Powder Burn

by Blake Banner

  “Not today. Get your damn shoes, I’ll drop you at Union City.”

  He made an Italian face and nodded a lot, very slowly. Then he pointed at me. “You’re a regular guy. I owe you one, pal.”

  I pulled open the door. “Yeah, just don’t put a giant fountain in my drive, will you.”

  He frowned at me like I was crazy, then his face cleared and he started laughing. “Oh, yeah! Like the movie. Hahahaa! That was a funny movie. I like that. You’re all right. You know that?”

  I took the long way back, via Cresskill, and he talked all the way. I tried to focus my mind on what a billionaire in Englewood would have against five young, homeless prodigies, and why he would want Charlie’s diary so bad he’d be prepared to kill for it. Meanwhile, Delano told me how much he liked my car, how he’d once owned a ’67 Alfa Romeo, about his mother’s osso buco, his wife, his life, his hopes, his nightmares and his dreams.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I believe there is, like, a higher purpose in life. Do you believe that? I’m a Catholic, you, I am figuring you are a Protestant or an atheist or some shit like that. No offense. But that don’t mean you can’t believe in a higher purpose, right? And sometimes God can bring two people together to show them something. And you know what? I think God brought you into my life right now to show me that I had taken the wrong path. What do you think about that?”

  I thought to myself that if there were a god, he would have made me break Delano’s jaw and interrogate Marsh. That way I could have killed them both. He went on.

  “Like, how is it possible? Nah, don’t look at me like that. Show a little respect. I’m being serious here. How is it possible that a guy like me—I ain’t gay, I ain’t a Nancy, I’m a hard case. How is it that a guy like me can be born into a family like mine, a Mob family, exposed to real violence from the age of twelve—you know, killing, maiming, breaking bones—and suddenly, at the age of thirty-five, for no apparent reason, have a total change of heart? How is that possible? Suddenly, I discover compassion. It was always there, I always had it, but I never saw it before!” He stared at me, then flapped a hand. “Ah! You probably think I’m crazy.”

  But something he’d said had caught my attention. We sat in silence for a while, cruising through Rutherford toward the Metlife Stadium. After a while, I said, “It was always there, but you never saw it.”

  He looked at me resentfully for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah. Like, my family never let me see what was there. It’s a kind of conditioning. You know what I’m saying to you? Then, I guess it’s one sobbing guy too many, one plea for mercy too many, and something kind’a shifts. Something changes. You can’t do it anymore.”

  “You literally changed your mind.”

  “Huh?” He looked at me like I had started speaking Chinese. When I answered, I was talking more to myself than to him.

  “Your mind was shaped by your parents, your family, like a computer program. But then something happened to you and the program changed. Different aspects of your mind were activated. It’s like you’re on your PC and you’re using Google to surf the net. Then you close down Google and you start using Word, or iTunes. Those programs were always on your computer, you’d just never used them before.”

  He made a face and nodded a few times. “Yeah, I guess it could be something like that. Now, God put you in my path so that I can have the chance to be a better person.”

  “Something like that.”

  I pulled into the parking lot of La Roca Supermarket. I studied his face, wondering if I was being a sap. “Don’t make me regret this, Delano.”

  “You won’t. You’ll never hear from me again. I’m gonna start a new life in Miami.” He held out his hand. “Some day I hope I get the chance to pay you back. I know you shoulda oughta killed me. But you didn’t. That makes you a good man.”

  I took his hand. “Pay it forward, Delano. Now get the hell out of my sight before I change my mind.”

  I watched him hurry across the parking lot, asking myself if I had gone insane. But I was pretty sure he would not go back to Sykes or Troy. He knew they’d kill him. And there was truth in what he had said. At some point, you start to be aware of the compassion. It was always there, you always had it. It’s the most important part of being human. And when you become aware of it, you just can’t ignore it anymore.

  But there was more to it than that. I put the Zombie in gear and headed for the Lincoln Tunnel. As I plunged into the darkness, under the great weight of the river Hudson, I knew that what he had said was important, very important. People change. That was important, but I didn’t yet know why.

  ELEVEN

  I crossed Manhattan and made my way to the 43rd Precinct on Storey Avenue, in the Bronx. It was Eleven o’clock when I walked in and asked to see Detective Mo Novak. I was taken upstairs to interrogation room number three and sat at a table. After five minutes, Detective Mo Novak came, perspiring and carrying two paper cups of dirty liquid. He squinted down at me. “This what they call eight AM in Boston?”

  I shook my head. “I was unavoidably detained, Detective, but I am here now.”

  He sat and switched on his recorder, then stated who was present, where and when. After that, he said, “Just talk me through it again, will you?”

  I had been struggling since the day before about how much to tell him, and whether to tell him about Charlie’s text message or not. Logic dictated I should, but for some reason I could not explain to myself, for the second time in as many days, I lied.

  “An acquaintance of mine telephoned me from Mexico. She was worried about her brother, Charlie Vazquez. She hadn’t heard from him for a while. He’s a student at Columbia. I asked around and they said he was a friend of Hans and Hattie’s. I went to the Peabodys’ to ask if they had any news of him. Like I told you, Mr. and Mrs. Peabody were very hospitable and offered me lemonade on the veranda. That was when I noticed the flies…”

  “So who is this acquaintance, and who is her brother?”

  “Like I told you, Detective, her name is Carmen Vazquez. She lives in Mexico. A couple of years back, she had got into some trouble in Arizona. I helped her out, got her on her feet and back home to Mexico. Her brother, Carlos Vazquez, is on a student visa at Columbia University, studying biology. He must be a smart kid.”

  “And he has disappeared?”

  I shook my head. “No, it was a false alarm. The pressure of studies was getting to him and he dropped out. She called me this morning and said he’d telephoned her from Vegas and he was on his way back to Mexico.”

  He curled his lip. “Kids. If they was more afraid of their dad than they was of a bit of hard work, things like that wouldn’t happen.”

  “You got that right. I was in the army at nineteen. There was no dropping out there, believe me.”

  He nodded a few times, reading my face with shrewd, little eyes. “Carlos Vazquez, huh? Back in Mexico.”

  “So I am told.”

  “How well do you know this kid?”

  “Not at all. I have never met him.”

  “You never met him?”

  “Never.”

  “You must know the sister pretty good. Were you romantically involved?”

  I shook my head. “No, nothing like that, Detective. As I said, I met her briefly in Arizona. She’d got herself into a mess. She was brought into the United States illegally by the Sinaloa drugs cartel. She was being used as a prostitute. I helped her to get back to Mexico, and to get her life sorted.”

  He was frowning hard at me. “Forgive me, Mr. Walker, but you must realize that that sounds like a very improbable story.”

  “Yes, I know.” I nodded a few times. “Until you put it into context.” I smiled apologetically. “You see, I’m a billionaire. My father made a fortune and he wasn’t always very scrupulous about how he amassed his fortune. So, now that he is dead and I have inherited his wealth, I like to make a difference where I can.” I handed him my card. “My father was Robert Weston…”


  He studied it for a moment, nodding, then sighed. “Who told you Hans and Hattie were friends of his?”

  “Fellow students at Columbia. I’m afraid I don’t know their names. You must realize, I didn’t come here planning to play detective.” I gave a small laugh. “I thought I was going to find Charlie with a bad hangover, give him a pep talk and take him out to lunch somewhere, and put him back on the straight and narrow. The last thing I expected was to find his friends murdered.” I paused. It made perfect sense and it was more or less what he expected to hear. After a moment, I said, “Detective, may I ask you something?”

  He jerked his head at me. “What?”

  “How were they killed?”

  “Gunshot wounds to the head. Why?”

  “An execution. You and I have seen plenty of them in our time, no doubt.”

  He nodded. “Why d’you ask?”

  “It had crossed my mind that Carlos disappeared at roughly the same time as Hans and Hattie. I wondered if he might have been killed, too.” I sighed. “I wondered if there had been any young Latino John Does reported in that time frame, over the last week or so.”

  He shook his head. “We checked. Have you got a number for Carmen Vazquez we can contact if we need to?”

  “Not on me, but I can email it to you as soon as I get back to Weston.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  He handed me his card and I put it in my wallet. “Is there anything else, Detective? I am keen to get back to my wife. It’s been a trying couple of days.”

  He shook his head. “No. We’ll be in touch if anything comes up.”

  I thanked him and left.

  Outside, I stood a while staring absently at a burgundy Jaguar Mk II parked next to my Zombie. It was a handsome car, but all I could think of was that I needed a shower, a steak and a beer, and to spend a while thinking through the facts. The more facts I had, the less sense they all made. I hadn’t expected Charlie to show up at the city morgue, but it was something to know he hadn’t—not yet, anyway. I climbed into the Zombie, pulled silently out of the lot and cruised slowly through the midday heat, back to Manhattan and Riverside Drive.

  I stood for twenty minutes under the shower, switching from hot to cold and back again. Finally, I stepped out, toweled myself dry and pulled on a pair of jeans. I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and took Charlie’s diary and Delano’s phone to the dining table. The first thing I checked was the last number Delano had called. I figured if Marsh was driving, half out of his mind with a broken jaw, Delano had done the phoning to say they had the diary and were on their way.

  The call was to a cell, and he’d made it about two minutes before they turned off for Englewood. I ran a GPS search for the number and found it was exactly where Delano said it would be, on the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Booth Street. Half an hour on the New Jersey Land and Deeds Records Directory told me that the address belonged to the Ceres Corporation. Ten minutes on Google told me that the CEO of the Ceres Corporation was Francoise Michel Troyes.

  Troy.

  But the name was nagging at my memory for another reason. I knew it would come to me, so I let it be for the moment and read on. Troyes’ vice president and head of research and development was Wolfgang Fokker. If I had been twelve years old, I would have sniggered at the name. Instead, I just smiled, real mature.

  There was a YouTube video of Fokker being interviewed on a TV chat show. I clicked on it. He was a small man who looked more Latin than Germanic. He had dark hair and brown eyes, and an excitable, animated way of talking. He sat forward, on the edge of his chair, and gesticulated with the backs of his hands, like he was holding two large cups while he talked.

  The interviewer asked him, “I think, Wolfgang, what a lot of viewers will want to know is, have you fully considered the ethical and moral aspects of this bill, and the research you are proposing to conduct?”

  “Yuh, of course, and vee would all like to live in zee Walt Disney movie, but, you know, vee are in zee real world and it is no good to hide behind some beaudiful idea of how vee are want zee world to be, and ignore zee reality.”

  “That doesn’t really answer my question, Wolfgang. Are you saying that morality belongs in a Disney movie? That won’t be very reassuring to viewers who are worried by the kind of…”

  Fokker was shaking his head. “No, no, no, Larry, zat is not what I am saying. Science and technology heff opened up a new world. A world where there are no limitations. Vee can now become like zee gods of Olympus. Larry, vee do not need to die! Can you conceive of zis? Vee do not need to grow old. Vee do not need to work. Vee are at zee portal, not of Eden, but of paradise, for vee are about to become gods. Science fiction cannot keep up with science! And people are scared of this. People want to go back! Back to what is safe, on zee Christmas card, zee little cottage mit zee smoke in zee chimney.”

  “Well, Wolfgang, as you are refusing to answer my fairly straightforward question, I take it the answer is no, you have not considered the moral implications.”

  Fokker laughed. “There are no ‘moral implications’.” He used his fingers to make the inverted commas. “Ceres Corporation is not in zee business of hurting or exploiting people. Ceres is in zee business of promoting learning, understanding and wellbeing. We make more donations to universities zan any other corporation in the world; vee fund research departments in Ivy League universities like Columbia and Stanford! Vee are funding five thousand schools in zee Third World. So what are people scared of? What is this immoral thing that vee are doing? ‘Playing God’. Why? Because we recognize that human destiny is to use science to conquer death, aging, illness and suffering?”

  “And how exactly do you plan to do that, Wolfgang?”

  He leaned forward and pointed at the interviewer with a long finger, and his eyes looked mad. “By switching off zee death genes!”

  I switched off the video and sat staring out at my bright, sunlit terrace. Science fiction cannot keep up with science. I believed there was a deal of truth in that. I wondered how you switched off death genes. Then I wondered how you switched any gene on or off.

  People change. That was the recurring theme. Did people change when you switched their genes on and off? That was crazy.

  I turned my pack of Camel over a few times in my fingers, and wondered what a world of eight billion breeding immortals would be like. It sounded like exactly the kind of nightmare Omega had wanted to avoid, before I decapitated them[3]. But Omega would have kept this technology for the few, not the many. And I was pretty sure that was what Fokker and Troyes had in mind too, whatever they may say.

  On a sudden impulse, I opened an email and attached the YouTube video. I addressed it to Marni, and in the subject box I put, Is this Omega? and sent it. As I watched it go, I told myself that if Omega wasn’t dead, they were languishing. They could never recover from what I had done to them. Senator Cyndi McFarlane was gaining a following on both sides of the House, to tackle not only the issues of climate change and overpopulation, but also the accountability of secret government bodies and organizations.

  Omega was dead, or dying.

  I pulled a cigarette from the pack and lit up, then started reading Charlie’s diary. It started Sunday 7th of January. It was a short entry.

  TC. Not much to report. Feel a bit weird. Is hard to explain, like I know nobody is gonna understand me. I feel kinda alienated. But I know Zack and the guys are feeling the same, and that kinda helps. Also feeling pretty excited. Like the dragon is waking!

  The 8th January was even shorter.

  Nothing to report. Business as usual. Disappointed.

  There was no entry for Tuesday. Wednesday said simply: Feeling pretty let down. Can’t see much point in keeping a diary if I have nothing to report. But looking forward to Sunday.

  He had inserted a winking, smiling face beside it. I thought back to the calendar. Sundays all had the big red circle. I kept turning the pages, but there were no more entries for that wee
k. Then Sunday there was another, longer entry.

  Sat through a pep talk about being constant and staying focused. Pretty subjective stuff coming from people who are supposed to be objective observers. Still, the proposition has sufficient merit to warrant giving it another week—having said that, I honestly think it’s a waste of time. Discussed it with Zack and he feels pretty much the same. If things haven’t improved by Tuesday AM we’ll have a round table with Bran, Hattie and Hans and make a decision.

  I frowned and turned back to the first entry, compared the handwriting and read through it again. The handwriting was identical, but it didn’t seem to be written by the same person. I turned to Monday 15th.

  Holy fuck! I just read a thirty-five-page chapter on cell mutation and I can remember the whole goddamn thing! I am trying to forget it and make mistakes—I can’t! I went for a walk, I ran in the park, I talked to Zack on the phone. I still remember the whole goddamn fucking chapter! I am scared to read any more in case I remember the whole damned book. How much space have we got in our heads? I keep freaking out. I keep asking questions like, who am I? If I can change this much, am I still me? It’s doing my fucking head in, man!

  Tuesday 16th:

  I feel better after four hours’ sleep. I was pretty freaked yesterday. But now I am aware that I am still me. Nothing has changed in that respect. It raises interesting questions about the nature of identity. I feel the same, I know I am still ‘me’ whatever that is. So it seems that the nature of self does not alter with the volume of information available to it. Nor with the speed of access to that information. Yet, my behavior has altered, the way I express and conduct myself has altered and is altering, so I am faced with the profound problem of identifying who, or what, exactly, is ‘I’. I feel I am in the midst of an existential crisis.

  Wednesday 17th:

  I have a growing sense of wellbeing. Hattie’s advise to start meditating has been very helpful. My sense of ‘I’ though increasingly difficult to define, is, at the same time, becoming stronger. I have concluded that ‘I’ is, by its very nature, indefinable: ‘that which cannot be defined’, is I. I am looking forward to Sunday, though I am also increasingly aware that I am capable of handling this without guidance. My vitality is enormous, my energy seems to be inexhaustible, and where before I feared to assimilate more information, now I hunger for it.