In graduate school, Louis and Danny developed the software program. The program is used for genetic engineering, coding and replication of DNA. By implementing a Monte Carlo simulation, the software program dices and splices the proper combination of messenger RNA molecules and builds proteins. This software is licensed to a major company in Silicon Valley, California. The California Company manufactures and sells the program to biotech firms all over the world. Louis and Danny get a small percentage from each sale.
Danny and Louis earn more money as consultants. They have consulting contracts with thirteen clients. Two companies are based in Boston. Two companies are in Northern New Jersey, three in California, one in Nevada, one in Memphis, and one pharmaceutical company is in New York City. They have a contract with the United States Government. They have two foreign clients located in London and Paris. L&J Incorporated consult with companies that manufacture new medicines and vaccines, investigate the causation of genetically inherited diseases, clone organisms and do stem cell research. One company they consult with is developing a thinking computer chip based on organic molecules and neuronal cells. The program can also be applied for the development of bacterium and viruses used for germ warfare.
Louis Rodriquez was born in New York City on the seventeenth of November, 1973. He lives on East Eighty-Third Street. He is six feet tall, one hundred seventy pounds. He is light complexioned, good-looking and extremely intelligent.
Louis went through the New York City Public School System. He graduated City University with a double major in biochemistry and computer science. He received a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering from MIT in 1996. His mother was half Irish and half Puerto Rican. She was a grade school teacher, born in Manhattan. She died suddenly of a heart attack at home on the fourth of July 1996. Louis never knew his father. His mother told him that his father died a few months before he was born. She said his dad was killed in Vietnam.
Danny Johnson was born in Jersey City, New Jersey the twenty-eighth of November, 1973. Danny lives on West Seventy-Eighth Street. He is six feet two inches tall, two hundred ten pounds. He has light brown skin. Danny is also highly intelligent, very handsome and powerfully built.
Danny attended Catholic Schools. He graduated from Manhattanville College with degrees in biology and computer science. Danny received his Master’s Degree in Software Engineering from MIT in 1996. Danny’s mother was a gynecologist, born in Newark, New Jersey. She was of African American and Italian decent. She was a tall, slender woman. The cleaning crew found her dead at her office desk, late on a Thursday evening, the nineteenth of September 1996. The autopsy showed a brain aneurysm. Danny told me that his father died of colon cancer when he was eighteen months old. Danny said he did not remember his father at all. Danny is very proud of the accomplishments of his mother.
I find that the personal interests of these two young guys are similar. Danny and Louis both listen to classic rock music. They play songs from the sixties. They listen to an oldies station on WCBS 101.1 FM and listen to a rock station at 104.3 FM.
“You can’t always get what you want.” Danny Johnson sings that line, every now and then. Then he sings, “I know it’s only rock and roll.” Danny is a big Rolling Stones fan.
Louis sings, “I’m doing time on cloud nine.” Sometimes he sings, “You need schooling, I ain’t fooling.” I never heard a young guy sing a song by the Temptations and then another song by Led Zepplen. They remind me of guys from the sixties because their taste in music ends in the year, 1971.
I think, “Where are the hip hop, rap and salsa?”
Every Wednesday evening Danny and Louis meet at a karate club near Amsterdam Avenue and Seventy-Second Street. Sometimes they run together in a Central Park race. Occasionally I’ll join them for a race in the park. Of course they always wait for me at the finish line.
During the three years I have been with L&J Incorporated hardly anyone has ever entered the office suite. Danny and Louis work with minimal distractions. It is a business office like any other with computers, telephones, copiers, and fax machines. Each one of us has a private room. My office room is in the front between Danny’s office and Louis’s office. Each room is the same size. There are also a meeting room, bathroom and shower in the large office suite. There is a good view of lower Broadway from the meeting room.
Danny and Louis are extremely security conscious. They send encrypted email and have firewalls set on the network system server. Hackers have been unable to crash into their system. L&J Incorporated has a business website. I monitor the website logs. I try to track where virus attacks come from. Most of the attacks come from anonymous web addresses. These anonymous addresses are listed on a Russian website.
Danny and Louis travel by airplane to California, Nevada, Tennessee, France and Great Britain. They take the Amtrak train to Boston and Washington, D.C. I make all travel arrangements for them. I am responsible for local consulting correspondence in New York City and New Jersey.
The guys date women from all over the world. I have met a few of their girlfriends at small private parties given at Danny’s apartment. These young women are extremely good looking.
The company L&J Incorporated has gross receipts of six hundred eighty thousand dollars before taxes for the year ended December 31, 2000. Seventy five percent of the receipts come from consulting fees. The other quarter of revenue is from their percentage of software sales. Louis and Danny are doing rather well.
It is another cold January day. As usual I travel on the subway train to and from work. The commuters on these transit trains have some nasty colds. They wheeze and sneeze. They carry tissues and cough drops. I try to avoid them. When I’m on a train, if possible, I move my seat to get away from the germ spreaders. I am paranoid about catching a cold. I make sure I take plenty of vitamin C before getting on any train.
Chapter 23
Business Trip
Today is my first long distance business trip for L&J Incorporated. It is Tuesday, the twenty-third of January, 2001. I board the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago at New York Penn Station. I have a small first class room. I shall transfer trains at Union Station in Chicago for the train westward. I always wanted to take a train to Chicago, riding through western, upstate New York to the Great Lakes. I remember watching Cary Grant in the movie, North by Northwest, traveling on the Twentieth Century Limited from New York Grand Central Station to Chicago. Now I am traveling on a train to the Windy City.
There are no pretty actresses on this train. There are only Twilight Zone People. I speak with them in the dining car. The Twilight Zone People are all afraid to fly. Some have been on hijacked airplanes. They have lots of interesting stories. I listen to them.
In Buffalo, I get off the train and stand outside the station. I think of a movie, where a famous actor, I think Gene Hackman, plays a policeman, traveling on a train through Western Canada. It is really cold in Buffalo, New York; probably just as cold as Western Canada.
On Wednesday, the twenty-fourth of January, I arrive in Chicago. Before I change trains for the western part of the trip, I go directly to the Amtrak counter and rearrange my travel itinerary. There is a closed circuit camera above the ticket booth. It takes pictures of passengers purchasing tickets. The original train tickets are for Las Vegas with a return trip to New York City on Monday, the twenty-ninth of January. I pay an extra fee and change my return ticket to depart from Union Station in Los Angeles, California on Sunday, the fourth of February, 2001. Therefore I shall be in Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend. Then I shall visit Los Angeles, California.
I board the train heading west out of Chicago, Illinois at 4:15 PM Central Time. This train has an upstairs and downstairs. It has a viewing car too. The train travels through Illinois, crosses the Mississippi River into Iowa then goes through Missouri, Kansas and a piece of Colorado. The train chugs into the tunnel at the Santa Fe
Pass through the Rocky Mountains to New Mexico. There is some light snow flurry activity in the mountains. It is a dreary day. Finally the train comes down from Flagstaff, Arizona to the desert. I and six other passengers get off the train in the middle of the night in Needles, California. The train then continues to its final destination in Los Angeles.
We seven passengers take a shuttle van from Needles to Las Vegas, Nevada. Elvis is with us. When we were on the train, he sang a few songs for some of the girls. Of course he is just an Elvis impersonator but his presence makes the trip a little more bizarre.
The van takes us to McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. I grab a taxi from the airport to the Luxor Hotel. The taxi driver gives me a card for a nightclub with lap dancers. Everybody is on the hustle in Vegas. Las Vegas is a lot like New York City.
I am inside my hotel room. It is 4:00 AM Pacific Time, Friday, the twenty-sixth of January. The trip took two and one half days.
On Saturday, the twenty-seventh of January I have to do my job. I take a taxi to North Las Vegas. I punch in a code to open the gate into a private community. The gate opens and the cab driver takes me to the directed address. I ring the doorbell at precisely noon. An elderly man answers the door. I hand him one computer floppy diskette. Then I get back into the taxi and return to my hotel.
I have some relatives in Vegas. Saturday evening, I go with them to a famous restaurant inside the Venice Hotel. I eat some pasta and Caesar salad. I drink a little red wine and have a cup of espresso for desert. The food is good and less expensive than New York. After returning to the hotel and casino, I play some video poker and lose twenty dollars. An old song by Steely Dan comes into my thoughts, “Now you find yourself in Vegas.” During the evening, a blond, blue eyed, very pretty, cocktail waitress in her mid-thirties stops to look at me. She reminds me of the sister of a girl I once knew many years ago. I say nothing to her and go to listen to the Blue Man Group bang away on the drums. The Blue Man Group does shows in New York City too. However, I never went to see them in Manhattan.
Sunday afternoon, I watch the Super Bowl in the large, hotel theater with my cousins and their friends. There are lots of hot dogs, beer, people and fun. The football game is between the Giants and the Ravens. I win $100 betting on the over. The final score is Ravens 34 and Giants 7.
Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of January, I take the local Greyhound Bus from downtown Las Vegas to Los Angeles. I know I am being followed. The guy watching me gets off the bus in Barstow. He made it clear to me I was being monitored. He was either a Las Vegas policeman or a local FBI guy. I wasn’t sure which. The bus ride to Los Angeles takes more than seven hours. I should have taken the express bus.
From the LA bus station, I grab a taxi to Torrance, another forty- five minutes in traffic.
My Uncle Bill picks me up at the Tally Ho apartment complex in Torrance, California. He brings me out to dinner and then to his home in Rolling Hills. Rolling Hills is a guarded hilltop community. No one gets in without the consent of the guards.
I have three deliveries to make in California. My uncle gives me his car, an Audi, very fast. On Tuesday, I deliver one diskette to a physician in Newport Beach. On Wednesday, I make two diskette deliveries, one to a clinic in Downey and another to a residence in Long Beach. That is it. My work for L&J Incorporated is done.
Now I visit some old friends. Thursday evening, we have dinner at an Italian restaurant at the Fashion Mall in Newport Beach. On Friday, I have dinner with some other friends at their home in Seal Beach. It is a nice time.
On Sunday, the fourth of February, I board the train at Union Station, Los Angeles. There is a government agent behind me, making sure I get on the train. I think he is probably from the east coast and not California because he is wearing a suit. The temperature is eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. It is a very hot day for early February in Los Angeles.
There are some problems on the return trip. The porter tells me, a freight train derailed outside of Winslow, Arizona. A song by the Eagles plays through my mind, “I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.”
The train cannot go around the derailment. The other passengers and I have to take buses to Albuquerque, New Mexico, a four hundred miles ride through Flagstaff, Arizona, on Interstate-40. I know the route well because I have driven this highway a half dozen times in my life. This is an eight hours bus ride and I get to see some high desert scenery.
In Albuquerque we get on the train that was heading west. Now this train goes east. The passengers on the western bound train do the same thing in reverse. When their bus arrives in Winslow, Arizona they board the original train I was on and head west. Because of the long delay, I miss my connecting train when I arrive in Chicago. Therefore, I have to spend one night at the Days Inn Hotel in Chicago before changing trains for New York City the next evening.
When I arrive at New York Penn Station on Thursday, the eighth of February, I quickly leave the train. The same government agent who had checked the train in Los Angeles peers at me exiting the train in New York. The watchers are watching me.
Chapter 24
Return to Work
On Monday, the twelfth of February, I return to work. Louis and Danny ask if the deliveries went smoothly.
I answer, “Yes, but I was followed.”
Louis says, “Who followed you?”
I answer, “The government. I was checked throughout the trip. Amtrak is regulated by the government, therefore the government can make inquiries about the arrival and departure of everyone who goes on the train. Any government security agency can check hotels, bus lines, whatever. They just check the credit cards and schedules. There are cameras in the train station, bus station and all over the place in the hotels in Las Vegas. There is Amtrak security on the train. It is really easy to monitor anyone. The government can also get records of all cell phone calls and bank card withdrawals with the exact time and place.”
Danny states, “You were probably followed because of our government contracts.”
I say, “Yes, I assumed that was the reason.” I fail to mention to them that I may be followed for numerous motives.
Danny adds, “Where you ever watched by anyone else since you’ve been working for us?”
“Yes,” I answer. “I went to a movie on East Eighty-Sixth Street. It was a nine o’clock show on a Saturday night, last September. The theater was crowded and I took a seat toward the front. A young couple watched me. The male was early thirties, white, well built, six feet tall and clean clothes. The female was late twenties, blond, nice looking, athletic, five ten and wearing dark pants. They sat three rows behind me. I felt them watching me. Fifteen minutes into the movie, I got up and went to the bathroom. I was in the bathroom one minute. When I opened the door to leave, that guy was coming in. I immediately left the theatre.”
“What do you think they wanted?” Louis questions.
“I have no idea.”
Danny says. “Maybe the guy had to go to the bathroom.”
“No,” I answer. “The girl was at the candy counter when I left the theater. She saw me leave. When I got onto the street, it was crowded. I quickly walked down Eighty-Sixth Street, than I ducked into the Barnes and Noble bookstore. I saw the guy and girl pass by the bookstore window shortly thereafter.”
“Then what did you do?” asks Louis.
“I left the bookstore, walked in the opposite direction to Lexington Avenue, went down into the subway and took the number six train to Seventy-Seventh Street. Then I got off the train and went home.”
“What was the movie?” asks Danny.
“It was a movie about cloning, starring Arnold. It was absolutely awful. I would have walked out on it anyway.” I did not tell Danny and Louis, that I stopped going to movies on Saturday nights. Now I go to the movies afternoons only.
“How come you never told us about these two people?” says Louis.
“It probably had nothing to do with L&J Incorporated. In New York City, people watch other people all the time. There can be lots of reasons they were watching me. I figure they may have had me confused with someone else. Or because they saw I was alone, they may have wanted to hold me up, take my wallet, whatever. So, I got away from this young couple as quickly as possible.”
Louis says, “It may have had something to do with our company. Danny and I started getting followed in June, 2000. We have government contracts so we notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the city. The government offered us protection from corporate spies. They wanted to monitor our Internet connection. We refused the offer because we are capable of protecting our computer system. After analyzing reasons for this new surveillance we realized it was the government following us.”
Danny then says, “We did not tell you about the government watching us because we did not want you to get upset and quit the job. We know you like privacy and don’t want any unnecessary problems.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “This job adds some excitement to my peaceful, boring, mundane life. You both have always been honest with me. You told me the disks contain a computer worm that destroys the network systems of your Nevada and California companies.”
Danny responds, “Those disks are meant to crash L&J’s computer program in case one of those companies begins to use the program for biological weapons development.”
I think, “Germ spreading.”
“How was the trip?” asks Louis.
“On the return trip, a freight train derailed in Arizona. We had to get on buses all the way to New Mexico. The kid behind me on the bus had a terrible cold and coughed for three hundred miles.”
“A germ spreader,” says Louis.
“Yes,” I answer.” “I caught a mild cold for two days. The first cold I had in seven years.”