by TJ Martinell
“You got yourself a nice rifle,” he said. “Try to not ruin it until you get it to your girl.”
“You think it’s funny. I don’t.”
“Nobody thinks it’s funny when it happens to them.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“I wanted to talk to you,” Griggs said. “A friend of mine told me you come here often.”
“Who?”
“I got friends everywhere. Others make enemies everywhere. They also tend to get themselves killed.”
“Have an example?” I asked.
“Yeah, you.”
He took another drag, giving me time to look at him. His most prominent physical characteristics marked him as Caucasian, but his dark skin complexion indicated a mixed background. He had jet black hair combed back neatly and his blue eyes had a striking intensity to them. There was a naturally honest quality to him, but I had dealt with such people before. Too many times they had been liars so effective in deception they deceived even themselves.
“In the car when I asked for your name, you never asked for mine,” I said. “I was wondering why. Now it makes sense. You knew who I was before that, didn’t you?”
“Right.”
“So why didn’t you kill me?”
Griggs shrugged and flicked his cigarette into an oil drum. The honest quality in his voice.
“I didn’t kill you because I didn’t get a clear shot,” he said.
I was quiet. Any other time, I would have gone for my gun, knowing only one of us would walk away. But he wasn’t looking to fight.
“You might think I was there at the cemetery to get the same story as you,” he continued. “But I was there for one reason. To kill you.”
A long time passed without a word said by either one of us.
“I can see why,” I admitted. “One of your people got killed chasing me. But I don’t see why you would go out of your way to hunt me down. Unless, of course, your editor ordered you to do it.”
Griggs scoffed. “My editor told me he had had a chat with your editor and resolved the matter. He wasn’t ready to start a war over you. He told me to keep my hands clean. I wasn’t fine with that.”
“Why did you care?”
The bitterness formerly lacking in his voice suddenly appeared.
“The stringer’s name was Victor Polchinski. He was my best friend.”
The mask of obscurity fell off his honest face. It all instantly made sense.
“He was a decent guy,” Griggs insisted, as if it had been considered a matter of debate. “I trusted him. He didn’t always do the right thing, but who the hell does? We’re stringers. Half of us deserve to burn in Hell. He didn’t.”
I chose my words carefully. Griggs probably wouldn’t lose control of himself, but I refused to take the chance.
“Why weren’t you with him when he got killed?” I asked.
“We split up. He got a former delivery boy as a bodyguard, and I went it alone. My editor told us it was too much of a risk to keep us together. Apparently, he was right.”
“You don’t think you would have changed anything if you had been with him?”
Griggs reached into his pocket and threw a stick of gum into his mouth.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to think about it, or what might have happened if the boy hadn’t been shot at the cemetery,” he said. “We might not be talking.”
“Not that this is any consolation, but I didn’t kill your friend.”
“I know.”
“How?” I asked.
“Because you told your pals to let me go instead of killing me right then and there. I knew then you couldn’t have killed them.”
I could sense the desire for revenge lurking beneath his cool demeanor. He contained it, like we were expected to do. How long would that last?
“Understand that I don’t consider you an enemy,” he said. “Victor…well, I don’t know what to say. You didn’t kill him. If you had we might be having a different conversation. It would have been a mistake to kill you, too, especially now that I know we have a mutual enemy.”
“Who?”
“The ISA.”
“Hell, they’re everyone’s enemy here,” I laughed.
Griggs offered me a strange smile. “How long you been here?”
“A year, a little more.”
“You’ve still got more to learn. Come to think of it, I’m glad I didn’t kill you for another reason. You’re a lot like me, or who I used to be.”
He leaned closer to me and turned so that he had his back facing the crowds. His voice lowered.
“We stringers and newspaper boys like to pretend the ISA is the enemy; that they all hate our guts, and vice versa. But really, it’s a love-hate relationship. They hate us but they love us, because without us they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.”
“I’m sure they would find something else to do to justify their budget to Congress.”
Griggs led me back into the marketplace. He pushed us through the crowds and brought me to a newspaper stand run by a thin, balding man with a bad five o’ clock shadow. None of the newspapers were visible, of course, all tucked away inside cabinets. When a customer asked for one he wrapped them inside binders like one would place a liquor bottle in a brown paper bag and handed it to the customer. The customer then walked off reading it inside the binder.
“Know who that is?” Griggs asked.
“I’ve seen him around. Doesn’t seem like a friendly guy.”
“Most of the ISA’s undercover officers aren’t.”
I froze, slowly looked over at the man again. Now, I could see it. He had an air of intelligence concealed behind his disheveled getup.
“His name is Edward Owens,” Griggs said. “He’s one of the ISA’s most senior men here. Got to pick wherever he wanted to work. He chose Pike Place.”
“He’s not doing a very good job at keeping a low profile.”
“That’s just it. He’s not working an undercover job here. He’s working the newspaper stand. He sells newspapers, magazines. Whatever. All illegal. He doesn’t sell them to figure out who’s who here and report back to his supervisor. He’s here to sell newspapers to make a shitload of money.”
Yes. Double dipping. Casey had told me about their policy on that. Rather, he had hinted at it.
“He started out selling newspapers he stole from the evidence rooms in the ISA office,” Griggs explained. “Then he formed his own racket. A newspaper paid him off to seize another paper’s delivery trucks, then store the papers at the ISA office. He seized them, falsified the records, sold the papers, and pocketed the earnings. This worked until the delivery crews started arming themselves and the raids didn’t end so well. Owens decided to go into selling newspapers here at the marketplace. Libraries sell a lot, so do carriers, but he has a wider selection. He also sells the morning editions. Libraries tend to sell the evening editions, ‘cause they don’t open until later. He keeps the pretenses up with his bosses by tipping them off about something, usually a member of a newspaper they want rubbed off and don’t want to do it themselves because it’d get messy. Or he just bribes them. Either way works.”
“Are there others like him?”
“All over the place,” Griggs stated. “They love us.”
“Love us?”
He laughed. “Hell, kid, why do you think they don’t just use an eagle to hit the marketplace? They could kill half the people on their fugitive list in a single strike. They don’t because then they would lose a helluva lot of money. We don’t use their currency, but our money gets them access to a market like this where they can buy things without the entire world knowing.”
“I thought they were against that.”
“Ha! I figured a guy around here couldn’t be so naïve. It’s all a giant pretense that everybody goes along with. The ISA pretends they want to shut us down for good. But deep down inside if they
were honest they’d admit that they love us. Actually, what it comes down to it, they need us. They need us to do what we do, or else they don’t have a reason to exist. If we are here they have a reason to be here, too. They get their funding because we do things they pretend to fight against. It’s a game they play as much as we do. Some stringers talk about how much they hate the ISA, but where the hell would they be without them? Get my drift?”
“Wait a minute,” I said abruptly. “You came to the cemetery yesterday to kill me. You didn’t come for the story. How did you know I would be there?”
“An anonymous phone call. Person said you’d be there and they were paying me back for a favor.”
“Who owes you a favor?”
“Too many to narrow it down.” He chuckled for a moment, then grew somber. “I have the feeling you dug yourself a big hole and now you realize how deep you’re in you don’t know how to climb out,” he said.
I tossed my cigarette away and thanked Griggs for the tipoff.
“Consider us friends,” he said. His smile became a stern frown as he stepped forward and whispered in my ear. “But don’t ever, ever come to Shoreline again.”
“What if I do?” I asked. “Will you try to kill me?”
“If you’re my friend you’ll stay out.”
He blended in amongst the throngs of people amid the square pushing and shoving and pressing against one another. Letting the implications of what Griggs had told me sink in, I made my way to up toward the street and fell in with a group heading out. A young girl no older than twenty holding a man’s hand, same age as her. They were laughing and giggling and their faces were pressed close to one another’s as they kissed. Still absorbed in their passionate embrace they both stopped at a strange sound and looked up at the sky, holding their hands up to block out the sun blinding them.
The entire marketplace stopped. Everyone imitated the young couple, placing their hands like a visor up above their faces and gazing at the sky as though searching for the same source of that distinct yet foreign sound. I tried to look, too, but the sun’s harsh glare concealed whatever we heard.
Someone grabbed me and shoved me forward with a frantic exhale. I dropped and was about to fall but the unknown person pushed me forward to keep me on my feet and stumbling away from the market. I lost my balance and tripped and fell. Still not speaking, the person grabbed my arm and pulled me up.
I looked up and saw Griggs. His face was white as plaster.
With a powerful thrust he threw me forward one final time. I managed to stay up for a few more yards and then landed on my face again. I turned to see him throwing himself through the air toward me. I looked over at the young couple still holding hands, still gazing up at the sky along with the rest of the crowd. Still smiling.
The sudden bright flash consumed them instantly. They disappeared along with the rest of the crowd. A great conflagration of fire poured out as an explosion shook the ground and sent shock waves raced out in all directions. The intense heat seared my face like a bad sunburn. I threw myself down against the concrete as it groaned beneath me. Then I was suddenly deaf except for an aching sound ringing through my head.
***
Griggs was standing a short distance from me, motionless. His whitened face was dirtied, his clothes ripped. He stared at the marketplace like a statue in a fixed pose.
I couldn’t look. The mere presence of death was all I needed. It was the stuff of nightmares, the visceral experience of bad dreams. But as I paused and waited, the nightmare did not end with me waking up in my bed. If it was a nightmare, seeing what Griggs saw would awaken me. Holding my breath, I slowly turned and took in the sight. My eyes immediately returned to the place in the street where the young couple had held hands.
They were no more.
It was not a sight of death and carnage and gruesome bodies like one would find on a battlefield. All that remained were darkened spots like the boils signifying the presence of the bubonic plague on a person’s body. As though the people had never existed at all.
Several of the booths were afire, the flames flapping like sails in the wind. Some survivors had recovered and stared at the place where many people had just walked and in a second had vanished. There were those who had been struck by the blast but had not been disintegrated or even harmed, though they had stood a few feet away from another who had left nothing to signify their passing.
With their clothes and hair and eyebrows signed, the survivors looked openmouthed at the ground and then at each other. They wondered what too many before them since time immemorial had asked, why they had lived and others had not, why death had taken others but left them.
Griggs wiped his face and frantically dug into his coat for a cigarette. He tried to light it with a match but the wind kept blowing the flame out. He cursed and threw the cigarette away and exhaled nosily as he placed his hands on his head.
“My God,” he said.
A wail, soft and gentle, emanated from marketplace itself. More survivors inside the buildings came out and stared. The security guards stood impotently, knowing there was nothing they could have done. Amid the debris they discovered more survivors. Among them were the few corpses found.
Or what was left of them. An arm there, a leg over there.
One man’s entire lower body was gone, erased. He was still alive, conscious of the fact he had a minute or less to live. He was spitting blood, trying to speak what he knew to be his final words. One of the guards listened with his ear next to the man’s lips, but when the man’s hand fell down to what little remained of his chest, the guard stood up and stormed away.
Near the building, the vendors had brought cameras and were snapping photos and recording as the guards cleared the area and the rest of the crowd dispersed in dread of another strike.
It was a story. A hell of a story.
To hell with Olan’s orders. This couldn’t wait.
I went to leave. I stopped and looked at Griggs. I couldn’t speak. There were no words to describe what I felt. He knew, anyway.
“Just remember,” he said.
I went to work quickly. By the time they came the area would be cleaned up, the bodies removed and the marketplace partially restored. Several vendors were willing to speak. Others were still in a state of shock. The guards refused to comment as they worked to restore a semblance of order and contacted their superiors. It wasn’t a duty for a stringer, but I got a few photos with my camera. The readers, those who had never stepped foot in Seattle, needed to see this. Otherwise they would not believe it.
I jogged over to our safe house 5th Avenue and Virginia Street. The wail was no longer soft or gentle and seemed to follow me and echo across each street block after block as if to remind me of that I should have been among the dead. Reaching the safe house, I flashed the password to enter, and was whisked in by an uneasy guard who had felt the rumble and seen the explosion. He demanded to know what had happened. I ignored him and stumbled across the foyer into the phone booth, my voice hoarse and feeble as I got a hold of Port.
“Damn it, Roy boy!” he said. “Olan told ya to─”
I didn’t scream. I spoke in such a ghostly tone that he cut himself off and did not say another word until I had finished reading from my notes.
“Christ,” Port muttered. “How are ya not dead?”
“I’m on my way.”
“Here or being dead?”
“Both.”
Rather than make my way to the newspaper, I walked into a small alley behind the building. An old Ford truck sat on the ground like a horse with no legs, its tires removed and its glass shattered. I stepped inside the Ford and sat in the deteriorated seat, looking at the visible steering column. I looked at it. But I didn’t see it. I saw the young couple, the man blown in half and his intestines spilled out on the ground.
There hadn’t been any children there, yet how many of them would wait in vain all night for their mother
or father to come home and maybe even stay awake through the night, only to find the dawn arrive and their parents still gone? And would the man who had fired the missile inside a mundane office environment, sipping coffee while watching a holographic screen in front of his face, ever know this? Censorship in the ISA forbade him from seeing people, so instead of faces he saw dots and numbers as he confirmed the order to launch the strike. Removed from the carnage caused at the scene, he was unaffected by the results. At least temporarily. He would go home that night to his family and eat a quiet dinner and go to bed in a protected neighborhood in a secure city and never have to confront the awful things he was responsible for.
It would be years later that his long-repressed conscience would cry out to be heard.
In the meantime, however, the state would have its human sacrifices.
Resting one hand on the steering column, I took off my flat cap and placed it on the seat next to me and lowered my head as I broke down and wept, unable to hold myself back. I tried to convince myself there was no reason to cry. I had known none of the people killed. It didn’t seem to make a difference, and I realized it wasn’t merely about those who had died that day but the innumerable and unknown victims and how I might have been one of them. I had been spared from death’s clutches and I didn’t know whether it had been the product of random chance of Griggs being there to save me or providential intervention into the affairs of men.
I sat in the seat for a long time, watching as the sun reached its zenith in the sky. In the east gray clouds gathered far off the shore. The street retained a solitary silence as I collected myself, left the truck, and headed back to the newspaper while ravens collected in the sky. I looked at them with a fist held up, as if to challenge the man operating them to come down and confront me and end it all. He would not come to me.
At some point, I knew I would have to take the fight to him.
***
Olan wanted to yell at me.
He had the reproachful expression, his hands clenched into fists and his body stiff and tall.
