it was real. Too many coincidences. He was everywhere I went. Believe me, we don’t have that much in common.”
“You sure?”
“Believe it or not, he and I just don’t hang together. Not only that, just now I could hear him in his cubicle. He got really still as soon as I lowered my voice.”
“What was he doing in there before, to make so much noise?”
“Jerkin’ off, probably. Again, I don’t want to know that much about him. And yesterday, when I looked up Carlisle, I hear Boscombe, suddenly making some intense phone calls. I can’t hear what he’s saying, any more than he can hear what I’m saying now, but I know it’s important to him, because as soon as he gets off the phone, he starts fidgeting around.”
“But why do you suspect Boscome for erasing Carlisle from the data banks?”
“I kept going back to Carlisle, while I was listening to Boscombe. And that isn’t too hard, because like I said, he was watching me. He was acting like I was his long lost Siamese twin.”
“Did he make any more of those secretive, urgent calls?”
“A lot of them. All day. Every time he’d make a call, I’d check on Carlisle. Still didn’t come up. Close to quitting time I was beginning to wonder how long I was going to have to stay. No problem coming up with an excuse, guys like me are notorious for having no life, so we work late a lot. But I do have a life, and I wanted to get out of here. But finally, Boscombe connects.”
“What time was this?”
“Four thirty-eight. I could tell he’d got ahold of who he wanted because every now and then he’d raise his voice, say something like ‘Listen,’ or ‘Look here,’ and then he’d go back to that intense low tone. After about two minutes he rang off. I could hear him tapping on the keys. So I looked up Carlisle again. Suddenly he was back. Born, lived, died. Wowie. Well, I didn’t say anything to Boscombe, but I couldn’t hold back a laugh.” Then, in a normal voice, he said, “What a jerk!”
“You wouldn’t know where Boscombe lives, would you?”
”What do you think?”
“It was worth a try,” I said. “We have other ways to find these things out.”
“Something else,” Farley added. “First thing this morning, my boss came in and told me I’d been transferred to the Sheriff’s Department. I asked him why, and he said he didn’t know. It was orders. Suspicious or coincidence?”
“Sounds suspicious.”
“I don’t know if I can stand all those cop types around all the time. Think of it, a whole building full of serious eight balls like my buddy here.”
“What are you going to do for the Sheriff?”
“Good question. Mostly bother the shit out of Personnel trying to get a transfer.”
“And what if that doesn’t happen?”
“It’ll happen. Everybody jumps ship in this organization. If I can’t get a transfer I can quit. I’m a computer programmer. Know what that means? I can earn a miserable pittance anywhere I might go.”
“When are you going?”
“Monday. That gives me the rest of the week to goof off.”
“Can they send you over like that? Legally?”
“Sure, they can. Anyway, they did.”
“Come to think of it, I can really pump you for info over at the Sheriff’s Office.”
“Serving you is my life’s only goal.”
I had a sudden thought. “Do you still keep printed records?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. We still have them around someplace. Locked in a cave maybe. Lawyers and all, they like to have hard copies to bring into court. But you’d have to look in the computer to know where to look for print files.” He said, loudly, “When a guy’s off the screen he’s gone!” Then he whispered, “Bet that made Boscombe’s heart skip a few beats.”
“There’d have to be a way to find printed files without the computer.”
“Like trying to find a tootsie roll at the bottom of a latrine. Big shots are always bragging how the bureaucracy used to be full of file clerks, trapesing around like ants. They paid them squat, treated them like lower life forms, and kept records of everybody and everything in acres and acres of file cabinets. More records, more people, more files and more clerks. A nightmare. So they solved it by putting everything on computer. Saved the taxpayers a bundle, they say. Now instead of an army of clerks they have a platoon of computer geeks. They pay us a little more, treat us a lot worse, and everybody’s happy. The new millennium!”
“It’d be easy to throw a cog in the whole system.”
“Easy? That ain’t the word, my friend. It happens all the time without anyone even trying. Don’t delude yourself into thinking there’s a system. It’s a giant trashcan. And someday, somebody’ll screw up and dump it all.”
“Sounds scary.”
“It’ll make it tough to keep tabs on people. On the other hand, maybe trading beads and trinkets will be fun for us too. I’ll see you around.”
I looked up Boscombe in the phone book. There were several, one an L. Boscombe, with a downtown number, no listed address. I jotted it down.
I had a name, a name that had been erased from the records, and a day later, put back on. The suspect was a computer nerd with mental problems.
I went outside, had breakfast at a corner restaurant. At that time I had the place to myself. Then I took a three-block walk in the rain to the new Library and Courts building.
The new Library and Courts is a cheap knockoff of the old one, which is a classy place. Built in 1928, the old one has statues and engravings and a fountain in front, surrounded by flowers. Inside it’s all marble and varnished wood. It went up when buildings were still supposed to convey a sense of recognition of the species using them. The new one went up a couple years before this tale. It’s bureaucratic, modernistic, built on the cheap, to meet minimum standards…cheesy, hard to use, leaky, already falling apart. It lets everyone know that those who fronted for it have no respect for those who will be paying for it long into the future.
But the Library staff is competent and helpful. They quickly got me the microfilms of the papers at the time of Aaron Carlisle’s death. I checked the obituaries and official death notices, and learned nothing new. He died of a simple heart attack, and no inquest was held.
In cases of sudden death, there is always an autopsy.
Pavement Pounding
I took the information and more questions to my office. No lissome blonde was hanging around, so I got back to work. I spread the paperwork over my desk, hoping for some revelation to pop up before my eyes. All I got was the name of the coroner’s deputy who signed off on the death certificate: Sidney Ohls.
