Vertigo

by Wesley Cross

  Chen slowly got up, stretching her sore limbs, took off her sneakers, undressed, and dumped the wet pile of clothes in the corner. Then she stood there for a few moments, letting the water pour over her head and run down her body. An image of a mutilated face with an empty eye socket flashed in her mind, and she doubled over and fell to her knees as she sprayed the contents of her stomach over the shower panel and the bathroom wall.

  Chen stayed down, waiting for the spasms to stop, and then turned the water as cold as she could bear. After a few minutes, she was shivering uncontrollably, but at least her stomach backed away from her throat. After a while she got out of the shower, wrapped herself in a warm towel and shuffled to the kitchen, taking her cell phone with her. There was an empty voicemail from a blocked number, which was the preferred method of the Department of Defense telling their contractors to call back. Chen stared at the phone for a second, deciding if she wanted to be bothered, and then dialed the memorized number.

  “Please enter your authentication code,” the automated message prompted and Chen typed a ten-digit password they had given her for the assignment.

  “Your contract has been discontinued. Thank you for your services. Good-bye,” the automated female voice informed her, and the call terminated a second later.

  “What the hell,” Chen murmured and then dialed Hiroko’s number.

  “Do you know what time it is?” the woman said, as the call connected.

  “Um, no,” Chen said and pulled her phone away from her ear to look at the clock. “Shit. I didn’t realize it’s four in the morning. I’m sorry. I can call you later. What day is it?”

  “It’s Thursday, obviously, and I wasn’t sleeping, so it’s okay,” Hiroko replied. “Is everything all right?”

  “Thursday? No.” Chen thought about it for a moment. “Nothing is all right. First of all, the DOD dumped me from the project. And I got the info that should help us do what we decided to do.”

  “That bit sounds like good news.”

  “It would be,” Chen said, “if not for the part that it came from a naked guy tied to a table with half of his face missing.”

  “Hang up the phone,” Hiroko said with steel in her voice. “Go make some coffee. I’ll be over in thirty minutes.”

  Helen was on her second cup of coffee, spiked with a fifteen-year-old El Dorado Special Reserve for good measure, when Hiroko showed up at her doorstep. The woman marched past her to the kitchen, helped herself to a cup of coffee and took a seat at the table.

  “So?”

  “Want some rum in that coffee?” Chen asked.

  “No,” the woman said, “but I do want to hear the story.”

  “There’s not much to the DOD story,” Chen began. “They left me a message saying that I was fired. The other story, though—”

  Hiroko listened to the tale of Chen’s blindfolded trip to the unknown warehouse and the consequent visit of the chamber of horrors that she’d discovered there. The woman’s face remained unreadable the entire time, and her eyes studied Chen as if trying to decipher if she were telling the truth.

  “Do you have any pictures of him?” she asked when Chen finished the story.

  “Good grief, of course not. Why would I—”

  “Not the naked dude,” the woman interrupted her. “Your boyfriend.”

  “Um, sure.” Chen looked around, then left the kitchen and came back a moment later with a faded Polaroid. She and Vic could be seen hugging on the pier in front of a three-masted sailboat in the background.

  “Some kid took it by Pier 11. We took a boat around Manhattan there once like a pair of tourists.” She smiled at the memory and then shivered. “The first guy I’ve ever dated whose drawers I didn’t turn inside out before getting serious. Jesus.”

  “This,” the woman pointed to the man in the picture, “is your boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  Hiroko threw her head back and let out a hearty laugh, which unnerved Helen even more. She’d never seen the calm and measured woman laugh this way before.

  “Victor Ye Junior was your boyfriend,” the woman said, looking at Chen. “Helen, you must be the dumbest smart person I’ve ever met.”

  “Stop this.” Chen raised her voice. “I just came back from the place where I saw a naked guy who was skinned alive. Then I apparently slept under a running shower for almost twenty-four hours with my clothes on. I’m not in a fucking mood to play games. Who is Vic?”

  “He’s the estranged, well—” Hiroko stopped herself. “I guess not that estranged. He is the son of Victor Ye, the mobster in charge of the Red Dragon, the most powerful Chinese gang outside of mainland China. Or as the mobsters call him, the Master of the gang. They do all the usual mobster stuff—money laundering, racketeering, and so on. But their primary business is high-quality street drugs. They are giving the Colombians quite a run for their money. And they also got a reputation of skinning people who crossed them, which, judging by your story, is warranted.”

  “Jesus,” Chen buried her head in her hands, “what the fuck am I supposed to do now? I guess I should disappear for a while.”

  “I don’t think you’re in any danger right now,” Hiroko said. “They wouldn’t let you out of there alive if they considered you a threat. They probably figured what you saw would persuade you to keep quiet.”

  “They figured it right.” Helen looked up. “It would be suicide.”

  “If anything, I might be in danger,” the petite woman added. “For all we know, your house is being watched. But for what it’s worth, I think they won’t touch you or anyone you’re with unless you start making noise.”

  “Wait.” Chen stood up and started pacing back and forth. “Tell me if I’m going crazy here, but don’t you think it’s weird that first I get whisked away to see a horror show and then in the middle of the night, less than twenty-four hours later, I get canned by the DOD? What if it’s not a coincidence?”

  “Yeah,” Hiroko said, “I’d say you’re going crazy. One hundred percent.”

  “I don’t even know if the DOD has a full grasp of what’s going on,” Helen insisted, ignoring the woman. “Otherwise, why the secrecy? They want us to find the hacker, but won’t even give us the names of people who had access to their shit? And someone stole something, but we can’t know what? I mean—fifteen hundred computers get hacked and I only communicated with three dudes during my entire stint there. They write a press release, but then never actually release it. It should’ve been a bigger deal. That makes no sense, unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless they didn’t know what was stolen, because they didn’t know they had it in the first place.”

  “I’ve called you the dumb one, but I have no idea what you are saying right now,” Hiroko said.

  “What I’m saying,” Helen stopped pacing and looked the woman in the eye, “is that someone is using the Department of Defense for the cyborg project and the DOD has no idea about it. Not a single goddamn clue.”

  24

  September 2007

  New York

  The safe house where Jill Cooper placed her captive was a dump. An abandoned three-story red brick with a garage door covered with obscene graffiti was squeezed on both sides by public housing buildings. The sun was shining through the gaps of the two-by-fours that covered the gated windows and reflected off the pieces of broken glass on the dusty floor. An old twin bed with a stained bare mattress, a desk, and two plastic chairs were the only furniture in the room.

  “It’s a nice area,” the man said. He was tied to one of the chairs, but his voice was calm and his features relaxed.

  “Did you see outside?” Cooper asked without looking up from her laptop.

  “Yes,” the man continued. “There’s a lovely church right in front of this building, and the street is lined with linden trees that bloom every summer. And of course, there’s quite a bit of history in this neighborhood as well.”

  “Stop talking, man,”
Cooper said, refusing to look at her prisoner. “I’m busy.”

  “The name’s Arthur, but I guess you already know that,” he said. “Do you know why they call this neighborhood Morrisania?”

  “Why?” Cooper said before she could stop herself.

  “Once upon a time, this was part of the Manor of Morrisania, the massive estate that belonged to the powerful aristocrats, the Morris family. Ever heard of them?”

  “No.” She stopped typing and looked up.

  “You should.” The man smiled. “At some point, the family owned most of the Bronx and a large part of New Jersey.”

  “There were a lot of families who owned a lot of land back in the day,” she said.

  “That may be true,” he continued, “but that’s not the best part. What makes it interesting is that the family included a New York senator named Lewis Morris, who signed the US Declaration of Independence.”

  “Huh,” Cooper said, genuinely surprised. “It is interesting, I’ll give you that.”

  “It also included another man named Gouverneur Morris I, who I hope you’re familiar with.”

  “I’m afraid not. Who was he?”

  “He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States,” Arthur smiled, “though of course not as famous as some others. Both of them, Lewis and Gouverneur, are buried in the crypt right here in Morrisania at St. Ann’s Church.”

  “The place’s changed quite a bit, I suppose,” she said.

  “Yeah. Now,” he pointed with his chin toward the windows, “predominantly populated by Latin American and African American families, it’s considered to be one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I wanted to be a historian,” the man said, “but there weren’t a lot of choices for a kid with my skin color living with a single mother when I was growing up. My uncle had a small welding shop, and when my mother passed, he took me in as an apprentice. Lucky for me, it turned out I liked welding and was good at it.”

  “You seem to have done well for yourself.”

  “It’s unclear.” He turned his wrists around as if to show that he was bound to the chair. “It’ll depend on how you and I part ways, I guess.”

  She closed the laptop and looked at him for a few seconds.

  “It’s out of my hands at this point,” she finally said. “I made a case, and now we wait. One thing’s for sure—I’m not getting paid for this, and that’s the best-case scenario.”

  “From where I’m sitting—everything is in your hands. You could let me go, and then walk away right now.”

  “It’s not that simple, Arthur.” Cooper walked over to the bed and lay down. The rusty springs squeaked in protest. “But since I’m waiting, why don’t you connect some dots for me. Who hired you for the prosthetics?”

  “Actually, I don’t know,” Arthur said, “and that’s the truth.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “The man who approached me said he worked for the government. Showed me the ID and the papers, the whole nine yards. Made me sign some non-disclosures as he said the work would be deemed classified.”

  “So, you don’t know what department he was from?”

  “That’s the thing,” Arthur said. “I don’t think he worked for the government at all. I actually did a few small jobs for Uncle Sam in the past, also classified. Some research for the parts of the Abrams tanks. This guy wasn’t it.”

  “But you took the job anyway?”

  “What can I say?” Arthur’s face stretched into a grin. “A man needs to pay his bills. Sometimes people come to me, and after we do the work, all I have is a first name and a cash receipt. As long as you don’t ask me to do something illegal, that’s going to come back and bite me, I don’t care if your name is real or fake. As long as the Benjamins you’re paying with are real, we’ll be your best friends.”

  “How long ago did you start?”

  “The work?” The man shrugged. “I don’t know—six, seven months ago? But he came to me because he saw a few patents I’d filed, and I got those a few years back.”

  “What about the alloys that you mentioned?” Cooper asked. “I didn’t see patents on those.”

  “You’ve done your research.” The man smiled. “Very impressive. No, I didn’t file patents on those. You see, patents are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they protect you, but on the other, they tell the whole world how you did what you did. That always makes it a tricky decision whether to file one. Because if someone steals your idea, then you will have to enforce your rights—hire a law firm, sue them and so on. Might work for a big company with an army of lawyers already on a payroll, but I’m just a small guy with a small business.”

  “So, you reckoned it’d be harder to figure out your formula than to enforce the patent if somebody had stolen it,” Cooper said, almost to herself.

  “That’s right,” Arthur said. “Now I have a question. How does one get a job like yours? It’s not like you get people to visit your college campus and leave booklets with potential prospects. If I had to guess, you must’ve served in the military at some point, but I always thought that people like you only existed in the movies.”

  “Keep guessing, old man,” Cooper said, “and you will talk yourself into trouble before I hear from my employer.”

  Her phone beeped as if on cue, and she sat up to read the message. When she looked up at Arthur again, his face was still calm, but she could see that his body was now rigid with tension.

  “You’re one lucky bastard,” she said. “Here’s the deal. I will let you go and, in a few days, someone will contact you. All you have to do is to start working for that person. You’ll be compensated handsomely. But if you breathe one word of this encounter to anyone—well, you’re a smart guy. You know what it means.”

  Cooper cut the bonds holding his left hand and left the rest untouched. It would take him at least five minutes to free himself, she decided, and by then she’d be long gone.

  “I still stand by what I said.” She heard his voice as she was leaving the room. “Everything’s in your hands.”

  Cooper didn’t answer and took the stairs to the first floor. She cracked the door open and stood there for a few moments, peeking out through the gap to make sure there was nobody outside the building. Then, satisfied, she opened the door, slid outside, and started walking. As she did, her hand slipped into her breast pocket and produced a faded wallet-sized, laminated photograph.

  A young girl, her face beaming with a smile, was sitting on top of a circus pony, her hands clutching the reins of the animal.

  “It’s not that simple,” Cooper said to the picture. “You know that, don’t you?”

  The girl on the photograph remained silent, a moment frozen in time, never to be seen again.

  Cooper put the picture back in her pocket and held her hand over it for a few seconds.

  “It’s not that simple,” she repeated as she continued to walk.

  25

  September 2007

  New York

  Vic sniffed what was left of the Scotch on the bottom of his tumbler, groaned, and then poured it out into the sink. He was starting to think that drowning one’s sorrows was a misplaced idea for those who didn’t drink that much to begin with. He worked the cork back into the bottle and set the bottle on the counter.

  It was late in the afternoon, and he had spent most of the day indoors. He’d called in sick first thing in the morning and then stepped outside to do some grocery shopping, which somehow resulted only in a bottle of Johnnie Walker, a bag of peanuts, and a container of blueberries. He then spent the rest of the day flipping channels on the TV. He watched a reality show where a fight broke out between two plus-sized women, a real estate channel that taught him about the nuances of wall insulation and different types of roofing materials, and a baking competition on a cooking network.

  Nothing seemed to be helping, at which point he turned off the TV and
decided to graduate to Scotch, peanuts, and blueberries. It worked, but only for a short time and soon he gave that up too. After dumping the leftovers of Scotch into the sink, he dragged himself back to the bedroom, lay down without taking his clothes off and closed his eyes. The doorbell didn’t register in his mind until the ringing stopped and the pounding on the door began.

  “No one’s home,” he said out loud and covered his head with a pillow.

  The pounding persisted, and he got up and walked to the door, determined to tell whoever was there to go straight to hell.

  “Open up. NYPD,” the voice said, and the pounding continued.

  Vic looked through the peephole and, to his alarm and surprise, saw two uniformed cops standing outside of the door. He turned the lock and opened the door just far enough to see the policemen behind it.

  “Can I help you?”

  The cop standing closer to the door gave it a hard kick, crashing it into Vic and sending him tumbling back. Vic let out a yelp of pain as something cracked in his right side.

  The cops forced their way into his apartment and then another man, whose familiar face sent Vic into a fit of blind rage, stepped into the hallway as well.

  “You bastard,” he breathed. “How dare you show your face in my home. Get the hell away from me.”

  “You don’t think I have the right to check on my son?” the man said. He closed the door behind him and then nodded to the cops. “Bring Junior inside, will you? I don’t want to have this conversation in the hallway. And tie him up.”

  Vic tried to fight back, but the two cops were stronger. The broken rib in his right side didn’t help either as it sent hot searing pain through his torso with every move. They dragged him to the living room, and Victor Ye watched as the cops tied his son to a chair.