Killer Karma

excitement. Could he work the screen, too?

He scrolled clear of Braff’s notes and drew his finger across the screen. A corresponding line appeared. All right! Below the line he wrote: Please pass the following information to Homicide. Writing with his finger was clumsy. That sentence took two lines. Still, it worked!

On Braff’s computer. For Razor’s he would have to use the keys. Could he?

He ran the arrow up to File and left tapped to pull down the menu. Nothing happened. He tapped the button harder. Still no menu. His heart sinking, he leaned on the button as hard as he could…without results. Frustration sparked in him. No! This had to work.

Keys rattled outside the door. Cole glanced toward the sound. Braff?

Yes…Braff. He came in and re-locked the door.

A faint tickle running up Cole’s finger pulled his attention back to the computer. He found the end of the finger sunk in the key. And on the screen the File menu had opened.

He stared at it. How did that happen? The finger part he understood. Like everything else material, the keys felt solid only as long as he looked at them. But what did going through do? Cole pulled back the hand and rubbed the finger with his thumb, thinking of the tickle. Did he make contact with the relay or whatever under the key?

Behind him, Braff grunted.

Cole grimaced. Rear vision caught Braff almost on top of him, eyeing at the laptop. Damn. He had forgotten to keep track around himself.

Braff came closer to the laptop. “Where did that come from?”

Cole sidestepped enough to avoid physical contact but leave his finger still in contact with the screen. The blood in Dunavan’s car-

He lost contact with the screen as Braff, gaping, turned the laptop. “What the hell?” Then Braff’s eyes narrowed. He glanced around the office. “Okay, very cute. Who’s doing this? Fontaine? Sekulovich?”

Cole groaned. Braff thought it was some kind of practical joke. Son of a bitch.

Braff went over tried the door connecting to Fencing, looked into the interview room, and even unlocked the front door to check behind the clerk’s counter in the outer office.

Was there any way to make Braff take this seriously and pay attention to what was being written? He tried, scrawling: No stunt! This is for real!

Before Cole had time for more, Braff closed the laptop…right through Cole’s hand. “I don’t where you are or how you’re doing this, guys,” he called, “but the game’s over. I’m too tired to play.” He sat down and turned his chair toward his typewriter. Cole left him rolling a form into the typewriter.

7

Well, that was a bust, Cole reflected. Except now he knew to be careful how he relayed information. Hopefully with the home computer, Razor would be less likely to take it as a joke. Before heading to Razor’s place, though, he wanted to run Gao through the computer. Benay, too. Check whether either of them was in the system, with criminal connections that put them in a position to set up the hit on him. He wanted as much information as possible to give Razor, to prevent him from running into a bullet, too.

In the Southern Station downstairs, the computers outside the holding cells were busy. One in the sergeants’ office sat idle, however, screen saver running…with a chair conveniently at the keyboard and the office empty.

Okay, now to see what he could do with a regular computer.

Eyes closed, he wiggled his finger around on the Escape key until he felt the tickle. Opening his eyes, he found the screen saver gone. So far, okay. Could he open and operate the search program with just the keys?

To his relief, yes…though clumsily. Finding the contact point did not always work the first time, and since he had to close his eyes to find the contact, his hand could drift to another letter. Then he had a mistake to correct. He hoped the sergeant stayed busy elsewhere for a long time. He needed every minute.

The search on Gao came up negative. Cole exited, and gritting his teeth, slogged through entering Sara’s name for a new search. Damn it! If only he could type while looking at the keys.

“Dunavan, what’s this frigging hangup about surfaces you see? Get past- ”

He broke off. The computer had a hit on Sara’s name. Shit.

To his relief, it proved to be nothing serious. Two and a half years ago she had been among a number of guests detained when Narco raided a house party. She had been released without charges.

Still…drugs. Thinking of the fake tweaker, Cole made himself run the house party’s host. That revealed Mr. Antonio Novello had been charged with narcotics violations several times, though never prosecuted. The Nob Hill address suggested why. Money had not saved him from being blown away by his girlfriend six months ago, however.

Cole exited the search and slumped in the chair, feeling wrung out. If a little record search gave him this much trouble, how was he going to carry on a conversation with Razor via computer. Start things off with the computer, yes. Use it to alert Razor to his presence. Then they really needed to talk to one another. Somehow.

Was alerting Razor going to be enough? In Razor’s place he would need evidence a ghost was present. Sara’s lamp came to mind. Maybe he could play with the lights. Give Razor a message like: To show you I’m for real, I’ll turn the lamp in the corner on and off five times. Except Razor had no touch-on lamps.

A desk lamp sat on one of the sergeants’ desks. Cole swivelled and scooted over to see if he could affect it. No. Groping around in the base and switch had no effect. The lamp remained off. He drummed soundlessly on the desk. If Razor had a lamp already on, interfering with current might turn it off. And maybe not. What else could he do? A walk-through?

A key in the door lock brought him to his feet. Time to go.

Turning toward the door, he halted, staring at the chair still in front of the computer. Why- The thought broke off in a mental dope slap. Of course the chair never moved. He just scooted across the room without noticing, sitting on thin air…like cartoon characters who walk off cliffs and keep going until they notice the ground gone from under them.

As the door opened, Cole passed through the wall into the hall and headed for the rear entrance. Once out on the north terrace, he concentrated on visualizing Razor’s apartment and himself in it. An additional detail came to him…the big window behind the futon flanked by Razor’s framed collection of police patches and a watercolor of the Chimera painted by of Denise’s artist friends.

He waited expectantly. Only to remain standing on the north terrace. In disgust, he gave up.

“Have it your way,” he told the sky, and broke into a lope. “I’ll leg it.”

For the first several blocks he brooded over the inconsistency of ziptripping, analyzing every attempt, comparing the successful trips to the failures. To his frustration, whatever made the difference eluded him.

Crossing Market, a chair tied to the top of a passing car made him think of the chair he had not been sitting in. Which felt like a chair. The flip side of what-I-see-feels-solid…imagining surfaces where none existed? More mental stuff.

Could he choose to imagine a solid surface? Say a walkway about ten feet up so he could quit dodging people. He pictured a stairway and put one foot on the bottom step, then gingerly brought up his other foot beside it. It worked. He now stood eight inches off the sidewalk.

Another step worked, too, and another. Still, he eased his way up…just in case the illusion failed. When he caught his thinking, Cole laughed at himself. Even if gravity affected him, what was he afraid of, a fall killing him? He ran up the rest if the virtual flight to a height he liked, then pictured his walkway and stepped out on it. Seeing nothing under him remained a little unnerving but, yes, he decided, it felt cool, too…loping over the heads of the other pedestrians. If such an ordinary word as pedestrians applied to the prostitutes, gangbangers, drug dealers, junkies, and winos populating the streets of the Tenderloin.