“As far as I know. I wasn’t too eager to learn everything.”
Wallis took the file reluctantly and flipped it open. Inside were more of the same flow charts broken down into categories with groups of ten boys per column. Each group was separated by two years in age with a short series of numbers under each name in different three number combinations. Other pages had a list for each boy of accomplishments and goals still to be met. It was a careful, orderly mapped out plan to ensure success in life.
“Everybody should have one of these, Stanley,” said Wallis, turning over pages. “This isn’t a plot. This is an old boy network. Clubby, snobby maybe, but not diabolical. Of course they knocked Jimmy McDonough out of this club. His career path was to become an even better alcoholic.”
“Yeah, well there’s a pretty nasty catch,” said Stanley, his head sinking toward his chest. “There’s no out clause. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. That’s what Kristen had been screaming about. That’s why she had been desperate and gone to Ray. The dumb bitch was so desperate about Jimmy she talked herself into believing it would all be alright, until it wasn’t.”
“No out clause.”
“Well, unless you consider death a way out. That’s it, that’s what I’m saying. You can’t sign up for the program one year and then decide you’ve had enough the next. Once in, you’re in forever. No alternative career plans, no dropping out and becoming some lame artist or joining the Peace Corps. They tell you what you’ll be, where you’ll live and occasionally, what you’ll do for them. It’s a very orderly system, alright.”
“They were planning to kill Jimmy McDonough?”
“They were planning to give him very limited career options. To contain him and keep him from becoming a problem. Sales in some dead-end company had been mentioned as an option. Jimmy wouldn’t have amounted to more than middle class, but maybe that was higher than he would have made it on his own, anyway. Death was the other alternative, and the one that won out. You see, until the very end, Kristen still believed in her young Jimmy and was unwilling to let them suddenly limit what he might become. She wasn’t having any of their ideas and kept pleading with the Watchers to come up with some other way. She told Ray that Jimmy was young and could sober up, but the Watcher had said they’d been doing this for a long time and knew the outcome. There was no place to go for an appeal.”
“Who is it that cares so much what happens to a bunch of boys? The Watchers? What’s a Watcher?” The more Wallis learned the less she felt she knew and the more she knew she would have to find out.
“That’s what I don’t know. I told you, I tried not to ask too many questions. I don’t know, maybe I should have. Ray said he’d found something out and we had plans to meet the next morning when he turned up dead. They must have found out. I tried going through his things but there was nothing left but the thumb drive. Somebody had beaten me to it. I wouldn’t have that if he hadn’t told me where to look, just… just in case. I’m surprised they didn’t find it.”
“So why me?”
“That was one of the last things he told me on the phone. To find you if something happened. You and only you because as much as he was sorry you were Lilly’s lawyer he admired what you could do, but that was only part of it. Ray said you knew someone they were trying to recruit. He’d found the name on a list and saw you with her. He thought you might have a chance to find out what was going on. That and you’re from here too. You have the right kind of roots. People might trust you enough to talk.” Stanley was talking faster, getting lost in the knots of what had happened to him.
“Who do I know that’s mixed up in this?”
“Sharon Whittaker, that’s the name he gave me. They want her son. They want Paul.”
Wallis caught the look of surprise across her face a little too late. Stanley saw it and Wallis could see the look of fear grow in his eyes. He stood up as a shudder went through him, ending with a shake of his bony knees.
“I have to go.”
“Not yet. Where do I go from here? Do you have Alice’s phone number? Who else knows?”
“Give me a pen. I’ll give you her new cell number. She gave it to me with the promise that I don’t give it to anyone, but I’m making an exception. She’ll just have to get over it. I can’t take any of it anymore.” Stanley hurriedly wrote the number on the back of the file and handed the pen back to Wallis. “She’s taken off for Williamsburg this morning. She didn’t even bother to have her mail forwarded. I’m supposed to pick it up for her and send it along. Tell her I’m sorry.”
“You said one of the things Ray said, what else did he say?”
“Just that most of these names had no home of their own and they weren’t all from Richmond. I don’t know what that means. Ray was going to tell me when we got together.”
Stanley turned to leave as Wallis grabbed his arm.