Part 3: Final Boss / Chapter 27
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“We have to do something now, not later,” I urged Chazworth.
“Every minute we sit around—”
“It’s called procedure, man,” he interrupted. “Until there’s some kind of evidence, we can’t leap to conclusions. You mess with Nikolai Sokolov without a warrant, you better be bullet proof.”
“Who’s Nikolai Soko—”
“Head honcho in the Russian crew.”
The fact that I was sitting in a police detective’s office talking through the Russian mob’s org chart might have been hard to fathom a couple of days earlier. But by now it seemed par for the course.
“Well you’ve got evidence,” I said. “You can get a warrant!”
“What evidence?”
“An eye witness!”
“No judge is gonna sign off on us traipsing into 99 Whipple on nothing but some kid’s word.”
“99 Whipple?” I asked.
“Import/export warehouse,” he elaborated.
He didn’t make air quotes around the euphemism, but his voice implied them.
“Import/export? You mean mafia headquarters?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Can’t you go check the place out at least?”
“I told you. Not without a warrant. This ain’t the movies.”
He went to take a swig of his coffee and found it had run empty. He grunted, got up and stepped out of the room, presumably for a much-needed refill.
I was left alone there, thinking about how this would all play out. I checked my watch. It was 8:30. There was still nearly nine hours until my date with whatever RIP abomination was coming next. Objectively speaking, I had time to wait on the security footage. But who knew how things would unfold from there?
If there had been a camera in Robbie’s room, I was sure the cops would have gotten on board. But there wasn’t. Security cameras are reserved for public spaces—and what were the chances that the Russian gangster had made even a minor show of being armed on his way through said public spaces as he made his way out of the hospital with Darla? Given his objective, a low profile was in his interest. And Darla wasn’t the type to endanger patients and hospital staff by making a break for it and forcing his hand. I doubted she’d have a pleasant, serene demeanor on her way out, but Branch was obviously not of a mind to give me the benefit of the doubt. With his bias, he’d just see Darla leaving with some guy she’d met.
Ultimately, I was convinced the security footage wasn’t going to help me. And I wasn’t keen on waiting around for it to not help me while Darla was sitting in a warehouse at 99 Whipple. The help from someone with a badge and backup wasn’t working out as I’d hoped.
Then it finally dawned on me. Mess with Nikolai Sokolov without a warrant, you better be bullet proof, Chazworth had said. I knew what I had to do.
###
Meanwhile, Darla was reporting to her captors every one of the printout’s highlighted tech industry tidbits, leaning into the admittedly naïve notion that once she was done, they’d send her on her way.
She had to go slow, as a nerdy kid named Dimitri was studiously transcribing her words. The pace afforded her the time she needed to read ahead and rehearse glazing over various highlighted bits. Specifically, she omitted everything the feed had conveyed about her own life, which included various things that had and hadn’t happened. Her omissions included:
“2.05.2020: Darla Cunningham rams her Ford Escort into the cheeseburger-shaped drive-through intercom at the Chuck’s Chuck burger restaurant.”
“3.14.2021: Darla Cunningham marries Henry Hubble in a small ceremony in Napa Valley.”
“3.07.2042: Darla and Henry Hubble agree to beta test Project Do-Over.”
She’d seen all of these entries before, and only now did she realize she hadn’t shared the last one with me since she’d come clean about our “marriage.” The curiosity aroused by the far-off future date was rivaled only by the reference to the mysterious ‘beta test’ she and I had apparently signed up for.
The closer she got to the present date, the more entries she had to skip over, as the mixture of tech industry buzz gave way to half-fact, half-fiction about her. It was as if the feed had evolved to cater to its reader—segueing steadily from her uncle’s Silicon Valley-geared tastes to her own more ego-centric predilections, starting roughly when she’d assumed proprietorship of the mansion and its contents.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
She wondered grimly if any of the indecipherable entries told the story of her recent abduction. A ripple of hysteria ran through her as she re-lived the moment when Boris had walked into the hospital room and brandished his gun. But the ripple was interrupted when she noticed a passage that she could read that wasn’t highlighted.
Unlike the cryptic passage about her “psycho fort test results,” this previously undiscovered passage wasn’t particularly interesting—just a tidbit about a vacation she and Henry had supposedly taken in Cabo San Lucas. Just the same, she’d studied every page of the printout awfully closely. How could she have missed two passages?
Regardless, the discovery was nothing she needed to relate to her captors, and she’d reached the end of the legible entries.
“This is all?” Nikolai asked.
“Yeah,” Darla lied, hoping that no one had noticed her leafing surreptitiously past various highlights.
“Nothing here can make any money until maybe three, four months,” Nikolai pointed out.
“Yeah, but that fiber-optic merger!” Merrick said hopefully, referring to a merger of two communications conglomerates the printout had predicted. “When that hits, you could make a major killing. You could clear everything I owe you and then some.”
He was desperately banking on Darla’s disclosures to bail him out.
“Maybe,” Nikolai said. “Maybe not. There is interest on your debt.”
“What?”
“Also predictions have been . . . unpredictable, yes?”
Merrick sighed.
“We wait and see.”
“What about me?” Darla asked. “I did my part. So now you let me go.”
“Mm. I think no.”
“What?”
“I am practical man,” Nikolai explained. “When Merrick say you are magic fortune teller, I think maybe you are science we not understand yet. But chances are not high. Real reason I bring you here? Merrick say you have money.”
Darla knew they weren’t talking about what she might have in her pockets. They were talking about the fortune she’d inherited.
“Okay, and so what if I have money?” she coaxed him.
“You give.”
“Give you money?” Darla clarified.
Nikolai nodded.
“How much?”
Nikolai laughed, and elbowed Boris, inviting his comrade to enjoy the joke. They shared a good guffaw, then Boris answered her question.
“All. You give all money.”
The full scope of her naivete finally hit home as Darla digested his words.
“USA not first choice for my family,” Nikolai explained. “We come here because . . . misunderstanding in Russia. Misunderstanding about money. But if we pay back money, everything A-okay. Go home.”
Darla finally assessed the logistics. The chances that she’d be able to transfer everything in her accounts to these lowlifes before the terms of her uncle’s will took effect were nonexistent. Estate lawyers may already be in the process of freezing her accounts. But she decided that was a good thing.
“Well, here’s the bad news, bucko,” she said, looking over at Merrick. “All my money went up in flames when your whipping boy here burned down my attic.”
“You keep money in your attic?” Boris exclaimed. “What are you, some kind of criminal?”
“My inheritance was contingent on keeping the equipment in the attic running, and now it’s gone—nothing but ashes.”
Nikolai stared daggers at Merrick.
“I didn’t know,” Merrick squealed. “How could I know?”
“So you’ve gotten everything you’re gonna get from me,” Darla said, ignoring his predicament.
“Mm. I think no,” Nikolai said again.
“What?” Darla exclaimed, unable to fathom what more they could possibly want from her.
“You know story of Jack and beanstalk, no?” Nikolai replied nonsensically.
“What are you talking about?”
“The giant, he has golden goose?”
Darla began to take his meaning.
“Maybe you learn to read more of printout, you are golden goose. Make us more money.”
“What?” Darla gasped, picturing her future in some underground lair in Moscow, taking daily lashings from a sweaty, truculent Russian dungeon master as he screamed “Read!” For whatever reason, she assumed he would be shirtless and not in very good shape, except for his whipping arm.
The vivid vision spurred her to grasp at straws.
“Who says I’ll learn to read more?” Suddenly, she thought about the passage about her trip to Cabo, and wondered . . . but it didn’t matter.
“Plus, like you said, it’s unpredictable,” she went on. “That BioLink thing happened six months ago—before the Flying Dutchman thing, which was a bust. Something’s gone wrong. Maybe none of the recent stuff can be trusted. You could lose more than you win, placing bad bets!”
Nikolai appeared to consider this rational for a long moment.
Then he said, “Is true. We give, how you say, ‘trial period.’ As long as what you read happens, we stay partners.”
He looked over at Dimitri.
“What was thing about Evergreen AI? At 10 p.m.?”
“After hours announcement. New CEO,” Dimitri responded. “No big deal.”
“No. No big deal,” Nikolai agreed. “But if not happen, big deal for girl.”
“Right,” Darla said. “If there’s no announcement, you don’t need me anymore.”
“No announcement, we no need,” Nikolai agreed.
His tone suggested something left unsaid. Darla noticed Merrick shaking his head at her, dolefully. Maybe it was an uncharacteristic fit of empathy. Or maybe it was a pang of self-pitying regret that his fate and hers were linked. Either way it triggered a chill that ran up her spine as she finally realized that Nikolai not needing her wasn’t a good thing.
“Then again,” she said. “Even if the feed’s hit or miss, you wouldn’t want to miss out on the hits.”
Nikolai just stared back at her, wordlessly. She’d made her case too well. If they couldn’t trust the information she was giving them, the cost of a mistake could easily outweigh their gains.
She looked at her watch. There was just over half an hour until the new Evergreen AI CEO was supposed to be announced—just over a half an hour until her fate was determined.