The Devil's Code

Professional Criminal,” then you may have taken a bad turn down life’s dark alley. While other people were wistfully contemplating the grassy fork in “The Road Not Taken,” I’d lurched down a gutter full of broken wine bottles, and kicked asses and people telling me to go fuck myself. Nobody to blame, really.
    Well, maybe the Army. The Army had left me a roster of dead friends, a vicious dislike for bureaucratic organization, and a few unusual skills. And hell, it was interesting. At least I’m not stuck in a garret somewhere, with a pointy little beard and a special rap for victim women, trying to peddle my paintings to assholes in shiny Italian suits. At least I’m not that.
    What I am, is an artist. A painter. I make decent money from it. But even though I was working harder than ever, my production—artists actually talk about things like production—had been falling over the years. I’d always been a little fussy about what I sold, and I’d gotten fussier as I’d gotten older, so even as my prices went up, my income actually declined a little. The year before, I’d sold six paintings. I’d gotten a little more than $300,000, but let me tell you about the taxes . . .
    Or maybe not. I sound a little too Republican when I get started on taxes.
    In any case, I still worked at my night job. I stole things. Computer code, schematics for new chips or new computers, designs for new cars. I suppose I could have stolen jewelry or cash, but I wasn’t interested in jewelry or cash—and besides, that kind of thievery didn’t pay as well as my kind.
    I knew that for sure, because my best friend is a woman named LuEllen, who was exactly that kind of thief: she stole cash and jewelry and coin collections and even stamps—or anything else that was portable and could easily and invisibly be turned into cash. LuEllen and I had known each other since I caught her trying to break into another guy’s apartment in my building. That was several years ago. Ever since, we’d been friends and sometimes more than friends.
    Even with that history, I had no idea what LuEllen’s real last name was, or where exactly she lived. She was comfortable with my ignorance.
    I’m not exactly embarrassed by the night job, though I’ve often thought I’d give it up if I could make ninepaintings a year instead of six. Then again, I might not. If I were French, and philosophical, I might even argue that “professional criminal” wasn’t that far from “freedom fighter.”
    But there was always that skeptical face in the mirror, the face that asked whether freedom fighting should generate large amounts of expendable income. I could say—“Hey, even freedom fighters gotta eat.” But what do you do when the face in the mirror asks, “Yeah, but should freedom fighters get condos in New Orleans and painting trips to Siena and fishing jaunts to Ontario and season tickets for the Wolves?”
    Being neither French nor philosophical—rather, a believer in the Great God WYSIWYG, that What You See Is What You Get—I had no ready answer for the question, except . . .
    You gotta shave faster.
    I did not immediately believe, or believe in, Lane Ward; believe that I was getting what I was seeing. “Let me get out on the Net for a couple of minutes,” I said.
    “Check me out?” Ward asked.
    “See if I’ve got mail,” I said, politely.
    “ ‘3ratsass3’ sounds like a password,” she said. “So who’s Bobby?” She had large, dark eyes. I’d first thought maybe Mexican, with an Irish complexion. Now I was thinking Oriental, one of the robust-yet-delicate Japanese ladies of the Hiroshige woodcuts. Something about the eyebrows. I would like to drawher, from a quarter angle off her face, to get the brow ridge, the cheekbone, and the ear. I didn’t say that.
    “Bobby runs an information service,” I said. An information service for people like me, I might have added—but I didn’t add it. “ ‘3ratsass3’ is probably the password on one of Bobby’s mailboxes.”
    “So let’s see what’s in it.” She looked around. “Where’s your computer?”
    “In the back.”
    I ’ve been in the apartment for a while. I own it, part of a deal the city of St. Paul had going years ago, to bring people back downtown. I’ve got a tiny kitchen with a small breakfast nook off to one side; a compact living room with a river view; a workroom with maybe three thousand books, two hundred various bits and pieces of software,