122 Rules (31 page)

Some believed that the cowards capable of such reprehensible acts of violence could be cured with the right ministrations of counseling and the correct balance of medications, rehabilitated and someday integrated back into society.

Sam’s stomach roiled as he viewed the pictures of the crime scene and thought about a day, years in the future, when someone pronounced this butcher “well” and released him into the world again.

Sam too believed in a cure for such people. After witnessing the atrocities committed by those bent on the destruction of civilization, he had a more direct way to integrate them back into society, and it didn’t involve singing
Kumbaya
and talking through their feelings.

He’d gotten up from the booth, never having even ordered, and pushed through the glass door of the diner.

39

Monica’s back ached, and her legs had started to cramp from the long hours spent on the road. She needed to get out of the car and stretch. “Let’s stop someplace and see something,” she said as Angel drove them into St. Louis.

“Way ahead of you,” her friend replied, a slight smile playing on her lips. Angel made another turn, and the Gateway Arch came into view.

From a distance, it didn’t seem very big, but the closer they got, the more it loomed in Monica’s vision. Craning her neck to look up, she said, “That’s pretty cool, I guess. But I don’t really see the point.”

Angel cocked her head to the side. “Huh? What do you mean?”

Monica’s anger seemed to come from nowhere, but she felt powerless to stop it as she waved a hand toward the structure. “Well, it just seems like a tremendous waste of effort. It doesn’t really do anything. You can’t have a business in it or go to lunch at the top. I get that it’s the city’s ‘thing’ to draw people here. But it takes a tremendous amount of resources to maintain and run, money that could be better spent. Do an ad for McDonald’s—it
is
an arch after all—and get it productive.”

Angel rolled her eyes. “Gawd, you sound like such a lawyer.”

“Whatever. Part of the problem, besides shitty parents, for abused and neglected children is the complete lack of resources allocated by the city, state, and federal governments. There are always other priorities for those institutions, and they usually have nothing to do with the bettering of things for our smallest, most defenseless citizens.”

Angel stared at her for a heartbeat. “So, you think they should tear this thing down, just knock it over with a wrecking ball, and use the money to fund orphanages?”

Monica frowned. “I know you’re making fun of me, but basically, yes.”

“I’m not making fun of you. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to ‘Practical Monica.’ She’s a smart girl, but sometimes she doesn’t see the big picture.”

“Practical Monica” placed her hands on her hips and turned to her friend. “No, she sees the big picture just fine. It’s everyone else that doesn’t seem to understand.”

“Come on,” Angel said, taking Monica by the hand and pulling her toward the entrance.

“Where are we going?”

“To see why they built this thing. To understand how it benefits society and why we shouldn’t just bulldoze it.”

Monica sighed. She wanted to pull away, to argue, but Angel seemed to have her mind set, so Monica followed her inside.

They waited in the underground line at the crowded entrance for tickets to the elevator. “Well, I guess if we are going to do this, at least we don’t have to walk.” Monica huffed in resignation.

They boarded the tiny car, which seemed more like a spaceship escape pod than an elevator, their knees almost touching the mom and two young children on the opposite seats. The youngest child, a girl of about four, held her mother’s hand and stared at them with wide eyes. On the other end of the spectrum, the son, a willowy boy of about seven, asked a never-ending litany of questions. “Who built it?” “Why?” “How tall it is it?” “What happens if it falls over?” His poor mother struggled to draw a breath in between answering the relentless barrage. At one point, the haggard woman, pretty in her light summer dress despite the deep-purple lines under her blue eyes, smiled at Monica, exuding a bone-weary tiredness reserved for parents of the very young.

She watched through the small window as steel girders and other building infrastructure scrolled past on their ride up. When the doors opened at last, Monica and Angel let the family exit first. The excited boy tugged his mom’s hand, dragging her behind him. Monica stepped out of the pod and stopped short, astonished.

People, a great majority of them children, packed the long, arching room. Dozens of excited little voices chattered as kids peered out the small rectangular view ports. The family they’d rode up with disappeared in the throng. School kids in uniforms, families, and other patrons marveled at the view and technological wonder together.

Monica and Angel wove through the crowd, making their way to one of the windows, and stared out at the landscape below. The clear sky gave an unobstructed view of the river. They switched sides and peered out over the city. After wandering the hall for a little while, they left. Monica didn’t say anything on the ride to the bottom.

“So?” Angel asked. “Do we still need to call the wrecking ball people? Mr. Kadafi, tear down this arch!” she said in a decent Ronald Reagan impression.

Monica la
ughed. “You goob. First of all, it’s Mr. Gorbachev. Second of all, it was a wall in Berlin, not an arch in Missouri.”

“Yes, counselor. The distinctions you’ve observed have been noted and entered into the record.”

Monica nodded. “I guess you’re right. There is something here. I never thought there’d be any benefit to something so extravagant, but the kids were very excited. It gave the children and the parents something in common to bond over.” She thought about it for a minute. “Okay. It can stay.”

Angel burst out laughing. “So glad you approve. It would have sucked to have to walk into city hall and tell the mayor, ‘Mr. Mayor, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. You know your arch? Yeah, the one that brings in a zillion tourists a year. Well, Mr. Mayor, it’s crap, and I’m afraid it needs to come down.’”

The two women strolled the circular walkway around the arch to a nearby canopy of trees. In the distance, a paddleboat languished its way up the river. Several families, with kids running around, dotted the landscape of the shared grounds. Exhausted parents remained on constant vigil as their children played hide and seek and chased one another along the grassy knolls.

Monica turned her face to the sun, breathing in the Mississippi river air. Her friend had, once again, taught her a lesson about life. She looked over at Angel as they strolled the trail.

Perhaps, just perhaps, a chance existed that they would pull through this thing.

40

Barry Yamalki sat in his office going through news articles and the police reports from the Walberg explosion, hoping to find something that would assist Tyron. Another meeting with Laven loomed in the near future, and if he didn’t have good news, Barry’s life expectancy might plummet by several years. He’d seen time and again what happened to those that displeased Laven. Being behind bars hadn’t slowed him down any. Though his second-in-charge ran the basic day-to-day operation, Laven retained command of the troops.

Tyron had not yet caught and tied up the loose end. Somehow the witness continued to elude him. Barry had been sorting through the dozen or so news articles when something stopped him. With nothing new to report, a resourceful Phoenix reporter, desperate to blather on about something—anything new—started interviewing locals who didn’t seem to know any more than the flailing journalist.

Except, in this patchwork of pathetic attempts to rouse a story from the literal and figurative ashes, the correspondent entered the local coffee shop and talked to the woman running the place, Mary Beth Sanders. He got his news quote for the night when he asked her if she had any theories about the explosion and death of the local girl, Susan Rosenberg.

“…
I knew somethin’ was goin’ on. This town is little, and pretty much ever’one knows all the goin’s on of ever’one else. But that girl was so secretive. She didn’t want to date no one and never talked about her background or nothin’. You want to know the truth? I think somethin’ was going on with her, like she was hidin’ maybe. Then after her house exploded, there was the thing with the law office. At first folks was sayin’ that Lisa Bunder got fed up with her husband—Lord knows they’s fighten all the time—but usually someone like Lisa’ll come ’round after they cool off. Only she didn’t. S’posedly, she went to her office, took out all the money from the safe, and drove off. Don’t think so. That girl was flighty, but she was real responsible about her business. She’d never just leave it to rot like that. I ain’t no detective. Our sheriff is a good man, and I tried to tell him something happened to her. Somehow, that Susan girl is ’volved. See what I’m sayin’ there? But he’s not thinking so…”

The police disregarded the woman’s wild theories, but Barry started searching. He traced the car and credit cards with ease. He didn’t have the card numbers, but he found the car as a matter of public record. He could ascertain their connection from the senator who had connected him with the Agency. The same Agency who refused to continue helping, insisting they completed the project. A misunderstanding, Barry decided. When he first started working for Laven, the mob boss explained that everything was connected.

“See,” Laven said from behind his big desk after hiring Barry to handle all his legal needs, “there are threads between everything. They are invisible to most people, which is why the masses have to work so hard. They are busy spinning their own threads because they can’t see the ones that already exist. Everything, and I do mean everything, is connected.

“If you know how to see them, and even more importantly how to use them, life becomes your playground. Let’s take you, for instance.”

Barry stiffened, and his stomach gurgled.

“Your mother,” Laven continued, “is in a nursing home in Pennsylvania.
”

Barry tried to keep his face impassive and hide his shock, but he knew Laven had seen it. Laven saw everything.

“The man who runs it,”—he paused for a second as if thinking—“Greg Hutton, he’s got a problem.”

“I don’t understand how—” Barry began, but Laven ignored him.

“See, he likes the ponies. Every other Friday is payday at the nursing home. Greg has Saturdays off, and by Sunday he’s broke. Doesn’t matter how far up he gets, he doesn’t stop until his check is gone. He’s lost his apartment. He has no car. Nothing. Everything is gone. So Greg has been living in one of the rooms at the home—eating their food, using their laundry, you get the picture. But it doesn’t stop there. He’s maxed out his credit cards, and the hounds have been searching for him.”

“Mr. Michaels, I don’t—”

“No, of course you don’t because you can’t see the threads. You don’t see how everything is connected, so let me shed light on it for you. I know all of this because I make it my business to know things. Greg can hear those hounds baying for him in the distance, but they haven’t caught him…yet. He’s on the cusp of collapse. If the owner finds out his employee is living on his dime, Greg is out. No one will hire a serial gambler that lives on the back of the man who gave him a job.”

Laven tiltled his head ever so slightly. Cold eyes appraised Barry’s face; the mob boss seemed to be able to read the lawyer’s thoughts as easily as a highway billboard. “So what? They’ll just hire someone else. It’s just another bum on the street. In fact, we should tell the owner, right? Get him out of there. Don’t deny it. You’re thinking it; I can see it on your face.”

Barry didn’t deny it. The situation angered him. A man like Greg Hutton used the system Barry paid for. He loved his mother and allocated money to afford her the best care in the best facility the state had to offer. He went every two weeks, without fail, and spent the afternoon with her. She didn’t recognize him anymore. He hadn’t heard her call him by his name in two years and faced the immeasurable grief of introducing himself to her every time he saw her. Despite the expense, he didn’t mind writing those checks every month, but he loathed the thought of someone mooching off of his money.

“But you only think that because you don’t see the threads. See, there is a senator in Pennsylvania by the name of Silvia Goldwater.”

Barry’s forehead crinkled in bafflement. He had no idea where his new boss headed with this tale.

“Silvia is an independent, strong-willed, die-hard feminist, so when she married her four-star general husband, Drake Pinkle Hutton, she kept her maiden name. Are you starting to see the threads now? Greg Hutton is Drake’s disowned brother, though the two men haven’t talked in years, decades actually.”

Barry shook his head. He didn’t like the picture his boss painted yet he had no power to stop it.

Laven continued, “So someone with a charitable heart, my organization, let’s say, offers to help. We can keep the dogs off and relieve a little of the pressure. A man as desperate as that will grasp any branch extended to him. So now I own Mr. Hutton. His life is mine to do with as I please. Both Drake and Silvia, as career politicians, recognize the potential for scandal if it came out that his brother, disowned or not, had fallen from grace. Once the dogs were done with Greg, a mere appetizer, they would turn to the couple. The hounds, having a taste of blood, would be thirsty for the main course, and nothing would be tastier than a rich general and his senator wife.”