"Where did you go yesterday?" she asked. "Everybody was looking for you. About a dozen students came by, some several times. Fred Barnard from Intercontinental called twice wanting to know how it went at DCPD, and Dr. Alexander from accounting called about a committee that you agreed to be on."
"Alexander," I groaned. "I forgot all about that."
Apparently, the university had decided to put globes on all the streetlights with the letters "FBU" for Foggy Bottom University. The local residents felt that this was further evidence of the university encroaching on their neighborhood. DC Public Works didn't want to be responsible for the bulbs in case one of their technicians damaged a globe and university maintenance did not want to attach anything to city property. One contingent within the University wanted the lettering to be reminiscent of the gas light days while another felt that the lettering should be ultra modern. Several on-campus organizations felt that each globe should have the name of a different student organization. A different group felt that the globes should be world globes to represent the global aspects of the university. Yet another group felt the globes were an unnecessary waist of university money and wanted to scrap the idea all together. And so on. And so on.
In the university there are two kinds of people. First there are people who are busy doing things of some importance. Second there are people who dream up committees for other people to sit on in order to keep them from accomplishing anything of importance. Whoever dreamed up this globe idea was definitely in group two. So a committee was formed. Being a good citizen of the university I agreed to be on the committee.
Despite my aversion, and contrary to popular belief, committees play an important role in the university. Academia is a fertile ground for crackpot ideas. Most institutional structures from committees to peer reviewed journals serve to keep those crackpot ideas from escaping into the world of normal people. Only the most powerful ideas survive the gauntlet of institutional obstacles. In fact, if the same institutional barriers where in place at an insane asylum, it is likely that people would believe that insane asylums were also institutions of higher learning. But I agreed to serve on this wacky committee and serve on it I would.
"I'll call Barnard and Alexander. Any other calls?"
"Yes," Patience said pausing. "Gita called this morning." The air was heavy with anticipation as Patience looked at me waiting for me to explain who this caller was. Patience felt that one of her primary duties as my teaching assistant was to screen candidates for my social life. I was in one of those contrary moods and decided not to give in.
"Oh, Gita called. I'll have to call her back right away!" I said enthusiastically reaching for the phone.
"What about Barnard and Alexander?" Patience challenged.
"Who?" I said, dialing the phone.
"Don't tie up the phone for too long." Patience murmured crossing her legs and turning back to her computer screen. "I'm still expecting Smitty to call."
I dialed the number and it was picked up on the second ring.
"Intercontinental detective agency, Gita Ramana speaking."
"Hey Champ, what's up?" I asked partly for my own benefit and partly for Patience.
"I visited a few contacts this morning," she said, "and I might have come up with something. Oxenstein was dealing with a cheap con man named McNulty. Ryan or Brian McNulty. Nobody seems to be sure of his first name."
"That's odd. Daisy wasn't sure of it either. Maybe there's a clue in there somewhere." I said trying to sound like a real detective.
"I'll come by your office and drop off some papers and then I have to go out of town for a couple days."
It was almost like one of those cartoons. Gita hung up and the next thing I knew she was knocking at my door. Actually, I had begun looking at the files that I had taken from Oxenstein's computer. One of the files was a database containing two tables - addresses and payments. The addresses table had names, addresses and telephone numbers. The payments table had names, payments, and dates. The data in both tables was encrypted so I couldn't read either, but by running a query I could tell that all the payments were made to the same two people in the address table. I began tinkering with some encryption techniques and got so absorbed in it that the twenty five minutes it took Gita to get over to my office passed in a heartbeat.
"Find anything interesting?" Gita asked from the doorway.
"Hey Champ. Come on in. I might have something interesting, but I'm not sure what it is."
Gita walked in and glanced at Patience. I made mental note not to introduce her as Champ.
Patience this is Gita Ramana. Gita this is Patience McGrath.
"My name is really Carol." Patience said smiling as she offered her hand to Gita. "Dr. Wentworth just calls me Patience. You know how he is."
Gita smiled and nodded as though everybody knows how I am and puts up with me anyway.
"Have a seat Champ." I offered gesturing to the empty chair next to me. "I can't tell what any of this information in Oxenstein's database is, but I can certainly tell that all payments were made to the same two people. There are about an even number of payments to each. I'll bet that when we find out who they are we will know the con men he was dealing with."
"How long will it take to find out?" Gita asked.
"It depends on how sophisticated the encryption is" I replied. "It could take an hour. It could take a year."
"Well, you can work on that while I am out of town. I've got some goodies for you. Here is a background sheet on Brian or Ryan McNulty. He is a two-bit con man with a long rap sheet. I think he intentionally confuses his name because some of the stuff we dug up was under Brian and other stuff was under Ryan. Some times con artists do that to confuse witnesses."
"Maybe there are two different people and you have their stuff mixed up." I offered.
"I thought of that, but we have pictures and they are the same guy."
McNulty had an engaging smile beaming across a freckled face. He had prominent cheek bones and curly redish brown hair. He had the kind of face that stood out in a crowd and you could pick out of a line up with the lights dimmed.
"Maybe I'll ask around Oxenstein's place and see if anyone has seen this guy." I said, thinking aloud.
Gita turned to me even more serious than usual. "Listen to me Tad, and listen good. These guys belong to a loose gang of con men who could tear your guts out with a claw hammer while they were eating linguine with clam sauce and still feel like strawberry shortcake for desert. They may have been the one's who killed Oxenstein. The gruesome crime scene was certainly their style. This isn't like some computer virus that might cause you to loose some data. These guys mean business and they are way out of your league. Do not! Absolutely Do Not go over to Oxenstein's until I get back and can go with you."
"O.K. O.K." I said.
"I mean it Tad. These guys are bad news."
She softened a bit, patted my arm and smiled. "I'll be back tomorrow evening. Anything you need to do can wait till then."
"O.K. I'll wait." I said grudgingly.
"Promise?" she smiled.
"Promise." I felt like I was promising to do my homework before I went to Seven Eleven for a soda.
"Good. I've got to get to the airport. Call me a cab and have it pick me up on the corner downstairs."
Patience, a little overwhelmed by the intensity of the interaction, came out of her trance, picked up the phone and called the Cab Company. "I'll get it," she said. "It was nice to meet you Gita."
"Nice to meet you too Carol. Tad I'll call you when I get back in town tomorrow. Remember what I said."
With that she grabbed her overnight bag and briskly walked out.
I turned back to my desk and noticed that Patience was staring at me.
"What?" I asked, somewhat impatiently.
"Why do you call her Champ?"
"It's a long story."
Patience pulled back the tab on her diet coke and relaxed back into her chair. "I've got time," she said and waited for me to fill the conversational void.
"About five or so years ago we were working on a mail order fraud job together. The front man for the operation was an over-the-hill boxer who everybody just called The Champ. It could have been sarcastic for all I know but the guy was six two and two hundred and fifty pound with forearms like Popeye the sailor so he was still a threat to normal people. We managed to infiltrate the organization and were working the phones gathering evidence when he got wise to us. We were in a back room photographing some files when he walked in and caught us. He picked up a piece of lead pipe and started coming toward me threatening that he was going to put an end to our investigation. I instinctively stood between him and Gita, but Gita had a different idea. She threw me against the left wall. As he turned to me she came up from the side and kicked him behind his left knee. His leg began to buckle and he put his arm out to balance himself. As soon as he did she grabbed his arm and pulled him into a half nelson. He tried to reach around with his other arm and grab her, but she got that arm too and pulled it into a full nelson. It would have been almost funny if I hadn't been so terrified. Her feet were dangling about six inches off the ground. Anyway, he must have thought he would just flip her off his back so he lurched forward. As he did she pulled her knee up and pounded him in the crotch from behind. The force of her strike was amplified by the strength of his pull. The blow drained his strength and he was about to go down. Gita used her knee in between his thighs as an anchor and twisted the full nelson hard to the left. His right shoulder popped out of joint and he went down, hitting the floor in a pile of agony. He gasped a few times and then managed to say, "You bitch. You got a lucky move. When I get up I'm going to make a few lucky moves on you." Anger flared in her eyes. She pulled back her foot and with a kick that would have easily made a forty yard field goal, she drove the pointed toe of her navy blue pump up under his rib cage. She cracked a few ribs, tore some cartilage, and ruptured his spleen causing substantial internal bleeding. He lay in the hospital for a week, agonizing with each painful breath until he finally just gave up the ghost. When we found out what had happened, I said 'Well, I guess you're The Champ now!' and the nickname has stuck ever since."
Patience was sitting wide eyed but finally managed to ask. "Didn't she get into any trouble for killing the guy?"
"Well," I said. "It was self defense. But the guy never told anybody what happened. He couldn't admit that a six foot two ex boxer had been destroyed by a five foot five woman in pumps."
"How did she manage to better such a big guy?" Patience asked.
"Gita has some very specialized training. I don't know much about it because she simply won't talk about it. But I get the idea that at one point in her life she was training to become a professional assassin."
"Why would anyone want to become a professional assassin?" Patience asked. "Especially a woman."
"I can think of one reason. The pay is great. You can pull off a half dozen jobs and you are set for life. Besides attractive women are in great demand because they can go places where men cannot."
Patience blushed.
"That's not what I meant. An attractive woman can be somebody's date to a party and slip through security completely unnoticed. If a burly guy shows up at a party like that red flags go up everywhere."
"Does everybody call her Champ?" Patience asked.
"No. Nobody else has the nerve. I've just known her a long time so she puts up with me."
"Don't we all?" Patience said with a sigh.
"It part of my charm." I said smiling. Then I reached for the telephone. "Well, I guess I better call Barnard and Alexander."
Patience looked up but didn't say anything.
"Oh, right! Smitty is going to call." I said sarcastically. "Maybe I'll take a handful of quarters downstairs and use the pay phone."
Patience crossed her legs and ignored me. It felt a little chilly in the room but I ignored it and started looking through my email.
About ten minutes later Anjali Chakravarty our system administrator walked in and went directly over to Patience. "I set up those accounts you asked for." She said to Patience.
"Hello, Angel." I said cheerfully.
No answer.
Angel had a stony expression on her face and the temperature in the room had dropped again. With these two I didn't really need air conditioning.
"What??" I pleaded angrily, feeling ganged up on again.
"I feel like I'm being left out." She said maintaining her stony expression.
"What do you mean?"
"You have this new case and this new partner and I am feeling left out. Is your new partner a computer whiz?"
"No."
"Does she know how to crack encrypted data?"
"No."
"Can she break password security?"
"No."
"Well, what does she do?"
"She beats up bad guys when they pick on me." I offered, smiling, enjoying the absurdity of the imagery.
"Phoo." Said Angel. "I'll bet that's what she does."
"It's true." I said. "But since you're here. I do have something you can do."
Angel mellowed a bit. She never mellows much. But by her standards she had forgiven all. "What do you have for me."
"I have a database in which all the fields are encrypted. If you can decrypt the data for me it would be a big help."
"What are you looking for?"
"I'm not exactly sure. First, it appears as though all the payment records are associated with two people. I'd like to know who those two people are. Second, see if you can find anything on a guy named McNulty. His first name is Ryan or Brian."
"Which one?"
"Nobody seems to know, but see what you can figure out."
I went back to answering my email and in less than half an hour Angel returned looking very pleased with her self.
"The two people to whom the payments are made are both McNulty's. One is B.R. McNulty and the other is R.B. McNulty."
"How did you crack it so quickly?" I asked, impressed with her skill.
"There are standard encryption keys that people tend to use." She said in a slightly teasing tone of voice. It was a part of one of my standard lectures on computer security. "People choose a number that they will easily remember so they don't get stuck not being able to decrypt their data. Oxenstein used his birth year as the key. I cracked it in less than twelve tries." She announced.
"B.R. McNulty." I mulled over out loud. I'll bet that stands for Brian Ryan McNulty. No wonder people get confused over whether it is Brian or Ryan. He might even go by both names."
"Then how do you explain the other name R.B. McNulty?" Angel asked.
"Its fairly simple." I said. "It is a common transposition. Normally, it is considered bad database design to use a name as a key field because of the likelihood of misspelling. Oxenstein was probably typing in a record, transposed the initials and the database created a new record."
"But that doesn't explain all those payments." Angel pointed out. "About half are to R. B. and the other half are to B. R.. Further, R.B. and B.R. have different addresses."
"Of course!" I exclaimed. "He put in a change of address and transposed the initials. All of the payments before February are to B.R. and all the payments after February are to R.B. He was probably paying blackmail to B.R. McNulty and refused to pay any more so R.B. killed him. Yes, I am sure that R.B. McNulty is the man we are looking for."
Both Angel and Patience were looking at me with great suspicion.
"O.K. What is it?"
Patience began. "Dr. Wentworth. Normally you question your own ideas ad nauseum. You crisscross back and forth challenging and rechallenging your assumptions. Here you are defending your hypothesis with the most meager of evidence."
"I am defending it because I think I have it figured out." I said defensively. I thought I had solved the mystery, but of course I hadn't. I saw these two names as an error because it fit neatly into my understanding of database design. But the error wasn't in the database. It was in my preconceptions. This is an occupational hazard of academics and this one almost cost me my life.