Those to be Forgiven

Published: 28 Dec 2017

Wait! This isn’t report…

(…)

Why didn’t you include this in your report?

(…)

If you don’t give a full account how are we expected to work together in future Mr Quaid?

(…)

Mr Quaid?

(…)

Mr Quaid do I need to remind you that you need to be honest with me?

When I came to, my vision blurry and my head aching like I’d been hit by a sixteen-wheeler, it took me a few minutes to gauge my surroundings. I was sitting in a chair; wrists tied behind my back and the cord wrapped around the chair’s back legs… Trying to maneuver my arms was painful and the positioning of my wrists in relation to the chair only allowed for minute movement in my shoulders and fingers. There was dried blood around and over my top lip and when I tried to breath the sharp pain that tore through the bridge of my nose to my forehead let me know that my nose was broken.

The room that I was in was dark. I could make out, with the aid of the puddles of light from under the door and around the windows, a few indistinct shapes… boxes seemed to be piled around the walls which put me in the centre… but beyond that there wasn’t enough to give me any real feel for the room. Though with the curtains pulled over I couldn’t be entirely sure where I was; there was enough of an orange glow from street lamps outside to let me know that it was still night and that I was still in the city.

The sounds of the chest reverberating four on the floor beat rollicking through my feet at least let me know that I was above a dance floor – probably in a club somewhere.

I kept twitching my nose to shift some of the dried blood that had coated the inside of my nostrils but all it did was hurt like hell.

Shadows moved under the door and two sets of feet scuffed the floorboards. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but there was enough quick toing and froing for me to gather that they were bickering with each other. The sound of the key in the lock. More bickering. Finally, as the door opened, two silhouettes cast shadow across the floor and I lifted my aching head.

“Go get the boss. He’s awake.” A thick deep Brooklyn accent coming from the shorter rounder figure.

“He’s with Shabana and Debbie… I er… I don’t wanna disturb him.” A more high pitched nasal voice, the accent less defined.

“He wanted to be told as soon as the Dick opened his eyes.” Brooklyn.

“Well you do it then!” Nasal sounding a little nervous.

The door closed and I heard them muttering between themselves although again, I couldn’t make out what they were saying behind the door.

Dazed, confused and more than a little sore I struggled to find some sense of place. The beat of the dance music below wasn’t helping, it seemed to give off a disorienting sensation. But then that could have been the concussion.

I made a little effort to twist my arms and trunk; when I tried to kick back a little to see if i could maybe break the chair and use the shards of wood as a possible weapon… should it be needed you understand… I found that it was fixed to the floor. Kicking the backs of my heels against the chair legs confirmed that it was bolted down.

It was while considering that maybe I should have taken escapology classes or at least carried a small knife in a secret pocket up my sleeve that the door opened again and someone switched the lights on. The bare bulb above my head twitching as the current ran through to the filaments.

“Nice of you to join us Mr Quaid.” The voice was deep and didn’t belong to either Brooklyn or Nasal.

Blinking under the light I tried to focus on the figure in front of me but my vision was as blurry as any Bigfoot footage.

“I don’t think I was given much of a choice.” I tried to sound cool. Tried to ape my literary and cinematic heroes when they find themselves in a bind but inside my heart was racing. “Maybe next time you’d consider an evite or maybe go old fashioned and write out a letter? Texting is pretty popular these days…”

I heard him chuckle as Brooklyn and Nasal scuffed their feet on the floor.

As my vision cleared I could finally make out the man standing in front of me: mid forties, close cropped brown hair, an expensive looking pair of glasses and an as expensive looking brown pinstripe suit. He wore spats with a high shine, which I thought was a nice touch, and was looking at a rose gold pocket watch. It looked antique.

“You’re a funny guy Mr Quaid. That’s real good. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Doesn’t seem fair… that you know my name and I don’t know yours… especially as you’ve gone to such an effort to invite me into your… home.” My lips were sore and the taste of copper in my mouth made me turn my head and spit. I looked at the boxes against the walls. Liquor. A few kegs… I was in a store room for a bar.

“Well what can I say Mr Quaid. We couldn’t be sure that you’d come unless the invitation was delivered in person.” He put his pocket watch back inside his jacket and smiled at me. “My name is Marko. Marko Keena and I was…”

“Shit!” I started laughing, which cut him off and which he seemed a little annoyed by. “I was going to call in on you tonight Mr Keena.”

A puzzled brow.

“I was given your details by…”

“Pickman?”

“Our mutual friend.”

He curled his top lip at the inference that he would be friends with Pickman. “I’m very keen to find and speak with Pickman, Mr Quaid. If you could find it in your heart to point us in his direction perhaps we could arrange to have you find your way back to your apartment.”

I coughed a little, which made the bells in my head ring, and I spat up a little more blood on to the floor.

“I can’t do that.”

“Well that is a real shame. Because we have it on very good authority that you’re the only one currently aware of his whereabouts.” Marko Keena stepped forward toward me and lifted my chin – raising my eyes to meet his.

“Who’s the little bird that’s been chirruping in your ear?” Pickman thought he had been so careful.

“Going through his list of known associates we worked our way down until we got to you. Found the message on your answering machine from the morning after ‘The Incident’.”

“You’ve been in my apartment?” I struggled against the restraints but only managed send a ring on pain through my shoulders and wrists.

“We didn’t leave a mess Mr Quaid. Just looked for clues. Doing our own… detective work…” He cracked his thumb knuckles in his balled up fists. “I do have a car outside your apartment building though. You’re a married man correct? Your husband might not be home just now but I wouldn’t want him to return to an empty apartment when he does get in!”

I didn’t know how he knew about David, the photos on the apartment walls perhaps? Bills on the table by the phone? I didn’t really care. I was just glad that he didn’t know that David was still in Seattle.

“My husband and I have separated Mr Keena.” I lied. “It’s unlikely he’ll be back at that apartment ever again.”

He curled his lip and struck me across the face. Hard. The sharp sting of the back of his hand against my cheek made me wince and nick the side of my tongue with my teeth.

“You need to tell me where to find Pickman.”

“I can make him talk!” Nasal stepping forward – tall and thin, face like a sparrow under greasy shoulder length blond hair.

“As I was trying to say Mr Keena…” I turned from him and spat on the floor again at Nasal’s feet. “I was going to contact you. Pickman asked me to.”

“He did?”

“Yeah! Bet you feel a little silly about going to all this trouble to get me here now huh? Especially when I would happily have walked through your front door I mean.”

He turned to Brooklyn and Nasal and the three whispered a quick conversation that I couldn’t make out.

“What happened… The horror at Red Hook… That wasn’t Pickman’s fault.”

Keena turned back to me with a squint in his eye.

“Think about it! If you’ve dealt with him before you know he’s hardly going to launch a one man war against you and your boss…”

“Then maybe you should tell me what happened Mr Quaid.”

“Have one of your boys untie me and fetch me a glass of water… or better yet a whisky and I’ll sing.”

Keena, a little unsure at first but obviously deciding that I presented no problem nodded to Nasal who withdrew a Glock 19 from inside his jacket and pointed it in my direction. Another nod to a less than confident Brooklyn had the heavy set man step behind me and unfasten the cord that bound my wrists to the chair.

They stood around for a moment, Keena with his eyes focused on me, Nasal with the gun aimed at my head and Brooklyn looming over me while I rubbed at my wrists – the skin red and patterned by the cord. I pinched a finger to my nostril and blew… shooting a rope of bloodied snot to the floor. That hurt like hell. But at least I could breathe through my nose.

“Single malt. If you have it!” Again, I was trying to be all cool and collected. I thought about Mike Hammer and Lew Archer; wondering if I was coming off with the right amount of edge…

Keena nodded again to Brooklyn who shuffled out of the room while the barrel of Nasal’s Glock was still trained on me.

“So… Would you like to sing for me Mr Quaid?”

“Hum a tune and I’ll join in.”

Nasal stepped forward; I’m sure ready to pop off a shot at any given opportunity but Marko Keena stretched out his arm to stop the gunman from getting too close.

With my thumb and my forefinger I gently prodded at the bridge of my nose. Yeah, they’d broken it but it felt clean. There was cut that was uncomfortable to the touch but nothing that some bactine, a few cotton swabs and a band-aid couldn’t deal with. I lowered my head, taking my eyes off my host and with a quick jerk snapped my nose back into place. I heard Nasal give a little yelp when the sound of cracking bone reached his ears. He wasn’t as tough as he made out.

Keena though: he was smiling.

When Brooklyn came back into the room he carried a bottle of amber nectar and a glass tumbler that he handed to me as he poured the whisky.

I downed the liquid in one and held out the glass, waving for another. Brooklyn had to look back to his boss who nodded, allowing him to pour me a second glass.

“You have your throat lubricated enough now Mr Quaid?”

I smiled at him in a way that I knew would piss him off but hopefully not enough to provoke another fist or backhand aimed at my face. “Pickman had arranged the meeting through you right?” He nodded while I took another drink. “And you’ve used his… ‘services’ before I assume…” He nodded again as I sat back in the chair. “Then I imagine that you’ve a pretty good idea of who he is… what he’s capable of and what he’s most definitely not.”

“I lost four guys in Red Hook Mr Quaid. One who was like a brother to me…”

“Benson?” Nasal questioning Keena’s rose-tinted view of the dead.

“Well… a cousin you see at Thanksgiving.”

“And you think Pickman killed them?”

“He arranged the deal. Some foreigner wanting to sell hardware…”

“But do you honestly think that Pickman… Peter fucking Pickman… had any idea of what was going to happen to your associates?”

Keena thought to himself for a moment, perhaps reaching the notion that he may have jumped to conclusions. The look in his eyes meant that he wasn’t going to let Pickman off completely though.

I relayed the story as Pickman had told it to me. Almost. The Dutchman, Barney at O’Toole’s, Red Hook and the shit show that followed. In an effort to make Pickman sound a little less like a guilty party I added that he had taken a swipe at one of the Dutchman’s goons but had gotten laid out. I made a mental note to persuade Pickman that I’d need to break his nose to make the story fit. Considering what helping him had given me so far, it only seemed fair. When I told Keena that the Dutchman had left Pickman alive, only so that he could pass on a message to Christian, he shook his head like a disappointed father figure.

“What was the message?”

I placed the tumbler on the wooden floor by my side and reached inside my jacket – Nasal cocked his Glock.

“Don’t get excited. You patted me down right?”

Nasal looked to Keena who nodded before replacing the safety.

Keeping my eyes on the gun pointed at my head I pulled out the card and held it up for Keena to take. It was Brooklyn who yanked it from my hand with his stubby fingers and handed it over.

I shifted my focus to Keena who turned the card over in his hand, ran his thumb over the embossed symbol on the top left hand corner – the three swirls like irregular question marks sparking from a blotch in their centre. He looked like he was about to throw-up.

“You know him?”

“No.” Keena’s reaction was honest. I could tell the name meant nothing to him. His touching of that emblem on the card though – I’d wager that that brought about in him the same feelings in his gut as it did in mine.

“So… I delivered the card. You know as much as I do… as much as Pickman does… You think that maybe you could see your way to letting me walk out of here?”

He was thinking about it. His eyes still on the business card of The Dutchman Daan Dieprink.

“I want to see Pickman. I want this confirmed.” He put the card into his jacket pocket.

“You know… you make him a little nervous. More so than normal that is. He might not be so inclined to come talk to you if he thinks he’s not going to get to leave.”

“You’ll just have to make him ‘so inclined’ then won’t you.”

“Does that mean that I can go?”

He’d made up his mind already but he rolled his head as if he was thinking about it.

“You can go. But I want Pickman here tomorrow night.”

“And what if I can’t persuade him that it’s in his best interests?”

“Oh… You’ll persuade him. After all… It’s in your best interests Mr Quaid.”

As I stood, Nasal lowered his gun and Brooklyn put the bottle of whisky at rest on top of a box of Polish Vodka. The four of us had made it out of the room and to the top of the stairs before I remembered to ask for my phone, briefcase and coat. Nasal, like the good dog he is, disappeared to fetch them while Keena and Brooklyn stayed on me.

“Can I get a guarantee that Pickman won’t get hurt?” I cocked my head to Keena. “I meant it when I said what happened to your men wasn’t his fault.”

“I can’t guarantee anything until I speak to the boss.” Keena checked the time on his rose gold pocket watch. “If he’s being honest and if this card means something to Mr Christiansands… then he’s got about a fifty-fifty chance of walking out of ‘all of this’ with his head still on his shoulders. I know the rumours that circulate about the man I work for. He knows them too. But he’s not unreasonable.”

“Fifty-fifty?”

“Fifty-fifty.”

“Pickman’s squirrelled out of situations with worse odds.”

“Yeah well… We’ll see… Just you make sure that you get him back here by tomorrow night. Nine o’clock. Before the club opens. Then we won’t have to slash those odds.”

Nasal reappeared and handed my case, cell phone and overcoat to Keena, who passed them over to me one by one.

“The boys will walk you out Mr Quaid.” Keena turned and started walking down the bare corridor towards what I assumed was his office at the far end. He stopped and turned as I adjusted the coat on my shoulders. “I looked through your briefcase Mr Quaid…”

The copies of the pictures of Donny Baldwin. The copy of the police report.

“I hope you find the kid.” He turned away again. “And the sick son-of-a-bitch who did that to him.”

‘The boys’ led me down the narrow back stairs and out onto the balcony: The club was filled to the rafters, wall to wall with gyrating hips and kissing lips. That four-four beat vibrating the large room and moving every muscle that was calling this place refuge for the night. I got a few looks as I was walked down from the balcony towards the bar. Flanked by little and large and with a bloody face and broken nose it wasn’t surprising. My head was still pounding and the flickering lights and strobes weren’t exactly helping.

At the main entrance Brooklyn and Nasal walked me outside and nodded with the doorman; a huge Samoan with dark curls and a little beard. I turned to check the name of the club: “Revelations” in ice blue neon above the door. The queue of people waiting to get in was a good size and I wondered why it had never entered my sphere of knowledge until now. I turned from the club, from Nasal and Brooklyn and made my way down the street, a little unsure of where I was at first due to the ringing in my head – but I quickly found my bearings and placed myself in the East Village.

The first thing I did… The very first thing when I was sure of where I was, was to call David:

“Hey Handsome!”

“Hey Baby Boy…” I could hear the slight change in my voice from the broken nose but hoped he wouldn’t, “How’s Seattle?”

“Oh My God it’s awful. Not the city. The job. I’ve never had to sit in so many meetings with union reps. To be honest I don’t know why I’m here. They don’t need me until final decisions are made. I’d much rather be at home with you.” I heard him clear his throat as he turned his head away from the phone. Which probably meant that he had been smoking while he was away. He hid that from me and I hid the drinking. Neither was fooling the other but we played along. “How’s things?”

“Things are…” I thought about making something up but decided that it was in his best interests not to. “How much longer are you going to be away from home for?”

“Ramsay?” A twinge in his voice.

“Things are a little difficult here at the moment. How much longer are you going to be in Seattle?”

“Ramsay what’s wrong?” The twinge blooming into full blown worry.

“Nothing that you need to worry about. But after you’re done in Seattle I want you to go and visit your sister for a few days?”

“Ramsay?”

“Please! David. I got myself into a little… trouble tonight.”

“What sort of trouble? I’m coming home. I’m catching the next flight…” I could hear him in his hotel room already throwing things into his suitcase.

“David! No! You need to trust me. After you’re done in Seattle take some holiday. Go stay with your sister. I’ll tell you when it’s safe to come back.”

“Safe? Safe?” The intonation in his voice meant that I should have picked my words better. “What’s happened. You tell me exactly what’s happened or I’ll come back right now and make you…”

“No. David. You have to stay away… Look… It’s probably nothing.”

“This is to do with Pickman isn’t it?”

“It’s not fair to…”

“Goddamnit Ramsay!” He cut me off. “This was always going to happen you know that? He was always going to…”

“David?”

“…get you into the worse kind of trouble…”

“David?”

“…and you’ll just go along with it because that’s what you do and…”

“Baby boy?”

He stopped. I could hear him sigh down the phone as he sat down on the bed in his hotel room.

“You need to pause. You need to breathe.” I imagined him sitting in his room shaking with restrained anger as he tried to collect himself. “It’s not the end of the world. You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine… Tomorrow there will be weather.”

A sharp intake of breath through his nose on his end of the phone before a slow release through his lips. “Tomorrow there will be weather…”

“Now. Do what you need to do in Seattle. Take your time. With any luck this’ll all be wrapped up by the time that you’re due back in the city and we can go back to business as usual. If that’s the way it works out I swear that I’ll tell you everything. But if you don’t hear from me before then, then I need you to go stay with your sister for a few days. I’ll call you, you can come home, then we can take a few days. Maybe go for a short break. Back to that little Inn in Maine? I’ll explain everything.”

He was quiet for the longest time before: “OK.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

We stayed silent for a moment just listening to each other breathe down the phone.

“Ramsay?”

“Yeah?”

“I really hate Pickman.”

I could hear him smile in his breathing and I chuckled a little. “Yeah… Me too.”

We said our goodbye’s and our ‘I love you’s’ and hung up.

I flagged down a cab and headed back to my office. Watching the city at night-time play through the window, the people disporting like wolf cubs, I thought about what needed to be done. Darnell was supposed to be coming round for dinner the following night, so I needed to call him and cancel. With David safely out of the way the only other person I gave enough of a shit about, to fear that Marko Keena and Christian Christiansands would consider worthwhile collateral damage, was him. So I needed to keep him clear of any potential blast zones. I also needed to see him about my laptop and what information he could find from the files and the worm that had burrowed through his security system. Pickman was going to be tough work. If I couldn’t persuade him that it was in his best interests to accompany me to Keena’s club then I needed to drag his ass kicking and screaming. There was also the question of how I was going to get to Johnny Ives in North Carolina…

At the office I poured myself a drink, popped more aspirin than I should have and washed up. The first real glance of myself in the bathroom mirror and I wondered why the cab driver had even stopped for me. It looked worse than it was. What can I say: I’m a bleeder. The nose would set fine but it would swell; I’d also have a couple of black eyes for a week or two… Cleaned up and with a band-aid over the bridge of my nose I had a couple more drinks to numb any lingering pain and decided that I should try and get a couple of hours sleep before reaching out to Pickman or Darnell. The office chair wasn’t the most comfortable but it was what it was.

When I woke up it was a little after six in the morning. I’d managed about three hours of restless dream riven sleep. I combed my fingers through my hair and gargled some mouthwash in lieu of brushing my teeth (I didn’t keep a brush at the office but the mouthwash helped hide the smell of booze on my breath when I went home to David), changed my shirt with a spare I keep at the office and headed out to Pickman’s.

I was real careful about taking any direct routes. If Keena was telling the truth about having someone outside my apartment building then there was every probability that he’d have someone near the office too and I didn’t want to risk being followed. A couple of cab’s and a few subway changes… doubling back on myself in places and some speed walking through crowded streets and I felt a lot better that I should have thrown any tail that would have been put on me. Maybe I was being paranoid. But I didn’t want to take any chances. On the way I texted Darnell, asking him to meet me at a coffee shop with my laptop in the afternoon. He was either up early or still awake from the night before because he responded real quick.

Pickman was sleeping when I entered his safehouse – tucked up in bed to the sound of the wavemachine that he must have lunked around with him every time he ran from one place to the other.

I filled a glass of water from the tap in the kitchen and took it through to him. Then tossed it over his face.

“WHAT THE…” He scrambled out of the bed in a panic, naked as the day he was born.

“Good morning Pickman.” I was sitting on one of the fold out chairs by his bed.

“What the hell man… What the hell?”

“It’s a beautiful morning.”

He squinted, wiped the sleep from his eyes and squinted again as he stared at me: “What the fuck happened to your face?”

I stood up and folded the chair over and rested it against the wall. “Your friend Marko Keena is what happened to my face.”

“He did that when you went to see him?”

“Actually he found me first. Seemed to think that I knew where you were hiding and decided that we should have a little chat before I got the chance to drop in and explain the situation.” I threw him a pair of boxershorts from out of the bag that lay beside the bed. “Put some underwear on. We need to talk. And your weird looking dick is distracting.”

Sitting down to fried eggs, toast and a cup of coffee from the groceries that I had bought him a couple of days previous I explained in graphic detail how my night had panned out. To his credit, Pickman was concerned for my welfare, concerned for David’s welfare and apologetic as all hell when I told him about the veiled threat to my husband’s life that Keena had made. To say, though, that he wasn’t overly eager to let me escort him to Keena’s club that night though would be an understatement…

“Fuck no! No! Not a chance! I’m not going!”

“I’m not really giving you a choice here Pickman. We either go together on foot or I knock you out and drag your ass there.”

“We could run. You and David ever wanted to move to LA? LA is good right? I’ve never been but it looks real glamorous. Maybe I could fuck a movie star…”

“Pickman. Like it or not we have to deal with your problem. If Christian Christiansands is even half as dangerous as the rumours lead us to believe then you could move to Johannesburg and he’d still come for you.”

He thought it over while chewing on a well buttered slice of toast, his eyes on me like an injured puppy not sure if it can trust the man trying to help it. “If I do, what’s to say that I get to walk out of there? What’s to say that if I do walk out of there I do so with my fingers and tongue still attached to my body?”

“I’m to say.” I sipped at my coffee. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He squinted at me trying to believe what I was telling him. “No offence Ramsay but with the state of your face I’m not entirely convinced that you can look after yourself nevermind me too.”

“I walked out of there didn’t I?”

Again with the squint. “This is bullshit! You know that?”

“This is all your doing is what it is. And I’m trying to get you out of it.”

“OK, OK.” He sighed and sat back in his chair. “What time do you want to meet to go the club?”

“Oh… You’re not leaving my sight all day.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to risk you chickening out on me at the last minute. For the rest of the day you’re going to stick to me like glue.”

“So you’re gonna be like… my bodyguard?”

“More like a babysitter.” I finished the coffee and looked at the clock on the wall: a little shy of ten in the morning. “Go shower and get dressed. We’ve a meeting to get to?”

“A what?”

“For the case I’m working?”

“The porno thing?”

“Yeah… So get your shit together and try to look presentable.”

It took him an hour. Christ knows what he was doing in that bathroom but he got there in the end. While I waited for him my attention turned from texts from my husband on my cell: ‘Is everything OK?’ to the streets outside of the safehouse. Despite the the fact that we weren’t due at Keena’s club until nine o’clock I was still troubled by the irk that he’d just snatch us off the streets if he doubted my ability to get Pickman to him on time.

He was looking over his shoulder for the whole trek to the coffee shop; every old lady, every workman in a hi-vis vest, every tourist snapping pictures was a potential shadow just waiting to pull him into th eback of a near-by car. Not that I was entirely without paranoia. I used the same tricks I’d used to get to Pickman’s safehouse that morning. Swapping out of subways and taking cabs to nowhere in the hope that the erratic journey would throw any tails.

We arrived at the coffee shop a little after one and Darnell was sitting in a booth in back; tapping away on one of his laptops. He waved when he saw me, then looked a little confused when he saw that I’d brought company.

“Pickman this is Darnell, Darnell this is Pickman.” They shook hands, both a little wary of the other.

“You wanna tell me what happened to your face?” Darnell’s eyes all a squint as he imagined me to be in more pain than I actually was.

“Would you believe me if I said that I walked into a door?” I asked sitting down across from him in the booth.

“Not really, no. But if there’s something that I can help you with you know I got your back right?”

“I know, I know.” I smiled at him and reached across the table to pat his shoulder. “Thank you. But seriously… It’s fine. Anyway… you’re helping me enough with this as it is.”

“You think you could get me a latte or something?” Pickman sitting next to me in the booth looking at the queue of three women waiting for their coffees.

“You think that you could maybe get it yourself?”

“I don’t have any cash on me.”

“Why’d you come out without your wallet?”

“You didn’t tell me I’d need it.”

“Jesus Christ!” I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a twenty and handed it to Pickman. “Go get yourself a coffee. You can get me a flat white while you’re at it. Darnell?”

“I’m good.” He nodded to the half drunk cappuccino by his laptop.

“You think I could maybe get a muffin or something too?”

I sighed. “Get what you want. And don’t get any funny ideas. I can see the bar from here and I can run faster than you.”

Pickman shrugged and rolled his eyes before joining the queue.

“Friend of yours?” Darnell was smiling with a shit eating grin.

“Of a sort.”

“So I’m assuming you’re cancelling dinner on me tonight has something to do with this?” He waved a hand toward Pickman.

“Sorry Darnell. David got called away on a business trip and I’m stuck babysitting Pickman. Can we call you when David gets back?”

“Of course.”

“My of-a-sort-friend here is in a little trouble and I can’t let him out of my sight until tonight. Last thing I wanted to do was mix his shit in with yours but things have become… time sensitive.”

“Something to do with the missing kid?”

“No. Something else entirely.” I wasn’t going to tell Darnell about Marko Keena, Christian Christiansands or the Dutchman. The less he knew the better.

I looked over the queue and Pickman was next but one, hopping on his feet and trying to get a better look at the muffin stand.

“So what can you tell me about my computer?”

“Well the files… the pictures and the video were wiped clean.” He pulled my laptop out from a bag by his feet. “There’s nothing there beyond file names and author. Can’t restore previous versions because previous versions don’t exist.”

“I figured.”

“The worm on the usb drive though…”

“So it is a virus?”

“Well it’s spyware. Feeds back information from a computer that’s it’s infected to another. Only works if the system is hooked up with an internet connection though. A complicated little thing too. You want specifics?”

“Will I understand it?”

He smiled. “Probably not, no.”

“Maybe just get to the crux then.”

“The spyware scanned your computer and sent back what information it was set to find to whoever designed it. From what I could tell it wasn’t looking for financial information but it was gathering personal. Internet history, searches, home address, phone number…”