by Douglas Jern
“We go back to the motel and wait until tomorrow, like we planned. You said Joey always hangs out at that kebab shop around lunchtime, right?”
“Not sure staying in one place that long is such a good idea,” said Zachary.
“It’s got to be better than driving around on the streets where people might recognize us,” said Laura.
Once again, she had a point. The motel was on the outskirts of town, where there were fewer security cameras and patrolling cops. He was sure they weren’t being followed, so the risk of getting busted at the motel was fairly low.
“The motel it is, then,” he said.
It had been one of the worst days of his life. He didn’t even want to think about what the next one might have in store.
AUGUST 8, NOW
09:18 – Laura
The fluorescent above the bathroom mirror flickered on and off, making it hard to see what she was doing. She added more eyeliner, drew highlights just above her eyebrows and smoothed them with her finger, trying to create a raising effect to make her eyes look bigger. After contouring her face, accentuating her cheekbones to subtly alter its shape, she applied lipstick. It was blue, not exactly a conventional color, but it would draw attention away from the rest of her face, which was good. But despite her best efforts and all the theater tricks Brianna had taught her, it was still too easy to recognize Laura behind all that makeup.
The new hairstyle would probably serve as a better disguise than all the foundation and concealer in the world ever could. She’d agonized over the decision, but had eventually grit her teeth and taken the scissors to her long hair, wincing as each lock fell to the grimy bathroom floor, as if the hair were a living part of herself that she was mercilessly amputating. The short, uneven bob cut wasn’t flattering, but it was a radically different look.
She studied her face in the mirror from different angles, sighed and switched off the flickering lamp. It would have to do.
When she entered the bedroom, Zimmerman was sitting on the creaky chair, cracking his knuckles. She’d felt his mind through the bathroom door and knew how tormented he was. He was trying to rationalize his shooting of Fred Mullin, telling himself that he’d done it to protect Laura, to help her help him bring Jeffrey’s killer to justice. The reasoning was flimsy, insufficient, but he clung to it like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood. There was nothing else he could do.
He looked up at her and blinked.
“Well I’ll be damned. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
His surprise was genuine, which heartened her a little.
“Do you think I could fool the cops?”
“I’d say you’ve got a good chance, as long as no one takes a good long look.”
“Guess it’s the best I could hope for. You ready to go?”
Zimmerman looked at his watch. It was about half-past nine.
“I don’t think he’ll be there for at least another hour.”
“Well I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to. Can’t we just drive slow, take the long way around or something?”
“I guess we could. I don’t think the cops know about our car, at least not yet.”
“Let’s get going then!”
10:45 – Laura
One hour later, Laura arrived at Himdad’s Kebab and Falafel. The drive from the motel had been tense, and the walk from the car had been harrowing; she’d expected sirens to start blaring any moment and had to concentrate hard to look straight ahead and walk at a normal pace, so as not to draw attention to herself. Entering the diner was like coming up to the surface after a long dive.
The diner was crowded even at this hour, but most of the customers bought their meals to go, accepting their foil-wrapped kebabs and falafel rolls from the grinning cook and then heading outside. There were only three people sitting down to eat in the diner: two women engaged in an animated discussion over plates of salad, and a scruffy man seated at a corner table, four falafel rolls lined up in front of him, devouring a fifth one with gusto. Zimmerman had told her Joey liked his falafel. She hadn’t imagined just how much.
She bought a can of soda from the fridge next to the counter and made her way into the diner. The gourmand in the corner took no notice of her, absorbed as he was in his own culinary heaven, until she addressed him.
“Excuse me, are you Joey?”
The way his stress levels shot through the roof at her question told her she’d hit pay dirt.
“Who wants to know?” he asked, eyeing her up and down.
“I’m an acquaintance of Zachary Zimmerman. He told me you’d be here.”
Joey’s eyes widened, and he looked frantically around the diner. A half-eaten pepper, disturbed by his sudden movement, dropped from his falafel roll and fell into his lap.
“Relax,” said Laura as he rummaged for the errant morsel, cursing under his breath. “I just want to talk.”
She sat down opposite him, opened the soda, and took a sip. The sickly-sweet taste nearly made her gag and she remembered why she’d sworn off the stuff after high school.
Joey wiped his fingers on a paper napkin, peering at her.
“So, a friend of Zach’s, are you? Is he all right? I watch the news, you know. You’re her, aren’t you?” He lowered his voice. “Laura Greenwood?”
“That’s me. Zimmerman is all right. He helped me find you.”
“What does a wanted cop killer want with me, and why would Zach help?”
“I’m not a killer, Joey,” said Laura. She stopped herself from adding: Not yet. She looked into his eyes, clutching the soda can with both hands. “Zimmerman told me you know a lot of things, Joey. I was hoping you could help me find someone. You see, I was set up. Framed by a man I think you’ve heard of. A man who calls himself Homer Moley.”
Joey went pale. He put his falafel roll down on the table and wiped his mouth on the napkin with an almost theatrical deliberation, never taking his eyes off Laura. After putting the napkin down, he breathed in deep, held the breath for a few seconds, then let it out in a shaking sigh.
“Look, I don’t know how much you think you know about Homer Moley, or why you’d be of interest to him, but let me give you some advice while you’re still alive: Run. Get out of town, and don’t look back. God knows if it’ll save you, but you can try, at least.”
It was a dramatic statement, but he meant it; his mind was a deep black abyss of terror, in which the name Homer Moley swirled in a maelstrom of memories, none of them pleasant, all of them clear as crystal, each of them a testimony of a traumatic experience of the kind that engraves itself upon a person’s soul. Laura felt a mixture of terror and excitement.
“You’ve met him, haven’t you?” she whispered, prodding at his mind. Joey shut his eyes and shook his head, but Laura persisted. “Tell me about him, please.”
Joey hesitated. She could feel his desire to tell her, to share the load of his knowledge despite his fear of repercussion. He started talking, slowly, choosing his words with care:
“He’s an assassin. I witnessed one of his hits. This was about nine years ago, when I was doing odd jobs for the Morricone family—minor deliveries and pick-ups, you know, harmless errands. One day in September, they told me to accompany one of Giuseppe Morricone’s lieutenants by the name of Alberto Rosso to a deal. No idea why they picked me for the job. Hard to believe they couldn’t get some more reliable muscle, but a job’s a job, so I took it.
“The deal went down smoothly at first; we were selling some product, never mind what, and the price was very agreeable. There were four of us, including me and Alberto, and only one of them. Just one guy. It was him. He showed us the money—a whole briefcase full of twenties—and everything was just peachy… right up until the point where he snapped the briefcase shut and said he was going to kill us all. So we drew our pieces, and that’s when shit got weird.”
Laura had followed along with his story, watching it unfold in his mind as he spoke. She could see the scene i
n front of her, a dirty room with walls of cracked concrete, a fluorescent light flickering in the ceiling. Alberto and his two henchmen standing in a row on one side of a small table, Joey a little off to the side. The briefcase lay on the table. And on the other side of the table, with eyes glowing green like radium in a dark room, stood Homer. At this point in Joey’s story, Laura noticed a subtle shift in his mind, a sudden increase in clarity of the image, as if a veil had been drawn aside.
She leaned closer, focusing on the glowing green eyes, which opened up like tunnels. She had established a connection to Joey’s mind. Eager to see more, she dove in, falling through the green tunnels. She tumbled through a tangle of neurons, and then was there, in the memory. She was experiencing the scene from Joey’s perspective now, the three mobsters at the left edge of his vision, and Homer in the center. She could not move, could not even look away from Homer. This was Joey’s memory, and he had been standing stock still, his gun pointed steadily at Homer, finger curled around the trigger. She could feel the tension in the air and knew something was about to happen.
While she watched, she still kept an ear open for Joey’s voice. The effect was much like that of watching a movie, complete with narration.
“Now, Alberto had this gun, big fuck-off revolver, Colt Python I believe it’s called—man, he had such a boner for that fucking gun, never shut up about it—anyway, he had it aimed right at Homer. Meanwhile, Homer himself…”
Homer raised his arm and pointed two fingers at Alberto, like he was aiming at him with an imaginary gun, as if the whole thing were just a game to him. Then, without warning, Alberto turned to his left, pointing his oversized gun at one of his henchmen. Laura barely had time to register the sudden movement before the room exploded with noise and the henchman went down in a spray of blood. Her view swiveled from the dead mobster to Alberto, who looked just as shocked as anyone at the carnage he had caused. His mouth went through a series of soundless shapes, trying to form words that would not come. Why? How? What the fuck?
Homer, thought Laura. This is what his work looks like to other people. People who can’t see what really happens.
Alberto’s face went blank. Without further ado, he raised the revolver, placed the muzzle right under his jaw, and fired. The top half of his face disappeared, and his body dropped to the floor like a sack of flour. Laura knew this too must be Homer’s doing. If only she could see what had really happened! Joey stood as if rooted to the spot, staring at the bloody mess that had been the face of Alberto Rosso. Then she heard a brief scuffle and a loud gurgle, and when Joey whirled around to face the source of the commotion, she saw Homer standing over the last man with a bloody knife in his hand.
“In the blink of an eye he’s on the guy standing next to me, bearded fella called Marcus—I forget his last name—and slits his throat. And then…”
Joey’s voice faded. He may have stopped talking, or he may have kept going. It made no difference to Laura; she had stopped listening. In Joey’s memory, Homer was looking her straight in the eye. And he was smiling. The sight of that serene smile, every bit as disgusting as when he had killed Jeffrey, set the embers in Laura’s heart ablaze.
She lunged at him, but was held back by an invisible hand, a resistance against her movements. This was Joey’s past, and at the time he had been frozen in place by terror. Laura was simply inhabiting the memory. But in her fit of blind rage, Laura forgot all about where, and when, she was. All she could think of was killing Homer. She strained against the resistance, and with a painful tearing sensation, as if she were pulling herself free of a block of ice, leaving remnants of her skin behind, she felt herself move forward.
I’ve got you now, you bastard, she thought as she reached for Homer’s face…
“Hey! What’s the matter?”
Joey’s voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, and the image before her eyes began to stutter and distort. Homer’s face disappeared into a gray fuzz, only his eyes remaining like two sharp pinpricks of light, exuding malevolence. Laura realized she had gone too far and pulled herself out. Back she went, spinning and tumbling through Joey’s mindscape, until she plopped back onto her seat in the diner, feeling as if she had just stepped off the world’s fastest roller coaster.
She rubbed her forehead, trying to make the pain go away. This kind of thing had happened before when she and Jeffrey were kids. Sometimes, when they went deep into each other’s minds, trying to achieve that perfect meld, they had hurt each other, like when you stick a Q-tip too far into your ear and scrape the eardrum. She had lost control.
“I’m sorry, Joey,” she said. “Did I say something?”
“You made a really scary face for a second,” said Joey. “Thought you were having a stroke or something.”
“I’m fine,” said Laura, relieved that she at least hadn’t shouted or made a scene. More importantly, she didn’t seem to have done any damage to Joey’s brain. “I guess hearing you talk about Homer kind of set me off.”
Joey peered at her. “You really got it in for him, don’t you?”
“You have no idea. Anyway, please go on.”
“Right,” said Joey and cleared his throat. “So, as I was saying, Homer smiled at me, and I…” He frowned.
“What’s wrong?” asked Laura.
“I… You know, it’s weird,” said Joey, confused. “Now that I think back on it, I get the feeling that you were there. Like you were with me when Homer killed those guys.”
Laura risked another peek into his mind and saw that it was true. When Homer turned to look at Joey, Laura appeared out of left field, arms stretched out towards Homer. Her contours were jagged and diffuse, as if someone had ripped an image of her out of an old newspaper and pasted it into the frame. But she was undeniably there, and the sight sent chills through Laura’s body. Through sheer willpower, she had altered Joey’s memory.
“But that can’t be right,” said Joey, shaking his head. “We’ve never met before, have we?” His eyes narrowed and his mind emanated a confused suspicion. “Have we?”
“Of course not,” said Laura hastily, pulling herself back into the moment. Her newfound ability was an enormous discovery, but she didn’t have time to unpack it all right now. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“Yeah…” Joey still sounded unsure.
“I’m sure you just had a little mental hiccup,” said Laura, eager to steer the conversation back on track. “This is obviously a traumatic memory, and reliving it like this, well, it’s no wonder your mind would play tricks on you.” She knew that wasn’t true. Joey’s mind wasn’t playing tricks on him—she was. But he didn’t need to know that.
“I guess you’re right,” said Joey after a moment of consideration. “This isn’t something I usually share with people.”
“What happened next?” asked Laura. She was still looking into his mind, but this time she took care not to immerse herself too deeply. She had never manipulated anyone’s memories before and did not want to risk doing it again. Not until she understood the process better.
Joey was hesitating. Until now, he had told his story in the manner of an independent narrator, someone observing events from the outside rather than taking part in them directly. But now, when Homer’s eyes were on him and the focus of the narrative shifted, his detachment began to lapse. He shook his head as if trying to ward off the memories, and when he spoke next, his voice was trembling.
“Like I said, he… he smiled at me. That’s all. And that was the worst part of it, if you can believe it. He just looked so… happy. Content. Like he had the whole world figured out, and it was all his. ‘I could kill you too,’ that smile said. ‘Whenever and wherever I want. And you just have to live with that.’ I still see that smile in my dreams.”
He shuddered.
“He spoke to me. Said that everything that had happened was according to his plan. And then he said, ‘If anyone asks what happened here today, you tell them Homer Moley came to do his
job.’ I’d heard the rumors before, but I’d always dismissed them as crazy talk. But right then and there, I believed. Homer Moley is a demon.”
Laura waited for him to continue, her heart racing. She saw the image of Homer in Joey’s memory pull something out of his chest pocket and hold it out. It looked like a piece of paper. He gave it to Joey, who took it after a moment’s hesitation. Laura guessed it was some kind of message or written instruction. If only she could read it! The vision tantalized her, but she didn’t dare to dive in. Not after what had happened last time. Instead she waited, letting Joey tell her himself.
Except he didn’t.
“Anyway, that’s what happened,” he said, picking up the next falafel roll from the table, tension draining from his mind in a wave of relief. He was wrapping up his story.
“The Morricones weren’t all too happy about losing some of their best people, but they still had their product, so I guess it didn’t bother them too much. As for me, I became somewhat of a charity case among the families, doing menial jobs that anyone could do, for a reasonable pay. Guess they felt they had to compensate me for my horrible experience. I never told them the details of how the deal went down, and they never asked. Better that way, I suppose. To this day I don’t know why Homer let me live, and I suspect I never will.”
Laura glared at the man stuffing his face on the other side of the table. She was starting to run out of patience.
Fuck it, she thought. If I back down now, I might never get another chance to find him.
“What about the note Homer gave you, Joey? Do you still have it?”
Joey dropped his falafel on the table. He shied back from her like a startled horse, eyes rolling in their sockets as he pressed his back against the wall in a desperate attempt to distance himself from her.
“How the fuck do you know about that?” he sputtered in a breathless falsetto.
“I know, Joey. That’s all that matters. Do you still have it?”
“No,” he lied. “But I remember what it said.”
