The Manuscript (16 page)

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, though. The concentration of wealth and power had never been greater with the financial elite than it was today, with some hedge fund managers making as much per year as the gross domestic product of small nations. Even as the average Joe couldn’t afford a cup of coffee on the island anymore, the wealthy got wealthier – as they had done so since the dawn of civilization. There were some things that would be perennial.

For now, the old man had his memories and his treasured quiet time with his great-grandson, Bernard, before he had to get the boy home to his ma so they could truck off to school. These weekday morning walks lasted half an hour and were an important time for the old man; a reminder of the vitality of new life as well as of his ebbing time on earth. The cycle was relentless, he’d seen far too much to try to fight it anymore. He had his small chunk carved out for walks with Bernard, and that, in the end, was enough.

They moved to the river side of the path, taking in the rush of water as it made its way out to the sea. The East River was a source of endless fascination for Bernard; he could spend hours watching the current sweep all manner of debris past their vantage point. It was just one of the many wondrous things the world reserved for the entertainment of the young.

“Look! Over in the water. Is that some kind of animal?” Bernard asked, gesturing with his small hand at an object bobbing against the concrete pilings near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The old man peered at the area where his great-grandson was pointing, straining to see. His vision wasn’t what it used to be. Nothing was, really, but it beat the alternative.

“I…I don’t see what you’re looking at,” he admitted.

“Right there, in the water, by the posts. It’s floating,” Bernard urged.

“Oh, I see. Nah, it’s probably some kinda garbage. Don’t look like no animal. Too big for a dog,” he said, and then finally was able to better focus and get a clearer look at the mystery object. He gasped, then concentrated on getting his voice under control so he wouldn’t alarm Bernard. The little boy sensed something was wrong and looked up into the old man’s dim eyes.

“Bernard, come on, come away from there. We gotta go call the police. It looks like somebody mightta fallen in the water.” In spite of his efforts to stay calm, the old man was twitching with agitation by now. He’d gotten a good enough look to know that what they were looking at was indeed no dog.

They made their way to the nearest pay phone, and with trembling hands he dialed 911. The operator took down his information and assured him there would be a squad car on site within a few minutes and asked that he wait for it to show up so he could pinpoint the location. He agreed to do so, more because he wanted to see how the cops would react than anything else.

The old man and Bernard sat expectantly on a nearby bench, watching the joggers as they waited for the police to show up. It was exciting for them both when the car arrived and the two uniformed officers got out and asked him to show them what they’d seen. It wasn’t often that Bernard got to stand in the spotlight and be the center of adult attention. He nervously walked to the edge of the path, trailed by the old man and the police, and thrust his tiny finger in the direction of the object in the river.

The cops exchanged glances, and the old man read their faces, knowing that this was going to present an interruption in their morning traffic patrol routine.

A grossly distended body bumped against the pilings, wedged there by the current as the river forged its way out into the harbor on its journey to the sea. The submersion had already begun to take its toll on the bloated pale blue flesh of the waterlogged corpse.

********

Michael woke late and went through an abbreviated workout before showering and making his way down to the coffee shop. He’d toyed with the idea of trying the other place at the far end of the block, but decided against being adventurous with his breakfasts. There was a certain comfort to knowing the food was going to be good and the coffee hot and plentiful, so he saw no reason to broaden his admittedly narrow horizons.

He bought a paper from the magazine vendor and settled into his usual booth. The café was filled with older folks, who had the distinct aura of having no particular place to be or adhering to any well-defined schedule. He supposed that was what retirement must be like – endless mornings at the corner diner, arguing politics or religion with the same acquaintances you saw every day, whose minds had consistently failed to be changed for years. Michael was by far the youngest person in the place, with the exception of a sketchy twenty-something year old couple in the back who looked either badly hung over or in need of a fix. Or both.

He opened the paper and scanned the news with a cynical eye. The government was claiming the economy was in fair shape, which everyone knew to be an outright lie. Inflation was said to be tame, which ignored that items like food and gas were excluded from the data. So as long as you didn’t need to eat or go anywhere or buy anything that got onto a truck or a boat, inflation was low. Gold and silver were up fifty percent over the last two years, signaling that the dollar had fifty percent less buying power. But the talking heads ignored such trivialities, choosing instead to focus on home prices, which were carving fresh lows.

It was funny because, at the time Michael had been growing up, his parents had been staunchly patriotic; to the point where they automatically assumed that Michael would spend some time in the military serving his country. There was never the slightest hesitation. But since then, something had changed. The disenchantment that had begun with the Iraq war had grown deeper after the economy fell apart in 2008, when former Wall Street bankers leading the treasury handed out the nation’s cash to their friends like it was play money. The politicians who accepted the largest funding from the financial sector nodded along like it was all business as usual. And now, many in the middle class had lost much, if not everything, even as those same banks, which wouldn’t even exist were it not for the country’s tax dollars, booked record profits quarter after quarter, and speculators who had helped structure the mortgage vehicles that collapsed the economy made billions while the rank and file picked up the tab.

Everyone Michael knew was in harsher financial shape than they had been a decade earlier, and it didn’t look like it was going to get better any time soon. New York was largely an exception because the entities that had most benefitted from the taxpayers’ generosity were based there, so the money tap was never shut off. But in the heartland, in the states between Los Angeles and New York, the country was struggling as those in positions of power shortchanged them time and time again. It sucked, but nobody had ever told Michael life was supposed to be fair, so he wasn’t in the least surprised. Abuse of power had been a constant throughout human history, and he didn’t see why anything would suddenly change, absent divine intervention.

He supposed he was thinking along these lines because of the manuscript, which made abundantly clear that there were two sets of rules: those for the general population and those that the rich and powerful lived by. That was one of the reasons the allegations in the document were so incendiary – it documented a system so cynical and so different than what was represented outwardly, as to make a mockery of the country’s identity. It was a manifesto to create social unrest on an epic scale. Michael could envision rioting in the streets as a very real consequence. But the real question was, what would the population do if it turned out its leadership had been provably running a drug smuggling, murder-for-hire and financial swindling racket for decades with the most nefarious criminal cartels on the planet – all the while pretending to be their mortal enemies?

That was one of the most troubling aspects of the manuscript for Michael at a personal level. He’d been in active duty and seen his friends take bullets in the 1990s in the Middle East, and he knew more than a few families who’d lost children during almost a decade of continuing action in Iraq and Afghanistan while battling in the name of democracy. It was impossible for him to believe that it was all artifice, but if the document’s revelations turned out to be true, then facts were facts, however unpalatable. It would mean that a lot of what he held sacred and had fought for was a living lie. He could see that there would be a whole lot of angry people out there who wouldn’t take kindly to such information.

How in the hell had he gotten involved in this in the first place? What a nightmare. He almost wished he could just rewind a few days and remain blissfully ignorant. Knowing such truths wasn’t exactly a peace-of-mind builder.

The waitress arrived and delivered his breakfast with a surly flourish, which he observed she did with everyone, so he didn’t take it personally. He dug in and tried to think about something besides the damned manuscript. Which was roughly like trying not to think of a zebra after somebody instructs you: “Don’t think about a zebra.”

Oh well. If he was going to contemplate striped animals, might as well do so constructively. He washed down his third cup of coffee, motioned for the bill and thought about his day’s agenda. First, he wanted to get hold of Jim and warn him there could be some storm clouds on the horizon. Next, he wanted to check on Koshi and make sure he’d made it to his cousin’s with no issues. Once he’d completed those two errands…what was the plan? So far he’d been entirely reactive. That ran counter to his nature. He wanted to do something. Take some sort of control.

He’d start by making the calls he could to verify that all was well. Once that was dispensed with, he had the germ of an idea growing in his head. It was a little outlandish, but he couldn’t see much else in terms of moves. It was still just a kernel but it had occurred to him last night at some point and his gut was now spurring it to grow.

Back in the apartment, he logged onto his new e-mail account and checked for a message from Koshi. Nothing.
Fucking Koshi
. He could be so unreliable sometimes. He probably thought this was a joke of some sort and hadn’t gotten through his head that this was a real threat.

Michael angrily stabbed at the keys on the internet phone. His call went straight to voice mail. Incredible. He had his phone off.

He talked himself down, even though he was fuming.
Getting angry wouldn’t do anyone any good.
Koshi could be a dick sometimes, that was all. It was just the way things were.
Move to something more productive.

Michael next called Jim and got the same response. He tried twice to no avail. Didn’t anyone answer the damned phone anymore?

That reminded him. His cell phone was doing precisely the same thing to callers. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Michael called into his voice mail box, to find two messages. One was from yet another potential client and the other was from Ken, telling him to call immediately when he got the message. The time stamp was from twenty minutes earlier. He dialed Ken’s number.

Ken cut straight to the chase. “No bullshit, Michael. Where are you?”

“Good morning to you, too. What’s up? What’s so important you got me out of bed?” Michael figured he’d try the light approach to diffuse the obvious underlying tension.

“You have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

“Ken. You called me. I’m calling you back. What’s the problem?” Michael asked.

“The problem? The problem is that Jim, your electronics technician, decided to jump out his window last night and splatter himself all over the sidewalk.”

Michael took a few moments to digest the news. “That’s impossible. How do you know?”

“I check the overnight bulletins first thing every morning. Routine. And I saw Jimbo’s name there.”

Jim had been referred to Michael by Ken, years before.

“Ken. This stinks. No way would Jim commit suicide. He wasn’t the type. I saw him just a few days ago…at Abe’s. That was the last contact I had with him. Fuck. I’ve been trying to call him since last night…” Michael rambled.

“Why, Michael? Why were you calling him? Another job?” Ken’s tone was suspiciously even – always a warning, in Michael’s experience.

“All right. Ken. Look. I’ve got reasons to believe that whoever planted the bugs in Abe’s office is working through my security team. Jim was there – his prints were all over the place. Abe is dead, and now Jim goes curb diving…and the bugs are nowhere to be found. It’s too coincidental, Ken. Someone’s rolling up the team.”

“If they are, it’s another good coincidence that you’re out of town, huh?” Ken observed.

“Ken, since last night, I’ve been trying to call Koshi, my computer guy, who was also all over Abe’s office.  I keep getting the same non-response as on Jim’s phone. Nothing. Dead.” Michael suddenly had a very bad feeling.

“Jesus, Michael. What have you gotten into here? Seriously.”

“I told you. Abe got an e-mail with a damaging document that implicated the government in a whole bunch of really nasty shit. If this is related, and it sure is starting to seem that way, somebody’s trying to tie up all the loose ends that could have come across it. That’s how it looks to me,” Michael said.

“Does this have anything to do with you being AWOL?”

“Ken, if I said I had a premonition something ugly was going down once you told me Abe was murdered, would you believe me? Or more importantly, does that even matter right now? Please – just do me a favor and check on Koshi. He was going to leave town last night, but he wasn’t taking this seriously. I’m worried. I last talked to him at ten p.m. and he was out at some restaurant, and then he went dark.”

“All right. Give me his number and his address and I’ll send a car by to check on him. I hope to God you’re wrong about all this, but I guess I don’t blame you for making yourself scarce under the circumstances. At least you’re still answering your phone…and returning calls.”

Michael gave him the info.

“Is there a number I can reach you at?” Ken asked.