by Max Barry
“Um, sure. I just want to know about subcontracting.”
“I see,” Pearson said. “You knew we reserved the right to do that, right?”
“Well… I guess. I mean, it doesn’t matter if the NRA actually did it. I just want to know—”
Pearson’s eyebrows shot up. “What makes you think it was NRA work?”
“Oh!” Hack glanced at John, who looked disgusted. “I just…thought.”
“Did you?” Pearson said. “Well, that’s a very interesting guess, Hack. Because, as we discussed, we treat our business associations with the utmost confidence. The utmost confidence.”
“That’s what I want to talk about. I want to know if there were any other, um, business associates, besides the NRA.”
Pearson folded his hands neatly. “In our line of work, Hack, discretion is critical. I’m surprised you don’t know this already. Did I give you a brochure?”
“Ah—”
“I’ll give you a brochure. We have safeguards in place to protect your confidentiality. They are incontrovertible.”
“Okay,” Hack said.
“But I see you want additional assurance,” Pearson said. “Which, given the nature of the job, I can understand. Very well. I can inform you that the directive passed directly from us to a third party, who carried out the work. No intermediaries were involved.”
“Right,” Hack said, relieved. “Okay, well, thanks—”
“I hope you appreciate the magnitude of what we’ve accomplished here, Hack. You will remember that when you make your monthly payments.”
“Yes, Sergeant Pearson,” Hack said.
“Senior Sergeant Pearson,” Pearson said.
John was upbeat on the walk home from the Police. “They’re a very focused organization, all right. John was one hundred percent right about that.”
“Uh-huh,” Hack said. He was thinking about Violet again.
John peered at the brochure. “Each case has a single contact. Everything’s encrypted, so employees can’t tell what their colleagues are working on. Even management can only access job numbers, not names. And it’s the largest Australian-based company in the world! Did you know that?”
“No.”
“You want to know why Americans took over the world, Hack? Because they respect achievement. Before this was a USA country, our ideal was the working-class battler, for Christ’s sake. If Australians ruled the world, everyone would work one day a week and bitch about the pay.” He shook his head. “Then there’s the British, who thought there was something wrong with making money. No surprise they ended up kissing the colony’s ass. The Japanese, they think the pinnacle of achievement is a Government job. The Chinese are Communist, the Germans are Socialists, the Russians are broke…who does that leave?”
“Canada?”
“America,” John said. “The United fucking States of America, the country founded on free-market capitalizm. I tell you, those Founding Fathers knew their shit.”
Hack was silent.
“So here’s this Australian company,” John said, waving the brochure, “doing the only thing Australians still have a competitive advantage in: keeping their traps shut. Still, it makes our job easier.”
“Does it?”
“Sure. It means we only have to kill Pearson.”
“Oh.”
“Although, when I say ‘we’…”
Hack dropped his head.
“It’s in your contract,” John said. “Page eight. A clause called ‘logical extensions.’”
Hack shook his head wildly. “No, I can’t do this again. Please. I can’t.”
John sighed. “Jesus, Hack, you are the worst goddamn assassin I ever heard of. We wanted a nice little rampage, something we could write off as an employee gone postal if the Government caught up with us. Neat and tidy. But no, you had to go and outsource.” He sighed. “Good people get the job done, Hack, no matter what. Remember that. Is this your apartment?”
“Yes,” Hack said. When they reached the top of the stairs, he fumbled for his keys.
John reached out and stopped him. “Knock first. We don’t want John getting jumpy.”
“Okay.” He hoped John wasn’t the sort to get jumpy. He hoped he hadn’t explored the apartment.
An eye appeared at the peephole. “Hack?” It was Violet’s voice. He heard her unlocking. “Hack, there’s a man in here—”
“Violet! It’s okay, there’s a guy with me, too. It’s all right.” Silence.
“Hello?”
“Who’s that?” John said. He tried the handle. “That’s not John.”
“It’s my girlfriend. Violet.”
“Give me the keys,” John said. He wrestled with the door. Finally the door swung open. It was dark inside. “John? You there, buddy?”
“Violet?”
“You go first,” John said. He pushed Hack forward.
Hack moved blindly, his hands out before him. He couldn’t think why the lights would be out. And why Violet had answered the—
John said, “Ag!”
He turned. John was two steps behind him and Violet had a long knife to his throat. She must have hidden behind the door. “Violet! He’s John Nike! Let him go!”
“Girl,” John said, “you want to let go of me, right now. You really do.”
“Hack,” Violet said, “pack some clothes. We’re leaving.” She looked at him. “Do it!”
Hack jolted into motion. He went into the bedroom and started pulling open drawers. He threw clothes into a bag and showed it to her.
“What about shoes? Hack! And get my computer.”
He grabbed some shoes from the bedroom closet and collected her notebook. When he emerged, she was patting down John’s pockets.
“Violet,” Hack said, “I really think you’re making a mistake.”
“Go,” she said. “Outside.” She pulled a pistol from John’s jacket and looked at him.
“That has sentimental value,” John said. Violet pushed him into the living room. He regarded them from the darkness. “Violet—is that your name? This is your last chance. If you do this, you’ll regret it. I guarantee it.” He held out his hand. “Give me back my gun.”
She slammed the door. Hack followed her down the stairs and into the car park. “What’s going on? Where are we going?”
“I think I killed a man,” she said.
“Oh.” Hack left a respectful silence.
“Now drive,” she said, and he got in.
17 Buy
Buy couldn’t tell what color the walls were. The sounds of the crowd were dulled and thick, and he kept realizing that his head was heading for the bar just before he reached it. Buy was very drunk. He was going down in flames.
Buy hadn’t been in to work for almost a week. He’d arranged the leave a month ago, knowing that the last week of the financial year would leave him drained; of course, he hadn’t known just how true that would turn out to be. It was Wednesday night, and tomorrow Buy was meant to front up to Mitsui with the stain of a dead girl on his soul, and he absolutely, definitely was not ready for that.
A woman at the bar was looking at him. He squinted at her and she rose and came toward him. He tried to sit straighter on the stool.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” Buy said. When she didn’t say anything else, he added, “Can I buy you a drink?”
“A Manhattan, please.”
He ordered the drink. “I’m Buy Mitsui.”
“Sandy John Hancock. You got life insurance?” She laughed. “I’m kidding. Are you a stockbroker?”
“Yes,” Buy said. He managed to discern a black skirt and a tight green top.
“I wanted to be a stockbroker, once. But I didn’t like the math. Do you have to know math?”
“Sometimes,” he said, even though the answer was no, not really.
“Thanks.” He realized she wasn’t talking to him. The barman was looking at him expectantly. He dug out a card from his wallet and fumbled it o
nto the bar.
“Points card?”
“No.” Buy had one, but didn’t think he could find it.
“You should get one of those,” Sandy said. “I got one last year, after they formed US Alliance. I got a Team Advantage card, too. You earn so much free stuff.”
“I don’t need free stuff.”
“You must be rich. Are you?” She laughed. “I’m just kidding.”
“I have an unlimited AmEx. But you have to be able to… recite the numbers…to use it.” He felt his head dipping toward the bar again.
“Unlimited? Wow. So you could, like, buy a whole apartment on plastic.”
Buy said nothing. He tried to drain his glass, but nothing came out. He set it down on the bar as carefully as he could. “Life insurance,” he said. “It doesn’t actually protect your life, does it? It just gives you money for it.”
“Well, life insurance is for your dependents,” Sandy said. “If you have any.”
Buy realized she was waiting for an answer. “I don’t.”
“I find that hard to believe.” He saw teeth.
“Mmm,” Buy said. The bar was swaying. “Do you want to see my apartment?”
“Does it have a view?”
“Um,” he said. “Yes, it—”
“I’m just kidding,” she said. “Let’s go.”
On the street, he asked, “Have you ever done something generous for no reason?”
“Sure. Everybody has.”
“Once I gave a girl five thousand dollars.”
“For no reason?”
“Because she wanted it.”
“You know, I want five thousand dollars.” Sandy laughed. Buy said nothing. “What did she do?”
“She died.”
“She died? What, because you gave her money?”
“I think so.”
“You mean the one time you did something nice for no reason, the person died?”
Buy swayed, and she caught his arm.
“Let me help you,” Sandy said.
“No,” he said, but she did anyway.
18 Jennifer
It was hard to believe how far Kate could strew the contents of one schoolbag. “Kate!” Jennifer yelled. “Where have you put your drink bottle?”
“It’s on the TV.”
“Why is it on the TV?” She didn’t really want to know. She’d spent twenty minutes trying to make sandwiches with one arm in a sling and when she picked them up all the cheese fell out. It was her first day back at work and Jennifer was being thwarted by slippery condiments.
Kate entered the kitchen, carrying her schoolbag. “It makes the reception better.”
“Well—go get it, please. We’re both late.”
Kate left. Jennifer wrapped the sandwiches and tucked them into the schoolbag. There were some papers crammed in there, and Jennifer pulled them out. Papers usually meant things she had to sign to avoid getting scammed by a school fund-raising drive. Last year she’d ended up with a crate of Barbie dolls to sell; they were still under the house. Mattel ran good schools, but the merchandising was killing her.
The papers weren’t about fund-raising. It looked like Kate’s schoolwork, a paper on penguins. There were drawings and writing and printouts of pictures from the internet. It looked pretty impressive to Jennifer. “Kate?”
Kate reentered. “I’ve got it.”
“What’s this?”
“What? Oh. A project. It’s due in today.”
“It looks great. Really great.”
“Well, I like penguins.”
“Do you want a folder for it? It’s going to get crushed if you take it in like this.”
“Do we have folders?”
She looked at her watch. “For you, I have folders.” She led Kate into the study and rooted through her desk drawer. There was a Government report on inner-city crime rates in a smart, gray folder, and she tipped it out. “How about this?”
“Yeah!”
“You know, we should put the pages behind plastic sheets,” Jennifer said. “They’ll look snazzy.”
“Mommy, you said we were late.”
“A project this nice,” Jennifer said, “should be behind plastic sheets.”
“Okay!” Kate said, excited. She ran to get it.
She was so late to work she missed her own Welcome Back party, which she was grateful for. Since she’d been injured her answering machine had fielded fourteen well wishes from colleagues. It wasn’t totally about her, she knew: it was about Taylor, who had gone to work Friday morning and died in a shopping mall. Jennifer hadn’t done anything except stay alive. But this was a big deal to agents, who had the highest death rate of any occupation except machine operators.
There was an e-mail waiting for her from Legal, about the suit from the Mercedes-Benz dealer whose car she’d fallen on. It said:
Dear Field Agent Jennifer,
Please justify why damage to the property in question (1 X MERCEDES-BENZ E420 SEDAN) was unavoidable in the course of carrying out your duties. In particular, please specify:
(1) whether you considered any alternative plans of action that would not have led to the destruction of this property;
(2) if so, why you did not pursue these alternative plans;
(3) a statement about your mental state at the time.
She had a lot of experience with allowing memos from Legal to grow old and die in her In Box, but this one, she decided, deserved a response. She tapped out:
The alternatives I considered were:
(1) jumping under a passing bus;
(2) shooting myself in both legs;
(3) dragging some sorry asses out of the Legal Department and throwing them off the third floor.
I did not pursue the first two strategies because they did not guarantee me as much personal injury as landing on a Mercedes. I did not pursue the third strategy because my mental state at the time must have been severely impaired.
“My God,” Calvin said, entering. “You’re really back. How’s the shoulder?”
“Hi,” she said, turning. “Did you get Hack Nike?”
He dropped into a chair. “Come on, Jen, this isn’t Europe. I can’t just get someone. We have no evidence. We have no budget.”
“I asked you to.”
“I assumed you were delirious,” Calvin said. “Look, anyway, I’ve been busy interviewing families, trying to scrounge up funding. So far, zip. And I’m down to the last couple.”
“Who?”
“Ummm…”He slid his chair over to the desk and shuffled some papers. “Jim GE and Mary Shell. Parents of Hayley McDonald’s. Killed at…”He looked up.
“Chadstone?”
“Maybe you should sit this out.”
“Don’t coddle me,” she said. “I can run an interview.”
There was a knock on the door. A man stood in the doorway. His suit was so cheap it shone. “Jennifer Government,” he said. “Maybe you think you’re a comedian. Maybe you think this whole situation is funny.”
“Who are you?” Calvin said.
“Lemme guess,” Jennifer said. “Legal?”
“My department has a job to do, Jennifer. We’re trying to defend your budget. We can do without you sending us insulting replies.”
She said, “Don’t ask me why I chose to fall onto a car and talk about being insulted, you shit. I’m wearing a sling here.”
He reddened. “Well, we still need that information. It may not seem important to you, but this is a serious suit.”
She couldn’t help it: she looked at his suit.
“I see,” the lawyer said. “It’s all very, very amusing.”
“Ah, look,” Calvin said. “We’ll get you the info you want. We have interviews to conduct now. Okay?”
“Fine,” the lawyer said, and left.
“What did you do to him?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Go get Hayley’s parents.”
He left. She tried to push back her hair before remembering
there wasn’t anything left to push: just a crude, dark shock. She missed her hair.
Calvin led Hayley’s parents in and offered them seats. They were shy, clutching coffees in polystyrene cups. She stared at them. It was hard to forget she’d seen their daughter shot. Calvin cleared his throat.
She blinked. “Jim, Mary, I’m Field Agent Jennifer Government. I’m very sorry for your loss. I’m not sure how familiar you are with Government procedure in these circumstances.”
Mary looked lost. Jim said, “You want money.”
Jennifer folded her hands on the desk. “In order to pursue the perpetrators, we need funding, yes. The Government’s budget only extends to preventing crime, not punishing it. For a retributive investigation, we can only proceed if we can obtain funding.” She gave them a moment. “I apologize for the question. Can you contribute?”
Mary shifted. Jim said, “I…I’ve had a very bad three months. I lost my job…”
Silence. Calvin folded his arms.
“She played hockey,” Mary said, then bit her lip.
“There were Government agents at the mall,” Jim said. His ears were red. “If you had stopped these people then, Hayley would—we wouldn’t be here.”
“We did our best with the information we had,” Calvin said. “We’re sorry, Jim. We lost an agent in this mess.”
Jennifer leaned forward. “I was there. At Chadstone. If anyone should have stopped them, it was me.”
His eyes darted to her sling. “And now you want money.”
“Yes.”
Silence. “This wasn’t some street shooting.”
“No. We think it was planned.”
“Then they’ll be hard to catch.”
“Yes.”
He nodded. He looked at Mary, then his hands. Then he looked at Jennifer. “Will you try?”
“If I have the budget, I will get them. I promise you that.”
“All right,” he said. “Then I’ll sell my house.”
Her relief was frightening. “Thank you, Jim.”
“Jen, that was really bad form,” Calvin said, closing the door. “You know you’re not meant to promise results. No investigation is a slam dunk.”