Chapter 5: Cyberking

"Okay, so it goes like this," Oz said.

He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of John.

"There's a forum. I won't say the name. It's the kind of place where people post things that get other people arrested."

"Great," I said.

"Eleven years ago a user named KING joined it. Within a year he'd won every contest on the board."

"He broke a bank's vault system as a joke and mailed them the bill for his time."

"He did not," I said.

"He did. Everyone called him Cyberking."

"Nobody ever saw his face or learned his name. Then seven years ago he stopped posting, and people said he'd gone legit."

Oz pointed at John with his spoon.

"Everyone said he'd started a company. Nobody could prove it."

John's face did something complicated.

"You're saying I'm a criminal."

"I'm saying you're a legend," Oz said. "Those are different on a good day."

"And a bad day?"

"Same thing, but with lawyers."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

John looked at me, and then he laughed, too, quietly, holding his ribs.

For a minute the apartment was just three people in a kitchen on a Saturday, eating cereal for dinner.

It was nearly midnight when I woke to a light under my bedroom door.

I had given John the couch and put Oz in charge of the locks.

I found John standing in my room with the lamp on, because he'd gone looking for a bathroom and walked through the wrong door.

He wasn't looking for a bathroom anymore.

He was looking at my wall.

I'd covered the whole thing, floor to ceiling, in paper.

News clippings, printed forum threads, a map of the city grid with eleven red pins.

A photo of a man with a kind, tired face holding a fishing rod: my father, Leonard Lindeman, at fifty-eight.

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