Midnight Movie: A Novel (19 page)

EXCERPTED FROM THE PAPERS OF DR. AARON GILLESPIE,
RISK MANAGEMENT ANALYST FOR THE DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND SECURITY

May 27, 2009—Still quiet on the eastern front. Brian’s runner, who went by the megalomaniacal moniker of the Lord, had not initiated contact in months.

They brought me in and embraced me as best they could, but there was always the distance, likely because I chose to sleep at home. Going in, I had a hunch that might happen, so I came armed. Not with weapons. With a plan.

All I wanted to do was prove myself. And if I exterminated a few people in the process, so much the better.

One thing I have learned over the years is that it is as important to cover your tracks as it is to devise quality weaponry. Look at those idiots who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, or that so-called bomb factory that was raided in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in 1997. The bombs were not good, but their planning was worse.

There had not been any significant terrorist action in Chicago period (strange, I always thought, because it was not a well-protected city), so I thought that blowing up the Excalibur nightclub—which would at once be catastrophic and endear me to the Lord—would not prove to be a problem.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: HE FOUND ME!!!!!

DATE: May 27, 2009

Dee—

Where have you been? I haven’t heard from you in a few days. I miss you.

That old guy from the earthquake night found me.

It was lunch period, and I was craving Taco Hell, and I wanted to be left the hell alone, so I snuck out to the parking lot and got in my car. I drove out the exit, and all of a sudden, I felt something cold on the back of my neck, and a voice said, “I missed you, Gwennie.”

I screamed, and he yelled, “I’M NOT GOING TO HURT YOU, I’M NOT GOING TO HURT YOU!!!”

I said, “THEN WHY ARE YOU HOLDING A GUN ON MY NECK?” He started laughing, and I said, “Why are you laughing? This isn’t funny! I’m calling the cops.”

He crawled into the front seat, then grabbed my purse (which is where my cell was) and said, “No, no, don’t call.” Then he showed me the biggest, most beautiful diamond necklace I’d ever seen and said, “It wasn’t a gun, Gwennie. It was this.”

I kind of gasped. You would have too, it was so beautiful. I said, “Is it real?”

He said, “Do I look like the kind of guy who would show up with a cubic zirconia?”

I looked him over, and he most definitely was NOT the kind of guy who would show up with a cubic zirconia. He had thick, black hair that he’d gelled into a cute fauxhawk, and his eyes were penetrating green, and he was skinny, but not too skinny. He was wearing a brown designer suit with a sharp striped shirt and a really cute tie. He looked like an older version of Robert Pattinson. I said, “No. You look pretty good. How did you know my name?”

He laughed, then said, “It came to me in a dream.” And then he kissed my cheek gently, and it was over.

I don’t want to tell you exactly what we did. I want to keep that to myself. I will say that we didn’t have actual sex, but we did almost everything else. But here’s the weird part. I gave him a blow job, and he came all over the place, even in my eyes a little bit. And it was that blue, that same blue I saw in my period last month. I got my period this morning, and there wasn’t any more red. It was all blue. I was bleeding blue. The same blue as the old guy’s come.

But that’s not the weird part. The weird part is, I don’t care.

xox,
Gwennie

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: re: HE FOUND ME!!!!!

DATE: May 27, 2009

I had my period too. I’m bleeding blue. And unlike you, I fucking care.

I’m transferring schools, and I’m not telling you where. Don’t call or write me anymore. If I see you on the street, I’m going to hurt you, and you can save this e-mail to show to the police. I hate you, and I will hate you until one of us dies.

Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.

EXCERPTED FROM THE PAPERS OF DR. AARON GILLESPIE,
RISK MANAGEMENT ANALYST FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY

May 28, 2009—I gave them the plan. They loved it, all except for Brian. That is not true, exactly. Brian loved the concept, but he did not want to execute it, as he was nervous about doing anything to “advance the cause” without his runner’s approval.

I wanted to make Brian angry, so angry that he would make a decision that went against his masters. He had come to respect me, and he felt that my opinion of him counted for something, so I called him a coward. I insulted his mother. I questioned his masculinity. For hours. In my experience, this is the kind of thing that can put a Middle Eastern male over the edge. But Brian, to his credit, would not be swayed by name-calling. He simply laughed.

The other men, who had been held down for two-plus years, were itching to kill, maim, and destroy. (Bully for them!) They believed I had hit on the perfect way to simultaneously make a statement and cause some considerable civilian damage, so they went to work on Brian. After hours and hours of what I believed were some quite convincing arguments, Brian would not bend, so they told their soon-to-be-deposed leader that if he was not with them, he was against them, and if he remained against them, they would inform the runner that Brian was a double agent who moonlighted with Mossad. He saw they were serious, and he gave in. Blackmail is never elegant, but it is effective. And besides, like all of us, he wanted some blood on his hands.

Before I came aboard, they had procured four nondescript vans that, as far as the Department of Motor Vehicles was concerned, did not exist. Brian had explicit instructions to save them for future action. Much to my eternal gratitude, he allowed me to use two of them.

At this point, we had a goodly number of homemade explosive devices at our disposal, including several dozen pipe bombs, five suitcase bombs, and, the keynote to my plan, a cyanide bomb.

When I refer to my “plan” as a plan, it makes it sound much more grandiose than it actually was. In reality, all we were going to do was load van #1 with twenty pipe bombs and five canisters of gasoline, set it on fire, and leave it behind the Excalibur, where it would kill somewhere between twenty-five and fifty people, and send the remaining two hundred or so clubgoers out the front door, where they would be met by van #2, which would house the gas bomb. The timer on that particular explosive, as well as the compound, was a masterwork.

It could not have been easier. I drove the pipe bomb van, and Brian took the cyanide vehicle. We arrived at the Excalibur at precisely midnight, when it was at its most crowded. I got out of the van and made a bonfire in the back, then jumped into a car we had planted earlier and drove off. Simultaneously, Brian parked his van across the street from the club, turned on the timer, calmly left the van, and retreated to the subway.

It went off without a hitch. My only regret is that I was not able to see the aftermath.

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

EXCALIBUR STILL OFF-LIMITS

HOMELAND SECURITY: “NO END IN SIGHT”; CDC CITES CYANIDE

JUNE 4, 2009

BY DONNA WONG

CHICAGO
—Three days after the deadly terrorist attack at the Excalibur, the area surrounding the club is still being quarantined.

Homeland Security press officer Lt. Gregor Montone said, “It is going to be like this for the foreseeable future. There’s no end in sight. Despite our best efforts, the air is still deadly. Think of it as Ground Zero. Citizens should avoid downtown like it’s the [expletive deleted] plague.”

The death toll from the disaster has risen to 93, and there are at least 20 others in critical condition, some with third-degree burns and others with respiratory damage from the bio-weapons.

Marlon Wooten of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta believes the chemical used in the attack was a cyanide composite.

“It is possible it was straight cyanide,” Wooten said. “Normally, something like that would dissipate in several hours. We have no clue how or when this will scatter. We hope that the chemical fingerprint will
point us in the direction of the solution and the perpetrators.”

Illinois governor Wilton Jacobs and Chicago mayor Elvin Washington will tour the event zone this afternoon.

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