by John Locke
I doubt it.
So there’s that. On the other hand, the longer I wait before pressing the button, the more time the terrorists will have to set bombs in and around high profile targets!
Want to see how the dark side of my brain works?
What if I’m being set up?
What if George was a terrorist, and the whole lady-walking-into-a-lamp post event was staged for my benefit? A good mastermind could have put that into play. Now that I think about it, George was awfully quick to tell me there was no need to meet his arms dealer. What if there was no arms dealer? What if his terrorist buddies have truckloads of plastique stashed all over downtown Las Vegas? Or maybe the airport? What if the plan was for me to press the button four times and cause the destruction of tens of thousands of innocent people?
I’d love to be the one to press the button. I just wish I could believe the only ones who’ll get hurt are the bad guys. Unfortunately, in real life it doesn’t always work that way.
I get dressed and sit on the bench in the locker room, check my phone messages, see that Miranda has texted me her flight information. She’ll be here in two hours and forty-five minutes, which means she hasn’t left New York City yet.
I look at Jeff. “You want some breakfast?”
“If it’s real breakfast,” he says.
“What’s real to you?”
“Rooster knees and grits.”
“A diner?”
“That’ll do.”
“Bennie ought to know a place.”
Jeff calls Bennie to tell him we’re ready to be picked up.
“No problem,” Bennie says. “I’m just around the corner.”
I retrieve the gift-wrapped present from Norma, the receptionist, and shake it to make sure the device is still inside. Everything feels right. Is that a good or bad sign?
See how I live?
Back in the locker room I open the gift box. The device is there.
Why am I so paranoid?
Because it’s all going too easily.
My guard is up.
Jeff and I head outside. My eyes are scanning the campus, expecting an ambush. I watch the car drive up, wonder if it’s filled with armed agents bent on retrieving the chip. Or killing me. Or both.
IUC’s more of an urban campus, which means there are few trees to hide behind. The gun is no longer in my bag, it’s in my pocket, in my hand. I feel like an old-time gunslinger, ready to start shootin’ the minute some owlhoot draws a bead on me.
Then I feel like an idiot when it turns out the car is perfectly safe.
Jeff appears to be looking at me strangely.
I wonder if my present state of mind has something to do with the chip being de-magnetized. Maybe that did something to enhance my paranoia.
I climb in the limo. Jeff scoots near the front to explain to Bennie what type of diner he’s looking for. While he’s doing that, I call Lou.
“What’s up?” Lou says, cheerfully.
“I need to cancel the flight.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I changed my mind.”
“What about the chip?”
And there it was.
I say, “I don’t recall telling you anything about a chip.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You must have.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then how would I know?”
“How indeed?” I say. I must’ve sounded strange because Jeff turns to look at me.
“You okay?” he says.
I study Jeff a moment. I’ve known him for six years. I generally trust him, but he’s an odd duck, and I don’t trust anyone completely. Maybe it’s because I was lying on the table, vulnerable, for forty minutes, and haven’t recovered from that loss of control yet.
Lou hasn’t come up with a response, so I click the phone off and concentrate on Jeff. From where he’s sitting, I can’t disable him without a full-scale encounter. In other words, he’s too far away for me to strike him before he can react. By the same token, I’m too far away for him to attack me.
Not that he seems the least inclined to do so. Instead, he’s trying to touch his nose with the tip of his tongue.
I’m pretty sure Jeff’s safe. He sees me staring at him and says, “What?”
“Are you still dating that girl, the one with the weird job?”
He laughs. “The hair boiler?”
“Right. Tell me again what she does?”
“She dumps tons of animal hair into giant vats of boiling water until it curls. She dumps the hair in the pot, stirs it, drains it, dries it.”
“I remember she was very pretty,” I say.
“Still is.”
“There was some reason she had trouble getting dates.”
“The smell.”
“Tell me again.”
“Picture the smell of wet, burning, animal hair. She boils it all day long.”
“Boiled hair soup!”
“Exactly. The smell is always in her hair. It even seeps into her skin.”
“Would you ever let her cook for you?”
“Yeah, but not soup.”
“And you’re able to overlook the smell?”
“That’s why we get along so well. I like the smell! Why do you ask?”
“I have no idea.”
“Just making conversation?”
“I guess.”
I spot Kimberly’s voice message on my phone. This time I listen to it. Just as I’m done, I get a text from her. She’s in Dallas, waiting on her connecting flight. But it’s on time.
“Jeff, we need to cancel breakfast.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My daughter’s on her way to Vegas.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“What about Miranda?”
“I can’t wait that long.”
He grins. “Want me to meet her at the airport for you? Make sure she’s okay?”
“Not on your life!”
I press the speed dial for Miranda. She answers, saying, “Donovan, I’m so sorry! Our plane’s been delayed. But I’ll be there before one o’clock.”
“Honey, that’s actually good news.”
“I don’t understand. You don’t want to see me?”
“Of course I do! But I just found out my daughter’s on her way to Vegas to pay me a surprise visit.”
She laughs. “That would’ve been awkward.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“Damn right you will,” she says.
“I look forward to it.”
“Me too.”
54.
Bob Koltech gets us back to the private airfield. I pay him the balance I owe him, and he tries to hug me. I back away. He tries to shake hands. I bump his fist, instead. I like Bob, but I don’t allow anyone get a hold of me if I can help it.
“How’m I gonna show my love?” he says, frowning.
“By being available for me, day and night.”
He grins. “Count on it.”
Jeff and I climb in my car and I head straight for McCarran International, knowing Kimberly will be landing any minute. I find a spot in short-term parking and tell Jeff to catch a cab to PhySpa to check on George’s corpse.
“If it’s ready, what should I do?”
“Start without me.”
He smiles. “Thanks, boss.”
Jeff is at least a little stranger than the rest of us.
Moments later I’m in baggage claim, talking to Lou on my cell phone.
“Why wouldn’t you take my calls?” he says.
“I was on a plane.”
“I thought you changed your mind about needing a plane.”
I ignore the comment. I should probably be more concerned with what’s going on with Lou, but I’m so excited about Kimberly’s visit, and so happy about her friendship offer, I barely care. Lou’s after me? Big deal. Not so long ago my life was in the hands of a c
age full of monkeys!
“I notice you called me three times,” I say. “What’s up?”
“I wanted to come clean.”
That surprises me.
“Go ahead,” I say.
“Darwin wanted your itinerary.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“He’s my boss. You keep forgetting. You fired me, remember?”
It’s true. I do keep forgetting. But I don’t forget why I fired Lou. He tried to kill me. But I forgave him. Not completely, but enough to let him continue working as my facilitator. Since he and I both work for Darwin, it’s not a great idea to keep the relationship going. But Lou is irreplaceable, so I can’t imagine finding someone else. Whoever I get would have to be a personal secretary type of person, with no government contacts. And he or she would have to understand what I do for a living, and…well, it’s a tough gig.
“You weren’t going to tell me about Darwin,” I say.
“I hoped to prevent it. It’s not like he’s using the information to kill you or anything.”
“Lou?”
“Yeah?”
“Darwin ordered Doc Howard to plant the chip in my brain.”
“That’s nearly true.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you. But I’m the most loyal friend you have.”
I take the phone away from my ear and look at it. Then put it back to my ear.
“Did you mean to say that?”
“I know,” he says. “Like my old friend Donovan Creed used to say, it sounds stupid when you say it out loud like that.”
I smile.
“Let me try to explain,” Lou says.
“Make it quick.”
“Got a hot date?”
“Something even better.”
“Okay. Remember Augustus?”
“Of course.”
“If somehow he had survived, and the whole issue with the kidnapped girl had been resolved, would he be able to trust you from that point on?”
“Yes. But what happened with us was different.”
“I’m trying to make up for it.”
“Then give me something to convince me. Because right now it sounds like you’re in Darwin’s pocket.”
“I decided to give you a present.”
“A present.”
“Right. Something so big you’ll know you can trust me with your life.”
“What could possibly be that big?”
“I just killed Doc Howard.”
“ What? Why on earth-”
“Doc Howard was Darwin.”
As I’m about to faint from shock, I hear a young woman shout “Father!”
It’s Kimberly, heading down the escalator, toward baggage claim.
I tell Lou, “Thanks.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?”
“No, but it’s the first thing.”
55.
After hugging Kimberly, we sit and wait for her luggage. She’s beaming. I’ve never seen her look so happy.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You found a golden ticket in your Wonka Bar?”
“Even better.”
“You’re in love again?”
“Even better. I realized I don’t need to be in love to be happy.”
I feel her forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”
She smiles.
I say, “You’re still a female, right?”
“Don’t be a shit head!”
She looks beyond me a second.
“Oh, the poor man!” she says.
I follow her gaze and see a man with two enormous bandages, one on each side of his head.
Tony Spumoni. Carrying a briefcase.
He sees me looking at him and immediately spins around and ducks into the men’s room.
“Do you know him?” she asks.
“We’ve met.”
“He seems terrified of you.”
My mind begins racing. If there really was an arms dealer, and if George didn’t come home last night, is it possible the arms dealer might have started threatening other members of Ropic’s board? Could they have coerced Tony into helping them? Like planting a bomb at the airport? I don’t know. But one thing I do know is sometimes indecision is worse than a wrong decision. I can’t take a chance on the terrorists planting explosives all over the world and setting them off at the same time with the wrist device. Even if there’s collateral damage, I’m suddenly convinced fewer civilians will die if I detonate the two hundred and twelve devices right now.
I remove the ceramic device from my pocket, take a deep breath, and press the button four times.
My head is fine, I’m happy to report, but the airport men’s room explodes.
I don’t know if anyone else was in there, but I know most of Tony Spumoni is not. One of his ears, still casted, rolls to a stop a foot from Kimberly’s shoe.
She kicks it away, and the look of shock on my face makes her laugh out loud.
People are screaming. Rushing, running around.
Kimberly’s smiling at me. Smiling!
“You’re not upset?” I say.
“Of course not.”
“A bomb just went off in an airport!”
“So?”
The noise around us becomes so loud I have to shout to be heard. “What’s going on?” I yell.
“I’m not upset because you’re not,” Kimberly shouts. She leans into my ear so the whole world won’t hear her words. “I’m also not upset because I saw you detonate the bomb. And because…”
“Yes?”
“I’m OOU.”
I give her a puzzled look. “What’s that mean?”
She points to herself, then to me, and says, “I’m one of us.”
“Tell me,” I say.
And she does. People are running around us, yelling and screaming, but as far as I can see, there’s no damage beyond what happened in the men’s room. There’s a TV monitor twenty feet away, suspended from the ceiling, and I glance at it from time to time while Kimberly tells her story. I’m trying to see if there’s any breaking news of planes falling from the sky or buildings blowing up.
So far, so good.
But it’s early.
Kimberly’s story is compelling, as is the TV monitor. She’s telling me she lied about being in school and how she hasn’t attended classes for the past two semesters. I don’t know what to think about that, because Lou obtained a copy of her transcripts. Her biology teacher’s a dick, remember?
But I don’t interrupt her.
The whole scene around us is surreal. Security guards are shouting, trying to make their way into the men’s room. People are running here and there, some have left their bags, others are stealing bags off the moving luggage belt. Someone’s making crowd control announcements, trying to get us to evacuate the building. Everyone’s yelling at everyone else, but no one seems to notice the two of us.
“Keep an eye out for your suitcase,” I say.
“I am.”
The area around us grows less noisy, and Kimberly no longer has to shout. She tells me she’s had a certain type of female problem she really can’t discuss, but that a man befriended her almost a year ago, and became her confidante, and gave her confidence, and uplifted her.
“Who is this man?” I say.
“Not important,” she says, then tells me how the man helped her understand the cause of her depression. He convinced her that what she really craved above all else in the world was her father’s love. When she gets to that point, she bursts into tears and hugs me, and I forget all about the TV monitor.
But when Kimberly calms down and tells me how the man paid for her psychiatric visits and kickboxing and weapons training, and how he taught her the family business of killing people-I felt like I was in the middle of a Fellini movie.
Now we’re being rounded up with the others and ordered to go outside. Kimberly sees her suitcase. We grab it and head outside.
“What do you mean you killed people? You mean you killed them in your mind? Metaphorically?”
She laughs. “No, father. I killed them in real life.”
I look at her with grave concern. I wonder if she’s crazy.
“You haven’t actually killed a human being,” I say.
“Yes.”
“When? How?”
She smiles. “I have your interest now, don’t I?”
I frown. “You do.”
Something suddenly clicks.
“This man,” I say.
“What about him?”
“Did he disguise his voice?”
She pauses too long before answering, “How do you mean?”
She’s lying. But why?
I say, “What I’m asking, did he use a voice altering device?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You’d know.”
“Then I guess not.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes, of course. Why are you asking that?”
We start heading for my car. When we get there, I hold the passenger door open for her, and call Callie while putting Kimberly’s suitcase in the trunk. When Callie answers I say, “Are you with me or against me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want to know who I can count on. You’ve made some remarks lately that bothered me. I have trust issues. You know that.”
“Of course. And abandonment issues.”
“Right.”
“And emotional issues, and mental issues, and issues with women, and psychotic episodes, and schizophrenic issues and-”
“Enough! Can I count on you?”
“Of course. Why?”
“I’m declaring war.”
“On whom?”
“Darwin.”
“Oh, shit!”
“But he might be dead already.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Me or him, Callie?”
“You, of course.”
“Will you help me?”
“I’ll pull the fucking trigger. Is that enough help?”
“Thanks.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?”
“No. But it’s the first thing.”
56.