Criminal Destiny (14 page)

G
US ALABASTER (1948– ) is a powerful organized crime figure who ran west and northwest Chicago for twenty-two years before his arrest in 2001 on federal tax evasion charges. His control over O'Hare airport gave him national and international reach. Considered by the FBI to be “the most successful gangster in American history,” Alabaster was almost as accomplished as a media darling as he was as a mobster . . .

We're back at the factory, where we can rely on the internet being the real thing. At Tori's house, there was no such person as Gus Alabaster when we researched him on Eli's iPad. But here—not in the burnt-out conference room, but in the offices above it—the name alone generates over 200,000 hits.

This is my first time here—I was late to the plan to escape Serenity. Don't think I'm not ashamed of that. I used to be this awful place's biggest fan. If not for the others, I never would have seen past the honesty, harmony, and contentment. I was too busy thanking my lucky stars for being born in this wonderful community.

. . . Alabaster was often seen in the company of celebrities, sports heroes, fashion models, political figures, and even royalty, chauffeured around Chicago in his signature white Rolls Royce.

Federal, state, and local police charged Alabaster with 147 counts of crimes ranging from armed robbery to racketeering to conspiracy to commit murder. The nimble gangster was cleared every time, which only added to his legend. In the end, though, tax evasion proved to be the charge Alabaster could not beat. The swashbuckling mob boss could not explain how someone who did not earn enough to pay any income tax could own six houses, fourteen cars, two yachts, and a private jet . . .

We gather around the iPad. There's a picture of the smiling mob boss in a nightclub, surrounded by Las Vegas showgirls, and another of him lighting up a big, fat cigar directly in front of a
No Smoking
sign. He's grinning even
wider in a photo from his 2001 trial, and in the shot from his first day in prison, he's practically beaming. The guy must be crazy. The worse his life goes, the bigger the smile on his face. It's not happiness, of course; it's defiance. He's showing the world that no matter what happens, it doesn't bother him in the slightest.

Eli scrolls down to the final picture on the web page. It's a black-and-white close-up image of a teenage Gus Alabaster with a black eye and a crooked smirk. The caption reads:
Mug shot from first arrest, age 15.

Four identical gasps threaten to suck all the air out of the room. I've seen this face before. I'm looking at it now, hanging over my left shoulder.

It's Malik.

Eli, Tori, and I take a step backward. I've had my problems with Malik, but I feel so awful for him. How will he react to learning that he's cloned from this despicable gangster?

“I knew it!” Malik cackles gleefully. “I just knew my guy would turn out to be somebody cool!”

We stare at him. “Cool?” I echo. “He's a ruthless criminal who's spending the rest of his life behind bars!”

Malik is undaunted. “But when he was out he had six houses, fourteen cars, two yachts, and a private jet!”

“According to this, the government took a lot of it away,” Eli reminds him.

“The government,” Malik snorts. “Who listens to them? We're living proof of that. They said no cloning. And what did they get? Cloning. Anyway, gangster's not so bad. It's way better than that Bartholomew Crossword guy. At least he's not a serial killer.”

“Only because he had hired guns to do his killing for him,” I put in.

Eli studies his sneakers, waiting for his own identity, and nervous it might come up Bartholomew Glen. At least we girls have been spared that possibility.

Tori sighs. “Let's just move on. I kind of doubt this is the biggest shock we're going to get today.”

Brother Juan Antonio Lanterna turns out to be a monk who was arrested for running a major counterfeiting operation in the cellar of his monastery. He died in prison in 2010. There's no picture of him as a kid, but his intense burning eyes and long pointy nose look a lot like Robbie Miers.

“He's one of us,” Tori confirms, as if we need reminding. None of us will ever forget the names on the eleven whiteboards—the eleven Osiris clones.

Eli pounds the tablet's virtual keyboard. “Miers is
peace
in Latvian.” All our fake last names mean things like peace, love, and brotherhood in other languages.

“Robbie.” I let my breath out and realize I've been holding it. We weren't friends, exactly. Still, when you grow up with only twenty-nine other kids, everybody is kind of close. Robbie's quiet, a little on the shy side.

“Go, Robbie,” Malik says with a laugh. “He's the last person I'd ever expect to be printing funny money—”

“
He
didn't,” Eli interrupts him. “The guy he's cloned from did that.”

“I wonder what happened to him and the others when our parents shut down Osiris and took off,” I muse.

Nobody has an answer for that. We don't know—and have no way to know—what's been done with our fellow clones.

Archibald Barrett is a doctor who went to jail for trafficking in human organs for transplants. Eli is able to track down his high school graduation picture online. He looks exactly like Ben Stastny. Stastny—Czech for
contentment.
Chalk up another one on our happy list. Poor Ben.

Next is Mickey Seven. She had this long Russian name, but people started calling her Seven because she was the seventh person busted in a march on the Virginia State Capitol protesting cuts to homeless shelters. According
to the internet, she spent her whole life protesting something, and the older she got, the more violent her activism became. She was arrested sixteen times over the next eight years, serving several short prison sentences. In 1991, while protesting the First Gulf War, she led a group that blew up the armory at Brannigan Naval Base. She was declared a terrorist and sent to prison. Even in jail, she still spends most of her time riling up the other inmates to riot against the guards. The woman is a toxic mixture of anger, mule-headedness, and zero fear. She has absolutely no conscience. No wonder the courts extended her sentence to life. The last thing anyone would want is a rabble-rouser like that loose on the streets.

The web page has a reproduction of a newspaper article of her first arrest. I take in the picture. The Plastics Works tilts and I almost crumple to the floor.

I'm looking in a mirror.

In the photograph, Mickey Seven is older than I am—probably about eighteen. But there's no question that her face is my own. In the image, she's in the process of ripping a riot shield away from a cop and hitting him over the head with it. It's an action shot—her blond hair is flying; her eyes are ferocious. That's the part I recognize even more than her appearance—her intensity, her 100-percent
confidence that she's doing the right thing.

I've felt like that, and I remember exactly when. It was the day I learned about Project Osiris and how my entire life was a lie. At that awful moment, I'm sure I looked just like the wild animal in the photograph.

Malik beams at me. “Welcome to the club, Laska. You might even be worse than me.”

“Shut up,” I mutter, but I'm too deflated to manage any volume. I wanted to know who I am. And now that I do, I wish I didn't.

Tori puts a sympathetic arm around my shoulders. “Sorry, Amber.”

I bristle. “Don't ‘sorry' me! There's nothing to be sorry about! I'm not this person. From now on, I'm going to do everything opposite from the way Mickey Seven would do it!”

Malik nods in amusement. “That's probably what Mickey Seven would say.”

My eyes are slits. “Just wait and see.”

We move on. Q. Sinjin Lee has to be the DNA donor for Aldwin Wo.
Wo
—a Chinese word for
peace
. It's hard to imagine him as an exact copy of the guy who ran one of the largest smuggling operations in American history. By the time the government added up all the charges against Lee,
he was sentenced to over three hundred years behind bars. Not that he got to serve much of it. He was stabbed to death by another inmate last year.

We finally get to Tori when we research Yvonne-Marie Delacroix. There's no mistaking it. The website actually has a middle-school graduation picture. I've had sleepovers with the girl in that photo. We kept drawers of clothes at each other's houses. I called her parents pseudo-Mom and pseudo-Dad. The two are identical.

Everyone sees it except Tori herself. “It's impossible,” she says firmly. “Yvonne-Marie Delacroix is a bank robber! I won four honesty badges last year!”

Eli tries to explain. “She's not just a bank robber. She's a genius at getting in and out of places. Doesn't that sound kind of familiar? Who got us into the Plastics Works that first time? You. Who got us out of the Medical Arts building? Who broke into the Campanellas' house?”

“But I didn't steal anything!”

“Not if you don't count clothes, food, backpacks, and a Jeep Wrangler,” Malik agrees.

“I didn't steal that! I just rode in it!”

“Calm down,” I urge. “Yes, we've done some bad things. It was the only way to survive.”

“Right!” Tori clings to that. “I stole because I had no
choice! Yvonne-Marie Delacroix did it for the money!”

“And she was pretty good at it too,” Malik reads on. “She was at her villa in Tuscany by the time Interpol caught up with her. Her 1985 Fort Knox robbery is still a required class in FBI training.”

“I don't want to be a required class in FBI training!” Tori wails.

I put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders. It was hard enough learning we were exact copies of terrible criminals. But that doesn't compare to the horror of finding out which ones—to seeing that picture of someone who's you, and yet not you, along with details of the awful crimes this person has committed. Mickey Seven is a radical extremist and a mad bomber! And the fact that we share a lot of the same beliefs makes it scarier! She was protesting a war. Who's more anti-war than me? Does that mean it's in me to do the kind of things she has?

It's even harder for Eli. For better or worse, we now know who we are. He hasn't found a match yet, and it's becoming more and more obvious who he's going to be.

We identify Farouk al Fayed, the kidnapper, as seventh grader Freddie Cinta (
love
in Indonesian). Last on the list is C. J. Rackoff, swindler, embezzler, and Ponzi schemer. We agree on him right away, even though the youngest
picture of him shows him in his twenties.

“Hector,” Malik barely whispers. “Wouldn't you know he'd wind up a scuzzy little cheat, using his brains to rip people off.”

Believe it or not, he says it kind of fondly.

“At least we don't have to tell him what a stinker he is,” Tori offers.

“Doesn't matter,” Malik murmurs sadly. “Hector was smart. He would have known what was in his own heart. Maybe that's why he was such a sad sack—just like this Rackoff guy. Look, according to this, his biggest complaint in jail is that he never gets any visitors.”

“Like people should be lining up to spend time with a low-life con artist like him,” I put in.

“But that's
exactly
Hector,” Malik insists. “Always bent out of shape because he was being left out, or he wasn't getting his fair share of something. Poor shrimp.” He lapses into a melancholy silence.

Eli's attention is still on the iPad. “There are three left,” he observes in a flat tone. “Margaret and Penelope”—he takes a deep breath—“and me.”

I understand what he's talking about. We don't have all the names, but the last remaining male could only be the clone of Bartholomew Glen. We've learned pretty grim
things about ourselves, but Eli's lesson must be the toughest. Nothing could be more awful than finding out you're an exact copy of the Crossword Killer.

I want to say something to him, make him feel better, but the right words won't come. It's not my fault. Mickey Seven isn't the touchy-feely type.

Tori places a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You're not your DNA,” she offers gently. “None of us are.”

Eli nods, but you can tell he's really devastated. “Maybe that's why my dad was so strict with me. He knew who I was and what I might turn into.”

“When it comes to bad, our parents don't take a backseat to anybody,” Malik assures him.

Even though nothing has changed, it suddenly comes over me: What are we doing in this sick town? “Just because there's nobody here doesn't mean they won't come back. Let's get out of here.”

“The factory?” Tori asks.

“No, Serenity. This isn't our home anymore, and it never really was. Let's go.”

Malik nods. “I'm with Laska. We've already learned everything we're going to. I vote we bounce. Happy Valley gives me the creeps.”

“We don't have anywhere to bounce to,” Eli reminds us.
“We came here for proof. We picked up a lot of information, but none of it proves anything.”

We turn to Tori.

“What are you looking at me for?” she demands.

“Yvonne-Marie Delacroix would know what to do,” says Malik.

“But I'm not her!”

“You've been the best at figuring out our next move,” I tell her. “I don't care where we go so long as it's out of Serenity, and soon.”

Tori seems stricken for an instant, and then a focused intensity takes over. “Poor C. J. Rackoff doesn't get any visitors,” she muses. “I'll bet it would make his day if we stopped by and introduced ourselves.”

“C. J. Rackoff?” Malik is incredulous. “Doesn't it feel bad enough to lose Hector without having to go look at his middle-aged evil twin?”