Chump Change by G. M. Ford Page B

irreconcilable differences of marriage lost its commercial luster, Carl inventoried his skill set and segued into the information business. Skip tracing. Finding felons, freeloaders, and deadbeat dads became his mission. He was the Duke of the Database. Seemed like half the attorneys in the city made use of his services. Unless you were planning to go to ground in the wilds of Montana, à la Ted Kaczynski, Carl was going to find your ass, sooner rather than later.
    He’d bought a little three-bedroom over on Crown Hill a few years back and wired himself up to the world. Eight monitors lined the north wall of what used to be the front parlor, each keeping track of something or someone or other. I made it a point not to ask too many questions. There’s only so much sneering a man can take.
    I’d told myself I was gonna stop by Carl’s and put this Gordon Stanley thing to rest, once and for all. Find out he was just another schmuck for whom wealth proved too great a burden. Some folks are that way. I think it was Tolstoy who said that too much prosperity is bad for people, in the same manner that too many oats are bad for a horse. He may have had a point.
    Carl’s custom-made wheelchair had a robotic arm, like the writing surface of an old-fashioned school desk, except bigger. I’d always found it ironic that this little man who was virtually unable to move had found a way to extend his reach to the far corners of the earth. It said something; I just wasn’t sure what.
    “You playing at being a detective again?” he asked.
    “Naw,” I said. “This is for me.”
    “So . . . are sexual favors to be included here, or did you bring your checkbook?”
    “Much as I’d like to . . .”
    He waved me off. “Whadda ya want?”
    “I want to find out how much money a guy won in the Washington state lottery.”
    “What guy?”
    “Gordon Stanley.”
    Carl swung the arm up and began typing. The monitors rolled and changed. He typed some more. We waited. One by one the monitors rolled up data.
    “Nobody by that name ever won the Washington state lottery,” he said, disgustedly. “You sure it was Washington?”
    “I thought so.”
    “I’ll try Oregon, Idaho, and Cali.”
    The wait was considerably longer this time. More like forty minutes. The screens rolled and blinked and rolled again like slot machines. Same deal, though.
    “No Gordon Stanley,” Carl said finally.
    What came up right away was the question of why anybody would lie about a thing like that, which was, of course, a stupid question, because people lied about money all the time; the more money, the bigger the lies.
    “You sure?”
    He pointed up at the bank of screens, moving his bony finger from left to right. “Powerball, Mega Millions, Lotto, Hit Five, Match Four, Daily Game, Daily Keno. That’s all of em, Bonzo. I searched the past five years, and there’s no fucking Gordon Stanley.”
    “What if we were looking for him . . . you know, in the flesh?”
    “That’s a whole nother ball game,” he said.
    “Let’s see what’s out there.”
    He named a price. I winced. He read my mind.
    “You start that old-times’-sake shit with me, and I’ll throw your big ass out of here,” he warned. “What’s that old Jean Shepherd book title? In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. ”
    “Do it,” I said. “Let’s see if we can find this guy.”
    Every time I watch Carl work, I get the willies. Despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, I still refuse to relinquish my illusion of personal privacy. I know . . . there’s a camera on every light pole. I know if they’re so inclined they could GPS-track my every movement through my cell phone. Yadda, yadda. I know all of that, and still I just can’t operate from the perspective that I’m under surveillance. When I’m alone, I have to work from the premise that nobody’s watching, even if they are. Otherwise I’d be lining the walls of my house with tinfoil and communicating by