Chapter 3: I’ve Got a Secret

SIX O’CLOCK GETS EARLIER every morning. If it weren’t for the wet nose stuck in my face and the demands of having a pet that needs to be walked, I’d have rolled over and stayed warm and comfy in my bed. But Maizie was insistent.

I hauled myself out of the sack and headed for the john. Aging sucks. A back injury from when I was in the Navy keeps acting up on me, especially when the weather changes from dry to wet like it did this morning. I count it a good day if I can stand up straight by the time I get from bed to bath. This morning I was all the way to the kitchen before the last spasm subsided.

The clouds hung heavy around Queen Anne giving the Space Needle that strange other-worldly appearance that makes you think aliens have landed and are taking over downtown. With Maizie on her leash and an umbrella over our heads we set off through the cold mist for the office. Lower Queen Anne is a great place to live. I can walk to the Waterfront with only a couple of stops to rest. Thankfully, Riley drives me home at night. I’d never make it back up the hill with my breath as short as it’s been lately.

My first stop was at a coffee shop on Broad. It’s one of the few independents that were left in the city that spawned coffee-love throughout the world. But big name brands are the lowest common denominator for anything that wants to be called espresso. The little independents were where you got a cup that opened your eyes and put a smile on your face. Tavoni’s was just that kind of shop.

Maizie and I stepped through the front door at 7:00 and both shook the water off. At that hour, when they open, there is never a question of standing in line, or even ordering. Jackie came out from around the counter and brought me my espresso and Maizie’s biscuit.

Yeah. Espresso with my heart. There are a few pleasures in life that are worth dying for.

Jackie brings me an Americano—two shots of espresso pulled on top of two shots of hot water. I’d drink the espresso straight, but it cools off too quickly.

Espresso is an art, both in creation and consumption. I held the cup in both hands and absorbed the warmth through my fingers as the aroma tickled at the edges of my nose. I never drink fast. If I dove in and took a drink I’d just burn my tongue. I just hold it there and breathe. Then slowly bring it closer—about four inches from my face—and inhale deeply. A properly-made espresso will pick me up from that distance and jumpstart my heart. I could feel it working before the cup actually touched my lips. The first sip was mostly crème. That’s the oily foam that rests on top of a freshly-pulled shot of espresso. Just beneath the silky foam comes the first taste of heaven. The coffee was strong enough to dry my mouth out. The flavor washed across the sides of my tongue first then swept up to meet in the middle. As soon as the black liquid hit my throat, I inhaled again, sucking air down with the coffee until my lungs felt like they would explode. Lowering the cup so not to cool it, I expelled the air out through my mouth in a long sigh.

The cup at Tavoni’s was the only cup in the day that I got anymore, and I savored every last drop without thinking of anything else. I didn’t read. I didn’t talk. I didn’t listen. I coffeed.

After my coffee was finished, I checked the headlines of the newspaper and looked through the business section. When Maizie had finished her biscuit, we took our refreshed selves on to the office.

Riley was doing research at the library and then at the courthouse to look up all relevant records on BKL. I figured I had about six hours before she got back to the office. She tried to get me up and dancing after dinner last night, but I just couldn’t do that. Of course, there wasn’t a man in the club who didn’t want to wrap his arms around her dressed the way she was. She didn’t really like people to be that close to her, though. What a real contradiction in terms.

I unlocked the vault and checked the status of my drive set-up.

The vault was a special room I had built in this office when I first moved here years ago. I don’t show it to anyone who doesn’t need to know. The vault was located behind a wall next to the bathroom. A remote control sat on my desk for the wide-screen television on the wall opposite. If you knew the codes it would also unlock the vault. The wall slid open and a small room was revealed. The room was temperature controlled to keep the heat from my servers at bay. I had my own network and web servers so I didn’t have to use an ISP for connection to the Internet. The room was small, if only because one wall was lined with servers. It took a lot of power, but kept me independent from third parties.

Before I left last night, I wired Simon’s laptop into the system behind a firewall and a write-blocker. Then I spun the disk up and did a full spectrum analysis of the hard drive, including making two copies of the disk on new drives. I disconnected the laptop from the system and locked it and one backup in the safe in the vault. I wouldn’t touch the subject hardware unless I discovered there was a hardware key needed for security override. There was no more than one computer in a hundred thousand that required a hardware key. I wired the other backup drive into my network, protected by a firewall. Once that was done, I closed and locked the vault.

I didn’t work on computers in the vault, I kept them safe there. I worked on an ultra-portable laptop. It weighed less than three pounds and could connect to the Internet from just about anywhere in the world. I connected through a cellular connection so there wasn’t a wireless network in the office that anyone else could detect. I used a virtual private network to connect to the real power that was safely locked up in the vault.

I was paranoid about security, which is why I was so good at getting around other people’s.

If Simon wanted me to find him, he wouldn’t have made it too hard to do, but that assumption could trip me up. Simon would set things up in such a way that he thought only I could get the clues. That meant he probably tried to be cleverer than he actually was which could backfire and get a person into trouble. And I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the laptop itself might only be a hook to get me involved in the case.

If Simon was hiding more than himself, I thought, there might even be information on the computer that he didn’t want me to find. He would use obvious clues to get me looking in one direction and obfuscate what he didn’t want me to know. I fully expected his calendar would show only appointments he wanted me to know about.

I wanted to know why. Why after over thirty years did Simon send Brenda to me? Why did he want to play “Simon Says?”