The Eighth Day

by Joseph John

  “Shawn!”

  Shawn blinked and furrowed his brow. His door was open. He’d swung a leg out and hauled himself out of the car with no recollection of any of it.

  “What are you doing?” Harrington asked.

  Shawn fell back into his seat and slammed his door shut. “I don’t know. Getting a newspaper.” The Cadillac started forward again, and he bit back a rising panic as the newsstand slipped by and disappeared behind them.

  “A newspaper.” The detective rolled the word on his tongue, savoring it like an after-dinner mint.

  Shawn glanced over his shoulder. “I think it’s how they control me,” he said. “How they give me missions or instructions or whatever you want to call it. Do you remember when we first met, at the Café del Mar? I was reading the Times. And later that night, they delivered a hard copy to my apartment.”

  Harrington nodded. “We found it opened to the classifieds,” he said. “There was an ad that only existed in your copy. It was a quote from Shakespeare and a telephone number, and someone from that number sent you a text with blueprints to Madison Square Garden. Do you remember what happened after that?”

  The dream in Amarillo that had been on his lips when he’d awoken. Don’t—

  He’d been about to say, Don’t shoot.

  “You killed a man,” Harrington said. “A senator.”

  “And then I killed myself,” Shawn said. His voice was soft and ragged, like frayed silk.

  Harrington scratched at his beard. “I got a feeling if you turn to the classifieds, you’ll find another ad. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. Soon. And it’ll be Shakespeare and a phone number all over again.”

  “But I died. How do you explain that? I shot myself, and I died.”

  “I have no idea. I wish I did, I really do, because it scares the hell out of me.”

  The city loomed before them like a mythical labyrinth. Colors and lights stretched into the darkening sky and faded into the heavens.

  “I’m having these visions.” Shawn stared out the window as he spoke. “I had one just now. I had them earlier, too, when I stopped at the hotel.”

  “What kind of visions?”

  “I’m in a jungle. It’s during the Vietnam War—don’t ask how I know that, I just do. But I don’t know if these are memories they gave me or if I’m going crazy or what. But it’s bad. I black out.”

  “Well,” Harrington said, “I guess it’s a good thing I’m driving.”

  Shawn stared at him. The corner of Harrington’s mouth twitched. He broke into a grin, started to chuckle, and Shawn couldn’t help but join in. Soon, the two were laughing like a pair of Mad Hatters.

  When they’d gotten ahold of themselves, Shawn wiped at his eyes. “But if they can just put an ad in the classifieds, why come after me?” he asked. “Why not sit back and wait for me to finish the job for them?”

  Harrington furrowed his brow and stroked his beard again. “Maybe it’s because they don’t know which city you’ll stop in or which newspaper you’ll read. Hell, even if you stopped somewhere for a while, you’re remembering shit you’re not supposed to. They’re probably afraid the newspaper trick won’t work anymore. And if in the meantime you remember your next mission or who did this to you—forget about it.”

  Shawn leaned his head back and sighed. He said, “It all sounds so crazy.”

  “You got a better theory?” Harrington asked. “Look. Lark Morton, where you worked, I paid them a visit after you disappeared. They’d closed up shop. I’m talking the place was a ghost town. The entire floor, empty. And when I tried to figure out where they went, I got zilch. No tax records, no filings, not even a goddamn website. Like they never existed.”

  “That’s impossible,” Jaffe said.

  Harrington ignored him. “You had cardboard boxes in your apartment. What was in them?”

  Shawn shrugged. “Some stuff from my mom and dad’s, pictures, crap from school, clothes, stuff like that. Just memories.”

  “Memories.” Harrington nodded. “I like that. Because those boxes were filled with bricks, old magazines, junk. Nothing but trash. Nothing real.”

  “That’s—”

  Harrington cut him off. “Impossible? You wanna know what’s impossible? They erased you. You vanished as easily as footprints in the sand. No records, no social networking profiles, no online purchases, nothing. Remember what that guy at the restaurant said? He said you’re not Shawn Jaffe, you’re not from Ohio, and you’re not an investment broker. You say it sounds crazy. I say fuck yeah, it sounds crazy. But that’s how it is.”

  The horizon burned with the dying embers of sunset. The Cadillac’s headlights cut through the twilight, and the city stretched before them like a flawed jewel. “So what do we do?” Shawn asked.

  “I’m gonna make some phone calls. Then we’ll go somewhere nice and public and wait.”

  “Where?”

  The detective grinned at him. “I hear the Café del Mar has a mean tapas bar.”

  Chapter Seven

  Chad Dodd zoomed in and squinted at the tablet, his expression that of a man puzzling through the punch line of an obscure joke. At last, he shook his head and laughed.

  Emma cocked an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “They’re at the Café del Mar. That’s where Gary Reed got himself killed trying to warn the Delta and Harrington entered the picture. The man’s got one hell of a sense of irony. I guess it’s poetic or something, making his last stand where all this started. Must think he’s safe with an audience.”

  Dodd gave Jensen the address. They stopped a couple blocks away, and Emma piled out of the Suburban with Dodd and the Alpha while Jensen programmed directions for the nearest parking garage into the navigation system. His expression remained impassive to the horns and obscenities shouted from the vehicles stacking up behind him as he unfolded himself from the cab and eased the door shut, and the Suburban rolled off into the night.

  They forged their way along the sidewalk beneath a halo of streetlights and holo-signs that glowed fiery red, dark blue, and the yellow-orange of sulfur.

  “How do you wanna handle this?” Emma asked.

  “Lemme do the talking,” Dodd said. “I’ll lay it out for them. Once Harrington finds out what his pal is, I’m hoping he’ll see the light.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  Dodd shrugged. “Either way, Harrington is coming with us. No loose ends this time.” He peered at Jensen. “If he tries to resist, you’re up to bat. Nonlethal force. If we can, let’s avoid a scene. Make it look legit.”

  Jensen nodded. The press of bodies had thinned with the setting of the sun, and the few who remained gave his lumbering gait a wide berth.

  Dodd went on. “Tyler, if things get hot, try to defuse the situation. Some part of him remembers you as his wife, so work that. The Alpha’s a last resort. We only put him in play if Echo-7 throws down or tries to run.” He turned to the Alpha. “You understand?”

  But the Alpha had fallen behind them. He paced a young woman in a sundress and denim jacket who was hand in hand with a little tow-headed girl in pigtails. He peered at the child with a wordless stare. The woman wrapped an arm around the child and increased her stride, but he matched it. She regarded him with wide, fearful eyes.

  “What’s your problem, creep?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Dodd’s face clenched like a fist. “Hey!” He raised his forearm, a finger poised over the wristband.

  The Alpha froze and raised his hands in mock surrender. The young woman and little girl hurried past, the woman tossing an anxious glance over her shoulder.

  “Last goddamn warning,” Dodd said. “Next time, you’re done.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” the Alpha said in a low, malefic tone, and the words hung in the air like an ominous pall.

  Emma half-expected Dodd to do it—a tap of the wristband, and the Alpha would crumple to the pavement as his head rolled into the gutter. But instead, Do
dd spun on his heels and strode off, and they fell in behind him.

  It was probably for the best. If Echo-7 fought back, they had no chance without the Alpha. Yet a terrible foreboding gripped Emma. He was a loose cannon with a lit fuse, waiting to go off. Nevertheless, she said nothing.

  Later, she’d wish she had.

  Although the dinner crowd had come and gone, the diehard night owls still filled over half the tables at the Café del Mar, sipping cocktails and picking at their meals. The atmosphere was dark and smoky, like fine rum. The nightclub on the second floor thumped with a muffled bass and sent a subtle sway through the chandeliers that hung from the ceiling. Their lights glittered like constellations in flux.

  An olive-skinned maître d’ with slicked-back onyx hair greeted Shawn and Harrington at the door. His gaze flitted over their jeans and rumpled T-shirts, and he wrinkled his nose and adjusted his tie.

  “Buenas tardes, señores. How may I help you?” He forced a smile.

  “Table for two,” Harrington said.

  The maître d’ frowned but scooped a pair of leather-bound menus off a stand. “Of course. Right this way.”

  He led them to a table nestled in the back of the restaurant. It was perfect. They had an unobstructed view of the entire dining area. Shawn slid into his seat, and Harrington sat diagonally to his right. The maître d’ placed the menus in front of them.

  “Your server will be with you shortly,” he said and spun on his heels and glided back to his post.

  Harrington brushed at a stain on his shirt and frowned. “You think I’m underdressed?”

  Shawn shot him a nervous smile, fidgeted with the napkin-wrapped silverware, and knotted his hands in his lap. His gaze darted about the room like an erratic heartbeat, moving from face to face before returning to the entrance.

  “Relax,” Harrington said. “They won’t try anything. It’s too public. We’re safe until my guys get here.”

  Shawn wished he could believe that.

  The front door swung open, and Shawn’s breath caught in his throat, but it was only an entourage of well-dressed twentysomethings who wound their way to the rear of the restaurant and the stairs that led to the nightclub.

  Most of the crowd were suits and skirts throwing a few back amid raucous laughter after a day at the office. A scattering of couples sat hand in hand and leaned toward each other at a phototropic slant, eyes locked, heads bent in conspiratorial whispers. The soft murmur of conversation and clink of cutlery mingled with the aroma of Spanish spices, and the contradictory banality of it set his already precarious state of mind into a tailspin.

  So when the front door swung open again and a man with a blond crew cut and dressed in cargo pants pushed his way through the front door of the restaurant, Shawn’s heart leapt into his throat, bucking and kicking like a wild mustang.

  Crew cut was tall but nothing compared to the mountain that lumbered in behind him with the neck of a bull and biceps that strained at his sleeves like gorged pythons. Victoria glided in after them, her long, shining black hair flowing down her back like she’d stepped out of a Vidal Sassoon commercial.

  “They found us,” Shawn said.

  Crew cut locked in on them and veered toward their table.

  That’s when the final member of the team came into view, and Shawn’s world collapsed like a house of cards.

  His hair was longer, parted in the middle and hanging to his shoulders in unkempt strands, and he moved with an unfamiliar, languid swagger. But his face was the reflection that stared back at Shawn from the surface of mirrors and still waters everywhere.

  This other Shawn Jaffe bared his teeth in a wicked grin.

  “My God!” Harrington gasped.

  As they approached the table, the doppelgänger quickened his pace and slipped in front of the others. Crew cut’s eyes widened with alarm, and he raised an arm to stop him, but Shawn’s doppelgänger stepped around it with an easy grace. He spun the chair across from Shawn around and sat straddling it, arms folded over the back.

  “Hello me,” he said. “How’ve I been?” He regarded Shawn with a cold, flat expression and cocked his head to one side.

  “You mind?” crew cut said. He and the giant shifted the empty chairs around and shoved one of the adjacent tables so it abutted Shawn’s and the detective’s.

  The maître d’ hurried toward them, his expression grave and none too happy. “Por favor, I’ll seat you at a larger table.”

  The giant’s arms crossed, and he stepped into the man’s path. The maître d’ skidded to a halt.

  “Thanks. We’re good,” crew cut said. He and Victoria slid into chairs alongside Shawn’s doppelgänger.

  The maître d’ shifted his feet and blinked at them. At last he sniffed and stalked back to his station at the front door. The giant remained between them and the exit.

  Crew cut turned to Harrington. “We need to talk, Sam.”

  Harrington whirled from Shawn to his lookalike and back again. “What the hell is this?”

  “Just a conversation.”

  “What the hell is this? He has a twin?”

  “Something like that.”

  Shawn gawked at the skewed mirror seated across from him. Impossible, yet the proof literally stared him in the eye. Harrington shot him a look that was equal parts bewilderment and suspicion.

  Shawn shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  Harrington turned to crew cut. “But you do,” he said.

  “Of course,” said crew cut.

  “Then start talking.”

  But before he could, the giant said, “We got company.”

  Chad Dodd twisted in his seat and craned toward the entrance. Two men—one rotund and damn-near bursting the buttons of his dark suit, the other athletic, black-haired, and much younger—brushed past the maître d’. They ignored his greeting and angled toward the retinue seated at the tables. The maître d’s shoulders slumped, and he hung his head. If he’d had a towel, he’d have thrown it in.

  Jensen stepped into their path, and the rotund suit flashed a badge. “Detective Nat Francis, NYPD,” he said. “This is Detective Ethan Mooney.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the younger man.

  Jensen glanced at Chad and raised an eyebrow, and Chad gave a slight nod. Jensen stepped aside, and the two detectives converged on the table.

  “Harrington,” Francis said with a tip of his chin. “Long time no see. How’s life?”

  “It goes on.”

  Francis did a double take at the Alpha and Echo-7. “Who’s the Weasley twins?”

  Harrington cocked his head at Echo-7. “This one’s Shawn Jaffe.”

  “No shit, huh?” Francis said. “Back from the dead. How’s that work?”

  Harrington shrugged.

  “What about George over there?”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at Chad. “But I think he might.”

  “Is that so?” Francis asked.

  Mooney reached inside his blazer and came out with a small, handheld electronic device that resembled an old-fashioned radio.

  Chad frowned. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Mooney waved the device over Echo-7 like a divining rod—sweeping for bugs.

  “Sir,” Francis said, “I’m gonna need you and your friends to come with us to the station. We need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Stop,” Chad said to Mooney.

  Mooney chuckled. “Fat chance, pal.”

  “Maybe you’re hard of hearing.” Francis leaned into Chad’s face. His breath reeked of yesterday’s coffee. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but between you and me, I hope we do it the hard way. I’ll ask one more time. I’ll even do it real nice. Wipe that smug look off your fucking face, get your ass out of that chair, and come with me. Please.”

  Chad pulled an ID card out of his jacket and held it out to Francis. “How’s this for smug?”

  Francis stared as if it had teeth and took it. He frowned, and his face darken
ed like thunderclouds rolling in.

  Meanwhile, Mooney passed the bug detector over the nape of Echo-7’s neck. Its LED lights glowed red, and it let out a squawk.

  “Gotcha,” he said.

  “Well, detective?” Chad raised an eyebrow at Francis.

  “You hear that, Francis? I found the bug.”

  Francis chewed on his bottom lip, inspected the ID, and said nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” Mooney asked.

  “There’s one smart move here, detective,” Chad said.

  Mooney glared at Chad. To Francis, he said, “We’re bringing them in, right?”

  Francis slumped like a sail in a calm wind.

  Chad said, “Fat chance.” He smiled. “Pal.”

  “What is it?” Sam Harrington asked.

  Francis peered at him with mournful eyes. Coupled with his loose jowls, it gave him the countenance of a basset hound. “Sorry, Harrington.”

  “Lemme see.” Sam held out his hand, and Francis pressed the ID into his palm.

  It was clear plastic, embedded with microcircuitry and embossed with the seal for the US Department of Commerce. Beneath an unsmiling photo of crew cut was his name—Dodd, Chad Nicholas—and the card identified him as the chief of operations for Roman Biogenics. A yellow stripe with black letters that repeated “Executive Privilege // Corporate Immunity” bordered its edge like police tape.

  Corporate conglomerates had all but stomped out independent business decades ago. From there, they moved on to co-opting the government, and in time, the majority of the US Congress shifted from Democrats and Republicans to board members. But Thomas Hoyt was the first corporate lackey elected president, and the Executive Incorporation Act was his baby. It authorized the merger of the Department of Commerce and five of the largest corporations in the United States. It also gave their leadership full executive privilege and corporate immunity. Roman Biogenics was one of those five.