When they got down to the lobby, he asked the guy pushing the chair to stop in front of a newspaper vending machine. Sure enough, the date on the front page confirmed that it was 2015. The scam couldn’t be that detailed, he realized. This had to be real.
He waited as Nate pulled his car up to the front. It was a 2013 Crown Victoria, owned by the department. Inside was a rifle mounted between the driver and passenger seats, but that was not what drew Doug’s attention. He was focused on the electronics, the computer screens and communications systems, which were like nothing Doug could remember seeing. “What the hell is all that?” he asked.
“Modern tools of the trade,” Nate said. “Your car is exactly the same. But don’t worry, the trunk is full of old-fashioned things like weapons and tear gas. The kind of stuff you love.”
Once they were out on the road, any lingering doubt Doug had that Nate and Carmody were telling the truth was soon dispelled. The cars looked different, and even though Doug had always had a keen interest in cars, there were some he had never seen before.
Some of the malls they passed had new stores in them; billboards advertised products he had never heard of. Then Doug reached into the bag of personal belongings the hospital gave him when he checked out. He held up a device. “What’s this?”
“It’s your iPhone.”
“Like a cell phone?”
“Boy, have you got a lot to learn. I’ll show you how it works later. You also have an iPad and iPod touch. You like Apple stuff.”
“If it’s Apple, why isn’t it called an aPhone?” Doug asked, as he fiddled with the device a bit. In the process he accidentally activated Siri. “What can I help you with?” her computer voice asked.
“What is that? Is she talking to me?”
Nate laughed. “She’s your best friend, and the only woman you’ll ever meet who gives a shit about what you want. Hey, you want to go to your place and get some stuff, or if you’d rather, we can get you to my place and I’ll go pick it up? You can rest that way, which might be a good idea. You look like shit.”
“No, I’ll go with you,” Doug said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to see where I live.”
They drove to an apartment building in Hackensack called Royal Towers. It was familiar to Doug, but not as a place where he’d ever lived, but rather because there was a bar across the street called The Crow’s Nest that he had been to a bunch of times. The bar was still there and looked the same; for some reason he was comforted by that.
He was quiet as he and Nate got out of the car, and he stumbled as they started walking. Nate went to grab him, but he righted himself and waved him off. They reached the elevator and got on. “What floor?” Doug asked.
“Four.”
They rode up to the fourth floor and got off, with nothing whatsoever looking familiar to Doug. Nate reached into his pocket and took out a key, then put it in the door. “We keep copies of each other’s keys,” he explained. “Just in case.”
“You mean in case ten years of my life gets wiped away?”
“Something like that.”
The door across the hall and slightly down from Doug’s apartment opened and his neighbor, Bert Manning, came out. He took a step for the elevator, but then saw Doug and Nate.
“Hey, Doug … how ya doin’? I heard you had some trouble.”
“A little bit, but I’m fine, thanks.”
Manning seemed as if he wanted to say something, but looked at Nate and decided better of it. Instead he offered his hand to shake, and said, “I’m Bert Manning.”
“Nice to meet you, Bert,” Nate said.
Bert then turned back to Doug. “So you’re okay?” he asked. “Everything’s okay?”
Doug nodded. “All good.”
Manning hesitated again, and then nodded and headed for the elevator.
Doug and Nate entered, and Doug walked through the apartment, silently taking it in. It seemed inconceivable to him that he had ever lived there, though he did recognize many of the things as his own. The kitchen table, the recliner chair, the Phil Simms jersey hanging on the wall … there was more than enough to convince him that this was, in fact, his home. Or was his home, before he lost his mind.
“This is so fucking weird,” he said, more to himself than to Nate.
They loaded up two suitcases with clothes and Doug went into the bathroom to get some toiletries. He saw himself in the mirror, the first time since he had gone to the hospital. “You look old,” he said to his reflection. “Shit, you are old.” Then he realized why his own voice sounded strange; it was ten years older than the last time he remembered hearing it.
When he went back into the living room, Doug asked, “Do I still play softball?”
“Nah. You hurt your arm breaking up a fight in front of a bar. Now you play squash.”
“Squash?”
Nate nodded. “Yeah. According to you you’re pretty good. We’re all set, huh? We can come back if we need anything else.”
Nate grabbed the pair of suitcases, and Doug started to follow him toward the door. He stopped when he noticed a picture of himself and Jessie on the beach with what looked like a resort hotel in the background. “Who is she?” Doug asked.
“An ex-girlfriend.”
“She’s great looking. What happened?”
Nate shrugged. “Just didn’t work out.”
“Too bad, I guess. Unless she’s a serial killer or something.”
“She is definitely not a serial killer.”
They drove to Nate’s house in Teaneck, which Doug remembered, having been to a couple of barbeques there. It was the house that Nate grew up in, and stayed in when his parents moved down to Florida. It looked exactly like it had looked all those years before.
“You’ve certainly done a lot with the place,” Doug said.
Nate nodded. “Yeah, it’s really coming around.”
“So who shot me, Nate? That’s something I’d sort of like to know.”
“We don’t know, pal. If we did, they’d be in jail.”
“What were the circumstances?” Doug asked.
“Get some rest,” Nate said, looking through the drapes out the window toward the front. “You’ll come to the barracks tomorrow, and we’ll go over everything with the captain.”
Doug walked over and saw what Nate was looking at. It was a state police car that had parked in front, with two troopers in the front seat.
“What are they doing here?” Doug asked.
“Let’s put it this way: whoever shot you, we want to make sure they don’t shoot you again.”
Waking up every morning I have the same sensation.
Things seem normal … I seem normal … and my first thought is that it isn’t possible. There’s no way I could have lost ten years of my life.
I’m pretty pissed off about it. It’s like I was in a coma all that time, as if I never lived those years at all. I’m already realizing that life is all about memories; it’s the way we keep score. It doesn’t matter if the tree makes a sound when it falls in the forest; it only matters if anyone remembers it.
This iPhone thing I have is amazing. Last night I was trying to find a way to get my memory back, so I figured I’d check out what’s happened in the world and see if that would help. So Nate showed me I could just ask the phone to have this Siri woman tell me what happened in any particular year, and before I knew it she was giving me all this information.
I read it, I know it’s true, but it doesn’t seem possible. How could I not remember my Giants beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl? Twice! An African-American runs for president and wins, and it slips my mind?
I tried to focus on that stuff, and a bunch more that I read, and I tried to force myself to relive it. But I didn’t come close; none of it rings any kind of bell.
I’m nervous today. Nate is going to take me to the barracks, and I’m going to see all these people who will know me, and who work with me. But chances are I won’t have a cl
ue who most of them are. I’m going to feel stupid, and helpless.
“When we get there we’re going to go into the meeting room,” Nate tells me, once we’re on the way.
“What for?”
“The captain wants you to meet everyone at once; get it out of the way. So everyone not on duty will be there. He thinks it will be easier on you that way. Sounded like a good idea to me.”
“Who’s the captain now?” I ask.
“Name is Bradley. He’s a good guy; you’ll like him. You liked him, even though you think he’s an asshole, and he thinks you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Why does he think that?”
“Probably because you’re a pain in the ass.”
The state police barracks looks pretty much like I remembered it. It was built just a year ago as measured in my life, which means 2004, and it’s really eleven years old. It’s held up well.
We get inside, and there is a woman at the reception desk. “Hey, Doug, welcome back. Good to see you,” she says, a smile on her face.
“Hello,” I say. “Nice to see you too.”
As soon as we get past her, Nate says, “Her name is Nancy.”
“Now you tell me.”
He brings me to the conference room, and when I open the door I see about thirty people, maybe two-thirds of them men, sitting and standing there. They all get up when I walk in, and in smiling bunches they make their way slowly over to me. The whole thing seems to be choreographed, as if someone told them how to act in front of the weirdo.
Each one says hello, and tells me their name. They obviously know about my condition, so I don’t feel a need to explain. I feel badly that I don’t know them, but it’s way down on the list of things I feel badly about.
When I get to the middle of the line, I see a face I recognize. “Hi, Doug, good to see you. I’m Jerry Bettis.”
“I know you, Jerry. From the Academy.”
He smiles. “Yeah, amazing we both made it out of there.”
The next person says, “Hello. I’m Jessie Allen.”
I think this is the woman that I saw in the photo on my night table, the one that Nate said I went out with. I didn’t realize that she was a cop. She looks every bit as good as she does in the picture. She shakes my hand in a sort of robotic way. If there is any remaining warmth between us, I’m not picking up on it.
“Hello, Jessie, nice to meet you,” is the best I can come up with, and she seems to bite her lower lip as she walks on.
Once I’ve met all my old friends for the first time, Nate brings me to the captain’s office. Like everybody else, he greets me with a smile on his face, as if he’s treating a lunatic with serene kid gloves.
“Doug, I’m Captain Bradley. Good to have you back. Have a seat.”
“Thank you, Captain. Good to be back, even though I don’t remember leaving.”
We sit down and Bradley gets me coffee. Even without a memory, I am pretty sure that he’s doing so for the first time ever. Getting coffee is not a typical captain function, and I don’t think that would have changed if I was out of it for a hundred years.
“I just want you to know that you are being reinstated to the department with full back pay.”
“What rank am I?” It’s a question I hadn’t thought to ask Nate.
“Lieutenant. You were promoted three years ago.”
I nod. “Why was I suspended in the first place? And while you’re answering that, it’s time someone told me the circumstances behind my getting shot.”
Bradley and Nate shoot glances at each other, and then Bradley nods. “It’s all related,” is how he starts. He reaches for something on his desk; it’s a photograph of two men, and he holds it up for me.
“Do you recognize either of these guys?”
“No.”
“The one on the left is Nicholas Bennett. He’s today’s version of what used to be called the head of a crime family. We’ve gotten close to him a few times, but he’s so well insulated that we’ve never been able to pin anything on him.”
“He looks like a businessman,” I say.
“That’s how he sees himself, but his businesses include drugs, prostitution, money laundering, gambling, and murder. He’s been a main target of ours for a long time, but you became obsessed with him.”
“Why?”
He hesitates and says, “Because you’re a cop, and you give a shit. But you went too far, you harassed him, and you pushed him into a cabinet. He bruised a rib, lodged a complaint, and we had no choice but to suspend you. Restraint has never been a particular strong point of yours.”
I feel like he’s not telling me something, but I ask him whether that’s the case, and he denies it. I point back to the photo. “Who is the guy with him?”
“Name is Luther Castle,” Bradley says. “Bennett’s right-hand man, his enforcer when all else fails. Castle is as bad as it gets; he’s Bennett without the bullshit slick façade.”
“So what was I doing when I got shot?”
“We’d sort of like to know that as well. You were supposed to be sitting at home, riding out the suspension, but you weren’t following the drill. I didn’t know it, but you were out on your own, trying to bring Bennett down. One day you made this phone call to Nate.”
He presses a button on a recorder, and I hear my voice.
“I got him, Nate. This time I got him. You…”
Nate’s voice is next. “Doug, come on, you can’t keep doing this.”
“Shut up, Nate, and listen. You’ve got to get down here with backup, and you need to notify the FBI.”
“FBI? Why?”
“It’s much bigger than we ever thought, Nate. And I’ve got it all.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Find Congers and—”
“Hey!” is the last thing either of us says, and then there is the sound of gunshots. It’s very weird to hear myself getting shot, to say nothing of having no memory of it.
“Where did this happen?”
“The Peter Pan Motel.”
I know where that is, but I don’t ever remember being there. “How did you find me?”
“Well, Nate asked Jessie to trace the GPS on your phone, but before she got the answer, a call came in. I think one of the guests in the motel found you and called nine-one-one.”
“So Bennett or one of his people is the shooter?” I ask.
Bradley shrugs. “That’s the best guess, but no way to be sure.”
“Who is Congers, the guy I mentioned in the call?”
“Dan Congers. He’s a state cop, used to be a buddy of yours. Now he’s assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. And there’s one more thing.” He shows me another photograph. “This is Ahmat Gharsi; Homeland Security says he’s an international terrorist, and a big-time one.”
“How is he involved?”
“You sent an e-mail to Nate with this photo attached, an hour before you got shot. You wanted him to run it. Homeland Security is rather anxious for you to remember why.”
The impact of this hits me all at once. Something major may be going on, and the answer might well be inside my head. I just have no way to access it.
“Shit,” I say.
Nate speaks for the first time since we came in the office. “You got that right.”
Gharsi had never been to a used car lot before.
His visit to this one in Garfield was not meant to correct that oversight, and was not something he had on his bucket list. It also wasn’t to buy a car, used or otherwise.
Gharsi wasn’t worried about being seen and identified by other customers; this was a special visit arranged at two o’clock in the morning. And he wasn’t greeted by one of the normal salesmen, but rather by Nicholas Bennett.
Bennett had sent a driver to pick him up, and the man was waiting in the parking lot to bring him back to the city. Gharsi was looking out at the sixty or so cars in the lot, at this point lit only by moonlight, when Bennett and Luther Castle approached
him.
“Are you in the market for a car?” Bennett asked. “I’ll give you a good deal.”
Gharsi smiled. “I’m interested in many of them, and I have no intention to bargain. I am paying what you Americans call top dollar.”
Bennett returned the smile. “Then let’s go inside.”
They walked inside to the showroom, a rather dingy place not conducive to upscale buyers. “You own this business?” Gharsi asked.
“Not officially, but it’s fair to say I have an interest in it.”
Castle smiled, but didn’t say anything. His job was not to speak, it was to let his boss do the speaking, and to make sure his boss’s words were heeded.
“How many cars do you sell?” Gharsi asked.
“More than you would think. But this place has other purposes.”
Bennett and Castle led him into the back, which was the service area and body shop. They walked through that into a large garage-like room that had no apparent function other than to house a dozen fairly large cars. They were nondescript, not likely to attract undue attention, and each was at least five years old.
Gharsi walked slowly through the room, peering into each of the cars, opening some, and looking in all of the trunks. As he did so, Bennett said, “They are all untraceable. The VIN numbers have been removed, and it will be impossible to tell their history, recent or otherwise.”
Gharsi saw no reason to question Bennett’s statement, since he didn’t care if it was accurate. Once these cars had done their job, it didn’t matter to him at all if they were traced. If they were, it would be Bennett and others who would be in the cross hairs; Gharsi would be long gone.
“What about the license plates and identification?” Gharsi asked.
“All will be completely legit and up to date. No chance of attracting attention.”
“And the people driving them?”
“That is being worked on,” Bennett said. “And it will not be a problem, provided the money is there, and the escape is assured.”
Gharsi smiled. “Excellent, then we will do good business together.”
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