This Is Not a Game (18 page)

(At least we now know that Chatty doesn’t work for Customs!)

 

You know, we’re not devoting every minute of every day to
Motel Room Blues.
If we could solve a real-life murder, we could earn a lot of good karma. Like we did by helping Dagmar.

But the victim won’t give us all a thank-you dinner, the way Dagmar did.

 

Dagmar looked at the bulletins lined up on her screen and simply stared for a long moment. Then she let out the air she’d been holding in her lungs and reached for the phone on her desk.

She had Lieutenant Murdoch’s number somewhere, if she could find his card with her trembling fingers.

 

 

 

 

Charlie had showered and changed and as a result now looked like a homeless person who had been taken off the street and dressed in someone else’s clothes. He was slumped, motionless, over his desk, hunched over a mug of coffee. He seemed to have aged twenty years in the past twenty-four hours.

Probably Dagmar had, too. She should probably avoid mirrors for the next several days—she didn’t want to know how ragged she looked.

As Dagmar entered his office, Charlie looked up, and said, “Did you post the message? ”

“I didn’t need to. The Group Mind figured it out on its own.”

He shrugged, slumped again. Dagmar seated herself.

“But listen,” Dagmar said, “they figured it out by finding out who the killer was.”

Charlie looked up.

“He’s a professional hit man,” Dagmar said. “Russian Maffya.”

Charlie stared. Dagmar sensed his mind working behind the weary facade.

“Did you tell the police? ” he asked.

“Yes, but Murdoch already knew. They had Consuelo’s uploads and the same biometric data that the Group Mind had.”

“Do they know where the guy lives? ”

“He smuggled himself into the country under a false identity. I imagine they’re going to wait for him to fly out on that identity, and nail him at the airport.”

Charlie looked down, frowned for a moment, then glanced up. “Do you know what false identity he’s using? ”

“Murdoch wouldn’t say.”

Charlie leaned back, stared into the far distance, and tapped a thumbnail against his coffee mug. “I wish,” he said, “that I was one of those millionaires who knew all the politicians, and I could call Murdoch’s superior and get the name. But I’m not politically connected. I’ve never needed favors from any of those people. I don’t even know who my state senator is.”

“Do you know anyone who
is
connected? ” Dagmar asked. “Anyone who owes you a favor? ”

“I know lots of people. Favors are another issue.” He looked at Dagmar and narrowed his eyes. “We’re thinking about the same thing, aren’t we? ”

“Set the Group Mind to finding the killer? ”

“Yeah.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin. “That is like
totally
crazy, isn’t it? ”

Dagmar felt anger clenching the muscles in her jaw.

“I want Austin’s killer found,” she said.

“So do I.”

“So if we make Austin’s killing part of the
game
. . .”

“Yeah.”

Dagmar put her hands on her head. “And give rewards to anyone who gives us answers.” She passed a hand over her weary eyes. “I’ll have to think about how to do all that. How to work it.”

Charlie stood, hitched up his brand-new khaki trousers.

“In an hour,” he said, “I’ve got a meeting with Austin’s partners. We’ve got to try and figure out a way to keep his company going.”

She looked at him. “Why are you involved? You’re not part of his company.”

“I’m one of Austin’s original backers. I still own a piece.”

She stared at him in surprise. He looked irritated.

“What’s wrong? ” he said.

“It’s just that I didn’t know that.”

Charlie flapped one arm. “I made my millions first, so I gave Austin a hand. It’s not as if I haven’t been repaid a dozen times over. He had the golden touch.”

“What’s going to happen with the company? ”

He shook his head. “He’s got partners, but they’re
junior
partners. None of them are ready to move up to the Show. So we’re going to have to hire a honcho with a good record, and hire him fast, and that’s going to cost.”

“Good luck.”

He waved a hand. “Thanks.”

She stood, and she walked with him to the elevator. As he reached for the button, she put a hand over his.

“Charlie,” she said, “I have to know something.”

He looked at her. “Sure. What do you need? ”

“I need to know if Austin was connected with the Russian Maffya,” she said. “You’re a part of his company, maybe you know.”

Charlie looked at her in astonishment.

“No,” he said. “No, in fact I’m sure he wasn’t. I don’t know every start-up he was involved with, but I know he had plenty of options, and there’s no way he’d touch anything that looked hinky.”

Hinky.
Now
there
was a word Dagmar had never before heard in conversation.

“Okay,” she said. “Next question.” She looked over her shoulder, made certain the corridor was empty. “Are
you
involved with the Maffya? ”

Charlie was beyond astonishment. The question left him openmouthed.

“Me? ” he managed.

“Yes.”

He put a hand on her arm.

“Dagmar,” he said, “I make
software.
I make autonomous agents to help business and government manage complex systems.” He gave an incredulous laugh. “I help ordinary people make
shopping decisions.
I help
filter spam,
for Christ’s sake.”

Dagmar licked dry lips.

“You have these foreign backers,” she said. “None of us have ever met them.”

Again he gave a laugh.

“No,” he said. “None of them are Russian.”

Then he stepped back, put both his hands on the sides of his head in a parody of astonishment.

“
Dagmar!
” His voice rose to a kind of geeky shriek, unusual in a man of his height and dignity. “How long have we known each other? I can’t believe you’ve been thinking this!”

Dagmar felt heat rise to her cheeks.

“Sorry,” she said. “But it occurred to me that the killer might have been after you, not Austin.”

He looked at her in sudden silence, and lowered his hands. “What do you mean? ”

“You’re the same physical type. You wear glasses and he didn’t, but he was wearing shades. Your faces are different, but behind the cap and sunglasses, that might not have been apparent. You were even wearing the same color shirt.”

Charlie raised his arms again and looked at his new shirt.

“Jesus, Dagmar,” he said.

“Okay.” Dagmar waved a hand. “I’m clearly out of my mind. Go to your meeting, okay? ”

“Sure.” He reached for the elevator button and pressed it, then shook his head.

“Damn,” he said. “You’re fucking scary, you know that? ”

Dagmar ventured a tight little smile.

“PTSD,” she said. “But I’m learning how to manage it.”

 

Exhausted, Dagmar went home in midafternoon. On the way she stopped at a Beef Bowl drive-through, and the scent of the beef, rice, and ginger rising in her dented old Prius rekindled her faded appetite.

It had been a long time since that piece of toast.

Dagmar lived in a two-room apartment in the valley, less than two miles from AvN Soft. The building had been built in the 1970s, was three stories tall, and surrounded a courtyard with palm trees, a swimming pool, and a clubhouse with a couple of Ping-Pong tables and humming soda machines.

Dagmar lived on the top floor so that when the Big One hit, she’d pancake on the people below and not be pancaked herself. She figured that was only sensible.

Even though Charlie paid her very well, she still couldn’t afford California real estate, and she didn’t have time to take care of a house anyway. So she put her money where Charlie and Austin told her to put it, and watched it grow with a kind of abstract joy completely void of comprehension.

She’d grown up poor, in apartments of decreasing splendor off Detroit Avenue in Cleveland. She knew the value of a dollar, of twenty dollars, of a hundred.

The kind of numbers that Charlie dealt with every day were beyond her ken. A hundred thousand dollars was a statistic. A million a fantasy.

She had a couple of hundred thousand in the market, but it was just Monopoly money to her.

Monopoly money that was growing. Regular paychecks and a rising market, she had found, were a good reinforcement.

She parked in front of the ginkgo bush, took her beef bowl in its white paper bag from the worn passenger seat of the Prius, and legged out of the car. She was about to give her thumbprint to the electronic lock on the wrought-iron gate when she noticed the white Dodge van parked in one of the building’s visitor spaces.

The van, she saw, had a
satellite uplink.
If she hadn’t had a very paranoid twenty-four hours, she might not have noticed the detail.

Andy’s Electronic Service,
she read on the door.

Dagmar walked along the wrought-iron gate and placed herself directly between the car and her apartment door, on the third-floor corner.

The sight lines were perfect. Whoever was in the van had an unobstructed view of the front of her apartment.

Anger crackled along her nerves. She pulled her handheld from its holster, opened a file, thumbed in the license number, and mailed it to herself. Then she stalked up to the van and peered through the dark glass of the driver’s-side window. Joe Clever’s surprised face stared at her for a brief second before he vanished into the back of the vehicle. She walked to the rear of the van and banged on the door.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Come out of there!”

She kicked the door.

“I can stay here all day, motherfucker!” she yelled. “Get your ass out here!”

“Don’t dent my van!” came a muffled voice. “I’m coming out!”

One of the rear doors opened, and Joe Clever climbed out, lanky body unfolding as he dropped his sneakers onto the pavement. He was over six feet, appeared to be in his twenties, and had a stoop and dark hair that looked as if he cut it himself with scissors and a pair of mirrors.

Type One Geek.

“Hi, Dagmar,” he said. “Haven’t seen you since the dinner.”

Dagmar had given a dinner at an Indonesian restaurant for those members of the Group Mind who had helped her escape from Indonesia, or at least those who had been able to make it to L.A.

“You’ve seen
me
since the dinner,” Dagmar said. “It’s just that I haven’t seen
you.
”

He grinned. He didn’t seem the least embarrassed.

“Yeah!” he said. He stepped to the side so that Dagmar could see the interior of the van. “Pretty cool, huh? ”

“Why don’t you give me the tour? ” Dagmar said.

So he showed her the van, the two-way-mirror side and rear windows, the Pentax on its mount, the lenses sitting in foam in their shockproof steel carrying case, the telescope, the binoculars, and the elegant NKVD-surplus monocular that could be worn on the finger like a ring. Electronic images fed into a laptop computer, which could then upload anything via the satellite uplink.

There was more than one computer, and an online game was frozen on one monitor, something he’d been playing when she showed up.

The van smelled like old fast-food cartons, which it contained in large numbers.

He didn’t show her what she suspected was audio equipment, so Dagmar made a point of asking about it. He showed her his Big Ears, and some smaller surveillance gear he’d purchased in some neighborhood spy store.

So, Dagmar thought, her own office wasn’t secure, not with the big glass window that could be used as a diaphragm for the laser signal.

She’d have to call in some countersurveillance experts.

“I’ve even got some oscilloscopes,” he said. “They don’t really have any
function
or anything, but I think they’re cool.” Green standing waves hummed in the displays.

“Nice mad-scientist decor,” Dagmar said. “All you need is a Tesla coil.”

“Thanks!” He opened the squeaking lid of a large cooler. “Want a drink to go with your dinner? ”

She chose a lemonade, then climbed out of the van and blinked in the bright California sun. She turned to Joe Clever as he joined her on the asphalt.

“What do you do for a living, anyway? ” she asked.

He adjusted his spectacles. “I play games full-time.”

“I don’t think that pays very well,” Dagmar said.

Joe Clever grinned. “My grandma died and left me an income. Not a big one, I’m not rich or anything—the van is six years old—but I don’t have to work, and sometimes I’ll buy myself a trip to Bangalore or someplace.”

Dagmar looked at the van and the blinking oscilloscopes.

“That’s good,” she said, “because I’ve got a job for you.”

“A job? ” For the first time, he seemed surprised.

“Not for money,” she said, and then corrected herself. “Not unless you
want
money, I mean. What I want is for you to find the killer.”

He frowned. “That Litvinov guy? It looked like he wasn’t part of the game.”

“He is now,” Dagmar said.

Joe Clever considered this. “Interesting,” he said.

“When you find him,” Dagmar said, “don’t approach him or anything. Just let me know—me or the police.”

He scratched his chin. “Where do I start? ”

“If I knew,” she said, “I couldn’t tell you. I’m the puppetmaster. I’m the one who decides what the puzzles are.”