Vigilantes and Lovers by Charles Dougherty

Author:Charles Dougherty [Dougherty, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

26

Sipping my fresh mug of coffee, I sorted through all the information from Nora's boss. Over the years, I developed my own mental filing techniques. In my college days, I found that doodling on a letter-sized pad was a good way to organize my thoughts. Once I finished drawing circles and arrows and scribbling comments about what they meant, I didn't need to refer to my notes again.

My work required solid memory skills, but writing notes was dangerous. Nevertheless, I knew that writing things out helped embed facts in my memory. Early in my work, I weaned myself from using paper notes.

I learned to close my eyes and visualize a yellow legal pad. With an imaginary fountain pen — don't ask me why; it works, so I stick to it — I doodle to my heart's content. When I finish mapping out whatever problem I'm struggling with, I open my eyes and my notes vanish. But the information doesn't. It's all nicely catalogued in my mind; ready for recall any time I need it.

The strangest part is what happens when I recall it. In my mind's eye, I see everything I need, all organized and written out neatly on the pages of a yellow legal pad.

That's not how I visualize the information when I'm processing it into my memory. It's jumbled and illegible, then. But when I call it up, the notes are presented in flawless script. The mind is a marvelous puzzle.

I dealt with the phone call to Nora's boss first. Aaron's information would keep. Besides, Aaron presented it in a logically connected fashion, which made it easier to remember. Nora's boss — I'm going to think of him as just plain "The Boss," from now on.

The information I gleaned from my phone call with the boss was a mess. His delivery was disorganized, maybe by design, and when I tried to put the pieces together, there were inconsistencies.

Inconsistencies are part of the real world. Things rarely fit together without gaps and conflicts, and when they do, it sets off warning bells. Fabricated stories don't have conflicts; the truth is a ragged piece of work, full of holes and contradictions.

On a macro level, I didn't trust the boss. I put that at the top of my first imaginary yellow page. The boss is full of shit. I went on from there, listing my thoughts and recollections as they popped into my mind, brainstorming as opposed to trying to impose order.

He was definitely who he said he was. He knew too many insignificant details to be an impostor. All that stuff about my early missions — he was reading from the files. After he mentioned things, I remembered them. But it was stuff I did, and even I couldn't have called up that kind of detail off the top of my head. So he read the files, or excerpts from the files.

Nora told him about meeting me in St. Martin. He knew she gave me the satellite phone when we were there.

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