Flashback

“But I’ve beaten the serious addiction part,” continued Nick. He raised his hands and spread his fingers. He was determined not to beg (he still had his ace in the hole, the reason they had to hire him) but for some stupid reason it was important to him that they trust him. “Look, Mr. Nakamura, you must know that it’s estimated that about eighty-five percent of Americans use flashback these days, but not all of us are addicts the way I was… briefly. A lot of us use the stuff occasionally… recreationally… socially… the way people drink wine here or sake in Japan.”

“Are you seriously suggesting, Mr. Bottom, that flashback can be used socially?”

Nick took a breath. The Japanese government had brought back the death penalty for anyone dealing, using, or even possessing flash, for God’s sake. They feared it the way the Muslims did. Except that in the New Global Caliphate, conviction of using or possessing flashback by sharia tribunals meant immediate beheading broadcast around the world on one of the twenty-four-hour Al Jazeera channels that televised only such stonings, beheadings, and other Islamic punishments. The channel was busy—and watched—day and night throughout the Caliphate in what was left of the Mideast, Europe, and in American cities with clusters of hajji Caliphate fans. Nick knew that a lot of non-Muslims in Denver watched it for the fun of it. Nick watched on especially bad nights.

“No,” Nick said at last. “I’m not saying it’s a social drug. I just mean that, used in moderation, flashback isn’t more harmful than… say… television.”

Nakamura’s gray eyes continued to bore.

“So, Mr. Bottom, you are not addicted to flashback the way you were in the years immediately following your wife’s tragic death? And if you were hired by me to investigate my son’s death, you would not be distracted from the investigation by the need to use the drug recreationally?”

“That’s correct, Mr. Nakamura.”

“Have you used the drug recently, Mr. Bottom?”

Nick hesitated only a second. “No. Absolutely not. I’ve had no urge or need to.”

Sato reached into his inside suit pocket and removed a cell phone that was a featureless chip of polished ebony smaller than Nick’s National Identity and Credit Card. Sato set the phone on the polished surface of the top step of the tansu.

Instantly, five of the dark-wood surfaces in the austere room became display screens. In ultimate HD, but not full 3D, the view was clearer than looking out perfectly transparent windows.

Nick and the two Japanese men were looking at multiple hidden-camera views of a furtive flashback addict sitting in his car on a side street not four miles from here, the images recorded less than forty-five minutes ago.

Oh, God damn it, thought Nick.

The multiple videos began to roll. 

1.01 Japanese Green Zone Above Denver—Friday, Sept. 10

NIck’s first response was professional, a product of his years on Vice and Major Crimes stakeouts—This took five cameras, at least two of them in stealth-daylight MUAVs. Two with very long, stabilized lenses. One handheld impossibly close.

It was him, on the screens, of course. Him in his clapped-out gelding, windows down because the day was already hot in the September morning sun, the vehicle parked under an overhanging tree in a cul-de-sac in an abandoned development of new multimillion-dollar homes less than four miles down the hill from the Japanese Green Zone and about a mile off the Evergreen–Genesis exit from I-70. Nick had taken triple precautions to be sure he hadn’t been followed—although why would his prospective employer follow him before the hiring interview? No matter. He liked being paranoid. It had served him well during his years on the force. He’d even gotten out of the gelding and scanned the sky and overgrown shrubs and weeds growing out of the abandoned structures with his old IR, motion-sensor, and stealth-seeking binoculars. Nothing.

Now Nick watched himself settle back in the driver’s seat and remove from his rumpled suit coat pocket the only vial of flashback he’d brought along that morning.

He and the two Japanese men continued watching as the Nick on the screens closed his eyes, squeezed the vial and inhaled deeply, tossed the vial out the driver’s-side window, and settled back farther into the headrest, his eyes rolling up within seconds as they always did with flashers, his mouth open a bit—just as it was open now.