I fell asleep on the
couch after I had drained a third of a new bottle of
scotch. The chirping ringing of my cell phone woke
me. It took me five rings to find the phone in the
pocket of my jacket. It was Dr. Ishigami.
“We need to speak,”
he said in a hushed voice. There was absolute silence
behind him. I couldn’t tell where he was calling me
from. “Can we meet?”
“Today?”
I walked into the
kitchen and looked at the clock on the oven. It was
nearly noon. I made coffee while we spoke.
“Yes.”
“And what about…?”
“I think it is best
if you left him there.”
“Is your line
secure?”
“Of course it is,” he
said.
“Then you can tell me
what you need to tell me on the phone,” I said.
There was a brief
silence. The coffee machine hissed and began
percolating.
“Mr. Crawford is
thinking of shutting him down.”
“I thought it
couldn’t be done,” I said. “He didn’t have a fail-safe.”
“I didn’t think so
either,” he said. “He told me this morning about
something he had made for Leon twenty years ago…”
He paused. There was
a knocking in the background and in a muffled voice he
told someone he would be ready in a few minutes. Then he
spoke again, his tone hiked. Controlled panic.
“I have to go. Please
call my home and leave a message with my wife. Just give
him an address where you can be and I will know it’s
from you.”
Before I could agree
or disagree with the meeting, he had turned off his
phone. I stared at the dark screen of the cell and
flipped it closed. I shoved it away from me. I stared at
it until I heard the last gasps of the coffee maker
whine down and the machine clicking off. I poured a cup
and walked into the bedroom where I had left Leon.
He was still
asleep. His nude body was tangled in the bed sheet and
he was sleeping among the contents from the box I had
spilled on the ground. Some envelops were opened and the
items inside emptied on the floor. He had a picture
clutched in one hand. I walked over and crouched down to
look at it, but I woke him instead.
“Coffee?” I asked,
offering him my cup.
He shook his head and
pushed himself up slowly. The crinkled picture he had
held in his hand tumbled out of his grip. I picked it up
and smoothed it out against my thigh.
It was a picture of a
beautiful woman in a floral sundress with her hair tied
up in a pony tail. In one of her white gloved hands, she
held a large brimmed hat with flowers stuck to the band
around it. She was posing beside a manicured lake that
looked too prim to be public. I turned the card over and
there was only a letter “K” written in black ink, in the
corner.
“Your mother?” I
asked and held the picture out to him. He took it from
me slowly but didn’t look at it.
“I don’t know.”
“But there’s a
connection you made to the picture.”
“I don’t know,” he
said again and looked down at the picture.
“What thoughts do you
have when you look at it?”
He shrugged.
“Papa…Edward often
showed me this picture,” he said. “And said I mustn’t
forget.”
“Did he tell you who
she was?”
He nodded.
“Do you believe him?”
“Pa…Edward would
never lie to me.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” I
said. “I need to go out for a little while in a few
hours. Will you wait for me?”
“I will wait for
you,” he said. A smile, perhaps the most genuine one he
had ever had since I met him, appeared.
I
arranged a meeting at 6 PM at a café two blocks away
from the Crawford corporate buildings. He looked
nervous, more than usual, when he came in. He held his
briefcase close against his side and slid into the bench
across from me at our booth. I had come ten minutes
earlier and was already working on my second cup of
coffee. I had also ordered a scone but I had not started
on it yet.
“Is he
safe?”
“Of
course he is,” I said. “What did Crawford install in
him?”
He looked
around nervously and caught the eye of the waitress, who
came to him. He asked for a cup of tea and she left to
fetch it for him.
“If Leon
leaves the facility for more than ten days, his system
will shut down and he will be irrecoverable.”
“I
thought Crawford couldn’t stand losing him.”
“He
couldn’t. Leon’s data is very valuable. However, if he’s
in the wrong hands – he’d lose him anyway. He figured
Leon might have fallen into the hands of the government
if he was taken for so long. Lose one precious Doll or
the entire company and the Doll.”
The
waitress returned with the tea and left to greet three
men with long dark coats who had taken an empty booth
near the doorway before they were seated by the hostess.
“Is there
a way to reverse this?”
“He has
to return to the facility to reset.”
“By reset
you mean the 10 day window re-starts if he should leave
again.”
He
nodded.
“His
shelf life is only 10 days out of the box?”
“I am
afraid so.”
His hands
were shaking as he picked up the tea cup and drank
it. The ceramic cup clanked noisily when he set it back
down on the saucer.
“Are you
suggesting I return him?”
For a
moment, he said nothing. He stared down at the cup and
his frown deepened.
“I don’t
want him to die,” he said. “He is like my child.”
“Would
you want your child to live that kind of existence?”
He took
off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“I don’t
want him to die,” he said again. He kept his head low. I
didn’t realize he was crying until his shoulder shook.
“You are
selfish,” I said. “Just as selfish as Crawford is.”
“I am
nothing like him!” He said, a little too loud. His eyes
were brimmed with tears. “I want to protect him!”
“Protect
him from what?” I took the pen from my pocket and wrote
on the napkin.
You
wired?
And shoved the napkin toward him. He froze when he read
it and nodded.
“Death.”
“And I
ask you again, what kind of life are you giving him in
exchange of death?”
I wrote
another sentence below the first.
The
three men by the doors are from the company.
He nodded
again, after reading it. He wiped at his eyes with his
shirt sleeve.
“If he is
alive, there is a chance for change. There’s no chance
at all if he dies.”
“Will
you trust me?”
He looked
conflicted, as he searched for the answer. Then he gave
the slightest nod.
“Excuse
me for a couple of minutes,” I said and got up.
I went
toward the sign that said ‘bathroom’, passed it and went
into the kitchen. The people in there, with their aprons
and pans full of fresh baked goods looked at me. I
pressed an index finger to my mouth and walked toward
the exit that was half-opened.
I had
left my car in the parking garage a block away but I had
to take the longer route to it so the three men by the
doorway would not see me. However, by the time I had
neared the garage, I had concluded that there would have
been someone ready to tail me. They knew the make and
plate of my car. I ditched my ride and flagged down a
cab.
I asked
to be let off a block away from my place. There were
three Mercedes parked out front bearing Crawford
corporate plates. They might have arrived shortly before
I did and perhaps found the place through my tax
records. It was to be expected that Crawford would have
connections to find every single scrap of my legally
known existence within hours.
I lit up
a cigarette and waited. I was on my third when four men
in long coats came out. One of them was on the cell
phone. After the call finished, the four men descended
down the stairs and left in two cars. I dropped the
cigarette and rubbed it out with the toe of the shoe. I
drew the gun from the shoulder holster and went to my
apartment.
The door
was unlocked. I took out my cell and dialed my home
phone. I heard it ring. A moment later, footsteps
hurried toward it. As soon as the phone was answered, I
slammed the door open and pointed the gun toward where I
knew he would be.
“You
fuckers get the same coats issued to you as required
items or what?” I said and shut the door behind me.
“What?”
He said, one hand up and the other still held the phone.
“Anyone
else here?”
He shook
his head.
“Where’s
your piece?”
“On my
hip, to the left,” he said. He had a heavy New England
accent.
“Drop the
phone and with just your fingers and with your left
hand, get it and put it on the table.”
He did
so, slowly and with his hand shaking. The silver snub
nose revolver he had made a thump and probably gouged my
table when he dropped it.
“You got
cuffs?” I asked him.
“Y..yeah?”
“Let’s
see them,” I said.
He took
them out of the cuff pouch he had at the small of his
back. I asked him to have one end cuffed to his wrist
and the other to the refrigerator door. I pocketed his
gun and did a walk-through of the apartment, then back
to him.
“Where
did your buddies go?”
“Dunno,”
he said. “Just gonna drive around and look.”
“And you
are here, waiting for me to return.”
“Yeah.”
“With
your corporate cars parked out front where I won’t see
it?”
He
shrugged.
“There
ain’t no good parking around here.”
“I hope
the rest of you lot are as bright as you are,” I said.
Then I
heard the heavy sounds of footsteps stumping up the
stairs. His colleagues had returned.
“Car
key,” I said.
He
reached into his pocket and fished it out, then tossed
it over to me. I left the apartment through the fire
escape outside the master bedroom. I was downstairs
already, when the front door of my apartment was flung
open again and all of them came out. I ducked into the
Mercedes at first, and then put a couple of bullets into
the tires of the two cars parked behind me before I
floored the gas and left. I watched them in the rearview
mirror wave their guns at me but no one fired. The
sounds I had made had possibly sent someone to the
phones to call 911 as was.
“Mr.
Redfield!” Reeves said when I came in. Both of his hired
helps were assisting customers fitting the Armanis.
“I can’t
stay, Tom. Can you get him?”
“Of
course!”
He
disappeared through the door that was marked “staff
only” and emerged a moment later with Leon.
“Come,” I
said and Leon did. He held to one of my arms as he said
good-bye to Reeves and the two clerks. We were on the
road and on the expressway within minutes.
“Where
are we going?”
“Somewhere else,” I said.
He took
my right hand and held it on his lap. For a long time,
neither of us spoke. Then Ishigami rung my cell phone.
“Are you
both safe?” He asked.
“As safe
as it will ever get for now.”
“They
realized you were gone fifteen minutes after you took
off.”
“About
what you told me, was it true?”
“I really
don’t know. It’s what he told me.”
“How did
he know that you knew I made contact with you?”
“While I
was away with you, Saikaku called me. My wife said I
left with someone she didn’t know…” he paused. “Perhaps
that was enough for him to report it to Mr. Crawford.
And Mr. Crawford questioned me at length next morning
and told me about the hidden fail-safe.”
“It might
have been a lie to get you to reveal what you know.”
“Maybe.”
“And it
worked.”
“When Mr.
Crawford mentioned the welfare of my family, it worked.”
“I see.”
“What
will you do?”
“He won’t
be returned to the facilities.”
There was
a stretch of silence on the other end. I pictured him
crying again. The way he had hunched over and sobbed
quietly in the café. I said nothing, allowing the long
pause. When he spoke again, his voice was smaller.
“Please
take care of him,” he said. Then he hung up. I pocketed
the phone and pressed my hand over Leon’s.
“That was
Dr. Ishigami,” I said.
His eyes
lit up.
“He sends
his love to you,” I said.
He
smiled. I squeezed his hand.
“There
are many people who love you,” I said.
He held
my hand up to his cheek.
“And now,
I love only you.”
“I know
you do.”