Bubble Top

Michael Coville
Copyright © Michael Coville, 2004


This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, places or events is entirely coincidental.


For Lorraine Angela Montgomery,

 Because you started this crazy thing, and then provided the inspiration to finish it.


Author’s Note: This book was written in less than 30 days during National Novel Writing Month. Any damage to the English language or glaring errors of judgement are entirely the fault of the writer, who had no editorial help whatsoever.



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Chapter One


“It ain’t for sale.” The old guy startled me, sneaking up from behind without a sound. He caught me laying on the ground looking at the underside of the Bel Air. I rolled onto my back and squinted into the sunlight to see him. He was slightly stooped, wore a food-stained plaid shirt, wispy white hair sticking out at funny angles, a big hooked nose dominating his face, small watery red-rimmed eyes blinking at me.

I sat up slowly, pushed myself to my feet on the gravel. “Is it your car?” I asked, wiping my hands on my jeans. We stood in a driveway next to an old farm house in need of paint and roof repairs, the fallen remains of a barn some fifty yards behind it, the grass overgrowing from neglect, the rusted wire fence around the perimeter dipping in places. There was wind in the air, making the leaves of a few large maples shake noisily. Somewhere distant a dog barked at something uselessly.

The old guy seemed to be chewing on his own tongue, his mouth moving without sound, then he narrowed his little eyes at me and said, “What fuckin’ difference it make? Ain’t for sale, I said.”

“Okay.” I took another glance at it. Although the paint was faded, chrome dulled, interior worn and cracked in places, there were no missing parts, no cracks in the glass, no flat tires and, most importantly of all, no rust. “Does it still have the original drive train?” I asked, smiling to let him know I meant no offence.

“Course it still has the original drive train, why would I change it?”

I glanced down at the 409 badges- indicating the engine’s cubic inches- on the fenders. “It isn’t the 409-horsepower option, by any chance?”

He chewed his tongue some more, narrowing his eyes even more, lifting his head a bit in suspicion. “Why you want to know? Ain’t for sale, I said. You retarded or somethin’?”

I lifted both hands. “Hey, I’m just interested in these cars. I’ve been looking for one like this for a couple of years now. Are you planning to restore it soon?”

“Don’t need restorin’, drives good like it is. Now get the fuck off my property.”

There was no point in arguing with him, so I headed for my car. As I did so, I heard a screen door slap shut, looked over at the long lop-sided front porch on the house, saw a young woman standing there looking at me. From a distance, all I could see of her was that in tight clothes, she had a shapely body.

I got in my Olds and started it. The modified 455 under the hood rumbled to life, noisy out the dual mufflers, the idle lumpy with the big cam in it. I looked to see the old guy standing in front of his ‘62 Bel Air in a protective stance, as if he was willing to fight me for it.

I put the Olds in reverse and backed down the long gravel driveway, got on the highway, hit the gas and left a pair of short black patches of rubber behind. I had to admit I was pissed off. That Bel Air was a rare find, particularly these days, with every Joe and Donny who had half a clue about the skyrocketing values of those cars looking for them.

Ten years ago I could have bought two of them on my wages. Now I would be lucky to buy one out of a junkyard, in need of a complete restoration. Old muscle cars were my passion; I lived for the joy of driving them, the sight of them, talking about them with my buddies, going to cruise nights with like-minded people, racing them on the local drag strip for fun and small bets.

I’d happened across the Bel Air purely by accident. The farm was remote, on a paved two-lane a good hour north of Kingston, a road I would never have any reason to drive on in the course of my usual travels or business. But it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I’d felt the urge to get my 442 out and bomb around in it, burn up some hard-earned dollars in high-octane gas. Part of the fun in that was driving to places I’d never been, on roads I’d never explored before. Blasting down that empty back road, slightly lost but not caring if I was, I almost missed it. A slight sideways glance at the farm house as I passed by made the car pop up in my periphery; it was easy for someone like me to immediately recognize the shape of a car from the sixties. That alone made me slow down; a hard look in my mirror confirmed it was the roofline of an Impala or a Bel Air, and a two-door bubbletop at that. Full on the brakes, a hard u-turn, and back I went. No sign of life at the house, so I started looking the thing over.

Silver blue with a medium blue interior and a pillar-less top. Bucket seats and a console, housing what I saw was a four-speed shifter. Dual antenna, dual exhaust, the 409 badges, all the original chrome and stainless steel trim accounted for, the whole thing in remarkably good shape for a car that looked unrestored. Original hubcaps, even. The only thing not made in 1962 that I could see were the radial tires, and even those looked ten years old. Someone had added a suicide knob to the steering wheel, illegal these days, but popular back when the Bel Air was new, and probably put on back then and left there.

Judging by the age of the rude old coot, he was likely to be the original owner. And I got a watery mouth at the thought that he probably didn’t have a clue as to what the car was really worth in today’s dollars. His house didn’t look like the kind that had computers hooked up to the internet, or even cable television, for that matter.

But I didn’t want to get too excited at the prospect. He clearly wasn’t in the frame of mind to negotiate the sale of the thing; that young lady on the porch, on the other hand, might be more approachable if I could get to her alone. I would have to go back someday soon.



“Beer?”

“Sure.”

Tammy smiled at me and turned to get it. I sat at the bar of a large pool hall restaurant, Breakers, my usual watering hole when I went out. The crowd was mostly my age; they played classic rock for background music, always had sports on the T.V.’s. The wait staff were all female, all attractive, all young, and the food was good, too.

“Cocksuckers.” Jimmy said to me, browsing a flyer from some electronics store.

“What?” I asked, throwing a five down for the beer Tammy was pouring into a frosted mug.

“I went to buy this T.V. this morning, they said they were all out.” He tapped a picture of a medium-sized flat screen being advertised for sale. “Sale started today, I got there ten minutes after the door opened. How is it they were all out of them already?”

I shook my head at him. Jimmy was smaller, thinner than I was, a guy with a narrow face, long nose, slightly bulging eyes. Sandy hair in need of a cut, he wore a Senators t-shirt and faded jeans and construction boots with the toes so worn you could see the steel in them. He was a carpenter. Busy in the summer, unemployed in the winter, most years, unless he got lucky and the union called him up for some big job that ran through the slow season.

“They try to sell you something different?” I asked.

“Yeah, only it was three hundred bucks more.”

“That’s how they work. They put that ad in there just to get people to come in, then sell ‘em something different.”

“That should be illegal.” He decided, sipping his beer and sliding the flyer away in disgust.

“It is, but they do it anyway.”

“I should go back there and tell them to order me one, and I’m not paying a penny over the price in the flyer.”

“Good luck.”

“Jesus, who’s that?” He was staring at an exceptionally attractive young woman who was walking past us quickly.

“She’s new. Cindy, I think. Ask Tammy what her name is.”

“Christ, are they getting younger all the time, or is it me?”

“I think it’s us getting older.”

“Shit. Been too long since I got any.” This was a common complaint for Jimmy. He sipped more beer. “Where the fuck were you this morning?”

“Out driving around.”

“I called your house.”

The new girl came walking past us again, going the other way this time. Jimmy swivelled on his stool to look at her. Long dark hair. “Jesus, Jesus.” He muttered, shaking his head at her. “Look at the way she walks.”

“Don’t stare, Jimmy, it isn’t polite.” Tammy said to him over the bar. “You having another one of those?” She pointed at his beer. Tammy was no slouch herself, and Jimmy grinned at her.

“Don’t worry, baby, you’re still number one in my book.”

She gave him a crooked smile. “I’ll die happy knowing that, Jimmy.” She got him another beer and walked away to rinse glasses.

“She gets a bit of a smart mouth on her when you get to know her.” Jimmy commented, staring at Tammy’s back.

“You should see the way she treats people who don’t tip.”

“So where’d you go this morning?”

“For a drive. Exploring. I found a nice car, started looking it over, but this old guy who owns it chased me off his property. I think he’s senile or something.”

“I got a grandmother like that. Sometimes we go to visit, she thinks I’m my dad, or my uncle, starts giving me shit for breaking the neighbour’s window or forgetting to cut the grass. Weirds me out.”

I nodded. “I hope if I ever get like that, someone shoots me.”

“So are you gonna sell your house you think?”

I shook my head. “Haven’t decided. I might hold off until I can figure out what to do with this car I found.”

“Think you can get it cheap?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I hope so. I’ll have to go back, see if I can get him to think about it.”

Jimmy looked at his watch. “I gotta go see my kid soon.”

“I thought you had him next weekend.”

“I do. His mother has a ‘thing’ tonight, I think she wants to go out on a date. Slut. Asked me to babysit.”

Tammy was passing by, and she stopped to say, “It’s not babysitting if he’s your kid. It’s called parenting.”

“How would you know?” Jimmy challenged her.

“It’s just logic, Jimmy. Babysitting is when you look after someone else’s kid.”

“Yeah, well. Sandra asked me to babysit him tonight. Said she was going out somewhere with her sister but I think she’s going out with a guy. I just hope she fucking marries him.”

“So you don’t have to pay alimony?” Tammy grinned.

“Hey.” He tapped at the ten on the bar next to his beer. “That alimony cuts into my booze money, and your tips. So you better hope she marries the sucker, too.”

Tammy rolled her eyes and walked away again.

“Well, I gotta drive home, so I better head out.” I said.

“You’re not gonna finish that?” Jimmy pointed at the mug that was about a third full.

“I don’t like taking chances with my license, Jimmy.”

“Jesus Christ. It’s only seven o’clock, the cops aren’t looking for drunks yet.”

“You better be careful yourself.” I cautioned him.

“Waa waa waa. Hey Tammy, what’s that new girl’s name?”

She looked over from the cash register. “Cindy. You want her phone number?”

“Sure.” He brightened up, sitting taller on his stool.

“Then try asking her.” Tammy grinned, winking at me as I passed by. “See you later, Rick.”

“Yeah, have a good one, Tammy. Jimmy.” I waved to the thin carpenter.

He gave me his middle finger with a smile.

_________

(Excerpt of Chapter 3)

My brother worked for the government. He was older than I was by one year and two months. He got lucky when he graduated from college. For a brief moment, probably due to someone’s mistake, the government of Canada actually hired some people who weren’t already working in some other branch that was being down-sized. Not only that, my brother was in no way related to or sleeping with the manager who hired him. It was a good job, too; he sat at a desk, read reports written by other people, found reasons to cross-reference them, and maintained a database that was nothing more than a cross-reference library for a whole bunch of other databases.

It sounded pretty boring, but whenever I asked him about it, my brother said I would not believe the kind of information the government gathered on all sorts of obscure topics in the course of a day. I asked if this wasn’t a waste of the taxpayer’s dollar and he claimed of course it wasn’t. It might not seem worthwhile right now to cross-reference the relationship between auto exports and the price of bread, but the day may come when that information became vital to our national security.

I told him he was full of shit, he was just trying to defend a redundant job. He would get angry at me and we wouldn’t talk for awhile. Sometimes it was better when my brother and I didn’t talk for awhile, we’d always had a rocky relationship since he’d been such a bully to me when we were little. But we were still brothers and so we always got together with my mother on holidays and birthdays and tried to get along for the sake of the family. My brother had three adopted kids who were all adorable little characters and a wife I sometimes wished I had met first.

After I dropped Jimmy off at Breakers to get his car, I arrived home to find my brother sitting in the driveway in his nearly-new SUV, smoking a cigarette while waiting on me.

“Rob. What’s up?” I stood next to him while he still sat in the big black Chevy Suburban. My brother slowly turned his head to look at me, the cigarette pinched between his lips and his eyes narrowed slightly.

“I been waiting here for almost an hour.” He stated in an icy tone, speaking out of the corner of his mouth.

“I didn’t know you were coming.” I told him. I hadn’t spoken to him in at least two weeks.

“Why didn’t you return my message about the NASCAR race? I was gonna watch it with you.” One of the few things we did have in common was our devotion to stock car racing, something our father had introduced us to when we were very young.

“It got rained out.” I replied. “Sorry. I was with Jimmy and I decided to go look at this car I’m interested in- you going to sit in your truck or come in for a beer?”

“Guess I’ll come in.” He said, stepping out of the Chevy. I noticed that he looked a little thinner. Not that he was thin, after ten years of sitting at a desk, but he was certainly down about ten pounds around the waistline than when I’d last seen him, only a few weeks ago.

“You feeling all right?” I asked, noting that he also seemed a little pale, especially for this time of the summer. He had a swimming pool at home, and he usually got lots of sun.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” He replied, although he didn’t sound as if he believed it. He followed me into my small bungalow. I lived in one of the older neighbourhoods in the city, built just after World War Two, the houses were small and utilitarian, the yards big enough for kids to play in, and in my case, big enough to build a garage that had the same square footage as the house itself, and still have some back yard left over.

Because it was still warm in the late afternoon, we went out to the back patio to sit on my outdoor furniture. I had a round plastic table with four plastic chairs and a big beer-label umbrella tilted to give shade to one part of the patio. The square cement slab that constituted the patio went right from the back of my house to the front of my garage, which was built about thirty feet behind and just to the right of my house, so that my driveway came in alongside the house and widened a little as it reached the double-wide garage door. I had a string of old-fashioned patio lanterns strung from the back corner of the house to the front corner of the garage. The grass beside and behind the garage needed mowing; I would have to get to it within a day or two. I should have done it this morning but I had been too hung over. As with all the houses in the neighbourhood, the yard was fully fenced, six foot of brown-painted boards that gave a fair amount of privacy.

I had a barbeque set up next to the patio furniture. While Rob sat down with a beer I poured some fresh charcoal into it and asked if he wanted to stay for a hamburger.

“No, I gotta get home soon, Beth is cooking a roast for us.”

“How are the kids? Molly’s arm getting better?” Their young daughter had burned it two weeks ago in a camping mishap.

“Oh, yeah, she’s going to be fine. Bandages come off in a few days, the doctor says it won’t scar. Beth is really happy about that.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I gotta talk to you about something.” Rob said, his voice a little strained, his eyes unsettled.

I sat down across from him, sensing something important was up. “What is it?”

“There’s been some funny shit going on at my work and I’m starting to get a little worried about it.”

I looked at him. “Are they downsizing again?” Rob loved his job, and relied on all the benefits that came with it to help support his family. Two of his kids- both the boys- had medical problems that could turn out to be expensive down the road.

He shook his head. “No, it’s not that. They’re having an investigation there. Looking for people who might have been taking stuff home. Or selling it or something.”

“Okay.” I sipped at my beer, noting the way he sat forward with his elbows planted on his knees, hunched over tensely. “So why should that worry you?”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if I can explain this.” He stared at his beer for a bit and then he looked up at me, with a look of real pain on his face, so intense I thought maybe he was passing a gall stone. “I might have done something really stupid, Rick. I could end up in prison for it.”

I had to close my mouth after it dropped open. Rob was a go-by-the-book kind of guy, the one who called the cops on his neighbours for minor infractions, the one who obeyed laws that nobody else did. His blind acceptance of authority in the past had driven me crazy at times, had gotten me into a lot of trouble in school, because he would often rat me out to my teachers and parents when he knew I was cutting class to go bombing around with my friends in our cars. He even got our dad to take my car away from me for a whole semester; something I still hadn’t forgiven him for.

So now I looked at him and wondered what the hell could have possessed him to do something so far outside the rules at his work it could actually land him in jail. “You mean you might get fired, Rob, not go to prison.” I replied.

He shook his head. “Look, you can’t tell anybody this shit. Not even Beth, okay? Nobody.”

He’d spent a lifetime telling my secrets to the world, now wanted me to keep his. “Okay.” I said, just to make him keep talking. I had to hear this.

“I needed some money.” He started. I wondered how many bad endings to a great beginning were explained away by that one line. “I thought I needed some money.” He changed the statement slightly. This was a bit more honest; he’d never been hard up for cash. “I was playing around on the stock market with our savings.” He glanced up at me quickly. “Thought I could get more out of the money that way. The banks don’t pay interest any more, you can’t just leave it in a savings account. You lose money that way.”

I nodded at him, “Yeah, whatever. So what happened?”

“Nortel.” He stated.

Ouch. That was the big one, as far as Canadian stock-price devastation went, next to that gold-mining scam a few years previous.

“I started buying it at ninety-six dollars. Then I kept on buying it while it went up to over a hundred and twenty. I could have sold it then, made a bit, but it had been going up for years and didn’t look like it was going to stop- I knew people who were still buying it the day it nose-dived. Everybody got caught short by that. I thought it would rebound.” He shook his head slowly.

“How much did you lose?” I think the stock was currently trading at around three or four bucks a share.

“Over a hundred grand. Close to two hundred. Everything, just about. College for the kids, our retirement cushion- all the stuff the money was supposed to be building up for. It was just gone. I finally sold it at twenty-six bucks a share, couldn’t lose any more than that, I ended up with about twenty grand left over. I couldn’t bear to even tell Beth about it. She wanted to use a mutual fund, spread it around. I put it all in Nortel, because the year before the stock had split and some friends of mine had made a pile off it. I wanted in, for the kids, you know? Not so much for the retirement, but for the kids’ college and medical stuff.”

“Yeah, I understand, Rob, thousands of people got burned on that deal.” I reminded him. “You weren’t alone.”

He shook his head again. “Shit. Anyway, so there I was, and I had to do something to get some of the money back, it was going to take ten years to make it up the old-fashioned way, ten years of investment just wasted. We’ve only got so many years to work with, Rick. You can’t make up for ten years. It’s too much.” He was actually crying a little at this, a tear sneaking out of the corner of one eye, which he swiped at quickly, turning his face away so I couldn’t see it. “Anyway, I met this guy. He’s an investor. Venture capital he said. It’s only high risk if you don’t have all the information you need, he told me. The smart guys, they don’t gamble their money. They put it in a new company, it’s because they know it’s gonna go big. They know this shit, and it isn’t ESP, it’s information. Information is what makes people rich.”

I had an idea of where this was going. “And the guy-“

Rob put a hand up. “Listen, now. I didn’t think it was illegal. I mean, we have some rules at work, we’re not supposed to make copies of anything, not supposed to take any work home, which was fine by me, one of the best parts of the job, right? Work stays at work. Gives me time with the family every day. But anyway, now I’m hearing from these people, these guys who are poking around the computers looking for shit, well, I guess if you do download this information and it goes to the wrong people, you can go to prison for it.”

“So back up and tell me more about how it works.” I said to him. Curiosity was eating it’s way out of me.

Rob threw up his hands. “The guy said to me, if I can get him information about topics A, B and C, he can use that to make decisions about where to invest money in some emerging technologies, biomedical stuff, for instance, or new energy sources and that, and if he makes money from these new companies, I’ll get a share of it. He was paying me a thousand bucks a pop whenever I delivered a disk to him with information he wanted. It seemed like harmless stuff to me. Projections on crop growth, for Christ’s sake. Strategies for medical lab funding. Tobacco research, even. Shit like that. Shit you could probably figure out just from reading the paper, Canadian Geographic, the Farmer’s Almanac, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t that important.”

I looked at him and he stared back at me, his eyes imploring me to understand he was innocent. Innocent of anything other than wanting to make it up to his wife and kids for blowing their future on a stock market gamble. “I was getting a thousand bucks a week from the guy. Cash money.”

“Cash money?” I repeated. “And you thought this was okay?”

He threw his arms out. “I knew it wasn’t okay. I just didn’t think it would hurt anybody. I was saving him the time and effort of reading a hundred newspapers and magazines to put this stuff together, for searching the files the public has access to, most of the stuff wasn’t even classified, it was just too damn hard to find if you needed it quick. There’s a lot of red-tape in the government.”

“No kidding?”

He shrugged at it. Fact of life. “But I could get it easy. I had it all cross-referenced. I had all the databases, everything he needed, I just had to hit a few keys and there it was. This report, that finding, this policy paper, that new regulation, recommendations for regulations, extrapolations for future growth, you know. Anything he needed.”

“So he was asking you for specific information? Naming certain reports he wanted?”

“Sometimes he knew exactly what he wanted. Other times, he just wanted as much detail about a certain topic as I could find. Get me everything on embryonic stem cell research, he would say. I remember that one because it’s been in the news so much. He wanted everything I could find about it, didn’t matter what it was, whatever studies the government had done, whatever I had cross-referenced to it. That was a huge amount of data.”

“And he paid you a thousand bucks for it?”

“He was supposed to be giving me stock tips, too. Letting me know when to buy a certain company. What price to go in at, what price to sell at. I would have the inside track. I couldn’t lose.” Again he pushed at a tear that tried to escape, got killed in the attempt.

“Did he?”

“I kept asking and he kept putting it off. He never did give me anything to go on that way.”

“Why not? Was he bullshitting?”

Rob shrugged. “I don’t know. He disappeared on me. Stopped calling, stopped showing up for our meetings. Just disappeared. And then, a couple of weeks later, I hear these things at work. Auditors. Our usual four-year check up, my manager called it, always happens whenever the government changes hands, the new finance minister will order an audit, see how things stand before they start into making up the next budget. But this one wasn’t being done like those, and the bosses looked really nervous about it. So I knew this was no regular audit for finance. It was something different. One of the AA’s who works for the manager told me they were forensic auditors. RCMP. But it was supposed to be hush-hush, nobody was allowed to let on. She was telling people anyway, so they could get any personal stuff off their computers before these guys found it. A lot of people spend their days surfing the net, buying shit on E-Bay and that, stuff we’re not allowed to do. She was trying to protect those guys. She has no idea what I’ve been doing.”

“How long were you doing it?” I asked.

“About eight months.” He fidgeted with his beer bottle, ignoring the contents.

I got up and went into the house and pulled two hamburgers out of the fridge and threw them on the barbeque, which was ready for them, and sat down with a fresh beer. “Eight months. How much money did you make?”

“About thirty-seven thousand.”

He looked at me, guilt written in every wrinkle and freckle on his face.

“Where’s the money?”

“A safety deposit box. I was saving it up for when he was going to give me a stock tip. Get in on the ground of some hot stuff, make a bundle on it. That was the plan. I spent a little bit of it, though. That vacation in the Barbados for Beth and I, first one we’ve had alone, without the kids, in February. That cost about four grand.”

“And you didn’t put any of it on credit cards?”

“Small stuff. The rest I paid with cash.”

I stared at him. “That might be hard to explain to a forensic auditor from the RCMP.”

“Yeah, I thought of that. A few days ago. I don’t know what to do.” His hands were shaking and he was even more pale than when he’d first arrived. He lit a cigarette, pulled on it, was smoking them back-to-back now, after two years of cutting down to a few a day.

“You’d better take it easy on those things or you’ll die of cancer before the Mounties can get to you.” I pointed at the pack of smokes in his pocket.

He smirked. “Yeah. Like I’m worried about that now. I need your help, Rick.”

I looked at him, standing up to flip the burgers, add some barbeque sauce. “What kind of help?” I didn’t want to end up sharing a cell with him. Even if he was my brother.

“The money in the safety deposit box. I’m too afraid to go get it. I don’t want to leave it there. I don’t want the fucking cops to find it. You gotta go get it for me.”

I stared at him. He stared back. Puffed on his smoke nervously. “Why me? Why take the money out, why not leave it there?” I asked.

“These guys can find out about that sort of shit.” He pulled an envelope out of his back pocket, sitting it on the plastic patio table. “That’s my Will.”

“Jesus Christ, Rob!” I blurted, staring at the envelope in horror. “What are you thinking?”

“No, no- I’m not gonna off myself, it’s for the deposit box. You have to switch it for me. Take the money out, put the Will in there. So when they find it, if they find it, I mean, well, if they think I had the box to hide money in, or the disks I made, all they’ll find is the Will. It’s a good excuse, right? To keep it safe, in case something happens to me. If they can’t find the money, they might not be able to prove anything.”

I regarded the envelope with suspicion. “But Rob, how do you know they don’t have this guy in custody right now? The one who was paying you? He might have already told them about you. They might be waiting for you to do something like this, to lead them to the money.”

He nodded several times. “Yeah, yeah, I was thinking that, too. That’s why you have to do it. I can’t go near that bank. They might be waiting for me to do it. But if you go, they won’t know. They won’t be watching you. I was thinking tomorrow, when I’m at work, I’ll take off at lunch, go for a drive, see if anyone follows me. I don’t know if they’re watching me or not, I have to find out anyway, so if I go drive around in circles for an hour and I see the same car behind me all the time, then I’ll know, right? But meanwhile, when I’m doing that, you go to the bank and switch the Will for the money. Take the cash and hide it somewhere. Put it where no one will find it. Keep it for me.”

I flipped the burgers again. I sat back down, drank more beer. “You’re asking me to risk going to jail for you.”

He looked at his shoes. “I don’t want anyone to go to jail, Rick.”

I picked up the envelope, opened it to peer inside at the contents. I put it back down. “Okay, I can do that, but how serious is this? I mean, what can they charge you with?”

He gave me another long, pained look. “Terrorism.”

My mouth dropped open again. “What?” I gasped the word.

“Espionage.” Rob augmented it. “Trading in official government secrets. But it falls under the same thing as terrorism now, since 9/11. They changed the criminal code on it. I’ll be treated just like I was a terrorist. I could get life.”

“Life?!” I just about shot right out of my chair. “For downloading government files that aren’t even secret?” I shouted this part and Rob looked at me in horror, afraid someone would overhear. “Sorry.” I said quickly, sitting down again.

He explained, “We signed an agreement, when we started working there. We have to treat all the files, no matter what they are, as secret documents. Blanket protection. Even if it’s already been published in the newspaper, we can’t make copies and take them home. We sure as shit can’t make copies and sell them to people. I signed the agreement. That means if I get caught doing it, it doesn’t matter if the files are secret or not. It all comes under spying and terrorism in the end.” He tipped the beer up suddenly, drained it. Set it aside. “And some of the files I gave the guy really were secret.”

I could smell the burgers burning so I quickly got up and turned them again. “What were they?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Rob exclaimed.

I looked at him. “You can sell them to a total stranger but you can’t tell me?”

“What if somebody questions you about it?” He asked. “What if you blab? How would you know about them unless I told you? I’ve been reading secret stuff for years, Rick, I never tell anyone what’s in them. I’m in major cover-my-ass-mode right now. I’ve cleared off my computer at work, made it look like a crash, wiped the hard drive. I made sure nothing was on the computer at home, either, I’m gonna go buy a new one sometime this week, throw the old one in the dump, get rid of it. I can’t tell you anything I haven’t already told you.”

“Not even who this guy was? The one who was giving you the money?”

He shook his head slowly. “I doubt he gave me his real name anyway. But I can’t say, just in case.”

“Have you talked to a lawyer?”

“Yes, but I didn’t give him any details. Just asked general questions. The way the government can go after a person, now, Rick, when it comes to secrets like this, espionage stuff, even lawyer-client privilege might not be safe. You can’t tell anybody about this. Never tell anyone what I’ve done, or about the money, okay? Never tell.”

“Alright, Rob, alright. Calm down. I’m not a rat.”

He lowered his head again, almost hanging it between his knees. I tended to the burgers in silence for a minute. “Sure you don’t want one of these? They’re ready.”

“I can’t eat.” He said in a hollow voice.

“You’ve got to watch your health, Rob.”

“Yeah.”

“So what are you going to do? Besides what you told me?”

“Hang on, I guess. Pray. Hope they don’t find enough to pin it on me.”

“Pray?” I asked with a smirk.

“I might start going to Church.” He admitted.

“You think God is going to help you out on this one? You drop a ten in the collection plate and he’ll strike the Mounties dead for you?”

“I just mean I could probably use some moral guidance. I’m not feeling too human right now. I’m ashamed of myself, Rick. I can’t tell Beth.”

“You might have to, Rob. She’ll be pretty pissed off if you keep it a secret and she finds out later. Like after you’re arrested. She’ll wonder why you didn’t trust her.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I just have to hope I don’t get caught.”

I didn’t think he had much hope of that, but I didn’t say it directly. “Well, cover your tracks, like you said, and hopefully if they do charge you, they won’t be able to prove anything. You better hope that guy who was giving you money doesn’t get caught, or doesn’t testify, at least. Did you guys ever talk about what to do if this happened? Do you have a story you’re both supposed to stick to?”

Rob shook his head again. “No, not really. He said I had nothing to worry about, as long I kept silent. Kept the money hidden. Didn’t keep anything at my house, on my own computer. He said as long as I did all that, I had nothing to worry about.”

I stared at my brother with real pity. Talk about out of his depth. Even in high school, I knew enough to concoct a cover story with my friends in case we got caught doing something. If Rob had just skipped a few classes himself back then, he would have known better.

“Yeah, easy for him to say. Things get tricky, he disappears. You’re the one with a wife and kids and a mortgage and his career to worry about.”

“I was so stupid.” He said, his voice half-gone.

“Just don’t lose it now.” I advised him. “Try to act normal, for one thing. Do everything the same. Don’t give people reasons to suspect you.”

He stood up. “I’m late for supper.” He pointed at the envelope. “I put the bank information, a permission slip, and the key in there for you. You’re going to do it tomorrow, right?”

“I work on Tuesday, so yes.”

“Do it around lunch time, when I’ve got them distracted.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

He held a hand out. That was a rare thing. I shook it. “Thanks, brother.”

“It’s okay, Rob. I’ll do what I can. What you did was greedy and stupid, but you don’t deserve life in prison for it.”

He nodded at me once, then walked through the patio doors back into the kitchen.

I ate the two hamburgers for supper, but I didn’t taste either one of them.

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