Cancer (June 22—July 22): Being in the right place at the right time is your style today. You get recognition for a job well done. Balance job responsibilities with social ones. Celebrate, even if you have to invent a reason.
No warning here, either. But he liked the being in the right place at the right time part. That never hurt. No help, though, on what had happened to all his files.
He glanced at the screen where the words still flashed:
HOPE YOU REMEMBERED TO BACK UP!
Richie jabbed the off button and the screen went dark. "Fuck you!"
He had remembered to back up. He had a copy of every file in a safe place.
6
Jack found a small neighborhood no-name bar and earned a lot of stares as the only white face in the place. The available drafts were various Buds and Millers so he ordered a bottle of Corona—no lime—and a bar pie. He took it to the front window where he had a good view of Cordova's office across Tremont.
Traffic was thick on the sidewalks as well as the street where every third car seemed to be a black Lincoln Continental or Town Car with a livery sticker.
The Corona was good, but he barely tasted the pie. Good thing, because the backroom microwave oven had left the crust as gummy as the stingy layer of cheese. Hard to tell where one left off and the other began.
Not that he cared. He was eating simply to keep from being hungry later. Knowing that his face now resided in the Dormentalist computer had filched his appetite. Didn't want his photo anywhere.
But he hadn't been able to do anything about it. He'd considered pushing the privacy-nut persona a little further but had had a feeling that wouldn't wash with Jensen. The big guy was no dummy, and Jack sensed he could be trouble.
Maybe he was already trouble. He'd had him followed again. The same guy who'd tailed him yesterday had tried to dog him again today. Jack had lost him easily in the Rockefeller Center mob and then headed straight up here to the Bronx.
Jack read the tail as a sign Jensen might not be completely sold on his Jason Amurri persona. Maybe just his nature: He didn't seem to be a trusting guy in the first place, and no doubt a big part of his job was sniffing out trouble and heading it off at the pass. But beyond that, he appeared to have a chip on his shoulder where Jack was concerned. Probably hadn't liked looking bad in front of his boss.
So Jack had let them take his picture. Now what to do about it? He'd have to think of something. Maybe Russ could handle it, although Jack sensed he might be leery about serious hacking, considering how it could screw up his parole.
Checked his watch. Almost noon. Cordova had probably fired up his computer by now. Jack wished he could have been a fly on the wall when he'd opened his first file, then watched the growing horror on his face as he realized he'd been wiped out.
He was halfway through the pie and three-quarters done with his Corona when he spotted Cordova sidling out onto the sidewalk with his computer tower cradled against his big belly. As he started moving uphill, Jack gulped the rest of his beer and headed for the door.
It took him longer than he liked to weave through the lunchtime crowd—it looked like Sidewalk Sale Day, with more clothes and electronics and miscellaneous merchandise displayed outside the stores than in—and when he got to the street, Cordova was gone.
"What the—?"
Had he jumped into a cab? Jack was about to launch into a litany of self-excoriation when he noticed a sign just a few doors to his left: Computer Doctor.
"Let's hope," Jack muttered as he dodged across the street.
He stopped before the front window and pretended to be looking at the display of monitors and keyboards and various gazillion-megabyte hard drives. A quick glance up showed Cordova standing at the counter, waving his arms at the white-coated clerk.
Jack let out a long breath and retreated to the far side of the street to watch and wait.
7
"I've got your diagnosis already," said the clerk after Richie had explained what had been happening.
Richie wanted to wipe that smug grin off his pimply face—preferably with a barbed-wire washcloth. His white coat hung loose on his narrow shoulders; he had a shaved head and lots of earrings. Lots. Richie stopped counting at six.
"Yeah? What?"
"Your computer caught a cold."
What was this asshole up to? "How do you know that? You ain't even hooked it up yet."
A wider smile as the geek hooked his thumb under the name tag of the white coat. It said Dr. Marty.
"The doctor knows. And you've come to the right place. Where better to take a computer with a virus than to the Computer Doctor?"
"Virus?" Richie had heard of those. "How'd I get that?"
"Do you have antivirus software?"
"No."
Dr. Marty rolled his eyes. "Do you go on the Internet?"
"Well, yeah." This clown better not ask where.
"Ever download anything—programs, patches, files?"
"Yeah, sometimes."
Lots of times. Richie didn't know what a patch was, but he'd downloaded a ton of picture files of tight young bodies going hot and heavy at—
"Then that's where you probably picked it up. That or through e-mail."
"So it doesn't mean someone came into my office and put this in my machine?"
"You mean physically uploading it into your machine?" Dr. Marty laughed. "Hardly! This is the twenty-first century! You opened your computer's door and it breezed right in off the Internet."
Well, that was a relief. Sort of.
Dr. Marty then went on to explain something called the HYRTBU virus that causes exactly what had happened to Richie's machine.
"Can you fix it?"
"Of course. I'll install some antivirus software and run a diagnostic."
"How long's that gonna take?"
"Give me a couple of hours. Leave your number and I'll call when it's cleaned up." He shook his head. "Won't be able to retrieve any of your files, though. They're dead and gone. HYRTBU takes no prisoners."
"That's okay. I've got backup."
Dr. Marty gave him a thumbs-up. "My man!"
"Hey, no chance of this HYRTBU thing messing up my backup?"
"Can't. Not if you're backed up on CD. That's ROM and you can't—"
Richie had heard all he needed to hear.
"Great. I'll be waiting for your call."
8
Jack straightened as Cordova came out. Instead of returning to the office, though, he began walking in the other direction.
A good sign. Jack was pretty sure Cordova's backup wasn't in his office; maybe he was heading for it now.
Keeping to the opposite side of the street, he followed—a whole three blocks to the local Morgan Bank branch. He followed Cordova inside, saw him pick up one of the clerks and follow her back into the rear section.
Jack nodded. Heading for a safety deposit box.
He noted the bank hours: the lobby locked up at three. Great. It would take time for the Computer Doctor to clean up Cordova's machine—too long to allow him to retrieve it, hook it up, restore all his files, and get back to the bank before closing.
So a good chance he'd leave the disk in the office overnight.
And then? Jack would break in again tonight and reintroduce HYRTBU, but what about the backup disk? He could simply steal it, but that would tip Cordova to the fact he'd been invaded.
Jack decided he could live with that if he had to, but he much preferred to leave fatso raging at the gods, believing it was all due to the dumping of the truckload of bad karma he'd been amassing.
Which meant another trip to Russ to find out how he could wreck the backup CD with no one the wiser.