An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity by J. Mulrooney

Author:J. Mulrooney [Mulrooney, J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy fiction, weird fiction
Amazon: B01MYMP4WN
Publisher: Castalia House
Published: 2016-11-13T23:00:00+00:00

They were in the endless underground mall that stretched itself beneath the country’s mightiest banking towers. Cooper had not done anything to Thisbe on the elevator. In fact, he had spoken irrelevantly about actuarial school and some man living in Scratch’s basement.

“Gormley?”

No, a man she had met at Scratch’s party.

Thisbe was too upset to follow. In action movies, when an ordinary man off the street suddenly finds himself embroiled in a murder plot, he rises to the occasion, avoids being shot a dozen times, punches out some evil goons, and ends by outwitting the mobsters who want to do him in. Thisbe did not feel able to punch Cooper out, and, far from outwitting him, she was even finding it difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. For it is a fact not much explored by the action movie industry that ordinary people, faced with mortal peril for which they are totally unprepared, find that adrenalin secretions, flight instinct, and sheer terror are unconducive to clever ruses and sudden effective violence. She took a deep breath. Calm, calm, she told herself. Two blue policemen walked past. Nothing to be afraid of here, she told herself.

Cooper ordered a yogurt smoothie. They sat at a table in the food court. Thisbe kept looking around, expecting that at any minute two large men in pin-striped suits would come to take her for a ride. She thought of all the time she and Dean had wasted in the years of their not being together. She thought of Cooper, who seemed kindly disposed, and she wondered if she should beg for her life. She had always liked Cooper. She thought that he liked her. Was it really necessary that she be killed? Was she such a danger? She hoped she would not make a fool of herself. The bottom of her stomach felt queasy.

The policemen walked past again, this time seeming to take an interest. Thisbe recognized one of them—Sergeant Maconochie, with whom she had spent two hours just a couple of nights ago. She gave him a smile and a wave. Cooper looked up, frowning at the interruption, then continued. The sergeant smiled at Thisbe and continued past. Cooper was babbling on about the basement at Scratch’s house, the furnace, a notebook—the notebook he had with him. Whatever he was talking about, he was not telling the story particularly well, forgetting bits and rushing back to catch them up, including the keeling over of Keiter, Gormley’s thanatopic nickname, the unsurprise of Gormley and Scratch, the furnace, his subsequent conversations with Keiter. The notebook was the only part she understood: this was his hitman’s scorecard, where he kept the names and dates and times of people he was planning to murder.

“Cooper, I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” she finally said. She felt safe in the mall and was pleased that Cooper had looked up and frowned when he saw the police. If he was planning to kill her, he couldn’t get away with it here.

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