“Yes.”
She still didn’t trust me enough to speak. But she had a tell. Her trust revealed itself with a slight tilt of the head. Like the curve of her tiny smile even if her lips seemed to stay straight and silent. I could see her comparing me to the predatory animal Gladstone had unfairly portrayed me as in his journal.
“And what about these bombs going off? Think he has anything to do with that?”
Things had started exploding after Gladstone’s journal went paper viral. First figuratively, with photocopies being passed around from person to person, and the sketch drawing of a Wi-Fi symbol wearing an M-shaped fedora on the book’s cover page popping up as graffiti—especially with FREE THE MESSIAH written under it while he was in captivity under the NET Recovery Act. But things started blowing up literally after we let him out. People had died. Senseless acts of terrorism, and usually accompanied by the Messiah symbol. The dead ex-wife was only one part of what sent him running.
“I’ve not seen one thing about Gladstone, in terms of evil intent or even organizational skills, that would lead me to believe he has either the desire or the ability to cause that kind of destruction.”
It was the perfect thing to say to Margo, and it had the added benefit of being true. She titled her head. “Anyway,” I continued, “I got your card from a lovely Australian named Melody Andrews. Y’know … Oz?”
“Yes, I met Melody,” she said, fully aware she still hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know.
“May I ask how you found her?”
She laughed. “Really? After all that, that’s the part that’s stumped you?”
I downed my drink and flagged Harry for another, swapping my card for the bills on the counter.
“You’re blushing,” she said.
“Must be the booze. I get red sometimes.”
“Y’know,” she said with an actual smile, “I think Gladstone was way too hard on you in his journal.”
“I know, right?” I laughed. That’s how she conceded all my hunches were correct. In the form of an almost compliment.
“So, Former Agent Rowsdower,” she said, “buy me one more drink and I’ll let you call me Margo. I’ve always hated the way ‘Ms. Zmena’ sounds like ‘misdemeanor,’ and coming off your lips, it’s especially bad.”
“OK, Margo.” I waved at Harry, pointing to Margo’s empty glass. “I’m Aaron.”
“How do you think I found Oz?” she asked. “She’s a prostitute. I offered money. Just posted a bunch of ‘have you seen this man’ postings around the shadier parts of Perth and she found me.”
“And how did you know to go to Australia?”
“Same as you, I suppose. I’d read his book. Where else would he go?”
“And you bought the rights to his story?”
“I did.”
“How much?”
“Enough for him to get away. Start a life. He had nothing. It would have been very easy to take advantage of him, but I didn’t.”
“And you won’t tell me where to find him?”
“I don’t know. He has my card if he needs to contact me, but I don’t know where he’s gone or what he’ll do.”
“One more question,” I said, and she waited. “The weather said thunderstorms all day. Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I had a hat.”
“Well, I never use them,” she said, but then downed her drink and added, “people who use umbrellas are always the last to know when it’s stopped raining.”
I would have tipped my hat, but it wasn’t mine, and it was already resting on the bar. I would have done a lot of things, but that’s when an explosion went off. It was so big it shook us from our stools, blowing out all the windows. Car alarms pierced even the ringing in my ears. From my knees, I saw the twentysomething on the floor. He wasn’t moving, and Margo was trying to stand, pressing her fingers just below her collarbone, blood spreading through her blouse like a marker held against paper.
Report 2
Maybe Harry had a future as an action hero after all, because he stood up looking impossibly well coiffed and rugged. The geriatric at the end of the bar seemed OK too, stumbling around and getting back on his stool with no signs of bleeding. I rushed over to Margo.
“Let me see,” I said, but she didn’t move her hand from the wound. “It’s OK,” I said, and worked my bulky fingers over hers, gently pulling them from her chest. I hold the length of her hand in my fist. Her wound dripped, but didn’t squirt. That was a good sign. Seemed like she’d only caught a shard of glass from the exploded window. The picky eater in the booth didn’t fare nearly as well. He’d caught the brunt of the window, unwittingly taking one for the team. A sacrifice he never knew he made, and he was gone before anyone could say thank you.
“Call 911,” I shouted to Harry, and hurried outside to get a better idea of what happened.
Across the street, most of the sound stage was now gone. At least, the parts I’d seen before. The remaining wall had what was left of the Messiah symbol, with fire spitting from the black smoke rising behind it.
“Bullshit,” Margo said, pressing a few bar napkins against her chest.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Get back in there and wait for the ambulance.”
“Oh, right away, sir,” she said. “I’d salute you, but I’m afraid it might upset the old war wound here.”
“Exactly. You’re bleeding. Wait for the ambulance.”
“Gladstone didn’t do this,” she said.
“How do you know?” I asked. “I thought you only met him once.”
“You think he did it?”
“No. I told you that already, but we’ll talk about this after the ambulance comes.”
“Well, you’re a man of action,” she said. “Surely you can get me to a hospital.”
Margo rode shotgun, holding the slowly filling napkin to her chest as I drove to Cedars-Sinai.
“So this is what FBI drives,” she said.
“No, dollface, this isn’t my G-ride. It’s just a stupid Nissan Altima I rented.”
“Did you just call me ‘dollface’?” she asked, and I laughed, positive that a certain percentage of her offense was feigned.
“Too much?” I asked.
“Just warn me before you say it again so I can take off this napkin and bleed out first.”
“Fair enough,” I said, and handed her my hanky. “Looks like your napkin’s had it.”
“A hanky?” she asked. “Did you just drive through a wormhole from the 1940s?”
I ignored her question. “So is this a good time to tell me where your money comes from?” I asked.
Maybe it was because I’d passed enough tests to be trusted. Or maybe it was because I was looking after her, but Margo started talking. And although her speech was still immaculately controlled, there was also a sense of relief, like a diligent employee finally getting a well-deserved vacation. It felt good to be that comfort for her.
Margo Zmena graduated from the University of Michigan, and went to L.A. after college, brought there by a boyfriend turned husband. By my guess, he was the first person smart enough to get her jokes. But even a loner like me knows that’s not enough, and when the laughter ended, she was stuck there. Not really stuck, because she somehow learned to like it. Love it even. She learned the back roads to the highways that kept me in traffic. She found the hole-in-the-wall takeaways while I struggled with main-strip dining. She made L.A. her home and she did it at the right hand of C. Martin Rubinek, or “Marty,” as she called him during our drive.
“Why do I know that name?” I asked.
“Because he was a big fucking deal in Hollywood for over fifty years?” she offered.
Seems Marty never snitched during the Red Scare, and although it didn’t get the press, apparently, he called Joseph McCarthy a dirty son of a bitch a full two years before Chief Counsel Welch did that whole “no sense of decency” thing. A big
splash, forgotten to history. He swung too early to be safe and it finished him, for a few years at least. He went to New York, found work in theatre, and got to come home eventually, because, as he apparently liked to say, he took enough abuse without dying. Margo paused for a moment when she told that part. It was something she admired, and I wondered what wreckage she’d crawled from.
Marty started Phoenix Pictures in 1960 when he was still young enough to work too hard. Or maybe that had nothing to do with it, because even fifty years later, in his early eighties, he was still running a profitable production company. Margo was proud of her time with the last remnant of Old Hollywood.
“Why’d you leave him?” I asked as we sat waiting in the emergency room, and all that pride dissolved.
“You think I should have stayed a personal assistant forever?” she asked, turning to notice the rush of new patients flooding in. We’d come right in the middle of the ambulance brigade, and dozens were in greater need than she.
“If you liked it,” I said. “But no, I guess you don’t seem the personal assistant type.”
A tiny part she forgot to hide was flattered. “I was young,” she said. “I needed a job. I kind of loved it, and staying there also made me uncomfortable.”
There was a TV in the waiting room. It wasn’t just L.A. There were more attacks. Explosions in New York at the Kmart in Penn Station, and in Florida at Disney World. This was coordinated violence, strategic death, and all within spitting distance of Gladstone’s Wi-Fi symbol each time.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, and Margo flinched, unsure she was still sitting next to the same man who believed in Gladstone’s innocence. I wondered too.
“I’m going to find whoever did this,” I said, trading anger for resolve.
She pressed her wound, watching the damage being done to the world. She saw the fire and wailing, all the increasingly familiar signs of tragedy. I watched her watch them. My hanky filling with her blood.
When you’re an investigator you learn there are all sorts of ways to ask questions. Some get answers, but sometimes getting answers isn’t the point. Sometimes it’s just about fucking shit up. Disturbing the waters. You never get a clear picture looking through a splash, but sometimes motion reveals a trace of what’s been hidden.
“I’ll ask you again,” I said. “Where’s Gladstone?”
“Oh, there’s the Rowsdower from the journal,” she said. It was meant to hurt me, and it did. “So now you think it’s Gladstone again? I gave you my answer. I haven’t seen him since I bought the rights to his journal.”
“Not even an option?” I asked. “You bought the rights straight out without even a studio behind you?”
“It’s a good investment. Marty would have approved,” she said, and that’s when I understood.
“Oh, it’s Marty’s money.”
“No,” she said, really angry this time. “Marty’s dead. It’s my money. But he was a very kind man. I wasn’t even his assistant when he passed.”
“Just how kind was he?”
“Is that your business?”
“Enough to retire?” I asked. It was the right question.
“Maybe if I were fifty-five instead of thirty-five,” she said.
“But enough money to quit the day job and start your own business?”
“Right.”
“OK, Margo,” I said. “I got it now. You quit your job with Marty, floundered around with, I don’t know, copywriting, and…”
“Branding,” she interrupted.
“Whatever. And then Marty dies, gives you a bunch of money, and you decide to start Prague Rock productions. You spot Gladstone’s story. You watch him speak at one of his Messiah Meetings at the Hash Tag, and when the shit hits the fan, you seek him out in Australia and buy the rights to his journal. Swinging for the fences, in one fell swoop, instead of starting with a bunch of smaller projects.”
“Well, I can hardly produce a web series right now, right?” she asked.
“Did I get it all right, Margo?” I said.
“You did,” she said. “Even the part about seeing Gladstone at the Hash Tag. How’d you know that?”
“Because this is what I do.”
“Well, you’re a very good agent.”
“Not anymore. You can thank your buddy Gladstone for that. How much money did you give him again?”
“I told you. Enough to get settled and start over, but not a ton. A girl’s got to eat.”
We turned back to the breaking news on the hospital TV because I suppose it was easier to look at the people dying on a screen instead of those around us. Even with shock close-ups of covered bodies dissolving into long shots of smoke and tears. All of it happening in the shadow of Gladstone’s symbol. It was a strong mark to be sure.
CNN cut back to the studio and suddenly there was a guest via satellite. Hamilton Burke, the billionaire Gladstone claimed to have met. I wasn’t sure if that had happened, but it seemed a strange thing to invent. Burke was wearing one of his omnipresent three-piece suits that he’d sported on the cover of so many money magazines in the ’80s. His hair was combed straight back like Nixon’s, but gray.
Anderson Cooper was conducting the interview from his desk in a navy-blue suit that shined in the studio lights. “Mr. Burke,” he said, “you recently had some harsh words for this administration. Would you care to explain?”
“Anderson,” he said, “this isn’t about taking pot shots at the president. Now is a time for action, and I’m sure this administration is committed to finding those responsible for these grievous and unspeakable acts.”
“So, do you retract your quoted comments from earlier this week where you expressed frustration with the president’s failure to return the Internet to full capacity?”
“Not at all, Anderson. I was voicing the frustration of the people. I mean, this is an administration that took months to get its health-care website working right? The private sector would never accept such results. You don’t get to be on top without demanding performance, and the American people deserve such action.”
My hanky was now soaked and I wondered if seeing Burke had quickened Margo’s pulse. She was paler, but seemingly due to anger rather than blood loss.
“Not a fan of Mr. Burke? I thought you had a thing for rich old men?”
“If you truly thought that, then I take back everything I said about you being a good agent.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was shitty. Did Gladstone mention Burke to you?”
Margo didn’t answer. She just pressed my hanky harder against her chest.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me where to find Gladstone so he can tell me himself?”
“I’ve already explained. I don’t know where he is.”
She was getting tired, and it seemed a good time to push. I had to be an agent first, even without a badge. “Bullshit,” I said, and this time I managed to surprise her. “I went looking for you before you ever came home. You went to Australia before I did and came home way after.”
“I was on vacation.” Her head tilted slightly.
“And?” I asked.
“And I met a boy,” she said. “Is that a crime?”
“Who?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s just a miner, not an Internet Messiah.”
Just then, a nurse called Margo’s name and she stood with her eyes on me. I wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, but I didn’t give it, and she returned my bloody hanky.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
She paused a moment longer. “It was a pleasure to get to know you, Special Agent Rowsdower.”
“Aaron,” I said.
“Thank you for the ride too,” she said, and meant it. She also meant it when she said, “I’ll take a cab home,” before following the nurse for her stitches.
Letter to Margo Zmena from Parker Lawrence
Dear Margo,
The da
y after you left, I ran out of shaving cream, so I soaped up my face and I shaved without it. That’s how I realized I don’t really need shaving cream. And when I ran out of whiskey, I didn’t buy more, and that was OK too. Then I weaned myself off coffee. It really only took me a week to start living like a monk. Asleep by 10 and up by 5. I’ve already dropped five pounds.
And then there’s the job. I’ve been working like a bastard. It’s mindless and hard and that’s good too. I drive the trucks and gather what needs gathering. I get the minerals from point A to B. I eat when they tell me to eat and work when they tell me the time for eating is over. It’s nice to be told what to do for once. I try to be a good employee, and I try not to think of you.
It took me a while to realize that’s what this was all about. You were a beautiful distraction, but I’m too tired of needing things that go away. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. You’ve done nothing wrong, I’m just telling you where I’m at. It was good to have you for the time I did even if I cringe in embarrassment thinking of how I was. You deserve a full man.
Love,
Parker
Letter to Parker Lawrence from Margo Zmena
Dear Parker,
You are a very silly boy. Do you know that? In fact, I think you’re the silliest boy I’ve ever known. What does it even mean to say I “left”? Yes, you are there and I am here, but we’ve only just met. You know where to find me and I know where to find you.
If I need a man who eats as fast as he thinks, I know where to find you.
If I need someone dark and strong, with skin that seems always in shadow, I know where to find you.
If I need to feel the strength of a miner’s hands on me, a solid mass against my body, making me feel both protected and possessed, I know where to find you.
If I need to be held gently all through the night by someone who’ll never let me go, even reaching out for me through sleep, I know where to find you.
If I need someone brilliant who is too sure of himself and filled with too much doubt, I know where to find you.
If I need a man, I know where to find you. And if I need a boy, I know where to find you because you are also a boy. The best boy, and I’m so lucky you like me.
Reports on the Internet Apocalypse Page 2
