The Broken Window

that was “What the hell is he really up to?”
    •   •   •
    Do They think I’m stupid?
    Did They think I wouldn’t be suspicious?
    They know about knowledge service providers at this point. About predicting how sixteens will act, based on past behavior and the behavior of others. This concept has been a part of my life for a long, long time. It should be part of everyone’s. How will your next-door neighbor react if you do X? How will he react if you do Y? How will a woman behave when you’re accompanyingher to a car while you’re laughing? When you’re silent and fishing in your pocket for something?
    I’ve studied Their transactions from the moment They became interested in me. I sorted them, analyzed Them. They’ve been brilliant at times—for instance, that trap of theirs: letting SSD employees and customers know about the investigation and waiting for me to peek at NYPD files on the Myra 9834 case. I almost did, came within an ENTER keystroke of searching but just had a feeling something was wrong. I know now I was right.
    And the press conference? Ah, that transaction smelled off from the beginning. Hardly fit predictable and established patterns of behavior. I mean, for the police and the city to meet journalists at that time of night? And the particular assemblage up on the podium certainly didn’t ring true.
    Of course, maybe it was legit—even the best fuzzy logic and predictive behavior algorithms get it wrong occasionally. But it was in my interest to check further. I couldn’t, even casually, talk to any of Them directly.
    So instead, I did what I do best.
    I looked into the closets, gazed through my secret window at the silent data. I learned more about the folks up there on the podium during the press conference: the deputy mayor, Ron Scott, and Captain Joseph Malloy—the man supervising the investigation against me.
    And the third person, the professor. Carlton Soames, Ph.D.
    Except . . . Well, he wasn’t .
    He was a cop decoy.
    A search engine request did turn up hits for Professor Soames on the Carnegie Mellon Web site, and on his own site as well. His C.V. was also tucked away conveniently into various other sites.
    But it took me only a few seconds to open up the coding of those documents and examine the metadata. Everything about the phony prof had been written and uploaded yesterday.
    Do They think I’m stupid?
    If I’d had time I could have learned exactly who the cop was. I could have gone to the TV network’s Web site archive, found the press conference, frozen an image of the man’s face and done a biometric scan. I’d compare that image to DMV records in the area and police and FBI personnel photos to come up with the man’s real identity.
    But that would have been a lot of work, and unnecessary. I didn’t care who he was. All I needed was to distract the police and give myself time to locate Captain Malloy, the one who would be a veritable database of information about the operation.
    I easily found an outstanding warrant for a man bearing a rough resemblance to the cop playing Carlton Soames—a white male in his thirties. Simple matter then to call the bail bondsman, claiming to be an acquaintance of the fugitive and reporting that I’d spotted him at the Water Street Hotel. I described what he was wearing and hung up fast.
    Meanwhile I waited at the parking garage near Police Plaza where Captain Malloy parks his low-end Lexus (its oil change and wheel rotation long overdue,the dealer’s data report) every morning between 7:48 and 9:02 A.M.
    I engaged the enemy at exactly 8:35.
    There followed the abduction, the drive to the warehouse on the West Side, and the judicious use of forged metal to execute a memory dump from the admirably courageous database. I’m feeling the inexplicable, more-than-sexual satisfaction of knowing I’ve completed a collection: the identities of all the sixteens who are after me, some of the people tethered to Them and how They’re running the case.
    Some information was particularly revealing. (The name Rhyme, for instance. That’s the key as to why I’m in this fix, I now understand.)
    My soldiers will soon be on their way, marching into Poland, marching into the Rhineland. . . .
    And, as I’d hoped, I got something for that collection of mine, one of my favorites, by the way. I should wait until I’m back in my Closet but I can’t resist. I fish for the tape recorder and I hit REWIND then PLAY .
    A happy