“Why did we bring him with us?” Thorp asked.
“The better question might be why the hell did you shoot him?”
Thorp dropped his hands to his knees. “I told you—he was going for that gun. Would you have preferred that I just let him fucking kill you?”
They drove a few blocks and came to a red light. A plow came thundering the other way, washing the two men in the haggard Fairlane with pulses of yellow. The salt crystals being thrown from its rear as it passed rained against the side of their car, a momentary hailstorm.
“What now?” Thorp asked after the truck had passed, his voice meek.
Brody checked the rearview mirror. He caught a glimpse of the bull testicles hanging from the mirror that were perpetually swaying into his line of sight. He ripped them off and tossed them out. They hit the asphalt with the clack of two billiard balls colliding. “I don’t know.”
“He didn’t know where we can find Shandorf?”
“Nope,” Brody said.
The light turned and they pulled forward.
“And where are we going now?” Thorp asked.
“That last cup of coffee at the truck stop didn’t cut it,” Brody said. “And as you pointed out before, we should probably try to avoid disaster by keeping our equipment in decent working order. My brain doesn’t work for shit without some caffeine in it.”
Brody had to look closely to make sure the server behind the counter at Noodle Shack was actually breathing. When she caught him leaning forward and leering at the collar of her uniform, she gave him only half a cup of coffee before backing away to the kitchen. He tried to apologize, but she was already out of earshot, too far back into the steam and Latin music that filled the kitchen to hear it.
“Maybe I should be the one asking you if you’re all right,” Thorp said from the stool next to him.
“I’d rather not speak right now if that’s okay with you.”
“Is this because … ?” Thorp received a withering look, nodded, stared at his hands cradling his coffee mug. “At the time I thought it was the right thing to do, and I just figured—”
“Stop. Just stop. Just … no.” Brody looked around them again, glanced at the kitchen door. “What’s done is done.” He lit the final cigarette from Seb’s pack, then crushed the cellophane packaging and deposited the crackling knot onto his plate. He didn’t remember smoking an entire pack today.
For a few moments, they said nothing.
“Tell me something. Do you think it would be hard for someone like me, who isn’t exactly what you’d call simpatico with gizmos and gadgets, to break into Alton Noel’s ordi?”
Thorp folded a piece of buttered toast in half and said before biting into the corner, “Do you mean like a hack?”
Brody glanced around the dining area. Save for an octogenarian couple in a far booth, they were alone. “Yeah.”
“I can do it,” Thorp answered. “No problem.”
“I think we really need to put the pedal down here. It won’t be long before word gets back to whoever has Nectar what we’re up to. We need to cover as much ground as possible. We need to get proof and get it quick. Especially now with that cargo we’re carrying.”
02:59:59.
“I take that back,” Brody added, “We really need to make use of our time here.”
Thorp, chewing: “Should I just go back to the house, then?”
“No, I think we should do what you suggested before—split up, get more done, and regroup, say, in a couple of hours. The YMCA is right up the street.” On the counter between them, nestled against the chrome napkin dispenser, was Thorp’s ordi. Brody navigated the holo, seeing the blue dot denoting where they were on the map and where they had to go.
“Is that where you want me to go?”
“I’ll go there.”
“So where do you want me to go?”
“Take the car and find a suitable place to deposit the contents of the trunk, if you know what I mean. Because that junker out there is already a magnet for the cops, and I’d hate to try and explain what’s back there.”
“Excuse me but you can’t smoke in here,” the waitress curtly informed them, giving both men a start. She pointed to a No Smoking sign above the counter.
Brody apologized and got off his stool. “I’m going to finish this outside. You settle up; this one’s on our friend.” After depositing Spanky’s jigsaw into Thorp’s hand by disguising the exchange in a handshake like he’d seen people do in several movies, Brody headed outside.
There was still some light traffic, even around midnight. The same sodium lights found in every city lit up the entire strip of road that the Noodle Shack was on.
Brody stood outside smoking with the cigarette tucked into the corner of his lips so he could keep his hands in his pockets. It was then that he inventoried all he had on him, just to make sure he hadn’t lost anything in the scuffle with Seb. The lens charger, the sonar in its case, two cell phones, Seb’s ring of keys along with his own ring of keys, the knuckleduster, his lighter. And, of course, who could ignore the presence of not one, not two, but three guns? One in each side pocket and one tucked into the interior pocket by his chest. It was the heaviest his coat had ever been.
He glanced through the tinted glass of the restaurant. With his wide back posted atop the stool, Thorp continued to finish his breakfast, hunched over his plate.
Brody took a stroll down to the end of the restaurant, then around the corner to a Dumpster. When he lifted the lid the carnivalesque stink of fryer grease jumped out at him. Brody let the pearl-handled derringer and the phones that weren’t his fall in with a hollow bang. After he removed the key for the Fairlane, Seb’s ring of keys went in as well.
He gave pause, for he still felt as if he hadn’t unloaded it all. Where were Spanky’s keys? He had heard them drop out of his hand at the cubie lot, and then … He looked at the Fairlane. Of course, Spanky’s keys weren’t the only thing of his that required dropping off. Brody zeroed in on the trunk.
Never. Dead.
He turned away.
Into the Dumpster went Thorp’s handgun. He was going to throw his own in too but thought better of it. They still had a while before the end of the night. Nonetheless, he had it in his hand, trying the slide time and time again to ensure it wasn’t loaded. He took the magazine out of the left pocket and checked it against the streetlamp glow. He put it away and checked the chamber of the handgun—everything was in its place.
The front doors of the Noodle Shack jingled.
Brody returned his gun to his coat and eased the lid of the Dumpster shut, wiped his hands off on his pants, and headed back, nearly running into Thorp as they crossed paths at the corner of the restaurant.
Thorp let fly a yell and clutched his chest. “Don’t do that.”
“You snuck up on me,” Brody said.
“The hell were you doing back there, anyway?”
Think fast. “Taking a piss.”
“They got bathrooms inside, you know.”
“I was out here already, and with our waitress yelling at me I wasn’t about to go back in just for that.”
Thorp watched him, nostrils flaring, still riled. “Whatever you say. Let’s get going. I don’t want the sun coming up while I’m still driving around.”
Thorp drove without flipping on the wipers—or wiper, since only one worked anyway. The patchwork plastic on the windshield developed sinking pockets where the snow collected. Each time a pocket threatened to pull the whole thing down Brody gave it a push to empty it, sending the snow out ahead of the car in a brilliant puff, but soon another spot would begin to fill.
“I really wish this thing had auto drive,” Thorp complained when he had to slam on the brakes at a stoplight.
They slid halfway through the intersection, saw no reason to stop when they were pretty much already on the other side anyway, and kept right along.
Brody turned the dome light on.
“What are you doing?” Thorp asked.
Brody reached into the backseat for the shoe box with Alton’s transparencies. He held the swirly, grayscale sheets of plastic—some were warped and crunchy from only partly surviving the arson attempt—against the light with one hand, and with the other, he used his phone to photograph them, utilizing the dome light so all the detail could be captured.
“I’ve started e-mailing myself what we’ve collected so far,” Brody said, taking a second and third snapshot of the transparency. In the second one the image was more skewed, the gray matter within the oval of Alton’s head a fraction more warped. “I’ve got Abigail’s fingerprint analysis sent to myself and now a copy of all the scans.”
“Good thinking.”
They made a turn where the Fairlane’s GPS suggested.
“All right, so there’s no easy way to ask this,” Thorp began.
Brody took another photo of the third transparency, his neck craned to get a clear shot of the plastic sheet held directly on the dome light’s bare bulb. “Ask what?”
“Can I have my gun back?”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” Brody said. He returned the transparencies to the shoe box and replaced the lid—all photos taken. “I threw it away.”
Thorp kept his gaze on the road as they crossed the North State Street Bridge. “You threw away my gun.” It wasn’t a question. “When?”
“Back at the restaurant, along with that peashooter that cost Spanky his life and their other stuff. All I could see was future exhibit A when I felt it move around in my pockets.”
“That gun was a collector’s item.”
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You already have an entire museum’s worth of guns back there. You could go to war against a few dozen of Seb’s friends with what you have in that bag.”
“Yeah, but that Franklin-Johann was an antique.”
Brody groaned. “You know as well as I do that the Franklin-Johann was a terrible weapon. Cheaply made, more often than not the sights were off—swing by the Two-For-One after you drop me off, I’m sure they have a bargain bin dedicated to the Franklin-Johann semiautomatic.”
Thorp made a sharp whistling sound through his nostrils. Brody had heard the noise only once before when Thorp had fallen victim to a prank on the barracks in Cairo. Someone had filled every one of the handyman’s socks with cheese from a can.
“Look. You like to go into things unprepared; that’s fine. You want to bring brass knuckles to a gunfight, fine. That’s you. But as long as we’re in this, running against dangerous people, one of us needs to be armed at all times. Needs to be.”
The GPS informed them, “You have reached your destination.”
“I don’t think what you’re going off to do requires a gun. He’s not dangerous anymore.” He looked over at Thorp, cast under the harsh, unshielded glare of the dome light. Anger still polluted his eyes.
Thorp had no response.
“One hour,” Brody said. “Meet me back here in one hour.”
Standing on the slush-strewn sidewalk, Brody couldn’t help but check the address on his phone against where he stood. The YMCA on Dearborn Street wasn’t like any Brody had seen before. It was tall, for one, and set centrally in the city, clearly visible from the sidewalk. Most he had visited as a youth for swimming lessons were in tucked away, old-looking buildings. Even the community center in Minneapolis was off the beaten path—across the street from the recycling center and up the block from the meatpacking district.
This YMCA had a definite art deco finesse to its architecture, and inside it smelled like a comfortably musty old hotel. He was expecting a throat-blanching chlorine and locker room reek.
Approaching the front desk while shaking the snow from his hair, Brody asked the T-shirt-clad young woman, “Excuse me, but would you happen to have a room for the night?”
“Do you need it just for the night?” the girl asked. She had fiercely red hair that was bunched into angry, defiant curls. Her face was a scattershot of freckles. When she smiled, it made Brody think of motherboard innards—so much metal.
“Yeah, just one night,” Brody said.
“Do you happen to be a member of the armed services?” she asked.
“Yeah. What gave me away?”
“This is a pretty frequent stop for veterans,” she said, “and I’ve sort of worked it into my routine whenever anyone comes in asking for a room.”
He handed her the military ID.
She looked it over and blushed. “Uh, I’m sorry but this is expired.”
“I don’t have any money,” Brody deliberately blurted as if having this room for the night was a matter of life or death. He imagined when Alton came here, he probably thought it was. “I’ve got probably a buck to my name at best. I just need a place to get out of the cold for a while.”
The girl bit her lip. “The lock on room number eight is broken. If you don’t mind the lack of security, you can stay in there …”
“That’s fine,” Brody said.
“It’s perfectly safe. Everyone here gets along really well. A few months ago, someone got into trouble and … long story short, he locked the door before he left and took the key with him, and since he was in no shape to bring the key back … Never mind. I’ll just show you the way before I freak you out any further.”
“Try me.” He smiled. “I love a good horror story.”
She bit her lip again. It was plain to see she wanted to tell him but was hesitant. “You heard about that guy who shot all those people in a mall in Minneapolis last month?” She cocked an eyebrow, apparently in complete rapture over divulging the lurid details of horrible events.
“Yeah?”
“This is where he stayed while he was apparently planning the whole thing.” She leaned back in the afterglow of the story being told. If you want to change your mind, I can give you a different room.”
“No, no. Call it a morbid curiosity. I want to see it.”
She came around the counter and escorted him to the head of a staircase but didn’t accompany him down it; she simply pointed and said it was down there on the left. Then she clicked on the stairwell light and handed him a few folded tissues.
He accepted them, and he must’ve had a confused look on his face because she added as she walked away, “You’re bleeding.” She jammed a finger into the mass of red curls at the back of her head.
“Thanks,” he said, dabbing his head with a bare hand and then the tissues and pulling out crusty smears of half-dried blood onto the soft paper. He felt something dig against his palm and pinched a square of broken glass from his hair. He headed downstairs, still dabbing.
Each one of the rooms had a tall, narrow window set into the door. Most of them had the curtains drawn, but a few shameless men slept with their doors open, sprawled onto cots and cocooned, snoring, in stained sleeping bags.
Brody reached the room he had been appointed, finding it easily since it was the only one in the well-lit basement hall that was missing its doorknob. He turned on the light and saw it was as expected. Kind of clean, linoleum floor, a folded cot standing in the corner, a milk crate for a nightstand with a brand-new Bible resting on it. Brody had to admit it wasn’t far from what he came home to every night. There was a closet, and he found nothing but a blackened, holey sock. None of it seemed to be Alton Noel’s belongings. All of what remained appeared to belong to the Y.
He returned to the hall and traveled to the end where it bent and went deeper beneath the building. He could hear the pumps for the pool going, that expected smell of chlorine now coming to him. He came to a classroom of sorts, flipped on the light, and examined the décor. It was where a GED class apparently met, with the electronic chalkboard still displaying a snapshot of the periodic table of the elements.
In the far corner of the room, he spotted a handwritten sign on a jagged triangle of cardboard: Lost & Found. He went over to the canvas laundry bag of items and sifted through. Most were strange-smelling garments, a forsaken toddler’s shoe without its mate, a well-thumbed video game strategy guide, a handful of loose ceramic hair curlers.
At the very bottom, Brody found a flip-top ordi, with its silver case chipped to reveal the bland black plastic underneath. Emblazoned on a peeling manufacturer’s decal was Mediapurisu. He took a seat at one of the classroom desks and opened the device. Inside, the keyboard was so well worn that only the Q and X still bore their paint. He wiggled his finger on the touch pad, and half the monitor came to life. He moved the cursor around and read the different links available. He wasn’t sure if the other half, the half that remained black, had anything available.
Nothing on the surface indicated this was Alton’s ordi. No personalization by way of stickers on the lid, and the file marked Photos didn’t have a single image saved to it. It was difficult navigating the broken screen, Brody felt there were other icons waiting to be clicked on just on the other side of the dead half of the monitor. He pushed the cursor over into the murk and clicked here and there in the blind spot, but no programs opened.
Of the program icons not within the dead half, Brody found a hologram-video editing program. He tapped on it. The program loaded, and Brody watched as dozens of entries were listed in the recorded videos dubbed confessions. Each video, each confession named Al Christmas as the author.
Bingo.
He closed the lid and took the damaged ordi back to his room. He closed the door and remained at the window for a moment to ensure he wouldn’t be interrupted. He pulled the gauzy curtain over the glass slot in the door and took a seat on the cot with Alton’s confessions.
He pressed play, and a numeral three made up of translucent white light floated in the center of the room. It became a two after a beat, then a one.
A male voice came from the Mediapurisu’s tinny speakers: “We’re sorry. The holo-video you want to watch was recorded in a space much larger than the one you are in now. Would you like to continue, even with dimensional irregularities taking place during the presentation?”
“Yes,” Brody told Alton’s ordi.
Then Alton Noel was there in the room with him in holo. He was dressed in a gray T-shirt, a pair of loose-fitting jeans, work boots, his hair still cut to stubble. While to the untrained eye, someone might be convinced that it was actually him standing there, Brody had seen many holos in his day, even sometimes being taught by one in school when the regular teacher couldn’t make it. It looked like a genuine person, but if the lights weren’t dimmed, he’d appear ghostly, foggily lucent as an unpolished gem, and outlined against the background a bit too heavily. It almost looked like the holo had been plopped into this world and superimposed onto it, and in a way that was exactly what happened. Alton appeared this way now to Brody, stammering to find his words for his first entry.
“I don’t really know how to use this thing.” His voice was timid, soft. He was muscled, baby-faced, fidgety. He held his arms at his sides as if he were standing in a strong wind, afraid of being blown over.
Another voice came. “Just say what you want. Whoever sees it won’t be someone you know.” A woman stepped directly through the wall toward Alton—the dimensional irregularities of not watching a holo-video in the same place it had been recorded, Brody gathered.
She was svelte and tall, wearing her hair half in braids, half loose. The coloring of the holo-video was a bit off, but Brody could tell it was Nectar.
She pointed to approximately where Brody sat, guiding Alton’s gaze, where the camera had stood when they had made the holo-video. “Right there. Just imagine someone you really love is right there.” For a fleeting second, she seemed to be making eye contact with Brody.
Alton sighed, rolled his eyes. “Why did you guys buy me this thing?”
Another woman entered through the opposite wall, came up beside Alton on his other side. Abigail Schwartz. It was remarkable how much she and Nectar resembled one another—cherublike cheeks, bright eyes, even a similarity to their voices. Throaty with an affected accent of SoCal infused with a suburbanite’s attempt at sounding Latina.
“I hope it’s me you’re picturing over there,” she jibed.
“When did you get here?” Nectar asked.
“It was slow at the shop, closed up early. Wanted to see if you were able to talk Mr. I Hate Ordinateurs into finally using his holo-cam.” Abby dropped her purse and removed her jacket. Both disappeared; apparently the holo-cam registered them unimportant after they’d left her person.
“I am,” Nectar said, “but it’s not going so well.”
“What, it’s on right now?” Abigail squealed.
“Right there.” Nectar pointed toward Brody in a different place and—according to the time stamp—a little over a month in the future.
Now Abigail looked into his eyes. She fixed her hair, pumping it up with her palms like an old-time starlet. “Why didn’t you say something?”
They all laughed.
Brody allowed a smirk.
She curled an arm around Alton’s back, guiding his gaze toward the camera. “Well, go on then, honey. Tell the good people everything you want them to know.”
Sandwiched between the two women, Alton looked ahead … and stared.
They both elbowed him and giggled.
Finally, the young veteran spoke. “Okay. All right. My name is Alton Noel. I am—was—a private in the United States Marine Corps.”
“That’s good,” Nectar said, nudging him. “But keep going.”
“And this is my post-traumatic stress disorder recovery diary.”
The girls applauded, hugged him on either side.
He smiled, visibly embarrassed.
The video ended.
The next holo-video began immediately. Two supine nude figures floating two feet off the floor made love. Abigail straddled Alton as she grinded against him and made small, chirping whines. “Yep,” she said between moans, slowly gaining momentum … “Yep, yep.”
The highly private moment made Brody avert his eyes immediately. It wasn’t prudishness, but he knew it wasn’t intended for him or anyone else to ever see.
“Next,” he said.
Alton was dressed again and sitting in an invisible chair in an empty room. Brody assumed that the holo-cam knew not to waste disk space by uselessly measuring and recording the spatial arithmetic of furniture and other objects unless told to do otherwise.
“Hey,” he said, elbows on knees, bent forward and fiddling with his fingers, picking at a hangnail. “I’m not really sure what to say. I mean, talking about shit and opening up and all that—I was raised to keep your insides inside and crying is for pussies, but I think I have to talk about this. It’s, you know, important.”
Brody listened, watched.
“I started this thing as a way to talk about my feelings. But I think I have to—no, let me start over.” Alton disappeared, then reappeared less than a millisecond later, this time a few inches closer.
“When I was on the base in Malaysia, we had to sign up for duties when we weren’t at war or active. So some guys got mess hall duties or vehicle maintenance—by luck of the draw, I got information technology. Like some kind of joke. Me in IT? I did it, took the classes—the whole bit.
“Anyway, one day they call me to the mess hall and it’s just me. It’s Gunnery Sergeant Dobbs and some brass, guys I don’t recognize. They tell me to install these new transmitters all over base for the wireless. I say we already have wireless, and they tell me this is different. So I set up the wires in the barracks, in the mess, even in the rec and weight rooms. And that night, everyone’s puking. They’re running to the shitter, getting sick in the sinks, right there on the floor, shitting themselves—all of it. I think it must be food poisoning, but that night—it’s weird—we had leftovers. And I can’t imagine something we had already eaten could make us that sick, right? But it keeps happening. I get called into the mess, all alone, and Dobbs is there and the brass—who never say who they are—and ask me to install more transmitters and routers and shit and just like before everyone gets sick.”
When he spoke again, it came out reedy. He was wringing his hands, shaking his head, and sniffing back tears. “I don’t know what I did. I don’t know if it’s my fault everyone started getting sick. But then it just kept getting worse, and guys would have to be airlifted out to see a medic at another base, and they’d never tell us what happened to ‘em or anything. Fuck. Did I do this shit to them?”
00:59:59.
Brody sat forward. “I’m going to need more than that.”
And as if he had heard him, Alton looked up in the direction of the holo-cam at Brody and said, “They told me not to take copies of the instruction books. They told me not to tell anyone about any of it. They said I could get court marshaled if I did. But for everyone out there online who wants to know the truth—fuck it—I don’t care anymore. The name on the packages all said ‘Hark Telecom.’ Yeah, that’s what I thought—the fucking phone company? But it was them. If any of those soldiers died, I want it to be known to God and everyone else that it wasn’t all me and I didn’t know what I was doing, okay?” He paused. “That’s it.”
The video ended. Brody began lowering the lid of the ordi when the next one started without warning. Alton was directly ahead of him, so close that if he were physical, Brody would’ve been able to feel his breath.
“I’m not a bad person,” Alton said. “But I went with them. They came to my fucking job, where I make a living. Said they were the government. I thought, This is it; I’m done. So I went with them. They drove me out to this place, and all I can remember is it had dirt floors. And, yeah, I’m here again at my place. Just woke up, no idea how I got home. I’m moving out of here today, going to the YMCA to stay, lay low.” He shook his head violently. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think. All I know is this fucked-up-looking guy with a braided beard and the worst breath I’ve ever smelled walked right up to me at work the other day and told me if I’m not able to be found on ten-twenty, I’m through.”
Ten-twenty. October 20. The day Alton shot Elizabeth Lake and the nine others. Brody inched forward on the cot’s canvas. “Come on. Give me a name.”
“He opened his coat real quick, showing me he was covered from head to toe in knives, and walked off. I have no idea if that’s part of it or …” Alton sniffed. “I had enough, though. I wasn’t sure how he’d react, but I shoved him. I told him to tell me who he is, and he smiled that shitty smile at me and said, ‘I’m just your uncle Titian, kid.’ Fucking freak.”
“There we are,” Brody said.
“He said that with my experience I was the ideal candidate. But he wouldn’t tell me for what. Maybe it was because of what went down in Kuala Lumpur—I just did as I was told. Kill or be killed, right? I tried to kick his ass, but he ran off, got into a car with some guys.”
The azure ghost of Alton Noel took a deep breath, and when he continued it was with grit. “I’m going to hide this ordi somewhere. I don’t know what’s going to happen—if the shit about ten-twenty is true, if the things I’m hearing are real, if the shit I hear myself saying sometimes means anything … I just … I just want this shit to be heard, and I pray to Jesus it makes sense to you—whoever you are—watching this. Please don’t judge me. Please.”
Alton broke down into a blubbering wreck, still seated on his invisible chair. From the collar of his T-shirt came a metallic jangling. His dog tags fell and snapped together at the end of his lanyard. They clinked, muffled, as he squeezed them in a fist. Alton’s close-shaven head bobbed up and down as he quietly wept. “I don’t know what to do … I wish time would stop. I don’t know what’s going to happen on ten-twenty, if that’s even a date or a time or … I wish someone would tell me what’s going to happen—”
Brody struck esc, killing the video.