User:EKrauskopf/sandbox: Difference between revisions

I turned to face the stranger who had taken my arm. “Gilbert.” It was a name I hadn’t answered to since childhood and had hated it even then.

The stranger sat me down on some damp grass next to an old man in a good suit and told me to stay put.

From what I could glean, he was a child of the Delta made good and returning home on family business. His life, he believed, had been one of intent and achievement. He said something about treating one of his employees poorly, and he appeared to repent of it. Something about having saddled her with young people wearing gaming helmets roaming the streets of Baltimore.

He reached into his suit coat and lifted out a deep brown leather wallet, holding it out to me until I received it. From another pocket, he retrieved a ring of keys and put them out to me as well.

It made no sense, and when I paused, he said, “Just write it. ''Emotion compromises calibration''. He’ll figure it out. ”When I finished, he reached out for the card and examined what I’d written. He seemed a careful person, one accustomed to following up and attending to the details.

He paused and gave me a hard look. “I don’t want my law firm involved in this in any way. ”There was something about the inflection in his voice. It sounded like a warning, not an instruction.

He took the pen back and repeated his directive, this time as a request. “Please see that . . .” His voice faltered. “. . . Adamski gets that.” He nodded toward the wallet. “That should cover any expenses you might have. Keep the rest for your trouble.”

I looked around. There were others sitting along the grassy slope, but no one else was nearby except one other man facing away from us, talking softly to himself. I thought someone ought to give both him and my companion some attention. Then the other man lay back on the grass, and he too went silent.

Knowing nothing about him and lacking any insight into what his message could mean, I reached over and placed the wallet back into the inside pocket of his suit coat, all its contents intact. I needed to know more. The fact that I had offered up my name as Gilbert underscored my haziness and that I should avoid making any decisions just yet. Stein’s thousand dollars was no

inducement at all. I might still decide to act on his request, but if I kept the money, I’d feel an obligation that I was unwilling to accept. Memories of past unfortunate decisions lingered.

The business card with my writing on it was still in my hand. Wanting to restore some sort of order, I slid it back into his leather business card holder, counting. Third one down.

It felt right to have the business card holder with the message inside. I don’t know why I kept the keys.

The doctor stood over me. “You’ve had a blow to the head and you’ve got a concussion. We’re going to keep you here with us for a few days so we can monitor you. ”He consulted what I supposed was my chart. “It says here you have confusion and memory loss.”

“We hope your symptoms will be gone in a few days. It might be a week or longer. There is something called ‘post-concussion syndrome,’ where the symptoms last longer than six weeks. It’s unusual, but it’s not outside the range of possibility. As you work through this, you can still expect to find there are things you can’t remember and you’ll probably still have periods of confusion. All that would be normal. ”He stopped talking for a moment, and I suspected he was trying to read my reaction. “How do you feel right now?”

As promised, someone did come in later to check on me, and I asked for my effects. My cell was in the bottom of the plastic bag.

I was beginning to drift off and didn’t have the energy to respond. But I did recognize it was Stein’s death that had been the biggest news item on the hospital TV blaring from the wall in my room. She tried a couple other topics, then said she would check back again the next day.

But the reports failed to delve further. Realizing whom I had encountered pulled me up out of my fog. Using my cell, I tried a deep internet dive. It showed him to have been a black hole into which money was inexorably drawn and from which none, or so it appeared, could hope to escape. And that his affairs were in the hands of Battersea, Welch, & Connor, an old and

The search, intriguing as it was, exhausted me, but as I slipped the plastic bag containing my effects under my blanket tight against my side, I began to give serious thought to running the errand Stein had tried to send me on.

For the past few years, I had been making my living by putting together bits of information that were just sitting around out in the open, not necessarily important by themselves but, in combination with other bits of information, quite valuable.

It was particularly intriguing that Stein had told me to keep all of this from his law firm, a condition I had not agreed to. Early the next day, as it happened, his law firm sent someone to see me in the hospital. He was a youngster named Mush, or perhaps Marsh; I couldn’t tell in my haze. He introduced himself simply as representing Mr. Edgar Stein’s legal interests. I thought him strange.

My mind had been going in and out, and he showed up when it was mostly out. His attempt at conversation must have been unproductive because he promised to return at a more useful time. He had known, which meant that Battersea, Welch, and Connor must have known, that Stein had

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me instructions for changing the bandages on my head and for managing my recurring vertigo. Walking was physically painful, and my dizziness didn’t help, so I mostly tried to stay still. Half the time, I couldn’t think straight. Other times, I was fine. I made the best use I could of the better times.

As was usual whenever I was on the road, Marta had been coming by to feed my cat Guilfoil. She enjoys interacting with him, but she’s not someone who would take on that level of full-time responsibility. She has her own life to lead and, despite her concern for me, it seemed that she was ready to get back to it. I hoped my situation wouldn’t inconvenience her too much

Marta’s interest coincided with my own intentions. I was already keen to get Mush to spill something about his employers, since Stein had been firm about keeping them out of the loop. And here was Mush showing up for no good reason that I could see, other than to get information out of me instead. I wished my head were clearer as I sat on my sofa, impatient with myself for

Noting my immobility, Mush made an effort to ingratiate himself that I found annoying. “Can I get you anything?”

“Club soda. Lemon and no ice.” I hadn’t intended the snark, it just slipped out.

“When you were with Mr. Stein, did he give you . . .” Mush faded into a blur and must have let himself out.

Mush turned to me. “Mr. Stein was developing gaming helmets. Do you know what those are?”

I thought that perhaps Mush had asked me this before and that perhaps I had been unresponsive, which would explain his having asked me again. Or perhaps he wanted to see whether my answer would change as my mind became less blurry. I withheld judgment.

I meant that gaming helmets tended not to work as well as people wanted them to. Stein hadn’t mentioned them not working well. Instead, I knew of such things from attempts by friends and enemies to develop military applications. And from some other arenas.

For some reason, I wondered whether Stein’s helmets worked better. I just had that feeling, but resisted the temptation to ask.

“No.” It wasn’t true, of course. Stein had mentioned both gaming helmets and Baltimore. Young people wearing gaming helmets roaming the streets. As he had said, ''disguised''.

My mind went again to reasons you would disguise something. Threats and opportunities.

The woman who opened the door knew Mush. She was holding a gun in her hand, casually, as if she had forgotten it was dangling loosely from her fingers. Not between two fingers, but just casually, as if it were the usual thing. Mush showed only tenuous interest. He complemented her on it, called it an Adams something. It was large.

“This is the gentleman who was with Mr. Stein when he died.” The woman told me hello.

The woman placed the revolver on a nearby table. She impressed me as eccentric, an impression based on my old life, when that sort of thing, eccentricity and its possible ramifications, had to be noted and taken as a signal of consequence. Especially when paired with an apparently casual firearm. Marta would have noted this and made something useful of it. For

I looked around. Like my own home, the furnishings were inexpensive and few, easy to replace or abandon.

Mush turned to me. “I think that you’ve no need to see me again. ”He led the way back through the tall grass toward his car. “I’ll drop you at home.”

Mush and I could have been at an end if I had let it drop there. But I couldn’t help myself. There was too much curiosity and potential for gain. Later, the street name was beyond my recall, but it didn’t matter because I had the house number and images of adjacent yards. I didn’t know it then, but returning would almost guarantee that Mush and I would cross paths