Conspiracies

"Shit still happens."

"How eloquent you are today."

Jack shrugged. "It's a gift."

"I envy you. But as you say, shit does indeed still happen. So, people who don't use Occam's Razor tend to go two ways. Some drop into denial and reject all our centuries of rational and scientific evidence; they seek shelter in orthodoxy and cling to potty beliefs like creationism."

"Some of them must belong to SESOUP. I saw a flyer about a book exposing 'the Evolution Hoax.'"

"With Darwin as the chief conspirator, I'm sure. But if you're Occam-impaired and choose to keep your head out of the sand, you must come up with new brief systems to explain what's wrong with your world and who's pulling the strings attached to your life. For half a century international communism was such a wonderful bad guy, but when the USSR went kaput it left a huge vacuum that had to be filled—because we all know there's something in those shadows. King and the Kennedy brothers weren't killed by lone meshuggeners, the changes in family life and society aren't part of long processes—they're all part of a plan. The result is that fringe groups, with the help of a jaded, sensation-hungry public and accommodating mass media, get main-streamed. We find comfort in the wackiness."

"I don't know," Jack said. "Aliens, antichrists, New World Orders ... that's comforting?"

"For lots of people, most certainly yes. There's a certain comfort in being able to point a finger and say 'That's why,' in being able to explain events, no matter how scary the explanation. If the cause is a conspiracy, then it can be identified, it can be broken up, and the world will be on track again."

"Which brings us back to control. You know," Jack said, remembering his conversations with various SESOUPers, "the fear of mind control seems to play a big part in all their theories."

"And shadow governments. A shadow government you need, subverting the will of the electorate in order to implement mind control."

"Yeah. Olive worried about the 666 chip, Zaleski talked about mind-control devices implanted by aliens, and Kenway went on about the CIA's mind control programs."

"That you should lose control over your thoughts and actions is a terrible fear. You would think about things that frighten you, you could injure or hurt people you love."

"Start talking about mind control and I start thinking about Dirty Eddie," Jack said, referring to a homeless guy of indeterminate age and race who used to wander Columbus Avenue.

Abe smiled. "Eddie ... where is he these days? Haven't seen him for a year at least."

"Me neither, but you remember the aluminum foil cap he used to wear? Told me it was to keep out the voices that kept telling him to do things."

"I'm sure any conspiracy theory has its paranoid schiz mavens; that sort of stuff is tailor-made for them. But for the rest who haven't completely broken with reality, the cult aspect is probably as important as the conspiracies themselves. Fellow True Believers form a sort of intellectual commune. Not only do you share The Truth with them, but appreciation of that common knowledge sets you apart from the workaday schlmiels who remain in the dark. You form an elite corps. Soon you're associating only with other True Believers, people who won't challenge The Truth, which in turn reinforces The Truth over and over. I'm sure no small number of people are involved for fun and profit, but the core believers are searching for something."

"Control."

"Yes ... and something else, maybe. Something they're not finding in modern society. Family, I think. Fellow believers become a family of sorts. And in this rootless, traditionless, culturally challenged society America has become, family is hard to find."

Family ... Jack thought about how violent death had hurled him on a tangential arc from his own family, how his father and sister and brother were scattered now up and down the East Coast. And he thought of how Gia and Vicky and Abe and Julio had become a new family of sorts. Anchors that kept him from drifting into a dark no-man's land.

"Yeah," he said. "I guess everybody needs a family of some sort."

"And this fish yoich group—"

"SESOUP."

"Whatever—is a sort of extended family. And like any family, they have squabbles."

"Deadly squabbles?" Jack said. "Neck-twisting, eye-gouging, lip-removing squabbles?"

Abe shrugged. "Hey. When the police find a dead body, who's the first suspect? Someone in the family. And here you're dealing with one meshugge family."

"Yeah, maybe," Jack said. "But I've got to tell you, Abe, after what's been happening, I'm starting to wonder."

"Oy, you're not serious? I'm starting to think maybe you've been hanging around these people too long."

"Something's, going on, something a lot bigger than a bunch of conspiracy nuts sitting around and trading theories. I sense it, Abe. Someone's moving around behind the scenery. I don't know if it's one of these fabled secret organizations or a government agency—"

"If it's a government agency, then you should include yourself out of this mess immediately, if not sooner. You and government weren't meant to mix. Let someone else find the missing lady."

"But I can't," Jack said, wishing he could get out, but haunted by what Melanie Ehler had told Lew.

"Why the hell not?"

"Didn't I tell you? Because only I can find her. Only I will understand."

5

Jack closed his apartment door behind him and froze. He scanned the front room as he snatched the Semmerling from his ankle holster.

Something wrong here.

He listened. No sound except the hum from the computer's CPU fan and the ticks and tocks from the various pendulum clocks—a Shmoo, Felix the Cat, Sleepy the Dwarf—on the walls. No unusual odor.

He didn't sense anyone in the apartment, yet something was not right. With his pistol against his thigh, he did a quick search of all the rooms—he knew every possible hiding place, and each was empty. All the windows were double-locked with no sign of forced entry. Times like this he wished he'd put bars on the windows; trouble was, bars worked both ways, and there might come a time when he wanted to go out one of those windows.

Jack and his fellow tenants had a mutual watchdog society and were extremely careful who they buzzed in. A four-way bar-bolt secured his door. No one was going to break it down, but as he well knew from experience, no lock was bypass-proof. No system was perfect.

Long ago he'd considered and rejected an alarm system; that would bring the police, and the last thing he wanted was a couple of cops—city or private—snooping through his place looking for an intruder.

He thought of Kenway's motion recorder and wished he had one. That would have settled the question once and for all.

Jack turned in a slow circle. He was the only one here now. And from all appearances, he was the only one who had been here since he'd locked up and left yesterday.

But he didn't put the Semmerling away. His hackles were up and his nervous system was on full alert.

Why?

He couldn't put his finger on it, but the apartment and its contents seemed subtly out of kilter, just the tiniest bit askew.

He checked his computer, the filing cabinet, riffled through the papers on his desk, did a count in the weapons cache behind the secretary. Nothing appeared to be missing, everything seemed to be just where he'd left it. He checked his shelves, still crammed with all his neat stuff. Nothing had been disturbed—