The 56th Man

by J. Clayton Rogers

The young man jutted out his jaw and presented a crooked sneer. He looked like a wild boar. His eyes shifted.

  Ari quickly went back to his screen and opened a new window. The young man performed a rapid alt-tab. When the reference librarian arrived, she saw Fox News on Ari's monitor and lectures on medieval philosophy on the young man's.

  "Everything all right?" she asked.

  "Yes," the two men said in unison. Ari was abashed that the woman had gone from being an object of flirtation to an arch foe in one easy flash.

  "That's good. Let me know if I can be of any assistance."

  "We will," the men answered, both startled by a bolt of awareness. They had unwittingly and unwillingly become allies.

  The librarian made her flat-footed way back to her desk. Ari and the young man turned away from each other and alt-tabbed back to their respective studies.

  Ari was once again surprised by an erection. Could he have possibly been effected by the young man's pornography? Or was it the lingering oatmeal warmth of the librarian? He could not continue like this.

  His biological embarrassment deflated as he re-focused on Jerry Riggins' bloody, empty eye sockets. A voice seemed to call Ari from a vast, blind chorus. He angrily dismissed the memory of Rana's face when he turned her over in the courtyard.

  He skipped ahead to Moria Riggins.

  "Sicko shit."

  Ari whirled, but the young man was still planted firmly in front of his screen.

  "Neek Hallak," Ari snarled.

  Moria had been sitting on the edge of her bed when she was shot. Facing the bedroom window, although Ari doubted she had been watching the moon. Her eyes bulged slightly from the hydrostatic shock, but at least they were still in her skull. Her powder blue robe was cinched at the waist. Ari clicked ahead rapidly to a photograph of the slippers. They were plain, pale blue, matching the robe. There was a wavy pattern in the fabric along the edge of the soles. Most definitely a water stain, but was it recent? From the picture it was impossible to say if they were still wet. Ari noted several framed portraits on a nearby dresser. Using the sliding toolbar, he shifted the image up and zoomed. Mr. and Mrs. Massington and their two children. The boy looked to be around sixteen. Tina Press had told Ari that Moria’s brother had been killed in a car wreck.

  He studied Tom Massington, the Tin Man who had banished Moria from his will. His face bore the harsh contentment of a man who made difficult decisions at other peoples' expense. His son showed that same contentment, but without the harshness. He would have grown into it, as Tom Massington himself no doubt had, and become the spitting image of his father.

  In comparison, Heather Massington seemed soft and unfocused. Ari saw none of the stern beauty concocted by his imagination and Tina’s description of her as a cold fish. Nor did he detect any hint of the femme fatale. Yet there was hidden strength. She had broken from her husband when it came to their daughter, choosing to leave Moria in her will. And to Ari’s eye it was obvious she had strayed from the marriage bed. Looking at young Moria at fourteen or fifteen years of age, he smiled grimly. The resemblance to the illicit lover was striking. Tina had told him Heather shed no tears over her son. Yet Tracy Mackenzie said Moria’s mother had been completely distraught when she made her one and only visit to the Riggins house after the murders. The love child still bore the largest part of Heather’s affection.

  01:27:20 12/24/2005: Joshua Riggins' bedroom. And here the deception, or self-deception, became most transparent. Joshua's body was lying sideways on the bed. He was barefoot, but a small robe lay under him. Ari could see cartoon characters woven into the robe's fabric. One arm was still inside the sleeve, while the other lay curled at the waist. Most striking, though, were the streaks on the front of his pajama shirt. Saliva, thick mucous, tiny pink rivulets that Ari could only see on zooming in. Had Joshua been sick? Yet it did not look like vomit, nor was there any sign of vomit on the rumpled bedsheets. And where was the ghosting pattern mentioned in the matrix worksheet? He zoomed in closer. Just as the image began to blur in over-focus, he thought he could see flecks of blood on the shirt front and at the knees. The pattern was at waist-level.

  The following picture was a close-up of the head wound. Ari studied it for a moment, then clicked to the next file. He immediately noticed something odd on Joshua's nightstand. A gaudy Batman clock was half hidden behind what at first looked like a blue and white bundle of cloth. He zoomed in and saw a facecloth surrounded by small beads of water. There was an open prescription bottle next to the pack, but when he attempted a closer look the image blurred. It was as though the cameraman had predicted his complaint, because the next shot was a close-up of the bottle. Zooming blurred this picture, as well, but at least now he could pick out the small letters at the bottom left of the label: Valium.

  He clicked forward several files until he came to William Riggins. Unlike his brother's, William’s bed was almost immaculate. The boy was on his back under a crisp sheet. Except for the bullet wound, it had all the formality of a body in a casket. Ari zoomed in on the nose, upper lip, and mouth. He bowed his head and offered up a silent prayer.

  He had seen enough, but he continued to the end. The last file was another shot of the back door from inside. Having started at the beginning, Ari was puzzled by this return to the point of entry.

  02:15:17 12/24/2005. The investigator had spent an hour and fifteen minutes plying his camera throughout the house. What caught Ari's interest was the broken wood from the door littering the entranceway. There was no sign of the path Ari had assumed the police had cleared through the mess after Jackson and Mangioni had entered the house.

  He went back to the first picture of the door taken from the back yard. Standing open, but from that angle the floor was out of sight. He clicked on the next picture. There...the floor completely swept clean. The next four images showed the same assiduous housekeeping.

  He switched to the directory. None of the files had a proper title, but was listed as 100_001.JPG, 100_002.JPG and so forth. The first six files showed a (2) next to their numerical name. None of the remaining files showed this parenthetical footnote.

  He sat back and noticed that his pulchritudinous neighbor had departed. A moment later, the reference librarian slipped into the vacated chair. She made a sound of disparagement and reached for the keyboard. Then she noticed Ari watching her.

  "Oh, this." She flicked a reproachful glance at the monitor. "I wondered why he left so soon. He managed to lock up the computer, again. Sometimes the filters just get overwhelmed--oh, no! You don't want--"

  But Ari had already leaned over for a look. A woman's mouth was frozen in mid-blow job.

  "Ah," said Ari. "Freedom of speech."

  "Is that what he told you? That's what he always says. 'Freedom of speech' my Twinkies."

  "I'm not familiar with that phrase."

  A smile penetrated the librarian's frown. "That's all right. It's an anachronism." She hit CTRL/ALT/DEL and rebooted the system. Then she blushed and literally stifled a laugh by clamping her hand over her mouth. "Freedom of speech!" she said after the spasm passed. She plinked the screen. Ari smiled.

  "May I inquire as to your name?" he said.

  "If you tell me yours."

  Ari gave her a long look. She was certainly no great beauty. There were a few mild acne scars on her cheeks, her hair was lifeless, and her hands were a shade too red, as though she had been scrubbing pots. Yet he found himself entertained by the sparkle behind her rather thick glasses. And when she was not feeling harassed, her voice had that warm, smooth tone that Ari prized. It was said that Cleopatra was no sizzling sexpot--but her voice had seduced an empire.

  "I would like to tell you my name. If I showed you my driver's license, you would see Ari Ciminon, complete with identification number. But that is not my name."

  It was her turn to stretch out a stare. Her blush reached new heights. "Mr. Ciminon...I'm not used to this."

  "Used to what?"

  "To...talking
like this."

  "You've never told anyone your name before?"

  She smiled and took a deep breath. "Lynn Gillespie."

  "Thank you, Ms. Gillespie."

  "You're very welcome, Mr. Aladdin. If you're going to use a pseudonym, I might as well pick the one I like."

  "Fair enough. I need some assistance with..." He gestured at the monitor.

  "Someone's waiting for this workstation." Lynn glanced towards the reference desk, then shrugged. "They can wait one minute more. What do you need?" She rolled her chair closer. Ari felt the oatmeal warmth.

  "This directory..."

  "These are picture files?"

  "Yes. I'd rather not show them to you."

  "All right..."

  "I was wondering about this..." He laid a finger over the (2) on the directory. "Do you know what this means?"

  "It's a copy." She scrolled down the directory. "The first six files...all copies."

  "Where are the originals?"

  She went to the bottom of the directory. "It looks like they've been deleted, at least from this disk."

  "Why would someone delete the originals but leave copies?"

  "You didn't create these files?" Lynn asked.

  "They were made for me."

  "Okay. Well, what might have happened is that someone tried to delete all those files at once. When they blocked off the files they wanted to get rid of, they accidentally copied them at the same time. It's happened to me before."

  "So you don't think they meant for these files to be here?"

  "I have no idea. You're being very mysterious. Are you sure I can't just..." She floated the cursor over one of the files.

  "No, please..." He cupped his hand over hers and gently removed it from the mouse. He did not let go right away. A tremendous, erotic sadness filled him. His need left a palpable taste in his mouth. Imagine, wanting to plunge into this sad little Plain Jane. He let go.

  "Is..." Lynn caught her voice. "Um...is that all?"

  "No. I need to send an email."

  "That's no problem. You have an account? That's no problem, either. I can set one up for you in Gmail. It just takes a second."

  He closed the window and removed the ScanDisk, then rolled out of her way.

  "Which of your many names do you want on the account?" she asked as she pulled up Google.

  "You choose."

  She thought a moment, then gave him a very attractive smirk. She typed in 'Ali Baba.'

  "Please...not that."

  "Why--"

  "That's what the American soldiers call the enemy in Iraq."

  "Oh."

  "I am not the enemy."

  "And I don't know Aladdin’s first name," said Lynn sadly.

  "Nor I."

  She draped her hands over her knees for a moment. "How do you spell Ciminon?"

  Within minutes the account was set up--and Lynn had learned his street address, because that was one of the fields required to set up an account. She did not appear to make the connection between Beach Court Lane and the Riggins family.

  "One more thing," Ari said as she began to rise from her seat.

  "Really, there's someone waiting--"

  "The email I need to write is in Arabic." Ari spread his hands over the keyboard. "And as you can see..."

  "Use Google's language tool," she said, a little briskly. Obviously her job took precedence over aimless flirtation. But when he put on his best face of unadulterated stupidity, she lowered herself back down. "Here." She opened another window and pulled up the Google translator. "Just type what you want in this box in English, then pick English to Arabic. Do you know how to copy and paste?"

  Ari nodded contritely.

  "Copy the translation into your email and send it. Now, you have less than ten minutes left on your reservation. And I really have to go..."

  Ari lingered in the oatmeal for a moment, then set about composing his message. He needed help beyond a few basic lessons on the computer. And he knew just the man for the job.

  SEVENTEEN

  Saddam Hussein had lost his heads.

  It had been years since Ghaith had visited the Karradat Mariam, where the Republican Palace was located. One of the Great Man's interpreters had come down with a fatal disease, and the President's German was on the far side of nonexistent.

  The President had looked at him suspiciously when he was introduced. But then Ghaith (fully aware and fully reminded that he was a nonentity) had screwed up enough courage to recall for the President a glorious day on Pig Island, when ‘Mr. Deputy’ had presented Ghaith's father with a case of Jack Daniels. Ghaith's appreciation of that moment in his childhood impressed the President with its warmth, and almost drew a tear from the Great Man. Yes, Ghaith was just the man he needed at that moment. In any other country, with his multilingual talents, Ghaith would have been ideally suited for the Akashat/Al Qaim project, which involved contractors from all around the world: Swiss, German, Danish, French, British, Austrian, Swedish…and American. But the Great Man did not want anyone to know too much about his nerve gas plants, and Ghaith was soon returned to his usual duties.

  On that visit, while approaching the palace, the giant bronze heads of Saddam Hussein as a warrior in militant Saladin headgear had frowned down upon him from the roof. Even then, he thought they were majestically tasteless. Soon after the invasion, the Americans had carted the heads off to the scrapheap. Ghaith felt a sense of loss.

  Security had tightened since the double suicide bombing that had wrecked the marketplace and the Green Zone Café. The guards at FOB Prosperity looked askance at the driver, a corporal from III Corps, then asked Ghaith to step out of the Humvee for a little waltz with a metal detector before allowing them to proceed out of the peripheral Red Zone.

  They were stopped again by members of the Florida National Guard. As the soldiers frisked Ghaith, his eyes fell upon a trailer park on the road leading into the compound. A sign announced that this park was known as 'The Palms'. It was packed with Shia refugees from Sadr City. The Americans thought it would be bad publicity to evict them. A good face was worth a hundred lives. The embassy was breeding insurgents right under its nose. All the T-Walls and blast walls and barbed wire didn't mean much when the enemy shared your toilets.

  Inside, the palace seemed to be falling apart, with plaster flaking off the walls and rubble from the columns strewn underfoot. Whether this was because Iraqis had built it or because the Coalition had occupied it was an open question. Ghaith recalled the huge dining hall of the South Wing, quotes from the Koran scowling down from the walls with grim imprimaturs as one tried to enjoy a meal. Then there were the giant murals of the South Ballroom: a Jew-less Jerusalem, the World Trade Towers coming down, Scuds rocketing off to kill God-knew-whom.

  Ghaith was led down the Center Wing, current home of the United States Embassy. The corporal handed him off to a sergeant (who shrugged), the sergeant to a civilian (who shook his head), the civilian to a colonel (who nodded). The colonel guided him to a straight-backed chair in a small office which must have been a broom closet under the previous regime. The colonel took up his seat behind a small desk and began perusing a folder.

  "Abu Karim Ghaith Ibrahim?"

  "Close enough."

  “’Abu Karim’…isn’t that sort of like a tribal name? Weren’t those banned by the Baath party?”

  “Only in the military.”

  “But aren’t you military?”

  “I’m the father of Karim. That’s enough.”

  "Okay,” said the colonel, surrendering to confusion. “Says here you were a registry clerk at the Baghdad Central Confinement Facility, previously known as Abu Ghraib Prison."

  "I worked there occasionally."

  "In a briefing with his commanding officer, Captain Rodriguez said you made some comments about the Wolf Brigade to the effect--"

  "I know what I said."

  The colonel looked up sharply, unaccustomed to having his comments decapitated. Ghaith
was not impressed by his razor-sharp ACU, perfect bearing, or authoritarian demeanor. There was something about the colonel that labeled him as a permanent desk jockey. Perhaps he was the type the infantrymen in the field disparaged as 'Powerpoint Commandos.'

  "You do know why you're here, don't you?"

  "I've been told that I might be useful," Ghaith answered blandly.

  "That's right. And if you're very useful to us, we can be very useful to you. However, neither of us can be very useful to the other if you get your head shot off."

  Ghaith's eyes wandered to the window behind the colonel. He could see the top of the orange grove behind the palace. He knew that if he looked down from this third-story office he would see a large kidney-shaped pool.

  "Your story has gone all the way up the chain of command," said the colonel, leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head. "We would very much like to employ you in a big way, but..."

  "If you perform a thorough background check on me, if you start asking my neighbors and former coworkers about me, what remains of my family will probably be assassinated."

  "Then you see the problem," said the colonel. He had invoked some kind of mental chant to relax himself and his voice took on an almost jovial tone. "We know very little about you, and I strongly suspect you will offer very little voluntarily. Were you a Baathist? Are you one now?"

  "I am not and have never been a member of the Communist Party."

  The colonel laughed. "You've brushed up on your U.S. 101." He lowered his arms to the file. He closed the manila folder and held it up. "See that? That's an awfully thin file. I've seen bigger CV's for administrative assistants."

  "I don't believe there is a man in Iraq who would tell you the full story of his life," said Ghaith. "Of course, I've heard of your wonderful American transparency. I'm very happy there is one place on Earth where a man can reveal everything about himself without fear of consequences."

  "Sarcasm won't get you anywhere." The colonel tossed the folder down and again sought reassurance in some ghostly temple in his mind. Whatever his method of self-control, it did wonders for his attitude. He smiled and reached into a desk drawer. He pulled out a deck of cards. "Recognize this?"