Indigo Man

by M. J. Carlson

  The woman nodded, a short, choppy gesture, took the drive from Zach, and plugged it into her countertop computer.

  “You see all the files?”

  She nodded again as her eyes moved over the screen.

  “Open the one titled General Explanation, Text. It’ll make everything clear, and it’s why I need the money and equipment.”

  She opened the file and started reading. As she read, her fingers floated up and covered her mouth.

  “The woman? Agent Goode?” Emotion thickened his voice as he said her name. He gestured to the screen. “They killed her this morning. The wreck you’ve been watching on the feeds? That was me. The guy who shot her because she was protecting me, kidnapped me. He was taking me to a secluded place to kill me and I drove off the overpass to escape.”

  “That was you in the yellow shirt?” Marti asked, her eyes wide.

  Zach nodded slowly.

  “That other man, he kill this woman?” She gestured to the computer’s screen.

  “And her parents, and my best friend.” Tears swam in his eyes. He brushed them away with his fingertips.

  “All that because of this?” She inclined her head toward the computer.

  He nodded again.

  She sat on the stool behind the counter. Concern replaced the shock on her face. “Whatchu going to do?”

  “Make sure people know who they’re voting for.” He reached into his back pocket, removed his drivers license from his wallet, and laid it next to the ring. “I have no use for that ring. I’ll probably be dead by this time next week, but I can guarantee you won’t want this ID on your records.”

  Marti examined the ID then Zach, her black eyes shining into the corners of his soul. She blinked and reached under the counter.

  He inhaled a sharp breath and pulled back a half step. He relaxed again when she held up a tube of fresh crystal drives.

  “Tommy say to help who he send. You don’t need no laptop, you need these.” Marti pulled the first crystal flash drive from the tube and placed it in the second drive port of her computer and touched several places on the screen. “Look around the store. This will take about a quarter of an hour.” She smiled her broad grin at Zach as the machine copied the files.

  He slipped his ID back into his pocket, leaving the ring and chain on the countertop. He wandered through the store, idly checking out tools, electronics, and sports equipment. Most of the inventory was older and well used, but a few pieces were in surprisingly good shape. He was looking at a carved blue and brown stone chess set, his thoughts crowded with memories of Sara, when Marti called out to him.

  “Hello?”

  He straightened. “Yes. I’m sorry, I was looking at the chess set.”

  “The carved one? It’s nice. It only went up three days ago. Maybe you’ll come back and buy it when this is all straightened out.” She held out a small transparent sleeve of twenty crystals. There was a paper bag on the counter next to her arm. She placed the sleeve inside and slid it to him. It was half full of padded mailer envelopes and multiple hard copies of the text file of his explanation and research findings. She’d even included a marking pen.

  She turned away, hit a few keys on the cash register, and slid a small, plastic card through the machine. “There’s two hundred on it. Should be ‘nuff to mail those.” Marti picked up the chain and ring and held it and the card out to him. “Tommy trusts you, so I trust you.”

  He dropped the card in the bag, took the chain from her, and held it between his index fingers. Leaning toward Marti, he slipped it over her head and placed it around her neck. Touching her scarf with his fingertips, he leaned closer and brushed his lips against her forehead.

  “You keep this. I don’t need it any more.”

  She held his hands in hers. “Don’t do nothing stupid, Dr. Marshall. This will be right here for you when you come for it. Tommy don’t trust many people. You be safe and come back.”

  He gave the woman the closest thing to a smile he could manage. “Thank you, Marti.” He slid his hands away from hers and cleared his throat. “I have to go now. I have some things to take care of. Can you tell me where the nearest library is? I need to look up some addresses.”

  She nodded, returning his smile with one that almost made it to her eyes. “Closest library’s down on Mirror Lake Drive. Big pink buildin’. Can’t miss it.”

  “Thank you for everything.” He slipped his mirrored shades on, folded the top of the bag over, and carried it out the door. Outside, he brought a hand up and faked a cough as a police car passed by. Zach watched it disappear in the distance and rubbed his face. Three day’s worth of stubble covered his cheeks and chin. He surveyed his surroundings for anything unusual. A few cars moved on the street. An older couple strolled hand-in-hand, stopping to window shop. He turned south and walked away.

  CHAPTER 25

  Don Brown slouched in one of the chairs, turning the silver Kitaro Cup ring on his finger with his thumb. Stiles paced the living room of the beach penthouse suite. Brown lifted the short, heavy glass in his other hand and tossed a slug of Stoli down his throat. He briefly considered pouring Stiles a scotch, but the man had been eating benzos like they were candy for two days.

  Across the room, the eighty-six inch holographic display was replaying long-distance footage from someone’s personal link. The scene showed an unidentified black-haired man in a yellow Hawaiian-print shirt limping away from a wrecked black SUV leaning on another young man. The footage switched to a recorded interview of the second man.

  Nineteen-year-old Tyler Williams described his assailant. “Dude. He was, like, the most polite kidnapper I ever heard of. Dude was, like, chill.” Tyler grinned and made the peace sign as if to punctuate his comment. In another room, Special Agent Johnson was mumbling into his iLink and gesturing with both hands.

  “Goddamn it, Don, how could things go this wrong?”

  Brown shrugged and threw the last of the contents of the glass past his tongue.

  “We can salvage this.” Stiles started pacing again. “We can spin this. We just have to come up with—”

  “Spin this?” Brown lifted an eyebrow. He laughed, the sound a sharp, mirthless crack in the quiet. “We’re hosed. Boned. Finished. We’re done. Have you been paying attention?” He stood and crossed the room to the bar where he poured himself another vodka. “Let me round it off to big numbers for you. One member of our protection detail is in a body bag, another is in surgery, and a third is lying dead next to one of our SUVs, which is totaled. That makes two of those we’ve lost, by the way. Two other agents are missing, and the last two are jumpier than feral cats on meth.”

  Stiles’s face turned bright red. “We—”

  “If we spin our asses off, we will be goddamn lucky not to end up in prison.” He slammed another drink of the harsh liquid. “It’s over.”

  The red washed out of Stiles’s face, leaving it ashen.

  ***

  Everything ached. Zach’s left leg throbbed from the gunshot wound, and the barbed wire encircling his chest stabbed into each breath. His throat tightened and tears burned his eyes at the memory of Sara sprawled in a parking lot.

  Hands in his pockets, paper bag tucked under an arm, he limped east on First Avenue, occasionally stumbling and having to stop and regain his balance. Focusing his thoughts on staying upright and inconspicuous, he hunched his shoulders a bit more to give the air of someone without hope and realized he had become that person. “Stop it,” he said to himself. “It is what it is.” The phrase only took him back to Sara. The memory of the glittering waves of the bay, of his arm around her shoulders as she cried swept over him and bowed him further. “And wherever it goes, we go together.” Zach tugged a free hand out of his pocket and scraped sore fingers over stinging eyes. Maybe he wouldn’t have to miss her for long before Stiles’s hit men finished him.

  The walk was shorter than he expected. He circled the library as casually as possible, scrutinizing his surroundings for
police cars, black SUVs, guys in suits and shades, helicopters, or anything else unusual. Cars were parked on the streets and in the lot. People ambled by in the shade of the huge old oaks lining Mirror Lake Drive and Fifth Street. No one paid him any attention. Satisfied, he approached a side door past a young couple lounging on the grass near a half full rack of bicycles. Scanning the lot one last time, Zach stepped into the cool, quiet library.

  He stopped and stood to one side of the door, glancing around the open space and orienting himself. A dark blue banner hung from the ceiling, indicating the periodicals section. “Okay,” he whispered. He shifted the paper bag and shuffled toward the restrooms at the front of the building.

  The image in the men’s room mirror shocked him. His newly cut spiked hair was more tousled. Tiny bits of broken safety glass sparkled like glitter under the LED lights. Dark stubble graced his sunken cheeks, and his skin was almost as white as the tiles on the walls. When he removed his shades, dark circles accented the red-rimmed eyes staring hollowly back at him. He almost laughed. He wouldn’t have recognized himself on the street. He rinsed and dried his face and headed to the periodical section.

  He stood at the computer reservation desk. The screen blinked, requesting he scan either a library card or a current local ID. He mentally crossed his fingers and held his drivers license under the scanner. The screen flashed, directing him to a computer.

  He sat at the computer and pulled up the major news-feeds from across the country. He copied the snail-mail addresses of the largest national and Florida news feeds. He addressed the remaining envelopes to the other candidates’ press offices and law enforcement agencies. Then, he plugged his data crystal into a port on the computer and pulled up the text of his letter. After carefully adding two paragraphs to the end, he copied the changes to all thirty data crystals Marti had given him. He checked the vicinity for other patrons. Seeing none close, headed to the reference desk.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the reference librarian. “How do I print a copy of a letter?”

  The man behind the desk gaped up at him like he’d asked for a book on how to grow wings. “Print? On paper? You mean a hard copy?”

  “Please. It’s for a resume, and they want hard copies.” He thought about the stealth OS he had downloaded as a plan B. It was in Sara’s jacket pocket. The memory of her fussing with her stupid jacket in the mirror at the hotel yesterday, hiding her stupid gun, made him miss her more.

  “Do you have a library card?” The man scrutinized Zach over his glasses.

  Zach shook his head.

  The seventy-something year old man raised a bushy, gray eyebrow at Zach. “An ID?”

  “Sorry, I forgot it at home.” He used his most sheepish, embarrassed look. It was one thing to let the workstation reservation reader log his license, but handing it to a person who might recognize his name from the feeds was a risk he was unwilling to take. “I had to walk all the way here and I just need to make a few hard copies. Can you please help me? I really need this job.” He was getting better at lying, he noticed, and decided being emotionally shallow helped. He mentally ticked off another trait. Pretty soon, he’d have them all, like a collection of poisoned fast food toys.

  The man hesitated just long enough for Zach to grow uncomfortable and start wondering if he’d been recognized. The librarian reached to a slot behind the counter and pulled out a card with a magnetic stripe on the back. He typed a few strokes onto the keyboard in front of him and slid the card through the slot. He held it out to Zach. “This is a temporary card. You can put money on it over there.” He pointed to the wall to Zach’s left, where a machine stood. “And pick up the hard copies here when you’re done.” He indicated the printer behind where he sat.

  Zach took the card. “Thanks.”

  “I have a grandson about your age.”

  “Can you tell me where the nearest post office is?”

  “Out the main entrance, then south on Fifth Street to First. One block east, and turn south. It’s all columns and arches. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks, again.” He nodded to the man, shuffled over to where the librarian had indicated, and put ten dollars on the card. Next he printed new copies of his letter and returned to the workspace he’d created. Carefully folding a copy of his letter and research findings together, he slid a set into each padded mailer. He added a data crystal, sealed them, and dropped the envelopes into his bag. Finally, he attached the files to emails telling them to expect hard copies through snail mail and sent one to everyone.

  Zach cleaned up the area he’d used. He tucked the bag containing the envelopes under an arm and limped toward an exit different from the one he’d entered.

  ***

  The middle-aged postal clerk pushed the pile of envelopes into the basket behind him. “That’ll be one hundred eighty-six dollars and twenty cents.” Zach handed the clerk the card Marti had given him earlier. He slid it through the card reader. He blew out a silent breath. “Wow, that was close. You want the rest on the card or in change?”

  “Change, please. I had to work through lunch.”

  The clerk nodded and counted out Zach’s change.

  “How long to deliver those?” he asked, as an afterthought.

  “The in-state stuff will deliver tomorrow.” He considered for a moment. “The east coast letters will be three or four days. The west coast addresses will be four, maybe five business days.” He looked back at Zach. “We can up the three to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle to ‘express’ for twenty-one more dollars, total. That’ll get them delivered day after tomorrow.”

  Zach thought about it for a second and pulled out all the cash remaining in his pocket. “Do it.”

  “Important stuff?”

  Zach smiled. “Resumes. I’m a web designer, and I just got my walking papers from the place I’ve been at for two years.”

  “Ouch. Right before Christmas? Sucks.”

  “Yeah, they’re downsizing, and I was low guy on the totem pole. You know, I’ve never understood that saying. Seems to me, if you chop the top of a pole off it has no effect on the whole.” He made a gesture of a pole with his hand and a chopping move at the top. “But remove the low man,” he said, chopping at the bottom of the imaginary pole, followed by pivoting his forearm over in a falling motion, “and the whole thing topples.”

  The clerk chuckled. “Must be why the economy is so screwed up. They’re getting rid of the wrong guys.”

  “Yeah. There you go.” The clerk finished the corrections to the postage and handed Zach the change. He looked at the coins. “Sixty whole cents.” He closed his fist around the money.

  “Try not to spend it all in one place.”

  Zach dropped the money into his pocket. “Good advice. Listen, thanks, and Happy Christmas to you.”

  A genuine smile warmed the man’s face. “We’re not allowed to wish people denominational greetings, but same to you, sir, and good luck to you for next year.” He offered a hand to Zach.

  His mission accomplished, Zach strolled out of the post office, shoved his hands into his pockets, and stared up at the bright blue sky. The winter sun fell on his face and the warm, Florida air moved in and out of his lungs. Turning his back on the warmth, he walked to the corner and headed north, across the broad, three-lane street. He wanted to thank Big Tommy for everything and say good-by.

  ***

  Carol’s Deli was the emptiest he’d ever seen it when he walked in. He realized he’d never been in the place during off-peak hours. Having no career and nowhere to live finally settled on him. It was a freedom Zach hadn’t experienced since college at the end of finals, when the pressure was suddenly gone. Screens dotting the corners of the deli were still running the aftermath of Zach’s catastrophic escape from Murphy. He ignored them and stepped up to the counter where Big Tommy was wiping down the prep surface. “Can I get a little service here, big guy?”

  Big Tommy’s expression of mild annoyance evolved through shoc
k, and into relieved joy when he recognized Zach. “Oh. My. God.” He dropped his rag and ran around the counter. The cashier stood in open-mouthed surprise.

  Big Tommy’s arms were around Zach’s shoulders before he could react, squeezing until Zach had trouble breathing and his broken rib threatened to come between him and consciousness. Tommy lifted him like a rag doll, spun him around, and gently lowered down onto the floor.

  “Zach. Sit down. I didn’t recognize you with that hair and those shades.” He turned to the cashier. “Tiff, can you get my friend a bowl of soup? Thanks.” He stared at Zach. “What the hell happened to you? Christ. You look like you been dragged behind a horse.” Big Tommy wrinkled his nose. “You smell like you been dragged behind a horse. You been sleeping in a ditch?”

  “Thanks.” Zach sniffed at the combination of peroxide, blood, and sweat. “It’s good to see you, too. I spent the last of my cash on postage, so this’ll have to be on my account.” He flicked an embarrassed grin at Big Tommy. “Actually, I seem to be without a place at the moment, since the Secret Service asshole blew up my house. You think I could I hose off behind the store?”

  They both laughed as Big Tommy led Zach to an empty table and sat facing him. “What the hell happened to you?” Tommy asked again. “I saw that shit on the feeds, but I knew it was BS, then you dropped off the planet till that call this afternoon.” He eyed Zach’s hair. “You don’t have a yellow Hawaiian print shirt, do you?”

  Zach smiled. “Not any more.”

  Tommy’s eyes rolled. “Okay,” he said. “You talk, and I’ll feed you, but I want to hear it all.”

  An hour later, both Big Tommy and Tiffany, the cashier, sat at the table in open-mouthed shock as Zach finished his story and a second bowl of minestrone soup. Tiffany stood and put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “I’ll start getting ready for the dinner crowd. You two finish talking.” She leaned over and kissed Zach’s cheek. “I’m so sorry about your friends, but God, what a story.” She shook her head and walked behind the counter.

  Tommy reached into his pocket and laid a set of keys on the table. “I want you to go to my place and get cleaned up, you know, shave and stuff.” He wrinkled his nose again. “And wash those pants and burn that shirt. Use anything you need, and get a new shirt out of my closet. I’ll write down the address. I’ll call my lawyer and get you some new clothes this evening.”