So far, all the spider’s hits were useless, unrelated to the man she was looking for. But you never knew, and so every timethe app chimed, signaling that her software had found something new about one John Bianco or another, Cathy looked.
The latest find: a piece of video footage, locked away in the supposedly secure Dropbox cloud storage of a woman named LeighShore, who seemed to be some sort of reporter. The footage was labeled “Interview—John Bianco—Union Square—Oracle Riots,”with a date from last December.
Cathy tapped the clip, expecting to see one of the other John Biancos she’d encountered in her cataloging of the many NewYork City residents with that name.
But no. There he was.
John Bianco—her John Bianco, standing next to an irritated-looking Indian man, being interviewed by an attractive young black woman. Cathytapped the footage again, freezing it, then scrolling it back until she found a decent headshot of the man, with his mouthclosed, looking directly at the camera. She took a screenshot, then opened the headshot in her image editor, cropping it untilit was just Bianco’s head.
Cathy opened another app and fed the new image into it, then activated the program, and waited.
The problem, all along, was that she didn’t have a photo of John Bianco, and there hadn’t been an easy way to get one in theirlimited set of interactions. Now, though, she had what she needed, and it was relatively simple to ask the web to kick backphotos of people who looked similar to the image she’d fed into her app. Hell, even Google could do something along thoselines.
These moments were always wonderful—when the secret was about to be revealed, when the vault was about to be breached. Whenshe was about to learn something she wasn’t supposed to know.
A photo appeared, on a dating website, accompanied by a description that danced a fine line between wittily self-deprecatingand enormously desperate.
The name attached to that photo was Will Dando.
Will Dando had John Bianco’s face. Or, most likely, vice versa.
Cathy grinned in triumph, feeling a rush of victory. She enlarged the photo so it filled the screen, then set it down, staringat it, wondering if she was looking at the Oracle.
The rush was already beginning to fade. Cathy frowned.
It was obvious that the Oracle’s identity was something the Oracle didn’t want anyone to know. Her knowing it, or even knowingmore than he wanted her to, might very well screw up the deal he’d offered her. After all, this wasn’t really about money.It was about the Oracle giving her a prediction that would save her life. And Becky’s life.
It wasn’t necessarily a problem. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut.
But those two words—Will Dando—they felt a little like a ticking bomb.
Chapter 18
“As you from crimes would pardoned be,” the swarthy man intoned, one arm extended in supplication toward the audience, standingalone on a mostly darkened stage, “let your indulgence set me free.”
His eyes closed. His head dropped. The lights went out. The audience sat very still.
Will looked at Iris, sitting next to him. She wore a tight red dress. Short, impeccable. Will wore a tuxedo—something theconcierge had helped him procure that afternoon. It was nothing like the tux he had at home, a rarely cleaned $200 numberhe wore for wedding gigs. This was an item. Custom-fit that day, while Will waited in the tailor’s shop, sipping a small glass of pisco.
Iris looked back, her eyebrows raised slightly in an expression of bemusement.
José Pittaluga was possibly the worst actor Will had ever seen.
The audience was beginning to rustle. Apparently, Will was not alone in his opinion. No one was clapping. Poor José stoodalone on the stage, in the darkness. Waiting for the applause the Oracle had promised him.
Will had taken a quick look at a plot summary for The Tempest earlier that day, and he knew the ending was bizarre. The last bit of Act Five had Prospero literally asking the audienceto play him off with applause—it was supposed to free him from eternal imprisonment on the island where the play was set.If no one clapped, presumably Prospero was trapped forever, and José Pittaluga had to stay onstage until the end of time.
Pressure seeped into the theater, mounting as the quiet extended. People were looking to either side, as if daring each otherto stand.
Will’s eyes returned to Pittaluga, erect on the stage, his eyes closed, alone, silent.
This isn’t possible, he thought. The predictions all come true. All of them.
He considered that his presence might have changed something, influenced the prediction. It hadn’t worked at the Lucky Corner—theopposite, really, but maybe, somehow . . .
Will’s gaze didn’t waver from the actor. Possibilities flooded through his mind. He felt light, open. If the predictions couldactually be changed, that meant—
A sound, from the front of the theater. Loud, and sharp, like a huge firecracker going off. Pittaluga fell to the ground,just a complete collapse, as if every bit of animus within his body had vanished at once.
Gasps arose from the seats closest to the stage. A few people got out of their seats and rushed up the aisle toward the theaterexits. Stagehands appeared from the wings, running toward Pittaluga.
Will watched, his heart pounding, trying to convince himself this was somehow part of the play. It was possible. It was stillpossible that’s all this was. Most of the audience was still in its seats, even though the first several rows had emptiedquickly, their former occupants still sprinting toward the theater doors.
The atmosphere in the theater was expectant, pregnant, thick—something had happened, and no one understood what it was, andno one wanted to move until they did. Perhaps five seconds had passed since Pittaluga’s collapse. The tension was growing,like a downed power wire
