End of Secrets

by Ryan Quinn

  Kera said she had to meet with a colleague before she came home. They were meeting over drinks, she said. Meeting over drinks could mean almost anything. City people were meeting all the time for drinks. They never had barbecues, they never had people over to their apartment, they never built campfires on the beach. They met for drinks, grabbed drinks, had drinks, got drinks, did drinks. Sports bars with eight-dollar drinks next to lounges with twelve-dollar drinks next to dives with one-fifty cans and four-dollar pitchers. Suits and ties and fraternity sweatshirts and high heels. Pool and darts and video games. Two-for-one glasses of wine before eight. Free drinks for anyone named ____ (never “Parker”). Three-fifty pints before seven. Parker went out for drinks with guys from work once or twice a week. Tonight he’d forgotten that Kera had her meeting—her drinks. He’d come straight home, and now he wished he’d gone for a drink of his own.

  He refreshed his in-box, his home page, the weather page. Another junk e-mail, no new headlines, the temperature a degree cooler, the wind shifting direction.

  He put on jeans and a T-shirt, clothes he’d worn on the weekend, and went down to the street. The sun was low, the city was in shadows, but it was still sticky warm. He crossed the street and walked in the direction of L@Ho. Just one drink.

  The same bartender was there. He doodled on a napkin when he wasn’t mixing a beverage. Something about the way he returned to the napkin at every free moment, as if escaping, made Parker think bartending was only his temporary job. When Parker asked, the bartender admitted to being a writer. He wrote novels. He had a novel coming out soon. Parker asked him what it was about. It was about love. It was about whether we have to know someone before we can fall in love with them or if we must love them in order to ever really know them. It was about a pilot and his wife, said the bartender. Those were the main characters. But love, that’s what it was about. Parker wished him luck. Said he looked forward to reading it. Said he’d take another gin and tonic.

  A table of jersey-clad soccer fans celebrated a goal. Parker watched the final minutes of the match and then paid his bill. On the street he came across one of the population clocks that had started popping up on the sides of bus stops and on billboards across the city. There are 7,375,331,951 people in the world. Soon they will all be connected. He didn’t feel connected. He felt small and lonely, just one of seven billion strangers who lived on a planet. He walked the streets and felt as if the world were moving too fast, as if he were surrounded on all sides by those ticking counters, reminding him of how relentlessly humanity was expanding.

  He walked three blocks to the grocery store, and then he walked up and down the aisles. He hated grocery shopping in the city because the aisles were too narrow. The people were too rushed or else they were in his way or they were too cold and inhuman-looking. He hated the lights that were lit twenty-four hours a day, the freezers and refrigerators that worked overtime to maintain regulation temperatures.

  He found spinach, mushrooms, tomato, garlic, salmon, heavy cream, Parmesan, and bacon. He went back to produce for red onions and a lemon, and then he went back to dairy where they kept the fresh OJ. He carried the groceries home in the dark. In the three blocks between the store and the apartment, he saw four homeless men, a police cruiser (lights not flashing), a deli cashier smoking, three Asian deliverymen on bicycles, an ambulance (lights and siren blaring), a homeless woman, a couple kissing, three black men standing at a bus stop, two Hispanic deliverymen on bicycles, a white SUV limousine, too many taxis to count, a restaurant entrance crowded with smokers and people waiting for tables, a restaurant with dark windows and SPACE FOR LEASE, and a dog on a leash sniffing a puddle. Humanity.

  When he got home, Kera wasn’t there. He turned on the lamp with the energy-saving bulb and opened his computer. His home page was set to Gnos.is. He opened a bottle of wine and drank a glass as he browsed the website. He read a review of America, the documentary film that had lost its distribution because of right-wing protestors. The reviewer said the movie was clichéd and cynical and unpatriotic. Parker gave the critic a bad rating and read another review that said the film was brilliant and emotional and hopeful. He searched for independent theaters that might show the film. There were only two. It opened in eight days. The film would show in LA and New York and at film festivals in Toronto, Aspen, and Barcelona. Nowhere else. He viewed this as one bright spot in the dimness of city life.

  Kera still wasn’t home, though she hadn’t sent word that she’d be too late. He poured another glass of wine and drank it as he prepped for cooking. He rinsed the spinach, diced the vegetables, salted the salmon, and peeled the potatoes. He was trying to replicate a meal they’d had on a date. The salmon wasn’t as good as he could get in a restaurant, and he wouldn’t be as good at cooking it, but the effort would be worthwhile.

  Kera called to say she was coming home. Even with two glasses of wine—almost three glasses of wine—he was not safe from the awful flutter inside his stomach, his chest, his throat. It was not isolated in any particular organ. Dull regret broken by an occasional flutter of fear. Dull regret, flutter of fear. It had been a week since Dubai. He was afraid every time she came home, every time she called, when he held the door for her, told her a joke, when he entered her and she pulled him close.

  How could she not know?

  He heard the key in the lock. His lungs, bowels, esophagus. Flutter flutter flutter.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The world knew Rafael Bolívar as the handsome, Venezuelan-born playboy who, at just thirty-three, had transformed Alegría North America from a fledgling Latin American TV network into the fastest-growing media company in North America. Only ONE controlled more TV networks and radio stations. Bolívar’s father founded the company in Venezuela and had discovered in his only son the man who could turn it into a successful enterprise on an international level. Since his college years at NYU, Bolívar had based himself out of Manhattan, maintaining his status in the country with a work visa until he gained dual citizenship. He owned apartments in New York and Miami and houses in Los Angeles and Aspen. He traveled frequently. His net worth was hard to estimate, given his family’s Caracas-based business holdings, but previous years’ US tax returns suggested he was good for at least $1.4 billion.

  Kera’s glimpse into Bolívar’s private life revealed a man not altogether dedicated to the lifestyle portrayed in the tabloids. His success with Alegría had earned him respect in the business community, even if it did leave people scratching their heads. How did he run this business so masterfully when he spent so much of his time entertaining the young, social elite at the city’s hottest drinking establishments? Kera was surprised to discover that, away from the spotlight, he carved out time twice a week to play a pick-up soccer match at Pier 40. And though he made evening appearances at trendy restaurants and nightclubs in the company of attractive women, these were, in fact, rather brief excursions selected for the benefit of the photo op they provided.

  He spent his nights alone in his apartment, where the lights were often lit well into the early morning hours. Then he’d be up at six or seven, an hour that clearly challenged his playboy credentials, even though he didn’t walk into view of the surveillance camera aimed at his office building’s front entrance until nine or nine thirty.

  That was his daily routine. In addition, HawkEye dove deep into Rafael Bolívar’s past and surfaced with a trove of personal records and documents. There were minutes from Alegría board meetings, citizenship application papers, and library records listing books he’d checked out in college (when people still did such things). It was too much to absorb. Kera flagged a few interesting things for later reading. There wasn’t time for that now.

  She was consumed in her screens. Both Charlie Canyon and Rafael Bolívar were at work. She watched the video clip from that morning of Bolívar walking from his apartment building to the waiting car. He was wearing dark dress jeans and a white button-down shirt open at the collar. She switched to the nex
t clip and watched him step onto the curb and stride into the front doors of the Alegría building. He would likely remain at the office engaged in meetings until twelve thirty, when he would be met outside by a town car and be driven to his lunch meeting. She wondered whom his lunch was with today.

  Charlie Canyon’s morning had been equally uneventful. He was already set up in his new office at ONE’s headquarters building. Ever since the acquisition, Canyon had been spending less time at the office. He usually went home at six and stayed in all evening. She had no idea what he did at home alone. She wondered about that and about what he thought of his new role at ONE. She had learned a great deal about both Canyon and Bolívar, but this knowledge had only produced a seemingly endless list of questions about what she did not know.

  She put in a call to Charlie Canyon. He called her back two minutes later and agreed to drinks that evening after work.

  She spotted him at a round booth deep within the restaurant’s belly, his face slanted down at the pages of a book. It was a physical, paperback book, the kind she never saw people reading anymore. She was a few minutes early and immediately resented him for being earlier, for beating her, just as she would have resented him for being late. She had picked the venue. It was a subterranean Russian caviar bar she and Parker favored for the cocktails, since caviar was, in general, out of their league, and here, where the prices were obscenely displayed on tiny menus, their only practical use for the caviar was to make the twelve-dollar drinks seem like a hard bargain.

  He looked up from his book as she approached, taking care first to dog-ear his place. As he set the book aside, she saw that the cover was blank. There was no title or jacket design, just plain, white, heavy-stock paper binding the interior pages together.

  Canyon stood to greet her and then leaned back casually against the booth. He’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt one button more than was really necessary. His style was superior to Parker’s, she thought, though she couldn’t pinpoint why and had never thought of her fiancé as particularly unfashionable. She suspected the difference had something to do with Charlie’s broad shoulders, the subtle but unmistakable plains of pectorals split by the V of his open collar. It was a well-fitted shirt. On the cushion beside him was a lightweight green and white jacket. The tag was visible at the collar, but the only marking was a simple black X.

  “Your jacket. Is that the designer you were making the commercial for last week?”

  “Yes.”

  She pictured the shirtless actor, Daryl Walker, dancing at the turntable while the small army of graffiti artists climbed around the bizarre warehouse set. “How did the spot turn out?”

  “It’s great.”

  “Will we be seeing it around the city soon?”

  “No.” Canyon’s eyes dimmed a measure or two.

  “Does that have anything to do with the merger with ONE?”

  “Acquisition. It was not a merger. And yes, the X campaign was dropped because there’s no room for small fish anymore. Not even the most promising.”

  “But you still have your job?”

  “I was promoted,” he said without emotion. “My first role is to manage the Jalen West account.”

  “Congratulations,” Kera said, using extraordinary control not to react to this news. He was doing it too, she realized—not reacting. “What are you reading?” she asked.

  He looked down at the book as if he’d forgotten it was there. “A novel by Lazlo Timms.”

  Kera winced apologetically. “Haven’t heard of him.” She made a point to commit the author’s name to memory.

  “You will. It’s about a pilot who slowly discovers his wife’s fear of flying.”

  “A metaphor,” she said. “I don’t read much fiction.”

  “I only read fiction.”

  “Really? No news sites? No blogs?”

  “Only to look at the ads. The rest of it is trash.”

  Was this small talk? She couldn’t figure out why Canyon had agreed to meet with her. He seemed detached, his eyes distant. “Is something wrong? You seem preoccupied,” she said.

  “I lost Daryl today.”

  “The actor?” How had she not seen that coming? She had to text Jones to get a dossier going.

  “He was up for a big role. Major motion picture. The good kind, though. Quality screenplay. We found out yesterday that he didn’t get it. He should have. They’re making a monumental mistake. But fuck them. And fuck Daryl. He’s decided to become useless. Don’t get me wrong—this role would have been huge. But rejection happens, you know? It’s not like his career’s over. He’s what, twenty-seven? And he hasn’t eaten or showered or left his bed since I called him with the news. A little dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “Wait, he’s OK?” Kera felt heat in her cheeks. “I mean, he’s not—he didn’t disappear?”

  Charlie laughed at this, but in a way that was neither funny nor happy. “No. He wouldn’t do that.” She waited for him to say more, but he slumped back into the booth. He had finished his drink, and Kera hoped the waitress would bring him another.

  “He’s an actor. Maybe you just need to give him some time,” she said.

  Canyon shook his head bitterly. “He’s better than this victim routine, and he knows it. That’s the worst kind—” Canyon stopped suddenly. His gaze tilted upward, and she could see in his eyes that he’d forgotten she was there.

  “What is it?”

  Canyon pointed up, indicating the music coming from the speakers. Kera hadn’t even been aware of it before. But now she recognized the song.

  “Jalen West,” she said. Canyon’s eyes had gone glassy. She let him listen to a few bars, studying him. “Is he next?” she said, seeing her first opening and taking it.

  His face was stony for a moment, his mind off somewhere else, but then he shook his head. He repeated the word tentatively. “Next.”

  “Look at me, Charlie. There are now eight people who are missing, and they all have exactly two things in common: they were signed with ONE and they met with you. You just said yourself that you’re working on the Jalen West account at ONE. That’s not a coincidence, is it?”

  He took a gulp of the new drink the waitress had put before him. “If it was, would you believe me? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem like the kind of girl who has lost her ability to appreciate a good coincidence.”

  Kera ignored this. “What happened to them, Charlie? Eight people.”

  “Is that what you came here to ask me?” He smiled. “I can’t help you with that.”

  “I’ll find them, with or without your help.”

  “You know, you just might.”

  “This isn’t a game. You could be subpoenaed. It’s a felony to withhold evidence to a crime.”

  His eyebrows arched. “Has a crime been committed?”

  “Until this week, I wasn’t sure about that. Before vanishing each of them made preparations to avoid default on any financial or legal obligations—although I suspect ONE would dispute that on contractual grounds. Either way, fake suicide notes are one thing. But an airplane? A full-fledged search-and-rescue effort that, aside from wasting tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars, put the lives of first responders at risk? Yeah, I’d say a few crimes have been committed.” She watched for his reaction, but he had none. “I want to hear your side of the story, and I want to believe you. But I won’t overlook a crime any more than I’ll ignore the truth, once I uncover it. What about Rafael Bolívar?”

  For a moment he seemed to be weighing the subject, how much to say. But then he stretched out his arms across the back of the booth, richly enjoying the suspense.

  “You and Bolívar were classmates in college,” she said. “Are the two of you friends now? Are you working together?”

  “I’m going to make Rafa famous. Don’t you think Rafa should be famous?”

  “He’s already famous.”

  “I don’t mean in that way. All that is just a diversion. Rafa is a
genius. It’s people like him, people with the ability to change the world—they are the ones who should be famous, don’t you think? Not vacuous celebrities or quitters like Daryl Walker.”

  “What does being famous matter?”

  “It matters a great deal. Ideas are valuable to society in proportion to the extent that they are popular. When people go unheralded, their work is wasted.”

  “What about people who disappear? Would you say their work is wasted?”

  He permitted, in fact seemed to enjoy, the prolonged cross-table stare-down that followed this challenge. “You know what your problem is?” Canyon said in a way that made her imagine stabbing a fork through his cheek. “You think too small.”

  “Eight people. What happened to them?”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  “I told you. I’m doing a story.”

  He glanced at the clock on his phone and then leaned back, looking directly at her. “I don’t have a lot of time. And I’m getting bored with that pretense. We both know you’re not a journalist.”

  “I’m sorry?” she said, staring at him. He stared back with steady eyes. They both knew that she’d heard him.

  “What is Hawk?”

  Paralysis seized her. The effect was most devastating for her lungs, which could not move air. Those three words—What is Hawk?—could end everything. Protocol in this situation required her to tell Gabby immediately that she had been compromised. Hawk would be turned inside out in a hunt to discover the source of the leak. She would be disavowed, possibly Jones, possibly others. They would evaluate whether the breach was catastrophic. If it was, all of the mission’s resources would be redirected to damage control. Hawk would be shuttered and everyone involved would lose their careers in the intelligence community.