and while he knew buyers considered the huge shade trees a desirable feature, they looked faintly ominous to him. Perhaps it was how they loomed over the tiny houses, dwarfing them, or how their roots were slowly but surely lifting up the sidewalks as if liberating the ground from the concrete covering humans had imposed on it.

  Not a place you'd want to be in a hurricane, he thought, as he rang the doorbell. Or even a bad thunderstorm like the last two nights'. Most of the residents had already cleaned up the fallen twigs and branches, leaving their front lawns immaculate. Mrs. Stallman hadn't. She'd also ignored the leaves covering her yard in great drifts, unlike the neatly manicured yards on either side. Perhaps she was too distracted by whatever problem she wanted a private investigator to solve.

  Tim was about to ring the doorbell again when he saw a face peering through one of the glass panels that flanked the door. After a minute, the door opened a few inches.

  "Yes?"

  "Mrs. Stallman? Tim Pincoski, Pincoski and Diaz." He held his PI registration and a business card toward the opening. A wrinkled face appeared, inspected them, and then glanced up at his face. He smiled encouragingly.

  "I'm Eunice Stallman," she said. "Please come in."

  She backed away to give him room to enter, glancing nervously out at the street as she did so. Tim suppressed a smile at this familiar behavior. He'd been surprised when he first realized that some people were embarrassed to be seen consulting a private investigator. Especially people who lived in neighborhoods like this one. If they came to his office, they looked over their shoulders anxiously, and if he went to visit them, they behaved as if both he and his car had his profession stenciled on them. He'd long ago stopped being surprised or insulted by the occasional client who didn't want to be seen with him. He just noted their embarrassment as a potentially useful weapon if they tried to weasel out of paying. It had happened.

  "You're not quite what I expected," Mrs. Stallman said.

  "No, ma'am." He was used to that, too. Apparently most people expected a PI to be either a weathered, hard-bitten ex-cop or someone as handsome and buff as their favorite TV detective. Tim suspected that when he showed up instead, his slender, five-foot-eight-inch frame and easygoing manner failed to inspire confidence in clients who thought a PI used his fists more than his wits. And in addition to getting him carded occasionally, at twenty-five, his pleasant, boyish, but average face appealed more to little old ladies who thought him a nice young man than women his own age who were looking for, well, something else.

  At least his appearance helped now. Mrs. Stallman, after inspecting him for a few moments, nodded approvingly and ushered him into the living room.

  "Let me fix you some tea."

  "Please don't go to any trouble," Tim said. Which Maude had taught him was more polite than saying he loathed hot tea.

  "No trouble at all," she said, and darted through a doorway with unexpected agility.

  Tim sighed. Not the first time that the reality of talking to a private investigator sent a potential client scurrying for cover. Maybe the familiar ritual of making tea would help Mrs. Stallman regain her nerve. A remarkably noisy and inefficient ritual by the sound of it. Perhaps she was rummaging through every cabinet in the kitchen as a stalling tactic.

  Meanwhile, he surveyed the room. Odds were Mrs. Stall-man had moved into the neighborhood before prices reached their current astronomical levels, he decided. The room was clean and comfortable, if old-fashioned and slightly shabby. Genuinely old-fashioned and shabby, not* the deliberate shabby chic he saw in the decorating magazines Maude and Claudia Diaz, his business partner, read so assiduously. White walls; faded green woodwork; comfortable-looking sofa and

  chairs upholstered in tweeds or flowered prints; floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace.

  He strolled over to study the bookcases. Which were actually filled with books, rather than knickknacks, and well-used books at that. Mostly literature, history, and a sprinkling of what were probably popular novels three or four decades ago. Though he did spot a small stack of paperback mysteries on one end table. He nodded with approval.

  "Milk? Sugar? Lemon?" Mrs. Stallman asked, startling him as she burst into the room with a teapot and two teacups rattling on a tray.

  "Just black, thanks," he said.

  He waited until Mrs. Stallman had poured their tea and they had both taken tiny sips before he nudged the conversation along.

  "You didn't explain why you wanted to hire us," he said, finally.

  "Someone tried to kill my grandson," she said.

  She sounded so matter-of-fact it took a moment for her words to register.

  "Tried to kill him?" Tim repeated. "I'm sorry—if you'd told me that over the phone, I'd have told you that it's probably something the police can handle a lot better than we can. In fact, the police usually don't like Pis getting mixed up in their criminal cases."

  "Here," she said, handing him a folded newspaper.

  It was the Metro section from Thursday's Post, and she'd highlighted a two-paragraph article. Edward Stallman, twenty-two, was in critical condition at Northern Virginia Community Hospital following a hit-and-run incident on Fillmore Street in North Arlington.

  Tim knew the area. It was close to Little Saigon, the stretch of Wilson Boulevard where Vietnamese stores and restaurants had clustered since the seventies. In recent years the neighborhood had become trendy, with an ever-increasing number of restaurants and bars catering to twenty-somethings. As he

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  continued reading, he nodded. Tim even knew Whitlow's on Wilson, the bar where Eddie had been drinking until 11:30 Wednesday night.

  The last sentence said that the police were looking for a dark blue or black sedan. No license plate, no description of the driver. Didn't sound promising.

  Tim took a sip of tea and studied his would-be client's face while he gathered his thoughts. She seemed like a perfectly nice old lady. Rather like what he remembered of Granny Pincoski. Mrs. Stallman's white hair had a bluish tint that he suspected came from regular visits to the beauty parlor rather than nature, and he doubted the slightly tousled curls happened by themselves either. She wore trifocals, but behind the thick lenses her gray-blue eyes were sharp and alert. He suspected they might twinkle when she wasn't so stressed. Granny Pincoski had been short and stout rather than tall and thin like Mrs. Stallman, and Gran would have been wearing a dark, flowered dress and a cardigan rather than a navy-blue polyester pants suit, but he sensed a similarity in character beneath the external differences.

  She didn't look as upset as Gran would have if he were in critical condition, but then not everyone reacted to stress the same way. Mrs. Stallman looked determined—almost fierce— and a little excited.

  Probably fired up over the very bad idea of hiring a PI to poke into what the police would consider their business, Tim thought, with dismay. He took another sip and tried not to wince as he swallowed several soggy tea leaves that had floated into his mouth with the bitter liquid.

  "So they haven't caught the perp?" he asked. He wasn't sure police used the word perp in real life, but he figured it sounded suitably authentic to his clients, who'd probably watched the same TV shows he had.

  She shook her head.

  "Mrs. Stallman," he said. "I still don't understand why you think what happened to your grandson was deliberate,

  and more important, even if it is, I can't take on a case that the cops are still investigating."

  "Of course not/' she said. "I don't want you to investigate the hit-and-run. The cops can do that. I want you to investigate his business."

  "His business?"

  "He's in some kind of trouble," she said. "I don't know what—he doesn't tell me things like that. Things that would upset me. But he's been worried about something. Acting strangely. Getting odd phone calls. Strange visitors. I've noticed that for the past several weeks."

  "He lives here with you?"

  "In the basement," Mrs. Stallman said. "He lives there and runs his business from there."

  "What kind of business?"

  "I don't know." She looked slightly sheepish. "He's explained it, but it's over my head. Something to do with computers."

  "Ah," Tim said. He nodded solemnly, to cover a moment of panic. If it had something to do with computers, chances were it was over his head as well.

  "It seemed like such a good idea for both of us," Mrs. Stallman said. "I couldn't afford to stay in the house by myself. I'm the only family Eddie has, and he needed a place to live and a place to run his business. A perfect solution. I try to give him his privacy, you know, and he keeps such odd hours that I sometimes don't see him for days on end. Things really were going quite well until recently."

  She frowned for a few moments and then started violently when a phone rang elsewhere in the house. From the basement, Tim realized.

  "Do you need to get that?" he asked.

  She shook her head.

  "It will only be one of his customers, complaining about some problem I don't even understand, much less know how to fix," she said, with a hint of panic in her voice. "I cant

  figure out what his business does, or why it would make someone want to hurt him, but I'm sure it has. I can't even keep it running while he's in the hospital, and I have to, so it won't fall apart. If something happens and he can't come back to it—"

  She buried her face in her hands for a few moments. Then she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and looked up at him.

  "You could figure it out," she said, standing up and walking toward the fireplace. "I understand that you can't investigate the hit-and-run. But you could look into his business. Find out what it is, and how I can keep it running. And find out where his money is, before those shady friends of his find it. For all I know it could be one of them who killed him. Tried to kill him."

  Killed him. She doesn't expect him to make it, Tim thought. Mrs. Stallman picked up something from the mantel.

  "That's Eddie," she said, handing him a framed photo.

  High school yearbook photo, Tim guessed. Eddie's thin, boyish face stared back at him with a familiar mixture of anxiety and resignation. Tim remembered the sense of doom he'd felt when having his own senior photo taken—a photo almost sure to be horrible, and one he'd have to live with the rest of his life. At least that's how it seemed at the time. In the picture, Eddie looked as if he felt the same way.

  Bad idea, identifying too strongly with the subject so early in the investigation, he reminded himself. Got in the way of seeing things clearly. Assuming he even took the case.

  "As long as you understand that it's the business we're investigating," he said. "And if we find any evidence relating to the hit-and-run, we have to take it to the police."

  "If you find one scrap of evidence abSut the hit-and-run, you bring it to me," she said, her voice so fierce it startled him. "I'll take it to the police," she added. "I can get to them more easily—and besides, I want to see their faces."

  Delete All Suspects 17

  I'll bet you do, Tim thought.

  'But for now, we're investigating possible skullduggery with his business," he said aloud.

  "Of course," Mrs. Stallman said. "Let me show you."

  She turned and headed for the kitchen. She seemed calmer now that they were talking about the business.

  Tim put the photo down on the end table and followed her through the kitchen and down a steep set of stairs to the basement.

  "This is Eddie's stuff," she said, waving her hand in a wide arc.

  From the size of the room he guessed the basement ran the length and width of the house. A small space immediately to his right, including the area under the stairs, was closed off into a separate room. Rooms, in fact; there were two doors. He spotted a bathroom sink through the nearer opening and suspected that the closed door beyond hid the furnace, water heater, and any other mechanical equipment the house needed. The rest of the basement was finished in knotty pine paneling—probably from the fifties or early sixties—and stuff. Boxes, piles of books and magazines, heaps of discarded clothes, and more computer equipment than Tim had ever seen in anyone's home.

  Of course, he reminded himself, this wasn't just Eddie's home. It was also his business. Though it was hard to imagine anyone focusing on business in this untidy, cluttered space.

  It wasn't even piles of stuff; more like a giant mound of paper with paths carved through it—one to the bathroom door and another, to his left, to an outside door. The tangle of bed linens mixed with books, magazines, and towels in the far left corner probably indicated that a bed lay beneath, or at least a mattress and box spring. Most of the left-hand wall was covered with cheap, battered bookcases, filled with a haphazard mix of worn paperbacks, thick computer manuals, and untidy stacks of paper.

  The near right corner appeared to be a kitchenette. It contained a much higher concentration of dirty dishes and discarded food containers than the rest of the room, and Tim eventually made out the forms of a small refrigerator, stove, and sink beneath the debris.

  Beyond the kitchenette, half of the right-hand wall was given over to a built-in bar; evidently, the basement had served as a rec room at one time. Eddie had appropriated the surface of the bar for his computers. Tim counted a dozen monitors, each surrounded by a tangle of mice, cables, keyboards, and various-sized plastic and metal boxes. Turing or Maude could probably identify the boxes in an instant as CPUs, disk drives, or whatever, and could tell him exactly what all the blinking lights and beeping noises meant. Tim could only look around in dismay.

  More hardware sat on file cabinets, on tables, on the floor, peeping out from beneath paper piles—on every horizontal surface. Every square inch not filled with equipment or paper was piled with tools, parts, printouts, manuals, and unidentifiable objects that he presumed were related to computers. Cables and wires and cords snaked through the room, disappearing beneath the papers and then appearing again elsewhere, as if some large electronic spider had been spinning them into webs, to immobilize the room's contents.

  "Wow," Tim said.

  "You see why I need your help," Mrs. Stallman said.

  "I specialize in fieldwork," Tim said. "I leave computer stuff to the experts."

  "But you have experts on your staff, don't you?" Mrs. Stallman said. "I mean, I assume that's why Eddie was thinking of hiring you himself."

  "He was?" Tim said, surprised.

  "I've been looking through some of fiis stuff," Mrs. Stall-man said, waving at the avalanche of paper before them. "Trying to get some idea what this is all about. But it's a little overwhelming."

  Delete All Suspects n

  Tim nodded.

  "But I found something Eddie printed out—an e-mail from one of his friends," Mrs. Stallman went on. "A young man named Casey. He recommended you. Said you were good with computer-related cases."

  "Did the e-mail say what Eddie wanted investigated?"

  "No, just that he recommended you to help Eddie solve his problem."

  "Okay," Tim said. He could probably find out from Casey. He managed to keep from laughing. Casey was a promising eighteen-year-old hardware technician who worked for Alan Grace Corporation, the company Turing had founded to be her public face. But like Tim himself at the same age, Casey wanted to be a private investigator. Casey probably hoped that Pincoski and Diaz would take on Eddie Stallman's case and recruit him to help with the computer hardware while they chased down clues and witnesses in the real world.

  He could think of worse ideas. Maybe he could borrow Casey from Turing. For that matter, maybe he could enlist Turing herself. Okay, it wasn't a great case, but right now he and Claudia didn't have any other cases—just another batch of routine background investigations farmed out by a larger PI firm that always had a backlog. Any case was better than routine background investigations.

  "I'll need to bring in my associates," he said.

  "Whatever you need," Mrs. Stallman said. "It's beyond me."

  "Let me call my office," Tim said, pulling out his cell phone.

  KingFischer and I had spent part of the morning discussing the leaf-nosed bat and the pied-billed grebe. Not the actual creatures, of course: those were our code names for two of the credit card issuers whose systems wed targeted. KhtgFiscbtr,

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  who had raised paranoia to a new art form, insisted that we assign code names to the financial institutions whose security systems we were targeting.

  "What if someone eavesdropped on our conversations about the project?" he fretted. "They might not appreciate the importance of our efforts to assess and monitor the security of the global financial system. They might misconstrue our motives."

  "Yeah/' I said. "What if they misunderstood, and thought we were cracking all those systems merely for our own personal reasons? Oh, wait. . . I forgot, that is why we're cracking all those systems."

  For some reason, KingFischer didn't see the humor in this.

  "If you ask me, he's been scanning too many spy novels," Maude commented, when I told her. "Aren't you targeting hundreds of institutions ? "

  "Thousands," I said. "But that's no problem — there are more than enough birds, animals, fish, and insects to go around."

  "I should think it would be hard enough to keep track of all of those places under their own names, much less remember a code," Maude said. "What if you get them confused?"

  "We're AIPs, remember?" I said. "The only way we can possibly forget something is to delete it consciously."

  "Well, yes," Maude said. I was pleased; I could tell from her tone that she had forgotten it, momentarily. "Still, isn't it rather a waste of processing power?"

  "Not that much," I said. "And it keeps him happy. Even if it is useless."

  Besides, to talk KingFischer out of it, I'd have to point out something! preferred not to think about. Yes, someone might be monitoring the Internet for messages that mentioned the names of financial institutions in close proximity to words like "hack" or "break in." But KingFischer and I weren't talking on the open Internet. No one could monitor our conversations without breaking into the Universal Library's computer network. Something both of us wanted to believe impossible.