Billy stopped, struck by a thought.
The anonymity of the Internet â¦
“Well, what did he say?” the old man demanded. “He better not be backing out of this auction. I wonâfair and rectangular.”
“Pop, can we look people up by their nicknames? At this auction site?”
“Yeah, nicknames and home cities. But you can't see their real names unless they want you to. Am I not getting my world's fair invitation?”
Billy shuffled to the chair and plopped down. His hands trembled as he tapped the address for the auction site. “Show me how.”
Together, the two Povich menâone of whom was still mystified that a microwave can make a frozen sausage so hot it explodes, yet somehow knows not to set paper plates on fireânavigated the site's various search features until they found a place to type a nickname to locate any member.
“Who you looking for?” the old man asked.
Billy typed
dismas23
and commanded the machine to search.
One exact match.
Hometown: Providence, R.I.
“Huh. You found somebody local,” the old man said. He clumsily slapped a photograph on the table, and turned it to read the inscription on Adam Rackers's shoulder. “Dismas-twenty-three? Who is this feller supposed to be?”
Billy was too far along to begin an explanation. “How can I see what he's been selling?” he snapped.
“Click his history.” He pointed to the screen.
What a history!
Billy browsed page after page of recorded transactions. Over the past twelve months, dismas23 had been a clearinghouse for women's fashion, high-end electronics, new DVD movies, designer sunglasses, wristwatches, rare silver coins, and sterling tableware.
The old man let go a low whistle. “This guy's made a fortune online.”
“Would all of these people have sent him checks or money orders?”
“He only accepted electronic transfers,” the old man said, reading the screen. He shifted in the wheelchair, and Billy caught the faintest whiff of aftershave and dirty hair. “I'm afraid of those transfers. What's wrong with money on
paper
? What if I hit a bad key and send my bank account to some teenager in Poland? Uh-uh, boy.”
Billy could not be sure dismas23 was Adam Rackers, but the clues were persuasive. There were no new auctions listed under that nickname after Rackers's death, and several of his most recent buyers had posted complaints that they never got their merchandise. Dead men don't visit the post office.
“We're so close,” Billy said. “How can these people help us find him?”
“See if he bought anything,” the old man suggested.
Billy clicked the buttons to exclude all sales from the list of
transactions. A much shorter list of purchases remained. With the old man's shaky guidance, Billy found the one item dismas23 had bought within the last three months of Rackers's lifeâthe period for which he had no known address.
The object was a tiny eyepiece, for which dismas23 had paid sixteen dollars.
“What the hell is that?” the old man asked.
“A loupe,” Billy said. “It's like a magnifying glass or a little microscope. Jewelers use them to examine gems, to help decide what the stones are worth. Hmm. Now, why would Rackers buy a loupe?”
“Why would
who
buy a magnifying doohickey?”
“Just a guy I'm trying to find, Pa.”
“This guy in the pictures you got spread out here?”
“Sort of.”
“Ain't he dead?”
“He was alive for the time I'm trying to find him.”
“Whatâ?”
“Why would he buy a loupe ⦠unless he was going to examine some gems ⦠.”
“If you wanna find this guy, why not ask the photographer who took these pictures? Doesn't look like he'll be moving too fast.”
“Let's concentrate on the loupe, okay?” Billy asked.
The old man harrumphed and tightened the drawstring of his housecoat. His waist was as thin as a child's. Billy looked away. In his youth, William Povich Sr. could have benchpressed Greenland, or so it had seemed to Billy.
“Sixteen bucks for that doohickey,” the old man said with a chuckle. “I told you there were deals on this site.”
“Pop, please,” Billy said after a deep breath. “I need to find where this guy was living.”
“Well, then ask the seller where the heck he mailed the doohickey. Had to send it somewhere.”
Billy slapped his own forehead and thundered, “
Now
you goddamn tell me!”
In a far corner of the apartment, Bo's tiny voice echoed: “Now you goddamn tell me!”
The old man punished Billy with a dirty look, then called down the hall: “You hush with that talk, Bo.”
“Yup!”
“Change outta your jammies and get me the newspaper on the porch, okay?” the old man ordered.
“Yup!”
Billy sighed and typed a message to the seller, icedealer177. “I'll just ask him for the address, right?”
“Won't work,” the old man said with a sour face. “Say that you're interested in what he's got for sale, on the recommendation of dismas-twenty-three.”
“Why so complicated?”
“If some stranger asks anonymously for the address of one of your customers, what would you do?”
Billy huffed impatiently. But he took the old man's suggestion, deleted what he had typed, and wrote a new message.
He sent it.
They waited.
“I guess that's all we do right now,” Billy said after three minutes.
“If I don't hear from him, I'll send another message every twenty-four hours. Eventually ⦠.”
“Missed it by THAT much!”
Billy and the old man looked at each other in surprise. Billy opened the message:
To groverwhalen2 ⦠i offer many items for sale, on the internet and through special arrangement. where is dismas23? is he mad i sold his address to junk mail marketing list? an oversight on
my part. tell him i remain VERY interested in the arrangement we discussed. i am prepared to offer best price, if quality as good as he says.
icedealer177
The old man scratched his scalp and shed dandruff flakes into the air. “That don't make sense,” he said.
“He's a diamond dealer, Pop,” Billy said. “By the look of it, not a scrupulous one. Rackers bought a loupe from him, so Rackers must have gotten his hands on a stone. You can't just list stolen diamonds on the Internet, can you? This guy must have offered a black-market deal to fence whatever rocks Rackers had stolen.”
“Have there been any diamond robberies the last few months?” the old man asked. “I ain't heard of any.”
Billy searched his mental record of front-page headlines. “Naw, nothing like that. That would be a big story.” He sighed and read the message again. “Maybe Rackers hadn't gotten a diamond yet. Maybe he was planning to steal one, and was preparing ahead to fence it.”
“That's bad luck.”
Billy glanced at the dead man's pictures on the table. “Apparently.”
The old man would not let go the point. “Do you schedule a victory parade before you play the game?” he asked incredulously.
“I get it, Pop.”
“Because Fateâshe gets pissed when you do that.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I should know. I've had it with Fate and she's had it with me. That lady ⦠is a bitch!”
“That lady is a bitch!” sang Bo brightly as he stomped into the kitchen with the newspaper.
Billy glared at his father, but the old man refused to look at him.
The kid still wore his Atomic Thunderbolt pajamas: red booties
and gloves, little blue shorts, and an off-white shirt with a red splotch on the chest, like someone had splattered him with a paint balloon. Billy could not understand why Bo had taken to an obscure comic book character from the 1940s. The Atomic Thunderbolt never even had his own cartoon. This was the old man's influence, of course. Billy's father thought everything was better in his day, even the superheroes.
Bo staggered into the kitchen like a four-foot hurricane and threw his arms around Billy.
From the corner of his eye, Billy watched the old man recoil.
So much can happen in a split second. His father's lips spread into a snarl, and the heat of jealousy burned in his eyes. In an instant, the emotion was gone, forced back beneath his face.
The reaction startled Billy. He held the kid by the shoulders and gently moved him to arm's length, then laughed as if it were a game.
“Weren't you supposed to change?” Billy asked.
The kid hugged himself, and his costume. “I want to show Stu,” he said.
Billy looked at the old man. “Treatment day, Pop,” he said. “We should get to the hospital, so the kid here can show Stu Tracy his superhero pj's.”
The old man glared bitterly at some spot on the ceiling. “Stu's blind, for Christ's sake.”
“I want to show him,” said Bo.
The old man papered a smile over his rage and took the newspaper from Bo. “Fine, then. We'll see Stu after I get my blood scrubbed, okay? Why don't you pick a movie for us from Billy's collection.”
The kid snapped to attention, broke off a crisp Atomic Thunderbolt salute, then ran recklessly down the hall.
“That was shitty of you,” the old man growled. “A betrayal.”
“Let's type a response,” Billy said cheerfully, locking his eyes on the screen.
“You only delay what I have decided is inevitable.”
Billy spoke aloud as he typed: “Dear icedealer-one-seven-seven, thanks for the e-mail. My friend, Dismas-two-three, is currently, um ⦠out of commission.” He paused, thinking.
“Dismas authorized you to take over the deal,” the old man urged, unable, even in betrayal, to resist being part of the action.
“Yup,” Billy said as he typed the suggestion. Then he added, “But my friend left town rather suddenly and you need to send me his mailing address so I may pick up the appropriate item for the transaction.”
“That's a fucking whopper,” the old man whispered.
“I hope this guy is greedy enough to buy it.”
He sent the e-mail.
They sat together in silence. The old man emitted hot anger like radiation.
Christ, like sitting next to a hunk of uranium.
Billy sensed that his father could not stand to be near him, but was too curious about the e-mail deception to leave. The old man dumped the newspaper from its plastic bag and snapped the paper into shape. For two minutes he read in silence, then showed the front page to Billy and demanded, “This the case you're on?”
A front-page photo showed the State House memorial for Judge Harmony. Two smaller photos showed June Harmony delivering a speech, and Martin Smothers at the podium, with his jacket open and a nasty black spot on his shirt.
“That's my case,” Billy confirmed. “Not that I've gotten anything out of the investigation, except a beating and two pounds of sand in my ear.”
The computer said, “Missed it by THAT much!”
Billy hurled the paper over his shoulder and banged the key to open the e-mail:
To groverwhalen2 ⦠if dismas23 is your friend, what is the item?
“Shit, we're bagged,” Billy said.
“How are we supposed to know what the item is?”
“Exactly, Pop, this is a test. And we need to send the answer fast, or this guy's gonna get too spooked to deal with us.”
“Well, it's a gem. Tell him it's a gem.”
“Not specific enough.” Billy pushed himself from the chair and moaned at the pain. “So goddamn close!” He paced the room, ignoring the complaints of battered muscles. He wound up to kick the newspaper, but stopped and slowly lowered his foot.
He stared at the pictures of Martin and June Harmony. Something about the two of them together held his attention ⦠. What was it?
Holy shit.
He needed a phone. Billy barked, “Where's the goddamn cordless?”
“There!” The old man pointed.
Billy snatched the phone from the countertop and began to dial Martin Smothers. “No,” he scolded himself. “Not something Martin would know offhand.” He hung up, and then dialed a new number: the cellular phone of Martin's assistant, Carol.