? ? ?
One of News at Noon’s most popular features was called “Just A Word From Jack.” Jack O’Malley was a fat old dinosaur who had probably started in the biz when TV was still black-and-white, and he bumbled on for five minutes or so at the end of every newscast about whatever was on what remained of his mind. He wore huge black-rimmed glasses, and his jowls quivered like Jell-O when he talked. Ordinarily Brady found him quite entertaining, a bit of comic relief, but there was nothing amusing about that day’s Word From Jack. It opened whole new vistas.
“The families of Krista Countryman and Keith Frias have been flooded with condolences as a result of a story this station ran not long ago,” Jack said in his grouchy Andy Rooney voice. “Their decision to terminate their lives when they could no longer live with unending and unmitigated pain has reignited the debate on the ethics of suicide. It also reminded us—unfortunately—of the coward who caused that unending, unmitigated pain, a monster named Brady Wilson Hartsfield.”
That’s me, Brady thought happily. When they even give your middle name, you know you’re an authentic boogeyman.
“If there is a life after this one,” Jack said (out-of-control Andy Rooney brows drawing together, jowls flapping), “Brady Wilson Hartsfield will pay the full price for his crimes when he gets there. In the meantime, let us consider the silver lining in this dark cloud of woe, because there really is one.
“A year after his cowardly killing spree at City Center, Brady Wilson Hartsfield attempted an even more heinous crime. He smuggled a large quantity of plastic explosive into a concert at Mingo Auditorium, with the intent to murder thousands of teens who were there to have a good time. In this he was thwarted by retired detective William Hodges and a brave woman named Holly Gibney, who smashed the homicidal loser’s skull before he could detonate . . .”
Here Brady lost the thread. Some woman named Holly Gibney had been the one to smash him in the head and almost kill him? Who the fuck was Holly Gibney? And why had no one ever told him this in the five years since she’d turned his lights out and landed him in this room? How was that possible?
Very easily, he decided. When the coverage was fresh, he’d been in a coma. Later on, he thought, I just assumed it was either Hodges or his nigger lawnboy.
He would look Gibney up on the Web when he got a chance, but she wasn’t the important thing. She was part of the past. The future was a splendid idea that had come to him as his best inventions always had: whole and complete, needing only a few modifications along the way to make it perfect.
He powered up his Zappit, found Z-Boy (currently handing out magazines to patients waiting in OB/GYN), and sent him to the library computer. Once he was seated in front of the screen, Brady shoved him out of the driver’s seat and took control, hunched over and squinting at the monitor with Al Brooks’s nearsighted eyes. On a website called Bankruptcy Assets 2015, he found the list of all the stuff Sunrise Solutions had left behind. There was junk from a dozen different companies, listed alphabetically. Zappit was the last, but as far as Brady was concerned, far from least. Heading the list of their assets was 45,872 Zappit Commanders, suggested retail price $189.99. They were being sold in lots of four hundred, eight hundred, and one thousand. Below, in red, was the caveat that part of the shipment was defective, “but most are in perfect working condition.”
Brady’s excitement had Library Al’s old heart laboring. His hands left the keyboard and curled into fists. Getting more of the City Center survivors to commit suicide paled in comparison to the grand idea that now possessed him: finishing what he had tried to do that night at the Mingo. He could see himself writing to Hodges from beneath the Blue Umbrella: You think you stopped me? Think again.
How wonderful that would be!
He was pretty sure Babineau had more than enough money to buy a Zappit console for everyone who had been there that night, but since Brady would have to handle his targets one at a time, it wouldn’t do to go overboard.
He had Z-Boy bring Babineau to him. Babineau didn’t want to come. He was afraid of Brady now, which Brady found delicious.
“You’re going to be buying some goods,” Brady said.
“Buying some goods.” Docile. No longer afraid. Babineau had entered Room 217, but it was now Dr. Z standing slump--shouldered in front of Brady’s chair.
“Yes. You’ll want to put money in a new account. I think we’ll call it Gamez Unlimited. That’s Gamez with a Z.”
“With a Z. Like me.” The head of the Kiner Neurology Department managed a small, vacuous smile.