“What’s Joe into?”
“Sometimes the people he pays for protection ask him to store things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“All kinds of things.”
I gathered up the Drone’s money and list into the knapsack. Taylor just sat looking bemused for a moment, sliding off her well-worn couch to the floor. She wandered over to the wall and popped open a tub of paint and began rendering some ideas for decorations suitable for a wet tunnel environment.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what’s in it for you?”
“I assumed you were asking for my help as a friend.”
“I guess I was. Thank you.”
Chapter 4
Downtown, Port Montaigne - Strip n’ Waffle
10:51 PM, December 21st, 2199
Silverstein’s Log, Part 3
I sat outside the Strip and Waffle on an old bus bench, wondering how I was going to ask Joe to set up a gun buy for me. I didn’t even know if the guy had those kinds of connections. He might even be insulted I asked him such a thing. I was probably way out of my league, punching above my weight class, etcetera.
I’d just about made up my mind to go in and talk to Joe when a well-dressed and exceedingly elderly man sat down next to me. He was dressed in a dark green suit, burgundy tie, and matching hat. He turned and looked at me, almost as if he expected me to say hello. He was damnably familiar, the only person I’d met since losing my memory that evoked that sensation.
He furrowed his brow, looking into my face, like he wasn’t sure of what he was seeing. Then, he smiled, tipped his hat to me and pulled out a cigarette. It was not the hand rolled type that Taylor and the rest of downtown smoked.
The smell was intoxicating. In what was my very short memory, I couldn’t recall ever wanting a cigarette. All the same, I wanted one of his cigarettes. I looked over at him and searched for the words.
“I’m surprised you don’t have any of your own,” he said, offering me one.
“Not sure why you would think that.”
He smiled and pulled out a stainless steel lighter and lit the cigarette, puffed once, and handed it to me. The cigarette tasted as good as it smelled. I even seemed to breathe easier as the smoke filled my lungs. The sensation was fantastic.
“That’s the good stuff my friend. Pure tobacco grown in the black earth,” the gentleman replied.
“You and I sitting here isn’t some strange coincidence, is it?” I asked, continuing to enjoy the cigarette.
“No.”
“Who are you?”
“You really don’t know? I’d feared as much, but I guess it doesn’t really matter at this point. I only have another three minutes or so to live.”
“Not a lot of time to get to know each other.”
The gentleman took out a wooden box and placed the stainless steel lighter inside of it with two dozen of those wonderful cigarettes. He handed me the box and smiled. I couldn’t help but be completely baffled by the situation, so I stared down at the box and listened. “It’s peculiar, talking with you like this. A stone bench on a corner in downtown Port Montaigne, chatting like we’re old friends.”
I nodded slightly, possessing not a single clue what he was talking about.
“You look good. Well, better than most of the rest of us. I don’t know how you managed to beat it. How did you achieve even a measure of control?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, shaking my head.
“Really? Maybe you aren’t one of us. Maybe you’re... him? That makes sense, especially after I saw your eyes light up when I lit up. You always did like the good stuff.”
“I do like them. Try and take them from me,” I replied with a wink.
“You don’t know who you are?” The old man said slowly clasping his hands together.
“No.”
“Hell of a thing. How’d it happen?”
I lifted up my hair and showed the old codger my stitches. He winced and shook his head.
“You do that to yourself? I suppose, directly, or indirectly, you probably did.”
“Not sure.”
“Well don’t expect me to ruin it for you. Also, I doubt it was a blow to the head that has suppressed your memory.”
“Ruin what? What else could it have been?”
“I think if you had even the slightest inkling of who you were, you’d probably thank me for not telling you. At least, right this moment anyway,” the old man said leaning back slightly.
“Maybe you should let me be the judge of that?”
I looked over at him, hopeful for any illumination into who I was, but he was gone. It was strange, but I was suddenly possessed of a profound sadness, more than what I thought was usual. Some part of me knew this old man, and the rest wondered why he had come to visit me so close to what he knew would be his death.
Of all the things in the world one would choose to do with their last moments, why would they visit me? I reached over and closed his eyes. I went ahead and checked his pockets, but didn’t have any identification on him, just the cigarettes and the lighter. I stood up and looked at the old guy for a couple of moments. There was definitely something familiar about him, but like so much of everything else, I couldn’t place him. I inspected his hands carefully. There were no callouses or scars suggesting he’d led anything but the life of an uptown person.
Joe came out of the Strip and Waffle and lit up one of his hand-rolled monstrosities. He looked over at me, then the old man, with eyebrows raised, and cigarette hanging at an odd angle from his mouth. Putting his hands in his pockets he wandered over to me.
“Who’s the old guy?”
“Didn’t get a chance to find out. He knew who I was though.”
“Wow, really? Y’know, he does look a little bit like you. A relative maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe. Joe, I need to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, I’ve got a client that needs some special items.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t want to get Taylor in trouble, but she said maybe you could help me?”
Joe’s face broke into a barely contained smile.
“She’s already talked to you,” I said covering my face with my hands.
“You’re a nice guy, Silverstein. She knew it would take you an hour to build up the nerve.”
I nodded, resigned to the fact that I probably wasn’t cut out for the type of business regularly conducted downtown. Joe patted me on the shoulder reassuringly, while finishing his cigarette. I gave the old guy a last look before we went inside. He seemed peaceful, and not eerily so.
“I’ll have a couple of guys deal with the body,” Joe said, beckoning for me to follow him.
We walked into the kitchen toward the back where the industrial freezers stood. He was either going to kill me, show me the merchandise I was after, or give me an ice cream and send me home. Turns out, the freezer marked ‘out of order’ housed a number of crates.
Joe opened one revealing a number of matte black firearms resting in yellowing wax paper. He tipped one up out of the crate holding it by its not-so-shiny barrel for me to inspect. One gun looked pretty much the same as the other to me.
“I have no idea what I’m looking at,” I admitted softly, shaking my head.
“These are expensive and foreign made. Very good guns, but difficult to get ammunition for,” Joe remarked. He gently closed the crate.
He opened another crate that held several grey colored firearms, smaller with shrouds I guessed were painted up to be urban camouflage. Joe grabbed one up and put it in my hands. It was unbelievably light and the clip which fed the ammunition was made of a clear polycarbonate or similar.
“
These are pretty common around here, and additive manufactured. No one gang or organization is known specifically for using them, and the ammunition is easy to get. These are cheaper, though, and can jam up if not maintained properly.”
I nodded quietly as I awkwardly looked the firearm over. Joe opened the last and smallest crate and withdrew a semi-gloss revolver with a dark wooden handle. He clicked the cylinder open. It carried seven rounds of ammunition.
“These are good backup pieces in a pinch,” Joe said raising his shirt to show that he carried one wedged into his belt. “Very accurate, and very reliable.”
“Who makes and manufactures these weapons?” I asked, looking through the revolvers.
“Armor Company makes the carbines I showed you,” Joe said as he pointed to the matte black rifles.
I nodded somberly in response.
“Texlar Industries makes the grey submachine guns, and Smith & Wesson makes these revolvers.”
If I had ever heard of any of those manufacturers I couldn’t remember. My curiosity sated, I began gathering a selection of each, grabbing two of the carbines, a half dozen submachine guns, and a dozen revolvers. I packed as much ammunition as I could afford into black duffle bags Joe was kind enough to provide me.
“Taylor didn’t tell me who you were doing the buy for. Do I want to know?”
“Nope.”
I took a quick look at Joe’s books while I was there then waited with a plate of waffles while Taylor finished her shift. She bounded into Joe’s office just before quitting time, nearly tripping over the black duffle bags. A little red in the face, she stooped down to look through what I’d bought from Joe.
“Jeez, did you leave any money for me to buy decorations?” she asked, pointing a revolver at me.
“Yes! Yes!” I exclaimed, holding my hands in the air.
We sat in the back room and chatted quietly with a couple of the dancers until it was almost dawn. We didn’t want to walk through downtown in the dead of night with duffle bags full of weapons. Borrowing one of Joe’s laundry carts, we covered them with old curtains and set out for home.
The sun’s rays barely made it down through the raised uptown streets during any time that wasn’t dawn or dusk. Even though I had no idea how to use one, I loaded and tucked one of the revolvers into my belt in case we ran into trouble. As the few visible uptown lights began to fade, the street got busy.
The abandoned buildings seemed to disgorge people of every type and persuasion. Scavengers, day laborers, dock workers, and more flooded the streets around us. The laundry cart was a cunning camouflage. A bag lady offered to buy the curtains, but that was the closest we came to our cover being blown.
Taylor did as she always did, weaving expertly through the crowd giving pick pockets the shove, while I played mule. A decent arrangement considering I couldn’t tell a hustler from a missionary down here. Everyone seemed to blend together, only the value of what they carried, and their relative earning potential seemed to rise to the top. As usual, all I could see were the numbers.
I still couldn’t remember a single detail about myself, but I could tell each one of these street walkers the best way to invest the money they panhandled. I could advise them on the best way to write off business expenses, balance their checkbooks, and plan for the college their kids will probably never attend. This sometimes-useful ability had become more and more troubling.
It wasn’t that I was ungrateful for having a skill in the wake of losing my memory, but seeing people as just numbers had begun to wear thin. The only person that my overly mechanical mind couldn’t seem to quantify were the drones and Taylor. With them it wasn’t about numbers or money, it was something else.
The building where Taylor lived was a welcome sight. It was some considerable trouble getting the laundry cart up the crumbling front stairs. Between the two of us, we managed to make it into the lobby before the rain started. Russ greeted us with a stern face, and angry eyes that moved slowly down to our muddy feet.
“Sorry!” Taylor squeaked, quickly retreating to the threshold to kick off her shoes.
He just shook his head and resumed mopping the lobby floor. Russ looked over at me, his eyes darting toward the cart suggestively. I nodded an affirmative to him. He resumed his mopping while looking back out into the street nervously.
He was right to be nervous. We were insane for having done this at all, but this had become about more than just keeping the heat and power on in the building. Yes, I wanted to help Taylor, but I also had come to believe that I hadn’t been merely discarded in downtown Port Montaigne. The old man’s appearance and the things he said threw any notion of my situation being accidental into question.
If getting the laundry cart into the barely functioning elevator wasn’t bad enough, there wasn’t room for the cart in Taylor’s apartment. I had little choice, so we stashed it on the roof after unloading the weapons. Needless to say, my limbs ached and my head throbbed mercilessly by the time we got to the apartment and shut the door. Nevertheless, I spent another twenty minutes preparing some ramen to eat before we crashed.
“One of the girls told me you found a dead guy outside the club.”
“Yeah, he gave me these before he died,” I said pulling the slim wooden box of cigarettes from my coat pocket.
Taylor opened the box withdrawing the lighter and a cigarette. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of the contents and quickly closed the box handing it back to me. I smiled quietly and replaced it back in my pocket between stirring the ramen.
“What are those awful things?”
“It’s real tobacco. It wasn’t grown in a greenhouse or in a flower box off someone’s window downtown like those things you prefer to smoke... and no, you can’t have any of mine.”
“If you’re going to insult my smokes, don’t bother trying to bum one from me when you run out of your fancy cigars,” she replied, her voice full of mirth.
“Have I ever asked you for one?”
“No, in fact I didn’t think you smoked.”
“Never wanted one until the old guy smoked one of these in front of me. They must have been my brand before I got conked on the head.”
“Only uptown folks can afford those things. You never see them down here.”
“Yeah, that occurred to me too. That old boy was dressed like uptown, sort of like when you found me. Even had a pair of Silverstein shoes. He knew who I was, but told me I’d probably prefer not to know.”
“Really?”
“I told him I’d prefer to judge that for myself, but he died before he could tell me any more.”
“That’s really strange, and a little scary, Silverstein. You didn’t happen to um... take his shoes?”
“Taylor, the only thing I took was what he gave me. I haven’t gotten to the really odd part, though. The old guy knew, down to the minute, how much time he had left to live.”
Taylor was silent for a few moments, watching as I added a blend of frozen peas and carrots to the ramen. I gave the concoction another minute before pulling it off the stove to her makeshift strainer. The steam from the boiling water rose and fogged up the few windows in the apartment.
“This is pretty good. Did you suddenly remember how to cook?” Taylor joked as she greedily devoured my creation.
“Nope,” I replied holding up the printed directions on the back of the package.
Taylor laughed, another of a precious few genuine displays of glee I’d witnessed since we met. She helped me finish mine before crashing on her bed in the adjoining room. I moved to my own spot on the couch and closed my eyes hoping the blessed sleep would take me quickly.
The rain continued to make its way down through the tangle of concrete that held uptown Port Montaigne above. There was a palpable sense of déjà vu that overcame me just as I drifted off to sle
ep, like my mind was desperately grasping to recall what came before whatever happened to me in the alley. Our brains probably need more than just the little I had to give the body motion. I fell asleep contemplating the notion.
I was nudged awake hours later by an impossibly thin Drone, his green luminescent goggles the only light in the apartment. He shushed me, his pointy ears straining to pick up even the smallest sound. I grabbed the revolver from my belt and held it up clumsily.
“Are you the man called Silverstein?” the Drone hissed as he flicked the pistol from my hand. Then, he perched on my chest and stared down at me.
I nodded, quickly gasping for breath. The Drone looked about the apartment, his eyes settling on the duffle bags. I grabbed him by his rubbery trench coat and we rolled roughly to the carpet. He gave me two quick punches to the solar plexus knocking the wind from me, then tossed me against the couch.
The Drone’s semi-translucent skin seemed to glow with the dim green light of his goggles, reflecting off the rest of his garments. He was still wet from the rain falling quietly outside, but there was no breeze in the apartment suggesting an open window. I couldn’t fathom how he’d gotten in, as all twenty of Taylor’s locks were still firmly in place.
The slender Drone seemed more than hyper-vigilant, almost paranoid for a few moments. Then he calmed, moving toward the small window in Taylor’s living room. His hands were powerful, each ending in wicked retractable claws. He was barely over five feet in height belying his monstrous strength.
He looked back over to where I gasped for breath, and after removing his goggles, turned to keep a sort of watch out the window. I staggered over to where he was standing and gestured toward the kitchen.
“Coffee? Tea? Or are you just going to wander about looking creepy and beating the stuffing out of me?”
“My name is Ezra One. Annabelle Five sent me to check on you. We got word that our rivals down below, a group calling themselves the Sodality, have gotten wind of your movements.”
Uroboros Saga Book 1 Page 6
