“Didn’t really think about it. I usually use a pencil,” Cole offered.
“Feds got pens that fire a .22 long rifle. One shot to the head and that’s it. I have one—or I used to. I tend not to hold on to stuff. Ties you down.” Reed pointed at the floor in front of him again. “Sit. Please.”
Cole tossed his pad on the floor in front of Reed and sat. There was about four feet between the two men. Four feet and a large suitcase, Cole thought.
“So,” Cole began, “what is it you want to say?”
“I didn’t think you would be so businesslike. In our other talks, you’ve been more, I don’t know, more glib.”
Cole stuck his pencil behind his ear and leaned back against his palms that lay spread on the cool floor. “Okay, so you’re a Crosby, Stills, and Nash fan, huh?”
“No, Airplane. I always liked them a lot. I used to love a hit of windowpane acid and a Jefferson Airplane record. That was a good high. Can’t get good acid any more, you know. Not since the Mafia took over everything. Used to be people made their own. Owsley, Timothy Leary, those guys had pure, clean, uncontaminated acid. I had a friend named Terry who went to Harvard. Learned to make that shit in an organic chemistry class. Organic acid, is that a trip? Man, would I love to hear Surrealistic Pillow again. That was a long time ago.” Reed frowned.
“I met the Airplane once. Long time ago. Before Woodstock. About ’68 I guess.”
“Oh, yeah? Were they cool?” Reed asked with genuine interest.
“When I was in high school, I worked for a dairy that also sold orange juice, grape drink, fruit punch, stuff like that, and put it up in cartons. Every Saturday, my job was to go in at 2 in the morning and mix up a thousand-gallon batch of fruit punch, then stand at the end of the machine and put the cartons into plastic crates and push them into the cooler. Anyway, I got there one morning, and the late shift hadn’t finished up. So, the foreman said for me to come back in an hour. It was too far to go back home, so I went to this pancake joint called Sambo’s. Ever heard of them? They had mascots of a little Indian boy in a turban and a tiger. Take off on the Little Black Sambo stories. They all closed up because people thought it was racist. Anyway, I went in and sat at the counter to have some cocoa or something, and in walked all these hippies. Where I lived, you didn’t see a whole lot of hippies, at least not in ’67 or ’68.
“I recognized Grace Slick instantly. Grace and Marty Balin slid into a booth, but Jack Casady and Paul Kantner sat at the counter next to me. I told Kantner I liked their music. He wanted to know if I was a milkman because of the white uniform I was wearing. That’s it.”
“That’s cool. ‘Got to revolution, got to revolution’!” Reed sang the line. “You know, Mr. Sage, death is very liberating. I feel very happy, almost like being stoned. Except I’m not. I feel at peace. Like, I know what I’m doing is the right thing, and all will be better because of me. I want to talk. I haven’t been able to just sit and talk with anyone in a long, long time. Can you imagine what that has been like? Now I have no secrets to conceal. Hey, that’s Dylan, huh? How’s that go? ‘Go to him now, he calls you…you got no secrets to conceal.’ Ha! How weird is that? Anyway, I thought since you and I have talked more in the last week than anyone I have talked to in years, you would be a good person to finish with. Where do we start, Mr. Sage?” Reed looked at Cole with an almost childlike anticipation.
“Where are you from, Reed?” Cole said offhandedly.
“Foxboro, Massachusetts. Not far from Boston. At least that’s where I was born. I am from the earth now.”
“Do you still have family there?”
“I don’t know.” Reed shrugged.
“Siblings?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How old are you, anyway?”
“Fifty-five, I think.” Reed squinted as he tried to concentrate.
“Ever been married?”
“Almost. She died.”
“Died?”
“I killed her,” Reed said flatly. “Her name was Jacqueline. I probably shouldn’t have done it. At the time, though, it seemed like she might say the wrong thing to the wrong people. Shit like that gets you killed, you know. She was not very pretty. Good soul, though. I think I may have even loved her. Had red hair like me. A real revolutionary must make sacrifices. I sacrificed Jackie. I always meant to go back and make a marker on her grave. But now I can’t remember where I buried her. She had a birthmark on her inner thigh, looked like a saxophone.” Reed smiled at the memory.
“Sounds like those were good times,” Cole said smiling.
“Probably the best. I don’t think Mel ever really liked me.”
“Mel?” Cole prodded gently.
“You know, Mel Lyman. I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. He taught me everything I know that has any meaning. But the more I think about him, the more I think that maybe he wasn’t God. I think he was preparing the world for me. It took too long for me to figure it out, you know? The message has gotten watered down. Time flies, you know. I looked in the mirror this morning before I came down here and, goddammit, I’m an old man. Mel disappeared at about 40-something. I should have been ready then.”
“He sure could play harmonica,” Cole offered, wanting to direct the conversation away from anything that could possibly set Reed off. “I tried to learn, but it made me cough.”
Reed licked his lips and looked down at his hand on the switch. In that instant, Cole saw a young boy. A boy who had made the wrong choice and knew it but didn’t know how to undo what he had done. Before him sat a man nearly 60 years old, and Cole began to see a person who hadn’t grown with his age. Reed went from rebellious teenager to murderous revolutionary without any rites of passage. No graduation, no driver’s license, no prom, no first date, no first job, no Christmases, no birthdays—none of the things that fill a life with memories and meaning. Instead, he murdered, poisoned, blown up, terrorized, intimidated, and then trained others to do the same. Now he wanted to make a connection, he wanted to talk, chat, make small talk, shoot the bull, and then blow up San Francisco.
“What does a revolutionary, radical, or whatever you identify yourself as, live like, anyway. I mean, it must take a lot of money.”
“There you go. Everything with you people always gets back to money.”
“You people?”
“You know, straights. Wait, I forgot that means something different now. Remember when it was straights or squares who were the enemy? Never trust anybody over 30. Now I’m twice that, nearly. Things were different back then. You think they had queers then? I never met any, least I don’t think I did. You ever had sex with a man?”
“No,” Cole said evenly. “You?”
“Hell, no. I just wondered. This place is crawlin’ with them. Arabs do it to each other all the time, especially Turks. Anyway, what did you ask? Oh, yeah, money.” Reed frowned.
“How do you live, support yourself? I always wondered about that.” Cole tried to refocus the conversation.
“Lot of shitty jobs to start out. I’ve picked fruit, gathered eggs on a poultry farm, chopped vegetables in a Chinese restaurant. Oh, yeah, and I painted lots of stuff—barns, houses, schools, I even painted a water tank in Kansas one time. I always had enough to get by. You learn to get by and still be invisible. You’d be surprised the underground economy in the country, it’s not just the Mexicans that sneak over the border. You know, I’ve never been paid with a check for any work I ever did?” Reed paused as if considering his own words.
“Later on, I had plenty. But I gave it away. It’s not about money. Like the Arabs, they think because they have all the money in the world, they can buy anything they want. They could never buy me, because I’m not about money. I have turned down vast wealth, Mr. Sage, because it would have spoiled me, spoiled the mission, spoiled what I was supposed to do. That’s why they’ll never win. The guys at the top, they’re about power and money. They feed the poor, stupid, gullible fools all that Alla
h shit, and they eat it up. Strap a bomb to me! Seventy virgins, here I come! Idiots, the top guys are cutting deals with the CIA and the Israelis. It’s crazy, Mr. Sage.”
Cole studied Reed for a long moment. Who strapped the bomb to you, he thought. Even in the world of anarchy and terror, it is still them and us. My cause is better than yours, my goal is more right than yours, my reward is greater than yours.
“Do you know Richard Shipman?” Cole asked.
“Of 221 Grey Block Lane?” Reed laughed. “Now, there is a freak for you. And I don’t mean it in a good way. Mama’s boy, masturbator, crazy mean, throws fits like a little kid if things don’t go his way. Why?”
“He’s afraid you’re going to set off that thing.” Cole pointed at the suitcase. “And he’ll die.”
“That’s him, all right, only worried about himself. Offered me a million dollars once to teach him about explosives. Banged his head on a door ’til he collapsed when I said no. Knocked himself out.” Reed chuckled at the thought. “You think he’s queer?”
“I don’t know,” Cole replied.
“Shipman always bragged that if he ever got busted, his family would get him out. Lots of money there, man.”
“Do you come from money?”
Reed smiled but didn’t speak for several seconds. “I, my friend, come from the great unwashed masses we call ‘the middle-class.’ My father was a bookkeeper in a shoe factory. My mother died when I was two. My stepmother sold bras at J.C. Penney’s.”
“So, you’re an only child? Me, too.”
“Yes, I was the only fruit of my father’s loins. A fact he never let me forget.” Cole detected a note of bitterness in Reed’s voice.
“How so?”
“Before my mother died, she made my father promise to remarry. They always planned to have a big family. It was his idea mostly, I think. So, two years after she died, he married Karen, my stepmother. That was in August. In October, I got the mumps. So did my father, except his went straight to his balls. Swelled up like cantaloupes. Made him sterile. I was the last kid he would have. He never forgave me. Always called me ‘the bastard that gave him the mumps.’ ‘Mumps may have made me sterile, but they made you an idiot,’ he used to say. Nice, huh?” Reed rubbed the top of the hand attached to the finger on the button with his cheek.
“When did you leave home? Must have been kind of rough with your father being so bitter.”
“He wasn’t as bad as her. Karen blamed me for making him mean. Used to twist my ears. Look, see how they’re all weird on top? When he was around, she was an angel. Minute he stepped out the door, she would start in on me. God, I hated that woman. When’d I leave? The week after they didn’t celebrate my 16th birthday. So, it was the summer of ’67. Good timing, huh? I hung around Harvard Commons and met Tim and Maria. They took me to the Family. I sold the Avatar to earn my keep and did chores on the block to be a member of the Family.”
“When was the last time you spoke to your parents?”
“The night before I left,” Reed said proudly. “So, am I a raving lunatic madman?”
“Bitter, angry, misguided and definitely exhibit some antisocial behavior, but not a lunatic. No, I don’t think you’re nuts.”
“Then you got it all.” Reed smiled.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m done.”
“Sorry?” Cole was not sure where the conversation was going.
“Well, Mr. Sage, you are an award-winning journalist. I am about to make history and change the direction of the modern world, and you asked me the questions you felt were the most important. I gave you a reasonable amount of time, and now we are through.”
“But I haven’t—” Cole motioned to his pad as he took his pencil from behind his ear.
“I’m going to give you an hour to get as far away from here as you can. You will go and publish the story you’re going to write about our meeting, and the world will know who Jason Reed is, thanks to you. I’m just an average American kid who grew up seeing that things can be better only when they’re destroyed and rebuilt by those who can see the flaws. I willingly and with clear conscience do what I will do in one hour for the betterment of Planet Earth. Thank you, Mr. Sage, for the part you will play in history. Sorry I won’t be around to read the story you write. I’ll look it up in my next life.”
“Reed, you don’t have to do this. You’re an average guy with some legitimate concerns. Stop now, and let’s put your thoughts in a book. I’ll work for free. The money can fund all the political and social agendas you want.” Cole was pleading and, for the first time, really believed Reed was going to set off the bomb.
“No!” Reed screamed. His face was crimson, and the veins in his neck bulged. “Get out before I change my mind! One hour, you hear me, one hour!”
Cole twisted to put his feet behind him. As he put his hands on the floor to push himself up, his head was only inches from the suitcase. Letting the yellow pad slip away, he felt the pencil in his right hand, and in an instant, he knew what he must do. As he rose to a half crouch, Cole slipped the pencil between his index and middle fingers, the eraser resting against the center of his palm.
Cole began to straighten and stand then pretended to slip and stumble. He reached out with his left hand and covered Reed’s fingers and the detonation switch. In the same moment, he drove the needle-sharp point of the pencil into Reed’s eye. Using the butt of his palm, he slammed the pencil into Reed’s brain. The pencil glided through tissue until Cole felt his hand slap Reed’s forehead. The pencil stopped when it hit the hard bone at the back of Reed’s skull.
The small man’s face contorted with pain, and his body whipped with convulsions, blood spewing from the wound in his eye socket. But Cole held fast to Reed’s hand with all his strength. Without thinking, as if driven by some animal instinct, Cole hit Reed again and again in the face, first breaking his nose, then jarring, snapping, and driving the pencil deeper into Reed’s brain. Reed howled and gurgled, his tongue sticking out of his mouth in grotesque distortion. Then Reed’s body went limp and slumped to the floor. His hand and arm under Cole’s weight arched away from his trunk in a peculiar twisted position. Reed jerked spasmodically several times and then lay motionless. Cole now looked into the face of a pale little man with the eraser end of a pencil protruding from his eye socket and his mouth gaping in shock. Cole gagged and vomited.
“Can I get some help here?” he screamed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He heard the sound of heavy boots already running across the shiny floor behind him.
“My God, Cole, what have you done?” It was Carter Washington.
“It seems this is how far I would go to protect those I love,” Cole said softly.
“Get my people in here now!” Washington shouted into his radio. “It’s going to be okay, Cole, just hang tight for a little while.” He rested his hand on Cole’s shoulder.
Within moments, two men and one woman in navy nylon windbreakers were hovering around Cole. He was on his knees, one hand atop the other, still smashing Reed’s hand against the top of the suitcase.
“Jesus, who puked?” one of the FBI agents muttered.
“I did,” Washington said, looking down at Reed’s vomit-splattered chest.
“Nice shot, sir,” the agent said sheepishly.
Cole winked at Washington.
The female agent felt Reed’s neck for a pulse. “Dead, sir.” “I figured as much. Mr. Sage doesn’t do things halfway.”
“Mr. Sage,” the woman said, laying her hand on top of Cole’s, “we only get one shot at this, so please do as I instruct you, okay?”
“Yes.”
The woman gently stroked the top of his hand. He looked up at the face slightly above his. “What’s your name?”
“Jennifer.”
“You have kind eyes, Jennifer. What do you want me to do?”
“First, just slowly take away this hand.” She patted Cole’s right hand.
Cole did
as requested and turned to look up at Washington.
“Not so bad, is it?” Washington smiled.
“Kazzas, got that tape ready?”
Cole’s head snapped to his right, hearing the familiar ripping sound of duct tape pulled from a roll.
“Did you know that duct tape is required by an act of Congress to always be on Air Force One?” Jennifer asked no one in particular.
“Ready with the tape,” Kazzas said, holding up a grey foot-long piece.
“Now this is where it gets a little tricky. You with me, Mr. Sage?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Cole said, attempting humor.
“I will replace your hand with mine. Please try to be as loose and limp as you can.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” Kazzas said with a broad smile.
Five people all looked at him, and none were smiling.
“You wish,” Jennifer sneered. “Okay, now that funny boy has had his little moment of levity, and before I file a sexual harassment complaint, can I get you to listen to me real close?” Jennifer paused and Cole nodded his head. “Can you feel my finger on your index finger? I want you to slip your hand away and let me take over. You tell me when you’re ready, all right?”
“I’m ready.” Cole slowly slipped his hand out from under Jennifer’s.
“Got ’em.”
From seemingly out of nowhere, Jennifer produced a butterfly knife with a five-inch blade. Cole rubbed his hands together, then rubbed his palms on the sleeves of his shirt. Jennifer’s index finger pressed down on the bluish tip of Reed’s index finger. She pivoted to where their fingers were at right angles.
“Okay, Kazzas. We’re going to strap his finger down as tight as we can, just like we have done in training a million times. You ready?” Jennifer looked to see Kazzas nod his head in the affirmative. “On three. One, two, three.”
In the blink of an eye, Reed’s finger was duct-taped to the suitcase, allowing no movement.
“You might not want to watch this next part,” Jennifer again said to no one in particular. With a firm swift downward motion, she severed Reed’s index finger from the rest of his body. His arm fell to his lifeless side.
Helix of Cole Page 22
