Flicking

I have this report. I think you need to look at it,” Andrea blurted.

  “Ok. Let me strap myself in for the ride.” The CFO’s giant salt-grey eyebrows wiggled above his well tanned face. A smile spread across his lips.

  “Yes of course,” Andrea said, not quite understanding his point, though vaguely remembering this wasn’t the first time she’d burst in, and that the incident of the missing show poodle invoices had not been her most shining glory. In fact, now that she thought about it, those invoices had been a disaster. She’d suspected the director of the first SuperHeroes movie--what’s his name--of burying unallowed expenses in poodle rental and grooming invoices. It was logical, given the script (which in retrospect, she should have read) didn’t have any poodles in it. Unfortunately, there was a problem. The female lead—why couldn’t she remember a single fucking name? the blonde one, you know hot—well the female lead had a special clause in her contract that put all her vast poodle expenses on the studio. Who signed that off she’d never understand. Ridiculous. And she hadn’t read the contract either, for that matter. That probably would have been even better to read than the script. So basically, no one had any clue what was in the contract, which led to some extremely unfortunate misunderstandings, and before anyone had pulled the contract, the star was storming off the set in Saskatchewan, four poodles in tow. Good thing the next town was fifty miles away. And even better that the next flight out wasn’t for another five days, something quickly discovered by the star at the end of a four hour hitchhiking odyssey.

  “So give it to me good and slow,” the CFO said, his lips compressing with gravitas.

  “Well,” and here she wanted some formality, “sir, I did some investigating.”

  His head nodded gently.

  “I found that we have an offshore company. It’s called Beehive. Have you ever heard of it? Anyway, it’s not exactly fully legit according to what I’m seeing.”

  “Ok.”

  “There’s a lot of funds going in, and nothing going out.” She reached out and dropped her plastic encased paper stack on the sparkling dark mahogany, then turned her report around to face him. “If you look here, we’ve put almost two hundred and fifty grand into Beehive and got nothing out. Not one cent has been accounted for. And honestly, who has access to those funds?”

  The CFO picked up the documents and leafed through them. “Go on,” he said.

  “So that’s the main point. It’s a lot of money to be putting into a company we don’t know exists and even more if you consider we don’t do offshore.”

  “Is that all?” His head nodded kindly once more.

  Andrea sighed. “Yes.”

  “First of all,” and his arms moved in an expansive gesture that encompassed the small room, generously including Andrea, and the back lot of Melbox Movies over his shoulder, “thank you for bringing this to my attention.” His voice reminded Andrea of an oboe solo in a vast music hall. “It is of the utmost importance to bring any issues of suspect dealings, be they inadvertent or deliberate, of whatever magnitude, to my personal attention.” Now Andrea recognized a familiar ring in the oratory.

  “So what you’re saying is that I shouldn’t worry about this one?” she said, neatly filling in the rest of the CFO’s many upcoming paragraphs.

  The CFO looked slightly surprised at being pre-empted. “Why, yes. That’s the gist.”

  “And you’ve never heard of this company?”

  “It’s common for us to have these types of funds. I’ll look into this one personally. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.” He rose to his feet, holding his large leathery hand out to Andrea across the desk. “Thank you.”

  She stood up rather awkwardly, smoothed her skirt, and shook. “Thank you for listening.”

  As she walked into the hall a text arrived on her cell phone from the actor.

  Would like to see you for dinner tomorrow. You game?

  She stood there, lost in thought. Did she really want to see this joker again? Well maybe, maybe he’d be worth a kiss. He was quite good looking after all. But then, wouldn’t she risk falling asleep while he told her how great he was? Anyway, he probably just wanted to get into her pants. The idea made her smile a little. She began typing a response. She could just hear the CFO apparently on a call.

  “Hi. You wanted me to give you a jingle if anyone came snooping around Beehive. Well…” and the door to his office slammed shut.

  She must have been out of sight, she thought. She had been standing there silently, after all. She looked around to see if anyone was watching. No one was. What did he mean, snooping? She was just doing her job!

  Move

  Dorian didn’t know what to expect, his mind dull from staying up all night. A killer with a public MySpace profile? It didn’t make a lot of sense. He fiddled with an itch on his neck, waiting for the page to load. Nerves shot though his body. What does a killer look like?

  He’d never even imagined, other than seeing them occasionally on television. And even from a young age, he’d figured out that all the killing in movies was an illusion. Fun. He’d create strange worlds, never thinking too hard about whether they happened for real. The showers of blood in Scarface amused him. He’d run around the neighborhood, shooting fake bullets out of his fingers at his friends, imagining blood spurting from the wounds. Not that it was any different than the other kids. Maybe the blood spurts in their imaginations weren’t as spectacular, but Dorian didn’t know.

  He’d always pretended that deaths were stories in a movie plot. Certainly not something he needed to think or worry about. Although, since that horrible day in Milan, pretending didn’t work. Revenge had taken pretending’s place in his mind.

  Maybe his imagination was why Mamma and Babbo’s death didn’t make sense, initially. They should have been killed in a movie. After a shock and some movie sorrow, he would have come home and said ‘good morning, I’m back and ready for a Cappucino.’ And this evil person would be an actor.

  A black background appeared on the screen. Dorian rubbed his eyes and looked hard. The elements of the page filled in rapidly, adjusting to their final size, but no words or pictures. In the center, as if to tease Dorian, an image refused to load. The page paused, hanging, as Dorian waited to meet his parents’ killer.

  Dorian blinked. And there it was: the completed MySpace profile.

  “Fuck.” Dorian kicked the garbage can across the room. “So this is what a killer looks like face to face,” he said to the empty room. “Not funny. Officially not funny.”

  The black and white photo in the middle of the page contained a large obelisk, probably a towering family grave. Revealed in the shadowy light, spires, inscriptions and an arched bronze plaque covered it’s ghostly granite face. In the foreground, an intricate iron fence with fleur-de-lis shaped spears on top, loops inside and diamond indents in the metal, crossed the bottom of the photo, etched by the sharp camera flash. It was the figure that stood between the obelisk and the iron fence, that made it clear Dorian had been duped.

  He saw a black-robed wraith with a dark hood obscuring its features. It held a scythe in black-gloved hands adorned by glow in the dark skeleton bones. Angel of Death, Dorian recognized the costume instantly. The Angel of Fucking Death.

  It sucked, it really sucked. He knew that finding the person that was in the picture, assuming it was possible, or the photographer, wouldn’t make any difference. That photo had been pulled off Flickr or some other place on the internet and put on this site to mock Dorian. That was clear.

  What a chump he’d been. He’d done everything right, tracked the data, scanned and investigated for hours, and this idiot bastard had let him think he’d won. That was the worst of it. Dorian had actually thought that he had ReeperG ready to be taken down.

  In truth, Dorian was nowhere. ‘The home page of George Reeper’, the page explained. ‘George Reeper specializes in eviscerating movie pirates and the expert creation of false identities’.

  Suddenl
y sound blasted into the room. Dorian jumped, adrenaline surging through his system, only to realize he was hearing the music off the web site. Of course. Most MySpace profiles had music on them and naturally, this one would be no different. But the song was different: Killing Me Softly, by the Fugees. Nice touch you bitch.

  He should close the site, and give up. That’s what Dorian should do, he thought. Clearly this was a dead end, that went without saying.

  Or did it? Maybe he could find something else here. And he could still break into the private areas and, just maybe, ReeperG slipped up.

  Dorian clicked into the blog. Clearly ReeperG had been expecting him. The pictures mocked him: a poster from Catch Me If You Can, an image of someone’s butt. Dorian shook his head. Why did the bastard go through the pain in the ass of creating a site like this, and then leave it empty? It didn’t quite make sense.

  At least he hadn’t found anything bad. But he still had to break into the administrative side of the account, where ReeperG must have put an email address, almost certainly faked, and a real phone number, a lot harder to fake.

  In the end it was easy. A bit of Googling and getting on the right hacker site, where the criminals put their malware and he’d downloaded a MySpace breakin plugin for his browser. It did exactly what he wanted, automatically broke into ReeperG’s account, after Dorian pointed it in