The Municipalists

by Seth Fried

  Teddy lifted the axe and gave it another broad, heavy swing in my direction. I fell back onto the bed, which collapsed under me—making the blade land too high. As Teddy once again struggled to pull his axe from the wall I kicked him in the crotch a second time. The look of astonishment on his face was indescribable.

  Biggs rushed forward and lifted me by my collar, then hit me in the mouth and threw me into the bureau, which splintered beneath me. The underwear came spilling out and I saw the tie clip slide across the floor.

  Biggs wrenched the axe out of the wall and looked ready to bring it down on me himself, but suddenly OWEN appeared in the doorway and shouted for everyone to freeze. He was holding a samurai sword, which he leveled at Biggs.

  “Drop the axe,” OWEN said. “It’s the nerd or your life.”

  He chopped the air with his sword and his interface produced a simultaneous whistling sound that was a little too loud to be realistic, though neither of the men seemed to notice. Biggs tossed the axe to the floor and put his hands up. Teddy was still on the ground and had to push himself up to his knees before following suit.

  OWEN gestured for me to stand up, then ordered the two men to sit in the middle of the floor with their backs together.

  “All right, Thompson,” he said, pretending to be careful as he slid his sword into the scabbard hanging from his belt. “Tie them up.”

  Having just narrowly escaped a beheading, I found it difficult to match OWEN’s poise.

  “With what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, his voice taking on a certain sharpness as he pointed toward the demolished bureau. “How about some of those disgusting pairs of underwear over there.”

  “Or,” Biggs chimed in, “you could use our ties.”

  OWEN silenced him by pulling his sword a few inches from its scabbard and slamming it back down.

  I tied their hands behind their backs and noticed that their fingertips looked as if they had been burned. OWEN noticed it too and tried to ask the men about it. Teddy kept his head bowed in silent prayer over his genitals and Biggs just laughed, saying that they’d both been doing some ironing.

  “How did you find us?” OWEN said.

  “This is our city,” Biggs answered. “No one sets foot here without us knowing.”

  “Who’s us?” I asked.

  OWEN shook his head like I’d just embarrassed him, then took a step toward Biggs.

  “Where’s Kirklin?”

  Biggs smiled.

  “Kirklin who?”

  OWEN unsheathed the katana and raised it over his head before letting out a blood-curdling howl. He kept the sword overhead for a moment, observing Biggs for any sign that his resolve had been weakened. When Biggs only looked confused, OWEN frowned and put the sword away again.

  He told me to get my things together and stepped out into the hallway before adding, “And don’t forget your tie clip.”

  I stooped to pick up the clip and felt a sharp pinch in my back as well as a stiffness in my calf from when I’d been thrown through the bureau.

  “Wait a second,” I said, trying not to limp as I followed him into the hallway. I waved him away from the door and lowered my voice.

  “Can you contact the police or something?”

  “No,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

  “But aren’t you, like, a . . .”

  “Technological marvel capable of contacting every single police station in the world in one-billionth of the time it would take you to fall down a flight of stairs?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re right, but I’m not calling the cops.”

  When I asked him why not, he shrugged.

  “Oh, a couple reasons,” OWEN said. “First of all, on the plane you insulted my disguises and when I told you that my feelings were hurt you persisted in being rude.”

  I started to stammer out something in my defense, but OWEN cut me off.

  “And when those goons showed up, I couldn’t do anything about it because you put me in a drawer, and judging from the smashed, low-end cell phone in there I’m guessing when you needed help I wasn’t even your first choice. So while I am obligated to help you get out of here alive, I’m not going to be taking orders from someone whose attitude is so completely toxic and unhelpful.”

  There was an awkward silence between us before I came out with the only thing I could think to say, even though it felt absurd saying it to a computer. “OWEN, I’m sorry.”

  He considered my apology a little while before accepting it.

  “Wonderful,” I said. “Can you call the police now?”

  “No.”

  I took a deep breath. Keeping OWEN’s apparent vulnerability in mind, I felt it was probably for the best that I remain calm.

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” OWEN said, “I still don’t really feel like it, because that was a terrible apology. Also, we were sent to the city to find out what Biggs knows, which we can’t do if he’s in custody. And lastly, according to police scanners, Bao-yu called 911 about seven minutes ago. So get your bag, get Biggs, and let’s get out of here.”

  Biggs and Teddy had left a black Buick sedan at an angle in the middle of the street with its engine still running. OWEN’s sword kept Biggs docile while I popped the trunk and loaded him inside. Once I was behind the wheel, I saw OWEN standing by the passenger-side door. He shoved his sword up the sleeve of his jacket, then cleared his throat. I followed his eyes down to a black soft leather briefcase on the passenger seat. I had to stare at it for a moment before I understood. I threw the briefcase into the back and he appeared in the seat next to me as I straightened the car out and pulled off down the street.

  * * *

  OWEN directed me to Velmer Hill, a dozen blocks of high-end office and residential buildings in the West Side. Taking a nervous right onto Quillent Street, I asked OWEN what in the hell was going on and why he had been asking Biggs about Terrence Kirklin. He glanced back toward the trunk and projected his voice into my ear as a whisper.

  “Keep your voice down,” he said. “And if you’d listened to me on the plane, you’d already know.”

  OWEN used satellite imaging to confirm no drones were following us. He also managed to locate a federally owned building in the area that was closed for the day, its empty rooftop parking lot ideal for an interrogation. As we pulled up, I saw a large brass placard over its main entrance identifying it as the regional office of our colleagues at the United States Census Bureau. The agency enjoyed a good relationship with the USCB and so I was reluctant to follow OWEN’s suggestion to ram through the steel security gate blocking the ramp to the building’s roof. Only after he promised to help allocate $6,500 of agency funds to reimburse them did I finally rev the engine and plow through the gate, sending it sparking up the ramp in a twisted heap.

  When we reached the roof, I drove through the lot to the far row of spaces marked for visitor parking. As I navigated our stolen Buick neatly between the painted lines of Visitor Parking 0001, OWEN looked around at the empty lot.

  “You know,” he said, “sometimes you exhibit what a psychologist might call ‘internalized oppression.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  But he had already projected himself out into the lot, where he was peering over the roof’s barrier wall down into the street. Even though he must have been using a combination of infrared, sonar, and satellite imaging to check if anyone had noticed us breaking past the building’s security gate, the projection of OWEN was looking down into the street with a large pair of binoculars and occasionally licking his index finger to test the wind.

  When he was satisfied we wouldn’t be disturbed, he returned to the passenger seat and regarded me for a moment before again projecting his voice softly into my ear: “We have to interrogate him now. Are you up t
o it?” I hesitated before telling him I was. “You might have to punch him. Do you know how to punch people?” I thought for a moment, then shook my head no. OWEN shrugged as if to suggest he hadn’t thought so and brought up an animation that hovered above the dashboard. It depicted a man’s face opposite a floating, disembodied fist. Flashing arrows highlighted the fact that the thumb was curled outside the fist and that the impact should fall on the first two knuckles. There was a series of quick diagrams on appropriate stance and follow-through; then the fist began slamming into the man’s face again and again, a thumbs-up icon appearing at the center of each impact. I held my clenched fist up to OWEN to demonstrate my form and he examined it for a moment before projecting a thumbs-up icon onto it.

  “Are you ready?” OWEN said.

  I nodded, then stared blankly at OWEN.

  “You have to get out of the car and open the trunk,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. “Sorry.”

  As we walked to the back of the car, something occurred to me. I took a few steps away from the trunk and lowered my voice.

  “OWEN, are you going to pull out a samurai sword again?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, stepping away from the car himself and half pulling the sword from his sleeve as if he were trying to reassure me.

  “Why a sword?”

  “I told you,” he said, taking the sword the rest of the way out and slicing the air with it as he spoke. “I’m a Kurosawa fan. The katana is an elegant weapon.”

  “OWEN, did Klaus ever show you The Magnificent Seven?”

  He lowered the sword and gave my question some thought, eventually snapping his fingers.

  “You think a gun would be scarier?”

  I nodded and he looked down at his sword briefly before whipping it off the roof.

  “Okay, I’ll try it,” he said. “Also, can I just say? I really appreciate how you communicated that feedback. When you locked me in that drawer I started to feel pretty low, so I read through some of the self-help books available online. I finished about eighty thousand, and more than half of them suggested that discussion and compromise are the lifeblood of a successful relationship, whether personal or professional.”

  I told him that seemed perfectly interesting, but he ignored me when I tried to remind him of the bound man in our trunk.

  “I read a book called Excuse You,” he said. “It mentioned that it’s important to be clear and honest when someone has hurt your feelings. That’s what I always do, because I have what the book calls ‘healthy impulses.’ But it also said you need to communicate clearly when someone has behaved in a way that makes you feel valued and respected. So that’s what I’m doing right now, Henry.”

  OWEN paused and then said expansively, “I’m communicating that to you.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Maybe we can talk about this some more after we’ve interrogated Biggs.”

  “Oh, definitely, I’d like that,” he said, sounding excited by the possibility of further discussion. “Also, if we have time later maybe I could summarize the compare-and-contrast essay Gus had me write on Sturges and Kurosawa. He said I managed to draw some very subtle parallels.”

  I wondered whether OWEN might actually be a more effective partner when he was upset with me, but I settled on telling him that sounded fun as I moved toward the trunk.

  I opened it and inside Biggs was lying perfectly still, staring up at us without expression. Once I pulled him from the trunk, he stood behind the car, looking off into the middle distance with fatalistic resignation, as if he understood he was in danger but simply wasn’t impressed by the fact. I took his elbow and jostled him, drawing his attention to OWEN, who was standing across from us.

  “Henry just learned how to punch people,” OWEN said. “He couldn’t be more excited to give it a try. But if you answer our questions, I can make sure it doesn’t come to that.”

  Biggs looked over his shoulder at the view of the city behind us and OWEN snapped to get his attention. When that didn’t work, he pulled a gun from inside his jacket and cocked it. Biggs turned to face him, slow but obedient. I was discouraged to see that the gun OWEN had chosen was a pearl-handled Smith & Wesson that looked at least a hundred years old.

  Already the interrogation was going poorly and I was dreading the possibility that I might have to punch someone.

  “I’ll start with an easy one,” OWEN said. “Where is Terrence Kirklin?”

  Biggs shook his head once and then smiled with his disturbingly bright teeth.

  OWEN motioned for me to hit him. I steadied myself by grabbing his shoulder and brought my fist back a little too far, but otherwise I was pleased with how I carried the whole thing off. The punch landed squarely against his jaw with what felt like substantial force. However, the sense of relief I felt at having successfully followed OWEN’s instructions was quickly replaced by horror when I saw that Biggs’s teeth had come out. Not individually. All of them, together. His full set of teeth clacked once on the pavement and then fell in two halves, straight and shining, connected to a pair of glistening pink gums. The unexpected sight caused me to shriek briefly, but OWEN was fascinated. He bent down on one knee to examine them before calling out, “They’re dentures.”

  Biggs stood with tendrils of drool hanging from his soft, empty mouth.

  His words were slurred when he spoke, but I was able to make out, “Not bad for a first punch.”

  “Interesting,” OWEN said, still examining the teeth. “No fingerprints. No dental records.”

  He looked up at Biggs and said, “You’re staying right here until we know everything. I can have Henry work on you all day if that’s the way you want it. Or you can end this now and save yourself the discomfort.”

  Biggs seemed to consider OWEN’s threat for a moment before shrugging to himself and head-butting me in the temple. My vision blurred, but I heard his quick steps moving away from the car and OWEN shouting for him to stop. My eyes refocused in time to see him make it to the low concrete barrier separating the parking lot from the building’s ledge. He paused there to shout something in another language and then rolled himself off the building.

  There was a long silence before we heard the impact down below. OWEN let his revolver disappear and buttoned the top button of his blazer.

  “Well, that was a weird thing to do,” he said.

  I pulled myself up and walked over to the barrier. OWEN appeared next to me and we both looked down into the street at Biggs. His hands had stayed tied behind his back and he had pitched himself forward like a diver so that his skull received the brunt of the force. We stared down at the resulting gore in disbelief.

  “He didn’t seem depressed to me,” OWEN said after a while. “Did he seem depressed to you?”

  I turned away, feeling sick.

  “What was that language?” I said, trying to make sense of what Biggs had just done. “What was he saying?”

  OWEN projected himself back toward the car and seemed to be examining the scene of our interrogation.

  “Esperanto. He said Kirklin would find us before we found him.”

  OWEN might have taken that moment to point out that he was right, whatever was going on had something to do with Terrence Kirklin. But at the moment he was otherwise engaged. He had moved to the roof of the Buick with his binoculars and was analyzing automobile and foot traffic on nearby streets. He predicted we had ten minutes before the police showed up. He suggested we flee the scene unless I was confident I could convince the authorities we had tied up a man and taken him to the top of a building with no intention of throwing him off.

  “Then what?” I said, still trying to understand how OWEN’s mad speculations could be true. “Biggs was our only lead.”

  “Biggs was your only lead,” OWEN said as he jumped down from the Buick. “I’ve got hunches enough for the both of us. Now let�
��s move.”

  I grabbed my bag from the car, along with Biggs’s briefcase. After searching the rest of the vehicle for anything of significance, OWEN projected another animation into the air between us showing a man using the cigarette lighter from a car’s dashboard to light a necktie that had been inserted into the filler neck of a car’s gas tank.

  OWEN must have sensed my reluctance after the animation repeated a third time.

  “The police will be here before you would be able to wipe the car down,” he said, pushing his face through the animation. “And you humans get your DNA and greasy fingerprints all over everything. It’s disgusting and incriminating.”

  On OWEN’s recommendation I also picked up the man’s dentures and threw them into the backseat as I was grabbing the lighter from the dash. When the spare necktie from my bag caught fire, OWEN shooed me away from the car. The stiffness in my calf that I’d noticed earlier was getting worse, but I managed a quick limp, carrying my bag and the briefcase toward the edge of the parking lot. By the time we reached the stairwell leading down to the street the car was awash in flames.

  “Hey, look at that,” OWEN said. “You got it on your first try.”

  There was a series of loud pops as the tires burst in the heat, followed by a wail of sirens in the distance.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We should find a cab and get out of here,” OWEN said.

  He pointed back toward the thick column of black smoke rising up into the clear sky.

  “The cops frown on this sort of thing.”

  4 We found another self-driving cab and OWEN told it to head uptown. Thanks to my bad leg I almost fell as we climbed into the backseat, and so OWEN insisted on giving me an impromptu medical examination. He confirmed that there were some large slivers of wood in my leg and upper back, but assured me the wounds were minor and recommended I treat them myself once he found us another room. He then immediately launched into the introduction from his compare-and-contrast essay on Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. Despite trying to sort through everything I’d just seen, I followed along in an effort to avoid the risk of hurting OWEN’s feelings—a dangerous prospect, as I had learned. I was so focused on feigning interest that I failed to pay attention as he occasionally stopped to give the cab directions. I was therefore surprised when we arrived at Eldrit Plaza.