The End of Marking Time (33 page)

The defense made a statement that convinced me these men were a prime opportunity for Nathan Farnsworth. The men had been at a house party for a friend who was going off to war. When the party wound down and the friends spilled outside, a car raced down the street, nearly hitting one of the men. Traffic stopped the car at the corner and the men ran and caught up. Someone recognized the driver as a suspect in a gang shooting a week earlier. The men pulled him from his car and held him for the police. The lawyer admitted his clients had been overzealous. They’d beaten the man and he had been taken to Massachusetts General Hospital with serious injuries, but the men had been trying to do the right thing.

The lawyer pleaded for leniency. The men went too far, but their intentions were honorable. For a few minutes I thought the judge was going to let them go and that I’d have to go back to the lobby and follow another case, but I didn’t have to. The judge asked to see the footage from the traffic camera. When he did, he sentenced all eleven to reeducation.

I knew they’d all be headed to Nathan Farnsworth. Now all I had to do was follow them and prove that Farnsworth was paying Marc for the favor. I assumed the first part would be the easiest, but when the judge banged his gavel, the men were led to a doorway I hadn’t noticed before. They disappeared into a part of the courthouse Mandla hadn’t shown me.

I went out to the hall and circled around to where Marc sat, but saw no entrance along the left wall. It was as if the only entrance to the room they entered was through the courtroom. That door was guarded by the court officers and the bailiff. The only other possibility was the locked hall that led to the judge’s chambers. I didn’t remember a door that opened in the direction the men went, but we had only been in that hall for thirty seconds.

Retreating to the back corner of the courthouse, I camped on a bench that gave me a view of Marc’s door and down the length of the building to the district attorney’s office. I couldn’t see inside Marc’s office, but I knew he was in there. I couldn’t quite see the front entrance, but there was no way to get to the front of the courthouse without following the hall. If those eleven guys went to see Marc, or went out the front door, I’d see them.

Court was open until five o’clock on weekdays. When that time came, Mandla told me they were locking up and that I’d have to leave. The men still hadn’t come out. I wished I’d seen their cars to know if they were still there, but I was sure they were inside the building somewhere. As I reluctantly followed Mandla and picked up the pen camera at the checkpoint, I wondered if the eleven were getting their implants and ankle bracelets. They’d need to stay overnight for that. Once they were implanted, there was no escape for them. I waited outside the courthouse another two hours. No one came out. The seven cars remaining in the lot were proof enough that something was still going on in there. I couldn’t risk breaking into the courthouse, so eventually I gave up and caught a cab home.

The cab dropped me at the curb and soon I was back in my apartment, trying to figure out how Nathan Farnsworth could bribe Marc in a world without paper money. He couldn’t leave a trail at Govbank, so he couldn’t pay him off that way. The drug dealers took electronics, but how many iPods and phones could one man use? Farnsworth could put Marc on the payroll in an unofficial way, but that trail would be too easy to follow. It had to be something valuable and untraceable. I’d spent most of my adult life shifting property around. In a world without cash it was almost impossible. Farnsworth knew more about this world than I did. I knew he’d found a way to make it work. The best way to find out how he was doing it was to follow Marc and see who he talked to and what he did.

On my way to bed, I picked up the next book off the stack, Treasure Island. Mandla said the program wasn’t about the black box and its lessons. I believed him, but by that time, I’d been reading so much that I wanted to get inside the story. My English was improving every day. I could hear it when I talked to people on the street. Gone were the lazy words, stuff and like and dude. Instead of packing them into every third sentence, I used words with meaning and I was proud I did. I know that’s hard for you to understand because you are only hearing me now, but if you had heard me when I first came here, you’d think I was a different person. You probably would have pressed the red button already.

When my eyelids were heavy from reading, I crashed and slept as long as I could. After my donut and coffee, I walked to the bench behind Nathan Farnsworth’s place. I worried that I’d see Stephan at the ballgame that morning or that he’d see me and come storming over. I felt bad about what happened with his camera and the subliminal messages we found, but I was trying to do the right thing that day. I had no idea then how overmatched I was. I hid my face in my book, but like most worries, the confrontation never happened. I read and watched the action on the field and never saw Stephan again.

The eleven men from the courthouse appeared around lunchtime. I couldn’t recognize any one of them from where I was sitting, but they came out onto the field as a group, and as they introduced themselves around they moved in a pack. I recorded the group standing along the foul line. When they settled into playing, I had half of what I needed. These men shouldn’t have all come to Farnsworth’s program. They’d broken the law, but they had been trying to do the right thing. None of them was likely to wind up back here. Wendell needed his share of these guys to clean up his record, but Farnsworth stole them from him. All I needed to do was prove that Farnsworth paid to get them.

Instead of going straight to the courthouse, I went home and took a nap. It was hard falling asleep in the middle of the day, but I couldn’t get close to Marc at work. I was planning to follow him around all night. My hope was that his payoff would come after hours and come soon.

I slept too long and worried that Marc could be gone for the day. The cab dropped me off at the courthouse around four o’clock. To be safe I walked in through the front door and followed the hall past Marc’s door. He didn’t look up from the file he was reading, but I felt like he knew it was me. I kept on going, waited five minutes like I had something to do at that end of the courthouse, and then walked back to the lobby without letting Marc see my face.

I went to the employee parking and took down the color and plate number of every car. I tried to act casual for the cameras on the light poles, but there were twenty cars back there and I couldn’t write down so much information without paying attention to what I was doing. I hoped Marc didn’t have access to the cameras, but why would he?

Settled on a bench at the sidewalk, I watched the employees filter out and scratched the cars off my list as I saw them. It took forty minutes before Marc’s wide face came rolling toward me in a silver Camry. I turned for the street even as he waited to pull out into traffic. I found a cab quickly and a few blocks later we caught up to the Camry at a red light.

Marc stopped at The Last Call, a tiny brick building with neon signs advertising American beers and free nachos on Wednesdays. The days all ran together for me, but I was sure it was Wednesday when he rumbled inside. The cabbie parked half a block back. The fare was nine dollars and change.

“I need you to wait.”

“Sure,” he said.

I was convinced he’d be gone once I closed the door. I added a fifty-dollar tip and his eyes widened. “Listen, if you’re not here when I get back, I’m going to tell your company you ripped me off. If you’re here when I come back, it’ll be clear what the tip was for. Deal?”

The cabbie gave me his word he’d be there and I rushed into the darkened bar after Marc. Pool balls clacked. Eight feet from the entrance I ran into a cluster of people circled around talking. The dress shirts and skirts suggested they’d come straight from a nearby office. I pushed my way through. They let me pass and immediately the men and women pulled their conversations back together. All the tables were filled. Every chair had a coat draped over it, so I worked my way over to the jukebox and stood against the wall where I could see Marc, or rather his back, at the bar.

I remembered the big guy I saw shot near the ball field. His problems started in a dive like this. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was glad there was no detector at the door to identify me, and when anyone sidled up to the jukebox or wanted to push by I was sure to make way. Mostly I hugged the wall and watched Marc through the sea of heads.

He shoveled in nachos for the next two hours and washed them down with three beers. He’d chosen his spot at the corner well. People kept pushing up beside him to order a drink. I couldn’t hear what he was saying or see his facial expressions, but a few women walked away shaking their heads. I couldn’t tell if he was hitting on them and failing miserably, or if it was the splattering of cheese and sauce on his face that turned them off.

I watched carefully, putting the camera on him every time someone stood beside him for more than a minute, but no one passed him anything and no one seemed interested in talking with him. He sat. He ate. He drank and finally he left with me right behind.

The cab was where I left it and the cabbie was pretty good at following the Camry without being noticed. Marc didn’t strike me as someone particularly aware of his surroundings, but we stayed back half a block and followed him for twenty minutes to a neighborhood of high stone walls and wrought iron fences. Marc stopped at an entrance, spoke into a speaker, and a wide gate opened.

The place reminded me of Wendell’s and I remembered how fast the cops swarmed me for jumping the wall. The cab stood out in this neighborhood of Beemers and chauffeurs, so I paid the fare and stepped out onto the naked curb. My book was useless as camouflage in the dark and people here parked behind high walls, so there were no cars to crouch behind. The only cover was the occasional tree and that was where I chose to hide.

The maple at the corner had low branches that made climbing into the canopy easy. Once I reached the height of the wall, I was enveloped by leaves that hid me from passing cars, but I could clearly see the circular drive up by the house. In the next hour, three cars arrived, each carrying a single man. I was positive this was Marc’s payoff. I sat there on a thick branch, wondering what was going on inside. What could be so valuable to Marc that he’d be willing to risk his job?

After an hour of watching and worrying that Marc would leave and I’d have no way to follow, I crept out along the heavy branch until I could step over to the top of the wall. The flat surface had iron spikes on top, but once I stood astride them, I could walk along the wall comfortably, which I did until I drew even with the house.

Marc stumbled out to his car and drove away. I turned and Treasure Island slipped from my coat and fell eight feet to the grass. I suppressed a twinge of panic. I wanted to jump down and retrieve the book, but couldn’t see an easy way out again. If there were dogs or sensors, I’d be hauled to relearner court for the last time. Marc had led me to what I needed. I let him go and followed the wall for a better look inside the lower windows.

Inside that monstrous house was a form of payment that made perfect sense for Marc. It was untraceable, yet incredibly valuable to someone like him. I wondered if the men I saw through the windows with lingerie-clad young women on their laps all worked in the court system or if there were some politicians thrown in. Once I proved Nathan Farnsworth was paying the bills, I’d have everything I needed. That would be no easy task, but I knew someone who could help me and I had something he desperately wanted.

My nap the day before messed up my schedule. When I got home and couldn’t sleep, I spent most of the night reading another book I picked from Wendell’s pile. I was angry I’d dropped Treasure Island, not because it could alert someone at the house that they were being watched and not because it could lead them to me, but because I was halfway through and I wanted to know how it ended.

I showered and shaved the next morning even though I could barely open my eyes that early. I skipped my donut shop ritual and jumped in a cab with my stomach gurgling and complaining that I was going the wrong way. The cabbie parked half a block from my destination. I paid him and walked through the neighborhood of tightly-packed houses as if I was out for a morning walk.

The car was locked but had no alarm and I was sitting in the passenger’s seat within seconds. It was Thursday, surely a workday for anyone at the bank. I couldn’t be sure what time he went to work, but both cars were parked at the house, his at the curb, hers in the driveway. I was dreaming when footsteps rounded the trunk. My subconscious screamed to try and wake me up, but my dreaming mind refused to alert me to what was happening outside the car.

The remote clicked and tried to push open the locks even though I’d already unlocked them to get in. The door swung open, the seat rocked, but my eyes didn’t open until I heard the yelling beside me. I rubbed my eyes open and told Nick to relax and drive.

“Screw that. What the hell are you doing in my car?”

“It’s your lucky day. I’ve got something you want. I need a little favor and if you can deliver, I’ll sign the papers and you can forget I ever existed.”

I thought I heard a door open and worried that Kathleen would come out and see us together. “Drive,” I said. “Before your wife starts asking questions you can’t answer.”