Links to previous installments are at the end of this chapter
Radu-Chapter XXXXIII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
10 pages approximate
Toby looked sullenly at the headline of the latest issue of the Baltimore Inquirer. His fists clenched as he read, inadvertently wadding the edges of the tabloid.
RAPPER RAPS TO THE FEDS
Those motherfuckers have murdered me, he hissed to himself, while his lawyer, Desmond Marcellus, paced the floor behind him, looking warily at the seemingly countless numbers of gallon jugs of gasoline that all but filled the confines of Toby’s house. He didn’t even want to know about it.
“I’m planning a long trip,” Toby had explained. “I’m stocking up before I have to sell another platinum album just to be able to afford to drive out of state.”
Desmond shook his head as showed Toby the Inquirer article.
“Do you know what this means?” he demanded.
“Yeah, it means I’m a dead motherfucker. They got me after all. They couldn’t charge me with anything, so they just put the screws to me in the worse possible way. I’m sunk.”
“Starting with sales of your CDs and DVDs,” Desmond added. “I guess I might as well tell you now. There’s going to be a massive burning at the city park this Saturday night. WBMW is telling everybody to bring all their Toby Da Pimp recordings. They’re going to bulldoze them, crush them all up, then douse them with kerosene and stage a big old bonfire. There’s even talk of burning you in effigy. They actually got city permission for all this.”
What could he say? Everything in the article, supposedly leaked from an official source, was the truth. It laid out the evidence for Letcher’s involvement in various criminal activities, and at the same time explained concisely why he never faced charges, nor ever would.
“That article even accuses you of complicity in the murder of Spooky Gold, claims you were the main beneficiary after the fact. Which, hey, that happens to be the truth. So how did that go down?”
Desmond was beside himself. His major client was finished, and he saw potentially millions of dollars fly out the window, and his own reputation ruined by reason of association.
“James Berry shot him dead, like a dog, in the basement of the Crypt,” Letcher explained. “Spooky gave up, laid down his gun. Berry just calmly, coldly put a bullet right through his heart. Spooky never knew what hit him. Berry said after Spooky admitted to killing Reverend Chris George, he had to go. Spooky was just out of control. Which, he was. What the hell could I say about it? The fool popped me right in the gut, just to make it look good. Damn well almost killed me in the bargain. It’s not like I had a say in things. Ever since that fucking Milo set me up-you know what, fuck all this. I’ve got enough money saved up, I don’t need this shit. I’m going off somewhere. I just got one more thing I got to do, and then I’m out of here. Fuck Berry, fuck Marlowe Krovell, fuck everybody.”
Desmond flinched at the mention of Marlowe. He wasn’t about to just take all this calmly.
“What about this Krovell guy anyway? Is he really still alive? Did you guys really bomb the hospital just to help him escape? What the hell was you thinking?”
“That was Marshall Crenshaw’s doing. Spooky went along with it. We all did what Spooky said. I had no idea it was going to turn out like that. I thought Marshall was out of his fucking mind when I found out.
“Yeah, Krovell is still alive-if you want to call that living. Look, Desmond, I really need to be alone for a while. Did you get that thing I told you to get from Hacksaw?”
“Yeah, I got it, but I really wish you would tell me just what the fuck it is. I can’t make any sense out of it.”
Desmond handed the sheet of lined notebook paper with the code in the handwriting of his partner Hacksaw, the computer expert and hacker currently in custody, pending charges on conspiracy. The charges would never come about. He and the other lone survivor of the Seventeenth Pulse, Mercury Morris, were both detained by the Baltimore PD. They would release them in time, but by then it would be too late. Letcher only hoped he was capable of understanding the instructions written by his partner, and that Hacksaw destroyed any other copies, as he promised he would.
Desmond decided to depart the company of his now infamous client. He was at least grateful that, for the time being, he had what he trusted was an adequate security detail to protect him from the wrath of the various street thugs eager to get their hands on anyone seen on the premises of the man who was now arguably the most hated man in America.
Dwayne Letcher was finished. Most people now considered him a terrorist, with a share in the responsibility for the deaths of numerous innocents. As if that were not enough, his own people saw him as a police and federal informant, which ruined his previously impressive street creds. To put the icing on the cake, even those who had previously heralded his music for its originality of interpretation now denigrated it as “derivative”.
He knew the end was coming, and the true irony was, he would go down as a hero, but would never hear the accolades. He had no doubt Marlowe Krovell had told him the truth. He did doubt it at first, but then he remembered the last trips he made through the inner city where he was born and raised. It was always a hard life, and one had to fight to survive with just a shred of dignity. Now, the last few times he ventured into the old neighborhood, the despair was palpable. The last time he played Spooky’s Joint, the place was barely half-full. Usually, on a Saturday night, it was standing room only. Now, people were dying like flies. There were few survivors among the many victims of the epidemic, and though it showed promising signs of abating somewhat, there was clearly a good chance that it could come roaring back to life with a vengeance at any given time.
Most of the neighborhood concluded it was a manufactured epidemic meant to clear out the inner city in order to pave the way for development. If only they knew.
He remembered the last days of Felicia’s life, of how the doctor’s desperately tried to save her, all the while keeping her quarantined, as Toby desperately turned to Doctor David Chou, the man who miraculously saved his own life. Chou, however, was coldly unsympathetic.
“It is always hard to lose someone you love,” he said dispassionately, almost dryly.
“Ain’t there something you can do?” he persisted. “Hell, you made me good as new, and no one ever thought Sean and Marcus would ever come out of the vegetative state they were in. It’s almost like there was never anything wrong with them.”
“There is a big difference,” Chou replied. “Exposure to the compound can prevent infestation with viruses, but it can not cure them once they have taken hold. Your affliction, as well as those of the two young men of whom you speak, were of causes against which the compound has no such limitations in its application. I am afraid your girlfriend is beyond my help. You might try praying. That would be the limit of my advice.”
Dwayne Letcher became desperate in those final days, and was to the point of begging. He apologized profusely for the murder of Chou’s daughter, assuring him that he had no knowledge of it, nor was in any way involved. Chou just looked at him coldly.
“Like I told you,” he said. “There is nothing I can do.”
Felicia died three days later, of bubonic plaque, an illness supposedly wiped out centuries ago, or so Toby thought. She died in horrible agony. She died alone. Chou himself was incarcerated, accused of complicity in purposely spreading the epidemic, in what authorities described as a terrorist plot of epic proportions. He professed his innocence, explaining that someone must have sabotaged his formula without his knowledge. He was, he claimed, a mere general practitioner-a dupe. Chou’s wife as well died from the effects of the formula, once heralded as a potential wonder cure. His surviving children were in hiding.
When the remainder of the blood-derived compound went missing, this seemed to vindicate Chou, and so the authorities released him on his own recognizance while obviously watching his every move. There was never any real proof of any involvement on his part with any criminal conspiracy. The real culprit seemed to be a certain Doctor William Sherman, an apparent minor associate to Chou, who was conveniently missing since the apparent abduction of the compound itself. No one had any ideas as to his whereabouts, and since some of the formula had in fact disappeared from the confines of the CDC, the indication was that the alleged conspiracy moved far beyond the confines of a few isolated individuals. There was real cause for concern, but the government naturally appealed for calm.
Calm was the last thing towards which Toby was inclined. He had seen too many people die from the effects of everything from the plaque, to polio, on down to what seemed to be an incurable case of the common cold. His aunt died from the suddenly debilitating effects of the lupus from which she suffered for years. He watched an uncle succumb to hepatitis. Various friends and former neighbors begged for help, as if his sudden fame and wealth instilled in him a godlike power to at least heal the sick, if not raise the dead.
The churches went from full on a nightly basis to all but empty pews on Sundays, while relatively restrained demonstrations gradually gave way to riots. Now, with this latest edition of the Baltimore Inquirer, he soon would find himself the focus, not of appeals for aid, but of wrath, a conduit for the expression of rage and demands for vengeance. His people would gladly sacrifice him on the altar of justice. They would make an example out of him. He truly felt sorry for Hacksaw and Mercury. They had enough money stashed yet in offshore accounts, they might well be able to live relatively peaceful lives, if they could get away in time.
He could as well, but he would do so in the knowledge that the crime that was about to occur would make the recent epidemic look like child’s play, and would in fact pave the way for it’s resurgence to an unfathomable, in fact an unstoppable degree.
He started the computer, quickly putting in the password written down on the paper Desmond smuggled from the jail in his visit to Hacksaw. The machine came on and opened up. Toby feverishly punched in the numbers, and letters, until an account opened that demanded a specific set of passwords in order to gain access. He typed in the twenty-seven character code, only to watch as the top secret, classified site denied him access. He felt his heart stop when he saw that, and looked once more at the code. Hacksaw must have copied the code down wrong, which would be understandable, given the amount of characters it contained. Now what in the hell was he going to do? He didn’t have that much time, and it was conceivable that his efforts to infiltrate the government intra-departmental secured web-site would not go by unnoticed. Still, he had to keep trying. What else could he do? He looked desperately at the code for some kind of clue. He perused each character slowly.
12q374444monnn*(wsitrf883UI
He reasoned that Hacksaw must have copied down the code correctly from one he carried with him. That meant, if true, he was missing something. He wondered whether Hacksaw had inadvertently used the wrong parenthesis character, and tried using the opposite one on the keyboard-to no avail. He considered the possibility that the “q” character should instead be a “g”. To his despair, this too proved futile. He decided it would be impossible to mistake any other key for the asterisk symbol, and so dropped that idea without pursuing it.
Then, Desmond returned. He seemed even more disturbed than when last he left.
“Those Feds,” he began, “that woman and the guy Fifer that interrogated you-they’re right outside the house. What do you think they want?”
Before Toby could answer, Desmond looked toward the computer screen. His eyes bulged suddenly and fiercely.
“What in the hell are you doing on a government web-site?”
“Desmond, never mind that, I need you to tell me something. Look at this. It’s important that I access this site, but I think I got something wrong here.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me. This looks like a classified Defense Department site. What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m trying to delete a code, one that will give the wrong people access to the wrong information,” he said. “Look, Desmond, I ain’t got time to explain this. I’m already on the site, and there’s a good chance those Feds will be in here any minute now. If I don’t take that code off, somebody will”-
“How did it get on there?” Desmond asked as he snatched the code from Toby’s hand. Toby reluctantly relinquished it, fearing that Desmond, in his determination to prevent Toby from digging a deeper hole for himself, might unknowingly pave the way for hell on earth.
“Hacksaw put it on there,” he explained desperately. “It was embedded on the DVD, in the song where Chou’s daughter was murdered.”
“What?” Desmond was incredulous.
“I know it sounds crazy, but that was the reason for the power outage a couple of weeks ago. During the repairs, somebody retrieved the code and put it on this site. Now I got to get it off here, or else.”
Desmond just looked blankly at Letcher.
“Or else what?” he asked.
“Or else a bunch of people are going to catch pure hell, to put it bluntly. If you don’t want to see the whole country, including Baltimore, up in flames, you’d better help me out here and stop bugging me with these stupid questions.”
Desmond looked at the code on the paper, unsure of what to believe. He did know one thing for sure-on rare occasions, he had seen fear emanate from the person of Dwayne Letcher, but never had he seen anything remotely like the naked terror and desperation from him or anybody that he now saw. Yet, accompanying it was a steely determination the likes of which he could barely conceive. Toby was telling him the truth-at least the truth as he saw it and believed it to be.
Desmond looked at the code on the paper, and then at the screen, which pulsated expectantly with the demand for the proper code.
“It’s case sensitive,” he noted. “Look what you’ve done. “You typed all the letters in lower case. The “M”, and the “W”, “R”, and “F” after the parenthesis are all supposed to be upper case.”
Toby looked at him blankly.
“You’re supposed to put those letters in capitals.”
“Now why in the fuck didn’t Hacksaw tell me that?” Toby said as he exhaled in relief, though obviously agitated at the same time. “Damn, I’m just used to that stupid fucking MySpace bullshit.”
“Toby, those letters in the code is plainly marked in capitals. The rest are in lower case.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever the fuck,” he replied as he punched in the code. He held his breath, until finally the screen changed, announcing his access.
“If Hacksaw was here, he would have done had this shit over with-damn!”
He scrolled down, noting the various passwords and codes listed in the encrypted web site, and continued for ten minutes with no luck.
“Damn, look at this shit,” he said. “The damn scroll bar is just barely away from the top. This could take hours.”
“Toby, are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”
“We all damn well better hope I am,” Letcher replied. “That’s assuming I’m going to be able to find the code in all this fucking mess.”
“This is just a suggestion, but why don’t you just delete the whole damn thing. It wouldn’t take nearly as long.”
Toby’s eyes widened at the thought.
“You might have a point there. What if the same guy just gets on to repair it and ends up putting the thing back in there?”
Desmond didn’t answer as he perused he screen. He suddenly realized something.
These are locations-latitudes and longitudes. Toby, every damn one of these things is code indicating a place on the globe. Scroll down fast to the bottom.”
Toby did as Desmond suggested, and discovered that the page ended with an icon. Toby clicked on the link, which took him to what put him in mind of a profile page.
“Desmond, I think we’re home clear,” he said. Toby realized that on this page, he could change his password.
“I can block this sucker’s access to this page for good,” he said. “I better come up with a good one though. What do you think?”
“I think you’d better know damn well what you’re doing,” Desmond replied. He was sweating, obviously anxious, and breathing heavily. He began chewing his nails, a habit he had not engaged in since his first year as a struggling law student. Toby just looked at him.
“Man, I’m nervous enough, would you stop that shit? It says here the password needs to be twenty-seven characters exactly. What in the hell should I do? I don’t want to make it something whoever it is might be able to figure out.”
Desmond walked toward the window, worried that at any minute the Federal agents waiting somewhere outside might get the word of Toby’s intrusion on a governmental website and come barging through the doors. Worse-what if Fifer and his buxom partner were themselves part of the conspiracy? They might not need a pretext to break in. In any event, if Toby didn’t move quickly enough, he might be up to his neck in trouble. He might lose his law license, at the very least.
“Alright, I know what I’m going to do,” Toby said, as Desmond thought he heard the sound of footsteps coming up to the door.
“Toby, somebody’s coming,” Desmond warned him. “They’re coming this way.”
Desmond could hear the sounds of Fifer seemingly communicating with someone by way of cell phone. They seemed to be halfway down the sidewalk between the house and the street, but Desmond was even afraid to look out the window to see. Luckily, they did not seem to be in a hurry. Toby extracted a book of matches from his shirt pocket. Lighting one, he set the paper with the code ablaze.
“Let’s just hope I don’t need this anymore.”
He then began typing quickly, as he punched in twenty-seven characters at random, as haphazardly and quickly as possible. Seeing that he had to repeat the process, he copied the code he typed and then pasted it once, then two more times, into the spaces at the bottom of the page. He then clicked on the link, whereby the site displayed the new password for his verification. Toby confirmed it, without even looking at it, and then proceeded to delete the entire set of coordinates on the previous page, as quickly as he could, while the old code now emitted smoke, a crumpled pile of dark ashes.
He had only one thing left to do. He reached down inside the box that sat under his desk. He found what he was looking for, the one machine he could depend on that would completely erase any records of his actions on this computer. He turned on the switch, and then turned to Desmond, who waited anxiously at the door.
“Thank God it’s over,” he said. “Desmond, you’d really better get out of here.”
“Are you sure?” the attorney asked.
“If I need you I’ll call you,” he said. “I think it’s pretty much over with though.”
Letcher’s demeanor now seemed the polar opposite of what it had been just ten minutes before. Where earlier he seemed in a state of complete nervous anxiety and near collapse, he now acted as though he was at peace with himself. He seemed transcendent-even spiritually calm, as he lit up a cigarette as though it would be his last act of any significance.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
Toby smiled.
“I’ve never been better,” he replied.
Desmond opened the door and carefully peered outside, now seeing no sign of the two Federal agents.
“You call me if you need me,” he said.
Toby flashed him a Seventeenth Pulse gang sign that indicated all was well. Desmond nodded his head and left. Toby finished his cigarette. He sat there for another ten minutes as his life flashed before his eyes. He remembered singing in his church’s youth choir, as a little boy. Even at the age of eight, he could bring crowds of people to their feet. That was so long ago, it seemed, before the day he was gang raped by four neighborhood girls-after which he was later in the day badly beaten-all a requirement of his initiation into his first gang at the age of fourteen. The robberies came later, and then the executions.
All the time, he just kept on singing and rapping. He reached up for the CD player and turned it on. He sat and listened to his version of Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life as he lit up another cigarette. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, followed by the voice of Fifer demanding entrance.
He wondered if they would just go away if he ignored him. A part of him though wanted them to enter. A part of him did not want to be alone. He decided it just wouldn’t be right, but they persisted.
“Get the fuck out of here, Fifer!” he shouted. “I ain’t got nothing more to say to you. The same goes for your bimbo partner.”
As he said this, he picked up one of the gallon cans of gasoline that sat piled up in the apartment and poured its contents on top of the still running computer. He was half-finished when Fifer kicked the door in and entered, his partner Bridgett right behind him. Fifer’s eyes widened with shock as the computer hissed and sputtered in protest, and then finally went blank.
“What in the name of God are you doing here? What’s all this gasoline?”
“Is it against Federal law to store gasoline in your house?”
“It is if you’re trying to destroy evidence pertaining to a federal investigation,” the agent responded. “We have orders to confiscate your computer. Luckily, it doesn’t have immunity. We’re still working on rescinding yours. Don’t worry, Toby- it might take a while, so you have at least a few more days yet to record an appropriate swan song.”
Bridgett overcame her initial revulsion to the stench of the gasoline that doused the now disabled computer, and looked around at the numerous presumably full jugs in amazement.
“Maybe you’d better check out some of the other rooms,” she suggested. “While you’re doing that, maybe me and ol’ Toby here might get better acquainted. I think I’d enjoy spending some time with him.”
“You might be spending more time with me than you bargained for,” Toby replied as Fizer suddenly approached the rapper.
“Let’s have your cigarette lighter,” he said. Toby handed it over without objection.
“I think I just had my last smoke anyway.
“You keep an eye on him,” Fizer said. “As for you, you mind your manners.”
“Just who is it that barged into whose house anyway?” Toby asked with a shrug as Fizer made his way to the back room.
“Holy crap, every room in this place is piled with full gallon jugs of gas,” he shouted from the adjoining bedroom.
“So, what have you been up to, Toby?” Bridgett asked. “Funny, you don’t seem quite as happy to see me as you did the last time we talked.”
“That could be because I’m not hyped up on Viagra now, you reckon?” Toby said.
“Or maybe you’ve just been relieving yourself with the help of some porn sites?” she responded. “You might as well tell us now. As soon as the other agents get here, we’ll confiscate that computer, and we will find out, you know. Of course, as long as its not kiddie porn, or another snuff film, that’s not a problem. Something tells me you’ve been doing a lot more than trolling porn sites, though.”
“Well, you could say what I’ve been logging onto is obscene,” Toby replied. “I doubt you’d find it much of a turn on though. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.”
“So what’s with the gasoline, Toby?” Bridgett continued. “Whatever evidence you’re trying to destroy on that computer, I hate to break it to you, but it’s too late now.”
“It might be too late for you and your partner,” Toby said with a smile, “if the two of you don’t get the hell out of here within the next twenty seconds.”
“Hey, Fifer, I think Toby just threatened us,” the female agent called out to her partner, who suddenly reappeared from his quick inspection of the rooms.
“He’s got enough gas in here to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserves,” Fifer said in amazement. Toby peered down inside the backpack at his feet.
“Yeah, I guess I might as well tell you-I got stacks of boxes full of dynamite in that closet over there,” Toby said calmly, almost quietly, as he looked down into the box under his desk.
He looked up at Bridgett with a smile as Fifer warily walked to the side of his female partner, his eyes alternating between the closet door and the box under the desk..
“What the hell is in there?” Fifer asked as he bent down toward the box, as Toby obligingly rolled backward in his chair out of Fifer’s way, while Bridgett cautiously opened the closet door. Sure enough, there were boxes, one stacked on top of another too high for her to look into the top one, though they were all palinly marked “Dangerous-High Explosives”.
Fifer peered inside the box under the desk, and then raised his head toward Toby, as a suddenly terrified Bridgett joined her partner, urgently tugging at his sleeve, while Fifer stared wide-eyed at Toby, who looked past both agents with a smug grin. He seemed absorbed in the music of the CD that played from the CD player on the desk beside the disabled computer.
“What’s wrong, Bridgett asked?” but the unintelligible whisper of the agent belied the look of horror that exuded from his bulging eyes.
Within the next instant, one blinding flash accompanied one deafening blast, as everything went black.
Links To Previous Chapters
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
PartThree
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XXXX
Chapter XXXXI
Chapter XXXXII
