Future Imperfect (25 page)

I say, “Interesting.”

Belle smiles and says, “It’s not true but it should be.”

She directs me to a sketchy neighborhood where the houses are all on top of the factories and the train tracks and the empty looking warehouses. It’s this no man’s land where the lawns have rotting cars on them and the streets are all dinged and dented like meteors fall here all the time. We pass one house after another. She directs me left and then right and then right again.

And that’s when I see it.

Right there, on the rusted-iron garage door of some gnarly looking concrete bunker building is the spray-painted hand symbol I saw on the door to the LoDo Diviners’ lair. Same symbol on Janice’s T-shirt. Right there. I hit the brakes and I hit them hard. Belle almost gets her front teeth lodged in the dash.

“What the hell, Ade?!” she shouts at me.

I just point over at the weird bunker building. At the hand.

“So?” Belle plays cool.

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Nice try. Who lives there?”

“What?”

“Who lives there?”

“I don’t know,” Belle says, shaking her head too hard.

“Well, we’re going to find out.”

NINE

What it’s called is breaking and entering.

I don’t knock on the door.

I don’t yell out hello when I walk in, Belle in tow.

What this is called is getting some answers the only way I can.

Good thing kicking down the front door actually works.

We walk into this place and the first thing I’m struck by is the fact that it’s like totally festooned with wires. So festooned we have to duck under cables and cords and wires like the place was a tech jungle.

There are so many computer monitors on that everything in the room flickers like it’s underwater. Fans whir. Something not a cricket beeps. Something not a bird chirps.

And there’s this dude sitting in the middle of this mess.

He’s in a reclining leather office chair surrounded by computers. On his lap, two laptops side by side. One for each skinny thigh. He’s gaunt, his head shaved clean, and he has his bare feet in a tray of what looks like dirt. There are empty cans of demolished energy drinks catching the green light under his chair.

Belle, in my ear, she whispers, “Slow Bob.”

And I see why they call him Slow Bob almost immediately.

This guy, he’d lose a race against my coma dad.

We’re standing there long enough, in full view, that you’d worry the guy was dead. The way he turns to look at us, it’s like he’s moving backward. And when he speaks, he stops and starts like a busted-up cassette tape. His voice, it’s the blandest thing I’ve ever heard.

“Gilberto told me you might stop by,” Slow Bob says. “Funny, that.”

“So you know me already too, huh?” I ask.

All slow, Slow Bob says, “I’ve heard a fair deal.”

“Who doesn’t know about me?” Mostly I ask Belle that.

Belle says, “You weren’t ready, Ade. I’ve told you.”

I just let that go. “So, what’s this guy do?”

Slow Bob motions to the computers around him, says, “With these I can get everything I need. So long as I’ve got an inch of skin in some earth, I can read anywhere. And that means that I can see what goes down in the ground. Geomancy, I can read a place like you read the future.”

I look down at the tray of dirt his feet are buried in; it’s clear plastic but cracking and there’s dirt spilling out. I’m pretty sure that through the yellowed plastic I can see worms, but they might be roots.

“Where you want to go?” Slow Bob asks.

“Cherry Creek Reservoir, the north end, east side. Beach area,” I say.

“Big beach.” Slow Bob yawns. “Can you narrow it down more?”

“Right across from the tennis courts.”

“Cool.”

He types away at one of the laptops, fingers like bird beaks, and then leans back in his chair and says, “Okay, this look like the place?”

I walk over, lean in, and look at the screen. It’s an aerial shot of the beach. “Looks like the place,” I say. “Right there in the water is where it goes down.”

Slow Bob says, “Someone needs to grab me a drink from the fridge over there.” He points behind us. Belle volunteers to get the drink but has a hell of a time finding the refrigerator. Slow Bob shouts directions, only he does it so slowly Belle looks at me and gives a silent scream of frustration. When she does find the fridge, she slams the door shut hard. Computers rumble and belch. Slow Bob yells about that too. Belle comes back shaking the can vigorously.

He puts it on the floor by his feet and then tells me to give me his hand.

I do, his skin is cold, and he bites me.

Hard enough to draw blood. I pull my hand back fast, look down at the wound. Belle, she’s looking around for something to drop on Slow Bob’s head. I tell her I’m okay and Slow Bob says, “Part of the process. Just need a teensy bit.”

He spits into the dirt at his feet and then leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He says, “This will probably take a few minutes. Just sit back and relax.”

A full sitcom later we’re still standing there.

I’ve been watching the bite mark on my hand, looking for swelling, redness, pus, or any signs that it’s as horribly infected as I’m afraid it is.

Belle says, “It looks fine, stop stressing.”

I dream about hand-sanitizing gels.

I whisper to Belle that I’m ready to jet, that this isn’t working.

That’s when Slow Bob comes alive again.

Even though the approach of his voice is distant, sluggish, it still spooks us.

“Geomancy’s totally different these days,” Slow Bob says. “I don’t know a geomancer who’s had to go to an actual location in the past five years. What with the GPS and the mapping software, most of us are doing just fine like this. Sure, there are some show-offs like Stanley Pulse who feel the need to go trucking around with a rod, but that’s all sport. This is the future of our art. Besides, if I were out there checking out every landfill for Indian Burial Grounds and digging my nose into snowbanks for lost hikers, I wouldn’t be here developing software and making a killing on my GeoMagic Toolkit CDs.” Slow Bob points to a stack of disks sitting in a crooked pile on a monitor.

He opens his eyes, swivels his chair a bit to face me, without moving his embedded feet. He points, says, “That beach is a terrible, terrible place.”

I ask him what he means.

“Murder’s what I mean,” Slow Bob says. “That beach’s seen its fair share of blood before. What you’re going to do to your buddy, it ain’t the first time, is all I’m saying. The place has a funk to it. The way truck-stop restrooms do. Locker rooms. This beach has a bad aura. Most people, probably running around in the sand, sunbathing, fishing, whatever, they don’t even sense it. Cursed, is what it is.”

“Can you see what happened?” I ask.

Slow Bob coughs. “That’ll cost you fifty.”

Belle shakes her head, digs into her purse, pulls out two twenties and a ten. She hands it over, says, “Better be worth it.”

“’Course it will.”

This scrawny, pale man reaches down, grabs his energy drink, pops it open, and ignores the spill of fizz before downing a mouthful that gets most of his shirt wet. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand and then, to me, Slow Bob says, “Maybe ten years ago, maybe not that long, there was a kid swimming in the reservoir. It was winter. Kid was swimming hard. He was freezing. This kid’s mom was yelling at him from the beach, right there where you will do your thing. No one else nearby, just these two out in the freeze of it.”

“Jimi,” I say. I think back to how Vauxhall told me the story. How it was the thing that really stuck in my mind, it might have been one of many abusive things Jimi’s mom did, but it was one that haunted Jimi. One that haunted Vauxhall.

“This kid, little guy, skinny like me,” Slow Bob says, “he just can’t take it anymore. The bitch on the beach, screaming at him, smacking at him when he gets out of the water all red like a lobster from the cold. This shaking boy, he decides right then and there that he won’t take it anymore. Whatever this woman had done to him it had been bad enough that the kid cracked. He grabbed a rock. His mom was screaming, top of her lungs, calling him horrible names, embarrassing names, and he hit her. Just plunked the rock down on top of her head.”

We are all silent. Slow Bob closes his eyes. There is much motion under the lids.

He says, quieter, even slower, “What happened next was kind of funny. Funny not like in the ha-ha way but in the uncanny way. You know the word ‘uncanny’? That’s what this was like. The mom, she just stood there with this crazy, confused look on her face. The rock hit her head and her shouting stopped and then, just a trickle of blood. Tiny trickle. Stopped yelling, looked up at her kid with this look of just total shock and confusion, and then she keeled over. Time she hit the snow she was dead as the rock that hit her. The kid, he was a calculating type, he pushed, dug into the snow with his already numb fingers, grabbed some more rocks, stuffed them in his mom’s yellow parka, and pushed her out under the ice.”

I look to Belle. Her eyes are probably as wide as mine.

“Killed his mom,” I say softly.

Slow Bob opens his eyes, turns back to the flickering screens in front of him, says, “That woman sank like she had been made of rock all the time. And to add to the surprising nature of this little story, she was never found. Probably getting her bones gnawed on by catfish right this moment.”

“What about the kid?” I ask. “What happened to him next?”

Slow Bob shrugs. “He left the beach. Rest, I don’t see.”

Learning that Jimi is a murderer, honestly, it doesn’t faze me. I’m not surprised either. If anything, I was expecting it. Not this exactly, not him having sunk his mom in the reservoir, but knowing my feelings were justified feels right. It’s satisfying. First thought is: Jimi’s a danger. Vauxhall needs to stay away from him. And the follow-up: How come she didn’t know this earlier? Or did she?

“Anything else?” Slow Bob growls.

“Yeah,” I say. “There’s another thing. A guy in a mask. He’s following me around in my visions. Past and future. It’s like he can—”

“Time travel?” Slow Bob asks.

“Yeah.”

Bob laughs. “Sure. But he can’t do that. Impossible. Nah, he’s just getting into your head. Into other people’s heads. Anything you’ve seen, it turns to memory instantly. Almost even before you’ve seen it. And then it gets filed away. He’s able to get into there, this guy. What you need to do is stop thinking so linearly.”

“But how can I figure out who he is? Why he’s there?”

Slow Bob says, “Dunno that. Why he’s there is easy. Most likely it’s a thrill thing. That’s the most common reason. Then again, could be he wants to tell you something. Could be he’s desperate. How do I know?”

“All right,” I say. “Last question. Do you think I can change what will happen?”

Slow Bob looks over to Belle. The look on his face, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. It’s the old is-this-guy-a-nut-job-or-what? look. Then he turns back to me and says, “Can you change the orbit of the moon? Rhetorical question. Grandpa Razor’s the best of us. He set down the rules for a reason. You don’t try and break them. Not for anything.”

“That’s what I thought,” I say, all dismissive. “But either I do or I don’t. Can’t have two futures, right?” I don’t give him time to answer. “Look, Slow Bob, I need to see Grandpa Razor.”

Belle shakes her head. She mouths, Not a good idea.

Slow Bob rolls his eyes. “Can’t,” he says.

“For sure I can,” I say. “I’m betting you could find anyone.”

“Again,” Belle says. “Probably not a good idea. He’s a last resort.”

“I’m sure he’s already expecting me,” I say to both of them.

Slow Bob says, “I’ve only ever met Grandpa Razor twice. Last time was years ago. I suspect he’s slowed down a bit, but for a long time he was the scariest thing around. Back in the early eighties, and this is just to give you an example of what kind of cat he is, people were talking about him eating someone. Said he’d had the best visions he’d ever seen. Ate some guy, an old junkie, over the course of five months. Ate every bit too. Started with the knuckles was how it went. Ended with the ears.”

“Bullshit,” Belle says.

“You don’t get out much, Bob. Besides, we’re not interested in boogie man stories,” I say. “Grandpa Razor’s been calling me, I know he’s just waiting for me to stop by. You tell me where he is and if I get eaten, no skin off your back. You warned me, right? For this thing to end, for me, I have to see him and I have to know what he knows.”

Slow Bob smiles slowly.

“He’s in the Esquire Hotel, penthouse. Good luck.”

TEN

“The best thing you ever did,” Belle says, “is quit.”

We’re in the foyer at the Esquire Hotel and already a handful of junkies have walked up to us to beg for change. This place, it’s the last place you want to be at night. During the day, from what I’ve heard, it’s even worse. The carpets were rust colored once and possibly plush, now they’re gray and they’ve got holes in them the size of sewer covers. In the corners, under the decaying furniture, up the stairs, are chewed-up sunflower seeds, cigarette butts, beer bottles, crack vials, condoms, and rafts of different colored hair. The lights flicker. Even the sun seems to flicker the way it comes through the thick shades. The graffiti of the hand, the divination symbol, it’s all over this place. In fact: I saw the hand sign spray-painted on two buildings on our way down here.