The Ferryman

by John E. Siers

  “That was how I knew she got the message.” he chuckled. “Note to self—wipe down the office chair with disinfectant and change the air freshener cartridge.”

  He’d summoned Lisa to bring Cindy back into the office, and the two had departed so hastily, he’d had to call to her in the lobby to give back the UID cards. She’d snatched them from his hand and dragged Cindy out the front door without a word.

  Now he and Lisa were reviewing the event over coffee in the cafeteria.

  “What would you have done if she’d noticed that her name was on the contract as well?” Lisa asked.

  “I’d have told her we did it that way to save money—so I didn’t have to hire LifeEnders to whack her after we did Cindy. One way or the other, she’d have gotten the word.”

  “The woman’s a murdering bitch,” Lisa said. “Her husband and mother-in-law…well, OK. That was about money—probably the most common reason for a LifeEnders hit. But that sweet little girl? I almost wish we’d gotten her to sign a contract that didn’t have Cindy’s name on it, only her own. Then you could have put one between her tits, and Cindy would have lived happily ever after.”

  “Happily ever after as an orphan,” he reminded her. “A very rich orphan, but still…if she’d had any other family, Martha could have just paid them off to take care of Cindy and keep her out of Mama’s way.”

  “I’d have adopted her in a heartbeat,” Lisa insisted. “When I talked to her the first time—three days ago when you negotiated the original contract—I got the impression she knew her mother had something to do with grandma and daddy disappearing suddenly.

  “You want to know what she was told when she was brought here?” Lisa continued. “That Mommy Dearest was signing her up for a wonderful new school where she would meet new people, and learn new things, and…seriously, the kid’s not dumb, and she knows how to read at a basic level. She can read the name on the building, and this place doesn’t even begin to look like a school.

  “She was scared, Mark…terrified that something was going to happen to her. I tried to calm her down, make her feel more comfortable, but…”

  “Yeah…and that’s not going to go away soon. But maybe now she’ll figure out something’s changed—that now Mommy is the one who’s afraid, and she’s the one who’s safe.”

  “I hope so. But promise me one thing, Love…” she reached out and put a hand on his arm. “If something does happen to that sweet child, Martha is mine.”

  Three days later, Mark was in his office, waiting for an incoming prospect, when Jay Morgan called.

  “Just a heads-up, Buddy,” Morgan’s face was serious. “Woman by the name of Martha Jurgens came into our Malibu office yesterday. Wanted to put a hit on you. You do something to piss her off?”

  “Yeah…I suppose I did,” Mark admitted. “I threatened to shoot her—right between her artificially-enhanced boobs—with a Desert Eagle.”

  He proceeded to tell Morgan the story. They’d already discussed the court case over beers, and Jay knew how he felt about killing kids.

  “Maybe you should have just popped her—called the little girl a no-show and dropped her off on some charity-addicted socialite’s doorstep…somebody who could be trusted to keep their mouth shut about it in the name of enhanced life expectancy.”

  “That’s a little too far out for me. I figured I was pretty close to the line just slipping that contract past her,” Mark declared. “You, on the other hand, love to think up twisted plots and shadow deals, but you’d probably whack one of your own operatives who pulled shit like that.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t have a court ruling that says our people have to kill nine-year-olds. If we did, I’d probably look the other way if one of our guys broke a few rules to save a kid’s life.

  “Far as I’m concerned, you’re a hero, Marine.” Morgan shrugged. “But what do we do about the Jurgens woman? Is she a problem? We’ve got her on hold, ‘pending review,’ and she’s due back in our office tomorrow. Per the No-Hit rules, you’re entitled to a freebie if you want her removed.”

  Mark thought about it for a moment.

  “No…like I told Lisa, I really don’t want to leave the kid an orphan. Tell you what I’d like you to do—scare the living shit out of her. Tell her you don’t take contracts on Ferry people, and as a professional courtesy, you’ve already informed me of her attempt. Tell her LifeEnders is also concerned about little Cindy’s welfare…because you don’t like people who snuff kids, either. Tell her she’s just had Strike Two…and we’re not sure yet whether she’d going to get a third one.

  “I said scare the shit out of her and I mean that literally. I’d be really happy if she walked out of your office the way she walked out of mine—with her panties full of it. Maybe if it happens twice, she’ll get the message.”

  By now, Morgan was grinning from ear to ear.

  “I love it!” he declared. “And we’ve got just the guy to deliver that message. The staff calls him ‘Doctor Death’…and he specializes in, ah, persuading people to see things our way.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  SAD

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re not calling to invite me to go out for a few beers?”

  “No, I’m not,” Jay Morgan admitted. “Official business…sorry…but now you mention it, I was thinking about inviting you and Lisa to dinner somewhere, like maybe someday next week.”

  “Dinner? What’s the occasion?”

  “Er…nothing special.” Morgan wore a sheepish look. “I was just kind of thinking maybe you could have Lisa give Ramirez a call and ask her to join us.”

  “Never give up.” Mark chuckled. “If the mission’s not finished and you’re still alive, get back in the fight. So how many Purple Hearts do you figure that woman owes you so far?”

  “Don’t know, but I treasure every one of ‘em. Anyway, we can talk about that later. Business comes first.”

  “OK…what do you need?”

  “Nothing much, just some of your time—and Lisa’s, too, I guess. Special Activities Division wants to send somebody over to talk to you. My understanding is that it’s nothing specifically to do with you, just part of some kind of research they’re doing.”

  “Research about what?”

  Mark was suddenly wary. LifeEnders SAD was reportedly involved with some very strange stuff, and most of what they did was supposed to be Super Top Secret, Burn-Before-Reading. People who asked the wrong questions about SAD quickly ended up on the LEI Shit List. If they kept at it, they might even end up on the Completed Contracts List.

  “I have no idea. I’m not involved with SAD, have no clearance for their projects. All I know is they’re into some weird shit, and I’m not really sure everybody over there is playing with a full deck.

  “Anyway, I’ve been asked to make an appointment with you guys to have one of their people come over and talk to you. They say they may need a few hours of your time; they promise they won’t ask you anything about the details of your operation—nothing you’d consider confidential from a business standpoint. Corporate says you don’t have to participate, but they would be really disappointed if you didn’t, so…”

  Mark gave him a sour look. The last thing he—or Morgan, or anyone else, for that matter—wanted to do was ‘disappoint’ LEI Corporate. Any such disappointment could adversely affect his ability to do business. If severe enough, it could affect his life expectancy.

  “OK…an appointment…we’ve got a lot going on tomorrow, so how about Wednesday?” he offered grudgingly. “We’ve got nothing scheduled for that day, so your SAD people can pick a time. I’m sending you a one-time passcode to use at the gate, so we’ll know who it is.”

  “Right…they don’t even give me a name, so that’ll work best,” Morgan said. “I’m going to put it down for 10:00AM—SAD or not, these people need to know they’re on your schedule, not theirs.”

  “Now…” he leaned back with a grin, “about that dinner…”

>   To Mark’s surprise, the woman who showed up on Wednesday looked quite—well, not exactly ordinary, but far from what he expected of an LEI SAD agent. Well, hey…a lot of Shooters don’t look the part, either.

  She arrived at the gate driving an antique Volkswagen microbus with an artistic paint job that would have been the envy of any 1960s flower child. She gave the proper passcode, and he opened the gate, but when she emerged from the bus, he shook his head in amazement.

  She actually looked like one of those flower children, complete with tie-dyed poncho, threadbare jeans, floppy, flower-trimmed hat covering an unruly tangle of ass-length brown hair, and—of course—floppy sandals on her feet that looked homemade. ‘Goodyear sandals’ as we called them in the Marines, he recalled. Locals in some ass-end-of-the-world countries he’d visited had made them out of old tires.

  And yet she was young—probably born early in the 21st century, he decided. If she had any ‘hippies’ in her family tree, they would have to have been grandparents. She was also moderately attractive, in an unkempt, scrawny sort of way.

  Yeah…I would, Mark answered the first question he asked himself about every woman he met. He no longer felt guilty about it, since he’d discovered that Lisa asked herself the same question about every man—and woman—she met. Sometimes they even compared notes on the subject.

  She came through the front door toting a canvas shoulder bag—which the security system told him held nothing more dangerous than a laptop computer—and strode boldly across the foyer to greet him.

  “Mark!” she exclaimed with a warm, sunny smile. “I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you. I’m Sparkling Waters, from SAD.”

  “Of course you are,” Mark agreed, taken aback by her cheerful approach. “Uh…I thought we’d meet in the conference room, rather than my office. It’s more…”

  “Comfortable! I know…besides, you and Lisa both like it better there—and she’s already waiting for us.”

  “Uh…are you…” he stopped and looked at her, the next word in the sentence not wanting to come out…Clairvoyant? Psychic?

  “Oh, gosh! I’m sorry,” she said, taking hold of his arm and starting him moving again. “I just sometimes get ahead of myself. Some people think it’s annoying, but I don’t mean anything by it. I just start talking, interrupting people—please forgive me.”

  “No. It’s OK,” he assured her, but he noticed she’d turned down the hallway and was headed for the conference room without any guidance. He stepped forward and opened the door for her.

  “Lisa!” she exclaimed, stepping into the room. “Wow! I’ve really wanted to meet you in person. I saw that Kim interview, and I could just feel the vibe…”

  She trailed off, staring at Lisa with her mouth open. Suddenly, she turned and looked at Mark again. Her eyes went wide.

  “Both of you…” she said, quietly. “Amazing…”

  Lisa looked at Mark. He shook his head and shrugged, having no idea what Waters’ problem was.

  “Lisa, this is…”

  “Oh, I’m sorry…” Waters shook herself. “Getting ahead of myself again. I’m Sparkling Waters, from LifeEnders SAD. Let me just calm down a bit. I get excited when I meet new people, especially when they’re as…interesting as you two.”

  She put down her bag and pulled out the laptop. Mark closed the door—force of habit, though there was no one else in the building. Lisa had already locked the place down as soon as Waters was inside. The three of them settled into their places around one end of the table. By that time, Waters seemed to have recovered her composure.

  “OK—business,” she told them, once again bright and cheerful. “Special Activities Division is conducting a survey of LifeEnders field operations. We realize that the Ferry isn’t one of those—you’re an independent, technically a franchisee, though you don’t operate under the LifeEnders banner—but we consider you part of the family, so to speak.

  “And because your operations are different from those of the typical LEI field unit, we think any data we get from you will be extremely useful for benchmark comparisons. All I need to do is ask you a bunch of questions, and if you don’t want to answer any of them—like maybe I’m getting into things you consider secret or confidential—just say so, and we’ll move on. By the same token, I’d ask you to consider that anything we talk about here is confidential as well—that’s kind of a rule with SAD.

  “So…” she was still wearing that cheerful smile, “with that in mind, are you willing to participate?”

  “Yes…of course.” Mark and Lisa both nodded in agreement.

  “OK…one question I have to ask to begin with: Do you believe in ghosts?”

  Silence.

  Mark and Lisa looked at each other. Waters was still smiling, but now her smile seemed to radiate hopeful anticipation—like their answer would be really important to her, personally important. Finally, Mark spoke up.

  “Let’s just say I don’t disbelieve,” he told her. “I guess you could say I’m an agnostic on that subject. I’ve never seen any evidence that would prove the existence of ghosts—and I presume you mean ghosts as in ‘spirits of dead people’—but I haven’t seen anything to disprove it, either. People have believed in ghosts, talked about ghosts, reported sightings of ghosts for thousands of years, in virtually every culture throughout recorded history. Any belief that persists for that length of time must have something supporting it.”

  “Yeah…” Lisa chimed in. “I’m with Mark on that. There have been too many documented instances of things people attribute to paranormal activity to just dismiss, even if we can’t say for sure that ‘ghosts’ are the cause.

  “And like he says, ghost stories are durable. I mean, a thousand years ago, people believed in dragons,” she shot a wink at Mark, “but now nobody talks about them. But people all over the world were talking about ghosts long before that, and they still talk about them today.”

  Waters looked startled. She paused for a moment, then her smile returned.

  “That’s an enlightened attitude,” she said, “especially from people who haven’t seen any hard evidence.

  “Unfortunately,” the smile changed to a look of sad frustration, “it probably means the Ferry is not going to be a treasure-trove of information for this study. My next question was going to be about any paranormal activity you might have noticed here—in this building—but I’m getting the impression the answer is ‘none.’”

  “Right…none that I’ve noticed.” Lisa shrugged.

  “Nor have I,” Mark agreed, “and we’ve certainly had plenty of people depart from this life inside these walls. If any modern building ought to be haunted, this is it.”

  “Not necessarily,” Waters said. “First of all, everybody dies eventually—passes into the spirit world, that is. We don’t fully understand the process, but some of them—perhaps most of them—may just move on to that ‘higher plane of existence’ some talk about. What we think of as ‘ghosts’ are those who don’t—the ones who, for whatever reason, choose to hang around here, on Earth. They’re obviously living in some other spatial dimension, which is why we can’t see them or touch them—at least not most of the time—but they’re able to interact with our time/space continuum…”

  She stopped suddenly, realizing that both of them were staring at her with a very strange look of intense concentration. Dragons…she thought. Yes, Lisa, they still exist, and you know they do. But that’s a topic for another time and place.

  “OK…” She shook herself. “I’m getting ahead of myself again. I forget I’m not talking to SAD people. For the moment, just assume that I know things about the subject that you don’t. Can’t say more because you’re not cleared for it.

  “The point is that yes, the ones who hang around are often those who died suddenly and violently—especially those who wanted very badly to go on living, who clung to life until the end—or simply those who felt they had unfinished business when they died, something they still ne
eded to do, something they could accomplish by lingering here.

  “Most Charon’s Ferry clients come here because they want to depart this life. You’re not taking their lives against their will; you’re giving them the release they desire. For them, there’s no reason to hang around…so I guess maybe I shouldn’t expect to find any activity here.

  “But hey…you never know.” She shrugged, and the cheerful smile was back. “We’ve found some instances of what you might call ‘benevolent spirits’—ghosts who hang around because they like the place or have some fondness for the living people there.”

  “Well, you should probably know that not everybody who comes here wants to die,” Mark cautioned. “Some of them think they have no choice—death is not what they want, it’s the only way they know of to avoid something worse.”

  “Honey Ryder…” Waters said, then looked startled when she saw the look on Mark’s face. “No, no…I haven’t been snooping in LifeEnders files. The name just popped into my head—you must have been thinking very strongly about her.

  “It’s something I’ve had to deal with all my life,” she explained. “No, I can’t read minds…I just have these flashes. SAD thinks it’s a valuable talent, but sometimes I think it’s a curse. Sorry.”

  “No…it’s OK.” Mark relaxed. “I keep forgetting you’re with LifeEnders, so you’re cleared for that information anyway. But I also wanted to mention that in some cases, we terminate people who don’t expect to die—who come here thinking they can cheat the system and somehow survive.”

  He waited to see if she would pick up on Warren Simpson’s name, but instead she just shrugged again.

  “Well, yes…maybe so, but they might not want to hang around this place because they’re afraid of you—because you frightened them so much that they just want to get away. Everybody talks about being afraid of ghosts, but evidence seems to suggest that some ghosts are afraid of people.”