The Inner Circle (19 page)

“You sound just like the Kid.”
 

“Do I? Well, I guess I’m okay with that. I mean, the Kid is a genius, after all.”
 

There was movement on the computer monitor. The Racist was sitting up, swinging his feet off the bed. He just sat there for a moment, then looked up directly at the camera. Lifted his right hand and gave us the bird.
 

“Oh look,” Ian said. “I think that’s your cue.”

29

The Racist looked like he was dead.
 

He must have heard me open the safe house door, walk in and close it. He must have heard my footsteps on the concrete floor, the noise of the bottom gate opening as I slid his new tray of food into his cell, took away his untouched tray from this morning.
 

But he didn’t stir. His slow and shallow breathing didn’t change.
 

“Mason,” I said.
 

He continued lying there supine on the cot.
 

“I saw your little message earlier. I’m assuming that means you now want to talk.”
 

Still no response.
 

I went to the desk just outside the bars and set this morning’s tray of food on top. It had been pancakes and scrambled eggs and bacon with maple syrup. When I’d slid it into his cell this morning the food had been warm. Now it was cold and hard.
 

I pulled the chair out from the desk and sat down. Placed my arm on the desktop and tapped a slow but steady beat with my ring, middle, and index fingers.
 

The safe house was a small, squat building made completely of cinderblocks. Half of the room was the holding cell, which contained a cot, a toilet and sink—these last two tucked away in the corner and concealed by a plastic blind for privacy from the cameras.
 

To be honest, calling it a holding cell wasn’t fair. It wasn’t the type of holding cell you’d find in a local police station. Ours also contained a mini-fridge, stocked full of bottled water and fruit, and a telephone that, when picked up, immediately called the farmhouse.
 

Mason hadn’t touched the phone once. As far as I knew, he hadn’t even opened the fridge.
 

Three of the four cameras were positioned in the ceiling corners of the safe house. Two looking straight down at the middle of the holding cell, at the cot and fridge. The other on the other side, looking down at the metal desk and chair. The fourth was outside, right near the door, facing the trees and trail leading up to the safe house.
 

Today Beverly had cooked the Racist meatloaf covered in ketchup, mashed potatoes and broccoli. Steam rose from where the meal sat on the floor just within the cell. It was getting cold, and something told me it would go untouched until I brought another meal.
 

A minute passed in silence.
 

I watched the Racist, his chest slowly rising and falling. He wore the same clothes as he had the night we picked him up in Miami Beach. I’d brought him fresh underwear and socks, a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, all of which lay folded in the corner of the holding cell, but he hadn’t touched those yet.
 

I continued tapping.
 

Another minute passed.
 

More tapping.
 

Mason Coulter said, “You killed my family.”
 

My hand stopped at once, the ring finger already touching the desktop, the middle and index fingers frozen in midair.
 

“I could have beaten him. I could have won the game. But you ... you people had to come and fuck it all up.”
 

I leaned forward in my seat. “Do you seriously believe you had a chance at winning the game?”
 

Mason said nothing.
 

“Nobody wins the game. That’s the whole point. Simon and his people push you and push you until you have no more give left and you either kill yourself or they kill you. And your family? They’re already dead.”
 

Mason bolted up from the cot. His face was red. The lights above him shined off his bald head.
 

“You don’t know that.”
 

“But I do. I’ve explained this to you already. I even asked you to read that”—I gestured at the bound manuscript on the floor next to the clothes—“but you haven’t. Why? Why are you making this difficult?”
 

“Go fuck yourself.”
 

“We’re trying to help you, Mason.”
 

“Oh yeah? A lot of fuckin’ help you’re doing me, keepin’ me locked in here.”
 

“I explained that to you also. This is only temporary. Your cooperation dictates how long we need to keep you in here.”
 

“Yeah? Well if I were you, I’d keep me in here forever. ’Cause the minute I get outta here, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ neck.”
 

Mason glared at me another moment before he lay back down on the cot.
 

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath.
 

“Mason,” I said.
 

No answer.
 

“Mason, what’s your definition of evil?”
 

Still no response.
 

“I know you hate black people. Are they evil?”
 

Mason continued lying there, staring at the ceiling.
 

“How about the Jews? What have they done to you personally? How are they evil?”
 

I focused my gaze on the plate of meatloaf, which was still steaming.
 

“I don’t know about you, Mason, but I never really thought much about evil. It was just a word to me. The difference between right and wrong, yeah, that’s easy. But evil? I didn’t know evil until the first time I spoke to Simon. Until I heard his voice and realized what it was he wanted me to do.”
 

I shook my head.
 

“So I began to believe that Simon was evil. That Caesar was evil. But just them, you know? Not the rest of us. Not everyone else that I considered ... normal. But then a year ago, there was this guy we rescued from one of the games. He was a real big guy, just like you. His show had been called The Gravedigger. He acted like he didn’t give a fuck either. He acted like he wasn’t scared. But he was scared. And so we welcomed him into our little family. We explained to him what was going on. How he’d been used simply as entertainment. How he never had a chance at saving his family. It was hard to accept—it’s always hard for a player to accept the truth—but he understood. And you know what he said to us? He said he wanted to help us with our fight.”
 

The meatloaf had stopped steaming completely now.
 

“There was this girl we’d saved only two months before the Gravedigger. Her name was Vanessa Martin. She was twenty-four years old. Very pretty. She’d been a waitress at a diner in Alabama. She had never done any wrong to anyone a day in her life, and then all of a sudden she had woken up in Simon’s game. But she was tough. She wouldn’t back down. And not even a week passed since we’d saved the Gravedigger, when we had started to train him. He had seemed normal enough, but one night he managed to get Vanessa alone. I don’t know what happened exactly—maybe he tried hitting on her, flirting with her, something like that, though until then he had never expressed any interest in her as far as I know—but he took a knife from the kitchen and managed to get Vanessa alone and he ... he raped her. He kept the knife at her throat, telling her he’d kill her if she screamed, and he tore off her clothes, wrestled her to the ground, and raped her.”
 

I stood up and went to the holding cell, wrapped my fingers around the cold bars.
 

“He raped her, Mason, and then he killed her. But he didn’t do it fast. He started slow, cutting her in different places first. She must have cried out, or someone must have realized the two of them were gone and suspected the worst, because right before he was able to drive the blade into her throat, Drew burst in on them. The Gravedigger—remember, a guy about your size—he fought him. He stabbed Drew in the stomach and threw him down on the ground and started cutting him. He cut him all across the face. Would have killed him, too, but then Carver came in. Carver took his gun and placed it right against the Gravedigger’s head and pulled the trigger.”
 

I paused. Realized my eyes were closed. That I had been seeing the entire thing happening in my mind.
 

Opening my eyes, I stared down at Mason.
 

“The Gravedigger’s name was Christian Kane. And to me, he was evil. He was even more evil than Simon. Because Simon, he doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. Simon knows what he is. But Christian? He pretended he was normal, just like one of us.”
 

Still staring up at the ceiling, Mason said, “You really think I’m a racist, don’t you?”
 

I said nothing.
 

He sat up and swung his feet off the bed and glared back at me. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me. You see these tattoos and just assume that I’m the one that put them there.”
 

“If you didn’t, who did?”
 

“Who do you think?
Simon
, that cocksucker. Yeah, I was in prison, and yeah, I killed a black guy in there. And yeah, I was briefly a member of the Brotherhood when I was in the joint. But I did that because I had no choice. If I didn’t join them, I was going to die.”
 

“What are you talking about?”
 

“See, you think you know everything there is to know about me just based on my appearance. But you don’t know shit.”
 

“Is that right? Then what about the male prostitute you killed? What about the transvestite you beat up at The Spur?”
 

“I have anger issues.”
 

“That’s bullshit.”
 

“It’s true. All my life I’ve had a hard time keeping my temper under control. See, you didn’t know that, did you? But Simon, he knew it, and that’s why he put me in those situations. Be honest with me. If some faggot was sucking your cock, would you be happy about it?”
 

I said nothing.
 

“Exactly. So don’t judge me when you know nothing about me. You want to talk about evil? You want to be so self-righteous to think you’re perfect? You ask me, that’s evil right there.” He tilted his head, keeping his gaze level with mine. “What do you have to say about that?”

30

“Boojum,” the Kid said simply. He paused a beat, letting the word sink in, and then said it again. “Boojum.”
 

The room was silent.
 

“Some of you are hearing this for the very first time. If that’s the case, I apologize. The truth is, so much has happened in the past couple of days that this word—boojum—has become a ... bane, almost. Ben claims it was Carver’s last word—”
 

“It was,” I said.
 

“Let me finish.” The Kid held up a placating hand to me, then once again addressed the entire room. “Ben claims it was Carver’s last word and maybe it was. But even so, who’s to say it means anything?”
 

Nobody spoke.
 

The Kid cleared his throat. “I won’t get into the different possible meanings of boojum, but the main meaning comes from Lewis Carroll. And if we all knew Carver like I know we did, we all know Lewis Carroll meant something special to him.”
 

Ian leaned forward in his chair. “So what does it mean?”
 

“It’s a particularly dangerous kind of snark. The most dangerous kind of snark, in fact.”
 

Jesse asked, “What’s a th-th-thnark?”
 

“A fictional animal created by Carroll.” The Kid shrugged. “You can read the poem it’s from later, but the main reason I’m mentioning it now is because even if Carver did mean to tell us something using that word—like some kind of code—we have no idea what it is.”
 

We were all spread out around the room. Beverly, Maya, Ian, Jesse, and Graham sat at the long oak table, where we’d just been eating a meal less than a half hour ago, the lingering scent of pot roast and mashed potatoes and green beans still in the air. Ronny, Drew, and myself stood leaning against the walls in different parts of the room. We all faced the Kid, who stood at the head of the table, one hand at his side, the other in the pocket of his jeans.
 

“So yeah,” the Kid said, “I just wanted everyone to know that. Not that I really expect it to change your minds, but I figure you’re all owed the truth. Again, if you weren’t told, the reason it was kept from you is because we were trying to see if it meant anything first. And, again, as far as we can tell, it doesn’t. At least not yet.”
 

Ian asked, “What does that mean, ‘at least not yet’?”
 

“Tomorrow I’m taking Carver’s hard drive with me back home. There are some files locked in there that I want to try to get into. Maybe the answer to boojum will be in those files. Maybe not. Honestly, I’m not too hopeful.”
 

Again, silence.
 

Graham cleared his throat. “Let’s move on, Kid. Yes?”
 

The Kid nodded. He looked relieved to be past the first part of tonight’s business. He even took his hand out of his pocket, and while the motion was slight, I saw him wipe the palm against the back of his jeans.
 

“Secondly, there is this business of our mystery rider, the one who came to Ben’s and Ian’s rescue. We still have no idea who this person is, or what his connection is to us or to Simon or Caesar or to anything.”