The 56th Man

by J. Clayton Rogers

  Had she been by his side now, she would not have needed eyes which were now gone or a voice that was now silenced. Her simple, profound presence would have nipped his anger in the bud. Whenever he had felt wrathful toward one of his sons (even the best of boys could find a way to draw one's ire), Rana's gentle shadow nearly always subdued him.

  His cell phone rang. Ari leaned sideways and removed it from his pocket. He opened it. The number was unfamiliar. The Marshal or the police? Either might call to ask him to come in voluntarily, saving them the trouble and expense of arraying the might of the state against him.

  "Ciminon," he finally answered.

  A strange, croaking whisper came out of the tiny speaker.

  "Hello?" said Ari.

  "No...charges..."

  "Ms. Sandra?"

  "Yes."

  "Where are you calling from?"

  "The...hospital. Where the fuck...do you think?"

  "I'm glad to see you're still alive." And he was. He hadn't been sure.

  "I called them off." Her constricted voice was filled with pain.

  "The police?"

  "Everyone. Told them...never mind."

  A lovers' quarrel.

  "Then pulled my weight. Showed them...my credentials..."

  Sandra pulling her weight. Ari found himself smiling.

  "Listen, Ms. Sandra...I'm sorry--"

  "Shut the fuck up. I shouldn't have...I didn't know..."

  "I understand," said Ari.

  "Do you? If you were arrested...you'd..."

  So this wasn't a kiss-and-make-up call. Sandra was concerned that he would tell a court-appointed lawyer some dirt about Jerry and Moria Riggins. The lawyer would blackmail the prosecution into a plea bargain. Ari had seen enough American movies to understand the arrangement.

  “Mr. Ciminon…?”

  “Yes?”

  “I…don't see any good reason…why you should be helping the U.S., after all that happened...”

  “This is the only way that I can save what little I have left,” said Ari, and left it at that.

  "All right. But why--"

  “I have nothing more to say on that subject.”

  “And I shouldn't be asking, anyway,” said Sandra quietly. After a pause, she asked, “Do you think...you can find the killers? I mean, of the Riggins family?"

  Ari was surprised by her openness. He nodded, as though she could see him. Then he said, "I think so."

  "Good," said Sandra, then disconnected.

  In the Electronics department of the Forest Hill Wal-Mart Ari tried to invoke the assistance of a clerk, who stared at him as though he had just jumped out of a fish bowl.

  "You want to buy a computer?" the clerk said.

  "Inexpensive but efficient," Ari responded.

  "Well, sir, we don't go into computers in a big way. I mean, not in the stores. We've got some bundle packages on our website. HP, Dell, good names like that. But…I guess you need a computer to go online and buy them. We've only got a few things here…"

  "But?"

  "Well, they're cheap enough."

  Ari was aware that 'cheap' was a double-edged sword. "Are you suggesting that I go somewhere else?"

  "We've got a Toshiba laptop that's pretty good. Uh…but…have you tried Circuit City or Comp USA or Best Buy? They might have something better on their shelf, if you need something right away. Well, not better. Just more powerful.”

  “That sounds better.”

  “It depends on how you want it configured. You want XP? Are you going to be doing a lot of downloads? How much RAM are you going to want? If this is for business, you'll need a good processor for your bandwidth. I hear Intel's 2 Quad core is good. It can chop right through the threads."

  Ari felt himself droop as the young man droned on. So much for his splendid English. He felt as stupefied here as he had at Lowe's when confronted by the arcana of home improvement. The clerk's eyes had glazed over as he paraded his expertise, and so did Ari's. The two of them looked like a hypnotist and his subject, only both had gone under and there was no one around to snap them out of their trance.

  The clerk stopped talking. The men stood stupidly for a moment, then shook themselves awake.

  "To tell you the truth," said Ari, "I don't need it for anything extensive. I just want to use it to send an email and for a little research.

  "An email," the clerk said, dumbfounded by the singular indefinite article. "Why not just go to the library, then?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "There's public libraries all over the place."

  "They would have a computer that I can use?"

  "Sure. Some of them hardly have books anymore. Just terminals."

  "Excellent. Thank you."

  Ari had already noted three libraries, one within jogging distance, the other two about fifteen minutes away by car. The Westover Hills branch of the Richmond Public Library looked so much like a residence that Ari had wondered if he misunderstood the sign. He suspected it had limited resources, and in any event it was too close to home. The main city library on Franklin Street looked sufficient, even grand, but Ari found it uncomfortably close to Carrington's base of operations. That left Henrico County's Tuckahoe Library, just off Parham Road, which he had seen during his drive out to Moria's Notions. Spacious and new, it held out the promise of giving Ari everything he needed--for free.

  The librarian at the front desk directed him downstairs, where he found two long rows of computer workstations, plus numerous terminals tucked away in odd corners. They all seemed to be occupied.

  "I'm afraid you'll have to wait your turn," the harried woman at the reference desk told him. “It's first come, first serve, with a two-hour limit. You have a library card?”

  “I'm afraid not.”

  “I can issue you a temporary one.”

  “With my name and address?”

  For the first time the reference librarian gave him a good look. Noting his suit and neat appearance, she seemed to conclude he was not a homeless good-for-nothing. “Do you live in the Richmond area?”

  “I'm…visiting.”

  “Then I'll issue you a Visitor's Card when a workstation is free. I'm afraid that's only good for one hour.”

  “That's perfectly adequate. Thank you so much.”

  Ari put a name on the waiting list, then wandered through the book stacks. He noted several new titles about the war in Iraq, including State of Denial, Cobra II, Assassins' Gate and Hubris. After flipping through some of the books, he concluded the general theme was summarized by one particular title: Fiasco. Ari shrugged mentally. All wars were fiascos. He'd lived through three of them.

  He passed a table around which sat three teenage girls. They could barely suppress their giggles as they flipped through the pages of the oversized volume in front of them. Ari drew a book at random from the bookshelf and sat at a nearby desk.

  "Can you believe?" one girl was saying.

  "That can't be Mr. Wilson. I mean, this guy's like totally bald!"

  "It's him, Shirley."

  "Oh gawd, you mean he's wearing a wig now? But he's a hunk!"

  "Well he's a baldy hunk under that rug."

  "How about Colonel Kramer? My sister told me they had a total dripwad teaching English when she was a junior..."

  Ari glanced down at the book he had selected. Ancient Mesopotamia. He stood and returned the book to the shelf. He went back to the reference desk.

  "I'm sorry, no terminal is available yet," said the harried librarian.

  "I wanted to inquire about something else. Do you have books here put out by the schools? I mean as mementoes, with pictures of the students and teachers?"

  "You mean yearbooks?"

  "That sounds right."

  "We carry some of the local schools."

  "Freeman High School.”

  "Oh yes," the librarian smiled. "We have them going back thirty years. It's just down the road from here. I graduated from there myself before going off to Mary Bal
dwin."

  "And where would the yearbooks be?"

  "Against the back wall behind the reference section."

  "Ah..." Ari turned left and right.

  "I can show you." She asked her coworker to take her place for a moment, then led Ari down an aisle behind her desk. She wore a plain white sweater and a blue skirt. Her loafers gave her a flatfooted stride that verged on the gawky. Her dishwater blonde hair fell straight to her shoulders. She seemed pleased to take this little recess among the shelves. Perhaps she had once dreamed of spending her days among books, only to find herself in a bleak landscape of pixels and geeks. "Here you are," she said on reaching the back of the room. "Was there any particular year you were interested in?"

  "Nineteen-ninety-two.”

  "That's the year I graduated!" She went straight to the yearbook in question and pulled it down from the shelf. "I haven't looked at this in ages."

  "Everyone who graduated that year is in here?" Ari asked.

  "Everyone, period. It's divided by classes. See? The freshmen get these tiny portraits and the seniors have these larger, formal ones, with the sophomores and juniors in between. Who are you looking for?"

  "I'm trying to find an old friend."

  "Oh." The librarian wore no lipstick and had only a watch for jewelry, yet she possessed a strange (if flat) grace. "Your English is very refined," she said, blushing.

  Ari gave her a long look. "University of Baghdad," he answered.

  "Really? Well, your teacher was first-rate." She ventured a naughty moue. "Even if he forgot to include 'yearbook' in your vocabulary."

  "Yes. Professor Yahya Abdallah."

  Arrested on suspicion of espionage. Ari learned later that the charges were trumped up. The professor had made a mildly disparaging remark about the regime to a Brit reporter, who had turned around and spiced up the quote into borderline treason before broadcasting it on BBC World. The professor had died in prison.

  The librarian rested the yearbook on a narrow table and backed away reluctantly. With a small gesture, Ari invited her to join him. She smiled and shook her head. "I have to get back to the reference desk. Someone's sure to have locked up by now." Her smile took a wan downward turn. "I've become more of a hacker than a librarian."

  Ari quickly found Moria Massington's picture in the senior section of the yearbook. 'Youthful freshness' described the portrait with fair accuracy. Could he ascribe that simmering gleam in her eyes to simple teenage buoyancy? Or was there something else behind that knowing look. According to Tina, Moria had only been using product for a couple of years.

  You could see the future in Moria's eyes. But which future?

  There it was, in print, right under her name:

  'Our Moria. What can we say? She can charm a moonbeam off the Moon. Aspires to a degree in Business. Shop at Moria's in 4 years!'

  Considering this was the year she had graduated, Moria had undoubtedly possessed an identical copy of the 1992 yearbook. Was it surrounded by the signatures of her friends? Did it contain shy little notes from boys in love with her?

  Ari turned to the index. Moria was listed four times, more than most of her peers. There was no listing for Jerry Riggins. He had gone to a different school. Nor did he see Tina Press. Perhaps she had also gone to a different high school. Or she could have married and kept her husband's last name after they split--an assumption based on Tina's invitation to share her bed with him. He went to the next listing for Moria.

  Senior Prom. Moria, dressed like a princess, standing beside a strapping young man in a tux.

  'Don and Moria outsparkle the stars at the annual bash. Is there more to this than tripping the light fantastic?'

  Don. Ari rifled through the senior class and found Donald Bland.

  'Don's going places, no doubt about it. Where will we see him next? On the Moon?'

  Ari grunted. The yearbook editor had moondust on the brain. If Don had gone places, Moria had not followed. She had ended up roughly where she began.

  He found the next listing, a photograph of some kind of school club. Moria was the only standout in a drab lot. Ari read the caption:

  'Esperanto rules!'

  He chuckled, then flipped to the final listing. A pyramid of six cheerleaders standing firm for the camera, with Moria at the apex. He looked closely at one of the girls beneath her:

  Tina.

  You met Moria at the shopping mall, Tina? Why did you lie about that?

  He looked more closely at the picture, twisting his head in an impossible attempt to see beyond the pompoms.

  He sat back and closed his eyes.

  All the old Rebels of '92 will miss you. Remember the pyramid?

  Moria had one sterling quality that almost made up for her grievous faults: she knew how to maintain a friendship.

  "Mr. Aladdin? There's a workstation free now." The librarian was drawn over to the table by Ari's smile. "You found your friend?" She glanced down and saw the cheerleader pyramid. She seemed disappointed. "Oh. Her. Are you a reporter? You could have told me. Anyone can look at this."

  "You're speaking about...?"

  "Moria Massington. At least that's the name I knew her by."

  "You knew her?"

  "I would see her in the hallway at school. That was long ago."

  "An eternity."

  The librarian blushed and smiled. "It is when you're a woman and thirty." She cocked her head, then reached down to the yearbook and turned back to the senior section. "Here. You can see I didn't exactly belong in Moria's crowd."

  Ari found himself looking at a young girl in a formal gown who was painfully aware of her unbecoming acne. He mused over the picture for a moment, then raised his head.

  "And now you've blossomed into a radiant vision."

  Her blush deepened. "Do they really talk like that where you come from?"

  "When we mean it," Ari said.

  The librarian looked over her shoulder, as though convinced he was speaking to someone else. "Oh dear. I think I'd better get you to that computer, Mr. Aladdin." Then she gave him a jovial reprimand: "If that's really your name."

  "I can show you my lamp."

  "Oh dear!"

  She hastened out of the reference stacks with Ari close behind her. She showed him to one of the atrium workstations, next to a young man seated at the end of the row who hunched close to his monitor when the librarian shot him a look. She gave Ari a temporary user name and password, tossed another warning glance at the young man, and returned to the reference desk.

  Ari logged on and brought out the 2 gigabyte SanDisk that he had taken from Sandra's courier pouch. He inserted it into the tower's SD slot and waited. Nothing happened. He opened the directory menu and clicked on the F drive. After a moment, the screen filled with thumbnail views of jpg files.

  It was the Riggins crime scene.

  He wanted to see the pictures in the sequence in which they were taken. He clicked on the 'details' button. The thumbnails vanished and he clicked on 'date modified'. Slowly, he worked his way down the list.

  01:01:34 12/24/2005: The back door, smashed in. Judging by the time indicator on the bottom right hand of the screen, the CSI photographer began snapping pictures around forty minutes after Jackson and Mangioni radioed in. Ari did not know if this was evidence of efficiency or the reverse. There were very few murder investigations in Baghdad these days. The most detailed were those performed by Americans whenever Americans were accused of murdering innocent Iraqi civilians.

  01:02:04 12/24/2005: The back door again, from a slightly different angle.

  01:04:56 12/24/2005: The back door from inside the house. Someone had to have swept up the broken wood that must have littered the hallway's linoleum floor. There was not even a splinter in sight.

  There were a few more pictures of the door, plus a couple of the kitchen. Then came the living room.

  01:08:31 12/24/2005: Jerry Riggins. Officer Jackson had not been exaggerating, except Ari did not get the impression tha
t Jerry had been staring at the Moon when he was shot. The green easy chair was facing the picture window, yes, but it seemed to Ari that the victim had been caught in the side of the head while turning to face the killer. The camera flash was reflected in the window, as well as several silhouettes. There was the cameraman, a man in uniform whose face was indiscernible, and a large man wearing a sports jacket. That face, too, disappeared at the edge of the reflection, but Ari was sure it was Carrington.

  The cameraman had shifted position as he took shots from numerous angles. He had worked his way to the front of the body, apparently leaning sideways to avoid stepping in the blood-soaked patch on the carpet. Ari finally saw the Christmas tree, though with the gruesome remains of Jerry Riggins' head in the foreground. The tree was strung with decorative lights, but they were not on. Perhaps someone had switched them off because their reflection in the window had interfered with the cameraman.

  "Oh shit."

  Ari turned to find his neighbor leaning over to gape at his monitor.

  "What kind of sick shit are you looking at?"

  Ari leaned the other way for a view of the young man's screen. A naked couple was making lust against a wall. The stud-star pulled out, forced the woman down on her knees, and came in her face.

  "And what kind of shit is this?" 'Shit' sounded odd on Ari's lips. He could swear with almost miraculous felicity in Arabic, and could roll out his stramaledetto's as well as any Italian. But there was a crude sonority to the fuck/shit lexicon that he found hard to emulate. He had discovered long ago that oaths and humor were among the most difficult cultural interchanges to negotiate. But Ari's neighbor took no notice of the stiff pronunciation.

  "Hey!" The young man yanked away. "This is freedom of speech, man."

  "Are you exposing yourself?" Ari glanced down. "Are you ejaculating in your pants?"

  The young man rolled away a couple of feet, twisting in his chair.

  "Leave me to mine and I'll leave you to yours," Ari whispered. "Agreed?"