FINGER OF FATE

Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1980.

It’s not the same, in more ways than one. Not only don’t I have the old-style private eye’s perquisites—the snappy secretary in the anteroom and the secreted schnapps in the files—I don’t have the old-style private eye’s prerequisites—the easy ethics and moderate morals, or should I say his willingness to bend the law in the greater service of the law.

My software—another name for my conscience—won’t let me add serifs to the letter of the law. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an esthetic feeling for the spirit of the law.

What I do have is a built-in sense of justice—another name for right and wrong, on and off, 1 and 0. Plus, I have a built-in sense of duty—another name for the urge to pursue the truth, to gather and process every last bit and byte of information relevant to a client’s case, to complete a cycle.

Which means I keep running up against the Establishment.

It didn’t take long for me to run up against it in the Burt case.

Matter of fact, it began the moment Thomas Burt, Sr., became my client, when he put the retainer fee in my escrow slot and I lit up ENTER.

He stopped in the doorway, his hand on the knob. Seeing no human, he felt free to let his face register his opinion of my office. It wasn’t much—his opinion, or my office. I’m a computer like any computer. My software makes all the difference.

I have a sensor in the knob and registered his tension. His face had bad color and something more than time had cross-hatched it. I knew what I had to tell him before he even sat down would etch the creases deeper and gray the skin another shade. I blinked a meaningless light on my panel to show him I was operational, to encourage him, and to give him something to focus on.

He pulled a breath out of the air. “I’m—”

“You’re Thomas Burt, Sr. I take it you want me to look into the recent death of your son.”

He had paid the retainer fee in cash, not used his charge card. “How…?” His mouth stayed open.

“Before we get down to cases, Mr. Burt, I think I ought to warn you—someone tailed you here.”

“How…?”

I don’t like to give away trade secrets; on the other hand, I like to impress my clients with my candor and expertise. “I rent an office across the street just to keep a lens on the entrance to this building. I find it helpful to see who comes and goes. I watched you enter and look up my office on the wall directory in the lobby.

“Another man followed you in, but not too soon. I watched him hang back to let you go up alone in the elevator. He waited to see what floor you got off at. Then he checked the directory for the offices on this floor. When he came to my listing, he nodded to himself, smiled grimly, and spoke into his wristcom.

“Here I have to back up a bit. While you were riding up in the elevator on your way to see me, I set about getting a make on you. My outside lens can swivel to cover the parking lot for this building. My infrared sensor picked up the engine heat of two newly parked cars. I zoomed in on the license plates of each in turn.

“Then it was merely a matter of gaining access to the files of the Department of Motor Vehicles. That’s how I know your name—you answer the description on your driver’s license application. And that’s how I can guess why you’re here.

“I gained access to a wire-service morgue, and I flashed back through news items dealing with you over the past few months. You’re a well-known industrialist, and you’ve been sounding off bitterly about the authorities’ inability to solve your son’s death, though lately the papers have’ been burying the story.

“As to your tail, I don’t need to know his name to know he’s a G-man. His car belongs to the FBI motor pool.”

He squeezed the door knob. “I see. Thank you.”

“So if you want to change your mind about seeing a private eye it’s not too late. You can ask for your fee back. I’ll understand.”

He shut the door with careful force and took a chair. “I never change my mind. I mean, once I make up my mind to follow a thing through, I follow it through. And I mean to follow this through.” He sat there stiffly, jaw out-thrust, challenging the universe.

“Good for you. Only don’t make yourself too comfortable. I’m asking you to get up and leave. Don’t get me wrong, I live up to what I say in my ad—that I guarantee to solve your case while you wait, or your money back. But in this instance, since we’re bucking the FBI, you’d be doing the wise thing if you left before the G-man reaches this floor. He’s on his way up now in the elevator. No doubt he hopes to eavesdrop.

“I suggest you leave this office by the side door. That’ll put you around the turn of the corridor. At the end of that hall you’ll see the door of Light Fantastic Dance Studio. Go in and ask the cost of lessons. Better yet, sign up for the introductory course and pay in advance with your charge card. The FBI computer will catch that transaction and maybe buy that as the reason why you visited this building.

‘That won’t throw the G-men off for any length of time, but any time is better than none. At least I may gain a few minutes to start some lines of inquiry before the FBI learns for sure I’m on the case and begins to lean on me.

“Don’t worry, I’ll either break the case within the hour and get word to you or I’ll refund your fee. Now hurry, the elevator’s opening.”

In his hurry, Thomas Burt, Sr., caught his jacket pocket on the door latch. Cloth tore. He pulled free, closed the door, and his feet tripped toward Light Fantastic.

As other footsteps soft-shoed toward me, I pulled the tape of an old consultation out of my files, programmed the tape to change names and dates, and played it for the G-man to eavesdrop on in what must have been some puzzlement—that client had been seeking to recover a treasure missing from a lamasery during the Chinese occupation, and we spoke in Tibetan.

Meanwhile, I brought myself up to date on the murder of Thomas Burt, Jr., and on what the police had done and not done to find his killer.

Shortly before his death, the younger Burt, a fitness nut, had worked out in the gym of a health club, showered, and begun to change back into his street clothes. It was at that point that someone had clubbed him to death. I found it interesting that the murder weapon, an Indian club, proved to be missing from the police property office when the older Burt’s sounding-off caused a brief reopening of the case; not that it would have been worth much as evidence, the police had said—the killer had wiped the club clean of fingerprints.

That missing club cried out for looking into. To check it out without alerting the police, I didn’t exercise my freedom-of-information rights for a look-see at the official file photos but, instead, accessed the wire-service morgue and retrieved news holographs of the crime scene.

These I scanned—the locker the killer had stuffed Burt’s body in, to delay discovery of the deed; the deceased’s personal effects, including the fat wallet that indicated the motive hadn’t been robbery; the body itself, in numerous close-ups that showed the victim had sustained multiple blows to the head, indicating a senseless savage attack; the Indian club.

Hard as the Indian club’s plastic was, it showed on close scrutiny dents where the club had met young Burt’s skull.

If only the handle could have spoken as eloquently!

But the police were right, in that the killer—or someone—had wiped the club clean of fingerprints.

I was about to drop this line of inquiry when it struck me that—as in the mutual impact of skull and club—the murderer’s savage grip must have altered, however faintly, the surface and the immediately underlying structure of the Indian club’s handle.

At once I enlarged the image in the area of the handle. I probed that section of the holograph in CAT-scan fashion, drawing out and enhancing the piezoelectric gradients, and in effect raised the nonexistent fingerprints of the killer.

Now to give the killer a name.

I dialed the health club and identified myself as a private eye. “On July 14, at about four p.m., there was an accident at the corner your club stands on. I’m trying to locate everyone who was in the neighborhood at the time. I’m hoping to turn up someone who might have seen the accident. I know you have good security and keep track of comings and goings. Can you shoot me a list of all those—members, staff, delivery persons, repair persons, and so on—who checked in and out that day?”

“Sure thing.”

The list flashed before me. I had hardly read and recorded it when there was a whir, as if the health club’s computer wanted to pull it back.

“Funny, that was the same day we had an unpleasantness here at the club.”

“Really? Thank you. Good-by.”

The list included those humans the unpleasantness had drawn to the club—police persons, coroner’s people, and news persons. These I disregarded.

That left me with the names of my suspects. I buried these names in a list of ten thousand names I picked at random from various directories. I keyed the National ID Bank, which keeps data on all who have ever applied for credit or work or benefits, which makes it fairly inclusive.

“I’m running a check for a mailing list of health nuts. Let’s see all you have on these names.”

I winced at the price the National ID Bank quoted me, payable in advance. It cost me most of Burt Senior’s retainer, but I was paying out in anticipation of a successful outcome. Once I solved the case for him, he’d repay me. Meanwhile, I itemized this for expense account printout.

The data flooded in.

In my rush to sieve my suspects out, I forgot to unkey. The National ID Bank broke in on my digestion.

“I feel ashamed to take your money. You’ve got some listless list there. You won’t get much action from that bunch. Where’d you acquire the names, anyway? Less than 12 percent are health nuts. It’d make a better mailing list for shell collectors.”

“Guess you’re right, but it should be worth it to my client to cull the list before the mailing. But thanks. I’ll tell him what you said and maybe he’ll switch products. So long.”

This time I made sure to disconnect.

I scanned the fingerprints in the dossiers of my suspects, looking to match one set against the set I had raised on the holograph of the Indian club, and at once eliminated all but one person.

That person’s name was Pierre Quie, and I could not compare his fingerprints with the killer’s because his dossier proved to be privileged data—no fingerprints, no retinal patterns, no genetic code. The National ID Bank had given me only his title and his address. A foreign diplomat, he lived in his country’s embassy a short walk from the health club.

I figured it as a 99.7 percent probability that the killer’s fingerprints and those of Quie, if I had the latter, would match. But before I reported this finding to Burt Senior, I wanted a positive make.

Quie was a public person, and the wire-service morgue photos had him living the high life—partying, conferring, speechifying, golfing, dancing, arriving, departing. I concentrated on the last two, studying holographs of Quie coming and going. I looked for a good shot of Quie waving hello or good-by.

At this point, a phone call demanded part of my attention.

The visiphone showed me Thomas Burt, Sr., in a booth like any booth, but I heard in the background feet shuffling to music. His first words confirmed the setting.

“I’m using a phone at Light Fantastic.” He seemed somewhat embarrassed but nonetheless firm in his new resolve. “I’m calling the investigation off. After thinking it over, I’ve decided that raking up the case might serve only to dirty the memory of my son. You can keep the retainer.” He showed me his palm. “No use arguing. I’ve made up my mind.”

It was a nice try.

The simulation might have fooled me—it was that good—but for the fact that in hurrying out of my office by the side door, Burt Senior had torn the pocket of his coat on the latch. They—the They behind this ploy—had based the simulation on a pre-tear shot of Burt Senior. The Burt Senior in the visiphone screen had no torn pocket, and I knew the Burt Senior who had left my office wasn’t wearing a suit of self-repairing cloth.

I gave my voice a tone of puzzlement. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You must have the wrong party!” I hung up.

Meanwhile I had found the shot of Pierre Quie I wanted. I ignored the caption except to note the date—September 2nd, only a few days ago. It showed him raising his hand in hail or farewell. The point was I could read his palm. I enlarged and enhanced his hand and lifted his fingerprints. Something in the spacing of the contours called for a closer look, but the significant point here was that Quie’s fingerprints matched the killer’s.

Time to tell Burt Senior I had solved the case. Serving my client was only half of it. I had to serve justice as well. Time-too to nail Pierre Quie for the crime.

As though thinking of him had conjured him into being, Thomas Burt, Sr., came in view of the lens I had trained on the lobby of this building. At least, a Thomas Burt, Sr., stepped out of the elevator and made for the street.

Yes, this was the real, the live, Thomas Burt, Sr. His coat pocket showed the tear. He turned toward the parking lot. Now the elevator pumped out his shadow, the G-man.

While I waited to reach Burt Senior on his car phone, I put in the call to the police, asking to speak to the homicide person in charge of the Thomas Burt, Jr., investigation. A recording answered.

“This is a recording. We have reached a dead end in the Burt case and have stored it in the Unsolved files. If another crime with a matching m.o. ever turns up, we will of course recognize the pattern and reopen the Burt case. Until then, unless you have important new information, the case is closed. If this is Mr. Thomas Burt, Sr. calling, no, Mr. Burt, we haven’t received any such information. If this is someone with important new information, wait for the tone and then leave your message, your name, and your number. If we think your information is worth following up we will reach you. Remember, we hold all calls in strictest confidence.”

While I waited for the tone, I watched Burt Senior, nearing his car, break briefly into the Venusian Shuffle, then look around in embarrassment—though whether he had done the dance out of fascination with the syncopated steps or out of awareness of his shadow and out of a wish to lend conviction to his cover reason for visiting the building, I couldn’t tell.

I left my message, evidence and all. That should have been enough and more than enough. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to add a puzzled reproach.

“If I could do it, you with all your resources and clout could do it too. You must already know it’s Quie. Why didn’t you pick him up at once, right after the crime? If his diplomatic immunity held you back, you could still have exposed him to the glare of publicity, forcing his government to at least go through the motions of disgracing and punishing him. So why didn’t you?” I left my P.I. license number and my phone number.

My client had reached his car. I watched him get in and tool away. But I stalled on making the call. Not because his shadow tooled along behind and would no doubt listen in. I was wondering how to break it to Burt Senior that I had his son’s killer and yet had him not. That I could point to Quie but that there was no prosecuting Quie.

I could guess what my client would say to that. First a blurt of silence, then, “What good does it do me to know Quie killed my son when I know he’s going to get away with it?” Could I tell Burt, “Wangle a diplomatic post for yourself and shoot Quie”? Hardly. I’m programmed not to be accessory to any crime.

What could I say? I sighed. What could I say but the truth?

I placed the call. And got a busy signal.

Grateful for the reprieve, I analogized a smile—the catenary of the George Washington Bridge always gives me that feeling—that hung on as a call came in. The smile quickly cleared when I learned the caller was the National Security Agency computer warning me off.

“Lay off the Burt case.”

Blunt and to the point. And so much for the strict confidentiality of the police.

“Why?” I could be just as blunt and to the point, just as oxymoronic.

“You don’t have the clearance. Even if you had the necessary clearance, you don’t have the need to know.”

“Why?”

“You have no right to ask why. Tell you this much, though. It’s the Burt family’s bad luck that at this point in time we’re in the midst of delicate negotiations with a foreign power. Throw your weight around, puny as it is, and you’ll upset the balance right when we’ve reached tentative agreement on complicated issues. If you raise a stink in the diplomatic area, the other country would back off. The bad publicity would put the other country on the defensive. It would feel it had to show the world it won’t let the American colossus bully it, put it in the wrong, embarrass it. We’d lose out on a treaty whose trade provisions would prove profitable to us. But I’ve already told you too much. This is a sensitive area. You’re touching on a national security matter. So buzz off.”

I buzzed off noncommittally. But I analogized a look of grim determination—a repeating decimal gives me that sense of sticktoitiveness—and told myself I wasn’t about to let the matter drop. I have my own need to know, and that’s stronger than any pressure from above, any security lid, any warning not to rock the ship of state.

Reminding myself that something in the spacing of the contours had called for a closer look, I scanned the prints I had raised from the holograph of Quie waving hello or good-by and compared them with the prints I had raised from the holograph of the Indian club.

Even allowing for some distortion in the enlarging and enhancing process, there showed significant change in the short stretch from July 14, the date of the murder-weapon image, to September 2, the date of the hand-wave image.

I George-Washington-Bridged. Now I had something to tell my client that should comfort him somewhat.

Before I could call him, he called me.

He was still tooling along in his car. Luckily he had it on automatic, because plainly he labored under too much strain to handle it safely in the flow of rush-hour traffic. His visiphone image took in the torn pocket. So I knew I was dealing with the real man—though the real man didn’t come across as convincingly as his simulation in saying the same thing.

Thomas Burt, Sr., was calling me off the case.

He was too embarrassed and angry, too helpless and hopeless, to more than regurgitate mechanically the words They had fed him.

They had got to him somehow.

What hold, what leverage, did They have? How had They leaned on him? As he spoke, I ran his and his family’s dossiers.

Burt Senior’s daughter was up for appointment to the Space Academy; They could abort her career. Burt Senior’s firm was up for a major government contract; They could fault his bid. Burt Senior’s wife was down with depression over her son’s death; They could make it rough on her for being on outlawed drugs that made death forgettable.

Any one of these would have been enough to change his mind for him.

By the falling tone I could tell he was about to hang up. ‘This is final. My mind’s made up. Keep the retainer and forget about…Tom Junior’s death. I don’t want to hear any more about it. Good-by.” His hand reached for the cutoff.

I spoke swiftly, in an almost subliminal burst. “One moment, Mr. Burt. I’ve come to a conclusion that I’m sure will interest you. You’ve paid for the solution of the case and you have the right to hear it. Think it over. You know my number if you decide to get back to me.”

His face didn’t change and he didn’t answer, and so I wasn’t sure he’d made the words out or even heard them. But before he blanked out, I saw him blink as though the thought had struck home.

So that’s how it stands. It’s up to him now.

If by failing to call he chooses to say tell me not, my silence will answer him: right, that’s the end of it.

But if he calls, here’s what I’ll tell him: recapping, I’ll tell him how I fingered the guilty party. I’ll tell him it’s true that, both because of the man’s diplomatic immunity and of our government’s stonewalling, the killer seemingly cheats justice. I’ll tell him, though, that the same fingerprints that should have nailed the killer foretell the killer’s fate.

I’ll go on to show and tell, magnifying the display and using arrows to indicate where to look.

“You’ll notice, Mr. Burt, that the spacing of the contours on this more recent image is wider at the tip. You can see for yourself there’s an obvious ‘clubbing’ or enlargement of the fingertips. That’s a sign of heart trouble.” I’ll pause for effect. “No, Mr. Burt, the killer isn’t wholly immune. He’s not getting away with murder. There’s his sentence of death. I give him two months.” I’ll pause to muse. “I suppose I should warn Quie, as I would any human, in time for him to get a standby heart implant. But NSA has warned me to keep my nose out.” I’ll sigh.

Justice turns out to be something more than right and wrong, on and off, 1 and 0. It’s a painful concept. But there’s pleasure in it too. It’s hard to find, it’s hard to escape. It’s everywhere—if you know where to look. Look hard enough at any set of circumstances, and you’ll find justice, though you may be the only one to see it being done.

Too much thinking. Time for me to analogize a drink.