Altered States (19 page)

The hierarchy was clear to all. Chinny was the boss, Lips was the muscle and Nino was the smarts.

I also knew who I was now. I was Bigby for the next few minutes. So I could drop the inebriated stranger act and slip casually toward sobriety over the course of the conversation.

There was still a whisper of suspicion about the boss’s eyes so I felt I had to re-affirm my personage with the only fact I knew about this situation from our previous text conversation.

‘So, what’s so special about BlueJay?’ I asked, enquiring as to why this had to be the meeting place.

‘Nothing,’ Chinny replied flatly, not wishing to elaborate. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell me, I sensed, but that he didn’t actually know. As if he’d been instructed to meet here. That was interesting. From my supposed throw-away question I’d gleaned something potentially useful. I stored it away for future reference, just in case it became important.

‘So how come you been banged up?’ Chinny asked to deflect the attention back to me. ‘You been a naughty boy?’ He gave a wicked smile.

‘I wish I had. But nope, some bastard’s set me up,’ I said. ‘You boys wouldn’t know anything about that would you?’ I left a pause just long enough before I started to laugh. Long enough to see the marks of surprise about their eyes that confirmed they had nothing to do with it. I sighed inside. It appeared my current route may be heading for a dead end. And I was heading there pretty fast so I hoped it wasn’t bricked up.

But the journey was not certain to be a wasted one. Not just yet. For I had a dual purpose in being in this place. There was one more thing I wanted to know from these men. Although, I guess you wouldn’t know what.

Maybe it’s time you did.

The thing is, I lied earlier. Well, I misled you anyway. When I said that nothing had happened to me in the last ten years worth talking about. In fact, a lot happened in those years. It’s just that I’m not so proud of much of it.

It started when I left Gemma. After that moment I kind of turned a corner – both literally and psychologically speaking. Originally, way back in college, I began learning my skills with the aim of helping people. To seek out people suffering from internal troubles; and to resolve their issues – if I could.

That may sound a bit do-goodery; a bit up-my-own-arsey. But I’m not claiming my motivations were anything but selfish. I don’t believe humans are actually capable of true altruism. It is an impossibility of nature. All human actions are instigated to satisfy some biological imperative, some internal need. Need of self, not need of others. We are driven by fundamental visceral mechanisms: pain, hunger, pleasure. So if I want to help someone else, it’s because I have a desire to, because it makes me feel better.

This is true of all so-called ‘good’ people. But before you saddle up your high-horse and come galloping in, just let me say this: it makes no intrinsic difference. If someone wants to help old ladies across the road because it makes them feel good, that’s still a damn sight better than wanting to, say, punch someone in the face because it makes them feel good.

Ultimately, people are neither good nor bad, just a huge bundle of conflicting desires. In turn, their actions are neither good nor bad, just a reaction to an even huger array of external stimuli.

The point is that I don’t consider myself holier-than-thou. I understand that for whatever reason, it was extremely important to me to make a positive impression on the world and the people in it. So that was the purpose of my scholarly early-adult years.

After Gemma, though – after losing a child and walking out on a lover – I became prone to much darker thoughts than I had ever experienced before. And these thoughts led me to wonder if perhaps I could improve the world in another way – a darker way. An indirect, but farther-reaching way.

I wondered if, rather than seeking out sad people and making them happy, maybe I could seek out bad people and make them ... dead. To cut the cancers from society.

And so began a new chapter in my life. One that I could write a book about in itself. It would start with a trip to Colombia, where I would learn far more about the human condition than I ever believed there was to know. I had some pretty eye-opening experiences in that country. But they have no bearing on the here and now, and suffice to say that I never did go as far as killing anyone. It appears I do not have the confidence of mind for executing that immutable action – as proven again when I dumped Burch in the gutter the other day. So it seems I don’t quite have the mettle to be the next masked crusader – which is just as well as I don’t quite have the legs for tights either.

However, it’s fair to say that I did do some things that my mum wouldn’t be proud of; some things that may be considered as wrong in a two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right kind of way. But that doesn’t mean they were not justified. Sometimes a second wrong is the quickest way to redress the cosmic balance. Sometimes, not always.

With many bad people doing bad things it’s simply a case of informing the appropriate authorities: police, traffic warden, park ranger, whoever. But this approach is not always going to produce the desired effect. Sometimes, it’s down to me and my wrongs.

On occasion it’s enough just to perform a little intimidation; because with many wrong-doers – the small-time, fringe variety – it is enough for them to know they are being watched to stop them doing whatever it is they are considering.

But when it comes to bigger things, I have to play much cleverer games. This is my party trick. This is what I do best; what has the greatest results. Essentially, it entails turning the bad guys against themselves. I wind them up like little clockwork toys and point them at each other; and then I walk away knowing that whatever comes next is their own doing – mostly.

Anyway, because of these little games I like to play, my purpose at BlueJay was twofold. Firstly, of course, I wanted to find out who had set up Burch and why; and I’d already drawn a blank on that front. But secondly, I knew that if I met some of Burch’s associates, I might find some bad people worth messing with. It all depended on their particular brand of badness. I already knew that whatever game they were into was illegal. But that was not enough, because legality and morality are not entirely well aligned. Partly because the latter is subjective and culturally dependent, but mostly because the former is based on nonsensical ideologies.

Some cases in point. In California, it is illegal to play bingo, yet legal to sell carcinogenic substances for inhalation. It is illegal for a twenty-year-old to buy a pint of weak beer, yet legal for a hormonal sixteen-year-old to drive a 3.5 litre killing machine down a five-lane freeway. Go figure.

So, yeah, I work to my own code. That sounds far more renegade than it’s supposed to. It just means I don’t waste my time on benefit fraudsters and double-yellow parkers.

I continued my conversation with Chinny and his colleagues, to establish the details I sought. This is not as hard as it seems with a little practise, especially if you have a funny accent – as I do to them. If you put a foot wrong they just assume they misunderstood you, on the most part. That gives you a few chances. And a few chances are all I need.

To give them their dues, they were into it in a big way. We are talking container loads of the stuff, shipped in from Asia. All destined to be distributed to the gangs of New Meadows, to be filtered down to their guys on the streets. This was all very interesting and, yes, illegal, but to be frank, I couldn’t give a shit about the rug trade. For my money, it wasn’t doing anyone any serious harm.

So my job here was pretty much over. Time to make my leave. I shook hands on a deal they thought was too good to be true, and walked away.

That evening I took another soak in the tub – to loosen my thinking muscles. I re-ran the evening’s events through my soggy mind. The fact that the men I met were into the rug trade, a pastime not worthy of my further attention, was not such a major disappointment. I could live without that kind of work for a few days.

Of greater annoyance was that these associates of Burch genuinely had no idea about why he had been set up. They didn’t even seem to have much of an idea as to why they were meeting in BlueJay either. A legitimate fashion outlet did seem like an odd choice of venue for forging deals in illicit goods, rather like plotting a money laundering scam in the lobby of the Federal Reserve. I got the solid impression they were acting on orders from higher up the food chain. And Burch himself didn’t have a clue as to why he’d been set up either.

Clearly, they were all pawns in some larger game of chess. I had no idea as to the stakes of the game, or who the players were. I briefly entertained the idea that I was a pawn too, but that didn’t seem plausible. I can see through anyone’s attempts to play me – Aaron Braunn to King Four would not go unnoticed.

So, it was all a bit of a mystery. But then something unexpected happened. In the context of my own brain that is. I suddenly began to wonder whether I actually wanted to unravel this particular mystery.

Why?

Because another mystery entirely had begun to play in my thoughts instead: the woman at the bar – who was now running amok like a small child in a toyshop. I wondered if I’d chosen the wrong direction earlier, when I turned toward the past.

Reality Check

Conner was making a habit of waking to new pains; on this occasion a stiff neck and a dead arm, courtesy of his restless night on a Holiday Inn sofa. He filed his new ailments along with his existing ones and pulled himself into a sitting position.

Mila was still asleep. Sleeping like a heavily sedated baby, in a comfy king-size cot. Conner decided that if she was just going to rub it in his face like that then he’d leave her to it. He pulled on some clothes and headed out in search of breakfast. Considering everything that had taken place, breakfast was pretty much the only short-to-medium term event he could reliably plan for. Beyond breakfast everything was all kind of murky; greyer than the Holiday Inn scrambled eggs that he opted to avoid.

Conner picked up coffee and pastries from a store down the street and returned to the hotel room to find an unoccupied bed, and an occupied bathroom – as far as the noise of a rushing shower was an indication of occupancy. A recently acquired streak of paranoia coupled with too much movie-watching prohibited him from jumping to any obvious conclusions, such as the aforementioned shower rushing over a naked Mila – as much as the thought appealed. He stood motionless, ears pinned back, and after a moment there was the sound of movement from within the room. There was somebody in the shower, which was a positive start. He took a step toward the door.

‘Mila, I’m back,’ he called.

A brief pause, then, ‘Okay, almost done,’ came the response, in a reassuringly familiar voice, much to Conner’s relief.

Conner took a seat and flicked on the TV for company. The beautiful faces of über celebrity couple, Danny Rubeck and Sadie Winters, flashed up at him. Their image had started appearing all over town recently, the stars of some mysterious ad campaign that didn’t reveal what was being promoted – presumably to create some kind of anticipatory buzz. Conner tried desperately to care less but failed, and began channel-hopping in a futile search for something less a waste of his time.

A few moments later – okay, quite a few moments later – Mila appeared from the bathroom, fully dressed in last night’s clothes and drying her hair with a towel. She perched on the end of the bed and Conner handed her a coffee.

‘Thanks,’ she said as she took it.

Conner turned off the TV and they both stared at the white walls for a while, not speaking. Conner was particularly aware of the untenable situation they found themselves in, which made it hard to know where to start talking.

Mila knew where to start. She’d known for a while, deep down. And as it wasn’t directly associated with their recent attackers it was a topic she favoured focusing on. She took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh, and just let the words tumble out with it.

‘I don’t believe any more, Conner,’ she declared as if confessing a sin; as if it was God she was referring to. But she knew this was way more important to Conner than any mere deity.

‘You don’t believe in what any more?’

‘In our cause.’

Conner knew what she was talking about. The cause of trying to bring the rug dealers to justice. The cause to which they had both sacrificed countless days and nights.

‘And it’s not just because of all this,’ Mila continued, gesturing to their surroundings, highlighting their current predicament: holed up in a hotel room, on the run from persons unknown, the victims of recent beatings and kidnappings. She shuffled along the bed toward where Conner was sitting opposite, such that their knees were almost touching. ‘I just don’t understand who we are trying to protect,’ she said, looking at him now. ‘The goods these guys are selling on the street are just as good as the genuine article, but at a fraction of the price. Isn’t that called competition? Isn’t that
good
?’

Conner responded for the first time, in agitated tones. ‘It’s not about the quality of the
material
; it’s about the intellectual property in the design. It’s about the
designers
being stolen from.’

‘The designers? Do I have to care about them too?’ Mila shook her head as if to say that it wasn’t enough. ‘If they were struggling to feed their children then maybe I
could
care. But if counterfeit sales means a designer gets only
two
hundred thousand a year instead of three; or the CEO gets
four
million instead of five; and they have to – I don’t know – sell one of their condos or something; then it’s hard for me to feel their pain. It’s hard to worry about them. It really is. You know?’