The Devil's Code

it was distinct from the garbage before and after, and itdid look like a key—I noticed the OMS tab again. The Old Man and the Sea. No, that wasn’t right: everyplace I’d seen the whole name, it was Old Man of the Sea: either a mistake, or not Hemingway.
    “Let’s go,” I said.
    “Where?”
    “Down to the university library. See if I can get somebody to tell me about this Old Man of the Sea.”
    “Kidd . . . this is the University of Texas. ”
    “And a damn fine university it is,” I said.
    “Really?”
    “Yup. It is.”
    “But then if it turns out to be something important, whoever you talk to will probably remember you.”
    “I think it’s a chance we’ve got to take.”
    “Couldn’t you just look it up on the Internet or something?”
    “Well . . .” I scratched my head. I could try, of course, but I’d become so accustomed to thinking of the Net as a large sewer clogged with crap, that it hadn’t occurred to me. “We can try.”
    I plugged “Old Man of the Sea” into the Alta Vista search engine and got back 756 Web pages; most of it was junk, but it became pretty clear that the original Old Man of the Sea was a character from the Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.
    According to the story, Sinbad was stranded on an island—he never learned—where he came across an old man who he believed to be crippled. The old man asked to be carried to a pool of water, but when Sinbad got him there, the old man wouldn’t get off Sinbad’s back.
    In fact, he grew something like spurs, and claws, and dug into Sinbad’s neck. For days, Sinbad was forced to carry him around the island and feed him. Sinbad himself, in an excess of pain, hollowed out a gourd that he found, and filled it with grapes. In a few days, the grape juice had become strong wine, which he drank to kill the pain.
    The old man noticed him doing this, and demanded some of the wine. Sinbad gave it to him. The old man became drunk, and Sinbad was able to throw him off his shoulders. Not being a major moralist, Sinbad then beat the old man to death. When he managed to get a ship off the island, he was told that the old man was a famous devil, who would beg to be carried, but then would ride his victim to death, eventually eating the body . . .
    “Nice story,” LuEllen said.
    “I should have remembered it,” I said. “I read all the Sinbad stories, but a long time ago.”
    “So . . . what does it mean?”
    “There are some very heavy social and psychological implications to it.”
    “You have no fuckin’ idea what it means,” she said.
    “Why do you think we’ve been cutting the devil card out of my tarot deck?”
    She opened her mouth to crack wise, and then shut it. And kept it shut.
    A ctually going out on the Net suggested something else to me. I did a quick search, found a site, and plugged in www.dallasnews.com . The Dallas MorningNews had one of the better newspaper sites, and on page one, it carried a teaser: “One Killed, One Wounded in Denton Shooting.”
    I punched it up and after a minute, a brief story trickled down the laptop’s screen.
A C ALIFORNIA WOMAN WAS KILLED AND A MAN WHO TOLD POLICE THAT HE WAS HER “ BODYGUARD ” WAS WOUNDED IN A SHOOTING AT THE E IGHTY -E IGHT M OTEL IN D ENTON LATE S ATURDAY NIGHT . D ENTON POLICE SAY THE SHOOTING MAY BE DRUG RELATED .
    L ANE W ARD , AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AT S TANFORD U NIVERSITY IN P ALO A LTO , C ALIFORNIA , WAS PRONOUNCED DEAD AT THE SCENE , WHILE HER “ BODYGUARD ,” IDENTIFIED BY POLICE AS L ETHRIDGE G REEN , OF O AKLAND , C ALIFORNIA , WAS IN FAIR CONDITION AT M OUNT OF O LIVES H OSPITAL .
    P OLICE SAID THAT BOTH W ARD AND G REEN HAD PRIOR DRUG-RELATED ARRESTS , W ARD IN 1986 IN S AN F RANCISCO FOR POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA , G REEN IN 1977 IN O AKLAND FOR POSSESSION OF COCAINE .
    W ITNESSES SAID THE GUNMEN WERE TWO WHITE MALES , ONE OF WHOM WAS WOUNDED IN THE SHOOTING . N EITHER GUNMAN HAS BEEN FOUND .
    P OLICE SAID G REEN WAS BEING HELD FOR QUESTIONING AT THE HOSPITAL .
    “Ooo. Little Lane was smoking dope,” LuEllen said.
    “In 1986,” I said. “She was a college kid.”
    “But it sounds bad, doesn’t it?”
    “Not unless the cops dropped some dope in the room, and the paper doesn’t mention any dope being found,” I said. “Of course, there’s the other possibility.”
    “Yeah?”
    “That it’s all bullshit from start to finish; that the FBI or somebody is mixing in with the cops, and don’t want reporters