The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

“I don’t get it, Marshall.” Sylvia stretched out her legs, moving them closer to the fire even though she wouldn’t feel the warmth through her sweater tights and boots. She wanted to nudge them off and curl into the stuffed, high back chair— a cat in a cottage, all cozy and unimpressed, concerned with nothing but personal comfort. Were she not in a hotel lobby, she’d be half undressed. She had a good view of the Niagara Gorge — the two hundred foot gash in the ground left by millions of years of receding waterfalls — as well as the dancing, soothing, hypnotizing fire. So she put up with the clothes.

“What don’t you get?” Marshall’s voice filled her left ear. “I can’t believe you don’t get everything you’re after.”

“This farmer I interviewed. Total shit. I expected him to have some not-so-secret respect for the Milkman. Farmers are supposed to do things on their own. Cherish their independence. Hate the human calculators from corporate. Not this piece of leather. He loved the company. And I don’t think he was faking it for the cameras.”

“It’s not surprising,” Marshall returned. “Commodity producers used to be the play-things of the market. If they produced too little, they didn’t have enough to sell. If they produced too much, the price dropped and they did all that work for the same amount of money they would have made had they produced too little. Most benefit from corporate control. You didn’t think any dairy farmers were going to help, did you?”

Sylvia flexed her feet. “I don’t know. A little ‘look the other way’ is what I was hoping for.”

“I’m afraid the dairymen are playing the part of French aristocracy to this creamy Pimpernel. They are not going to blow the Milkman any kisses.”

“Ho hum,” she said. “This wouldn’t be fun were it easy. What else is on the menu?”

“I knew you didn’t call because you missed me.”

“I didn’t toss a message, either.”

“True, true, true…” Marshall’s voice trailed off.

“Did you see something shiny? What are you doing?”

“I made a note. Right here. Your previous victim’s cryptic expression proved helpful. Called an old friend from blah, blah, blah and, Emily Durante was right. Her boss, Victor Park, is lined up for a monstrous promotion. Director of Consumer Products. Grade 2.”

“Oh.” Sylvia felt ‘Grade 2’ slide down the back of her neck, from the regions of the brain that processed the data to the stomach, legs and sphincter that may be called on to react. People became deities at Grade 2, with power over landscapes and lives. Restrained only by the laws of physics, their imaginations and other Grade 2s (maybe the Grade 1s, if they’re paying attention). Or so the rumor went. Not a lot of trustworthy information circulated about the lowest grades. They remained largely unseen, beyond the news, unless one died, which seemed rare. There were only a handful of them. Sylvia wasn’t sure how many. 300 out of the more than three billion Ambyr employees? What little knowledge did surface bubbled in gossipy legend, a friend of a friend who saw the Director of Medical Services rounding up children for an orgy, the Director of Land Management hunting ollies for sport or the Director of Energy turning off power to Ambyr’s third of Mexico City because they beat Rio in soccer.

The highest grade Sylvia had ever met was a Grade 4 and he expected to have his rings kissed. She did not want to contemplate what real, unbridled power did to the psyche. When there’s only 11 people left in the world with a higher grade, it must unhinge you. She knew it. Marshall held a grade 5 and entertained his peculiarities with devotion. Of course, he made most of his real money on the side. A good deal of his power buzzed outside the corporate structure. Still, money bought power and power bought indulgence. She could feel it herself, after the tiniest taste of it. More fur, bigger fires, a baby.

“The question now,” Marshall said, “is who else is on the bench. I’m tugging on my strings to see who answers the chimes.”

“You think another candidate for this Grade 2 post is financing this movie.”

“It will embarrass Victor Park. The Milkman is currently under his purview. It looks like he can’t control his employees. Which he can’t. No one can. It’s the videographic evidence that does the harm.”

“My movie.” Sylvia drew her legs in and sat up. “The Milkman’s the bullet, my movie’s the gun.”

“Bull’s-eye.” Marshall laughed. “Get it? Bullet, gun, bull’s-eye?”

“Yes,” Sylvia said. “It’s about as funny as a hole in the head. My head. Seriously, if my project might keep this man from becoming a 2…”

“He’ll stop at nothing to see it quashed.”

Sylvia felt a squirt of acid in her stomach. She’d felt them before, intermittently her whole life, but the baby had begun to encroach on her guts, dimpling them she thought, making things like a squirt of acid so much worse than they’d ever been.

“When were you going to tell me this?” she asked.

“I don’t know, dear,” Marshall said sans his usual force. “When I figured out how, I guess. Or what to do next. There are other candidates who will stop at nothing to see this movie made.”

“So all this gun and bullet shit is nonsense. I’m a fucking nut in a cracker.”

“You do have skill with the visual metaphor. Have you ever considered a career in film?”

“I think I want to go back to landscaping.”

She twisted in her chair to look out over the gorge.

* * *

McCallum had never been to Wayne Clement’s office before. No reason, really. Everything he needed to know from Econ usually fit in two lines of mail or, on friendlier days, a short oral exchange. A face-to-face? Rare. Discouraged, he always thought, as if too much chumminess between the detectives and the economists might put the company in the back seat; move the bottom line closer to the bottom.

And they were right
, McCallum thought. Putting business second absolutely was the reason for this visit. Security professionals caught on to the value of personal appearances before they left the academy. Lean more and learn more, they teach you. He came here for both.

Clement had a nicer office than he’d expected. Ninth floor, with a view of Lake Erie. The exposed pipe work had enough layers of beige paint to give them the texture of elephant skin. The oak desk dated back before the Buy-Ups, probably back before Buffalo was a broke and busted pumping station poaching water from the Great Lakes and pimping it to warmer climes, back when it was a jewel of the Great Lakes. He liked the old world charm of the space, the slight hint of the past— that there
was
a past. Especially the big framed print of Captain Marvel. He figured it at around four feet by three, it dominated the wall behind Clement’s desk and represented the kind of information you got not with mail, but with a visit.

Because it took a special kind of confidence to have comic book art in your office. Old comic books stored wealth, McCallum knew, like paper money did in the last century. They had physical presence, outside the companies’ electronic realms. As such, they could be exchanged between the corporations. With fine art, it had become nearly impossible. Everybody knew everything’s whereabouts. But comic books, baseball cards, first edition Twains— you could always say you found one in your grandma’s attic and the company couldn’t prove otherwise. McCallum had once investigated bales of copper wire gone missing from a job site and two weeks later found a foreman selling a
Giant-Size X-Men 1
he ‘found in his basement.’ Unauthorized intra-corporate trade. Not the kind of thing you wanted to advertise in your office at Systems Security headquarters.

He liked the Captain Marvel, though. The simple red figure, with a bold yellow lightning bolt down his chest. Muscles, power, a subliminal phallic symbol. The print had a grainy quality to it. Blown up from the four-color original, no effort had been made to hide the fat dots of the source material. It occurred to McCallum that altering the size had created a new piece of art entirely. Not unlike some of Roy Lichtenstein’s pieces. ‘Head, Red and Yellow’ still resided in town, at Ambyr’s city headquarters. He made a point of viewing it any time he found himself in the building.

Clement rested his head on his fist, elbow planted on the desk. He gazed into rows of numbers on his large monitor.

“Shazam,” McCallum said as he sat down.

Clement’s eyes popped wide. They darted quickly right and left.

McCallum pointed to the print. “That’s what Captain Marvel says.”

“Didn’t take you for a fan.”

“Wouldn’t have guessed you were one, either. I’m not. I have a professional interest.”

“My appreciation is… similar.”

“I can imagine,” McCallum said. “My beat is theft of material and sabotage. I don’t care about much else.”

“Nothing else? Nothing on the side?”

McCallum looked away from the print and found Clement’s eyes. He knew a probing question when he heard one. He should’ve figured Clement would expect some give with the take, he just wasn’t used to it. System Security Operatives took. They usually just took.

“I knit,” he said.

Clement chuckled and looked back at his screen. “I’ve got to pronounce this John Raston thing dead.”

“What?” McCallum sounded more confused than angry.

“They’ve moved his account from Human Assets to Human Liabilities.”

“No fucking way.” McCallum inched to the edge of his chair.

“He retired,” Clement said. “He started living off his pension and savings. He produced nothing. The company pays for healthcare regardless, so he got moved to Liabilities. Now that he’s disappeared, he’s off the books. There’s no budget for a search. The opposite, actually. If you found him, he’d be back on the books. In red.”

“He’s worth more dead than alive?”

“We all get that way eventually.”

“There’s no pool to draw from.”

“He didn’t have an insurance policy to cover any investigation into his death or disappearance. He’s got no family to foot the bill. The company’s going to get all of his assets.”

“What about…” McCallum tapped his head. “What about proving his death? Doesn’t the company want to know, so they can seize everything now?”

“Now, later, the company doesn’t care. You’re right that time is money and the company is so frequently in a hurry. This isn’t one of those times. You may not find him dead. He may have gone to another company, or off line, either of which makes things messy. The company is happy not to know until you’ve got a corpse.”

“Off line, huh?” McCallum said. He wasn’t in the habit of thinking out loud, but he wondered if Clement had a thought on the matter. “You think Raston decided to go ollie?”

“You tell me, detective,” Clement said. “I would’ve picked dead or defection. What makes you think ollie?”

McCallum thought about Raston’s garage and the smell of gasoline and the open space in the middle. The nothing. The place where something had been.

“Can you give me a run down of Raston’s purchases over the last year?”

“Sure.” Clement nodded towards the screen. “They’re all here. Looking for something specific?”

“That would be too easy.”

Clement tapped his wristband, stared, mumbled, tapped again and turned his screen so McCallum could see the list of transactions. Dates, costs, places, parties involved. He moved closer, putting his arms on the desk.

“What’s this costing me?” he asked.

“The first one’s free,” Clement answered. “Once we get you hooked, you can’t afford it.”

“There,” McCallum pointed to the monitor. “Auto Trade, what’s that?”

“A solenoid. No idea. 80 bucks.”

“Me neither. What’s Auto Trade?”

Clement tapped on the desk space in front of his monitor.

“It’s an Ambyr sanctioned open market for vintage car parts.”

“Vintage, like in gasoline?”

“Lots of people restore them. Collect them.” Clement thumbed the Captain Marvel print behind him. “Bigger, heavier versions of these.”

McCallum nodded. “Any details on this solenoid thing?”

Clement tapped again. And again. “Solenoid 12v 3 terminal, 1955 through 1971 Jeep CJ. Seems to be something that helps start a gasoline engine on an off-road vehicle.”

The men looked at each other. Clement turned in his seat, folded his arms and hunched over the desk, leaning in close to McCallum.

“I wish I had some funding, Ed,” he said, “I can see what this looks like, but I couldn’t squeeze out enough to buy you a beer to cry in.”

“It’s not your problem.”

“It is. It is my problem. I don’t want to be one of those assholes in Econ… like mom, telling everyone when to come in. Lights out. Grounding you if you spend your whole allowance. You know what I mean? The only way I can come to work everyday is if I can convince myself, once in a great while, that I facilitated some good. That I didn’t yell ‘times up’ and stopped you all from playing ops just when you were about to catch the robber. If I could be the robber— if I could rob some Peter to pay Paul, I… I need you to know that.”

“I know.” McCallum leaned back and looked over Clement, out at the blue lake. “That’s about the only thing I do know.”