by D. A. Maddox
Garrett’s flesh prickled. Twelve hours ago, this had all seemed a whim. Now, it was becoming real, and there was no longer anyone who could stop him from committing himself.
“How soon do you wish to see me?”
Garrett looked down over himself. This morning, he wore a dark navy, two-piece silk sharkskin suit with twin-stitched buttonholes and a double-vented back. A matching Bulgari tie. Platinum cufflinks and debossed leather brogues. Even his belt was silver-embossed black leather. All of this was for the meeting with Artie Blatch, who wanted to absorb the majority share in the local football team.
Garrett was dressed for work, not therapy.
We do not dress to impress, his father liked to say. We dress to intimidate.
“I—I was thinking … Thursday or Friday, if you have—?”
It was Monday. He’d have time to think, to reconsider if need be.
“I have time right now, Garrett. Do you?”
That took him aback. Now? There was no way. He’d only started considering this option last night, after he’d first seen the ad.
“I, uh … have a ten-thirty that I can’t really back out of—”
“Back out of it.”
His father might do that, if only to make old Artie sweat, but he would never do it because he had been told to do so. Certainly, Barnabas Rusk had never needed therapy in his life.
Garrett checked his watch. It was nine o’clock. There was no way he’d make it back in time.
“You’re overdue, Garrett,” she said. “I can tell. This will not wait.”
****
The stretch car made a slow left at 23rd and West End. Almost there, he thought. Do you really want to do this?
The answer, Garrett thought, was probably no. But he had to. Among the people who could afford her, Doctor McAdams was the most sought-after therapist of her kind in town, and he needed help. He needed direction, confidence, peace of mind—all of the things that his father, the proverbial master of his own universe, had failed to pass on to his son.
Also, not that it mattered much, but Garrett had already dropped a considerable amount of money. For $2,500 an hour—for a professional only two years in the field—she had to be good. But the thought brought him no comfort. It made him uneasy, even saddened him a little. And yet he’d paid four sessions in advance. Just the interest in one of his secondary bank accounts would cover that in less than a day, but money was still money.
Through the window to his right, the buildings of Las Fornis seemed to roll past him, as though the city moved and not the car. He could hardly feel the motion of the limo at all. From the inside, it was quiet enough for him to listen to his own breathing.
Strip clubs, brothels, television studios—every one of them closed at this hour. It was all decidedly upscale, none of it seedy from the outside. It was his first drive through this particular part of town, his first time looking upon these establishments in person, and yet many of them were counted among his assets.
The city was his playground. Literally. He owned nearly half of it.
Oh, and there was the Office of Employment, and it was actually open. Outside the front door, he could make out the end of a queue—mostly young people. Men and women probably his own age. They were beautiful, hopeful. Destitute. Desperate.
At twenty-two, the day after graduation, Garrett Rusk had come to the city and finally learned how his father had made his fortune. Then, at twenty-four, he’d come into his inheritance. Now, a year later at twenty-five, he still had little idea what to do with it.
I should tear it all down, he thought. Start over. Make the city something clean, something…
Safe, like school had been.
But that would be impossible, even for him. It would have been impossible even for his father, the Great and Powerful Barnabas Rusk. Las Fornis had been meant to be this way from the start. It was the anti-oasis, the heavily taxed dumping ground of America’s sin. If Garrett wanted clean, all he had to do was move. Sell out.
Just like Artie Blatch wanted.
Gazing up through the gap between the front seats to the rearview mirror—Garrett never drove himself anywhere—he studied his own face: ordinary eyes of cornflower blue, a short, deliberately messy cut of glossy black hair with just enough gel for a touch of stability. The eyes were from his mother, whom he’d hardly known before he lost her to a terrorist attack in the first days of the Second Uprising. The hair was from his father, struck down by a heart attack when Garrett was hardly past the age of transition.
But the way Garrett styled it would more likely have placed him among the old twentieth-century beat poets of New York City than as the only son of Barnabas Rusk, the real estate magnate of the city of Las Fornis, where fortunes could be made, or lost, with a toss of the dice, where morality came to die.
Children didn’t live here. There were no schools here. Few people of any age made Las Fornis their home. They came here to play out their fantasies, to gamble away their fortunes, to escape the police state the rest of America had become and to barter their souls.
Or to work. That, Garrett reflected, was what he was supposed to be doing. The power brokers of Las Fornis did not mingle with the common folk, not even the ones with money. If his father were watching him right now—either looking down from Heaven, or more likely, up from Hell—he’d be disappointed. Nothing new there.
At West End 444, the car stopped at the parking garage of a three-story office building with reflective glass for outer walls. It was almost like a smaller version of the Rusk Tower—albeit much smaller. It was well maintained and outwardly respectable, with wide concrete walkways, alabaster benches, and even a lane of half-grown trees. It looked every bit a doctor’s office, except for the parking garage, which sloped down from beyond the barrier bar into a dull, murky orange glow.
From the driver’s seat: “Mr. Rusk?”
They were still fifteen asphalt yards away from the ticket booth and the barrier bar.
“Yes, Armen. Pull up, please.”
Armen, like Tara Dormer, had been with the Rusk family as far back as Garrett could remember. He saw no point in calling Armen “Mr. Stevens” anymore, or in asking the friendly old driver to call him Garrett. Things had changed.
“Mr. Rusk, sir,” Armen said, ill at ease. “Forgive me for stating the obvious, but this isn’t our … turf, sir.”
Garrett locked eyes with him in the rearview. “I have an appointment, Armen.”
“A business appointment, sir?”
His father wouldn’t have tolerated this. “Depends on what you mean by ‘business,’ Armen.”
He had paid, after all. There was a transaction being fulfilled.
“Are you unwell, sir?”
Floor One, as the GPS monitor at Armen’s right revealed, was for the diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. There was also a urologist and an OBGYN. Floor Two was for psychiatric analysis and counseling. Floor Three was anxiety disorders and behavioral therapy.
“I’m … fine, Armen. I appreciate your concern.”
“This isn’t like you, sir.”
“Pull up, Armen.”
End of sample chapter
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