Fifty Mice: A Novel by Daniel Pyne Read Free Book Online Page A

out on the sofa during March Madness, the unfortunate collagen lip treatment that his mom didn’t need, the controller attack patterns in Nintendo Super Smash Bros. Melee, his first girlfriend Lisa’s lopsided breasts, the virginal Emma’s peculiar preoccupation with feet that creeped him out, and what was that bar on New Years ’06, in New York, the Village, with the grapefruit martinis?, and one particularly sweet reverse layup on a driveway backboard, among the desperate farrago of television, the scatter of Internet signal and noise, texting, posting, friending, gaming, taggings and selfies, the disconnection and loneliness, the information overload, the tedium andrepetition: day, after day, after day, after day, immutable, unremitting, unremarkable.
    What of this could they possibly want?
    •   •   •
    E ventually one of the escort marshals, still trailing his miasma of aftershave (Rodriguez? Jay guesses) comes to get him, and leads him out into the narrow hallway and down to a kitchen where Public and Doe wait at a Formica breakfast table with a scary-thin lady lawyer who introduces herself as Arden Richter, and smokes a Marlboro Red with abandon.
    “Constitutionally speaking, you’re here voluntarily,” she says.
    Jay shakes his head. “But I’m not.”
    “Right, well, and your government is claiming they’ve brought you into custody for your own protection. So.” Arden grips the edge of the table like a schoolgirl waiting to get her test back, and expecting an A.
    “They can do that?”
    Richter takes the cigarette from her lips and stares at it. “They can do whatever they want, and you can take them to court for it, later, and—”
    “Like unlawful detention, or something.”
    “You’ve been watching your
Law and Order
,” Richter observes. “Yes. Or something.”
    “But meanwhile?”
    Richter’s hands flutter up in what Jay assumes is a shrug of helplessness.
    Jay looks to Public. “I guess I just want to know, protection from what?” He looks at Richter. “Or whom? Can you get them to tell me that?”
    Doe tells Richter that Jay has already asked it, but she, they, theFederal Authorities, this group of marshals, can’t answer that question without completely compromising the investigation in which Jay has been deemed a materially significant player.
    “That doesn’t really make sense,” Jay observes aloud, “but, okay. So where does that leave me?”
    Again, a fluttery shrug.
    Public shows his teeth, not really grinning, unamused, but apparently interested for the first time. “You really have no clue why we brought you in?”
    “I don’t. No.” He looks to Richter again. “This is what I’ve been trying to get through to them.”
    Doe starts to interrupt, but Public holds up his hand, so Jay can finish.
    “I didn’t see anything,” Jay tells everyone in the room, as calmly as he can. He still wants to believe that these are rational people who have made an honest but aggravating mistake and if he’s just convincing enough, and lays it out for them, right here, right now, they’ll let him go. “I don’t know . . . anything. I have nothing to offer you. And because you won’t give me a clue as to what it might be—”
    “We can’t. Don’t you understand? We need it to come from you, unsolicited—it’s essential that you tell us without our asking for it—”
    “Why?”
    This causes another awkward hiccup in the conversation. Evidently, they can’t tell him that, either. “This is either a case of mistaken identity or some bad information you got on your end,” Jay says. “I’m nothing. I’m just a regular, normal, boring guy. I lead a regular, normal, boring life, a telemarketer who sells virtual real estate on his way to a Thursday-night three-on-three roundball with some other guys, friends, when you, I dunno, accosted me, and pulled my coat over my head and drugged me and took me away and droppedme into this . . . well, yeah, I’m sorry,