I find Nikki and Ezra standing at the bottom of the service ramp.
“Another minute and I would have joined the couple over there,” Nikki says.
“I was surprised when I saw it wasn’t you,” I fire back.
Smiling, she nods up the ramp. “Locked on the street level.”
I nod, then race up the ramp and explode through the metal doors. The doors had been bolted shut, little resistance to someone that can push over large military vehicles. I stand on the sidewalk, reaching back to pull up Nikki and Ezra.
I look around and note that no pedestrians were injured as a result of my exit. Yet, I only see one door…. Oh, there’s the other one. Embedded in a silver mot. The vehicle is empty. No harm, no foul. The world got lucky today.
Nikki takes Ezra by the arm and they rush toward my mot.
As I step away, the blind fortune reader points at me and cries out, “Sun-god, heat all around you, but you control the flame. You heeded a fool’s wisdom and secured deception. Deceit is a romance…close to heart.” The blind fortune-teller is now quiet. Her blank, frosty green eyes drill into me.
“Thank you.” I say. Not having a clue what she’s just said. I give her a twenty and beat it down the sidewalk.
Nikki and Ezra stand by my mot.
I start the engine and open the doors on the run. Nikki and Ezra are in the mot a moment before I am.
I pull into traffic with a rush but without making too much of a fuss.
Nikki turns to Ezra in the backseat. The old man is taking deep breaths.
I scan the street for unfriendly types. And there they are, in my rear view monitor. I see three men studying the service entrance and the mot with the metal door sticking out of it and asking questions of the sidewalk vendors. I can already hear the conversation with the blind tarot reader.
“We’re clear,” I say to Nikki.
She exhales, and turns back to Ezra. “You okay, old man?”
“Yes, but running damn near killed me. Yet I am grateful for the shock to the system.” He takes another deep breath.
I study his face. He appears to enjoy his new freedom.
“And who is your impressive boyfriend, my angel?”
“Ezra, this is Apollo. Apollo, Ezra.”
“Hello, sir. Good to see you.”
“A pleasure to be seen,” replies Ezra as he studies me. It’s almost like he recognizes me. It’s an unsettling familiarity.
“Thank you very much for rescuing me,” he says to me. He turns to Nikki.
“Nikki, they made me call you. They said that they would kill your sister if I didn’t cooperate. I didn’t know you had a sister. So I resisted. Then they showed me pictures of you at your sister’s birthday party and other family gatherings. I didn’t know what else to do. So I called you. I was hoping for a miracle – and you brought the miracle with you.”
“Yeah, he is something special.” Nikki pulls a pack of cigarettes from her purse. She tugs a smoke free from the pack and lights it.
I study the monitors, looking for a tail.
I feel a sharp prick at the nape of my neck and an icy vice seizes my throat.
I turn to see Ezra ease back into his seat. Needle? He’s holding a needle?
I look to Nikki. Is she smiling or grimacing as smoke escapes from her lips?
My body sings pain. I can feel everything and my world is black.
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
–Donald Rumsfeld. 02.12.02
18
The back of my throat is slick and salty. The wind is blowing and I smell the sea.
I open my eyes. The world is hot and white. Everything is super burning bright.
I close my eyes. I couldn’t keep them open if I wanted to. Calm. Focus.
I feel the heat pressing my flesh. The heat is stifling and roasts my lungs with every breath I take.
Calm. Focus. I am alive, of that I am sure. Now manage the pain. Calm. Focus.
Moments to minutes to hours and the sun never change positions or intensity.
Calm. Focus. I open my eyes. The sunlight is so bright that it cancels out shapes and colors and depth. And yet I see that I sit on a chair that rests upon still waters. I sit upright and tight and lift my bare feet from the wet, solid sea.
In time, I relax and set my feet upon the calm waters. Yet I cannot contain my fear that my chair will drop into the sleepy water at any moment.
The brilliant light diminishes a few grades.
Then I …
I see a shadow.
Moments of indecision, then in a fit of exhaustion, the shadow wanes and reveals a thin man sitting across from me. He sits in the same type of chair as I do and his bared feet rest comfortably on the blue waters. I see that the man wears a yellow robe and a soothing aura rests about his stout frame. He speaks and it shocks me because it’s not a pleasant voice; it sounds like a pickaxe biting into concrete.
“What would you do if you found a gold watch protruding from a giraffe’s rectum?” queries the interrogator with the discordant voice.
I visualize the question. A very tall brown and white animal has a gold watch sticking out of its ass.
“I’d leave it there,” I say. Quite sure that is the correct answer.
“The watch is real gold.” The interrogator replies, adding an intoxicating hitch.
I’m confused as to the seductiveness of a real gold watch protruding from an asshole. “I’d leave it there.” I state plain and resolute.
“Interesting. No regard for the giraffe’s well being?”
“I’d call a vet.”
“Then the vet would get the gold watch.”
“Anyone willing to put their hand up a giraffe’s ass deserves a gold watch.”
I guess I gave the wrong answer for the calm sea begins to swirl and ripple. I feel dizzy, going under…
The blue ocean becomes a strange sky of scattered bright white clouds against a solid dull white ceiling.
I’m on my back looking up. Not wet but dry upon a soft white bed.
I see fuzzy people standing about me. Then one face becomes clear and vivid. The face is wide and plastic-clean. The man says, “You know, the initials P.I., really stand for Public Idiot.” His voice, that familiar timbre of a pickaxe biting into concrete makes me realize I’m not dead. Just back in hell.
“Screw you, Griffin.” I say. My throat hurts and feels packed with chunky salt. I want a drink of water. I smell high organic cleaning solutions. I feel clean and sterile. Downright divine.
“Well, well, well, it’s alive.” Griffin says with a rich laugh in his voice. Like the cat that gets the rat. Like the little boy who gets the most wanted toy. Like a man who has me by the short hairs. Griffin is my keeper. I’m supposed to report daily to him. I’m supposed to follow his orders without question. I’m supposed to consider him my friend and confidant.
I shun him like the plague.
This is the first time I’ve seen him in over three years. He is a man of medium height with a perfect pear-shaped body that suspiciously steadies on spindly legs. He is bald with thick blonde eyebrows and shallow green eyes. His skin is a taut sun-tanned buffalo hide. I hate this man. He is Satan in brown Forzieritti wingtips.
“Just shoot me, Griffin,” I say.
“No way, baby. This is what I live for. Hell, you and Lynch going sour at the same time has us considering canceling the retirement program for you early model super studs.”
Play stupid, a.k.a., act natural. “Lynch? What’d he do?”
“Your blood brother screwed a rich little blond girl to death then shoved her body under a hotel bed. Being a valuable piece of government hardware, like you, we just rescinded his retirement and sent his ass to space. He’ll be space bound in a few hours, never to set foot on this planet aga
in. And the same fate awaits you … unless you can produce a miracle.”
“Who do you want me to kill?”
“Kill whoever you need to in the course of recovering the Project Blue Book appendix sixty-three-A file. The same file you damaged eight agents for earlier today. The same file that we were attempting to recover at that bar about six hours ago. Get that file back – now! Then we’ll talk about whether or not you get to remain on terra firma. But understand, fail and you will spend the rest of your half-ass unnatural days space walking.”
I nod and bite the bitter bullet. Nikki used me then tried to kill me. She blinded me with a cool and fabulous ass. Nice set of tits too. Maybe I’ll fuck her before I kill her.
“So, you ready to get to work, or would you like me to give you a sponge bath first?” he says as he lights a cigarette.
We stare at each other for a slow moment. I smile.
“Get the hell up!” Griffin shouts.
“Hey, don’t offer if you ain’t gonna deliver.”
I see my clothes hanging in the closet. I sit up. Stand up and sigh. I walk over to the closet. Griffin and two uniformed and well-armed soldiers remain in the room. I’m obviously not going to get any privacy.
I undo the hospital gown and let it fall to the sparkling floor. I look up to find no underwear.
“What happened to my underwear?”
“We burned it,” Griffin says with a laugh.
“And you didn’t give me a replacement pair?”
“No. Shut the hell up and put your clothes on.”
I sigh again and swallow the fire that wants to leap from my throat.
Fine. I grab my pants and find to my dismay that they’re dirty and torn at the knees and right hip. This is messed up. And so I put my pants on.
“Give me a snap detail of the events that led up to your ass being dumped on the curb,” requests Griffin.
“I was hired to help find something. Once that something was found, I was hired as protection. At the bar, we met up with another contact that then tried to kill me. You already know what I was hired to find and who hired me to find it.”
Socks are in my shoes. Well, that’s something. I slip on the socks. I see the shoes are dull and shabby. I hate it when my shoes are beat. I gotta stop by home for a new pair. Hell, a new suit.
Griffin nods. “Yeah … What I don’t understand is once you realized it was an official government document you had secured in that warehouse, why you failed to contact me? Apollo, where is your sense of national security? Where is your loyalty to the President and the party? You should’ve secured the file and immediately brought it to me. But that didn’t happen, and now I’m the only thing standing between you and a count of treason.”
I button up my shirt. No blood on it or stink to it. That’s nice.
I say, “I had no way to be sure it was a true government file. It could have been a forgery.”
“That’s not your decision! You should have called me right away. You don’t think. I do your thinking for you. That’s rule number one.”
My life is full of rule number ones. I slip my shoes on.
“What was I injected with?” I ask Griffin. I put on my shoulder holster and check my gun. Weapon is loaded and secure. I put it in the holster.
“Don’t know. The lab is still analyzing your data. It almost did the job, whatever it was. I know that Davis and Sinclair are surprised you’re alive. Serves you right for hanging out with vermin.”
I put on my jacket and grab my overcoat – which is dirty as sin. Where’d Nikki dump me? I check the inside pockets and find my phone but not my wallet or the Bolt or the flash drive.
Well, I imagine Nikki has them.
Yet … I’ll know in a moment if Griffin has the Bolt. He’ll tell me how illegal it is to own and how it’s one more notch on my stick of doom.
Griffin walks over to the door of my room. One of the armed soldiers holds the door open for him. I follow. The soldiers follow us.
We stroll through the hospital corridors without speaking. I don’t hear any other sounds. It’s tomb-quiet in this facility. That’s when I realize it’s not a regular hospital but a company lab. Of course, why would they bring me to a regular hospital?
Griffin shatters the quiet. “Do you have Malcolm Space’s flash drive?”
“What?”
“Your phone was ringing every ten minutes so I took the liberty of listening to your phone messages.
“You have something he wants bad. So what is it? What’s on the drive?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t had the chance to view it. How did you figure out my password to access my phone messages?”
With a mean laugh in his voice, “Please … We started with the obvious and it was a hit. Mr. Clean.”
Nikki had called me prissy. And this nasty little asshole just tagged me pretty much the same way, or how else could he had so easily hit my password? I don’t know why I’m pissed about this but I’m feeling tense. And this suit is dirty as all hell and I’m running without underwear.
Shoes are beat.
I’m not happy right now.
Griffin, agitated and tight, spits his question at the floor, “How long have you been working for Space? I thought Lynch was the only flunky on his payroll.”
“I’m not working for Space. I secured the flash drive in question as a favor to Lynch. He gave me the word to pass it to Space. I was on my way to deal with Space when I got jacked.”
Griffin gives me a disproving huff. He tries his best to walk tall. He sets his back upright and stiff and rolls his shoulders, too hard and square.
“He takes a backseat to me. You understand? Space is not important. I don’t give a damn about his money. Your priority is the Project Blue Book file. Understand?”
“Understood.”
We exit through a red door and emerge onto a parking lot.
My senses tell me it’s night yet I must look up for confirmation and I find the ultra bright city lights make the night sky un-black and the stars invisible.
“Did you read the file?” Griffin asks me.
“No. Nikki found it and she was happy with what she found. All I had to do was get her out of the house and my job was done.”
“Great job. If you like danger so damn much, why the hell don’t you go into stunt work like Michaels and Becuá? Become a celebrity, get the women, get that money and be happy?”
“I don’t like movies.”
“You’d rather be a private investigator. You wanna help people. Michaels and Becuá are also volunteer firemen. That’s helping people.”
“To hell with the dynamic duo. I’ve done some good work.”
“You found a missing child two years ago. Since then, nothing worth a damn.”
On this count, Griffin is right. Most of my work is feudal justice.
“Catch.” Griffin says.
I snatch the remote from the air.
“Black mot.” He nods toward the low profile cruiser. It’s flat deep black in color. The vehicle has no edges or angles. It’s a smooth instrument that will slice through the sky.
“Damn. This is sharp, Grif. A Shorter Black Bullet. When did the agency start spending money on good mots?”
“We’ve always had good vehicles – we just never gave them to lowlifes like you. Now go get the file.”
“Aye-aye.” You little fat bitch.
“And you can’t pull the seed out this time. It will explode if you mess with it. I want to know where your ass is at all times! If you go off radar I will stop the world to track you down. And when I find you, I won’t waste taxpayer money on a spacewalker – I’ll shoot your ass into the heart of the sun! Hell, that may be the only way left to kill you. And I’m sure the sun will kill your ass. Are we on the same page?” he asks with crystal cold anger. I believe he would scorch the earth to find me.
“Yeah. Doggie stay on his leash.”
“Damn straight. Now get out of my sight.”
“
My pleasure.”
I get in the mot and rip out of the agency’s service lot.
Griffin hadn’t mentioned the Bolt. And he would have given me much grief over the possession of an illegal weapon. So looks like Nikki has the weapon. Got to watch the way I approach her. Can’t give her time to put the gloves on.
I punch up the office on the mot’s phone. It rings once.
“Hello, Apollo Agency.” The words flash from Liz’s mouth. She looks good.
“Hi Sweetheart – man, it is good to see your face. What’s the news?” I say.
“I want my flash drive, Apollo.” Not Liz’s voice and no longer her face.
This was the faceless voice of Malcolm Space.
“Hello Mr. Space.” I hesitate. Here it comes. He wants to know where his drive is. Can’t tell this man I don’t have it. Take a deep breath. Decompress.
“I will trade you a live and healthy, and very beautiful business associate for my flash drive, Apollo. It’s that simple. Liz’s life for my flash drive.”
“Understood.” I say.
“Excellent. I await your arrival at my Madison office. Anytime is good for me.”
“Be with you soon, Liz,” I say.
I watch Space’s finger grow fat then the monitor goes black.
Okay, one more reason to screw Nikki to death. But first I have to find her.
19
At sixteen hundred meters, the glow of the city is muted so I can see the true black of space. I can see space stations and orbit traffic and stars, planets.
Descending.
I come to a rest and hover above a rooftop in a residential neighborhood.
I hide behind a row of six huge wooden water reservoirs.
These high-rise condos are set in groups of four interlocking buildings. They have open-air food markets, schools, parks, pools and full athletic facilities. Nice place to raise a family and the rent won’t kill you.
I open the Shorter’s computer and call up my homepage. Let’s see if Nikki is still using my old mot. I activate Port-trak. My old mot is exiting St. Louis City limits, continuing west at three hundred and sixty clicks.
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