The Hidden: Play the Game: The Hidden, #5

The Hidden: Play the Game. Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Michael Schwarz

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The Hidden

By

Andrew Michael Schwarz

Episode 5

Play the Game

38

Jack sat alone in his empty condominium. He sat in a slate gray recliner he had purchased at a Macy’s fire sale. It did double duty as a bed. He had one coffee mug and a full stock of paper plates and plastic forks. An empty pizza box graced the floor. A block of cheese and a six pack of beer waited in the fridge. He’d been living here for three weeks and had not yet called Nikki to tell her he was home.

The cell phone he used was a track phone. The only person who had that number was his daughter. He was waiting for her to call him right now. In the corner of the room he had a stack of file folders which had been supplied to him by the FBI. They were faked medical records. The records showed false blood tests. They were proof that he was on Xanax and Clozapine. He had other such proof too, like his attendance at a regular group therapy meeting every week and a letter from his shrink, Dr. Hildegard, who also just happened to be Special Agent Craig of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, though Amy would never know that.

He was fully cooperating with the FBI. He was doing everything they wanted him to do because if he did, they would help him get his daughter back and that was the only thing he cared about. He had signed the papers she had wanted him to and then sent them off to her with Agent Hughes assuring him that they were in contact with her attorney and those papers weren’t going anywhere.

He had let them coach him on what to say to her, not being too forward, not appearing too needy. Saying things like Take as much time as you need and There’s no rush. He had followed their advice not to call her more than two times a week, no matter how bad he wanted to hear from her, to show that he had other things going in his life, because no one wants to believe that you are their only friend.

He had even told his only daughter who he loved more than life itself that if you never want to see me again, I will understand and respect that. Somehow he had managed to keep a cool demeanor while saying it.

And now, after two weeks and five days of dedicated effort and delicate communiqués to allow her to originate interest, he was going to see her again. They were going to go out for dinner and, the best thing had happened: she had called him Dad. He had almost cried when she’d said it. She had been calling him Jack every time he’d spoken to her before that, and it had seemed she was going to address him by his first name for the rest of his life. But then she had called him Dad. It still warmed him from the inside out just to think of it.

He got up and went to the bathroom, where he shaved, and then brushed his teeth. He did his hair and put on another layer of deodorant. In his bedroom, in the closet, he had three new shirts and two new pairs of jeans. He dressed in his new clothes and examined himself in the mirror. He looked good. Better than he had in months. He paced the living room floor until his phone buzzed. It was Amy.

Hi, baby, he said, wincing at how overzealous he sounded. Keep it low key, come on buddy. Let her come to you. Just like Agent Craig says, let gravity work in your favor.

Are we still on? she asked, her voice sounding as if it were quavering slightly.

Yes, of course, he said. Why wouldn’t we be?

I don’t know, she said.

Everything okay?

Oh, sure, she said. Everything’s fine.

I don’t want to be a source of—

No, she said. It’s not like that. I want to meet.

Okay. Let’s meet then. Did you have a place in mind? He was gripping his cell phone so hard it was making the palm of his hand sweat. Or was that just his nerves? He checked the other hand and found it wet, too.

I know of a place, she said. It’s quiet and we can talk there.

His heart nearly froze. It sounded like she were intending the excursion to consist of just the two of them, that she wanted to go somewhere where they could stay awhile and talk things out.

Anywhere, he said. I’m there.

She told him the name and address of a place in the Silver Lake neighborhood. They agreed to meet in an hour and a half. Jack jumped up from his recliner and, realizing he had nowhere to go, began pacing excitedly. This is exactly what he had been working for, this is what he was all about.

He folded the blankets that were lying around on the floor and placed them neatly on the recliner. He laughed. That’s all there was to his house cleaning these days.

Christ, if she could see how I’m living she might not want to meet with me. He worried that she was going to come crashing through the door any minute, or baring that, she might want to come over after dinner. And she would know the truth.

But the truth of what? His ruse was that he was pretending to be guilty of everything. There was nothing left to hide. But the very idea of that set his teeth on edge. A very dark and heavy gloom took root in his gut. He knew the truth. He had been shown the truth and yet, here he was, ignoring it.

Yeah, but you can’t really prove that shit, he said to himself in the mirror as he modeled his new clothes, making sure that he looked as good as he possibly could. I mean, come on, projecting phenotype? That’s fucking crazy.

He wondered what he believed now. Gemini, body doubles, evil twins. It was all so…over the top. There was simply no way to prove anything. But he knew—had known—what he was looking at while at the de Bainbridge estate, hadn’t he? But that was the problem. They look like us, talk like us, act like us. Who knew, they probably even killed like us. What, then, was the difference? It was the old riddle, if it walks like a man, talks like a man, ain’t it a man?

A convenient excuse for slavery, that’s what it was. Sexual deviance, in the case of de Bainbridge and his club of lecherous old men. And there had been that computerized print out of the possible renditions of his genetic arrangement. Well, how fucking farfetched was that? Was he supposed to sit here and believe that not only did Jerry look like him now, but could also arrange his outward genetic expression to look like all the possibilities of what he could be or might have been?

Ah, ridiculous.

But, Jack had been there when Jerry had been born, hadn’t he? He had seen him as a wraith, he knew where he had come from… Goddammit Jacky Boy, don’t start doubting what you know, what you’ve seen with your own two eyes. We’ve been through this before, many times. Half the reason it escapes detection is that it is too incredible to be believed. Hell, that’s half the reason the world is in the shape that it’s in, today. Crazy shit happens and the general population, finding it too uncomfortable to believe in the impossible, back down in their own minds and accept that everything can be simply explained. Lee Harvey Oswald really did kill Kennedy and there has never been such a thing as a UFO.

Of course, that one image really had looked like Amy’s boyfriend, Zach. Honest to God it had. But he had looked at it so many times now that it had lost its impact. He wished he could see it afresh for the first time again, but there was no way to unring the bell. He had put it away in a drawer in the hopes that given enough time, he might be able to see it with new eyes. He feared that might take more time than he had.

He shook his head. The other angle on this was that de Bainbridge knew so much about him, why was it so impossible to believe that he would also know about his daughter’s boyfriend? Why was it so impossible to believe that this entire goddamned thing was just one big set up, just a big elaborate joke? Maybe Lord Raven took some wicked delight in misguiding gullible men to murder, or maybe Lord Raven was a Gemini himself and wanted to do away with anyone who might threaten his security. It could be anything.

Then, of course, there had been the FBI agents and there was just no way those guys were fake. No way. He had the false medical records to prove it.

He laughed at that, but the truth was that you couldn’t get false records like that unless you had special connections, as in the government type.

He sighed. All this hardly mattered. He was getting his daughter back and there was simply nothing else that compared or meant anything. Nothing at all.

He met her at Café Stella’s on Sunset. She was waiting outside for him in a silver blouse and tight blue jeans. He could hardly believe she was here. She smiled when he walked up, but did not reach out to hug him, and he didn’t force it. Let her come to you.

Inside, the décor was less imposing than he had anticipated. The booths were painted a faded red and the art work on the walls featured faux Picasso’s and pasta adverts from over a hundred years ago. It was cozy and perfectly flawed.

Amy picked up a menu at the counter and began studying it.

He was carrying his false medical records under one arm. He didn’t think she had even noticed. He wondered if he’d even needed to bring them. It seemed suddenly rather too much.

He studied the menu over her shoulder and saw the French names.

Don’t worry, she said. I’ll tell you what to order.

Deal. He was never very good with French cuisine.

They sipped water while staring at the table, remarking solemnly on the décor. He realized he was waiting for some pronouncement, as if she were going to lay out another ultimatum. When the meal came—his plate consisting of something akin to a very messy grilled cheese with an egg on top—he realized that she didn’t have some agenda to unfurl. He relaxed and found small talk.

How’s school going? he asked.

It’s okay, she said. Actually, I haven’t been going.

No?

No. It’s—I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Maybe nothing.

Baby, you should—

I know. I should do a lot of things. It’s just that when you filled out those…oh, forget it.

He didn’t push it. There were a lot of things he had done, which he would never know about for the simple fact that he had never done them. Regardless, for a moment there it almost seemed like old times again, like she had let him be her dad again. But she could easily shut him out and next time, he feared, might not let him back in.

This is going to be a balancing act.

They ate in silence, but it seemed they were both