The Broken Scarlet Sky

 "So tell me about your friend."

"He lives a couple of slips down from me at the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale. He has a small motor boat stuffed with books. We have been friends since the sixties. He is like a big amiable bear. Hairy and clumsy and comical in some ways. But a good friend none the less. The smartest man I know. Well book smart."

"Not street smart?"

"No. Not in the least."

I sat back in my chair for a moment. McGee sat still in my client chair. Confident and still. He didn't feel the need to fill the conversational void. I think we know some of the same things. Susan would shake her head and be amused at what she would call macho posturing. Still it was true none the less.

"So you think he walked into something that he couldn't handle?"

"Without a doubt. Look Meyer was a smart guy. He had developed a couple of algorithms that could predict how stocks would behave. When to buy and when to sell. Something like that would be worth a lot of money."

"So he went to MIT to sell it?"

"No I don't think so. Who would have the money to buy it there? He either went there for the last piece of the puzzle from one of his fellow math geeks or to connect with one of those Silicon Valley types who had the dough to buy the algorithm and do the real work of putting it to practice. I think he wanted to sell it. Look we have a great life down in Florida. We are retired. Do a little fishing. A little partying. At least as much as we can these. Meyer is even older than I am. Somehow it didn't happen. Somebody else must have gotten involved. I need you to find out who."

I thought about that for a minute. I didn't know anybody who had any connection to MIT. Susan was wired into Harvard not MIT. But that wouldn't be a problem.

"I guess we have to talk to someone who knows something about MIT. Luckily enough I know somebody who has connections there."

"Who a professor?"

"No. A leg breaker."