Dead Echo

  *

  He’d been born in an unnamed barrio at the tail end of 1965. His mother, a whore who’d contracted syphilis and died alone, buried in an unknown pauper’s grave, had christened him Tomas Durand Lorca, though he knew as little about the origin of his birth name as he did about his birth mother. Subsequently, he’d never thought of women as mothers anyway. More to the point, they were just something soft warm and wet to sink your dick into.

  According to the legend of his life (he thought of it in this way because on the day he’d legally turned eighteen, a date set and agreed upon by some nebulous court for lack of legal documentation), he’d left Colombia in early ’67 or late ’66. The information had come to him in a thin manila envelope, handed across an old peeling table at St. Paul’s by a chain-smoking stick of a woman who’d left after a few curt instructions in a swirl of tobacco reek. He’d opened the envelope and struggled through the meager contents, having managed little better than second grade reading competence at the time of his burgeoning manhood.

  The name at the top of the file had initially thrown him off, Thomas Leszno, causing him to think the dragon-lady had given him the wrong folder, whatever this thing was supposed to be, supposed to prove. But as he pieced through the words he did begin to find himself, if however, only obliquely. Memories and images took on corporeal form as he hammered through the English words, smells and sensations as if from another’s life, as if he were no more than the doppelganger of someone long forgotten and dead, somehow resurrected back to life by this slim skiff of papers.

  He’d stopped with The Fire, had closed the damned file and sat breathing hard for the next ten minutes. Because before he’d closed it, the ghosts’ names had been clear on the page, as if highlighted in confusion. Meeta, one had read, and Eduardo (even now the nauseating swirl starting in his gut), and last, the real mystery, the one he’d called ‘Big Daddy’, illumined now as one Karol Leszno. Ghosts from the past, little, growing streaks of fiery memory.

  The rest of that day was lost to him now. Whether he’d eaten, what time he’d gone to bed, who if anyone he’d spoken to. All lost. As well as most of the contents of that slim folder too. Everything except those three odd names, forever scratching at the back of his mind, rattling skeletons out of their uneasy slumber. Because until that moment he’d never considered a past. He lived facing forward, comfortable finally in the reality of state possession, doggedly unfettered now when he was shuffled from home to home, sometimes state to state. He’d come to believe it was normal, a somewhat unfortunate but unquestionable fact of life. Until the folder. And even though he’d filed the three names nowhere else but his mind, there was a forth name and address he’d taken pains to copy on a dirty scrap of paper he’d fished out of his jeans that day. It’d turned out to belong to a lawyer in Killdare, South Carolina.

  It was not a full two weeks later that he spoke to the man’s accomplice in person.

  He remembered it had been a Tuesday afternoon, just getting back to the dorm after the Algebra tutor had had enough. He’d just thrown the books on the desk and collapsed on the slat they called a bed when the sharp crack had come from the other side of the door to the hallway. That goddamned Percy, he thought, getting up. Little sawed-off pansy fucking “Hall Chief” with his pearl-handled stick. One day Tomas knew he’d put that motherfucker straight up Mr. Fancy Pants’ass, that cabron, and he set his mouth, yanking the door wide. Sure enough, there stood Percy Applewhite in what passed on his thin pasty face for smug glory. You’d have never guessed both his parents had died within a year of each other of fucking AIDS. Not to see this smug prick standing here.

  “What?” Tomas sneered, hating the very smell wafting off the little pink. Percy looked him up and down once, quickly, dismissing him to the wastes of his mind. Then he cleared his throat, tapped his little stick twice on the floor.

  “You have a visitor,” he said, already moving away down the hall. “At the reception desk,” he added glancing at his neatly trimmed fingernails as he moved into the shadows.

  That had been another first, and initially Tomas had not considered the file folder as having anything to do with whoever this person was. It didn’t have a chance; he was too surprised by the actuality of a visitor to consider much else. He stepped into the hall and pulled the door closed behind him after patting his pants down for the keys. And Don Brown, as he soon found out, would have liked to have been anywhere other than the shitty little chair in the shitty little confidence room, stale with the smell of smoke and mildewed furniture. This was a man who obviously thought it beneath his dignity to hobnob with orphans; everything in his demeanor said it like a megaphone.

  It took Tomas about two minutes to get there and he opened the door, aware of a few glances from others as he went inside. The suit and tie looked up, smiled thinly and pulled his things closer together in his lap. Tomas walked deeper into the room and in the universal manner of older cast-off children kept his distance. The man made a decisive mark in a notebook resting on his knee and smiled again, thinly, across the space that separated the two. Tomas changed tactics, stared at his hands in practiced boredom. Up until now these guys had spoken only to the people in charge, only casting sideways glances every once in a while in his direction. After another moment of silence the stranger spoke. He did not, however, stand up or offer his hand. And Tomas liked it just fine that way.

  “My name is Donald Brown,” the man began, pressing back into the chair, leaving the things he held on his lap free. “And I’m here on behalf of two agencies, my employer, and the Child Protection and Support Services of the State of Louisiana.” At this he produced a card and reached over, placing it on a table he must have strategically arranged before Tomas walked in. Tomas plucked it off the table, glanced quickly at the lettering, registering the names of some unknown string of lawyers among one familiar one. The one he’d copied out of the file folder.

  “Okay?” he said.

  The flunky smiled and nodded his head as if the time, finally, of talking had visited itself fully upon him. “First,” he said, “I must congratulate you on your birthday. Eighteen is indeed a landmark.” He paused and now it was Tomas’s turn to smile and nod.

  “Uh hmm, yeah, I knew it had to be something like this,” Tomas said with a brutal edge. “Why else would you be here?” Brown obviously considered the question rhetorical because he remained nonpulsed. “Oh, come on,” Tomas continued, shaking his head. “I’m legal now and it’s time to get me off the State’s back. That sure didn’t take long.” He looked at the man and felt the ticking in his head again. But then Brown’s hands went up, waving him down.

  “Now, now, Tomas, please, hear me out. I’ve been making these sorts of visits for a long time and I know the foster home system and its auxiliaries fall short of what’s intended. Unfortunately we have to work with what we have, and so far, up until now at least, very few options have been available. I have two kids of my own and many nights I’ve laid awake in bed wondering ‘what if’?” He shook his head and pursed his lips. Tomas didn’t take his eyes off the man. Brown nodded his head again and slapped the notepad in his lap. “But you, son, are better off than most. Without your knowledge, you’ve been the subject of random scrutiny that has speeded up as of late when your official birthday was set by a court of law. You see, you’re legal now, and there are certain things concerning you that have, as they say, ‘slipped through the gaps.’” He turned to the notebook in his lap and stabbed something about halfway down the page.

  Tomas leaned up in his chair, closing the distance on the man. He waited expectantly, but Brown seemed to be fishing for a comment, so Tomas obliged him. “I didn’t do anything,” he lied, searching back through his memory for any loophole he’d missed.

  Again Brown held out his hands, even laughed a small burst of air to relieve the suddenly stifling tension. “Oh, no, son, this…this situation is beyond anything you might have done, at least to the best of my knowledge. To the bes
t of anyone’s, it seems,” and he glanced up into the air. “Do you remember a man named Karol Leszno; he may have called himself Carl?” Tomas shook his head, refusing to give up anything, yet. Brown nodded, continued. “How about Meeta?” and at this there was a sudden flare in his eyes he had no hope of hiding. He leaned back. “Ah, I was hoping so,” Brown said. “It will probably expedite matters, make things a little easier to comprehend.” But Tomas was no longer listening. He clasped his hands together in his lap so Brown wouldn’t see them shaking. “Do you remember a fire?” he heard as if from the depths of a deep tunnel.

  And the dam broke. A wild torrent of fear raced through Tomas’s head: furniture blooming flames to the ceiling, the sound of splintering glass against waves of heat, himself and another huddled tight in a corner watching the smoke build like black, choking tumbleweed around them. He gasped, his eyes darting back and forth as if half-expecting the conflagration to roll into this room as well. The panic brought Brown to his feet, the notebook and other paraphernalia slipping off his lap to the floor. And then he cautiously approached the boy. His concern broke the vision and Tomas sat bolt upright, refusing to give this guy any more fuel for the grist mill than he’d just supplied. “Are you okay?” he heard and nodded, running a cold hand across his forehead.

  “Yeah,” he managed. “’S just a spell I get sometimes. No big deal…” but his eyes remained wild and pained.

  Brown bent to retrieve the notebook. “Spells?” he repeated but found nothing offered in the silence that followed. He decided not to write anything down until the interview was complete. He heard the boy clear his throat and looked at him. Tomas appeared a little better; not great, but better. Brown thought it best to skip ahead.

  “I’ll come to the point of this visit,” he continued, resorting back to his this-is-the-way-things-are-going-to-be voice. “Simple, short and sweet.” The boy was still discombobulated but Brown had need to get on with it; time was money as they say. The previous few minutes would prove useful after he’d put some miles and time between them, later when he could talk to the boss. “Your case is an anomaly, a breach in the system. More than once, and this fact alone makes it extremely rare and strange, you’ve simply dropped off the face of the earth, insofar as records are concerned anyway. But every time, oddly enough, you’ve surfaced. Needed paperwork suddenly becoming handy enough to identify you, at least obliquely, until you’re gone again,” and the man snapped his fingers.

  “So I’ve lived in a lot of different places,” Tomas replied, over the brunt of whatever had sideswiped him, but still far from the land of the rational.

  “Indeed you have,” Brown agreed. He flipped the notebook open to a yellow sticky-note. He put his finger to a line of penciled chart and began to read. “St. Paul, Concord, Birmingham, St. Louis, Tampa…” and he pulled his finger back. “Foster homes, orphanages and the like, as well as much, and I use that word in its broadest sense, undisclosed and undocumented whereabouts.” He snapped the notebook closed with the same forefinger, this time probably for good, Tomas thought. He seemed to be coming to the end of this train, whatever it was and wherever it was going. “You are,” and the man smiled humorlessly, “a mystery man, pure and simple.”

  This time Tomas had to laugh. He wasn’t being arrested and it was obvious this prick didn’t know shit. The vision of the fire had receded to a safe place and there was nothing he’d reveal accidentally or otherwise to any suit and tie, especially this joker. If they were going to take him it was going to require a lot more work than this guy was obviously up for.

  He decided to push the envelope. “Listen, Mr. Brown, or whatever your name is. Why don’t you tell me what this is all about. I don’t understand; you act like I’m hiding something.” He hunched forward and glared at Brown, stealing the advantage when the man glanced away to the door. Tomas was glad he’d closed it when he entered. “So look,” he said, slapping both knees. “I’m done with this. I don’t know you from Adam and can’t think of any reason you’d be here in the first place. Fuck, you people have been overlooking me my whole fucking life and now I’m about to be put out on my ass. What else is it?” He worked hard to keep his voice low, away from the menace he felt lurking just beneath the surface. He took one more look at the man and stood up to leave.

  With his hand on the doorknob, Brown finally spoke. “How about one more little thing before you go,” he said. Tomas didn’t turn around until he heard the word ‘money’. And then he did. He let his hand fall away from the knob and put his attention back to the suit, still sitting in his chair. The man was not smiling now, humorlessly or otherwise. “Yes, that’s what I figured,” he said. “Money talks when everything else walks, right?” He gestured with his hand back to the chair. “Please, Tomas, sit.”

  Tomas walked over and sat back down.

  This time Brown didn’t open his notebook nor refer to any other cue. He seemed to have memorized this part. “Though any adoption papers, if they even ever existed, have never surfaced, a compensation has been made available to you from the will of a one Karol Leszno, father of Meeta Leszno, now deceased. Seems she died some years back in a sanitarium in New York, and due to the nature of her state and her father’s somewhat clouded immigration status, his legally-held property in the state of Louisiana has lingered in limbo for almost two decades. But once again,” and he smiled now, again humorlessly, “certain documents have suddenly come to light. Documents naming you as beneficiary upon your eighteenth birthday, which, lucky again for you, the laws of this land have seen fair to grant you. Legal status has been achieved.” Brown reached to the side of his chair for a briefcase which until now had been hidden from Tomas’s sight. He placed it on his lap, rifled through a quick combination, and popped it open. He reached inside and withdrew some official-looking documents, placed them on the table he’d used before. “Once again, an anomaly, my boy. It appears you are not a rich man, but you are plainly in a league apart from the vast majority of orphans I’ve had the opportunity to deal with over the years.” When Tomas did not move he gestured with his hand. “Please, they are yours. My employers’ firm will be more than happy to help you with any and all legal questions and papers that need to be filed, but I do not want to overstep any line of ethics here. I have been invested with the job of delivering these documents to you and then you can make any arrangements you feel necessary. I have also been instructed to do nothing further today; you are to read the file and then get in touch with my employer at your convenience.” Brown gathered the things in his lap and placed them in the briefcase. “We have done our best to make the information contained there straight forward and simple to understand. And as I said before, I think you’ll find you are a very lucky person, Tomas.” He smiled again and extended his hand. Tomas took it but felt nothing. His eyes were glued to the folder on the table. Brown turned to leave but paused at the door. “The phone numbers you will find inside can be reached at any time of the day or night. We look forward to hearing from you. Good day son,” and the man opened the door and left the room.