Internecine (49 page)

“Third floor. I’m not going to stay as long as they want me to. Incidentally, this resort is all paid for.”

“Damned right, or I’m on the phone to a lawyer on both our behalfs.”

“Rainstone is stepping down.”

That hung in the air and stank for a while. “Our fault?” I asked.

“It was inevitable. Not only did what happened to you and me
not
happen, but the circumstances under which it happened never existed, either.”

“There is no
NORCO
?”

“Just like I’ve said, all along.”

“So who gets the big, fancy secret subway system under all of LA?”

“The new crew. Hell, maybe the guys who shot the phony Gerardis, at the airport. You can bet your ass
that
was never on the five o’clock news.”

Nor the freeway shoot-outs, nor the limo takedown, the firefight at Varga’s, the blow-away in the pizza parlor, or my fleeting sideline as a kidnapper. Nothing, anywhere, about Alicia Brandenberg. An appropriately sullen news item on G. Johnson Jenks’s unfortunate demise by heart attack. No follow-up on Choral Anne Grimes; it was as though she had never existed, never been spotlit on TV as a possible victim of foul play, since she had been safely refiled as a suicide. The elimination of Zetts’s house and the Sisters’ compound were random fires so dull they didn’t even rate coverage. If it wasn’t on TV, it wasn’t real.

“What about Zetts?” I asked.

“My deal with Rainstone, when I left the company, was to watch from afar and keep him out of harm’s way. I did that. I kept him close and fed him just enough adventure to prevent him from getting damaged for real. Zetts doesn’t need me anymore. He is what currently passes for a grown-up. My obligation is fulfilled.” He almost bit his lip. “So much for that.”

“You’ll still see him, right?”

“What are we going to do, Connie? Have a barbecue, go to the movies?”

“Well, maybe he’ll still see you.”

Dandine snorted. “Maybe.”

“What about me?”

He gave me his combat smile. “Maybe.”

“I’ve been going over and over this in my mind, trying to put it in order, in all my leisure time,” I said. “I can’t track the events. They don’t cohere. There’s no line of cause and effect. It’s not linear, and I like things linear.”

“Oh, you want a
story,
” he said. “What, are you writing a book?”

I lobbed his own grin back at him. “Maybe.”

“What the hell is this?” He picked up the bullet from where it was stationed, upright, on my bedside table—the yellow-striped rocket cartridge, which I had ejected from the (booby-trapped!) gun and stuck in my pocket. It was still with me. I looked at it a lot. “Trophy?”

“Keepsake,” I said. More than that, it was my sanity, expressed as a self-contained projectile. Evidence that the things I have told you actually happened. Dandine seemed to understand why it was necessary. “Answer me one thing,” I said.

“Depends on what it is,” said Dandine.

“The hit-kit. Who doctored it?”

“You should know that by now,” Dandine said. “You being all linear and logical and orderly and everything.”

“I came up with an answer,” I said. “But I’m still having trouble with it.”

“
I
doctored the kit,” Dandine said. “Before Zetts stuck it in the locker. There—does that save you some trouble?”

One of my little beeping machines started beeping faster. The answer kept bouncing off the inside of my skull like a golf ball in a spin-dryer.

I groped for words and only grunted fragments.

“I doctored the kit,” Dandine went on, “and instructed Zetts to hide the key in the wrong car.”

My mouth was still working, fishlike. Why? Why?

“Why?” said Dandine. “Because I had you marked out from the first, Mr. Conrad Maddox of Kroeger Concepts, whose data-pull is the thickness of your mattress. I chose you. Out of all the files I reviewed, yours was the best. I would pull you into my world in order to leave a vacancy I could fill. But things did not turn out exactly the way I’d planned. I got to a point where I could not stand by and watch you get killed, or eliminate you myself. Good news for you; not so good for my brilliant plan.”

I couldn’t really flail about; I was a virtual prisoner in the bed. I was mildly surprised when he didn’t click off my monitors, or tweak a hose, or lift a pillow to suffocate me.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m looking out for you. Don’t panic. Just
think
about it all, for a moment.”

My reasoning powers had all but evaporated.

“I have to do another round of X-rays at three,” he said, preparing his exit. “I just wanted to see how you were doing. And tell you something no one else knows.”

“What’s that?” My voice had gone arid and I had to clear my throat.

“My name. My real name. Because you’re a friend, and you have to promise not to laugh. It’s Curtis.”

“That’s worse than the name of Choral’s cat.”

“Well, actually, it’s Curtis, er . . . Bond.”

I laughed, breaking the promise, and to compound the mortal sin, kept laughing. It hurt but was unstoppable. He sniffed and attempted to incinerate me with a look.

“Feel free to indulge yourself,” he said, and that just made it worse.

I was still overpowered when he made his good-byes and walked out the door. That was the last I ever saw of him.

I was tempted there to go for what they call the Hollywood Ending—you know, guy triumphs over adversity and gets the female lead; guy “learns” something and, as a result of his “arc,” grows in some unforeseen way. But you and I both know that’s not how things go down in the world, hence the gulf between fantasy and reality. Fantasy exists as empowerment parables, wish-fulfillment to make us feel less shitty about our uneventful lives. We acid-test our value systems by proxy through the characters presented in books, in movies, in make-believe.

But what if I told you that I lied a little bit, back there during the part where Conrad Maddox, the dreaded and fabled adman, discovers hitherto untapped reserves of courage and rises to the challenge?

Maybe you’d prefer a version of the story where poor, angry, misguided Choral Grimes turns out not to be dead, because Connie’s knowledge of that death was all hearsay and manipulated media. After the smoke clears, she makes contact. After a heartwarming meet-cute redux, they have a terrific sex scene (I probably would not have been much good at writing
that,
I’ll admit). She and Connie eventually get hitched. Connie leaves Kroeger and starts a consumer advocacy network. They spend their days wisely avoiding the poisoning aspects of modern advertising, having learned a handy object lesson in the form of your wacky protagonist, the hit man with a heart. A pat, neatly ribboned wrap-up. A story with a palliative moral, easy to swallow, reinforcing the status quo of payback and fair play in the world of the walking dead.

Yeah, Andrew Collier would have
loved
that ending. It paints a rosier worldview than the nihilism of
nobody cares, everyone expects the worst, and nothing matters.
(A picture that my associate Rook would instantly peg as a forgery, no doubt.)

Or maybe you’d favor a version of the story that Connie feared the most—that I was a figment of his desperately bored imagination, or a projection of his insecurities. An alter ego, something from a virulent nightmare, or a malign twin, separated at birth. It’s astonishing, what some people can talk themselves into.

Or maybe you’d prefer the idea that
NORCO
wasn’t real at all. But I can only tell it from my point of view. Call it authorial license.
NORCO
no longer exists, anyway. Sometimes it’s a new outfit; sometimes a refinement, or evolution, of an extant interest, but whatever it is, it’s called something else, today—as Rainstone said. And such people only get better at what they do. Sometimes I think about what a bad shake it would be if they actually
were
running everything, but that’s giving them too much credit. Besides, you wouldn’t believe it . . . right?

Conrad eventually sorted it out for himself, I’m sure.

And here I am, writing this narrative out in Conrad’s voice, as an ultimate test, a sort of final exam. It’s up to you to determine how well I’ve actually captured the man inside the personality.

I was serious when I revealed to Conrad that I had researched him in depth, with the objective of taking his place. I needed a berth in the real world where my skill set would not lie completely fallow.

What surprised me was the letter Burt Kroeger received. It read:

(day) (month), 20__

Mr. Burt Kroeger Kroeger

Concepts (internal)

Dear Burt:

This letter will introduce Mr. ———   ——— with my highest recommendation as an interim member of the Kroeger team. I’d put him forth for my recently vacated VP slot, but that of course is your call.

Know that ———is creative, resourceful, and comprehensively experienced in the challenges of ad/pub, with the kind of ability to think out of the box, something I know you value highly. Please review the attached work history and background material at your leisure. I’m positive you’ll see what a great potential picture it paints.

Thanks a million for the consideration.

Thanks, too, for your grace and goodwill in letting me out of my contract early, or at least putting it on hiatus. The least I can do is vet you a capable replacement while I’m away resolving a few private matters that have been hanging fire for far too long. You’re a pal for not prying.

I love you all and I guarantee you’ll be hearing from me.

Sincerely, your friend,

Conrad Maddox

Executive Vice President

The most staggering thing about the letter was that I did not write it. And when I say this, I’m not being what, in fiction, is called the “unreliable narrator.” You know—like that movie where the guy whose voice-over you’ve been listening to for the whole story turns out to be dead when the story begins? Not that at all.

I think Conrad wrote the letter. I think it was exactly what it purports to be. Because Conrad figured out my grand plan, there in his hospital bed, all by his lonesome.

Proof? Who needs it?
NORCO
? Gone now. Some other head of the Hydra has gained ascension. Databases have changed hands for imaginary cash—think of your own vital statistics—in a yard sale. Anybody can get them. So do names and ominous sounding titles really matter? All it takes is to push the right buttons. What I don’t know, Zetts can find out (I’m still not very Internet-friendly, as you might have guessed). As for the skinny on Connie Maddox . . . well, hell, the guy was just begging to be advantaged, he was so bland. But I can’t tell my story without telling his, right? And if I had never come along, no one would ever have bothered to talk about Conrad Maddox, in the first place. At all.

Katy Burgess took a liking to me right away. She was prepped for Conrad, but now Conrad was gone, and there I was. Together we worked on the campaign for the new governor. Not Theodore Ripkin, but a senator I think I once saw getting his testicles crushed by the Sisters.

Well, at least I know now who left the provocative message on Conrad’s answering machine.

You may have perceived some lack of detail in the sections describing Connie at work. I faked them, hoping to skim past. Sometimes you can sound more credible with less information. But I’m learning as I go.

Needless to say, I got the idea of writing this all down from Conrad himself, back at the hospital.

Gerardis remains dead, and good riddance. Rainstone stepped down with a deal instead of a firefight. I helped him negotiate terms. Zetts still strolls the planet, though now without need of my phantom guardianship.

(It was most likely Zetts who leaked the salacious Alicia Brandenberg home-vids to the Internet, thereby scuttling Theodore Ripkin’s aspirations to public office and giving the replacement candidate a running leg up. The scandal thrust Ripkin into exile and I wouldn’t be surprised if he has changed
his
name, by now. I haven’t verified this, but I suspect it’s true.)