I was studying a black dog lying on his side, tongue hanging out, eyes open and dull when I was buzzed. The ceramic wall was creeping me out anyway. The woman behind the desk pointed to an available PAL sitting under a hanging sculpture which appeared to be a bent boat propeller, parts of which had been eaten away by cavitation or perhaps chipmunks. When I took my seat, I looked up. One of the blades pointed down toward the top of my head.
I worked fast, browsing back through old news stories around September tenth, looking for deaths. I found it easily and whacked my forehead with the heel of my hand for not looking earlier. There I was in the background of a news video at a crime scene. A woman wearing a magenta blazer, puffed blonde hair, and enormous breasts talked to the camera about the murder of Judge Kimbanski who had been investigating police corruption in the narcotics division. Apparently I’d found the body. I could see myself in the background talking to a woman, my hands in my pockets, nudging the edge of a pot-hole with my right foot. Closer inspection revealed that the woman I was talking to was the detective Kumar had sent with Doorway to arrest me the first time.
Detective Kumar had implied, but never said, that they didn’t know whose body it was that I’d actually seen in my forget session. He’d been testing me, trying to see how much I’d forgotten, and I now knew I’d forgotten a lot.
A sidebar linked to the video explained that the alley was named after Anton Carla, a former Alderman for the district. He was best known for buying a piece of inaccessible land, an island really, which had been created as the lake receded. He’d built a small house on it, and then demanded that the city build a causeway because by law they had to provide unimpeded access to all residential areas. The law was meant to correct some snow removal problems, but Anton Carla had seen a way to make his land worth a lot of money. It was a new island off the coast of Chicago and everyone wanted to live there. He wanted to put up a ring of condominium buildings and have a park in the middle.
It cost the city more than three hundred million to build a low land-bridge and to pay for the court costs accrued while fighting building it. Then the lake level rose back up a little and the island, instead of growing, shrank to nothing. Now the causeway was an expensive ersatz cruise ship dock and fishing pier.
This information was provided to library patrons by Death News, a news company that reported only on events in which someone died, preferably in some gruesome, violent way, though sometimes they would include articles where pets or zoo animals died as well. As the ads rolled by, I sat back and looked up at the prop again.
The police hadn’t arrested me when they received the transcript because I’d reported the body to the police in the first place. I’d already told them everything about finding it. The murder was already public knowledge. When I showed up at Chen’s, they recognized me from Kimbanski’s murder scene and that was the reason they were interested in why I was there. They were thinking I’d found Kimbanski because I was involved in the killing, that maybe I was the murderer. Apparently I’d satisfied them that I wasn’t. Or maybe they were still watching me to find out who I talked to and who I went to see.
The police blackout period was over, so, when the Death News ads finished, I looked up the news reports of Chen’s and Paulo’s deaths. The neighbor, who had identified the bodies, was on the videos talking about it to a reporter from Good Dirt Press. He’d put some pants on for the interview. He didn’t know much, he hadn’t actually looked at the scene of the crime, but he talked fast and waved his arms around a lot, so the reporter couldn’t get away. I was surprised the neighbor even knew what Chen looked like. After scanning through fifteen minutes of coverage, I decide there wasn’t much more in the news that Carla hadn’t already told me.
After watching the Good Dirt Press ads flash around the screen for a while, I found a later report that had more information from the investigation. The police listed Paulo’s death as a murder and Chen’s death as a suicide, Chen being Paulo’s killer. Chen was listed as not employed. No surprise there, but Paulo was listed as working for Forget What.
That stunned me. Paulo worked at Forget What. I remembered Chen saying that Carla worked at Forget What, and that she could get the transcripts for me. Paulo called me later with Carla’s phone address. Now I figured Paulo must have worked a deal with her to give me the modified transcripts in exchange for a free forget of her choice, which would also include her forgetting she ever gave me the transcripts in the first place and forgetting that Paulo worked for Forget What. She had seemed anxious when we had dinner, and that was probably why. I had no idea what she got out of it, what her primary forget was, but she certainly wouldn’t remember either.
If Paulo had created the fake transcript, then it was Paulo who put Chen in the dead man’s spot. I could only guess that Paulo was mad at Chen for suggesting Carla give me the transcripts in the first place and he had used the modification of the transcript as a passive-aggressive way to get back at Chen. It seemed a bit too ghastly for Paulo’s bouncy attitude, but then I’d been surprised to find out he worked for Forget What in the first place.
Carla was apparently telling the truth as she knew it when she said at her apartment that she never worked for Forget What. I smiled at that. I hadn’t liked the idea that Carla would change her story about something so obvious. It had seemed stupid and unfriendly.
So I was back to where I started. I’d forgotten something, and I still didn’t know what it was. The only person who was directly involved in some way and still alive was Carla. And, for some reason, I wanted to see her again anyway.
Chapter 10
I went back to the Unapartments and took the vator to seventeen. I met Carla at the door as she was going out. She was wearing a blue, knee length coat over black slacks and black shoes. Silver globe earrings glistened when she turned her head. “Hello,” I said, “Do you have a minute?”
“I was just going out to get something to eat,” she said looking more alert and determined than she had the last time I’d seen her. I hoped she was coming back to herself after the forget. She looked me in the eye with what I hoped was a sort of invitation.
“Can I tag along?” I said, feeling stupid and uncouth and suddenly warm.
“Sure, but I’m going somewhere cheap.” She clutched her handbag as though it contained everything she owned in the world and gave me a forced smile. She had a job either at Forget What or at a grocery not long ago, so she wasn’t used to having no income at all. She’d have to move out of her Unapartment and into civic housing like mine soon, unless she found another job. Finding another job seemed unlikely if she had been a clerk at the grocery, more likely if she really had training in marketing and had worked at Forget What, but I was doubting that more and more, and she couldn’t remember it anyway.
We walked without talking down to a noodle stand and stood slurping from steaming cups and watching the bank’s street screen display mechanical avatar boxing results. I used to bet on them years before, but when the results stopped feeling real to me, I quit.
“Carla?”
She turned to me instantly, like she was just waiting for me to say something. “Yes, Benjamin?”
Benjamin? Nobody called me that. Khan maybe, Benny, usually, but Benjamin, never. I liked it though. She said it distinctly, pronouncing every syllable clearly and separately. It sounded like an important name. Not like Benny at all. I rolled the name soundlessly around on my tongue, liking it more and more. Finally I pushed it aside.
“How long did you know Paulo? How did you meet him?”
Her shoulders sagged a little, and she sighed. She looked across the street toward an older, dark-skinned man in a dark gray suit who was playing the harmonica and stomping out some blues for a small crowd near the VRcade.
“I don’t remember meeting Paulo exactly,” she said after a moment of listening during a pause in the ground traffic. “He was friendly and we just got to talking in the vator or waiting for it sometimes. He came into the grocer
y once in a while. I didn’t really know him. He was just an acquaintance. I knew he lived in the building, but I didn’t know where.”
She paused then looked back toward the bank. “Do you think they fix the outcome in avatar boxing? It certainly looks real to me. Isn’t it regulated or something?” She wanted to change the subject, but I needed to know a little more.
I slurped the last of my noodles and tried to look relaxed. “When was the last time you talked to him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A month maybe.” She looked me in the eye. “Why do you care? Were you and he—close?” She said close like she meant having-an-affair close. She was watching me, expecting a reaction. The pepper in the noodles made my face flush. Why was I so attracted to this woman? I had to admit she was pretty, but there was more to it than that. I’d been around pretty women before and they didn’t have this effect on me. Some of them even wanted to affect me, though I admit I didn’t know why.
“No, we weren’t close. Paulo and I didn’t interact much, but there are just a few things I don’t understand.”
I folded the noodle cup and put it in the bin next to the vendor’s stand. Bits and pieces of the music filtered through the noise while I waited for her to finish her dinner. The harmonica player was singing, “Key to the Highway,” and playing fills and turnarounds as he went along.
Carla folded up her cup, threw it in the bin, then looked at me expectantly. I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk.
“I’d like that,” she said, holding her hands out in a which-way-should-we-go gesture.
I pointed up E’Clair toward Morph Street and we started walking that way. Our hands brushed, and I nervously pointed at construction equipment across the street to hide my confusion about taking her hand. “The city is digging low-income housing there; twelve stories deep. They haven’t been able to find anyone to develop the above ground part yet.” I thought I sounded like a tour guide.
“You make it sound like they’re going to bury poor people,” she said. “Actually, from what I’ve read the developers have orders for three more of those below ground apartment buildings for upper class people. They’re going to be terribly expensive. Sunshine piped in through mirrored light tubes, or the fake stuff when it’s a cloudy day. They shine it in behind display windows showing any scene you want in hologram so it changes as you move around in your room. They’re planning to place little camera posts in a few select places in the world then pipe in the actual scenery. You get a view out your window of a sandy beach or a winter mountain top. Sounds pretty nice to me.” She described the pit as though she would love to live there, but I knew the apartments they were creating at this location wouldn’t have piped in light or scenic views. They would be little concrete coffins far below ground level where gov could hide the indigent, so people with jobs wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.
We crossed the street and looked down in the hole, which was already lined in plastic concrete to keep out the water. Morph was a long normal street in Chicago except here, where a tooth had been pulled leaving a hole in Chicago’s jaw that I thought would get infected quickly enough.
“For the people who can afford them, the amenities will be nice, but I doubt this pit will have piped in sunlight.”
Carla leaned on the fence and stared down into the dark. “No, probably not.” She sounded wistful.
We turned right on Morph and walked into the evening wind which was blowing from the lake. The air smelled of dead alewives and rust. We passed a canned meat market and Carla said, “I like their lamb when I can afford it. The real stuff is a bit strong, but the fifty-fifty is good.”
“Yeah, lamb is a favorite of mine, too. My brother has meat all the time.”
“Maybe the next time we go out, we should go to your brother’s house,” she said.
I looked at her. She was suppressing a smile, but not doing a very good job of it. I hadn’t been teased in years.
“It would be an improvement over the noodle stand, and I’m sure Arno wouldn’t mind,” I said, imagining Arno’s reaction to my bringing my own date instead of trying to work with someone he thought was a match. I laughed out loud. Arno would not like the idea that I might do something better than him, even if it was picking my own girlfriends. I guided her right, onto Quacker.
“My brother would like you too much, and besides, it’s not a romantic place.”
She stopped.
Women have a way of displaying several emotions at the same time when they want to. Men can’t or don’t do that. We are creatures of a single emotion at a time. It’s one of the reasons men tend to make a firm decision that is wrong rather than hesitate and waffle and appear unsure. Whatever we’re thinking, we’re positive about it.
Carla stared at me with her head slightly tilted and a wisp of an enigmatic smile on her lips. She looked coy and happy and intensely sensuous at the same time. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d said that produced that mixture, but I liked the look. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her for a while. She slowly turned forward again and we started walking. I could tell she was thinking, but I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
When we arrived at the alley, I stopped, took a deep breath and looked at her. I wanted to see if she had any reaction to the place. She looked up at me expectantly, so I leaned over and kissed her. It seemed like the thing to do. Her lips were warm and friendly, but I felt like a clumsy lout. When I pulled back, I wasn’t sure if she would feel like I’d pulled back because I didn’t like it or what, but she smiled a relaxed smile and leaned against me. In my mind, I fought a battle between feeling like we’d known each other for years, like she was a part of me, and feeling that we’d just met, that I was smitten with a kind of puppy love reaction to closeness and emotional eye contact. It’s what love was supposed to be, I guessed. I’d heard people say that. But the strong feelings made me uncomfortable. I just wasn’t used to that emotional level. It invigorated me and tired me out at the same time.
“Come back in the alley,” I said, “I want to show you something.” I didn’t want to, but I had to know what her reaction would be.
She lifted an eyebrow, but followed me back anyway. The sun was low and hidden behind the buildings, but we could still see. I showed her The Carla, now Carma, Alley Blues Club sign. “I don’t even remember this alley being here,” she said, “and I walk by here all the time to go to the grocery. It’s just around the corner. Doesn’t look like the club’s been closed very long either.”
Things were beginning to make sense. If Carla couldn’t remember the alley, then she must have had a forget session that included Carla Alley just as I had. I wondered if Carla had been there when I found the body.
“The alley’s named after Anton Carla, some politician, but I like the name.”
Carla smiled a tight, cursory smile to acknowledge the compliment, then turned and walked back out to Quacker Street. I followed her out. There was a restaurant neither of us could ever afford legally on one side of the alley entrance and a surveillance and voyeur supplies store on the other. “Do you remember the restaurant and that store?” I said pointing to one then the other.
“Sure. Like I said, I walked by here all the time. At that store they have displays in the window that show who’s looking in the store. You can see yourself in the display, which is nothing special, but you can also see what you look like from behind. I guess they have cameras on the other side of the street. It’s kind of weird to see yourself that way. Why don’t we go somewhere else? This place spooks me. This alley isn’t supposed to be here. It’s like they created it yesterday just to blink me.”
I had to admit it made me feel that way too. Every brick, every bag, every piece of broken glass looked too defined and distinct, as though it had been painted too perfectly. The rotten smell of garbage and decay and the lack of any breeze made the whole scene feel overdone.
But I had one more question. She was looking at the window of the surveillan
ce place. I watched her in the reflection. “Did you know Judge Kimbanski?” I didn’t expect any reaction at all, just a “no, who’s that?”
She spun around, eyes wild, breathing hard. She grabbed my arms. “Oh, no. I mean, yes. I knew him.” She turned around and ran down the street a few stores. When I caught up with her, she was crying. I hugged her, but I wanted to ask her who Kimbanski was to her, and why she had said, ‘Oh no,’ like that. Instead I waited. Which wasn’t like me at all.
I had no doubt then that Carla must have been there when I found the violently beaten body. I must have sent her away before I keyed the police to report it. And I decided that I’d been right in the first place; I had left myself a clue. I must have wanted to find Carla after things simmered down. I looked down at the top of her head, which lay against my shoulder, and I understood why I wouldn’t want to forget a woman like her. I could feel my heart in my chest.
I figured I also must have wanted to forget she was at the scene of the murder of Judge Kimbanski in case the police followed up with more questions later. I wouldn’t have wanted to ever implicate her in any way. If I couldn’t remember, I wouldn’t have anything to hide. I’m not a very good liar.
She settled down a bit, and I edged us next to a building, so we weren’t in the way of pedestrian traffic. “What do you remember?” I asked, still holding her.
She looked up at me with stricken gray eyes, and I almost kissed her again. “I remember his name, and I remember being really upset about him. I cried for days about it, but I don’t know why. That name makes me shiver though. I remember being on this street with him. I think he was a client.” She turned away from me suddenly.
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