Heading up the grand staircase, Lucia seemed to know where she was going.
On the second floor of paintings, airy and opulent rooms fed into each other, grouped into categories like Impressionism and European Art.
“Have you ever been inside the museum?” she asked.
“No. But I have gone parasailing on Lake Michigan.”
She looked perplexed by his comment, which was understandable but not worth explaining. With each new room, they passed a hovering metal block lit up on all six sides with blinking red lights. Dowland knew it was a security device that monitored all activity and could take action whenever necessary.
“I like seeing the American art from 1900 to 1950,” she told him.
“I like getting answers,” Dowland told her in a gentle and nonconfrontational tone.
“Yes, I know. Just…please indulge me for a moment.”
Lucia Gonzales seemed pleasant enough, but Dowland knew she had a strong will. For her to be defying laws and working with the people she was working with, there had to be a fire inside her. She stopped at several pieces, sharing some thoughts on each that he didn’t really pay attention to. The art was fine—something he could never do, something most people couldn’t do—but it meant very little to him. It was flat and lifeless, unlike most modern art that enveloped you and took on a life of its own.
“Before algorithms took over painting and drawing and creating, there was a simplicity,” Lucia said, studying a historic painting of people in a park. “It used to be only a canvas and colors of paint. Now it’s tapping air and letting machines think and create and paint for you.”
“Saves time,” Dowland said with a smile.
Her brown eyes didn’t seem to particularly like his sarcasm. She led him to a moody-looking painting of a diner at night with three people sitting at the counter, the server behind it bent over working on something. Standing in front of it, Dowland felt a strange sense of disorientation, like standing next to a cliff and staring down at the lagoon he was about to jump into. He had seen the image before, a piece interwoven in the fabric of pop culture, yet taking it in there in person was something else entirely. He looked to see the description of the painting on the wall: Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.
“Haunting, isn’t it?” Lucia said, noticing Dowland’s curiosity. “The artist was said to have been inspired by a Hemingway short story called ‘The Killers.’ ”
He wondered if that was some kind of subtle or not-so-subtle message for him, but nothing on the petite woman said so. As the painting drew him in, everything about it felt bleak and hopeless. These characters—not talking, not smiling, not interacting, not even the couple sitting next to each other.
Lonely Souls—that’s what I would’ve called it.
The two male customers wore dark suits and fedoras, but it was the one by himself that intrigued Dowland. He sat, his back facing the window you looked into, his arms on the counter and his head notched downward. For a few moments Dowland watched the man, waiting for him to get off his seat, to say or do something. But he just sat, waiting perhaps, or thinking or killing time.
Or planning to kill the couple.
“What are they thinking?” Lucia asked.
Dowland stepped closer to look at each character.
“The couple—they’re at a crossroads. He’s numb, reality hitting him. He’s tried to figure things out, but he can’t, and all he can do is numb the pain. She’s enduring it, enduring him and their relationship, and waiting to move on.”
“Interesting,” Lucia said. “Keep going.”
“Yes, professor. The guy behind the counter is tired from working ten hours, his legs and back sore, his spirit impatient for these people to leave. And then this guy here…”
The guy sitting by himself is me.
“He’s from out of town. Sent there to find the woman, who’s running from the police and who’s a wanted criminal. The guy by himself is waiting for them to leave. He’s been watching them, unafraid to look them in the eyes but not saying a word to them.”
“Is he a private detective?” she asked.
“No,” Dowland said. “He’s a killer, just like the Hemingway story that I haven’t read. Maybe the man next to the woman knows their lives are over. Maybe he knows they’re both going to be killed, so he’s having his last cigarette before dying.”
“Not a lot of hope with your vision.”
“No. We can’t do a thing either since we’re outside of the glass. We can’t call out to warn them or protect them. All we can do is stand and watch as the horror unfolds in front of us in the bright lights of a late night.”
Lucia looked at him, studying him carefully. He broke his reverie and grinned.
“Then again, maybe they just really, really love coffee,” he said.
3.
Near a set of modern art pieces that Lucia had no interest in, she began to talk to him, telling Dowland what she knew.
“Reckoner contacted me out of the blue. Not personally but through a letter.”
The same way Keith Burne liked to communicate. “Reckoner, Acrobat—what’s his real name?” Dowland asked.
“I’m not sure. I like another one he used: the ‘Man in Black’ alias. I’ve never been able to find any information on him. Nor has anybody ever given me a name.”
“What’d he want?”
“To talk about some of the people I’d been meeting with. And some of the things I was saying. He knew about my faith. He had actually been watching me.”
“You know what they say about Big Brother.”
“At first I thought he was someone official, someone from the government. Maybe the rumors were true. Maybe powerful people really were killing Christians. I finally realized that he was not only a leader but a prophet.”
He wanted to make sure he acted as if this was information he had already heard.
“I want to meet Reckoner. In person.”
“Nobody’s done that. Nobody knows him—what he looks like, where he lives. At least that I know of. He’s sort of like a ghost.”
“Keith Burne told me all about him,” Dowland said.
“But he never met him. We were both messengers. People helping to deliver messages. The news doesn’t cover the people who have been individually contacted. Are you one of those? Is that how you came to know Reckoner?”
Dowland nodded, not having a clue what she was talking about.
“I need to meet with him in person,” he told her. “I can deliver messages to powerful people. Those who control things. Those who are dangerous.”
“But you don’t just knock on a door and find him.”
“How do you communicate with him, then?”
“He finds you,” Lucia said. “He has been able to talk through my SYNAPSYS. His voice sounds different each time.”
“How? How is he able to do this?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. I— I work at my information-processing job at Incen Tower and spend my weekends binge-watching shows from the golden era of digital content. Nothing is really different or special about me, but Reckoner thinks I’m different and special. He makes you feel that way. Of course, I see Christ in him. In his spirit. In his love.”
She’s as trapped as the four souls in the Hopper painting. Only she’s crazy as well. “Who are the people in this city that you work with? People who know the man?”
“All these questions…They make me nervous.”
There was a third thing Dowland sometimes used to help his job. Instead of pointing a gun or telling a lie, he simply looked at Lucia for a moment. Then he smiled.
When she finally smiled back, really smiled, he knew she was going to share as much as he needed to know.
4.
He waits. Patience is a key to this job. Along with letting go of the guilt af
ter it pays off.
Dowland thinks of the painting again. Those silent figures, so alone even in the midst of one another.
It’s a portrait of this world.
People pass, talking with someone through their SYNAPSYS, or listening to music with eardots to avoid the outside conversations, or watching the walls of visuals, from the daily news draped over the sides of buildings to vintage music videos and movies playing on the sidewalk. His eyes find a woman walking across the street, all business as she argues with someone somewhere else, and then his attention lingers on the intersection as he sees footage of the Spielberg classic Jaws.
We used to go into darkened rooms to escape reality and watch lit-up life on the big screen. Now we’ve become those darkened rooms since life is lit up all around us.
He waits to spot the man who is using an alias of Jim Johnson, perhaps the most common-sounding name to make it all the less memorable. Lucia told him this wasn’t the Reckoner, the one behind everything, but Dowland suspects that’s something everybody will believe. A man who has done the sort of things Reckoner is doing is not only dangerous but also smart enough to keep everybody at arm’s length, even those who might be his most committed.
Committed…That’s the right word to use.
He sits on the sidewalk table watching the evening activity and feels as if he might be drinking on a sidewalk in Phoenix or Florida or Mexico instead of Chicago. It’s February, and the temperature is five degrees and getting colder, and snow will be coming tomorrow, but still he’s warm and comfortable on the sidewalk table. It’s not some tacky plastic-covered veranda, and he’s not being blasted with heaters the size of semitrucks. It’s new technology a kid probably in the eighth grade invented, allowing the stone on the sidewalk and building to make an invisible bubble of temperature set as warm as you’d like.
Dowland remembers being a kid and thinking heated cement sidewalks were cool. As he finishes his cocktail, he wonders what would happen if the temperature accidentally got set to 120 degrees. Would people start passing out or possibly burst into flames?
A man hurrying down the sidewalk across the street stops Dowland’s wandering nonsense.
He’s wearing the Cubs beanie and thick winter coat, just as she said he would.
It’s hard to make out the man’s face since his mouth is covered by a goatee and he’s wearing a hat. Dowland opens up a screen on his table and looks at the scan on the man’s SYNAPSYS. Sure enough, it’s an alias, with the name registered as James Joseph Johnson. As if he’s actually trying to be ridiculous with this cover-up. There’s a fake Chicago address, fake work name, fake spouse, fake everything. But at least he knows this is Lucia’s contact.
The man is tall and lean, maybe in his late forties or early fifties. The patch of beard makes it tough to really examine him, but there’s no gray in it. Then again, he could easily color it, or the goatee could be fake. These days it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s fake with someone.
Dowland has already paid for his drinks, so he stands and then leaves, jogging down the sidewalk and soon feeling the temperature drop by about seventy degrees. He stops at the intersection, watching mostly similar-looking Autovehs passing by. A security robot waits at the corner, giving him one of those creepy android smiles as if it knows it could crush him in two seconds, and as if it is angry it has to be standing there watching, as though it has something better to do.
Crossing the street at the green light with twenty others, Dowland weaves through the city folk going about their normal lives without a clue. A pair of young girls carrying shopping bags. A couple locked in each other’s arms at perhaps the start of a date. An older couple, reeking of money, walking as if they owned not only this boulevard but the entire neighborhood.
Not a clue. Not one bit.
The wind cuts, and he’s reminded his thin coat isn’t suitable for this weather. He passes an Irish pub and then another fancy restaurant. The man he’s following stops in the middle of the block, with people passing in both directions slightly knocking into him, one even cursing at him to keep going. Dowland halts too, in such an obvious way that it draws attention to him.
The man ahead of him turns, the Cubs beanie facing him.
Dowland sees a pair of eyes staring at him, then scanning the rest of the sidewalks around them.
As Dowland starts walking toward the man, casually without an obvious care, Mr. James Joseph Johnson tears down the sidewalk, hitting and plowing through the evening shoppers and strollers who are braving the cold night.
Dowland curses and takes off as well, reaching for his Beretta for a second, then changing his mind. He’s not going to give himself away. Not yet. He can still be who he claims to be while chasing JJJ. Taking out the handgun changes everything.
Something about the way Johnson is running, though…There’s something about it he doesn’t like.
Johnson gets to the corner and slows down, walking by the security robot, then runs once again in the middle of the street while crossing. The light turns red as Dowland steps to the curb. Valuable seconds tick off slowly as he waits, cursing and moving his body back and forth, trying to force himself to be patient.
With a steady line of vehicles coming both ways, Dowland darts into the street, holding out both hands while the cars screech to a stop. One even slightly hits him as he tries his best to roll over its hood like some cool seventies cop, but instead, he jams his hip while the artificial driver doesn’t say a word.
I kinda miss the days of the jerk taxi drivers with their disregard for everything other than their cabs and customers.
He continues running down the sidewalk, telling others to move but never apologizing. He keeps wondering whether to get the gun out. At the next intersection he can’t see Johnson. Then he turns to see the man heading east toward Lake Michigan. Dowland continues his pursuit even as the lights dim where they’re headed. He grabs the short, round grip of his Beretta and pulls it out of his side holster. Fewer people can be seen on this side street between office buildings. Johnson’s dark figure is the only thing moving ahead of him.
It takes a minute to run down the block, the echoes of his boots on the cold cement seeming to bounce off the buildings. Johnson is at another intersection but keeps going down this side street. The man knows he’s being chased and has no desire to stop and see who it is.
Dowland knows this is his man. It’s gotta be Reckoner. There’s no way some ordinary, regular person would have any clue who I am.
Lucia believed Dowland was who he said he was.
With his breathing rapid and sweat on his forehead, Dowland stops in the middle of the block. The lights on this section of the street are off for some reason. It’s dark, and he’s lost sight of his man. Pausing for a moment, he holds his breath to listen as carefully as possible to his surroundings, but only a passenger vehicle can be heard as it races past him to the next stoplight.
The barrel of his gun tracks where his eyes scan, to the five-story government building next to him, to the tracks of the Mag-Train in front of him.
He opens his left hand and looks at his palm to see the digital map displaying the streets around him. One of the millions of tools the SYNAPSYS gives you when it’s turned on like now. He sees that Lake Michigan is only six blocks away. The building next to him is unoccupied, thus the look of abandonment everywhere.
As he starts to walk again heading east, a black shape emerges from the shadows of the brick building.
There’s a door there—
And before he can move his gun forward, a flashing, hot streak of white flame blinds him and causes him to jerk backward. He falls on his side and feels a searing pain tear through his arm as all his weight jams it—all while the pyrotechnics in front of him continue spewing dazzling sparks.
Then they stop, and the flares turn into thick smoke that rushes over him, cau
sing him to choke.
A Phantom Tear.
As he gags and spits while getting on his feet to sprint away from the toxic fumes, Dowland realizes exactly what type of instrument is being used on him. It’s a combination of heavy-duty fireworks and tear gas, used only by the military and the National Guard. The initial flames are meant both to dazzle and to distract the targets, right before an explosion of black gas swarms over them, causing temporary blindness and the inability to breathe. And if they inhale too much of the fumes, they end up spending the night in the ER.
Dowland emerges from the smog but continues gagging. His eyes feel as though they’re on fire as he blinks and tries to see his surroundings. As he squints and begins to regain some focus, the passenger vehicle that just passed has its blinking red lights on, meaning it’s picking up somebody.
He races down the sidewalk, coughing again, one hand wiping the tears from his eyes. He calls out for the vehicle to stop, and then he aims and fires three loud rounds, the shots seeming to go off into nowhere. Soon the car is one block farther away. Then it turns and is gone.
Dowland curses and bends over and retches. Everything tastes and smells like burning flesh, something he’s smelled before. Of course, it’s the toxins of the Phantom Tear used on him.
There’s no way that James Johnny JimJam is anybody other than the Reckoner.
He’s made contact, which is good. He’s close, which is even better.
In another day or two, the Reckoner is going to be found. And then I’m going to make him pay for this Fourth of July display tonight.
NINE
Death Is Inevitable
1.
Do Not Trespass signs appeared around the cracked pavement of the parking lot in front of the block-long warehouse. The building looked abandoned and not even worthy of the money spent to bulldoze it. As they drove up to it, Jazz made sure it was the correct address, not via his SYNAPSYS but from the scrawled directions on a note.
American Omens Page 18