With everything this guy had said and done already, Chip would have been justified in shooting him up right here and now, but Chip was all about restraint. If he shot this guy who was attacking him, people would see that he’d been right all along. If he were killed—well, then he’d be a martyr for the cause of self-defense. It wasn’t ideal, but at least in death, if not in life, he would be celebrated for standing up for the rights of all Americans.
“So, what do you want?” Chip asked him.
The thug shrugged. “Nothing. Just letting you know we’re keeping an eye on you. Making sure you don’t kill anyone else.”
“I’m just getting some beer.”
“And some snacks, which, if you don’t mind my saying, you don’t need.”
“What I don’t need is to be harassed,” Chip said. “Don’t you have anything better to do, like maybe look for a job?”
The thug smiled, the kind of smile you give before you cut someone’s throat. Chip tensed, thought about going for his gun, sitting warm and useless in his right pocket.
“Getting a job? That’s a good idea, man. Maybe you could introduce me to your boss. Where do you work again? Must pay pretty well to live in that sweet house. Or did your mother pay for it?”
Chip’s stomach clinched at the thought of this guy knowing where he lived.
“But it turns out I already have a job,” the thug said. “I’m an attorney, dumbass. I’m also part of a watch group that wants to make sure there are no more crimes like the ones you got away with. I’m out here making sure a black man can buy a soda and some candy without losing his life.”
A lawyer. For real? Chip glanced at the guy again, and began to see that maybe he wasn’t as much of a thug as he first thought. He wore baggy jeans, sure, but not the kind that sagged. He had a button down shirt tucked into them, and leather jacket on top of that. His flashy jewelry, on closer inspection, was just a cross on a chain.
“Is this how it’s going to be now?” Chip asked. “I can’t go to the store without one of you bothering me?’
“One of who, exactly?”
“One of your watch group.”
“If I’d been out that night,” he said, “maybe a young brother would still be alive.”
Chip opened his mouth to say something, but he decided against it. There was no arguing with a guy like this, a guy who wanted to be ignorant. “I’m walking away now. Don’t follow me.”
“Why would I want to follow your fat behind?” the lawyer inquired. It was not, in Chip’s estimation, a sincere question.
Chip turned away and headed down the road. That’s how it was now. A new indignity to pile on top of the old ones. Now he wouldn’t even be able to walk to the convenience store without someone thinking it was his duty to make Chip’s life miserable. People believed they had a right to harass him, to insult him, to say or do whatever they wanted. And they could get away with it, too. Chip might have taken out his gun with that lawyer. He would have been justified in waving the pistol in his face, but no one would see it that way. He was helpless and out of options.
He had only managed to reach the shoulder of the main road when a pickup slowed down and someone tossed something out the window, striking him in the back of the head. “Asshole!” He heard wild laughter as the car sped off.
Chip looked down to see a fast food bag, bloated with grease and half-eaten hamburgers lying at his feet. Maybe they’d recognized him. He was an internationally-known figure, after all. Or maybe they’d seen some pathetic fat guy, humping his way by the road, by himself, half dragging a suitcase of beer. It could even be that there was a time, a happier time, in his life when he might have tossed a similar bag at a similar stranger, but that didn’t excuse what those people had done. He might once have done something like that for laughs, but those people had been cruel, and there was never an excuse for cruelty.
Chip wanted to think that this was the bottom, that things couldn’t get worse for him, but he knew it wasn’t true. As time went on, the few remaining people who still supported him would forget what he had done for America. Someone else would have to defend himself, or a cop would justifiably shoot a minority while doing his duty, and there would be a newer, fresher face for patriots to rally behind. The little money he still earned from his notoriety would dry up, but there would be no corresponding upside. The public would still revile him. He’d never be able to earn a living or have a social life or even walk by the road like a regular person without strangers throwing things at him. As bad as this was, it was only going to get worse. All those fantasies about his life turning around, he knew, were absurd. What did he really have to look forward to?
He wanted to cry. Like a little kid, he wanted to drop his stuff and stand there and cry, but he knew no one was going to come and comfort him. No one was going to tell him that it was all right and that things would get better, because it wasn’t and they weren’t. This was his life, and he was stuck with it. He had acted to defend himself, and he would pay the price forever for refusing to be a victim.
Chip had only begun trudging on toward his mother’s house again when another car approached from behind, slowing down noticeably as it grew closer. Chip veered away from the road, making himself a less appealing target, and watched warily as the car slowed and pulled onto the shoulder a little ahead of him.
There was nothing to do but walk past it, but Chip shifted his burdens so he could, if necessary, drop his purchases and grab his gun. He decided not to look into the car. He didn’t want to escalate things. Events would unfold without his intervention, just as they had that night when he’d demanded that a shifty-looking kid, obviously up to no good, explain what he was doing in his mother’s neighborhood.
“Hey there,” a woman called from inside the car. “You need a lift?”
The voice was mature—obviously not some teenager messing with him—though certainly not old. Chip risked a glance and saw a woman in her thirties, and possibly attractive. It was hard to tell in the dim light. For sure he could see that she wore a pants or skirt suit and her hair was up in a bun, business-lady style. She didn’t look like the sort who would toss fast food bags at passing strangers. Neither did she look like the type to give strange men a ride, and that made Chip suspicious. He kept walking.
“Come on, Mr. Dunston,” the woman called as the car inched after him. “You can’t be enjoying your late night stroll, not burdened with your purchases as you are.”
She knew who he was, but did that make matters better or worse? There was still no way of knowing if she was there because she was one of his many—though not terribly useful—admirers or part of the larger and more rabid base of haters. Her fancy way of talking suggested she was in the latter category.
“I’m not here to harass you,” the woman said, inching the car along to keep up with him. “And I’m not an admirer, if you’re wondering. I’m not paid to have an opinion about you either way. Mr. Dunston, I’m here to offer you an employment opportunity.”
More than anything else she might have said, this got Chip’s attention.
“This seems kind of strange,” Chip noted.
“If you feel uncomfortable or if I intimidate you,” and here the woman flashed him a winsome smile, “we could arrange to meet tomorrow at a place of your choosing. I simply thought you might wish to learn more now.”
He did wish to learn more now, but there was something strange about all of this. Why would some woman want to talk to him about a job in the middle of the night? How would she even know where to find him? Things, he felt sure, did not usually work this way.
“Whatever you like, Mr. Dunston,” she said. “It’s up to you.”
Only minutes ago, Chip had been thinking that things were as bad as they had ever been, and only getting worse. Now, like in a fairy tale, a woman appeared and at least claimed to be offering him a leg up. Maybe she was lying and meant to harm him, but if she succeeded, what did it matter? Chip had nothing to lose. He figured
he might as well get in the car with her. If she tried something threatening, he could always shoot her.
*
It only took a couple of minutes to reach his mother’s house. Chip sat with his bag of snacks and his suitcase of beer between his legs, one hand inconspicuously near his weapon, though the woman did not seem in any way dangerous. Still, in this world you didn’t live long if you weren’t careful.
Her name, as she explained on the short drive, was Ms. Spravedlnost, and she worked as a recruiter for a company called Limbus, Inc. As she drove, she handed Chip a card. Still keeping his right hand close to his pistol, he held up the card with his left. In the passing flash of headlights and street lamps, he saw the name of the company, a picture of a globe, fragmented into quarters, and a few lines of text.
Are you laid off, downsized, undersized? Call us. We employ.
1-800-555-0606
How lucky do you feel?
Chip had not been feeling lucky lately, but maybe things were about to change. Assuming this woman was not here to mock, expose, interrogate, abduct, or murder him, perhaps things had hit a turning point.
Once she pulled into Chip’s mother’s driveway, she turned to him and smiled. She was, he realized, perhaps a little older than he’d first realized, but still attractive for a woman who was maybe pushing forty. If she came on to him, he decided, he might go for it. Older women weren’t his thing, but he could make an exception since he didn’t have anything else going on.
“As I mentioned,” she said in a businesslike, but not unfriendly, tone, “I am a recruiter for Limbus.”
“You seem really proud of that,” Chip said. “What does this Limbus company do?”
“It recruits,” she said sweetly. “We are an employment agency, though that is a little like saying NASA is an engineering firm. At Limbus, we specialize in finding the right sort of unusual people for the right sort of unusual jobs.”
“And you have a job for me?”
“We do.”
“Well, what is it?” Chip demanded, not really liking the smug way she seemed to want to withhold information.
“Mr. Dunston, I’m not prepared to discuss that. It’s not our job, and we aren’t offering it. We are simply putting you in touch with an employer who might have use for a man with your skills.”
“And what skills are those?”
Ms. Spravedlnost smiled indulgently. “Yours are the skills our employer seeks. I am only prepared to say that we think you are well matched. As to other details, you will need to speak to the employer.”
“Okay,” Chip said, drawing the word out so that Ms. Spravedlnost would know he doubted the legitimacy of all this. “And what does this unknown job pay.”
“It’s not our habit to discuss salary with prospective clients,” Ms. Spravedlnost explained.
Chip took a moment to process all of this. “So, you want me to take a job I don’t know anything about for a salary that you won’t tell me.”
“I don’t wish for you to do anything,” Ms. Spravedlnost said, though not unkindly. “What I wish is to put interesting employers together with interesting employees. And I can promise you that the work will, indeed, be interesting. While I cannot give you any specifics about the compensation, I can guarantee you that you will be more than happy with what the client chooses to offer you. Finally, I would add that there is no harm in interviewing with the client and seeing what comes of it.”
That, Chip agreed, was fair enough. “So, where and when do I go.”
“The information is on the card I gave you.”
Chip looked at the card, which he had flipped over before and noticed nothing in particular. Now he saw that an address had been written in a neat hand. Below it was tomorrow’s date and a time—5:30 AM.
“That’s a little early, isn’t it?” Chip asked.
“It’s a matter of perspective,” Ms. Spravedlnost said. “The client wakes up early, but he did not want to meet with you until he had breakfasted and accomplished some of his early morning tasks. If you want the job, that’s when you must be there.”
“I don’t like it when I don’t have options,” Chip said. “It makes me angry.”
“You have the option of not applying for the job,” the woman said. “If you wish to apply, you must meet the client at the time of his convenience.”
Chip wondered if maybe he’d overreacted. He decided he had not, but thought he should change the subject, so Ms. Spravedlnost didn’t feel bad about being so pushy. In general, Chip tried to be sensitive to other people’s feelings. “So, the client is a person, not a company.”
“The client is a person who works for an organization. Good night, Mr. Dunston,” she added, which Chip took as her request that he get out of her car. He realized that maybe he had been misreading her signals, since he’d been pretty sure she’d wanted him to kiss her.
Once inside his mother’s house, Chip cracked open one of his newly acquired beers, put another half case in the fridge, then hid the rest of the case under his bed. Then, when he felt he could finally relax, he sat down and examined the card again. Disappointingly, this provided him with no more clues. He could use a job, even a vague one, though this whole business was weird and maybe a little suspicious. What if he showed up and some thug with a piece of rebar hit him in the back of the head? The only reason to suspect that might not happen was that thugs didn’t like to get up early. Also, he didn’t know exactly where the interview was located, but he knew that part of town, and it was pretty nice. Definitely not thug territory.
He would go armed, of course, but he would go. He’d check it out, listen to what they had to say. It was awfully early in the morning, though. He looked mournfully at his beer and thought that he was going to have to do the rest of the night’s drinking quickly.
*
The morning was about as brutal as he feared it would be. After battling with the snooze button on his alarm clock, Chip finally managed to get out of bed and shower. He didn’t have anything that anyone would call interview clothes—none that fit him, anyhow—but he figured anyone who wanted to hire him wouldn’t want him dressed up as a banker. Chip Dunston brought certain things to the table, but a corporate vibe was not among them. He would be himself, and he’d see what happened. Accordingly, he slipped on a mostly clean pair of jeans and a completely clean polo shirt that was only a little tight.
With his mom’s car acting up, and the fact that he didn’t have permission to drive it, he didn’t want to take any chances, so he called a cab. Hopefully the outlay of money wouldn’t turn out to be a waste. He got to the address on the card at about six, which Chip considered close enough. It was in one of the older parts of town, where houses often looked like they did up north—two or three stories, and kind of historical, like they were from the eighteen hundreds or something. This one was particularly big—three stories, and surrounded by mossy oaks and cypress trees. It wasn’t more than fifty feet from the street to the front door, but Chip felt like he was walking through a fairy tale forest.
Chip rang the doorbell while, with some trepidation, he listened to the cab pull away. If no one answered, he was going to be completely screwed. The minute he pressed the bell, however, he heard the scrabble of clawed feet on wooden floors and then, more distantly, the shuffle of what sounded disturbingly like his mother’s slippers.
He listened to the claws as they scratched at the door, and he thought that the dogs were well trained not to bark. He’d had a Rottweiler for a year or so—for protection more than companionship—and it had been impossible to train it to do anything, let alone keep it from barking. Finally Chip had to get rid of it when it tried to bite him one too many times. He couldn’t find anyone to take him, so he’d driven him to a field maybe fifteen miles out of town and left him there. The dog was tough and would be able to figure things out on its own.
After a moment Chip heard the muffled sounds of a person issuing orders, and the scrabbling of claws quieted. Then came
the slow and laborious click of locks. Finally, the door swung outward, and Chip faced a thin man wearing frameless oval glasses. He was pale, with hair the color of wet sand and eyes almost the exact same hue. He wore khaki pants and a blue oxford shirt, partially un-tucked, and he looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. He also looked like he was younger than Chip, maybe 25 at the most.
“You are new assistant?” the man asked in a European accent Chip could not identify.
“I was told to come here to apply for the job,” Chip said tentatively.
“Yes, yes,” the foreign man said, waving Chip forward. “I understand that. It is very clear, of course!”
Chip stepped forward, and the foreign man slammed the door behind him. The interior of the house was spacious and neat, but it gave off the sense of being under-furnished, like a development model. The only signs of human habitation were a few stacks of folders on tables near the staircase. Also unusual were the two lizards, the size of Chip’s discarded Rottweiler, racing toward the front door.
The foreign man turned to the lizards and shouted a command at them in his foreign tongue. The lizards pushed themselves to a stop, though they skittered a couple of feet along the floor, propelled by their considerable mass.
“What the hell are those things?” Chip demanded as he backed up toward the door.
“Komodo dragons, yes?” inquired the foreigner. “But only on the outside. In the brain,” and here he tapped his own skull, so as to avoid any confusion that might arise over the word brain, “they are dog. Mostly. Also, some cat for self-grooming and purposes of waste disposal. It creates problems, yes, to walk big lizard on a leash, so I make them to use the litter box.”
Chip glanced at the foreigner’s placid expression, but mostly he kept his eyes on the dinosaurs who were maybe ten feet away from him, watching him with their big, reptilian eyes. Except, they weren’t staring like they wanted to eat him. It was that look dogs got when they wanted attention. The lizards, Chip felt sure, were cheerful—or at least optimistic.
Limbus, Inc., Book III Page 10
