by Jim Nelson
“Faye,” Cline said. “You need to—”
“Well, I can certainly understand why you would want the film destroyed,” I told Faye. “After all, you were the female lead.”
“I never asked for it to be destroyed. I'm simply asking for some discretion regarding its availability and distribution.”
“It’s part of the historical record,” I said. “You want to pick and choose what we remember and what we forget.”
A man’s voice called from the other room. She’d left the powder blue door open. Through it, I made out a luxurious bedroom of fluffy powder-white linen and more Edwardian furniture. The man’s voice neared. Mayor Samuel Justin entered wearing a pressed white shirt, suspenders, and pinstriped slacks. He was trim and much shorter than he appeared in-memex. Faye stood half a head taller than him. He was in socks. He pressed two ties to his throat.
“Red or blue, honey?” he asked Faye's back.
“You’re speaking to an environmental group,” she said tartly without turning to him.
“So red, then?”
“No, blue.” She walked him to the bedroom with some impatience and said she’d be with him in ten minutes. She closed the door this time.
“Excuse the interruption.” She made a furtive, not apologetic, smile. “You were saying I want to pick and choose what people remember. Well, certainly your employer Dr. Clift believes he can pick and choose history for the rest of us. Doesn’t he?”
“I don’t speak for Clift.”
“Well, I’ve heard him speak. I’m also aware of his ways. He’s a small man who found he could raise his stature standing on top of a milk box someone else built. He believes history can be edited like a movie script still in the typewriter. A little white-out here, a type-over there—”
“You really think this ten-minute art school film is going to ruin your husband’s chances of election? You’re worried about it going viral after all this time?”
“The film has been public for twenty-seven years now. What has not been made public is my involvement in it. That is what I’m seeking to avoid, and it’s what our opponents are hoping to exploit.”
I thumbed toward the door behind me, like a hitchhiker hoping for a lift. “That sign outside says you have plenty of time to respond if the connection was made in the press.”
“Mr. Naroy,” she began with a weary exaggerated sigh. I sensed the oncoming cold shower of a patronizing lecture. “I have been running my husband’s campaign for sixteen months now. The process requires careful shaping of our story and constant monitoring of public perception. Everything must only help our campaign. Even a man like you can understand that, I imagine.”
“A man like me,” I echoed.
“If our opponents had the film in-hand, they could release it at their discretion," she said. "A well-planted rumor and an anonymous announcement on the Nexternet could land any day they wished it to. I imagine they would release the film in four weeks, the middle of February, to force us on the defensive for the final two.”
“You've thought this out,” I said.
“There are certain other details we suspect they will attempt to deploy as well,” she said. “To foment an alternate narrative about my husband. New personal attacks to distract the voters.”
“What kind of attacks?”
She smiled. “I’m not speculating to someone I just met—”
“Humor me,” I said. “After all, I might know where your film is right now.”
She grew dead serious. “You know?”
“I have a good idea,” I said. “But the point is, I don’t have it. When I do have it, that’s when I’ll decide what I’m going to do with it.” I nodded once. “Here’s your chance to help me make that decision.”
"That sounds like extortion."
"I'm telling you I have an open mind."
I’d left Gannon’s memex at the security desk outside. My modified memex remained inserted in my spinal socket. I enabled the sidestream.
Faye’s thoughts erupted across my mind. The raw, unprocessed thought stream hit me like a fire hose spraying static electricity. The human mind generates a roaring river of notions, opinions, and emotions. Sensations and memories join the river, and all roar forth in parallel.
"I would prefer we stay on the subject at hand," she said.
The conversation had ignited her own hard memories. She was modeling when we made the film in 2010. Around that time, there was an incident. A photographer cornered her in a changing room, took liberties with her. With the sidestream enabled, the photographer was cupping my chest and wandering his hand down my side and leg.
Mentally, I reached out with my memex to the Old Internet. Recorded there for eternity was the result of this changing room advance. She complained and it made minor news on the Internet. He sued for defamation. She retracted her claims rather than face a long court battle. It was her word against his. He crowed on the Internet he’d “won” and that she'd lied for the publicity it would garner her. The story was all there in the historical record, but under her stage name, Melody Purcell.
Even I could do the arithmetic. Her political opponents could portray her as a lying feminist. They could use Detachment and the photographer's claims to portray her as hateful toward men.
“I can handle a whisper campaign about my past,” she said. “The film’s content is the linchpin. The visual of me…” It caught in her throat. “Castrating a man for not being masculine enough.” She smiled wistfully. “Do you really think voters will trust a Lady Macbeth? Would you?”
She straightened and considered me once more. My presence in this sanitized, pristine room was now even more sullying. I wasn't quite garbage in her mind, but I was down the ladder.
"Faye," Cline said, voice barely over a whisper. "He's—"
"We're still talking," I shut her down. "And I'm still making up my mind what to do with the data brick."
"When you get it." Faye tilted her head at me once more. “Are you the kind of man who requires a stipend to see it my way?”
“What kind of man do you think I am?”
“You security people are all the same.” She motioned toward the antechamber doors. “Not the physical security people we employ. They strike me as honest, hardworking men. They are the kind of people this campaign stands to represent when Samuel takes office. No, I mean you computer security people." An image of a corpuscular Aggaroy bulging at the seams flooded her mind's eye. She remembered Aggaroy eating a doughnut in the campaign coffee room. It disgusted her then and it disgusted her now. "When we had the Old Internet, your job was keeping out hackers. Fair enough. Thanks to the memex and the Nexternet, today your job is to invade people’s privacy and exploit them without regard.”
"I wouldn't say without regard. I have plenty of regard."
He's no different than that man Gannon hired, she thought. That dough-ball who thought he could squeeze us for money.
“Faye—” Cline insisted. The pained look on her face told me she couldn’t bear to hold back the secret any longer. I had to press my advantage now.
“In order to made my decision about the film, I have to know what you know," I said.
He's negotiating, her internal voice said. Lower back stiff, shoulders back. He wants information not money. Cline said sympathy card might have worked. Stay in control. Don’t lose cool again. Play up Gannon’s loss. Play up mother’s loss. Sympathy.
"I understand you discovered Gannon earlier today," Faye said. "I've sent my condolences to his mother."
"What did Gannon tell you about the film before he died?"
The fat man told Gannon, came over the sidestream. This is how a sidestream can be used as a lie detector: The mind has to fetch the truth before it can devise a lie. Put it back on Aggaroy.
"Gannon told me nothing about this matter," she said. "I don't believe he's involved in any way with this affair."
"And yet this morning, he was found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Did you
order Gannon to remove the film from Alcatraz?"
A memory leaped at me, one of Faye agreeing with Gannon's plan to steal the data brick. It was not her idea, but she rubber-stamped the plan.
"It was only well after the theft and Aggaroy's death I learned of any of this matter," she stated.
She thought I was negotiating, so I negotiated. “Whatever I do with the data brick, I'm going to have to give people some answers. There's going to be loose ends to tie up."
He's working with Brandt’s campaign, she unwittingly broadcast to my slipstream. What has he agreed with Clift? Give him a little more, see what he gives in return—
“Was Aggaroy blackmailing you about the film?” I asked.
Use Aggaroy, Aggaroy can't dispute me now.
“Gannon told me he was beginning to distrust your friend. Gannon was going to tell me more, but with his death—” She nodded with a pained look on her face, as practiced as a tennis serve. Use Aggaroy. "Whatever occurred on the island, I'm certain it was Mr. Aggaroy's doing, and I'm certain it was of his own accord."
“If you didn't know ahead of time, when did you learn about the theft?” I nodded toward Cline. "When did you decide to use your old friend to arrange an interview with me at Union Square?"
Use Aggaroy. Never Gannon. The word Gannon was a mental engram for the campaign. Aggaroy was separate. Gannon was linked.
“Christ,” I said. “You’re like talking to a parrot.”
“Excuse me?” Her voice raised. "I am telling you, the campaign had nothing to do with this."
"It does now."
"It's patent your friend Aggaroy learned of my past through the film and decided on his own to extort me. Now—" Her voice accelerated her, an indication she was closing the conversation. "How he met his fate I do not know, but I certainly believe Gannon's death is unconnected to any of this." She added, "Most likely an accident of some kind."
Her thoughts betrayed about sixty percent of that. She did not believe it all, but she wanted me to.
"Mr. Naroy, I am pleading with you. Finding and returning that film to Dr. Clift is a major mistake. Can you see the sense in what I’m asking?”
I shut off the sidestream. Enduring every aspect of her subconscious unleashed was draining. Half of her side thoughts regarded my physical appearance. She loathed my presence. If she thought this little of me now, I could triangulate what she thought of me twenty-seven years earlier when I was shirtless and weighing down upon her with my tongue against her neck.
“Your friend wants to tell you something," I said, feeling disgusted as well
“It’s him,” Cline pleaded with Faye. In a mad gush of language, she explained what she’d learned at the bar downstairs. “I don’t know how, but it’s him.”
Perhaps I should have left the sidestream on to hear Faye’s mind connect the old man before her with the desperate, sex-starved young man she’d pretended to love and castrate a quarter-century earlier.
Mouth agape, she said, “You were banned from the Internet—”
“And somehow I’m standing here today,” I said. “You both thought by getting rid of me you were disposing of me in real life. What did they used to say? ‘If it’s not on the Internet, it doesn’t exist?’ Well, you won. The man I used to be ceased to exist.”
“After what you did to Cline—” Faye said. “It was unforgiveable.”
She lowered her voice, her mouth a threatening frown.
“If you return that film to Dr. Clift, I will have no choice but to report you to the authorities," she said. "I’ll make sure you lose your license and are dragged off to prison. Where you should have been stewing all along, if there was justice.”
“I never touched anybody," I said. "I hacked some servers. I said some nasty things on message boards. That doesn't make me—”
“Violence is violence,” Faye said. "Not all abuse is physical. Now which is it?"
I glanced between the two of them. At that moment, in their presence, I was as nauseated with them as they were with me.
"You haven't convinced me to destroy the data brick," I said. "If I do it, it'll be for me and not for you."
"So be it."
Faye summoned the security men. Behind me, the double doors opened. The plush carpeting could not mask the treading of their hard-soled shoes. I could smell their aftershave and hair oil. I could smell the lite beer they would drink after work. I could smell their earthy blue-collar Protestant sturdiness, the salt of the earth this campaign so forthrightly stood for. I could tell they lived in the suburbs, far away from San Francisco. They hated it here. They returned home to their wives and children and told them of the craziness in the city. They swam in their backyard pools and mowed their front yard lawns and washed their cars in their driveways, and it was nothing like this godforsaken place.
“Do you know a man named Ellis Lotte?” I said to Faye.
“I’ve never heard the name,” she said curtly. “Good evening,” she added, mindful of the presence of the men in the room. A political animal knows when it’s time to keep up appearances.
“My memex couldn’t record a photo of him,” I said. “The first time I saw him, he'd muted himself. Of course, that was before he hired me and tried to puree my brain with a rabbithole.”
“I have no idea what you're speaking of.”
“The second time I saw him, he was dead."
That caught her attention.
"He couldn’t mute himself then, obviously, but my memex wasn’t working so well at that moment, so I couldn’t take a photo of him either.”
She dismissed the security men. "Did you say Ellis?"
As old-fashioned as it was, I set about describing him from memory. “He was five-foot-ten or so, with a mop of brown hair parted to one side. He wore glasses like an owl would wear. I suspect they were decorative, though. A guy that good-looking would’ve had corrective surgery. He probably wore glasses so people would take him seriously. He said he was a psychiatrist. He looked more like a muni course golf pro.”
My description piqued her interest. “Are you certain his name was Lotte and not Ellis Brandt?”
“He said Lotte. Tell me about this Brandt.”
Cline peered back and forth between us, a confused bystander now.
“Ellis Brandt is the nephew of Donahue Brandt,” Faye said. “Ellis is much as you describe. You’ve heard of Donahue Brandt? The current mayor of Los Angeles? We’re running against him on the March ballot.” She cocked her head with a patronizing smile. “You really don’t follow California politics, do you—I don't know what to call you. It's been so many years, I forgot your name.”
It didn’t matter. I could have repeated to her two dozen names I’ve been called, all derogatory. Hell, I answer to Hey you. Call me whatever you want.
“Naroy is my name,” I told her.
30.
I descended the Palace Hotel by elevator, alone. On the way down, a secure message arrived via Nexternet. My memex unwrapped the message’s onion-like layers of routing and encryption until a one-word message was revealed: Aggaroy.
*
After gathering equipment from the stage well below my office, I hiked up Taylor Street and east on Sutter to the Medical/Dental Building. By the time I reached the heavy brass doors, it was ten to eight. The night watchman stopped me at his table. Years before, the top four stories had been converted to penthouse apartments. I fast-talked my way past him, swearing I left my car keys upstairs at my friend’s place and would be down in five quick minutes. On the eleventh floor, I ran my hand crab-like through the dirt and moss of the potted tree beside the elevators. I found the brass key I’d left there two days earlier. In seconds, I was inside the psychiatrist's office.
I’d killed all the lights before I last left. They remained off. The office was as dark as a dungeon. Past the windows, electric-blue storm clouds from the west stampeded toward the city's skyscrapers. I turned on the light in the waiting area and let the illumination seep
into the other rooms. A stubby houseplant stood limp on the floor beside the receptionist counter. Its elephantine leaves were brown and crinkled like giant potato chips.
My first visit, I was led inside by Lotte. He controlled my movements here. This time, I opened side doors as I advanced down the admitting hall. In one room, I found stacks of pizza boxes and fast food wrappers strewn about, the grease still fresh and receipts only days old. Another door led to an appointed doctor's office with advanced degrees on the walls and hardbound books on shelves. More theater posters were here as well, productions of Shakespeare and Mamet and Brecht. The desk was tidy and organized. Opposite it was a long couch covered in an unkempt mess of blankets and pillows. Another pile of fast food refuse was cluttered on the floor around the couch. The paper on the wall was conferred by New England universities to a Daryl Mollie Lund.
On my way to the medical building, I’d used my memex to call up old social sharing photos of Ellis Brandt, nephew of Los Angeles mayor Donahue Brandt. One look and I knew. Ellis Lotte was Ellis Brandt. Sheer curiosity led me to peek in the bathroom and ascertain that, indeed, Brandt’s body was still decomposing on an umber mat of dried blood—
The bathroom was empty. I stepped inside and searched around, stupidly, as though Brandt had dragged himself into a corner so the next visitor would not be inconvenienced by his corpse sprawled across the floor. The tang of citrus and bleach hung in the air. The vanity and floor and door were spotless. Someone had scrubbed the bathroom clean. It wasn't enough to stop a forensics team, but it would make their job more difficult.
The storage closet was exactly as I’d left it. Not a detail was disturbed. The safe on the rear wall remained closed and locked. Its touchscreen display indicated it was no longer in back-off mode, meaning no one had made another foolish attempt to open it. If someone had tried after I’d left, the engram lock would’ve shut down for eight days and I’d be down the creek. As things stood, I still had a chance of opening it.
Back in the waiting room, I dragged a couch across the carpet and propped it against the locked entry door. To ensure the couch remained shut, I wedged a chair into the back of the couch, the chair's legs pressed up against wall beneath the receptionist's window. Even if someone picked the lock, they'd have a helluva time forcing the door open.