Chapter 8

Salamanders and Keyloggers

June 29: San Francisco

I found a public domain version of the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini on gutenberg.org, downloaded it, and began reading it on the plane. I was well into the book by the time we landed at SFO and thoroughly embroiled in the fascinating narrative. There was no way to tell whether most of his stories were truth or fiction but they were definitely entertaining and he didn’t shy away from embellishment. For example, early on he told a story from when he was five years old:

“My father happened to be in a basement-chamber of our house, where they had been washing, and where a good fire of oak-logs was still burning; he had a viol in his hand, and was playing and singing alone beside the fire. The weather was very cold. Happening to look into the fire, he spied in the middle of those most burning flames a little creature like a lizard, which was sporting in the core of the intensest coals.”

Little Benvenuto’s father called him to the basement, showed him the creature, and told him it was a mythical salamander which legends said were born from fire. He then proceeded to give Benvenuto ‘a great box on the ears’ which he explained was a trick to make Benvenuto remember the moment later—a strategy that apparently worked since fifty-eight year old Cellini remembered it well enough to add the anecdote to his book.

A light thump alerted me that we had landed. I turned off my e-reader and looked out the window. Beyond the tarmac, the bay was still and tranquil. After deboarding and making my way through the airport, I took the BART downtown and walked home along the waterfront rather than riding the crowded T train. I had arranged to meet Ashna for drinks in the late evening but I had a few hours to kill before that. I was looking forward to making some progress on the half-finished sculpture in my studio, reading some more Cellini, and maybe getting in a workout at the Krav Maga gym I frequented but hadn’t been to for months. My years of Krav Maga training had literally saved my life not long before. I shuddered, remembering the cold and silence of that clearing in the woods. It had been a close call but the walk along the bay was pleasant and soon dispelled the bitter memory of that night.

A light, warm breeze ruffled the banners at the ballpark and when I glanced back the downtown skyline seemed to shimmer. Seagulls gave me the side eye as I crossed over the old bridge at McCovey Cove and then turned east to take Terry Francois Boulevard, tacking along the edge of the water. Walking in San Francisco on a warm day is one of the finest experiences a person can have but the feeling of contentment I had built up imploded when I arrived at the front door of the cinder block cube I called home and found it unlocked.

I paused for a moment, hand on the doorknob, thinking fast. It was possible that Mr. Lee, owner and manager of the garment manufacturing business that occupied the lower level of my building, had forgotten to lock it. It had happened before. It was also possible that he was in the building but that was unlikely. He sometimes came in on Saturdays to finish up paperwork but rarely, if ever, on Sundays.

My palms prickled with an intuition. Something was not as it should be. I decided to go around back and have a look instead of walking in the front door. There was an alley that ran behind the building. I walked to the end of the block, turned, and came back up the alley, moving slowly and keeping to the near edge of the neighboring buildings so I wouldn’t be visible from the rear windows.

There was an emergency exit that let out onto the alley from the first floor but I didn’t normally carry the key for it. I tried the handle silently and the door didn’t budge. It was locked as it should be. I put my backpack down behind the small dumpster Mr. Lee kept for fabric scraps and walked back to the neighboring building which had a fire escape ladder that gave access to the roof. The bottom of the ladder was high enough to discourage casual climbers but I was able to run, kick off the wall, and grasp the bottom rung. My neighbor’s roof was four feet higher than mine. I crept to the edge and dropped silently to my own roof. There were two skylights over my studio space at the back of the building. I approached one and looked down. My work in progress, sheathed in a spattered drop cloth, the back wall where I kept my tools—I couldn’t see much else. Still, my pulse was up and I felt strongly that there was someone inside. I went to the other skylight. From there I could see part of my kitchen but no intruder. A sudden, loud bang like a rifle shot made me jump. It was the front door of the building I realized after a moment. I rushed to the edge of the roof overlooking the street and arrived in time to see the driver door of a white van with tinted windows slam shut. The engine roared to life and the van pulled away, accelerating down the street. I squinted at the bumper. There was no rear license plate but there was an instantly recognizable rental company logo on the back. I watched it go, my mind racing. There were many possibilities to consider but first I needed to see what the intruder had been up to. I never kept anything of value in my home but a burglar wouldn’t know that. The places he had chosen to search could be instructive.

I went back down the way I came up, retrieved my backpack, and entered my building from the front. Most people think of it as one of the worst kinds of violation to have someone break into their house or car. I had no business being offended or outraged. As a professional, I just wanted to investigate my fellow professional’s work. The front door had two locks, the knob set and the bolt. They were both good locks but not immune to picking. I inspected them but could find no evidence that either had been forced. Mr. Lee might have left them unlocked, or the intruder could have picked them. Picking seemed unlikely though. It would have taken time and the door was in full view of the street. The foot traffic on the street was sporadic but I wouldn’t count on being able to pick my front door locks during daylight hours before at least a couple of people had wandered by. Also, the mystery intruder would have wanted to check that the place was empty before going in. He must have entered from the roof or a window, gone downstairs and unlocked the front door to make sure he had a clear exit path, then back upstairs to search. If he had been upstairs at all. I still didn’t know that. He might have been trying to burgle an industrial sewing machine.

I climbed the stairs. The interior door to my second floor flat was unlocked as well. There was no chance I had left it open. So, the intruder had definitely been inside. Did he have an accomplice in the van acting as lookout? I entered cautiously and climbed the stairs to the roof door. It was open. The lock had been drilled out. I had been too preoccupied to notice when I was on the roof only minutes before. Back downstairs, I searched quickly through every room. In the big main room where I had my workshop, office/sitting area, and kitchen/dining area, my filing cabinet had been rifled, kitchen cabinets searched, and all my tool chests opened. In the bedroom, everything had been pulled out of my closet and drawers and dumped on the floor. I had a storage bin where I kept all of the specialized gadgets—tools of my shadier trade—I had built or accumulated over the years. It had been pulled out and dumped on the bed. I sighed. It would take a while to get everything back in order. I could think about who might want to search my place while I worked. I was pretty certain it was not a random burglary. The intruder had been looking for something specific.

****

“So you think he was looking for something? Like what?” Ashna asked, then looked away, gesturing with her empty glass to the cocktail waiter who was passing by.

“Yes,” I answered when she turned her attention back. “It was a methodical search. He must have been there for a while before I arrived.”

“Anything for him to find?”

I shook my head. “I never keep anything worth stealing in my house. And nothing that could possibly incriminate me in any way.”

“Laptop?”

“I had it with me.”

“Good.”

“Yeah. I can’t escape the feeling that this has something to do with the Wolhardt job though. The timing is too weird. Somebody knew I was out of town.”

“What about the Corsican guy in France, who you thought had Valerie’s painting?”

“Antonetti? I don’t think so. If anything, he would send somebody to kill me, not search my place.”

“Somebody you talked to in Seattle?”

“Just Benderick but he was pretty convincing. I don’t think he’s mixed up in this. I didn’t get that vibe from him. And Valerie’s friend Maggie too but I don’t think she would have told anyone.”

“Maggie huh? Another old friend of Valerie’s? I need to hear about this.”

“Nothing happened. She’s married and has a kid. Or maybe two kids? I probably should have asked her about that. Anyway, she was just a favor Valerie called in to get me into the reception so I could meet Benderick.”

I filled Ashna in on my meeting with Benderick, telling her his theories about the Enigma Variations, that his ‘dark saying’ had something to do with the occult, and the possible connection to Benvenuto Cellini.

“Cellini?” She said, draining the dregs of her second cocktail. “Never heard of him.”

“Seriously? You took the same two semesters of art history as me.”

“Yes but that was a long time ago and you know I never gave a shit about sculpture. Except yours of course. You sculptures are good I guess.”

“Thanks so much for your effusive praise.”

“Whatever. I’ll read his book. Let me tell you what I found out while you were gone. I cracked another identity. Still working on the last one but I know who Crowley eighteen seventy five is. His name is Lester Dworkin.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. Lester the molester. I had a gym coach in middle school whose name was Mr. Lester and that was what we called him. I don’t think he was actually a molester, it just rhymed. Kind of a dick move now that I think about it. Making fun of somebody’s name. Anyway, Dworkin wasn’t easy to phish. He seems pretty paranoid. But I got him at last. I made a guess based on his screen name and the kind of stuff he posted on that music nerd forum that he wasn’t actually named Crowley. I figured he was into Aleister Crowley the weirdo occult guy. By the way, this is an interesting coincidence with the stuff Benderick told you. Anyway, those kinds of dudes always have like homemade computers running Windows so I packaged a key logger in a windows executable file and sent him an email that spoofed the address of a publishing company. The email said the attachment was an excerpt from a previously unknown manuscript by that racist fuck H. P. Lovecraft. All those crypto white supremacist Crowley fan boys love them some Lovecraft.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I work in tech! Half the dudes I work with are obsessed with this shit. Either that or they’re Ayn Rand spouting libertarians. Okay, realistically, maybe only ten percent of them. But enough to hear about their batshit ideas pretty regularly. So, he opened the attachment and my key logger wormed its way deep into his OS and pretty soon I started getting transcripts of everything he typed sent to a burner email account I set up. That got me passwords for his email, bank, and surprisingly mundane porn accounts. He lives in Philadelphia and works at a bookstore that specializes in sci-fi and fantasy. He lives in an apartment walking distance from the store. His mom forwards him a lot of chain emails. He doesn’t seem to have many friends. So, long story short, Philadelphia, home of the liberty bell, is your next destination.”

“Philadelphia? Never been there,” I said, thinking about logistics and already reaching for my phone to search for a flight. “Oh, by the way,” I said, looking up from my phone, “Interesting coincidence. Wolhardt said he noticed a rented van parked on his street before his place was broken into. The person who broke into my place also had a rental van.”