Maiden Lane

by Christopher Blankley

The agents nod and turn for the door.

  “Wait!” Eve calls out. She’s looking down at the desk. She picks up her purse and her shawl and tosses them aside. She reaches down and picks up the American eagle letter opener. “What is this doing here?”

  No one answers. Eventually, Tusk says weakly, “It’s a letter opener.”

  “If he didn’t take this, what did he take?” Eve scans the desk, frantically. “What’s missing?”

  “What are you talking about?” Tusk asks.

  “He was supposed to take the letter opening before you arrived in the room. If he didn’t take this, he must have taken something else...WHAT’S MISSING?”

  “Umm, umm...” Tusk looks over the desk. “...err...the Willie Mays autographed baseball!” he says triumphantly.

  “A baseball?” Eve looks at him in terror, brandishing the letter opener. “A baseball? He really is gone!”

  “What?” Tusk realizes the implication, suddenly angry. “You mean, this is all part of your Rubrics?”

  “Of course it is! Do you think you’re so perfect that Junior can’t predict your actions too!” she turns to the agents. “Find him!” Her voice echoes around the library.

  I’ve heard enough. I’m no longer concerned about silence. I sprint from the window, running around the conservatory. The car is still there. I try the driver’s door. It’s unlocked. I climb inside.

  The keys are in the ignition. I start the engine and put the car in gear. I tear away in the gravel, bringing the car around in a wide arc.

  It sounds like I’m finally one step ahead of them all. Eve’s voice, yelling ‘He’s really gone!’ rings in my ears. I step on the gas. All I’ve got to do is keep things unpredictable. The driveway is long and twisting, but the performance sedan takes the gravelly corners without difficulty.

  Okay, so what’s the last thing on earth, a guy like me, who’s had a day like I’ve had, going to do?

  The front gates of the estate, bearing Tusk’s name, are in front of me. They’re open, letting yet another limousine inside. I thread neatly between the car and the iron gates. I’m out onto the dirt, country road behind.

  Yeah, what’s the last thing in the world, right now, I want to do?

  Head back to New York, I answer.

  Chapter 15

  I abandon the car in Flushing. It’s a government vehicle, after all; I’m sure it can be tracked. And a car isn’t really doing me any good. The closer I get to Manhattan Island, the crazier the roads start to get. The news was right, the drop in the stock market has started some sort of widespread panic. The parkway out of town is jammed with people hoping to flee civilization before it collapses in on itself. The roads heading into town are no better. Everyone seems to be out and about, protesting the government, fighting each other, or just loading up to run for the hills.

  I pass a main street of stores, all with their windows smashed in. Looks like the looting has started early.

  I ditch the car down a residential street, leaving the keys and my white waiter’s jacket in the front seat. Before I leave, I check the trunk, hoping for a little surprise. I’m not disappointed. It is a Secret Service car, so there’s a full tactical load-out in the back, all snug in high-impact cases, with foam lining – a couple of machine guns, a sniper rife, body armor and hand grenades. I pass all that up and help myself to a black handgun. I slide a magazine into the hilt and hide the gun away in the back of my pants, under my silk shirt. It sticks out, but I’m not too fussy.

  By the time I’m back on Manhattan Island, I’ve picked up a dark, black hoodie from a looted discount store and traded the trousers of my bespoke suit for a pair of cargo shorts. I pop out of a subway station on the Upper West Side. The city is quieter here than out in Queens. The subway was still running but almost completely empty. I think I might have caught the last train. As I climb the stairs up to the street, an MTA worker is closing the metal gates in front of me. I have to sprint to make it out before he hurriedly padlocks himself inside the gate.

  I don’t think he likes the look of me. I don’t much either, noting my reflection in the windows of the empty Starbucks. No more hand-sewn Savile Row tweed. But I still have the shoes. I look down at the beautiful, perfect shoes, and my heart sinks. They’re almost dead – I’ve almost killed them, all caked in mud and grime and oil. I can see my sock through the toe of the left one. It’s just not fair, not fair at all. They deserved so much better. Why do such beautiful things have to suffer so? Today of all days...what a day for shoes like these to come into my life! Yesterday, tomorrow, perhaps they might have stood a fighting chance. But today…

  I put one foot in front of the other, letting what’s left of my beautiful shoes take my weight. “It’s not far now,” I tell them. “Only a few blocks. And then you can rest.”

  Yeah, I’m talking to my shoes. Get over it. I just jumped out of helicopter. And lived. I get to talk to my shoes.

  It takes me ten minutes to reach my destination. The building looks quiet from across the street. The lobby is empty. I watch the front door for a good fifteen minutes, hiding behind the stairs of a brownstone down the street. I’m half expecting Eve to pop up in some sort of crazy outfit. But nothing happens, nobody comes or goes. Eventually, I decide the coast is clear and head into the lobby. I take the elevator up to the eighteenth floor.

  I’ve had Logan’s address in my phone for years. Of course, up until this moment, I’ve never bothered to drop in. Not until the whole world is collapsing down around my ears.

  I ring the doorbell to apartment 1815.

  My face is bruised and bloodied. I have the hood of my sweatshirt up. There’s a gun in the back of my shorts. I’m every bit the sort of trouble nobody would want showing up on their doorstep in the dead of night.

  Logan opens the door. He’s eating. He doesn’t even bother to look at me, just turns and walks off, back toward his couch, leaving the door open. “Y’alight, mate?” he says over his shoulder.

  I step inside, warily closing the door behind me. Is this some sort of trick? After everything, I wouldn’t be surprised. I scan Logan’s apartment. Everything looks normal. He’s watching the news. Protests in front of a certain President’s midtown skyscraper.

  “Logan...” I begin. I feel like I should explain. He’s not paying attention. “I...you don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  “Surprised?” This makes Logan turn around. He laughs, his mouth full of chicken or something. It’s not a pretty sight. “Why would I be surprised, you narna?”

  “Well-”

  “I mean, I pick you up, you tell me that yarn about the Masons. Then I get home, and this is all over the telly.” He points at his flat panel. “I’m not wondering if you’re going to show up mate, I’m just wondering when!”

  That makes a certain kind of sense. I pull my hood back, unzipping my sweatshirt.

  “Get comfy, mate.” Logan turns back to the television. “It looks like the end of the world.”

  I let myself relax. This is no trick, this is just Logan’s apartment. For the first time that evening, I realize that I’m finally free of it – of whatever game Eve and Tusk have been playing with me. What did she say? I took the baseball, not the letter opener? I don’t know exactly why that matters, but if it means Eve is no longer two steps ahead of me, then I’m glad I did.

  I take off my sweatshirt, remove the pistol from my shorts and hide it inside. I place the whole ball down on a chair and then move across the room to the couch.

  “Crazy, huh?” I say, dropping down next to Logan.

  “Insane, mate,” Logan doesn’t look away from the action. “Absolutely mental. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve lost!” He points at a laptop on the coffee table. It shows a bunch of lines, zigzagging down from left to right. “I mean, I can tell you EXACTLY how much money I’ve lost, but I don’t care! I really don’t! ‘Cause it ain’t just me, mate, it’s everyone. All them Masons, too. They’re really getting it, good and hard. You know wha
t they say, the bigger you are...”

  “It’s not the Masons,” I tell Logan, rubbing my face.

  He splutters, incredulously. “Not the- he...you need a beer?”

  “Yes!” I really do.

  “Just a sec,” Logan puts his chicken down on the table and heads off toward his small, galley kitchen.

  “I stocked up!” he calls back from the kitchen. “You know, when it started to look like Armageddon. Figured I’d need plenty of beer. Got plenty of loo roll, too. Can’t run short of that. My old Nan was in the Blitz, you know. Rationing and all that. She always told me: Logan my boy, be sure to keep extra bog paper on hand. ‘Cause you never know when you’re going to be wanting. And the Lord’s truth, you don’t want to be wanting for that.”

  While Logan is talking, my attention strays away from the television. I’ve lost interest in the ‘Never Tusk’ protest. I glance around me, looking over Logan’s stuff. He’s done well for himself. The apartment is small, but all the furnishings are very nice. Not a bad place to wait out the end-of-the-world, I think.

  Then I see it: the picture on the side table, by the couch. It’s Logan and me, back in college. Smiling and laughing, handsome and young. It’s Logan and me and...a girl...

  It’s her. It’s really her, in the picture. Eve. But how can that be? She’d looked vaguely familiar, that first time we’d met in the elevator. But...no. I can’t be her. It just can’t. I jump to my feet and snatch up the picture, looking closer.

  It’s her. It’s really her, five years younger, but just as beautiful. Her hair is short and she’s wearing a Caltech sweater, but...it’s her. And that means...

  I glance back at the kitchen. Logan is fishing out two bottles of beer, still blabbing on about his Nan. I put the picture down, cross the room and pick up my hoodie. I take the gun from underneath.

  When Logan turns around, I have it leveled at his head.

  “Jesus!” he screams and drops both beers. They hit the linoleum and explode. “Where’d you get that?” He raises his hands.

  “I’ve had enough, Logan,” I say. “I’ve really had just about enough. Where is she?”

  “Where’s who?” Logan plays it dumb.

  “You know who!” I wave the gun, then yell to the room. “Okay! You can come out now!”

  But nobody replies.

  “Who are you talking to?” Logan asks, petrified.

  “Her!” I bellow. “Her!” I point to the picture.

  “Who?” Logan is simultaneously terrified and confused.

  “Her!” I say again. I step back to the couch, not lowering the gun, and toss the picture at Logan’s feet.

  He picks it up and looks at it, none the wiser. “Who? Stacy?” he says.

  “Her name is not Stacy!” I yell back.

  “Yes it is!” Logan nods, like he’s talking to a madman. “Stacy. You remember Stacy...my girlfriend, junior year...” He puts the picture down on a bookshelf, raising his hands back in the air.

  Now that he mentions it, I do remember a Stacy...but...no…

  “Come on Roddy, my old mate,” Logan eggs me on. “You remember Stacy. She moved to Phoenix, with that hippie guy who drove the Datsun 210. I was broken up about it for weeks.”

  “Stacy?” I ask, confused. I’m still pointing the gun at Logan’s head.

  “Yeah, Stacy. She ain’t here, mate. She’s a thousand miles away.”

  “No, she’s the girl in the elevator. In the subway.”

  “Nah,” Logan shakes his head. “Nah, she might look like Stacy, but it ain’t her. I think maybe you’ve been working a little too hard. You said yourself you’ve been seeing things.”

  “I’m not seeing things!” I bark. “It’s Red Shield!”

  “It’s what?”

  “Red - Never mind. That’s her, the girl from the elevator. The girl who’s been chasing me all over town. And if that’s Stacy, that means you’re in on it, too.”

  “No, Roddy, my man, no! I’m not in on anything,” Logan lowers his hands. I brandish the pistol at him and he quickly raises them again. “You’ve got to believe me! Maybe that is Stacy, I don’t know! But I haven’t seen Stacy in years!”

  “It can’t be a coincidence!”

  And as if to let me know that is wasn’t, the doorbell chooses that exact moment to chime.

  Chapter 16

  “Who could that be?” Logan laughs nervously.

  “Who indeed?” I look at Logan down the sights of my gun. I remember the commitment I’d made to doing exactly the opposite of what I’d normal do. Well, shooting Logan in the head and leaping out of the window felt like exactly the last thing I’d do. On a normal day.

  But then...it could be anyone at the door. Maybe Logan ordered a pizza? It could be a Jehovah’s Witness with insomnia. Shooting Logan felt very permanent, regardless of his allegiance to Red Shield. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  I back up across the room, not taking the gun off Logan. He doesn’t try to move. When I’m at the door, I turn the handle. It’s not locked.

  I steal a glance to see who’s at the door. Just as I’d guessed. I didn’t really need the proof. I should have just shot Logan.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Eve asks. She steps into the apartment and closes the door behind her. She’s not wearing any sort of costume – no evening gown, or combat gear – just a coat and pants and her hair tied back.

  “Stacy!” Logan laughs, realizing how bad all this looks. “What a surprise! You look good.”

  “Logan,” she nods. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Cut the crap!” I yell.

  “No, no!” Logan waves his hands in panic. “Love, you got to tell him! This is the first time we’ve seen each other in years! Stace...pet...you’ve got to tell him!”

  I look at Eve, she’s looking at Logan. “Well?” I ask.

  “Shoot him or not...” She shrugs. “...it’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “No! No! Wait!” Logan is absolutely melting down.

  I’m not paying attention. “Is this some sort of trick?” I ask Eve.

  “No, no more tricks,” Eve answers. “I just came here to talk.”

  She walks over to the couch and sits down, turning the TV off.

  I lower the gun.

  Logan instantly turns off the waterworks. “You’re not going to shoot me?” he asks hopefully.

  “Not right now,” I answer. But I don’t put down the gun. I pick the picture up off the bookshelf and hand it to Eve. “Care to explain this?”

  Eve looks at the picture. She smiles. “What’s there to explain? You don’t remember?”

  “Vaguely,” I scratch me head. Now it’s coming back to me. We smoked an awful lot of pot in those days: Logan, me and a girl, up in our dorm room. That could have been her. “You and Logan?”

  “For about six months.”

  Logan laughs. “See?”

  “But now you work for Red Shield? Did you back then?”

  Eve sighs. “I don’t work for Red Shield. Well, not exactly. I work for an organization called The Foundation. The Foundation’s goal is to guide and protect humanity – steer its course.”

  “Into the hands of Red Shield?” I add.

  “It’s not like that.”

  “No? But, even back then...” I show her the picture again. “...you were working for this Foundation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is more than just tonight?”

  “Yes, Roderic,” Eve acknowledges. “We’ve been watching you for a very long time.”

  “Err, sorry to interrupt,” Logan interrupts. “But what hell is going on?”

  “Yeah,” I wave the gun at Logan supportively. He winces. “What the hell IS going on?”

  “We needed you to answer a question,” Eve replies.

  “What lies at the end of Maiden Lane?” I repeat. Eve nods. “Why is that so important?”

  “It’s not, in and of itself. But if you’d been able to cor
rectly answer the question, you’d have certainly been on the right track.”

  “Right track to what?”

  “To fix this,” Eve turns the TV back on. It looks like the protests have turned violent...or celebratory. It’s hard to make out, watching it on TV, if the whole thing is one blow-out New Year’s Eve party or a riot. Perhaps both. Are people actually welcoming the end-of-the-world?

  “How can I fix that?” I laugh. I don’t find it funny.

  “With Megalytics,” Eve replies.

  “Megalytics can’t fix that...whatever that is,” I dismiss.

  “Yes it can. And that’s the answer to the question. That’s why I’m here. And that’s why I was there, too.” She points at the picture. “Megalytics holds the answer to fixing all of this: the stock market crash, the economic damage and resulting social unrest. Red Shield has predicted it.”

  “Predicted it?” I ask. “How?”

  “Well,” Eve thinks for a moment. “With Megalytics.”

  I’m confused. So is Logan. “Wait? Somebody stole Roderic’s maths?”

  “No, not exactly...” Eve scratches her head.

  “Then what?” I ask, angry.

  “Well...that’s how I’ve been able to predict your movements around town – showing up before you, places you don’t even know you’re going yourself. That’s what Megalytics does.”

  “My math can’t do that!” I scoff.

  “Yeah, yeah it can!” Logan add excitedly. “You said so yourself, in the car. Taking into account every possible decision, and every possible outcome, at every intersection on every road, the numbers get really, really big, really, really fast. Then you get a flock of seagulls, or something...and stuff...and I sort of stopped listening after that...”

  “We call it the Rubric,” Eve says. “The probability matrix of all input and all outputs. It’s where your math would have taken you, Roderic, in five to ten years.”

  I’m appalled, angry, hurt. How does she know where my math would have taken me in five to ten years, if I don’t even know? “But even if such a calculation was possible, it would take a computer of unimaginable power to perform it. No such computer exists on this planet.”