Man of Wax (20 page)

I only nodded. I was hoping this man wouldn’t get into the reason for why my “show” had been listed as it had. I remembered what Simon had told me, how that grin had been so clear in his voice.
 

“So then what?” I asked finally. We were driving through the streets of Chicago now, an entire other world outside the windows that I could barely see, nor see myself ever living in again.
 

“That was three years ago,” Carver said. “I’ve made it my mission to stop these people anyway I can ever since. For the past five years or so the Kid’s been working as a white hat hacker for major businesses. In his spare time he monitors the web for when a new show’s posted, then tries to determine the location, and I go there with my people to try to stop it. Just like back in Reno.”
 

“Your people.”
 

Carver nodded toward the front. “That’s Bronson driving and that’s David in the passenger seat. There are three others I’ve saved in the past three years. There was one other but she”—he shook his head—“she wanted to continue playing the game. Suffice it to say she’s no longer alive.”
 

I closed my eyes, took a breath. “This is just so ... unbelievable.” Except it wasn’t, not after everything I’d done in the past five days, but it was something that needed to be said, if not to maintain my own piece of mind. “You said you were FBI. Why didn’t you go back?”
 

“Are you kidding me? Either my supervisor or one of the higher ups was involved in this. You have to understand these people are very powerful. They have resources like you’d never believe. What I did do was contact someone I knew at the
New York Times
. He looked into things, was going to blow the story wide open. Then I found out he killed himself. A forty-three-year-old Harvard grad hanging himself by a noose in his high-rise condo in Manhattan. Don’t you get it? When you start fucking with them, they make sure to fuck you first.”
 

“So now what?” I asked.
 

“Now we lay low for a day or two. Simon’s people are going to be looking for us. Especially you.”
 

“Why me?”
 

“Because they want you to keep playing the game.”
 

I shook my head. “That ... that’s insane.”
 

“Maybe. But it’s happened before. Simon can be very persuasive when he wants to be.”
 

Carver touched his earpiece, listened for a moment, and said, “Shit.”
 

“What is it?” I asked.
 

He ignored me and called up front, “Bronson, did you hear that?”
 

Bronson was nodding, already turning off onto a side street.
 

“What is it?” I asked again.
 

“This van was just reported stolen. We’re going to need to go without wheels for awhile.”
 

David called back, “There’s an L station coming up.”
 

“Let’s do it,” Carver said. “Call Larry and let them know.”
 

Seconds later the van was parked and the doors opened and we all piled out. I stepped onto the pavement, for the first time actually feeling the presence of the city around me. Traffic loud on the street, people walking the sidewalks, that ubiquitous smell of exhaust. I had to squint to see the tall buildings around us and then my arm was gripped and I was being pulled forward.
 

“We need to take you someplace and get you new clothes, new shoes, everything.” Carver was talking while we hurried down the sidewalk. Bronson and David were behind us, bags over their shoulders. “Do you know your prescription off the top of your head? If not, we’ll figure it out and get you new glasses so you can actually see.”
 

We headed up the steps toward the train.
 

“What about the cameras?” I asked.
 

“Keep your head down. They can hack into practically any security system.”
 

I kept my head down as we reached the platform and whispered, “But what—what if they come after us on the train with guns and stuff?”
 

“This isn’t the movies,” Carver said. “What happened back on the highway was a fluke, since they thought they could contain us quickly. They’re not going to chase and shoot at us through a crowd of people. Too many witnesses. Besides, that’s not the way they work.”
 

“How do they work?”
 

Carver shook his head, shrugging off the question, and stepped forward as a train came screeching to a halt in front of us.

36

At the same time the three of us were getting on the Brown Line train at Sedgwick, a young cop named James Henley was working his shift less than three miles away by Navy Pier. He was twenty-five and had wanted to be a cop ever since he was a kid. His life’s ambition was to become a detective. But before he could do that he had to work the street, and today he was working bicycle patrol. Unlike some of the other men, he preferred the bike to the patrol car. In the car it could become cramped, stuffy, while with the bike he had the freedom to take a break and stretch his legs, to not have to roll down his window if he wanted some fresh air. Of course he wasn’t fond of wearing the helmet constantly, but regulations were regulations.
 

He had been married for just two years. He and his wife had found out they were pregnant four months ago. The ultrasound said they were having twins.
 

I like to think he was thinking of this in the final moments of his life. Pedaling his Trek around the plaza, the wind coming in off Lake Michigan, taxis and cars and buses making their deposits and pick ups. Coasting over the sidewalk, watching the people but also thinking about his wife, about the twins he would be raising in the next couple years.
 

It was almost one o’clock and people were everywhere, tourists mostly carrying cameras and backpacks and shopping bags. They were headed toward any number of places—Bubba Gump or Capi’s Italian Kitchen, the IMAX theater, the Children’s Museum, the Crystal Gardens—or else they had set out early and were finished for the day, heading away from the mall with souvenirs and snacks. Maybe James was watching them and didn’t notice the man approaching from behind. Or maybe James had been watching the man the entire time, had even begun to suspect that something was wrong. It’s impossible to say, just as it’s impossible to know if the man said something to James before taking out his gun and shooting the cop three times in the chest. What is possible to know is that he was thrown a couple feet from the bike, the helmet doing little to protect an already dead James Henley. What is also possible to know is that there were witnesses who claimed they’d seen everything. There was even one witness who said he managed to snap off a picture of the cop killer’s face before the killer hurried away.
 

As the news would tell us an hour later, not surprisingly, that face belonged to me.

37

We eventually ended up in a motel in Evanston, not too far away from Lake Michigan. It was a small room with two narrow beds and a chair and a TV and a closet that squeezed in a shower and sink and toilet. When I went to take a piss I couldn’t help but remember Carver’s story and imagined Casey floating there.
 

Carver’s other team would meet up with us later; right now they were searching the city for new transportation. It was important, Carver explained, that they stay split up at all times in case something happened to either team.
 

When I came out of the bathroom Carver was sitting in the single chair in the corner using the cell phone to talk to the Kid. Bronson and David were both lying on a different bed, their eyes closed.
 

Carver said, “Well when you do, call me on my cell,” and disconnected the call. He took the battery out of the phone and tossed them on the bed by Bronson’s feet. He said to me, “I wanted the Kid to know the number, see if he can trace it.”
 

“You really think somebody set this up?”
 

“Yes,” he said. “Based on your wife’s job and your own job and your social standing in the community, it doesn’t make sense—if you all went missing, too many people would notice. Normally the people they use are ... well, trash. People with no real job, no real life, who could go missing and nobody would ever notice. The fact that your wife is a lawyer”—he shook his head—“something just doesn’t feel right.”
 

Silence fell between us. On one of the beds, David began to snore lightly.
 

I asked, “Why are you doing this?”
 

Carver was staring down at his hands in front of him, lost in his thoughts. He blinked and turned his head in my direction.
 

“I told you that quote before, the one by Edward Burke? About how all that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing? I’m just doing my part to keep the evil at bay as much as possible.”
 

“But ... how is it evil?”
 

A second later my question really hit me and I wanted to take it back, but by then Carver was speaking.
 

“Your bio said you’re addicted to pornography. Have been ever since you were in high school. Do you consider that evil?”
 

I looked away and then looked back. Didn’t really feel like saying anything.
 

“Okay, how about this—do you consider it good?”
 

Even though I couldn’t really see him, I just stared back.
 

“The world’s full of sick things, Ben. Pornography’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a gateway into the other stuff.”
 

“The other stuff.”
 

“Yeah. I don’t want to pry, but can I ask what you started looking at in the beginning? Was it just naked women? Almost tasteful?”
 

Again I said nothing.
 

“It gets deeper and deeper,” Carver said, “believe me. I’ve worked scouring the Internet for a long time. People get sucked in and eventually get bored. They want to try something new. So they go from softcore to hardcore. Then do you know what’s after hardcore?”
 

I just stood there. Again had no will to answer him.
 

“There’s an underground to the Internet,” Carver said, sinking down even further into his chair. “Then below that underground is another underground. A place where the people who can afford it can see whatever the hell they please. Sometimes, if they have enough money, they can even direct what happens. That’s what this entire thing’s about. These powerful people who try to get off on whatever they can. They have the money and so bad things happen and people die. It’s that simple.”
 

There was another beat of silence.
 

Carver said, “Remember a while back when President Bush put a task force together against pornography? Most of the nation was like, What, are you giving up on terrorists all of a sudden? They were too hung-up on that question—not to mention their own privacy—to catch the economical purpose in what was happening.”
 

“Economical.”
 

“That’s right,” Carver said, nodding, but when he noticed my expression he decided to switch gears. “Ben, do you realize that pornography is nearly a one hundred
billion
dollar enterprise worldwide? All politicians are puppets, and Bush was no exception. The world is run by those who have the most money, hence the most power. When the U.S. government said they wanted to crack down on Internet pornography, it was a case of simple economics: supply and demand. The fewer websites out there, the more the other websites can charge. Sure people will balk at first, telling themselves they don’t need it. But they do the same when gas prices go up. In the end they fold, because they need it. Just like you need it.”
 

“I don’t need it,” I said, but the words were hollow, fake even to my own ears. I stood there for a moment, my arms crossed, thinking. “So let me get this straight. This is like an organization or something. A kind of ... club?”
 

Carver shook his head. “Far from it. These are just people, Ben, people like you and me. It’s not some conspiracy. The way the world’s set up today, we’re content with the entertainment provided to us. The others who can afford it, who get off watching children raped and killed and all that shit, they create their own form. I will say, though, that they are getting bolder. The bombing at the retirement home yesterday isn’t their usual M.O. It raises too many questions, too many possibilities of exposure.”
 

There was silence again. Now David was snoring lightly too.
 

Carver said, “Sorry about those two. They’ve been up for the past twenty hours trying to get to you.”
 

“How long have you been up?”
 

“Much longer.”
 

“I don’t believe you about my family.” Even though I couldn’t really see his face without squinting I looked back at him evenly. “They’re still alive. I ... I can’t give up that hope.”
 

“So what do you want to do? You want to go back into the game? I’ve told you already there’s no outlet. The only way I survived—the only way David and Bronson and the rest survived—is they made their own way out. They walked away. Unless you do the same, you’re as good as dead.”
 

I shook my head, started to say something else (what, I realized a few moments later, was just more self-denial), when Carver’s cell phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket, put it to his ear, listened for about thirty seconds. Finally he said thanks and disconnected the call, slipped the phone back into his pocket.