The Ignored (35 page)

But that was impossible, and I knew that it would only depress me
further to look back at the past, and I forced myself to concentrate only on the
present and the future.

Mary saw me sitting alone in the corner of the suite that we’d
commandeered for Christmas Day, and she came over and planted a chaste kiss on
my forehead. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

I smiled at her. “Merry Christmas.” I gave her a hug, kissed her on the
cheek, and took the hand she offered me, walking back into the thick of the
festivities, where Tommy was trying to teach Junior how to play Nintendo.

Business in the desert cities did not stop for the week between
Christmas and New Year’s Day, and we took the opportunity to do a little spying
on the enemy. Joe told us who the power brokers were and where they worked, and
we spent the week walking into some of the newer and more exclusive office
buildings, checking out the lairs of our adversaries.

None of the security guards stationed at the entrances to the banks or
corporate offices saw us, and we walked easily past them, into the buildings,
choosing doors at random, going in. Some were locked, of course, but others
weren’t, and behind them we saw deals being made, bribes being offered and
accepted. We saw secretaries having sex with bosses, saw an executive with a
photo of his wife and daughter on his desk fellating a younger man.

Sometimes these people would jump up in shock and outrage and horror
when we barged in.

Sometimes they did not see us at all, and we stood watching as though we
were invisible.

None of the power brokers were ever in, though. They
did
take the
week off, no doubt spending it with their families, and it was lucky for them
that they did, because we always arrived armed, ready to take out whomever we
could.

New Year’s Day was on a Saturday this year, and Philipe had Joe call
Harrington on the Thursday prior and set up a meeting on the first. Harrington
didn’t want to have it on that day, he wanted to stay home, watch the games, but
Joe said it was then or never, and the businessman finally agreed.

Joe hung up the phone. “He asked me if I’d finally come to my senses and
decided to resign,” he said. “I told him that’s what we’re going to talk about.”

“Good,” Philipe said, nodding. “Good. That gives us a full day for
target practice.”

We spent Friday in the desert, shooting at cans.

All of us.

Even Tim.

Saturday, we awoke early, too restless and anxious to sleep. Part of it
was because the specifics of what we intended to do were still hazy in our minds—Philipe might know exactly how we were going to take out the power brokers,
but he hadn’t yet shared it with the rest of us and we were vague on the
details.

That ended at breakfast.

Over McMuffins picked up by Joe, with the sounds of the Rose Parade
coming from the TV, Philipe outlined precisely what each of us was to do in what
he called “the operation.” The plan was simple and—because of who we were,
because of
what
we were—foolproof.

Joe was scheduled to meet with Harrington and the others at Harrington’s
office at eleven, but we were in front of the building by nine, sitting in our
cars, watching, waiting. The first man, the one with the cigar, arrived around
ten. They were all there by ten-thirty.

“He’s not coming,” Joe said at ten-fifty.

“Who?” Philipe asked.

“Jim. The Ignored guy who’s supposed to be the new mayor.”

“What do you expect? He has no say in any of this. He’s just a puppet.”
Philipe opened the door, got out of the car, motioned for the terrorists in the
other cars to do the same. They emerged carrying revolvers and shotguns and
automatic rifles.

“All right,” Philipe said. “You know the plan. Let’s get in and get it
done.”

“Wait a minute.” Joe cleared his throat.

“What?”

“I want Harrington. He’s mine.”

Philipe grinned. “You got it.” He looked around the assembled group.
“Are we all ready?”

“No.” Mary, holding on to the trunk of our car, shook her head. She had
driven over with us, riding in the backseat next to Joe. She’d spent the night
with him.

Philipe turned to face her, annoyed. “What is it now?”

She looked pale. “I… I can’t do it. I can’t go through with it.”

“Bullshit,” Philipe said.

“No. Really.” She seemed as if she were about to throw up.

“You were in on Familyland—”

“I can’t do it, okay?”

Philipe looked at her, then nodded. “Okay.” He sighed. “Wait here with
the cars.”

She smiled weakly. “You want me to drive the getaway vehicle?”

He looked at her, then grinned slightly. “If you can handle it.”

“Yes, boss.”

Once again, he looked over the group. “Anyone else want to bow out?” His
gaze settled on me, moved to Tim, to James. We all shook our heads. “All right,
then,” he said. “Let’s get these fuckers.”

We strode into the building. Don and Bill staked out the south stairway,
Tommy and Tim the north. Paul and John stayed in the lobby, in front of the
elevators. The rest of us went up.

I held tightly to my automatic rifle and stared at the ascending numbers
lighting up sequentially above the elevator door. My hands were sweaty and felt
slippery on the gunmetal.

How had I gotten into this? I thought. How had this happened? I felt in
my gut that I was doing what needed to be done—it seemed like the right thing
to me—but at the same time I could not help thinking that something here was
way off base. This was not
supposed
to feel right to me; I should not
want to kill these men.

But I did.

I started thinking about all the ways in which I and the others were
average, ordinary. Did average, ordinary individuals want to go around killing
people?

Maybe they did.

I thought again that something had slipped off track somewhere along the
line.

Then the elevator doors opened and we were on the fifth floor. Most of
the lights were off. Only a few soft recessed fluorescent bulbs illuminated the
long hallway. We walked slowly toward the office, our weapons at the ready.

“Harrington’s mine,” Joe repeated.

Philipe nodded.

We moved into the darkened waiting room, and the door into the inner
office opened slowly.

“You go in first,” Philipe whispered. “Tuck your gun in your belt. Hide
it.”

Joe turned toward us, scared. “You’re not going to leave me alone?”

“No. I just want to hear what they have to say.”

Joe nodded.

“Mayor Horth!” called out someone inside the office.

“Go!” Philipe whispered.

The rest of us gathered around the door, hiding in the shadows.
Harrington stood as Joe entered the room. He looked large and threatening,
silhouetted against the panoramic desert view, and when he spoke his voice was
tight, tense, filled with a barely contained rage. “You little shit,” he said.

“What?”

“Who the fuck do you think you are, ruining our New Year’s like this?
You think you can pull this crap without us teaching you a lesson? I don’t know
what got into your pea-brain, but you’ve obviously forgotten who you are and who
we are and who calls the shots around here.”

“He calls the shots around here. He’s the mayor.” Philipe stepped out of
the shadows into the room, revolver drawn. The rest of us fell into step behind
him.

All of the men in the room looked from Joe to the rest of us. “Who are
these guys?” the bald man asked.

Cigar squinted, looked closely at me, at Steve, at Junior, at Pete.
“It’s more of them,” he said. “A whole gang of them.”

“‘Them’?” Philipe said mockingly.

“You’re certainly not one of us.”

“Then what are we?”

“You tell me.”

“We’re Terrorists for the Common Man.”

Cigar laughed. “And what the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means we’re going to blow you away, you egocentric asshole.”

Philipe raised his gun and fired.

Cigar went down screaming, blood gushing from the hole blown in his
chest. For a brief fraction of a second, I saw what looked like a light-colored
organ or piece of tissue through the ragged opening, then the blood was
everywhere, pumping out in a sickening, amazing geyser. Cigar began thrashing
crazily on the floor, blood spurting all over the carpet, all over the pants and
shoes of his panicked, terrified buddies.

“Take ’em out,” Philipe said coldly.

And we began shooting.

I aimed for the bald man. He was scrambling across the boardroom, trying
to get away, and it was as though I was at a shooting gallery. I watched him
move jerkily back and forth across the width of the room, like a target on a
track, and I trained my automatic rifle on him, followed him for a few seconds,
and shot. The first bullet hit him in the arm, the second in the side, and then
he was on the floor and howling with agony, and I took a sight on his head and
pulled the trigger and blood and brains shot out of his collapsing skull and
then he was still.

I didn’t want to feel good, but I did. I felt great. I glanced to the
right of the bald man, saw the short guy rolling on the floor, holding his leg
and screaming, begging for his life in high womanly tones. Red streaks smeared
over the white shag where his blood soaked into the carpet. Pete stood above
him, a rifle pointed at his head.

“No!” he screamed crazily. “No! No! No! No!—”

Pete pulled the trigger and the short guy’s head exploded in a spray of
red-and-white mist.

I was still high, still pumped, and I looked around for someone else to
shoot, but the others had gotten them all.

Joe fired his last bullet into Harrington’s already unmoving body.

There was silence all of a sudden.

After the screams, after the shots, the quiet seemed spookily unreal.
There was a muffled ringing in my ears. The air was filled with smoke, the floor
with blood, and the room smelled of metal and cordite, fire and shit.

As quickly as it had come, the elation fled, replaced by repulsion and
horror. What had we done? I caught James’ eye. The expression on his face was a
mirror image of the one that must have been on my own.

“Let’s go,” Philipe said quickly. “Let’s get out of here. Now.”

Joe looked around the blood-spattered office. “But shouldn’t we—?”

“Now!”

He strode through the doors the way we had come. I followed immediately
behind him, my stomach churning.

I made it all the way to the hallway before I puked.

The murders were news. Big news. They were the top story on the front
page of
USA Today
, on the NBC, CBS, and ABC national newscasts, in
The Wall Street Journal.

The men we’d killed had not only been important residents of Desert
Palms, they’d been big deals in the world of business, and their deaths caused
the stock markets of Tokyo and Wall Street to dip for a few days before turning
back up. It turned out that Cigar, whose real name was Marcus Lambert, had not
only owned Lambert Industries,
the
major tool manufacturing firm in the
United States, but had been the major stockholder in literally dozens of
multinational corporations. The others had not been quite as powerful, but their
deaths as well caused a ripple effect in the world financial markets.

We cut out articles and videotaped newscasts and added to our library of
media coverage.

Joe was like a new man. The whipped dog we had met that first night at
La Amor had been replaced by a cocky bantam rooster. In a lot of ways, I liked
the old Joe better, and I knew most of the other terrorists felt the same way.
He’d been timid and frightened, but he’d been kind and generous and humble. Now
he seemed overconfident, cocksure, and self-important, and there was a hardness
within him that made a lot of us uncomfortable.

The day after “the action,” Joe convened a meeting of the city council,
and he asked publicly for the resignation of the city manager and the chairman
of the planning commission. He called for a vote on several ordinances that he’d
been told to support in the past, and he voted against them.

We sat in the audience and watched. Philipe was paying particularly
close attention to the proceedings, and he frowned to himself each time the
mayor spoke. Finally, after Joe had broken a tie vote on widening a three-block
section of road, I tapped Philipe on the shoulder. “What is it?” I asked.

“I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong.”

I followed his gaze, watched Joe lead a discussion on neighborhood watch
programs. “What do you mean?”

“They hear him: they pay attention to him.” He looked at me, gestured
around the room. “Not just the city council, but the reporters, the people who
came to watch. They see him.”

I’d noticed that, too.

“And he’s changed. I mean, he’s killed his boss—with a little help
from us—but he hasn’t…” Philipe shook his head, trying to find the right
words. “He’s drifted farther away from us instead of coming closer. He’s… I
can’t explain it, but I know it. I know what happens after the initiation, and
it hasn’t happened to Joe.”

“You know what I think?” Junior said.

“What?”

“I think he’s half-and-half.”

Philipe was silent.

Bill jumped in, nodding excitedly. “Yeah. It’s like his dad was Ignored
and his mom wasn’t. Like Mr. Spock or something.”

Philipe nodded slowly. “Half-and-half,” he said. “I can see it. It would
explain a lot.”

I cleared my throat. “Do you think we can trust him? I mean, do you
think he’ll remember where he came from or do you think he’ll just shine us on?
Do you think he’s still on our side?”

“He’d better be,” Philipe said.