Interesting Times (Interesting Times #1)

by Matthew Storm

  “No,” she said, her face impassive. “It would be too dangerous to kill you. I’m not sure what would happen if I tried.”

  “What was that about, then?”

  “Quarantine,” the girl said. “You would have woken up somewhere far away from here, where you wouldn’t be a danger to anyone.”

  “Why?” Oliver asked.

  “Mr. Jones, do you really think I can have you running around out in the world unsupervised? Knowing the things you can do? I would turn you loose on this world no sooner than I would provide an infant access to a nuclear weapon.” She thought about what she had just said for a moment. “Although I suppose in that analogy, you are both the infant and the weapon.”

  “But you could have just said that, instead of pretending to give me a choice!” Oliver protested.

  “You did have a choice,” she shrugged. “We are none of us slaves, Oliver. You had to choose to be one of us freely, without conditions attached. And now you’ve made that choice. Congratulations are in order, I suppose. Are you sure you won’t have some tea?”

  “You’re crazy,” Oliver said. He looked back at Tyler and Sally. “You’re all crazy!”

  “You really have no idea,” Sally smirked.

  Oliver heard a commotion at the restaurant’s door and turned to look. A thin man with short, wildly uncombed hair and round eyeglasses was hurtling toward their table, carrying what looked like an iPad. From his twitchy, nervous demeanor, Oliver guessed he was an aficionado of strong coffee, or quite possibly much more serious stimulants.

  “Oh, good,” Tyler said. “You can finally meet Seven.” He turned to the approaching man. “Seven, this is…”

  Seven brushed past him. “Not now,” he said, thrusting the tablet computer he carried toward Artemis. “You are not going to believe this,” he said.

  Artemis studied the screen for a moment, her expression never changing. “My goodness,” she said. “That is quite a problem, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” Sally asked, coming around to look.

  “Mr. Jones, I hope you don’t mind, but time is a factor now,” Artemis said. “We will have to discuss your salary requirements and conduct your orientation later.”

  “You do an orientation?” he asked.

  “Of course we do,” she said. “Do you think we just send people out into the field without any training?” Tyler glanced at her skeptically. “Don’t answer that,” she continued. “Tyler, we’re going to need some candy.”

  “You want me to run to 7-11?” Tyler asked in disbelief. “Now?”

  “Not that kind of candy,” Artemis said. “What we need is in the Vault.”

  “Oh,” Tyler said. “Oh wow.”

  “Indeed.” She stood up. “Come along, Mr. Jones. We’ll have to explain things to you on the way.” She headed for the door.

  Oliver hesitated for a moment, and then turned to follow her. He wasn’t sure what this new life was going to be like, but he was certain it would never be dull. He was living in interesting times, like the old Chinese saying went. Time would only tell whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. “May you live in interesting times” was a curse, after all.

  Three hours later, when he saw the dragon for the first time, Oliver had his answer.

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  ALSO BY MATTHEW STORM

  In the mood for something a little darker? Why not try out the first chapter of “Broken,” the new mystery by Matthew Storm. It begins on the next page. If you’d like to see more, please click here

  Chapter 1

  I don’t know how long I lay in my bed listening to the wind chimes before I realized they weren’t wind chimes at all, but the sound of my doorbell ringing. Nobody had rung my doorbell in quite some time and I’d forgotten what it sounded like. I didn’t get a lot of visitors.

  Who could be at the door? A particularly aggressive bill collector, maybe? That was awfully ambitious of them. It would also be fruitless. I didn’t have any money in the house to give anyone, and there was very little anyone could threaten me with anymore.

  I considered ignoring the bell, but the noise was interspersed with knocking now. Whoever was out there was not going to give up. I groaned and looked over at my bedside clock. It was 10:42 am. But on what day? The last day I had been aware of had been Thursday, but my blackouts were getting longer and longer these days, lasting upwards of a week sometimes. That made it hard to say for sure. Not that it really mattered. I didn’t have a job and it wasn’t like I had any place I needed to be.

  The doorbell rang again and I finally gave up. I hauled myself out of bed and noticed that my legs were already beginning to tremble. That wasn’t a good sign this early in the morning. A small glass tumbler sat on the bedside table, half full of clear liquid. I reached for it and took a sip, hoping that I hadn’t gone crazy during the night and poured myself a glass of water. It was vodka, thank god. I downed the glass. The rush of alcohol hitting my stomach made me choke, and then I had to spend a minute swallowing hard to suppress my gag reflex to keep myself from throwing up. As long as I could keep it down, the vodka would keep withdrawal at bay for a little while.

  I’d blacked out in street clothes, dirty jeans and an old t-shirt. At least I didn’t need to get dressed. That would save me a minute of listening to that damn doorbell. I frowned, noticing I was only wearing one tennis shoe. What had happened to the other one? I pried the shoe off of my foot so I wouldn’t be forced to limp around the house. I could find its mate later.

  My bedroom floor was a forest of empty vodka bottles littered with fast-food wrappers I hadn’t bothered to throw away. I tended not to worry about trash until insects started showing up in my house, and even then I was rarely sober enough to worry about it all that much. I started for the bedroom door, carefully picking my way through the mess. If I fell down in this condition, I wasn’t going to be getting up again for quite a while.

  The living room was in no better shape than the bedroom. The piles of garbage were bad enough, but worse was a sour smell that lingered in the air. It had to be something rotting, or maybe I had vomited on the carpet recently and failed to clean it up? That also would have done it. Later on I’d open a window up and get some fresh air into the place. That would help, at least a little bit.

  The person outside was knocking again. “God damn it!” I snarled. The police department had taken my gun away when they’d fired me, but I could find another way to make whoever was out there wish they’d spent their morning bothering somebody else.

  I made it to the door and opened it without bothering to look through the peephole. A tall, grey-haired man stood on the other side. He wore a dark suit that had never seen the rack and shoes that looked like they’d been shined two minutes before he’d started ringing my bell. The man smiled pleasantly at me. “Nevada James?”

  “I gave at the office,” I said.

  A puzzled expression crossed the man’s face. “Gave what?”

  “Never mind,” I said. I was never funny first thing in the morning. “What do you want?”

  “My name is Chandler Emerson,” the man said, extending a hand to shake. It was difficult not to notice his perfect manicure. He was definitely not a bill collector, then. I didn’t offer him my hand, anyway. He held his own in the air for a moment, then dropped it back to his side as casually as if he’d never made the gesture.

  “What do you want?” I repeated.

  “I represent Alan…” he began, but then his face suddenly wrinkled and he took a step back. The smell had hit him, then, either my own or whatever was stinking up the inside of my house. I wasn’t sure when I had last changed clothes, but I probably hadn’t showered in even longer. I didn’t much care how I smelled. It wasn’t as if I had a social life. I only left the house for food and alcohol.

  “You were saying?” I asked.

  Emerson cleared his throat. “
I was saying, I represent Alan Davies.” He looked at me expectantly, as if I was supposed to be impressed with this information.

  I thought about it for a moment. I’d heard that name before, hadn’t I? Was it someone I had borrowed money from? No, I’d probably be able to remember that. But then I placed him. “Alan Davies? The Mafia guy?” What the hell could Alan Davies possibly want with me?

  Emerson scowled. “Mr. Davies is a well-respected businessman, and scurrilous accusations like that…”

  “Oh, I don’t give a shit,” I interrupted. “I’m not a cop anymore. You said you represent him. You’re his lawyer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you here?”

  I saw Emerson’s lips tighten into a thin line. “Mr. Davies has a business proposition he would like to discuss with you. I have come to convey you to his estate.”

  I looked toward the street and saw a black Lincoln town car parked at the curb. A muscular man in a grey chauffeur’s uniform stood waiting next to an open rear door. He even wore a jaunty little cap to complete the outfit, but I was more interested in the bulge I could see in the left side of his jacket. He was either carrying a pistol or his lunch under there, and he didn’t look all that hungry.

  “Some people call,” I told Emerson.

  “Mr. Davies felt that would be impersonal, and asked me to come myself in order to convey his respect for you.”

  I stifled a laugh. I had no idea what Alan Davies looked like, but it was hard not to imagine Marlon Brando when Emerson talked like that. “So I’m supposed to get in there and take a ride with you?” I asked.

  “Indeed.”

  I shook my head. “Look, I don’t know what your boss is thinking, but I didn’t switch teams when the cops fired me. I don’t do jobs for gangsters. Tell him to fuck off.”

  “The proposition Mr. Davies wishes to discuss with you is entirely legal,” Emerson said primly. “I can assure you that none of your ethics will be compromised.”

  “Get lost.” I started to close the door on him.

  “Mr. Davies will pay you ten thousand dollars simply to meet with him,” Emerson said quickly.

  I hesitated for a moment, then opened the door again. “You’re serious?” I asked him. “Ten grand?”

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Emerson repeated, looking annoyed. “Cash. If you don’t care for what he has to say, you can walk away, and the money is yours to keep.”

  “He’ll let me just walk off with ten grand, and I don’t have to do anything but listen to him? Why am I having trouble believing that?”

  “He gives you his solemn word.”

  I thought it over. Alan Davies’s solemn word didn’t mean a lot to me, but ten thousand dollars would pay a lot of bills, and I was behind on my rent and…I was behind on everything.

  “He’s wasting his time if he asks me to do anything illegal,” I said. “Don’t give me that legitimate businessman shit.”

  “Nothing illegal,” Emerson said.

  I frowned. “He knows I didn’t work organized crime? If he wants to know what the cops have on him, I have no idea, and I wouldn’t tell him even if I did.”

  Emerson opened his mouth and I could tell he was about to deny what Alan Davies did for a living again. I cocked my head at him and he caught himself. “Mr. Davies knows you were a homicide detective. He will not ask you for any information with regards to your former employer.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Emerson pursed his lips, looking at me skeptically. “Perhaps you’d like to…”

  “What?”

  “Bathe?” he suggested. “And change clothes, perhaps?”

  I looked down at my t-shirt. I really had been wearing it for quite a while. It was stained with things I didn’t particularly want to think about. I should probably change it before it rotted and fell off. Maybe I’d even stick it in the washing machine. “All right,” I told Emerson. “You can wait out here.” Even if I had been in the habit of inviting Mafia lawyers into my house, it probably would have been a good idea to clean the place up a little first. I wasn’t sure Emerson would have been able to handle the smell.

  “I’ll wait in the car,” Emerson said, looking just a bit relieved. “See you soon, Ms. James.”

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Matthew Storm lives above a bar in Tokyo, where he is occasionally visited by a stray cat who may or may not speak.

  Matthew is on Twitter: @mjstorm