“Get out Benny. Don’t come looking anymore, I’ll have you thrown in the river as a topside spy if you do. I have to move again because I let you in here, and that in itself is making me mad. I’m tired of moving, and I’m tired of you. Why don’t you just forget the whole thing and turn straight if you’re so pure now? Go out and get a job.” He went back to staring at the papers on his desk, ignoring me.
I sat there for a moment trying to think of something smart to say. Instead, I said, “Tell me how I was responsible for Paulo’s death? You owe me that much.”
“I don’t owe you anything.” He didn’t even lift his head.
I went to the door and stood fixed there for a moment thinking he might tell me anyway. Chen never liked a silence. He finally looked up. “Sukey borrowed my old thatcher, the Zorro one, and was waiting in our usual spot for a likely victim. Carla brought the judge into the alley with you not far behind. He witnessed you and Carla in action with the judge. He asked Paulo for a forget favor and Paulo obliged, but Sukey found out he’d had a forget and wanted to know what it was. They were arguing with each other, so I left. I didn’t want to listen to that.” Chen put his head in his hands. “If I’d stayed, they’d both be alive, but I couldn’t know that.” He considered me again. “And you didn’t know he was there when you killed the judge, but you ended up killing Sukey and Paulo along with your mark. I know you didn’t do it on purpose, Benny. You sent Sukey off with a threat when you realized he’d seen you. You could have killed him too, but you didn’t. You were already getting squeamish about murder the last time you had your forget. And now you think one more forget has provided you with a conscience.”
A conscience. Yeah, I guessed that was what I had, and it was getting as heavy as a dead body. “Chen, are you with the police?”
That popped a derisive laugh out of him.
“How do you know about the murder?” I asked.
“You told me, Benny.”
“That’s no answer.”
“It’s all you’re going to get. Now, I need to have this done in twenty minutes, but please don’t tell Kumar what you know. You will regret it.”
I went back through the cardboard passage to the brothel. The woman with the enhanced lips swayed over to me, took my hand and smiled at me. Her teeth were sharpened. She looked like a smiling opossum. “Would you like to stay awhile? A friend of Chen’s would get a break.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I have an appointment with a shark.”
Chapter 17
The front desk at the police station was originally a deep mahogany color, but years of cuffs and guns and hands had removed the stain and left the wood worn and dirty. The woman behind the desk was much the same. She shifted her gaze to me without moving any other part of her body.
“What’s your business?”
“I’m here to see Detective Kumar, but if he’s not around I can come back later.”
“Uh-unh, wait over there.” She pointed with her eyes at a long bench full of men in orange uniforms, each handcuffed to a stout bar that ran across the wall behind the bench.
“You know something I don’t?” I said.
“Just have a seat.”
I went to the opposite side of the room and sat on the floor beside a girl with bowl-cut straight black hair and a skin sculpture of a bloody hole on her forehead. I smiled and said hello, but she didn’t respond. She looked unhappy.
While I sat on the floor, cooling my jets, I watched people; a woman frantic about her missing son, a crazy demanding to be handcuffed for having urinated on the lamp post outside the police station, and any number of police coming and going. The girl beside me never had her name called and didn’t move from her spot.
About an hour later, Kumar arrived by the same door I had. He motioned for me to follow him as he walked by. I stood and nodded to the girl as though we’d been talking the whole time. She sneered, crossed her arms and looked the other way.
Kumar led me to a small room with a steel desk and two chairs, one behind the desk, the other facing it. The left wall was stacked solid with unlabeled cardboard boxes. There was a window with a set of metal blinds, but the slats were bent like someone had leaned on them, and they let in sunlight. It was not an interrogation room, but apparently an unused office. He sat down in the chair behind the metal desk, and I sat in the other chair, which was an armchair with metal posts sticking up where the arms would have been attached. Someone had scratched “You’re fucked,” into the paint on the front of the desk.
Kumar had a note pad and a pen. He tapped the pen against the desk twice, then said, “What did you learn from Chen?”
I tried not to look startled, but I’m sure I failed. The police must have had people Under The River watching things and just happened to see Chen. I wondered if Chen would be trapped Under The River forever. They would be watching for him at the exits now.
I decided to startle Kumar back. “He told me I killed the judge and then had the memory forgotten.” I waited for a moment, watching him. He didn’t seem surprised. He just looked at his pen. “Then he told me I’d caused Paulo’s death somehow and that Carla was not involved in all this and that you’d release her in a few days whether I tried to help her or not.” I dropped the last part in, hoping to get an indication if Kumar had anything on Carla.
Kumar sat back in his chair causing it to creak like a front porch step and tapped his pen against his lips, blowing air out past it each time. He looked thoughtful, then said, “Actually, we’re releasing her today. She’s had a few memories wiped by judicial order and with her consent. Apparently she had an uncle who was quite mean to her as a child.” He said it as though he knew it was a blink. He was holding back information or making it up, I wasn’t sure. I ached for Carla. I didn’t know what part of her they’d wiped exactly, but I had the feeling Kumar had orchestrated the forget to cover himself. Which was odd because I hadn’t thought of him being a bad cop until Chen implied it earlier.
Kumar was involved in the investigation of Paulo’s murder and the arrest of Jon Tam, and he was paying a lot of attention to me. He had to be part of the explanation of my mystery.
I shifted forward in my chair. “So, are you going to arrest me? You probably have the evidence for a conviction. I don’t remember doing it, but that shouldn’t stop you.”
“I want to believe you’re on the level, Benny. I want to think you don’t remember any of it. If that’s the case, your punishment is already complete, but I need to know why you killed him. What was your motive?”
I thought about that for a moment. My atonement came to me then. I had to turn in my brother and if Kumar was in on the whole thing, on the wrong side, I had to out him too. “Money, I guess.”
“Money? You’re poor as dirt. You should have been flush when you got paid if that was your motive.” Kumar was fishing again.
“I put the money in my brother’s garage. I hid it there, so I wouldn’t be caught with it.”
Kumar tapped his pen against his lips some more. Again, he didn’t seem surprised and that made my hair itch. His icy gaze chilled me. “Well, Benny, I don’t know if you’re square or not. We’ll have to wait and see. I have an interrogation this afternoon, and I need to be in on a raid tonight, but tomorrow morning we’ll go over to your brother’s house and see that stash. If all goes as you say, we can show a judge the evidence and your forget transcript. With my recommendation, I imagine we can keep you out of jail.”
“Can you keep me from getting wiped?”
“Sure, Benny. You’ve undoubtedly forgotten the important stuff, and, by turning yourself in, you’ve shown you’re no longer a danger.” He didn’t sound exactly convinced and neither was I. It was a nice thing to think might happen though.
There was a tap on the door. A uniform came in and whispered into Kumar’s ear. Kumar listened while staring at me, then said, “We’re done for now Benny, but I want you here at eight tomorrow morning.” Kumar stood and hurried out the door.
I sat for a moment, thinking I’d set myself up for some real trouble. I wished I knew what the trouble was, and from which direction it would come.
Chapter 18
I decided to go to the library to find out who I’d killed and maybe why. I could remember only five of the names from the list, but I figured five would be enough.
The first person I’d killed was Dujo Kay, but I could find no information on him whatsoever.
Gerard Bonarubi was next. The news reported that he was suspected to be chief financial officer of a clique called the River Pirates. This particular clique catered to rich deviants who wanted people to torture and sometimes kill, or for more long-term sexual slavery. The River Pirates would take the order and kidnap someone who fit the exact need. Bonarubi had had two small children and a wife who gave lots of money to charity, but apparently didn’t spend any time at it. I didn’t feel real broken up about that one. I felt for his kids, but, if the news reports were correct, he was doing things worse than killing for money. He knew what he was getting into.
Another remembered name was Galasta Chavez, who also appeared to be a member of the Pirates. She was suspected of renewing the Pirates’ money through various commercial ventures and running an on-line protection racket. If you paid the clique money, they would protect your on-line presence from attack, presumably from themselves.
The third was another woman. Killing women felt especially vile to me for some reason, even though the idea that Carla had killed didn’t repel me that much. The victim’s name was Yuni Mukawski, and she ran a fabric store. She was unmarried and the press didn’t seem to know much about her. It wasn’t obvious to me why I would have been paid to kill her, until I noticed that she had owned the secluded house Arno now lived in. Could he have paid me to kill her just so he could buy the house? That seemed unlikely, yet I couldn’t find any other connection.
A singer named Agasey was next. He was known to have gambling debts, and he liked to have violent sex with women, then settle out of court when he was sued for causing permanent damage to their breasts and the bottoms of their feet.
The person I’d killed just before Kimbanski turned out to be only fifteen. He was a forward on the soccer team at the private high school where Arno’s son was second string in the same position. They made a big deal of a promising sports career gunned down in the street by clique violence. It wasn’t clique violence. It was Benny violence.
The news reports included a video of Arno’s son, who I knew as Little Arno, on the verge of tears talking about his best friend and their rivalry for the position and how much he would miss the other boy.
I had expected to find out that Arno was methodically killing off his rivals for some clique job, or perhaps getting revenge for some past injustice. But going through the old cases, I began to suspect he had me kill anyone who he felt was causing him a problem of any kind or degree. It became so easy, he’d even used me to get his son on the first string soccer team.
Everyone has things in their past they wish they’d not done. Everything from trying to sing Volare a capella at a party, to getting woozy and using their car as a blunt instrument. Me, I’d killed for the most insipid of reasons, money, and I felt wretched and despicable.
Arno scared me. He’d paid me to kill a fifteen-year-old boy, yet he didn’t forget anything. He didn’t need to. He felt no remorse.
“Buddy, you going to sit there staring at the screen, or give it up so someone else can use it?” The man stood over me, talking loud, so everyone in line could hear. He was a tough guy, standing there, fists balled, leaning forward on his toes, red-faced and belligerent, aware of his audience and playing a part. I had an urge then. Something worrisome, an arbitrary sort of irritation, like you get when a fly keeps landing on your hair. I figured that’s not what normal people feel. I figured that most people just get angry or hostile. But I could kill him. I could rid the world of this obnoxious nit and feel good doing it. All I had to do was grab him long enough to shove the slash thatcher deep in his ear and tic it. If I yelled, “What’s wrong!” before I grabbed him, no one would suspect a thing.
Instead, I shut down my session and walked along the waiting line. They all glared at me and looked me up and down as though trying to figure out just what a loser looked like, so they could identify one should the need arise. I smiled, just to disconcert them. Their opinions didn’t matter to me.
I walked out onto Hackson and into the slanting sun, which glinted through a break in the clouds. The wind was shoving its way west and stirring up the sandy dirt from the construction site next door. The dark mass of moving clouds made the building appear to be tipping over me and the verdigris gargoyle perched on the corner of the library seemed about to take flight. I didn’t wait.
I plodded north with my head down, looking up only at the traffic lights. I knew seeing Carla would be a mistake, but I had to go.
Everyone who’s feeling down has that impulse to feel more down, to wallow in self-pity and martyrdom. I told myself I needed to hit bottom, so I could imagine things only getting better.
Somewhere in the back of my pathetic psyche, though, there clung this hope with its head down and its feet worn raw from walking on broken glass. Somewhere down there I hoped that she would remember me and, if not, would at least still be the same person, the same Carla I’d fallen in love with. The same Carla who seemed to like Benjamin just fine.
Gov wipes people specifically to make them into someone else, someone who will be a better member of society. I didn’t know which personality shaping events and people had been removed from Carla’s memories. I didn’t know what other unrelated memories had been lost simply because of their proximity in the brain. But I still had that barefoot, hangdog hope.
I had had an immediate affinity for Carla after my last forget because I’d known her for so long and, I thought, loved her for so long, that just erasing memories of her didn’t erase her from my mind. She must have been more to me than just the memories. She must have been there in everything I did and thought. I had erased her physical presence from my memories, but her essence was still there. I was able to reconnect the dots when I saw her again, the same way you find your way to some place where you haven’t been in years, by looking around and, without remembering any specific landmarks, just going the direction that feels right. Carla was unforgettable.
The wind picked up and low dark clouds shuttered in to obscure the tops of the taller buildings and block the sunlight. I could feel the rain coming, I could smell it.
I arrived at the Unapartments around five. While I was walking up the stairs, my stomach began to hurt. I told myself it was because I hadn’t eaten all day.
Once at her door, I stood for a while staring at the paint, noticing the drip just below the number, then seeing the cross-swipe where the painter had tried to remove it with the brush after the blob had dried. What if she had no memory of me? What if she remembered more and knew I was a killer? Scenes played out in my head, a series of quick movies each ending with her calling the police to report a suspicious man outside her door.
A lean woman holding two bags of groceries in her arms and wearing a purse belted to her waist stumbled out of the vator, down the hall and around the corner, not sparing me even a glance. Perhaps I wasn’t so suspicious looking. I knocked.
I heard Carla’s voice, “Hold on a minute.”
It seemed like more than a minute before she opened the door. She wore a loose sky-blue oxford shirt and a stainless necklace, sand colored pants with open-toed black shoes. Her hair hung down and curled under at the ends. No longer was it up and away from her face, but rather enclosing her face like a dark picture frame. “Benny, I was hoping you would come by.” she said, opening the door.
That she still remembered me, was an instant thrill, a shot of exuberance that went through my whole body. That she called me Benny took that feeling away almost instantly and replaced it with a sense of dread. I didn’t know why, e
xactly, but her use of my nickname scared me.
Other than cosmetic changes, at first glance she looked like she’d looked before the police arrested her. But closer inspection revealed a lighter, easier stance, the tenseness was gone from her shoulders. Even her face hung easier on her cheekbones.
“Hello, Carla,” I said, “I haven’t been by in a while, so I thought I’d drop in and say hello.”
She’d been working at her PAL. I sat down in the soft chair and asked, “Do you still need a new apartment? There are two open in my building which would be a whole lot cheaper than this one. I could probably get you in.”
She looked at me with a smile. She didn’t smile at me as she had at Dinner that day at the Beef Tucuman. This was different. Her smile wasn’t sweet or happy or enticing. It was a placeholder. “No, I’m fine here. It’s small, but I like it.”
I’d been worried that Kumar would have her completely wiped clean. Now I was worried that he had instead accidently given her the key to her past and that she had opened the lock.
She sat down at her PAL and asked where I lived. I said, “I live at the Hacker Skyhigh on Obyeo near LaSally.”
I suddenly realized her typing was unrelated to what I had to say. I stood up to leave.
“Please stay. I have some citrus if you want some.”
“No,” I said. I had a bad feeling. I thought maybe she was telling someone I was there, asking what she should do. I had to get out. “I’ve got to be somewhere, I just had a moment. See you again.”
I ducked out and started down the stairs. I was running from something, and I didn’t even know what it was. Carla had scared me. I didn’t know what she was thinking, and it could be anything from, “Gee Benny’s a nice guy,” to “Benny’s the guy they said I was supposed to kill next.”
I ran down the stairs, out through the E’Clair Street exit and headlong into a slashing, wind-driven rain. I didn’t slow down for two more blocks.
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