St. Louis, 2004

"Jason's completed the transfer of funds," Ben announced. He tapped out a reply to the instant message and added, "he can begin the transactions at any time."

He looked up from his laptop and grinned across the conference table. Ben always had an air of knowing more than he let on that belied his age. It was, presumably, how he got to be the Director of Marketing and PR at Infotractics. The title was moot; the company was slipping into Chapter 11 and all but a few freelancers had been pinkslipped. But right now Ben looked smugger than the cat that ate the canary.

It would not have been a good day for a canary in the office. Ben's smugness was mirrored on the face of Karen Greenwood, nominal Vice President of Infotractics, and Mark Johansen, valued client. For an added layer of security, Jason was doing his computer wizardry from another location. But still, the tableau was incomplete. The dragon was missing its head. Ron Piotrowski, CEO and founder of Infotractics, dervish of data analysis, was late. The moment of satisfaction stretched into unease.

Johansen shifted uneasily in his chair. He was a pale man in his late 50s, with traces of handsomeness beneath the bags under his eyes, beginnings of jowls, and truly unfortunate toupee. This deal made him nervous, even though if anything went wrong he would almost certainly get off scot free. This little brain trust was taking the real risk. And he'd still talked them down to a 15% commission. They had to be truly desperate to take those terms. And the company must be truly mismanaged to be in the shitter, considering its talent level.

Karen, who had sharp eyes and a sharp mind to match her sharp face, caught Johansen's restlessness. "Gentlemen," she simpered, "Would it be bad luck to have the champagne now? Serves him right for keeping us waiting."

"Sounds good to me," Ben replied cheerfully. Karen smoothed her blazer – unlike the jeans-clad Ben, she was keeping up the corporate façade – and slipped out of the room. Ben pulled out his cell phone and hit autodial. The call went to voice mail. Again. He rubbed his ample chin, and flashed Johansen a reassuring grin. "Someday, Ron will be late for his own funeral," he said apologetically.

"Technology changes, but people stay the same," replied Johansen. He fancied himself a wit. And a visionary. "Amazing what computers can do nowadays, isn't it? I remember when they were first hitting the desktop in the 80s. Did you know I was in the vanguard…”

Ben did know. He'd heard this story several times. He kept a polite grin plastered on his face and thought about the deal.

Johansen had told this story a thousand times. He affably filled the conference room with the tale of introducing Macs to his accounting department while he thought about the deal.

Yes, it truly was amazing what people could do with computers. Especially people like Ron. Ron could match up data on this computer with data on that computer and produce amazing correlations. With the help of Jason to crack those databases that Ron had no business accessing, Ron had turned those correlations into hypotheses, and hypotheses into models.

The final piece of the scheme was one of those brilliant ideas you couldn't believe no one had thought of yet. Jason had "borrowed" data from Google's servers, and Ron had matched up IP addresses with particular zip codes and fed that very select search history into the algorithms he'd been building for years. The result was a working model of the stock market. A working, predictive model of the stock market.

Now if Ron had been as good a businessman as he was a computer programmer, Johansen would never have heard about any of it. But Ron had run his little company into the ground and left himself with no capital. If that bright young Ben hadn't brought Johansen on board, that would have been the end of the story. Now Johansen was going to pull Infotractics out of insolvency, as a happy byproduct of nearly doubling the 3.4 million dollars about to be invested in a dozen futures through a dozen shadow companies.

Karen bustled back into the room with a bottle and some plastic cups. "Oh, Mark," she chided. "Are you telling Ben about your computer conversion?" She had a way of saying dull things in a slightly flirtatious way. It should have been cute but there was something too brisk about it, like someone telling a joke she didn't quite understand.

The outer door to the office slammed. "Here comes the mastermind!" Karen chirped. She set down the bottle and cups and moved to the door, nearly colliding with the short, stocky man she worked for.

"Whoopsie," she said, and then - softly, but not softly enough - "Jesus, Ron, have you been drinking?"

Ron swept a baleful glare across the tableau. "I," he announced, with the careful pronunciation of someone who's had one too many, "have been thinking. And what I want to know is, have you-" he jabbed a finger at Ben - "been sleeping with him?" The finger stabbed in Johansen's direction.

"Excuse me?" Johansen sputtered. His indignation carried him to his feet. "Excuse me! I am a married man. A family man. How dare you...you…” Ron ignored his feeble protestations, His eyes were locked on Ben's, radiating hatred. Ben's face was a mask. Karen watched in helpless fascination.

"What were you before you met me," said Ron heatedly. His face was flushing. "You were a step up from a street hustler." A small, strangled noise came from Johansen's direction, but Ron ignored it. "I gave you this job. I gave you everything!" There was an undercurrent of desperate pleading in his voice as he repeated, "I gave you everything."

"Everything, huh?" Ben's voice was cool and clipped. He rose unhurriedly, the better to look down on the shorter man. "Until you get tired of me. I know about the one before me. And I know about the Cayman account. That was a nasty surprise."

"You're a nasty surprise!" Ron bellowed. It wasn't much of a retort, but the gun he pulled out made an impression. Johansen whimpered and started whispering a Hail Mary.

"Shut up!" Without tearing his eyes away from Ben, Ron waved the gun in Johansen's direction. Johansen shut up.

"Here's the last surprise," Ron said through gritted teeth. He pointed the gun at Ben. His hand was shaking and he was fighting back tears. He put his other hand on the gun to steady it. "Anything you want to say to me, Ben?"

Ben's face was unreadable. Maybe he was in some kind of denial, didn’t believe this was happening. Or maybe he was too angry to bend so much as a millimeter and ask for forgiveness. Instead he sneered and said, "Had an HIV test lately, babe?"

"Oh God" Johansen whispered. It was a tiny noise, but it sounded strangely big in the silence. And then Ron closed his eyes and there was a bigger noise, too big for the room, too big to be real. For a moment everything was still, as if time itself was shaking off that horrible noise.

Ben's eyelids fluttered, and a dark stain began spreading across the front of his shirt. Then time snapped back like a rubber band and bounced around. Johansen saw Ben step back and fall into his chair, heard Ron sobbing, felt Karen's hands on his shoulders as she pulled him out of the conference room. Somehow he was in the tiny reception area and Karen was screaming and closing the conference room door. Before the door slammed shut Johansen saw Ron, hollow eyed, put the gun to his temple.

This time the gunshot didn't seem as bad. It was the soft noise of Ron's body hitting the floor that set Karen off. Tears flowed silently out of her ashen face. She and Johansen stared at each other. They were too shaken to offer each other any more than that: I see you. I know

Then the contents of Johansen's stomach came shooting up. He got most of it in the trash basket. He wiped his mouth and took a deep breath. He had to get out. Now.

"Karen," he whispered. "I can't...I can't be involved with..."

"With a queer murder suicide?" she said quietly. There was something flinty in her eyes, some unexpected resiliency coming to the surface. "Well Mark, " she said slowly, "Fuck off. Fuck off to your family. I suggest you take the back stairs."

Sheepishly, Johansen made his way through the tiny office towards the fire exit.

"Wait," she called. Her hand scrabbled on the receptionist's desk for pen and paper, scribbled something hastily. She approached him quickly and handed him a Post-it. It bore an email address, a password, and a second email address.

The stony look on her face cracked a bit. "Look," she said, "I'll keep your name out of it. Email me tomorrow and we'll figure out what to do."

Johansen shoved the yellow scrap in his jacket pocket. He hesitated a moment. For once in his life, he didn't know what to say.

"You better go. Fast." The flinty look was back. She watched him make his exit. She closed her eyes and slowly counted to sixty before she opened the door to the conference room. For a long moment she stared at the bloody scene.

Her employer was still breathing, albeit raggedly. His chest heaved in hiccupy bursts. She prodded him with her Prada knockoff.

"Corpses don't giggle, Jack," she said disapprovingly. "You should take a lesson from our friend Ben."

Now the prone figure was shaking with suppressed laughter, his distress echoed by giggles from the other side of the conference room. Ed sprang up from behind the table, his broad grin a ghoulish contrast with the stage blood dripping from his shirt.

Jack let out a loud whoop, and let loose his laughter. Great, deep laughs that took his breath away and made standing up awkward. He managed to gasp out, "Anything that fun-"

"-should be illegal," finished Karen and Ed in unison. They shared a quick smile as Karen took out her phone and checked her text messages, and Ed began stripping off his goopy shirt and blood pack.

"Now tell me, Ed," wheezed Jack as he awkwardly got on his feet. "Did you actually have to sleep with him? Because that deserves a bonus."

"Fuck you," Ed laughed, ignoring the flicker of jealousy beneath the teasing. There was a lot unsaid between the three of them. Jack put his arm around Karen's waist and kissed her shoulder. "What's the good word, honey?" he smiled.

"Petey's tailing Johansen," she reported. "Looks like he's headed home. Keith is on his way here." Keith had been at the country club putting on another performance, flashing a phony badge and making "discreet inquiries" about a hustler who preyed on closeted men. Rumors of his visit would travel fast, keeping Johansen further off balance.

"And Jason's got the money sorted," she concluded. "Baby, we just made over three mill." She laughed and kissed him hard while Ed watched.

Two nights later, Ed was sprawled across a bed at the Chateau Frontenac, watching porn and tapping his laptop every ten minutes or so. He always got antsy after a job. For the umpteenth time he pressed get mail...and waited impatiently as 1 of 3 became 2 of 3 became you have 3 new messages.

The first message was an automated message from his bank. This would be the confirmation he’d received his share of the St. Louis job. He opened it as a matter of form, and whistled. The deposit was much larger than he expected. What was going on?

The second email was from Jack.

Hey kiddo,

This sucks, and I’m really sorry.

It's been fun, but it's over.

I'll share the game and I'll share the money. But I don't want to share her anymore.

J

Numbly, Ed opened the third email. It was from Karen, and it said almost exactly the same thing.

Ed stared at the screen for a long, long time, trying to work out what he felt. Later, with the help of the mini-bar, he constructed a complex philosophy of human interactions that explained exactly what went wrong and why, and what to do about it. All he remembered of it the next morning was: dump them before they dump you.