She woke up the next morning feeling distant from the whole world. The weekend off. Nothing to do. She was alone.
She tried to go back to sleep, but her mind kept tumbling through the previous evening. She sat up and reached for her phone to check her messages. Nothing. She desperately wanted Zach to call her. She thought of phoning him but figured he should make the first move. She knew she could talk to Les about Zach, but she felt Les had hit the pause button. They were partners, would risk their lives for each other, and they were friends, but she couldn’t expect the world from him.
She dressed, ate, and biked a third of the way to Harper’s Ferry and back as fast as she could force herself to go. But the trip unsettled her. There seemed to be great bunches of litter alongside the pathway. She smelled death and, seconds later, spotted the carcass of a dead deer, its body teeming with flies. She caught a flash of broken glass, and before she could help it, she imagined stepping on it and Zach once again coming to her rescue.
Sunday, she was already tossing and fretting by 5:00 AM. She dragged herself out of bed, dressed, ate a banana, drank a cup of coffee, and ran fourteen miles. It was the only good time to run anymore—early morning or evening, that is, so you wouldn’t fry.
No rigors, no exhaustion, though, could quiet her mind. She was pummeled by a looping playlist: Zach. Eden. Bibles. Les. Gray Suit. Child’s Play. Mercenaries. Zach Eden Bibles Zach.
As she ran, she tried to focus on one thing, what she actually knew about Eden. Was that all it was, the street name for a counterfeit version of the treatment? Or could it be more than that? She replayed every time she had heard the word. First time couldn’t have been more than six weeks earlier, perhaps two months. Where had she been? Not the women at the hairdresser’s, not the man who wouldn’t talk to her. She couldn’t remember, likely because the first time it was simply a word, not yet part of a pattern, real or imagined. She cast around. She had an image of the district station, but that probably wasn’t right. The image of a park. No, not that either.
For a while, she managed to crowbar Eden out of her mind and pressed herself to pump her legs harder. She tried to bludgeon herself into numbness.
As she pushed herself toward an exhaustion that just wouldn’t come quickly enough, she kept returning to the blowup with Zach. She wondered if she should have told him about Chandler back when they’d met. God, there were so many differences between them. And why the hell hasn’t he phoned me? Her mind drifted back to Richard O’Neil hitting on her, and she was caught off guard by a rush of disconcertingly delicious feelings. Fantastic-looking. Rich beyond belief. Mesmerizing. Smart. She punched away the thought that he was 112 years old. Don’t think he charmed me simply so I’d lie in court. He was interested in me. He was cool, definitely cool. And these thoughts quickly morphed into a fantasy of the life they could have together. Why not? I’ll never worry about anything again. I’ll have the full treatment. Screw Zach.
She commanded herself to stop thinking such things, but Richard O’Neil started looping himself into her playlist.
By the end of the weekend, she not only realized but accepted that Zach deserved to be upset. She should have told him long ago. And now she should be phoning him to apologize and say she loved him.
But she just couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone.
15
Monday, July 16—09:18:37
Captain Brooks said, “What did I tell you two weeks ago? Forget about Eden.”
Only eleven days, I said to her, and she told me to lock it.
Jen said, “But it’s all changed since then, sir. Child’s Play said he was going to sell them Eden.”
“He told you this?”
“He was unconscious when we first visited.”
“So you psychically connected?”
“When we visited him again, there was this private security woman who stopped us right when we were starting to question him.”
“When?” He looked concerned, maybe even a bit pissed.
“Friday. End of the day.”
He rubbed his scar. I was starting to worry he’d expose bone if he didn’t lay off.
“Who was she working for?”
“Wouldn’t say.”
“Then you didn’t talk to him.”
“Not exactly.”
“Inexactly?”
“We heard it from Olive Ortega. She said that Child’s Play was going to sell her the treatment. Later in the interview, she called it Eden.”
“Did you ask her what she meant by this?”
“She didn’t have much to say.”
“Playing dumb?”
“I don’t think she needs to play at it, sir,” Jen said. “She told us she didn’t know anything about Eden. We—Les and me—asked if it was the full or modified treatment. They apparently hadn’t even asked that.”
“Why didn’t you tell this to Teko Teko Mea?”
“That’s his name?”
“I asked you a question.”
“It only came out when we questioned Ortega again after we met on Friday.”
No, it didn’t, I corrected her. Les told you. Thursday night. Pancho Porter’s garage. 21:22.45.
Jen ignored me. Damn, she was going to get all of us in trouble.
“You should have come and told me.”
“You said not to bother you with Eden gossip.”
“Then why are you telling me now?”
“Maybe it’s more than gossip.”
“So you Sherlocked it and concluded Eden is the street name for the black-market treatment.”
“Something like that.”
“Brilliant deduction.”
“Thanks.”
“Jen, I was being sarcastic. It’s pretty obvious.”
“But it’s good to know, isn’t it?”
“Only because now you can forget all the rumors and get back to your job.”
“But it means they can listen for it. Scan for ‘Eden’ and see who’s using it in conversations and texts.”
“Happy to hear you’ve been hired by the NSA.”
“Sir, I think you’re being unnecessarily hard on me.”
Go Cobalt!
“Do you now?” He turned up the voltage on his stare. I felt Cobalt Blue shrink back to Jen B. Lu. But then his look softened. He shook his head. “Jen, how many more weeks on your probation?”
“Two, sir. Just under.”
We watched him scribble the number 2 on his pad, make a circle around it and then scratch it out.
She said, “Do you want me to contact—”
“Teko Teko Mea?”
“—and tell him what we heard?”
“No. I’ll let him know. But you can—”
“Do my damn job?”
He almost smiled.
* * *
10:37:52, Jen’s phone text-dinged.
I eavesdropped. I mean, what’s a guy to do? Her eyes are my eyes.
From Zach: Hey, J. I’m trying to figure out how I’m feeling about all this. Mind if we take a couple of days. Maybe see each other Wednesday night?
Jen wrote out a long reply. Apologizing. Scolding. Saying she was hurt by his response. Saying she was sorry. But in the end, she deleted it all and typed, K.
She spoke to Hammerhead. She drank a coffee. She checked the notice board in the staff room. She was a ton of fun today.
Pinned to the notice board was a flyer for a weekly prayer meeting at a nearby fundamentalist church. It had a quote from the Bible, one of the usual “God’s gonna whup your sorry ass if you don’t be nice and give more money to your minister’s private airplane fund.” Jen ripped it down, but as she was about to bunch it up, her eyes fixed on the numbers attached to the quote. The usual format—I mean, I’ve studied this stuff. Book name chapter: verse.
“Chandler,” she said, “I wonder if you could help me focus on something I saw when you were switched off.”
Now we’re talking.
It wasn’t easy. Wit
h her help, I accessed her memories of her break-in at the Johnsons’, the Bible, and the receipts, and as before, all I saw was a blur of numbers and letters, as if someone has erased a bunch of pencil markings. But human memory is a pretty fascinating thing. For me, all I need to do is think about something and I’ve got it. For them, it seems they sometimes need to not think about it, and it pops into their head hours or days later. I’m calling it their memory, but it’s clear it isn’t the same as true computer memory.
Thus I sailed her mind this way and that, like I was a captain on a pitching ship on the high seas, and before long, there it was, rising clear to the surface like three neon-colored fish:
John 9:16
Acts 12:19
Spesians 4:11
“What’ve we got, Chandler?”
“Bad Bible studies. The first one doesn’t exist. There’s no John 9:16.”
“Either she jotted it down wrong, or my memory scrambled it.”
Not wanting to offend the boss, I kept quiet.
The second verse was one of those Biblical history bits. King Herod had decided to kill Peter, Peter escapes, Herod decides to put to death those who protected him.
We pondered that one a bit, but other than stretching it into a reference to exit, it didn’t seem to do much.
Moving on, I said, “Spesians might be her shorthand for Ephesians. And—sorry, Jen—this one is even more nothing than the last: ‘And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.’”
Bible studies over for now, Jen and I returned to the Washington Charity Hospital Complex to check on Child’s Play. Maybe sneak in this time to see him and detect some crimes.
No guard outside his room. Good news.
No one inside his room. Not such good news.
At the nursing station, we flashed her badge at three nurses or nursing assistants or doctors or patient care assistants or custodians. Everyone dresses the same, and my programming always fails me: I never have a clue whether we’re talking to someone who transplants hearts or changes dirty sheets. The badge-flashing routine always impresses me, although it didn’t seem to do the trick on them. It was one nurse’s first day, and he’d never heard of Child’s Play except when used as an expression. A second spoke very poor English and said, “He gone,” and made a whooshing motion of her arms that either signified he had been discharged or had learned how to fly. A third tried to check Child’s Play’s file but found no record he’d ever been there.
We were about to leave when the nice Lebanese doctor arrived. We asked about Child’s Play. He blushed. “I, um …”
We waited.
“I can’t really … it’s …” His eyes looked very sad.
“You can’t say where he’s gone,” Jen said.
“I can’t even say someone was here who has gone.”
“But—”
“Listen, they can boot me out of the country faster than …”
We waited to hear what it would be faster than, but instead he shook his head sorrowfully, turned, and walked away.
We headed over to V Street NW on a white and silver cop bicycle to pay a surprise visit to Delmar Johnson Jr.
“Delmar Johnson Jr. is a bit of an oaf.” Jen likes to school me on the subtitles of human character.
“I thought,” I said, “that oafs had to live in the country.”
“No. We have urban oafs. And this one is a damn lucky oaf.”
Delmar Junior was out on bail, facing only a charge of possession of an illegal firearm. The DA had decided a jury would rule that he acted in self-defense.
“Do you agree with that decision?” I said.
“That’s not my job.”
“I didn’t ask you that.”
“Dunno,” Jen said. “His father might have shot him first. It was a standoff. And his dad was the one who shot his mother. And they were refusing to exit. Sounds like self-defense to me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What?” she eventually said. “You don’t agree?”
I said, “I’m not so sure.”
Here’s the strange thing. If she had asked me the same question two years ago, I would barely have known what she was getting at. A year ago, I would have understood but wouldn’t have ventured an opinion. Six months ago, I would have toed the line. But I seem to be changing my mind. Well, that’s only an expression. Or is it? Could I be developing a mind? I wonder what that feels like, to have a mind and not merely organic circuits? I wonder if Jen will notice. I wonder if anyone will notice. I wonder what will happen to my mind when I die in three years.
We locked the bike in front of their apartment.
“Before we go up, I need to get one thing straight,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Is this the third or the fourth time you’ve been here? In other words, I want to know if you were the one who broke in.”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“It’s mapped all over your brain.”
“Then, yes, I did. You knew anyway.”
“I wanted to know if you trusted me.”
“Chandler, of course I do.”
“And?”
“Of course I don’t.”
Betrayed by your own partner.
“Don’t take it the wrong way. But the question is, would you lie for me? I mean, I’d cover for Les any day of the—” She froze and I caught a whiff of an argument they had had. She quickly recovered. “There might even be a circumstance when I’d lie for Hammerhead, although nothing comes to mind.”
“You never said whether you’d lie for me,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Say I screw up, and I get you in trouble. Would you take the blame and cover for me like you’d probably do for Les? Or would you lay it on me?”
“Jesus. I don’t even know what you means, in your case.”
“Me. Yo. Moi. Ahau.”
“What was that last one?”
“Maori. I’ve been boning up on it since we met Gray Suit.”
“Let’s go see the oaf, okay?”
The stairs again smelled freshly washed. Up on the second floor, the yellow police tape was gone, and the door had been crudely repaired. We knocked. No answer. We knocked again.
Delmar Junior came to the door in his boxers. Can’t say I blamed him. It was damn hot in there. But these had black and white kittens all over them.
We had arrested him. We had questioned him twice. But he gawked at Jen like he’d never set eyes on us before.
“Mr. Johnson, I’m Detective Lu. We met at the police station.”
We ‘met’?
I’m trying to make him comfortable.
He’s going to think you were in the next cell.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Thought I catch you before. You the Chinese chick who busted me. Am I right?”
“No hard feelings?”
“For what?”
“Listen, I wonder if I could come in and talk to you for a moment.”
“Do I gotta put on clothes?”
“No, that’s cool.”
He turned and walked back to the kitchen without giving us a second glance. It still smelled of dirty dishes, and except for the floor where the blood had been scrubbed off, it didn’t look like Delmar had an advanced degree in home economics. We looked at the empty high chair. The toddler was back with the neighbor. Delmar plopped down in his old seat. He didn’t invite us to sit down but Jen did so anyway.
“You not here to give me grief?”
“Nope. Your time of grief is almost over.”
“I’m not saying I wanted to shoot him. It just happened. And I ’specially didn’t want to see Ma killed. She was special.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. Just one of those things that happen.”
When you’ve pointed a loaded pistol at your dad.
“Say,” said Jen trying to sound offhand, “I wonder about something yo
ur Ma said.”
“You be talkin’ to her?”
“No, I mean right before she died. I was here, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Keep forgettin’.”
He lifted a joint from an ashtray on the table and lit it, taking a big pull. He offered it to Jen, but she said no.
“She said they were getting to Eden.”
“She always go sayin’ that.”
“Not going to heaven? You sure that’s not what she was saying?”
“Well, of course she be sayin’ that too. She sittin’ up there right now, watchin’ down on me.” He looked up at the ceiling and gave a little wave. “But she got that Eden bug in her head so bad. He did too, and that’s why they wasn’t goin’ near exit.” He put on a falsetto. “‘We don’t need to exit. Don’t you see, Junior? We go to Eden and you be taken care of.’ I had three months, four months of that shit before I decided to pop him.”
“Delmar, if I could give you a bit of advice. I’m a police officer and you probably don’t want to go saying things like that.”
He shrugged.
“I’d like to hear more about Eden. Do you know how they were going to get there?”
“She go on forever ’bout Eden. But they hardly had no money to take a car, and I never saw no bus ticket.”
“Did they tell you where it was?”
“She always wavin’ her Bible and goin’ on ’bout John this and ’Spesians that.”
You got that, boss? Spesians.
Got it, but it doesn’t get us anywhere. I think that was a dead end.
Meanwhile, Delmar was again mimicking his mother. “‘Don’t you feel it, son?’”
“Any idea—”
But he was now rising to a full preaching voice. “‘Let yourself feel it, son. It’s all ’round us.”
“Yeah, great. Any idea where she first heard about it?”
“Idea? … No.”
Jen’s heart sank.
“Hell, no idea at all. I can tell you exactly where and when,” Junior said.
“You can?”
“Well … where, anyways.”
“Okay.”
“It was that weirdo store.”
The Last Exit Page 10