After arbitration. That’s where I come in. I’m a Restitution gumshoe. Smith comes to me. For a healthy fee paid by Jones, we assess and collect. If Smith doesn’t like the risk or delay, he sells us his arbitration judgment and we collect it all.
“So how ya doin’ today, sweetie?”
The throaty cackle that passes for Murray’s voice raises my focus from the paperwork. “Only half here,” I admit.
“Well, it’s a fast-moving world. Maybe the rest of you’ll arrive by lunch.” He peers into my eyes. “Didn’t sleep well or are you planning to pack those bags?”
“No, no, I slept fine. I’m just…” my tongue doesn’t wrap around the right word, “…preoccupied.”
Murray perches his massive posterior on the corner of my desk and asks softly, even though we are alone, “I thought you’d be madder than a wet cat at desk duty. Not quiet. Quiet has me worried. What’s bothering you, kid?”
Why not? I retrieve the newspaper that I’d stuffed in my purse, still folded open to the last page. I throw it on the desk.
Murray picks it up. He examines the photo for a long moment then shifts his stare to me. “This upsets you? Why? Do you know him?”
I shake my head.
“Then what is it about the photo?”
“I don’t know,” I lie.
Murray’s scrutiny returns to the photo. “Can I take the paper with me?”
I nod then ask, “Why?”
“I want to check out who he is. Or, maybe, I don’t want you staring at it all day and getting even quieter. Who knows? I’m a complicated man with a multiplicity of motives.” At the doorway, he pauses. “You really don’t know why you’re upset?”
“No.”
Disbelief is palpable in his squinting eyes and the assessing once-over they give me. After Murray leaves, I whisper aloud, “If you lie, I lie. I’m upset because I understand the goddamn math on the board. I even see where a negative sign has been dropped. So tell me, Murray, how does a graphic artist understand second-order differential equations better than a physics prof?”
I don’t need the photo. I grab a scrap of paper and duplicate the equation but with the negative sign where it should be. I tuck the paper into my purse because I don’t want it lying around where someone can find it. I don’t know why.
In the lunchroom, Sophia plops down in the chair across from me and starts to chat about nothing with a vigor I admire. As usual, she has an extra sandwich and pushes the cellophaned square across the table toward me. Tuna fish today. My favorite.
Sophia sits alone in Murray’s outer office, day after day, which gives her a case of logorrhea whenever there’s a spare ear. Little wonder. It must be dead boring in there because I never see her do anything in the office other than eat lunch. And, then, when she goes home, there’s no family or friends. Not many people pay attention to a middle-aged, plump matron. The fact that I don’t get up and leave seems to be attention enough for her to be happy.
I unwrap the cellophane. What the hell, free food. Only I’m not hungry today and the sandwich suffers neglect.
“No appetite?” she finally asks, interrupting a monologue on how I’d be so much prettier if I put on a few pounds. Them’s fighting words but her blue eyes twinkle kindly enough behind thick glasses, and I can bear a bit of mothering today.
I nibble the sandwich and toss back onto the cellophane. “Actually, I feel like having tomato soup.”
Sophia is surprised. “I don’t think we have any, dear,” she says, scanning the closed cupboards on the lunchroom’s far wall as though she has x-ray vision.
I resume nibbling. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t like soup.”
“But you just said…”
I shrug. “I’m a complicated woman with a multiplicity of motives.”
She removes her glasses and cleans them with a tissue retrieved from the cuff of her sweater. She waits.
“I’ve been thinking about the wars,” I tell her and wonder why. She and I never speak of the war or of anything unconnected to work. “Sophia, what happened to you during the war years. I mean, did you always live in the Free Z — in Santa Monica?”
Again, surprise. She swallows a slug of coffee. “No, I moved here about a year ago to work with Murray.”
“Did you have…” I cut the question short.
“You can ask me anything, dear, I do so enjoy our lunches.”
“Did you have a family?”
“Yes, a daughter,” Sophia answered softly, “but she killed herself. My daughter’s name was MaryAnn. The thing I miss most is the laughter. She laughed all the time, even in her sleep. I would give anything to hear it one more time.”
“Why did she…?” I bite into the sandwich in order to avoid finishing the question.
“Why did MaryAnn kill herself?” Sophia finishes my sentence.
I nod.
“Awful things happened and she couldn’t live with them.” A tear slides down Sophia’s cheek and into the corner of her mouth.
I’m sorry I asked. I know better. Everyone has a story about the wars and too many of them end with a death. The old woman is as close to a friend as I have in this office but feeling compassion is painful. “So, why did you want to work with Murray?” I shift into another gear.
Sophia fumbles at the sweater cuff and pulls out a crumpled but clean tissue to dab her eyes. She clears her throat to recover a voice before stating, “His work is more important than you know. I need to be part of it.”
I laugh derisively then add quickly, “That’s not directed at you, Sophia. I just… I’m not sure I trust Murray any more. I don’t think he always tells me the truth, and maybe he’s not telling it to you either.”
Sophia leans in and whispers, “Why don’t you trust him?” She reaches out and touches the back of my hand even though she knows I hate being touched. “Is it happening again?” she asks.
“Is what happening?”
A long, hard stare from behind the glasses holds nothing of the former kindness in it. “Then I guess not,” she leans back. “But you need to take the rest of the day off. I’ll clear it with the Big Guy.” She shifts the gears herself with a smile. “So how are you going to spend the afternoon, dear?”
“Well, I have a new book of puzzles I bought that looks challenging enough to lose myself in for a few hours.”
The smile deepens. “Good. I know how fond you are of word games, riddles and clues.”
I go directly home after lunch. Maybe I should buy a cat. I wonder as my purse hits the corner wall by the front door and slides to the floor. Something alive to greet me… Then I realize, What an odd thought.
I cross over to the shelf on which I stack canned goods and take out a lonely can of tomato soup. When in the name of God did I buy that? And why? I hate tomato soup. The pop-lid opens with a rip that sounds too loud in the silent apartment. I eat the cold red gel with a spoon and viscerally remember how much I truly, truly do not like tomato soup. I put the can down in disgust on the kitchen table, then pick it up, then put it down again.
Without thinking, I carefully peel the label off the can. I read the ingredients listed on the print side and then flip the label over to the white inside that hugs the can’s surface. What I see hits like a rock to the forehead. There is writing. Sentences in my own handwriting. They say, “Our name is MaryAnn Weslez. Our husband is Kenneth. Our son is Carl. Don’t let them go. Fight.”
I remember little of the afternoon that follows. Moments of it flash through me. A truck rumbles under the balcony. The phone rings. An urge to urinate goes away though I don’t remember how. The phone rings. A neighbor comes home from work and turns on the television. A cramp hits my fist and I realize I have been clenching the crumpled label.
A knock on the door. How long was I sitting? The sun is sinking. Spectacular oranges and reds spread across the sky and reflect in the ocean like a ribbon of fire. A knock at the door again.
“Mac? Mac, it’s Murray and I’m not goin
g away. That’s what happens when you don’t answer the phone.”
I unclench my fist, uncrumple the label and read, “Our husband is Kenneth. Our son is Carl. Don’t let them go. Fight.”
After scratching through my purse, I let Murray in. I close and lock the front door and point my gun directly at Murray’s head. With the hand still holding the label, I motion him to the couch I call “the living room.” He sits and mutters something incoherent. I hand him the soup label. He frowns in confusion, reads and blows out a long, shuddering breath.
“I thought we cleaned out the apartment, Mac. Two guys scoured every inch of it. But, this, this was written on the inside of a…” he checks the other side of the label, “of a tomato soup can? Sonofabitch. You’re good.”
“It’s my handwriting.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Murray tells himself. “She’s a bonafide genius at hiding messages and encrypting everything.” He looks past the gun into my face, “The last time you used the ol’ trick of writing with your finger on a windowpane — you know, like kids do — so steaming it with your breath makes the words pop out. I guess paying the window washers was a waste of money.”
Another frustrated breath blows through his lips. ”I gotta admit. I’m at my wit’s end with you, Mac. You can’t even be trusted with a straight-shot run into Old Town.”
I interrupt, “If you see John Galt on the road, kill him.”
“Yeah, that’s what did it for you the last time, too. You painted the Galt thing on the window of a wrecked shop months ago, where you could see it every time the trans slid by. I thought ’bout sending someone to whitewash the damned stuff but, then, I thought, let it stay. Like a litmus test for how well everything’s working.”
I pull back the hammer on the gun. “Who am I?”
“MaryAnn Weslez. Mac, Mackenzie, was my daughter.”
“Where are my husband and son?”
“Dead,” he states simply. “Excuse my bluntness, sweetie, but going through all this for a third time kinda makes it feel routine.”
“The third time?”
“The third and the last ’cuz we’re not going through this again. Maybe it coulda worked, maybe, if you weren’t so mule-headed contrary.”
I tremble with coldness that could be anger or fear, or both. “What could have worked?” I pronounce the syllables carefully, “and be very, very careful about what you say. I’ll shoot if anything isn’t true.”
Murray raises his hands, examines the palms and starts to talk into them. “It’s a question that’s dogged me since I got into the restitution biz. I know how to make someone whole if a bicycle’s ripped off or a car’s been dinged. But what about someone whose life is train-wrecked by violence, a person who’s lost everything or everyone and nothing can be whole again?”
I repeat, “Be very, very careful.”
“I always am, sweetie. ’Bout two years ago, as the wars sped toward the end — though nobody knew it was ending back then—” He looks abruptly up into my face. My grip on the gun handle tightens. “Do you remember how bad it was just before the Zone treaties? Had to get that bad, I guess, before the need to survive kicked people in the head hard enough to stop. Remember?”
“Yeah, I think I remember but, then, I recently discovered I don’t even know my own name. So a lot of my memories are up for grabs right now.”
Murray continues in the same dry manner, “You and your husband Ken worked in a lab together in Free Z, synthesizing chemicals for weapons. That wasn’t the job you trained for but the wars caused a lot of career detours. Near the end, when the streets got violent, you lived in the lab instead of trucking back and forth. Carl, too, because you thought he’d be safer there with you.
“Anyway, there was a break-in at the lab. The three guys were part of a gang and they wanted drugs. You didn’t have what they wanted but they didn’t believe it and tried to make you talk. First, they tortured Ken ’til it went too far and he died. In front of you. Then they threatened Carl to make you spill but you couldn’t tell them where the drugs were because there weren’t any. When they shot Carl through the head, they probably became believers. There was nothing in the lab, nothing you could give them. Then you were just a messy detail to clean up. You, they gang-raped and left naked for dead in the parking lot across town.”
The gun had been sinking but I raise it again.
“You were in the hospital for weeks, kid. Then, after your body healed, you tried to knock yourself off twice — once with drugs, once by slashing your wrists.”
My eyes jerk to my wrists. Two deep scars slice up my arms, each at least six inches long. Why have I never seen those before?! I must have spoken out loud.
“Because you didn’t want to,” he states simply. “But enough of you wants to see, wants to live that both suicides flopped. That’s where I come in. Your mom brought you to me, she begged me to put you in a program we’d just launched. Sophia was willing to pay anything to get you back.”
For the first time, it connects. If I am MaryAnn, Sophia is my mother. “She paid you? For what? I work for you, why would she…”
Murray shakes his head. “No. You never did any work. I sent you on errands to pick up worthless papers and I let you shuffle through dead files because we needed to watch you, to test you out.”
He goes back to the thread of thought. “When Sophia pushed you through my door, I asked you one question. ‘What does restitution look like, what would make you whole?’ You said, ‘I want to be new. I want a different life. Make me forget.’”
“And you were lucky ’cuz forgetting is what the program is all about. It makes people whole by tearing them down and putting them back together, but different — as somebody who hasn’t been broken in half by life. So that’s what I did. You were brainwashed, marinated in drugs. And then there was hypnotism for new memories, behavior modification… MaryAnn died so Mac could live.”
“I don’t believe you. A mother wouldn’t give up her daughter.”
“Oh yes she would, if the other choice was suicide. She knew you’d succeed at that sooner or later.” Murray stands and removes his jacket, ignoring the gun pointed at him. “It’s hot,” he explains, draping the jacket beside him as he sits back down.
“You created Mac Jones?” My mind tries to wrap around the concept.
“No, you did. What I gave you was a name. The rest of Mac, well, you wanted to get as far away from MaryAnn as possible. No math, no science, no family, not even a mom who loves you. That’s the closest to restitution you could get.”
“And it’s fallen apart three times? That’s some program you’ve got.” The words are hostile but the gun dangles at my side with the hammer no longer cocked.
Murray stares at the lowered weapon. “Yeah, it is some program. It worked like a charm on four other people. You’re our only failure, Mac. It’s like the suicides — as much as you wanna die, that’s as much as you wanna live. Enough of MaryAnn remains to make you fight tooth and nail to remember.”
He crosses the few steps separating us. “The apartment where you were attacked? With hundreds of thousands of buildings between Old Town and Free Z do you know why you chose that one?”
“You and Ken lived there as newlyweds. That’s why you knew the rail was a fast path to a flat roof. Every time we ‘wipe’ MaryAnn, you search for clues to where she’s gone, and you don’t even know you’re doing it. The other MaryAnns leave a trail of breadcrumbs that always bring you home because MaryAnn doesn’t really want to die. That’d mean losing the only part of her family left — her memories.”
Murray gently unfolds my fingers from the gun’s grip and takes it from my hand. “You won’t be needing this, sweetie.” He slips it into an inner pocket of his jacket on the couch.
I crumble like a rag doll to the floor, beyond standing, beyond tears, with no words to describe the spreading deadness in my veins. “I want—” I began.
“No, this ain’t happening again. It took under
a month for you to come out of it this time. I’m not soaking you in more drugs, I’m not messing with your memory. It’s over, and you either move on or kill yourself.”
“I can’t move on. Everything about Mac is a lie and I only get glimpses of MaryAnn. I’m no one.”
Murray puts on his jacket. “You are both.”
I glare up at him. “You’ve stuffed me into limbo. I’m no one unless I’m lucky enough to ‘come to’ and see my husband being tortured and my son being killed on the inside of my eyelids for the rest of my life.”
“In a nutshell,” he states bluntly.
“You are a lie… and cruel. You talk a good game about restitution but someone like me, who really needs it, me you dump like garbage.”
His face flushes with anger. He reaches down, grabs my shoulders and shakes. “Snap out of it! I’ve knocked myself out over you. And, in case you care, a mother who loves you is waiting downstairs in my car, waiting to find out if she still has a daughter.”
I blink.
“Only one thing left to do.” From another pocket, Murray pulls out another gun. The grip is wrapped in a handkerchief to prevent fingerprints.
“You want me to kill myself?”
“Yeah, with your mom sitting outside, that’s what I want you to do. Snap out of it! The gun’s a gift.”
“I already have one — unless you’re a thief as well as a liar.”
“This one’s unmarked, untraceable, and you throw it away afterward.”
“After what?”
“Like I said, there’s only one thing left. I found one of the guys who killed everyone you love, including MaryAnn.”
A shock of ice tightens my throat as I snatch the gun from his hand, keeping the handkerchief in place. “You’re telling me to kill him.”
“I’m not telling you anything ’cuz I know better. I’m saying you have a street gun in one hand, and a woman downstairs who’ll give you any alibi you want. Here.” He hands me a piece of paper.
I stare at the name and address. “How will killing him bring back Kenneth or Carl?”
“It won’t. Nothing will. But it might bring you back.
Defiant, She Advanced: Legends of Future Resistance Page 2
