On a LARP, page 8
I will share with you, Tsarno is looking rather, hmmmm, I shall pick the word “askance,” at me. Askance, as in he is looking at me with eyes and a face filled with mistrust. I prefer that thought to the other option of he’s looking at me as though I have lost what’s left of my rational mind. Or even, he’s looking at me as if I just grew three heads and, poof, I am now a three-headed dog named Fluffy (yes, a fair and square HP reference). Although come to think of it, it would actually be hysterical if that was how Tsarno was seeing me, because I just can’t imagine him knowing that reference. But then again, if you think about it, there is something a bit Hagrid-ish about him. True, a lot shorter. But still somewhat Hagrid-ish. Maybe we could call him Hagrid light?
Clink. The lovely sound of coffee cups jostling, announcing their arrival, mercifully stops my internal ramblings.
Instead I watch, half fascinated and half horrified as Barno leans over and paws the white sugar packet holder, emerging with a fistful. He then puts four sugars in. Blech. Now he reaches for the cream. Wow. I mean really, what’s the point? Why not just order an éclair from the display case in the front?
Okay. Take a minute. Sip my coffee, black, for the record. Nice civilized moment and go, jumping back in. “Look, forgetting whatever the legality is here for just a minute,” nice eye pop, Tsarno, “even if we were to try hacking into things like her LinkedIn account, all that’s gonna happen is three tries and they will seal the account.”
I realize I am either sounding desperate or this coffee has an unusually large amount of caffeine. I hear the falsetto hit my brain. Sing with me, “speed talking, la la la la la.” Slow it down. Get a grip. “Take her Facebook account. Today we can read her postings, but someone, someone is going to tell them she’s dead and they will memorialize it and then we won’t be able to get in, because even right now, even though I can get onto her page to read it, I can’t confirm our friendship. So once it’s sealed off, we’re out.”
I come up for air. He’s still just staring.
OMG. I once again bow at the altar of the great, and prolific, Robert A. Heinlein who once wrote of trying to teach a pig to sing, “It wastes your time and annoys the pig.” He is so right. I am doomed.
“The important thing here,” I bravely continue in my attempt to find an oink we can share, “ is we know it’s somewhere in her system and we just need to find it. Tessa didn’t go out to a soiree dressed like that without there being some, I don’t know, invitation. And if she’s posting every freaking meal she eats out, where’s that post? It makes no sense.”
Tsarno snorts. This seems to be working. He leans forward while he signals for the bill. Kind of gets right up to my eyeball. “You and Detective Macdonald are okay?”
Gulp. “Yeah. Sure. Why?”
“Because I don’t really understand a damn thing you’ve said, but I get the gist. And Emma knows the guys who currently have all the computer paraphernalia you want.” He reaches down, comes back with his money clip, throws a few bills on the table. “Looks like I’m stuck with you both.” And then he smiles. Nicely.
“Saturday, three o’clock outside at the station.” I am guessing my poker face wasn’t working and he could see how shocked I felt, because he continued, “I know. Sounds like a long way away. But it’s not. Look, Sid, if we get lucky and solve it today, ah well, I’ll still have appreciated the help. But you know what, the statistics don’t lie. The more time away from the crime, the tougher it becomes and trust me, none of this is going anywhere. You got any idea how many cases those guys in the evidence room are trying to get processed on any given day?”
Given what we know about Tessa that Tsarno doesn’t know we know, not the answer I am expecting.
“Hey, I pull you in after school, your parents are gonna kill me. Besides, where’s the rest of your posse?”
I know it’s not exactly a redundant question, just a fisher. Still, I mentally check off the answer: football, chess club, singing lesson, and one more, which I don’t actually know. Out loud, I choose the more pointed and yet self-deprecatingly droll “Short straw.”
But make no mistake; I am still not happy nor mollified.
TWELVE
Time for another simple pop quiz question. Do you know what you call three brilliant minds gathered round a computer getting absolutely nowhere?
A Geek Tragedy.
Ba Dum Bum. Tish! Okay. Stop moaning and groaning. It’s kind of funny. If not laugh out loud, it is at least titterable.
So, as you can tell, we did manage to “hang in there” and make it to Saturday. Barely. I think I personally memorized every single picture Tessa Sargentino has ever posted, or been tagged in, on FB and Instagram. I could probably walk into her office building and say hi to at least half the employees using their first names.
Which really might not be a bad plan.
And I think this why?
Because I now know a bad plan when I think it. You see, I have already been to her apartment building to “investigate.” I have chatted with the doorman, got nothing. I tried a stake out approach but there is no “street view” to see and most people aren’t inclined to stop and chat with a random teenager they are sure is out to hustle them for something. Which I guess I am, but obviously not the hustle they are all so worried about. And yes, I did wear a decent outfit.
So anyway, after I launched my underwhelming stealth attack, I realized even if someone were inclined to share an odd moment of chatty warmth, the odds of my newfound chattiér (fake French chatty friend) actually knowing Tessa would be slim. The Gehry building has like a thousand apartments. Which don’t even start until after the first five floors, which is a school.
And let me just point out, none of this is ever an issue in a cop movie. But then again, neither is parking. And there’s not a New Yorker alive who doesn’t know that’s a joke.
So, we can now surmise, some people are born gumshoes and some people, after eight hours of nothing to show, are born gumshoeless.
But now that I am thinking of it, Tessa’s office peeps would be a way easier target. I mean I’d already have all these talking points to begin with. And if I do it on a day Imani’s available, she’s the most amazing person at starting conversations with brand-new people because, as she says, she’s been doing it her whole life.
I’m liking this idea. Could be a genius opportunity.
But not today.
And as always, I thank you for asking . . . because today is finally Saturday and we are spending it back in the wonderful world of cinderblock, all booted up, all hovering one over the other, all of us salivating to get at this. And all of us, as we are discovering, are sadly all dressed up with no place to go.
In spite of Emma having delivered. We have Tessa’s computer and login info; we’re into her gmail account, which so far has revealed nothing. And I mean pretty much nothing. Zero. Zilch. About the only thing I can claim to have learned is that reading someone else’s email is by and large pretty freaking boring. Okay, and yes, we found her passwords for LinkedIn, her invitation to join Sparkology, and a bunch of other business and social media sites, but nothing is taking us anywhere we need to go.
I can tell you Tessa hates her boss. Thinks he’s an idiot. And her newest client, she is pretty sure, has cooked the books. Maybe she should lose him? But then again, he’s worth a lot of billable hours. Lovely.
I can also tell you she and Michael Z in the office had a hot affair for about three months, six months ago. And that might have been something except Tsarno and Emma already knew about him and he already alibied out, so our little mini-jolt of joy was quickly snuffed out.
According to her browser history, she is on the hunt for a new microwave. She follows vegetarian recipes on Flipboard, which is only interesting because her food shots tell a very different story. Orders online from her Amazon Prime account all the time. She is planning to see Billy Joel at his Madison Square Garden gig. A whole lot of no there there.
And Imani and Ari aren’t faring any better. They are still calling all over New York and no one seems to know anything—or at least if they do, no one is talking.
By the end of our session, we have nothing. Not even our belief in my assumption. It’s a long walk home.
¤ ¤ ¤
Bolting awake. Again. Three in the morning. Again. Only this time, I have it! I know the answer. Chat rooms. We need to find it through chat rooms. However this LARP came about, someone has to know about it in order to go to it and somewhere there has to be a chat room for it.
¤ ¤ ¤
“No. I am telling you we approached it all wrong.” I pleaded, begged and frankly just plain bullied everyone into canceling their plans and regrouping back at Platitude. Well, almost everyone. Emma is somewhere working her magic to try and bring the computer back. “We’re searching her computer hoping to find the connection. You know, that person she was emailing with or that letter she wrote or even that bustier she ordered online from, I don’t know, Bustiers are Us. It’s not going to be there.” I pause for just a second, checking that I have everyone’s attention.
“She’s using a hidden chat room. We need to look for IRC Channels or maybe Jabber Chat or who knows, even ICQ. We need to find that application.”
For a moment everyone is frozen, mulling, thinking, assessing. Then The Flynn nods, not only in agreement, but in impressive-ment and I feel my self-worth smug up as the excitement begins to regenerate. And while it may not be nice to allow my smugness to rise, yesterday I had taken quite a beating. I mean no one said anything, but we all know the LARP was my conceit and it was bombing out in a big way. So I am going to smug this for all it’s worth.
“Yeah?” Detective Tsarnowsky on the phone cut in on my glorious gloat. We all watch and wait. “Great. See you in ten.” He hangs up, turning his focus back to us. “She’s got it. Let’s go.”
¤ ¤ ¤
We get back and get down to business. This time, Jimmy, Vikram, and I take time to clone the computer onto ours so rather than leaning over each other’s shoulders we can quadrant the system and section out work areas.
This efficiency, by the way, cost us about fifteen minutes of time while we shared an explanation of the process with Emma and Tsarno. “We are not changing anything in Tessa’s computer. We’re just making an exact copy of her system, which allows us to explore all the data without touching or compromising the original.”
Apparently Emma had had to swear to her pals we would “only be looking,” and “we wouldn’t change anything,” and she had to toss in a bit of begging and promises of coffee for the upcoming week. So as she saw our cables and cords being pulled from here and there, and heard words like “brute force rooting access” being bandied about, well, she got a little, we’ll just call it wiggy. Telling her to chill didn’t seem like a very prudent plan, so Vikram and I took a minute to pause and conquer. Which was working.
“We will run our versions through the usual VPN and such to mask our use, in case we stumble upon something where a dead person typing would be technically a big giveaway. And by setting ourselves up this way we can all take sections and be working on the problem simultaneously.”
I smile at Emma with what I hope translates to calm and assured, “Frankly, we are just becoming a hub of virtual, stand-alone Tessa Sargentino machines.”
And so we were. Well, more or less. Imani and Ari did go out and grab a bunch of chips and assorted colored waters to keep our energy up.
“Damn, Sid. You were right! She’s using ICQ. The program is in here and,” Flynn is yelling out from where he’s working, his fingers flying across the keys,“it’s in the E directory. The folder is labeled XXXOXOXXX, which is why we didn’t catch it. And she must have a gadzillion saved chats. Wow.”
“ICQ?” Blow me the fuck away. Oops. Pardon my language. But ICQ? I mean I know I was the one who suggested it, but I only tacked it onto my list so my thinking would look bigger and more impressive. I never actually thought it could really be an answer. Without getting too complicated, ICQ is really old. It was developed sometime in the ’90s, I think. It’s binary and text only.
But there it is, and here we are. We all immediately access Tessa’s file, and Jimmy’s right; there are tons of saved messages. And all of them are recoded to display in a series of x’s and o’s. So anyone casually looking would not necessarily twig to what is there. But who would even be looking? This whole ICQ thing is just weird. So now, in order for us to read them, we first have to change them over to ones and zeroes, which we then have to convert from binary to text.
Vikram takes the lead on this, and as the first half-dozen or so convert into plain English, my oh my, the things we are learning about our Ms. Tessa Sargentino and why she 1) keeps so many records and 2) keeps them so private.
Because was I so right. Tessa likes to chat. A lot. And while she kept her public profile all sweet and chatty about her cat and her food, her ICQ chat was a lot more, hmmmmm, interesting.
First of all, as I said, she was chatting using a program, which was not exactly what, or where, anyone would have any reason to go looking for her. But we did go there. And we did find her. But only sort of.
It turns out, in ICQ land, Tessa Sargentino is known as Mistress Philomena. And judging from her conversations, Mistress Philomena likes to chat about . . . Well, wow, my face flushes. This is way harder than I thought. I’m just going to put it out here before I chicken out. Mistress Philomena likes to talk dirty. And I mean seriously, really dirty. As in words I don’t even know and words I don’t want to hear being read aloud, particularly when sitting around with a group of your pals and buddies. No. No no no no no. You know, sitting around talking dead bodies is one thing. Talking hips and clips and, oh, all kinds of whips, entirely something else.
A case of major ick seeps over our crowd, causing us to sit here and try to avoid all eye contact, as we grind to an uncomfortable and, well, mortifying halt. Dead silence. Live awkwardness. Wow. And Tsarno’s going to have to tell her father and brothers. Ew.
“Okay, people.” Almost as though he could hear us, Tsarno clears his throat, snaps his fingers in front of Vikram’s face to get his attention off the screen, “Let’s not make it like you haven’t read these words before.”
And if I’m going to maintain my honest streak, I have to fess up. Some of them I never have. And I have a pretty darn impressive vocabulary. I’m sure most of them I could figure out with the old context clues trick, but right now I don’t have the time.
Because I find I am now trapped in a bigger problem, a kind of hoisting with my own petard as Shakespeare, or Ms. James, our rather annoyingly nasal eighth-grade English teacher, might have said. Given this extraordinary discovery of Tessa’s double life, Tsarno and Emma are rapidly shifting the focus by having everybody stop everything else to convert and print every Mistress Philomena chat, because they are now thinking it’s “John Gone Bad” or “Tricked” or some other poorly pornographically titled chapter of Tessa’s life, whose plot can be summarized as, when working as a call girl, it all went wrong.
And I cannot argue this. It is a very plausible theory. One, which for the record, does explain how she affords her apartment, food, and hair. But I still believe it’s not the answer. From the moment I saw her I knew she was LARPing and I still believe the answer is a LARP. And now, I am once again all alone.
But maybe I’m not all alone. Maybe it’s both. Maybe the LARP was a date with one of these chatty guys? Maybe she was out LARPing and one of these guys saw her and killed her?
“Argh!” The room turns to look at me, which is a bit embarrassing as I have my face smushed between my hands. Apparently I was using my outside voice with fist pound accompaniment. Who knew? I remove my hands, free my face, and give one of those “sorry” shrugs, while rolling my eyes and snarling to myself. I try to recover by chomping a handful of chips and looking back down at my screen.
And as Ari and Imani scoot their way over to team up with Vikram for converting/sorting/printing detail and Jimmy continues making his way through the E drive seeking more, I casually slip my online cloned Tessa files away from the ICQ crowd and imagine she and I reboot all the way back to the beginning.
THIRTEEN
Inhale. Exhale.
Focus on the screen. Pretend the screen is dark. I am Tessa. I come home. I boot up my computer and I go somewhere to look for my, I don’t know, maybe my invitation or my instructions, or something. I don’t bother with my email because I know it won’t be there. I check my calendar, but there is nothing.
Okay. Start again.
I am Tessa. I come home. I boot up my computer and go off to change my clothes. I come back. I sit down. Maybe I’ve stopped and poured a glass of wine. A nice pinot gris. I take a sip as I flip through my phone book, looking for, not a name, not a number, but a something, anything to make contact. Maybe it’s a nickname. Or a code. Or a line from a song. Something that just doesn’t fit. I find nothing.
“Stay with us, Sid.” I give myself my own personal pep talk. This is no time to let frustration rule myself. Breathe deep. Focus. Start again.
I am Tessa. I come home. I toss down my bag, I boot up my computer. I’ve waited all day. I want to get to it. Fast. Come On. Load. Load. It’s got to have easy access. So I . . . Don’t think, Sid; you’re Tessa, just do it. So I pop open . . . Launchpad and, my fingers circle the air, eenie meenie miney mo. I pick, my eyes and fingers line up, click Dashboard. Really? Dashboard? Who uses their Dashboard?
Holy Shit. Apparently Tessa Maria Sargentino does. Whoa. Because here it is. In plain sight. On a hot pink widget Stickie. Jinkies, Velma! Pay dirt.
FOURTEEN
“Hey Jimmy?” I whisper, kind of loudly, urgently. He looks up and I motion him over with my head. I point to the Dashboard Stickie in front of me. “Is that what I think it is?”
