I DON’T TURN around until I’ve nestled myself behind a tree along the cliff. It’s desolate, a low wind sweeping across the short, three-par hole, and it’s beautiful. Behind me, I can see the bridge reflecting moonlight.
I’m being followed by the parade of killers and would-be killers, the puffy guy from the bar and his pal in the lead, the horse-faced guy bringing up the rear, all huffing, just like me. But there’s a difference: all three have their guns drawn. This is going to be tricky.
They’ve stopped, and spread out a bit, Hearty to the far right, his henchman just to his left, Fred’s killer farther over still. They’re all crouched. Battle positions.
I yell: “Promise you won’t kill Zeke.”
The three pause. They can’t tell my precise location. I’m north of them, behind the tree, bushes surrounding, a good place to lose a golf ball, an impossible place for me to get shot, at least at this angle.
“You have my word.” It’s the puffy guy from the bar.
I hear a dark purring of low-level laughter. It belongs to Fred’s killer. “Your word?!” He exclaims. A terse wind gusts across the fairway. “You’ll say anything to get what you want. Don’t listen to him. Give me the computer drive and I’ll make things right.”
Now it’s Hearty’s turn to guffaw. “I’ll say anything?! Look in the mirror. You’re in this for yourself, period. You want one thing: power. You’ll do and say anything to get it.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up!” That voice belongs to the third guy, the one closer to the middle, the guy who whacked me in the leg. “You two are ridiculous. Birds of a fucking feather.”
They birds begin to squabble. I see guns pointed. I’ve got them plenty heated up. This just might work.
“I’ll give it up, the thumb drive,” I shout. “First I want answers.”
They’re paused. They look in my direction. I hear a foghorn in the distance. I work up some energy to spout out my theory. I say: “Fred figured out how to tap into the computers of all the candidates for higher office. He’s got their Internet searches. He can expose their digital secrets, their secret desires and queries.”
I pause.
“It’s private,” one of the thugs says. “It’s stolen. Besides, it doesn’t necessarily say anything about their core values.”
I ignore him. “He stored it all on some Google server somewhere, in one of those massive data warehouses. Someplace you couldn’t possibly find. And he made a copy for himself, the one in my pocket. You guys pieced it together. How? Did he start threatening to go public?”
Another silence. Then: “You hear about the Republican in Macon who pulled out of the twelfth-district race?” It’s the third guy, Hearty’s henchman.
“Enlighten me.”
“The local paper got tipped off to the fact she’d been shopping around to find a discreet place to get her daughter an abortion. She was ardently pro-life.”
“Fred gave it to them.”
“It was his test case. We figured it out. Realized he’d put together a dossier.”
“We?”
They start squabbling.
“And the movies,” I shout over them.
I prompt a silence, the low wind coursing through it.
“He managed to get video of the candidates, in real time, as they did their searches.” I’m musing, guessing. I’m picturing the image of the presidential challenger, hair tousled, sitting at his desk doing some lurid search. Most of the search logs on the computer drive had attendant movie files. This part I can’t quite figure.
“He used the cameras built into their own laptops, in a few cases, on their phones,” It’s Hearty’s pal again, the muscle, sensing my uncertainty, filling in blanks. “Everyone has a camera these days, for videoconferencing or whatever. He just programmed the devices to record every time there was an Internet search. It’s basic stuff. Think of all the Internet searches you’ve done. You really think those are private. You think Google or Yahoo doesn’t know. It’s their business to know. Fred figured out a wrinkle, pairing the searches with video; I’m sure lots of bad dudes have been working on developing the same technology, or have it. More than these two turkeys want the disk, they want Fred’s IP.”
“Not true,” Hearty protests.
“I’d absolutely deny it,” exclaims Fred’s killer.
“You really think your data is that secure. Jesus, the Pentagon can’t keep people out of its servers,” The third guy inserts himself over them. “What makes you think you can keep people out of your MacBook Air?”
“I’ve got a desktop.”
No response. Maybe we’ve hit an impasse, or this Luddite revelation is truly a conversation-deadening admission. In the void, I have a realization.
“Which one of you guys is the Republican?”
No answer.
“One of you guys is a Republican, and one is a Democrat. You’re party honchos. You were working together to try to track down Fred and his computer drive. But then you turned on each other.”
“Guy’s a hypocrite,” shouts one. “Oh that’s rich,” shouts the other. “You’re destroying this country with your lies.”
“Hey! Enough!” My voice cuts through the squabbling. I look up and see the rogue’s moon; full, shadowed by high clouds, just the way the old time pirates liked it so they could sneak up on the galleons.
“Come and get it.”
I toss the thumb drive out into the middle of the fairway, almost equidistant from the killers. I can see it bounce in a patch of moonlight and settle somewhere in the darkness.
There’s a moment of silence.
A gunshot rings out.
I peer into the darkness. A muzzle flash, then another. A blaze of gunfire. I see the puffy guy fall, then Fred’s killer. I tuck myself against the tree. The flurry of firing slows. I peer out again. The henchman still stands, wobbly but walking. The guys on the ground are moaning, bullet-riddled, moribund.
The guy walks over to the area of the thumb drive.
“Help,” he mutters.
“Who are you?” I shout.
“This is not my problem. These guys are crazed hypocrites. I’m independent.”
“Who?”
“Swing vote.” He reaches down to pick up the thumb drive.
Two shots ring out, from the fallen, writhing killers. The guy in the middle goes down in a heap.
I hear sirens, distant, approaching. I crouch, listening. The thugs’ moaning has stopped, the writhing ceased. I scramble back across the fairway. I pause to look at the bodies. The puffy guy, the one who threatened me, totally dead, looks to have dented the grass with his heavy body. I’ll have to ask Nat, but I wonder if he could be suffering elephantiasis.
I turn to the other guy, the one who killed Fred. Equally deceased. With his mane of a mullet and long face. I make a note to figure out what medical condition makes you look like a dead donkey. I thoroughly wipe down Fred’s phone and slip it, fingerprint free, into the dead guy’s shirt pocket. The cops can make the connection.
I pick up the thumb drive.
I hustle to my car and jam myself inside. I drive back out through the Presidio. When I reach an overlook, I stop. I yank myself out of the car. I throw the drive into the ocean.