Walking Shadow

by Clifford Royal Johns

  There were obviously others, however, who I’d worked for, who paid me for murder, who might suspect that my box contained more secrets than it did. I was a hired assassin who might have second thoughts after any forget session, and there would be people who wouldn’t like me walking around if I was no longer in their pay. The government was willing to let killers go after they’d forgotten whatever made them killers. Apparently I’d forgotten whatever had made me a killer, but I would be a potential liability to anyone I’d worked with before, so my own life was in danger.

  The killing and forgetting sequence must have happened many times before, perhaps as many times as there were murders on the list. Each time, my brother would have had to evaluate me to see if I’d changed too much to accept another job. How had I acted the previous times? What would give me away this time? I had to bank on my employers viewing me as a valuable resource, too important to throw away without knowing they’d used the last drop. Being quiet and noncommittal would keep them wondering, but opening my mouth would remove all doubt.

  Arno was there hovering and smiling when I opened the door.

  “We still partners?” he said.

  I thought it best to sound like I was willing to kill again. “Yeah,” I said, “we’re still partners,” but I couldn’t smile, even as an act. Did he know I suddenly didn’t like him at all? Did he know I felt nauseous?

  We walked back past the kitchen window. Denise was still there. She wasn’t doing anything. Just watching, sad faced.

  “I can give you a ride home,” he said without looking at me. We had already walked to the front of the house away from the garage. I knew he didn’t really want to give me a ride home. He stood with his hands in his pants pockets and his eyes scanning the hedges, giving me the feeling he was distancing himself from me already.

  “No, thanks. I’ll walk.” The train would have taken me most of the way if I’d wanted a ride, but it was only about an hour walk, and I decided that I needed the time to come to grips with being a murderer and to accept the idea that Carla was a murderer too.

  I tried not to feel guilty about those murders. They were done by someone else. It wasn’t me. I started life around September tenth. Before that, there was someone who looked like me and who left me a lot of money in his will. Yeah.

  The police were right about one thing. Forgetting can change your whole persona. I used to be a murdering bastard and now, all I could think about was Carla and getting her out of jail.

  Since Carla was an assassin too, when she’d said Kimbanski was a client, she probably meant he’d hired her to kill someone. Did she even remember what the word client might have implied? If she still remembered who she was before, she hid it well. Was she still a killer? I didn’t know, but I knew I had to find out.

  I figured Carla must have a stash somewhere too. I hoped I could get to her before she was able to find hers. I hoped to save her from that devastating moment of discovery. I also hoped she wouldn’t be the one assigned to kill me when my brother determined I wasn’t his pet murderer anymore.

  I fondled the money in my pocket and thought about bribing Kumar, but I didn’t want to end up in jail myself. Who would I be of use to then?

  The doorman was sitting in his spot by the door when I walked up to my building entrance. I went over and settled down on the cool concrete beside him. He eyed me suspiciously. “This is my spot,” he said in a gruff, put-on voice. “Get outta here.”

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out a five. I handed it to him. “I’m not looking to take your spot, or your patrons. I just want to sit for a few,” I said.

  The doorman stared at the five. It wasn’t a huge donation, but it mattered to him, I could tell. He grabbed it and stuffed it down his shirt. It was then I realized the doorman was a woman. A man doesn’t stuff things down his shirt that way.

  I leaned my back against the wall. “You ever had a forget?” I asked.

  “First you sit in my spot, then you talk.” She paused for a while. “No, I never did. Thought about it. If I had the money, I might, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? You could forget whatever it was that put you here. Maybe get help from the agencies. Get back on your feet.”

  She grabbed my coat by the shoulder and stared into my eyes. I could see her focus switch back and forth from my left eye to my right eye and back. She was looking for something, or maybe trying to get my attention. “Then who’d I be? I’d be somebody else wouldn’t I?”

  She let go and straightened her hats back into a neat stack. She smelled of sweat and urine and shit, but not of alcohol or derpal. She gazed up at the underside of the entrance roof. She said, “You’ve had a forget or two haven’t you?”

  “Yeah. Is it that obvious?”

  “You look scared, that’s all. Maybe a bit lost. You used to kick me as you walked past. You seemed to think it was a joke or something. Kick the lady on the ground. Then you just quit doing that. Now you’re all chummy and giving me money, like I should forget all that, like I should forgive you. But those kicks hurt you know.” She kicked me hard in the calf. It hurt. She was crying and trying not to show it.

  “I did worse things than kick people,” I said. “I’ve had enough forgets that I can’t even remember my mother’s name or who I am. I’m sorry I kicked you. It wasn’t me.”

  She kicked me again, even harder. “Yes it was. Now get out of here. Your five is all used up.”

  I stood up. I had a bit of an urge to kick her back, but I didn’t. I said, “Thanks for your time,” and headed up the stairs to my apartment.

  She had a point though. It was me, and I couldn’t get away from that. I had to face my past whether I could remember it or not. Other people remembered me as I was before, and, although I wanted to keep the deeds of my past selves separate, I just couldn’t do that.

  I would have to atone for my past sins, not just forget them.

  Chapter 16

  I was tired from walking to my brother’s house and back, and emotionally drained from what I’d found there. At least Kumar wasn’t waiting for me at my door this time. He’d left a message, though. He wanted to see me the next morning at eleven. That was just as well. I wanted to see him too. He knew things I didn’t know, and I had a feeling they were important. What’s more, Carla was still in jail and Kumar had the keys.

  Kumar was fishing for information and not just to help him track down Kimbanski’s murderer. I’d thought he was looking for Chen and was using me to find him. I appeared to be the bait. That made me nervous. But there had to be more. He didn’t even ask me where Chen was.

  Kumar had arrested Jon Tam for running a derpal kitchen, meaning Kumar actually worked for the drug enforcement division. Kimbanski was investigating the drug enforcement division. So it was certainly possible that Kumar was under investigation. It was also possible that Kumar was helping Kimbanski investigate someone else, maybe Chen. Either way, I had the feeling Kumar and Chen were playing cat and mouse, with each one thinking he was the cat and the other was the mouse.

  But I still couldn’t place Chen in the equation. His only link to my mess seemed to be Paulo’s death, and that he suggested Carla would be a good choice to hand me my transcript. He also knew I’d killed the judge, and he hadn’t told the police about that. He didn’t even provide an anonymous tip. Why not? Because I was his friend? No, there was some ulterior motive behind Chen’s largesse. I decided to talk to Chen again if I could find him in time.

  But first I had to keep the bureaucracy happy. I brought my latest rent receipt to the dole house and stood in line for two hours waiting to have it registered so the money would be reassigned to my pitiful account. Later that month the same amount would be automatically withdrawn to pay the next month’s rent. They could have done it all automatically, but they wanted to make sure I paid for my apartment in some way. Having people stand in line fulfilled that bureaucratic need.

  When I returned home, I resolved to get some sleep, wake
up early the next morning and try Under The River. Chen didn’t get up early, so if he was still hiding there, maybe I could catch him before my appointment with Kumar.

  The morning was raw and windy, but clear. I held my coat together in the front, using my hands tucked in the pockets and folded across my belly. I ducked through an Egyptian restaurant and used the back door out to a garage to avoid the bitter wind. Taking short cuts through buildings kept me warm, but it also allowed me to see how the person who followed me was doing. I knew the buildings. He didn’t. That was obvious. I had to wait for him twice.

  He had tried his best to look like an indolent slacker, but I knew what indolent slackers looked like. For one thing, they didn’t wear anything that retained creases, nor did they walk with their head held high with arrogance.

  Finally, head down, scratching a nonexistent itch on my face for cover from the cameras, I went into a bank, crossed the lobby and slipped out an emergency exit. While the alarm sounded, I ducked down a flight of stairs that led to the lower level CAT, immediately circled and came back up another set only fifty meters away. Looking back at the bank exit I’d come through, I could see a guard holding a gun on my follower. The follower happened to look my way. I waved, took three steps back down the stairs, hiding myself behind the railing, paused, then returned to street level. He was gone, the guard peering down the stairs after him. I stepped into a travel store where I attracted an appraising glance and no more. The guard had let my shadow continue to follow me, which meant the shadow was police. Strangely, that made me feel better. At least I knew who it was.

  I waited ten minutes, then walked over the bridge and entered Under The River by the north entrance.

  The dupe was fun, but it had wasted time. I headed for the west wall. The stainless wrist units at the third table showed it was already eight thirty and the cat house was about a half hour away. I had two hours.

  I meandered a bit, making sure no one was watching me too closely, then I wandered toward Chen’s box. But the box was gone. Completely gone, bathtub and all. There wasn’t an empty space where it was either. Under The River abhors a vacuum. Chen’s box, large as it was, might never have been there.

  Someone nudged me, but their hands didn’t wander. I looked in another direction for a second then, casually looked at the nudger. He had dark skin, slick black hair, a bulbous nose, and was wearing the coveralls of a city street cleaner. “He moved,” he said.

  I looked away. “Clue?” I said.

  “Where The Sun Don’t Shine,” he said, then he strode off.

  Where The Sun Don’t Shine was not in the dark back places, but rather, out near the river. Here was an area that, even though it was exposed to the weather, was shaded by the tips of a few buildings and never saw sunshine. A bad combination. It was where the outcasts of the outcasts lived, the poorest of the poor. The woozied out, the insane, the people who didn’t even bother to go topside and ask for a handout. The lowest of thieves lived there too; the ones who would steal from others Under The River if they could.

  Pulling my coat around me, I took a roundabout path to Where The Sun Don’t Shine.

  I found what I thought was Chen’s box, noting a cheese stick emblem in a high corner. I circled the area, trying to decide if I should simply go up the entrance and shake the door, or if I should just leave. Two women followed me the last half way around, and when I paused, they stopped to whisper to each other. One of them left, but the other continued to watch. The one that stayed was older, perhaps fifty, with black hair and a sallow complexion. She wore a dark long coat and bright white platform shoes which seemed absurdly out of place. She didn’t try to hide the fact that she was watching me, and I didn’t try to hide the fact that I knew she was watching me. We were waiting for something. I hoped it was for Chen to approve my talking to him, but it also occurred to me that we might be waiting while the other woman went to retrieve five or six men to grab me, shove me in a box and take my money and clothes. I leaned against an unlit fire barrel and waited.

  Most of the construction Under The River was relatively new, built after the fast and furious fire that swept through the fields of cardboard and people about seven years before. When they moved back in, the homeless refused to accept the sprinklers installed by the Elves and continued to use fire barrels for heat and for disposal. The Gnomes were forced to turn the fire detectors off.

  Three things happened while I stood there. A tall, thin man was brought out from the inner part of Under The River by four others and summarily thrown over the railing into the muddy part of the river. One of the throwers turned to the onlookers and said, “Liked kids too much,” and strode back into the gloom. Then an enormously fat woman made me move because that was her fire barrel and, even though the fire wasn’t lit, I could only stand there if I paid her. I moved a few feet away, but she continued to glare at me. Finally, the man who’d given me the clue emerged from the growing bustle and nodded to the woman with the white shoes. She moved toward me and opened her coat for a moment to let me see she what she was wearing underneath, a pink merry widow, garters and stockings, and, of course, the outlandish white shoes. I nodded and took her arm, hoping this was a ruse to make anyone watching think I was after sex, not Chen. I suddenly worried that I’d given her the impression that I was really after sex for money and that perhaps that was what she was expecting.

  She took me to a wooden crate, which was barely out of the weather under the protection of the concrete foundation floor of the buildings above. The younger woman, who had long red hair and enhanced lips, stood by a door. She opened it to let me in as though she were running the brothel. Inside, it was a hallway with open doors leading to many tiny rooms with just enough space for a bed and a little area in which to get undressed. I guessed it was too early to have clients.

  Chen was in the next box, which was connected to the first by stapled together flaps forming a short passage. He sat at a desk in a low, mostly dark room. A lamp lit his desk and a bit of floor around it, but left the rest of the room in shadows. Chen was reading the top page on a stack of paper. A larger stack, turned upside down, sat to his left as though he’d been reading for quite a while.

  He looked up when I entered, held up his index finger indicating he would be a minute, then went back to reading. I looked around for chair and found a sturdy box against the far wall. I sat down and studied the back of my hand.

  Finally, Chen wrote rapidly on one of the sheets of paper and looked up. “What is it you want, Benny?” He sounded hostile and wary.

  “I know I killed the judge, Chen. I guess I’ve killed a lot of people, but I don’t remember.”

  “What do you want from me? Sympathy? Forgiveness?” Chen turned the lamp shade up so the light was directed toward the ceiling. The walls were covered in gray foam. A tall man would have brushed his hair against the ceiling. The only things in the room were Chen’s desk and chair, a narrow bed, and the box I sat on. There was another door which presumably led to the room I’d been in when his box was on the other side of Under The River.

  He turned over the page he had been reading. “You kill people for a living, Benny. There isn’t any forgiveness for that.” He drummed his pen on the desk. He didn’t have time for me.

  “I don’t expect forgiveness from you. I wanted to let you know I won’t kill for money again, and I’m looking to start over, not by forgetting, but by atoning. I’m not the same person who killed those people, the judge. I know I’m still guilty, but I’m not that person.” I said it like I believed it, but I was trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince Chen. I leaned back against the foam and sighed. The wall insulation felt warm against my back.

  Chen stood and paced across the room twice, then turned to me again. “Benny, who were your clients? Who paid you?”

  How could I answer that? Arno was a murderer just like I was although indirectly. He never did the killing, but it was close enough, yet he was my brother and turning him in w
as still betrayal. Of course I didn’t really know who I would be turning him in to. Chen wasn’t police, at least the thought hadn’t occurred to me until that moment. Why would he want to know who paid me?

  “I can’t tell you that right now. There are some things I have to work out before I tell you that. Anyway, why do you want to know?”

  Chen leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms. “You don’t trust me? I guess that’s not surprising, but there’s nothing I can do to make you trust me more, and there’s nothing I can do to make you tell me if you don’t want to, so you might as well go.” He walked around his desk and dropped back into his chair. He swung the lamp back down to light his papers.

  “Chen, I’ve got an appointment to see Detective Kumar at the Cat House at eleven. I think if I tell anyone, it should probably be the police.”

  I had his attention back. “Kumar’s not the person you want to tell. If you have to, just call in an anonymous tip to the central line, but don’t tell Kumar. He’s not who he makes out to be.”

  Chen wasn’t helping me, but he still wanted me to follow his directions. “If I tell him, he’ll probably let Carla out. That’s important to me. Why should I tell you? Can you get Carla out of jail?”

  “Still thinking of yourself, Benny? What’s in it for you? That’s all you care about. You’ve not changed as much as you’ve let yourself believe. Carla will get out anyway. They’ll wipe her and release her, whether you tell them something interesting or not. Kumar will make you think the only reason you got even that much was because you told them about your clients, but it’ll work out the same anyway.”

  Chen paused and adjusted his light. “And he’ll probably try to get you to tell him more about me.”

  That surprised me. “I don’t even know anything about you.”

  “Get out Benny. Don’t come looking anymore, I’ll have you thrown in the river as a topside spy if you do. I have to move again because I let you in here, and that in itself is making me mad. I’m tired of moving, and I’m tired of you. Why don’t you just forget the whole thing and turn straight if you’re so pure now? Go out and get a job.” He went back to staring at the papers on his desk, ignoring me.