Page 20

I stood in the silent kitchen, doing a slow three-sixty, taking it all in. I loved my gadgets, and the counters and cupboards were loaded with them—pasta maker, bread maker, Cuisinart, blender, microwave oven, food dehydrator, deep fryer, rotisserie, ice cream churn, Macho Pop popcorn popper, mini-donut machine, sno-cone machine, pizza oven. Only it was my silver Vienna de Luxe coffee machine that I was searching for.
I had poured myself another drink before I went to bed. And another. And one more. Now I had awakened with a hangover that rocked my head and sent my stomach into a whirlpool of nausea. Still, I’ve had hangovers before, and I knew I would survive. Pepto-Bismol, toast, coffee, lots and lots of coffee, and I would function fine until noon, a respectable hour when I could have a stiff drink to help take the edge off.
Ingredients were already loaded into the machine. I pressed a button and a predetermined amount of French vanilla almond coffee beans was reduced to a fine powder in about six seconds and sprinkled into a filter; spring water was poured, and the coffee brewed.
I split a bagel and dropped the two halves into my toaster. While it was toasting I put on a CD, Tosca, by Giacomo Puccini. I don’t have a lot of opera in my collection—normally, I’m a jazz guy—except I had been introduced to opera by Kirsten Sager Whitson, the very lovely, very wealthy woman who dumped me just before I met Nina, and somehow it seemed appropriate.
The opera was filled with heartache. It was all about Tosca, a beautiful singer who is forced to sacrifice her body and soul to the villainous Baron Scarpia in order to save the life of her boyfriend, Mario, whom the baron has imprisoned. Naturally, everyone dies in the end. Yet while I sipped my coffee and munched my bagel and listened to the incomparable Maria Callas sing the hell out of the lead, I had to wonder—when did I become Baron Scarpia?
Stalking Nina, lurking outside her home, contemplating the murder of her boyfriend even in jest—are you kidding me? I don’t do things like that. I’m a good guy. Even the people who hate my guts would have to admit I’m a good guy, and where I come from, being a good guy isn’t just a compliment. It’s a responsibility. You’re expected to step up. You’re expected to take care of business. You’re expected to behave like a man who can be trusted at all times.
I still had high hopes that I could win Nina back. After all, I’m rich, I’m good-looking, I can cook—I’m a helluva catch. Yet if I couldn’t, certainly she must know she could trust me to take it like a man, like a good guy. Otherwise, I had no business dating in the first place.
I toasted Nina with my coffee cup at just about the moment in the opera when Tosca jumps off a parapet after first vowing to meet her tormentor in hell.
“Here’s to you, sweetie,” I said.
Then I went to work.
My PC was located in what my father used to call the “family room”—one of the few rooms in my house that was actually furnished—where I also kept my CD player and CD collection, my books, my DVDs, and my big-screen plasma TV. I was using the PC to surf databases, gathering background information on both Merodie Davies and Priscilla St. Ana of Woodbury, Minnesota. It wasn’t difficult. Nor did the social scans trouble my conscience.
The right-to-privacy zealots who fight tooth and nail to keep our deepest darkest secrets from prying eyes don’t get it. It has always been possible for someone to learn an individual’s employment, medical, and credit history, as well as the schools he’s attended, the addresses he’s lived at, his criminal record, whether or not he’s married, whatever. It merely demanded more effort. An investigator was required to actually visit the sites where records were stored and physically sift through mountains of paper to find the information he needed.
Now he can accomplish the task with just a few strategic cursor movements and keystrokes. The government is even helping us. County Web sites list citizens’ property tax information. The Department of Motor Vehicles will happily reveal a driver’s record for a mere nine dollars and fifty cents. The Minnesota Court Information System allows anyone with a PC to immediately access all orders, judgments, and appellate decisions. If you want filings by private parties that aren’t generated by the courts, or charging documents such as criminal complaints, you’re welcome to use the public access terminals available at the courthouse.