by Peter Idone
“Henry Bock told me to see Chris Glass. He said he could help.”
There was silence from the other side. Logan rapped on the door. The density of the metal allowed no impression. He pounded. A few moments passed and the door hissed, like a hermetic seal, and opened a couple of inches. He couldn’t see the person on the other side completely, but it was a woman. A shock of wet black hair, an eyeball, and a white terrycloth robe was all he could see; that and toe rings on a pink foot.
“I asked who you were.”
“My name is Joe Logan. I was talking to Henry Bock a little while ago, and he suggested I see Chris Glass. I’ve a few questions and Henry thought he might be able to help. Is Mr. Glass in?”
“What kind of questions?”
“It’s sort of involved, and if I give the short version, it might sound ridiculous.”
“Henry Bock referred you?”
“Yes. He’s with the Department of the Environment. Do you know him?”
“That funny old man? And I don’t mean funny in a good way. He’s a drunken old sod who’s worn out his welcome. The Tacticals will be throwing him out of town any day now. Glass won’t see you. He doesn’t see anyone. You’re wasting your time. What happened?”
“Excuse me?”
“What did you want to talk to Glass about? You can tell me, I’m his research assistant.”
“If you insist. My dog was killed last night by some strange-looking animal. It had the head of a man and the body of a dog. It was wearing a collar with blinking lights.”
“Sounds intense. Scary.”
Logan couldn’t tell if the woman was mocking him, but it certainly sounded as though she was. “Yes it was scary and upsetting. The thing tore my dog’s throat out. It gets even weirder.”
“Oh, I bet it does. Still, Glass is in no mood to see you or anyone else for the time being. Besides, you were very rude to me yesterday.”
The door opened halfway and Logan could see her more accurately now. She was the young woman he had seen at Frenchy’s, the one who asked him what that strange little fellow, Creech, had said to him. “I’m sorry. I thought I was about to get snagged by the Tacticals. It had been a bad day and it only got worse. You work for Mr. Glass?”
“Yeah. And it’s just Glass. He hates mister. He doesn’t do interviews any more. I field all his questions. You can talk to me.”
“Can I come in,” Logan asked, affably.
“Fuck sakes, no way. I just got out of the tub. I’d like to hear more of your dilemma but not now. Meet me tonight at the X. I’m usually there about nine thirty or ten.”
“You on the level? This isn’t a brush-off?”
“On the level. I want to hear your story. So will Glass, but you will have to tell it to me first.”
“The Hotel X then. I’ll be looking forward—” The door sealed itself closed before he could finish the sentence.
He walked back to the pickup and climbed in. Strange woman, he thought. Logan figured her for about twenty-five or twenty-six. Attractive. She seemed more self-assured the short time he had seen her at the fuel depot with Tactical goons swarming the place than she did just now in her own home. Logan was aroused. She interested him in an erotic fashion. Most women did since Jill had left, yet nothing had happened since they split; his love life had turned into a very long, drafty, singular moment. The woman was probably involved with this Glass character. Boy, could she lay on the mystery. They might even be married, but Logan didn’t care. He cursed himself for not asking her name and was tempted to go back and ask, but thought better of it. “She’d only think I was being a pest,” he said aloud. Maybe she’s the Ms. Schneider Henry spoke of.
Logan hadn’t been to the X in ages for a host of reasons and didn’t look forward to it, but he’d go, knowing she would be there. “Just make sure you show tonight, Ms. Whatever-your-name.” He sped down the drive, the blue-stone crunching noisily under the heavily treaded tires.
7
Essex had the appearance of any number of marginal, defunct, midsized towns typical of the constraints placed upon it by the Dislocation. Over a third of the Main Street storefronts were boarded up, and the businesses still open lacked interest or enticements, judging by the lack of imagination in the window displays. Facades were crumbling, and litter, soggy and rotting, clogged the gutters. A section of sidewalk had been dug up, and a large-diameter pipe, possibly a water main or sewer line, lay exposed. Dirt and broken chunks of concrete lay in piles, and a flimsy barricade of four-legged folding signs strung with yellow caution tape hemmed in the work in progress. The mounds of earth had begun to erode into the street.
It had been like this for months. Either the town had run out of money for the project, or the local government was so exhausted by its own inertia that ambivalence had taken root. Probably a bit of both, Logan thought, as he stepped into the road to avoid the excavation. The Hotel X was another five blocks down, near the Jefferson Avenue intersection that constituted the very edge of the downtown core and the beginning of the Station. It had always been an unofficial line of demarcation: economic, political, and social. Essex seemed to comprise two different towns. There was the village and the Hills, with its upper-middle class and wealthier citizens, and then there was the Station: working class, ethnic, poor, more crime, fewer public services. It hadn’t always been like that, certainly not when Logan’s father had moved into the area. People all worked, made decent homes for themselves, and the neighborhoods were racially mixed. Folks generally got along. Now, the entirety of Essex was like the Station, and the Station was even worse. That was the great equalizing of the Dislocation.
Logan arrived at the building, the former Essex Hotel from years past. When the Schneider woman told him to meet her at the club, he felt a certain amount of trepidation. He hadn’t been to the X in ages. Around the time of their separation and swift, final divorce, Jill had worked at the X and was involved with its manager, Randy Squire. Logan never knew if that relationship was the cause of their final break or if it was just a fling. Jill was off of him like a favorite food recently thrown up, and she didn’t hang around town long after the divorce. She left Essex for Vermont; a girlfriend lived in a town by Lake Champlain where she and her husband were making a go of a B&B they started and asked Jill to come up and help. Apparently Vermont was doing better than the rest of the country, or maybe just here in the Northeast.
Squire, on the other hand, had stayed. That Logan was sure of. He had gotten drunk one night and was all set on coming down to the X and slapping “randy” Randy about, but had sobered up in time; actually, he’d chickened out. Tonight, he wouldn’t know what he’d do if he ran into him. With any luck, he had the night off or had been laid off.
The club got its name from the fact that the neon tubing had been vandalized years ago, leaving only HOTEL and X; the letters ESSE were the casualties. The new owners who bought the place apparently liked it and decided on it as a name for the club. A small, elegant building from early in the last century, the club’s architecture featured Doric marble columns flanking a wide, mahogany-framed glass doorway. At ground level the brick façade was marred by old posters, handbills, and graffiti, some of which was made by chem-glow markers. It all signified a hip, fashionable, although still amateurish club.
A line had yet to form out front, which was typical for places like this if they were at all popular. Too early, Logan reasoned. Once inside, he had to admit the place could boast of an impressive sound system of high-powered amps, mixers, and speakers. In the red-carpeted foyer, the plaster ceiling was high and decorated with medallions of rosebuds and ivy leaves. The plaster on the walls was stained a bilious green-gray in places, and small sections were missing, leaving the old wood laths visible. Crumbs of plaster littered the carpet and continued into the banquet hall, which now served as the bar and dance floor. Maybe the deterioration of the aging plaster was causing the fallout, but the volume of the music was helping it along. Over the PA system, Fende
r guitars blared: stark riffs reminiscent of an Ennio Morricone preamble to a gunfight accompanied a lead singer who mournfully recited lyrics that were as visually explosive as a Rimbaud prose poem. Logan wasn’t familiar with this particular band, but he hadn’t been paying much attention to what was new in music lately. For all he knew, it could have been a relatively recent or an old tune. He hadn’t been listening to any kind of music as of late. A few in the crowd swayed listlessly to the hypnotic vocals, but there wasn’t much dancing to speak of. There were a few civilians who came to drink, take a little something extra surreptitiously, and numb out. The runway-length bar and tables were populated mostly by men in black leather coats or some urban camo-patterned field jacket. Some of the men were filing their edge against lipstick, high heels, and tight skirts. They looked like expensive working girls. The X had become the main watering hole for Tactical Response Team personnel. He had heard that they imported women from outside. On Friday and Saturday nights, some of the rooms on the upper floors of the old hotel were converted so this bunch could hardcore their way through a good time.
He spotted Squire bartending. He looked horrible. His spiky brown hair had developed a steely gray sheen, and his complexion was ruined by pockmarks. It almost seemed as though he had been ingesting dioxin. God knew what was seeping into anyone’s bloodstream these days.
Then he saw her at the bar, chatting it up with a Tactical cop. She was definitely dressed for the place; in fact she looked better than most of the women in the room. Her black hair was done in a short, perky style. She wore a short, tight, charcoal-gray dress, black stockings, and black suede pumps, but the most striking article of her attire was her coat: black with yellow zigzag stripes. It looked like it was made out of bumblebee fur. Her ruby-painted lips were engaged with some bright concoction that had the color of something more chemically industrial than humanly drinkable.
Walking up to her, he said, “Hello. Remember me?”
“Joe, right? What are you drinking?”
“Whatever is good on tap, I suppose.”
“Beer sucks. With all the booze in this place, make it worth your while.”
She was right. The back bar was well stocked. In these times of shortages, few bars and restaurants could boast of such a supply readily on hand. Logan had to think of his budget. “No, beer’s fine.”
“Here, let me buy. I insist.” She was in an unusually pleasant mood compared to when Logan last saw her. Maybe it was the liquor.
“You know, we haven’t properly met. I’m not even sure of your name.”
“Natalie Schneider. And you’re Joe Logan. I’m good with names. Names, places, dates, and details. I have to be. It’s my job. This is Marl.” She gestured to the Tactical sitting beside her.
Marl had the chiseled features of a television actor and short, dark, wiry hair that was speckled with traces of blond. He didn’t seem too interested in his surroundings, definitely not in Logan. The man was bored, empty. He was performing a ritual with absinthe, pouring the phlegm-green liquid from a clear bottle into a glass over a cube of sugar resting on a decorative, slotted, spear-shaped spoon. He then placed the glass under a water fountain set on the bar. Made of pewter, the tall, necked stand and cap over the globe of ice water was shaped like an old-time streetlamp. Activating a spigot, Marl allowed the water to drip into the glass. The liquid immediately turned opalescent. “Louche,” he said breathlessly.
“Louche,” Natalie Schneider mimicked.
“Hello, Joe. What’ll it be?” It was Squire.
Logan nodded. “Imperial, I guess. On ice.”
“You can do better than that,” Natalie insisted.
“All right, then. Make it Jameson.”
“Now we’re talking.”
Squire quickly put three cubes in a glass and added a more than liberal shot of whiskey. He set it on the bar top. “That’s on the house.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Don’t be like that, Joe.”
“Be like what? You sleep with my wife, and a free drink is supposed to make up for it?”
“She broke both our hearts. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Mine was broken longer and harder, and I’ll never leave it at that.”
Squire held up his hands and backed away to another part of the crowded bar.
“Ouch,” said Natalie. “You fellows have some history between you.”
“Forget it. It’s nothing.”
Natalie cocked her head in Marl’s direction. “Marl here works at Pine Haven. What a surprise, huh Joe? But he never says what he’s protecting us from or against over there, do you Marl?”
“I can’t talk about it. Part of the contract.”
“Can’t or won’t,” Natalie needled him, “for reasons of national security.”
“All of the above.” The Tactical appeared more genial than Logan would have given him credit for. He’d probably had a few absinthes to help soften his flint.
Natalie slid off the bar stool. “You wanted to talk, didn’t you? Let’s get a table.” She turned to Marl. “I’ll be seeing you later,” she said.
The Tactical pointed a finger at her and cocked his thumb like a pistol. “So you keep threatening,” Marl said, giving her an agitated smile.
Natalie shrugged and led them to a table outside the dance floor. It was in a small alcove that helped decrease the volume of the music. They sat down.
“What about your friend?”
“He’ll be worthless for conversation with that drink of his. I always associated absinthe with nineteenth-century Symbolist poets, not twenty-first century mercenaries.”
“They prefer the term military contractor, I think.”
“Marl is shy. He was in the war, you know. His unit was in a hot zone when those battlefield nukes started popping off. He will probably get sick eventually.”
“We all will, eventually. Tough break. For him, I mean.”
“At least he can finish up the rest of his career in the contract services, although these boys don’t get the big money like they used to. I don’t think some of these guys can talk to a woman unless they’re carrying a firearm. The French Algerian psychologist Franz Fanon did a book about it in the 1950s. That whole underlying power/oppression thing and the way it affects the operative representatives of the state apparatus. No wonder the RTMC imports high-priced poontang for these guys. Glass has an aversion to policemen. At least the Tacticals. I cover for him. Run interference. So, how did you come by old Henry Bock? You a friend of his?”
“I only just met him. I was at the police station this morning. Henry overheard some things and wanted to talk.”
“Was he any help?”
“Not what concerned my situation. He was explaining about these cysts growing on farm animals and some creature called an Ouroboros. I don’t know if that had to do with the cysts. I don’t know if any of it’s true. But I did see something.”
“Yes, your dog and the creature that killed it. A lot of strange things around here don’t get reported and when it does, it goes nowhere. People are getting edited out of the equation, what’s happening to them, what’s important to them. Like a number of edge cities and satellite towns, Essex is under a cone of silence. Very little gets out, and what does is monitored, controlled.”
“A cone of silence?” Logan wasn’t aware such a protocol had been put in place.
“Tactical Response Team Management and Control has come to your town bearing the full package. Human and Signal Intelligence, surveillance, information operations. Think of Essex as an ongoing laboratory. What’s going on here won’t be known in the next town over, let alone the rest of the country. No information is allowed out. The exclusion zone’s ultimate feature will be ‘nobody in, nobody out.’ The Tacticals use it at their discretion. Did you notice how there was no coverage in the media over the protests when the radioactive waste from Triumph was going to be shipped here?”
Logan had been working at the tim
e. He was offered a chance to take a much larger role in the organizing, but backed out because of his job. He hadn’t had one in a while, and he desperately needed the money. He did turn up at a rally down at Town Hall. Later, word came that some of the leaders of the opposition to the planned waste site were rounded up; some had even been charged with conspiracy. Evidence was discovered of violence being planned against Response Team Management and Control. There were even calls for full disclosure about the Pine Haven accident. Journalists from independent and citizen news groups were being scooped up before they made it into town. There was even a rumor that NORCOM satellites were used to track the movements of key opposition organizers and media figures. “The atmosphere is pretty oppressive, but I don’t know if it’s better anywhere else.”
“You know, Joe, if the Tacticals, the DoD, or Department of Energy have their way, the exclusion zone will encompass the whole town and neighboring communities. There are a lot of powerful forces at work here, and the people of Essex are going to pay a high price for Response Team policy.”
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
Natalie shook her head. “Glass and I arrived about a year ago from the Chicago area. We’re renting the place we’re in now. It’s not permanent. We’re here to research the Pine Haven incident and the increase of security and the border extension of the e-zone. Glass wants to write a book about it. This whole thing with the waste site came as both a surprise and an obstacle to overcome. It’s made our job all the more difficult.”
“Have you had any luck so far?”
Natalie made a noncommittal gesture. “It’s difficult to gauge. A few leads here and there. It’s why I come to the X every now and then. I try and strike up a conversation while these boys are getting looped. Work the crowd. But I think my presence is beginning to wear thin.”
“How so?”
“Because I don’t fuck them, and word is getting around that I don’t. On the weekends all this trade wants is plenty of liquor and blow jobs.”
