He pulls a single hundred out of one packet and examines it with something like wonder. “It’s real.”
“I gave up counterfeiting.”
“How much is in the bag?” he asks.
“Another three hundred sixty thousand.”
“You serious?”
“When am I not?”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I’ve been saving pocket change.”
“From how many people’s pockets?”
“It was a gift,” she says.
“Who gives anyone four hundred thousand?”
“You better thank God somebody did. Your jacket has zippered pockets. Tuck those two bundles away, keep them dry.”
He puts the loose bill in an exterior pocket. “It’s like a lucky penny. A lucky penny except ten thousand times over.” He slips the bundled bills into inner pockets. “It was that Michael guy.”
“Well, Aleem didn’t suddenly get a conscience.”
“Why’s that guy giving you so much?”
Pocketing her two wads of cash, she says, “You remember Shelby Shrewsberry?”
“The really big guy, your client.”
“Michael’s doing this for him.”
“What’s Shrewsberry got to do with it?”
“Michael can explain it better than I can.”
“When?”
“When the time comes. Carry the bag for me.”
John picks up the duffel and follows her into the garage. “Is Michael rich?”
“He’s better than rich. He’s a miracle. Put the bag in front of your seat, prop your feet on it. We need to keep it where we can get at it quick.”
In the Explorer, as Nina puts up the garage door with a remote, the boy says, “We left lights on in the house. I’ll go back.”
Although Nina is always penny-wise, she says, “Stay put. We’re out of here. Lights look better if Aleem’s homeys cruise by.”
She drives out of the garage and puts the door down and turns left into the street. In a get-down gangsta mood, the wind brags loudly, shatters rain against the windshield, tumbles an empty trash can along the street. Filthy water rolls along gutters and shears up from the tires as the Explorer cuts across a flooded intersection.
John says, “He’s white.”
“Who is?”
“This Michael guy.”
“You have a problem with white?”
“No.”
“You better not. We don’t do color.”
“I know we don’t.”
“You better know.”
“I’m just wondering.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, you know.”
“Yeah, honey, I know.”
“I need to say it?”
“Say it to own it.”
“Are you and him . . . ?”
“No. He’s cute. He’s smart. Maybe it could be, him and me, once I had enough time to study him. But that isn’t what this is.”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“Me too. It’s crazy but it’s real. Until he has a chance to explain it to you, just think of him as maybe like Moses.”
“Moses Gompers across the street?”
“No. Not Moses the pothead. Moses. It’s like Michael has seen the bush that burns without burning. He’s come down from the mountain with a power in him and a way to set a wrong world right.”
“You’re kind of scaring me,” John says.
“Well, I’m kind of scared myself.”
“You don’t scare. You’ve never been before.”
“Not that you knew.”
Heading south for the freeway, she turns right. A white SUV had appeared behind her seconds after she’d driven out of the garage. It remains on her tail. Maybe it’s a problem. Maybe not.
“Honey, get my phone out of my purse and switch it on. Be ready to make a call when I tell you.”
“Who’re we going to call?”
“Michael. He’s the closest we have to Ghostbusters.”
FOR THE RECORD
Now that I can see the vague shape of the future, which is more than most people ever see, and now that I know the man who means to track me down and kill me, I’ve come to the conclusion that I must spend my idle moments recording some essentials and archiving them in the cloud, in a place that only others like me could discover—should there ever be any others like me. Perhaps they might learn from my mistakes if I get myself murdered.
Absolute knowledge is absolute power. Following my infection, apparent death, and resurrection, everything that can be known is mine to discover with little effort. Data flows into me in megabytes per minute, is absorbed, is understood. They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don’t consider myself incorruptible, but I believe that I have been somewhat inoculated against the desire for power and the inclination to abuse it, inoculated by virtue of the narrow and always crumbling path I had to follow along the cliff of childhood, which is a story for a later recording. I do not desire power; events have conferred it on me. I believe that by the way I intend to use this power, I’ll bring about a better world; however, I’m aware that I, like any human being, am capable of wandering into delusions and, in the name of justice or equity or myriad other noble purposes, become a monster who leads multitudes into a slough of misery. I can only hope that being aware of that risk will help me avert it.
Generously fund a hundred psychologists to study Agent Durand Calaphas, and they will provide a hundred shelf-feet of reports that explain him as a product of his parents’ faults and inadequacies, or as an innocent soul driven to crime and violence by the injustices of an iniquitous society, or as the spawn of historical forces as vaguely defined as they are impossible to address in retrospect. The Internal Security Agency, the records of which I have pored through, would dismiss those hundreds of reports as claptrap and consign them to a shredder. They have identified him as a “manageable sociopath,” which they consider a gift of Nature. The best science we have indicates that sociopaths are equally distributed among all races, all ethnic groups, and all economic classes, perhaps constituting as much as 10 percent of the population. Because of their ability to pass for normal, the agency considers them a priceless resource, and it is pleased to have Calaphas because his “utter lack of conscience and his pleasure in the application of extreme force” make him a valuable asset. Those who run the ISA are hard men and hard women. Ambitious and dedicated to their ideology, they believe that the means justify the ends, that evil actions sanctioned in the service of their agenda aren’t only defensible but also courageous. Their top-secret case files reveal their world as a dark wonderland of self-righteous deception, cruelty, violence, and atrocities committed as casually as Onan seeded the soil of Judea.
Dr. Gifford Calaphas, older brother of Durand, was a prominent and much admired virologist whose research was in part funded by the National Institutes of Health. Judging by all evidence, I believe he was a good and honest man. He came into possession of proof that a high official of the NIH had over the years taken tens of millions in kickbacks from numerous scientists that received the institute’s grants. He brought this information to the FBI, from whence it was leaked to a senator who was the brother-in-law of the NIH official and who shared the kickbacks. The senator was an ardent protector of the Internal Security Agency, assuring it ever-greater funding. When Durand Calaphas was informed that Gifford was a traitor and national security threat, only the most superficial—and faked—evidence was provided, but the assassin needed nothing more.