by John Locke
“You’re a computer expert, with full access to the government’s computers.”
“No one gets full access.”
“Good thing you’re a computer expert.”
“You expect me to hack into the government’s computers? The most sophisticated system in the world?”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I know twelve-year-old kids who could do it. You just happen to be the guy on the inside.”
“You want the actual photographs or the digital images?”
“One should be as good as the other.”
“If we’re talking about the digital prints, I can probably deliver them, if they’re in the computer.”
“You know damn well they are. They digitally catalog every item in the vaults.”
“What are your plans for the photos?”
“That’s my business.”
“What if I refuse?”
“You’ll be dead before we end the call.”
“How?”
“Remember the tracking device in your rental car? We planted explosives under the driver’s seat. But don’t try to run, or I’ll have to do this.”
“What?”
Sam hears a click.
“Did you just lock my doors?”
“I did. You’re spam in a can.”
“I don’t understand the reference.”
“It sucks being old. Though you might never know.”
“Look,” Sam says. “Not saying I’d ever double cross you, but what if I said sure, I’ll help you, but change my mind later, when I get back in the bunker?”
“You may be able to survive in there for many months. But sooner or later the government will release you. When they do, I’ll catch you, and turn you over to Creed.”
“And if Creed’s dead?”
“Callie. Are you, in fact, refusing to get me the photos?”
“No, of course not.”
“Good. So answer the question I asked earlier.”
“Which one?”
“Was having sex with Kimberly everything you hoped it would be?”
“Yes. And then some.”
“Good. I love it when a plan comes together. How did it make you feel?”
“Great. You knew it would, and it did. It felt, and still feels great.”
“You’re not falling in love with her, are you?”
“No chance. Kimberly Creed is inferior to me in every possible way. And now I’ve made her my fuck pony.”
“Was it hard to bed her?”
Sam laughs. “Fucking her was child’s play! And I’ll continue to fuck her as long as it suits me, though she’s not much of a lay. If not for the connection to Creed, I wouldn’t travel across town to do her.”
“One last question, if I’m not being too nosey. While you were having sex with Kimberly Creed, who were you thinking about, Donovan? Or Kimberly?”
“Both.”
“Good for you, Sam.”
49.
Doc Howard.
Doc Howard presses the rewind button for the third time. “Was having sex with Kimberly everything you hoped it would be?”
“Yes. And then some.”
He fast forwards to “Kimberly Creed is inferior to me in every possible way. And now I’ve made her my fuck pony.”
He fast forwards to “Fucking her was child’s play! And I’ll continue to fuck her as long as it suits me, though she’s not much of a lay. If not for the connection to Creed, I wouldn’t travel across town to do her.”
Doc Howard smiles, thinking of the many ways he can use it. The big question is who should he play it for first? Sam, Donovan, or Kimberly?
He tries to give an evil villain laugh, but starts coughing in the middle of it.
Getting old’s a bitch.
50.
Maybe Taylor.
Kimberly likes having an alias. For one thing, it helps her separate her killing life from her personal life. She also likes Sam far more than she thought she would. He grows on you. Like a wart, she thinks, smiling.
What she doesn’t like is her current relationship with her father. Specifically, she doesn’t like the way she’s been treating him. He’s got a life, and she’s a grown woman. They live in separate states, and his job keeps him traveling from place to place on a moment’s notice. She’s only recently begun to understand that part, but she now understands why it’s hard to schedule visits in advance.
And her father has enemies.
And those enemies might decide to come after her, to get back at him. He has to worry he could be leading those sorts of people to his daughter every time he meets her someplace.
Of course, this is one of the main reasons she decided to work for Sam almost a year ago. When he talked about helping her get in shape and learn self-defense, she thought of her father. If she could protect herself, maybe he wouldn’t worry so much about her safety. Then, over months, as she and Sam became closer, she told him about her father, what he did for a living, and Sam said he could provide her with that type of teaching as well. She didn’t have to kill people if she didn’t want to. But wouldn’t it be nice to know how?
From there, it was just a hop, skip and a jump-as Sam would say-to wondering how it felt to kill someone. Not a spur-of-the-moment killing, like with her boyfriend, Taylor, but a premeditated one, like her father routinely performs.
What better way could there be to understand his psyche than to enter his world?
After the breakthrough with Sam today, her head’s in a good place. Her female plumbing seems to have been restored, and she’s on the threshold of what could be a budding romance with an older guy who happens to be her adoring boss. For all the protesting she’s done, she’s secretly excited about having Sam as her boyfriend.
With so many things going for her, she suddenly regrets the phone message she left for her father.
She calls him back, gets his voice mail again. Says, “I’m sorry about the message I left a few minutes ago. I didn’t mean to say those things. I’m booking a flight to Vegas as soon as I hang up. I’m coming today, because we need to talk. There’ve been some major changes in my life, and I want to discuss them with you. I can’t say you’ll be happy with them, but I’m in a happy place. You’ve always said if I’m happy, you’re happy. So we’ll see. Anyway, call my cell if there’s a problem. Otherwise, I’m on my way to Vegas to see if we can be friends again.”
51.
Jeff and I sleep most of the way to Chicago. About an hour out, I give Bob Koltech a sack of cash and have him order a limo on his dime, so I won’t leave a paper trail.
“How much extra to spend the night here?” I ask.
“Just our rooms, food and transportation,” Bob says.
“How’s five grand sound?”
“Generous.”
I peel off fifty bills from one of the stacks in my case and add it to Bob’s bag.
“Don’t buy any liquor with that,” I say.
“What time you want to leave tomorrow?” he asks.
“I don’t know. We might even leave this afternoon, if my lady friend wants to come to Vegas.”
“Okay then. No liquor.”
When we land, Bennie the limo driver’s waiting for us with a stretch limo and a big smile. “You guys headed to UIC?” he says.
“We are,” I say.
“Good thing I’m your driver,” he says.
“Why’s that?”
“UIC has more than a hundred buildings on campus.”
“Over how many acres?”
“Two hundred forty.”
Bennie’s a proud father. Because his son is enrolled at UIC’s medical school, we get the full lecture on the ride over. The part I remember, UIC’s the nation’s largest medical school and has an annual budget of more than three hundred million dollars. Bennie claims thirty-five percent of the students speak English as a second language, which impresses him, for some reason.
“That’s amazing!” I say, noting the smirk on Jeff’s face
.
Bennie says, “Which building you want?”
“Center for Magnetic Resonance Research.”
“Never heard of it.”
I punch the information into my cell phone. “1801 West Taylor Street.”
“Oh. You shoulda said MRI. So, you gonna enter the beast?”
“We’re just doing a short tour.”
“If you’ve got a pacemaker, or any metal inside you, they won’t let you near the beast. Can’t even enter the building! That’s the big boy I’m talkin’ about, the biggest MRI machine in the world.”
“Maybe we’ll get to see it,” I say.
Bennie looks up in the mirror to catch my eye. He nods his head to the side, indicating Jeff. “He don’t talk much, does he?”
“English is his third language.”
“No shit?”
“Hakuna uchafu,” Jeff says.
Bennie says, “What’s that?”
“Swahili,” Jeff says.
“No shit?”
Jeff smiles. “Exactly.”
Jeff and I enter the building. The small leather bag slung over my shoulder contains toiletries, a change of clothes, and a gun. The suitcase in my hand contains what’s left of the cash after paying Bob for the flight and his overnight expenses.
I look around till I spot what I’m looking for, an old man and his wife. Jeff heads to the reception area to strike up a conversation with the two ladies working the desk.
As I approach the elderly couple I say, “Which of you is getting scanned this morning?”
The woman has a patch over one eye, and her other one is rheumy and filled with cataracts. Nevertheless, she thinks she knows me.
“I’d know you anywhere!” she squeals.
“You would?”
“You’re that movie star, what’s-his-name!”
“No.”
“You are! I’d know you anywhere!”
I wink at her and say, “Please, I’m trying to stay in character.”
She giggles, displaying the whitest set of dentures I’ve ever seen. It makes no sense anything on the planet earth could be this white! Herman Melville spent the entire Chapter 42 of Moby Dick trying to explain how white the whale was, but Moby had nothing on this lady.
White teeth aside, she’s right. I do strongly resemble the famous movie star whose name currently escapes her, except that I’ve gone back to my original black hair color. When Doc Howard, Dr. Petrovsky, and their team of surgeons reconstructed my face, attempting to give me a new identity, they used a movie star’s photo as a guide. Personally, I liked my old face better, though I did have an enormous scar on it back then.
“I love your eyes!” she says.
Of course she does. They’re back to the original jade green color I was born with, now that I’ve stopped wearing those ridiculous blue contact lenses.
“I’m Mildred,” she says. “But you can call me Millie. And this is Walt. He’s the one with the nine o’clock appointment.”
Walt appears to be near death, but raises his eyebrows as if to say hi. I don’t speak eyebrow, so I just say “Hi Walt.”
Millie winks at me with her one eye. Or maybe she blinked. It’s hard to tell. She says, “If I were twenty years younger…” then her voice trails off.
If she were twenty years younger she’d what? I wonder. Twenty years younger would still make her fifty years older than Miranda!
I sit beside her, despite the fact I think she’s coming on to me. She pats my arm. I wonder if there’s an eye underneath the patch, then decide I don’t want to know.
“I can’t believe it’s you!” Millie says.
I get that a lot. You’d think people would come up with something more intelligent, but inevitably they say, I can’t believe it’s you.
Who else would I be? Who else would anyone be?
But wait. Millie’s not finished.
“Is it really you?” she says. “Are you really sitting right here next to me?”
She’s making as much sense as Ricky Ricardo singing You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille.
Then again, I recently asked a woman if she was okay after watching her walk into a lamp post and fall on her ass.
Before her head blew up.
“What’s in the suitcase?” Millie asks.
“Money.”
“Aw, you shouldn’t have!” she says, jokingly.
“Let me ask you a question.”
“Shoot!”
“Are you and Walt rich?”
Millie starts cackling.
Even Walt’s eyebrows manage to smile.
“I’ve got a proposition for you,” I say.
“Didja hear that, Walt? He’s propositioning me!”
This time I don’t try to interpret Walt’s eyebrows. I say, “Millie, I’ve got a five-forty appointment to be scanned today. If you’re willing to swap appointments with me, I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars cash.”
Millie gasps.
I look her in the eye. “What do you say?”
“Twenty thousand dollars…and a kiss!” She says.
Oh no, oh hell no! I’m thinking. But what I say is, “How lucky for me!”
Millie doesn’t just kiss me, she tongues the shit out of me! And hers is not an ordinary tongue, either. It’s a flippin’ freak of nature! It’s long, thick, and dry, and feels like sawdust wadding up in the back of my throat. I have to fight to hold back the gag reflex. As she extricates her tongue, her dentures dislodge. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but moments later, she speaks to the receptionist with me standing there, and before you know it, I’ve got Walt’s appointment.
I ask Jeff to check the inner offices, where I’ll have to change into one of those silly hospital gowns, even though they’re only scanning my brain. While he’s in there, I tell Norma the receptionist that if my scan turns out to be normal, I’m going to ask my girlfriend to marry me. I hand her the small gift-wrapped box.
“I haven’t told anyone about this, not even Jeff,” I say.
“Why not?” Norma says.
“I want it to be a surprise. Will you hold it for me, just until I come out?”
“Well, I’m not really supposed to hold items for patients.”
“Please? It would mean the world to me!”
“We have lockers.”
She tries to hand it back to me.
“Please? I’m not comfortable leaving it in a locker. It’ll only be twenty minutes.”
She sighs. “Okay.”
“Can you put it in your pocket?”
She sighs again. “Fine.”
“Promise not to tell anyone?”
“I promise,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“I hope my scan is normal,” I say.
Norma looks doubtful, but says, “I hope so, too.”
I get the impression she feels bad for my girlfriend.
52.
Before heading into one of the dressing rooms to change into my hospital gown, I check my messages and notice Kimberly called.
I press the play button, and frown as I hear her angry words. She waited until five minutes before the deadline to call and has the gall to be mad at me for not being available.
Great.
I see she left me a second message, minutes later. Probably worked herself into a rage after thinking about it a while longer. Her mother used to do that. I stare at the screen a minute and decide to ignore the second message. I just don’t have the strength for her sullen attitude right now. She can chew me out later.
Jeff says, “You want me to hold anything for you?”
“No, but I’d like you to guard my locker while I’m in there.”
“Will do.”
“Are you okay spending the night?” I say. “If not, I can get you a flight back to Vegas.”
“I’m good. I’ll find something to do.”
“Okay, then.”
The technician joins us for a short chat. I tell him not to freak when he sees the
chip in my brain. “Let me know if it’s operable,” I say.
“We just shoot the pictures,” he says. “We don’t interpret them.”
I nod, then follow him into the scanning room, and take my position on the table.
“Just do twenty minutes worth,” I say.
“It doesn’t work that way. You’ll be here the full forty minutes,” he says.
Great.
53.
“You weren’t lying,” the technician says. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Do I get some sort of prize?”
“If you do, it won’t come from us.”
“Story of my life,” I say.
I exit the room and find Jeff standing with his back to my locker.
“Any problems?” I say.
“Were you expecting any?”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
“They had you in there forty minutes,” he says. “Is your brain that much larger than you thought?”
“Yeah.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Nope.”
I think about pressing the button now, to see if the MRI worked, but then a scary thought crosses my mind. Specifically, I wonder how much damage I might do. Assuming the chip in my head has been erased, I’m safe. But when I press the button on the ceramic device four times, two hundred and twelve chips are going to explode, wherever they are in the world!
Some of the chips are bound to be attached to explosives.
Plastic explosives-plastique as we call it-is soft and easily molded by hand. How easy? Explosives engineers call them “putty explosives.” So a group of terrorists on the same plane can each walk into an airplane lavatory carrying small bits of plastique and add their bit to the others that have been placed underneath and behind areas that aren’t easily visible. Like under the sink. Push a chip into the plastique, and you’re looking at a bomb that can be detonated from virtually anywhere in the world.
Even this locker room at the MRI center.
Here’s how my brain works: what if the airplane lavatory scenario is in place on Miranda’s flight? When I press the button, maybe the plane explodes, and I wind up killing 300 innocent people, including Miranda, simply because I’d been hoping to kill a couple dozen terrorists. Would I be able to live with myself?
