Shattered:Copyright (c) 6-10-1998
a Nowhere Man episode
by Christopher Clagg
The reel comes to the end of the tape and stops. There is a click as the mechanism halts and the lights on the panel go out.
("You are Gemini, Veil" Barton had said.) His words seemed to echo on the air. It had been only a few moments ago, not more than two or three minutes ago, but already Barton was dead. Now there was only silence, and the memory of the words ringing over and over in my head.
Over and over and over and over and over and ...!!
My life is NOT REAL!!
My life IS NOT.............!!
Shock settles over me.
I almost fall. My head feels light. Memories flood back of -Alyson and I...- of Alyson and the house and the ..... EMPTY SPACES !! EMPTY SPACES !! I CAN"T REMEMBER !!
I can't....
I can't ......
I sit down hard on the floor and the gun skitters away from me as it drops from my fingers. The gun slides against a cabinet. I think there is a sound to it. I think it made a sound. I think. I can't remember if it made a sound.
The screens of the terminals on the dozen stations in the room cycle, stop, freeze, move, stop.
Cycle again.
It takes a thousand centuries for me to rise to my feet, to stand. To move to a machine and press a key..., any key. There is no thought in this. No volition of my own will, no conscious decision to do...to do this.
My mind goes white!!
("Come on Tommy!" Dad stands in the stoop of the sailboat and smiles as the spray comes over the edge of the railing. The boat is small. Only sixteen feet from end to end.)
The screen stops cycling.
A blinking dialog box, red-edged replaces it.
"Proceed with Deletion?"
Two boxes underneath,
[ OK] [CANCEL]
I stare at the screen, but nothing makes any sense.
Where is Dad? What happened to Barton? Who did he work for?
Where was Alyson?
"Alysoooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnn............................!!"
There is a black hole in the back of my mind that swallows that thought.
Then another memory washes over me.
("Come on Tommy boy, we just might make it against these bastards this time, eh??" Cameron grins and pushes the faceplate of the scuba mask from his face. His face is in shadow. It is night.)
Daylight streams in through the pale window panes.
I fall to my knees this time. My legs buckling. I fall against the monitor stand that tears through my jacket and into my arm. Blood begins to stain the ripped sleeve.
The table tips back. Spilling monitors and equipment to the floor.
I don't hear anything.
It is silent.
"Cameron?"
("Shut up Tommy. If you talk too much now, its all over. You want to lose it now?")
"No." I whisper into the still air. But no one is there.
("Where did you hide it?" Comes a voice.)
"I told you Dad, I didn't Dad..."
("Where did you hide it?" The voice comes again.)
There is a wave in my mind. A roaRING-SCReaMinG-RiPPING-GOD-ALMIGHTY-WAVE THAT IS RUSHING !!!!
"The negatives?" I ask.
(The voice is impatient, very, very impatient. The figure limps in close.
"The PACKET. THE PACKET DAMN IT!! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE FREAKING PACKET!!? We know you were to Deliver.... DELiver... DELIVER!!...)
The room is dark.
On a desk somewhere a phone is ringing. Ringing. Ringing.
Cameron had been killed two years out of the academy.
"You were always too busy watching someone else's back, buddy boy. Who's back were you watching when you bought it?"
(Cameron grins in the dark, but says nothing. His red hair gleams.)
But it is only a memory.
Somewhere the phone stops ringing and I stand up. The place is a mess. Wrecked machines, shattered monitors and glass and disks and papers scattered over the floor. Slowly I start to sift through it. The floppies are the easiest. Those and the papers. There is no way now, with the shattered machines to check the hard drives.
The equipment is old.
Circa 1985.
About when all of this started.
Eons ago.
I almost smile, but I don't.
Silence.
Outside it is dark.
There isn't much time. Not much time at all.
Soon *They* will be here and I have to be ready for that, for them.
("Get it in gear!" Cameron says)
And I smile.
"Okay old buddy..." I whisper into the dark. But he doesn't answer me back.
"Why did ya have to go and die on me?" I ask him. "Break up the greatest drinking team the world has ever seen? You know of course that Trudy never forgave me after you died. She thought I shoulda been there with you. And she was probably right, old buddy. She never did forgive me after that."
But there is only silence.
I put a packet of tapes and floppies and papers almost haphazardly into an manilla envelope and get out of the safe house as quickly as I can move.
* * *
They catch me twelve hours later in a cheap motel off Benton Street. There are twenty four men in six cars.
* * *
The tape runs and then it freezes. Barton lies in a heap still half sitting in the chair that lies on the floor under him.
"Do we know what he got? What was left?" The voice cuts into the darkened projection room.
"We have a team going over the house now." says Robman. "It will be a few hours."
The Director stands with some effort, leaning heavily on the chair arm with his good arm. He pulls momentarily at the cigar and runs a quick hand back through his hair, turns facing Robman.
"And meanwhile we're hanging out to dry for all the world to see?"
Robman swallows hard, "I'll cover it personally. I guarantee you an answer in an hour."
The Director motions the lights up with a move of his good hand. In the projection room a man brings the lights up.
"Thank you. I appreciate the personal touch." Thomas Veil smiles.
Robman tries to smile in return, but doesn't quite manage it, then turns and leaves the room.
There is a soft click as the door closes.
* * *
I lie in a chair in a white room.
The light is brilliant and blinding. There is a Voice in the light but it is low. For now it is only speaking in whispers in my ear. They have yet to shout.
But I smile while I can, because I know what is coming.
I know this scenario by now.
By heart.
"Cheers Cameron." I whisper into the brilliant room.
But the tiny voice in my ear pushes the sound out of it. Pressing- pushing-demanding in its teeny-tiny-little-voice.
"...your name is.......your name is...." It says over and over and over and over.
I've been here before. I have been here many times, I remember.... I have to remember that.... That I have been here before. And I have to remember what that means.
Someone in white comes into the room. A form that comes out of the sound of a door that has a pneumatic sound to it. Coming out of the sound and forming a shadow inside the bright-white-light.
A needle plunges into my arm without notice. And sounds be--g - i --n t--o ---- w-----i-----n----d -----d-----o-------------w----------------n.
U---------nt-----------------------i------------------------------------l-------------- ----------t-h-----------e------
------------------------r-------e -----------i------------------------------------------------------------s---------------
------------------n't------------------------------ --------a-----------------n------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------y--------- -------------------------------m-------------
------------------------------------------------------------------o--------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------r--------------------------------------------------------------------------------e--------
-- S----------------------------------------------------------o--------------------------------------------
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-------d-------------------------------------------------------a------------------------------------------------------------
---------t------------------------- -----------------------------------------------a----------------------------------
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------l----.
* * *
At two-thirty a.m. Terry Brookers calls in sick.
The Supervisor on duty at the Post Office, Otis Wilkes picks up the phone.
"You better be dying on me Terry. I got half a crew out and you decide you wanna call in sick I'm gonna eat you for breakfast when you decide to come back in. You wanna work the sort machine's again smart aleck? You wanna eat five dollars an hour after I bust ya back to minimum wage? You gonna tell me your poor dog is having pups?? Bring 'er in and we'll have a litter in the basket for the whole west side. You get in here and you do it now! Or so help me I'll make a religious man outta ya."
The Supervisor hangs up.
Terry is sweating. But he gets dressed anyway. He isn't due until 6:30 a.m. But hey, its a cool night. Peaceful. Almost yeah, almost.
He swings by his route early. Picks up the letter box drops at 3:30 instead of 7:30. He might even get a grin outta old Pyramid face himself.
Terry laughs at that. Now that would be something to see, wouldn't it. Haha.
* * *
At 6:30 a.m. twenty-four vans covering ten square miles of space around the safe house and the motel came to smooth stops. The men in the vans wait.
At 7:30 a.m. 4 mail trucks out of the central Post Office make 16 stops.
The fifth truck never shows.
At 8:10 a.m. the eight remaining boxes on the route that had not been picked up are popped as easily as cold beers on a warm summer afternoon.
All of them are empty.
Terry actually gets a smile from old wrinkle puss, and a bonus which he liks a whole lot better.
He grins all the way home when he clocks out at 2:30 in the afternoon.
* * *
In Virginia, at a compound, the Director stands at a window regarding his orchard of cherry blossoms, trying to forget the headache and the spreading stiffness that presses at his temples, and is moving slowly over his face. He downs two pills from a bottle in his breast coat pocket with a glass of wine and stares through the filigreed window panes.
The phone rings.
He picks it up.
"Yesss?" His speech is starting to slur.
His expression changes.
"We have... have, that -- that -- taken care of Sir."
The conversation is short.
He hangs up the phone and then smashes his wineglass through the window. Glass shatters and rains down onto the carpet. Somewhere in the house an alarm goes off. Its dull repetitive beeping punctuating the silence and the inaction in the still house.
He picks up the phone again and dials a single digit.
The headache presses harder. Notching up the intensity.
After a moment a voice comes on the line. "Haaaaaave....... Robman meet me -- me -- at the gardens."
He almost hangs up but then reconsiders and speaks into the mouthpiece once more. "There has been an accident -- accident here, haaaaave someone clean it-- it up, please." Then he leaves the house.
Birds call in the canopy of branches out in the orchard as the Jensen Jaguar pulls out of the driveway and through the double gates and accelerates onto an empty country road.
He would kill....? What had they named him this time? Well, it didn't matter, whatever they had named him He would kill him himself. When they had the information back. Appropriate, so to speak, that number 19 kill number 6. It almost made him smile as he pulled onto the turnpike, but not quite.
Behind him, lost to all but the birds in the trees in the yard, the alarm keeps beeping frantically. But He doesn't think of that at all as he speeds towards Washington.
* * *
Steven Collins walks into an office that looks like an earthquake-hurricane has just devastated it. Marge pokes her head in and grimaces.
"You need a lady in your life Stevie boy."
"Yeah?" He grins, regarding his office, "Babes by the dozens, right?"
Marge puts her nose in the air but smiles anyway.
"More like cleaning service." She smiles.
Steven's smile deflates slowly.
"Ok, ok, so I'm not gonna win any good house keeping awards. But your looking at the next Pulitzer. Right here, Your looking at 'em. In the Flesh. Right this minute."
"I'll buy you a cup of coffee, if and when." Marge calls, wandering back down the hall toward her own office and days worth of work.
He glances at the mess of his office and then hollers "I need help Marge!"
Several people stop and look up from their errands.
"I know several reputable Psychiatrist's Stevie, meanwhile, back to the mundane world ok. At least until Pulitzer time. And she smiles.
In his office Steven Collins shrugs slowly.
"Right." He says to no one in particular.
On the corner of his desk a manilla envelope sits in the in-box. Written quickly in felt pen is simply: Washington Post. Exactly the kind of envelopes that you see in Fiction Editors In-boxes all across America. Somebody's masterpiece of a Novel, judging from the bulging sidesof it.
"Deliver me from idiots!" He says and picks up the envelope. Tearing it open quickly and puling out a sheaf of papers and photographs. Computer diskettes spill onto the desktop.
He glances at a photo in his fist of 4 figures hanging from a gallows somewhere that looks like Middle Asia. He stops and doesn't move. Holding the picture in his hand he yells, "Marge!!"
He crosses to the small cubicle of a doorway to his office.
"Marge!!"
His voice has a trace of panic, maybe fear in it.
People move out into the hallways again and stare, but he doesn't notice. He clutches the sheaf of papers-photos-envelope in his hand and move down the hallway towards her office.
"Marge!!"
* * *
Terry Brookers sit in the Supervisors office.
"Whadda ya want, eh? You wanna make me eat crow for bringing your dead-sorry- carcass in here and makin' ya work for a livin' like a man instead of sendin' ya off to rub two quarters together in Vegas, eh?"
Terry just sits in the chair and nods. By now after forty five minutes of listening to Wilkes spill his anger all over the office floor he isn't even registering what Wilkes is saying any longer. He just nods and goes along with whatever Wilkes says. For along time Terry hasn't felt this way. Hasn't had the world sit on top of him and beat him down with relentless and blind fists since he had left Cincinnati, and his Father. He had never gone back.
"I got eight beaming post office boxes spilling open in the sun, You think its Spring or something? You think they suddenly decided all by themselves they was gonna up and bloom!?"
Terry just nods.
Wringing his hands in his lap, The heat in the office is stifling. God, how can a man even breathe in here? But he keeps nodding.
"Jesus-Mary-Mother-Of-God Terry! I quit drinking twenty three years ago. You want I should like fall off the wagon or what?"
Terry just keeps nodding.
Wilkes sweeps a bottle of Antacids off the littered desktop and downs a fistful with a swig of luke-warm coffee. He picks up the phone.
"Gimme maintenance, yeah..."
He holds the phone while the line rings.
In the chair in front of the desk Terry keeps nodding, and Wilkes just shakes his head.
* * *
In the quiet countryside of a Maryland afternoon a weather-beaten gray house stands empty. Silent.
Through a ground level room in the kitchen, full of dust and clutter. How old? Nine months or a lifetime ago?
Through a cabinet with a small lock in the corner that hides a doorway that leads to a staircase.
A staircase to an upper room with only candles and oil lamps. Windows frayed with lace curtains and old wooden slated window frames over glass panes. A table with a faded, now yellowed table cloth and candelabra. A photograph and a single sheet of white paper rest in the center of the table, in a house that is empty.
No sound moves through the house.
Except perhaps the sound of the wind in the eves of the roof in the attic. Or the small almost no-sound at all of the house settling. Brown-gray wooden beams on cement square stones under the house in the dark.
The photo is of a man with blond-brown hair, bright blue eyes. An almost half smile, almost.
On the paper are quick scratches.
Inked letters that stand in Tall formation.
The room is still. Even the room is silent for a moment in the hot sun.
The letters scREAM!! IN TALL BOLD STROKES !!
I REMEMBER !!
I REMEMBER WHO I AM !!!!!
WHAT I AM !!!!!
I AM !!!!
I AM !!!!!!!!!!
There is a scream of letters. Silent, though still a scream. A scream that is gutteral and primeval that you or I would recognize. And that is the most disturbing part. That we know it. It is a sound that is empty and meaningless. The words are a ramble of letters across the page that though they form perfectly understandable words, those words still make no sense to you or I.
Four words.
YOU ARE A CLONE.
But no name. No name to say this is who I am.
But what is in a name?
That it would mean as much?
What was the name that Cameron called me? Long ago when we went to Annapolis together?
Or the name that Father called me the day I graduated from the Naval Academy? The name that Helen took when I proposed to her? But the children have always only called me Daddy.
The house is empty. There is no one there to see the shouts of ink across the thin paper resting on the smooth brown waxed wood of the table.
At night when it is dark, there is not even a sparrow flit against the glass for a moment. And see, even if the sparrow could never read the words that spell the name of the man I was, once upon a time. Somewhere. Somewhen.
Black ink in the dark.
But is even this real? Or only another implanted memory?
* * *
Outside a wind rustles and trees stand.
The night moves and the air moves and the house stands still.
There are memories here.
But wood doesn't speak.
At least not the way that we understand.
* * *
The coal-gray Jaguar pulls into the paved lot with headlights that snap shut on command.
The engine dies purringly, and the door to the drivers side pops open without a sound on perfectly oiled hinges.
Robman is waiting.
He stirs restlessly, then checks himself, begins to glance at his watch, but then doesn't.
The Director closes the distance slowly between them without a smile.
Robman sighs inwardly and moves forward to greet the man who runs the organization.
"Sir?"
The Director nods them ahead toward the entrance, but remains silent. The two men cross through the gates where an attendant stands smilingly passing out brochures to the Horticultural Gardens.
"Welcome." The Attendant say but Robman only nods, the Director says nothing at all. Robman waves off the brochures and the men limp-walk through.
The crowd is thin and mostly middle aged men and women. A few children run across the grass chasing peacocks, to be followed moments later by uniformed attendants with small metal whistles clutched between their teeth.
Just inside the gates the two men turn off the path toward a stand of willows atop a small rise.
Bronze plaques; meticulously shined, proclaim each variation of specie of plant.
Robman clears his throat.
"Go on -- on." Says the Director.
"He is remembering."
The Director waits.
Patience is a virtue he reminds himself.
"What -- What? Does he remember?"
Robman glances aside then back to the man in front of him. Cold blue eyes in a face that is slowly twisting into muscle lock, stare back. Brown-Blond hair that makes the man look like who he once was. And casts a strangely young look over the twisted features. It is disconcerting to stare at this man and to see what had once been Veil.
"Not everything. Not the details. Not even really more than a handful of the projects. But he remembers who he is."
"Kill! Kill him -- him!"
The words come out in a slurred quick snap. A hard brittle sound on the air that bites for a moment and then is over.
"I said KILL HIM!! , KILL HIM -- HIM -- NOW!!"
Robman turns as though dismissed.
"Don't. -- Don't Kill him."
Robman stops.
"He knows more now... now. Than from --from any of the runs before -- before."
The words are a statement rather than a question. Robman answers anyway.
"Yes."
"Wipe Him -- Wipe Him -- .........Damn It!! I - I - I Want --want........ Him Wiped NOW !!
......now. And this time -- time you had better well stay ahead of him-- him. I want --want .......
the information he took from us. I want the -- the packet. --Back -- back this time."
Robman lowers his head.
He doesn't answer for a moment, then he does.
"It's being done now. He is being re-programmed at the second safe house and we will be ready to release him by the end of the week."
The Director nods distractedly.
"Perhaps I--I-- can.............. outwit --out--wit myself , eh?" He laughs and turns away.
"Is........Is-- this Nightshade?" He asks, "Lovely --Lovely. Lavender -- don't --don't you think?"
"I don't think--"
The Director whirls on him, his eyes are bright and hard.
"You'd better--better Robert, you'd.............. damned well better think--think or I'll erase........
your ass and chase. You around...........around the country!"
The words are a hissed and struggled whisper to get out.
He calms then, suddenly. Smoothing a finger across a lavender leaf. He smiles an ingratiating smile.
"I think you -- you are right. After all, Can't............ be --be Nightshade. Right out here in front of God--God................ and Government and --and --and Public like this. We don't have any gardeners --gardeners working............... for us, do we?"
Robert Robman tries to smile, but doesn't.
And he doesn't answer.
"As soon--soon ............. as we have the packet I--I-- want him. Killed. Do you...............you understand? I don't care how badly we need him. I want........... want -- him dead. Dead."
* * *
The man on the other end of the phone line listened to Assistant Director Robman and nodded. Then said "Yes." Into the phone.
"I want confirmation before you terminate him."
"Understood."
The man in the telephone work dungarees replaces the headset into the half-cradle against the wall of the van and starts the engine. It purrs smoothly and perfectly. Without a flaw.
Not like the world at all, the telephone man thinks. But he doesn't say a word out loud.
* * *
Steven Collins read the letter twice. Slowly. Still not getting all of it. It seemed like some Science Fiction Novel rather than what it purported to be. Details of the Governments involvement in subversive actions in other countries against Congressional approval. Just so long as it didn't turn out to be an SF novel, Steven would be happy.
He'd bank his life on it.
Marge sat in the chair at the other end of the desk and regarded him, and did not so much as bat an eyelash wrong.
Stevie better learn something if he was serious about the Pulitzer. And with this envelope of debris scattered across his desk he stood a pretty good chance at that.
Steve blinked back the tiredness in his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers for a moment. The pain was sharp and quick and only eased some of the fogginess that was beginning to creep into his vision.
Then he stared back down at the page and began to read again.
"It says here--"
"I KNOW what it says Steven," Marge interjects and waves at him. "Give me some time to think."
He sits on the edge of his chair and fidgets. He waits ten seconds.
"But Marge!"
"Hush Steven, just hush a moment, ok!"
Steven? Had she actually called him Steven instead of the snide and always 'Stevie'?
He calmed enough to straighten himself and to not open his mouth more than a few moments later.
He waits fifteen minutes in the quiet.
He can hear his analog watch clicking over. The one that didn't make any sound at all.
Fifteen minutes.
Well it 'was' heroic of Steven to wait. When in all the six years that he had worked for her she had never heard him able to hold his tongue still for more than two minutes tops.
Marge grins at him. He might just make it. As long as they could trust what the photo's and the haphazard pages inside the envelope were describing. Maybe she could even stop hand holding Steven and be what she was supposed to be. An editor.
"First thing is can we verify any of this?" She asks him.
He looks at her hard then, perhaps the first time he ever has.
You're standing on your own two feet Steven!! God you're going to make me proud!!
"It'll take some checking. A lot of foot work and archive searching. Its slow and tedious as hell, but yeah, we can verify this inside of three weeks one way or the other."
"All right then, you take the over seas contacts, and I'll start on the home side. Fair enough?"
Marge asks.
"Alright."
Marge slowly traces a finger nail down the side of her lips.
"Guess its you and me then kid," And she smiles.
Steven smiles back.
Perhaps for the first time, in a way that is less than the put-on-bravado look out of him.
"Sure."
* * *
There is a room. White.
Where the light is so bright it is blinding, where you can only see shadows.
Shadows of Future Past and Present Past. Memories all. Memories all.
Or is it all only make-believe? Hahaha.
Brilliant and white and bright ...
There is a pressure on my upper arm. Quick and sudden and a shadow moves in the deep light, lost in the halo of backglow. The figure moves and then is swallowed into the light again.
I try to move.
Try to think. But things are slow....................ing .......................................................down.
(It is going to be alright son, Father says, just a scratch.)
But I don't say anything.
Dad has been dead for over fifteen years.
("Smart boy, always knew you were." Cameron smiles)
But Cameron is dead too. Even before South America, he was dead. Cameron's wife had hated me after that.
("Give her time." Helen had said.)
Things were beginning to S------l--------------o-------------w D------o-----------w-------------n.
("Get it in Gear Buddy Boy!" Cameron says, his voice is hard edged. "You know what's coming!")
"I know what is coming...." I manage. How many times have we been through this?
Too many.
And then the White light reaches up and enfolds me.
* * *
Winter is almost over now. In another month Ellen and the children and I can try to get away for some much needed rest and relaxation. Away from all the publicity and the hype and the circus that our lives have become since "Hidden Agenda."
Greg Anders knocks at the door and Ellen opens it.
"Hope your decent!" He calls.
Ellen smiles.
"After two kids I don't know about that." And she grins. "Old married woman like me, I'd sure be a sight!" And she laughs.
"I was referring to Wonder boy over there." He points in my direction.
I run my hands back through my hair nervously and give a quick smile.
"Right Greggo, I'm twenty pounds over weight and losing my hair on top, I'm a candidate more for Wonder 'bread' than anything else."
"Hey! lay off the balding jokes, ok. I'm a sensitive guy here." And he grins back.
I offer a helpless plea to Ellen and hope she will interject something here to get Greg off on some other tangent. She smiles and fixes my tie for me.
Greg plops down onto the couch by the window.
"Big Night Tonight, Big Guy. Showcasing the Best Writer for the Chicago Tribune and the Best Backup photographer---"
"Backup!!" I snort.
"Well ok, partner then." Greg smiles.
I try to look wounded for about another ten seconds but I can't hold it in, and I wind up laughing.
"I know, I know, " He says with exaggerated dramatic flair, "Papa always said with a name like Alexander Steven Crane you'd be a natural born writer. Right, so how come you wound up on the working end of a 35 mm reflex, eh?? Haha."
"Yeah, well...." But I can't think of a comeback, and I'm floundering when Ellen steps in and takes my hand.
"Time to kiss the children good night Papa."
"Better get it in gear buddy boy."
I stop, something tingling in the back of my mind, but I can't make out exactly what it is.
"What did you say?"
I stare at Greg and for a moment he doesn't look like anyone I know.
But then, just as suddenly the feeling slips away from me and is gone.
Greg glances uneasily at Ellen and then back to me.
"Just saying we're going to be late guy. You know, fashionable." He gives a weak grin for a moment and then bounds off the couch.
"Hey Alex, partner, what say I wait for us in the car, eh? Save on the upholstery bills and stuff, you know."
"Sure."
He walks out to the car quick and Ellen is pulling on my arm.
"Honey, you gonna kiss the kids good night?" She looks uneasy and fidgets with her hair, twining her fingers around and around for a moment and then when she becomes conscious of it, she stops. She gives a weak smile.
"I have to get them ready for a bath, hon. Give them a quick kiss. Daddy will be home soon.
I turn, and let her lead me into the back bedroom where I can hear Kimmy and David playing, and the moment I step through the door and see them, I have no doubts at all.
* * *
Marge checks out late. The clock on the wall reads 7:30. Already it is dark. She pops her head in the door of Steven's office and smiles.
"I've got a good friend who said he could look at the photo's for me. You going to call it a night?"
Steve manages a tired smile.
"Just a few more calls," He glances at the Rolex his Dad had bought him when he had landed the job with the Post, ten years earlier. "Nine-ish?"
"Ok, sweet dreams."
He laughs.
"Yeah, right, Oh here," he throws the manilla envelope at the door. It falls short and she picks it up.
"Put it someplace safe?"
"Don't stay up all night."
"Yes, Mother."
She smiles.
"'Night."
Her footsteps echo on the hallway floor down to the landing and the elevators. He doesn't hear the sound of them. Or the doors opening twenty floors down two minutes later that lead to a cab that scoots out into an early evening rain.
He puts down the phone. Sighs and lights a cigarette and picks up the phone again.
And dials.
It rings slowly.
In the office light the Rolex glints dully.
The phone picks up on the other end.
"Hi, this is Steven Collin with the Washington Post, ... yeah, right, 'The Post'," he smiles " I was wondering if you could check some old records for me? Yeah. When?"
He glances at the check sheet in front of him. His eyes are tired, getting difficult to focus. He half grins to himself as he tries to make out his own handwriting.
"August, 1990. Yeah, that's right. An explosion at the expo building in Dallas. Yeah, Dallas.
Expo. No, no E-X-P-O, Expo, yeah. Thanks."
He holds the line.
Nine-ish?
He'd be lucky if he got out of here at midnight. He sighs and waits.
Tapping his finger on the old desktop.
* * *
"We won't be too late, but don't stay up, ok?"
Ellen waves to Greg and I from the porch, "I've got a book. The kids will be asleep soon and I'll just sit here and read. No wild partying now Alex."
I grin back. "Sure no problem."
"Not me, " Greg laughs, "You two can be teetotalers all you want, but me, I'm getting soused."
"Get in the car Soused Sam." I wave to Ellen as she disappears into the house.
We climb into Greg's '74 Buick and he fires it up. It sounds like the car all of us dream of in High School. It sits on the ground and rumbles like its choking at the bit. Greg gives me an uneasy look for a moment and asks, "You got the negatives?"
I blink for a second, but look back at him, wondering why the uneasiness?
"Yeah, sure. They're safe.
"You ready?"
"Sure, you?"
Greg grins and punches the accelerator and squeals the tires down to the end of the block.
"You idiot!!" I am shouting at him, "The kids are trying to sleep. Get a brain and lay off the High School tactics, eh!?" But he simply swings an arm out the window and does a left that almost has us standing on the drivers side wheels.
"Sure Pops, no sweat." He grins and then he punches it again, as he turns another corner and heads uptown. Where the lights and the sounds of other things wait.
* * *
A dark car pulls out of the rain and into the parking garage of the Washington Post. It moves smoothly. And quietly. It stops in a corner stall and two men get out.
Their faces are plain.
Unpressed with anything other than simple purpose which renders their features bland.
The back door opens and Steven Collin steps out. Steps out onto the concrete floor and his shoes tap-tap on the hard surface. His hair is groomed perfectly, though he is unshaven. He tousles his hair and checks his appearance in the dark window of the car.
"Look ok?" He asks the two Suits.
"He wears a Rolex." One says. Steven looks flustered for a moment as he removes the Guicci and slips on the Rolex. " No style." He says to the Suits.
"You look fine." One of them says and then he nods and they move toward the elevator impressed into the far wall.
"Did you bring the bag?" He asks then.
The one that had answered before turns to him now, "We know our work. Let us do our job and you do yours, eh?" The frame of the elevator chimes as the indicator lights and the doors smooth open. The three men disappear into its small lit confines and the doors close, and the elevator begins its journey to the twentieth floor with just a small sound of rushing air.
It is Nine o'clock.
* * *
The Banquet Hall is overflowing when we arrive.
People move about in refined movements as elegant as their whispered words, their nods, their coiffed and perfect hairstyles and gracefully tailored clothes. All revolving about a massive portrait in the center of the giant room. Tables of hors d'oeuvres, meats, salads. Two drink bars, and wine fountains against one wall.
"Fancy, huh?" Greg grins.
"Right there, Greggo."
"Yeah. " Greg nods and moves on the balls of his feet. I simply stand and watch the crowd.
All the people. God all those people.
The centerpiece is "Hidden Agenda".
I had picked the title myself.
It shows a gallows, made from the overhang of an abandoned tenement park swing set on the lower west side of Chicago. Four men, all hooded Mob-bosses in a theatrically stylistic gangland murder.
I had taken the photograph six months ago. In the pre-dawn hours before the sun and the heat had come completely up over the city.
The scene is ringed at the edges with not less than thirty police squad cars from various precincts across the breadth and depth of the city.
It is a statement of the times.
It represents, even in its ugliness, a piece of the truth. The way that the world is.
They have blown up the photograph now, for this exhibition to almost billboard size. It spreads across almost an entire wall of the Banquet Hall. Sometimes life as art is made almost larger than the life is was. To compensate.
"Want a drink?" Greg grins and then pokes me in the ribs, "Hey, did ya get a look at that chic's wings?" He nods toward a tall blonde in a slinky strapless velvet evening gown. I just smile.
"Greggo, you are on your own partner." I can't help but laugh.
"Whatta you laughing at? The life of a single man is a serious thing." Greg gives me a mock look of total seriousness. Which I suddenly remember is the first time I have ever seen such a look out of him.
"Yes, you are perfectly right, Greggo partner." And I still keep laughing.
"Well, I'm not going to just stand here and be humiliated without a drink, I can be enjoying the benefits of alcohol consumption and get laughed at just as easily."
"Whatever you say Greg."
He wanders over toward the wall display and the general direction of the wine fountain and the bars. I am certain he will find something or someone to occupy him.
A woman in a white satin gown touches my shoulder then.
"So, what do you think?" She asks indicating the Billboard photograph of Hidden Agenda in the center of the room. I manage a weak smile, but don't know how to reply to what she is asking.
"Do you think it is something one can give their life to? Making things like that?"
She tips her long stemmed wine glass back and drains it.
"Well, it is there isn't it." I say, but she only gives me a funny look and moves away.
A portly older man climbs the stairs at the edge of a stage that has been erected against the opposite wall from the fountains, and crosses to the podium and microphone. Across the room Greg raises a glass and smiles. The room is full of static for a moment. And then the voice of the older portly man comes across the public address system.
"I guess we can get this thing started now." He says.
There is scattered applause and hear-hear's that come up from the crowd.
And for a brief moment, Nothing but silence.
* * *
In a darkened room a man moves and the projection freezes.
"This time I want it." The Silver haired man says.
"We........ will -- will." The Director replies. "If--you-- you hadn't--"
"'You' are this close," The Silver man presses his thumb and forefinger together.
The Director stands with some effort, he is almost completely crippled by now. He leans heavily on a cane and struggles to stand.
"You..............can't-- can't threaten............ me! Don't you think -- think I don't 'Know' that?"
He screams. The sound echoes in the enclosed room.
"You are the ones that-- that didn't 'Know' he would fold, that he would go 'Outside'. Why-- Why ? Do you.......... think you --made-- made me? And put me--me in charge? Who............. better................ to--to--................to catch me? Than me-- me, eh?
You're - the -- one. The one that had--had him.............. killed. Aaand --and we've been....... paying Hell--hell for it ever since. Haven't--haven't......... we? How many many-- times have we cloned him--him.........? And how many failures--failures? He is--is the........... the only one that has--has stabilized and............... survived for--for--for more than a few--few weeks. And the precious notes on the process all wrapped up in that packet of information he got out with. I--I don't care.......... care if you kill me. And start again. You had--had better hurry ............ or or you will--will miss your chance.
The Director moves against the chairs, as if movement will help. His eyes are dim in the half light, and for the first time, unafraid.
The Silver man leaves. He does not speak, not even to say goodbye. The door closes after him and the room is still dark. The Director standing in the center of the room is left alone.
The Silver man descends ten stories and crosses the lobby of the building to a side entrance. At the door four men wait. He walks through the doors one of them holds open and four more men join him, falling in beside him as they cross to the limousine at the curb.
A driver holds a door open.
"Mr. Vice President." The driver nods.
The Silver man returns the nod.
Just barely.
The doors close.
It is night.
The car makes no sound as it moves away.
In the light of the night, the city gleams.
* * *
The house is white clapboard. An oddity among the Spanish styled red-clay roofed homes that lay scattered along the Santa Barbara coastline.
A plain white Plymouth pulls to a stop in front of the house and a woman gets out. She is wearing a white-yellow summer dress with short sleeves.
'In February!' She thinks.
A woman in the yard looks up as She climbs a dozen small steps set into the incline of the ground that curves up into a small hillside toward the house.
"Mrs. Veil? Helen Veil?" She asks.
"Yes?"
"I'm Marjorie Bellot, I'm an editor for the Washington Post."
"Yes? Don't they normally send reporters?"
"Who send reporters?"
"Papers. You're with the Newspaper aren't you. Not Editors."
Marge smiles.
"Yes, you are right. Not normally editors. Can I ask you a few questions? About your husband?"
The woman's eye's cloud over for a moment.
"Hey Mom!"
The woman turns, a young man, perhaps fourteen is wheeling a bicycle out of the garage.
"I'm gonna go over to Kev's?"
"Going." She says. Her eye's clear then. "Going, not gonna, Michael."
"Ok, I'm going over to Kev's ok?"
"Ok, don't stay too long."
She turns back to the other woman still standing on the stairs.
"Mrs. Bellot? Ms.?" Would you come inside?"
"Miss, but I'm married to my job."
Mrs. Veil laughs, but then her eye's cloud for a moment.
"This is about Thomas?"
Marge purses her lips for a moment.
"I'm afraid it is."
Mrs. Veil moves slowly, then pushes herself a little faster.
"I'm afraid my husband is dead, Miss Bellot, but come in the house and we can talk. Do you like coffee?"
Her voice is tired. She manages a half-smile.
"That would be nice." Marge answers.
Both women climb the stairs and into the house.
* * *
There is a house.
In the calm quiet of a Maryland countryside.
The wind blows.
It is almost night.
A spread of young bright specks of stars on the late afternoon sky.
In an upstairs room.
On a table.
Rest a photograph and a yellowed piece of paper with handwriting scrawled across it.
Waiting for the man to come again.
Waiting.
Waiting.
* * *
// christopher clagg 6-10-98