Three A.M. (9 page)

I looked around for cameras, windows—any signs of life in this cavernous tomb. But it was just me and the boarded-up windows and a bank of elevators. The two-story glass street wall of the lobby must have looked nice in years past—now it was plywood and nails.

The yellowed floor clicked beneath my shoes as I crossed toward the elevators. A nice pair of brown loafers at the bottom of my crisp gray suit; I hadn’t been this well dressed in longer than I could remember. There was no need to attract attention, so I had donned the outfit of a government worker. I’d shaved, clipped at nose hairs, and dragged a comb across my salt-and-pepper scalp. More gray than I thought. It’s funny how whenever you wear clothes in which you don’t feel yourself, it seems the world can tell. I sucked in a sharp breath and missed a step as one of the elevators nearest me opened unexpectedly.

Two suit-wearing men and a smartly dressed woman stepped off and walked past me, talking among themselves in hushed tones. Not one of them so much as looked up at me. Still, I stuck out. As I stepped onto the elevator and pressed the cracked plastic button for floor six, I kept repeating to myself two words:
They know.
… The elevator button did not illuminate, but I started upward nonetheless. Science and Development once occupied this whole building … but now there apparently was so little left to research that they were down to one floor.
They know, they know
 … it became my little mantra as I rose in the trembling elevator.

*   *   *

He was dressed just like me. Across from the elevators behind a cheap-looking wooden desk sat a pencil-necked man with a weak chin and eyes set too close together wearing a gray suit. He plinked away at a computer, the pale green glow of the text on his screen reflecting off his glasses. I walked toward him slowly, trying to make it look natural and get a sense of the place, take it in for a moment. There wasn’t much to see. A few halls lined with closed doors. Behind the consummate bureaucrat was a large room full of other pale-skinned people clicking away at their workstations. The ceiling was low, and the whole place, lit by harsh fluorescents and smelling faintly of ammonia, was fabulously oppressive.

“Hi, there!” I beamed as I stepped in front of the reception desk.

“How can I help you?” His thin voice matched his birdlike frame and dour little face. He didn’t look up.

“Well, I’m hoping you can. I’m looking for a gentleman who works here.”

“You need to check with City Central, I can’t—”

“Oh, no—see, that’s where I’m from. The fellah works here and I need to get something from him and bring it back on over to Central, in fact.”

He let his annoyance show as he sighed slowly, typed a few more words, and then looked up at me. Retentive little fucker, this one.

“All right. Let’s see what we can do. Who are you looking for?”

“Great! Thanks. It’s Sam Ayers. Or Samuel, I should say. Gotta be professional, right?” I flashed my biggest shit-eating grin, hating every second of this exchange.

“Samuel Ayers?”

“Yes,” I said flatly.

He typed away at his computer. Then a quizzical look spread across his sallow face. “That’s … unusual … There is a record, but it seems he … hmm…”

Just then, the telephone on his desk rang. He picked it up and listened, saying nothing. I heard a voice on the other end but could not make out words.

“It seems he…” I led him, leaning close.

“Well, it seems…” He cupped a hand over the mouthpiece, but then just hummed for a while, studying the screen. I pictured all the different things a broken liquor bottle could do to this peon’s face as he hemmed and hawed and pecked at his keyboard. He swallowed.

“Well, it looks like there’s no record, actually. There’s not a Samuel Ayers employed here.”

“But you just said there is a record.”

“What? No, I must have misread—”

I stepped swiftly around the high desk and leaned in over the man. He was momentarily shocked by my invasion of his space but made no protest, just sputtered slightly and almost dropped the phone. On the screen was what looked to be a full record of the late Mr. Ayers: a picture, text—lots of things I wanted very much to see. But there was no time.

As the bureaucrat regained his composure and rose to place his thin body between me and his computer, I caught the last few words spoken to him over the phone line: “Don’t say anything. Find out who’s asking.”

“Excuse me. Step back. Please. Sir, please step back.”

“No, it’s all right, thanks,” I said, smiling as I put a hand on his shoulder and easily pushed him aside. I pressed a thumb down on the phone’s receiver, ending the call, and studied the screen as intently as I could, soaking in details and the grainy image of Ayers’s face. I stepped back around the desk and grinned.

“Geez, y’know, I’m sorry! Wrong guy! I thought you were just pulling my leg, but no, this must be the wrong department. I’ll head over to Power and Light.”

I walked quickly for the elevators and mashed the down button repeatedly. The little man stood, leaning over his desk with both hands clutching its sides and glaring at me. His shoulders rose and fell as he sucked in breath to call after me.

“Just one moment! Just wait a second, please! I’m sure we can help, sir! Please just come on back over here, and we’ll look again.”

I smiled and waved. “No, thanks. I need to get back to Central anyway. My soup will get cold. Where are the stairs?”

I looked for any promising doors but saw none and turned back to the elevator. Every eye in the room was trained on me. The incessant clicking of keyboards had gone silent and the room flickered in fluorescent tension. Then, in an instant, everyone was typing furiously. They kept looking from side to side down the hallways. My heart was thumping.

Then the elevator popped open. I practically leapt inside, rejoicing that it was empty. Once more the little gray man shouted, “Wait!” But the doors were already closing. As they did, I caught a glimpse of another man. This one was tall. His skin was olive, healthy. The man’s shoulders were held high, and his suit was a rich, deep blue. His dark, piercing eyes locked on to mine as he walked toward the elevator just before the last inch of space between us was sealed and I started down. He had not run to stop me—just taken a good, careful look.

*   *   *

I slid between the opening doors of the elevator and was surprised and relieved to find the lobby empty. I walked as quickly as I could without breaking into a run for the exit. The first door reluctantly strained open against the vacuum of the vents, and I stepped in and pulled it closed behind me. It clicked shut. A second passed in an hour before the outer door unlocked. I let out a breath I’d not known I was holding in and barged onto the street.

It was one of those rare times when I was eternally grateful for the fog. It swirled and enveloped me as I set off down the street at a jog. I mussed my hair, pulled off and pocketed my tie, and unbuttoned my dress shirt while cutting down alleys and across streets. No particular direction. Just away from those dark eyes set in that tan, handsome, chilling face. He looked like no one I had seen in years. He looked composed, healthy … out of place.

Thinking better of stopping so soon but unable to ignore the compulsion to do so, I pulled out a pen and sheet of paper and started scrawling down everything I could remember from the profile. I leaned against a damp cement building to catch my breath and held the paper against it, scrawling down notes.
Samuel Ayers
 …
birthdate
 … So he’d died at fifty-four. Well, that was too young. Sorry, Sam. He had looked strangely familiar, which was extremely discomforting. I never knew any scientists.

I shoved the paper back into my pocket and started sliding along the wall as fast as I could go silently. Someone was coming down the alley. Most people avoided alleys, which was why I favored them. Two sets of footfalls. They drew closer. I needed to find a recess in the wall, a pile of trash—something. The fog was as thick as ever, but the alley was narrow. Maybe six feet from wall to wall. Closer. My left heel fell too sharply and clicked on the uneven pavement.

Silence set in. I was sure they would hear my heartbeat, so thunderous was it in my own skull. I inched along. Still no sound. Then almost inaudibly through the swirling mist came a man’s whisper: “Arms out. Go.” And much more softly than before, two sets of feet began walking again.

I set off at a dead run, praying nothing would block my path. No stopping. No thinking. I ran as hard and fast as I could straight down the alley, my hand trailing against the wall to my left.

The skin on my palm grew raw as I dragged it across the cracked cement of the building. Then suddenly it was hanging in space, and I turned ninety degrees to my left, knowing I was on a cross street. I ran headlong down it, dodging orb posts as they burst into view mere feet before me. Keep going. Keep running.

A right turn here, a left there. Maybe it was for five minutes, maybe fifteen, but I ran until my lungs howled at me to stop. I slowed and staggered along at a quick walk, wheezing and doubled over at the waist. Then I slumped against a wall and tried to hear over my own ragged breaths. Silence. Just the cold, heavy air and my stifled smoker’s cough to keep me company.

As I sat there, leaning against an old brick building with an impending sense of dread, something occurred to me: I didn’t know how to get ahold of Rebecca. No phone number, no address. Nothing. I hadn’t even thought to ask since that first night at the bar. Fuck me. At that moment, I really, really wanted to run some questions by her.

*   *   *

“This is from the drawers over there, these pages came from a safe against the far wall … this disc was one of maybe fifty or sixty … all gone now. See this photograph? I swear it was ripped in half by hand. Deliberately. Carefully. These shelves were stacked entirely full of old ledgers.…” Eddie went on and on in his low, mournful voice. He strolled aimlessly around his ransacked warehouse, pointing to various overturned desks, scattered pages, broken shelves and cabinets.…

The place was a mess. He had been right when he told me that one person couldn’t have done all this in one night. It seemed like most everything had been taken and what little was left had definitely not been overlooked, rather intentionally disregarded. Some random papers were strewn about. They ranged from children’s school reports to old bookkeeper’s accounts to newspaper clippings. No pattern at all. Likewise the pictures and film reels and data discs came from across the spectrum of his erstwhile clients.

I glanced down at the torn picture he’d handed me. A blond woman in her thirties smiled, a man’s arm around her shoulder. The man had been ripped away, as it were, leaving her alone on a sunny street. Alone in the past.

Eddie rambled on as he meandered through the wreckage of his life and I let him; I was paying no attention anyway. It seemed therapeutic for him to lament. For me, I needed to find out why I had been chased out of the Research Department after asking one question. One. It normally took days of nosing around before someone tried to rearrange my face in an alley. I tried to subtly drop the torn photograph and look at the notes I’d jotted down after leaving Science, but Eddie turned to face me as I studied the scrap of paper. He cast a quizzical eye.

“I’m going to make a few notes, if that’s okay.”

“Of course. I’ll get out of the way.” Eddie walked past the door to the front room, where he kept his desk, leaving the door open. I scribbled a bit on my pad, hardly even attempting to write anything of substance, just a few nouns about what was on the floor. Then I walked toward his office. I was going to shake down Watley for answers to Ed’s troubles. That had been the plan since I first met the slim, shifty-eyed fucker. I’d scare him with a few dirty words and a slap or two, read his response, and if it seemed off, well, then the other employee, Thurmond, was to blame. Or at least in on it.

It was an inside job, no doubt. No forced entry, efficiency that pointed to lots of planning and foreknowledge. As much as I had my own business to deal with, at least I was finally going to take things up a notch for sad-eyed old Eddie. For weeks, I’d been half-assing my way through what seemed like a string of petty thefts—now it was major. Now it was a heist.

I stood before his desk. He looked so tired there in his metal chair with shirtsleeves rolled up and brow knit down.

“I’m fucked, Thomas. Totally and fully.” I’d never heard him swear before. “It’s a confidence business. Now I’m out cash and confidence. I swear … I swear it was the goddamn government.… They hate operations like this. Want everyone to forget and shut up and hunker down. Just to … to stumble through the mist. Go to work and then go home and shut up and sit down. Well, anyway, it’s the end of me, Tom. It’s the end of me.”

“Don’t talk so fatalistically. If I find a living room full of your stuff, it may yet work out for you—could be the end for someone else.”

He looked up at me. I read the question in his eyes and shook my head. “No summary justice here, Eddie. No violence here. Even the police will reopen a case if you put the proof under their noses. I’ll find out what’s going on if I can. If not … Christ, at least we’re all getting used to despair, right?”

*   *   *

It was only nine o’clock, but Albergue was almost empty. Every few minutes, Adam would walk over and wordlessly check on my drink. He seemed confused and maybe even concerned to see me nursing a single glass of scotch for so long. True, it wasn’t my style, but I had business tonight, and I wanted to be clear headed. Killing time here beat doing it at home alone.

Another sip of watered-down liquor and I checked my watch. Nine after nine. Time was moving at a crawl. I’d planned to drop in on Watley at half-past but had already been waiting here for nearly an hour. It wasn’t like Watley and I had a scheduled date. I threw a few rumpled bills down on the bar and nodded to Adam as I turned to go.

He nodded back, half-waving, and I pulled open the inner door. A fine mist played around me as I shut it behind me, got a cigarette ready, and then struck my lighter and inhaled as I pushed open the outer door and stepped into the evening haze. Cold tonight. The air was thick. I blinked for a while, leaning on Albergue’s wall for the millionth time, and then set off down the narrow street, the orbs leading my way.