by B. V. Larson
“I don’t remember much,” I admitted.
“Well, work with what you have, then. That’s all any of us can do.”
After that, he shooed me away. I left even more determined to learn the truth.
When I stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway, I encountered the opposition. There stood McKesson and two red-faced security men. None of them was smiling.
“You’ve been in there to see the old man?” McKesson asked me. “You’ve got more balls than brains, you know that, Draith?”
“I’ve heard that,” I said. I looked past the two security guys. They had a gurney with them. A large, lumpy mass filled the body bag on the gurney. “Bernie, I presume?”
McKesson gestured furiously for the security men to take the body down the hallway. They did so, and I had no doubt there was a waiting ambulance outside in the alley. I felt sure the paramedics didn’t have their flashers on, and I doubted they would take the body to the city morgue.
“What do you do in cases like this, Jay?” I asked McKesson. “I mean, do you have a big hole full of bones in the desert somewhere? Or do you have a one-way garbage chute set up to dump your waste into the world of the Gray Men? Is that why they are so pissed off?”
McKesson laughed unpleasantly. “That would be pretty cool, actually.”
“So, what do you want to do next?” I asked.
McKesson’s hand slipped down to his gun. He did it in a natural motion, as if he were adjusting his clothing. He smiled at me confidently.
“It’s time to take you in, Draith. You’re interfering with my job. Sorry, it’s nothing personal.”
I didn’t plan to turn around and let him snap cuffs on me. He read my eyes, and gave a tiny nod. Neither of us said anything. He made his move, and I did the same. Both of us pulled our pistols out and had the barrel in the other guy’s face.
“No plans to come along quietly, eh?” McKesson asked. He jerked his head toward the elevator. Is Rostok dead up there? Did you manage to take out the old man too?”
I glared at him. “We had this argument when we first met. I’m not an assassin.”
“All I know is that people keep dying around you, Draith. Important people.”
I decided to take a chance. Probably, in retrospect, it was a foolish chance. I grabbed his gun hand with my left and pushed it aside. At the same time, I pushed my weapon into his throat.
There were two dry clicks. McKesson had pulled the trigger. I’m not sure if the gun would have taken part of my face off, if it had fired. It was being pushed off target—but he had fired pretty fast. McKesson must have figured he had to shoot.
“What the hell?” he gasped. For perhaps the first time since I’d met him, I saw real fear in his eyes.
“Your gun misfired,” I said. “Happens all the time. I guess I just got lucky. You should buy the good ammo next time, not that cheap South American crap.” I knew, naturally, that luck had been with me. I’d grabbed his gun with my left hand—with the very finger that wore Jenna’s ring. The ring was, in fact, in direct contact with the metal of his weapon.
He stared at me for a second, baffled. “You’re so crazy. I could have taken your head off.”
“But you didn’t. Now drop it.”
The gun thumped down. Apparently, he was in no mood to try his luck against my weapon. I turned him around and cuffed him with his own cuffs. I tucked his gun into the front pocket of his jacket where he couldn’t reach it. I walked him to a door marked trash room a hundred steps down the hall. It was locked, but my sunglasses opened it, and after that the rolling steel doors that let out onto the parking lot.
“Where’s your car?” I asked.
“They’re watching us on camera by now. They know.”
I thought about that. Maybe he was right. “I know they’re watching. But I’m working for Rostok now.”
He jerked his head to look at me. I ignored him. It was hard to bluff a cop, especially this one. Whatever the case, we made it to his car unmolested. I let him sit in the passenger seat with his cuffs on while I drove. He wasn’t happy.
“They are going to fry you for this, you know that, don’t you?” he asked me.
“There’s nothing here to fry,” I said. “I’m empty. I’m a ghost without a past.”
“What are you talking about now?”
I gave him my story, telling him about my missing memories. He stared at me with growing apprehension. Clearly, he figured I belonged in a straitjacket.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I headed south, turned east on Sunset, and pulled over at Sunset Park. It was dark now, and there were only a few kids and weirdos around. I dug in the glove compartment.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
I had figured him for a habitual quitter. I found his pack of emergency smokes and a lighter in the glove box. I took out the lighter. McKesson fell quiet as he watched me. It was as if he suspected I was going to singe his eyebrows with the lighter. I remembered him pulling the trigger of his pistol, and thought to myself he’d look pretty funny without eyebrows.
I took the picture of my parents out of its case. There it was: a baby in a bounce chair. My smiling parents clustered close around me, my dad’s arm extended to full length to get the shot. If that baby was me, I’d never looked happier.
I flicked the lighter. It took three tries to get it to catch. These cheap safety lighters always hurt your thumb. I sat there behind the steering wheel, breathing hard. This was more difficult than I’d thought it would be. I told myself the flame would only mar one tiny corner.
I held the picture in my left hand and the lighter in my right. I didn’t put the flame under the picture, but instead brought it down from above to a corner. It took an effort of will, but I touched the flame down to the least interesting corner of the photo. There was no one there, I told myself. The lighter would only blacken what looked like a refrigerator in the background. It would give the picture a bit of character, that’s all.
The flame touched the picture for a half second, then I pulled it away. I was sweating.
“Your family?” McKesson said.
“I think so,” I said, flicking the lighter again. It had gone out.
“Nice-looking couple. You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Throw it all away. Burn your past.”
I studied the photo. Was it a little browner in that corner? It was hard to tell. I turned on the car’s dome light and inspected it.
“You know, you’ve been through a lot lately,” McKesson was saying. “People often give up when under heavy stress. I know some people you can talk to.”
I let my hands drop to my lap. “Would you shut up?” I asked. “This is hard to do.”
McKesson’s soft-guy voice vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “All right, asshole. Just tell me straight, are you going to do yourself, me, or the both of us?”
I stared at him for a second. “I’m not shooting anyone. I’m trying to see if this picture will burn.”
Again, he gave me that wary stare. I could tell he still thought I was crazy, but this time, he was certain. I flicked the lighter and held it under the picture again. I touched it there, then pulled away, then did it again. Finally, I held it there for ten long seconds, then I let the lighter go out. I held the picture under McKesson’s nose.
“There,” I said, “see? It’s an object. That’s why it survived the wreck, my burned house—everything.”
McKesson’s eyes traveled from me to the picture and back again. “Maybe it has a coating, or something.”
“No, no, man,” I said. I grabbed the picture again and tried to rip it in half. This act was relatively easy now, as I no longer believed I could damage the picture. The paper flexed and folded, but didn’t tear. It was like the strongest plastic I’d ever tried to rip.
“You see?” I asked him. “It’s an object. Like your watch. They ca
n’t be destroyed.”
“Who told you that?” he asked. He stared at me like I was some kind of homeless junkie talking about my secret invisible friends. Was it possible he didn’t know all that much about the objects in general?
“Let me show you,” I said coldly, putting the picture against his shoulder. I was tired of people telling me I was crazy. I knew what I knew. I aimed my gun at the picture and made sure there were no organs behind the spot.
“What the fuck are you—” he began.
I pulled the trigger. Inside the enclosed car, the bang was deafening, followed instantly by the sound of the bullet ricocheting and a weird cracking noise. I’d angled the gun so the ricochet wouldn’t hit me, but the moment after I did it, I realized it had been a dumb, impulsive move.
McKesson roared in pain, twisting around.
“You shot me. I can’t believe it. You shot me.”
“Calm down. You’re not hit, and the bullet could’ve just as easily hit me. And look…”
I held the picture up. It was perfect. There wasn’t even a crease. McKesson stared. He looked down at his shoulder. There was no hole—no blood.
“Where’d the bullet go?”
I pointed to the windshield. There was a new star of shattered glass there, right in front of his face.
“It bounced off the picture then punched through the glass. You’ll have a bruise, but you’ll be fine.”
McKesson stared at me, fear battling with anger. Then, finally, he broke into laughter. It was the laughter of a man reprieved. “You’re crazy,” he said, but there was a look almost like admiration on his face.
I shrugged. “I just have nothing left to lose.”
“You know how much a windshield costs?” McKesson asked, shaking his head and nursing his shoulder.
“So you believe me now?” I said.
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to shoot me.”
“Remember those two dry clicks?” I asked him. “Now we’re even.”
We glared at each other quietly for a second.
“Those dry clicks were a cop’s reflex,” he said finally.
“I’ve felt the same urge. But now we have to work together.”
“So how many damned objects do you have?”
“One too many. I don’t know what this picture does, but I know it was the one I started with.”
McKesson eyed me. “I’ll give you some new information about these things.”
“What?”
“Uncuff me, and I’ll tell you.”
I thought about it, and then nodded. “Truce, though, right? No more guns?”
“OK, Scout’s honor.”
I didn’t trust him worth a damn, and I didn’t think he’d ever been a Scout, but I figured we were even now. I put my gun in my pocket and released him. I watched him warily, expecting to get punched. He rubbed his wrists and his bruised shoulder.
“No wonder the perps hate cuffs,” he muttered.
“Do you have something to tell me, or was that bullshit?” I asked.
“I don’t know that much. I only have one, and I know how to use it. Most of the time, I try to avoid them, or eliminate them, or return them to their powerful owners. That’s my job. I’m a peacekeeper and for that, the Community likes me and gives me—special considerations.”
“Go on.”
“The objects are all trouble. Every one of them will give you bad luck in the end, and using them is like bad karma. The main reason for this is they tend to attract one another. Power draws power to itself—no one I’ve talked to knows why. That’s one reason why you’ll tend to meet people with only one object. The more objects you have, the more bad things tend to be attracted to you. Like gravity.”
“I don’t follow,” I said, although it sounded a lot like what Jenna had told me before. “You should still run into people with more than one object. I mean, if they attract one another, then someone is bound to mug someone else and have two objects.”
“Right. But the thing is, those people usually end up dead—really fast.”
We cruised for a time, but McKesson’s watch ticked away normally, showing the proper time rather than indicating a new rip in space. Deciding to call it a night, I talked McKesson into dropping me off on the Strip. It was getting late, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep for hours. I thought about visiting Holly and Jenna, but I figured they were probably safer on their own than hanging around with me and my load of objects. Besides, I wasn’t quite sure what to do next.
The gaudy lights were still on, but the Strip was relatively quiet. During the day, all six lanes were buzzing with tourists. After 2:00 a.m., the sparse traffic consisted largely of cabs and cop cars. Walking north, I passed the Miracle Mile shopping mall and continued on to the mini Eiffel Tower, where construction projects were underway. They always seemed to be building something new along the Strip. Besides the cabs, tourists, and cops, there was a significant population of…unusual people. I passed a man wearing a well-used backpack. He had a bushman’s beard that was shot with gray-white stripes. His glasses were shaded green, but appeared to be prescription. Despite the cool night sky, his face was leathery from a thousand sunburns and he wore a cap with a visor like a duck’s bill. Like so many before him, he sized me up as I approached the lamppost where he’d stationed himself. I could almost see the gears working. I looked like I had more money than he did, but he could tell I wasn’t likely to give it to him. Out of habit or sheer stubbornness, he tried to talk to me. The unintelligible words came out as a wheeze.
“No money,” I said.
He shook his head, indicating that wasn’t what he was asking for. I had no idea what was on his mind, but I stopped and rummaged in my pockets. I found McKesson’s cigarette pack and lighter. I must have shoved them away automatically. I wasn’t sure if I was a smoker or not, but either way I didn’t want to try one. I might be kick-starting a dead habit. I handed them over.
They were received with an appreciative cough. “Thanks, buddy,” I heard.
I kept walking. A cluster of businessmen approached next. Their conversation was loud and alcohol-fueled, punctuated by laughter. I thought to myself that here, at least, were some people enjoying themselves. When we drew close and passed by, my one body to their four, they stepped aside and quieted. They gave me as much space on the sidewalk as they could.
Why was that? I asked myself. How did they know I was different? What instinct or facial expression had tipped them off? Sure, I had a gun in my pocket that probably still stank of gunpowder from being recently fired. But they had no way of knowing that. I wore fresh clothes, including a hoodie, but I wasn’t bug-eyed and scowling. Still, they somehow knew to be wary.
The encounter disturbed me more than others I’d had because I’d already begun to suspect I was a walking disaster. The more I learned of my life, past and present, the more it involved danger for anyone who came near.
What had Rostok said about my past? To work with what I had. That meant the photo, I’d supposed at first. I had studied it, and come up blank. There was no date on the back. The picture looked new, even though it had obviously been taken many years earlier. I suspected that was due to the fact that it was an object. If they couldn’t be burned, they were probably immune to the effects of time as well.
What else had he said? He’d asked me about my earliest memories. He seemed unsurprised I’d lost my memory. There were no questions about that. Was amnesia so common a thing that it would go unremarked upon? I didn’t think it was. Where did that leave me? I thought hard for a while, and there was only one person I could come up with: Dr. Meng. She’d let me go and asked me to keep doing what I was doing, to get at the bottom of the deaths. I certainly hadn’t found many answers, but I knew enough to make a report. I decided I would return to the sanatorium in the morning and talk to Meng again. Maybe, with the new information I had, she could fit more pieces into this puzzle, and we could help each other.
At the next corner, I paused for a re
d light near a bus stop. Two Asian girls leaned sleepily together on the bus stop bench. Their heads touched to form a pyramid for mutual support. One wore a spray of magenta spikes, while the other’s hair was a tropical blue. They both sported nose rings and clusters of what looked like staples punched through their ears. Flame-shaped tattoos grew up out of both their blouses to lick their necks. They were young and pretty, despite their best attempts to the contrary. I could tell they were tired, rather than destitute. The pair caused me to smile faintly. They were only travelers, far from home. I suspected the dyes could be washed out and some of the metal bits were just clip-ons. Maybe the matching tattoos were spray-ons as well. In any case, they were clearly up past their bedtime.
Something about the two girls on the bench made me dig out my cell and call Holly. I figured she’d probably gone home by now. I’d avoided it up until now, not wanting to explain Jenna or apologize for meeting her. There had been a waiting game going on between us, I realized. Neither of us had called the other all day. I had to admit, there had been a lot going on and I hadn’t really thought about it much. But I figured she probably had been thinking about us. I wasn’t sure how my call would be received. Had she grown angrier, or cooled off? There was only one way to find out.
“Hello?” a familiar voice said.
She had answered on the second ring at 2:00 a.m. I figured that was a good sign.
“Hi,” I said, trying to sound neutral, as if all was well. “I’m out on the Strip—”
“Looking for another place to stay the night, is that it?” she snapped.
“I was the one who took you in last time.”
“Still, you’re looking for a bed, aren’t you? What happened? Did she have to go home to take care of her kids?”
“Holly, you’re jumping to conclusions.” I was going to continue, but hesitated. I’d been about to say that Jenna and I had never slept together—but we actually had slept in the same bed. Then I was going to say we hadn’t had sex—but we had kissed. And I’d have been lying if I said there wasn’t something going on between the two of us. I felt a little hot, despite the cool evening breezes.
