Brady grew depressed. He had reached the all too familiar point where his bright ideas collided head-on with gray reality. It had happened with the Rolla vacuum cleaner; it had happened with his computer-assisted vehicle backing device; it had happened with his motorized, programmable TV monitor, which was supposed to revolutionize home security. His wonderful inspirations always came to nothing.
Still, he had one human drone to hand, and after a particularly infuriating visit from Hodges, Brady decided he might cheer up if he put his drone to work. Accordingly, Z-Boy visited an Internet café a block or two down from the hospital, and after five minutes on a computer (Brady was exhilarated to be sitting in front of a screen again), he discovered where Anthony Moretti, aka the fat testicle-punching cocksucker, lived. After leaving the Internet café, Brady walked Z-Boy into an Army surplus store and bought a hunting knife.
The next day when he left the house, Moretti found a dead dog stretched out on the welcome mat. Its throat had been cut. Written in dogblood on the windshield of his car was YOUR WIFE & KIDS ARE NEXT.
? ? ?
Doing this—being able to do this—cheered Brady up. Payback is a bitch, he thought, and I am that bitch.
He sometimes fantasized about sending Z-Boy after Hodges and shooting him in the belly. How good it would be to stand over the Det.-Ret., watching him shudder and moan as his life ran through his fingers!
It would be great, but Brady would lose his drone, and once in custody, Al might point the police at him. There was something else, as well, something even bigger: it wouldn’t be enough. He owed Hodges more than a bullet in the belly followed by ten or fifteen minutes of suffering. Much more. Hodges needed to live, breathing toxic air inside a bag of guilt from which there was no escape. Until he could no longer stand it, and killed himself.
Which had been the original plan, back in the good old days.
No way, though, Brady thought. No way to do any of it. I’ve got Z-Boy—who’ll be in an assisted living home if he keeps on the way he’s going—and I can rattle the blinds with my phantom hand. That’s it. That’s the whole deal.
But then, in the summer of 2013, the dark funk he’d been living in was pierced by a shaft of light. He had a visitor. A real one, not Hodges or a suit from the District Attorney’s office, checking to see if he had magically improved enough to stand trial for a dozen different felony crimes, the list headed by eight counts of willful murder at City Center.
There was a perfunctory knock at the door, and Becky Helmington poked her head in. “Brady? There’s a young woman here to see you. Says she used to work with you, and she’s brought you something. Do you want to see her?”
Brady could think of only one young woman that might be. He considered saying no, but his curiosity had come back along with his malice (perhaps they were even the same thing). He gave one of his floppy nods, and made an effort to brush his hair out of his eyes.
His visitor entered timidly, as if there might be hidden mines under the floor. She was wearing a dress. Brady had never seen her in a dress, would have guessed she didn’t even own one. But her hair was still cropped close to her skull in a half-assed crewcut, as it had been when they had worked together on the Discount Electronix Cyber Patrol, and she was still as flat as a board in front. He remembered some comedian’s joke: If no tits count for shit, Cameron Diaz is gonna be around for a long time. But she had put on a little powder to cover her pitted skin (amazing) and even a dash of lipstick (more amazing still). In one hand she held a wrapped package.
“Hey, man,” Freddi Linklatter said with unaccustomed shyness. “How’re you doing?”
This opened all sorts of possibilities.
Brady did his best to smile.
BADCONCERT.COM
1
Cora Babineau wipes the back of her neck with a monogrammed towel and frowns at the monitor in the basement exercise room. She has done only four of her six miles on the treadmill, she hates to be interrupted, and the weirdo is back.
Cling-clong goes the doorbell and she listens for her husband’s footsteps above her, but there’s nothing. On the monitor, the old man in the ratty parka—he looks like one of those bums you see standing at intersections, holding up signs that say things like HUNGRY, NO JOB, ARMY VETERAN, PLEASE HELP—just stands there.
“Dammit,” she mutters, and pauses the treadmill. She climbs the stairs, opens the door to the back hallway, and shouts, “Felix! It’s your weirdo friend! That Al!”
No response. He’s in his study again, possibly looking at the game-thing he seems to have fallen in love with. The first few times she mentioned Felix’s strange new obsession to her friends at the country club, it was a joke. It doesn’t seem so funny now. He’s sixty-three, too old for kids’ computer games and too young to have gotten so forgetful, and she’s begun to wonder if he might not be suffering early-onset Alzheimer’s. It has also crossed her mind that Felix’s weirdo friend is some kind of drug pusher, but isn’t the guy awfully old for that? And if her husband wants drugs, he can certainly supply himself; according to him, half the doctors at Kiner are high at least half the time.