Children of Paranoia

by Trevor Shane

  I turned another corner and started to run back to my host’s apartment. I pumped my arms and lifted my knees, kicking it into a higher gear and pushing the last two miles hard.

  My host was a nice guy. Roughly thirty years old, he was single and lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Jersey City. He was a computer programmer at some insurance company in downtown Manhattan. He took me out for drinks my first night in town and peppered me with questions. I answered a few and left a lot more unanswered. He knew the drill. He also knew that the more information he could pry from me, the more dangerous it became for him.

  I finished my run at a slower pace than normal. I blamed the lack of sleep.

  It was nearly noon by the time Jared and Michael pulled up in their rental car. We would have to move pretty quickly for me to make my flight. Jared was driving, so speed wasn’t going to be a problem. Jared swung the car around as Michael hung himself out of the passenger-side window. “Joe,” he called out to me as the car slowed to a stop, “your chariot has arrived.” He spread his arms out wide, welcoming me. “Come here and give me a hug, you ugly bastard.”

  I picked up my bag and headed toward the car. I had spent the last hour or so people-watching on the sidewalk in front of Macy’s. I watched the people as they strolled into the mall, destined to spend their day trying to decide which pair of jeans made their ass look smallest or which television set would best fit in their living rooms. There were moments when I was jealous, but my life, our life, is never going to be normal like that. “You guys are late,” I said as I stepped toward Michael’s outstretched arms.

  “Better late than never,” Michael whispered to me as he grabbed me into a big bear hug. “Get in the car. We’ve got to get moving.”

  I threw my bag across the backseat and climbed in.

  “Jared,” I acknowledged my old friend with a quick nod, making eye contact with him in the rearview mirror.

  “How’re things, Joey? I assume everything went well.” He showed me a wide grin.

  “Easiest job yet. No hitches. How about you guys?”

  “You don’t have to assume,” Michael said. He threw an edition of the New York Post in my lap. “Your lazy ass didn’t even make the paper.” I looked down at the front page. There, in bold print over a picture of two bloody bodies covered by formerly white blankets, was the headline “Bloodbath in the Bronx.” Beneath the picture, in smaller print, were the words “Mets Take Two from the Phillies to Pull within One.”

  “Holy shit,” I said as I flipped to page three to read the story. “You guys are going to get yourselves killed.” I looked at the picture and the headline again. “And you’re going to get me killed with you.”

  “They told me and Michael that they wanted us to stir things up. Well, Michael might have gone a little overboard.” Jared eyed me in the rearview mirror again. His smile didn’t fade. He was proud, proud of Michael, proud of the job we’d just done, proud of all of us. I began to read.

  Last night at 12:35, two men were stabbed to death in front of Yankee Tavern, a crowded bar near Yankee Stadium. Joseph Delenato and Andrew Braxton were walking out of the bar where they had stopped for drinks after attending the Yankee game when they were assaulted. The assailant approached Joseph first, stabbing him twice in the chest, before turning to Andrew and stabbing him in the throat. Both men died within minutes of the attack. Witnesses say that the assailant, a white male about twenty-five years old, moved quickly. He did not stop to rob the victims, nor does there seem to be any other motive for the incident. “I was with Joe and Andy all night,” said their friend Steven Marcomi. “We just stopped in for a drink or two. I’d never seen the [assailant] in my life. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. It’s not like we got into any fights or anything. I can’t imagine why this happened.” While motive remains unclear, police say that this was likely the work of an experienced killer. “Whoever did this,” Lt. John Gallow said to reporters early this morning, “knew exactly what he was doing. He was efficient and precise.” Andrew bled to death on the scene. Joseph’s lungs were punctured when he was stabbed. “Technically, Joseph drowned in his own blood,” said the coroner’s office. “Each stab wound punctured a separate lung. They quickly filled with blood. The poor kid eventually drowned.” Joseph’s mother told this reporter, “I don’t know who could have done such a thing. My boy was such a sweet boy. He didn’t deserve this.” Andrew’s family was not available for comment.

  Next to a picture of the bar was an artist’s sketch of the perpetrator. “Nice picture, Michael. I’m sure your mother’s going to be real proud.”

  “That shit doesn’t even look anything like me.” Michael grabbed the paper away from me to look at his sketch again. It really didn’t look anything like him. It was typical. All artists’ sketches did was build up general suspicion. No matter what the sketch looked like, everyone knew someone who looked a little bit like it.

  “And the quote from his mother. Real fucking precious. Like she doesn’t know why her son was killed.” Michael paused for a second, going over the story in his head again. “But did you see the quote from the cop? Precise and efficient. I’d like to get that quote on my business cards.”

  “Did you really have to make things this messy?” I looked again at the bloody picture on the front page and then up at Michael.

  “Maybe not, but it was my best move. I had to take both of them out and I had to do it before one A.M. or else I risked them finding out about your guys’ jobs and getting all defensive. When I saw them go into the bar, I knew that my best chance was to hit them right when they came out. I figured they’d be buzzed and their reflexes would be numbed.”

  “That’s how you were able to stab the first guy twice before even turning on the second?” Michael was good at what he did. I had to give him that.

  “Yeah. That and the fact that the second guy half knew what was going on. An innocent would have run. Instead, this guy stands there frozen. He knows what’s happening but can’t remember how he’s supposed to respond. He’s got this dumb look on his face, like ‘Am I supposed to run? To fight? To take a shit?’ Pffft.” Michael made the sound of a deflating balloon. “Too late.”

  “And then what’d you do?” I asked Michael.

  “Slipped away into the cool Bronx night. That’s one scary borough, man. I’m telling you, I was the least dangerous looking guy on the street.”

  I began flipping further through the paper. “Jared’s is on page fourteen,” Michael said. I turned to the page. There, tucked onto the far right-hand side of the page, was a story about an affluent Westchester couple that left their car running in their garage and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. He was a litigation partner at some big law firm in Manhattan. She had been an advertising executive who gave up her career to take care of the children. The strange part of the story was how both children were found sleeping on the porch in the morning, wrapped in blankets, safe from the fumes. Officials surmised that the parents put their children outside before taking their own lives. No one could fathom why such a seemingly happy couple would want to kill themselves.

  “You’re a master, Jared. Truly brilliant work,” I said as I flipped further into the paper past the article about my friends.

  “You’re not in there, Joe,” Michael said as he continued to watch me flip the pages. “Nothing about your mark at all.” Just another body, I thought. Not newsworthy. Just an average woman killed in an average way. Nothing to see here. “You sure you actually remembered to do your mark?” Michael asked.

  “Yeah, I remembered. It was easy.”

  “Yeah, but your kill was probably the most dangerous,” Jared said. “Everything was set up for yours. We were just supposed to create noise. You had to take her out, show them that there are consequences.” Jared continued driving down I-295, changing lanes and slipping through traffic. “Her husband had to learn a lesson. You don’t take out eight of our guys in one year without repercussions.”

 
; “I read the preliminaries,” I said to Jared. I stared out the window at the faces in the cars that we passed, scanning each one, trying to guess if they were one of us, one of them, or if they were just one of the lucky uninitiated masses. There was no way to tell. We passed a silver Volkswagen Jetta with a cute college-age girl behind the wheel and one of her friends in the passenger seat, passed a big black Escalade driven by a large man with a mustache and a tattoo on his left arm, passed a black couple driving a small red sports car, kept on moving forward, kept on passing people, all potential friends, all potential enemies. All I knew for sure was that I had one more professional killer who had plenty of reason to want me dead.

  “What’s next on your agenda?” Jared asked me.

  “I’ve got a lecture to do. You guys?”

  “A little rest and relaxation for me.” Michael smiled. I looked over at Jared, wondering where he was off to next.

  “I’ve got another job to do. It shouldn’t be tough. After that, maybe we should try to get together.” Jared nodded his head toward the passenger seat. “Where exactly are you headed for your vacation, Michael?”

  “You know I’m not supposed to tell you two losers. What if you’re caught and tortured, you might give me up.” That was protocol. Even meeting for these moments after a job was unorthodox. We were always taught that as few people should know where you are as possible. It was safer that way. Keep moving. Keep quiet. Stay safe. It was boring and lonely as hell. “Besides, you two will probably cramp my style.” There was a pause. “But maybe, I might be headed to Saint Martin—the French side. Great sun, great food. My place is big enough for the five of us. Me, you two, and the two girls I’m bringing home each night.”

  “What do you think, Joe? Saint Martin? Sit in the sun, drink liquor through a straw, stare at the beautiful women cruising the beach?” My eyes met Jared’s again in the rearview mirror. He was my oldest friend. We’d known each other since long before we knew what type of life we were destined for. When we were in first grade, we played cops and robbers. We pretended to be firemen, astronauts. This, we never imagined. We never played good and evil. Jared looked a little tired, a little worn down.

  “I’m in,” I said.

  At the airport we went our separate ways again. Michael dropped me off first. He’d drop Jared in a different location and then return the rental car. As they drove away, Michael leaned out of the passenger-side window, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Remember, young Jedi, the force will be with you always.” I could still hear Michael laughing as I walked through the glass doors into the terminal. From here on out, if the three of us saw each other, we were strangers.

  When I got to my terminal, I went to the flight desk and got a seat assignment for a person whose name wasn’t mine. I showed them an ID with my picture on it but a stranger’s name. Then I boarded a plane to Chicago. It’s a shame that it wasn’t a longer flight because as soon as I leaned back in my chair, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. I didn’t budge when we took off. I barely noticed when we landed. It had gotten to the point where the only place I could ever get a deep sleep was on an airplane.

  Three

  In Chicago, I was supposed to assist in a lecture to some local kids. I knew what to expect. It was more an initiation than a lecture. Each kid would be roughly sixteen years old. They’d still be innocent. They’d still have two years left before their worlds began to collapse around them. They’d have two years to get used to the idea that there were people out there who wanted to kill them. I was invited to these things because I represented death. They didn’t know it yet, but I was their future. One of our Intelligence guys would lead the lecture. He would introduce me near the end of his talk. My job was to tell these kids about what I did for a living, to show them what they might one day become. It was kind of like career day for the criminally insane.

  The lecture took place in the den of a house in a wealthy Chicago suburb. The kids sat on couches and upholstered dining room chairs that the adults had pulled into the room for the lecture. Everything was set up so that the kids’ eyes would be directed toward an empty wall where the television usually was. The man hosting the event had three children, two boys and a girl. The oldest child, one of the boys, would turn sixteen in two months. The father had taken the two younger kids into the city for the day. They’d eventually have to sit through this lecture, too, but not today. Most parents tried to shield their kids from the War for as long as they could.

  All told, there were eight kids there, all from around Chicago, all within three months of their sixteenth birthday. There were three girls and five boys. Each of the kid’s parents had dropped them off for the lecture, kissing them, promising to come get them in roughly four hours and driving off, probably crying as they drove. This was no bar mitzvah or first communion. This wasn’t about ceremony. This really was the end of these kids’ innocence. None of them really knew what the lecture would be about, but none of them were clueless either. When you grow up in these families, like I did, you can’t help but know things.

  I sat in the back of the room on one of the chairs. I’d have to watch most of the lecture, only contributing my part at the end. Then the lecturer and I would take questions. We always got a lot of questions. We answered the ones we could. Some questions just went unanswered. The lecturer today was a guy named Matt from Intelligence. I’d never seen him before. I would probably never see him again. There was no rhyme or reason to our pairing. There never was. Matt wore a dark blue, pinstriped suit. His hair was cut short and he wore silver wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like a banker. These kids, they were our investment.

  Matt began his lecture. “Hello, everyone. My name is Matt. I’m here to tell you guys a bit about the world and about how you fit into it. I’m not here to lecture you. This is a talk. Feel free to ask questions at any time. I guess this will kind of be like your high school sex-ed classes, only I’m going to tell you some things that you don’t already know.” That’s right, butter them up, I thought. His line got a nervous laugh from the kids. They shot quick glances at each other, trying to figure out if it was okay to laugh. It’s okay to laugh, kids, I thought. You might as well laugh now while you still can. Matt continued. “Before we get started, I think it would be useful if everyone introduced themselves, first names only. Then tell us a little something about yourself, about clubs you’re in, sports, hobbies, favorite band, whatever.” They did this in every lecture that I had attended. I always thought it was strange because from here on out, so much of their world would be shrouded in secrecy. Normally, if you get ten of us in a room together, the idea is to share as little information about each other as possible. There is safety in silence. This was different. This was the first time for these kids. It was important for them to know that they weren’t alone. It was important for them to know that there were others out there, people on their side, people dealing with the same issues as them, other people who, like them, would go on to lead lives full of fear and hatred. Matt’s eyes turned toward the kid whose house we were in. “Ryan,” he said, as if he were an old friend of the family, “why don’t you start?”

  Ryan stood up. He was a big kid. He looked like an athlete. He was nervous, though. He put one hand in the pocket of his jeans to try to keep it from shaking. “Hi, my name is Ryan. I’m fifteen, going to be sixteen in two months. This is my house and I play football.” Football. If Matt weren’t about to fuck with Ryan’s head, Ryan probably could have been a popular kid. Maybe he could have been homecoming king. Maybe he could have dated a cheerleader. Maybe. The girl to his left spoke next. “Hi, my name is Charlotte. I just turned sixteen and I play the violin.” Charlotte glanced at the other kids’ faces as she spoke. When she was finished, she quickly turned her gaze back to her lap. It went on like that for the next fifteen minutes: Rob, the hockey player; Steve, the science club president; Joanne, the drama club member. None of these kids knew each other. They had been handpicked for this very reaso
n. Even if they had friends that were on our side, they weren’t supposed to know it. Jared and I weren’t supposed to know that we were both part of the War. The fact that we’d found out was just dumb luck.

  When the kids were done introducing themselves, Matt went on. “Okay, I know you guys are nervous. You’re nervous for two reasons. First, you’re nervous because you don’t know why you’re here. Second, you’ve got an idea about why you’re here and you’re nervous that you might be right. You all know that you are different. You know your lives are different from your friends’. You can feel it. I know that you’ve asked your parents questions over the years that they’ve refused to answer. Well, first let me assure you that they refused to answer your questions because they were trying to protect you.” Matt paused for effect. “I’m here because soon everything is going to change for you. Ignorance will no longer protect you. I’m here to tell you the truth.”

  The truth? The word bounced in my head. It echoed there for a moment and then died away before I had time to think too hard about it. Matt jumped right in. “How many people here have had a close family member murdered?” Six of the eight kids raised their hands. Matt raised his hand too. I could have but chose not to. “How many of you have had a parent murdered?” Three of the eight. As they raised their hands, the kids looked around the room, the expressions on their faces a mix of fear and amazement. The names, the clubs, the sports, those things didn’t help any one of these kids bond. The death, that’s what bonds them together, that’s what bonds all of us together.

  “Strange, don’t you think?” Matt nodded. “Well, my job here today is to tell you who killed your parents”—Matt made eye contact with the three kids who had lost parents—“and your relatives”—he lifted his head and gazed across the broader room. At this point, Matt turned on the projector that he had hooked up to his laptop. It projected an image against the blank white wall. All of the kids were now hooked, their eyes fixated on the picture in front of them. In their wildest dreams, this is not what they expected. When I was in their spot, it wasn’t what I had expected. I remember how shocked I was. The picture glowed on the wall. It was a picture of a white man, roughly thirty years old, with blond hair, brushed to the side. He looked like a television star, handsome, strong. The next picture was of a black man, roughly fifty years old, with a white beard and glasses. Matt clicked a button on his keyboard. The next picture was of a dark-haired woman with deep-set eyes and a slightly crooked smile. Another picture, this one of an Indian man wearing a turban, then one of a chubby white man with a crew cut, then one of a young black woman with her hair tied back, a Hispanic woman, a Korean man, another white man, another white woman, a woman wearing a Muslim headscarf, a man with a long beard, a Chinese woman, and on and on. This little slide show lasted nearly twenty minutes. We had video. We had plenty of video, but they’d tested it and the pictures always had more effect. The pictures gave the kids time to ruminate on the faces. I had seen nearly all of these slides before. There were only a few new additions. Each of these people was one of our enemies. We knew it. About half of them had been eliminated already. The rest were still on the list.