The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces (26 page)

“What is it called?” Prudence asked.

“The Data Disguise,” Dennis said as if he hadn't made the whole thing up right on the spot.

“By the way,” she said, “does Dennis have a last name? We'll need it for the announcement.”

“St. James,” Dennis said, “Dennis St. James.”

That was news to me.

We announced Prudence's comeback on-line. We talked about Dennis St. James and the Data Disguise as her first project. We called him a local computer wizard—his idea, actually. We e-mailed “Alice and Umberto” to members of the BOD list.

“I guess that's it,” I said.

“Let's meet at GP Ink tomorrow at nine,” Prudence said.

“Do you suppose I should already be there?” I asked. “Maybe I should get right over there and spend the night so I'll be there when you open in the morning.”

“That's probably not necessary,” Yuri said. “Just get up and go early in the morning.”

“So, how do we get out of here?” I asked.

“Mostly you just decide that you want to be out of here,” she said. “You sit up. I get the feeling that most people do not experience this to the depth you seem to be experiencing it. Or for that matter the depth that I experience it. You're mostly in a world of your own half the time, anyway.”

“Is that a crack?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I'm the same way myself.”

“Well, I guess this is really not so much different from what goes on in my head from day to day.”

“Most people would always be aware of their bodies back in the Quack Inn,” she said.

“Speaking of that,” I said, “I still don't see what the datapants are for.”

Yuri chuckled. “Why don't you show him what the pants are for, Prudence?”

Prudence blushed.

Yuri stood up. “My work is done.” He disappeared.

“Well?” I said.

She looked up at me and smiled, and her smile filled the landscape, and warmth washed over me, and a tingling caress—fingers from elsewhere and everywhere.

This is it, I thought.

Then everything went black. It was all gone as if someone had just switched off the universe. My head swam and I would have fallen, but then I realized I was already on my back in a big tray of goo in a room in the Quack Inn.

“Okay, get your butt out here,” Frank Wallace said.

twenty

I didn't move a muscle. I didn't make a sound. I hoped Frank would think I was still in VR. Or dead. Dead would be okay. Maybe he'd go away if he thought I was dead.

“Come out of there,” he said. “Don't play games with me, Brian. I turned it off. I know you can hear me.”

His next step would be to grab me and toss me onto the floor. I wondered how long he had been in the room and what he'd heard. At least my part of the conversation. Would that be enough for him to figure out what was going on?

“Brian, I'm warning you…” I could hear him getting closer.

“Okay,” I said. I reached up and pulled off the VR helmet and looked up into Frank's face. He didn't look happy. I dropped the helmet over the edge and rolled my head to the side so I could see the door. It was closed, but the security chain had been cut. I had been in so deep I hadn't heard any of that. I sat up and the rubber datavest made a smooch as it peeled away from the Jell-O of the bed.

“Hello, Frank.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “How did you know it was me under there?”

“I followed you here, you nitwit,” Frank said.

“You followed me?”

“Stand up,” he said.

I reached back and grabbed the cable leading to the
datapants.
I didn't want it jerking me short as I tried to stand up. The black rubber getup was already making it difficult to maintain my dignity.

Frank never took his eyes off me. As soon as I was upright he pulled my own camera out from behind his back and flashed my picture.

I had a bunch of choices at that point. I could take off the VR gear and walk naked across the room to my clothes. Frank would probably get a kick out of that. He'd be snapping my picture and I'd be doing a full body blush. I could just storm over to my clothes ripping the cables from the computer. He'd probably deck me for that one. I could just stand there like an idiot while he took another picture.

“Say cheese,” he said.

“Hey, Frank,” I said. “After you're done maybe we can trade places and I can take your picture. Why should I have all the fun? It's your stuff.”

That made all the muscles in his face tighten up. He kicked at my clothes on the floor and sat down at the little motel table.

I leaned down to unhook the cables from the computer.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Disconnecting, Frank. I need to use the can.”

“Cut it out,” he said. “And stay where you are. You think I'm going to let you slip out that little window in the bathroom?”

“That hadn't occurred to me.” Now that he'd mentioned it, though, getting away might not be a bad idea.

I pulled off a glove and tossed it back onto the bed. “So why were you following me, Frank?” I was doing my best to seem unflappable. I didn't want to be the victim here. I took off the other glove.

“Knock off the striptease,” he said.

I took my hands away from the datavest.

“The Russian Marvin busted yesterday turned out to be the guy who tossed your office,” he said.

“I practically put the guy in Marvin's lap.”

“Whatever.”

I stood on one foot and pulled off one of the datasocks. While I was still perched on one foot, Frank snatched my camera off the table and took my picture. The flash blinded me. I almost lost my balance, had to take a little jumping hop, and I stomped my bare foot down hard on the floor. Frank put the camera back down on the table.

“Genka Matusoff,” he said, “the Russian. He's got some confusing ideas about diplomatic immunity.”

“Oh?”

“He thinks he still has it.” Frank smiled suddenly and I felt a shudder of sympathy for Matusoff. I wouldn't want Frank smiling like that when he thought of me.

“So he used to be a diplomat?”

I got the other datasock off.

“Something like that,” Frank said. “He could see I'd be big trouble, but the interesting thing is that when it dawned on him just who I was, he got a lot calmer. He had something for me.”

I quickly slipped out of the datavest and dropped it onto the bed. “Like?”

“Like the fact that when he tossed your office, he found out you were following a certain police lieutenant for his wife.”

“Whoops.”

“I could just kick the crap out of you right here, Brian. Who would know?”

“Come on, Frank,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice and doing okay—well maybe there was a little tremble, but that was about it, and I should be allowed a little tremble, considering I was still tethered to the bed by a long cable hooked to my rubber pants. “I'm just doing my job. This isn't personal.”

He banged his hand down on the table. “Of course, it's personal! It's always been personal with you. You spend all your time trying to screw up my life.”

“Boy, Frank,” I said. “You think I've got nothing to do except think about you? Grow up. What have I ever done to you?”

“You shot me, you idiot!”

“We were kids! Almost kids anyway, and it was a long time ago. I'm amazed and hurt you'd bring that up after all this time. Get over it. It was an accident!”

“So you say. I still limp. When I'm too tired to fight it. Did you know that?”

“I'm sorry to hear it, Frank.”

“And Elsie,” he said. “I can't believe she went to you. You of all people.”

“It sounds like you're the one who spends all of his time obsessing about me.”

“You flatter yourself,” he said. “I doubt your name has been spoken in my house more than half a dozen times in the last ten years.”

“So, that explains it,” I said. “Elsie needed a detective and she just picked an old high school friend.”

“You were never friends,” he said, “and she knows how I feel about you.”

“It seems to me you don't talk much,” I said.

“I might still hit you, Brian,” he said. “You don't want to be jerking my chain. What do you think you are, some kind of marriage counselor?”

“I'm just saying you could have avoided this whole business if you'd just told Elsie what you were up to at the motel here.”

“This is work,” he said. “I can't discuss this.”

“Marvin thinks you've been acting weird, too,” I said. “Don't you talk to anyone?”

“I can't believe it,” he said. “I simply cannot believe it. Marvin, too? Marvin's been sneaking around talking to you about me, too? Is your number posted on the bulletin board? Big sign says you want to discuss Frank Wallace's personal life, call your local dipstick Brian Dobson?”

“Marvin was worried about you,” I said. “Besides what do you mean personal life? You just said this was work.”

“Well, you're finished as far as I'm concerned,” he said. “You can follow me till your dick drops off and you won't see me do anything but my job.”

“Come on, Frank, let me get out of your job.” I pulled the waist band of the datapants away from my body. “Let me put my clothes on.”

He picked up my camera again.

“I met Pablo Deerfield in there,” I said.

I thought he went a little white, but he recovered quickly. He put my camera back down. “Did he happen to tell you where he is in the flesh?”

“No,” I said. “Is that your cover story? Your virtual reality debauchery is all so you can track down Pablo in the flesh? Deep cover?”

“Something like that,” he said. “What do you mean ‘debauchery'?”

“Here's the deal, Frank.” Go for broke. Do or die. “I can report to my client that you come to this motel room alone, put on rubber pants, and interact with an electronic device.”

He was right on the edge like a coiled rattlesnake. Any second now he was going to jump into my face.

But then he looked down at his hands.

“I wish you'd leave the device out of it,” he said. “And the pants. And the motel.” He looked up at me. “If you think about it, you might say you owe me that much.”

In response to his claim that I owed him one, I gave him my cold-as-ice stare. I added my much practiced disdainful curl of the upper lip, especially effective when wearing a mustache, which adds a hint of cruel irony.

“You're such a screwup, Brian,” he said after a couple of moments of silence. “Put your clothes on.”

I could zap him with what I'd learned about him and COFID. That would take him down another notch or two, but it would also tip him off that EES was on to him. My purpose here was not to give Frank Wallace information. I slipped out of the datapants and hurried over to my clothes.

I got dressed as quickly as possible. I sat down in the other chair across the little table from Frank to put on my shoes. So what would Frank do next? If I were him, I'd probably haul me downtown and toss me into a cell. He couldn't hold me long, but he could let me cool my heels overnight with bad company. I needed a diversion.

“I'm about to solve the Documentalists Murders case for you, Frank.”

“Right. Sure, you are. And just how are you going to pull that little stunt off?”

“Get off your high horse, Frank,” I said. “If you want my cooperation in regard to your little electronic boudoir here you should be nice to me.”

“Get screwed,” he said. “And while you're at it, get a dictionary. Boudoir. Jesus.”

“Things to do, Frank,” I said and stood up.

“We're not done.” He didn't get up, but I knew he could be up and on me before I could get to the door. “What about the killer?”

“A minute ago you didn't want to hear it.”

“Just tell me what you're up to,” he said. “I'll probably have to stop you to protect the citizens around you.”

We would need the police sooner or later anyway. I would rather have had Marvin in on it, but sometimes circumstances force you to make other choices. I sat down again.

“Certain associates of mine have helped me set up a trap for the killer,” I said. “You may remember my theory, now largely confirmed, about the killer killing the producers of bad documentation?”

“I can be fair,” Frank said. “I think you do have that part right.”

“So, what we've done is produce maybe the worst documentation in the history of documentation. We've released it in certain circles on the net, e-mailed it to key individuals, and we've set up the documentalist who produced the abomination in an office where the killer can get at her.”

“And?”

“And now we wait,” I said. “The killer comes to knock off Prudence and we grab him.”

“Prudence Deerfield?”

“Right,” I said. “At the GP Ink offices. Maybe the killer comes by to check us out first and we recognize him. Or maybe he gives himself away in a manner no one has thought of yet.”

I thought he was going to tell me we were wasting our time, or playing a dangerous game—maybe say we were out of our league, but he asked instead, “When did you set this all up?”

I know I shifted my eyes to the bed and the VR gear, but I tried to cover it quickly. “Earlier,” I said. “I got the wheels turning earlier, but I've got to get going on this, Frank. Let's get out of here. I can fill you in later.”

I got up again.

This time Frank got up, too. “Come on then. You can fill me in now.”

He opened the door and let me step out first. He turned back to lock the door. He was confident that I wouldn't just take off, and he was right. What would be the point?

“We'll take your jeep,” he said.