Long Way Down (8 page)

I
rarely go to Westwood anymore, Mr. Stafford. It was not a happy place to grow up, I’m afraid. Too many ghosts.”

Selena Haley had the somewhat forced vivacity of a woman just past her prime and all too aware of it. She was still a beautiful woman but she did not glow. I knew she had just turned forty, but forty had been less kind to her than to other women. And she was tired. Tired enough that I could only assume that some malady—either physical or mental—was the cause.

“It’s a beautiful property,” I said.

She gave a soft laugh. “And a hideous house.”

“With a great view. The whole Sound laid out like that—from Stamford over in Connecticut to that lighthouse back toward the city. Impressive.”

Her apartment was impressive also. Two floors on Fifth Avenue, views of the park and the Met, lots of mid-twentieth-century American art on the walls, including an Edward Hopper that I had once seen in a retrospective in Paris. We sat in an alcove off the living room. Mrs. Haley served coffee from a silver set that probably retailed for the same price as a year of school for my son.

“Impressive, I will grant you. Do you know the story of the lighthouse? Execution Rocks, they call it.”

“I’ve heard of it. I grew up not far from there.” In working-class College Point—five miles and three or four zeros from the kind of wealth you needed for entry level to the Gold Coast.

“During the Revolution,” she said, “the British chained prisoners to the rocks and left them there at low tide. The tides there are eight to ten feet. More than one hundred years later, the Coast Guard had trouble keeping the lighthouse manned. The men said they could hear screams whenever the tide came in.” She delivered this macabre story with the air of a debutante discussing a flower show at the Armory that she had heard about.

“We didn’t cover that in seventh-grade history,” I said.

“And later, in the early 1920s, there was a serial killer, Carl Panzram, who dumped the bodies of his victims in the deep water just off the reef. My grandfather claimed to have met him one time.”

“And lived to tell about it.”

“My grandfather drank, Mr. Stafford. Copiously. Frequently. I learned early to take his stories more as fable than as fact. His cousins ran Standard Oil and he was always frustrated that he did not rise to their prominence. He had the name and the pedigree, but not the knack—nor the initiative. Desire without drive. You’re left with envy. Have you known anyone like that?”

I had met more than a couple of them, in and out of prison. Wall Street drew them like flies to garbage. Connections got them in the door but did not guarantee their success. They became complainers, hangers-on, or crooks. “Too many.”

“He enjoyed frightening me,” she said in a musing tone.

“Your parents allowed him to?”

“My parents were lovely people, incapable of seeing the bad side of anyone. And they were in love and therefore blind. They spent
their time traveling the world together. They passed within a year of each other.”

I didn’t know what to say. “My condolences.” But they’d been dead for some twenty years. Skeli would have had just the right words, I was sure of it.

“Oh, no. This was all a long time ago. While I am sure there is never a good time for one’s parents to die, it was an awkward time for me. I was still acting out. It must have been quite annoying for them. I like to think they would have approved of the way I’ve turned out. But I will never know, and now it is no longer that important.” She seemed to run out of air saying all that in a bit of a rush.

“You were left with your grandfather.”

“Who tried to break the terms of the trust. Six months before my twenty-first birthday, still mourning my parents, in my senior year at school, and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I fought back. And won.”

“I’m starting to see why you don’t like Westwood.”

“He wasn’t done, either. He sued again after Philip and I were married. And very nearly won.”

“I didn’t see any of this when I Googled the family.”

“We are discreet.”

“Obviously you won again in court.”

“No. My grandfather died. He was drunk—as he was most days from lunch, until he went to bed or passed out in his chair, whichever came first—and must have wanted to go for a walk on the beach. He fell down the staircase and broke his neck.”

I had seen that staircase when her husband walked me out to the cliff the day before. It rose a full four stories from the beach. A tumble down that would have been as lethal as a bullet.

“And what moral should I take from that? Don’t drink and walk on the beach? What goes around, comes around? Karma’s a bitch?”
All this talk of death on her part had been delivered in the same bemused but unemotional voice, as though she were floating on a sea of liquid Xanax. As though all these tragedies had been someone else’s life story.

She smiled at me. “Am I being morbid? Forgive me. But let me answer your question anyway.” She put her head back and closed her eyes. “Evil people, I mean truly evil people, look just like everybody else.” She opened her eyes again. “What do you think?”

I thought for a moment. “I’m an optimist, I guess. Or a romantic. I think anyone can be redeemed, if they want it. But I’m also a skeptic. I don’t believe most people want to be redeemed. They just want to win.”

“Or to take revenge for not winning.”

“Is that your take on this? Your husband is being set up out of revenge?”

“Certainly not.”

“Do you believe your husband is innocent?”

“Do you mean to be insulting?”

“I’m just looking for answers, and so far the only stories I’m getting are about jealous ex-beaux and Chinese masterminds.”

“Preposterous.”

“I agree. But that doesn’t get us any closer.” We had reached an impasse. I would have to change direction or admit defeat. “Are any of the board capable of doing something like this?”

“Capable? An interesting word choice. Two of our board members are both wealthy and powerful enough. And arrogant enough.”

“But would they? Does either have any reason to hurt your husband? Or the company? Without your husband, would there be an Arinna?”

“Point taken. There would not. Therefore it makes no sense.”

It was still early days, but not much about this was making any sense.

“I am sure of one thing. Whether he did it or not, my husband will be cleared. He never fails, and he never fails to survive. He is very dependable that way.”

Faith, fact, or pharmacy, or good old-fashioned denial. Whatever she had going, it was working for her.

Y
ou’ve got a vacation coming up soon,” I said.

The Kid did not respond. I had not asked a question nor had I given any of the other signals that he understood to mean I expected a response. I knew better.

We were having a reading party after dinner. The Kid was looking at one of his car books, a Dover paperback with full-page photos of antique autos. I was reading one of my new books,
Daily Crises on the Spectrum
. I had just read this paragraph:

For some children, holidays and vacations can be stressful, rather than relaxing. Engage your child in the process early. Empower them by letting them know that their feelings matter.

“I want to take you and Wanda and Heather and Heather’s friend on a nice vacation. Someplace with sand and sun and warm water. What do you think? Is that something you would like to do?”

He was staring at a picture of something that looked like an insect on wheels. I couldn’t see the description. I waited.
Eventually, he turned the page. I was preparing to make my approach a third time, when he answered.

“No.” For about three heartbeats, he looked at me with arched eyebrows and bulging eyes. The cartoon image of a sincere wish to communicate honestly. Heather had been attempting to get him to look at people when he talked. The results were more troubling than encouraging.

I waited to see if he wanted to elaborate. He didn’t. He went back to the book.

“What do you think you would like?”

He flipped a page. I thought I knew what he was looking at. “That’s an old Buick roadster, isn’t it? With the jump seat in back.”

He flipped the page angrily. “No.”

I went back to my book.

Remember, the child on the spectrum sees change as a threat. Your first attempts may be unsuccessful.

“Do you like the ocean?”

He looked up and his brow furrowed in concentration. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should try it out and see. Maybe you’ll really like it.”

He went back to his book. He slowly flipped a few pages.

“No.”

Sometimes you will find that the stresses of planning a trip are themselves the cause of your child’s anxiety. In this case, you may want to offer the idea as a “last-minute surprise treat.”

Brilliant. Don’t surprise him unless that doesn’t work, in which case try surprise. But don’t be surprised if that doesn’t work. I closed
the book and placed it in the “not worth reading anymore” pile. It was the largest pile. “To be read” was the second largest pile. “Really worth keeping” was the smallest.

“Hey,” I said. “Get your shoes and coat. I want to buy you an ice cream.”

“’Nilla,” he said, leaping up.

“You got it.”

G
etting in to see a pair of multimillionaires had required a minimal bit of planning and arranging. Getting in to see a pair of billionaires was proving to be much more frustrating. Getting to talk with a college professor was in a world of its own. But if he was as good as young Mr. Krebs had indicated, I could put up with a bit of frustration.

“Is this Mr. Stafford calling again? I can recognize your voice.”

I could recognize her voice, too. Ms. Sharp. Department secretary. The gatekeeper for the great man. Benjamin McKenna.

I might have to get one of those scramblers to disguise my voice. There was probably an app for it. I could use my tablet. If I remembered to keep it charged.

“Yes, it is. I’m hoping to avoid a drive all the way out there.”

“Dr. McKenna has office hours Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from eleven to twelve. I remember telling you that yesterday.”

“Doesn’t he ever talk on the phone?”

“You may leave a message.”

“I left a message yesterday.”

“I gave it to him.”

“But he didn’t call me.”

“Then the obvious conclusion is that he doesn’t want to speak with you.”

You can’t fight that kind of logic.

W
ednesday morning at quarter to eleven I arrived at the Department of Information Studies at the university in New Jersey. I liked driving through northern New Jersey even less than driving on Long Island, but there were more roads per square mile than anywhere else on earth. This allowed free roam to my inherited obsession with maps. My father and I had near photographic memories where maps were concerned, and any time either of us set out on a journey greater than crossing Broadway, we were compelled to calculate every possible route to our destination. New Jersey was like a kaleidoscopic carnival ride.

There were four women at work in the office on the main floor when I walked in. None of them looked up or offered to help. No matter my age or accomplishments, I always felt like a student when visiting a school—powerless.

I walked up to the long, tall partition that separated the students from those who actually did something there. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for Dr. McKenna’s office.”

No one looked up, but the woman closest to me—a thin woman with a haircut that looked like it had been modeled on a rag
mop—swung around in her chair and called out to one of the two women in the back of the room.

“We don’t have a McKenna. Am I right?”

A face like Winston Churchill’s appeared around the edge of a computer monitor. “McKinley?”

“No,” I said. “It’s McKenna, not McKinley.”

“He says it’s McKenna, Lydia,” the thin woman called out, though the room was no bigger than my living room and everyone there could hear every syllable of the conversation.

“No,” Churchill said.

“There’s a McKenna in Engineering,” a disembodied voice said from behind another large monitor.

“Benjamin McKenna?” I asked.

“No,” the voice answered.

“Well, then, could I speak with the department secretary, Ms. Sharp?”

“I’m Lydia Sharp,” the woman in the back said. She stood up and walked with a sailor’s rolling gait up to the partition. “What do you need?” She said this last as though everyone she ever spoke to had some sad, desperate need and it was her lot in life to deny them all. She sounded nothing like Ms. Sharp.

“Did we speak on the phone? Monday? Yesterday?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Is it possible that there is a Dr. Benjamin McKenna in this department and you four wouldn’t know about him?”

“No.”

“A visiting professor, maybe?”

“Is he a student?”

I didn’t think so, but I was ready to try anything. “I thought he was a teacher.”

“Try Room 108. Downstairs. TAs use it for tutoring sessions. There’s a list on the door. Maybe you’ll see McKenna’s name there.”

“Thank you.” I backed out of the room, not comfortable turning my back on the four guardians of knowledge.

There was a list on the door of Room 108. There were eight names on the list, each with schedules for student assistance. McKenna was not on the list. There was no one signed up for the eleven a.m. slot on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

“You being helped?” a deep masculine voice said just over my shoulder.

I turned to find a black-bearded, ponytailed man in his late twenties wearing the uniform of his generation—checked flannel shirt and knitted watch cap. His eyes flicked briefly across my face and he looked away.

“I’m looking for a professor, but no one seems to know him.”

“Who’s that?” he said, looking over my shoulder.

“Dr. Benjamin McKenna,” I said.

“That’s funny.”

“Why is that funny?”

“
The Man Who Knew Too Much
. Hitchcock. 1956. James Stewart and Doris Day.”

“Sorry. Don’t know the flick,” I said.

He seemed disappointed. “No biggie.”

“So you don’t know him,” I said.

“Somebody told you to look for Ben McKenna?”

He would not make eye contact. Was it Asperger’s? Or did I detect fear? Or both? It felt different from the Kid’s fear—and I was glad he didn’t spring the bulging-eye look on me.

“I guess I made a mistake,” I said.

“What’s your name?”

Definitely not Asperger’s. His fear was bordering on aggression. “Jason Stafford. A mutual friend said to look him up.”

He nodded, his head bobbing many more times than was warranted.

“Are you a TA here?” I asked.

He was still nodding. “This mutual friend? What do his friends call him?”

We were playing an odd game. “Spud.”

He handed me a scrap of paper and quickly walked away. The note was brief and neatly typed.

GO TO STARBUCKS. GET A COFFEE. DON’T LOOK AT ME.

The instructions were clear, even if nothing else was. I went back up to the admin office and got directions to the nearest Starbucks. There was one in the Student Union, just past Dodge Hall, the Humanities building.

“Just a small black,” I said.

“One short,” the girl called out. “Anything with it?”

Everything in the showcase looked good. The blueberry scone looked particularly good. It had blueberries. It was practically a health food. It was also about forty-five minutes of laps around the track at the Y.

“Just the coffee,” I said, feeling almost saintly. I took a small table away from the window, with a view of the front door. I only had to wait a few minutes.

The bearded man came in and went directly to the bar, where he ordered a grande something-or-other. He took his time with the sugar and half-and-half before taking a seat on the far side of the room. I tried to look like I was not looking at him and found that it was easier just to not look at him. A moment later, my cell phone rang.

UNKNOWN CALLER
. “Stafford,” I answered.

“Mr. Stafford? This is Ms. Sharp calling. Can you hold one minute for Dr. McKenna?”

It was not the voice of the Lydia Sharp in the admin office. It was
the same voice that I had heard twice before when trying to reach McKenna. I risked a look across the room.

“Mr. Stafford? Are you there?”

The man was speaking into the microphone on his plugged-in earbuds, which were connected to a laptop, and through it, to a cell phone.

“Holy hell, that’s you,” I said. “How do you do that?”

“It’s an app,” he said in his own deep baritone.

“Impressive,” I said. “But why all the spy stuff?” I thought it was more Maxwell Smart than James Bond. “Can’t we just have a conversation?”

“I checked. You weren’t followed.”

“That’s comforting.” I would have been quite surprised to find out anything but.

“Spud says that I can talk to you. What do you want?”

“How about we start with names? You know mine. Is McKenna your real name?”

“I have no name.”

“Well, what would you like me to call you? ‘Spud’s friend’?”

“Joy is my name.”

I was beginning to wonder if Spud was taking revenge on me for some unknown slight on my part.

“Fine. I will call you Joy.”

“You may call me Dr. McKenna.”

I counted to ten. “How about Ben?” I said, just to get one shot back at him.

He paused. “No. Dr. McKenna.”

“Okay, Dr. McKenna. Now, will you tell me why all this secrecy?”

“I have enemies.”

“Obviously.”

“Have you heard of a company called NEQUISS?”

“Never.”

“I created NEQUISS. North Eastern Quadrant Internet Security Systems. White hats. We helped keep the black hats out of your systems.”

“What’s the product? Anti-malware? Antivirus?”

“High-level security. IDS Plus.”

“Is there an IDS Negative?”

“Intrusion detection systems. Most packages are defensive-only. Passive, reactive, or preventive. They are all defensive. They let you know that someone is trying to hack in, or where they’ve been. Preventive systems actually work to keep them out.”

“So how is NEQUISS different?”

“Active. It’s like hiring armed mercenaries with big dogs to patrol your perimeter and take out anyone who tries to break in.”

“Take out? Like terminate?”

“We didn’t kill people, but we’d send them home limping—or infected.”

“So you made some enemies.”

“Last spring we were called in by a defense contractor in northern Virginia. You’d know the name. They had very good systems in place, but someone was getting in anyway. We identified the baddies as a team of Iranians—military. They’d managed to come in the front end and bypassed all the first-line systems, but they had set off an alarm. They hadn’t gotten through to any sensitive areas but they were getting close. Our team isolated them and guided them down a rabbit hole into a honeypot.”

“You’re losing me.”

“We let them see files that were worthless. Manufactured. They looked real, so the hackers kept going deeper.”

“But really it was a dead end?”

“They copied a full set of plans for a fictitious surface-to-air missile designed to target drones. What they didn’t realize was that they were also getting a worm we had embedded in the plans.”

“What did it do? Crash their computers?” I said.

“No. The worm was a sleeper. It did nothing but migrate until it found its target. This one was designed to attack the power grid. It took a week to travel to the right network and then there were rolling blackouts in Tehran for the next three days.”

“Cyber warfare.”

“That’s just one example. This goes on every day. All the time. Ten years ago, it was kids. Geeks like me. Getting kicks, which is what teenagers do, right? Woo-hoo, I hacked the
New York Times
! I rule! Only now it is serious shit. Al-Qaeda. The Russian mob. The Albanians stole one hundred twenty million credit card numbers—full identity, name, address, social, everything including where you go to church—and they made it look like the Russians did it. The Chinese? They’ve got an army regiment that does nothing but hack.”

“My client thinks that’s who is causing him all of his problems.”

“Could be. They’re good. But the U.S. is way out in front. They’ve got the edge.”

“What’s the edge?” I said.

“English. All computer languages parallel the language of the originators. Most were written by people whose first language is English. So, the code follows similar logic, sentence structure, and syntax. I’m not saying you can’t understand it if your first language is Mandarin or Farsi. But if you grew up speaking English, you’ve got an edge.”

“And most of the educated classes around the globe now speak English.”

“God help us if the Indians ever start hacking,” he said.

“Sounds like a good business. It’s like being an oncologist in Florida. If you’re any good, clients find you. If you suck, you’re probably still making a fortune.”

“We were very good. But fortune is the devil’s servant. It seems
we pissed off more than a few people. There were death threats, which we ignored for the most part until they started coming to our homes.”

“You’d been hacked,” I said.

“Maybe, but the more likely scenario is that we were sold out. We reported everything to the police. The next thing we knew, the FBI shut us down. They seized all of our assets, threatened the employees with prosecution, and arrested my partner and our CFO.”

“What about you?”

“I got a text message warning me. I walked out my front door, and before I got two blocks there were about a dozen government vehicles converging on my house. I’ve been off the grid ever since,” he said.

“I don’t get it. Why is the FBI after you? I thought you worked for the good guys.”

“We’ve talked long enough. I have to switch phones.” He hung up.

I watched him close up the flip phone and dig into a battered backpack. He pulled out another phone, identical to the first, connected it to his laptop, and redialed. My phone rang again.

“I have to keep switching phones or they’ll find me.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” If I was going to do business with this scary young man, I wanted to know what enemies I might be taking on.

“Someone who was very good hacked into SOCOM. Special Ops Command. The black helicopter guys. Ninjas. The hackers didn’t really get anything juicy. Certainly nothing we haven’t seen before on cable news. Not secret, just sensitive. It was a feint, nothing more. But they left footprints. Footprints that made it look like we were the ones breaking in. And they left a door open, which led to a site used for coded Taliban communiqués.”

“Was it your work?”

“Of course not. We would never have been so sloppy.”

“So you’re in hiding, your buddy’s in jail—”

“In the system. I don’t know that he is in jail, actually.”

“Okay. ‘In the system.’ What happens next?”

“His wife and kids are with her parents. They’ve hired a lawyer. I get messages from her. When it first happened, I asked for help online, but in the hacker community we’ve always been unpopular. But there’s a few good guys I’ve emailed with. Eventually, we’ll get through it. Straighten things out.”

“That’s optimistic.”

“Yeah. Or not. Did you get the blueberry scone? It’s good.”

“No. No offense, but you’ve got some heavy baggage. I don’t know what Fred thought we could do for each other.”

“He said you had a client who’d been hacked.”

“Not exactly. Look, I don’t doubt that you know your way around the Internet or whatever, but I think you’re too busy running to do me any good, and I really don’t know what I can do to help you. I think we’re stuck.”

“I need cash. I’ve been couch surfing, moving on every couple of days, but eventually I’m going to get tripped up somehow. I need money—cash money—to stay hidden.”

“I can do that. But I still don’t see what you can do for me.”

He began tapping at his laptop. “Give me a minute.”

It took him a bit more than a minute. Four minutes.

“I’m going to put more cream in my coffee. When I stand up, come over here and look at the screen.”

I waited until he was at the counter. No one was paying any attention to him—or me. I picked up my things and made myself walk slowly across the shop. As I passed his table, I looked down and froze.

My bank account was open on McKenna’s laptop. Cash balance, $3,480.11. My check for estimated federal tax must have cleared
already. Money market account, $157,323.44. Mortgage balance, $0.00. Paid off before I went to prison. Home equity LOC showed a balance of $34.82, which I kept forgetting to pay off.