NK3

by Michael Tolkin

  The two men left the Playa and walked past the burned-out mansions of the Holmby Hills. From there they crossed to the UCLA campus.

  When they were in sight of the UCLA Medical Center, Seth took Hopper’s hands in his. “You know how to keep an eye on me without being found. I know you can do that. When I’m ready for you, I’ll open my office window. You’ll see me. I’ll meet you back here. This is where I have to say good-bye now. But I’m going to help you because without you, I wouldn’t be back here. If I had to tell them about the airport, they might not believe I was forced to help. If they don’t punish me for disappearing, I’ll be at work quickly, I’m certain. You just have to keep moving until I can figure out how to make things safe for you, so you can search openly for your wife, and find her and then, together with her, finally bury Disney.” It made Seth feel good to put all those words into one sentence. “I’m going to tell them I had help. I’m going to tell them a Transport Service worker found me.”

  Seth walked through Westwood to the hospital.

  He’d never learned the names of the nurses, but the one with leather pants and a vest with no top was behind the reception desk in the emergency room when he approached the door, setting off the mechanism that drew the door aside automatically.

  If he didn’t remember her name, she had no trouble remembering his. “Dr. Kaplan, Dr. Kaplan, it’s you. You’re back.”

  “I am?”

  “You’ve been away.”

  “I have?”

  “Where were you? We were so worried.”

  “I walked. I know I walked. I went into houses and ate the food that was there. The man helped me find my way back. And now I’m back. Where’s Dr. Piperno?”

  “I know he wants to see you. He told me to call him if you ever came back. Don’t go away, not again. Don’t go away again.”

  She made a call.

  “Dr. Piperno, Dr. Kaplan is back. Yes, I’m sure. I’m looking at him right now. I’ll tell him. Yes.” She asked Seth a question. “Dr. Kaplan, Dr. Piperno wants you to stay here and wait for him. He asked me to see if you’re hungry or hurt. Are you hungry or hurt?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “We have microwave popcorn. It never goes stale. Would you like popcorn?”

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever had popcorn.”

  She put the bag into a microwave. They stood by and watched and listened while the popcorn popped.

  Piperno arrived, shouting at Seth. “Where have you been, Dr. Kaplan? We have looked everywhere for you.”

  “I went for a walk and I think I got lost.”

  “Lost enough for no one to see you for a month?” Then he turned to the nurse. “How long has he been away? Six weeks? A few days? It’s always so hard to keep track.”

  “Well, the popcorn is ready and he was here before I started it.”

  “I was in a house somewhere,” said Seth. “I was lost. And then I slept in the bushes. You can see how dirty I am.”

  “And how did you unlose yourself, Dr. Kaplan?”

  “I can’t say I unlost myself by myself. A man helped me.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. He had work.”

  “So do we.”

  “Dr. Piperno, I’m ready for that. I’m hungry. I didn’t eat very much. But I did think a lot about medicine.”

  When Piperno heard this he softened. “What did you think?”

  “That I’m ready to be a doctor now. That I remembered my medicine and want to help people who are hurt and sick.”

  “But where did you go?

  “I started drifting again, but inside the Fence. I know how to hide. It’s something you learn when you’re drifting, and I stayed hidden. I woke up while I was drifting this time. I remembered what I’m supposed to do. Dr. Piperno, you gave me good training and I came back to be helpful instead of what I think I was doing, falling into the old way of drifting.”

  “You must be tired.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Your operating table is waiting for you. Get some rest.”

  Seth returned to where he had started and fell asleep in his clothing. A few hours later, Piperno woke him up. “We have a badly cut patient. I’ve been drinking and my hand isn’t steady. It’s time for you to sew.”

  The patient was Hopper, with a deep red stripe on his left arm, the bleeding already stanched by the nurse’s tourniquet.

  “This is the man who found me!” said Seth. “This is the man who brought me back to the hospital when I was lost. I told you about him, Dr. Piperno. Do you remember when I told you about the man who found me when I was lost, the Transport Service worker?”

  “Remember? I think so. We’re grateful he helped you. Now, let’s return the favor. What happened to you here?”

  “I was bicycling and not paying attention and hit a curb and cut myself.”

  “And scraped your brand off,” said Seth, for Piperno to hear him. “That’s not supposed to happen. I’ll have to get you back down to the DMV.”

  “That can wait,” said Piperno. “We’ll clean that with some disinfectant and Dr. Kaplan will sew you up. I’ll watch.”

  Kaplan took the threaded suture and, pinching the two sides of the cut together, pressed the needle through both parts and pulled the thread. It took him twelve turns to finish the job. He didn’t talk to Hopper but looked to Piperno for approval. “Is that good?”

  Piperno looked closely at the stitches.

  “Good work, Dr. Kaplan. Tell your patient to watch where he’s going. Good-bye.”

  Piperno walked away.

  Seth growled at Hopper. “You hurt yourself so you could see me. You did this to yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Is my wife in Center Camp? Have you seen her?”

  “I haven’t been to Center Camp. I just got here. With you.”

  “Take me to Center Camp.”

  “You need an invitation to Center Camp. You need a reason. And this is why I said you were a Transport Service worker. They come and go. Nobody keeps close track of them if they’re already inside the Fence. I can send you to Center Camp on a supply mission. You can go there seeing if they need anything from the hospital. I think that’s what you should do. That’s what I would do.”

  “You’re speaking too quickly.”

  “I’m exploring a few possibilities for you that won’t get us into trouble. Tell them you’re doing inventory for the hospital. Inventory is all that anyone really cares about up there or down here. Hospital staff all had picture IDs on lanyards. I can give you a dead man’s ID. There’s a drawer filled with them. Nobody recognizes faces. If they see there’s no )’( brand, you’ll have trouble. Get yourself a long-sleeved green uniform from the laundry and you’ll look like you work here and everything will be fine.”

  “Will it?”

  “My patients were very sick children. I believe that I spent a lot of time telling them they were getting better. I can lie. It seems to come as easily to me as cutting through a man’s skin. And you’ll need a clipboard with a pad of paper so you can write things down.”

  “I don’t know how to write.”

  “You can read. You showed me the letter.”

  Hopper’s Silent Voice said to him: “Do what he says.”

  “Just tell me what to do.”

  “There are printed lists all over the hospital, lists of medicines, lists of patients, schedules. We’ll put a few of those lists on a clipboard, I’ll give you a few pens, different colors, and you can check things off. And you need a name. That’s the easy part.” Seth went through a list of the names of the dead. “I have the name of a First Waver, from Inventory, which is good. He died three years ago. Kraft Serviss.”

  Hopper said it to hear it. “Kraft Serviss. Kraft Serviss. What did he die of?”

 
“It doesn’t say why because they probably didn’t know, especially three years ago when everyone was just waking up. So now you’re Kraft Serviss. I’ll call Center Camp and tell them I’m sending you up.”

  “Kraft Serviss needs a new backpack for the bones. This one smells like fire.”

  Seth wanted to tell Kraft Serviss not to bring the bones to Center Camp, but he knew that Hopper wouldn’t listen.

  Pickle

  Pickle talked to himself. “This goddamn place stinks. But I am here on the water at night in a warm jacket I found in a sailboat and I am smoking old cigarettes and drinking good enough tequila and eating from a can of emergency rations and I realize that if he’s here he’s not on a boat because it’s so goddamn cold out here. So he’s where it’s warm. Where it’s warm and he can’t be seen, so keep rowing—not that hard to figure out—except the part about looking backward as you row so you have to turn your head a lot. I see his light, shining. I’m on Frank Sinatra’s Security Committee, and you’re just Inventory, and tonight, Vayler, Inventory loses.”

  Pickle, Vayler

  “Here’s the deal,” said Pickle, at the door to Vayler’s hideout. “There are fifty men behind me and unless you want to kill yourself now, come out with your hands up.”

  The door opened and seeing Pickle’s gun, Vayler raised his hands. “I don’t see fifty people,” said Vayler.

  “I lied.”

  “I hope you will believe this was just an awful mistake.”

  Chief

  Pickle delivered Vayler, his hands bound with zip ties, to Frank, who delivered him to Chief, who put him in a locked room in the house across the street, guarded by Royce Hall and Go Bruins.

  Redwings, Gunny Sea Ray,

  Frank Sinatra, Siouxsie Banshee

  Redwings called Frank. “Frank, sir, you have to hear this from Gunny Sea Ray himself.”

  “Pickle found Vayler Monokeefe. I know about that.”

  “You don’t know this part, which has nothing to do with the other part. Gunny Sea Ray is right here beside me. I’m giving him my radio.”

  “Gunny Sea Ray here, Frank.”

  “What have you found?”

  “Sir, first we found nothing. We were looking for Vayler, and we went along the riverbank. Hidden in the bushes we found a road bike, with absolute minimal wear on the tires. They were new tires, sir. You know how when you find a bike store and you see the tires on the bikes, they have little points of rubber that get worn down by riding? Well, Frank, these were fresh tires.”

  “The bicycle could have been there for a few years, Gunny. Someone hid it there after riding ten miles, and he never returned for it.”

  “If you’re testing my judgment, sir, I’m pushing back. The bike is new. The chain has fresh oil. Nothing was growing across it or through it.”

  “Fine, Gunny, well reasoned and I accept what you say. So now you have a new carbon fiber bicycle, but you didn’t call me for that.”

  “Sir, the bike’s condition and quality convinced me to look harder and we then spread out along the riverbank and we picked up a trail of footprints where the ash stuck. We followed the trail and that led to a pack of dogs fighting in the rail yards, which led to a body, sir, a dead body, and then a boxcar full of weapons.”

  “How did the man die? What I expect won’t change what I see. Murdered, yes? How?”

  “Beaten to death.”

  “And the dogs, what did they do?”

  “Et him a little, not much.”

  “Where’s the body now?”

  “I’m in the rail yards.”

  “I’ll be there. Cover him from the sun.”

  Nobody recognized the dead man.

  “That’s not Nole Hazard,” said Siouxsie.

  “You saw him when he was alive. Now his face is swollen and gray,” said Frank. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m not going by that. I’m going by his hair. Nole’s hair was naturally dark. This man’s hair is dyed black. You see the roots. Pull down his pants.”

  Sinatra opened the man’s belt and pulled his pants to his knees, and then rolled down his underwear. Redwings applauded Siouxsie. “Look at that, look at that. She knew, Frank. Gunny, would you call that light brown or red?”

  “That’s light brown, Redwings.”

  “Do we see many men with dyed hair?” Frank asked.

  “Bright colors, sometimes, on light-colored hair, or bleached, sometimes, usually First Wave. Never Drifters. They don’t know what they look like so they don’t have anything to change.”

  Gunny Sea Ray called to them from underneath the next rail car.

  “The doors were locked but doing my job I looked under the rail car here and found this, a hole on the bottom.”

  Inside, the container was empty except for an air mattress and clothing hanging from hooks on the wall, two backpacks, a tandem bicycle, and a carton of bags of Corn Nuts.

  “He liked Corn Nuts,” said Gunny Sea Ray.

  “Why so many changes of clothes, Siouxsie?” Frank asked her.

  “So he could go to Figueroa and if anybody noticed him, he’d be wearing something different the next time. That’s why the wigs, but it’s odd that his hair was dyed, too.”

  “Take everything apart,” said Frank. “Take it apart and bring it outside.”

  “What do you see that we don’t?” asked Siouxsie Banshee.

  “The same as you. A man who was killed and he wasn’t a Drifter. This was a hiding place. Look for what’s hidden.”

  Inside one of the backpacks they found handcuffs with a key in each of the locks. Gunny could feel paper folded inside a compartment in the backpack and cut it open with his knife. He took it aside to show Frank and Redwings. It was another map of the city, with the red line crossing the black circle.

  “That’s the Fence,” said Frank.

  “Sagacious man,” said Redwings.

  “At least someone here is adding to his vocabulary,” said Frank. “Now we have to see what the red line is doing here. It goes into Westwood from West Los Angeles, from the next Burn Zone. Until we know what this is, don’t talk about it with anyone. There’s enough going on about running out of food.”

  “A tandem bike with handcuffs,” said Siouxsie. “Don’t you want to talk about that, Frank?”

  “It’s obvious to me. Isn’t it obvious to you?”

  “Someone was taking a prisoner hostage? But how can you ride a bicycle when you’re handcuffed?”

  Frank told Redwings to tell Chief to meet them at the DMV.

  Chief, ElderGoth, Frank Sinatra,

  Siouxsie Banshee, Redwings, Gunny Sea Ray

  ElderGoth hated official visits. The equipment was her responsibility and she had good reason to be scared that one day someone would enter the building who would make the unimaginable mistake of cutting the line to that vital distant and hidden server. And then what would Chief do to her? What value could she claim for herself that deserved privilege? Vayler was doomed, whatever the propaganda. She knew that, and she didn’t expect much better for herself.

  Now Chief was here because Frank had an idea.

  “Chief, what Frank wants to try, it won’t work. I can’t verify a dead man.”

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “No one has ever asked me. I don’t know if the cameras work if the eyes are closed. It’s about the distance between the eyes.”

  “Right,” said Frank. “Do you have any Scotch tape?”

  Chief studied the dead man’s face. Frank didn’t expect him to say that he knew the man without some kind of verification. “Do I know you?” Chief asked the dead man.

  Frank and Gunny Sea Ray taped the dead man’s eyes open and tied him upright to the back of the chair. He still slumped over but ElderGoth said it wouldn’t matter if someone stood behind him and put a h
and on his head to face him toward the camera. Siouxsie signaled to Frank that she wanted the job.

  “Siouxsie can do that.”

  She wondered if she had ever felt so useful when she was curating at the museum.

  ElderGoth took the picture. “It can take a few minutes to search for a hit.”

  Waiting for the results, no one talked until Siouxsie Banshee said, “Can we cover up the man’s body or put him back on the stretcher?”

  “Good idea,” said Frank.

  While they untied the man the computer told them who he was: Reuven Abarbanel, thirty-two. He lived in Silver Lake. He was a lawyer.

  Frank asked Chief, “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No,” said Chief.

  “It may be a false reading, Frank,” said ElderGoth. “Dead, he may look like someone else.”

  “Do you ever get false matches?”

  “Chief, how would we know?”

  “Admit it, ElderGoth. There have to be a few false verifications wandering around Center Camp.”

  Siouxsie couldn’t restrain herself. “And that’s what is so unfair.”

  Chief told her, “Enough. You’ve said enough. Thank you all, I’m going back. It’s a false reading.”

  When Chief drove away, ElderGoth said, “I thought she was Verified Second Wave, Frank.”

  “It’s an experiment,” said Frank. “There are skilled people among the Drifters and some of them, like my friend Siouxsie Banshee here, can offer the verified community the kind of help we can’t get from anyone else.”

  “What do you give in trade?”

  “The chance to work. The chance to be useful. And a good room in a good hotel. Thanks for your help, ElderGoth. I’ll make the report to Chief. And you know the rules about Security. Do not discuss this matter with anyone.”

  This rule was something Frank often invoked, though it had never been formally announced and not often enforced, because it didn’t need to be. But at the moment, in the DMV, ElderGoth knew Frank had more to say. She put her mouth to his ear and cupped her hand and whispered so only he could hear. “Whatever Chief is interested in, and as you say he’s interested in everything, why, Frank my friend, why is he interested in a dead Drifter when we have two weeks of food left?”