“Yeah. He’s got that lumpy kind of shape.”

  I was unphased. “I know you guys are busting my balls because we’re all rough and tumble heroes who have to hide our affection for one another to keep up our tough appearances. So instead we make hurtful, derogatory, highly-detailed insults. But deep inside, you guys love me.”

  “He kinda smells like shit, too,” Phin said.

  “Why are we hanging out with him again?” Jack asked. “Didn’t we just see him?”

  “Keep it up,” I warned them, “and I won’t save the day at the end.”

  They shut up, like good sidekicks should.

  We arrived at the town hall just before it closed, and I led our procession with the commanding authority of a person with a lot of money. We passed some walls decorated with some legendary moments in the hundred year history of Bakersbad, like that time the town bar caught fire and killed seven people who were too drunk to escape, and the Great Back Up of ’59 where the sewers failed and all the toilets backed up and flooded the houses with feces. Big news. There was a bronze plaque memorializing it and everything. It was the number two story of the year.

  Ah, hell, did I just steal that joke from Abe?

  Jack sniffed out a secretary behind a desk. She was old enough to have babysat Moses, and wore one of those pinned-on elderly lady hats that looked like you could use it as an ashtray.

  “We’re here to see the County Clerk,” Jack announced, beating me to the punch.

  “Down the hall, room 6.”

  Phin and Jack marched ahead, but I lingered. “Were you here for the Great Back Up of 1959?”

  “I was a teenager. It changed me forever. I’m still afraid of dookie.”

  “How did it get all cleaned up?” I’m a naturally curious person, and wasn’t intentionally picking on the seniors.

  “Shovels. Over sixty years ago, and I swear I still have some dookie under my fingernails.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “So am I. I chew my fingernails.”

  Old people are a hoot.

  I caught up with my compatriots and they’d already entered the office of a blond guy with not quite enough facial hair to call it a beard. He’d been on his computer and seemed surprised to have visitors.

  “Can I help you?”

  “A man gave you a thousand dollars to tell him the location of Area 57.” Jack must have known I wanted her to take the lead. “What else do you know about it?”

  “Uh… who are you?”

  I took advantage of any opportunity to flash my .44 Magnum, so I yanked it out of my shoulder holster. “All you need to know is that if I shot you from this close range, all that would be left of your head is two molars and an earlobe.”

  Blondie got talking, fast. “It was built by the United States government in 1991 to store hazardous materials, but it was never put into use. Currently a private security team of unknown numbers guards the place. Rumor has it there is some sort of secret experiment going on there. Maybe aliens. Maybe ghosts.”

  “Could it be ghost aliens?” I asked. “Because that would be really scary.”

  “I don’t know what goes on there. I swear. I only know about the place because all the zoning permits come through my office.”

  “Have you been inside?” Jack asked.

  “Never.”

  “He’s lying,” Phin determined. “Don’t kill him. Just shoot him in the leg.”

  I smiled big. “This close it’ll blow his leg off.”

  We were playing the classic psychological game of good cop/bad cop/worst cop.

  “Then just whack him with it. Break his knee.”

  “Can I take off my pants? I like to be naked when I break knees.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  The guy blabbed before I even undid my belt. “I was never inside, but I’m sure I have the blueprints!”

  “Then give them to us,” Jack glanced at the nameplate on his desk, which read CHARLES BIVERTON. “Charles.”

  Wait a sec. Charles.

  Where did I just hear that name?

  Charles, Charles, Charles…

  Someone was recently talking about someone named Charles.

  I know!

  “So, tell me,” I accused, “is Charles in Charge?”

  For those not up on their 80s pop culture, Charles in Charge was a sitcom starring Scott Baio and Willie Aames. I felt disproportionately smarmy fitting that little nugget into our interrogation.

  “Do you have the number 19 tattooed on the bottom of your left foot, Charles?” Jack asked.

  Oh, yeah! Charles Darwin! That’s where I heard it!

  Still, my Charles in Charge reference was a pretty sweet callback to my previous narration segment. It all fits together like a handcrafted jigsaw puzzle. Everything is relative. Especially relatives. Though not a clone, I was adopted, and always lacked the solidarity of familial love. Luckily, I had my peeps, Jack and Phin, who were as close to me as any blood relative. Also I had a blood relative. Harry Jr. One day, my son would grow up to have adventures that are a dead-ringer for my adventures. And in some far, ecopunk future, his son would continue the legacy. Harry McGlade cannot be constrained to a single lifetime. I’m an ageless, timeless idea that keeps springing up, over and over, throughout history. Boy, this is a long paragraph. Is it the longest one in the book? I think it is.

  “You think he set our guy up?” Phin asked, getting the story back on track.

  Charles went wide-eyed. “I didn’t know who they were!” he insisted. “I didn’t recognize them! I thought they were just snooping around!”

  “We need to take him somewhere private,” Phin said. “Find out everything.”

  “There’s a secret entrance into Area 57. I can take you.”

  Phin walked around the desk and grabbed Charles by the underarm, helping him stand like the helpfully helpful guy he is.

  That’s when I noticed something unusual through the window, because I always notice everything because I’m a first-class eagle-eyed investigator.

  That’s a non-truth, of course. I’m a mediocre investigator. I was checking out my awesome reflection in the glass, and noticed something accidentally.

  A tourist bus, pulling up to the town hall and parking.

  Odd that tourists would be interested in a tiny, Podunk town like Bakersbad.

  But it made a lot more sense to me when I saw the first few men exit the bus.

  Grey, sharkskin suits. Black shirts and ties. Sunglasses. Porkpie hats. Black gangster fedoras.

  “It’s the Tony Mafia,” I informed my compadres.

  Jack and Phin turned to look, Phin keeping his hand gripped to Charles so he didn’t run.

  “They’re armed,” Jack noted.

  More and more disembarked the bus, like clowns exiting a tiny car at the circus. I stopped counting at forty men.

  “That’s a metric shit ton of Tonys,” I observed.

  Having a passing familiarity with organized crime due to my black market contacts, I knew that even though they weren’t as dangerous as many of the other outfits, the Tony Mafia was a formidable group of mean men. All named Tony. I was unclear if they only recruited men named Tony, or if the recruits legally changed their names to Tony when they joined.

  Only one way to find out.

  “I’m going to see what they want,” I told my partners.

  I holstered my roscoe, which is another archaic word that I needed to stop using, and headed out to meet the Tonys. As I walked up to them, I counted forty-seven.

  Counting is one of my many skills.

  I approached the closest. “Which one of you Tonys is in charge?”

  “That would be Tony In Charge.”

  “Which one is he?”

  “Had to stay home. Sick kid.”

  “That’s too bad. I hope the kid is okay.”

  “He’s got the trots. We think it was some bad clams.”

  “You need to make sure freshwater bivalves are cooked to one hundred and forty-five degrees to kill bacteria.”

  “We don’t think it was bacteria. We think it was his lousy sauce. His sauce is almost as bad as Bad Sauce Tony’s.”

  “Fascinating. So who is in charge right now?”

  “The number two guy.”

  “Tony Number Two?”

  “There’s no Tony Number Two. Sounds like taking a dump.”

  Apparently everyone uses that line. I thought about saying, “Maybe he’s a stool pigeon,” but I figured the pun would be lost. Besides, there have been enough browntown jokes. Instead I said, “So what’s his name?”

  “Tony Second In Charge.”

  “Can you point him out?”

  “He’s right there. Guy in the grey suit.”

  Cute. The wiseguy was a wiseguy.

  “Guy with the goatee?”

  “That’s Tony Goatee. Guy to his immediate right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You connected?”

  “We’re all connected, Tony. Made up of atoms created billions of years ago in the violent explosions of colliding neutron stars.”

  He nodded. He knew what I was talking about.

  I sauntered up to the leader and gave him the guy nod. That’s the nod that conveys guy-to-guy that everything is cool. We do it to signal there is no threat, like in dark alleys, and at urinals.

  “You Tony Second in Charge?”

  “You are correctly informed.”

  “You came to town looking for somebody.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I make it my business to know. My name is Harry McGlade. Heard of me?”

  “Yeah. I liked your TV show. Fatal Autonomy. But I don’t understand what the title was supposed to mean.”

  “No one does. It just sounded cool.”

  “It was a funny show. I liked that fat cop. Jack Daniels. Always wetting her pants when she got scared.”

  “That’s her,” I pointed to Jack and waved.

  “She lost weight.”

  “Camera adds fifty pounds. The guys you’re looking for, they named Abe and Tom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d you wind up here?”

  “Tom dropped his phone in Vegas. Had an ICE contact.”

  In Case of Emergency. Must have been Joan.

  “And you tracked that here. Smart.”

  “It was Smart Tony’s idea.”

  “What’s your beef with Tom?”

  “Got no beef. But his buddy, Abe. Tall guy, kinda looks like that assassinated president.”

  “McKinley?”

  “Other guy.”

  “Garfield?”

  “That cat? Eats lasagna?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Not him. Lincoln. He owes us money. And there’s some big muscley Van Damme asshole, beat up some of my crew. Our code of honor demands we repay in kind.”

  “How much does Abe owe you?”

  “Half a mil. He likes the ponies.”

  “Likes the ponies? What did he do, eat Secretariat?”

  “You’re a funny guy, McGlade. I respect you.”

  “I respect you too, Tony Second In Charge. Maybe we can work something out. Come over to my vehicle.”

  I walked back to the car, forty-seven Tonys trailing me. It made me feel like a mother duck.

  If the mother duck was in trouble with the mob.

  When I got to the car, I knew it was my chance. The one I foreshadowed earlier. The one I promised back at the motel. The one all of my fans expected.

  I reached into the back seat.

  “Ever see one of these?” I asked.

  “That one of them XG5 Volcano Reactor coffee mugs?”

  “You are correct.”

  “It’s nice. Why you showing it to me?”

  I had no idea. I just figured it would all work out somehow and I’d save the day. Like I always do.

  “It keeps your coffee at a perfect one hundred and sixty-two degrees,” I said, trying to desperately think of a plan.

  I searched for Phin and Jack and Charles, but didn’t see them anywhere.

  “So, McGlade, you gonna make good on Abe’s debt? Or did you just want to show me your admittedly nice XG5 Volcano Reactor coffee mug?”

  “How about I give you the mug, and we call it even? I’ll even throw in an autograph. And we take some selfies. Free selfies. I normally charge for those.”

  “Do you know the whereabouts of Abe?”

  “I’m no friend of Abe. Guys who make jokes all the time, they get on my nerves. But you know the rules about squealers. Snitches get stitches. So I keep my mouth shut. I’m sure a man like you who abides by a code of honor will understand.”

  That’s when forty-seven Tonys pulled out their guns and pointed them at me.

  TOM

  Area 57 – New Mexico

  While at the police academy, Tom had been taught to never give up his gun.

  But his training hadn’t included what to do when in a room with two dozen armed men. Tom could even recall asking, “What are we supposed to do when we’re surrounded and outnumbered by people with weapons?” and his instructor laughed it off, telling him that would never happen.

  Fuck that guy.

  “I used to be a cop.” Tom talked slowly and with practiced authority. “Mary is ex-military. Your guards shot at Bert, so we weren’t sure what kind of reception we’d be getting.”

  Ziggy didn’t respond. Tom looked to Presley to see if she had any ideas, but she was already relinquishing her firearm.

  “We’re all friends here, right?” She smiled big and handed her semi-automatic to an awaiting Beige Boy.

  I guess we’re not shooting our way out of here.

  Tom also gave up his gun, nice and easy, watching Ziggy to judge his reaction.

  He seems giddy. Not a good sign.

  “I don’t carry a gun.” Bert spread his hands. “Go ahead and frisk me.”

  “We intend to. We’d also like to check your bag, Mary.”

  “It’s just a laptop. A few snacks and bottles of water.”

  She handed it to another guard, and three more stepped forward to pat them down, which they did professionally.

  Not a good sign. These guys seem to know what they’re doing.

  “You want to frisk the bird?” Tom asked.

  “No need. Besides, we wouldn’t want to ruffle his feathers.” Ziggy laughed at his own joke. He had an annoying, high-pitched laugh.

  “So… Weejy and SoJo?” Bert asked again.

  “We’re going to meet them in the mess hall, for dinner. First, I wanted to show you what we’ve been working so diligently on, and the reason for all of the secrecy and security. Follow me.”

  In Tom’s experience, secrecy and security weren’t good things. There wasn’t much worth hiding that was worth killing for, and wasn’t anything worth protecting at the cost of human lives.

  But this is all psychological game theory bullshit, being perpetrated by a clone of Freud, the master bullshitter psychologist.

  He wants to know our intentions. We want to know his. Our intentions are secret; we want to grab Weejy and SoJo and get out of here safely. We have no idea what he wants, and gathering information will be helpful, so the best bet is to play along and see what we can find out. It’s a poker match, neither side ready to reveal their hand.

  “So I’m guessing you were adopted.” Tom trailed Ziggy through a door and down a new hallway. Three armed guards accompanied them.

  “Yes. Grew up in Shackleton, Iowa. Nine brothers and sisters. Father was an Hasidic Jew, a coward, sold wool for a living. Just like my donor’s father. I believe the people running the clone experiment tried to place me in an environment as close to the first Freud’s as possible.”

  “The same with me,” Tom told him. “It’s my understanding that part of the experiment was nature versus nurture.”

  “Ditto. I wasn’t born in Germany. But my family and upbringing was similar to Einstein’s.”

  “And you, Mary?” Ziggy asked.

  Tom tensed, waiting for her answer.

  “You mean was I born into royalty and later ruled England and Spain?” Presley laughed. “No. My father was wealthy. Powerful. Pretty much an asshole. But he didn’t get married six times, or behead two of his wives.”

  “I’d be interested to hear more about him when we have some time.”

  “Be fun to trade some unhappy childhood memories. I also have some questions about a recurring dream I’ve been having. Maybe you can interpret it.”

  Ziggy laughed. “It would be my pleasure.”

  So far, so good. Presley is cool as permafrost. Bert, on the other hand…

  “You okay?” Tom asked.

  “Just want to see my friends,” he answered. “Also, Tork is freaking me out a little.” Bert cast a look behind them, where Tork lumbered half a dozen steps behind. “We haven’t had much luck with the bad ones.”

  Ziggy slowed his pace to butt into the conversation. “Who were the bad ones, if I may ask?”

  “Jack the Ripper. Atilla the Hun. Vlad the Impaler.”

  “Among others,” Tom added.

  “That’s an impressive rogue’s gallery. Where are they now, might I ask?”

  Tom glanced at Bert. “They’re no longer bothering anyone.”

  “A pity. I would have loved to have gotten to pick their brains. Let me say that Tork may look brutish, but I can assure you… he is brutish.”

  Ziggy laughed annoyingly at his own joke, and Bert winced and forced an uncomfortable chuckle. They came to a door marked LAB 3 and Ziggy entered first.

  The room was circular, large enough to throw around a football, and filled with old lamps littering the floor and tables. In the center, wearing a grime-streaked lab coat and safety goggles, stood a thin man with a neatly trimmed mustache.

  Ziggy waved his hand with PT Barnum flourish. “Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Tudor, allow me to present Nikola Tesla.”

  “Call me Nick.” He pushed his goggles up to his forehead and reached out to shake Bert’s hand, but Bert bypassed him, chasing after Stosh—

  —who had run up to a turkey at the other end of the room.

  “Doooooooo-dooooooooooo!” cooed Stosh, flapping his tiny, flightless wings.

  The turkey chirped.

  “Dooooooooo!”