Vaz Read online

  The three stood tensely staring each other down a moment, then Dante touched Steve’s arm. “Leave it be. Get in a fight and we’ll get thrown out of school.”

  ***

  Billy got out of the shower, dried himself and put on the latex gloves. He opened the bag and shook the clothes out onto the freshly washed counter. All synthetics. All new. Two layers. He put them on, carefully not allowing the outsides of the clothing to touch his skin.

  Before he got in his car he put a plastic bag over the seat so none of the DNA he’d rubbed onto the seat over the years would get on his new clothes. He set the bag of other stuff on the passenger seat and gave the van an address near this Gettnor’s address. The job seemed simple enough. Intimidate this science nerd into taking his old job back. Rough him up a little if needs be. Leave no trail that could be traced back to him or Jerrod if the guy went to the cops, but intimidate him on that score as well.

  As the van took him to the address he’d given it, he thought through his plan again. He’d left his own AI at home, so no record would exist on it. Leave no DNA at the scene. Just before the van arrived, he got out the latex mask and put it on. It was just a cheap costume mask but it would make it impossible to identify him from the AI records at Gettnor’s house. It didn’t look so odd that people he encountered on the street would freak before he got there.

  He’d left himself a long walk to Gettnor’s and was irritable when he got there. Oh well, he thought, it’s got me in the right mood.

  When Gettnor’s door AI asked him who he was, he held up the box and said “delivery” in his lowest pitched voice.

  After a moment the AI said, “We’re not expecting a delivery.”

  Billy tried the doorknob. The door opened. Idiots, he thought to himself as he put the heavy work gloves on over his latex gloves. He stepped inside, crossed the entryway and looked across the stark family room for the door to the basement he’d been told about. Seeing it, he started that way. The door opened and an average sized light brown dude with no hair stepped out. He was wearing funny gloves.

  Billy was surprised when the man walked directly toward him. Most people hesitated when the confronted someone six foot six inches who weighed two ninety. Billy pitched his voice to a rumble again and had said, “Gettnor! I’m here to teach you a lesson. You need to go back to work for…”

  The guy launched a full out punch into Billy’s gut.

  It felt like he’d been hit by a sledgehammer. With a gasp, Billy bent over.

  Gettnor’s fist rocketed up toward his face…

  Lights were flashing on and off Billy’s face. No, he fuzzily realized, people’s heads were sometimes blocking the sun, other times not. “Can we get a hand here?” someone called, “This guy’s huge!” A lot of faces gathered around, then he was lifted onto something, then lifted into the back of an ambulance. He wondered, what the hell just happened? He wanted to ask, but in his business you just didn’t. A vague picture of that Gettnor guy throwing a punch at his gut rumbled through the back of his mind. His mouth tasted of blood and his teeth didn’t fit together right. He felt incredibly weak.

  Someone said, “Crap! Pressure’s low, let’s have some Trendelenburg. Turn on the sirens.” Billy’s feet went up, his head dropped and he heard the siren distantly as the world faded away.

  Sitting in their police car, the cop and his partner shook their heads as they watched the video they’d downloaded from the house’s AI. “Holy crap, run that back again!” The camera in the house’s family room had a good angle to show the intruder step in from the hallway he’d nearly filled, putting on a pair of work gloves. You could see that he had on a costume mask of the President’s face. He walked across the room and was near the edge of the screen when he spoke, saying, “Gettnor! I’m here to teach you a lesson. You need to go back to work for…” then out of the bottom of the picture Gettnor appeared, throwing the punch that crumpled the big guy. The big guy’s head was descending out of the field of view when it suddenly shot back up from the crushing blow that busted up his face. Then the big guy lay out like a tree falling. Then this Gettnor could be heard saying, “Call 911,” as he picked up the big guy’s feet, pulled them around and towed him toward the front door.

  They turned to one another, eyebrows lifted. One said, “Should we be charging him with anything?”

  The other shrugged, “Seems pretty clear cut, he was defending his home from an unwelcomed intruder who was threatening him with harm. If he’d shot him with a gun, he’d be within his rights.”

  The first cop snorted, “If he’d shot him with a gun, he might not have done quite as much damage! How the hell did a guy like Gettnor take out a mountain of a man like Billy Ray Evarts with two punches?”

  “I know, seems like such a nerd, right?”

  “Not very talkative though.”

  “Yeah, let’s go ask him some more questions.”

  Lisanne pulled into the driveway as the police were leaving. “What happened?”

  The officers looked curiously at her. “Who are you?”

  “Lisanne Gettnor. This is my house! What are you guys doing here?”

  “Your husband didn’t call you?”

  “No.” Lisanne considered telling them that she and Vaz hadn’t been getting along but decided to wait to see if it had any bearing. “I hadn’t heard anything. I’m just getting off work.”

  “Um, sorry Ma’am. You’ve been the victim of a home invasion. Your husband was home and stopped the intruder. Mr. Gettnor wasn’t hurt. He’s inside.”

  “My God! Was it a robber?”

  “Um, no Ma’am. He apparently wanted to coerce your husband to go back to work… uh, we have no idea why. Do you have any ideas in that regard?”

  “What? I’ve been hoping he would go back to work, why not?”

  The cop snorted, “Apparently, Ma’am, he really doesn’t want to go back to work. He said they offered him his job back, but he hates his new boss.”

  Lisanne closed her eyes and sighed in frustration. Then she opened them and frowned, “Someone wanted to force him to go back to work? Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “We’d like to know that ourselves. Your husband says he doesn’t know but we’ll be questioning some folks over at Querx about it.”

  “Didn’t you ask the guy?”

  “We will. He isn’t up to answering questions right now. Looks like your husband broke his jaw.”

  Lisanne drew back in startlement. Then realizing that if there’d been a fight Vaz had probably been hurt, she hurried inside.

  Vaz was down on his hands and knees with a rag, washing blood off the floor when Lisanne came in behind him. She said, “Vaz! What happened?”

  Vaz looked up at her warily. “A guy came in here and threatened me.”

  “And you fought him?! Why didn’t you just call the police?”

  “I did.” Vaz felt that this was a true statement, even if he had called after he’d hit the guy. He desperately didn’t want Lisanne to know how much he’d enjoyed hitting the guy. He’d been feeling really tense and having an intruder pop up—someone he could legally and in good conscience hit—had seemed like a godsend. The ecstasy of punching that huge guy had drained away all his tension and right now he felt great. He could hardly wait to get back down to the calculations he’d been working on.

  Vaz hoped Lisanne wasn’t going to feel like she had to talk about this for a long time. He didn’t want to lose this uplifted feeling before he’d tried to apply it to the hydrogen-boron fusion question.

  “Are you hurt?”

  Vaz shook his head and turned back to his cleanup.

  “He wanted you to go back to work at Querx?”

  Vaz shrugged.

  Lisanne narrowed her eyes, Vaz was hiding something. “Did Querx offer you your job back?”

  Vaz nodded, getting up from the floor with the rag and heading to the sink to rinse it out.

  Exasperated, Lisanne said, “Vaz! Talk to me! Are you g
oing to go back to work?”

  Vaz having wrung out the rag, started toward the laundry room to get rid of it. He wasn’t sure how best to answer Lisanne to get her off his back. Finally he just said, “No.” He turned toward the basement door.

  Lisanne beat him to the door. He realized that she’d been keeping between him and the basement door the entire time. She said, “Vaz! Why not? We need the money!”

  “No we don’t. This new finding will be worth a lot of money.”

  “A bird in the hand Vaz! You can’t jeopardize your children’s future for something that might be worth money. Please!”

  Vaz was wringing the rag that he’d never taken to the laundry room back and forth. His peaceful transcendent state was in tatters and tension was building. He wondered once again if he could explain that their financial situation was OK without making Lisanne angry that he’d been hiding it for a decade. He had a feeling that explaining it actually might resolve a lot of their issues, but he hated trying to explain things that he felt guilty about. Finally he stepped up to her and, gripping her by the arms, he gently but inexorably moved her away from in front of the door to the basement.

  “Vaz! Dammit! Vaz, no! Talk to me!” She began to sob, “Come on Vaz…”

  He shut the door in her face, feeling terrible, but unable to deal with the entire issue. “Don’t cry,” he said sadly through the door. “It’s going to be OK.” As he descended the stairs, he pulled the MMA gloves out of his back pocket where he’d put them after the fight. That was a problem with real fights, he mused, they didn’t last long enough to wear him out. At the bottom of the stairs he lunged out to begin pounding his heavy bag.

  Upstairs Lisanne sank to the floor and leaned her back against the basement door, gasping a little with her frustration. Vaz could be so stubborn, unyielding, and just plain difficult to communicate with! How could he just avoid talking about something so important in their lives?! Hiding in the basement like a child who’d done wrong!

  She wiped angrily at her tears; then frowned a little. Has he “done something wrong?” Besides the obvious of getting fired and refusing to take the job back when it was offered?

  ***

  Stillman Davis entered Jerrod’s Bar and Grill and walked directly back to Jerrod’s back office. He knocked and opened the door when bade to do so. With dismay he saw that Jerrod looked pissed.

  Jerrod stood and leaned forward, “You didn’t tell me the SOB was some kind of animal!”

  “Animal? Gettnor? What do you mean?”

  “I mean he took out the guy I sent over to lean on him!”

  “‘Took out?’ You mean… he, he’s, dead?”

  “No! Ruptured spleen, broken jaw. Bunch of surgery. Worse, the police will be questioning him when he recovers enough to talk.”

  Stillman frowned, “He shot him?”

  “No!” Jerrod barked. “Gettnor beat him with his fists!”

  “But… but Gettnor’s a science nerd. He couldn’t beat up a cockroach!” Davis’ eyes narrowed. “What kind of guy did you send over there?”

  “Six foot six, three hunnert or so. I guess I should have sent an actual tank?”

  “Wait, Gettnor? Took out a big guy? Are you sure you sent the dude to the right house?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure… but I’ll have to check, maybe somebody else was home?”

  As he left, Davis uncomfortably remembered how strong Gettnor had seemed when he’d thrown Davis out of his house.

  He shook his head, strong, maybe. A fighter though? That was just crazy.

  ***

  Vaz studied the hydrogen absorption results for the other alloy disks. One of them had absorbed a little more than the original disk, but not by much. Most of them were much worse so his original estimates for the alloy had been surprisingly good. Several of them did have even more bizarre electrical properties but he’d kind of lost interest in that phenomenon.

  The house AI interrupted his thoughts to tell him he had a delivery. Suspicious since that guy had come into his house last week, he checked the porch camera and saw a UPS man getting back in his truck and driving away. No one else was on the porch or in the house.

  Excitedly he got the package which did indeed contain the replication of the apparatus he’d been using in the lab and his new piezo ceramic electrode. He went back down to his basement lab to try it out. His excitement made his hands tremble as he tried to assemble the devices. He finally had to break for a light workout to calm himself.

  Having finally assembled the copy of the original apparatus, he started it absorbing hydrogen and turned to his new chamber. Gratifyingly the new electrode fit it like it was supposed to, so he installed a disk and turned on the hydrogen for that one too. He resisted the temptation to apply the hammering current immediately. Even though they should be saturated with hydrogen in just a few minutes, this time he wanted to wait to match the original conditions. That meant absorbing hydrogen overnight.

  With a sigh, he thought that it was fortunate that he had that amateur MMA fight this evening. It would take his mind off of the experiment so he wouldn’t sit around all night trying to resist the temptation to apply the current early.

  ***

  Dante and Steve walked into Eakin Auditorium and headed for their seats. Steve was pumped again. “I talked to the Abe at my dojo. He thinks I’m good enough to fight in one of these as soon as I turn eighteen. If I win a few amateur bouts, he thinks I could get picked up for semi pro.”

  Dante shook his head, “Man, I don’t know. Fighters get hit in the head a lot.” Dante was becoming more and more disenchanted with Steve and his constant talk about fighting. Steve was neglecting his studies and Dante had begun to realize that very few fighters were successful enough to make a career out of it. Even those who were successful often found their careers cut short by injury.

  “So?!”

  “So, I’ve been reading. Fighters can have some pretty significant neuro problems later in life.”

  “Hah, who knows if I’ll even live that long. I’m goin’ for a short life, full of glory.”

  Under his breath Dante said, “I’ll take a long life, and not as an idiot either.”

  “What?”

  “Nothin’.”

  Some cheers rose from the crowd as the first fighters entered the ring and were introduced. The first one, Jack Alexander had 5 wins and no losses. The second, going only by a pseudonym “Dr. Demento” was in his first fight.

  Dante hadn’t been paying too much attention to the ring, having become more interested in the spectators. They were a varied group that seemed to have come from all walks of life but he thought most of them were there to watch someone get hurt. Drinking beer seemed to be an important part of the ritual for many. However, when he heard them announce “Jack Alexander” he turned to look at the ring with wide eyes. It was Silvy’s Jack! He pulled off his robe and he looked enormously powerful. Dante suddenly realized it wasn’t just his extra weight that had made him hard to shake off in the hallway that day.

  Steve said, “Oh man, that new guy is smaller than the dude with the 5-0 record, he’s gonna get killed.” He elbowed Dante, “Check it out, he’s shaved his head and his eyebrows like your dad does.”

  Dante looked curiously down at the ring, surprised that Steve hadn’t recognized Jack. He saw that the other guy did look a lot like his dad. Dante snorted, the guy had on what looked like an ordinary bath robe instead of the flamboyant fighter’s robes that most of the competitors wore.

  Steve nudged Dante again, “Whoa! Look at the new guy. Holy crap, he’s ripped! The big guy might have some trouble with him after all!”

  For a moment Dante had narrowed his eyes. The “Demento” character looked so much like his dad that he’d begun to feel uneasy. But when the robe came off he relaxed. No way a narrow waisted, broad shouldered man with powerful thighs and massive arms like that could ever be confused with his dad, the nerdy lab guy.

  The ref waved a hand to start the
fight and the two fighters moved out into the middle. Steve said, “Oh man, the little guy better get up on his toes or he’s gonna get creamed.”

  Dante stared. Jack Alexander was up on his toes, dancing toward the middle. Demento, hands up, simply plodded toward Jack, walking just like Dante’s dad! What Dante thought of as his dad’s “waddle,” kind of wide based and robotic. Jack sent out some tentative left jabs that bounced harmlessly off Demento’s upraised gloves. Then he launched a big hook to Demento’s left ribcage below the elbow of the upraised left hand. Then Jack fell down… and didn’t get up.

  “What the Hell?” Steve shouted. “What the Hell!” He raised up on his tiptoes, “The little guy knocked him out?!” I didn’t even see it happen! Jeez!”

  Dante stepped out onto the stairs and began to walk slowly down to ringside. He had to know.

  The big screens over the ring began showing a slo-mo replay. On the video from the side that Steve and Dante were on you could see Jack’s testing left jabs, then the big hooking right to the ribs. From the camera on the opposite side you could also see the jabs, but then as Jack leaned down and in to throw the big hook to the ribs, Demento’s right came around to wallop the side of Jack’s head. The much bigger Jack simply went down.

  Dante had reached the bottom steps and someone was getting up to block his progress. In the ring he could see Alexander still laid out with his trainer trying to bring him around. And Dante could see his own dad walking down the steps from the ring wearing a bathrobe Dante had occasionally seen him wearing at home.

  One of the ringside bouncer types started shooing Dante back up the stairs to his seat. Dante made it up the stairs with only some minor stumbles, even though he kept almost all of his attention on his dad’s characteristic walk heading out to the dressing rooms. He wondered if he could get into the dressing rooms himself. He felt torn between wanting to tell his dad he knew his secret, and worrying that his dad would be pissed that he was down here watching MMA on a school night. He might not. Dante hadn’t even seen his dad for weeks. His mom and dad didn’t seem to be getting along very well, so it seemed possible that his dad didn’t even know that Dante’d told Mom he was going to watch a wrestling match.