Vandermein

XXII

There was a time of rest, but the television was on. The national news was covering the story of the sunken ship in our harbor, carrying an upwards of 100 children, though it was hard to get an exact number, given the nature of their deaths. 

They couldn't show many pictures; even the aerial shots from news copters had to stop, given the gruesome scenes that kept washing ashore. Those images, however, found their way to the dark corners of the internet where people inexplicably derive pleasure from such scenes. 

I found myself wondering how others could be so cruel, to be made happy--in some cases aroused--by such carnage. And yet, what was my empire built upon but the same thing, just more discreet? My fortune was made by manipulation, by investments in vice and victimization. Bolano, the company that had ties to the freighter, sold tobacco in international markets. How many children were smoking, becoming sick, becoming addicted, thanks in part to my investment? 

The fact was, I had probably sunk many more freighters full of children in other ways. 

And yet, my mind continued to escape to that place where responsibility hides away. It wasn't my fault that people decided to smoke. It wasn't my fault that banks failed to properly secure their vaults. It wasn't my fault that royalty didn't pay for better security. I played by the world's rules: eat or be eaten, and I was a lion, top of the food chain. If I didn't take my pound of flesh, someone else would, and maybe they wouldn't have such portion control. 

No, I wasn't a net bad to the world. I was a boon.  

A Boone. 

How ironic.

I looked to my right. The detective was watching the TV with me, his gave fixed, unflinching. I could tell that he was still blaming himself for the whole thing. to him, even a peripheral culpability was as bad as masterminding the plot. There were no degrees of guilt, only a fixed binary. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Hero or villain. 

Now he was one of us: a filthy killer, and there was no redemption complete enough to pull him out. 

To the left of me was Kenzie. I'd not checked in with her much since this all started going sideways. She was still in her thief outfit, the formal blacks of a cat burglar.  Her hands were busy with an embroidery loop, stitching together something or other. The act, it seems, was more pressing than the result. 

It was always work that redeemed Kenzie from the anxieties of a cruel world. She was a survivor. She had to be. Growing up, living through the brutality of the foster care system, she learned that the only one she could rely on was herself. It made her who she is, but success helped her to become something else as well: a therapist, a mother, a wife. It had been a while since she'd donned her criminal attire, and I wondered how it was affecting her. Ji-Min was, perhaps, reveling inside. She's dressed as she ought to be. 

"She's awake," the elderly Korean woman announced from the side room. "Time to talk."