The Blue Death

by Joan Brady

  ‘You know what I think, sir?’ Andy said.

  ‘Don’t think. Just fix it.’

  ‘Somebody’s playing a joke on you. Looks to me like they’ve downloaded some hardcore stuff, and you’ll keep crashing until—’

  ‘Can you fix it?’

  A flurry of fears and uncertainties chased themselves across the Warden’s face. He fancied rape videos of very young girls, and the Slad twins’ Bible-belt morality extended to all their employees, however lowly. They also rewarded employees for information about other employees: UCAI’s IT team would report back. Maybe Johannsen didn’t like being warden, but he’d had to manoeuvre hard to get the job; and the only reason he got it was that he was a Baptist, like the Slads. He’d professed very deep convictions. He’d appealed to the Lord’s mercy; he did have four kids and a wife with cancer. Times were hard, especially for ex-executives of, well, a certain age.

  The films he’d searched out would have him fired on the spot.

  ‘Your hard drive is crawling with worms and viruses,’ Andy said. It wasn’t, but he’d just been studying computer bugs. Then, realizing that the Warden needed a good nigger who wouldn’t tell tales on the boss man, not one uppity enough for white grammar, he burbled on. ‘I’m a-feared that means your anti-virus needs updating something right awful. But don’t you worry none, sir, ’cause, yes, sir, Little Andy can fix it. Little Andy can fix most anything. A couple hours maybe. They do bury this here stuff something deep.’

  Databases on the Warden’s computer held information on all employees, every staff member listed and photographed, date of birth, Social Security number, home address, telephone number, education, past employment history, credit rating, medical insurance information. Prison staff are inmates’ main source of everything from drugs to lace panties and interdental brushes. Occasionally they’ll supply out of kindness, but fear and greed are the mainstays of business: ten dollars extorted from one to buy a carton of cigarettes from another. Every one of them would sell his immortal soul for the kind of thing that was – or could be made to be – lurking in those databases.

  During his morning of fiddling, Andy added half a dozen user-names and passwords, which meant that anybody with a mobile phone could look at these records. Mobile phones were illegal in South Hams State Correctional Facility. They were in most prisons: a Texan inmate got slammed with forty years just for getting caught with one. But they’re worth the risk, essential for outside business: drug dealing in Carbondale, money laundering in Chicago, riot organizing in the prison itself, threats to sentencing judges all over Illinois. Prices at South Hams ranged from fifty to five hundred dollars, depending on supply and the buyer’s eagerness. Guards and chaplains brought in plastic mobiles that metal detectors missed; others arrived in soles of shoes, hollowed-out blocks of cheese, mayonnaise jars, boxes of tinned tomatoes, even in dead squirrels and by carrier pigeon.

  Access via mobile to the Warden’s databases meant not only that inmates could search them for nuggets that were already there; they could change the entries, add to them, cut from them, delete them entirely, create completely new ones. Imagine the potential profit – to say nothing of the unadulterated joy – in filling out a staff member’s life story with ‘registered sex offender’ or ‘arrest for possession’ or ‘indicted for tax evasion’.

  Andy was about to acquire the status of hero of South Hams.

  At noon, the Warden left for lunch, and Andy glowed with triumph. What would Lillian think of this? An email arriving on her own computer from the Warden’s office? And signed by Little Andy? He could see her shake her head, try to get angry at him, then give in, pull him into her arms and say, ‘How’d my boy get to be so smart?’

  ‘Dear Mom,’ he began. ‘Tell David, Quack hopes that tomorrow we’ll have more fine weather.’ Quack had told him to say that to Lillian as soon as he got the chance.

  ‘What for?’ Andy had asked.

  ‘Just a joke between old cellmates.’

  ‘“Fine weather”, huh?’

  ‘You got it.’

  But Andy hadn’t had to wait for Lillian’s visit. He was sending an email from the Warden’s office itself!

  ‘Guess where I—’ But he stopped mid-sentence, suddenly realizing that he hadn’t told her he was HIV positive. He’d never been volatile, not until his terrible experiences in South Hams; after that, the shifts had become abrupt and violent. This time his body went rigid in a panic of shame. His face burned. He needed her arms around him now. He needed her to tell him it would be all right now, that it wasn’t his fault – none of it. He needed her to tell him that he was still a man. Why do people do things like this? How could attacking someone you love do anything to soothe your own pain?

  ‘I know your tricks, Lillian Draper.’ He banged out the words. ‘I know what you think. I know the games you play. Never come see me again.’

  23

  SPRINGFIELD: The same afternoon

  While Andy was behind bars making use of skills he’d learned in Springfield, David was in Springfield struggling to use prison skills to turn Otto’s Autos into a house for him and Helen. It wasn’t going well.

  The problem wasn’t the job itself. He’d done all that homework to find ways to escape from South Hams; after all, the best way to escape a trap is to know how it’s constructed, and prisons are much like other buildings. They have electricity and plumbing. They’re designed by architects and built by contractors according to standard regulations. Blueprints and building specifications were the easy part; how plans translated into cement and steel: that had taken much longer. As for the prison’s security system, David imagined it as an elaborate lock, and if somebody can make a lock, there’s going to be somebody else who can break it. Before life in prison, he’d been the best lock-picker on the east side.

  After his release, when the question came up of what he was to do with himself, Hugh Freyl hadn’t hesitated. ‘Security systems testing and installation,’ he’d said. Hugh’s eyes and Helen’s were identical, the same intense green, the same dark rim around the iris; David had found a blind man’s eyes difficult at best, and he could never accustom himself to the blind man who stared at him out of her eyes.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ David had said to him. ‘So who’s going to hire me for that?’

  ‘If you have a flaw that you cannot hide, David, you must not try to hide it. Make a virtue of it. Who is more experienced at breaking locks than you are? Who is more experienced in breaking through unbreakable security systems?’

  ‘I failed,’ David said. His nearest success had been pure impulse, nothing to do with construction and even less to do with security systems.

  ‘That is a level of detail that need not concern us.’ Hugh’s smile had been wry. ‘What you will do is make a bet. You give a customer a large sum in cash that he is to store on his premises. If you cannot break in and retrieve it, he keeps the money. If you can, then the customer is vulnerable and he pays you to make him invulnerable. I know a number of people who would very much enjoy such a game – especially with an ex-convict. In fact, I doubt they’d even entertain the idea if you were not an ex-convict.’

  All David had needed was the cash and a licence to practise as a journeyman electrician. Cash was no problem for Hugh. He’d also arranged the paperwork for the licence; David had never asked how, and he’d passed the written exam entirely legally. As soon as he did, a colleague of Hugh’s took the bet, a computer retailer a hundred miles east in Matoon, home to the world’s largest bagel and host of the annual Lender’s Bagelfest. David had been shocked to find out how careless most professional security installers were, but he’d really got a kick out of defeating them. More jobs came in. They got harder. He’d studied to keep ahead. Books with titles like Construction Materials and Processes and Simplified Engineering for Architects and Contractors stood on the desk he used at the prissy house he and Helen rented not far from Otto’s Autos.

  But the labour force at the construction s
ite? How was he to handle that? For the security business, his crew had consisted of himself and a friend from his childhood. His only experience in directing workers came from the South Hams drug ring. He was an enforcer for the Insiders as well as the manager of their drug trade; his management technique boiled down to scaring his people into doing what he wanted them to. Or beating them into it.

  But civilian workers? Free men with hourly pay and overtime? How could anybody control them? He found disorder physically painful, and these guys left their tools lying all over the place. Bags of cement fell over and spilled out on the ground. Newspapers, cigarette butts, empty beer cans, water bottles, sandwich wrappers, coffee cups: they were everywhere. Take that kid sprawled out on the tarmac, maybe eighteen years old, maybe twenty, a lot of muscle on him, multiple earrings, a stud in his nose. He raised himself lazily on his elbows, upended a Coke bottle in his mouth, glugged it dry, aimed it at the telephone pole on the edge of the property, missed, flicked his cigarette butt after it, missed again, then leaned back in the shade.

  ‘Pick them up,’ David said.

  The kid lifted himself on his elbows again. ‘What?’

  ‘Pick up the bottle and the cigarette butt.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ The kid eased himself back down.

  ‘Now!’ David said.

  ‘I’m taking a fifteen minute break.’

  ‘Go pick them up.’

  ‘Why the fuck would I do that?’

  ‘After I cut your balls off, I’m going to shove them down your throat.’

  The kid shrugged, got up, went over, picked up the bottle and the butt, looked around for somewhere to put them, tossed them into a wheelbarrow.

  ‘In the dumpster,’ David said.

  ‘Fuck—’ A glance at David’s face stopped the kid short. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘I’m doing it. I’m doing it. Just stay calm, huh?’ He kept wary eyes on David as he picked up the bottle and the cigarette butt and set them carefully in the dumpster.

  It wasn’t the first time David had forced his workers to clean up after themselves; it was far from the first time he’d frightened one of them. But he knew what the result would be: the kid just wouldn’t show up tomorrow. He’d have to find some replacement, who’d be even stupider and sloppier. As for the other three men at work, they were all taking fifteen-minute breaks too – and watching David’s every move.

  He could feel their eyes on him, even though his back faced them. He could take all four of them, the kid first – those earrings were a gift. Then the guy who shouted snatches of out-of-tune jingles. The other two would run shrieking. He itched to do it, could see it happening, took in a breath, let it out, then swung around. ‘Get out of here. All of you,’ he said to them. ‘Don’t come back.’

  When David was in prison, he’d had a recurrent dream of running. Just running. Nobody stopping him. No walls. No guards. No prison yard. Just open streets and running. But a prison gym is all about pumping iron, not much preparation for a marathon. After he’d got out, he’d had to work months before he could run far enough and fast enough to ease the tension in him.

  He forced himself to wait until his four workers disappeared off the site of Otto’s Autos. Only then did he set off. The anger hadn’t even started to ease when he reached the railroad tracks on North 15th Street. It was very hot, oppressively humid, steam rising up from the tar on the roads, late afternoon, a desolate area, old deserted station, tracks stretching out to the horizon ahead and behind, acres of macadam. The man slamming into him came as a complete surprise. David staggered from the blow.

  ‘Where you think you’re going?’ the guy said. Despite the heat, he wore a Soviet general’s winter coat, right down to the ankles. His beard was black, several inches long, unkempt. He backed away, reaching into one of the coat’s deep pockets.

  When the tension rips apart in a person, thought just doesn’t happen. David must have charged the guy. He didn’t see him reaching into his sleeve and sliding something out from there, didn’t feel the hammer blow of whatever it was driving through the flesh of his arm and side. He yanked it out – a long, solid something – blood spurting after it: an iron railroad spike. The general gaped at him a moment, then turned and ran. David caught him on the tracks, a tackle that sent them both sprawling, but so much blood was pumping out of his arm and chest that the man slipped in it. So did David, lost hold of him, caught him again on the railway platform, grabbed the beard, banged the head against the brick wall of the Illinois & Midland Railroad building.

  And suddenly there were cops. David didn’t know how many. They pinned him to the ground. He couldn’t see the guy in the Soviet uniform, just heard him whining to the cop in charge.

  ‘He just come up after me, officer. He must be crazy or something. I didn’t do nothing. Nothing at all. He just come—’

  ‘You don’t know him?’ the cop interrupted.

  David lurched in an abrupt attempt to escape. Blood spurted again. More cops piled on him. Two of them? Four? The same cops? Others?

  A moment of nothing, and one of the cops was sitting on David’s chest. Or that’s how it seemed. Close up. No, no, far away. ‘You know, Mr Marion,’ he was saying, ‘I can’t recall a specific statute about beating a Soviet general’s head against the Illinois & Midland Railroad wall, so I guess you’re clear on that one. But, oh my goodness me, why can’t you behave yourself? Now you’re going to need an anti-tetanus shot as well as . ’

  David must have passed out then, because the sting of the needle stitching his side forced him to focus on the cop even though the cop wasn’t there any more. The needlework was a woman’s. So was the voice.

  ‘. all these sutures,’ she was saying. She was middle-aged, white coat, steel-grey hair that clung to her head like a bathing cap. She paused in her needlework to check an intravenous line that fed into David’s arm. ‘You’re too old to be running around in the sun,’ she scolded. ‘Not that somebody half your age should do it. People go crazy when it’s as hot as this.’

  Hospital smells. Hospital sounds. A badge on the woman’s white coat said ‘Dr Ellen Hargrove’.

  ‘Memorial?’ he asked. ‘Is that where I am?’

  ‘That’s where you are,’ she said. ‘Emergency Room. You’re lucky they didn’t jail you.’

  But the cop’s logo: it was yellow, round, Lincoln in it. That’s not the Springfield Police Department. Their logo is blue. A triangle. The Sheriff’s logo is round. An eagle inside. David had seen that yellow Lincoln only once before: the cop who’d warned him against a speed trap ahead when he was doing 120 in the Riley.

  24

  LEADWOOD, ILLINOIS: Two days later

  Nothing about Mr Huxtable of UCAI’s security department was what Jimmy expected. Certainly not this lunch. They sat at a long table in a hushed church hall, the air steam-bath heavy, only a whirring fan to stir it. No liquor. No music. Smell of oilcloth and cabbage. An almost interminable grace. Politics really does call for God; ever since his mayoralty campaign, Jimmy had spouted grace with the fervour of a new convert. But he hated cabbage. He wanted a dry Martini with a twist of lemon and the Sangamo Club’s air conditioning. He started to take off his jacket.

  ‘Please, no.’ Mr Huxtable held up a hand to stop him. ‘There are ladies present.’

  ‘Mr Huxtable,’ Jimmy whispered, ‘this is no place to talk.’

  ‘Perhaps a stroll after soup?’ Mr Huxtable had a dish face that sloped off to one side, round glasses, a bright cherry of a mouth. The soup was as thin as he was. The bread was dry. He hadn’t said as many as a hundred words to Jimmy so far, and he said no more until he’d finished his bowl and dabbed at his chin with a translucent paper napkin. ‘Finished, Mr Z?’

  Elderly heads turned as the two men scraped their chairs to leave.

  The small white church stood in a wood on the outskirts of St Louis; Mr Huxtable and Jimmy walked away from it into the trees. The ground was baked and cracked. ‘This was a stream bed only a few days ago,�
� Mr Huxtable said.

  Jimmy took off his jacket, loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves. ‘I thought we might be meeting somebody from the NSA,’ he said.

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘The, er, you know, the National Security Agency.’

  ‘Today?’

  Jimmy wasn’t quite sure how to take that. ‘Maybe Wet Operations?’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Department 4?’ Jimmy wondered if it was possible for a man in Mr Huxtable’s position to be unaware of what he was asking.

  Department 4 of Domestic Wet Operations is known among insiders as ‘Assassinations within the United States’. It’s the most secret arm of the National Security Agency, the most secret of America’s secret agencies and the one that takes on the nation’s dirtiest jobs, and the dirtiest of these go to Department 4. An entire section of their operations concerns delicate matters of ‘Quantitative Personnel Adjustment’ for US-based corporations.

  ‘I’m talking about the contract on David Marion,’ Jimmy said irritably. The heat and the hot soup weren’t sitting well in his stomach. His shoes were dusty. Plant spurs clung to his trousers.

  ‘Temper, Mr Z. Temper.’

  Mr Huxtable walked on, hands clasped behind his back, head bowed, studying the path in front of them. A frog jumped out, paused uncertainly in the path. He brought his heel down on it and ground it into the dirt.

  ‘A foolish fellow, your Mr Marion,’ he said abruptly. ‘A Godless fellow, rooting around in search of somebody to blame Hugh Freyl’s death on. I do dislike it when amateurs go blundering in affairs where they don’t belong. Bulls in china shops, Mr Z. Bulls in china shops.’ This sudden burst of speech came out rapid fire, very much at odds with the detachment on his face as he bent down to examine what remained of the frog. ‘Senator Calder would have made a fine president. Many God-fearing Americans invested a great deal of money, time, ingenuity – and faith, yes, Mr Z, faith – in making him into a leader. And your fellow imagines he’s found a motive for the murder of Hugh Freyl – Hugh Freyl of all people – in a remote corner of the Senator’s “creative accounting”. A shocking idea. Shocking. An election fund is a fluid thing, a living thing. It must be nurtured. It must be tweaked. Your ignorant fellow cares nothing for such subtleties. His threats of exposure alone caused that great man to have the stroke from which he may never recover. Bulls in china shops, Mr Z. Bulls in china shops. Such fellows are, in my humble opinion, among the most dangerous in our society. It is a matter of good business practice to cleanse the world of them.’