I frown. “Won’t a lack of response raise a red flag too?”
“Not really. It’s fairly accepted that if someone doesn’t reply to your PM, they’re either not interested in talking to you or they’re already busy.”
“So much for easy,” Alan says. “If we want to find him through the Net, we’re going to have to develop a real cover for this one. The whole enchilada.”
“What’s that mean, exactly?” Leo asks.
“One of us is going to have to make himself an enticing target for our perp,” Alan explains. “That means developing a full identity that will stand up to scrutiny. It means coming up with a name, backed by verifiable information, and a cell phone that he can call and that’s traceable to that identity. So on.”
“It means having an address that matches the identity,” Callie chimes in. “In case he has some way of tracing the Internet provider you’re using. Mostly,” she says, “it means a lot of research. Reading all the ‘manifestos’ of the very lovely men from this website, wading through hundreds of forum postings. Et cetera and on.”
“I get the house and cell phone, but I don’t really see the need for research. Things seem pretty straightforward here.” Leo smiles. “Just put on my wife-beater, drink some beer, and say ‘bitch’ every now and then, right?”
“Wrong,” I tell him. “What you’re talking about is a stereotype, and it’s a common and sometimes deadly mistake in undercover work. A stereotype is a two-dimensional view. You need to exist, when you adopt an identity, in three dimensions.”
“For example,” Callie supplies, “you are a computer nerd, yes?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, then, all I need to do is put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, grow some pimples, and know the difference between an IP number and a DNS server, right?”
“Okay. I get it.”
“Who do you want doing this?” Alan asks me.
“You and Leo. It needs to be men doing it. I might miss something unconsciously as a woman. I want you as a backup. Leo’s too inexperienced. No offense, Leo.”
“No, you’re right. I’ll feel better if Alan’s there.”
“Shit,” Alan grumbles. “But that means I’ll be stuck.”
“Why?” Leo asks.
“He might have seen my face at the wedding, when he dumped Heather Hollister. If he’s watching the house, and he sees me, the jig’s up. Which means you’ll be doing all the shopping, roomie.”
“Wait,” Leo says, “are you saying I’ll have to
“Of course.”
“But how do I explain that to my girlfriend?”
“You lie.”
“Lie?”
Callie pats him on the top of the head. “Ah, I was once young and naive too. Yes, honey-love, you’re going to lie. Tell her something exciting. You’re being whisked away on a top-secret mission; you might not come home alive. That’ll cover you and perhaps get you some hot good-bye sex too.” She winks. “Women love secret agents.”
“Fuck,” he mutters.
Alan claps him on the shoulder. “Think of it as an adventure.”
Leo nods glumly. “What do you want me to do about the other stuff?” he asks me. “Liaison with CCU and the past cases?”
“Those go on hold for now. You said the LAPD CCU was competent enough.”
“Okay.” He sighs, resigned to his fate.
“Division of duty,” I say. “James, you stay on the job of getting those files to Earl Cooper.”
“He’ll have everything by end of day.”
“Good. Callie, I want you to do all the legwork of setting up the identity and location. You know who to liaise with. I’d like to have things in place by tomorrow.”
“Shouldn’t be too difficult. It doesn’t have to be fancy. We can have him work from home, so we won’t have to contend with building a workplace cover. I’ll have to find him an ex-wife. That might take a little longer.”
“Find someone who’s not on the radar yet.”
“A promising, fresh-scrubbed graduate to be. I’m on it.”
“What are we going to be doing in the meantime?” Leo asks.
“Research,” I say. “Lots and lots of research.”
“There’s different ways to approach it,” Alan says. “My opinion, the best is to look for the things you can agree with, empathize with.” He points to the website, which is still sitting on the computer screen. “Find something in there that makes sense. Align the rest of it to that. That’s what a guy coming to the site’s going to do. He didn’t come here to find out everything about everything.”
“He’s there to find the solution to his own problems,” Leo finishes, getting the idea.
“Exactly.”
“Everyone know what they’re supposed to do?” I ask.
Silence is assent.
“Let’s get to it.”
We work late into the afternoon, each of us at our respective computers, reading over forum postings, lurking in the chat rooms, looking at the photographs.
Sex is here, and so is rage, but most of all, below it all like a toxic river, is the pain. The anger is the top layer, the loudest voice, the most visible, but pain is the fuel that drives the engine.
When rage outstrips agony, you have murder, and it’s this that I search for on the website. There are men, few and far between, who have long since passed the point of simply feeling their pain. It is their anger that drives them, anger that has mutated into rage. It’s a subtle thing, but as I read, the small tics become signposts.
One man writes:
God, sometimes I hate my ex-wife. I wish she’d just fuck off and die.
Anger is present but has not yet taken over. He is still grieving, not raging.
Another man writes:
Feminists have all but destroyed the culture of manhood. We need to reclaim our right to be men, and fuck the women who disagree.
Angry, but this is anger toward a principle, not a person.
Then there are the ones I’m starting to the think of as “the dark men.”
I lie awake sometimes in my bed at night thinking about her. About what she did to me. She fucked my best friend. She filed for divorce and got custody of my kids. She took my house and half my income. I live in an apartment, and I go to work every day, and I’m angry. I come home and eat alone, and I’m angry. But at night? When I’m in my bed and thinking about her? Sometimes I close my eyes and pray to God, or wish to the wishing genie, that she’d have a stroke, right now, or crawl into a bathtub and slit her wrists, or have a heart attack. I wish her dead. I actually lie there and try to will it to happen.
That’s an obvious example. There are subtler, even darker ones. Such as:
God took a shit, and there was a woman. Sows, every one of them. The sow who took my son from me, I watch her from my car after work every night. I sit outside, parked, and watch that bitch.
“This is tiring as hell,” Alan laments, standing up to stretch and groan. “I’ve never seen such a collection of whiners in my life. I mean, what’s the problem? You want to be a man? Be a man! You want to think differently than the quote
“What about the ones who lose their kids? You don’t think we have a system skewed toward the mother when it comes to custody?” Leo asks. “Just playing devil’s advocate.”
“There are countries where the kid goes to the father by default. You think that’s right?”
“Not especially. I think custody should be based entirely on who is the fittest parent and not biased toward
