Selected Stories: Volume 1

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Maybe you’d better tell me, Mr. … uh?”

  “Hendergast. Lionel Hendergast. And I read the terms of the contract very carefully before we went back in time. It didn’t say anything about deep-fried artichoke hearts.”

  I sighed. “What was your location, Mr. Hendergast?”

  “Santa Cruz Boardwalk. The place with all the rides and the arcade games. They have concession stands and—”

  “Sure, but when was this?”

  “Umm, two days ago.”

  I hate having to pry all the obvious information out of a client. “Not in your time. I mean in real time.”

  “Oh, um, fifty-two years ago.”

  “Ah.” I made a noise that hinted at a deeper understanding than I really had, yet. “One of those nostalgic life-was-better-back-then tours.”

  Now he sounded defensive. “Nothing illegal about them, Mr. Paramus. They’re perfectly legitimate.”

  “So you said. But someone must think you broke the rules, or you wouldn’t have been arrested. Was this person allergic to artichoke hearts or something?”

  “No, not at all. And it wasn’t the artichoke hearts. I was just trying to prevent him from buying them for her. I didn’t want the two of them to meet.”

  A light bulb winked on inside my head. “Oh, one of those.”

  “Altering history” cases were my bread and butter.

  The jail’s attorney-client meeting room wasn’t much better than a cell. The cinderblock walls were covered with a hardened slime of seafoam-green paint. The chairs around the table creaked, and veritable stalactites of petrified chewing gum adorned the table’s underside. Since prisoners weren’t allowed to chew gum, their lawyers must have been responsible for this mess. Some attorneys give the whole field a bad name.

  Lionel Hendergast was in his mid-twenties but looked at least a decade older than that. His too-round face, set atop a long and skinny neck, reminded me of a smiling jack-o’-lantern balanced on a stalk. His long-fingered hands fidgeted. He looked toward me as if I were a superhero swooping in to the rescue.

  “I need to understand exactly what you’ve done, Mr. Hendergast. Tell me the truth, and don’t hold back anything. No bullshit. We have attorney-client privilege here, and I need to know what I’m working with.”

  “I’m innocent.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Listen, Mr. Hendergast—Lionel—my job is to get you off the hook for the crime of which you’re accused. Let’s save the declarations of innocence for the judge, okay? Now, start from the beginning.”

  He swallowed, took a deep breath, then said, “I took a trip back in time to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk to 1973, as I said. You can get the brochure from the time travel company I used. There’s nothing wrong with it, absolutely not.”

  “And why did you want to go to Santa Cruz?”

  He shrugged unconvincingly. “The old carousel, the carnival rides, the games where you throw a ball and knock down bottles. And then there’s the beach, cotton candy, churros, hot dogs, giant pretzels.”

  “And artichoke hearts,” I prodded.

  Lionel swiveled nervously in his chair, which made a protesting creak. “Deep-fried artichoke hearts are sort of a specialty there. A woman nearing the front of the line had dropped her wallet on the ground not ten feet away, but she didn’t know it yet. In a few minutes, she was going to order deep-fried artichoke hearts—and when she discovered she had no money to pay, the man behind her in line would step up like a knight in shining armor, pay for her artichoke hearts, and help her search for her wallet. They’d find it, and then go out to dinner. The rest is history.”

  “And you seem to know the details of this history quite well. What exactly were you going to do?”

  “Well, I found the woman’s wallet, on purpose, so I could give it back to her. Nothing illegal in that, is there?”

  I nodded, already frowning. “Thereby preventing the man behind her from doing a good deed, stopping them from going to dinner, and”—I held my hands out—“accomplishing what?”

  “If they didn’t meet, then they wouldn’t get married. And if they didn’t get married, then they wouldn’t have a son who is the true spawn of all evil.”

  “The Damien defense doesn’t hold up in court, you know. I can cite several precedents.”

  “But if I had succeeded, who would have known? There would’ve been no crime because nothing would have happened. How can they accuse me of anything?”

  “Because recorded history is admissible in a court of law,” I said. “So by attempting to keep these two people from meeting, you were effectively trying to commit a murder by preventing someone from being born.”

  “If, if, if!” Hendergast looked much more agitated now. “But I didn’t do it, so how can they hold me?”

  The legal system has never been good at adapting to rapid change. Law tends to be reactive instead of proactive. When new technology changes the face of the world, the last people to deal with it—right behind senior citizens and vested union workers—are judges and the law. Remember copyright suits in the early days of the internet, when the uses and abuses of intellectual property zoomed ahead of the lawmakers like an Indy 500 race car passing an Amish horse cart?

  Now, in an era of time travel tourism, with the often-contradictory restrictions the companies impose upon themselves, legal problems have been springing up like wildflowers in a manure field. Aaron Greenblatt and I formed our partnership to go after these cases. We are, in effect, creating major precedents with every case we take, win or lose.

  Where was a person like Lionel Hendergast to turn? Everyone is entitled to legal representation. He didn’t entirely understand the charges against him, and I was fairly certain that the judge wouldn’t know what to do either. Judges dislike being forced to make up their minds from scratch, instead of finding a sufficiently similar case from which they can copy what their predecessors have done.

  “Do you ever sit back and play the ‘What if?’ game, Mr. Paramus?” Lionel asked, startling me. “If a certain event had changed, how would your life be different? If your parents hadn’t gotten divorced, your dad might not have killed himself, your mom might not have married some abusive truck driver and moved off to Nevada where she won’t return your calls or even give you her correct street address? That sort of thing?”

  I looked at him. Now we might finally be getting somewhere. “I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life. Four times, in fact, including the alternate-ending version. I’m very familiar with ‘What if?’ Who were you trying to kill and what was the result you hoped to achieve?”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill anyone,” he insisted.

  From the frightened little-boy expression on Lionel’s round face, I could see he wasn’t a violent man. He could never have taken a gun to someone or cut the brake cables on his victim’s car. He wouldn’t even have had the stomach to pay a professional hit man. No, he had wanted to achieve his goal in a way that would let him sleep at night.

  “The man was Delano R. Franklin,” he said. “You won’t find a more vile and despicable man on the face of this Earth.”

  I didn’t want to argue with my client, though I could have pointed out some pretty likely candidates for the vile-and-despicable championship. “Much as it may pain me to say this, Lionel, being unpleasant isn’t against the law.”

  “My parents were happily married, a long time ago. My dad had a good job. He owned a furniture store. And my mom was a receptionist in a car dealership—a dealership owned by Mr. Franklin. We had a nice home in the suburbs. I was supposed to get a puppy that Christmas.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Four.”

  “And you remember all these details?”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “Not really, but I’ve heard about it a thousand times. My parents couldn’t stop arguing about that day my dad took time off in the afternoon. He decided to surprise my mother over at the car dealership by bringing her a dozen long-stemmed roses.”
<
br />   “How romantic,” I said.

  “At the car dealership they take a late lunch hour so they can take care of the customer rush between noon and one. When my dad couldn’t find anyone at the reception counter, he went to the back room and opened the door—only to find my mom flat on the desk with her skirt hiked up to her hips, legs wrapped around Franklin’s neck, and him pumping away into her.”

  It wasn’t the first time I had heard this sort of story. “I can see how that would ruin a marriage.”

  “My dad went nuts. He tried to attack Franklin and as a result, ended up in jail with charges of assault. Franklin had most of our local officials in his pocket—small town. At first my mom insisted that Franklin threatened to fire her if she didn’t have sex with him. In the resulting scandal, she changed her story, saying that the affair had gone on for a while, that Franklin wanted to marry her. My parents split up, but as soon as the divorce was final, the creep wanted nothing to do with her. He kicked my mom out. She had no job, and by that time my dad had lost his furniture store.”

  “Sounds like a mess. So what happened to little Lionel?”

  “We lived in Seaside, California—that’s not far from Santa Cruz and Monterey. My dad got drunk one day and drove too fast along Highway 1.”

  I’d been there. “Some spectacular cliffs and tight curves on that stretch of highway.”

  Miserably, Lionel nodded. “The road curved, and my dad went straight. Suicide was suspected, but nobody ever proved it. Then, one day my mom just packed up, dropped me off at foster care, and left. Said she hated me because I was just like my father. I lived in six different homes until I was sixteen and old enough to emancipate myself.”

  I tried to sound sympathetic. “Not a very happy childhood.”

  “Meanwhile, Delano R. Franklin did quite well with his car dealership. In fact, he opened three more. He married some bimbo, divorced her when she got wrinkles, then married another one. Never had kids, but I think his wives were young enough to be his daughters.”

  I wanted to cut the rant short. “All right, but what does this have to do with deep-fried artichoke hearts?”

  Tears started running down his cheeks. “I remembered my mother yelling at Franklin once. He had wooed her by telling romantic stories, describing how his own parents met. The man who would be Franklin’s father came to the rescue, helped find a lady’s wallet at the artichoke stand, took her out to eat … and eventually spawned this inkblot on the human race, a uniting of sperm and egg that any compassionate God would have prevented!”

  I paced around the table, locking my hands behind my back. “So you figured that if you kept Franklin’s biological mother and father from meeting, he would never have been born, your parents’ marriage would have remained happy, and your life would have been wonderful.”

  “That’s about it, Mr. Paramus. But Franklin had someone watching me, so I got caught.”

  “Watching you? How could he possibly have suspected such an absurd thing?”

  “Because I, uh …” Lionel blushed. “I told him. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted the scumbag to know he was about to be removed from existence.”

  I groaned. In this business, the only thing worse than a hardened criminal is an unconscionably stupid client.

  “You have to get me out of here, Mr. Paramus!” Given the circumstances, an unreasonable demand. “That holding cell is a nightmare. It smells. There’s no privacy even for the toilet, and they took blood samples to test me for HIV and other diseases. They drew my blood! That means other people in the cell must have those terrible diseases. What if I—”

  “It’s just standard procedure, Lionel.” I snapped my briefcase shut. “Let me work on this and see what I can come up with. I’ll try to get you bail. I’ll talk to Mr. Franklin and his attorney on the off chance I can get them to drop the charges.”

  It was certainly a long shot, but I wanted to give poor Lionel something to cling to.

  I set up a meeting in the “boardroom” of the dumpy offices Aaron and I shared. I doubted I could impress Delano Franklin, but maybe I could convince him it wasn’t worth the trouble to press charges. Lionel Hendergast had almost no money, and when I learned who Franklin had hired for his own counsel to go after civil damages, I knew that money—or at least showmanship—would be a primary factor in this case.

  If you look in the dictionary next to the definition of the word “shyster,” you’ll find a picture of Kosimo Arkulian. He was overweight, with thinning steel-gray hair in a greasy comb-over that fooled nobody. He wore too many rings, too many gold chains, and a too-large gold watch, and he spoke too loudly. You’ve seen Arkulian on television with his boisterous ads, flashing his jewelry and his smile, treating everyone with a hangnail of a complaint as the next big millionaire in the lawsuit sweepstakes.

  When Arkulian sat down beside his client, I could tell it was going to be a testosterone war between those two men. Both were accustomed to being in charge.

  I gave my most pleasant smile. “Can I offer you coffee or a soda?”

  “No, thank you,” Franklin said.

  “This isn’t a social call,” Arkulian answered in a brusque tone.

  “There’s always time for good manners.” I looked at the clock on the wall. It was 1:00. “How about Scotch, then?” I had to get Franklin to take something. “Or a bourbon? I have a very good bourbon, Booker’s.” From my research, I knew Franklin was quite fond of both.

  “If your bourbon’s expensive, I’ll have one of those,” he said.

  Arkulian shot him a glance. “I wouldn’t advise it—”

  “I’m not going to get sloshed,” Franklin said. “Besides, I see a genuine irony in soaking this guy for a good expensive drink.”

  Arkulian grinned. “Then I’ll have one, too.”

  I had been careful to wash everything in our kitchenette before the meeting started. I quickly poured three glasses of fine bourbon, neat, and handed one to Franklin and one to Arkulian. The third I placed in front of me in a comradely gesture, though I barely sipped from it. I had a feeling I’d need to keep my wits sharp.

  Franklin looked like a distinguished late-middle-aged businessman gone bad. If groomed well, he could have fit comfortably into any high-society function, but he had let himself grow a beer gut. His clothes were garish, something he no doubt thought younger women found attractive. The ladies probably laughed at him until they found out how much money he had, then they played along but still laughed at him behind his back.

  I tried my best gambit, pumping up the sob story, practicing how it would sound before a jury, although it was unlikely this case would ever go to trial. The law was too uncertain, the convolutions and intangibilities of time paradox too difficult for the average person to grasp.

  “None of this has any bearing on what your client tried to do to my client,” Arkulian said. “Sure, the poor kid had a troubled life. His mother had an affair with my client some twenty-six years ago, which led to the breakup of his parents’ marriage. Boo-hoo. As if that story doesn’t reflect half of the American public.”

  Maybe your half, I thought, but kept a tight smile on my face.

  “Mr. Hendergast attempted to murder my client. It’s as simple as—”

  Impatient with letting his lawyer do all the talking, Franklin interrupted. “Wait a minute. This is far worse than just attempted murder.” As if he needed the fortification of liquid courage to face what had almost happened, Franklin grabbed his tumbler of bourbon, and took a long drink. He set the glass down, and I could see the smear his lips had made on the edge. “If Lionel Hendergast had gunned me down in the parking lot of one of my car dealerships, he might have killed me, yes, but my legacy would have been left behind—my car dealerships, my friends …”

  “Your ex-wives,” I pointed out.

  “Some of them remember me fondly.” He didn’t even blush.

  Arkulian picked up the story. “You see, what Mr. Hendergast was attempting to do would have e
rased my client entirely from existence. He would have obliterated the man named Delano R. Franklin from the universe, leaving no memory of him. Nothing he ever accomplished in this life would have remained. Complete annihilation. An unspeakably heinous crime! And if Mr. Hendergast had succeeded, it would have been the perfect crime, too. No one would ever have known what he did, since there would have been no evidence, no body, no victim.”

  I had heard my share of “perfect crime” stories, and I had to admit, this ranked right up there with the best. I didn’t offer them another drink. “What exactly is it you want from my client?”

  “I want him to go to jail,” Franklin said. “I want him to be locked up so that I don’t have to worry every morning that he’s going to sneak back on another time travel expedition and try again to erase my existence.”

  Arkulian smiled and folded his fingers. I couldn’t imagine how he could fit them together with all those rings on his knuckles. “I’m guessing the publicity on this case will give a remarkable boost to my business—and don’t expect me to believe you haven’t thought of the same thing, Mr. Paramus.”

  He was right, of course. I shrugged. “Publicity is free, after all, and TV ads are a bit out of my price range.” Ambulance-chasing seemed to be paying off quite well for Arkulian. I couldn’t resist taking a small jab at him. “How much do ten of those rings cost?”

  Miffed, Arkulian stood up. “If there’s nothing else, Paramus? We’ll see you in court.”

  I let the two men show themselves out, staying behind in the boardroom. When they were gone, I took a clean handkerchief, carefully lifted the near-empty bourbon glass Franklin had used, and made sure there were sufficient saliva traces on the rim. This was all I’d need.

  Predictably, a media frenzy surrounded the case. Arkulian held a large press conference in which he grandstanded, accusing me of leaking the story in order to get publicity. Within an hour I had a press conference of my own, accusing him of the same. Both of us received plenty of coverage, and neither of us ever admitted to making a few discreet phone calls and tipping reporters off.