“Neat.” Excited, Helen headed across the room to one of the more interesting works.
I was still trying to take the place in and meandering around until I noticed a man float over to Helen and begin talking to her. I figured I’d join them to see what it was all about.
“…just put it together from long pieces of scrap metal and plastic I found in the alleyways in the city. A little bit of hot glue, and voila.”
His method would have actually been fascinating if it wasn’t obvious that he was trying to put forth as little effort as possible to be considered an artist. The whole thing looked like a failed junior high science project disguised as minimalistic. It still wouldn’t have been so bad, except he started laying it on pretty thick.
“I really helped 3D 4R art rise to its current popularity starting five years ago…”
He went on, but my ears wouldn’t let me listen any longer. My eyes wandered past everything to a window on the outside of the room where I saw other, more-normal-looking people arising from the lower level and leaving the building through the back. There was something else happening in the building, and I wanted to check it out. Against my will, my mind wandered back to the conversation in front of me, and I was suddenly bearing witness to attempted highway robbery.
“And with all of the effort I put into it, four ninety-nine is a steal. What do you think?”
I couldn’t help but butt in. “She thinks we have to go. Thanks anyway.” Grabbing Helen’s hand, I pulled her back out toward the front desk.
“Hey, I really liked that piece!”
“Trust me. It was bad.”
Back at the front desk, I looked behind the counter at the chalkboard where the day’s events were listed, but everything below the art show was smudged.
“Find something you’d like to purchase?”
I ignored the mustachioed man’s ridiculous question.
“What’s happening in the back of the building?”
“Oh, that’s not related to the show. Just some people from the neighborhood that share the space with us.”
“Can we go back there?”
“Well, I think their meeting just ended, but the two organizers usually hang around afterward. You can take the stairs at the end of the hallway. I’ll keep your PEDs, so don’t forget to pick them up here on your way out.”
We headed through the building to the stairs, then stepped down slowly into the dank basement. The lighting was dim, and the smell went from nostalgic to earthy. At the bottom, we came upon what appeared to be the back of a large room filled with rows of chairs. Up front, an older woman in a familiar model auto-chair swept the floor and a still-older man facing away from us looked at a hologram while swiping through an old-fashioned netphone. The hologram image’s title was a bit jarring.
Gentrification: How Communities Are Bought and Sold.
The virtual progression of images must have been telling the story of how Marktown went from working class to poor to rich in a matter of a few decades. Helen was still watching it when I headed up front to talk to the man.
He acknowledged me without even turning around. “Art show’s upstairs.”
“I wouldn’t call that art.”
Turning around to catch a glimpse of me out of his peripheral vision, he clearly didn’t trust me. He finished flipping through the netphone, tapped it a couple of times, and the hologram switched to a slow, rolling reel of old photos of what must have been his dog before they were outlawed. I remembered from my virtual sessions that the breed was German Shepard, and judging by the size of the beast, I could understand why those laws were made. As large as the dog was, her name was funny to me, but before I could finish the humorous thought, the man snapped off the reel and finally turned around.
“And who are you?”
Helen walked up next to me as I responded, “Oh, sorry, sir. I’m Ryan. And this is Helen.”
“How may I help you Ryan and Helen?”
“We ’re interested in the history of Marktown.”
Eyeing us both, he inquired.
“Is it some school project, or are you two reporters?”
“Oh, no. We’ve just never been to this side of town before, and we like getting history firsthand.”
“Humph. Well, there’s not much to tell. People with jobs lived here decades ago. The jobs left. The people who could leave, did. Those who couldn’t, lived hand to mouth until they were forced out years ago. This group is comprised of the only ones left from Old Marktown, as we call it.”
I needed to move things along. “Maybe you could help me find information on a person I’ve heard about—a former alderman.”
He nodded. “You mean the Padre.”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“He’s the one that started the whole prosperity-and-opportunity bullshit before he snitched and got himself killed.”
“What do you know about him? Before he was alderman?”
His right eyebrow went up. “Well, he was just a guy from the neighborhood. That’s how he got elected. The old bootstraps-and-hard-work mantra.”
“Didn’t he run a gang?”
The man’s face stiffened almost as if it was in pain, and I couldn’t tell if it was fear or something else. The old woman stopped sweeping and rolled over next to him. The purr of her motor was nostalgically calming. That comfort instantly dissipated when she questioned me.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
I shook my head. “No, ma’am. An honest question. I heard rumors.”
Her right eyebrow went up and she looked around, clearly flustered, then peered up at the man. “Allen, let’s take our guests to the back room.”
Helen grabbed my arm as if to say, Let’s get the hell out of here, without words.
I shrugged her off because, while the old man was large, I figured I could handle him, and I wasn’t too worried about the woman in the auto-chair.
The man extended his arm toward a narrow concrete hallway. “Follow us.”
We walked down the hallway until we came to an open, thick metal door. They entered first, and we followed. After we entered, they shut the door with a clank behind us. Allen walked around a large table in the center of the room, the woman following in her auto-chair. They motioned us to sit down in the chairs on the other side.
The woman then spoke up with a bit of angst in her voice. “We don’t know nothing. We never saw nothing.”
“Why did you bring us back here to tell us nothing?”
Allen glared as if to try to read us better, then chimed in. “You don’t work for his former employers, do you?”
“The Padre’s? No. We’re just local history buffs, is all.”
He looked at the woman, and his expression broke. “I think they’re okay, Sonya.”
Her eyes got wide as she questioned him. “Are you sure?”
“No, but I’m tired of acting scared every time someone brings him up. What more can they do to us?”
I interrupted their side conversation. “Did the Padre run a gang?”
“Look, Ryan, the Padre was a flawed individual all the way up to his death.”
Feeling like I needed to move the discussion to more specifics, I looked at Helen, then back at them. “He sold human organs on the black market, right? He made a lot of people disappear. Did he have any way to fake his death?”
Again, they both looked at each other, partly frightened, partly angry.
Through her teeth, the woman asked again, “Who the hell are you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you. But I just know things about this neighborhood. Plum Street used to be Main. The Sock Emporium used to be a Pete’s Hardware. The fancy bistro next to it used to be a Stella’s Waffle House with the best fried chicken you ever had. And the Padre used to be a crime lord. How did he get elected alderman
?”
Stunned didn’t begin to describe the looks on their faces. In front of them was barely more than a kid who clearly wasn’t from the area, giving them a trip down memory lane. They sat blinking back their shock for what had to be ten seconds, then looked at each other a moment longer.
Allen finally spoke up. “Uh, well, the word on the street was that a job went south, and his bosses took away his power. They ‘made’ him alderman because they still needed his network for processing their products.”
The warehouse job. That must have done him in. “What happened after his plea deal?”
“He hung around the neighborhood for a few weeks, and then his body was found in the river. Had to have been his former employers getting back at him for snitching.”
“Is there anyone who could give me more information on the Padre? To confirm his death?”
Allen glared at me and pointed to Helen. “Son, if you’re not careful, she’s going to be confirming your death. You don’t mess with people like the Padre, even if they are dead.”
“Trust me. I know. Is there anyone?”
They looked at each other and sighed in unison.
Sonya responded, “I guess there’s Junior, his son.”
“The police officer?”
Sonya nodded. “The police chief.”
Even more surprised than me, Helen interjected, “Your chief of police is the son of a former crime lord?”
Sonya grimaced. “Crazy, I know. Junior was a street cop for years, and everyone assumed he was a mole for his dad. But he went out of his way to bust the Padre, and then publicly denounced him afterward, when he didn’t have to. It really gave him respect in the neighborhood. Some of us were even saying he should have run for the alderman position, but he declined, saying that he loved police work too much. It turned out to be a good move for him as he steadily rose through the ranks.” Sonya’s tone seemed conflicted, weaving back and forth between disappointment and pride, but it was probably the anxiety of Helen and my strange, unexpected visit.
“Thanks, Sonya, Allen. We’ll stop bothering you now.”
“To be clear, you didn’t hear anything from Allen or Sonya.”
“Of course. Thanks again.”
Helen and I left the room and walked down the long hallway. On our way past the room with chairs, the images of the dog on the hologram flashed through my mind again, and for a moment, I thought something about it was as familiar as it was odd.
Who names their enormous dog R—?
“What are you thinking?” Helen interrupted my thought as we headed up the stairs.
It was silly anyway. “I need to speak with Junior.”
“Why? The Padre’s dead.”
We grabbed our netphones on our way out and headed for the bullet stop.
“He might be dead, but I don’t think Charlie will be satisfied without proof.”
“Ryan! You heard them. You’re dealing with some dangerous people. Why would you put yourself in harm’s way, digging up the past?”
For the first time, I could actually feel Charlie’s force welling up inside of me, and I didn’t fight it.
“I would do anything for my family.”
Chapter 23:
If All Else Fails
I would do anything for my family.
The air was as cool and crisp as I could ever remember, with the subtle aroma of leaves burning in the distance on every waft. Intense rays from the sun relentlessly poured over every inch of the scenery, giving the outside an overexposed look. The occasional cottony, cumulonimbus puff stretched across the sapphire sky, allowing gazers to interpret the shapes like naturally occurring Rorschach tests. Neatly groomed, forest-green Kentucky blue provided the perfect contrast to the spotless, gray sidewalks lining the area. Pockets of colossal oaks with deep red, bright orange, and dull brown leaves dotted the landscape, confirming that the season was in full swing. It had never been more evident that the imperfect perfection of the outdoors knew no bounds.
I drifted aimlessly in awe like being lost in space until the surrounding din finally offered me a buoy halfway back to reality. There was the obnoxious blare of a car horn, no doubt a bad driver getting the attention of a worse driver. The loud, quiet hum of a lawnmower doing laps across a yard could be heard from somewhere behind me. Across the way, an ill-trained miniature terrier incessantly yapped as she dragged her owner toward anything that moved. To my front left, I heard the almost rhythmic, and all the more annoying, thud-thud of a soccer ball being booted against a cement wall. If all of that wasn’t enough, just past the playground, there was the tinny dribbling of a basketball in between the metallic swooshing chain net and ritualistic male howls, grunts, and groans. Sponging up all of the nuances of suburban life, part of me questioned living in the city.
“Are you okay, Charlie?”
Shaking my head, I snapped out of it. “Yes. Sorry.”
On the playground, Lucy darted under the spiral blue slide, feverishly chasing some local kids trying to make one of them “it.” Next to me, Joey happily gulped and murmured while gently slapping Sarah’s breast as he nursed. Everything confirmed the perfection of everything else.
“What if we left the city? Moved out here?” In that moment, it felt like the most logical question I could ask.
“And where would we live?”
“You and the kids could stay with your folks while I figured something out. Maybe we could buy a house. Who knows?”
“Charlie…you heard the doctor. The kids and I being away from the city for too long is risky. Why would we take the chance?”
She was right. I only worked four or five nights a week with the Padre, and some of those nights were just prepping for the next job. So, with the little time and energy I had left at odd hours, I’d read everything I could get my hands on about spotted lung. Bizarre from the day it was discovered, scientists and doctors couldn’t agree on its origin. There were two index cases in two completely different geographical locations thousands of miles apart. In both instances, the exact same strain of the virus was contracted, making it baffling and unclear who the actual patient zero was.
Patient Zero A was an older German business man visiting Hong Kong to settle a major corporate deal. Distressed by his cough, the local doctors simply diagnosed him with bronchitis. He closed the deal in spite of his fading health, and was allowed to fly back to Berlin the following week. He died a month later, but not before the disease spread quickly throughout Germany and other parts of Europe.
Patient Zero B was a poor Argentine corn cultivator for a large corporate farm. Losing his job when his sickness became apparent, he visited a free clinic a day later where all of the patients and staff soon contracted it. A Cuban doctor on the staff was the one who instituted a quarantine of the entire clinic until World Health Organization (WHO) specialists swooped in. They ran countless tests, and when similar reports came from Europe, it didn’t take long for them to connect the seemingly unrelated dots.
It wasn’t until a year later that a breakthrough was made where they discovered potent drugs that would “neuter” the virus, rendering it incapable of spreading to new hosts. But the problem was still two-fold. Not only could they not cure or prevent the disease, but more importantly, only people with money could afford the drugs, which left much of the population at risk. Ironically, after treating 80% of the infected in Europe, WHO declared the epidemic under control only to turn around and confirm the first case on North American soil the same day. The industrial parts of the Northeast were hit first, and in a couple months, it made its way through the Rust Belt and around the Great Lakes.
European treatment facilities were located in or very near the cities in which their infected acquired the disease since most countries didn’t have the space or resources to move people far distances. However, North American doctors deviated from that bluepr
int, rounding up all of the infected and quarantining them away from their homes and work places. They were taken to the countryside where it was assumed that the fresh air would provide them relief as they were treated and studied. Instead, pain, suffering, and a considerable number of potentially preventable deaths ensued until doctors realized the virus had a peculiarity about it that had never been seen before in any other disease.
Spotted lung made its hosts “addicted” to pollution, with a particular preference for the pollution in the cities in which they became infected. In that sense, the virus was that much more fascinatingly adaptable, and all the more gut-wrenchingly terrifying as it moved from population to population. If the smog in a city was mainly produced by factories, the infected would flock to the industrial areas to breath in the dirty air. Large cities that had yet to ban old cars with exhaust systems had a major issue with people blocking traffic. Looking to relieve the pain in their lungs, they would walk into the streets at stoplights, stand in front of exhaust pipes, and inhale deeply. Some would get so high that they’d pass out on the road.
Once doctors acknowledged those idiosyncrasies were important to the overall treatment of the patients, they began bringing the research facilities back to the cities. That was right around the time the federal government passed the Spotted Lung Containment Act, where treatments to contain the disease were mostly or entirely subsidized. After that, the medicines and equipment to fight the virus advanced tremendously, but so too did the price hike that actually outpaced the subsidies three- or fourfold. The best equipment would allow the infected to live in their homes, go to work, and lead relatively normal lives until their symptoms got worse. Still, it was recommended as a precautionary measure that they stay in the cities where they’d caught the disease. But I was in denial, looking for anything to help my family, so I didn’t want to believe the truth.
“I know. But the air is cleaner out here. There’s more grass and trees. That’s gotta mean something. It’s just tough for me to believe that a virus, something so tiny, can manipulate the people it infects to stay in one place.”
Between Two Minds: Awakening Page 27
