The Easytown Box Set

by Brian Parker

  Sure, it brought in some extra cash to the operation, but in reality, it couldn’t have been that much. The real answer had to be about power—power over the individuals who’d wronged Mayor Cantrell or who hadn’t agreed to be a part of his scheme. It was sick.

  “You know what? It doesn’t matter what I wish,” I growled. “The fuckers did what they did to you and I’m going to make them pay for it.”

  “Yeah, but why me?” she continued to press. “If I ran the company, why did they clone me? I’d think I was an asset.”

  “More importantly, why’d they wipe your memory before putting you through all that? Why were you still alive when the others at that location were dead? What is it about you that made them want to spare you?”

  The shower turned off, plunging the small apartment into complete silence for a moment until Sadie spoke.

  “Because they wanted me to suffer,” she whispered. “I know something. I can feel it. There’s something locked away up here that will put an end to this whole mess.”

  I watched her finger tap softly on the side of her head. Maybe she was right. The problem was trying to figure out how to unlock the secrets buried inside her tortured mind—if that was even possible anymore after they’d wiped her memory.

  EIGHTEEN: SATURDAY

  The mournful echoes of bagpipes bounced off the concrete crypts. Fitting, since the rain fell in sheets this morning. The wind played havoc with the huge drops as they whirled in all directions across the cemetery, blowing alternatively between sideways and straight down the collar of my jacket.

  I was in a newer part of New Orleans, on the northeast of Easytown, known as Coastal Flats. The land here was less stable than the reclaimed land in Easytown and subject to floods as Lake Pontchartrain’s filth overflowed the boundaries seeking a way to the sea. Few people called the neighborhood home after the massive flood in ’84.

  Since then, Coastal Flats had become the city’s last remaining active cemetery. All the others were tourist destinations, filled to capacity with no further room to expand. Most people in New Orleans were cremated these days, their ashes placed in one of several large memorial mausoleums built for that purpose. Only a select few could afford a stand-alone crypt and yet somehow, Karen Goldman’s family had enough money for one only two days after her murder.

  Less than a hundred yards away, a small gathering of friends and family did their best to huddle under the canopy the groundskeepers placed over the site. A line of seven police officers stood in the rain off to the side, their ceremonial dress uniforms visible under the clear rain slickers they wore. A lone bagpiper squeezed the bladder of his instrument as Chief Brubaker knelt in front of two small children, presenting them with a folded American flag.

  The tune “Amazing Grace” was familiar, yet haunting, and it had far more of an impact on me today than ever before. I’d known Karen for years, our paths often overlapping as she walked her beat in Easytown while I made my way to various places across the neighborhood. She was a single mother of two, her husband had passed away of a heart attack in his late thirties before she joined the police force.

  Now those two children were on their own, and they thought I was the man who’d killed their mother.

  I watched sadly as the little boy cried, sobbing into his sister’s shoulder as she tried to be brave. She gripped the flag closely to her chest, jumping as the first volley of shots rang out from the officers off to the side.

  When the three volleys were complete, I saw an older woman, hunched in the shoulders, but similar to Karen’s build otherwise, usher the children away from the tomb. The three of them followed behind a man in a suit who held a large umbrella overhead. He led them to a black Mercedes. Once they were inside and the car was pulling away, the man returned to the canopy to direct the sealing of the crypt.

  I made my way around the back of a large stone tomb, using it to shelter me from the driving rain. I waited for a full twenty minutes until the sound of the retreating groundskeeper’s vehicles told me that they’d completed their task.

  After ensuring that they were truly gone, I walked down the muddy gravel road to Karen’s new resting place. The crypt was one of the prefabricated kinds; small, white, with an angled roof to help keep the rain from leaking inside. A small metal Jewish star emblem on the door completed the structure. There were five more like it within walking distance, the only variations were the religious symbols on the door. That explained how they’d gotten it so quickly, but didn’t explain how they’d been able to afford it. I didn’t know her well enough to have any insight into their financial situation, though, so maybe I was reading too much into it.

  I wasn’t the praying type, but I felt compelled to mumble a few words. Karen had been a caring, compassionate police officer, and now she was dead because someone was trying to frame me. She just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and paid the price for it.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” I said. “An apology doesn’t do your children any good, though. I’ll find the motherfuckers who did this to you and make them pay. They’ll wish they never laid a hand on you, Karen.”

  My thoughts turned darker than they’d already been. The shit these people did to others would be revisited tenfold on them. I’d make sure of it.

  The phone felt odd in my hand. I was used to my small, handheld device, not the large clunky throwaway that I’d picked up off Tyrone, one of my contacts in Easytown. I hefted its weight, thinking the damn thing would make a good weapon in a pinch.

  I activated my phone and copied the number into the throwaway. I paused for a moment before placing the call. If my gut was wrong on this one, it may very well unravel all of my hard work, and turn one of my seeming allies against me for sure. Unless I could work a miracle, I needed to make the call.

  I pushed the hardwired button to connect.

  It rang once and then Betty answered, “Marie Leveau Shipping Company.”

  “Hi, Betty. This is Jack Arnold,” I stated. “I was working with Anastasia the other day on a shipment issue. Can I speak to her, please?”

  “Of course, Mr. Arnold. Please hold while you’re transferred.”

  The phone clicked over and Anastasia’s voice answered tentatively, “Hello?”

  “Hi, Anastasia. We talked the other day about some parts of the company that were dying off and premature shipments. Do you remember me?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t,” she replied.

  Shit. I hadn’t thought beyond that little coded message. I thought she’d be able to pick it up from that.

  “Uh… When I was in there yesterday, I accidently tripped the droid defense—”

  “Oh! Mr. Arnold, I’m sorry. I forgot to process that order. Can you remind me what it is again?”

  “Yeah, I’m missing about twenty-two items from my order. I’d like to know how to get them.”

  “Sure, I’d love to help you,” she replied. “Is there somewhere I could meet you to discuss the options on replacement?”

  I looked at my phone—the one that wasn’t connected to the network. It was early, before lunch. I needed a place to talk with her where it wouldn’t matter who I was; where nobody paid attention to who came or went and one person was as faceless as the next.

  “Can we meet at Whispers?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that will work. What about noon?”

  “Alright. I’ll meet your there.”

  The girl’s hips moved slowly in perfect time with the music as I sipped on a beer. I’d learned my lesson about drinking hard liquor and driving. She twirled her back to me and bent her knees, rapidly dropping her rear end to eye level. The thin piece of gossamer thread she wore left nothing to the imagination as she thrust backward toward me.

  The club had several small stages, each with a ring of chairs around it. There weren’t any tables off to the side. The proprietor designed the place for maximum viewing pleasure for every patron. The setup also removed the anonymity of a crowd.
In the other clubs along Jubilee Lane, someone could go in, watch the dancers and not pay them anything. Not in Whispers. I relied on the overall anonymity of the strip club to keep anyone from recognizing me.

  The dancer lifted a leg out to the side and swung it up, using the momentum to turn herself over onto her back. Both of her legs were in the air as she patted her crotch in rhythm with the song’s bass drum. Then she put her feet on the stage and her hands near her head, arching her back upward impossibly high.

  The girl had talent. I’d give her that. I started to swipe my credit chip and pulled back. That mistake would have been an easy locator beacon for the cops to find me. She noticed immediately.

  “You didn’t swipe your chip, baby,” she purred, cupping my chin in her hand.

  “I remembered I don’t have enough money in the account,” I replied, tossing a twenty dollar bill on her small, mirrored stage.

  “Cash works too, doll,” the dancer said, gripping my wet shoulders to draw my head between her large breasts. She rotated her torso so they slapped against either side of my face.

  “Ahem…”

  I pulled away reluctantly and turned to see Anastasia. She was stunningly beautiful, even in the strip club lighting. Her smile seemed to take up her entire face as the subtle blacklights accentuated her lipstick against her skin.

  “Enjoying yourself?”

  “Just passing the time until you got here,” I replied.

  “Who’s this? Is this your girlfriend?” the dancer asked with a smirk of amusement.

  “I’m Ana. And no, I’m not his girlfriend.”

  “Cassadie,” the girl replied. The two women exchanged a soft handshake before she began dancing again and we sat down.

  I placed my face close to Anastasia’s. Her hair brushed against my cheek and the aroma of flowers enveloped me, replacing Cassadie’s scent of vanilla sugar that all dancing girls seemed to wear.

  “So, do you have any leads on where I can find the rest of the clones?” I asked into her ear.

  “Yeah. Tommy wants you to pick away at the edges, finding the one or two here and there. For him, it’s all about damage control. That’s why he sent you to that warehouse.”

  “Is there someplace better to look?” I asked.

  “Are you—” She stopped as the dancer’s butt pressed against her chest and began sliding sensuously up and down.

  “Want a private dance, baby?” the girl asked.

  “No, thank you,” I replied.

  She laughed. “I wasn’t talking to you, man. Your lady friend is hot.”

  “Not today, sweetheart,” Anastasia answered.

  “Suit yourself,” the stripper shrugged. “I do way more in the Joy Room than I do on stage. You’re missing out.”

  “I’ll have to remember that,” the clone responded and swiped her credit chip to tip the dancer.

  “I’ll have to remember that too,” I mumbled aside to Anastasia. “You know, when I’m a cop again.”

  “Oh, leave her alone. She’s just trying to earn a buck,” my co-conspirator scolded. “Where were we? Oh yes, Tommy is covering his ass by having you clean up the clones that were accidentally sold. That’s all good and we need to rescue them, but you’re going to find the answers in the Biologiqué International headquarters.”

  “What answers?”

  She pursed her lips. At first, I thought she was thinking, but I started to get the feeling that she was flirting with the dancer as her eyes followed the girl’s movements closely.

  “Hey.” I snapped my fingers in front of the clone’s face. “Earth to Anastasia.”

  “Hmm? Oh, sorry. What was your question?”

  “Jesus… What answers do you think I’ll find at the lab?”

  “For starters, Tommy’s in over his head. He’d never admit it to you, but he got taken advantage of. They took his money and then excluded him from everything. That’s how we got to the point of the clones being tortured for fun. He has less idea of what’s going on over there than he lets on.”

  “Why didn’t he go to the police if he thought they were doing something illegal?”

  Anastasia blinked vacantly at me.

  “Oh, right. He came to me.”

  “You’re the only cop he trusts.”

  I felt like an ass going behind his back to speak with Anastasia.

  “Where are they, exactly?” I asked. “I mean the headquarters—where is it?” I knew from Chris’ news feature that it was on the southwest side of town, but there were a lot of neighborhoods and I was driving myself, so I needed to narrow it down.

  “The headquarters is in Black Pearl, near the river. The cloning process requires a steady flow of energy into the growth vats. That’s provided by hydroelectric generators on property.”

  “So, your recommendation is to go for the head of the beast and infiltrate the headquarters,” I summarized. “What should I be looking for when I get there?”

  “I don’t know, Zach. Maybe you could start by getting evidence of them cloning influential people in the government.”

  “Sure. That’s a given,” I stated. “But first, I need a live clone that would be willing to undergo testing with a geneticist. I need to prove that the chemical dependency exists in clones, which would be a way to determine who is and who isn’t a clone.”

  “And you want me to be your guinea pig?”

  “You’re the only clone I know,” I replied without elaborating. “Unless I can capture the clone of Kelsey Bloomfield and somehow get her DNA tested. Of course, that’s kidnapping and wouldn’t fix my record if she pressed charges.”

  She shook her head slightly, eyeing the dancer as she shimmied up the pole. “I don’t know. I took a big risk coming here. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “What risk?”

  “Tommy gives me an incredible amount of freedom. He treats me like a woman, not like a clone. If he knew I was going behind his back, all of that could change. Heck, if he wanted to, he could beat me or kill me and the law wouldn’t care.”

  “That’s because the mayor is behind all of this. He’s the problem. We can work on getting the laws changed once he’s behind bars.”

  “No,” she shook her head again. “It’s an issue with federal legislation. Louisiana isn’t the only place with clones. Maybe the techniques that Biologiqué International uses are better than other places, but there are plenty of clones running around. This has to be a national discussion.”

  The dancer hooked her legs around the pole above us and turned upside down. Her breasts fell toward her face. The sight of them flopping side-to-side made me appreciate Teagan’s small chest. Cassadie swung around, using the momentum to carry her down the pole slowly.

  “It may be a national issue,” I replied, returning to the conversation. “But it needs to start somewhere. Look, Anastasia, you don’t have to do much besides go speak to the geneticist that the reporter, Chris Young, is working with. He’ll draw your blood, take a few hairs, and maybe scrape off some dead skin cells. That’s it. You could be in and out in ten minutes. Shit, you could do it on the way back to the Dockyards.”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “If you want things to get better for clones, for you to get actual rights and protection under the law, it has to start somewhere. Maybe the doctor won’t even need to take blood if you’re worried about Ladeaux finding out. I’m sure they could get the same results from a swab of the cells inside your mouth.”

  The club’s neon lights reflected in her eyes as she thought about it. In my periphery, I could see the dancer once again on her knees, crawling toward the edge of the stage. Anastasia smiled and I felt the girl coming closer. The clone caressed the dancer’s tits as they kissed deeply beside me until I began to feel awkward.

  “Okay,” Anastasia said when they broke apart. Her lipstick was smeared and she breathed heavy. “Give me the address. I’ll go today, as soon as Cassadie and I finish in the Joy Room.”

  The
song ended and I passed her a slip of paper that disappeared into a small clutch. Then, Anastasia helped the girl off the stage.

  Cassadie patted my crotch as she walked by holding the clone’s hand. “You sure you don’t wanna come back too, baby? It’ll be an hour you won’t ever forget.”

  “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll try to bring her back to you in one piece. No promises!”

  I watched the two of them walk hand-in-hand to a closed door beside the bar. Cassadie typed in a code on the keypad set into the wall. The door opened and they disappeared inside.

  I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that room.

  NINETEEN: SATURDAY

  I left Whispers feeling hopeful that Anastasia would follow through with her commitment to visit Dr. Grubber so we could get at least one verified sample from a clone for comparison. If we could get that, and he could identify the chemical dependency at the cellular level, then we could develop a way of screening whether someone was human or a human clone.

  The problem was that a type of test like that could also lead to further discrimination and subjugation of the clones without a change to the legislation. I wasn’t sure if we wanted that type of knowledge to go public until they were protected in some fashion under the law. To do that, I needed to bust the mayor and get support from the state to recognize them as human. Well, almost human.

  I believed that Anastasia was correct about the headquarters building. That was the ultimate goal. But I wasn’t as convinced as she was that it should be my next move. I wanted to find as many of those missing clones as I could. I felt that finding them would help on several levels, not the least of which would be figuring out who the mayor and his cronies had tried to replace—or had already done so.

  On the drive back to Teagan’s apartment I decided to call Voodoo. Maybe he’d found out something since I talked to him yesterday and since my phone was off the network, he didn’t have any way of contacting me.

  “Marie Leveau Shipping Company. How may I direct your call?” Betty asked.