In My Memory Locked

by Jim Nelson

  "So what?" Brandt made a weak step forward. He attempted to make a book of poetry appear menacing. "I'm calling the cops."

  "Yeah, why don't you do that." Aggaroy motioned his head backwards toward the office. "It'll be fun to hear you explain how Dr. Lund got to be dead right after you dropped in to talk with her."

  Brandt stuttered. "I can explain that."

  "I'm sure you can," Agg said. "Why don't you let me try first."

  Aggaroy brought his girth closer. If the holographic projector could emulate all five senses and not just sight and sound, no doubt we would have smelled Aggaroy’s woodsy aftershave and the strong peppermint gum he liked to chew.

  "Your uncle the mayor is running a tight race against the mayor of this city," Agg said. "Uncle Don hears of an old, old film that might give him an edge against his opponent. This film shows the mayor of San Francisco's wife doing some pretty damn horrific things. It's old, but not so old that people would instantly forgive her. Hell—" Aggaroy chuckled. His girth shook with each throaty guffaw. "People don't forgive for much of anything anymore. People have long memories these days. Long, unforgiving memories."

  "Who are you?" Brandt said.

  "Then Uncle Don goes searching on the Old Internet and discovers the film's missing. No film means no advantage over his opponent."

  "What are you doing here?"

  "What's interesting is what you're doing here," Agg said. "You're here because the lead of this film was a patient of the psychiatrist growing cold in the other room. You thought you could buy the file of that patient from his old shrink. Now you're thinking you can break into her safe. Her patient might still have a copy of this film, right? You've already approached the director of this film. You reached out to the cameraman too. They're married today, which is inconvenient for you because they don't want anything to do with the film anymore. How am I doing? This all sound familiar?"

  "How do you know all this," Brandt said blankly.

  "Because that's what I'm paid to do," Agg said, gum popping. "Next time you travel, do a better job covering your tracks. And mute your memex, for godssake. It's nothing at all for me to look up all kinds of information about you right now."

  "I—I didn't—" he said, feeling around the back of his neck.

  "You don't care about the director or the star of the film. You just want your hands on that movie, don't you?"

  Brandt needed a moment. He hoarsely whispered, "That's all I want. You're right, we went looking on the Old Internet, but it was gone. I mean, we know it used to be there. There were literally thousands of copies. Now we look and it's gone. We think Elgin Clift, the man who runs the island, we think he's friends of Faye Justin—"

  "You can forget all that," Agg said with some impatience. "The reason you can't find the film is because I have it." He thumped his forefinger against his sternum twice. "I stole every copy of that film out from under Clift's nose."

  Clift stepped around the projections. “Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve altered this,” I said.

  “The neural signatures prove the authenticity of these memories,” Clift said.

  “How much did you offer this Dr. Lund?” Agg asked Brandt.

  Brandt produced a familiar envelope. Agg riffled through the stack of bills it held. He slapped the packet against the palm of his hand with the crack of a barber’s strap.

  “I have a proposal,” he told Brandt. "It's a win-win proposal. You get what you want and I get what I want."

  Brill halted the projections. Before Clift could speak, I told Brill, “Take us to Aggaroy cracking that safe.”

  The holographic projector animated us inside Dr. Lund's closet once more. Brandt stood helplessly behind Aggaroy, the book of Shakespeare’s sonnets open in his hands, while Agg manipulated the wall safe’s touchscreen. An optical cable glowing pale blue extended from the back of his neck to a block of equipment on the floor below the safe. Another cable ran from the equipment to the safe itself. After a minute, the door popped open.

  “All right, give me—” Brandt rushed forward.

  Aggaroy could hit like a player on the gridiron. He side-armed Brandt. The young man crashed into the coats stored on hangers on the side wall.

  “Not so fast,” Aggaroy said.

  Agg turned to a hard-shell equipment case propped open on a folding chair. He opened a side compartment and removed from it a blue data brick flecked with mercury flakes.

  "What's that?" Brandt said.

  "The film," Agg announced. "Detachment."

  He set the data brick in the safe atop a stack of folders and slammed the door shut. The touchscreen cycled, indicating it was re-locking.

  Brandt panicked. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  Agg carefully detached the cable from the back of his neck. He flexed his jaw and stretched his neck in circles to work out the soreness.

  “I’ve modified this safe’s locking software,” he told Brandt. “I installed a neurotrap. It’s called a rabbithole. So don’t think you can just recite those lines of Shakespeare again and open it. It’s not that simple anymore.”

  “What’s going on?” Brandt said, almost shouting. “What are you doing?”

  “Listen,” Agg said. “You’ve got a dead psychiatrist in the refrigerator. You’ve got in this safe a data brick stolen from a Federal facility that could make or break the next election.”

  “I'm paying you for that film.” Brandt's weasel voice sounded demanding and pleading at the same time.

  “I don’t trust you,” Aggaroy said. “You’ll screw this up.” He began putting away his equipment, one piece at a time, in the hard-shell case.

  “You can trust me,” Brandt said, again in that high-pitched weasel voice.

  Aggaroy clapped his hands, hard, four inches before Brandt’s face. Brandt’s head jerked back, sending the projections into a backwards spiral. I heard Leigh on the other side gasp from the sudden motion.

  “If this gets back to me, I’m through,” Aggaroy said in a soft yell. “Besides—” He fluttered the packet of money before Brandt’s nose. “This isn’t enough. On top of that, if I give your uncle that film, I have to be sure it's not traced back to me. Understand?”

  Brandt’s breathing was measured and hard, like coming up from a dive in the deep end.

  “What do you want of me?” he asked Aggaroy.

  Aggaroy closed and latched his suitcase of equipment. He lugged it from the closet and, breathing hard, practically dropped it on the patient’s couch.

  “That friend of mine I told you about,” he said.

  “Naroy?” Brandt asked.

  “That’s him. I think I know how we’re going to fix our problems.”

  Brill cut it off there. He fast-forwarded through a day of Brill’s memories—eating take-out pizza, taking a crap, getting drunk in Lund's office, jerking off to bad Nexternet porn in Lund's bathroom, the same bathroom he'd soon be dead in.

  "Ellis Brandt lived in her office," Clift explained to Leigh.

  "While she was in the refrigerator?" Leigh said with a measure of disgust in her voice.

  I said aloud and to no one, “What is Agg talking about when he says I can fix their problems?"

  Brill resumed playback after untold hours of memories had passed. Brandt stood in the rain on Market Street, drops pelting his hat and sleeves with round hollow plunks. A yellow police line hung draped across the intersection like Fourth of July bunting. A pair of uniformed SFPD stood before the onlookers. Brandt’s attention remained on Stevenson Alley half a block away. He craned his neck to peer toward the entrance of the Palace Hotel.

  A statuesque Gannon towered beneath the eaves of the main entrance. He glowered at the police huddled on the street opposite. Aggaroy had brought a lot of unnecessary attention to the Justin campaign headquartered nine floors above.

  Off to the side came a voice. “This guy says his name is Naroy," one cop called out. "Didn't Talley say to send him through?”<
br />
  Brandt’s attention swiveled down the police line.

  “Send him through,” the other cop called back.

  Brandt eagle-eyed me as I ducked the police line and approached the huddle of detectives at the head of Stevenson Alley. My shoulders were hunched over and my neck extended forward, loping and Neanderthal-like. I would be on the boat to Alcatraz in two hours’ time.

  “So Brandt returned to Agg’s corpse after the fact,” I said. “Show me Brandt killing Aggaroy.”

  Brill switched off the projector and raised the lights. The holograms sizzled off as they evaporated. In their absence, only charged dust motes floated through the air. We stood about the perimeter of the dissipated stage, Clift, Leigh, and I, three points on a triangle circumscribed by a circle of memories.

  “Ellis Brandt didn’t kill Michael Aggaroy,” Clift said calmly. “He made Dr. Lund’s office into a tiny little apartment during his stay in San Francisco. A nice way to avoid a hotel bill, I have to say. And, yes," he said to Leigh, "he was sleeping in Lund’s office while her corpse was cold in the refrigerator. Most importantly, he was in her office the night Aggaroy was murdered. His memex proves it.”

  “Impossible,” I said.

  Brill delivered the memex to Clift.

  “Ellis Brandt’s alibi is rock-solid.” Clift tossed Brandt’s memex up with one hand and caught it with the other. “If you want to know who killed your friend, you’ll have to do better, Mr. Naroy.”

  35.

  At the wet bar, I considered refilling my drink. I’d barely touched the Scotch. With the stakes this high, I certainly didn’t need any alcohol in me.

  I said, “A lot of people think you’re trying to rewrite history.”

  His face broke the slightest of smiles. “Is that what you hear?”

  “People think you’re editing the past out here to benefit yourself and your friends. Or to make political favors. For a price.”

  “Outrageous,” he said. “I admit, when I first assembled the corpus here on the island I did attempt to minimize George Drake’s contributions. But I copped to that mistake.” He lowered his voice. “I may be many things, but I’m not corrupt.” He said it like he meant it, which shows how corrupt he really was.

  “Then why didn’t you correct those edits you made? Why does the Old Internet still list you as the creator of the corpus? Why is George Drake’s role still erased?”

  “Like the greetings spray painted around this island welcoming Indians, my edits are now a part of the Internet’s history. I vowed to let them stand, just as I would not dream of erasing the paint the Indian movement used across this island in 1971.”

  Leigh remained waiting on the other side of the room. Her petite creamy-white face glowed in the green-shaded lights of the study lamps down the length of the table.

  “I guess your definition of ‘corrupt’ is different than mine,” I told him. “But never mind that. I believe you. I think you truly are concerned with keeping the Old Internet preserved."

  "I am."

  "And for that, you killed Agg. You hired him to safeguard your data and he stole it out from under you. I bet you asked him to look into it when you discovered the film was gone."

  "Indeed we did," Clift admitted.

  "When you figured out he'd stolen the film, you sicced your man on him and had him killed.” I pointed at Brill. “You jumped him and left him bleeding on the wet street.”

  “We didn’t come to understand Aggaroy’s complicity in the theft until after his murder,” Clift said. “The day before his death, he backed out of our agreement, claiming he had too much other work on his hands.”

  “You killed him because he broke his contract.”

  “He refunded our money, Mr. Naroy,” Clift said. “Minus his expenses, of course.”

  “You killed him.” I pointed at the cane standing in the corner. It was topped with a brass elephant the size of a tennis ball. "You brained Agg with the end of that stick."

  “Maybe it was Gannon Chancellor who did in Aggaroy,” Clift said grandiosely, adding a stage actor’s panache when he growled did in. “Maybe Aggaroy was killed at the hands of George Drake. Why not make it Faye Justin, Mr. Naroy? Or Leigh here?”

  Leigh, engrossed, was caught off-guard. Wide-eyed, she shook her head. “I would never—”

  Clift shushed her. “I’m joking.”

  He tossed Brandt’s memex at Brill. It arced gracefully in the air. Brill caught it with one hand.

  “We can spend all afternoon with you airing unscrupulous accusations at me,” Clift said. “We’re no nearer to naming the killer.”

  “Unscrupulous?” I said.

  “You lack a shred of evidence.”

  “But I can name plenty of motive.”

  “Motive.” Clift chuckled. “You are chiding me over motive.”

  I paced to the other side of the beech study table. Through the picture window gridded with chicken wire hexes, the angry expanse of the bay heaved and stirred. Rain came down like a shower of gravel.

  From the shroud of fog blanketing the Ferry Building emerged two black watercraft. Their bows knifed through the waves with a distinct sense of urgency.

  Clift joined me at the window. “Someone’s brave out there,” he said. “Not a day for pleasure boating, I would say.” He grew quiet. "Brill—they're making a beeline for the island."

  Peering, I made out the gold badge painted on the black hull. On one, a silhouetted figure stood foredeck, arms akimbo and legs spread defiantly. The wind blew their jacket wildly, like death’s cape on horseback.

  “That would be the police,” I told him. A red-and-white helicopter overhead joined the duo of boats. "And that's the Coast Guard."

  “What?” He stepped closer to the window. “They can’t land here.” He turned to Brill and snapped his fingers. “Radio them off.”

  “You won’t keep them away this time,” I said. “They’re coming with a warrant.”

  “They have no authority on this island.”

  “You bet they do,” I said. “When it comes to murder.”

  “What makes them think—” He snapped his bony fingers at me. "This is your doing."

  "Talley Whitcomb put most of it together on her own. I offered her the final piece of the puzzle."

  He stared a moment, his bearded mouth making a hard pruned hole. He perhaps expected me to admit I was joking.

  "Maybe they're coming for you," he said. "You cracked a safe, you broke parole, you forged an identity—”

  “One of you lay in wait and killed Aggaroy. One of you is going to the gas chamber.”

  “—You violated the Internet Exclusion Act of 2008,” he said over me, as though my digital crime was the greater. “Which was extended to the Nexternet in 2029. You, a Nexternet security consultant, traipsing around the computer network you were banned from.”

  "Your man killed Donahue Brandt's nephew," I said. "The Mayor of Los Angeles, the man who might be this state's next senator. You really think your friends are going to protect you now?"

  He came closer. He stood so close, I could smell the bourbon on his breath, aged and earthbound.

  "That's not what the police will learn. Ellis Brandt's memex shows you killing him."

  "No it doesn't."

  "Brill can replay it, if you want." He went to Leigh. "Would you like to see Mr. Naroy slit Ellis Brandt's throat?" He turned to me. "You were quite vicious."

  "I was stuck in a rabbithole when your man killed him."

  "That's not what Brandt's memex says. Which, of course, we'll turn over to the police when they arrive here."

  "You modified his memex," I said. "Or you're trying to rattle me. Maybe your modification is masterful. Maybe it's so good, it'll fool the police neural forensics team. But I know for certain Brill killed him."

  "And how is that?" Clift asked, amused.

  "Because he was connected to my engram-breaking software when he was killed," I said. "Whatever his memex may or may not
have recorded, I have a second record of Brandt's last fifteen minutes alive. It's neural-signed and can be verified against the Nexternet ID on his memex. I transmitted that recording to Talley Whitcomb right before I boarded the ferry," I said. "That's why she has the warrant."

  Clift's mirth drained in gradations. Several moments passed before he recognized my seriousness.

  “We've retained the best lawyers on the West Coast,” Clift said. He said it to Brill as much as he said it to me. “Whatever charges the police imagine they can press, we’ll mount a vigorous defense.“

  "For one murder, fine," I said. "But not two. That's a killing spree."

  “You still believe without proof I killed Michael Aggaroy."

  “Your two men broke into Agg's office and wiped his retention server. They even used the same attack they used on my retention server. You destroyed the proof.”

  Clift bristled and started to deny it. He was so concerned about the police in transit, he was already practicing the answers he would offer them. He remembered then who he was talking to. He softened with another of his bearded smiles. “You are wrong once again.”

  He made a hand motion toward Brill, one I did not understand. Brill exited the room and returned carrying another data brick. He began connecting the new data brick to the cart of equipment. He did his work with a certain intensity, like a mortician primping the corpse in an open casket.

  "What's that?"

  “Aggaroy’s memories,” Clift said.

  “You didn’t destroy them?”

  “We preserve things out here. That’s the business we’re in.”

  “Was his memex recording?”

  “Right up to his last breath.”

  Brill made quick work of the optical cables and neurotransmission adapters. Clift stepped to his position in the informal circle we’d made below the holographic projector. He joined Leigh, who was now hugging herself. She sidled away from him, out of his reach, staring accusingly at me.

  “I refuse to see any more of this,” she declared to both of us. “You’re going to replay a man being killed. I've already watched an elderly woman die. This is grotesque.”