When Jack's eyes opened, he had absolutely no idea where he was. At first he thought he was in bed, that he'd awakened in the middle of the night because it was so dark. He thought he must have fallen asleep on top of the covers since he felt an unpleasant shiver of cold. Then he realized he wasn't in bed. He was lying on something hard. He was on the floor. A light-colored floor…
He forced himself to sit up and heard himself groan. The pain in his head rocked him but he wasn't dizzy and he didn't feel nauseous. No concussion, he decided. But a hell of a headache. He put his right hand up to gingerly touch the sore spot and he could tell he'd been bleeding. He must have been out for quite a while because the blood was just damp and sticky now.
Jack stood up and, strangely enough, that made him feel better.
It didn't take him long to realize that the apartment had been cleaned out. All of Kid's boxes were gone and, when he went into the bedroom to check the closets, he saw that there were no traces of Kid's clothes.
He checked the gym; that seemed untouched. And in the kitchen all the food and drink had been left as it was. It was only Kid's things that were gone.
Jack walked into the bathroom, forced himself to look at the side of his head. Not nearly as bad as he thought – or felt. There was a small laceration, some blood, and a swelling that he knew would keep rising and hurting over the next few days. He splashed some cold water on his face, cleaned off his wound with a damp washcloth, stood there in the small white-tiled room wondering what the hell his next move was going to be and realized he had no other choice but to leave. And leave quietly. He thought about calling the police but realized what he'd have to say: I bribed my way into the apartment under false pretenses. I broke into and was looking through private property and I got mugged. He also realized that whoever mugged him could easily say they thought he was a burglar and that they were simply protecting themselves. For all he knew, whoever hit him might already have called the police.
But he seriously doubted it.
Jack went to the front door of the apartment, peered through the peephole, but no one was outside in the hallway. He opened the door cautiously, stepped out of the apartment, closed the door behind him. The elevator took a minute or so to come up to the top floor and Jack then rode it down to the lobby. He did not expect the super to be waiting for him and he was right. The lobby was empty.
Jack found his car exactly where he'd left it, parked on Reade Street, two blocks from Kid's apartment building. Jack reached into his left pants pocket for his car key, felt a piece of paper that, for just a second, he didn't recognize. And then it came to him. He pulled the paper out, unfolded it.
Kid's travel receipt.
With a name: Grave Enterprises.
And a credit card number.
Jack felt the excitement well up inside him as he got behind the wheel of the car. He had some information. He had some evidence. Okay, he thought. Okay!
And as he reached the West Side Highway and headed uptown, here was his next thought, not nearly as exciting:
Now what?
– "-"-"MMMMM," THE VOICE on the other end of the phone mumbled. The next word sounded vaguely like "yeah." It might have been a question.
"Randy?"
"Yo." The voice sounded sleepy, as if he'd just been awakened. Jack looked at his watch and saw it was 8:30 p.m.
"This is Jack Keller."
"Mr. K! Whassup?"
"Did I wake you?"
"Well…" The voice hesitated. That kind of hesitation when someone's been awakened but doesn't want to admit it. "Kind of," he said. "What time is it?"
"Eight-thirty."
"Morning or night?"
"Night," Jack said. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah." The voice was waking up now, coming to life. "I've been working on a complicated job. A security system. Kind of working day and night, so I catch up on the z's wherever I can get 'em. You know me, all work and no play."
"You should try to get out more, Randy."
"Out? What's that?"
"You want me to call you back? When you're more awake?"
"No, no. I'm fine. Gotta get up anyway and get back to work. What can I do for you?"
Randy Pelkington was a twenty-nine-year-old Australian who'd moved to New York when he was eleven years old but he'd never managed to lose his accent. Randy's parents were good, upstanding middle-class people – his mother was a book publisher who'd been hired by an American firm and relocated to New York and his father was an architect who, when he had trouble landing work in his new country, became a professor of architectural history at NYU. They were both extremely surprised when their son, at age fifteen, got into quite a bit of trouble with the local police. Randy, it seemed, had a skill. He was one of the earliest and best computer hackers and, just as a lark, he'd hacked into the NYPD system and did some, as he called it, rearranging. When he was caught, Randy had been prepared. He'd saved all the original information on disk and was easily able to re-rearrange things back to normal. Since Randy's actions seemed not to be malicious and purposeful but rather done out of curiosity, some clever person on the force decided that there was a better alternative than tossing the young genius into juvenile detention. His punishment was that he had to spend a year on probation helping the department with their computer programming. At the end of the year, Randy was promptly hired by the city as a consultant to continue his work. He also, at the same time he attended NYU, started his own business. Most of his computer work was fairly benign. He described it as "helping rich people get over their terror of the unknown electronic universe." What he mostly did was go to those people who tended to work out of their homes – writers, architects, artists, what have you – and set up computer systems for them. He taught them how to use Windows as well as non-Windows applications and came over to rescue them whenever they thought they'd lost something of value in the bowels of their computers or just generally got confused and screwed up. He also did several small office systems installations, which is how Jack happened to meet him. Caroline had hired Randy to set up the computer systems for Jack's restaurants nationwide.
"I need some help," Jack now told Randy.
"No problem. At the restaurant?"
"No, no. This is personal."
"Sounds intriguing. What is it you need?"
Jack told him and Randy said he'd call him back in fifteen minutes.
– "-"-"NO PROBLEM," RANDY said when he called back. "I don't even have to come there. We can do this over the phone."
"Are you sure?"
"Piece o' cake. You still on the ThinkPad?"
Jack said that he was.
"This is gonna be easy," Randy told him. "Go to 'Search the Internet' and when you come to the search line, type in 'CylockHolmes.com.' and click on 'Search.'"
Jack did as he was told, waited, and suddenly a line appeared that said: 1 of 1 Web Site Matches.
"Okay," Randy told him, "click on the Web site line. You want me to hang on while you start it up and download, Mr. K?"
"If you don't mind."
"My pleasure," the computer whiz said.
To Jack's amazement, cartoonish drawings of a Sherlock Holmes-like detective popped up on his computer screen, followed by hype for the site. According to that hype, he could use this program to find long-lost friends, license plate numbers, Social Security numbers, and unlisted phone numbers. He could also verify educational records, get dirt on his neighbors – in essence, according to the on-screen promises, discover anything about anyone. Once he typed in his credit card number and registered as a user, the following grid appeared: