Skunk Hunt (8 page)

Jeremy looked at us, puffing furiously away
at our cigarettes, and cocked the pipe like a gun. "I'm just
joining in. Do I need permission?"

I shrugged. Barbara shrugged. Our eyes
collided on a tobacco pouch that he drew from his pocket. After
testing a kitchen chair and finding it wanting, but the only one
available, he lowered himself cautiously, juggled a bit in his
seat, then sighed. He packed the bowl of his pipe, then took out a
shiny silver pipe lighter and lit up. It didn't look normal, the
flame coming out sideways like that. To me it smacked of inversion.
I recalled my earlier thought, that Barbara might think I was gay.
I wanted to get things back on track, but they kept swerving
further and deeper into the jungle.

Barbara was gazing at Jeremy with horrified
rapture, as though he was some kind of man-eating guppy threatening
to leap out of its fish bowl. Flint Dementis was the only man we
knew who smoked a pipe, and we (meaning the original neighborhood
chumps) ascribed it to the fact that half of his brain was missing.
Unless it was employed for the honorable purpose of ingesting
illegal substances, no one on Oregon Hill considered pipes worthy
of respect.

"If Skunk saw you he'd jump right back in his
grave," Barbara said.

"After knocking your head in," I added.

"He'd have to come back from the dead,
first," Jeremy answered, his head bobbing as he worked the lighter
over the pipe, like some kind of sage, or some kind of idiot. All
the while his eyes worked back and forth, as though he was scanning
the room for evidence of civilization. He drew the lighter away
slowly, thoughtfully, tested the embers in the bowl with a few deep
draws, then doused the flame. A cloud of thought combined with the
tobacco smoke. I half-expected him to summon up demons.

"Don't give me that look, Mute," he said. "I
might throw you to the Matthews boys again."

This was the Jeremy I knew, ready to foam at
the mouth when confronted by adversity. Or logic.

"They're gone," I said. "Like most everyone
else we knew."

"Mmmm..." Then the Jeremy I knew reverted to
the stranger as remorse emerged from the smoke. "I'm sorry I did
that, Mute. It was a shitty thing to do, especially when you were
just trying to help Sweet Tooth here."

"Oh God," Barbara moaned, "you found
Jesus."

"That's one of the hazards of prison life,"
Jeremy admitted. "But I haven't taken holy orders or anything."

This was too spooky. I decided it was time to
get down to business.

"You brought the letter with you?" I
asked.

"I can't let you read it."

"I know that," I said testily. "I just wanted
to make sure we all had our ducks in a row."

"What's in the bags?" Barbara asked, nodding
at the nylon mountain on the table.

"This is a laptop bag," Jeremy said.

"Yeah?" said Barbara.

"It has a laptop in it."

"Yeah?"

"And this is a printer bag."

"With a printer in it?" Barbara ventured.

"You got it, Sweet Tooth. Good girl."

In the past, Jeremy had frequently been
cruel. Now he was smug. I didn't see much to distinguish the two
attitudes, except he didn't seem inclined to punch Barbara after
delivering his verdict. Actually, that was a pretty big
improvement.

"Where did you get them?" Barbara asked.

I shot her a warning glance. Don't ask, don't
tell. She caught on, but not quickly enough. A smirk had hitched
itself to Jeremy's lips.

"You think I stole it?"

"Does it matter?" I asked.

"You mean like father like son?" Jeremy
said. "What have
you
stolen
lately?"

"Nothing!" Barbara answered for me. That she
was telling the truth was only a matter of luck. "Mute has a good
job. That's how he pays for all of this."

She waved her arm in a circle, directing
Jeremy's attention to the broken sink, the ratty curtains, the
splotched linoleum floor, the unhinged cabinets, the
nicotine-stained walls, the wobbly table...all of this. Now that I
knew my brother considered this a pigsty, having it presented as
evidence of my scrupulous lifestyle left a bad taste in my mouth.
Truly, sort of like eating garlic and then blowing into someone's
face to prove how fresh your breath is.

Fortunately, Jeremy did not join Barbara's
visual tour of the kitchen. I think he would have preferred to
close his eyes and keep them shut. Having been dismissed as a
guide, Barbara scowled at the tote bags.

"I bought this with my own money, thank you,"
said Jeremy stiffly, again betraying a trace of prissiness. He took
out his laptop and opened it on the table.

"Don't you need wires?" I asked. "And you'll
probably need a phone jack."

"We're next door to a university. They've got
a cafeteria, library, all Wifi. I can piggyback."

Since neither Barbara nor I knew what he was
talking about, we fell into a glum and leery silence. As Jeremy's
fingers danced across the keys and pad, I sensed the skewed picture
was now practically upside down. I had expected a minimal
performance, the hunt and peck technique of a prison vocational
school, accompanied by dark mutters and loud complaints—accusations
that the computer was inadequate or that the skills taught to him
were out of date. But obviously, my brother had taken his lessons
seriously

As his face settled into bland repose, our
father's features became more apparent. I guess this was because
Skunk, except when in his cups, was not a demonstrative man. Jeremy
had been emoting since he stepped inside, in effect blurring the
mad dog face we had known and dreaded. Only this younger version of
Skunk had been to canine obedience school, aka Powhatan
Correctional Center.

Jeremy muttered to himself. His eyebrows
seemed to pop upwards, not in surprise, but jocular
self-commentary. His hand slid over the mousepad like a veteran
skater on a tiny rink. We watched him pummel the laptop keys for
another minute or so before Barbara grew impatient.

"Well?" she said.

"Oh, sorry, I was trending," he answered. He
didn't notice our stern expressions of inquiry because he was
totally absorbed in the computer screen.

"Hey, you want to look up and tell us what's
going on?" I said, a little timorously. I was programmed at a young
age not to push people who beat me regularly. I didn't want the old
Jeremy to jump out of this urbane skin and grab me by the
throat.

"Yeah." He raised his head and refocused on
us. "The domain name's not there."

"Meaning?"

"www.treasure447.com, the site mentioned in
my letter. Your letters, too, I guess. I didn't expect it to be.
We're dealing with a short-life website. Al-Qaeda uses them all the
time."

"Terrorists?" Barbara said faintly.

"It makes sense," Jeremy explained casually.
"As soon as the site disappears no one can track it because there's
nothing to track. The terrorists have the password in advance and
are told when the site will be activated. It comes up, they
download whatever's on there, and then the site disappears. Pretty
basic. Our treasure site won't be activated until April 1, and we'd
better damn well be where we can pull it up."

"Otherwise, it's sort of like
burn
before
reading," I
observed.

"That's pretty good, Mute," said Jeremy. I
waited for the punch that inevitably followed any sign of
cleverness on my part. I was pleased and puzzled when Jeremy sat
back peacefully in his chair.

But I was now less bothered by his
familiarity with the digital world. One of the displays at the
Science Museum concerned the growing problem of cyber-crime. It
wasn't much of an exhibit, computers not being very photogenic.
Cyber criminals ranged from noobs and script kiddies to the black
hats and "1337's" (also known as 'the Elite'), and they specialized
in unraveling binary DNA and recombining it into unnatural monsters
that robbed you, seduced you and amused you, usually all at once.
From what I could tell, it seemed like the perfect way for lazy
crooks to make an illicit buck. For Jeremy to know about
sinister-sounding websites that vanished without a trace was
strangely reassuring. Rather than take the Skunk route of charging
more or less blindly into a usually-unwinnable situation, it seemed
Jeremy had chosen the easy path to riches. Why else would he bother
learning how to use a computer?

"Of course," my brother continued, "we could
make this a lot simpler. You could just give me your codes and I
could take care of it all for you."

Jeremy was back in the McPherson fold.
Slicker, more educated and prone to unsightly courtesy, but with
larceny in his blood. There was no other explanation for his
proposal. Did he really think we were so gullible? Of course not.
But there was always hope for the off-chance, that he could catch
us in a vulnerable moment. When we glared back at him, he smiled
and shrugged. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He had gained
nothing, but there was no harm, either.

"You don't trust me," he said. "Am I right in
thinking none of us trusts the other? Did we all get a personalized
postscript, telling us something only Skunk would know? Do any of
us want to share our tidbit?"

"So we have to wait two days before we can
find out anything?" Barbara asked in a subdued wail.

"Looks like we don't have a choice," said
Jeremy.

"You could both stay here, if you want," I
said queasily. For the last three years I had lived alone. I
wondered if I had acquired the quirky habits of solitude—habits
that would not bear close scrutiny by a brother and sister. I
sometimes forgot to flush the toilet. I wasn't even sure if I
talked to myself. I would ask myself later.

"Why should we want to do that?" Jeremy
asked, darting a glance down the hall towards the bedroom we had
once shared. If the front of the house was a pigsty, the back might
be a cross between a camel pen and an anthrax lab.

"I don't think..." Barbara shifted
uncomfortably in her seat, her glossy shorts almost causing her to
slide off.

It was then I realized her 'nothing has
changed' had not been a compliment.

Now what? Trade stories about the old days?
Not much good could come from that, and we knew it. Relate what we
had been up to these past few years? Jeremy had spent time doing
time, while Barbara had shimmied from pole dancing to a disastrous
pre-nuptial divorce. Me? I was an hour away from donning a bright
red and yellow clown suit which was the Science Museum's version of
an old-time popcorn vendor's uniform—a nod to the geriatrics who
found modern science a crashing bore, if not utterly
incomprehensible. I wasn't very high on the job skill list, and
preferred not to discuss past or current prospects. Nor was my sex
life a fit topic—I would have put it on a par with their own, had I
been in the game.

To put it mildly, it was an awkward moment.
All we had in common was Skunk's booty, unavoidably out of reach
for about thirty-two hours. The only solution to our speechless
dilemma was to part ways as quickly as possible.

"So...we meet back here on—"

"Are you crazy?" Barbara interrupted. "You're
the one who didn't want me to say 'boo' on the phone. We're being
watched, you said."

We both turned to Jeremy for his input. I
expected him to dismiss my concern, and experienced a highly
tangible chill when he said:

"I think I saw someone outside, sitting in a
car."

"Watching my house?" I said.

"Isn't it still sorta
our
house?" Barbara
protested.

"If it's your house too, clean it up," I
groused. The new Jeremy was already having an impact on me. "This
is a pigsty."

My brother did not involve himself in the
brief squabble over property rights. He scrubbed his hand on his
bristly crewcut, set his jaw in a Skunk-like grimace, and waited.
In the back of my mind I registered this as another mark against
him. No papers had been signed after our parents' deaths. Legally,
this was as much his house as ours. Why wasn't he staking his
claim?

But my fear returned and I stood.

"I've got to check this guy out," I said,
heading for the front door.

"Gal," Jeremy amended, joining me. "Kind of a
dog, too."

This alarmed me even more. The two girls I
had recently dated were fit for euphemisms: 'ill-favored', 'on the
plain side', 'glamour-challenged', 'Miss Alternate Universe'. I
would add 'sweet personalities', if it applied. So far as I knew,
neither of them was dragging a torch for me. But what if I had
sparked some kind of emotion? Love? Unlikely. Perhaps, then, a
gnawing disgust so potent that they were inclined to rid the
neighborhood of such a fumbling rat? I doubted either one of them
was packing—but around here, you never knew. Still, if one of them
wanted to slather me in ridicule, with my siblings present as
witnesses, that would have been as effective as a bullet in the
head.

I had intended to stroll out the door and
take a casual glance up the street, as though looking for the ice
cream man. But prudence invoked a last-second course adjustment
that steered me to the window. Slowly opening a gap in the dismal
smoke-saturated curtains, which had not been changed (or washed)
since our mother died, I tried to find a clear field of vision
through the dusty glass.

"You've got to be joking," Jeremy fumed,
turning away.

"Wait!" I called out, but my brother was
already opening the door.

When I arrived on the porch, a rust-streaked
van was pulling away from the curb. I caught only a chubby fragment
of the driver's profile before it sped off.

"She saw us coming," said Barbara, coming up
behind me.