Ever notice how when someone lets you off the hook you feel worse?   

I half wish I had Magda back.  I could say something deliberately cruel and mean about Jinny, maybe mouth off about how her addiction is not my fault and then she could lay into me, hurt me some, make us both feel better.   

I don’t have time to cry but I do it anyway.  The ink of the letter gets smeared a bit but back inside the penthouse I blot it carefully.  I want this to take back with me.   

But I’m not leaving until some things are done. 

I’d had to leave my computer on and on line all night for hacker purposes; there’s unfortunately no big alert message on my screen telling me S’Phearhead’s kludge has alerted in reference to Massey’s computer being on line.  Fuck.  I’d told S’phear to send it in a porn picture, make the subject line something like, “I’m a 17 year old cheerleader who just loooooves to be tied up”. I know he won’t be able to resist that.  I know it.  Something has to go my way on this, for fuck’s sake.  I am not a total wash out as a cop.   

I check email.  Nada.  I feel slightly leery about the fact there is none from Sarge.   

I try McCafferty again and get the machine.  I leave another message and then after I’ve hung up I realize what I forgot and call back and leave another.   

“This is~~  This is going way out on a limb here, but I’m doing it anyway.  I’m asking you to please not open your mail until I can talk to you.  I don’t mean bills or personal shit, but anything from an address you don’t recognize.  Just hang onto it and call me.  I have to talk to you.  And if Jinny shows up call me before you let her start spilling her guts.”  I hesitate and then actually manage to say it, although stiffly.  “Please.” 

There.  Now what?  

Legaspi.  God, what do I do there?  I can’t just fly back to Texas knowing I broke her arm.  Why did Weaver not file a report, send someone to pick me up?  Should I do it myself?  Go turn myself in?  But then I lose my freedom and I need that right now to fix all the things I have fucked up before I leave.   

I try to envision a scenario where I go apologize but it keeps ending with Weaver’s crutch stuck through my abdomen.  Not that she would ever resort to such foul-minded violence, but if I took a running leap I might impale myself on it sufficiently to appease my own conscience at least.  But then she’d have to do more medical work on me.  Legaspi would probably have to refer her to someone as a patient after the trauma.  The floor tiles would be ruined.  Maybe I should go for something safe like flowers.  

 I’m on the phone with the florist I’ve found through the yellow pages when Amy Ray laughs on my computer signaling me an alert message has popped up.   

The message from S’Phear head is brief but ecstatic:  

 Got him.  I’m fishing.  If you’re there get your ass on.  I modified the kludge so you can cruise through his files with me. 

 Sometimes you actually do get what you need when you need it. 

 Less than seven minutes after accessing Massey’s files S’Phearhead sends me an ICQ.

 Jesus fucking Christ, Huckleberry.  You got enough disks for this? 

I manage to zip and compress what I want and transfer it onto seven different disks.  There was so much I could pick and choose from it and S’Phear is a savior there as well.

  I don’t grasp money laundering schemes.  I don’t understand the whole process.  There’s no clear cut victim, no deadly weapon, no one left bleeding…  I would probably have skimmed through those files and documents and zipped straight over to the file conveniently named “Exstead” had it not been for S’Phear. 

 No.  Trust me.  This is the shit.  Let me transfer the files you want and you put them on floppies. This is way bigger than what your friend stepped in. This is fucking huge. 

 When he explains it to me I feel dizzy with the magnitude of it, with the sheer fucking enormity of what he and I have found.  And I have no idea what to do with it.  I’ve violated major laws here.  What I’ve found should cost not only Massey’s job but Chandler’s as well but I’ve now gone inside a personal computer without permission, without a warrant and this makes these documents inadmissible for me as evidence.   

I hold Jinny’s letter in my hand as I stare at my lap top’s screen and rock myself a little, trying to think my way through the maze this has become.   

“I don't want to make it be more than it was but I also refuse to pretend that it was less—“  

God, she’s brave.  To lay it out like that, to say it, to just hand it over.   

She deserves so much better than what I’ve done.  So much better than what she’s been dealt so far in her life.  I am dancing along the edge of something that could gap open any moment and both of us fall in but if I can just see my way through this I can save her some grief.   

S’Phear gets uneasy with my silence and finally demands to know if I have gotten cold feet.  What am I doing out there?  Picking my nose?   

I lay out for him what I am thinking.  All this is too much.  It’s a god-send, a miracle at the eleventh hour but now I can’t use it because for fuck’s sake!  We’re inside the computer of Congressman Chandler’s brother in law.  We’ve committed Cyber B&E.   

Great time to go all legal on me, Huckleberry.   

I resist the urge to tell him to fuck off because I need him for this.  I don’t even understand the shit I’ve read.   

I glance at my watch.  It’s probably a beer deficiency.  I haven’t consumed any alcohol in at least twenty hours.  That could very well be some kind of record since Jase died.   

I look at the screen when the ICQ chimes.  

What if this information somehow became a matter of public record?  

My head reels giddily for a moment.  Public information.  Nearly every state has a law now stating that certain government and federal documents are considered to be part of public record, accessible (for a fee) to the public.  This is what Massey, probably at Chandler’s order, has requested on me from Austin.  Everything from driving histories to criminal records to property deeds to business transactions to certain adoptions and police investigations fall within the rather broad guide lines of “public record”.   

What if somehow all this information got uploaded inside existing public record documents?  What if it got uploaded into every State’s public records? What if it even showed up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?  

Jesus.  I grip the hair on my head and try to think.  It’s all about timing.  If I give the go ahead and he does this it’s not the same as me handing it to McCafferty and demanding an investigation into the Senator’s background and business dealings which will make anything I find here inadmissible as evidence in any court no matter how high up.  It’s been obtained illegally without due process.  But if someone else finds it, if it made a matter of public record, if enough people see it they will have to call some sort of ethics hearing before Congress.  If it is uploaded even so far as the White House…  It can’t get swept under or dismissed.   It’ll be too big.  If it is discovered in a public record it is admissible without a warrant, admissible without even my testimony in reference to it.  They’ll try to block it because it was put there deliberately but this is too big to be hidden once even a corner of it is glimpsed.  This information combined with the conversation on the tape is far too large to cover up once it is out.   

I feel dizzy trying to think my way through this.  But can he do that?  Can he access those files without being traced, without being caught?  It’s going to mean cyber B&E all over the place, a federal offense.   

S’Phear, Can you do this??? 

If he had answered immediately I would have been leery because there is no way this is a simple matter of FTP sites; he will have to break codes and breach security and try to do it without being not only caught but detected at all which would mean everything would come out too soon and we’d be fucked. They could slam us with charges before we could bring the other stuff to light and anything I offer up as an excuse is going to be suspect.   We’d both be looking at some serious jail time although the odds of S’Phear being caught are fairly nil.  I don’t even know what country he’s in right now.   He’s already on the Top Ten as it is.   Has been for several years.  I’m the one that will go down for this.   

It’s several moments before anything appears in the ICQ.  The cursor blinks and I blink too, waiting, eyes riveted on that flat screen. 

It won’t be easy.  I’ll need at least 3 days I think.  Can you give me 3 days to do this?  Just sit on what you’ve got for now?   

My hands are shaking as I type it in.   

I can try.   

There is writing almost immediately this time, barely a pause before the next words pop into the ICQ with a deceptively cheery chime. 

Huckleberry, you know this is deep shit, right?  You need to be careful.  Your buddy isn’t the only one going to be in danger if they get any idea what we’re up to here.   

Like I don’t know that.  My heart is pounding and I gather up the seven disks of information and hold them fanned out in my fingers like a hand in a card game.   

And I’m betting everything, not only of mine but of Exstead and S’phearhead as well.  It could ripple outwards to include Sarge and McCafferty eventually too, along with a stain smeared over our respective departments.  God, I wish I was smarter, more methodical, more inclined to actually fucking think things through.   

Huckleberry?  Give me the word.  Yes or no?   

I take a deep breath and try to settle my queasy, jittering stomach.  And leap, as usual.   

Go for it. 

END OF TWENTY TWO