Free The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces by Ray Vukcevich Page A

you apply three to the twos and two to the threes and multiply you get 66666.”
    â€œOr maybe two groups,” Sky said.
    â€œWhat.”
    â€œLike this.” Sky wrote on the chalkboard.
    666 66
    â€œSo we have the number of the beast,” Lulu said, “and a mostly defunct highway featured in an old TV show?”
    â€œOr,” Scarface said, “the number of the beast and the number inked all over Randy Casey’s body.”
    â€œI think the Satan connection is barking up the wrong tree,” Dieter said.
    â€œIf you want Randy’s number,” Dennis said, “you can just add up the three twos and get six and the two threes and get six and put them together to get 66.”
    â€œExactly,” Sky said. “That’s a lot neater.”
    â€œThere is a sinister secret much closer to home,” Dieter said.
    We ignored him.
    â€œSo, what are we saying here?” Lulu asked. “That the reason 66 was written all over Randy’s body is that it is a secret number embodied in the name of the Russian remailing service four-e-four?”
    â€œNicely put,” Sky said. “But what about EES? Is it also embedded in there?”
    Dennis erased the chalkboard and wrote EES on it.
    â€œThis is not a hex number,” he said.
    â€œMaybe you could make that S be a five?” Sky said.
    â€œWe could try that,” Dennis said, “but it’s not very elegant. Suppose we simply pull no punches and assume this is a number in base 26. Hang on a minute. I’ll do the math.”
    He filled the board with figures and the others waited. A moment later, Dennis turned back to the group. “It doesn’t add up to anything,” he said. “Not only that but I tried using 5 for that S and still got nothing.”
    â€œWhat if you use 19 for the S and just Hex for the rest?” Scarface asked.
    â€œWhy 19?” Lulu asked.
    â€œWell, S is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet,” Scarface said.
    â€œBut that was the idea when we did base 26,” Dennis said. “And I already tried base 19, too. Nothing.”
    â€œBut you didn’t try thinking of EE as a hex number.”
    â€œActually it would be EE0,” Dennis said. “Here. EE0 is 3808 and that plus 19 is 3827 and the prime factors of that are 43 and 89 and 43 plus 89 gives us 132. Doesn’t help much.”
    â€œOh, no?” Scarface said. “Just what do you think half of 132 is?” He walked up to the board and wrote.
    66
    Everyone was quiet for a while.
    We saved the calculation Dennis had made in a file. Lulu told us of her theory about Gerald’s death being a crime of passion. We wondered how Randy fit into that theory and she admitted she hadn’t worked that out yet.
    â€œI think we may be onto something with the Russians,” Scarface said. “Maybe Gerald and Randy were both moles. Now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, someone is cleaning up the loose ends. That would explain the Evil Empire business.”
    â€œBut if Evil Empire Software really was evil,” Lulu said, “they probably wouldn’t call themselves the Evil Empire.”
    â€œI think it’s all the doing of you know who,” Dieter said. No one could think of another delaying tactic, so we let Dieter go on for a few minutes about the Secret Society of Mexican Food Cooks who, he was convinced, was the true power behind the scenes.
    â€œIt seems clear to me,” he said, “that Gerald and Randy were responsible for the posting of the secret ingredient on the net.”
    â€œBut no one even noticed,” Sky said. “There were hundreds of posts offering other ingredients. No one would be able to pull out the real secret ingredient from that mess.”
    â€œThat bombardment of other ingredients was pure genius on the part of … well, someone in the society,” Dieter said. “But the society must have figured Gerald would