The Eighth Day

Chapter 33

There'd been a security camera. They had a video of him. That explained why the police showed up in Effingham. Someone recognized him—most likely the hotel clerk—and called it in. Which meant the standoff outside wasn't some bureaucratic miscommunication, because the men the police ran into weren't FBI, CIA, or any other three-lettered acronymic wing of the government.

They were the ones who'd fabricated memories of a life in Amarillo and a wife he'd never married. They'd relentlessly pursued him across the country. And a lifetime ago, a stranger had warned him about them in a New York City restaurant.

But who they were or why they were after him remained an enigma, and he put little credence in the tangled knot of his backstory. Throw in his visions of Vietnam, and the questions were piling up with no answers in sight.

In light of the video from the charging station, he needed to stay out of the public eye. But this wasn't something he could ride out like a bad storm, and he'd lose if he tried to go it alone. Considering he had one person in the world he trusted, the decision was easy. Shawn Jaffe set New York City as his destination in the compact's navigation system and drove.

By the time he reached its outskirts, the shadows had lengthened and distorted, as if the world was melting away. Beneath their smears of darkness, traffic clogged the streets, a gridlock in all directions.

Shawn Jaffe inched forward. He strummed his thumbs on the steering wheel as he searched for a place to park. Curbside was no use, but he spotted a parking garage ahead on the right. He signaled and forced his way into the adjacent lane. Horns blared. He gave a sorry-about-that wave and rolled over the sidewalk. The flow of pedestrians swelled around the compact's front bumper, and he inched forward until he broke through the surface tension of the crowd. A boom barrier rose in a vertical arc, and he drove beneath it into the gloomy viscera of the garage.

The compact spiraled up the ramp, the purr of its engine echoing through the concrete passageway. On the third level, he found an empty parking space, and he spun the wheel and squeezed into it. He grabbed the pistol from the center console compartment and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans before he got out of the car. The cool, shaded air of the garage caused his arms to break out in gooseflesh. He jammed his hands into his pockets and followed signs to the exit—a staircase that led to ground level and a door that opened on a flood of bodies outside.

The scent of pizzerias and fine dining wafted out of open doors and mixed with the dissonance of the crowd and traffic. Skyscrapers thrust heavenward toward their vanishing point, giving the street a cavernous quality. Their shadows stretched across the city. Hues of gold and orange lit the firmament and reflected in the buildings' glass windows as if the world burned around him.

He was a single man among millions, yet all it took was one person to recognize him from the video. He stared at shoes and moving legs as the tide of pedestrians carried him along the sidewalk, across intersections, past shops. Several blocks ahead, a holosign for a Nanosoft retail boutique stretched above a storefront. Shawn quickened his pace and shouldered his way inside.

Light-gray walls and a luminous floor and ceiling framed the room in an empyreal glow. Three rows of tables stretched the length of the store, and a cornucopia of computing power of all shapes and sizes lay upon them—laptops and tablets, contact lenses and watches, desktop behemoths with multi-touch interfaces and holographic screens.

Shawn lingered at the store's entrance, and one of the clerks veered in his direction. He had skin the color of raw umber and wore slacks and a black shirt made of a sackcloth-like material. His silvery-white hair hung to his shoulders and framed his face.

"Welcome to Nanosoft," he said. When he smiled, crinkles formed at the corners of his brown eyes. They were ageless and kind. "My name is Damian Artiran. How may I help you?" His accent was foreign but faint, like an afterimage left behind by a previous life.

"I'm in town visiting a friend," Shawn said, "and I lost my phone."

"Oh, dear."

"I'm from out of state. Can I use one of your computers to look up his address? Please."

Artiran gave a sage nod. "I also am from out of state—out of country, in fact. Madagascar. I understand what it is like to be a long way from home. Come." He beckoned Shawn to follow him as he glided toward a table. The crowd parted before him and dispersed to browse other displays. He slid a laptop toward Shawn and gestured. "There you are."

Shawn tapped at the screen, checked the connection, and opened Nanosoft's search page. He grinned. "Good to go."

"Excellent," Artiran said. "Be well, son."

Shawn turned to thank him, but Artiran had disappeared into the throng of customers. He returned his attention to the laptop, opened the universal address book, and typed Sam Harrington into the search. Narrowing the results to New York City left him with a single entry—a Harrington, Samuel, in Queens. It listed an address but no phone number.

If the detective was still on duty, no way in hell Shawn was going to stroll into the precinct looking for him. Not with that video on the loose. The grains of sand in the hourglass of his life were running out, but if Harrington wasn't home when he got there, Shawn would have no recourse but to wait until he returned. Furthermore, the detective had a family, a wife and son. If they'd seen the video, who knew how they'd react to his appearance. But what choice did he have?

He left the store and rejoined the multitudes that swept through the city, bumping and jostling along with all the mindfulness of sheep. Ahead, a self-driving cab pulled to the side of the road, and a middle-aged man in a rumpled suit and loosened tie climbed out, briefcase swinging at his side as he strode away. Shawn cut through the crowd and slipped into the backseat in his stead.

He tapped the detective's address on the Plexiglas's digital map and fed the last of his bills into the payment slot.

The cab pulled from the curb and carried him away—toward whatever fate may come.