The Naked Typist

hear more?

“Well, I was willing to listen. And he explained the setup. I would work there in the office at a word processor. I’d be typing up dictation from a microcassette. I would be in a locked room and no one would disturb me. I’d make eight hundred bucks a day.”

Kelly looked up at Steve with pleading eyes. “Well, it’s not the sort of thing I would have done. I mean, what the hell did I want to be in a locked office for. If I could have worked in his office, if there had been an opportunity to be alone, to have access to the files. But to run around naked in front of that dirty old man … well, there was no way I was going to do it.”

She paused. Took a breath. “Except for one thing. The word processor. The first thing I noticed was it didn’t have a printer. I asked him about it, aren’t I supposed to print out what I type? He said, no, that wasn’t necessary. The word processor was hooked up to the main computer in Castleton’s office. Everything I typed would be monitored and printed out there.

“Well, that was the key. The deciding factor. I wasn’t just working a word processor. I was working a computer terminal. I know computers. I would have access.

“I took the job.”

“And the rest of it?”

“What?”

“When you got fired. Thrown out. Was it true?”

“Not entirely.”

“How not entirely?”

“Well, a lot not entirely. He did lock me out in the hall-Phil Danby. I did play tag in the stairwells and find a coat in the basement. All of that was true.”

“But the attempted rape? The sexual advance?”

“Never happened. You met Danby. Can you imagine him trying that? No, what happened was I found it.”

“Found what?”

“The memo. The one Herb wrote. I found it in the computer.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all. I knew it was there, I looked for it and I found it.”

“How.”

“Well, the way the whole thing was set up, I couldn’t access their computer. But they could access mine. To monitor my work. And I had a way to tell when they were monitoring. Of course, that meant leaving the document I was working on and playing around with DOS.”

“DOS?”

“Yeah. Disk Operating System. I could get into DOS, tell if I was working solo or if they’d accessed my terminal. If they had, it established a link. The line was open. When they accessed my terminal, I could access theirs.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all. But it was risky. Because everything I was doing would be flashing on my screen.”

“And flashing on theirs?”

“No. If they accessed my document, that’s what they’d be seeing. If I exited the document and went into DOS, that wouldn’t show up on their terminal. Unless they knew how to look for it, they wouldn’t find it, and they wouldn’t know how to look.

“But it was on my screen, and even from a distance you could tell the difference. Of course, I couldn’t see through the window, couldn’t tell if anyone was looking through the other side. And I couldn’t turn my monitor away from the window, that would be a dead giveaway. I tried to keep my head in front of the screen, block it the best I could, but even so it was a risk. Besides, if they were looking at the last page of my document, if they stopped to think about it, they could see that nothing new was being typed.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I had to work fast. Before they caught on, and before they broke the link. Which wasn’t easy. They didn’t keep it open long. It took me half a dozen times before I got in.”

“Into what?”

“Into Fax-log.”

“And?”

“And it wasn’t there.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I found copies of every fax that was sent during the dates in question. Herb’s memo wasn’t there.”

“Maybe he didn’t send it after all.”

“Yes, he did. They erased it. They deleted it from the file. Isn’t that great? That’s ten times more damning than if it had been there. They knew it was important, so they erased it.”

Steve Winslow frowned. “That’s really inverted logic. What you’re looking for isn’t there, so you claim it was destroyed. I thought you said you found it.”

“But I did.” Kelly’s eyes were gleaming. “Don’t you understand? I found the damn thing!”

“What are you talking about? You just said it was erased.”

“Yeah, it was. From the file. But you gotta understand. These computers are very sophisticated. They all have backup systems. Suppose you accidentally delete a file, wipe it out. Well, it’s gone from the main system, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think that was it. But it’s still saved in the automatic backup, and if you know computers and know how to get into it, you can bring it back.”

“And you did?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“The day I got fired.”

Steve took a breath. “Okay. Tell me about that. What really happened?”

She held up her hands. “All right. Look. You remember, Castleton was gone for the day. Or so I was told-how the hell should I know? But as far as I knew, Castleton wasn’t there. So I didn’t expect to get anything because I didn’t expect to be monitored. But I kept checking off and on all day, and finally I hit it-someone was on the line. I didn’t know if Castleton had come back or if it was Danby or what the hell, but I didn’t care. I was in and I had to work fast.

“By then I really knew what I was doing. I’d been close before. I riffled through the files and I found it.

“I was really scared. I didn’t know if I was being watched. If Castleton wasn’t there, I shouldn’t have been. Those were the ground rules. If Danby was in his office, the curtain on the window should have been closed. I couldn’t count on that, but I had to take a chance.

“So I put a floppy disk in the computer and downloaded the memo.”

Steve’s eyes widened. “You what?”

“That’s right. I had a floppy disk in my purse. I mean, why not? They never searched me or anything. It’s just when I was working it was like being in a fishbowl. Anyway, as soon as I hit it I got up, grabbed my purse and went into the bathroom. I took the floppy disk out of my purse, went back to the computer and downloaded the memo. As soon as I had it, I ripped the disk out of the machine, went back in the bathroom and put it in my purse. I put the purse back in the closet and was just sitting down at the machine when the door opened and Danby came in.”

Steve was listening, too fascinated now to even think of a question. “Go on,” he said.

“I was scared to death. I didn’t know what had happened. Was the curtain open? Had he seen me? Had he been monitoring my terminal or what?

“I screamed, covered myself and backed away from the machine.

“That’s when I saw. Shit. I was still in DOS. I was so eager to get the disk out of the computer I hadn’t exited the program.

“I lunged for the machine, pushed the button, and the letter I’d been typing came back on.

“Danby tried to stop me. He grabbed my wrist, said, ‘Don’t touch that.’ But it was too late. I’d switched the