The Player

by Brad Parks

  By day, Kira is one of the Eagle-Examiner’s librarians. She is twenty-eight years old and looks like a proper Irish girl, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a wardrobe that appears to have been coordinated by Ann Taylor. She is quiet, conscientious, and diligent in assisting reporters with their research needs. She sometimes puts her hair up with a pencil. And even if she does it just to be ironic, it still adds to the overall effect.

  Then night falls, and she leaves work and morphs back into her true form, which is ten tons of uninhibited impulsiveness packed into a ninety-eight-pound body. Among her body piercings are parts I have never heard my mother say aloud (hint: one of them rhymes with “Dolores”). She enjoys it when certain private acts are performed in areas that might make them available for public viewing. And her closet includes numerous outfits that most people would refer to as costumes. She’s the only woman I’ve ever met who, if you ask her to dress up as a vampiress, will ask you to narrow it down.

  I’m adventurous enough that I can keep up with her. Sort of. One of these days, it’s entirely possible she’s going to get bored by me and my white and/or blue button-down shirts—even if I am seriously thinking about adding a third color to my repertoire one of these days—and leave me by the side of the road on her way to Comic-Con.

  In the meantime, I just try to hang on and enjoy the ride. I hadn’t really decided what I felt about her, other than that I enjoyed her company. She had indicated that she felt pretty much the same way about me. During one of our rare serious conversations, she said she viewed her twenties as a time to have fun and “experiment.” She wouldn’t even think about settling down until she was in her thirties, an age she spoke of like it was a strange land she could only barely imagine visiting.

  Beyond that, we had yet to have any kind of talk about where our relationship was or wasn’t headed—or whether we even had a relationship—and I sensed neither of us was particularly uncomfortable with that. If we had to name a magazine after our arrangement, we’d call it Vague.

  “Hey, it’s good you’re here,” she said as I entered the library. “My shift ends at seven and I’m sort of under a time crunch to get out of here. It would help if I could get changed now, but I’m the only one here. Could you cover the desk for a second?”

  “What if someone asks a question I can’t answer?”—which, in matters of library science, included just about everything.

  “Just do what I do when I get stumped: pretend like the database is down and tell them you’ll e-mail them when it comes back up.”

  “And you get paid for this?”

  “Not well, believe me,” she said. Then she grabbed a bag from under her desk and hustled down the hall to the bathroom.

  I sat at her desk, mercifully alone. It was getting to be the time of night when reporters either had what they needed or had resigned themselves to faking it.

  Perhaps five minutes later, Kira emerged from the bathroom wearing a helmet and a full-body leotard that was the color of bubble gum and festooned with various insignia and patches. She looked like a storm trooper who had fallen into a giant cotton-candy machine.

  “Okay, I give up, what are you supposed to be?” I asked.

  “I’m Rose, the Pink Power Ranger,” she said, like it should have been obvious.

  “Uh, okay?”

  “I’m going to a Power Rangers revival,” she said. “I really prefer to be Lily, the Yellow Ranger. But last time there were like five Lilys and no Roses, and we couldn’t form into a Megazord. The forces of Dai Shi nearly defeated us. The only reason they didn’t is because there’s never been a Power Rangers episode where that actually happened. So we sort of won on a technicality. But it was a hollow victory.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Didn’t you play with Power Rangers as a kid?”

  “Guess not,” I said. I have dim memories of Power Rangers coming along, but I think by that point in my development, I had already moved on from things like LEGOs to larger, more challenging toys. Like redheads. If only I had been able to master them as thoroughly as I had the LEGOs.

  “Oh, then you’ll totally have to come along and check it out. It starts at seven thirty but it’s in Jersey City, so we have to hurry. If I’m late, they’ll morph without me.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want that,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Kira got a few curious looks as she threaded through the newsroom in full Power Rangers regalia. Chances were most of them didn’t know it was our otherwise mild-mannered librarian underneath the helmet.

  Except for Tina. She knew. Which was fine with me. I had expressed my interest in a relationship with her in every way I knew how and she had rebuffed me every time. If seeing me walk out the door with another woman made her jealous? Well, this may sound small of me, but: good.

  I allowed myself a quick peek at her as I rounded the corner. All I saw was Tina shaking her head.

  * * *

  We took my car and within half an hour I was in the somewhat uncomfortable position of being in a room full of people in leotards, not all of whom had bodies intended for spandex. Apparently, there was an overlap between people who liked Power Rangers and people who liked cupcakes.

  I had thought being the only person at the party not in costume would shield me from inquiry, but it turns out they just assumed I hadn’t gotten into costume yet. As a result, I was pelted with questions about whether I was going to be one of the Jungle Fury Power Rangers or one of the Samurai Power Rangers—and what color I was going to be when that happened. My answer seemed to disappoint them. Apparently there’s no such thing as the Khaki Power Ranger.

  By the time it was over, I had consumed enough of this concoction they called “Power Juice” that I tossed my keys in Kira’s direction and asked her to drive my zord—that’s what Power Rangers call their vehicles—to my dojo. Or whatever.

  I had hoped that shortly after arriving at my house in Bloomfield, I would start to be able to answer that age-old question: what does the Pink Power Ranger wear under her costume?

  Except by the time we got there, I was just drunk and sleepy and, more than any of those things, exhausted. The day had taken more out of me than I had thought. It was all I could do to make my legs move once the car came to a halt in my driveway.

  Somehow, I trudged up to the house and into my bed. I’m not sure I remember much beyond that, other than being confused. What was my problem? Had I really had that much to drink? Had I just not eaten enough munchies at the party to sop up the booze I had poured into my stomach?

  Whatever the answer, the night was pure misery. I couldn’t get comfortable. If I lay on my side, it hurt. If I lay on my back, that hurt, too. My stomach was no great shakes. The rest of me was all shakes.

  I just couldn’t get my temperature right. At first I was freezing. Then I was too hot. I would wake up drenched in sweat, only to fall back asleep and wake up shivering.

  I also kept having these strange, awful dreams. In one of them, I kept trying to file a story, only I couldn’t get my laptop to work. In another, I had been granted this exclusive interview, except I couldn’t find my notebook. Then I couldn’t find my pen. At a certain point, I couldn’t even tell whether I was awake or dreaming. I felt disoriented, whatever state I was in.

  I’m not sure I got any real sleep. But when I woke up the next morning, Kira was still there. She was dressed in librarian clothes again and was lying next to me, a damp washcloth next to her.

  “Good morning,” she said, when she saw my eyes were open.

  “Uhhhh,” I groaned.

  “You had a rough night,” she said, as if I weren’t already aware of it.

  “I can’t believe I drank so much.”

  “Oh, baby, this isn’t a hangover,” she said. “You’re sick. I took your temperature in the middle of the night and it was like 103.5. You have the flu
or something. Do you have any Tylenol? I couldn’t find any in the medicine cabinet. It would probably make you feel better.”

  I directed her to the assortment of pharmaceuticals I kept stashed under my sink. She returned with two pills and a glass of water. I accepted both gratefully.

  “You’re a total sweetheart,” I said.

  “I just wish you had let me know you were going to get sick. I could have brought my nurse’s outfit.”

  “Rain check? Pretty please?”

  She just laughed. As I chased the Tylenol with the water and lay back down, she began running her hand through my hair, which felt delightful. The drugs kicked in a little and I thought I might finally get some good sleep. I was just on the edge of it when a thought wriggled its way into my consciousness:

  “Oh, crap,” I said.

  “What?” she murmured.

  “I totally forgot, Pigeon and I are supposed to do an interview this morning.”

  I started to hoist myself out of bed, but Kira pinned me back down. For ninety-eight pounds, she was pretty strong. Either that, or I still belonged flat on my back.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “Nurse’s orders. Pigeon can handle the interview by herself. She’s a big girl.”

  I considered this and, more to the point, tried to talk myself into exerting the effort that would be required to rise, shower, drive to Newark, and be coherent. I failed to find the will to do any one of them, much less all four.

  “Okay,” I said. “But let me call Pigeon and let her know I won’t be able to make it.”

  Kira handed me the phone, and I hauled up her number in my contacts—and, yes, it was stored as “Pigeon.”

  The phone rang once, twice, three times. Then finally I heard a thin, strangled, “Hi, this is Neesha.”

  “Pigeon, it’s Carter. You sound worse than I feel.”

  “I feel awful, too,” she said. “I was up all night. I think I’ve got the flu or something.”

  I felt a small prickle at the base of my spine. And it wasn’t just from the chills. What were the chances that two able-bodied, healthy young people would simultaneously come down with the influenza virus during a time of year when it was not normally known to be circulating?

  Very slim. I called in my regrets to Jackie Orr, telling her I had taken ill and asking her to reschedule until the next morning. And by the time I hung up, I was thinking, What if this isn’t the flu?

  What if it was the same thing that killed Jackie’s grandmother?

  Mitch DeNunzio always thought the mob got a bad rap.

  Yeah, they ignored some laws. But only laws that were dumb in the first place. And, yeah, they killed people. But only people who deserved to die. And, yeah, they made money. But what’s the point of being in the United States of Freakin’ America if you can’t make a little money?

  In a strange way, he always thought some of his crime-family associates were the most principled people anywhere. They had rules and expectations—a code, as Hollywood liked to call it. They followed the code. And as long as you did, too, there was no problem.

  Take, say, your friendly neighborhood bookie. Talk about a law that deserved to be broken: the ridiculous prohibition against gambling on sports, something that existed in forty-nine states (bravo, Nevada) for no other reason than that this country was founded by a bunch of Puritans. Now, sure, the local bookie was, technically, operating outside the law by taking bets on sports. But he was also providing a service that people clearly desired.

  And he did it in an honorable way. He took all kinds of bets, whether he wanted to or not. If you won, he paid promptly. If you lost, all he expected was the same courtesy.

  Now, if you couldn’t pay? Well. In the short term, if you were a good customer, he might be understanding about a momentary shortfall. But if you still didn’t pay? Well. Didn’t he have the right to get upset?

  He did. And there was no problem with that, where Mitch was concerned. Because the rules and expectations were clear all along. All the bookie was doing was following them.

  Face it, from a moral standpoint, other industries—the supposedly legal ones—weren’t nearly as clean. Take those scumbag bankers who threw the economy in the crapper with all the subprime-mortgage stuff, or the Wall Street types who gambled with people’s retirement money, or CEOs who bolstered their bonuses by slashing the salaries and benefits of their workers. You want to say they’re better than mobsters?

  Truth was, Mitch slept fine at night. He was proud of the business he did. His old man had been what some would call a loan shark. Mitch never called it that—“shark” was such a loaded word. Plus, it had this small-time connotation.

  Mitch wasn’t small-time. And he thought of himself more as a venture capitalist than as a lender. He did his research. And when he put his money in a project, it was because he knew it was going to provide the kind of return that assured the borrower would be able to return Mitch’s principal to him, with a reasonable rate of interest to compensate Mitch for his trouble and risk.

  McAlister Arms had attracted his eye for a while. It was just the kind of project he liked—big, complicated, and lacking in oversight. There would be money flowing into it (and out of it) for years. And jobs. And contracts. These were the kind of things that were the grease for his wheels.

  He just had to make sure his piece of it was protected. Like a good venture capitalist, he wasn’t going to just throw his money at it and walk away. He kept tabs on his projects, made sure they stayed on track. And if he had to do a little something here or there to nudge it toward success?

  Well.

  Sometimes, that’s just what a good venture capitalist did.

  CHAPTER 2

  Upon making the startling deduction that I had contracted the Ridgewood Avenue Mystery Disease—courtesy of some as-yet-undetermined toxin that had now invaded my body—I responded in the only way I could, given the circumstances: I took a nap.

  I was prepared to remain prone for the rest of the day, but several hours later I began to feel marginally better. I woke to the sound of moaning, then realized it was my own: Kira was giving me a nice back rub. That gave me enough strength to get on my feet and into the shower. When I got out, I found a note from Kira, saying she was due at work.

  It was disappointing, but she had been thoughtful enough to anchor the note with a Coke Zero. Like most journalists, I am a hopeless caffeine junkie. Unlike most journalists, I hate coffee. Hence, my caffeine-delivery mechanism of choice is whatever diet beverage the Coca-Cola Company has whipped up lately. Kira and I had not known each other very long, but she already understood and appreciated how a cold Coke Zero could make everything right in my world.

  Thus fortified, I was again feeling human enough to face Tuesday and the same quandary that had occupied my mind on Monday: what, exactly, was making people sick?

  This time, however, I had new information, namely my own experience. And that ruled out a lot. After all, I hadn’t drunk the water, eaten the food, licked the walls, or done any number of things that might have exposed me to a variety of pathogens.

  All I had done was sit on the couch and breathe the air. And since I had never heard of couch-sitting leading to a pandemic—well, unless you considered watching Jerry Springer a form of disease—that left me with the air as the most likely culprit. What was fouling the skies in that tiny little piece of the South Ward?

  The highway seemed like a tempting possibility, but I had to rule it out. The way Jersey people drive could make anyone sick, sure. But if there was truly something noxious being ported along Interstate 78, there would be more than just a few folks who happened to live just off exit 56 getting sick.

  It had to be something industrial. And there, New Jersey in general—and Newark in particular—had a long and tainted history. Over the past three centuries or so, the city had been a world leader at making everything from leather to plastics. It was good business back in the day, but a lot of the chemicals used in t
hose processes were still just sitting there hundreds of years later—and would be for all eternity unless someone cleaned them up. New Jersey’s reputation as a toxic-waste dump is both unfortunate and, largely, unfair. But it’s not entirely unwarranted.

  Fact is, there was all kinds of unimaginable goo lurking under our state’s surface. Was something from long ago finally working its way to the surface? Had it been on top all along and was just now being stirred up? Whatever it was, some trace amount of it must have wormed its way into people’s lungs. Including mine.

  By the time I arrived at work, I thought that was the worst of my problems. Then I was confronted by a more immediate one: Tina Thompson was standing in front of the elevator, waiting for it to go in the same direction as I was.

  Avoiding Tina had been high on my list of things to do, for reasons more professional than personal. But it was going to be difficult to accomplish that while riding up in the same elevator car. And even though she looked terrific—from floor up: calf-length black boots, gray tights, black skirt, form-fitting white blouse, curly dark hair swept up in a clasp—I tried not to look at her too much. There was no sense in antagonizing her.

  “Good morning or, wait,” she said, briefly glancing at her watch, “make that good afternoon.”

  “Hi,” I said, keeping my eyes on the numbers as they ticked upward.

  “Hey, I still need you to look at that recycling story in your basket,” she said, without any hint of rancor.

  “Okay,” I said. I was waiting for a riposte of some sort, but none was forthcoming. Instead, we reached the floor for the newsroom and she gave me a cheery “See ya!” as we departed.

  Suspicious, I logged in to my computer as soon as I got to my desk and hauled up my ode to reuse. Given Tina’s previous comments about the story being unfit for the paper it would be printed on, I expected to see a file awash in red, which was the color editors’ notes appeared in. But there just a small parcel of red text at the top: