The Inner Circle (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  The Kid’s mother chewed and sipped silently from her chair. Carmen went about her task without any complaint or show of impatience.

  “His eyes were still open and for some reason I thought he was still alive. But he wouldn’t answer me when I said his name. So I ran home. I ran straight home and found my dad and told him what happened. My dad took me back out to the field. He found my brother and he just ... he started crying. It was the first and last time I ever saw him cry. He picked up my brother and carried him the entire way home. He put my brother in the car and drove away to the hospital. He had never even said a word to my mother. She had been home the entire time, gardening or whatever. And then it was just me there, watching my dad drive away with my brother, and I didn’t want to go back inside. I didn’t want to tell her what had happened.”

  The sandwich gone, Carmen offered the pink cup one last time. When the Kid’s mother refused it, Carmen took a napkin and wiped the corners of the old woman’s mouth.

  “Anyway, I knew I couldn’t stay outside forever, so I went in. My mom was there, but I didn’t tell her anything. I just went to my room and shut the door and cried. And my mom, she knew I was home, that my dad had gone off somewhere, but she didn’t know where my brother was. So she sat by the window for him. She just sat there. And even when my dad came home, told her what happened, she refused to believe him. I think ... I think that’s when the screw in her head really started to come loose.”

  Carmen gathered the plate and the cup and brought them to the kitchen. She went about cleaning up without a word.

  The Kid glanced back at her, then at his mother, and whispered to me, “Sometimes she has good days, sometimes bad. Today’s another bad day.”

  I said nothing.

  “Go ahead, Ben. Ask your question.”

  “What question?”

  “You want to ask, why don’t I put her in a home?”

  Carmen washed her hands at the sink. Dried her hands on a towel and walked back into the living room, sat down beside the old woman.

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “First,” the Kid whispered, as if he didn’t hear me or just didn’t care, “because she’s my mom. And second ... because of Hickory View.”

  I thought about that brick building, about the Halloween decorations, the Norman Rockwell calendar and the bowl of Hershey’s Kisses. I thought about Phillip Fagerstrom and his dark eyes as he stared back at me, his angel of death.

  “You don’t really expect the same thing would happen, do you?”

  “I’m not talking about the building blowing up. But every time I think about putting her in one of those places, I remember what it looked like. I remember how you wrote about it. And that old man, the one that was just coughing and coughing and nobody did anything about it, nobody came to help? I just ... I couldn’t do that to her. It wouldn’t be right.”

  We stood in silence for a couple long seconds. Then the Kid muttered, “Fuck it,” and turned away, went and opened one of the cabinets. He brought out a box of Orville Redenbacher. He opened one of the bags, tossed it into the microwave, closed the door, and hit the popcorn button.

  As the microwave hummed to life, he said, “Believe it or not, I’ve been trying to stay away from this shit. I don’t have the metabolism for it I once had, and I don’t have time to go to the gym.”

  “Then why are you making it now?”

  “I’m fucking nervous.”

  A minute and a half later, the microwave pinged. He opened the door and carefully brought out the steaming bag. The smell of artificial butter was intoxicating. He dumped the popcorn into a large plastic bowl, held it out to me.

  “Want some?”

  I shook my head.

  “More for me then.”

  He opened the basement door and disappeared down the steps. I started to follow but stopped, turned to check on the old woman one last time. Carmen sat beside her, a book now opened in her lap, just reading while the Kid’s mother continued staring out the window and waiting for a son who would never return.

  36

  I sat down beside the Kid and said, “So what do we have?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “What’s your first impression?”

  “That we may have just opened a big fucking can of worms.”

  The Kid clicked the mouse, typed some commands, and a window popped up on the screen.

  “What are these?” I asked.

  “Folders. Eleven of them.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope. Just these.”

  “And?”

  “Notice how they’re labeled?”

  I did. Below each folder was a single word, or hyphened word, all starting with the letter B.

  Bellman, Boots, Bonnet-Maker, Barrister, Broker, Billiard-Marker, Banker, Butcher, Baker, Beaver. And, lastly, Boojum.

  “Recognize where they come from?”

  I nodded. “The Hunting of the Snark.”

  Like the Kid, I had already read over the nonsensical poem a dozen times. It was about a crew of ten lead by the Bellman, whose map of the ocean was a blank sheet of paper, on their hunting expedition of a snark. All of the labels were the ten members of the crew, except for Boojum.

  The Kid was already opening the folders, skimming through the emails. He had started with the first one: Bellman.

  “Why not start with Boojum?”

  “Because if this is the can of worms I think it is, then knowing who Boojum is is the very last thing I want to do.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but it didn’t matter anyway. Within minutes he had skimmed through all the emails. Apparently there weren’t many.

  “Looks like Carver was reaching out,” the Kid said, and stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

  “For what?”

  “Here’s how he started out every email.”

  The Kid made another circle with the cursor, and I leaned forward and read the simple line:

  I’m currently on the hunt for a snark named Caesar.

  That was it. Carver didn’t even sign his name, though the email came through with the sender simply identified as Man of Honor. And if the intended parties knew anything of Caesar and Simon and the games, it was safe to assume they already knew everything there was to know about Carver Ellison.

  “Who are they?”

  The Kid kept skimming, opening one folder and then closing another. “People high up in the government. FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security. There’s even one from the Secret Service, and another from the Pentagon.”

  “Were there any replies?”

  “A few. Luis Thackray of the CIA—labeled under Boots—responded with a standard spam warning form, detailing what would happen if Carver didn’t take him off his list immediately. The same with Demetrius McGowan of the NSA—labeled under Beaver—though his was a little more crude.”

  The Kid clicked the mouse and again made circles with the cursor. There was McGowan’s message, simple and to the point:

  Fuck off, asshole.

  “Well that isn’t very professional,” I said.

  “Few in the NSA are.”

  “None of the others responded?”

  The Kid opened another window. “Bernard Jardine of Homeland Security did. He’s listed as Barrister.”

  “What did he say?”

  The Kid shoveled another handful of popcorn into his mouth and pointed at the line with the cursor.

  Who all is in your hunting party?

  “What was Carver’s response?”

  “There wasn’t one. At least not here.”

  “Do you think he contacted Jardine another way?”

  “I have no idea, Ben. I know just as much as you do.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why haven’t you opened the last folder yet?”

  The Kid went quiet, looking away from me. Above us, a soft patter of footsteps sounded, no doubt Carmen heading into
the kitchen, maybe to refill that plastic cup the Kid’s mother didn’t seem very interested in. I wondered just how many hours passed through a day where the Kid hid himself down here while his mother sat in her high-backed easy chair, waiting and watching for a son long dead. Surely Carmen wasn’t here day and night. Was there a night nurse, and if there was, did either nurse know what the Kid truly did with his time?

  “Kid?”

  He sighed. “I have a bad feeling about it.”

  “Pardon me for saying so, but right now I don’t give a shit about your feelings. Carver obviously wanted us to find this and do something about it, so let’s do it.”

  The Kid’s hand hovered over his mouse, motionless. He said, “Aren’t you going to talk about it?”

  For some reason I thought he meant his mother.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  The Kid glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “You read it, didn’t you? I saw you on the plane. You went through every document and news article. You pieced it together just like I did.”

  “So?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think there’s more to the story than you’re letting on.”

  The Kid’s hand finally settled on the mouse. He moved the cursor around the screen in a wide circle.

  I said, “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t make me kick your ass in your own house.”

  He stopped moving the cursor around, leaned back in his chair. “Did anyone ever tell you you would make the perfect dinner guest?”

  “Kid.”

  He took a deep breath, crossed his arms. “Once Carver graduated high school he went to West Point. After he graduated he went straight into the FBI. Started working in the Crimes Against Children program but was reassigned two years later.”

  “Why was he reassigned?”

  “Carver never told me, but from what I can tell he got too involved in the investigations. Wouldn’t let certain cases go. The FBI doesn’t like to live in the past, and it certainly doesn’t want to waste time on cases they don’t think they’re going to break. So they move on. Carver wouldn’t.”

  “So they put him on the terrorist stuff.”

  “No, they put him in cyber investigations. Online scams, child pornography, all that clean and fun stuff. Put him in a room with a computer, got him away from doing what he really cared about. Then they moved him to the terrorist stuff. And after a year or two ... well, he forever became known to the Inner Circle as the Man of Honor.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Not completely. You remember Carver talking about his supervisor, the one he thought turned him in to Simon?”

  “What about him?”

  “Did Carver ever tell you his name?”

  “No,” I said. “But what—” I stopped, sat up straighter in my seat. “You don’t think ...”

  “His supervisor’s name was Edward Stark. I completely forgot about it until I saw the other people on this list.”

  “Stark as in snark?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  The Kid clicked the mouse and the folder labeled Boojum opened. And there, inside the file, were several email correspondences from the Man of Honor to FBI Assistant Director Edward Stark.

  “I told you I had a bad feeling about this,” the Kid said. “Say hello to our boojum.”

  37

  According to the time stamp on the first email Carver had sent—to Dominic Kilford of the FBI, aka Bellman—nearly an entire year had passed. This was a year after Carver and his people saved me from my game, when he first became aware that there was an almighty Caesar pulling strings. We had been able to learn nothing about this Caesar—we hadn’t been able to learn much at all about anything—so Carver had decided to make his own furtive inquires. Had he known these people in his past life? Possibly. But even if he had known them, there was no guarantee they weren’t in Caesar’s pocket.

  A year ago he contacted Dominic Kilford. When there was no response, he went to the next person. How many people he had planned to contact in all was impossible to say, but clearly, based on the way he had labeled the folders, he had intended on ten. Then, when those ten fell through, he contacted an eleventh person, his old supervisor at the FBI. The first form of contact had been only five months ago, with Carver’s opening salvo:

  I’m currently on the hunt for a snark named Caesar.

  That had been sent, according to the time stamp, at 10:17 PM. I wondered where I had been at the exact moment Carver typed out those ten words and hit the send button. Certainly I had been at the house, probably downstairs in the living room with Maya and Jesse. Maybe we had been watching a movie to unwind. Carver usually went to bed early and shut his door and didn’t reappear until early in the morning. In the back of my mind I had probably wondered what he was up to, but knew that if he wanted any of us to know, he would have said so.

  Edward Stark’s reply came at 9:48 the next morning:

  You aren’t the only one. I’m sorry about what happened.

  Nearly an entire week passed before there was another email. I could almost picture Carver hesitantly typing the few words, maybe deleting and retyping them several times. After trying ten others, here he finally had a lead. But just how solid was it? As far as Carver knew, the man on the other end of this email had been the one who turned him into Simon. In the end, Carver asked the most important question as simply as he could:

  Who is he?

  Later that day, Edward Stark replied:

  No clue.

  For several weeks, there was no interaction—at least, none that hadn’t been deleted. Whether Carver had contacted Stark another way, it was impossible to know, but nearly a month passed before Carver wrote:

  How high does this go?

  For two days there was no reply. Then:

  To the top. We should meet.

  Again, several weeks passed without any correspondence. This had been during the spring, and I tried remembering what Carver’s mood had been like. In the past year he had become withdrawn, but it had been gradual, so much so that those close to him, who talked to him every day, might not have noticed it. I certainly hadn’t.

  Carver finally responded:

  Who turned me in?

  Stark replied only a few hours later:

  No clue. We should meet.

  It was probably this second suggestion that they should meet which caused there to be another gap in their communication, this time nearly two months. There was a very strong chance that Edward Stark had been in league with Simon and Caesar from the beginning. Carver had probably contacted him on a lark, not expecting anything. Now a shadow of doubt had formed. If Stark was in fact clean, meeting might not be a terrible idea. But if Stark was in fact dirty, then Carver would be walking into a trap.

  “He never said anything to you about any of this?” I asked.

  The Kid shook his head, staring at the computer screen. “Not one word.”

  The next email, dated only a month and a half ago, was from Carver:

  How do I know I can trust you?

  Stark replied the next day:

  You don’t. But you can.

  Four hours later, Carver wrote:

  How much do you even know?

  The next morning, Stark replied:

  More than most people, but not nearly enough.

  Four weeks passed. Carver wrote:

  I would rather talk first. Where can I reach out?

  Two days later, Stark replied with a phone number and said:

  It’s a burner. Call any time.

  The Kid said, “Son of a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “Two weeks ago Carver called me. Said he wanted to fly out here for something.”

  “He didn’t say what?”

  “No. But now I think it was to call this guy.”

  There was one email left, dated just last week. Thursday, Carver wrote:


  New game has started. Will call once it’s over.

  “Fuck,” the Kid said.

  I shook my head slowly, my eyes fixed on those two sentences. “Why would he let him know that? He fucking led us into a trap.”

  “Maybe he was testing the guy.”

  “Yeah? Well it got him killed.”

  The Kid closed out the folder. He went to reach for more popcorn, hesitated, and then sat back in his chair, crossed his arms. We were silent for a long time. Above us, the sound of a television had come on in the living room, what sounded like Wheel of Fortune.

  I said, “We need to kill this motherfucker.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  “I would give anything to hear this guy’s voice. Just to talk to him for a minute.”

  The Kid looked at me, a thoughtful expression on his face.

  “What?”

  He smiled. “I have an idea.”

  38

  One thing about the Kid, he always had a trick up his sleeve.

  This time he had three.

  The first was not only did he have a secure phone line, but it was so secure that if anyone tried tracing it, the signal would bounce all over the globe before eventually landing up somewhere in New York City’s Penn Station.

  The second was a program that could analyze the other speaker’s voice. Any traces of uncertainty, doubt, even bullshit, the program would detect immediately and would represent via different colored lines bouncing across the screen. The program was, the Kid admitted, 90% accurate.

  “Seriously?”

  He shrugged. “Okay, maybe eighty percent.”

  I just looked at him.

  “Fine,” he said. “Seventy-five percent.”

  I kept looking at him.

  He sighed. “Okay, maybe sixty percent. Fifty at the very least.”