by Anton Strout
“Crap,” I said. I selected a parabolic mike from the case and futzed about, trying to open the satellite-dish-shaped cone around it.
“I take it that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes, it’s bad,” I said. “Unfortunately, working for the forces of Good isn’t quite as profitable as…um…my old profession.”
“Is there anything you can do?” she asked.
The concern in her voice was touching. I looked down at all the equipment spread out before me.
“Yeah,” I said with resolution, “I can probably take care of it tomorrow during the day. I’ll have to call in sick, though.”
“Are you not feeling well?” Irene asked.
“Outside of being ashamed for falling behind on my maintenance fees?” I said. “No, I feel fine.”
“Then what is it?”
“I need to play a psychometric round ofThe Price Is Right,” I said and threw the equipment back into the case. By tomorrow night, I was sure I would have figured out how to use it…
16
I turned in early for the long day I suddenly had before me. Irene was still sleeping in my guest room when I quietly left the apartment. I felt bad blowing off work, but not bad enough to actually get off the train with my file box and head back south to the city. I was desperate for the cash, and besides, spying on Jane would require darkness so I had to wait until nightfall anyway.
In the meantime, I hoped to reunite one of the promising purchases cluttering up my apartment with its original owner. Kevin Matthews had been the name I had gotten off the Intellivision game system reading at the night market, and a Google search had led me to believe that he had most likely grown up to be a Kevin Matthews who managed a bookstore at the mall in White Plains-so that was my first stop. The four other items I had brought with me were good finds that I could sell off to a local antiques dealer I knew up there. If I didn’t supplement my income unloading these goods, I doubted my building’s management company would accept antiques as payment.
Twenty minutes into my trip, Connor called, and without thinking, I answered.
I debated putting on some form of sick voice, but decided against it.
“How ya feeling, pal?” Connor said. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, opting to sound not necessarily sick but not necessarily well either. “I’m okay. I’ve been better.”
“Well, make sure you get lots of fluids.” Why does everyone say that? You could be hit by a car or dive naked into a vat full of razorblades, but people were always suggesting that you get lots of fluids.
“Yeah, I’ll make sure to do that,” I said. The train slowed for its next stop, and before I even thought of covering the mouthpiece, the doorsbonged open and a voice came over the loudspeaker.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the conductor said with all the enthusiasm of Droopy Dog. “The station stop is Crestwood. Crestwood station. Scarsdale will be next. Scarsdale will be next. Step in and stand clear of the closing doors, please.”
I slammed my hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.
“Ohhh,” Connor said, “I see…you’rethat kind of ‘sick’ today.”
Shit. Busted.
“Don’t tell the Inspectre, okay?” I pleaded.
“I don’t know, kid.” Connor sounded dead serious. “You’ve already got a mountain of paperwork sitting here in your in-box. Then there are the open investigations you’ve yet to do any follow-up on. I really don’t think it’s fair to the rest of us in Other Division.”
“How about if I promise to…” I couldn’t come up with anything that might appease him. Connor outranked me. I couldn’t bribe him by offering to do most of his tasks or reports that he needed to file. I also doubted he would take me being his coffee boy as payment for his silence.
“Don’t sweat it, kid,” he said with a laugh. “I’m just busting your chops. Everybody sneaks out every now and then. I’ll talk to you when you get back to the office. And kid…?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time, be a little faster on the mute button, will ya?”
After hanging up, I settled back and tried to enjoy the rest of the ride as the fall foliage whooshed past at breakneck speed. The foliage thinned as we pulled into the White Plains station, and I grabbed the legal-sized filing box I’d brought and got off.
A short cab ride through the White Plains business district of shiny modern buildings-tiny compared to the steel canyons of Manhattan-and I was at the Westchester Mall. I had never been there before, and my first thought wasWho the hell carpets a mall? I made my way to the nearest directory, found the B. Dalton Bookseller, and headed off to it.
The scent of plastic, books, and fresh carpeting washed over me as I entered the store. After asking to see the manager, a matronly looking clerk named Yolanda showed me to their back room. It was stacked to the ceiling with boxes, and a lanky gentleman was unpacking one of them onto a sleek metal library cart. He would never win World’s Hunkiest Librarian-midthirties, possibly older, with stringy brown hair that made him look all Six Degrees of Ichabod Crane.
“Kevin?” she said. “There’s a gentleman here to see you.”
“Thanks, Yolanda. I’ll be with you in a second,” he said, his face still buried in the contents of the box. “As you can see by the state of our store room, the holiday rush is upon us.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the towering cartons. “Who knew the holidays could look so…dangerous.”
“Please,” he said with a gesture toward a small table with several chairs around it, “have a seat.” He sat down, but looked distracted by the amount of work teetering behind him. “I assume you’re here about the holiday help.”
He pulled a yellow legal pad and a stack of blank applications from a nearby shelf, handing one to me. “You’ll need to fill one of these out.”
I placed my file box on the table and sat down opposite him. “No, I don’t, Kev,” I said, pushing the application back toward him.
“I’m sorry…do I know you?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
There was the tiniest hint of nervousness in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. “Well, if you’re not here for the job, whatare you here for?” He gave a quick look toward my box.
“Don’t worry,” I said as reassuringly as I could, “it’s nothing bad. I promise.”
“Oh God,” he said, with sudden revelation on his face. “Are you an author? Look, we have buyers at our home office who handle all that. I can give you their phone numbers but you have to go through the proper channels. We do very little direct buying of self-published work on the store level…”
“I’m not selling anything,” I said, reassuring him. I was already losing patience. I still had the antiques dealer to see and I really didn’t have time for Kevin’s guessing game.
I went for the direct approach. I pulled the lid off the box and lifted out the Intellevision unit.
“This, I believe,” I said, handing it to him, “is yours.”
I reached back into the file box and began laying out game box after game box before him-twenty in all. There was a little water damage to some of the boxes from the puddle in the alley where I had helped Connor with the ghost, but other than that, they looked okay.
“My God…” Kevin whispered and tears formed at the corners of his eyes, slowly rolling down his face. He ran his fingers over the individual boxes, pausing his thumb over tiny colored tabs that had been added to the upper-right-hand corners of each.
“Whatare those?” I said.
I always tried to maintain my emotional detachment when reuniting owners with their lost property, but I had to admit, I always loved seeing their reactions. They often cried, or had to do their damndest not to. The thing was that if an item had a strong enough emotional fingerprint on it that I could identify its past owner, it probably meant that the item was extremely important in the owner’s life.
“I…” he started, and stopped. The words wouldn�
�t come. Finally he grabbed hold of another one of the boxes. The wordsShark! Shark! ran down the side of it, and he hugged the game to his body. “I’m sorry. I’m a little overwhelmed is all.” He pointed to one of the tabs. “My friends-we were geeky as hell back then-and we used to color code the games by their genre. Sports games were green, for grass. Red was for fighting games, because, well, you know…blood and guts. Puzzle games were purple.”
“Why purple?”
He shrugged and smiled. “We couldn’t really think of a good color that stood for puzzles, really, so we went for alliteration.Pu rplePu zzles. See?”
I nodded and checked my watch. I could make the next train upstate if I was out of here in the next five minutes.
“How on earth did you get your hands on these? And how did you find me?” he asked, drying his eyes on his sleeve. “I thought this stuff was goneforever. I know it must seem foolish that I’m crying over something like this, but there are a lot of memories packed in here.”
“If you look on the bottom of the console, it has your name and old address on it,” I said.
It was a lie, really. I had gone ahead and faked the signature because it seemed a much more plausible explanation than trying to convince him that I had tracked him down through a psychometric vision of his childhood. I hoped he assumed one of his parents had done it.
He picked up the machine, flipped it over, and looked at the signature. “Huh!”Let’s wrap it up, Kev. Honestly, I wasn’t insensitive to what he was going through. I loved giving someone that sense of connection to their past, but if I was to be straight with myself, my real motivation was the possibility of a cash reward. I checked my watch again. Four minutes left to get out of here and catch the next train up to see the antiques dealer in Poughkeepsie. It was time to close the deal. There were two approaches that usually worked. One was a simple “How much you willing to pay?” gambit, but I thought the subtle approach would catch Kevin hook, line, and sinker. He was weepy enough, for sure.
Step one. “I should probably be going,” I said with the most sincere and sheepish look I could muster. “I just thought this stuff might be important to you.”
“Wait,” he said, getting up. “Please…let me give you something for your trouble.”
Step two. Look surprised.
Step three. Refuse once. “No, that’s okay,” I continued. “Really.”
“No, please. I insist.”
Almost everyone says that. “I insist.”
Step four. I reluctantly agreed, like I was doing him a favor by taking his money. “Well,” I said with a kind smile. “If it will make you feel better…”
I walked out of the store with Kevin’s gratitude and a check for just over three hundred dollars. He insisted I not take a dime less. It was amazing how high a price tag people put on healing their emotional scars. I sold memories. I sold a certain amount of healing and hope, too. It didn’t mean that I didn’t feel dirty about it sometimes.
17
When I got home from the sales trip, it was after dark, but not too late. I had been successful to the tune of two months’ maintenance. I found Irene asleep in the guest room as I had left her earlier this morning and I didn’t dare disturb her. Connor had talked about how her spirit might slowly start to degrade and turn into something like the one from the alley, but I figured the less I forced her to interact, the less energy she expended-and that might slow the degradation. I caught a few hours’ sleep before waking up and sneaking the surveillance equipment I had calibrated the other night out of the apartment while Irene slept on, and I headed for Jane’s address, which Connor had e-mailed to me.
Hours later, as I prowled the rooftops and set up a parabolic mike directly across from Jane’s Chelsea apartment, I felt skeevy and voyeuristic. The Inspectre had assured me it was a necessary evil in the fight against, well, evil. But as I settled into an evening of spying on her, I found myself…liking it. Spying on Jane gave me a much better understanding of the woman. By the dull glow of my laptop’s screen, I worked on my report for the Department, detailing every move that she made. Jane was a much more cheerful person when she was home alone, and I guessed that it was due to being free and clear of her responsibilities to the evil Mr. Faisal Bane. Well, notquite free and clear. Throughout the night, she bristled as she fielded several calls from her boss regarding his scheduling needs. I was impressed that the parabolic mike picked up his voice on the phone. The confused expressions that flitted across her face as she spoke on the phone made it clear that she didn’t understand half of what her powerful boss was up to. Not that she was dumb, but I doubted she truly grasped the evil extent of what she had gotten herself into.
She didn’t question any of his demands. As the S.D.L. had probably made clear to her, certain things-highly evil things, I had no doubt-were on a “need to know” basis. I bet the less you knew at the Sectarian Defense League, the longer your lifespan was.
It wasn’t until nine that she made an outgoing call of her own. Takeout. When she asked for her sweet and sour sauce on the side, the same as I did, I smiled. Thirty minutes later her food arrived (she was a heavy tipper, I noted), but before she had a chance to put it down, her cell phone went off yet again. This time, as I positioned the mike, I caught her cursing under her breath.
I adjusted the mike and their voices came in loud and clear.
“What’s up, boss?” she said.
“Good evening, Jane. I trust you’re enjoying your time off tonight?”
Jane looked at the unopened bag of Chinese food in her hand.
“Oh yeah,” she said with mock enthusiasm. “It’s a regular party at my place, sir.”
“I’m afraid your party will have to wait,” he said. “I’ve got some errands I need done.”
He really didn’t get the whole sarcasm thing. Perhaps it had something to do with that dark, brooding European sensibility of his. Or maybe he just didn’t get idioms.
I knew that a lot of people would be bothered if their time off was constantly interrupted, but after my dinner with Jane, I knew she was probably making the best of the situation in her head already. I bet she was thinking,Doesn’t Chinese reheat just fine?
I watched through high-tech optical headgear as she walked over to the fridge and tossed the bag in next to four others. Thanks to the power of the electronic eyes, I could even make out the other packages in there: one Mexican, one Italian, and two other Chinese.
“Where do you need me, sir?” She slammed the refrigerator door shut.
“Do you have something black to wear?”
“Of course,” she said as she crossed her kitchen.
Over dinner, she had actually said that day one of her Human Resources training, the Sectarians had sent her out with a corporate credit card to pick up a variety of outfits…all of them in black. The corporate equivalent of hairnets, paper hats, and smocks for the forces of Darkness, I guessed.
“Good, good,” Faisal said. “Wear something you can be flexible in.”
“Flexible, sir?” she said, puzzled. “Like a leotard?”
My mind wandered as the image of her in clingy clothing filled it. She was working for evil, but even evil could be hot, right?
Faisal chuckled on the other end of the line. “No no, my dear. Flexible as in the ‘I’m going to be climbing, spying, and gee, I hope I don’t get caught’ kind of flexible.”
“Oh,that kind.”
“Yes,that kind.”
“I’m sure I have something,” Jane said, and headed out of her living room into the darkness of the next room over. I switched the goggles over to night vision and suddenly had a perfect view of her bedroom lit in a wash of monochromatic green. The goggles read body heat and I couldn’t help but notice the red-blue swirls it picked up and the curves of her figure. Torn between gentlemanly respect and a sense of duty, I forced myself to keep watching. She headed straight to a chest of drawers. It was already open and clothes hung out of it in disarray. Jane started pawin
g through them. “May I inquire as to my mission?”
“You may indeed. I need you to check out those two men from the incident at our offices the other afternoon. I need you to tell me if one of them isn’t talking to someone.”
Jane’s face scrunched up, confused, and I found I was making the same face underneath the goggles.Isn’t talking to someone…?
She continued to rummage through her chest of drawers. “I’m sorry?”
“I beg your pardon,” corrected Faisal. “I need you to tell me if one of them is talking to someone who isn’t.”
Jane held up a shirt and stretched it across her body. Slimming, a bit tight, but if she was caught spying, she’d look dynamite in it. Perfect choice.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Mr. Bane.”
“Then follow this!” he barked, causing me to reach for the volume on the headphones.
Thiswas the Faisal I had expected. Jane nearly dropped the phone. She stopped fussing with the shirt and gave Faisal her full attention. “Thanks to that careless object retrieval you scheduled, one of my pet projects has been compromised, Jane. Some very important enemies are becoming all too aware of the Sectarian Defense League’s goings-on and I’m blaming this wholly on you.”
“Sir, the agent I sent to Ms. Blatt’s on the retrieval-”
“Wasstill your agent, Jane. Youdo take responsibility for people under your command, I assume?”
Jane was getting nervous. She started pacing and fell silent.
What could she say? I knew she was way out of her league, probably had been from day one. Right that moment, though, she had to think fast to please her boss. Her newfound career with the S.D.L. was on the line. How she handled Faisal would affect whether she lived or died, even if she wasn’t fully aware of the severity of her situation.
She seemed so small and insecure just then. I wanted to help her out, even if she was playing for Team Evil. I wished I could send thoughtwaves to her.Keep in mind where your bread is buttered and you’ll know to please him above all else to survive.