by Ramy Vance
Zach laughed. “I like that. I think I might use that in one of my books.”
They walked down the hall, and Marshall made a face. “You write books?”
“Crime novels, mostly.”
“That’s a pussy profession, son. For computer nerds and virgins. Real men don’t write.”
“Oh yeah? Tell it to that stunning reporter I took back to my place.” Zach winked at Martha and turned back to Marshall. “What about Hemingway? He went to bullfights and drank like a sailor and fished and stuff. He was a real man.”
“And his books are boring as shit. The only people that read those books are kids who have it shoved down their throats by high school English programs that haven’t updated their reading lists in about fifty years.”
Martha and Zach glanced at each other.
“Okay, what about Hunter S. Thompson? He was a real badass—”
“Yeah, hippie porn.”
Martha intervened. “You’re not going to convince him.”
Zach grinned. “I know. I’m messing with him for the hell of it.”
Marshall laughed. “I just might like this kid. Pussy-ass writer, but cheeky.”
Martha told Zach, “Believe me, that’s a higher compliment than he’s ever given his son.”
She expected Marshall to respond with something like, “I’d give Rueben compliments if he deserved them,” but Marshall stood with his lips pursed. If anything, he looked a bit saddened by Martha’s remark. Maybe the Peet family was evolving. Maybe after this was all over, they’d be happy again.
Zach led them to a video monitor hooked up to the security footage tape across from the hotel Rueben-Z had paid for with Rueben’s credit card. “Okay, so here it is. I haven’t had a chance to go through it all to see if there’s something of value on it. To be honest, this technology is so outdated. You might say, antiquated.”
Marshall popped his knuckles. “Move aside, young’un. Back in my day, they called me Hawkeye, on account of my skill at efficiently reviewing footage.”
“So cool,” Zach mused. “Hawkeye. I might use that in one of my books.”
Marshall took a seat and slid in front of the monitor. “You’re welcome.”
“Well, I’ll be moving along then. I have some copies to make for Kenneth, and I’m picking up lunch for some of the guys.” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, and I have to slice the cake for Jerry’s retirement party.”
“You really do like it here, don’t you?” Martha said.
“It’s good book research. And yeah. I do. Anyway, tell Buzz and the crew that I said hi.”
“Will do.”
“Say, you guys aren’t working on some new and dangerous case, are you? I mean, after the excitement at the military base and the summit, everyone just sort of disappeared.”
Martha sighed. “We’re all uh, taking a bit of a breather.”
“Well, don’t take too long because Pete’s still out there. I’m here if you need my help.”
Martha nodded. Her mind was on the mission. Hopefully, they were able to glean something useful from the footage so they could call Rueben and Aki, who by this time would already be parked on the curb watching the hotel. If this was a trap, they needed to know ASAP.
“In fact,” Zach continued, “I won another uh, hacking competition on the uh, dark net. I got a sweet new deciphering program. It’s so good that it's, like, ten years ahead of its time…Martha? Martha, are you even listening?”
Martha grunted. She and the team didn’t need some deciphering program. They needed to know where Rueben-Z was. She turned to Zach. “I’m sorry. This is really important.”
Zach nodded. “Just tell Buzz, will ya?”
Martha peered at the footage as Marshall fast-forwarded. “Will do, Zach. Thanks. I’ll tell Buzz about it.”
“I’ll let you get back to it then.”
Martha nudged Marshall’s shoulder. “Find anything yet, Hawkeye?”
Marshall smirked. “Woman, I’m working on it.”
The only things to denote the passage of time on the footage were the cars that went by on the street and the pedestrians on the sidewalk. Other than that, it was just the façade of the cheap hotel.
A few moments passed, and an imposing figure wearing a trench coat and a hood stepped out from the hotel and joined the flow of sidewalk foot traffic.
Martha leaned forward over Marshall’s shoulder. “Is that him?”
Marshall squinted, his meaty fingers still skillfully manipulating the controls. The footage slowed as the figure glanced both ways and walked purposefully down the street.
They still couldn’t tell if it was Rueben-Z or not. The figure moved out of sight of the camera and Marshall was about to rewind it when two additional figures stepped out from the hotel. They were big and beefy, with thick beards and wearing plaid flannel shirts.
Marshall shook his head. “Shit. They outnumber Rueben and Aki.”
“We’ve got to let them know.” As Martha pulled out her phone, suddenly the fire alarm went off, blasting through the precinct floor with ear-splitting noise.
“That can’t be a coincidence,” Marshall said glumly. “I think we’ve got company.”
Aki and Rueben sat in Buzz’s Jeep outside the hotel, observing the traffic and the building’s entrance. So far they’d seen nothing out of the ordinary. No sign of Pete.
Rueben glanced down at the syringe Buzz had given him to take a blood sample from Rueben-Z if they located him. He knew Rueben-Z wasn’t going to give it to them without a fight. Maybe Marshall had been right about apprehending Rueben-Z now and bringing him back to Buzz’s hideout.
Still, they had a plan, and they were going to stick to it.
Back in front of the hotel, they watched a woman struggling with two young children and some luggage hail a cab. One of the kids was throwing a temper tantrum.
To pass the time, Rueben asked, “What do you think their story is?”
“They’re not from the city. They’re from Jersey. Or in-state, outside the city.”
“Okay.” They did have a more suburban look than New York City dwellers.
Aki continued her story. “Dad’s away on business like he always is. So mom decides to take the kids for a couple of days in the city. Weekdays, because the rates are cheaper. They have a whirlwind visit to the city, but it ends up being more trouble than it was worth. Way more trouble than it was worth. Now, she just wants to go home. She’s going to tell her husband to quit his job because she’s going mental raising two kids alone.”
The cab pulled up to the curb. The mom dropped a bag, and one of the kids smacked the other one. The mom stood in front of the open cab door, shut her eyes, and visibly drew a breath.
Rueben laughed. “I think you might have her spot on.”
“Okay, you do it.”
“Hmm…I don’t know if I can do it any better, but I’ll try. She’s not the mom. She’s a nanny.”
“A nanny? I don’t know. She looks too old.”
“No, no, no. After her divorce, she decided to go to graduate school and try a new career.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, she’s having an identity crisis which required quitting her high-paying corporate job and taking a less stressful job. She thought, taking care of kids, how hard can it be? As it turns out, it was much harder than she bargained for, and she half-wishes she could leave those kids in the street and make a break for freedom.”
He recalled how stressed out he’d been when he’d first learned about his warping powers. Now, he had a team, and things were better. They could handle anything the universe threw at them.
Aki laughed. “Cynical, but I like it.”
The woman loaded the kids in the cab, and it drove away.
They scanned the curb again. No sign of Rueben-Z. All was still quiet. Aki pulled up a playlist on her phone and played it softly through the Jeep’s sound system.
He laughed as soon as he heard the first few notes. “Je Ne S
ais Pas.”
She nodded. “This is their first album.”
“Prima Donna Complex. It’s the best one they did.”
“Yeah. They got too cocky with the second and tried too hard to go back to their original sound with the third. Prima Donna, it’s just…”
They said in unison, “Perfect.”
She skipped through the first couple of tracks, and the next one started with an accordion and a thick bass line.
Rueben’s eyes lit up. “I Love You, I Hate You. This one was one of my favorites back when...” He didn’t finish the thought. He simply watched the sidewalk and let the lyrics fill the Jeep.
Aki finished his thought, “It reminds you of Rachel?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, back then. My life’s a lot different now.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely different.”
The Jeep was silent for a few minutes.
Then Rueben smiled. “You know, when I first saw you, you were doing a presentation on ‘Proper Etiquette While On Assignment.’”
Aki burst into an embarrassed laugh. “Oh, God, that was total garbage. I remember that.”
“I wasn’t a field agent at the time, but I did ‘go on assignment’ from time to time when I had to take the tech van out to CIA locations. It took some convincing for Sven to let me attend. It wasn’t garbage—I enjoyed it.”
“Well…thank you.”
“I could tell you were passionate about your job. It kinda inspired me to be a better agent. And well, you were serious and funny and…well, you. I wondered what it would take to become the kind of guy who got to kiss you. ’Cause I wanted to be him.”
She smiled and turned to him. “Well, at that time the bar wasn’t set too high. I was with Mike, remember?”
Good ol’ Mike Fury.
Suddenly, Aki straightened and peered through the windshield. “Is that…”
He looked in the same direction. “It’s Jim. The homeless guy.”
Jim’s wild red hair stuck out in all directions as he pushed a shopping cart along the sidewalk. He was slowly making his way toward them, oblivious to the stares that passersby gave him as he muttered to himself.
Rueben glanced at the hotel and back at Jim. He reached for the Jeep’s door handle. “He knows things. And he knows Carolyn. I think we should go talk to him.”
Chapter Fifteen
Thursday, May 25, 3:01 p.m.
Rueben and Aki exited the vehicle. Aki called out cheerily from ten feet away, “Hey, Jim. How’s it going?”
Jim saw them and looked unconcerned by their presence. “The birds live underground and fly like snakes with clocks and dragon wings.”
Rueben had no idea what that might mean. “I’m glad you remember us. Would you like to get a bite to eat?”
Jim stared soberly into Rueben’s eyes. “The eggs are in the wind, and the books eat the cat. But the horse is in the dell.”
“Jim, are you hungry?”
He started to wander off with his shopping cart.
Rueben called after him. “Hey, Jim, wait. Come back. You might be the only one who can really help us.”
“Time waits for no man.”
Rueben was quick with a response. “But it waits for me.”
A slow smile spread across Jim’s face, and his lips moved as if he were trying to memorize the quip.
Aki asked him, “Have you seen the other Rueben? The older one?”
Jim ran his finger down the side of his face.
Rueben grinned. “Yeah, the man with the scar. The bad one. Have you seen him? Did he come out of this hotel?”
Jim shrugged and started walking away again.
“Come on, Jim, talk to us. We need your help.” Rueben noticed the man’s shopping cart was full of old newspapers. “We’ll buy you all the newspapers you want. Just talk to us. Help us find the man with the scar.”
Jim stopped and looked at his papers. He held up one.
Rueben read the name of the paper at the top in bold letters. “Paper Warriors. Hm, never heard of them before.”
Jim handed the paper to Aki, and she held it up so that both Rueben and she could read the front page. The headline of one article announced that polar bear populations were soaring. Another claimed that the president had died a year ago, and his clone was now in office. It was an alt-science conspiracy paper.
“Where did you get this?” Rueben asked quickly.
Jim pointed toward a dumpster in an alley a ways back.
“You found it in the trash?”
“The only news there is. And people just throw it away. Knowledge is power. You cannot know what you have.”
Rueben had an idea. “Jim, what do they say in those papers?”
“It’s the only real news. They are the only ones that know the truth.”
“The truth? The truth about what?”
“The worlds. All of them.”
Rueben was nodding now. “So this newspaper talks about time warping and world-hopping?”
“She was in it.”
“My mother? Carolyn?”
Jim’s eyes glazed over as if he was beholding a miracle.
Rueben’s mouth dropped, and he met Aki’s eyes. “My mom said she did an interview with an alt-science paper that had launched the incident with Thorne. Paper Warriors must have been it.”
“Might be worth checking out…” Aki flipped the paper over, searching. “Look, here’s their address. It’s not far.”
“I say we go.”
“You think we should take Jim out there with us?”
Rueben shrugged. “If he wants to go.”
“But what about the plan? Watching the hotel for Rueben-Z? Getting a blood sample for Buzz?”
“To be honest,” Rueben said, “this feels like a trap.”
“I was getting the same feeling too. What if Rueben-Z has been watching us the entire time?”
Rueben didn’t want to think about that. “There might be something up with this paper. Something we can use to understand this time disease situation better.”
Aki turned to Jim. “Jim, do you want to go with us to get new papers?” She pointed at the Jeep, and Jim nodded vehemently. He held out his hand, and Aki gave him back the paper. Then he left his shopping cart and marched toward the waiting vehicle.
Jim smelled as if he hadn’t taken a shower in weeks and Rueben winced at him sitting on Buzz’s leather seats. Then again, Buzz also blew up his own house.
Jim got in the backseat and Rueben settled behind the wheel this time. In the passenger seat, Aki pulled up the Brooklyn address for Paper Warriors on her phone GPS. They were only about half an hour from it.
They pulled out onto the road.
Jim lay down in the back seat, seeming to lap up the luxury of the plush leather seating. “So nice.”
Rueben kept his eyes on the traffic in the rearview mirror. “I’m glad you like it.”
“You know, she didn’t know. She didn’t know.”
“Who didn’t know?”
“You mother…she didn’t know.”
Rueben soothed him. “I know. She thought she was doing the right thing. We’ve made up. It’s all good.”
“It’s all good,” Jim repeated, childlike.
Rueben took a turn, dictated by Aki’s phone GPS. “So, Jim. You never answered us earlier. Have you seen the man with the scar?”
“I have not seen him, and the time is short, my friends. It is short for this world.”
Rueben gripped the wheel and glanced up in the mirror at Jim in the backseat. “The time disease?”
“The end is near… The end is near, and the creatures turn to dust.”
Aki gave Rueben a worried look.
Suddenly Jim pointed at the sky through the window. “For us all. It is time. Like all the other times.”
Rueben realized that he was gripping the wheel tight. “You’re talking about the time disease the bad Rueben carries?”
“The destroyer of worlds.”
Aki jumped into the conversation. “Are you…originally from this world?”
Jim considered this before saying, “No. I like this world best.”
“And the bad Rueben destroyed your old world?”
“He destroyed many. They shrivel like dust. He hops like a frog to the next. The cycle repeats.”
Then Rueben remembered something Jim had once told him. “We want to end the cycle. You mentioned I had to undergo a quest?“
Jim looked sad. “Quest. Yes. Back to the dead world. Back to the dust world.” He cringed and emitted a low groan as if he were physically in pain. “Or else this world dies too. I like this world. You must stop it.” Jim started hitting himself. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.”
Aki reached behind her seat and grabbed his hands. “Hey, hey. There’s nothing bad happening right now. Right now we’re having a peaceful drive through the city.”
Jim drew slow, deep breaths. “The spreading death is peaceful. But it turns everything to dust.”
Aki gently released his hands. “We won’t let it.”
Jim whimpered and was quiet. Aki and Rueben didn’t say anything either for the rest of the drive.
The newspaper’s headquarters was in a tiny brick building in a seedy part of town. It was next to an overgrown basketball court and a closed-down furniture store.
“You sure this is it?” Rueben asked.
Aki stared at her phone GPS. “This is it. Paper Warriors.”
Rueben parked against the curb and squinted across the small strip of grass in front of the building. Iron burglar bars covered the glass door and window. “Let’s do this.”
Weeds had sprouted through the cracked sidewalk. They brushed against their shoes as the three of them made their way to the door. Jim twiddled his thumbs.
Right before they reached the door, Rueben’s phone rang. He answered it. “Hey, Martha. What’s up—”
“Rueben?” In the background, sirens wailed, and people shouted.
“Martha, where are you?”
Martha yelled over the commotion, “…police station…attacked…” The rest of her words were unintelligible.
