by Matt Ruff
“Lots of things can fight evil,” True replied. “Cinderblocks, for example—if a cinderblock had fallen in Josef Stalin’s crib, the twentieth century might have been a bit more pleasant. Even if one had, though, I doubt most people would say that the purpose of cinderblocks is to fight evil.”
“So you’re not the government. What are you, then? Vigilantes? You hunt bad guys, right?”
“The organization pursues its goal through diverse means, most of them constructive. We employ Good Samaritans, Random Acts of Kindness, Second and Third Chances…” He went on, ticking off more than a dozen of what I eventually understood were division names, actual organization departments that fought evil in positive, life-affirming ways. My eyes must have glazed over, because suddenly he stopped and said, “Am I boring you?”
“A little,” I admitted. “So which are you, a Good Samaritan or a Random Actor?”
“I work for what’s known as the Cost-Benefits division.”
“You handle the money.”
“I help allocate the organization’s resources. Which are substantial, but still finite.”
“‘Resources’ includes people?”
“Of course.”
“Well then, if you know anything about people, you know I’m not a good Samaritan.”
“No,” True said, “I don’t suppose you are…” He placed a green NC gun in the center of the table. “You’ll recognize this.”
“The one I had last time was orange.”
“The one you had in Siesta Corta was standard issue. This is a special model.”
“What’s special about it?”
“We’ll get to that. First I have a hypothetical question for you. A test question.”
“OK.”
“There are two men, both evil. One is a former concentration-camp commandant, responsible for the murder of half a million people; he’s ninety years old, living in hiding in the South American jungle. The other man is much younger—barely twenty-five, in excellent health—and living openly in the middle of San Francisco. He’s only killed once so far, but he’s discovered he has a talent and a taste for it, and it’s likely he’ll kill again many times…though of course, the total number of his victims will never be more than a fraction of the commandant’s.
“The death of either of these men would leave the world a better place. You have the power to kill one of them—but only one. Whom do you choose?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “The young guy.”
“Why?”
“Because killing the Nazi is the obvious choice, and this is a trick question.”
“Clever,” True said, in a tone that suggested it was anything but. “Now how about a less glib answer.”
“In this hypothetical situation, I’m supposed to be you?”
“Someone with my job description, let’s say.”
“Then the answer’s the same. Kill the young guy.”
“Why?”
“His worst days are still ahead of him. With the Nazi, the Holocaust is already out of the barn—killing him might be more satisfying, but the net benefit is smaller.”
“What about deterrence?” True said. “Wouldn’t killing the Nazi discourage other people from following in his footsteps?”
“It might, if it were a public execution. If I were the government, I could put him on trial for genocide and then hang him on pay-per-view. That might turn some heads. Trouble is, I’m not the government, I’m a member of a secret organization that dresses its agents like cheerleaders so people can’t talk about them. An execution that no one knows about won’t deter squat.”
“What about justice?”
“Is this a hypothetical real situation, or a hypothetical comic book?”
“And what about vengeance?”
“It’s fun. But it doesn’t have anything to do with fighting evil.”
“No,” True agreed, “it doesn’t.”
“Does that mean I pass the test?”
“The first half. The second half is less theoretical…” He laid a couple booklets on the table. They looked like those question booklets you get when you take the SATs. A name was written on the cover of each one in felt-tip pen. The one on the first booklet was BENJAMIN LOOMIS; the one on the second was JULIUS DEEDS.
“Two men,” True said. “Both evil. One you’ve already met—”
“Yeah, I have,” I said. “And he’s not ninety years old, if that’s where you’re going with this.”
“Julius Deeds has been indicted for murder. The case against him is strong, and despite his efforts at jury tampering he’ll probably be convicted. Even if he avoids prison, his actions have made him enemies on both sides of the law. A ninety-year-old might well outlive him.”
“And Loomis? Let me guess: he’s barely twenty-five, in excellent health…”
“Twenty-seven, actually. And he’s killed four times, not just once. Other than that, yes, he’s just like the younger man in the hypothetical. A predator. He’s been operating on a three-month cycle, so unless someone stops him, we expect he’ll take his next victim in early December.”
“The police don’t have a clue who he is?”
“The police aren’t even aware of his crimes yet. He hunts male prostitutes, men who’ve been abandoned by their families and have no one to report them missing. He kills discreetly and buries the bodies. In time he’ll be found out, of course—they almost always are—but it could be years from now.”
I stared at the tabletop. “The gun’s a one-shot, isn’t it? That’s the special modification. And the test is I have to choose.”
“We need to know what your real priorities are,” True said. “In a moment you’ll select one of these booklets; inside, you’ll find all the information you need to complete your first assignment. The other booklet will go back into our files, with a notation that its subject is never to be harmed or otherwise acted against by any agent of the organization.”
“So if I pick Deeds, Loomis gets a free pass? You’d really do that?”
“It wouldn’t be much of a test, otherwise.” He looked at his wristwatch. “You have one minute to decide.”
“Screw that. I don’t need a minute.” I reached for a booklet. True took the other one. “Don’t lose the gun,” he said. “You’ll see me again when the job is completed.”
I was in the hospital for a few more weeks. Towards the end of my stay, even though I hadn’t said a word about the organization, the doctors downgraded me from morphine to Vicodin. This made me cranky.
They released me right before Thanksgiving. I had a quiet holiday at home—just Phil, a couple microwave turkey dinners, and some nonprescription painkillers—and then, on the last day of November, I killed Julius Deeds.
It happened like this: Deeds’ favorite hangout was a nightclub in the Mission District. He’d show up most nights around ten, driving a red Mustang convertible that he’d park asshole-fashion in front of a hydrant, or just facing the wrong direction—like to say, you know, I’m the king of the jungle, the normal rules don’t apply to me. If it wasn’t raining, he’d leave the top down, too. I figured the deal with that was he wanted to show what a tough guy he was, so tough that nobody would dare steal his car. Or maybe he hoped someone would steal it, so he’d have an excuse to get in some batting practice.
That night, I was hiding in an alley across the street from the club when he drove up. I watched him go inside, and gave him half an hour to get comfortable. Then I set his Mustang on fire.
Gasoline would have been poetic, but besides being really conspicuous, a gas can is tough to sling one-handed, and my right arm was still in a cast. I used charcoal starter instead—a twenty-ounce container, small enough to slip inside my jacket. I strolled up to the car during a lull in the street traffic and stood there casually, peeing lighter fluid over the front-seat upholstery. When the container was empty, I took out a strike-anywhere match and lit it off my cast.
The Mustang’s interior was burning ni
cely by the time the nightclub’s bouncer raised the alarm. People started coming out of the club. Most of them hung back, but one particular Cro-Magnon went charging at the car. For a second it looked like Deeds was going to do my job for me by diving headfirst into the fire.
Where were you at this point?
A couple blocks up the street, by the entrance to this park. It was on a rise, so I had a clear line of sight to the nightclub, and vice versa. I was standing under a streetlamp, spotlit.
You wanted Deeds to see you?
That was the plan. It took a while, though. You know that expression, “a blind rage”? I know what that means now. Deeds was still trying to decide whether to throw himself on the flames when the bouncer came up with a fire extinguisher. The guy was trying to help, right, but as soon as he started spraying foam onto the Mustang, Deeds went berserk and swung on him. The guy went down, and then Deeds grabbed the fire extinguisher himself, and spent about a minute trying to figure out how to work it. Then he went berserk again, and tossed the extinguisher through a shop window.
In the middle of this tantrum he suddenly stiffened up, and I knew he’d finally sensed me watching him. “Over here, killer,” I whispered. He turned slowly in place until he was looking straight at me; I raised my good arm and gave a little wave. Then I ran like hell into the park.
About a hundred yards in, I stopped to look back. Deeds had already reached the park entrance, and was ripping a two-by-four off a sign on the park gate. I ran on, my cast banging against my ribs; when I looked back again, Deeds had closed about half the distance between us and was swinging the two-by-four in big warm-up circles.
I made a last dash downhill past a swing set and out the far side of the park, onto a street lined with houses. I went to a house near the end of the block, pulling out a key as I ran up the front steps. Deeds was right on my heels now—I’d barely got the door shut behind me when the pounding started. The lock splintered on the third blow, and gave way on the fourth; the door chain snapped and then Deeds was inside.
This time I was the one sitting in a dark corner of the living room. Instead of a baseball bat I was holding a double-barreled shotgun. I had it up and ready with both hammers cocked, the barrels balanced on my right wrist, my left hand on the triggers.
“You’re a dead woman,” Deeds announced. Then he blinked, noticing the gun, and added: “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not kidding. Now here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to drop that piece of wood you’re holding, and we’re going to go downstairs to the basement…”
“No,” Deeds snarled. “What’s going to happen is, you’re going to give me that fucking gun. You can either hand it over easy, or I can take it from you—but if you make me take it, I’m really going to be angry.”
I pulled the left-side trigger. The shot struck Deeds in the arm, knocking him back and tearing a big chunk out of his bicep. He grunted and dropped the two-by-four.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You want to start worrying about my feelings.”
Deeds cupped a hand to his ruined bicep. “You shot me!” he complained. “You’re crazy…” He glanced over his shoulder at the broken front door.
“You won’t make it,” I said. I stood up, and gestured towards the back of the house. “Basement door’s that way. Start walking.”
He moved slowly, hoping I’d come up too close behind and give him a chance to grab at the gun. When we reached the basement stairs, he slowed down even more and tried goading me: “I don’t know how you think you’re going to come out on top here, Jane. I mean, I know you’re not going to kill me.”
“Keep moving.”
“I know you’re not going to kill me. Maybe you’ve got the guts to pull the trigger, I’ll grant you that much, but you don’t want to go to prison, do you?”
“Keep moving.”
“Or are you stupid enough to think you can claim self-defense on this? Is that the plan? Tell the cops you had to do it, because of that beating I gave you? You think they’ll care about that?”
I wasn’t going to argue with him, but I couldn’t help myself: “I think they’ll care about those three kids you burned to death.”
“Those kids…So that’s what this is about?” He laughed. “Let me tell you something about those kids, Jane. I didn’t even know they were in the house that night. But their mother—my so-called girlfriend?—she knew. And I’ll bet the selfish bitch didn’t look back once when she was running to save herself…You want to pass judgment on someone, Jane? What about a mom who leaves her own kids to fry?”
“Shut up and keep moving. I’m not going to say it again.”
“All right, all right…But I’m telling you, Jane, I really don’t see this ending well for you. I don’t…”
He trailed off in mid-threat. We’d finally reached the bottom of the stairs.
The basement was lit by strings of hanging bulbs. Its floor had originally been wood, but the planks had been pried up and set aside, exposing bare dirt beneath. Here and there—four places in all—long, narrow holes had been dug in the dirt, filled in again, and sprinkled with lime. In between the water heater and the furnace a fifth hole had been started, but it was only half-finished. The handle of a shovel jutted out of it at an angle; lying facedown in front of it, one hand still reaching for the shovel, was the figure of a man.
“What the hell is this?” Deeds said.
“The greater of two evils,” I told him. “His name was Benjamin Loomis. He was a serial killer. Earlier tonight he had a heart attack. Died in the act—at least, that’s what the cops will think.”
“Died in the act of what?”
“Burying his last victim.”
Deeds turned and lunged for the gun then, but my finger was already tightening on the trigger.
“Bad monkey,” I said.
After, I went back into the park, and found True sitting on a bench near the swings. He wasn’t happy.
“I told you to choose one,” he said.
“One booklet,” I reminded him. “But I didn’t need your help to track Deeds down. He was in the damned phone book. And then when I went to take care of Loomis and found that shotgun in his closet…Well, I figured it was part of the test, to see if I had the initiative to take out both of them.”
“Did you really think that? Or did you kill Deeds because you wanted to?”
I shrugged. “Does it even matter? You said it yourself, they were both evil. The world’s better off.”
“Yes, but now there are discrepancies for the police to wonder about. Such as the fact that Loomis died several hours before Deeds.”
“They won’t be able to tell that, I bet. I mean yeah, if they came right now, while Deeds is still warm…But I don’t hear any sirens, do you? And once his body hits room temperature, it’ll be a lot harder to fix a time of death. That basement was cold as a meat locker.”
“And when they discover that Loomis’s other victims were poisoned, not shot?”
“So? Maybe Deeds wasn’t a normal victim. Maybe he found out what Loomis was doing, and tried to blackmail him, or just walked in on him somehow.”
“Somehow.”
“It’s a Nod problem. The police will believe that Loomis killed Deeds because it’s the simplest explanation. They’ll want to believe it, especially when they find out who Deeds was. Tell me I’m wrong.”
True shook his head. “This is not how we do things.”
“Look, you said you wanted to know what my priorities were. You want to give me grief for bending the rules? You want to blackball me for it? Fine. But we all make the world, right? And if that’s true, I’m not going to settle for just one bad guy when I can get two. I saw my chance and went for it, and I’m not sorry. I’d do it again.” I stopped there, worried about overplaying it, but after a minute had gone by and True hadn’t given me the chop, I went on, in a softer voice: “So do I pass the test? Am I in?”
Another
minute. True sighed.
“You’re in.”
white room (iii)
“WHAT’S THE PROBLEM THIS TIME?” she asks. “Did I screw up the body count?”
“No, your description of the scene in Benjamin Loomis’s basement was accurate,” the doctor says. “And there are details in your account, such as the fact that Deeds was shot in the arm, that were never released to the press. So it’s plausible you were there, or at least spoke to someone who was.”
“But…?”
“But, there’s no evidence to support the rest of your story. If Julius Deeds was a vicious gangster, you seem to be the only person who knew about it. There’s no record he was ever indicted for murder; no record of anyone committing an arson-homicide of the kind you say he was charged with; no record, either, of the beating you claim you received at his hands.”
“Back up a second. You’re telling me Deeds didn’t have a rap sheet?”
“He was a criminal, all right, just not a violent one. He had a long history of petty drug offenses, including one early charge for theft of a doctor’s prescription pad. The prescription pad theft happened while he was an intern at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, studying to be an oncologist.”
“No, you’re mixed up. The oncology student, that was—”
“Your dealer friend Ganesh, yes. Of whom there’s also no record. Or none that I could find: I wasn’t sure if Ganesh was a first or last name, or an alias.”
“I’m not sure either,” she says, “but I didn’t just imagine him. Hey, I bought dope from the guy for years.”
“Well if Ganesh is a real person, Jane, can you explain how Julius Deeds ended up with his biography? Or is that another Nod problem?”
“No, it’s not a Nod problem.” She frowns. “It’s Catering.”
“Catering?”
“Organization counterintelligence. They must know I’m talking to you.”
“The organization altered the police records?”
“Somebody did. And I know how this is going to sound, but if it is Catering? You can forget about fact-checking my story anymore.”