First Person Peculiar Page 6

  “You don’t understand,” I said doggedly. “I used karate or kung fu or something like that, and I don’t know any karate or kung fu.”

  “Who is this?” he demanded suddenly.

  “Never mind,” I said. “What I want to know is: What the hell is happening to me?”

  “Look, I really can’t help you without knowing your case history,” he said, trying to keep the concern out of his voice and not quite succeeding.

  “I don’t have a history,” I said. “I’m a brand-new man, remember?”

  “Then what have you got against telling me who you are?”

  “I’m trying to find out who I am!” I said hotly. “A little voice has been telling me that killing people feels good.”

  “If you’ll present yourself at the Institute first thing in the morning, I’ll do what I can,” he said nervously.

  “I know what you can do,” I snapped. “You’ve already done it to me. I want to know if it’s being undone.”

  “Absolutely not!” he said emphatically. “Whoever you are, your memory has been totally eradicated. No Erasure has ever developed even partial recall.”

  “Then how did I mangle a professional mugger who was attacking me with a knife?”

  “The human body is capable of many things when placed under extreme duress,” he replied in carefully measured tones.

  “I’m not talking about jumping ten feet in the air or running fifty yards in four seconds when you’re being chased by a wild animal! I’m talking about crippling an armed opponent with three precision blows.”

  “I really can’t answer you on the spur of the moment,” he said. “If you’ll just come down to the Institute and ask for me, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” I demanded. “Erase a little smudge that you overlooked the first time?”

  “If you won’t give me your name and you won’t come to the Institute,” he said, “just what is it that you want from me?”

  “I want to know what’s happening.”

  “So you said,” he commented dryly.

  “And I want to know who I was.”

  “You know we can’t tell you that,” he replied. Then he paused and smiled ingratiatingly into the camera. “Of course, we might make an exception in this case, given the nature of your problem. But we can’t do that unless we know who you are now.”

  “What assurances have I that you won’t Erase me again?”

  “You have my word,” he said with a fatherly smile.

  “You probably gave me your word the last time, too,” I said.

  “This conversation is becoming tedious, Mr. X. I can’t help you without knowing who you are. In all likelihood nothing at all out of the ordinary has happened or is happening to you. And if indeed you are developing a new criminal persona, I have no doubt that we’ll be meeting before too long anyway. So if you have nothing further to say, I really do have other things to do.” He paused, then looked sharply into the camera. “What’s really disturbing you? If you are actually experiencing some slight degree of recall, why should that distress you? Isn’t that what all you Erasures are always hoping for?”

  “The voice,” I said.

  “What about the voice?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know whether to believe it or not.”

  “The one that tells you to kill people?”

  “It sounds like it knows,” I said softly. “It sounds convincing.”

  “Oh, Lord!” he whispered, and hung up the phone.

  “Are you still here?” I asked the voice.

  There was no answer, but I really didn’t expect any. There was no one around to kill.

  Suddenly I began to feel constricted, like the walls were closing in on me and the air was getting too thick to breathe, so I put my jacket back on and went out for a walk, keeping well clear of Second Avenue.

  I stayed away from the busier streets and stuck to the residential areas—as residential as you can get in Manhattan, anyway—and spent a couple of hours just wandering aimlessly while trying to analyze what was happening to me.

  Two trucks backfired, but I didn’t duck either time. A huge black man with a knife handle clearly visible above his belt walked by and gave me a long hard look, but I didn’t disarm him. A police car cruised by, but I felt no urge to run.

  In fact, I had just about convinced myself that Dr. Brozgold wasn’t humoring me after all but was absolutely right about my having an overactive imagination, when a cheaply dressed blonde hooker stepped out of a doorway and gave me the eye.

  This one, whispered the voice.

  I stopped dead in my tracks, terribly confused.

  Trust me, it crooned.

  The hooker smiled at me and, as if in a trance, I returned the smile and let her lead me upstairs to her sparsely furnished room.

  Patience, cautioned the voice. Not too fast. Enjoy.

  She locked the door behind us.

  What if she screams, I asked myself. We’re on the fourth floor. How will I get away?

  Relax, said the voice, all smooth and mellow. First things first. You’ll get away, never fear. I’ll take care of you.

  The hooker was naked now. She smiled at me again, murmured something unintelligible, then came over and started unbuttoning my shirt.

  I smashed a thumb into her left eye, heard bones cracking as I drove a fist into her rib cage, listened to her scream as I brought the edge of my hand down on the back of her neck.

  Then there was silence.

  It was fabulous! moaned the voice. Just fabulous! Suddenly it became solicitous. Was it good for you, too?

  I waited a moment for my breathing to return to normal, for the flush of excitement to pass, or at least fade a little.

  “Yes,” I said aloud. “Yes, I enjoyed it.”

  I told you, said the voice. They may have changed your memories, but they can’t change your soul. You and I have always enjoyed it.

  “Do we just kill women?” I asked, curious.

  I don’t remember, admitted the voice.

  “Then how did you know we had to kill this one?”

  I know them when I see them, the voice assured me.

  I mulled that over while I went around tidying up the room, rubbing the doorknob with my handkerchief, trying to remember if I had touched anything else.

  They took away your fingerprints, said the voice. Why bother?

  “So they don’t know they’re looking for an Erasure,” I said, giving the room a final examination and then walking out the door.

  I went home, put the towel back over the vidphone camera, and called Dr. Brozgold.

  “You again?” he said when he saw that he wasn’t receiving a picture.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I’ve thought about what you said, and I’ll come in tomorrow morning.”

  “At the Institute?” he asked, looking tremendously relieved.

  “Right. Nine o’clock sharp,” I replied. “If you’re not there when I arrive, I’m leaving.”

  “I’ll be there,” he promised.

  I hung up the vidphone, checked out his address in the directory, and walked out the door.

  Smart, said the voice admiringly as I walked the twenty-two blocks to Brozgold’s apartment. I would never have thought of this.

  “That’s probably why they caught you,” I whispered into the cold night air.

  It took me just under an hour to reach Brozgold’s place. (They turn the slidewalks off at eight o’clock to save money.) Somehow I had known that he’d be in one of the century-old four-floor apartment buildings; any guy who dressed like he did and forgot to comb his hair wasn’t about to waste money on a high-rise to impress his friends. I found his apartment number, then walked around to the back, clambered up the rickety wooden stairs to the third floor, checked out a number of windows, and knew I had the right place when I came to a kitchen with about fifty books piled on the floor and four days’ worth of dirty dishes in the sink. I couldn’t jimmy this lock any better than my own,
but the door was one of the old wooden types and I finally threw a shoulder against it and broke it.

  “Who’s there?” demanded Brozgold, walking out of the bedroom in his pajamas and looking even more unkempt than usual.

  “Hi,” I said with a cheerful smile, shoving him back into the bedroom. “Remember me?”

  I closed the door behind us, just to be on the safe side. The room smelled of stale tobacco, or maybe it was just the stale clothing in his closet. His furniture—a dresser, a writing desk, a double bed, a couple of nightstands, and a chair—had cost him a bundle, but they hadn’t seen a coat of polish, or even a dust rag, since the day they’d been delivered.

  He was staring at me, eyes wide, a dawning look of recognition on his face. “You’re … ah … Jurgins? Johnson? I can’t remember the name on the spur of the moment. You’re the one who’s been calling me?”

  “I am,” I said, pushing him onto the chair. “And it’s William Jordan.”

  “Jordan. Right.” He looked flustered, like he wasn’t fully awake yet. “What are you doing here, Jordan? I thought we were meeting at the Institute tomorrow morning.”

  “I know you did,” I answered him. “I wanted to make sure that all your security was down there so we could have a private little chat right here and now.”

  He stood up. “Now you listen to me, Jordan—”

  I pushed him back down, hard.

  “That’s what I came here for,” I said. “And the first thing I want to listen to is the reason I was Erased.”

  “You were a criminal,” he said coldly. “You know that.”

  “What crime did I commit?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that!” he yelled, trying to hide his mounting fear beneath a blustering exterior. “Now get the hell out of here and—”

  “How many people did I kill with my bare hands?” I asked pleasantly.

  “What?”

  “I just killed a woman,” I said. “I enjoyed it. I mean, I really enjoyed it. Right at this moment I’m trying to decide how much I’d like killing a doctor.”

  “You’re crazy!” he snapped.

  “As a matter of fact,” I replied, “I have a certificate stating that the Stating of New York considers me to be absolutely sane.” I grinned. “Guess who signed it?”

  “Go away!”

  “As soon as you tell me what I want to know.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Are you still with me?” I whispered under my breath.

  Right here, said the voice.

  “Take over at the proper moment or I’m going to break my hand,” I told it.

  Ready when you are, it replied.

  “Perhaps you need a demonstration of my skill and my sincerity,” I said to Brozgold as I walked over to the dresser.

  I lifted my hand high above my head and started bringing it down toward the dull wooden surface. I winced just before impact, but it didn’t hurt a bit—and an instant later the top of the dresser and the first two drawer were split in half.

  “Thanks,” I whispered.

  Any time.

  “That could just as easily have been you,” I said, turning back to Brozgold. “In fact, if you don’t tell me what I want to know, it will be you.”

  “You’ll kill me anyway,” he said, shaking with fear but blindly determined to stick to his guns.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me,” I said. “If you do, I promise I won’t harm you.”

  “What’s the promise of a killer worth?” he said bitterly.

  “You’re the one who gave me my sense of honor,” I pointed out. “Do you go around manufacturing liars?”

  “No. But I don’t go around manufacturing killers, either.”

  “I just want to know who I was and what I did,” I repeated patiently. “I don’t want to do it again. I just need some facts to fight off this damned voice.”

  Well, I like that, said the voice.

  “I can’t,” repeated Brozgold.

  “Sure you can,” I said, taking a couple of steps toward him.

  “It won’t do you any good,” he said, on the verge of tears now. “Everything about you, every last detail, has been classified. You won’t be able to follow up on anything I know.”

  “Maybe we won’t have to,” I said. “How many people did I kill?”

  “I can’t.”

  I reached over to the little writing desk and brought my hand down. It split in two.

  “How many?” I repeated, glaring at him.

  “Seventeen!” he screamed, tears running down his face.

  “Seventeen?” I repeated wonderingly.

  “That we know about.”

  Even I was surprised that I had managed to amass so many. “Who were they? Men? Women?” He didn’t answer, so I took another step toward him and added menacingly, “Doctors?”

  “No!” he said quickly. “Not doctors. Never doctors!”

  “Then who?”

  “Whoever they paid you to kill!” he finally blurted out.

  “I was a hit man?”

  He nodded.

  “I must really have enjoyed my work to kill seventeen people,” I said thoughtfully. “How did they finally catch me?”

  “Your girlfriend turned state’s evidence. She knew you had been hired to kill Carlo Castinerra—”

  “The politician?”

  “Yes. So the police staked him out and nailed you. You blundered right into their trap.”

  I shook my head sadly. “That’s what I get for trusting people. And this,” I added, bringing the edge of my hand down on his neck and producing a snapping noise, “is what you get.”

  That was unethical, said my little voice. You promised not to hurt him if he told you what you wanted to know.

  “We trusted someone once, and look where it got us,” I replied, going around and wiping various surfaces. “What about that hooker? Had someone put out a contract on her?”

  I don’t remember, said the voice. It just felt right.

  “And how did killing Dr. Brozgold feel?” I asked.

  Good, said the voice after some consideration. It felt good. I enjoyed it.

  “So did I,” I admitted.

  Then are we going back in business?

  “No,” I said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an accountant, it’s that everything has a pattern to it. Fall into the same old pattern and we’ll wind up right back at the Institute.”

  Then what will we do? asked the voice.

  “Oh, we’ll go right on killing people,” I assured it. “I must confess that it’s addictive. But I make more than enough money to take care of my needs, and I don’t suppose you have any use for money.”

  None, said the voice.

  “So now we’ll just kill whoever we want in any way that pleases us,” I said. “They’ve made William Jordan a stickler for details, so I think we’ll be a lot harder to catch when I was you.” I busied myself wiping the dresser as best I could.

  “Of course,” I added, crossing over to the desk and going to work on it, “I suppose we could start with Carlo Castinerra, just for old time’s sake.”

  I’d like that, said the voice, trying to control its excitement.

  “I thought you might,” I said dryly. “And it will tidy up the last loose end from our previous life. I hate loose ends. I suppose it’s my accountant’s mind.”

  So that’s where things stand now.

  I’ve spent the last two days in the office, catching up on my work. At nights I’ve cased Castinerra’s house. I know where all the doors and windows are, how to get to the slidewalk from the kitchen entrance, what time the servants leave, what time the lights go out.

  So this Friday, at 5:00 PM on the dot, I’m going to leave the office and go out to dinner at a posh French restaurant that guarantees there are no soya products anywhere on the premises. After that I’ll slide over to what’s left of the theater district and catch the old Sondheim classic they’ve unearthed after all the
se years. Then it’s off to an elegant nearby bar for a cocktail or two.

  And then, with a little help from my shadow, I’ll pay a long-overdue call on the estimable Mr. Castinerra.

  Only this time, I’ll do it right.

  Erasures are, by and large, pretty lonely people. I can’t tell you how nice it is to finally have a hobby that I can share with a friend.

  ***

  When I was editing Sherlock Holmes in Orbit I decided to write a Holmes story myself. I chose to do an unreported case set in a time slot that Dr. Watson conveniently left open, and it also gives the true answer to what happened after Holmes and Moriarty went over the Falls at Reichenbach.

  The Adventure of the

  Pearly Gates

  “… An examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other’s arms. Any attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation …”

  —The Final Problem

  * * *

  It was most disconcerting. One moment I was tumbling over the falls at Reichenbach, my arms locked around Professor Moriarty, and the next moment I seemed to be standing by myself in a bleak, gray, featureless landscape.

  I was completely dry, which seemed not at all surprising, though there was no reason why it should not have been. Also, I had felt my leg shatter against the rocks as we began our plunge, and yet I felt no pain whatsoever.

  Suddenly I remembered Moriarty. I looked around for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. There was an incredibly bright light up ahead, and I found myself drawn to it. What happened next I can remember but hazily; the gist of it is that I found myself in, of all places, Heaven. (No one told me that I was in Heaven, but when one eliminates the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth … and Professor Moriarty’s absence was quite enough to convince me that I was not in Hell.)