Authors: Dale Wiley
At this point, they really could’ve mentioned the dissolute
life I was living—all the drinking and girls and stuff. It would’ve been a
half-truth but closer than some of the crap they were printing and a good deal
more flattering as well.
… specializing in columns criticizing the university administration.
Specializing? Again, the tying the chancellor up with yarn
suggestion comes back to haunt me.
Students describe Norris as likable, but somewhat
unpredictable, often taking off on a whim for places as far as New Orleans.
I went on a friggin’ road trip with my friends to Mardi
Gras! Come on!
Since moving to Washington during the summer, Norris had
evidently frequented some of the city’s more notorious bars …
I saw bands like Bikini Kill at places which weren’t
necessarily in the best part of town.
… and was dissatisfied with his work at the National Endowment
for the Arts.
The New York Post
“Did the Intern Clean the House?”
by Robert Parks
Trent Norris was a loser, even his friends say.
The alleged Congressional Killer saw himself as a writer but
became depressed when his novel was not published.
I wasn’t happy about it.
Norris was friends with drug users, party types, and even one
convicted felon, and, while not known as a drug user himself, was present at
many occasions where drugs were known to be used.
Okay. EVERYONE knows drug dealers, and I happened to go to
high school with a guy who got sent up on a burglary rap.
Norris’s controversial views were often reported in the student
newspaper, where he worked for three years.
A sign of my stability, let me add.
Well, that article went on and on, dissecting me in short,
fantastic sentences. The
USA Today
article was more of the same. In
general, the print media was depressing me even further, and I knew I had no
chance of going to sleep. I didn’t want to read any more of Helper’s novel, so
I turned the boob tube back on and watched a rerun of
M*A*S*H
, one of
the awesome early ones with Henry and Trapper. I thought about watching every
night at 6:30 in grade school, laying on the floor, with my dad sitting in his
arm chair, and my mom doing whatever, thinking about how I wanted to be a
surgeon—I didn’t yet know the depth of my loathing for science.
And I cried. I thought about what my parents, friends, and
relatives were seeing and reading, that they were probably being grilled by
reporters and cops, and that they probably believed I was a murderer. I knew in
the pit of my stomach that I should’ve turned myself in long ago, when the thing
first started. I could’ve straightened everything out. Everyone I knew would’ve
been willing to help. My family would’ve done anything they could’ve. But I
didn’t think; I was more interested in running than thinking about the
consequences of doing just that. They could probably use all of my actions, if
they wanted to, as further proof of my guilt. Now I was trapped, with one real
chance: Tabitha and I would have to find who killed Timmons and Roger and, even
more importantly, why.
Timmons and Roger weren’t as lucky as I was. I had avoided
the obstacles to this point; they didn’t even see them coming. And now there
were mothers, fathers, wives, and babies who thought that I killed their loved
ones. I sobbed and shook and would’ve traded anything to see just one face not
messed up in all this, something that triggered memories away from this big,
concrete city that was trying its best to kill me.
And, of course, Tabitha picked that moment to come in. I
thought for a second about running to the bathroom, trying to dry my eyes, and
staying in there until I looked less puffy and weepy, but it was no use. She
was ready, I think, to tell me good news, but, when she saw me, she put down
her bag and hurried to me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, taking off the blazer she had
worn.
“I watched
M*A*S*H.
” I choked the words out.
She hugged me close, in a soft way I needed.
Twenty
A
fter I was sufficiently comforted,
Tabitha pulled a slip of paper out of her purse. “I got the number for the
McHolland Foundation’s computer system. I just told a guy I needed some help
setting up an intranet, and he gave me all kinds of stuff. I also got a copy of
their annual report from the receptionist. It has all the budget. And then I
went to the bank where Helper’s trust came from and got their electronic
banking software. I’ll see if I can do anything with that.”
“Wow,” I said. “Thank you.”
She shook her head shyly.
“But,” I said, always the party pooper, “we still need to
remember to find out how Timmons ties into all of this. It’s great to find out
Helper’s got his hand in the till or whatever, but if we can’t prove that
Timmons knew, it doesn’t make a whole helluva lot of difference. Is there
anything I can do?”
“It’s gotta be in something that ties the organizations
together. Look at the annual report,” she said.
While she tried to crack the systems, I pored through dry
page after dry page, trying to see anything in the budget that looked
irregular. Problem was this wasn’t going to be the place to see any
irregularities. In the annual report, to keep it from being a zillion pages
long, they only reported the general and not the specific. In other words, they
just said, “Office Supplies $2000” and didn’t mention where they got them. That
was more than enough information for most people and not nearly enough for me.
It was getting close to supper time, and it looked like I
would get to have at least one more meal in freedom. I watched traffic and
walkers and was constantly on the lookout for cops.
“Hey,” she and I said at the same time.
We looked at each other, and, before I could even try to
speak, she continued her thought. “I don’t think I’m gonna get anywhere with
this stuff. I got a phone number, but I don’t have any idea about a password,
and the banking software is calling for a password too.”
I frowned. With my knowledge of computers, I had no answer.
“One of my clients is a bit of a cracker,” Tabitha said.
I had visions of a white southern racist. She could tell
this from my expression.
“A computer hacker who breaks into stuff.”
I showed signs of recognition, and she continued.
“He hates the government and he hates big business. He hates
about everyone except me. But … would you be willing to trust him? It’s your
butt in the sling.”
I thought about this. “Think he’d help us?”
She nodded knowingly.
I shrugged and considered this. “What the hell.”
Tabitha called, but her client’s answering service told her
he would be out of town until the next day. So much for that. As much as I
wanted to wait for him, I knew there were only so many hours before they would
catch me.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t think we could break into the bank,
but later tonight we probably could break into the Foundation.”
She looked dubious. “This isn’t like breaking into some
house, Trent. Have you even been there?”
I nodded, a little defensive. “We had a meeting there last
month. It’s over by the Hilton. There’s a security guy at the front desk, but I
think the whole building is non-profit organizations and such, so I’ll bet they
never see any action.”
Tabitha considered this. “How do we get past him?”
I knew she was going to ask that, and I was almost prepared.
I told her that “we” wouldn’t be breaking in; I would. She would be distracting
the guard with some story about her car breaking down. Standard stuff, but I
was betting that a bored security guard at a building that housed non-profit
organizations—the equivalent of being an FBI agent assigned to school crossing
guard duty—would fall for it, especially when the distressed motorist was as
shapely and blond as Tabitha.
“What can you get there that you can’t get from the annual
report?”
I explained to her that the report itself was too general.
What I needed was on their computer systems.
“But you don’t have a password, so you can’t get into it
from here. That’s not going to change just because you commit another crime.”
I knew, though, that if the foundation was anything like any
of the other places I had ever worked, if I could actually get inside the
offices, I would have no trouble getting a password. Because everyone in the
world believes their computer isn’t going to be broken into, just like people
used to believe their houses were not going to be burgled. So people—smart
people—did the things that you were never supposed to do such as writing their
password near their computer and making their passwords too easy—that kind of
stuff. And although I wasn’t a computer genius, I felt quite sure if I actually
had someone’s password and login name, even I could break in.
“Well, we can’t go until late tonight. Everybody would have
to be gone,” said Tabitha. “But it sounds like a good idea.” From the look she
gave me, I wasn’t sure whether she really meant it.
After our supper, I was beginning to get seriously
stir-crazy. Due to my overly-dramatic personality, I now felt like my entire
life had been spent on the run and hiding from people—kind of like a huge rock
band on tour but without all the sex and drugs. Even
The Simpsons
weren’t enough to hold my interest.
“Can we go do something?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A movie or something.”
“Yeah right. That’s where they got Lee Harvey Oswald.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m so tired of all this.”
“But you don’t want to have done everything you have only to
get caught by some ticket-taker.”
She was right.
I lay on the bed, trying to look pitiful enough that she
would come up with something to do. She pulled a roll of SweeTARTS out of her
purse. “A movie’s too risky. After all, what about Spectra-Vision,” she said,
and I gave her a dirty look.
“What you need is something to take your mind off all this.”
She bit her lip and drummed her fingers on the end table, looking at me and
trying to decide something. Hot as she was, I was praying that she wasn’t
planning to take off her clothes and suggest the horizontal mambo. I had
encountered enough problems in my life by hooking up with friends to know it’s
not a good idea as a rule; it’s especially not good if you’re both sober and in
grave danger. If your potential partner is the best friend of the girl you’d
still like to get together with, and if she’s also a prostitute, and if, most
importantly, she’s your only real chance of survival, it’s an especially bad
idea. But I hoped she wouldn’t even suggest it, because I was afraid that she
would somehow misconstrue all of my fairly genuine motives for declining.
“Give me some money,” she said, and I pulled out one of
Stanky’s hundred dollar bills. I was still afraid.
“I’ll be right back,” she said and left without another
word.
I tried to keep my mind off of things by looking again
through the annual report. I wasn’t much of an accountant, but I could tell
that what I was seeing looked about right. Of course, that was the whole point
of embezzlement. Soon, I just put the book down and stared at the ceiling,
trying to figure how someone could steal money thinking no one would notice
that it was gone
I honestly didn’t think it would be that hard to steal from
the government in the short-term. You could certainly nickel-and-dime them to
death with things like office supplies and over-billing for mileage, but I also
realized no one would shoot a Congressman over an extra box of paper clips.
This sort of graft could’ve gone on anywhere, including the
NEA. I thought that any kind of theft above that would be harder at the NEA
than other government agencies for one main reason: almost everyone—okay,
Helper seemed to be an anomaly—worked at the NEA because they wanted to see
artists get money. You didn’t work there if you were hoping to move up in other
political circles, because we were Washington DC’s version of a political leper
colony. So, because most workers actually cared about what they were doing and
because our budget was so small, people tended to scrimp and save rather than
over-spend, and this would make it harder for anyone looking to embezzle.
Of course, if the embezzler was the Chief Financial Officer
himself, all bets were off. Still, I was sure Helper had considered this and
would’ve tried to cover his tracks that much more carefully.
And I uncovered none of those tracks. After half an hour
more of gazing blankly at long columns of numbers, Tabitha returned, breathless
and holding a toy store package under her arm. She grinned at me and opened her
bundle. Inside she had a new edition of Trivial Pursuit. I laughed and moved to
the table, clearing a spot so we could play.
For whatever reason, the creators of Trivial Pursuit were
Watergate freaks, and I could answer all of those questions—Donald Segretti,
John Dean, and Charles Colson. I have also learned that if you don’t know the
answer you should say either chlorophyll, Shakespeare, Lucille Ball, or The
Beatles and you might well be right. Tabitha knew all about the movies, so she
got questions about
The Graduate
right and also knew it was Greta Garbo
who wanted to be alone. She even had a fairly decent knowledge of sports from
having two brothers. As she secured her last piece of pie and headed toward the
center of the board, I decided to ask her a science question once she got
there. Of course, she nailed it, pumping her arms after her victory. I was
gracious, shaking the hand of the victor while realizing she had just made me
go more than an hour without concentrating on my problems.