“And they got nothing new on you?”
He stares at me with eyes that could be my own. “They have everything on me, Jules. Everything. Nothing private about my fall from grace. They blew the whistle too early and now they can’t do anything worse.”
Over the years Watson had accumulated gossip and rumors around the department and all over town. Was the most well-known, and therefore hated, P.I. in the City. It’s why my wife said we should hire him. He had a journalistic itch, too—published articles and tipped off newspapers and blogs whenever he sniffed a scandal. He used his underbelly knowledge as bargaining chips for Favors and juicy arrangements, until some of the boys in black had enough, did some digging of their own, and figured they’d shut him up by shining a floodlight on his vices. One-night stands and prostitutes and gambling and bribery and dog-fighting rings, the occasional bump of cocaine or Juice. It never bothered me. The call of the void grows too loud to ignore, and escapism follows. Gaze into the abyss for too long and maybe you close your eyes or bring a bottle to your lips before the abyss can throw you a fiendish wink. The cops’ plan backfired. Watson’s wife divorced him and took his daughter. This left him with nothing to do but work even harder and publish more. It took me a long time to realize why he kept helping, why he became my friend.
DNA logged at birth, the double-helix dissection enforced by the system. Hair, eye color, birthmarks, prenatal deformities, inherited beauty, diseases, blood type, that first intake of breath, the scream of life, all acknowledged and logged via arithmetic logic and control units, stored on platters and tapes, magnetically accessed as needed, slingshot over wires and waves, genealogy traced back through eons. The fat cats in top hats and lab-coat brainiacs could smell the empire burning decades before the sparks licked the fuse. Knew they couldn’t put out the flames, or delay ignition, so they chronicled it all instead, flailing for knowledge. Pompeii looked up at Vesuvius with vigilant eyes. Newborns were first placed in machines instead of their parents’ arms. I remember Mathilda’s tears as they took Amelie, transformed her into a living barcode. We were made to kneel and kiss the ring, too. Faceless robots asked endless questions about my condition, never once offered to help. Citizens born before the great age of tracking were required to trade anonymity and privacy in the name of freedom. Struggle, rebel, and squirm under the boot heel on your jugular, wave goodbye to your residency permit. The government watched crime explode and tried to fight the stats with oppression and finger pointing. Corners cut so recklessly the wagons crashed. Monkey see, monkey do. I know what that monkey saw. Journalism was replaced by propaganda. Reporters were silenced, truth left hog-tied and ball-gagged under City Hall. Money’s growing obsolescence did not reduce robberies or the craving for material goods. New markets emerged. Flesh as currency, organs stolen and resold by the boatload. As reality’s ember of hope grew cold, the urge to use drugs became stronger. None of it helped. Muggings, rapes, riots, break-ins, murders, blackmail, the organ trade. The government lost the war against the invisible enemy the same way it lost control over what became the Ghost Town and the Outskirts. The Red Light District is fraying at the edges. The Financial District is the one place where the law even pretends to try, but corruption and rust grow within sure as cancer.
The City is dying, no question about it. It just won’t accept the diagnosis yet.
Amir “8-ball” Velar lies on the floor of his cell, handcuffed, eyes shut. He could be napping, but the cell’s lighting makes him look like a corpse. The smell isn’t too far off.
“Stand up,” says Watson.
Amir groans, does not move.
Watson nods at the hallway camera, waits. The door buzzes, then clicks open. He steps inside the cramped cell. I glide past him with ghostly non-presence, sit on the bed. Watson crouches next to Amir. He removes the gun from its holster and places the barrel on Amir’s cheek.
“Look alive, sunshine.”
Amir’s eyes open, bloodshot and hazed. Features shrouded in the pall of withdrawal. He doesn’t panic, maintains eye contact over the gun with reptilian poise. For my money, Amir is running the numbers, pondering if he can bring Watson down before a bullet enters his skull.
I light up a smoke and press my back to the wall, wait for dominance to be established. The smell of blood wafts in the air, pre-cognitive flakes of copper and rust.
“We have the children,” says Watson. “They’re being processed. The three pieces of shit guarding them were shot. Unfortunate, right? But not surprising. Burnt prints, no tats, no IDs. Nobodies, as usual. Farmhouse is a squat, no owner, should have been bulldozed long ago. But you were cocky enough to run your mouth over the wire about the sweet money you’ve been making lately. Well played, shit-bird. Who’s your boss, 8-ball?”
Amir cracks a smile. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, “but children? Don’t know what you mean, pig.”
Watson lets go of the gun’s grip, catches the weapon by the barrel, and coolly smashes the butt into Amir’s right temple. The left side of his face slams against the cement floor.
Watson forces Amir onto his back and rests the gun’s barrel directly between his eyes. “This conversation isn’t what you think it is. I’m not doing this dance. Your employer’s location would grant you extra kindness. Cigarettes, and maybe some Juice.”
“Man,” says Amir. “Big Charles. I told the other cops everything already.”
Watson sighs. “Most of what you said checked out. Big Charles, however? That answer reeks of bullshit. Big Charles is into drugs, never been into human trafficking. He’s a Ghost Town exclusive, too. You’re not. Whoever told you to mention his name wants to cause trouble for a rival. Who’s your boss?”
Amir eyeballs the gun, then Watson, then the gun again. “I can’t tell you that, man. I don’t know.”
“Amir, do I seem familiar to you?”
Amir hesitates to take his eyes away from the gun, but finally does, then frowns.
“I…I seen you on TV plenty of times. Oh, shit, you’re that guy always stirring shit up.”
“Yeah. I am that guy. Forget about whatever deal the cops offered. Forget protective custody—that’s a laugh riot. You talk, maybe I arrange for you to be transferred out of town. Maybe your cuffs are too loose, you get a chance to hop on a train. Keep up the bravado, and you get transferred to a shithole with no security. I spread the word that you snitched. You’ll be dumped in the Outskirts. Pigs will have you for lunch by the end of the week. I’m talking actual pigs, here. Or I could kill you now.”
“You won’t do nothing here. No way, man.”
“Check the cam, Amir.”
I angle my neck to follow Amir’s eyes, locking on the camera above my head. The camera does not move.
“Fuck,” says Amir.
The cop who led us to the cell strolls by, twirling his nightstick and whistling.
“Hey, man,” says Amir. “Hey, I need help here. Police brutality, man!”
The cop laughs, keeps walking. His laughter echoes from farther and farther away, vanishes down the hall.
“Who’s your boss,” repeats Watson. “And have you worked for the same employer for the past five years?”
“I don’t even know, man. I think so. I get a number of kids to bring and a location. It changes every time.”
“How’d they contact you?”
“They leave notes under my door.”
“Payment?”
“Cash. Under the door, too. And Favors.”
Watson nods, cogs turning in his brain, searching for holes. “Favors? Where do you collect them?”
“Big Charles, for real. He gives me all the goods I need. Juice too, sometimes.”
“Your next job. Did you have one scheduled?”
“Next week. Tuesday, late evening. I’m supposed to bring a girl somewhere. Note asked for a blonde.”
“Where?”
“Outskirts. 53 Franklyn Rose, an old plant.”
“When’d you get the job order?”
“Yesterday morning. But they’ll hear, man. Don’t even bother going there. They know I’m in here.”
Watson shares a swift look with me, loaded with rage. He has no intention of waiting. We’re going there tonight.
I stand up, drop the cigarette, crush it with my shoe. Watson holsters his gun. From my pocket, I remove a picture of Amelie, place it right in front of Amir’s face.
“Three years ago,” I say, “she disappeared. Elpis Elementary. Do you remember her?”
Amir studies the picture. I know what he’s thinking: lost children all look the same.
“I…I don’t know.”
My hand trembles and there’s bile in my mouth. “Try harder.”
Amir squints, frowns, and offers a polite smile.
“She’s pretty.”
Next comes the blur of adrenaline. Later, in the dead of night, the scene boomeranged in disjointed snapshots: knuckles on fire, splashes of blood and static, exploding teeth, crimson gums, begging for mercy, a thumb plunging into an eye socket, His name used in vain, Watson grabbing me from behind, me shrugging him off with ease, more punches, Amir’s screams, the crunches of collapsing bones, my screams, cops entering the cell, crushed Adam’s apple, maniacal laughter somewhere deep within, a heart draped in rust, curtains.
Mathilda told me I would have to pick up Amelie after school. Someone at her office was sick and she had to stay overtime. We had agreed early on that fetching Amelie by myself should happen as rarely as possible. But on this particular day there was no other option. I remember the excitement. The eagerness of seeing her face, the anticipation for love and beauty. The thought of being amongst other parents pretending to be normal, of Amelie running into my arms and us walking home hand in hand. I would not recognize her, but as her arms would wrap themselves around my neck, I would know her all over again.
I arrived a few minutes late. A stock market speculator had lost millions in a bad bet, ruined his career and countless other lives. Hope faltered. He dove from his company’s skyscraper, a final leap of unfaith. I stood paralyzed in traffic for too long, palm slamming the horn. I left my car in the middle of the mess and went for the nearest subway station. There were a handful of parents left in front of the school, most of them engaged in surface banter while their children played with each other. I asked the teacher standing guard where Amelie was.
“And you are?”
“Her father,” I said, out of breath. “Her father.”
“May I see your I.D?”
I opened my wallet, showed the card, pointed at my last name. “My wife, Mathilda, usually picks her up.”
“Let me go get her, Mr. Lethe,” said the teacher, and she went inside.
I waited by the entrance as the other parents left with their children. Someone emerged from the school building, looked around the courtyard in confusion. It was the teacher I had just spoken with. Same dress. She went inside once more. She came out again, accompanied by three other school workers. They spread around the courtyard, calling a name.
My daughter’s name.
In the car I study my bloodied hands as Watson stares dead-eyed at the road. I hand him another cigarette as soon as the one in his mouth burns down to its filter. The roar of the ambulance’s siren resonates in my mind. Watson shushing cops, explaining what happened, some of them nodding my way and smiling. Amir’s face, a vague canvas of pulp and ruin. His frenzied weeping as the paramedics lifted him on the stretcher and repeated, “You’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay.”
“Watson,” I say.
“Don’t.”
“Where are we going?”
“Big Charles’s den.”
“You don’t think that was bullshit?”
“Part of it. But Amir is, or was, a pretty serious addict. He needed a steady supply, and if any of what he said is true, it’s definitely the part about Charles giving him Favors. Now the real question: Is he the puppet master, or just another bitch-boy bending over for the real culprit?”
“You know him?”
Watson laughs. “Big Charles? Sure. His dope is excellent.”
We drive through the dying streets of Ghost Town, past gray buildings left to tumble in on themselves and distilleries used as makeshift squats. The summer nights are in full swing and only serve to bring out the worst of the sewer stench. Under the orange streetlight glow, shirtless men lean against crumbling brick walls with beer cans in their hands or needles in their arms. Prostitutes use the heat like a weapon, showcase what a few Favors or coins would give their customers access to. At a stoplight, a man limps across the street with great difficulty, holding hands with a rail-thin wraith.
The light goes green, his bruised face vanishes. We make another turn and I realize we’re in my neighborhood. My apartment block and the dozens of Juice-heads who always greet me but I never recognize, a bakery making its business on the sugar so many crave, my usual tobacco shop where hash and opium are more popular than cigarettes, bars and bodegas where I burn the candle at both ends.
The car stops in front of a nightclub that closed before I moved to this part of the city. The faded sign reads Purgatorio and this might be the drollest thing I’ve seen in a while. The proud, the lustful, the envious, the covetous. Seems about right. I wonder which profile fits Big Charles.
“We must be, what, two blocks away from my place?”
Watson pats his chest, making sure his gun is there. “This surprises you?”
“Not at all. Do we have a plan here?”
“We’re going to have a conversation with Charles.”
“The same way we had a conversation with Amir?”
“If you’re feeling suicidal. He’s got an itchy trigger finger. So do his lapdogs. Let’s take it easy.”
“I don’t see any lapdogs.”
Watson bursts out of the car, gun in hand.
Something ate away at Mathilda after Amelie’s disappearance. No sleeping, no eating, no talking. She had this fear there had been no kidnapping. That Amelie had walked away, absconded into the night. Which would be ridiculous for a five-year-old girl. But that fear dug its venomous claws into my wife’s brain—the notion that a child could choose to abandon its parents. It kept her up at night.
I had my own idea of Hell, too.
Our world, the world we’ve built, consists of many rooms. Happy rooms, sad rooms, boring rooms, necessary rooms, small and big, painted or bare, chaotic or neat, puzzling or logical. People live, work, or pass through them. There are as many kinds of people as there are rooms.
And then there is a room.
It’s the room where my daughter is. In my nightmares, the room glows red. It’s not a room in which she lives. It’s a room where she merely survives, wishing for whatever is being done to her to stop. Sometimes, people enter. It may be a man, a woman, several men, several women. Their faces are as blurry as the faces of everyone I’ve ever loved or hated—not only because of prosopagnosia, but because they could be anyone. My daughter screams when they walk into the room. She doesn’t stop until they leave, or until she is too exhausted, or hurt, to do so.
This is where Hell begins.
The red room is part of a house. Now, adjust the lens. Zoom out. Tune out the sounds, let my daughter’s cries fade. The house’s colors dim to black, except for the room itself. The house is part of a neighborhood. There might be other red rooms there, perhaps. Keep zooming out, though, and the area becomes a district. A town. More rooms. A city. A state. Soon enough, dozens of red rooms glimmer in the dark. A country, a continent. Hundreds, thousands of rooms. Zoom out far enough, and you’re staring at a planet, its surface as black as the emptiness through which it drifts and defiled by red dots, too many of them to count.
Turn the volume back up, and you’d hear it then. The screams and cries of the damned, begging for mercy.
We enter Purgatorio. Down the dimly lit hallway, weaving between chains dangling from the ceiling. Spent shell casings litter the velvet
carpeting. Bullet holes scar the walls. The hallway leads to a wide dance floor and the unmistakable whiff of blood. Chairs and tables have been flipped over, used as last-ditch shields. Three men lie on the floor. Their corpses soak in burgundy puddles.
A loud bang. Watson pushes me to the floor, swearing under his breath.
“You back for more, you cocksucker?” someone screams from the other side of the room.
Watson frowns, yells back, “Charles?”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Watson. I’m about to stand up now. Don’t shoot.”
“You solo?”
“No, I have a friend with me.”
“Cop?
“You could say he’s the opposite. Now, don’t kill me, okay? I’m coming over.”
Watson rises, waving his gun like a white flag. Two more corpses in the corner, the dead men cradling automatic weapons. One of them no longer has a head. Big Charles sits slumped in one of the back booths.
Big doesn’t cover it. Behemoth might do. Shaved skull. Veiny arms larger than my legs. His blood-soaked shirt clings to his rhino-like stomach. Dark blood pumps out of two nasty wounds in his belly.
Watson kneels next to Charles and takes no chances, slides the shotgun away from him. Charles smirks red. Sweat glistens on his forehead. “Been dying here for a while, man.”
“I’ll call 911.”
Watson gives me a disapproving look. Charles scoffs, “You blind? Too late. Not gonna start making friends with the Devil on my death bed, old man.”
Watson places a firm hand on one of Charles’s wounds, tries to plug the leak. “The hell happened?”
Charles coughs for too long, wheezes, manages to grab his breath. “Random goon waltzed in here, rifle in hand. Didn’t get a good look, but didn’t seem familiar. He didn’t say a word, simply opened fire. Two of my men turned on the others as soon as he stepped in. I gunned them down but couldn’t do much for the rest.”
“Any idea who’s behind it?” says Watson.
“Got more enemies than fingers, Wats. But if you came for your dose, I think he left without touching anything. Was no robbery.”
Soul Standard Page 21