Concrete Underground

by Moxie Mezcal

  Sometimes, when she couldn't sleep, she would lie alone in the darkness and tell herself that she was being punished for wanting to escape her family.

  Eventually, a man came along for whom simple pain wasn't enough; he had to give her something to remember him by. When the brothel's owner saw her scars, he kicked her out onto the streets. She was left alone and afraid in a country she didn't know filled with people she couldn't trust. But she was free.

  She dyed her hair and started calling herself Violet, transforming herself into a new person. In time her English improved, and she began working at the women's shelter that had taken her in. Through her work, she met other girls who had been lured away from their homes by false promises and forced into slavery. And eventually, she learned the name of the man who was responsible for bringing them to this country.

  She started moving in social circles that would put her in contact with people who knew Dylan Maxwell. Early on, she befriended a young girl whose father was one of Maxwell's most important investors. They had a lot in common; not least of which, both women used fake names to help them forget where they came from. Through this friendship, she was introduced to the man who worked as Maxwell's chief enforcer. They began a romantic relationship and were soon married.

  Through these connections, she learned more about her enemy and discovered the weaknesses in his armor. Slowly, methodically, she formed her plan, waiting for her perfect opportunity.

  The final missing piece came when another woman with a fake name walked into Violet's shelter – a woman who Violet discovered used to be named Jacinda.

  She found one of Maxwell's discontented lieutenants - a social misfit with delusions of grandeur named Ben Garza – who could be easily manipulated by a beautiful woman. She planted the idea of blackmail in his head and convinced him it was his own.

  Then she confronted her friend Columbine with the truth about her mother. After that, it didn't take much to convince her to seek revenge against both Jacinda and Max. It was Violet's idea to enlist the journalist Patrick Cobb to find Jacinda and kill her. Columbine suggested reaching out to Lilian Lynch, who would be an easily controlled pawn. Columbine also came up with the more dramatic flairs in the plan – partly because a little smoke and mirrors would help hide their identities, but mostly because she thought it was fun.

  Of course, Garza believed all their ideas to be his own, but then he never realized what Violet was really up to. The blackmail plot was supposed to fail – she knew that Max would never pay. Cobb was supposed to go public with the information; unfortunately, Cobb turned out to be unreliable. So Violet found someone new to step in and fill his role.

  Someone suave, witty, and devastatingly handsome.

  Soon things began unraveling according to plan, and Violet and Columbine set up Saint Anthony and McPherson as their scapegoats, hoping to force Max into direct conflict with the only people who would have a legitimate shot at bringing him down. Either McPherson would crush Max, or Max would wipe out McPherson and face retribution from the Highwater Society.

  Things hadn't necessarily gone down that smoothly, but Violet had improvised like a jazz master and was now so close to her revenge that she could taste it. She had beaten him at his own game, developed a trap as elaborate as any he could devise and made him walk right into it.

  But was it really that simple?

  No sooner than I had put the pieces together did I start to see gaping holes in it.

  I mean, really – a beautiful and mysterious woman needs me (and only me) to help her exact revenge on the monster who ruined her life? But why me of all people?

  Clearly, there are more dangerous assassins in the world than a suburbanite journalist who can barely change a flat. Hell, there are even better journalists – certainly far more credible ones.

  Was I a prime mover in this chain of events or just Violet's pawn? Am I special, an integral piece of the puzzle, or a rube who happened to be in the right place at the right time? Too much is left unanswered by the latter, while the former feels hollow and self-aggrandizing.

  Jesus, the way I tell it, she only ever married Anthony as a calculated move to help her get to Max. Is it really that impossible for her to have genuinely loved him, or is that just more convenient for me to believe?

  And what about the dreams?

  ---

  "You're over-thinking this all too much, you know," Max said as we passed the 32nd marker.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "You wanted to know who the dead woman in my airplane was, who killed her, and why she died. Check. You wanted to uncover the identities of my blackmailers, and you've done that, too. You wanted to uncover a damning secret that exposes me for the vile black-hearted villain I am while simultaneously making a name for yourself as a journalist, and I'd say that's a big fat check on that one, too. Hell, you've even got the girl," he said and pointed at Violet.

  "Look," he continued, "I get it. You feel like you've been used, you're upset and confused, and you're hoping that whatever you find here will somehow give you answers. I don't know what you expect – a pile of dead hookers, a computer hacked into the White House, the Loch Ness Monster, or the new Number Two. But there's no man behind the curtain waiting to make your dreams come true or explain the mysteries of the universe. That's not how life works. Life is messy and confusing and you just have to be happy with whatever joy and meaning you can scrape out of it.

  "So quit while you're ahead. Run off together, have lots of passionate crazy-person sex and make little foul-mouthed, purple-haired babies. If you turn around right now and ride off into the sunset, then you've won."

  We rounded another corner to find ourselves in another large clearing, this one coming to a dead end with a pair of giant metal doors tinted blue on the far wall. In the middle of the cleavage between the two doors, there was a big metal wheel the size of a big rig's hubcap with the Highwater sigil and the number 33.

  I answered, "Fuck it, we've come this far, might as well see this thing through."

  I crossed over to the doors and placed both my hands on either side of the wheel. I felt surge of energy coming from behind the metal, and every hair on my body stood on end.

  I rotated the wheel a quarter-turn counter-clockwise until I felt it click into place. I heard a sudden burst of air, like a hermetic seal being broken, and watched as the doors slowly parted.

  My ears rang with a piercing shriek of feedback, followed by the crackle of static and a tinny, mechanical laugh.

  As I stepped through the open door, I heard a voice call out:

  "Stop!"

  * * *

  BOOK FIVE

  The Concrete Underground

  PLAYLIST

  By This River | Brian Eno

  Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town | Pearl Jam

  Oompa Radar | Goldfrapp

  Elephant Woman | Blonde Redhead

  Art Is Hard | Cursive

  The Good and the Bad Guy | My Brightest Diamond

  * * *

  39. "Cured" Isn't an Accurate Term

  I sit in the dark theater, laughing as the old projector clanks loudly behind me.

  On screen, I am lying in bed at the Motley Fool. The sound of someone knocking on our door wakes me up. I roll over and see a naked woman laying next to me. She has purple hair and a gunmetal half-mask. I stand up and slip on my boxers as I slowly stagger towards the door.

  As soon as I crack it open, Detective Axelrod and a team of uniformed officers storm the room. Two of them slam me against the wall and handcuff me. As they spin me around, I see that they have rolled the woman over. She is dead – her neck has been clearly broken. Her hair falls off her head, and I realize it was just a wig.

  She's not who I thought she was.

  Then they remove the mask, and I see her face.

  "Columbine," I whisper.

  "Is this really happening," I groan in the theater, "or is it another dream?

  ---
<
br />   Amy pulled her car into the Oak Hill Psychiatric Center visitor lot. On her way into the building, she flashed her Morning-Star press credentials to the guard at the front desk. She was met by a blonde doctor in her early forties waiting in the lobby.

  "Amy Thompson?" the doctor asked with a smile.

  "Yes," Amy answered and shook the woman's hand.

  "I'm Dr. Sara Soderquist. Pleased to meet you," she replied warmly, letting her gaze linger momentarily as she looked Amy over, appreciating the way her tight ribbed sweater clung to her curves. Noticing this, Amy started to fidget ostentatiously with her engagement ring.

  Sara continued as she led Amy to the elevators, "I hope you didn't have too much trouble finding us up here. It's quite a drive from the city."

  "Not at all, a nice scenic drive through the mountains was actually a welcome change. My car was in the shop for a week and a half, and I was stuck taking public transportation."

  The elevator door opened and the two women entered. Sara pushed the button for the third floor, then replied, "Ah, I actually used to know the city's transit system pretty well. I took the Light Rail every day back when I was going to State – one transfer, 40 minutes to campus and 40 minutes back. At least it gave me a chance to catch up on my reading, so it wasn't all bad – once I learned to deal with all the crazies talking to themselves and pervs staring down my top." She chuckled and laid a hand gently on Amy's forearm.

  The elevator arrived. Amy shifted uncomfortably, but tried to hide it with an indulgent smile. "Anyways, I'm sure you're busy so we can just get right down to it."

  "Of course," Sara said. "He's right up here."

  She led her down a long hallway lined with heavy metal doors leading into patients' rooms, finally stopping in front of one marked 33. It had no window, but a small closed-circuit monitor was mounted on the wall beside it, displaying a blue-tinted video feed of the room's interior.

  It was small but clean and sparsely furnished with one bed, a small wooden table in the corner, and a matching wooden chair. A stack of notebooks was piled neatly on top of the table.

  A man sat on the edge of the bed staring out a window in the far wall. He had long black unkempt hair and a thick black beard, both streaked with hints of early gray.

  "When we spoke over the phone you seemed to already know a bit about him," Sara said, "but I'll just give you a quick run down of the basics."

  Amy nodded while pulling out her phone and switching on the voice recorder function.

  Sara continued, "He was arrested twenty-three years ago. The police found him in a motel room with a dead prostitute in his bed; he had broken her neck. Upon subsequent psychiatric evaluation, it was determined that he was suffering from a number of severe mental disorders. I won't bore you with the jargon, you can pull what you need from the file. Suffice it to say he had almost no grasp on reality in any meaningful sense of the word. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed into psychiatric care. He's been with us ever since."

  Amy nodded along to Sara's explanation, typing notes onto her phone's keyboard while the recorder kept rolling. "So how does the Highwater Society fit into all this?"

  "Before his arrest, he had been the recipient of a grant from the Highwater Society. In his illness, he convinced himself that somehow they had him framed for the murder, like it was some nefarious conspiracy – the details of which were always vague and inconsistent from one day to the next. The irony is that the Highwater Society have been his only real benefactors. They've paid for him to stay and be treated here so that he actually had a shot at recovery rather than rotting away in County."

  "And now he's cured?" Amy prompted.

  "'Cured' isn't really an accurate term." Sara corrected. "His illness has been successfully treated to the point where we're confident that he is no longer a danger to himself or others."

  "But you're releasing him," Amy pressed.

  "Yes," Sara said with a nod. "He's ready to start re-assimilating into the outside world."

  Amy looked back at the screen. The man had stood up and moved over to the table. He was rearranging the notebooks, his movements slow and deliberate, stacking and restacking.

  "What can you tell me about the play?" Amy asked, keeping her eyes on the man.

  "From what I understand, this is the play he was writing at the time of his arrest, the one that the Highwater Society originally gave him the grant for. It's also very powerfully linked to his illness; when he began to lose his grip on reality, he gradually integrated aspects of the play into his delusions. It was as if he had lost the ability to distinguish between reality and his own fictional inventions. In my personal opinion, I don't think the Highwater Society's plan to go ahead with staging the play is the best thing for him, especially so soon after his release, but I guess they own the work now so it's their right to do what they want with it."

  "Is he going to see it?"

  Sara shrugged. "You'll have to ask him."

  Amy watched as the man finally finished organizing the notebooks into six meticulous little stacks of perfectly-matched height, stood back and surveyed them momentarily, and decided he was satisfied. There was something familiar about him, although she couldn't quite place it.

  Then he – meaning I – turned and smiled at the camera. A chill ran down her spine as she thought to herself, It looks like he's smiling right at me, as if somehow he can see me through the screen.

  ---

  Amy sat down on the footlocker and turned her phone's recorder back on. I sat across from her on the wooden chair and rubbed my hands together slowly, enjoying the sound of the rough, dry skin.

  "So, Mr. Quetzal, are you happy to be finally going home?"

  I thought the question over for a second and sucked on my teeth. "I've been living in this room for over two decades. From what I understand, the place where I was living before this has been bulldozed and turned into a parking garage. So I wouldn't quite say I'm 'going home' – but yes."

  "Where are you going to live after you're released?" she asked.

  "My sister's coming to get me," I answered. "I'll be staying with her until I can get back on my feet."

  She hesitated momentarily, trying to make it seem like she didn't really want to ask the next question. "Do you believe you've been cured?"

  "I'm not sure that 'cured' is the right word," I replied. "But I realize now how sick I was. I'm much less confused than I used to be."

  "So you no longer believe that the Highwater Society or anyone else tried to frame you or is conspiring against you?" she pressed.

  I shook my head. "I know that no one else is to blame for the things that have happened in my life."

  "You know, you sound like you're reading from a script," she said, leaning forward as if to examine me more closely. "You're saying all the right things, but there's no conviction in your voice."

  I shrugged dismissively and let my eyes wander off to look back to the stacks of notebooks on the table beside me.

  She followed my gaze. "What's up with the notebooks?"

  "They're nothing really, just gibberish. I write for the sake of writing; it's therapeutic. But they're not intended for others to read, so I doubt they would make much sense to you."

  "Do you feel the same way about your play? How do you feel that it's actually going to be performed?"

  I smiled – a big, toothy grin that Amy found profoundly unsettling.

  "I think it'll be good for a laugh."

  * * *

  40. What's So Funny?

  Jenny lived in a chic loft atop a west side high rise. The main room consisted of a single large open space with the living room, dining room, and kitchen all flowing into one another. As we walked in, I noticed a package wrapped with shiny blue paper and a silver ribbon sitting on the buffet table behind the couch. Jenny smiled broadly when she saw me looking at it.

  "Welcome home, D," she said.

  I walked over to the table and sat my small suitcase beside
it while I inspected the box. I picked it up and tested its weight; it was fairly light for its size. "Open it," she urged.

  "After dinner," I said. "I need to clean up and settle in first."

  "Bathroom's down the hall on the left. Your room's the second door on the right. I'll put your bag in it," she said as she snatched the suitcase from my hands. I started to protest, but decided she was on too much of a roll fussing over me. "Wow, this thing is really heavy," she commented as she lugged it out of the room.

  I circled around the couch and picked the TV remote off the coffee table. There were no buttons on it, just a touch screen. I tapped the screen a couple times, but nothing happened. Then I felt around the edges and found a small black button. I pressed it, and two bottom panels butterflied out from under the accursed thing, presenting a full keyboard. Disheartened, I gave up. It felt like I had gone through a time warp or something; they didn't really keep the patients up to date on the latest technological advances in the nut house.

  "Here, let me help you," Jenny said as she returned. She took the control from my hands, slid the keyboard panels back into it, and swiped her fingers across the touch screen deftly. The TV came to life; a news anchor was rambling on about some new war we had got ourselves into.

  "What's with all the notebooks in your suitcase?" Jenny asked.

  "You snoop too much," I replied. She laughed.

  "Are the clothes you're wearing the only ones you have?" I nodded my head in response. "Okay, we'll go find you some new ones first thing in the morning. I already told the office I'd be working from home for a while so we could spend some time together. Anyways, I left a couple of towels and some sweats by the sink in the bathroom in case you want to take a shower while I get dinner ready. But we can watch a little TV first if you want."