Distraction - Bruce Sterling [89]
She snorted.
“Don’t think that I’m being frivolous. You are being frivolous. You are a national celebrity. You’re not some ragged grad student who can hide out in your nice giant test tube. Rita Levi-Montalcini wore tailored lab coats, and did her hair, and had real shoes. And so will you. Relax and eat your caviar.”
The door emitted a ring. Oscar patted his lips with a napkin, belted his dressing gown, stepped into his slippers.
Donna had arrived, with heaps of luggage and a set of suit bags. She had brought two winter-clad Boston high-maintenance girls in a second taxi. The three women were having an animated chat with a young Anglo man. Oscar recognized the man—he didn’t know his name, but he knew the face, the cane, and the support shoes. This stranger was a local guy, a neighborhood regular.
Oscar unsealed his door. “How good of you to come. Welcome. You can take your equipment up to the prep room. We’ll be sending your client in presently.”
Donna ushered her charges upstairs, chatting briskly in Spanglish. Oscar found himself confronting the man with the cane. “May I help you, sir?”
“Yeah. My name’s Kevin Hamilton. I manage the apartment block up the street.”
“Yes, Mr. Hamilton?”
“I wonder if we could have a word together, about all these guys who’ve been showing up trying to kill you.”
“I see. Do come in.” Oscar shut the door carefully behind his new guest. “Let’s talk this over in my office.” He paused, noting Hamilton’s cane and the clumsy orthopedic shoes. “Never mind, we can talk downstairs.”
He led the limping Hamilton into the dayroom. Greta appeared suddenly, barefoot and in her bathrobe.
“All right, where do you want me?” she said resignedly.
Oscar pointed. “Upstairs, first door on your left.”
Hamilton offered a gallant little salute with his cane.
“Hello,” Greta told him, and trudged up the stairs.
Oscar led Hamilton into the media room and un-stacked an aluminum chair for him. Hamilton sat down with obvious relief.
“Good-looking babe,” he remarked.
Oscar ignored him and sat in a second chair.
“I wouldn’t have disturbed you this morning,” Hamilton said, “but we don’t see a lot of assassinations in this neighborhood, generally.”
“No.”
“Yesterday, I myself got some mail urging me to kill you.”
“Really! You don’t say.”
Hamilton scratched at his sandy hair, which had a jutting cowlick and a part like a lightning bolt. “You know, you and I have never met before, but I used to see you around here pretty often, in and out at all hours, with various girlfriends. So when this junkbot email told me you were a child pornographer, I had to figure that was totally detached from reality.”
“I think I can follow your reasoning,” Oscar said. “Please go on.”
“Well, I ran some backroute tracing, found the relay server in Finland, cracked that, traced it back to Turkey.… I was downloading the Turkish activity logs when I heard some gunfire in the street. Naturally, I checked out the local street monitors, analyzed all the movement tags on the neighborhood CCTV.… That was pretty late last night. But by then, I was really ticked off. So I pulled an all-nighter at the keyboard.” Hamilton sighed. “And, well, I took care of it for you.”
Oscar stared in astonishment. “You ‘took care of it’?”
“Well, I couldn’t locate the program itself, but I found its pushfeeds. It gets all its news off a service in Louisiana. So, I spoofed it. I informed the thing that I’d killed you. Then I forged a separate news release announcing your death, and I faked the headers and fed it in. It sent me a nice thank-you note. That should take care of your problem. That thing is as dumb as a brick.”
Oscar mulled this over, thoughtfully. “Could I get you a little something, Kevin? Juice? An espresso, maybe?”
“Actually, I’m kind of bushed. I’m thinking I’ll turn in now. I just thought I’d walk down the street and give you the news first.”
“Well, that’s very good news you’ve given me. It’s excellent news. You’ve done me quite a favor here.”
“Aw, think nothing of it,” Kevin demurred. “Any good neighbor