The Dispatcher

  “I don’t want to get any more involved.”

  “Look, Valdez, you’ve got a woman who is planning to run you over the next time she catches you on the street. I’d say you’re involved enough. And besides we don’t have anything else to go on.”

  “You told Katie you had people working with the Agency.”

  “And they’ve got nothing. Neither do the officers who canvassed the building. Forensics has nothing from the living room, either. I knew all that before we talked to her.”

  “You lied to her.”

  “I didn’t see the point in making her day worse. My point is, this Mason character is the lead we have now. I’ll make a run at him if I have no other choice. If nothing comes out of it then we’re basically left holding our collective dicks and hoping Jimmy shows up. But if you think you could get something more out of him than I could, then I’m asking you to help me out. And maybe keep Katie Albert from making you a hood ornament.”

  I thought about it a minute and then pulled out my phone. “It would be better if you weren’t here for this call.”

  “I’ll go pee,” Langdon said, and then nodded toward the restaurant owner. “And then we better leave anyway. Badge or no badge, I think this guy is about to call the cops on us.”

  “Look at these assholes,” Mason Schilling said, pointing out into the field, sunken into the wide boulevard. In the dawn fog, two young men stood at a distance from each other, whipping swords around. Two other men, presumably their seconds, stood next to their friends, occasionally ducking out of the way of the swinging weapons. A fifth man, who I assumed was the referee or judge, kept his distance from all the other parties.

  “What are those?” I asked, and peered into the fog. “Are those broadswords?”

  “Technically they’re bastard swords,” Mason said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Fuck if I know, man. I’m just telling you what they told me when I called them broadswords. They were snotty about it, too. Nearly shot them then, just to teach them a lesson.”

  I peered again. “So this is a duel. An actual duel.”

  “You got it. It’s become a thing with college dudes. Someone’s honor is offended, someone demands satisfaction, and they show up at dawn to hack at each other with swords until someone is fatally wounded or the cops show up.”

  “Do the cops show up often?”

  “They won’t here. This is the University of Chicago. They have their own police force. I have an understanding with the woman who sends out the cars.”

  “How much does ‘understanding’ go for these days?”

  “About a hundred bucks for five calls coming in. She sends someone after that. I mean, that’s fair. And I don’t want her to get fired. This dueling thing is becoming a profitable sideline. I’ve got another one at Northwestern tomorrow.”

  There was a small yelp down the field. We both looked over to see one of the seconds clutching his arm and hopping away. His duelist was loudly apologizing.

  “They don’t seem very good at this,” I said.

  “They’re fucking idiots, is what they are. But they’re rich and they’re stupid and that works for me. Hey! Chad! Or whatever your name is!” The judge turned to look at Mason. “Let’s get this going! And tell them I’m charging extra if I have to dispatch one of the seconds!” Chad or whatever his name was nodded and tried to get the attention of the others.

  “Do you actually charge extra?”

  “For dispatching anyone else but the duelists? Hell yeah. Additional risk.” He motioned to the kids now getting their act together on the green. “And the thing about college kids is they’re rich but they’re cheap. You have to get them to pay up front otherwise they try to weasel out and turn dorm room lawyer on you. So everyone pays up front. Two fifty each for the duelists, one hundred for the seconds. The judge I don’t charge. They don’t usually die.”

  “Usually.”

  “There was one time at Wheaton College. Bad thrust. Judge got it in the eye. Real fuck up.”

  “I bet the guy who did it felt bad about it.”

  “Yeah, for about two seconds. He just stood there gaping. Then the other duelist took the opening and pretty much hacked off his arms.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “‘Legal’ is a very fungible term for this sort of thing, Tony. You know that.”

  “They’re ready!” Chad or whatever his name was yelled to Mason. Mason fluttered his hand as if to say, okay, fine, whatever and then turned his attention back to me. “But I don’t think you came to the fabled Midway at the UofC to talk to me about dueling, did you?”

  I smiled. “What, you don’t think I would want in on this?”

  Mason shrugged. “It’s in the financial demographic you like to work in. But it’s more into the gray area, legally, than you’re comfortable with anymore.”

  I watched as the two duelists, yelling, crossed the field and started whacking swords together. “Probably,” I admitted.

  “It’s too bad. It’s a growing field.”

  “Dueling.”

  “Yes. But I was thinking more of the gray areas.”

  “I’m doing all right.”

  “Suit yourself. But don’t pretend I don’t know you did it, once.”

  “I’m actually here because I wanted to ask you about Jimmy Albert.”

  Mason glanced over to me, then back down the field. “What about him?”

  “He went missing yesterday afternoon.”

  “Did he.”

  “Signs of a struggle in his apartment. Blood on the rug. That sort of thing.”

  The clanging of the swords lessened as the two duelists, clearly inexperienced with sword fighting, and possibly exercise, slowed down. The seconds hovered, unsure of what they were supposed to be doing.

  “If you’re asking if I know anything about it, obviously I don’t,” Mason said.

  “I didn’t think you did.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I was wondering whether you got Jimmy any gigs recently.”

  “You know that Katie told him to stop with the side gigs.”

  “Yeah, I know that. I also know Jimmy didn’t always do everything Katie told him to do.”

  Mason grunted at this and then turned his attention again down the field, where one of the duelists held up his hand to signal a break. Chad or whatever his name was called for the break, and the other duelist started to complain about it.

  “These assholes, I swear,” Mason said.

  “Come on, Mason. Tell me.”

  “Are you working for the cops, Tony?”

  “What kind of question is that? Obviously I am.”

  Mason laughed at this. “All right. I mean, what’s your intention?”

  “Mason, if they wanted to get you on the hook for something, you’d be in an interrogation room with some detective or DA trying to grill you while your lawyer sat next to you and you had that smug look you get on your face.”

  “I don’t look smug.”

  “You always look smug. You have resting smug face.”

  “I don’t even know what to think of that comment.”

  “My point is that the reason I’m here is they don’t care about you or anything you’re doing. It’s beside the point. What they want is to find Jimmy. So if you gave him a gig then it would help to know. So we can talk to them.”

  “Except then they’d know you heard it from me. That’s bad for business.”

  “They’re not going to know that, Mason.”

  “Jesus, Tony. Think of who I work with. Think of what you’re saying. Of course they’re going to know.”

  Down the field the duelist who had been arguing with Chad or whatever his name was yelled in frustration, pulled his sword back and ran Chad or whatever his name was through the gut with it.

  “Oh, fuck,” Mason said, and started running down the field. I followed.

  Mason got to the duelist as he was lumbering over
to the one who had called for a rest and raised his sword, using both hands, preparing to strike the other, who had fallen over in a panic and was trying to crawl away. Mason shoved the attacking duelist, knocking him off balance and tumbling him to the ground. The sword, knocked loose, fell, landing almost silently in the grass. Mason picked it up. I went to the judge, who was sitting, holding his gut and babbling.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Mason yelled at the duelist, who was still coming to terms with being on the ground. “You stabbed the fucking judge?”

  “Look, dude, it’s against the rules to stop—”

  “The judge did something you thought was against the rules so you fucking stabbed him?” Mason roared. “You think that was appropriate?”

  “Dude—” the duelist said, and then screamed as Mason shoved his own sword into his chest.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, was that against the rules?” Mason asked, and yanked the sword out.

  The duelist didn’t respond, unless screaming was a response. Mason let him scream for a few more seconds before hefting the sword down on his skull, which split in two down to the bridge of the nose. The screaming abruptly stopped, and five seconds later the duelist’s body vaporized.

  “Jackass,” Mason said, hefting the sword upward. He turned to me, with Chad or whatever his name was. “How does he look?”

  “It’s not good,” I said. Some of Chad or whatever his name was’s insides were rapidly coming outside.

  “No, I wouldn’t think so,” Mason said, walked over, and got himself into a classic batter’s pose. I lurched out of the way. “Sorry, Chad. Or whatever your name is.”

  “What?” Chad or whatever his name was had time to say, and looked up, just before Mason sliced off his head in a surprisingly clean motion. The body collapsed, the head rolled a few feet, and after that they both disappeared.

  Mason looked at the remaining duelist and the seconds, who had by now clumped together in terror. “Get the fuck out of here,” Mason said to them. They sprinted away, the duelist leaving his sword behind. Mason turned to me. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t want in on this.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “That was a genuine mess,” I said.

  “Now you know why I get paid up front.” He walked over and picked up the other sword and stood, one in each hand. “Want one?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Yeah.” He tossed both swords into the grass. “Come on, let’s start walking. I’m pretty sure I burned through my five calls back there.”

  “I could still use a name,” I prompted Mason, several minutes later, when the two of us were well away from the University of Chicago campus.

  “I’m not going to give you a name of anyone I work with. And I’m not even going to tell you whether or not I gave Jimmy any new gigs.”

  “Mason—”

  He held up a hand. “Orval Wooldridge.”

  “Who is that?”

  “The Internet will tell you who he is.”

  “What does he have to do with Jimmy?”

  “I’m not saying he does have anything to do with Jimmy. But you wanted a name, and I won’t give you a name of anyone I work with directly. So you figure out what you can do with that name. And that’s what I can do for you, Tony.”

  “All right. Thank you, Mason.”

  “Don’t mention it. I mean that.”

  I smiled at that.

  “I still have a lot of gigs I need people for,” Mason said.

  “I’m happy working my side of the street.”

  “Just as long as you recognize we’re working the same street, Tony.”

  “So who is he?” Langdon asked. We were at a hot dog stand, and she was getting her lunch.

  “CEO of AltiStar Investments,” I said.

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Unless you have a couple hundred million to invest, you wouldn’t. It’s a private company that works exclusively with high-end investors who want to play in emerging markets. Heavy engagement in southeast Asia, Africa and Central America, and also in eastern Europe.”

  “You’re an expert now.”

  “I can read a Wikipedia article and a bunch of stories from Google News.”

  “What else did Google News tell you?” Langdon bit into her lunch, made a face and then picked out the jalapeno from her dog. “I told you no jalapeno,” she said to the hot dog man, who shrugged. She turned her attention back to me. “This shouldn’t be a hard thing to remember.”

  “You have my sympathy.”

  “Uh huh. Wooldridge. What else about him.”

  “His wife just passed away. Elaine Wooldridge. Cancer.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So that would be Jimmy’s private gig.”

  Langdon frowned. “What?” I asked.

  “So, like you were doing when I met you? Being on call in case an operation went south?”

  “Possibly but not necessarily. He could have been doing remediation work with her.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Someone who is sick but not necessarily on the edge of death might try experimental therapies, meant to offer an immediate medical benefit. If they work, great. If they don’t, and they end up making the patient sicker, a dispatcher deals with it. That’s remediation.”

  “What does that offer her?”

  “It resets her to before the therapy was tried.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When you’re dispatched your body goes back to a state several hours before when you were dispatched. I told you about that when we were talking about the heart operation from yesterday.”

  “Is there a set amount of time? Like, you always return to how you were six hours earlier?”

  “We don’t think it’s exact. We think it’s in a range from twelve to thirty hours. It just depends.”

  “How does that even work?

  I held up my hands in a questioning movement. “How does any of this shit work? We’re not supposed to come back when we’re dead. There’s no science we’ve figured out to explain it. What we know about it is what we observe. This is what we’ve observed.”

  Langdon took another bite of her dog. “It really is unsettling, you know.”

  “What? That we don’t know how this all works?”

  She nodded and motioned out to the world, which in this case included views of the Wrigley Building and the Michigan Avenue Bridge over the Chicago River. “We live in a rational world. It has physics. And science. And now a big fat miracle that no one can explain and no one really likes talking about.”

  “These are the days of miracle and wonder.”

  Langdon peered at me suspiciously. “You just quoted a song at me.”

  I smiled. “I did, yeah.”

  “It doesn’t bother you.”

  “To live in an age of miracles.”

  “Yeah.”

  I made a half-hearted shrug. “It’s just one miracle.”

  “It’s a pretty big damn miracle, Valdez, come on! Coming back from the dead is pretty impressive. Before ten years ago, only one guy I knew of did it.”

  “Two. You have to count Lazarus.”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  “I get it,” I assured her. “And I don’t know. It was amazing the first few times it happened. It’s still weird. But now it’s also my job. It’s hard to get all mystical about your job.”

  Langdon took another bite and nodded her agreement. “Okay, so, remediation.”

  “Right. If he was doing that then it could have been a long-term gig.”

  “And one that didn’t work in the end because she died.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there any way we can tell?”

  “No, it’s a private gig so Jimmy doesn’t have to report like he does with an Agency job.”

  “Okay, so, what? Do we think this Wooldridge guy has something to do with Jimmy Albert’s disappearance?”

  “Not real
ly.”

  Langdon made a motion as if appealing to the heavens. “Then why on earth are you telling me this?”

  “Because Wooldridge’s security, both for AltiStar and his private home, is run by Tunney Security Solutions.”

  “Oh. Oh.”

  “Right. Oh.”

  Langdon finished her dog, and chewed the final bite slowly. “The Tunney family is supposed to be entirely legit by now.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Of course I don’t, but the part of them that’s not legit is pretty quiet about it these days.”

  “It’s quiet but it’s there.”

  “You ever do a gig for them?”

  “No, but I know Mason did. He still may, but probably not if they were only one skip away from the name he gave me. And I know Jimmy did, back in the day, through Mason.”

  “So you think Jimmy took a gig with them and something went wrong?”

  “I don’t know. But if he was working for them and something went to hell then they wouldn’t want him around to be a witness.”

  “Okay, so, walk me through this. Jimmy does a gig for Wooldridge, reconnects with the Tunneys through their legit arm, does work for them under the table…”

  “…then somehow something goes wrong and they pack him away for whatever amount of time they need him packed away for.”

  “They don’t kill him.”

  “I don’t think so. But it doesn’t mean that what they might do to him is particularly pleasant.”

  “It’s thin. We don’t even know for sure Jimmy Albert did work for Wooldridge.”

  “You have anything thicker?”

  “No, I don’t.” Langdon wiped her hands with a napkin, crumpled it up and tossed it into the vendor’s bin. “All right, let’s start digging things up on Wooldridge.”

  “What do you mean ‘let’s’? I’m done. You blackmailed me to see Katie. I went to see Katie. You asked me to talk to Mason for you. I talked to Mason. I’m finished. I’m excused. I have other work I have to do.”

  “I still need you. You’ve been helpful so far. You’ve gotten this investigation further along that I would have gotten on my own.”

  “As far as I can see I’m the one who’s doing all the work.”