There's Only One Quantum (8 page)

“Who?”

“Ms. Davenport,” he said. “Nothing like a woman scorned, eh, Ling?”

She said nothing. She seemed completely absorbed by her task.

“Wait,” Coe said. “Scorned? In what way?”

Chutney smirked. “I’m talking out of school here...But we’re not in school at the moment. Now don’t go running off telling Mitchell or Lyme or Ms. Hunter or Santa Claus this...” He paused as Ling worked her hands up the backs of his thighs underneath his towel and appeared to be massaging his buttocks. “Our Ms. Davenport, the frosty-nipple princess, was hanging it out for Revis.”

“Impossible,” Coe said automatically, since he was already privy to Revis’s relationship with Ms. Hunter.

“He told me,” Chutney said. To Ling, he said, “Right there. Nice and hard.”

“Revis was having an affair with Ms. Daveport? But she seems—”

“Asexual?” Chutney said.

“An adherer of company regulations,” Coe said.

“Not the one regarding employee dalliances, that’s for sure. But then Revis was quite the cocksman around town.”

“There were others?”

He sighed. Coe guessed it was a response to the massage. “The way he told it.”

Ms. Chu had begun massaging Coe the same way and her hands were moving over his buttocks. Her thumbs grazed over his anus, his scrotum. Coe attempted to ignore it. He said, “Do you think Steele has turned any other auditors in our department?”

Chutney’s eyes were closed. He was smiling. “Steele?” he said. “Who knows. There’s more than just Steele to worry about.”

Coe watched Chutney as the smile suddenly vanished and his eyes popped open. “You know something I don’t know?”

Coe said, “I don’t know anything. Ten days ago I was still in Philadelphia. It’s why I am asking you.”

Chutney stared at him a moment. Then his features relaxed and the smiled returned. “Forget work, will you? We’ve got these two lovely ladies here rubbing oil all over us.”

“Over?” Ling asked.

Chutney flipped over onto his back. A visible, obvious, erection stood from beneath his towel. Coe looked away.

“How about you?” Miss Chu asked. “You turn over now?”

“I’m good,” he said. “Just the back, please.”

He heard Chutney laugh at the response. From the edge of his periphery, he could see Ling’s hand beneath the towel, moving up and down.

“You’re not, you know...” he asked.

“Of course, not,” Coe said.

“Then what’s the problem? You don’t like Miss Chu?”

Miss Chu leaned over him and next to his ear said, “You don’t like me?”

“You’re quite lovely—”

Chutney said, “Let her wrap this up then. I’ve paid for it, for Chrissakes.”

Coe wanted to leave. He was not prone to frequenting massage parlors or receiving hand jobs from strange women. But, he needed to blend in—to fit in—if he was to pull this charade off. At least, that’s what he told himself as he rolled over and Miss Chu ran her hand along his inner thigh, up, under the towel.

“Where are you?” Her voice was breathless.

Chutney laughed.

“There you are,” she said, her hand around him. “Now just relax. Miss Chu is not going to hurt you...nothing to be nervous about...Miss Chu is going to make you feel good...”

Sean Tate sat at his desk, staring blankly at his CRT.

“Mr. Tate? Coe said.

Tate turned to him quickly and said, “You the guy from Philadelphia?”

“Scott Coe,” he said, extending his hand.

Tate took it, gave it a firm shake. “You ready?”

Coe nodded.

Tate stood, leaving his CRT on, and slipped into his overcoat. “Let’s get us some brewskies.”

Coe had sent him a message, via communicator, asking if he’d like to have a drink after work and fill Coe in on the job.

They went to Papa Cantrell’s on Viscount Avenue—a corner pub situated next-door to a florist. “I like to go here because no one from Quantum is ever in the place.”

They took a spot at the bar and Tate said to the bartender, “Alfredo, my friend—two porters.” To Coe, he said, “You like porter, right?”

“It’s fine.”

It was relatively uncrowded for that time of day and that part of the city.

“Saw you going out for lunch with Chutney,” he said. “I said to myself, I bet that’s the new guy from Philly.” He leaned in and said, “Chutney set you up with a hand job?”

“What?”

Tate smiled. “Everyone knows he goes to Ling’s for a rub and tug.” He must have sensed Coe’s embarrassment. He said, “It’s okay. We’ve all been in there. Hell, for an extra hundred, Miss Chu will let you fuck her.” He winked.

Their beers came. They were served in glass pints. Dark liquid with tan heads of foam.

“To the Ling lunch,” he said, holding up his beer. He laughed and then took a swallow.

Coe took a drink of his beer. It was bitter. “How long have you been an auditor?”

“Four years,” he said. “Four long, fucking years.”

“You don’t like it?”

He shrugged. “It’s a job. Fucking Mitchell is always on my nuts about everything.”

“Like what?”

“Reports. Files. Fucking breathing.” He drank some more of his beer and said, “That cunt Davenport, too.”

“You don’t like her?”

“I don’t. She’s a ruthless bitch. Ever take a good look into her eyes? Next time, look at her. Those are fucking cobra eyes. She thinks she’s Mitchell’s equal—hell, Lyme’s equal.”

“What do you think of Lyme?”

“He’s impotent. Really. A limp dick. Mitchell runs the section. I think Mitchell’s got the shit on him.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Lyme was fucking Davenport for a while.”

“Lyme? I heard Revis.”

He shook his head. “Revis was fucking your secretary. Hunter. Now that’s a piece of ass—”

“Did you know Revis?”

“We were friends,” Tate said. “Not the kind of friends that knows what’s going on in each others lives outside of the cubicle walls. Like when he got tagged for selling secrets to Steele—I knew shit about that.” He took a drink of his beer. “Porter is not just a drink...it’s a full-course meal.”

“So Revis wasn’t sleeping with Davenport?”

He shrugged. “Maybe he was. I don’t know. If he did, he probably had some kind of grudge against his dick.”

“Grudge?”

“You’ve seen her. Christ. Where do you even stick it in her? She’s probably fucking Lyme with
her
dick.”

“You don’t like her?”

“I don’t like her,” he said. “But Ms. Hunter? Now we’re talking—”

“What about his suicide?”

“Shocked the shit out of me. I mean it sucks he got fired—and jobs are hard to come by when you got like a hundred people to every one position—but Christ. Suicide? Get out of the city, move somewhere else—move to Mars. Start over. It’s just a fucking job. I mean, c’mon. Look at all of those people outside marching like zombies. They’re surviving somehow—”

“Do you think he killed himself?”

“It’s what the papers—the police—say. I guess he did...hey? I thought this was supposed to be you wanting to know about the job?”

“Sure...sure it is. It’s just that, well...look at all this stuff happening as I come on. I mean, what would you think?”

“Okay. Yeah. You’re right. They find the guy you replaced hanging from a tree. I see where you’re coming from—”

“I’m naturally concerned that it wasn’t murder, if you know what I mean, and he wasn’t eliminated for selling secrets or something.”

Tate picked up his beer to drink and then stopped. He set the glass back down, turned, and looked at him. “Are you fucking serious? That’s what you’re worried about?”

“Well, yeah, I—”

“Jesus Christ. What do you think this is? A spy novel? It’s just corporate horseshit. This stuff happens all the time. Sure. We steal their secrets; they steal ours. At the end of the day, it’s just work. No one’s killing anybody over it.”

He laughed, probably harder and longer than he should have.

“You can see where I had cause for concern—”

“I can see where you’re worrying the shit out of yourself for no good reason. Relax. We’ve got plum jobs. We’re untouchable in the audit section. You got no reason to worry—unless you’re selling secrets to Steele.”

He stared down Coe until he blinked. Then he laughed.

“Lighten up, Coe.”

Coe thought back to his first day, Diorenzo—the IT guy—bitching about Tate. “You never worry about losing your job?” he asked.

Tate calmly took a drink of his beer, savored it, and then placed the glass back down onto the bar. Looking straight ahead, he smiled. “They can’t get rid of me,” he said. “I know too much.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just how it sounds. I know some shit that could take a lot of people down.”

“Like Lyme sleeping with Davenport?”

He laughed. “Peanuts,” he said. “Fucking peanuts. I’m talking higher-ups.”

“Like Hanover?”

“Who the fuck is that?”

“Head of SAU.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He looked at his watch. “We done here?”

“I suppose so.”

“There’s this gal out in Somerset...cute, little blonde thing...only comes up tits high. She can practically give head standing up. Husband works second shift. Real asshole. I met her while doing some legwork on a file. Ever been to Somerset?”

“No.”

“Fucking nightmare. People practically spilling from buildings, windows. I told her I’d get her out of there if she divorces her old man.” He threw back the rest of his beer. He looked at Coe’s mostly full glass. “Drink up.”

Coe did.

“You got a car?”

Coe told him no.

“Just as well. At this hour, I’ll probably grab a hovercab.” He stood, threw down some money on the bar. He slapped Coe on the back and sauntered out.

For as sleazy as Chutney was, he was a saint compared to Tate. When he’d told his Steele handler that he had someone in mind to throw to Mitchell, he was speaking about Tate. Now, after meeting him, he was certain of it. He waited two minutes to make sure Tate had caught a cab, and then he caught the train back to his apt.

He interviewed the remainder of the auditing staff in a number of creative ways: striking up conversation after ‘accidentally’ picking up another auditor’s work at the printer; soliciting advice on local body shops for his nonexistent car; and television show talk around the water cooler. It was all essentially for appearances sake; a make-believe investigation.

“Do you still want me?” Janeiro asked. “To come? To live with you?”

She wore makeup. Her hair was different. It was wavy. She wore a black tank top. She looked as lovely as ever.

“Of course, I do.”

The minutes passed. They stared at one another; rather at the images of what they looked like in the past.

“I just...I just want you to be certain,” she said. “I love you, Scotty. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’ve begun packing,” she said. “I’ve sold a number of things I no longer want—”

She paused, a look of concern on her face. The camera shook. “Oh, my god. We’re having an earthquake—”

At that moment, Coe’s apartment shook. The doors on the kitchen cabinets opened. A few dishes fell out. A glass, too. It smashed to the floor.

He stared into the camera. Janeiro stared back, her mouth agape.

“You’re not on Mars...”

“Scotty, I—”

The screen went black.

“Janeiro!” Coe cried to the monitor. “Janeiro!”

He tried frantically to dial her back up. The building continued to sway. Each time he dialed the Mars number, an automated message advised it was no longer in service.

Seven.

Rainmaker. It’s what we do. It’s in our name. We are the world leader in the production of rain. Rainmaker. That’s us. We’re the “water people”...

He hammered on the door. A sleepy Miss Hunter opened it a crack, peeked out.

“Mr. Coe?”

“Can you access the databases from home?” he asked.

“I, I—”

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“W-why, yes...” She closed the door, unlatched the chain and allowed him to enter.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s late, but this is important. It can’t wait until morning.”

She was once again dressed in her robe. Her legs and feet were bare. “Would you like some tea?”

Ignoring her, he said, “I need intel on someone. A woman. Janeiro Martinez. Last known address: Mars.”

“Mars?”

“I believe she’s here in the city,” he said.

Coe followed Miss Hunter to her personal CRT. She sat down at her desk, keyed in her passwords. “Janeiro—”

“Martinez. Age twenty-eight. At least that’s the age she gave me.” He doubted any part of her story was true now.

“Here’s one,” she said, quickly. “Martinez, Janeiro. Cydonia, Mars—”

“That’s her,” he said.

“It’s not. She was three days old.”

“Was?”

“She’s dead. Died seven years ago.”

“What’s her UID?”

Miss Hunter told him. It was the same UID that had initially led him to Janeiro Martinez instead of Albert Bock of Winnipeg, Alberta.

“I’ve been set up,” he said. “There were no data entry mistakes. There were no mistakes—”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Coe.”

“There was a frame,” he said. “I walked right in and took the bait. It’s actually quite brilliant.”

“What does this mean? Are you in some kind of trouble, Mr. Coe?”

“What do you know about telecommunications relays?” he asked. “Specifically, involving Mars numbers?”

“I don’t have any experience with them—”

He was talking fast now, he realized that. His mind was jumping from idea-to-idea. Things, synapses, were firing, connecting. Janeiro Martinez—or rather the woman portraying Janeiro Martinez—had stolen the UID, and essentially, the identity, of the real, but dead, Janeiro Martinez. It was an old trick and quite easy. Anyone could accomplish it, anyone who could take a walk through a cemetery or peruse the obituaries. A baby doesn’t establish credit or any paper trail in three days. Just a name and a UID.

“Who is she?” Miss Hunter asked.

“Just find her.” He gave her the Mars number that had been disconnected. “I think it’s a relay.”

“But—”

“It’s very important that I find her,” he said. “I can’t tell you anything else right now.”

“I’m going to need some time,” she said.

The kettle whistle sounded. She stood and walked to the kitchen. Coe watched her make tea. He didn’t recall the decision, the fifteen feet between the living room and the kitchen, the standing behind her, the kissing her ear, her neck. He was aware of his hands loosening the sash that held close her robe, and of it opening, and of the freckles on her bare shoulders as the robe slipped to the floor.

She trembled as he cupped her breasts in his hands. He felt her nipples grow hard. Then she turned and pressed her mouth into his. He was aware of her hands undoing his belt, his pants. He stepped out of them, allowed her to slip his shirt off over his head. And then they were together and she was soft and warm and they stumbled through the kitchen and an aftershock and they tumbled into her bed and made love.

And he mostly made love to her—to Ms. Hunter—but he still couldn’t quite shake the notion of Janeiro and her olive skin, and he secretly wondered, as he entered Ms. Hunter, what it would have felt like to be entering Janeiro for the first time.

After they had made love, and Ms. Hunter was asleep with her head resting upon Coe’s bare chest, he thought some more of Janeiro. Echoes of conversations, snippets of dialogue—her grin—replayed in his mind. He’d trusted her; but she was a spider, or rather, the bait. There wasn’t anyone to trust now.

As if sensing his troubled mind, Ms. Hunter awoke and glanced sleepily at him. She touched his lips lightly with the tips of her fingers and then fell back to sleep.

In the morning, they rode the train in together to work, with Coe exiting at the stop before the building so they would not be seen together. All day, he smelled Miss Hunter on him—his fingers, his clothes, and his flesh.

He worked on the Bruges file. It made no sense to him. It was not named after a place, but rather a person: Vincent Bruges, an investment banker that one day turned up missing. There was no evidence of foul play or any sinister motive behind his disappearance. From all appearances, it seemed as though Bruges had just one day picked up and left without telling anyone—his employer, his wife, his mother—or their friends. A life insurance policy for $1M had been cashed in in the days leading up to his disappearance; debts—including a car payment and mortgage—had been paid off. A flight in his name to Argentina (Buenos Aires) with one connection at Dallas-Fort Worth had been booked one month in advance of the disappearance with departure scheduled for the very morning that Bruges kissed his wife and children good-bye and then failed to report to his office. What was Quantum’s interest in Bruges? It wasn’t clear. There were no instructions provided with the assignment of the file. Coe carefully read and reread the prior auditor’s notes, they being the only thing upon which to base his own investigation. There were telephone calls to the Bruges’s residence, multiple interviews with Mrs. Bruges, report cards and assessments from the Bruges children’s school, hours of surveillance on the Bruges house out in suburban Burdick—none of it fruitful. What he was to do with the file, he did not know.

He phoned Mrs. Bruges. Her first name was Loretta. “Are you the new caseworker?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said after a pause.

“So you’re the one that’s going to find Vinny now?”

“What do you think happened to him, Mrs. Bruges?”

“You have the file, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s in front of you?”

He hesitated and looked down at the file open and spread across his desk. “Yes.”

“And it has the notes from all of the prior caseworkers, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you wasting my time then?”

“I want to know why I should find him, Mrs. Bruges.”

She laughed. “Why you should find him? I don’t know. Maybe so you don’t have to pay out on the life insurance policy that you’ve done a good job of not paying, so far.”

“I’m not the insurance company—”

He was struck by an odd revelation—one that should have admittedly come much, much sooner in his career. He did not know exactly what The Quantum Corporation made or produced or what service they actually provided. Sure, Quantum was a global corporation with divisions in many sectors: finance, real estate, banking, investments, manufacturing, retail, hospitality—but what exactly that meant, was suddenly for the very first time clearly a mystery.

“We’re not the insurance company,” he said again, but not sounding so certain of himself.

“Well,” she said. “Whoever you are, or wherever you’re from—and whatever interest you have in Vinny; my theory on what happened to my husband has not changed in the four years since he’s gone missing. Put your reading glasses on and curl up with the file. Good-bye—”

“Wait.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Are you there?”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m not sure what our interest is in your husband...and I’m unsure why I was asked to find him...”

“Go on.”

“...I thought by speaking to you, that might become clear.”

“Christ,” she said. “What if you mean my Vinny harm?”

“Harm? But—and forgive me for saying this—you seemed to indicate a moment ago that you believed he was dead.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You accused me of being with the insurance company that holds the policy on Mr. Bruges’s life, and of holding up the death benefit.”

“How’s a widow to live?”

“A widow...only if Mr. Bruges is, in fact, dead.”

“You accuse me of killing him?”

“I don’t.”

“I pray every night he’s okay.”

“Does that imply that you believe he’s still alive?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said.

“What do you believe?” he asked.

“I believe there’s too many goddamned companies anymore. I can’t keep any of you straight.”

“Do you believe your husband’s alive?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“Not after nearly five years.”

“What do you think happened to him?”

“It’s in your file.”
“How can you be sure?”

She laughed again. “Because a million goddamned companies have a file on him. When he disappeared, I talked to everyone and anyone who would listen. I repeated the story so often I got sick of hearing it. I should have just saved my breath for the all the good it did me.”

“Why would a multi-billion dollar corporation be interested in your husband?”
“I don’t know...”

“What was he involved in?”

“He was a good man...a good husband...”

“What did he do?”

“Do?”

“For a living?”

“A professor,” she said. “At City College.”

“Professor of what?”

“It should be right there in the file...right under your nose...”

“I’d like to hear it from you, Ms. Bruges,” he said. “I want to know Vinny Bruges, the person—”

”Dr. Bruges,” she said. “PhD with an MS in Molecular Biology.”

“He was an intelligent man—”

“Is,” she corrected. “Or
was
. I don’t know. My feelings run hot and cold. Some days I feel like I could turn a corner or open the front door and find him standing there; at other times, it feels like he never existed at all.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Bruges.”

“Every time someone new picks up the case, I think, ‘Maybe this will be the man who finds Vinny...this will be the man that finds out the truth about what happened. Just the other day, a man from Steele called—”

“Steele?”

“Caseworker like you—they call themselves monitors there—but I know you’re all skip tracers, private eyes. All of these corporate sleuths on the case and not one of you have the damnedest clue what happened to Vinny.”

“What did you tell the Steele...”

“Monitor? Same thing I’m tell you. He’s still missing.”

“Which brings me back to who would have a reason to kidnap your husband or do him harm?”

She sighed. “Do you want to know how we met? Lockport College. He was the young chemistry professor. Me? I was a grad student—a pretty promising one. I enrolled in his class...He didn’t do or say anything inappropriate. He wasn’t like that. If I didn’t make the first move—and I waited until I was no longer a student of his—we would have never gotten together.” Her voice seemed more faint, as if it were traveling great distances, transmitting from the past. “He’s brilliant. He had all kinds of things in development—things only a speculative fiction writer could dream up.”

“Like what?”

“Synthetics—foods, skins—he developed a technology that allowed for grass to grow in Martian soil and in moon dust...given the right conditions—”

She grew suddenly silent.

“Mrs. Bruges?”

“Who did you say you were again?”

“I’m an auditor. I work for Quantum.”

“I don’t think I want to say anymore,” she said.

“But Ms. Bruges—”

“You ask the same questions...all of you. You want to know about his projects, his discoveries and inventions—what he was working on when he disappeared. None of you are interested in finding him.”

“I can’t speak for the others, Ms. Bruges. But I—”

“I must go,” she said and disconnected the phone.

He listened to the silence for a moment, as if there was something more she had said that had been delayed in the void. When he turned he found Ms. Hunter standing there, her small mouth unable to disguise her satisfaction. “I’ve found your Martian girl,” she said.