Connor O'Kane sat in a battered gray metal chair looking across a battered gray metal desk at a battered gray man who was doing his bureaucratic best to explain why Connor had to remain dead.
The cramped little office where the U.S. Marshall's service met infrequently with people in its witness protection program came with a view of Union Station's rusting railyard, windblown trash and the run-down rolling stock of Amtrak, the world's only national rail line that was more inefficient than the nation's postal service. The dimly lit room smelled of flatulence and fear. The residue of abandoned lives yellowed the walls.
As the soft gray federal marshall droned on about why it was important to remain dead, O'Kane thought of the name they had given him five years before, a name that never rolled easily off his tongue. He still stumbled at the details of his fictional biography; the credit cards still seemed to belong to a stranger. He still had to refer to the number on the new Social Security card they had issued him. The name on the birth certificate they had given him was Lance Minor. His mind rejected it all like a transplanted kidney mismatched from the outset.
They had carefully taken away everything with his true name, even snapshots and family photos.
"It must all disappear," they had told him, "You have to die completely before you can live your new life safely and successfully."
There had been days when his old life had seemed like a bad dream, when he doubted he was really Connor O'Kane rather than this fictional Lance Minor they had created . On days like that, he took out the scrapbook of newspaper clippings -- mostly stories of the killings -- to try and hang on to who he really was, but more and more he had craved official confirmation that verified that he was who he was.
"Look here," O'Kane interrupted. It sounded like "look he-ah" in the broad vowels of the Mississippi Delta accent they had tried to coach out of him, "to better cover your tracks." His larynx had rejected that training immediately, despite the fact that it could, on command, faithfully reproduce half a dozen regional accents in French, Arabic and Hebrew.
O'Kane leaned over the desk. The gray little bureaucrat flinched and moved his chair back, as if he expected to be assaulted. O'Kane didn't strike him, opting instead to use one of three remaining fingers on his left hand to tap the single manila file on the dented desktop. "You can talk until you're blue in the face about your damn rules and all the damn reasons all your damn support geniuses can create, but you can't get around the fact that I am sick an' tired of being a dead man and I'm not going to take this much longer."
The marshall gave O'Kane a gray, noncommittal look, folded his arms across his chest and leaned back. The derelict chair's rusty springs made a long fingernail-on-the-chalkboard sound.
From outside the grimy windows came the controlled crashing sounds of switch engines shuttling cars, coupling them, making up trains. O'Kane took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to decide whether he was angry or just depressed again.
"I've got material that could blow the Customs Service right out of the water," O'Kane said angrily. "I can send some really big people to jail, bring this administration right down to street level. I've got hundreds of megabytes -- text, document image files, codes -- all encrypted and ready for a holocaust that'll burn anybody remotely close to this."
"Yes, I've heard. About that and your other ... extracurricular activities," the gray bureaucrat said with a calm note of distaste that indicated he knew a great deal and didn't approve one little bit. His gaze left O'Kane's for a moment and flickered briefly to his briefcase on the floor where the familiar double-sealed, tamper-proof envelope waited. "But you're going to have to deal with Customs on that." He smiled a small thin insincere smile. "After all, I'm Justice, not Customs, and remember, I'm civil service, not an appointee."
"Not your table, you mean?"
"Exactly," said the bureaucrat, ignoring the sarcasm, or not getting it in the first place.
"Fucking bureaucrats," O'Kane muttered under his breath as he stood up and walked over to a gray metal bookshelf decorated in yellowing copies of Federal Registers left from the Nixon Administration.
The gray man noticed O'Kane's peculiar step, not quite a limp, but definitely odd. The results, according to the file, of nerve damage from one of the slugs. The skillful microsurgery followed by intense physical therapy assured that there was no weakness, no disability, just a unique way of moving.
Shaking his head, the battered gray man from the Witness Protection Program slowly unfolded his arms, clasped his hands and leaned forward. "I don't understand," he said quietly, trying to remember the tone of voice they had practiced at training sessions on how to deal with reluctant participants. Stay calm; be pastoral; count their blessings for them. "Just look at what you've got: you've got your sailboat -- just about the biggest one on the Potomac -- and a flourishing charter business."
The bureaucrat smiled as O'Kane turned, his movement stiff at the shoulders, as if O'Kane had a stiff neck. He did -- literally. The files indicated that two of the vertebrae in his neck had been fused during surgery to repair damage and relieve the pressure from the bullet-shattered bone that had threatened to turn him into a quadriplegic.
"You've got the fortune you made before you started working for Customs, and you've got the handsome consulting fees Customs pays you. Hold on!" He held up his hand as O'Kane started to interrupt.
"Just hold on a minute," He paused and lowered his hand as O'Kane closed his mouth and audibly loosed another deep breath. He stood by the book case with its chipped and peeling paint and glared at the marshall.
"Good," the gray man said. He paused, for just a beat. "You've got to remember you've also got your life. You stick with the program, and you can live it until you get sick and die of old age without having to look over your shoulder waiting for some fanatic to slice your belly wide open in the name of Allah and leave you with your guts hanging out on the sidewalk like they did with that writer."
"You just--" O'Kane started to speak but stopped as he caught the gray man from Justice sneaking a glance at the battered Timex on his wrist.
It was no use. How could he explain to this anxious bureaucrat that life might not be worth living, no matter how much money was in the bank? How could he explain to a man like this that memories are all that make us who we are. If you kill the memories, haven't you killed the person?
"Look," O'Kane began again, calmly. "People're more than just the sum of the pieces of paper and plastic that describe them." The gray man of paper frowned at this. "I can't live this stranger you've poured me into. I can't date women more than a couple of times before they want to know who I am and I have to lie to them. I'm not this guy whose name is on the credit cards. This legend you're trying to make me live has no memories, no past. Without a past, what kind of future can a guy have? I can't make friends living a lie. With no past and no future, all I've got is some kind of eternal present like those pleasantly senile people who can't remember you from minute to minute."
The gray marshall peeked into the manila folder. "I see that you've refused to take our referral."
"I don't need a shrink," O'Kane said without turning to face the bureaucrat. "I need my life back."
"Professional help would go a long way toward easing your manic depressive problems."
"I don't need to float through life like some smiling potato head on Prozac," O'Kane snapped as he paced the small room. "Just resurrect me. Remove the death certificate from the archives; restore my credit files; convert things back the way they used to be."
Let me visit the graves of my wife and son and walk the streets of my life again. His thoughts returned to the place where it was always night, a darkness filled with painful memories of his wife and infant son, how they would still be alive if he had been just a few seconds faster.
The gray man looked at his Timex again. "You wouldn't live another year," he said as he pulled the double-sealed envelope from his briefcase and placed it on the desk.
"Let me worry about that. " O'Kane brightened when he saw the envelope.
"Well, I just don't know," the bureaucrat said doubtfully. He bent his head to the desk and began arranging the fictions of Connor O'Kane's life neatly back into the manila folder where they belonged.
"I don't care what you don't fuckin' know." O'Kane stood up so abruptly the straight-backed metal chair crashed backwards to the floor. He leaned over and snatched the familiar envelope from the desk, turned his back to the desk and ripped the envelope open. Inside he found a name and a cruise ship reservation.
O'Kane was smiling when he turned back to face the marshall. His voice was cool, so quiet the bureaucrat had to lean forward to hear. "If I want to come out, I'll damn well do it -- with or without your help."
The man from Justice watched speechlessly
as O'Kane gave him a broad smile, calmly picked up the chair and
positioned it neatly in front of the desk for the next ghost.
O'Kane turned and walked from the room.