by Moxie Mezcal
Concrete Underground
by Moxie Mezcal
March 2010
Moxie Über Alles
San Jose, California
MoxieMezcal.com
First Edition
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or institutions, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
For Steph
* * *
BOOK ONE
The Rules
PLAYLIST
My My Metrocard | Le Tigre
Compared to What | David Holmes + Carl Hancock Rux
Red Dress | TV on the Radio
Id Engager | Of Montreal
Sheela-Na-Gig | PJ Harvey
Stagger Lee | Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
* * *
1. They Watch You Fuck
"They've got cameras everywhere, man. Not just in supermarkets and departments stores, they're also on your cell phones and your computers at home. And they never turn off. You think they do, but they don't.
"They're always on, always watching you, sending them a continuous feed of your every move over satellite broadband connection.
"They watch you fuck, they watch you shit, they watch when you pick your nose at the stop light or when you chew out the clerk at 7-11 over nothing or when you walk past the lady collecting for the women's shelter and you don't put anything in her jar.
"They're even watching us right now," the hobo added and extended a grimy, gnarled digit to the small black orbs mounted at either end of the train car.
There were some days when I loved taking public transportation, and other days when I didn't. On a good day, I liked to sit back and watch the show, study the rest of the passengers, read into their little ticks and mannerisms and body language, and try to guess at their back stories, giving them names and identities in my head. It was fun in a voyeuristic kind of way.
And luckily, today was a good day.
I watched the old Vietnamese woman with the cluster of plastic shopping bags gripped tightly in her hand like a cloud of tiny white bubbles. My eyes traced the deep lines grooving her face, and I wondered about the life that led her to this place.
I watched the lonely businessman staring longingly across the aisle at the beautiful Mexican girl in the tight jeans standing with her back to him. He fidgeted with the gold band on his finger, and I couldn't tell if he was using it to remind himself of his commitment or if he was debating whether he should slyly slip it off and talk to her.
I watched the two black teenagers making out, completely absorbed in the novelty and excitement of newfound love. It never occurred to them that their public display might seem cliché or rude or vulgar; their hearts had still not been hardened with the inevitable cynicism that familiarity and experience breed. Absorbed in their own private world, they were touching the divine.
And I even watched the bum with the wild, fiery orange mass of hair exploding from his pores, covering almost his entire face but for the small, narrow-set blue eyes peering out through the roughage. They were such a brilliant shade of blue that they made me think of the Fremen from Dune. In my head, I decided he was named Seamus Freeman.
"Everything gets streamed back to a giant server farm they keep up in the mountains, a massive concrete bunker that's buried nine-tenths underground like an iceberg, so they'll still be around after they take us all out with their WMDs."
Mostly, though, I just tried not to watch the blonde sitting next to me – specifically, I was trying not to notice the satisfying way that she jiggled under the low cut of her pink Sate University tank top as she bopped her head pleasantly to whatever was being piped through her tiny white earbuds. I wasn't altogether successful in that effort, but fortunately she seemed too engrossed in her Abnormal Psychology textbook to notice.
Finding myself staring again, I quickly averted my gaze and made eye contact across the aisle with a gruff middle-aged workman in black coveralls. He had looked up from his newspaper just in time to catch me ogling the blonde and shot me a sour, disapproving look.
I briefly thought about saying something to him, but before I could come up with anything smartass enough to be worth the effort, my cell phone went off. Several other passengers whipped their heads around to look at me as my ring tone sang out loudly:
I tried to call you before, but I lost my nerve.
I tried my imagination, but I was disturbed.
I pulled the phone out of my pocket; the display read: Jenny.
"Hey, what's up?" I answered.
The chipper female voice on the other end said, "Not much, just getting ready. Last minute stuff, you know. Trying not to let my nerves drive me crazy."
My eyes drifted back across the aisle to the workman's newspaper. He had it folded around so I could see one of the interior pages, the one before the article he was reading. It had a full-spread advertisement for Abrasax, the search engine and software company. Along with their corporate logo, a stylized red drawing of a rising sun, the ad contained a photograph of their CEO, Dylan Maxwell, looking straight into the camera with his giant, creepy fucking eyes. It was the kind of picture that seemed like it was staring right at you no matter what angle you looked at it from. My skin crawled just looking at the fucking thing.
"So what are you doing?" Jenny continued over the phone.
"Not much, just trying to stop staring at some college chick's tits," I replied nonchalantly.
"What?"
The workman again raised his eyes from his paper to glare at me disdainfully.
I chuckled, "Nothing, I'm just on the Light Rail going to meet someone for an interview."
"Cool, cool," she responded dismissively and followed up with a carefully-timed pause before adding, "So you're still coming tomorrow, right?"
"Of course I'll be there. You think I'd miss my sister's wedding?"
"It's just that I know how you are, D," she said in the voice she used when she wanted to nag without it sounding like nagging. It wasn't actually as effective as she seemed to think. "I hardly ever see you anymore – ever since you got back from Oak Hill, you're so... withdrawn. We used to be so close, and it means a lot to me for you to be there."
I looked up and saw the workman watching me, eavesdropping on my half of the call. He quickly dropped his eyes back down to the newspaper and began riffling randomly through the pages. Anything to pass the time on a long train ride, I thought to myself, and then repeated to Jenny, "I'll be there."
"Great. It'll be nice to have at least one person from my family there," she continued. God, she could be so fucking relentless. "I mean, I'll have friends there and everything, but it's mostly all going to be Brad's side, between his family and business contacts and all the politicos his uncle knows."
The workman stopped fussing with his newspaper and held it fully spread out in both hands with the cover facing me, as if trying to hide as much of himself from my view as possible. It was a tabloid-sized alternative weekly with the title Concrete Underground spelled in cut-out lettering like a Sex Pistols album sleeve. The cover was a photo of city hall superimposed over a background of hundred-dollar bills with the caption: City Contracting Scandal Exposed, by D Quetzal, page 33.
I felt my spirits lift a little as a smug smirk spread across my face and I replied into the phone, "Speaking of Brad, I was meaning to ask you if he read the article yet."
Jenny didn't respond, but just let out a prolonged, exasperated sigh.
"That's a yes. What
did he think?"
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said tersely. "Please try not to be an asshole."
I slid the phone back in my pocket and couldn't help but feel a little triumphant. Call me immature, but there was something about getting under Jenny's skin that I still found as entertaining as I had when we were kids. I guess that's the beauty of siblings.
I whistled across the aisle at the workman to get his attention. He folded the newspaper sloppily on his lap and looked at me with blank, listless eyes.
"So what do you think about all that stuff going on with the city?" I asked, indicating his paper.
"I don't read the fucking articles in these things," he grumbled. "I just pick them up to see what movies are playing."
I smiled and nodded my head in agreement. "Yeah, I'm with you, brother. A bunch of liberal paranoia bullshit, far as I'm concerned."
He didn't respond one way or another to my comment, but kept looking at me with a glazed-over, uninterested expression, as if waiting impatiently for me to get to the point of whatever I'd interrupted him for. I glanced at the logo sewn in bright red letters into the breast of his coveralls, which read: Asterion Record Management.
"Hey, Asterion," I said, pointing at the logo. "Didn't you guys just get that big contract from the city?"
He jerked forward suddenly and jabbed a thick, calloused finger at me. "Look, faggot, I don't know what you're getting at, or if you're trying to hit on me or what, but if you don't get off my nuts and stop staring at me, you're gonna be picking your teeth up off the floor."
I bristled at his epithet and thought it was a pretty broad assumption to make as I smoothed the lapels of my crushed velvet jacket with a couple black-nailed fingers. I let my lips hang open loosely in a mischievous grin and stared him down, keeping my eyes locked unwaveringly on his.
The passengers immediately around us shifted uncomfortably in their seats and watched nervously. The blonde next to me bobbed her head obliviously, still buried in her textbook. And Seamus the hobo kept right on preaching.
"They use biometric analysis to sort through all the hours and hours of footage so they can follow you from one camera to the next, keeping you forever under their watchful eyes."
I saw the workman's eyes drift over to one of the opaque black orbs that housed a security camera. He sank back into his seat. I pursed my lips together and made an exaggerated kissing face at him.
The train lurched and jerked to a sudden stop.
"Well, girls, looks like this is where I get off," I said, addressing the blonde's chest with a tip of my hat as I stood up.
She yanked the earbud out of one ear and looked at me quizzically. "Huh?"
I recognized the music that spilled out of the stray bud as Le Tigre, which I found a bit surprising based on her appearance, expecting her tastes to run more pop and mainstream.
I shrugged and headed for the train door. On my way out, Seamus held out one hand to my chest to stop me, then passed me a piece of paper with the other. It was a half-sheet flyer, a cheap black-and-white photocopy with three narrow vertical pictures – a closeup of the pyramid from the back of the dollar bill on the left, a police officer in riot gear in the middle, and a woman in lingerie on the right. The phrase "You Are Being Lied To..." was emblazoned across the top, and right below the images, it continued "Trust Us". At the very bottom, in tiny letters, was the words "The Highwater Society" along with a stylized logo of a globe with a crown floating above it.
"How do you know so much about all this?" I asked Seamus.
His deep blue eyes twinkled as he replied jovially, reeking of sweat, piss, and Mad Dog 20/20, "I used to work for Abrasax. I helped them build the damned thing."
* * *
2. Can't Be Held Responsible
The address I had been given was a flophouse called Casa Salvador in the scummy side of downtown, the part where the city's redevelopment (read: "gentrification") efforts hadn't yet managed to drive out the sundry undesirable elements.
I walked inside past the front lobby. I could tell the desk manager wanted to hassle me, but he was too busy arguing with a middle-aged peroxide-blonde woman in a leopard-print top. Her skin was leathery and weather beaten, and I guessed she was the type who was actually a good ten years younger than she looked.
I made my way up the narrow staircase that smelled of urine and bleach, going all the way to the third floor. I continued down the dimly lit hallway, past a series of closed doors that muffled the sounds of women faking moans of pleasure.
Room 313 was down at the far end of the hall, and its door was already slightly ajar. I knocked anyways, but there was no answer. Pushing the door open just enough to poke my head in, I called, "Hello? Is anybody in there?"
There was no response, so I went in and felt along the wall for the light switch. A single weak bulb came on, lighting up the tiny, sparse room with a dim yellow glow. The room was about 8 feet by 8 feet, and the only furniture was a dingy, unmade bed and a metal foot locker. There were no windows, no closet, and no bathroom. As I stepped all the way in, I noticed a wooden baseball bat propped up beside the door.
My watch said 6:20 – twenty minutes late for the interview. I sat on the edge of the bed to wait, hoping that maybe my contact had just stepped out momentarily.
After a few minutes, a phone started ringing out in the hallway. I let it ring six times with no one answering before I decided to get it – partly in the off chance it was my contact, but mostly out of morbid curiosity as to what kind of business someone would have calling this dump.
On my way to the door, though, a small blue flash of light caught my eye. It came from inside a vent at the top of the opposite wall. I moved closer and saw that there was something blue and metallic stashed behind the grating. The flash must have been a reflection of light off the metal surface.
I slid the foot locker over and climbed up to get a closer look. Inside, I could make out what appeared to be a small rectangular box about five inches long and two inches thick. I tried to pull the vent loose but found it was screwed in place. Digging my pocketknife out of my jeans, I started loosening the screws and had managed to work two of the four out when I suddenly heard a voice call out from behind me.
"What are you doing here?"
I spun around to see an old man standing just inside the doorway, thin and gaunt, wearing a cheap brown suit. He had picked up the baseball bat and was pointing it at me threateningly, as if trying to keep me at bay. I stepped down off the locker, and he advanced on me quickly, extending the bat out to just barely tap my chest with the tip.
"Stay right there."
"Whoa, calm down," I said. "You called me and asked me to meet you here."
"I didn't call you. Who are you? Who sent you here?"
"Look, someone called and told me to come here. I'm a reporter."
I started reaching inside my jacket to get my card, but he jabbed at me with the bat. It wasn't close enough that he meant hit me, but close enough that I got the message.
"I'm just gonna reach into my pocket to get my business card and show you who I am."
He watched me silently as I slowly tried again for my jacket pocket. I produced my card and handed it to him.
The top of the card was stamped the Concrete Underground cut-out logo. Underneath was printed:
D Quetzal
Punk-as-Fuck Investigative Journalist
He glanced at the card before training his gaze and the bat back on me.
"Is this supposed to be some kind of a joke?"
I took a couple steps forward. "It's no joke. I'm a reporter and--"
He swung the bat square into my mid-section. I doubled over, my abdomen on fire from the blow. Before I could recover, another swing brought the bat down on the back of my head, dropping me to the floor as I quickly faded out of consciousness.
---
I am having that dream again.
I sit in a crowded movie theater. On my right is an empty seat. To my left, a wom
an sits beside me. I think that I followed her into the theater because she looked familiar, like my old girlfriend from high school, but now I can see that she's not who I thought she was. She rests her head on my shoulder, and I sweep away her purple hair from her forehead and give her a kiss.
I watch a man on the movie screen riding in a car as it drives onto a small airfield in the middle of the night. Actually, I don't see the man himself; I see through his eyes. The man on the the screen is me; the me in the audience fades away, and I focus my concentration solely on the me on screen.
On screen, I get out of the car and am greeted by a short, balding man carrying a flashlight. He says something, but I can't make out his words over the sound of the film projector behind me. I follow the man with the flashlight into one of the airplane hangers. It is dark all around.
There is a single plane in the hanger, a small private jet. The forward hatch is open and a rolling staircase has been moved into place. I follow the other man up the stairs and into the plane. Inside, the beam lights up only small parts of the cramped space randomly, the flashlight bouncing in the man's hand as he walks down the aisle toward the back.
He stops at the end of the cabin and points the light at one of the seats. I move closer to see what he's showing me. It is a woman. She is dirty and disheveled – clothes torn, greasy black hair matted to her face with grime and sweat, large purple bruises on the exposed flesh of her neck where she has been strangled.
I kneel down and sweep away a few strands of hair to expose her face. I touch my hand to her cold skin, which feels almost unreal, like she's a wax dummy. Gently, tenderly, I run my fingers down along her lifeless cheek. I know her, but the me sitting in the theater can't quite place how or where from.
On screen, the man with the flashlight tells me, "Look in her hand." He moves the beam down so I can see her clenched fist. I force her grip open and see she's holding a necklace with a large, brilliant ruby mounted on a pendant. I flip the pendant around; there is a symbol etched on its back – a globe with a crown floating over it. I take the necklace from the dead woman's hand and stuff it in my pocket.