Jonathan Raban - Surveillance - A Novel

Plus there was Marjorie’s voice. During their conversation, Lucy hadn’t warmed at all to her vengeful tone and absurdly snobby accent — though perhaps that was because Marjorie was so irresistibly reminiscent of Lucy’s mother at her worst, and “picking flarze ” was exactly how her mom would say it.

For all these reasons, Marjorie Tillman was someone Lucy was inclined to take with a large pinch of salt, at least until the photograph arrived. If it really showed Augie on an English chicken farm, the GQ piece would raise a storm, not just in America but around the world. For a journalist, that would be an incredible windfall, yet even as Lucy allowed herself to savor this thought for a moment, she felt a wrench of alarm and pity for Minna. If Marjorie turned out to be right, she’d be destroyed. Augie, much as Lucy had learned to like him now, could be said to deserve whatever might be coming to him, but Minna was innocent, defenseless, and trusting, and no more deserved the hurricane in which she’d be engulfed than she deserved hanging, regardless of what Montaigne might have to say on the subject.

Lucy was impatient for Microsoft to sound the all-clear. Despite herself, she badly wanted to find an English Juris Abeltins.

TAD’S SECOND-TO-LAST rent check, returned to him with his most recent statement, was stamped on the back:

PAY TO THE ORDER OF UNITED SAVINGS & LOAN BANK SEATTLE, WA 98104 FOR DEPOSIT ONLY EXCELLENT HOLDINGS, INC. 125004587

The bank, on South Jackson, had a line of customers waiting for the four available tellers, which was fine by Tad as he scoped the place out. Most of the bank’s staff were Asian-looking, with Chinese names, but he spotted two Caucasians, one with the name tag Amy on her chest, the other — fortunately — a man. He’d do “Jeff,” though because the guy was in his twenties, the voice would be tricky: easy to play old, much harder to play young.

When Tad’s turn came, he cashed $100 on his Visa card to make himself a legit customer, then went to the courtesy phone. If that number, or the bank’s name, showed up on Lee’s cell phone, he’d have no cause for suspicion.

He was nervous as he always was when waiting in the wings for his cue. He checked the other Charles O. Lee’s Social Security number on the slip of paper in his hand, then dialed the landlord’s cell. One ring, and it was picked up.

“Yeah?”

“Hi, this is Jeff from United Savings and Loan, South Jackson branch.” Tad lifted his pitch to a height just short of falsetto, and tempered it with a butch Seahawks-fan accent. “I’m looking for Charles Lee.”

“Yeah, is me.” There was no hesitation in the voice at the other end.

“We got a minor problem here, nothing serious — this Freak virus hit us, I sure hope it didn’t hit you, Charles. Dang thing seems to have messed up some of our records. Just wanted to check your SSN. The number we have for you is 015-48-…”

“7816,” Lee said.

“Right — that’s what we’ve got. Thanks for your time. Have a great day!”

Bingo! Walking away from the bank, Tad trod on air. It was the law of averages, of course. He’d been wrong, and wrong, and wrong again — he had to turn out to be right sometime.

What he’d found would be his secret. He meant to tell no one, not even Lucy, at least not yet. That he could now prove the odious Lee was an illegal with a stolen ID was, Tad thought with giddy self-satisfaction, his nuclear option.

THE BROUHAHA over the Freak virus was over by lunchtime, when Lucy applied the patch and went onto the disinfected Internet. Googling Juris Abeltins, she found just one — a Latvian socialist politician, “dzimis 1947.” From the context, she guessed that “dzimis” must mean “born,” but just to make sure she Googled “dzimis + born,” and there, beside the name of some entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest, was “Dzimis Latvija (Born in Latvia).” A Latvian baby boomer clearly couldn’t be the same person as Marjorie Tillman’s wartime refugee. This was a setback, but by no means conclusive. There were still billions of people too obscure to show up on Google, and a dim and moony child might well have grown up to be one of them. Marjorie’s Juris could easily be working as somebody’s gardener, growing flowers now, not picking them, beyond the reach of any search engine.

When Lucy drove up to the school at 3:30, Alida ditched her friends with wholly uncharacteristic speed and came racing over to the Spider, her face pink and bulging with excitement.

“Oh my God! You won’t believe it!” she said, opening the car door. “You so won’t believe it!”

“What is it, Rabbit!”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Cool your jets! Won’t believe what?”

“Finn! It’s Finn!”

“Finn what?”

“Finn’s been arrested — by the FBI ! We’re all getting counseling! It’s amazing !”

Lucy switched off the engine. “I’m lost. Can you just remember to breathe, please?”

“He wrote the virus! He was always signing himself ‘Freak’ in e-mails. Four FBI men came, in two cars. They caught his mom first and brought her to the school. They weren’t wearing uniforms or anything; they were in suits. Then the principal came and called Finn out of Humanities — this was this morning — and in the lunchroom there were these eighth-graders talking and they said Finn was going to get seven years. In jail ! He wrote the virus! Finn wrote the virus!”

Holy shit! Lucy thought, but said, “Can I just say one thing?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“He won’t get seven years in jail.”

“He told me and Gail he was into horses. He meant Trojan horses! He wrote this Trojan horse thing and it did billions and billions of dollars of damage! The FBI came to our school!”

“How did they manage to find him so quickly?”

“The eighth-graders said he didn’t cover his tracks at all — because he wanted to get caught!”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“For the attention. Like, Finn’s famous. I mean, not famous like Tad’s famous — he’s famous famous! He’s so über -famous it’s unreal! Finn! I think his mom’s in jail, too.”

Lucy knew Finn’s mom slightly — a pallid blonde named Beth who worked for some online outfit but had once been a journalist. Despite that connection, they’d had an annoying conversation at the sixth-grade picnic in September and had barely spoken since.

“Rabbit, honestly, I wouldn’t worry too much about Finn. He won’t go to jail. They don’t jail eleven-year-olds for stuff like that. They’ll give him the fright of his life, confiscate his computer, and send him back to school. Either that or they’ll hire him as a consultant on cyber crime. But I don’t believe for one second that he’ll see the inside of a prison — him, or his mom.”

“Finn wrote the virus.” Alida’s face gave new meaning to the word boggle : there was no other term for it, her eyes were boggled.

“Holy moly.” Lucy switched on the ignition and pulled out of the parking space. “Jesus, what a day for you. I don’t suppose you managed to get any actual work done?”

“No, we had counseling. And there’s no homework.”

“So what did the counselor say?”

“Oh, you know. Stuff. I knew Finn was doing something. He’s always weird, but these last few days he’s been weirder than weird.”

“Funny — looking at him, I’d never have guessed he was smart enough to do something like this.”

“Finn’s a genius. He’s awesome. ”

“Rabbit — you mustn’t think of him as some kind of hero…. He’s just a nerdy, fat, unhappy kid who wrote some code, and what he did was just plain wrong. It wasn’t cool.”