Chapter 2-7
2017 Words
His eyes are set on me, hungry, seething. “I know.”
“Good. I just wanted to get that out of the way.”
He pulls his tie off, folds it in thirds, and sets it parallel to the edge of his table, same as what I would have done in his place. His jacket comes off next as he remains seated. I’m surprised as he tosses it over his shoulder, letting it land sloppily atop the wastebasket in the corner. I notice the clothing hooks embedded in the cinder-block wall behind him. “Yes,” he says, catching my gaze. “You would have hung it there.”
He unbuttons his left cuff and rolls up his sleeve. My mind is parsing his comment, analyzing its meaning: why he tossed the coat; why he told me that I was expecting it; why he seems so relaxed while I’m nearly quaking from anticipation.
I launch an active pingback. It comes up empty in my retinal overlay. I check the signal strength of my Mindnet connection. It’s at ninety-seven percent, almost perfect. Why can’t I get a read on him?
“You won’t find me that way,” he says, starting on the other sleeve. His movement is steady, but I can tell his blood is boiling. “My name is Jean Le Vau. All you had to do was look up the owner of this club, and you would have found me. Easy.”
I’m surprised that I missed that. Is the Switch finally wearing off? I had left the other dispensers behind on the rooftop of Reggie’s building. I’ve got no backup. It’s just me and the chemical substance in my bloodstream.
Someone bangs on the door. “It’s all right,” Le Vau says loudly. The banging ceases. “Sorry about that.”
“You look Honduran,” I say. “I wouldn’t have guessed French.”
“My mother was Nicaraguan, my father French. But you didn’t come all this way to figure me out, did you?”
“No, I came to kill you.” I’m surprised to hear myself say it. It sounds like a line from an old James Bond film. Maybe I’m not crashing after all. I can feel the surge of excitement, the tingle in my face, the need to put this man to his end. I quickly remind myself that I’m a police officer. I’m not going to kill this man. Am I?
Le Vau takes off his watch and places it next to the tie. Everything he removes lightens the load, allows him to be more nimble in a fight. I should be considering my own outerwear, but I’m already stripped down to a T-shirt and jeans. I remove my baseball cap.
“Feel free to toss it,” he says. He points at his jacket.
I want to throw the cap, but I need to place it neatly somewhere. I center it on the cushion of the chair facing him. He smiles politely, hateful beast masked by a level of control I can’t comprehend. How does he do it?
Le Vau offers me a seat. “You can always put your hat over there.” Again, he points at his jacket.
“I’ll stand.”
I’m evaluating his physicality, considering all the ways I can take him down. He will have his own brand of tricks, enhanced by heightened senses. Dig deep, I tell myself. Reggie’s advice.
“How long have you been using?” he asks, removing his gold wedding band, which I had failed to notice. I expect him to toss it on the jacket, but he surprises me again and sticks it in the drawer. I would have put it next to the tie.
“Two years. And you?”
“Five.”
I had no idea Switch has been around for half a decade. Hardly anyone knew what it was when I stumbled upon it. Even the wiki didn’t date its origin back that far.
Le Vau responds as if reading my mind. “Yes, it’s been that long. The first generation product was terrible. Liquid drops. It caused violent mood swings. We replaced it with clear tablets, but the stomach acid destroyed a lot of the positive effects, so we went to coated tablets, and even those didn’t do the job quite right.” He unbuttons the top of his blue dress shirt. Curly chest hair spills out. “Your generation has been around three years. It’s very good, but it also has its limitations, as you well know.”
My generation? He makes it sound like there’s something else. I’ve encountered plenty of variations in the form, quality and efficacy of the product. Is Le Vau alluding to that?
“My condolences, by the way,” he says. “I heard about the shooting at the gas station.”
His comment makes me mad. If we’re going to fight, what is the point of being polite? I examine the desktop for anything I can turn into a weapon. A pen to the eye, a letter opener between vertebrae, a paperweight to the philtrum, that area between the upper lip and the bottom of the nose. There are plenty of choices with these ordinary objects. Again, I’m thinking of killing, not wounding him. I amend my thoughts and consider a blow with the stapler to jostle the cerebral cortex. That might do the trick.
“My generation, however, has none of the side effects of yours,” he continues. “We’re experimenting with the dosage. If all goes well, we should start FDA trials next spring and get our approval fast-tracked. We’ve got some good people working on it. A much better business venture than the street has to offer.”
My mind tells me not to believe him, that he’s trying to placate me into thinking he’s working for the greater good. I’m not going to fall for his guile. Yet I’m stuck on the “we” reference. Who’s “we”?
He lifts the stapler. “Of course, I’m not all about the legal dosage for recreational use. If you’re going to save the best champagne for the best occasion, why waste your time on the cheap stuff, right? You go for the gusto!”
He switches the stapler to his left hand. His dominant hand.
“The good news about your generation of product is that it will be off the market once ours hits the pharmacies. No more psychotic episodes, no more cop killings, no more psychological addiction. You get a prescription for that attention deficit disorder you’ve been complaining about, and you’re good to go.”
He’s feeding me a line, but I’m keen on his game. I think his silver ballpoint pen is the best weapon to use. I come up with eleven methods to paralyze him without even thinking about it.
“You know, that’s a pretty good story,” I say. “I’m sure someone will buy it, but not me. So how about we cut the bullshit?” I step toward him. “Why did you deal to Kurt Rodriguez? Was he an experiment to you?”
Le Vau rolls back in his chair, leaving the stapler on the desk at a strange angle. The compulsiveness in me wants to nudge it just a little so it’s even with his tie. Again, he appears in control of his emotions. Not a blink at the mention of Rodriguez’s name. “That boy had potential. I was just curious to see how far he would take it. I had no idea he’d go all the way.”
“So he was an experiment. And you, what, coached him?”
Le Vau is smug in his response. “He had that spark. I simply opened his eyes.”
Le Vau makes it sound as if he was a benefactor. As if he were helping Rodriguez. Rodriguez wasn’t some kind of loner or misfit or abandoned child. He was well-liked by his friends, and loved by his family. All he wanted was a way to distinguish himself from the ordinary. It’s funny how you find what you want if you really seek it. Le Vau happened to own the candy store, evangelizing the merits of his product. One strip, and studying becomes easier. A second, and you can run faster. Up the dose again, and maybe you’ll make history. Keep going, and you’ll become God.
Le Vau is nothing more than a preacher, spreading his infected gospel while hiding behind a club to pursue his true proclivity.
“You could have stopped him.”
Le Vau stands and pushes in his chair, bringing it flush with the edge of the desk. “I could have done a lot of things. How about you? Who did you stop?”
He wants to make me out to be a hypocrite, and maybe I am. My selfishness hasn’t made me a better husband or father. It hasn’t made me a better partner to Mullins. And it hasn’t helped kids like Rodriguez stop themselves before it was too late. Right now, my nerves are frayed to the point where I’m not sure of what I am. But I know this: our encounter is going to end with one man standing.
Le Vau walks calmly around to the front of the desk and perches himself on it. It’s a disadvantageous position. He’d have to go on the defense to fend off my attack. Why would he do that?
He pulls a clear plastic sheet from his pant pocket. He lifts it up, exposing a two-by-five set of gel-like buttons, also clear. He pops one square off the perforated sheet. There’s a single button in the middle of the square. He pockets the rest of the sheet. “One of these is better than thirty of your strips. Except you don’t pop it in your mouth. You apply it to the skin, like this.” He places the square flat against his wrist and pushes the button. It pops inward, squeezing out a gel that reminds me of hand sanitizer. He tosses the empty square on the table and rubs the gel into his wrist. “See? It absorbs almost instantaneously. The rest evaporates, with no residue. It’s pharmaceutical grade quality. The good news is that it hits twice the neuroreceptors as the old product. That means you’re firing on all cylinders.”
I’m painfully aware that I just let him dose up in front of me. I think my senses are dulling. Are the strips finally wearing off?
He answers my next question before I even ask it. “It’s my second application today.” He folds his hands, scarred knuckle on top. “Normally, I do one but, you know, special company and all.”
He’s blocking the pen by sitting on the desk. And all the other implements I was considering using. He’s outmaneuvered me before I realized it. Even though I don’t feel afraid, I’m starting to get this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Well, there you have it,” he says with a smile.
I can’t resist asking, “So, what happens now?”
Le Vau slides off the desk. He shrugs, still smiling. “Now, I kill you.”
He comes at me before I have the chance to duck out of the way. His knee connects with my stomach, propelling me backward. I stumble three steps before righting myself, the wind nearly knocked out of me.
Instant nausea rises up my throat. I suppress my gag reflex. It costs me an elbow to the face. I barely deflect it, taking the brunt of the blow with my shoulder, the rest with my cheek.
I collide with the wood casing adjacent to the door. It’s a hard knock to my scapula, pain surging up my back.
Le Vau throws a kick. Somehow, I manage to sidestep it. His foot demolishes the Sheetrock to my right instead of my sternum.
- Writer
