The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces

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Book: Read The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces for Free Online
Authors: Ray Vukcevich
around to face her.
    â€œToo crude,” she said. She dipped into her bag and came out with a tiny computer, a set of datashades already dangling from the side. She put it on the desk and held out the net connection to me.
    I plugged her in next to my own connection. The office might be run down, the building might be poorly maintained, but at least it was wired with the latest high bandwidth computer cables and outlets. Wireless or no wireless, no one would do business here at all if that weren’t the case.
    When I glanced back up at her, I saw that she’d put on the shades. She poked and wiggled just one finger like a cyberwitch in sunglasses making hocus-pocus gestures in the empty air and a moment later my printer started rattling its ancient teeth.
    â€œWhat is that you’re using on your finger?” I asked.
    â€œLike a dataglove,” she said, “but just one finger when you don’t need so much.”
    â€œSo it’s a datafinger?”
    â€œYes,” she said. “It’s one of Pablo’s innovations.”
    â€œSo Pablo’s a hardware guy, too?”
    â€œPablo has lots of ideas,” she said. Since she was still wearing the shades, I couldn’t read anything in her eyes.
    â€œCan you download Randy’s book, too?” I asked.
    â€œNo problem.”
    â€œMaybe mail it to me,” I said. “So I can look at it later.”
    â€œI’ll just route it to your hard drive,” she said.
    I opened my mouth to ask her just how the hell she was going to get access to my system, but then I changed my mind. She already had access. She’d just routed the BOD list to my printer.
    She poked at the air a couple more times with her datafinger. Then she pulled it off and took off her shades and put them on top of her little computer. “All done,” she said. She glanced at me, and then she looked away.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNothing,” she said. “I guess it’s just the strangeness of your voice and the way you look. I mean, they don’t go together.”
    â€œThey don’t?” Lulu said in Lulu’s voice.
    â€œYou’re really pretty good.”
    I was pleased, but a little embarrassed, too. I got up and walked over to the printer and got the BOD list. I scanned the list as I walked back to my chair and sat down behind my desk again.
    It only took me a moment to find [email protected]. “So how come you get these mailings and Pablo doesn’t?”
    â€œGerald gets them,” she said. “Or he got them. You know what I mean. Pablo figured one was enough.”
    Yes, there was Gerald, and further down the list [email protected].
    â€œHmm,” I said. Wouldn’t Pablo be on this list even if Gerald was on it? Didn’t computer guys grab every opportunity to get e-mail?
    I half expected to see Dennis on the list. We tried to make him keep his head down on the net; he was, after all, one of my disguises, and while we let him have an Internet account, we didn’t let him spend a lot of time there. What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t really think he would be on the list, but if he had been, it wouldn’t have totally flabbergasted me. The beauty of my method is just letting go and allowing the process to work. The downside is that sometimes when I get out of my own way, I lose track of where I am.
    I didn’t see any other familiar addresses, but one thing did catch my eye. There were a bunch of addresses that ended in 4e4.com, the anonymous Russian remailing service. If the killer were on this list, surely he’d be among the anonymous.
    Or maybe not. I don’t remember who said it (but I think it probably is true)—naked is the best disguise. The killer could be right out in the open here.
    And I hadn’t crossed Pablo or even Prudence off my own list of suspects yet. It was way too early to go jumping to conclusions. I gave her a suspicious look over the top of the

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