[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
least, nothing had gone wrong. No trackers had jumped
him in his dreams. No fifteenth-century dukes had found
him while he slept.
Pushing himself up from the floor, his face felt like a great
soggy gland, but the sharp agony of his broken nose was
gone. That seemed to stoke his optimism. Though the ware-
house was now simply bricks and rotting timber after
Transom s invasion last night, it felt to Boy King as if life
were a blank page. He could do anything now. Go anywhere.
But he was hungry, desperately hungry, and his head
thundered with a godly hangover. He counted himself lucky
that this was the worst of his pains. Sitting and listening
to the geese, he ate an entire box of Saltines that he d
Dumpster dived a week before. Stale, but not too bad. He
THE MAGICIAN AND THE FOOL 211
drank some water from a jug, finished off his last Twizzler
from its sticky bag, and felt almost human afterward.
While he ate, Boy King decided this would be his last
day in Bryce & Waterston. Transom had successfully con-
vinced Visconti that Boy King wasn t here. Transom had
liberated Boy King. Now, Boy King was free to start over
somewhere else, and he found himself thinking that maybe
he d been too hasty to dismiss Lara for trying to get him an
apartment. Maybe things had calmed down at Dona Mia s
and he could talk to Lara about another gig next week.
The future was taking shape, like a blessed city coming
into view over the horizon.
But Boy King would need to finish reading Transom s
collection of documents before any of that could happen.
He sat down and opened the binder.
There was little that spoke to him more copies of
hieroglyphs and hand-drawn recreations of ram-headed
Khnum but then he chanced across his own name in a
section that had been heavily edited, evidently by govern-
ment censors. He thumbed back to the beginning so that
he could see what the document was.
Department of Justice
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C. 20535
January 15, 2004
Subject: Direct Action and Monitoring
FOIA No. 1014444 9032
Dear Mr. Visconti,
The enclosed documents were reviewed under the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Title 5, United
212 Barth Anderson
States Code, Section 52/552a. Deletions have been
made to protect information that is exempt from dis-
closure.
The enclosed material is from the main investigative
file(s) in which the subject(s) of your request was the fo-
cus of the investigation.
One document was reviewed and one document
was released.
Sincerely yours,
David N. Laurel
Section Chief
Record/Information Dissemination Section
Records Management Division
Enclosure(s):
From: Indigent and Immigrant Monitoring Division
Re: John Doe, Minneapolis, MN
ALERT: Suspected figure in Case # 98889A-DE-O (pending)
Date: December 2, 2003
These pictures of John Doe were taken following tips
from , who advised that this uniden-
tified individual might be a key figure in a pending
case out of the Madison, Wisconsin, bureau. The indi-
vidual is said to be squatting in the abandoned Bryce &
Waterston warehouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Length
of squat: unknown.
However, Special Agent used the
Forensic Image Analysis team s EigenMatch system, which
THE MAGICIAN AND THE FOOL 213
for human identification using eyes,
chins, cheeks, ears, and
. The
system employs an algorithmic
which remains controver-
sial, called eigenfaces standardized facial elements
derived from statistical analysis of the EigenMatch data-
base of face pictures using fourth- and fifth-dimensional
representations called auras that
As a result, Special Agent
was able to determine a 91% match between homeless per-
son John Doe at the Bryce & Waterston warehouse in
Minneapolis and the last known photograph of
taken at the Circus of
Infinite Wow in Austin, Texas. In other words, the SA
feels 91% certain that
is the Bryce & Waterston John Doe and not the Houston
Cherryvale Hospital John Doe as Special Agent
asserts.
Despite this near-positive match, more follow-up is
needed. For example, the address of the abandoned Bryce
& Waterston warehouse,
given in Case #
does not seem to exist in
the zip code provided. Follow-up with Minneapolis
Police Department found no maps or other records of a
214 Barth Anderson
warehouse with that name, despite having the attached
photograph with warehouse name and logo clearly visi-
ble. Sending a beat patrol to the site elicited no hard
evidence that this warehouse exists (officer could not
find it).
SA was asked to
repeat his EigenMatch findings in real time, which he
attempted, but circumstances beyond
for the Bryce & Waterston John Doe s alleged knowledge
of the and its disappearance
from Rome in 1991 (Washington office is requesting in-
formation of its possible location in US), Visconti s
group, known as (Boston office re-
questing), the whereabouts of fugitive Leo Burt and
other members of the Madison Underground (Madison of-
fice), various occult travelers hostels, connection to
Missing Person Tanya Elling, and/or the identity of the
Cherryvale John Doe.
As noted in the IIM bulletin, on ,
Operation Cattle Drive will begin. This coordinated
effort between the various State National Guards,
Homeland Security, and the Bureau s
will make further homeless investigations in cities
like Minneapolis nearly impossible. We advise sending
in a SA to Bryce & Waterston for one last interrogation
before the round-up begins.
THE MAGICIAN AND THE FOOL 215
Boy King quickly paged back to the initial letter from
the Department of Justice: December 2. That was five
months ago, which meant this Operation Cattle Drive was
probably still coming maybe a spring sweep, when a lot
of the homeless folks came back to Minneapolis, or at the
latest, a summer initiative. He hadn t heard about anyone
getting rounded up recently but it happened every few
years, and it was terrifying. People he saw regularly on his
Dumpster dives just disappeared, here one day and gone
the next. And this investigation had pictures of him, they d
been watching him, and they wanted to interrogate him.
Three letters, Transom had said in describing the greater
power that yoked him. Had he received three letters? No.
FBI. HSA.
Boy King slammed the binder shut and began gingerly
placing the paintings back in the cardboard box, imagining
special agents parachuting onto the warehouse roof. Could
Boy King find Lara? He needed her. He took back all the
snotty things he thought about her efforts to help him and
wished he had her address, phone number, or any means of
contacting her. He didn t know where she lived, didn t know
how to reach her except on Dream Machine Thursdays
and Sundays at the restaurant. After the mayhem with that
couple and the crazed busboy at Dona Mia s, he wondered
if Lara would even help him. He had to think of something
else. The van wasn t safe, not since the mud replica ap-
peared, so there would be no hasty flight out of town now.
Where could he go? He d gotten soft since finding and
building his little castle at Bryce & Waterston. He didn t
know the good hideouts anymore, where the cops didn t
come searching or where every homeless person in town
216 Barth Anderson
didn t already squat. He patted the packing tape back in
place, loosely resealing the cardboard box that housed the
ancient paintings. A homeless shelter might be okay. But
getting there, or anywhere, meant walking through very ur-
ban stretches of Minneapolis with the objects of so many
desires under one arm. If a desert hunter, an eigenmatcher,
a Khnum worshipper, or random tyro spotted him. . .
Boy King picked up the box easy enough to carry
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]