“Yeah, right,” Mort scoffed. “For the record, your hallucinations are way better than what this brandy has to offer me.”
“The device carbon-dates, in a sense, the psychic impressions it captures. He says he’s gotten impressions so far that go back over two hundred years,” Gretchen said, “always of some equally charged incident, a rape, a murder, a holocaust of some kind.”
“Otherwise the psychic impressions don’t linger very long,” Loft Boy explained.
Mort took another swig from the now largely empty brandy bottle. “No way.”
“It could be why they want to kill him,” Gretchen speculated.
“Why? The cops’d love to have this,” Santini said. “The FBI, CIA, every security agency in the country… Not to mention homebuyers who want to know if they have to hire an exorcist before putting any money down.”
“Maybe if it just went back a day or two,” Gretchen said. “But hundreds of years? The powers that be couldn’t cover their tracks. Not fully. Not ever. Not with these devices floating around.”
“I rather resent this wild speculation starting to make an ounce of sense,” Mort complained.
“How much would one of these toys go for?” Santini asked.
Loft Boy did some quick math in his head, “Two, three hundred bucks maybe, if I had to make them one at a time. With mass production, who knows?”
Santini peeled off three hundred bucks for the kid from a wad he kept in a gold money clip in his pocket. He paid for everything in cash as a rule; he essentially invented living off-grid. He spent less money than a sextegenarian spendthrift who peed on his lemon tree in the backyard to save on water. It came in handy for times like this. “I’ll take the one you have in your hand.”
“It’s just a prototype,” Loft Boy warned. “Probably break down inside of a month. Not exactly field tested to last.”
“Which is why we’re going to keep you in mind, and suggest strongly that you learn to continue your research off the net, where they can track your every keystroke,” Santini said.
“I’m no good at this cloak and dagger shit,” Loft Boy admitted. Slouching to make his tall, lanky build less imposing, he combed his long hair back behind his ears with his fingers. “I pay for everything with a credit card, even my thrift-clothes and my café lattés at Starbucks—which cost more than my entire outfit.”
“Not to worry,” Mort said. “Santini, and Sister Gretchen here are gonna school you on the ins and outs of living incognito. And I; I’m going to teach you to fight like a drunken Irishman. Drink like one too, for extra credit.”
Loft Boy smiled. He eyed the hole in his loft window, recalling recent events, Santini imagined, and said, “I’m in.”
They watched Thor approaching on Loft Boy’s security monitor, explaining how Loft Boy knew to lie quiet as a church mouse while Darkman probed his interiors using his .22 pistol for an antenna.
Thor bounded up the fire escape and stepped through the window. He trotted up, holding Darkman’s severed head in his mouth.
Flabbergasted by Thor, as usual, Mort said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Thor held the head up before the eye-scanner. The computer, which had relocked itself after being on idle for more than thirty seconds, unlocked itself again.
Santini popped the contact lens out of Darkman’s eye.
He had come prepared to grab what he could off the kid’s computer and scrub the disk, after taking care of Loft Boy, in all likelihood, Santini figured.
“So much for my airtight security,” Loft Boy said, and squeezed Gretchen’s hand.
“What’s with this dog?” Mort asked.
“He’s psychic,” Santini explained.
“How’s that possible?” Mort finished the last of the brandy, pondering the point.
“He was born in Berkeley,” Santini explained.
“I guess that explains it,” Mort said, rubbing the top of his head. “Why doesn’t he ever read my mind?”
“There’s nothing to read,” Santini quipped.
“Ha-ha.” Mort abandoned the empty brandy bottle the same way it had abandoned him. “He could at least get me a beer out of the fridge when I want. I trained my last golden retriever to do that. He wasn’t half as smart.”
“Probably just worried about your blood-alcohol level,” Santini explained. “Afraid, with the next beer, you might confuse him for your ex-girlfriend.”
“That I could do stone-cold sober.” Mort squirmed from the shiver riding up his spine just thinking about it. “Never get married and sign everything over to a woman when you’re drunk, so you have to live with her and pray she dies prematurely to get it all back. Especially with women being better at getting away with murder than you are, if you get any funny ideas.”
Gretchen and Santini laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Santini said, and kissed Gretchen.
After rewinding the security video, Mort noticed Thor had accompanied Gretchen into the loft. He watched him use his night vision in tandem with effective body blocking to guide her out of harm’s way.
***
Later that night, and half way into the morning, Mort dragged Santini over to see his dog eating the brains out of Darkman. “Yeah, he has some nasty habits I’ve learned to live with,” Santini said.
Mort shook his head, and took a nip of Loft Boy’s Gallo wine, the bottle the size of a St. Louis slugger. “I guess it could be worse.”
Another sip of wine to clear his head, and he said, “You realize this makes your dog suspect numero uno in those Moonie murders?”
“It’s just circumstantial,” Santini said. “Besides, we don’t know the whole story. There are always mitigating circumstances.”
“Like codependence,” Mort said, burying the bottle in his mouth.
They returned to drilling Loft Boy, whose real name, apparently, was Lewis Lafferty, (“LL” for short, he explained) on how to survive the next few days and into the foreseeable future. They couldn’t take him with, since they were headed into the kind of territory which would surely get him killed, lowering his chances, in Santini’s mind, from zero to less than zero.
Mort, who could barely stand up straight himself, taught the kid how to fight, at least how to throw off sneak attacks from behind, choke holds, and other dastardly stunts. How to rake his attacker’s nuts with his fingers, jab the top of his foot with his heel, poke out his eyes, rip out his wind pipe, and other one-quick-stroke, then-run-like-hell stunts in case it wasn’t enough.
That took them through the rest of the night.
***
“Okay, what do you do before you cross the street?” Santini said.
“Check for traffic-light cameras, store-security cameras, cameras mounted on the hoods of police cars, cell phones with people snapping pictures,” LL said, sounding worldly, and as if he was running out of patience. “Hey, this is like Xeno’s paradox: Is it possible to ever make it across the road, if you keep slicing time in half?”
So the kid had a sense of humor. Santini was impressed. He’d need it in the days ahead to keep from going stir-crazy from the now-healthy paranoia, the kind for which most people took medication to keep from blowing their brains out under that kind of everyone’s-out-to-get-you pressure.
“What do you do when you see a lovely little bauble on Telegraph Avenue for your girlfriend?” Gretchen asked.
“Pay in cash,” LL said. “Check it for bugs with the latest de-bugging technology, which I have because I keep up with the spy shops by going in one at least weekly.”
“What about your next invention?” Santini said.
“Design it on the computer under the protection of quantum encoding, as it can’t be cracked,” LL blurted proudly. “Wait for you to get me that coding with your ever-expanding network of techies under your protection. Make sure any parts I buy, come assembly time, are vetted by you guys, manufactured and distributed from the network.”
Mort shook his head, burped up the last of the Gallo
. “How did this kid last this long?”
“By proving angels live among us,” Santini said. “Let’s hope they stay on board.” He shook LL’s hand. “All right, kid. I certify you ready to go out and live in the world. Welcome to the Renaissance movement.”
“You think it’s a real Renaissance?” LL asked. “Like the one they had after the Middle Ages?”
“Only, instead of the church this time, we’re fighting men in black. Hope you can adjust,” Santini said.
“If not, I know Thor’ll be happy,” Mort said. “Seems to appreciate brain food.”
They escorted the kid well beyond the building, in case any more men in black were lingering in the shadows of Justice Park.
When they couldn’t go any further, Santini signaled Thor to continue the escort, and only double back when he was certain the kid was in the clear. He didn’t have to tell Thor any of this. He just thought it.
Thor barked his understanding. Santini appreciated the fact that his doggie radar probably—the kind that made his hairs stand on end when trouble was near—beat the shit out of his policeman’s radar. They’d spent enough time with the kid for him to start growing on Santini.
FOUR
“What is this? Japanese?” Mort scrunched up his face, unable to hide the pain caused by straining his brain.
“It’s math, you oaf.” Santini handed the paper back to him.
“Well, I’m a bit farsighted myself,” Mort said.
Santini redirected his eyes to the body in the center of the floor.
“Plush-pile carpeting. Not a bad final resting place,” Mort observed. “Blue, too. I hear blue is very calming.”
Gretchen collected up the papers with equations scattered throughout the house. “What you doing that for?” Santini said. “If someone killed him for that, then left it lying around, you can bet it’s going to be no good to anyone else.”
“I’ll find someone who can make sense of them,” Gretchen said. “It has to do with electrical engineering, I know that much. This is what someone needs to build another device—”
Mort hit her with a thunderstruck expression. “To bring the future crashing down on our heads. There’s a lot of that going around lately.”
He flipped the body with his foot.
Farrell had the placid face of someone who carts earthworms out of harm’s way before planting a seed, Santini thought.
He aimed LL’s scanner at the body folded up on the floor like an accordion waiting to be played. Curious themselves, the others made their way over to Santini’s vantage point on the scanner’s twelve-inch monitor.
“Will you get a load o’ that brute?” Mort said, watching one of the men in black holding the corpse, at the time still living, off the ground by the neck in one giant hand. “Lucky the kid had a long neck, or the hand’d never fit.”
“You can buy me out. It’s not like I have scruples. You don’t have to kill me,” Corpse Boy said.
“Well, that’s the thing,” the smaller man-in-black said. “In these trying times, we have to find ways to economize.”
They heard the boy’s neck crush in the giant’s hands, a sound like tearing tinfoil.
“Does that thing have a save button?” Mort asked. “That’ll spare me testifying to get those goons behind bars.”
“I’m more afraid of what they represent,” Santini said. He hit “save” on the scanner so it would hold on to the psychic impression. He couldn’t imagine it would be admissible in a court of law for another hundred years, but you never knew. Maybe someone would write an exemption clause to allow in breaking-technologies, provided their underlying workings could be satisfactorily explained to a jury.
Santini passed the scanner over another section of the room. “Hey, look at this.”
***
Before he brought the glass to his mouth, just sniffing the ale, he winced as if he’d licked the bottom of a pair of shoes that had been used to pat down manure. But so far so good. The first sip had gone down sensationally. He downed the rest of the mug as if he was drinking from a shot glass, and stuck out his hand for a refill. “God, I don’t believe you brew your own beer.”
“I sided with prohibition like a whore takes to a confessional,” Lupey said, refilling his friend’s glass, then pouring one for himself.
The visitor eyed the exposed chassis, the car’s wheels on a belt-driven runner for testing the engine Lupey was working on. He gazed up at the door and realized his host would have had to assemble the vehicle piece by piece to get it inside. How covert of him. “What’s this other thing you got going over here?”
“Oh that. Later, maybe.”
He found it strange Lupey was being so effusive. He usually loved to talk about his inventions.
“Shit!” he said, eying the clock on the wall, “the FDR broadcast is in full tilt. I can’t believe I’m missing it.” He flicked the dial on the radio, adjusted the band past the crackles and pops to get a clearer transmission. Beer in hand, he sat with his ear to the box, leaving just enough room to not hog all the sound from getting to his friend. “God, I love this guy. A do-good President. Who’d a thought?”
His friend’s attention hadn’t left the test-vehicle. He kept pacing around it from all angles, trying to get the measure of the thing.
Over the radio, FDR pontificated, “It is wholly wrong to call the measure that we have taken government control of farming, control of industry, and control of transportation. It is rather a partnership between government and farming and industry and transportation, not partnership in profits, for the profits would still go to the citizens, but rather a partnership in planning and partnership to see that the plans are carried out.
“Let me illustrate with an example.”
Lupey’s friend took advantage of his being distracted by the radio broadcast to further explore Lupey’s invention. After cranking the starter for a second time, he got the car to turn over. He listened to the engine humming nicely, better than a Singer Sewing machine. Steam jutted out the top. He smelled the bottle of fuel. It was no more than tap water.
Over the radio, FDR’s voice boomed like a fog horn over the ocean, “Take the cotton goods industry. It is probably true that ninety percent of the cotton manufacturers would agree to eliminate starvation wages, would agree to stop long hours of employment, would agree to stop child labor, would agree to prevent an overproduction that would result in unsalable surpluses. But, what good is such an agreement if the other ten per cent of cotton manufacturers pay starvation wages, require long hours, employ children in their mills, and turn out burdensome surpluses? The unfair ten per cent could produce goods so cheaply that the fair ninety per cent would be compelled to meet the unfair conditions.
“Here is where government comes in. Government ought to have the right and will have the right, after surveying and planning for an industry to prevent, with the assistance of the overwhelming majority of that industry, unfair practice and to enforce this agreement by the authority of government. The so-called anti-trust laws were intended to prevent the creation of monopolies and to forbid unreasonable profits to those monopolies. That purpose of the anti-trust laws must be continued, but these laws were never intended to encourage the kind of unfair competition that results in long hours, starvation wages and overproduction.
“The same principle applies to farm products and to transportation and every other field of organized private industry.”
“This guy is heaven-sent,” Lupey cried out. He drank more of his beer in celebration.
“Is it true this thing runs on water?” his friend asked, not able to peel his eyes of Lupey’s masterpiece.
“Yeah,” Lupey said, nervously. “Gets about sixty miles to a gallon of tap water. You can carry as much as fifty gallons in the trunk and still have room for a couple suitcases, and a stowaway.”
“Why haven’t you released this contraption on the market?”
“Ah.” Lupey waved his hand dismissively. “I’m seeing wh
at I can do to tweak the parts to prevent rust. Another month or so, maybe.”
Lupey turned up the volume to compensate for his friend running his device in the background. FDR said, “We are working toward a definite goal, which is to prevent the return of conditions which came very close to destroying what we call modern civilization. The actual accomplishment of our purpose cannot be attained in a day. Our policies are wholly within purposes for which our American Constitutional Government was established one hundred fifty years ago.”
His friend approached Lupey from behind, tightened the cravat around Lupey’s neck.
He cinched down hard, forcing Lupey to divide his attention between FDR’s profound words, and fighting for his life. Strangely, Lupey’s eyes never left the radio, even as his hands groped at his neck, trying to get under the cord, and just getting cut in the process.
On the radio, FDR lectured, “I know that the people of this country will understand this and will also understand the spirit in which we are undertaking this policy. I do not deny that we may make mistakes of procedure as we carry out the policy. I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average, not only for myself but for the team. Theodore Roosevelt once said to me: ‘If I can be right seventy-five per cent of the time I shall come up to the fullest measure of my hopes.’”3
Lupey caught the “fullest measure of my hopes” punch-line before expiring, his face as hopeful as the day he was born.
His friend dropped the cravat, making no effort to cover his tracks. The only thing he did was separate the steam engine from the chassis, so he could take it with him. It was surprisingly light, and just within the range of his upper-body strength.
***
“Says 1933 at the bottom of the screen, in case you were distracted by the news from beyond the grave.” By the time Mort finished twisting up his lips, a couple tassles dangled at the end, like a lady’s fancy hat. “Lovely. Just exactly how long have these men in black been around?”
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 87
