by TJ Martinell
“And they say we’re the paranoid ones.”
“Now you know why I asked to be assigned out here.”
“Or did my father talk you into it?”
He smirked as he ordered another shot of whiskey. “We’re not having one of those talks where we chat about our personal lives. I never went for that. Save it for your girl.”
“Don’t have one.”
“For the better. Life is simpler without one.”
He got up and retrieved his next round. He called for some other song to play. He wiped his face and small drips of whiskey fell from his chin as he threw his head back.
“What was my father like?” I asked.
“Forget it. I’m not giving you any stories. But if you really want to know, he was a bastard to me the whole time. I thought it was a personal thing. I hated him for it. It was only after I came here and found out who he really was that it makes sense. I thought it was a coincidence you two had the same last names, but didn’t figure being a stringer was a family trade.”
“What about the kid?”
“I’m still talking to him, when I can. I can’t show up to the office for a while. They’ll start to wonder if something’s up, and I’m not taking any changes. Not at this point.”
“Wouldn’t want to spoil that pension, eh?” I remarked.
“It’s not the damn pension. It’s not having to pretend to work for those bastards anymore. I’ve decided as soon as I’m done I’m sticking with this gig. I like my newsstand.”
“Ever appreciate the irony?” I inquired.
“Not really. This whole society is irony writ large.”
“I want to know what this kid has got so I can plan this out right.”
“Why? What’s this whole thing about?”
“The truth,” I said.
Owens laughed hard, his cheeks sparkling red as he slammed his hand on the table.
“The truth is you’re going to have to wait,” he said as though it were a punchline. He paid the bartender and struggled to his feet.
“You want some advice?” he asked.
“Depends.”
He bent down and prodded me with his finger. He wasn’t nearly as drunk as he pretended to be.
“I wouldn’t go out too much,” he said. “And don’t come near my newsstand again. I’m being watched. So are you. Don’t bother to try and shake them off. They know who you are and where you are. You can’t hide from them. They won’t touch you, though. Right now, they just want to know what you’re up to.”
“Why don’t they just kill me?”
“Because they know what will happen if they kill you. Someone will get a death knock tonight.”
“That isn’t very reassuring.”
“Doesn’t matter. Take the precautions. Stay indoors and don’t go out unless you must. At least while I’m working this. If they so much as hear that we’ve been talking, I’m dead. They’re a vindictive bunch.”
“Should’ve thought of that when you signed up.”
“I did. I liked it, then. Not so much now. But it’s like trying to get out of a gang. Once you’re in, there’s no leaving.”
“Don’t I know,” I said under my breath as he walked away.
Chapter Nineteen
It was late when I got the call from Owens. I was in the process of putting my revolver back together after cleaning it. The room smelled of gun bore oil and grime.
Owens tried small talk, which was out of character for him. I didn’t give an inch and forced him to make his point.
“The kid wants to meet you,” he said.
“Why?”
“Hell if I know. The kid is out of his mind. But he won’t budge. He said he needs to meet you before he does anything from here.”
“How’s that gonna work?”
“He wants to meet you in Bellevue. Not up for negotiations”
I didn’t like the setup. What I liked less was not having much of a choice. The boy had me cornered, unwittingly or not. If I went, I would be entering enemy territory on his terms. If he was a sellout, I’d see my father again sooner than expected. Even if this informer was genuine, he was still young. As I had learned from my own experience, youth and stupidity too often went hand in hand.
“You think he’s legit?” I asked.
“Hell, how do you know I’m legit?”
“Because you’ve got nothing to gain by screwing me over.”
“He’s naive. That’s good and bad. Good in that he says what he means. I’ll make sure the naiveté doesn’t get you killed.”
“Fine, but he needs to bring something to prove he has what he claims to have.”
“Won’t be easy. He’ll have to steal some codes. He might get caught.”
“Or he could be lying and acting as an undercover officer.”
Owens took a short pause. “You don’t think I’m backstabbing you?”
“No. But I don’t know this boy, and neither do you. Have you met him?”
“Nope. Just messages. All offline.”
“Smart. But it doesn’t tell you everything about him.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ll relay your message. He already has the place picked out for you to meet at.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Some nostalgia joint called Riordan’s. Ever heard of it?”
No way could it be a coincidence. Or maybe he knew from the dossier they had on me. However, I played it off like it was nothing.
“Yeah, I know it. What made him want to choose it?”
“No idea. Didn’t ask. Is there a problem with it?”
“…no…not at all…just curious…
“Good. In case you’re wondering, the answer is no. I’m not going. I’ve got a newsstand to run and I won’t risk it. I’ll stick my neck out so far, but that is too far.”
“Anybody else would interpret your actions as evidence of a double-cross.”
“Except I’m sure you have already notified your people that if anything should happen to you they’re to send their goons to rub me out with a shotgun blast to the face, marketplace rules be damned.”
I laughed. “I didn’t think of it until you suggested it. Not a bad idea.”
“I’m not trying to be a bastard, but at this point you’re on your own. I got you what you wanted. If he don’t show, then you can call me. I’ll reach out again. But if he’s there, consider this my final part in this.”
“Like I said before, I just needed your help here.”
I waited for him to hang up or give his farewell bit. I could sense the deliberation in his breaths.
“I did you this favor for your pops,” he said. “I take back what I said about him being a bastard. He wasn’t a bad guy. Don’t know what you know about his time with us. He hated every second of it. But he worked hard.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess he never fooled himself about why he was there. Everybody pretended to be there for some selfless, noble reason. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He quit as soon as they let him leave, but it was too early to collect a pension. If he had stayed for a few more years he could have retired with a nice little retirement.”
The revelation slowly sunk deep into my gut. While I was in high school we had had a retirement party for father. During it he had told me and everyone we were well taken care of. After learning about his ISA work, I had assumed the pension had come from there.
“Why didn’t he stick it out?” I asked Owens.
“He didn’t want it. Could have lived off it. But that wasn’t his way, was it?”
Then I finally got it.
Father hadn’t gone back to work for the newspaper simply for the nostalgia of reliving his former glory days. He had needed the money.
“Thanks for telling me that,” I said.
“Good luck. I’ll either see your name on the front page or in the obits.”
“O
r both.”
***
Riordan’s was empty, save for a handful of old men at the counter. They cackled amongst themselves and traded private jokes while flirting facetiously with the middle-aged waitress refilling their coffee. The banter was long established. She rejoined their cocky sense of humor with a faux sense of indignation.
They hardly noticed me when I came in dressed in a blue sports jacket. The rest was formal but discreet; a button-up shirt with no tie.
I instinctively felt something had changed. The smell of grease, saccharine, and salt was the same. The changes were in the finer details. The carpet and rug were stained. The doors were chipped and the paint faded. The damage all looked recent.
The waitress appeared stressed despite the lack of patrons clamoring for her attention. Dean Martin’s soothing voice emanating from a jukebox seemed like an ironic addition to the unmistakable tension in the room.
I walked past the front booth and gestured to the waitress to bring me coffee and moved to the to a two-man booth against the wall in the back, stunned to find the walls stripped of the Americana memorabilia that had once covered it from top to bottom.
The waitress arrived with a full pot and a tray of cream and sugar. As I thanked her I observed her hurried expression, the single tear in her eye. A tear of hopeless despair.
She somehow recognized me.
There was little I could do except tacitly impress upon her the danger if she said anything. And the danger wasn’t from me but from the police. They would all be viewed with suspicion after my arrest. She knew that.
She walked back to the front counter where she embraced the barrage of catcalls and wolf whistles from the old men. It violated all social rules and etiquette, but they were at the point in their lives where they simply didn’t care. If they had anything to lose, it had been lost or wasn’t worth protecting.
As I sipped my coffee I took out my freshly-cleaned revolver and discreetly placed it in my lap. It would do me little good in a firefight. But I had no intention of going down helplessly.
The speakers above the front door jingled. The waitress called to someone, asked them if they wanted coffee. A quiet voice replied. There was soft shuffling across the carpet. Their footsteps were slow and hesitant.
A man appeared around the corner in a well-fitted light brown suit with a matching tie. His pants were also thin. Yet they were still too big for his lanky legs. His body was so slim he seemed to disappear in his clothes.
I looked at him hard as he stood in front of me, the two of us sizing each other up.
The man suddenly became a young man.
A very young one.
It wasn’t so much the age. He was twenty one at most. It was that horrible naiveté Owens had warned me about. He openly displayed it in his big eyes, amazed at everything and anything trivial. It only added to his confused and disorientated gaze. Uncertainty in his mannerisms and conduct.
I got up and shook his bony, clammy hand, then invited him to sit. I asked if he wanted coffee and in a low murmuring voice he said he didn’t drink it or any other caffeinated drink. He fidgeted in his seat and looked around and at the bared walls. He then asked me how long I had been waiting for him.
“Would it bother you if I’ve waited long?” I asked.
“I hope you haven’t.”
“I didn’t think you’d care.”
He watched me as though to decide if I was the kind of man he had imagined me to be.
“I expected someone older,” he said. “You look like my age.”
“I’ve gotten used to that.”
“Were you expecting someone older?”
“No, but I was told otherwise. You weren’t.”
“It’s just, with the way people talk about you, you sound much older.”
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “How do they talk about me?”
He shrank in his head, put his head down. He lifted his chin and then muttered that people were always talking about “Kill” Roy Farrington, the cold-blooded killer.
“They say you’ve got a heart of stone. A former journalist who got kidnapped by a newspaper gang and turned into a monster.”
He waited anxiously for my reaction There was little I could do except chuckle. I found it ironic they called me a killer but not a liar.
“Maybe they’re right,” I said.
“Oh.”
“You don’t know, though, do you?”
He held his hands together on the table. It struck me as odd he wasn’t taking control of the conversation. Had he decided to do this on a whim?
“Well, you wanted to meet me,” I said. “And here we are. What do you want?”
“I wanted to make sure you were real.”
“Why would you doubt that?”
“Owen is the best undercover officer we have. When he first contacted me, I didn’t think anything of it. I assumed he had to have known. But then I thought about it and it occurred to me the position I’ve put myself in. All based on his word. There was no proof you existed. It might have been a test to see how loyal I was. They do those, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Loyalty tests. They do that to interns. They make you do things, I’ve heard.”
“Like what?”
A lump slid down his throat. He leaned closer to me even though no one else was within hearing range.
“Sometimes they make interns…I’ve been told they make them hurt people. Torture them. Sometimes even shoot them.”
“Shoot them?”
“I’ve only heard about it,” he said hastily. “Nobody has ever said they’ve done it.”
“Why would they have interns shoot people?”
“To see how far they are willing to go, what orders they’ll obey. It’s called the Milgram test.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Did you ever do it?”
His big eyes bulged in horror. “Kill anyone? Of course not. But I was never asked to do it.”
“What did they have you do?”
“Nothing. That is why I suspected Owens and wanted to meet you.”
“Really? That’s all you wanted to see me for. A phone call would have sufficed.”
“I thought you said you wanted evidence.”
“I do.”
The young man reached into his pocket and handed me a printed photo of a stack of documents inside a partially opened metal file cabinet.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s what I’m going to give to you.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“They’re files from when they still had them archived in physical copies. Now they store everything digitally, but they used to keep hard copies of certain files in the event of a security compromise or disaster or virus. Things like that. The hard copies acted as the final backup. Most were destroyed. But I found out some are still preserved. In fact, they are the only copies of those files left. For some reason, they did not make digital copies or backups. As a result, they are completely inaccessible through our database.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “You’re just an intern.”
“Technically, I’m a contractor with Corvus Systems Inc., which is why I probably never had to take the Milgram test. As to my discovery, I was working one day on the security software. A part of my job is to test for weaknesses in the system. During one of those tests I managed to break in. Normally I’m supposed to report the incident, document the necessary procedures I took to address the problem, and then move on. Instead, I keep exploring the data I had found. That’s when…”
He stopped and drummed the table with his fingers. His eyes full of pleas for commiseration. It was the look of a loner unaccustomed to support from friends and family. I knew that look of social isolation. It explained his willingness to turn it over.
“I found things, Mr. Farrington,” he said. “Things I could not believe. Things that I never w
anted to believe. I was…I was…”
“Appalled?”
“Something like that. I wanted to go to someone, to tell someone about it. I don’t know how conversant you are with our agency, but they don’t tell interns very much about what goes on. At least not interns like myself. Some they give more privileges, but I was given limited instructions and told to never deviate under any circumstances. That’s why I didn’t go to my supervisor about it. I wanted to believe someone would do something, if only they knew. But I know enough about people. My supervisor knew what was happening. You can’t work at the agency that long and not know. If he hadn’t said anything, then it was because he either didn’t care or didn’t think it was worth saying anything. Does that make sense?”
“More than you realize, kid,” I said. “What does that have to do with the documents?”
“One of the files contained a history of the archives, when they had been processed, copied, and the originals deleted. Some of them were never copied over. They are in the archives, locked up in the file cabinet.”
“A file cabinet? Not the biggest security.”
He smiled wryly. “It’s behind a security door that requires a code clearance, retina recognition scan, and fingerprint confirmation.”
“How are you going to get the fingerprints and spare eye?”
“You let me worry about that.”
The waitress refilled my coffee. After thinking it over, I asked the intern why he chose Riordan’s to meet up at.
“It’s the safest place right now,” he said. “It was raided last week.”
I blew out some of my coffee and slammed it down on the table. “Raided? How come we didn’t hear about it?”
“It was done quietly. No marked vehicles outside, all plainclothes officers.”
“But none of my stringers found any police reports about it. If they had, they would have told me.”
“There was no police report filed. They didn’t want it. They know somehow your reporters are getting a hold of information through the agency. They just don’t create any trails”
