Bad Monkeys

We All Make the World

I GREW UP.

I lived in Siesta Corta until I turned eighteen. It wasn’t supposed to be for that long, but my mother refused to take me back, and not even my aunt and uncle could come up with a way to make her.

Were you upset about not going home?

No. Before the incident with the janitor, I would have been, but after…My perspective on pretty much everything was different.

I can understand that.

I’m not sure you can. I mean yeah, I’d been through a life-and-death experience, I’d killed someone, but in hindsight, it wasn’t the shooting that most affected me. It was hearing that voice say my name on the phone. It’s like, imagine if God called you up one day, not to give you a message but just to let you know He existed. Imagine how you’d feel right after you hung up.

You thought the voice on the phone was God?

No! But it was like that: like I’d been in contact with something big and mysterious, and the fact that it was out there made the whole world more interesting.

So it was like a conversion experience.

I suppose. Only not bullshit—it really happened, and I had the coin to prove it. And that was another thing: the fact that they’d left me even that tiny bit of evidence told me it wasn’t over. I’d be hearing from them again.

You saw that as something positive.

Sure. Why not?

I think many people, having been through the experience you describe, wouldn’t be eager to repeat it.

Well yeah, but those people wouldn’t have even gotten the first phone call. Not everyone is cut out for Bad Monkeys, and that’s OK. But for me, once the initial shock wore off, of course I wanted to go again. I mean, Nancy Drew with a fucking lightning gun, what’s not to love?

So with that to look forward to, living in Siesta Corta wasn’t such a drag anymore. You can wait for a bright future pretty much anywhere, right? And while I was waiting, just in case it mattered, I cleaned up my act. I never became a model citizen, but I did cut out most of the bad-seed crap. I gave up trying to outsmart my aunt and uncle, and at school, I actually applied myself—enough so that when I finally graduated, I was able to get a scholarship to Berkeley.

So you ultimately did go back to San Francisco.

Yeah. I almost didn’t, I mean I thought about not taking the scholarship, but Phil convinced me I’d be an idiot not to.

You were in contact with your brother?

By then, yeah. The first couple years in Siesta Corta I didn’t hear from him, but on his thirteenth birthday he came out to see me. He stole a page from my old playbook: told Mom he was staying at a friend’s place for the weekend, then hitchhiked out to the Valley. I came home from working at the store one afternoon and found him playing with the cats on the front porch.

At first I was pissed about the hitchhiking: “Do you have any idea what kind of psychos are out on the road, Phil?” But he just laughed and said I was the pot calling the kettle black, and anyway he was big enough to take care of himself. And the truth is, he was; he’d gone through this major growth spurt, so even though he was barely a teenager, he had the height and weight to make a bad monkey think twice.

It ended up being a good visit. The same time he’d become more like me, I’d become more like him, so we were able to sort of meet each other halfway. Turned out we actually liked each other. So from then on we kept in touch, and when he could he came out to see me. He had a knack for showing up when I needed advice, like about the scholarship.

What about your mother? Did you and she ever reconcile?

No. I thought about going to visit her once I was back in S.F. I talked to Phil about it—I figured he’d be all in favor—but he thought it was a lousy idea. “You know you’ll just end up fighting with her, Jane. Why would you want to do that?” So I put it off. When she died in ’87, I still hadn’t seen her.

I’m sorry.

No, Phil was right. There was no love lost there, and no sense pretending, either.

Tell me about Berkeley. What was your major?

Christ, that question…Which one do you want to hear about first? I had like five.

You had trouble deciding?

I didn’t think I needed to decide. Look, there are basically two reasons people go to college. Some people actually go there to learn something, something specific I mean, a trade or a vocation. Other people—like me—just go for the experience. I was like one of those starving-artist types, people who convince themselves back in grade school that they have a destiny to become actors or musicians or writers. For them, college is a place to mark time until their destiny kicks in.

And you believed that you had a destiny…to become Nancy Drew with a lightning gun?

See, when you say it that way it sounds crazy. It was never that explicit. I didn’t even know what the organization was at that point, so it’s not like I ever thought to myself, “One day I’m going to join the fight against evil, and here’s how.” It was a lot more subtle than that, just this general sense that I was covered—I didn’t need to make a plan for my life, because the plan already existed, and eventually it would come clear to me.

But the wait got long. When I left Berkeley after five years, my destiny still hadn’t kicked in yet, and suddenly it didn’t seem so smart that I hadn’t studied anything useful. To survive, I ended up doing what the starving artists did, taking jobs that even a high-school dropout could get: waitress, pizza-delivery girl, liquor-store clerk…Name an occupation with no entry qualifications and no future, and I probably tried it at least once.

So I was poor, and living in one shitty apartment after another, but I was young, and having fun—too much fun, sometimes—and I still felt like I was covered. And then one day I turned around and I was thirty years old. And like I say, my destiny, I never thought about it that explicitly, but on milestone birthdays, you do think about things, and the day I turned thirty it occurred to me that it had been a really long time since I’d seen the coin. I decided I needed to see it, to hold it in my hand and remind myself, you know, omnes mundum facimus, we all make the world, whatever the hell that meant.

But I couldn’t find it. I trashed my apartment looking for it. And it was no surprise—I’d moved so many times, it was a wonder I hadn’t lost more stuff—but I was still very upset. So I went out and got really fucked up, and to make a long story short, my birthday ended with cops and an ambulance ride.

Afterwards, Phil came to see me, and we had a long heart-to-heart about what I was going to do with my life. I’d never told him about the coin, or the voice on the phone, or any of the rest of it, but he talked like he knew: “You don’t need an engraved invitation to do good works in the world, Jane,” he said. “You want to do them, you just go out and do them.” Which, once I got done gagging, actually made a lot of sense to me. So that kind of became the theme of my early thirties.

Good works?

Well, attempted good works. Turns out it’s not as easy as it sounds.

The first couple years, I did a bunch of gigs with groups like the Salvation Army and Goodwill, but I found out I don’t really have the temperament for charity work, especially religious charity work. I decided to try more white-collar stuff—March of Dimes, CARE—but that was just boring, plus I’m even worse at office politics than I am at charity. So then I thought, getting back to basics, maybe what I needed was something with a more disciplinarian bent to it.

Law enforcement?

Yeah. But there I had a different problem: to become a cop, or a prison guard, or even a parole officer, you need to pass a background check, and there were things in my history—like that meltdown on my thirtieth birthday—that made that a deal-breaker. About the best I could do was a job as a security guard, and protecting the inventory at some department store didn’t really count as good works in my book.

So as time wore on, my thirties started looking more and more like my twenties: lots of pointless, dead-end jobs. And then I was thirty-five, and thirty-six, and forty was just up ahead, and Phil didn’t have any more suggestions for me.

And then one day I bumped into my old pal Moon. I hadn’t seen her in twenty years, but this one day I was feeling nostalgic and decided to go back to the Haight, to the street where we grew up. I was standing in front of the lot where the community garden used to be—it had been paved and turned into a skateboard rink—when Moon came along, dragging a pair of kids with her.

She looked great. Young and skinny, not like someone who’d been through two pregnancies. Meanwhile I was definitely the worse for wear, so it took her a minute to recognize me, but when she finally did she gave me this big hug and introduced me to the brood. Then—like this wasn’t depressing enough already—she told me that she and her husband had started their own consulting firm and were pulling down six figures a year working from home. So I came back with this story about how I’d been in the Peace Corps, and if I seemed a little run down it was because I’d spent the last decade fighting AIDS in Africa. Then she had to go, so I gave her a fake e-mail address and told her to keep in touch.

And I was on my way home when I passed by this pay phone, and just on impulse I picked up the receiver. There was no dial tone, but the phone wasn’t dead—it was an open line. “Hello?” I said. There was no answer, but still it felt like someone was listening at the other end, so I said, “If you’re ever planning to call me back, do it soon.”

The next day, I got a jury-duty summons in the mail. I’d gotten calls to jury duty before, and I was about due for another, so it could have been a coincidence. But maybe not…and either way, I figured this was an opportunity to do some good in the world, exactly what I’d been looking for.

It was an arson-murder trial. This guy Julius Deeds, reputed gangster, found out his girlfriend was cheating on him and threw a gasoline bomb into her living room in the middle of the night. She escaped through the back door of the house, but she left three kids upstairs and none of them made it out.

So I was in the jury pool for this, and I was pretty psyched, until it dawned on me that I’d met the defendant before. He’d been at my dealer’s place the last time I went to make a buy.

That’s your drug dealer?

Yeah. Guy named Ganesh.

May I ask what kind of drugs?

The usual kind. Pot of course, speed, Valium, coke on special occasions, acid when I needed a cheap vacation. I know that probably sounds like a lot, but at that point in my life I had it under control.

Anyhow, the last time I’d gone to see Ganesh, about a month before the jury call, he’d come to the door looking scared. Now Ganesh was always a little shaky. He’d studied to be an oncologist before flunking out of med school, and I’m guessing he had a failure mantra playing 24/7 in his head: “I was supposed to be curing cancer, instead I’m one bad day away from doing twenty years in Leavenworth.” This time, though, he wasn’t just nervous, he was sick with fear, ashen with it, like he’d just come from watching his twin get autopsied.

“I can’t see you right now, Jane,” he said, and started to shut the door on me. Then the door jerked open again, and this giant ape of a guy stepped up behind Ganesh and belly-bumped him so hard he nearly fell on his face.

“Hi there, Jane,” the ape said, grabbing Ganesh by the back of the neck to steady him. “What brings you here?”

I kept my voice casual: “Just dropping by to say hi.”

“Oh yeah?” He looked down at Ganesh, turning him like a can whose label he wanted to read. “You sure about that? Because Ganesh here, he likes to sell things to people—he’s not so good about paying bills, but he likes to sell. You sure you didn’t come to do some shopping, Jane?”

“No, really…I’m just here to say hi. But if you guys are busy…”

“Yeah, we kind of are…” He started dragging Ganesh back inside. “So come back later. Much.”

I hadn’t seen or heard from Ganesh since, and I naturally assumed the worst.

I hadn’t seen Julius Deeds since, either. His lawyer had him cleaned up for the trial, but King Kong with a haircut is still King Kong, so I should have recognized him right off the bat. But I was so gung-ho to get on the jury, I spent my first half hour in the courtroom focused on the juror questionnaire. It wasn’t until I got done bullshitting my way through that and handed it in that I noticed Deeds staring at me, trying to work out where he knew me from.

We both got it at the same time. Then he smiled, like Christmas just came early, and all my good intentions went straight out the window. I started hoping three things in quick succession: one, that I didn’t get picked for the jury after all, two, that Deeds hadn’t made bail, and three, that if he had made bail, Ganesh was either dead or out of the country, because Ganesh knew where I lived.

I’m going to guess that none of your hopes were realized.

Of course they weren’t. I’d done such a great job on the questionnaire that I was the first juror seated—Deeds looked really happy about that—and then later, after we were dismissed for the day and I’d snuck out of the courthouse, I saw him on the sidewalk shaking hands with his lawyer.

So I tried calling Ganesh, but his phone had been disconnected. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad. I thought it might be a smart idea for me to skip town regardless, but first I made a stop at the house of this other dealer I knew, to re-up my Valium stash. And it gets hazy after that, but I guess between the Valium and the bottle of vodka I kept in my freezer, I decided not to skip town.

Now there’s one other important thing I haven’t told you, and that’s the date that all this happened. I got summoned to jury duty on Monday, September 10th, 2001. And so the next morning I came to in my living room at around six a.m., and the TV was on, and at first I thought it must be tuned to the Sci-Fi Channel because there was this image of the World Trade Center, and one of the buildings was on fire. Then I saw the CNN logo in the corner of the screen, and I’m like, hang on a minute. And it had just registered that this wasn’t a bad movie, this was real, when the second plane flew in.

I turned up the sound and sat there for about an hour with my jaw hanging open. Then my phone rang.

It was King Kong: “Hi there, Jane.”

Instead of being freaked out like I should have been, like I was supposed to be, I actually felt sorry for the guy, because the world had just turned upside-down and he obviously hadn’t gotten the memo yet. So I said: “Are you near a TV set?”

That wasn’t the reaction he was looking for. “Listen, you stupid bitch,” he said, “do you know who this is?” And I said, “Yeah, I know who it is, and I know you think you’re a badass, but the thing is, you’ve just been trumped.” And he went off, all threats and swearing, but I didn’t really hear it, because it was right then that the first tower went down. A hundred-ten-story building, and it turned to rubble right in front of my eyes, and I realized in this weirdly detached way that I was witnessing a mass murder.

On the phone, Deeds was raging: “Are you listening to me? Are you listening to me?” And I said, “Get fucked, killer,” and hung up on him. There was a moment right after I set the phone down when I thought, That probably wasn’t too smart, but then I looked back at the debris cloud on TV, and by the time the second tower collapsed, I’d put Julius Deeds completely out of my mind.

I took some more Valium and went for a long walk. Around noon I ended up at Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. By then all the planes had been grounded, and the city was quieter than I’d ever heard it—the only sounds were the wind and a few people crying. I was looking for a place to light up a joint when I saw Phil. We didn’t say anything, just wandered off together and sat down to watch the day go by.

It was after dark when I finally went home. The drugs had worn off enough for me to start worrying about Deeds again, but by then I couldn’t remember whether that early-morning phone call had really happened or was just something I’d imagined. I was wary going into my building, but when I found my apartment door closed and locked, not kicked off its hinges, I figured I was safe.

I let myself in. My TV was on, and that seemed wrong, but I told myself not to be paranoid. I started hunting around the living room for the remote, and then the television shut off on its own, and Deeds said, “Hello, Jane.”

He was sitting in the darkest corner of the room, with a baseball bat across his knees. I looked at him, and the bat, and then at the door I’d just come in by, and he said: “You won’t make it.”

“OK,” I said, standing very still. And he said: “You were right about me being trumped. This morning when we talked, I had no idea. You know they say the body count could be as high as five thousand?”

“Five thousand…”

“Yeah. Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Still, it’s not all bad news. My trial, for example: it’s been postponed.”

“Postponed?”

“Yeah. The courthouse was closed today, and the way things are, my lawyer says it could be months before I get a new trial date.”

“I’m happy for you,” I said.

“Oh, it’s not just good luck for me. It’s lucky for you, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” He stood up. “You’ll have time to recover.”

That’s my last clear memory from that night. I know I did try for the door, and I eventually made it—I was bleeding out on the landing when the neighbors found me—but not before he worked me over. He broke my collarbone, and my right arm in two places, and cracked or broke half my ribs. He also got in one really good shot to my skull—the doctors told me later it was a miracle I didn’t end up dead or a vegetable from that.

I was in a coma for ten days. I woke up in a darkened hospital room with a television playing somewhere nearby. Tom Cruise was talking about a priest who’d died giving last rites to a fireman at Ground Zero. Then Mariah Carey started singing that we all have a hero inside us, and I thought maybe I’d died, and this was hell. But the show went on, with more celebrities coming out to sing and tell stories, and there were calls for donations, and eventually I realized I wasn’t in hell, I was just in America.

The cops came around. I told them I didn’t know who’d attacked me. Then Phil came to see me, and I told him the same thing, but he knew I was lying. I told him to mind his own business.

I had another visitor, too. I first noticed him about a week after I woke up, and for a long while I wasn’t sure he was real. I was in a lot of pain, but because of the coma the doctors were nervous about drugging me. But I kept after them, and eventually they put me on a morphine drip. And I was floating on that when this guy showed up.

He was black, with a round face. He sat in a chair over by the window, watching me.

What made you think he wasn’t real?

The way he was dressed. He had on this cheerleader’s uniform: pink checked skirt, pink sweater with OMF across the chest, pink pom-poms, plus this wig—a yarn wig, like a pink mop head with pigtails.

That does sound a little strange. On the other hand, San Francisco…

Yeah, I thought of that too, but the other thing about this guy, nobody else seemed to be able to see him. The woman I shared the room with had end-stage brain cancer, so she was out of it, but there were nurses and doctors coming through all the time, and they never so much as glanced at him. I tried to draw attention to him without, you know, actually saying anything—if it turned out he wasn’t real, I didn’t want my morphine drip pulled—but no dice.

So finally I gave in, and tried talking to him: “What do you want?”

“What’s the magic phrase?” he said.

“What?”

“What’s the magic phrase?” He lowered his pom-poms and puffed his chest out.

“Omnes mundum facimus,” I said.

“That’s it…Now look under your pillow.”

It took some major maneuvering, but eventually I slipped my good arm under the pillow. My hand closed around a coin. The coin.

I was more relieved than I could say, but I was also pissed off: “Now you show up? Where the hell were you when that asshole was beating the shit out of me?”

“That was an oversight,” he said, frowning. “Not my department, you understand, but I am sorry—it was a busy day, and details got missed.” He brightened again, and laughed. “‘Get fucked, killer…’ I like that. That showed spirit. Not a lotta brains, but spirit.”

“So why now?”

“Well I know you got hit in the head, but you are aware of recent events, right? The organization I represent—that that coin represents—is holding a recruitment drive.”

“You want me to help fight terrorism?”

“No! There’s people all over the country lining up to do that.”

“Well what, then?”

“Well the thing about one big evil taking center stage, it tends to draw attention away from all the other evils. So now somebody’s got to swim against the tide, to make sure those other evils don’t flourish from neglect. You could be a part of that, if you’re interested.”

“But why now?” I persisted. “Those other evils, they were always there, so why didn’t you come for me sooner?”

“Omnes mundum facimus,” he said. “You looked up the translation for that, right? You know it doesn’t mean ‘Wait for further instructions’ or ‘Stand around with your thumb up your ass.’”

“No, but…”

“Let me lay another saying on you: ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ Now the implication is that the few are special—brave enough to answer the call, or worthy enough to be chosen. But there’s another way of looking at it. If many are called, and few are chosen, maybe that’s because most of the many have better things to do.” He shook a pom-pom at me accusingly. “You had a life. It was hoped you’d do something with it.”

“Great,” I said. “So you’re telling me you’re the booby prize?”

He laughed again. “I do like that spirit. I—we—can use that spirit. So the question becomes, are you willing to let it be used? Are you ready to be one of the few?”

“You know I am.”

“All right, then…Tomorrow night, between seven and seven-fifteen, you’re to go to the top floor of this building. Turn left out the elevator, and look for a door marked Examination One. If you come early, or show up late, it’ll be just an empty room. But if you come on time, you’ll meet a man named Robert True, who’ll tell you what the next step is.”

That was all he had to say to me, but still he sat there, watching me and smiling. “Go ahead,” he finally said. “Ask it.”

“OK. Why are you dressed like a cheerleader?”

“You know what a nondisclosure agreement is, Jane? This outfit serves the same purpose. What do you suppose would happen if you told the hospital staff about our conversation?”

“They’d cut off my drugs.”

“You got it,” he said, and winked. A few moments later a nurse came in and gave me a shot; I fell asleep, and when I woke up again, my visitor was gone. But the coin was still there, safe under my pillow.

The next evening, I made sure I was awake. At quarter to seven I hauled myself out of bed, and wheeled my IV stand to the elevator. I went up to the fourteenth floor and found Examination One, and at 7:01, I knocked.

“Come in,” a voice said.

Inside, the room was a lot like this one. Spare, I mean, with just a table and a couple of chairs. Robert True was standing when I came in. He was wearing a gray flannel suit that might have been stylish back when Ozzie and Harriet was a hit TV show; he was short, and heavy, and didn’t have much hair.

“Welcome, Jane,” he greeted me. “I’m Bob True.”

“Hi,” I said. “Omnes mundum facimus.”

“That’s all right. I don’t need the magic phrase. But as long as we’re on the subject, have you worked it out yet?”

I had, finally. “It’s a comeback,” I told him. “To that thing people say when they don’t want to be blamed for a bad situation: ‘I didn’t make the world, I only live in it.’”

“Very good.”

“So that’s what you’re about, your organization? Making the world a better place?”

“By fighting evil in all its forms,” True said, nodding.

“Are you the government?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “Does the government fight evil?”

I thought about it. For some reason, the first thing that came to mind wasn’t the FBI or the justice system, but my last trip to the DMV. “Well,” I said, “it can.”

“Lots of things can fight evil,” True replied. “Cinderblocks, for example—if a cinderblock had fallen in Josef Stalin’s crib, the twentieth century might have been a bit more pleasant. Even if one had, though, I doubt most people would say that the purpose of cinderblocks is to fight evil.”

“So you’re not the government. What are you, then? Vigilantes? You hunt bad guys, right?”

“The organization pursues its goal through diverse means, most of them constructive. We employ Good Samaritans, Random Acts of Kindness, Second and Third Chances…” He went on, ticking off more than a dozen of what I eventually understood were division names, actual organization departments that fought evil in positive, life-affirming ways. My eyes must have glazed over, because suddenly he stopped and said, “Am I boring you?”

“A little,” I admitted. “So which are you, a Good Samaritan or a Random Actor?”

“I work for what’s known as the Cost-Benefits division.”

“You handle the money.”

“I help allocate the organization’s resources. Which are substantial, but still finite.”

“‘Resources’ includes people?”

“Of course.”

“Well then, if you know anything about people, you know I’m not a good Samaritan.”

“No,” True said, “I don’t suppose you are…” He placed a green NC gun in the center of the table. “You’ll recognize this.”

“The one I had last time was orange.”

“The one you had in Siesta Corta was standard issue. This is a special model.”

“What’s special about it?”

“We’ll get to that. First I have a hypothetical question for you. A test question.”

“OK.”

“There are two men, both evil. One is a former concentration-camp commandant, responsible for the murder of half a million people; he’s ninety years old, living in hiding in the South American jungle. The other man is much younger—barely twenty-five, in excellent health—and living openly in the middle of San Francisco. He’s only killed once so far, but he’s discovered he has a talent and a taste for it, and it’s likely he’ll kill again many times…though of course, the total number of his victims will never be more than a fraction of the commandant’s.

“The death of either of these men would leave the world a better place. You have the power to kill one of them—but only one. Whom do you choose?”

“That’s easy,” I said. “The young guy.”

“Why?”

“Because killing the Nazi is the obvious choice, and this is a trick question.”

“Clever,” True said, in a tone that suggested it was anything but. “Now how about a less glib answer.”

“In this hypothetical situation, I’m supposed to be you?”

“Someone with my job description, let’s say.”

“Then the answer’s the same. Kill the young guy.”

“Why?”

“His worst days are still ahead of him. With the Nazi, the Holocaust is already out of the barn—killing him might be more satisfying, but the net benefit is smaller.”

“What about deterrence?” True said. “Wouldn’t killing the Nazi discourage other people from following in his footsteps?”

“It might, if it were a public execution. If I were the government, I could put him on trial for genocide and then hang him on pay-per-view. That might turn some heads. Trouble is, I’m not the government, I’m a member of a secret organization that dresses its agents like cheerleaders so people can’t talk about them. An execution that no one knows about won’t deter squat.”

“What about justice?”

“Is this a hypothetical real situation, or a hypothetical comic book?”

“And what about vengeance?”

“It’s fun. But it doesn’t have anything to do with fighting evil.”

“No,” True agreed, “it doesn’t.”

“Does that mean I pass the test?”

“The first half. The second half is less theoretical…” He laid a couple booklets on the table. They looked like those question booklets you get when you take the SATs. A name was written on the cover of each one in felt-tip pen. The one on the first booklet was BENJAMIN LOOMIS; the one on the second was JULIUS DEEDS.

“Two men,” True said. “Both evil. One you’ve already met—”

“Yeah, I have,” I said. “And he’s not ninety years old, if that’s where you’re going with this.”

“Julius Deeds has been indicted for murder. The case against him is strong, and despite his efforts at jury tampering he’ll probably be convicted. Even if he avoids prison, his actions have made him enemies on both sides of the law. A ninety-year-old might well outlive him.”

“And Loomis? Let me guess: he’s barely twenty-five, in excellent health…”

“Twenty-seven, actually. And he’s killed four times, not just once. Other than that, yes, he’s just like the younger man in the hypothetical. A predator. He’s been operating on a three-month cycle, so unless someone stops him, we expect he’ll take his next victim in early December.”

“The police don’t have a clue who he is?”

“The police aren’t even aware of his crimes yet. He hunts male prostitutes, men who’ve been abandoned by their families and have no one to report them missing. He kills discreetly and buries the bodies. In time he’ll be found out, of course—they almost always are—but it could be years from now.”

I stared at the tabletop. “The gun’s a one-shot, isn’t it? That’s the special modification. And the test is I have to choose.”

“We need to know what your real priorities are,” True said. “In a moment you’ll select one of these booklets; inside, you’ll find all the information you need to complete your first assignment. The other booklet will go back into our files, with a notation that its subject is never to be harmed or otherwise acted against by any agent of the organization.”

“So if I pick Deeds, Loomis gets a free pass? You’d really do that?”

“It wouldn’t be much of a test, otherwise.” He looked at his wristwatch. “You have one minute to decide.”

“Screw that. I don’t need a minute.” I reached for a booklet. True took the other one. “Don’t lose the gun,” he said. “You’ll see me again when the job is completed.”

I was in the hospital for a few more weeks. Towards the end of my stay, even though I hadn’t said a word about the organization, the doctors downgraded me from morphine to Vicodin. This made me cranky.

They released me right before Thanksgiving. I had a quiet holiday at home—just Phil, a couple microwave turkey dinners, and some nonprescription painkillers—and then, on the last day of November, I killed Julius Deeds.

It happened like this: Deeds’ favorite hangout was a nightclub in the Mission District. He’d show up most nights around ten, driving a red Mustang convertible that he’d park asshole-fashion in front of a hydrant, or just facing the wrong direction—like to say, you know, I’m the king of the jungle, the normal rules don’t apply to me. If it wasn’t raining, he’d leave the top down, too. I figured the deal with that was he wanted to show what a tough guy he was, so tough that nobody would dare steal his car. Or maybe he hoped someone would steal it, so he’d have an excuse to get in some batting practice.

That night, I was hiding in an alley across the street from the club when he drove up. I watched him go inside, and gave him half an hour to get comfortable. Then I set his Mustang on fire.

Gasoline would have been poetic, but besides being really conspicuous, a gas can is tough to sling one-handed, and my right arm was still in a cast. I used charcoal starter instead—a twenty-ounce container, small enough to slip inside my jacket. I strolled up to the car during a lull in the street traffic and stood there casually, peeing lighter fluid over the front-seat upholstery. When the container was empty, I took out a strike-anywhere match and lit it off my cast.

The Mustang’s interior was burning nicely by the time the nightclub’s bouncer raised the alarm. People started coming out of the club. Most of them hung back, but one particular Cro-Magnon went charging at the car. For a second it looked like Deeds was going to do my job for me by diving headfirst into the fire.

Where were you at this point?

A couple blocks up the street, by the entrance to this park. It was on a rise, so I had a clear line of sight to the nightclub, and vice versa. I was standing under a streetlamp, spotlit.

You wanted Deeds to see you?

That was the plan. It took a while, though. You know that expression, “a blind rage”? I know what that means now. Deeds was still trying to decide whether to throw himself on the flames when the bouncer came up with a fire extinguisher. The guy was trying to help, right, but as soon as he started spraying foam onto the Mustang, Deeds went berserk and swung on him. The guy went down, and then Deeds grabbed the fire extinguisher himself, and spent about a minute trying to figure out how to work it. Then he went berserk again, and tossed the extinguisher through a shop window.

In the middle of this tantrum he suddenly stiffened up, and I knew he’d finally sensed me watching him. “Over here, killer,” I whispered. He turned slowly in place until he was looking straight at me; I raised my good arm and gave a little wave. Then I ran like hell into the park.

About a hundred yards in, I stopped to look back. Deeds had already reached the park entrance, and was ripping a two-by-four off a sign on the park gate. I ran on, my cast banging against my ribs; when I looked back again, Deeds had closed about half the distance between us and was swinging the two-by-four in big warm-up circles.

I made a last dash downhill past a swing set and out the far side of the park, onto a street lined with houses. I went to a house near the end of the block, pulling out a key as I ran up the front steps. Deeds was right on my heels now—I’d barely got the door shut behind me when the pounding started. The lock splintered on the third blow, and gave way on the fourth; the door chain snapped and then Deeds was inside.

This time I was the one sitting in a dark corner of the living room. Instead of a baseball bat I was holding a double-barreled shotgun. I had it up and ready with both hammers cocked, the barrels balanced on my right wrist, my left hand on the triggers.

“You’re a dead woman,” Deeds announced. Then he blinked, noticing the gun, and added: “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not kidding. Now here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to drop that piece of wood you’re holding, and we’re going to go downstairs to the basement…”

“No,” Deeds snarled. “What’s going to happen is, you’re going to give me that fucking gun. You can either hand it over easy, or I can take it from you—but if you make me take it, I’m really going to be angry.”

I pulled the left-side trigger. The shot struck Deeds in the arm, knocking him back and tearing a big chunk out of his bicep. He grunted and dropped the two-by-four.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You want to start worrying about my feelings.”

Deeds cupped a hand to his ruined bicep. “You shot me!” he complained. “You’re crazy…” He glanced over his shoulder at the broken front door.

“You won’t make it,” I said. I stood up, and gestured towards the back of the house. “Basement door’s that way. Start walking.”

He moved slowly, hoping I’d come up too close behind and give him a chance to grab at the gun. When we reached the basement stairs, he slowed down even more and tried goading me: “I don’t know how you think you’re going to come out on top here, Jane. I mean, I know you’re not going to kill me.”

“Keep moving.”

“I know you’re not going to kill me. Maybe you’ve got the guts to pull the trigger, I’ll grant you that much, but you don’t want to go to prison, do you?”

“Keep moving.”

“Or are you stupid enough to think you can claim self-defense on this? Is that the plan? Tell the cops you had to do it, because of that beating I gave you? You think they’ll care about that?”

I wasn’t going to argue with him, but I couldn’t help myself: “I think they’ll care about those three kids you burned to death.”

“Those kids…So that’s what this is about?” He laughed. “Let me tell you something about those kids, Jane. I didn’t even know they were in the house that night. But their mother—my so-called girlfriend? — she knew. And I’ll bet the selfish bitch didn’t look back once when she was running to save herself…You want to pass judgment on someone, Jane? What about a mom who leaves her own kids to fry?”

“Shut up and keep moving. I’m not going to say it again.”

“All right, all right…But I’m telling you, Jane, I really don’t see this ending well for you. I don’t…”

He trailed off in mid-threat. We’d finally reached the bottom of the stairs.

The basement was lit by strings of hanging bulbs. Its floor had originally been wood, but the planks had been pried up and set aside, exposing bare dirt beneath. Here and there—four places in all—long, narrow holes had been dug in the dirt, filled in again, and sprinkled with lime. In between the water heater and the furnace a fifth hole had been started, but it was only half-finished. The handle of a shovel jutted out of it at an angle; lying facedown in front of it, one hand still reaching for the shovel, was the figure of a man.

“What the hell is this?” Deeds said.

“The greater of two evils,” I told him. “His name was Benjamin Loomis. He was a serial killer. Earlier tonight he had a heart attack. Died in the act—at least, that’s what the cops will think.”

“Died in the act of what?”

“Burying his last victim.”

Deeds turned and lunged for the gun then, but my finger was already tightening on the trigger.

“Bad monkey,” I said.

After, I went back into the park, and found True sitting on a bench near the swings. He wasn’t happy.

“I told you to choose one,” he said.

“One booklet,” I reminded him. “But I didn’t need your help to track Deeds down. He was in the damned phone book. And then when I went to take care of Loomis and found that shotgun in his closet…Well, I figured it was part of the test, to see if I had the initiative to take out both of them.”

“Did you really think that? Or did you kill Deeds because you wanted to?”

I shrugged. “Does it even matter? You said it yourself, they were both evil. The world’s better off.”

“Yes, but now there are discrepancies for the police to wonder about. Such as the fact that Loomis died several hours before Deeds.”

“They won’t be able to tell that, I bet. I mean yeah, if they came right now, while Deeds is still warm…But I don’t hear any sirens, do you? And once his body hits room temperature, it’ll be a lot harder to fix a time of death. That basement was cold as a meat locker.”

“And when they discover that Loomis’s other victims were poisoned, not shot?”

“So? Maybe Deeds wasn’t a normal victim. Maybe he found out what Loomis was doing, and tried to blackmail him, or just walked in on him somehow.”

“Somehow.”

“It’s a Nod problem. The police will believe that Loomis killed Deeds because it’s the simplest explanation. They’ll want to believe it, especially when they find out who Deeds was. Tell me I’m wrong.”

True shook his head. “This is not how we do things.”

“Look, you said you wanted to know what my priorities were. You want to give me grief for bending the rules? You want to blackball me for it? Fine. But we all make the world, right? And if that’s true, I’m not going to settle for just one bad guy when I can get two. I saw my chance and went for it, and I’m not sorry. I’d do it again.” I stopped there, worried about overplaying it, but after a minute had gone by and True hadn’t given me the chop, I went on, in a softer voice: “So do I pass the test? Am I in?”

Another minute. True sighed.

“You’re in.”