“Hey, Mel.”
“Where are you?”
“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”
“What can I do you for?”
“You in town?”
“Just about to leave for a watchmakers’ convention in Chi.”
“Mind if I stay at the place in Staten Island for a minute?”
“You know the codes. I kenneled the dogs so all you got to do is relax.”
34
Other than the computer interface and the huge memory drive, there was a sleeve in the suitcase that contained a velvet sack filled with a good many seemingly flawless emeralds along with a system of key chains holding somewhere around a hundred individual keys. Folded into a cream-colored envelope was a twelve-page document concerning the Quiller Cannon. There was also a letter, scrawled on parchment, in what I suspected was Alfred Xavier Quiller’s hand.
To whom it may concern,
My offerings to you are these files and 47 10-carat jewels. You have been bequeathed these curses in order that the knowledge might be known and subsequently wielded like an ax of truth. All of us have weaknesses. All of us have erred. These missteps don’t matter much in the scheme of things. But some of us have sinned, that is — having committed an immoral act that is a transgression against divine law. Hopefully you, the person or persons who receive this trove of knowledge, will be, or become, wise enough to figure the right way to apply this knowledge in the pursuit of justice.
The key chain is for various safe-deposit boxes and storage spaces that may verify some of the claims that are made.
I entered the name of a favorite political figure of mine. There was evidence that she helped a friend get away with an embezzlement. She was also involved in a hit-and-run accident. She was not behind the wheel, but neither had she gone to the police. The victim of the second transgression did not die but carried the memory of the event in his gait.
I sat back in the chair behind the desk that stood in place of the minister’s podium overlooking the nave of the chapel. It was the proper place to preside over the countless indictments and downright sins that Quiller had collected when everybody else was asleep.
As a rule I am not the kind of man who is plagued by guilt or uncertainty. Like any other creature in the forest of the damned, I do what I have to in order to survive one more day. There’s little guilt involved with fighting for one’s life. But the incriminations of that device caused my heart to race and my mind to fill with undefinable guilt.
I typed in Roger Ferris’s name. The machine was inactive for a full minute before presenting a list of damnations. The headlines were: government overthrow, jury tampering, extortion, false witness, and murder.
I was only interested in one thing and so went there with some trepidation.
Reading about my grandmother’s boyfriend, my employer, I felt empathy. I understood what he was going through and why he wanted a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on Quiller. It really was a moral quandary and not fear that drove him.
He’d told me the truth. He hadn’t killed George Laurel, nor did he have the young man killed; at least that was the judgment of the Ten Thousand Things (TTT). But, regardless of his innocence, he was still involved with the murder, deeply so.
The software designed to search the memory banks of the TTT was simple but complete. It allowed the user to request information by name, transgression, political affiliation, gender, nationality, or race. You could ask who and how many of the residents of that drive had committed the crimes of murder, rape, sex trafficking, theft, betrayal, and more.
Many of the entries were achieved by investigation, interview, and subsequent research. Some crimes had files that provided convincing arguments, others had the locations of where the bodies or the contraband was buried. You could download specific files to a thumb drive in order to distribute a little information without revealing the rest of the trove.
The enormity of information, condemnations, and secrecy of the TTT was truly amazing. In order to gather and organize the events therein, Quiller would have had to have seven maids with seven mops working for a hundred years. I thought that he probably used agents from institutions like Int-Op to collect data. He must have spent most of the millions of dollars he’d made combing through the billions of souls and their sins.
The last entry on the main menu was something called the dead file. This was a list of 219 individuals who had been killed, either by setup (i.e., sending information to the victims or, failing that, the authorities) or by literal assassination.
There was the feeling of hard-sweat obsessiveness to the data and its meaning. Quiller didn’t only go after liberals and the Left. He wanted to show the world that it was rotten at the core.
After many hours of poring over the files, I decided to request a tally of all the inmates. I say inmates because the drive felt like a virtual prison even if those indicted didn’t know it.
There were 10,364 individual sinners listed and indicted by Quiller.
I packed the device away in its suitcase and shoved it under the desk.
After that I sat for a very long time trying to make sense out of the predicament that had been laid upon my soul. The load was too much to bear and yet I couldn’t just walk away from it. I didn’t have the knowledge or wisdom, the courage or ambition, to undertake the task that Quiller’s suitcase presented.
I didn’t want the emeralds, not even for Aja. That wealth would have been a curse for anyone not willing and able to challenge the entire world.
In the end I decided to bury the device away, to hide it from others and also myself. Maybe one day I’d find someone who could see the use of the library of sins. Maybe.
It was dawn by the time I’d made my decision. Quiller was dead. Monica and Coleman were free, rutting like teenagers somewhere. I’d paid my psychic pound of flesh and survived, more or less intact. I’d loved and lost but that’s just part of life. In a while, a few days or so, I’d be cautiously happy again.
After a few days and one last task.
“Hello,” he answered on the first ring.
“You sleep even less than I do, Mr. Ferris.”
“When you get as close to death as I am, son, you begin to feel like sleeping’s a sin. What can I do for you?”
“I have it in mind to meet with you and your daughter.”
“What for?”
“All I can tell you, sir, is that this is the only way to end your conflict with her.”
“You want her brother there too?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think he’s a player in this game.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. Midday. Anywhere you choose.”
“What about the Obsidian Club?”
“Sounds posh.”
“Are you sure about this, Joe?”
“More than I’d like to be.”
“Okay. I’ll set it up.”
“How’s my grandmother doing?”
“She’s walking perfectly and if I ask her does it hurt she says, ‘Roger, you got no reason to be askin’ ’bout my butt.’”
That made me laugh.
“Okay, Joe. I’ll set up the meeting for two thirty, teatime. Anything else?”
“Yeah. You’ll have to be the one to reach out to Cassandra. You know how?”
“I know where she sleeps and the home addresses of Robert Billings and Ray Bears.”
“See you then.”
“Hello?”
“Olo.”
“Joe. How are you?”
“Pretty good, considering. What’s going on with you?”