The Maltese Cube (Chapter 5)

What happened before in Chapter 4

Mac gets Pindler and Gassly out of his office and consoles his secretary Umax after the verbal abuse she received from Pindler. Sherlock calls in and gives Mac the lowdown on Apple and Apple related user groups. Lastly Sherlock drops the bombshell that he may know who has the Maltese Cube!

Chapter 5
Cube, Cube, who’s got the Cube?

How the heck did Sherlock know who had the Cube? I paused before responding.
‘Oh really? I had two gentlemen in my office this evening that would like to hear this also.’ I said.

‘Were their names S. Pindler and J.L. Gassly?’

Sherlock has never ceased to amaze me. Just when I thought he couldn’t know more, he springs one out of his hat.
‘How did you know that?’

‘They were two of the names that came up in my searches.’ Sherlock paused for a moment. ‘Mac, do you remember the Too brothers?’

‘The who brothers?’

‘The Too brothers, Toocee and Tooey?’
‘Oh yeah. Didn’t they have a cousin named Toogee-ess(1)?’

‘That’s them.’ He replied. ‘They had dealings with those guys back in the early nineties. I haven’t heard very much from them in a long time. Pindler and Gassly are bad news boss.’

‘I’ll try to keep that in mind.’ I said. ‘What can you tell me about who has the Maltese Cube?’

‘From what my sources have put together, it was last seen in the possession of a man named Newton(2).’

‘Newton!’ I said surprisingly ‘There’s a name I haven’t heard from in awhile.’

‘You know this Newton boss?’

‘Yeah, I know him. He was my personal assistant a few years back. Before you joined us.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘I had to let him go. Oh, he was smart enough and did everything I could expect from him, but he had a speech problem.’

‘A speech problem?’

‘Yeah. I had to talk slowly, so he could understand me. Even then, what came back was sometimes garbled. He was working on it and doing well, but some people made fun of him and he just disappeared after awhile. Still, he was better than anyone else I hired afterwards. I had to learn a new language, grease Palms and do Handsprings to get those guys to do anything(3).’ I shook my head in amazement at what some people will go through for convenience.

‘Do you know where to find him now Mac?’

‘Yeah, I think so. I hope so for his sake. If you were able to find this out, I imagine that Pindler and Gassly could too.’

‘You going to give these Apple Pi folks a call?’

‘That seems to be a logical step. Thanks for the info Sherlock. I’ll talk to you later.’

‘Good night boss.’

After Sherlock hung up, I sat in my office contemplating my next move. Umax came in and said goodnight. I looked up some numbers and headed for the street, wanting no more than a good nights sleep. Sleep that would not come easy.

Notes for Chapter 5

(1) Toocee, Tooey, Toogee-ess ‘“ More word play with Apple history. The Apple II (2) series of computers were the bread and butter for the company for many years. The IIc (Toocee) and IIe (Tooey) were some of the finest personal computers available at the time, and Apple’s best sellers. The IIgs (Toogee-ess) was a great computer in it’s own right (with it’s own GUI no less), but Apple’s major resources were used for Macintosh development and the II series ended with the gs model.

(2) Newton ‘“ The Newton was a handheld PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) that predated the Palm series and was an amazing accomplishment considering the anarchy that ruled at Apple in the early to mid 90s. Several factors lead to its demise. First and foremost because it was an Apple product, the press was drooling at the chops to criticize anything that was Apple related (as compared with today?). The comic strip Doonesbury had a week long series poking fun at its handwriting recognition problems. Also, it was rushed to market before some of the bugs could be dealt with. Lastly, it was overpriced. With practice, it would learn your handwriting and allow you to enter in whatever data you wished.

(3) Palm and Handspring ‘“ These are the companies that make the PDAs that most people use today. Not nearly as elegant as the Newton, they also force you to learn a new handwritten language to enter data into them. They are, however, competitively priced and easy to use after a fashion.