Regeneration

by Max Allan Collins

  Feeling the self-pity descending, she fought it, refusing to feel sorry for herself … except maybe a little, tonight, in this dreary little motel room. But starting tomorrow she would pick herself up, dust herself off, and go on about her business the best she could.

  After all these years, Joy had learned that the one and only thing she could always count on about life was how capricious it was: One minute you’re flying high, the next crashing down … only to rise from the ashes once again. Wasn’t it only a few hours ago she had feared and hated Jack? Now she loved him again, and he was her comfort, her protection, even her future.

  Life was crazy. And that gave her hope.

  Jack got up from the chair and came over to the bed, sat next to where she lay, took her hand in his. “If you’re wondering what will likely become of us, we’ll probably end up in a witness protection plan.”

  “For how long?”

  He shrugged. “Till after the officers of X-Gen have been fully prosecuted, and convicted.”

  “Years?”

  “Years.”

  “Does that mean I won’t be going back to Kafer?”

  “Not until it’s all over. It would be too dangerous.”

  She hadn’t thought about that. But what about her clients, her meetings with celebrities?

  “Why am I even bringing it up?” she asked, glumly. “Once ol’ ‘Gray Fox’ Kafer finds out I’m not who he thought he hired. I’ll be out on my butt.”

  “Maybe not. I know Chuck Kafer pretty well—and I know his high opinion of you. It’ll only get higher when you stand up and do the right thing, here.”

  “You think so? You really think so?”

  “I really think so.”

  “I don’t know….” Joy swallowed, her gaze careening around the shabby motel room, dizzily. “This is all happening so fast—”

  Now she was whining….

  Jack settled in next to her, put an arm around her shoulders. “Baby, trust in me, trust in us, and it’ll all work out…. And we’ll be together, that’s what’s most important.”

  She nodded numbly; despite her concerns, fatigue was overtaking her. Resting her head on a pillow, she lay on her side, facing Jack, who was studying her lovingly.

  Her eyes closed but her mind wouldn’t shut down. “Jack … what made you suspicious about X-Gen, in the first place?”

  “You mean besides them snipping me down yonder, without my go-ahead?” He sat up, one elbow resting on the bed. “There was a woman, a talented, very nice woman … her name was Rachel … who had your job before you. I did business with her, just like we have.”

  “Exactly like we have?”

  He grinned a little. “Well, no—Rachel and I were only friends….”

  “This woman died in a car accident, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Susan mentioned her….” So had X-Gen’s Larue, actually.

  “Hit-and-run,” Jack said. His face had turned stony. “They never caught the son of a bitch.”

  Joy raised her head from the pillow a little. “But it was an accident, right?”

  He frowned and bitterness edged his voice. “Of course it wasn’t an accident! Wake up and smell the autopsies, Joy.”

  She swallowed. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because I read the police report, and an eyewitness—a homeless man—saw it go down. From what the witness said, it was an intentional act.”

  Now Joy lifted herself on one elbow. “But Jack, really … you’re going by a homeless man….”

  “Because a homeless guy was the only witness, he can’t be believed?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. But many of them are drug addicts and schizophrenics. You have to admit—”

  Jack was almost scowling. “He was a Viet Nam vet, for Christ’s sake, down on his luck….”

  “Probably trying to get a little money from the police for, what do they call it? Snitching?”

  “Jesus, Joy! Listen to yourself!”

  “Okay, okay! I believe you.”

  “Sorry. Guess I’m just tired….”

  She stroked his forearm. “Me, too. But go on, go on … the homeless man?”

  He sighed. “Anyway, a few days after the accident, I tried to find that homeless guy, to talk to him about what he saw … and he’d disappeared. I asked around and word was he’d gone looking for greener panhandling pastures, and I sort of forgot about it. Shouldn’t have.”

  “Why?”

  “About two months later, he turned up dead, drowned— washed up under the pilings of the Pier, at Santa Monica.”

  That made her shiver, particularly thinking of the fun times she and Jack had spent on the nearby beach….

  But she said, “Probably drunk. That kind of terrible tragedy must happen all the time.”

  “Terrible tragedy? Is that sarcasm?”

  “No … no … it’s a human life. What kind of monster do you think I am, anyway?”

  He sighed a laugh. “I don’t think you’re any kind of monster … but there is something else.”

  She waited for him to go on.

  Jack’s expression grew pained. “Rachel was failing, mentally— I could tell it the last few months we were working together. She was forgetting things, simple things, names, mostly, appointments….”

  “How old was Rachel?”

  “She was supposed to be forty. I’m guessing she was at least sixty.”

  “She was one of us.”

  He nodded. “I believe Rachel was suffering from Alzheimer’s. And Dr. Green discovered this, in his monthly exams, and X-Gen ‘terminated’ her.”

  Joy drew in a quick breath. Ashen, she asked, “To … to make room for me?”

  “To make room for some X-Gen client, sure. But mostly to get rid of deadwood—and prevent some insurance-company doctor from taking too close a look at her.”

  “It’s horrible … unthinkable….”

  He touched her arm, petting her. “You see, they want to keep us working as long as we can work … but once nature takes its inevitable course, we’re eliminated. We’re workhorses to them. And when we break down, there’s always another aging Boomer to step in—and for us, always room at the glue factory.”

  “Break down,” Joy said softly.

  “What?”

  “At my special training session, in my class, there was a guy that had a mental breakdown … hell, a meltdown.” She shook her head, remembering that ghastly night in the bell tower. “His name was Rick….”

  She told Jack about finding her classmate hanging in the belfry during her session at Simmons. “I mean, I thought he’d gone into a full-blown nervous breakdown, you know? Couldn’t face the future, but now …”

  “Now you’re wondering if he wasn’t murdered, weeded out, because he’d washed out of the program.”

  “Yes … and, like all of us, he knew too much to be let out. My teacher, Mr. Hanson, told me X-Gen was founded by some of his students….”

  Jack averted her gaze. Suddenly he swung off the bed, and wandered over toward the window, as if the closed plastic curtains were providing a view. His expression was grave—even in the dimly lighted room, she could see that the blood had drained out of his face.

  “Jack—what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Joy, there’s … there’s something I haven’t told you. Something I wasn’t … well, I wasn’t sure if you were ready to hear this.”

  She sat up. Threw her hands in the air. “Hit me with your best shot, Jack! What the hell else is there left that you could shake me with?”

  He turned, his hands in his pockets, head lowered. “You know I was out of town for a few days—in the Midwest. Well, I saw your teacher this weekend.”

  Astounded, Joy said, “You saw Don?”

  Jack nodded. “He was my teacher once, too—back then, Simmons was the only college where the special session was taught. There are half a dozen locations now, all over the country, more all the time, but … that’
s not the point, really.”

  “What is the point?”

  “I stopped by and told him I was in Des Moines on business and just came by to say hello….”

  “You don’t think Mr. Hanson is part of the X-Gen conspiracy, do you?” Joy couldn’t imagine Don being so cold as to make love to her, knowing what fate awaited her….

  “No, he wasn’t.” Jack sighed. “And I don’t think he realized what hatched out of a lively discussion in his economics class six years ago, about the repercussions the Boomers would have on Social Security, Medicare, the job market … not to mention our sheer numbers giving us the upper hand in any major decision. Think about it, Joy…. We’ll have the voting power to give ourselves anything we want.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted. “We’re going to be very unpopular with the younger generation.”

  “We already are. Or haven’t you noticed?”

  She had, starting back with how disrespectfully she’d been treated in the bathroom at Frank Tomas’s agency by those two younger women.

  “I told Mr. Hanson … Don … everything I know, everything I suspected,” Jack was saying. “I told him about you, and me … and he told me about you and … well, he told me he also thought highly of you. I believe his heart was in the right place, I really do, that he wanted to help people like us, our generation, our confused, selfish generation….”

  “Why do you keep talking about him in the past tense?” A chill was coursing through her. “Like he’s … dead?”

  “Because, Joy, he is.”

  She gasped; covered her mouth and the tears came in a terrible rush. Then Jack was holding her, whispering the horrible truth. “Don ‘killed himself’ … slashed his wrists in the tub. He left a note and the police say it was in his handwriting. It said since the loss of his wife, his life had been empty, a sham. And that he’d gone to join her.”

  She hoped they were together; she did hope that….

  “We know he was murdered, Joy, you and I, don’t we? I told him on Saturday, all my suspicions, and he was livid with rage, he was going to do something about it. I warned him to be careful, asked him to work with us to expose X-Gen, but he said he would do something about it … and the next day he was found dead.”

  “They … they must’ve had his house bugged, too.”

  “Oh, they did—but when we spoke, it was outside, on a bench on that lovely campus. I knew there was a good chance his house would be wired. Believe me, I took precautions.”

  Joy curled her legs up, hugged them to her. “You know he did love his wife … and missed her. After what you told him, he could have chosen to take his own life. It’s possible.”

  “No. It’s another X-Gen termination—a classic one. Built-in motive. That’s why I stayed over, Joy—so I could nose around campus a little, talk to the police.”

  She was shivering. “T-these former students of Don’s who started X-Gen … you don’t think they planned from the start to … use us up, and then … get rid of us?”

  Jack pulled the blanket up over her. “Maybe. Or maybe some enterprising young lad in financing came up with a nifty new cost-cutting tool.”

  Joy’s mouth felt thick; her brain seemed to throb. “This … this can’t be just about money.”

  “Yes … and no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He lay down next to her on his back, elbows winged out, as he stared at the ceiling. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  She shook her head. “I was an only child.”

  “Me, too. But there was a family that lived across the street from me when I was growing up … two brothers, one quite a bit older than the other. The older brother ignored the younger one … really treated him like shit-on-a-stick. Parents liked the older brother better, too—he was smarter, friendlier, the chosen son. Then one bright sunny day, the younger brother shot the older one. Killed him dead as Janis Joplin.”

  Joy cocked her head. “You’re going to have to interpret that one for me….”

  Jack propped himself up on one elbow, looking at her. “Don’t you see? This is about something more than money! It’s about one generation pitted against the other. They’ve been living in our collective shadow … forced to grow up listening to our music, watching our movies, wearing our clothes … they’re the ignored, put-upon little brother.” He paused. “Only little brother isn’t so little anymore, and isn’t the least bit intimidated by the aging likes of us. He’s growing stronger, beginning to see the cracks in our foundation—and believe me, we have our share—and he’s starting to see the threat we pose to the bright future of little brothers everywhere.”

  “I never thought of it that way….”

  He let out a hollow laugh. “It’s ingenious, really, X-Gen’s plan … preying on the two things our generation holds most dear— work and youth.”

  “Where’s love in that equation?”

  “A distant third maybe. Sad, isn’t it? But true.”

  Suddenly Joy was more frightened than ever. She put her arms around Jack. “Please hold me,” she whispered, clutching him tightly.

  They fell back on the bed.

  He ran a hand through her hair, kissed her forehead. “We’ll go somewhere,” he told her soothingly, “disappear together. Live happily ever after, Snow Fucking White and Prince the Hell Charming.”

  “Where?” she asked, playing along.

  “I dunno. How about Colorado?”

  “Oh, I love Colorado! Such a beautiful state. Denver?”

  “Too big. Maybe Golden, or how about Boulder?”

  “Boulder is good.” She thought about that. “It’s a college town—that would keep us feeling young.” If not looking it.

  “Of course, we’ll have to settle for lower-level jobs, but what the hell—we’ll get to keep all of what we make, and won’t that be a nice change of pace.”

  Joy lifted her head, looked into Jack’s eyes. “What about our pills? Do you think we could find them someplace else? Mexico or something?”

  “Probably not.”

  “We could have one analyzed … find out what’s in them.”

  “I don’t think we should take that chance,” he said, with a dismissive head shake. “We can finish out what we have, but then … it’s back to nature, baby.”

  She lay her head back down. “We’ll start to look old,” she said, words muffled against his chest. “Right away …”

  “I don’t give a damn.” He tightened his grip on her, turned his face to hers. “Anyway, would that be so bad? Growing old together? Isn’t that what God or somebody had planned for us in the first place?”

  She nodded and laughed, just a little, and smiled at him. “Sounds like it.”

  “Here’s what’s really important, the only thing that’s important—I love you, Joy.”

  “Oh, Jack, and I love you.”

  “For richer and poorer, better or worse, the whole nine yards.”

  “Whole nine yards,” she purred.

  He kissed her full on the lips, a hot, passionate kiss. And she kissed back, desperately wanting him, wanting the feeling of youth that only making love could bestow….

  Afterward, as they lay entwined beneath the bedcovers, they made plans for the morning.

  “I’ll keep the room for a few days,” Jack told her. “Until we’re ready to go to the FBI and the media.”

  “Okay … but let me go home, pack a few things. If I get spooked, I’ll come back here. I’ll take the extra room key.”

  Jack thought about that. “You should call in sick to work.”

  “Not sick. I’ll take a week of personal leave—I’ve got it coming. That shouldn’t draw suspicion.”

  Eyes narrowed, a little doubtful, he said, “Okay. But be careful. Meet me back here in two days. Say, two o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Will that give you enough time to substantiate our story?”

  “It should, and if not, I’ll know how much more time I need, and we can
proceed from there.”

  “I don’t know if I like the idea, you of breaking and entering without me.”

  He laughed. “Nancy Drew … we’re going to be fine, you and me, you’ll see.” Suddenly his voice sounded very far away. “We’ll grow old together, two of us….”

  “Umn … umn….”

  And she drifted of to sleep in his arms.

  The following morning, just before noon, Jack drove Joy back to the restaurant on Ventura where she’d left her car the night before.

  “Why don’t I follow you home,” Jack suggested as they sat in his little compact, motor idling. “Sweep the rooms for bugs.”

  She shrugged. “Why bother? I’ll be out of there in a couple days. And I’d just as soon not know where the damn things are … it would only make me nervous. And removing them would raise suspicion.”

  He raised an eyebrow, nodding. “You’ve got a point. Just be careful what you say. Don’t go around singing, ‘I’m leaving on a jet plane,’ okay?”

  Joy laughed. “How about ‘We gotta get outta this place’?” She leaned over and kissed him, a peck that turned into something serious.

  “Now we are going to attract attention,” she laughed, pushing him gently away.

  Jack grinned at her. “Sorry, baby.”

  Then she opened the car’s door and stepped out, and with a little wave, blowing him a kiss, headed toward her Jaguar.

  And they drove off in two directions.

  14

  “Time In A Bottle”

  (Jim Croce, #1 Billboard, 1973)

  How odd it seemed to Joy, returning to the tiny bungalow she’d worked so hard to make livable, knowing now that soon she’d walk away from it all. She wandered through her Hobbit house, touching things, as if bidding farewell to special friends: the walnut plant stand she’d found in the alley; the Fire King jadeite dishes she fought a fat lady over at a neighborhood garage sale; the non-secondhand gold couch she’d flirted so outrageously to get at cost from that odious furniture store manager who would be forever waiting to receive a phone call from her … not that he ever would have gotten one …