Who was he? Was he Danny yet?
He was in the program, they said; but for a week his jubilee was put on hold. The Marshals Service was skeleton-staffed for Christmas and New Year’s. He had once written a story on Tibetan Buddhists that required some research into the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Tibetans believed that souls lan-guished in a void known as the Bardo zone between incarn-ations. The description fit his current status, somewhere after Tom and before Danny, spending Christmas sequestered in a room in a Ramada Inn, in a bombed-out blue-collar neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
His window overlooked the empty parking lot of a defunct beer factory, the dingy, red brick housing of the departed workforce and the dreary Lake Michigan sky.
His guards changed daily, sometimes twice a day. He started demanding that they show their ID. The phone connected to room service but not to the outside.
“It’s the holidays,” a marshal explained. To compensate, they plied him with all the food and drink he desired. And VCR videos.
On Christmas day, he ordered a porterhouse steak, a fifth of Chivas Regal, and chose three movies. The films were calculated to indulge his current predicament- stories about Witness Protection, or about people who changed their identity.
Eraser with Arnold Schwarzenegger was a hoot-WITSEC on steroids for the popular culture, which was to say, teen-agers. Tom laughed, drank, turned down the volume on all the gunfire and explosions.
The second movie was appropriate. The Passenger with Jack Nicholson was somber and European. Nicholson played a reporter who escaped his life of quiet desperation by im-pulsively switching identities with a dead gunrunner. But Jack got in over his head and wound up murdered. Bummer, because old Jack hadn’t thought it through, like he-Tom, almost Danny-had. Which figured, Jack’s character was a TV reporter, therefore light in the ass. But the chick, Maria Schneider-the one Brando stuck the butter to, in Last Tango in Paris-looked great in a cotton dress against the background of the African desert.
Lascivious on Scotch, he saved the best for last. One of his all-time favorite movies: Apartment Zero. Another foreign film, natch-had to be, it had character development. This time the protagonist, a mild Buenos Aires landlord, Colin Firth, rented a room to a psychopathic killer-mercenary.
Drawn in by the killer’s dark charm, Firth finally overcame his wimp personality by murdering the psycho and absorbing his scary persona.
That was more like it.
Tipsy, he hit rewind and played the last scene over. Colin Firth, transformed, walked out of the art film cinema he owned, which was showing a James Dean retrospect-ive-James Dean see, a subtle cue there in the background, brooding from the movie posters. Now Firth had exchanged his conservative suit for a leather jacket. Smoked a cigarette.
New hair. Rugged, ballsy, a killer who got away with it. And, yeah-cultivating the look of James Dean.
You know, Tom thought. If you took away the glasses…
He stood, weaving slightly in front of the mirror over the dresser. Took off his glasses, experimented with combing his hair straight back, no part. Danny Storey could look like James Dean. Get contacts, some muscles. Put a dab of gel in his hair.
He poured another drink, rewound the movie, and watched it again.
The holidays ended and Tom checked out of the Bardo Motel. Another blacked-out van was waiting. This one opened in front of the Northwest baggage handlers at the curb of the Milwaukee airport. Two new marshals, in the young, taut, military mold, met him. They introduced themselves as Dennis and Larry. Their job was to escort him to “orientation.”
Dennis and Larry were correct but uncommunicative traveling companions. They said about five words apiece all the way to Richmond, Virginia.
Another hearse was waiting in short-term parking. Tom guessed that his destination was Washington, D.C. In keeping with WITSEC’s clandestine nature, the marshals never flew point to point, they always traveled at a remove.
Tom spent three hours in comfortable isolation. They stopped once at a Holiday station on an interstate exit, to use the bathroom. The marshals parked the van literally three feet from the bathroom door. Tom was out and back in, not seeing more than a slice of bare trees. Cloudy sky. The air was cold, wet, damp. But still some trace of green lingered to the exhausted grass. No snow.
The ride ended in another parking garage. Tom went up another elevator and was admitted to another quiet floor of an office building with unmarked doors and thick carpets.
His escorts unlocked a door and told him to go in and wait. Tom carried his bag into an efficiency apartment appointed with clean, plain furnishings. A sliding door led to a small balcony that faced brick walls on three sides. He heard voices, Spanish vowels slid off Asian tones. Cooking smells hung on the stale enclosed air. People were living all around him. A child yelled, then another.
He was in a warehouse of protected witnesses and their families.
There was a knock on the door. Tom opened it and faced a tall slender prematurely gray man in dark slacks and a light blue button-down shirt. No tie, black loafers. He looked less military than the escorts. He looked tired.
“Tom, my name is John, and I’ll be handling your processing.” He pointed to the telephone next to the bed. “That’s an internal line that rings in my office.”
“So we’re self-contained?” asked Tom.
“Completely. You won’t even see other people going through the process.”
“How long will it take?” asked Tom.
“Not that long for you. In fact, very fast.” John handed Tom a manila folder containing a menu and schedule of daily activities. Most of the regular schedule had been Magic-Markered out on his copy.
“All the testing except routine physical and dental has been waived. And your file is green lighted-which means you’re being processed quicker than anyone I can remember.”
John rubbed his eyes. “Actually, while you were in transit, we came up with a workable plan to reestablish you. Basically, we’re waiting on minimal redocumentation.”
Tom grimaced. “I’ve read about people going years before they get new Social Security cards and birth certificates.”
John wrinkled his nose. “They didn’t deliver Tony Sporta.”
“So how long?”
“Just weeks. Less.”
The last item in the folder whipped Tom’s pulse. A map of northern California. Tom grinned. “I wanted warm.”
“San Francisco and the immediate Bay Area are full. But we have an inspector-handler on the coast, south of San Francisco who has a ready-made situation that is perfect for you.” He pointed to the map, below San Francisco.
Tom scanned the map. California. Hollywood. Earthquakes. El Nino.
And Charles Manson.
John’s finger stabbed a place-name where the coast notched in south from San Francisco Bay. “How does Santa Cruz strike you?”
Something about the name snagged in his memory.
Something he’d read. Something exciting.
Santa Cruz. He recalled it was the epicenter of the big quake in 1989. But that wasn’t it.
Pondering, he acted merely curious and apprehensive.
John smiled and said, “It’s perfect for you. A laid-back college, tourist town. With San Jose and Silicon Valley just over
‘the hill,’ that’s what the locals call the Coastal Mountains.”
“Mountains and the ocean,” said Tom happily, and it was like a dream.
“And redwood trees,” added John. “A slice of Berkeley preserved from the 1960s. Real tolerant people.”
John placed a pile of books on Tom’s bed; they were a mix of travel manuals and locally published nonfiction about northern California. He glanced at his clipboard.
“You’ve expressed a preference for a new name: Daniel Storey.”
“Is it all right?” Tom asked.
“No one in your mother’s or father’s family is named Storey, are they?”
“No. I didn’t borrow it. I made it up. From the sound of it.”
“Storey,” said John. “It could be a corruption of a Scotch, Irish, or English name.”
“James is English, and my mother’s maiden name was Higgins.”
“No problem.” John shuffled some paper in the folder and handed Tom a legal form. “Fill this out. It’s an application for a legal name change. We’ll hand carry it to a federal judge.”
“Quick,” said Tom.
“Absolutely. Now, is there anything else to start?”
“Contacts,” said Tom eagerly. “And a haircut.”
John nodded. “Get you to an optometrist tomorrow morning. For now, take it easy. Anything you need, just pick up the phone. The TV is full cable, all the movie channels plus pay per view. You understand you can’t leave the room without an escort.”
John left and Tom inspected the room service menu. He picked up the phone and ordered grilled pork chops, baked potato, green vegetable and a salad. The refrigerator in the kitchenette was stocked with soda and water. A shopping list form stuck to the front with a magnet. Cupboards were stacked with dishes, drawers with towels and dishcloths.
Coffeemaker. Dishwasher.
Back at the table, he perused the map of California. What was it about Santa Cruz? He picked up the phone and heard John’s voice answer immediately.
“John, there is something about relocating to Santa Cruz I’d like to discuss.”
“Sure, give me about twenty minutes.”
Tom opened a Diet Pepsi, carried it to the table on his balcony, and sat down. Below him, the voices of a family, male, female, whining child, rebounded off the brick cocoon.
The enclosure resonated with the hive smells and sounds.
But furtive. Out of sight.
The unmistakable scent of fish sauce drifted up from a lower gallery. A half dozen cable television stations and radios competed. The different languages. The Witness Program had been conceived for the Italian Mafia. Now it sounded like the U.N. Tom smiled. The multiculturalism of the drug trade.
Santa Cruz?
John knocked. Tom got up and let him in.
“I’m trying to remember something I read about Santa Cruz, something that made the place stick in my head. Was it ever the site of a big story? I mean, besides the big quake in 1989?” asked Tom.
John grinned. “The UCSC mascot is the Banana Slug. Is that it? Just kidding. Does serial killers ring a bell?”
“Wait, yeah,” said Tom. “In that book by the FBI profiler.”
“Sure. Douglas’s book. In the early 1970s, Santa Cruz had the reputation of being the Serial killer Capital of the World.
It’s where Ed Kemper went on his rampage-he killed six coeds, then his mother and a friend of hers. At the same time, a guy named Mullin was killing people in Santa Cruz, apparently at the direction of inner voices. Also, a hermit named Frazier came down from the hills and slaughtered a whole family, claiming to be defending the environment.”
“Real fun place to put a college,” said Tom. Serial killer capital of the world. Where the United States government, in its wisdom, was relocating him.
He savored the irony. Thanked John. After the marshal left, Tom turned up his collar, whipped a wet comb through his hair and viewed himself, minus his glasses, from different angles in the bathroom mirror.
Tom had his hair cut, received an eye exam and ordered his contacts. And he took a full physical. The doctor told him his leg was mending well, he could begin light exercise. He settled into a routine. “The facility” had a small gym. He visited it two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. Faithfully Tom began to perform Agent Terry’s road exercises.
The red streak of scar tissue on his calf stung as he jogged on the treadmill. Liking the pain, he ran harder. In the privacy of his room, he stood naked in front of the mirror.
His glasses were now a backup system. The marshals had fitted him with contact lenses. His hair was shorter, but it wasn’t there yet. He experimented, combing it back, turning for different angles. What would he look like with ten pounds of belly hacked off.
He was not quite pudgy, but he was definitely doughy.
His breathing was shallow, and he tired easily. It seemed as if his lungs and circulation only serviced the outer layer of his body. No blood or air getting deep down inside.
His new self waited beneath that layer of flab. He began to drill through the fat. Searching for Danny Storey.
And he practiced being more assertive, aggressive. He mimicked Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, standing in front of the mirror, pointing, demanding:
“You talking to me?”
He paid attention to his diet. I will never go to McDonald’s again. He passed on the butter, the cheese, the ice cream.
The salt. More chicken, fish, turkey, and steamed vegetables.
Rice.
An hour every morning and evening on the running machine. A half hour rowing. The first time he struggled through thirty push-ups in a row, he cheered out loud. Yeah, Danny, yeah.