Myron’s cellular phone rang again. He stared at it for a second. Six weeks ago he had turned the phone off. Now that it was back on, the contraption seemed to be making up for lost time. He pressed a button and brought it to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Myron.”
Pow. The voice walloped him like a palm blast to the sternum. A rushing noise filled his ears, as though the phone were a seashell clamped against him. Myron slid into a yellow plastic chair.
“Hello, Jessica,” he managed.
“I saw you on the news,” she said, her voice a tad too controlled. “So I figured you’d turn your phone back on.”
“Right.”
More silence.
“I’m in Los Angeles,” Jessica continued.
“Uh-huh.”
“But I needed to tell you a few things.”
“Oh?” Myron’s Smooth-Lines Fountain—he just couldn’t turn it off.
“First off, I’ll be gone for at least another month. I didn’t change the locks or anything so you can stay at the loft—”
“I’m, uh, bunking at Win’s.”
“Yeah, I figured. But if you need anything or if you want to clear your stuff out—”
“Right.”
“Don’t forget the TV too. That’s yours.”
“You can keep it,” he said.
“Fine.”
More silence.
Jessica said, “We’re being so adult about this, aren’t we?”
“Jess—”
“Don’t. I called for a reason.”
Myron kept quiet.
“Clu called you several times. At the loft, I mean.” Myron had guessed that.
“He sounded pretty desperate. I told him I didn’t know where you were. He said that he had to find you. That he was worried about you.”
“About me?”
“Yes. He came by once, looking like absolute shit. He grilled me for twenty minutes.”
“About what?”
“About where you were. He said that he had to reach you—for your sake more than his. When I insisted that I didn’t know where you were, he started scaring me.”
“Scaring you how?”
“He asked how I knew you weren’t dead.”
“Clu said those words? About my being dead?”
“Yes. I actually called Win when he left.”
“What did Win say?”
“That you were safe and that I shouldn’t worry.”
“What else?”
“I’m talking about Win here, Myron. He said—and I quote—‘he’s safe, don’t worry.’ Then he hung up. I let it drop. I figured that Clu was engaging in a little hyperbole to get my attention.”
“That was probably it,” Myron said.
“Yeah.”
More silence.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I’m good. And you?”
“I’m trying to get over you,” she said.
He could barely breathe. “Jess, we should talk—”
“Don’t,” she said again. “I don’t want to talk, okay? Let me put it simply: If you change your mind, call me. You know the number. If not, have a nice life.”
Click.
Myron put down the phone. He took several deep breaths. He looked at the phone. So simple. He did indeed know the number. How easy it would be to dial it.
“Worthless.”
He looked up at Dr. Czerski. “Pardon?”
She held up the diskette. “You said there was graphic on it?”
Myron quickly explained what he had seen.
“It’s not there now,” she said. “It must have deleted itself.”
“How?”
“You say the program ran automatically?”
“Yes.”
“It probably self-extracted, self-ran, and then self-deleted. Simple.”
“Aren’t there special programs so you can undelete a file?”
“Yes. But this file did more than that. It reformatted the whole diskette. Probably the final command in the chain.”
“Meaning?”
“Whatever you saw is gone forever.”
“Is there anything else on the diskette?”
“No.”
“Nothing we can trace? No unique characteristics or anything?”
She shook her head. “Typical diskette. Sold in every software store in the country. Standard formatting.”
“How about fingerprints?”
“That’s not my department.”
And, Myron knew, it would be a waste of time. If someone had gone to the trouble of destroying any computer evidence, chances were pretty good that all fingerprints had been wiped off too.
“I’m busy.” Dr. Czerski handed him back the diskette and left without so much as a back glance. Myron stared at it and shook his head.
What the hell was going on here?
The cell phone rang again. Myron picked it up.
“Mr. Bolitar?” It was Big Cyndi.
“Yes.”
“I am going through Mr. Clu Haid’s phone records, as you requested.”
“And?”
“Are you coming back to the office, Mr. Bolitar?”
“I’m on the way there now.”
“There is something here you might find bizarre.”
Chapter 12
When the elevator opened, Big Cyndi was waiting for him. She’d finally scrubbed her face clean. All the makeup was gone. Must have used a sand blaster. Or a jackhammer.
She greeted him by saying, “Very bizarre, Mr. Bolitar.”
“What’s that?”
“Per your instructions, I was checking through Clu Haid’s phone records,” she said. Then she shook her head. “Very bizarre.”
“What’s bizarre?”
She handed him a sheet of paper. “I highlighted the number in yellow.”
Myron looked at it while walking into this office. Big Cyndi followed, closing the door behind her. The number was in the 212 area code. That meant Manhattan. Other than that, it was totally unfamiliar. “What about it?”
“It’s for a nightclub.”
“Which one?”
“Take A Guess.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s the name of the place,” Big Cyndi said. “Take A Guess. It’s two blocks down from Leather-N-Lust.” Leather-N-Lust was the S&M bar that employed Big Cyndi as a bouncer. Motto: Hurt The Ones You Love.
“You know this place?” he asked.
“A little.”