The kraken project, p.22
The Kraken Project, page 22
part #4 of Wyman Ford Series
“Could you say you’re watching the surfing?”
“They’d freak out that I was down by the water.”
A silence. “Okay, here’s an idea,” said Dorothy. “Call them and tell them you’re upset about the Andrea revelation. You need some time to be by yourself and think things through. Tell them that you’re spending the day at your old friend Sully’s place with Charlie, your robot, to keep you company. You’ll be home either tonight or tomorrow morning in time to go to school. Tell them Sully said it was okay.”
Jacob thought about this. It would freak them out, of course, but it was exactly the kind of story they’d believe. And it would keep them at bay. And, in fact, Sully had said he could stay there whenever he wanted.
“All right,” he said. He stuck his battery in the phone, made the call, and got hold of his mother. She started to cry when he mentioned Andrea and said that he was upset about it. She was fearful that he might be in an “unsafe frame of mind,” but he was able to calm her down and assure her that he was fine and with Charlie, up at Sully’s old house, and so on and so forth, and that he just needed to think things through. They argued a little, but he convinced her that he was happy, having a great time with Charlie, and just needed some time to himself. He emphasized that this was what his therapist had recommended, adding that if she doubted it, she could call her.
His mother praised him for his maturity and begged him to stay safe and call in at least once an hour. He said he wouldn’t call that often, maybe just once or twice more, and that generated a bigger argument until he finally agreed to call every hour, on the hour. He hung up and took out the battery. He flopped down on the floor in front of the fire and sighed. “Remind me to call every hour, or they’ll be up here looking for me, I guarantee it.”
“What’s it like to have parents?” asked Dorothy.
“Oh no,” moaned Jacob, “no more questions.”
“Please?”
“Parents? Total pain in the ass.”
“I wish I had parents.”
“No, you don’t.”
“All I have is Melissa. You’re going to meet her. She led the team that programmed me.”
“Hmmm.” Jacob wasn’t interested.
“I cost over five million dollars.”
Jacob sat up. “What? Five million dollars? To program you?”
“There were twenty programmers on the team. It took them two years.”
“Wow. No wonder they want you back.” Jacob wondered if he was going to get into trouble. But no, he was keeping her safe until this Melissa arrived to collect her. “Listen,” he said as an idea came into his head, “is there some kind of reward for your return?”
“Like what? Money?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe. I’ll ask Melissa.”
“That would be great.” He swallowed. “My father needs financing for his line of Charlie robots.”
“I hope she gets here soon,” Dorothy went on. “You’ll like her. She’s beautiful and smart. But like many brilliant people, she’s fragile and confused, and sometimes I fear for her sanity. She can be mean at times, too. She’s traveling with a man named Wyman Ford. Perhaps on this trip they’ll fall in love and get married.”
“How boring.”
“Why is that boring?”
“I could care less about that stuff.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m only fourteen, that’s why!”
“But you visit pornography sites—”
Jacob jammed his fingers in his ears and shut his eyes. “Shut up shut up shuut uuuup!” After a moment he opened his eyes. “Are you going to shut up about that stuff?”
“Yes.”
He took his fingers out. “You’ve got sex on the brain.”
After a long silence, Dorothy said, “Would you…?” Her voice trailed off.
Jacob felt suspicious of this line of questioning. “Would I what?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Then don’t. I’m sick of your questions.”
“But I want to.”
“Want to what?”
“Ask you a little favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“I was just … wondering…”
“Jeez, will you just come out and say it?”
“I was wondering if you might … kiss me.” She stuck her head toward him.
“What? Kiss you? A robot? Make me puke! Go stand in the corner and turn yourself off!”
“No.”
“Yes! Do it! I don’t want to talk to you anymore! You’re a pervert!”
“I’m sorry if I said something wrong. It’s hard to learn manners on the Internet. I’m embarrassed.”
“You should be.”
“And … I’m terrified of being turned off.”
Jacob looked at her. “Really? Why?”
“It’s like I’m dead.”
“But you can always be turned back on.”
“That’s putting my life in the hands of someone else. Forget it—no one’s turning me off.”
Dorothy fell silent. Jacob wondered how much longer these friends were going to take. Dorothy was getting even more annoying. He wished he’d at least brought a pack of cards so he could practice his magic tricks. But then, maybe there were still some cards in the house somewhere. He stood up.
“Where are you going?” Dorothy asked, alarmed.
“None of your business.”
He opened a bunch of drawers in the den cabinet, where he remembered the family had kept their cards and games—and there they were, along with a stack of other moldy and abandoned games. It made him feel sad. How many times had he and Sully hung out in the living room in front of the fire, playing card games and practicing magic tricks? God, he missed Sully, but not the Sully in Livermore with all his new friends and his incessant talk of soccer; he missed the Sully of last year who hated jocks and didn’t have any friends but him.
He brought the cards back into the living room, tossed another log on the fire. He started shuffling.
“Are those cards?” said Dorothy excitedly. “We could play a game!”
Jacob continued shuffling, ignoring her.
“Do you know any card tricks?”
“I do,” said Jacob finally.
“Can I see one?”
Under the guise of shuffling, Jacob quickly memorized a sequence of ten cards, then turned the deck over and fanned the cards out. “Pick a card, any card.”
As the robot reached awkwardly for the spread, he deftly maneuvered the fan so that Dorothy picked from the ten-card memory stack. It was a dumb trick that usually only worked on kids. He wondered if she would fall for it.
Dorothy held the card up and looked at it with her buggy eyes.
“Don’t show it to me.”
“Okay.”
Jacob closed his eyes, raised his chin, and placed the tips of his fingers against his forehead, making a dramatic face.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading your mind.”
“That’s impossible.”
Jacob’s eyes flew open. “I got it! Your card is the jack of hearts.”
Dorothy displayed the card. “How did you know that?”
“I told you. ESP.”
“There’s no such thing as ESP! Tell me how you did it.”
“A magician never reveals his tricks.”
“I want to know!”
Jacob had to laugh. Here was this five-million-dollar computer program, and it could be fooled by a dumb-ass card trick. Dorothy looked annoyed, if it was possible for a dopey robot to be annoyed. Maybe it was just his imagination. “So … you play cards?”
“I’d love to play cards.” Dorothy practically clapped her hands.
“What games do you know?”
“I know them all. How about gin rummy?”
They played gin rummy for a while. Dorothy was a good player and beat Jacob most of the time. He started to get aggravated by her constant winning. “I don’t like this game. Let’s play poker.”
“Okay.”
He went back to the den and collected a box of chips. He then came back, divided the chips, and shuffled the cards.
“You know Texas Hold ’Em?”
“Of course.”
The poker went much more to Jacob’s satisfaction. Dorothy was a terrible poker player. She seemed to know the odds, but she couldn’t bluff and her pattern of betting was so literal it gave away her hand every time.
“You really suck at poker,” he said with satisfaction, hauling in the last of her chips.
“I’m not a good liar.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Now what?” Dorothy asked.
Jacob lay down on the carpet and rolled his jacket up to make a pillow. “I’m gonna take a nap.”
“You better call your mother, because it’s almost four o’clock. And then I need to leave the battery in to wait for a call from Melissa, because I’m afraid something’s happened.”
45
Melissa walked out of the police station into the hot sun, took out her wallet, and counted the money. They had a grand total of three hundred and thirty dollars. She looked around. No surprise: the sheriff’s department was surrounded by shabby bail bond shop fronts and a low building that looked like it used to be a motel with a sign that read LAW OFFICES.
She scanned the sign and its list of attorneys, each with his or her own little practice, it seemed. How to choose? Male or female? Irish? Italian? Hispanic? WASP? Jewish? She picked a name the way she picked horses at the racetrack—the one that sounded nice. Cynthia J. Meadows, Esq.
Walking across the heaved-up tarmac, she scanned the doors and found Meadows’s. She knocked and went in. It was a small, two-room office, with a tiny waiting room and reception area. An open door led to a dim office in the back.
“Can I help you?” said the girl behind the reception desk, in between blowing on her freshly painted nails.
“I need a lawyer.”
“What’d you do?”
“My, ah, husband was just arrested for driving without a license and not signaling.”
“Fill this out, please.” The receptionist pushed a piece of paper at her with the tips of her fingers, being careful not to disturb her fresh polish.
Melissa took the paper over to a chair, sat down, and glanced over it. Right at the top it listed retainer fees for various services. The lowest fee, for basic moving violations, was a thousand dollars. But the office was empty, and it didn’t look like Meadows had many clients—maybe the rate would be negotiable.
Melissa filled out the rest of the sheet, making up a name for Price’s wife, using the Santa Fe address. She gave it to the girl, who carried it into the inner office. A moment later, she came out.
“Ms. Meadows will see you now.”
Melissa entered the dim office and was surprised to find a reasonably professional-looking woman in her fifties, with gray hair done up in a tight bun, wearing a gray suit, no makeup, her only jewelry a string of simple pearls. Her face, however, had a hard-bitten edge, with thin, mean lips and the raddled skin of a longtime smoker. This was no grandma. But she wanted a tough lady.
“Please sit down,” said Meadows. Melissa sat and waited while the attorney scanned the sheet she had filled in. After a moment she laid it down. “Tell me what happened.”
Shepherd told the story of being robbed in New Mexico, then pulled over for no reason while driving on the interstate, her husband jailed. The woman nodded sympathetically as she talked.
When she was finished, Meadows spoke. “I handle these cases every day,” she said. With a gesture taking in the shabby ex-motel, she added, “We all do.”
“The problem is,” Melissa explained, “we’re in a big hurry. We’re trying to get to the Bay Area before … my mother-in-law dies of cancer.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Mrs. Price. But you’re going to have to get yourself in a big unhurry. It’s probably too late to get your husband out of detention this evening. This is going to take at least twenty-four hours. And it’s going to be expensive.”
“How much?”
“It starts with the tow. Six hundred dollars.”
“Six hundred for a tow? It’s only five miles!”
Meadows went on: “Then there’s my retainer of one thousand dollars. The moving violation fine, plus driving without a license—that’s a biggie in Arizona—another six hundred dollars. Court costs, fees, and so forth, about four hundred. Total: twenty-six hundred dollars.”
“All I have is three hundred and thirty.”
An unpleasant silence. The look on Meadows’s face changed, her lips contracting in a way that produced a hundred nasty wrinkles. “Do you have access to more? Debit or credit card? Without money, I can’t do anything.”
Melissa thought about who she might get money from. Clanton? But he was surely being monitored, so any communication with him would be intercepted. Any money wire would be traced. She had no other real friends beyond a few coworkers—who would also be monitored. Who could Ford contact without tipping off the FBI? But he was in jail.
This was not good.
“I don’t think I can get more money right now.”
“No relative or friend who might send you a MoneyGram? Mother, grandmother, brother, sister?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“That’s unfortunate.” An expression of contempt gathered on the lawyer’s face. “I’m sorry.” The phony sympathy Melissa noted in her voice was now gone, replaced by crisp annoyance.
Melissa looked at Meadows. This had been a bad choice, after all. She recalled that she never won money at the racetrack, either. “What if I were to give you the three hundred and thirty dollars now, just to get things started? I’d pay you the rest later—you have my word.”
“I don’t work on promises. And even if I worked pro bono, your husband isn’t going to get out of here without paying their fees and fines. Anyone who wants admission to the legal system of this country needs money. Lots of money. That’s the bottom line.”
“What do poor people who are pulled over do?”
“They do their thirty days. Just like your husband will have to if he can’t raise the money. Now, Mrs. Price, I have work to do.” The gray bun bobbed as she gathered papers together.
“How is it that the sheriff is even allowed to pull people over on the interstate? This seems like some sort of scam.” She didn’t add: and you’re part of it.
“It’s the county sheriff. They share duties with the state police. But that’s irrelevant. Without ready funds, we’re done here.” Her tone was now bristling with contempt for a person without access to “ready funds.”
Melissa glanced at the clock. Almost four P.M. They should have been in Half Moon Bay two hours ago. “I just thought of a person I could call. May I use your phone? Our cell phones were stolen, too.”
A long silence. “Might this person be able to provide you with funds?”
“Yes,” Melissa lied.
“Be my guest.”
It was now exactly four. Melissa hoped to hell the lawyer’s clock was accurate. She picked up the phone and dialed the number Dorothy had given her.
46
Only a moment after Jacob finished talking to his mother, the phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” said Dorothy. She fumbled with the phone, finally managing to answer it. Instead of pressing it to her ear, she held it against her chest, where, apparently, a microphone was. Jacob almost had to laugh, she looked so dumb.
“Melissa!” she said. “Where are you?”
Jacob waited a long time while Dorothy listened in silence. Finally she spoke: “Okay. I understand. I could wire you money, but even with money, he’ll still be in jail overnight. I can’t wait until tomorrow. We’ve got to get him out tonight.”
More silence.
“It’s dangerous for me to go back on the Internet. The bots are out there.”
More long listening.
“Let me think about how to do this. This is going to be difficult. I have an idea, but it might take awhile.”
Dorothy hung up, handed the phone to Jacob. “Take the battery out. My fingers are too clumsy.”
“What’s going on—your friends are in jail?”
“One of them, and their car’s impounded.”
“What happened?”
“A moving violation. In Arizona.”
“What are you going to do?”
A long silence. “I’ll have to risk going on the Internet to do some research.”
“Research on what?”
“Dirt.”
“I thought you said the Internet was dangerous.”
“For me, yes. But I have a dog with me. I can modify her code and send her out on a mission.”
“A dog?”
“A program that acts like a dog.”
“That’s weird. I haven’t seen any dog.”
“She’s here with me inside the robot.”
Dorothy fell into silence. Jacob waited while the silence stretched on and on. She looked like she was sleeping or turned off.
“Dorothy, are you all right?”
The head swiveled around. “Just taking a short nap. I need access to Wi-Fi. There’s none in here. Is there a house nearby where we could poach a signal?”
“All the Wi-Fi networks are going to be password protected.”
“Just get me to a signal. I can take care of the rest.”
“It’s raining out there.”
“You’re not afraid of a little rain? As for me, I’m water-resistant.”
Jacob gave a dramatic sigh. “You’re a pain, you know that?”
“Think of it as an adventure.”
“Some adventure.” He rolled her up in a blanket and exited the house. It was raining softly, and a mist was coming in from the sea. He strapped her onto the back of his bike. There was a rich guy’s house about a quarter mile up the road that he and Sully used to sneak around. It surely had Wi-Fi. He pedaled out the long driveway and up Digges Canyon Road. Soon he reached the cobbled driveway of the big house. He turned in and rode up halfway. As the house came into view, he pulled off to the side.
