Carbines and Capacitors 2/14
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A/N: There’s at least one statement in this chapter that aligns with Cheyenne canon but not with Primary World history. I’ll lampshade it more thoroughly in a later chapter.
Chapter 2
The Man in the Suit
Earlier
“Did Shaw get away all right?” John asked as he returned through the stacks of the abandoned library to the command center where Harold Finch was overseeing the tail end of his team’s latest adventure.
“She did,” Finch confirmed, not looking away from his computer screens, “mostly thanks to the combined efforts of Detectives Carter and Fusco, which wouldn’t have been necessary if she hadn’t killed Delancey.”
John stopped to give Bear a hello scratch behind the ears and didn’t bother to point out that Carter was officially no longer a detective. “There was no other choice, Finch. Delancey and his thugs had us cornered; my hands were full of baby; and the only way to clear an exit was for Shaw to kill their boss with one shot. If she’d hit him in the kneecap, he could still have fired past me and killed his wife. If our positions had been reversed, I woulda taken the same shot.”
“I suppose we should be grateful that Delancey’s men are cowards,” Finch said drily.
“And that their gang’s on the outs with the Russians. Not only does that give us a convenient scapegoat, it meant they couldn’t expect backup from HR.”
“Y-es.” Finch didn’t sound convinced, but he turned toward John and let the subject of the shooting drop. “Did you get Mrs. Delancey and the children on the bus?”
“Train, actually.” John stopped scratching Bear and went to clear the plexiglass wall of the photos Finch had taped up in the course of the case. “Harder to crash in case one of Delancey’s men wants revenge. But yes, they’re safely on their way out of town.”
“Good. The crime scene units have just left; Det. Carter and Officer Laskey are making one last sweep—”
Finch was interrupted by the sound of a gasp from the tap they’d placed on Carter’s phone years earlier, while she was still chasing John as a suspected serial killer. “Laskey!” she cried, and John heard running footsteps followed by the thud of a body hitting concrete.
Wide-eyed, Finch turned back to the monitors as John rushed around the table to look over his shoulder at the feed from the surveillance camera overlooking the alley where the shooting had occurred. By the time John could see the screen, Laskey, who’d apparently been checking out the door John had used to get the surviving Delanceys to safety, and Carter were racing toward the prone form of a very big man dressed like a cowboy. This guy was easily 6'6", broad-shouldered, dark-haired, well-muscled—and beat up… not severely, but a bruise was already forming on his left cheek, and there was enough blood on his rolled-up sleeves and bared forearms and knuckles to show that he’d been in a fight. Sweat was rapidly soaking through his tan shirt, too. There was even a brown cowboy hat that had fallen nearby, with what looked like a row of silver arrowheads around the band.
“Where on earth did he come from?” Finch asked. And before John could even hazard a guess, Finch entered a few swift keystrokes to split the display between current footage on one monitor and past footage on another, then backed up the past feed several minutes to watch more closely while John kept both an eye and an ear on the current proceedings.
“Is he alive?!” Laskey asked as Carter crashed to her knees by the man’s side and tried to take his pulse.
A wordless bass groan seemed to be the answer to that, and Bear whined in concern.
“Stil,” John ordered, not looking at Bear.
Bear lay down again with a whuff of protest.
While Carter started first aid and sent Laskey to the squad car for water, John rolled a chair over to the desk and sat down, and Finch kept searching the recorded surveillance footage for where the man had come from, speeding up, slowing down, zooming in and out. “This makes no sense,” he finally murmured. “Look at this, Mr. Reese.” And he played the footage again for John at normal speed up to a point where he paused it. “Notice, there’s no sign of the man on any of the fire escapes or at any of the doors or windows to this point.”
“Right,” John agreed, because it was true.
“But look.” Finch advanced the image a frame at a time. Between one frame and the next, the man appeared in mid-air, clearly already falling.
“What the hell?”
“That’s impossible. People do not just fall out of thin air. But the video can’t have been tampered with—we can see Det. Carter and Officer Laskey moving perfectly normally.”
“Well, maybe there’s another explanation,” John suggested, although he was at a loss for what it could be. Then a Muppet Show sketch came to mind and he added, “Maybe somebody just invented a working teleporter.”
“The existence of the Machine does not presuppose other science fiction technologies, Mr. Reese.”
“I was joking. Mostly.”
Carter had gotten the man talking by this point and was asking him about having been in the military, which he apparently had. “Where’d you serve?” she asked in a tone that sounded casual but that John recognized as her being in interrogator mode.
“No place… you’d have heard of,” the man replied, his breathing still labored. “None of the… big battles, like… Chickamauga or… Manassas or Bull Run.”
“Chickamauga?” Finch echoed, frowning. “Those are….”
“Civil War battlefields,” John finished for him. “He thinks he’s a Civil War veteran.”
“I suppose that would fit with his costume, especially since he’s saying he wasn’t involved in any of the major campaigns of the Civil War. Perhaps he’s a reenactor from one of the sites on the frontier that saw more action against the Native Americans than between the Union and Confederacy.”
“Maybe,” John agreed, more hesitant about the reenactor part than about the rest. “Doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot.”
Finch nodded unhappily. “If anything, it makes the search more complicated, whether he’s speaking in character or not. The muster rolls for the major campaigns are well documented, but I don’t know if the same could be said of the frontier units.”
It wasn’t long before Carter and Laskey started getting personal details out of the man, but the more he talked, the more confused Finch became. Frantic searching revealed neither digital footprint nor current nor past records of anyone named Cheyenne Bodie; the closest Finch could find was a mention of an unsold Warner Brothers pilot on some amateur TV historian’s blog. Facial recognition software wasn’t getting him anywhere, either, although he did manage to get enough measurements that they could order Bodie some clothes if he needed them. John, meanwhile, had texted Fusco to send him back to the alley and was leaning away from teleportation and toward time travel as an explanation for Bodie’s appearance out of thin air—he had the uncomfortable sense, which Carter seemed to share, that Bodie was telling the absolute truth and wasn’t simply confusing reality with fiction.
How the hell spontaneous time travel was supposed to work, let alone how they’d get Bodie home, was a question John decided not to voice until after they’d gotten Bodie through the first few days of TBI protocols. He hoped his new colleague Sameen Shaw hadn’t yet destroyed her phone, as she was wont to do at the end of every mission; wherever they put Bodie up in the short term, John could use her help in keeping watch over Bodie while he still needed to be woken every two hours.
Finally, about the time Carter sent Laskey off to wait for the ambulance, Finch sighed in defeat. “This man does not exist. Cheyenne Bodie simply does not exist. We’ll… we’ll have to create a new identity for him, but… that can’t be Cheyenne Bodie because Officer Laskey associates that name with the 1880s cowboy persona.” He looked at John with an expression that meant he was just this side of a panicked meltdown.
John put a hand on his shoulder. “Finch. Tell Carter that.”
“Right, of course.” Finch pulled himself together and sent Carter a text. Then he busied himself with pulling up the websites and apps he needed to build a digital trail for Bodie’s cover identity while Carter relayed his request to Bodie.
Then Bodie sat up, clutching his head again, and said something that brought both John and Finch up short: “I’ve… been undercover a few times before.”
“Who is this guy?” John murmured.
“One of your former colleagues, perhaps?” Finch suggested, sounding half hopeful.
John shook his head. “The CIA doesn’t issue cloaking devices. Besides, if a guy like that was with the Agency, Kara never woulda let me hear the end of it.” He was secure enough about his own looks and charms, but Bodie had several inches of height and brawn on John, and given Kara Stanton’s penchant for needling him at every given opportunity, John knew not even the best-looking field agent we have would have been on her list had it been true.
Just then, Fusco called because he was nearly to the scene and needed more details than John had been able to give him by text. “Carter doesn’t know I’m on the case yet,” he admitted. “She and Laskey were canvassin’ up the block when Olson and I got there.”
“That’s all right,” said John. “Just follow her lead.”
“Is this somethin’ we need to make go away?”
“No. It’s something that might actually help.”
“So whaddaya want me to do?”
“Make sure the ambulance takes him to City Hospital and treat him like you would any other witness—for now.”
“For now? What the hell do you mean, for now?”
“Call me back once he’s in the ambulance, and I’ll give you the whole story as we know it. For right now, all you need to know is that he says he’s a cowboy from Wyoming.”
“—You mean he isn’t?”
“No, he is, but it’s complicated, and we don’t know what cover identity he’s come up with in the meantime.”
Fusco sighed. “All right, I’m here. But you better have a good explanation by the time I call you back.”
“Relax, Lionel. Have I ever let you down?”
“Frequently,” Fusco replied, though there was no heat behind it, and hung up.
Meanwhile, Finch had been busily filling in forms with the details that weren’t dependent on Bodie’s cover story, things like height, weight, and hair and eye color. By the time Laskey led Fusco and a paramedic down the alley, Finch was ready to start building Bodie’s new identity as quickly as Bodie could come up with it. For his own part, John watched Bodie carefully, and while he heard Carter alert Bodie that people were coming, he saw something in the set of Bodie’s shoulders shift as he slid into whatever new character he was about to play.
And play was the operative word. John had known some theater nerds in high school, the pretentious ones who aspired to Art but couldn’t play second banana to a third-rate burlesque comic, and Bodie not only nailed the persona but played it to the hilt. He might not have been comfortable on the stage, but he was a natural actor. Even his swing-and-a-miss about the Grand Hotel worked. John couldn’t help chuckling.
When Finch shot him an inquisitive look, John admitted, “He’s good.”
“He’s certainly given us a good deal to work with,” Finch agreed, typing furiously. “Creating a person from scratch takes time, as you know, especially when that requires establishing a new Social Security number, but I should have enough of the identity built in a few minutes to pass if someone other than Det. Fusco begins to look into Merritt in the next hour or two. We’ll still need to get official photos and signatures to complete his IDs, as well as fingerprints for a Georgia concealed-carry license, but those can be done after he’s released from the emergency room. In fact, I should be able to get his signature when the release papers are scanned into the hospital’s computers. I think it’s best if John Rooney is Jim Merritt’s old friend who’s called to pick him up from the hospital, and as he’s likely to be a long-term guest, perhaps he should stay at your apartment until we can find more permanent quarters for him. I’ll have Ms. Shaw pick up the necessary supplies.”
John pursed his lips and nodded as he considered the idea. “Not putting him in our usual safe house?”
Finch shook his head. “No, we’re likely to need that for our numbers. Even if Mr. Bodie should become involved in our operations, I’m sure he’ll appreciate more private accommodations.”
“Makes sense.” John stood. “I’ll go make sure my place is ready.” And he left.
No sooner had he reached the street, however, than the nearest payphone began to ring with a now-familiar urgency.
“Oh, you’re kidding,” John muttered, jogged over, and picked up the phone.
Beep. “Charlie. Hotel. Echo. YOUNG. Echo. November. November. Echo.” Beep. “BRAVO. Oscar. Delta. Indigo. Echo.” Beep.
John swore under his breath, hung up the payphone, and dialed his cell phone as he strode away. The Machine had sounded almost desperate at having to bend its programming this way, since there were no numbers associated with Bodie’s name yet, but clearly it had calculated that he was in danger too imminent to wait for the new Social Security number to go through.
“Mr. Reese?” Finch answered, surprised.
“Finch, we’ve got a problem,” John reported.
Now
“Much obliged, Mr. Reese.” Bodie’s handshake was firm, not crushing, but John could feel both the strength behind it and the calluses on the parts of Bodie’s hand that weren’t bandaged. Here was a man who wasn’t afraid of a hard day’s work and could handle himself in a fight—a far cry from the persona of Jim Merritt. He still smelled of horse and sweat and trail dust, too, under the gunpowder and blood and disinfectant… most of the city dwellers who’d encountered Bodie so far might not have been able to recognize all those scents, but John had known enough ranchers growing up in Washington and Colorado.
He could only wonder how much Bodie was learning about him the same way.
“In public, it’s John,” John said aloud as they ended the handshake. “John Rooney, asset manager for Crane & Associates—we met in college, at Tulane.”
“Tulane!” Bodie chuckled and shook his head. “Haven’t been to New Orleans in a fair few years. Didn’t even know actors went to college.”
“They do these days.” John turned onto another street. “What else can you tell me about Merritt?”
“He was part of a traveling show, the Thalia Reportoire Company. When I replaced him, he was performing in a play called The Marble Heart. You guessed right that he was a drunk, and a gambler as well, not to mention a coward. Col. Forrest said he’d deserted his post during the war, didn’t want anybody to know.”
“What was his wife’s name?”
“Nellie Barton.” Bodie scoffed. “She was a real piece of work. Had an affair with their co-star, George Willis—at least until I came along and caught her interest. They were raisin’ funds for a Confederate commander who was hidin’ out in Juarez, but Nellie tried to talk me into takin’ the money and runnin’ off to Europe with her. Said Willis was plannin’ to do the same thing.” He shook his head. “Can’t tell you how glad I was to be shed of her.”
John chuckled.
“I don’t know a lot else that might help you.”
“That’s all right. We can fill in the rest. Thanks. You hungry?”
Bodie hesitated. “Well, I ain’t had lunch, but… my stomach’s still none too happy.”
“I think we can find you something that’ll sit well.” A few turns later, John was pulling into a parking space outside the Lyric Diner. “They serve breakfast all day,” he assured Bodie as he shut off the engine, “and they’ve got things like soup if you want something more than pancakes.”
“Stack o’ pancakes sounds kinda good, actually.”
John had to show Bodie how to unfasten his seatbelt and where the door handle was, but once they were out of the car, Bodie followed John’s lead like a champ. Other than ordering pancakes and black coffee when the waitress prompted him, he let John carry the conversation with ridiculous college stories that never happened for either of them, reacting appropriately but not contributing much of his own accord. John had already eaten and contented himself with a slice of cheesecake, which left him plenty of time to talk.
They had almost finished eating when Finch, who had of course been listening to the entire conversation by phone, said through John’s earwig, “Mr. Reese, there’s a patrol car circling the block around the diner. I can’t tell whether they’re HR, but this is the third time they’ve passed your car. It might be prudent to leave as quickly as possible.”
John swallowed the sip of coffee he’d just taken, watched out the corner of his eye as the cruiser passed the diner again, and noticed that Bodie had noticed. He covered by asking, “So, do you ever hear from Nellie?”
Bodie seemed to fold in on himself, and it was clearly as Merritt that he answered with a quiet “No.”
“I mean, I know she left you for George—”
“George is dead, and as far as Nell’s concerned, I am, too.”
“Dead? What… what happened?”
“He got shot, that night down in Juarez. I don’t want to talk about it.” Bodie cradled his coffee cup in both hands before he drank.
“All right, I’m sorry. I just….” John broke off, pretending to realize that Bodie’s left wrist was bare of anything but the wristbands remaining from the hospital.
“What?” Bodie prompted.
“Where’s your watch?”
Bodie frowned slightly in genuine confusion and set down his cup. “My what?”
“Your wristwatch. The gold Rolex your dad gave you before you left for college.”
Bodie glanced blankly at his wrists and shook his head. “I must have lost it.”
“In a poker game?”
Catching on, Bodie threw his napkin onto the table. “Don’t start.”
“That’s what happened to your wallet, too, isn’t it?”
“John….”
“I warned you about those illegal casinos last time you were here—”
“Confound it, man, I said I don’t want to talk about it!” That was just loud enough to attract attention from the neighboring tables.
John huffed and pulled out his own wallet. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”
“The patrol car’s just turned onto 21st,” Finch reported as Bodie put his hat and shades back on. “If you leave now, they won’t know which way you’ve gone.”
John dropped a $20 on the table and herded Bodie out to the car. He might have sped slightly, but they had crossed 2nd Avenue before the cruiser turned onto 22nd again, and they were on 1st and headed uptown before Finch confirmed that they were clear.
“Do we need to take more detours, Finch?” John asked, earning him a very odd look from Bodie.
“I don’t think so,” Finch replied, “but I’ll keep you apprised.”
“Thanks.” John tapped his ear, hanging up, and glanced over at Bodie again. “I’ve got a wireless telephone in my pocket,” he explained. “It connects to a device I wear in my ear.”
“Oh,” said Bodie, although he didn’t seem to understand the explanation so much as chalk it up as another piece of the day’s weirdness. “Finch?”
“He’s a friend. You’ll meet him this evening. Carter still has your gun, by the way—she’ll bring it by after her shift.” John turned onto the nearest cross-street to start the loop back toward his loft.
“All right.” Bodie nodded over his shoulder, in the direction of the diner. “So what was all that about back there? Why’d you want people to know we were leavin’?”
“In case the police came in looking for us.”
“For us? Or just for you?”
“Eh, they gave up officially looking for me last year when I was declared dead, again. But there’s an organization of corrupt cops called HR that we’re trying to bring down—Carter more so than the rest of us, although she doesn’t know that Finch and I know yet. Fusco’s probably guessed, but we haven’t talked to him about it.”
“So?”
“There were two officers circling the block when we left. I can’t be sure they actually were with HR, but we have information that your life is in danger, and the only potential threat that makes any sense is HR.”
“Why? Were they behind the shootin’ I supposedly witnessed, or was it the Russians?”
John shook his head. “No, that was us. I was helping a woman and her kids escape her abusive husband, but he caught up to us. My other colleague, Shaw, shot him in the head.”
“Well, then, what reason would HR have for takin’ any interest in me?”
John sighed. “Because one of ’em thought you were me.”
Bodie frowned. “I don’t look anything like you.”
“No, but you’re tall, dark hair, blue eyes, former Army. If they’d never shown Laskey a picture of me, you’re close enough.”
“Laskey!”
“He’s the only person it could have been. Carter confirmed it when I called her; she’s known he was working for HR from the start. That’s one reason she sent him away so she could talk to you in private. And Finch checked his phone records. He called a known member of HR’s inner circle while he was waiting for the ambulance to arrive.”
Bodie shook his head. “I knew that boy needed watchin’. Meant to warn Miss Carter, but there wasn’t a chance. Glad she already had his measure.”
John blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I know his type—barely a man, wantin’ to prove himself, but not wise enough to see when an older man’s tryin’ to use him to a bad end. Even the ones that aren’t trailin’ after the wrong types can get themselves in a mess o’ trouble if they get in over their heads. Fill ’em up with liquor an’ lies, and they’re capable of anything… even murder.”
“Well, in this case it’s more likely to be money than liquor, but still.”
“Money goes to a man’s head just as quick.”
John nodded. He was pretty well immune to that temptation himself, especially after having been homeless until Finch had rescued him, but he’d seen it work often enough.
Bodie paused, seeming to give John a searching once-over. “Anyway, what do they want you for, besides wantin’ to clean up the town?”
John smiled wryly. “Didn’t they tell you? I’m an urban legend, ‘the Man in the Suit.’”
Bodie frowned again. “Anybody can wear a suit.”
“You’d be surprised.” John’s smile faded. “Like you, I never knew my birth family. My adoptive father was a soldier, a war hero. I grew up wanting to be just like him. After he died, and then after Mom died… I got in trouble, and the judge gave me a choice. I took the Army, Special Forces. I was good at it, but after eight years, I got tired of it. Was all set to get out, marry my girlfriend, have a normal life, and all of a sudden, we were attacked. I had to reup.”
Bodie nodded slowly.
“Few years later, I was recruited as a spy and assassin by the Central Intelligence Agency—it’s… after your time. Worked for them for about five years until they tried to kill me. Since then, they’ve tried again several times, and they used some of my legit ops to convince NYPD and a different federal agency that I’m a serial killer.”
“And HR?”
“The only reason anyone in the general public knows anything about HR is that Finch and I keep getting in their way. So do Carter and Fusco. They’ve almost killed Carter twice, and they did kill her boyfriend a few months ago.”
Bodie huffed. “Woulda thought that kind of thing died with Boss Tweed. Guess cities never really change.”
“Hell, Tammany Hall outlived Boss Tweed by about ninety years, and even after it died, the mobsters kept the graft going for another couple of decades. But cities don’t change because people don’t change. That’s bad in a lot of ways… but there are ways it can be good, too.”
“Reckon I can see that.”
They had, by this point, reached the turn to head east to Chinatown, but John paused with his hand on the turn signal. “Actually… since we’re headed this way anyway… I wanna show you something.” He took his hand off the turn signal and went straight through the intersection.
“What is it?”
“Just… trust me. You’re gonna want to see this.”
Bodie lapsed into skeptical silence as John drove through the Financial District toward Battery Park. As they emerged from the maze of skyscrapers, however, Bodie glanced out his window and suddenly straightened as he evidently spotted a sign that gave away their destination.
“They finished it?” he asked, turning back toward John.
John smiled. “They finished it. Dedicated in 1886, just finished the latest restoration last year.”
Bodie swallowed hard. “You’re right, I… I would like to see that.”
“The ferry ride out there would probably be too much for you right now,” John admitted as he hunted down a parking garage. “But we should be able to get a good view from the park that won’t be too hard on your eyes.”
Bodie nodded. “Thanks.”
They fell silent again as John parked and led Bodie out of the garage, across the road, and down the park paths to where the trees parted and one could see the Statue of Liberty in all its glory. Bodie gasped, slowed to a stop, and removed his hat.
“Yeah,” John whispered.
“I’d… seen a stereoscope,” Bodie admitted quietly, his voice cracking with emotion. “A few years ago, just her arm with the torch. I never dreamed….” He trailed off.
“Beautiful, huh?”
“Yeah.” Bodie nodded a moment, then gave John a sidelong look. “Worth dyin’ for.”
“She is,” John agreed, knowing neither of them meant the statue in itself.
They stood there in silence a moment longer before Bodie put his hat back on and they left the park.
When they got back to the car, however, Bodie paused and took his shades off briefly to look John in the eye. “Thank you, John.”
John smiled. “You’re welcome.”
Next
* Just in case it wasn’t clear, this is me positing a difference between POI-verse and our world, in which Cheyenne, the first hour-long Western on television, was wildly successful, ran for seven seasons, generated two spinoffs, and launched the screen career of the late great Clint Walker. (POI is itself a Warner Brothers show.)
** TBI = traumatic brain injury, better known to most of us as a concussion
A/N: There’s at least one statement in this chapter that aligns with Cheyenne canon but not with Primary World history. I’ll lampshade it more thoroughly in a later chapter.
The Man in the Suit
Earlier
“Did Shaw get away all right?” John asked as he returned through the stacks of the abandoned library to the command center where Harold Finch was overseeing the tail end of his team’s latest adventure.
“She did,” Finch confirmed, not looking away from his computer screens, “mostly thanks to the combined efforts of Detectives Carter and Fusco, which wouldn’t have been necessary if she hadn’t killed Delancey.”
John stopped to give Bear a hello scratch behind the ears and didn’t bother to point out that Carter was officially no longer a detective. “There was no other choice, Finch. Delancey and his thugs had us cornered; my hands were full of baby; and the only way to clear an exit was for Shaw to kill their boss with one shot. If she’d hit him in the kneecap, he could still have fired past me and killed his wife. If our positions had been reversed, I woulda taken the same shot.”
“I suppose we should be grateful that Delancey’s men are cowards,” Finch said drily.
“And that their gang’s on the outs with the Russians. Not only does that give us a convenient scapegoat, it meant they couldn’t expect backup from HR.”
“Y-es.” Finch didn’t sound convinced, but he turned toward John and let the subject of the shooting drop. “Did you get Mrs. Delancey and the children on the bus?”
“Train, actually.” John stopped scratching Bear and went to clear the plexiglass wall of the photos Finch had taped up in the course of the case. “Harder to crash in case one of Delancey’s men wants revenge. But yes, they’re safely on their way out of town.”
“Good. The crime scene units have just left; Det. Carter and Officer Laskey are making one last sweep—”
Finch was interrupted by the sound of a gasp from the tap they’d placed on Carter’s phone years earlier, while she was still chasing John as a suspected serial killer. “Laskey!” she cried, and John heard running footsteps followed by the thud of a body hitting concrete.
Wide-eyed, Finch turned back to the monitors as John rushed around the table to look over his shoulder at the feed from the surveillance camera overlooking the alley where the shooting had occurred. By the time John could see the screen, Laskey, who’d apparently been checking out the door John had used to get the surviving Delanceys to safety, and Carter were racing toward the prone form of a very big man dressed like a cowboy. This guy was easily 6'6", broad-shouldered, dark-haired, well-muscled—and beat up… not severely, but a bruise was already forming on his left cheek, and there was enough blood on his rolled-up sleeves and bared forearms and knuckles to show that he’d been in a fight. Sweat was rapidly soaking through his tan shirt, too. There was even a brown cowboy hat that had fallen nearby, with what looked like a row of silver arrowheads around the band.
“Where on earth did he come from?” Finch asked. And before John could even hazard a guess, Finch entered a few swift keystrokes to split the display between current footage on one monitor and past footage on another, then backed up the past feed several minutes to watch more closely while John kept both an eye and an ear on the current proceedings.
“Is he alive?!” Laskey asked as Carter crashed to her knees by the man’s side and tried to take his pulse.
A wordless bass groan seemed to be the answer to that, and Bear whined in concern.
“Stil,” John ordered, not looking at Bear.
Bear lay down again with a whuff of protest.
While Carter started first aid and sent Laskey to the squad car for water, John rolled a chair over to the desk and sat down, and Finch kept searching the recorded surveillance footage for where the man had come from, speeding up, slowing down, zooming in and out. “This makes no sense,” he finally murmured. “Look at this, Mr. Reese.” And he played the footage again for John at normal speed up to a point where he paused it. “Notice, there’s no sign of the man on any of the fire escapes or at any of the doors or windows to this point.”
“Right,” John agreed, because it was true.
“But look.” Finch advanced the image a frame at a time. Between one frame and the next, the man appeared in mid-air, clearly already falling.
“What the hell?”
“That’s impossible. People do not just fall out of thin air. But the video can’t have been tampered with—we can see Det. Carter and Officer Laskey moving perfectly normally.”
“Well, maybe there’s another explanation,” John suggested, although he was at a loss for what it could be. Then a Muppet Show sketch came to mind and he added, “Maybe somebody just invented a working teleporter.”
“The existence of the Machine does not presuppose other science fiction technologies, Mr. Reese.”
“I was joking. Mostly.”
Carter had gotten the man talking by this point and was asking him about having been in the military, which he apparently had. “Where’d you serve?” she asked in a tone that sounded casual but that John recognized as her being in interrogator mode.
“No place… you’d have heard of,” the man replied, his breathing still labored. “None of the… big battles, like… Chickamauga or… Manassas or Bull Run.”
“Chickamauga?” Finch echoed, frowning. “Those are….”
“Civil War battlefields,” John finished for him. “He thinks he’s a Civil War veteran.”
“I suppose that would fit with his costume, especially since he’s saying he wasn’t involved in any of the major campaigns of the Civil War. Perhaps he’s a reenactor from one of the sites on the frontier that saw more action against the Native Americans than between the Union and Confederacy.”
“Maybe,” John agreed, more hesitant about the reenactor part than about the rest. “Doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot.”
Finch nodded unhappily. “If anything, it makes the search more complicated, whether he’s speaking in character or not. The muster rolls for the major campaigns are well documented, but I don’t know if the same could be said of the frontier units.”
It wasn’t long before Carter and Laskey started getting personal details out of the man, but the more he talked, the more confused Finch became. Frantic searching revealed neither digital footprint nor current nor past records of anyone named Cheyenne Bodie; the closest Finch could find was a mention of an unsold Warner Brothers pilot on some amateur TV historian’s blog. Facial recognition software wasn’t getting him anywhere, either, although he did manage to get enough measurements that they could order Bodie some clothes if he needed them. John, meanwhile, had texted Fusco to send him back to the alley and was leaning away from teleportation and toward time travel as an explanation for Bodie’s appearance out of thin air—he had the uncomfortable sense, which Carter seemed to share, that Bodie was telling the absolute truth and wasn’t simply confusing reality with fiction.
How the hell spontaneous time travel was supposed to work, let alone how they’d get Bodie home, was a question John decided not to voice until after they’d gotten Bodie through the first few days of TBI protocols. He hoped his new colleague Sameen Shaw hadn’t yet destroyed her phone, as she was wont to do at the end of every mission; wherever they put Bodie up in the short term, John could use her help in keeping watch over Bodie while he still needed to be woken every two hours.
Finally, about the time Carter sent Laskey off to wait for the ambulance, Finch sighed in defeat. “This man does not exist. Cheyenne Bodie simply does not exist. We’ll… we’ll have to create a new identity for him, but… that can’t be Cheyenne Bodie because Officer Laskey associates that name with the 1880s cowboy persona.” He looked at John with an expression that meant he was just this side of a panicked meltdown.
John put a hand on his shoulder. “Finch. Tell Carter that.”
“Right, of course.” Finch pulled himself together and sent Carter a text. Then he busied himself with pulling up the websites and apps he needed to build a digital trail for Bodie’s cover identity while Carter relayed his request to Bodie.
Then Bodie sat up, clutching his head again, and said something that brought both John and Finch up short: “I’ve… been undercover a few times before.”
“Who is this guy?” John murmured.
“One of your former colleagues, perhaps?” Finch suggested, sounding half hopeful.
John shook his head. “The CIA doesn’t issue cloaking devices. Besides, if a guy like that was with the Agency, Kara never woulda let me hear the end of it.” He was secure enough about his own looks and charms, but Bodie had several inches of height and brawn on John, and given Kara Stanton’s penchant for needling him at every given opportunity, John knew not even the best-looking field agent we have would have been on her list had it been true.
Just then, Fusco called because he was nearly to the scene and needed more details than John had been able to give him by text. “Carter doesn’t know I’m on the case yet,” he admitted. “She and Laskey were canvassin’ up the block when Olson and I got there.”
“That’s all right,” said John. “Just follow her lead.”
“Is this somethin’ we need to make go away?”
“No. It’s something that might actually help.”
“So whaddaya want me to do?”
“Make sure the ambulance takes him to City Hospital and treat him like you would any other witness—for now.”
“For now? What the hell do you mean, for now?”
“Call me back once he’s in the ambulance, and I’ll give you the whole story as we know it. For right now, all you need to know is that he says he’s a cowboy from Wyoming.”
“—You mean he isn’t?”
“No, he is, but it’s complicated, and we don’t know what cover identity he’s come up with in the meantime.”
Fusco sighed. “All right, I’m here. But you better have a good explanation by the time I call you back.”
“Relax, Lionel. Have I ever let you down?”
“Frequently,” Fusco replied, though there was no heat behind it, and hung up.
Meanwhile, Finch had been busily filling in forms with the details that weren’t dependent on Bodie’s cover story, things like height, weight, and hair and eye color. By the time Laskey led Fusco and a paramedic down the alley, Finch was ready to start building Bodie’s new identity as quickly as Bodie could come up with it. For his own part, John watched Bodie carefully, and while he heard Carter alert Bodie that people were coming, he saw something in the set of Bodie’s shoulders shift as he slid into whatever new character he was about to play.
And play was the operative word. John had known some theater nerds in high school, the pretentious ones who aspired to Art but couldn’t play second banana to a third-rate burlesque comic, and Bodie not only nailed the persona but played it to the hilt. He might not have been comfortable on the stage, but he was a natural actor. Even his swing-and-a-miss about the Grand Hotel worked. John couldn’t help chuckling.
When Finch shot him an inquisitive look, John admitted, “He’s good.”
“He’s certainly given us a good deal to work with,” Finch agreed, typing furiously. “Creating a person from scratch takes time, as you know, especially when that requires establishing a new Social Security number, but I should have enough of the identity built in a few minutes to pass if someone other than Det. Fusco begins to look into Merritt in the next hour or two. We’ll still need to get official photos and signatures to complete his IDs, as well as fingerprints for a Georgia concealed-carry license, but those can be done after he’s released from the emergency room. In fact, I should be able to get his signature when the release papers are scanned into the hospital’s computers. I think it’s best if John Rooney is Jim Merritt’s old friend who’s called to pick him up from the hospital, and as he’s likely to be a long-term guest, perhaps he should stay at your apartment until we can find more permanent quarters for him. I’ll have Ms. Shaw pick up the necessary supplies.”
John pursed his lips and nodded as he considered the idea. “Not putting him in our usual safe house?”
Finch shook his head. “No, we’re likely to need that for our numbers. Even if Mr. Bodie should become involved in our operations, I’m sure he’ll appreciate more private accommodations.”
“Makes sense.” John stood. “I’ll go make sure my place is ready.” And he left.
No sooner had he reached the street, however, than the nearest payphone began to ring with a now-familiar urgency.
“Oh, you’re kidding,” John muttered, jogged over, and picked up the phone.
Beep. “Charlie. Hotel. Echo. YOUNG. Echo. November. November. Echo.” Beep. “BRAVO. Oscar. Delta. Indigo. Echo.” Beep.
John swore under his breath, hung up the payphone, and dialed his cell phone as he strode away. The Machine had sounded almost desperate at having to bend its programming this way, since there were no numbers associated with Bodie’s name yet, but clearly it had calculated that he was in danger too imminent to wait for the new Social Security number to go through.
“Mr. Reese?” Finch answered, surprised.
“Finch, we’ve got a problem,” John reported.
Now
“Much obliged, Mr. Reese.” Bodie’s handshake was firm, not crushing, but John could feel both the strength behind it and the calluses on the parts of Bodie’s hand that weren’t bandaged. Here was a man who wasn’t afraid of a hard day’s work and could handle himself in a fight—a far cry from the persona of Jim Merritt. He still smelled of horse and sweat and trail dust, too, under the gunpowder and blood and disinfectant… most of the city dwellers who’d encountered Bodie so far might not have been able to recognize all those scents, but John had known enough ranchers growing up in Washington and Colorado.
He could only wonder how much Bodie was learning about him the same way.
“In public, it’s John,” John said aloud as they ended the handshake. “John Rooney, asset manager for Crane & Associates—we met in college, at Tulane.”
“Tulane!” Bodie chuckled and shook his head. “Haven’t been to New Orleans in a fair few years. Didn’t even know actors went to college.”
“They do these days.” John turned onto another street. “What else can you tell me about Merritt?”
“He was part of a traveling show, the Thalia Reportoire Company. When I replaced him, he was performing in a play called The Marble Heart. You guessed right that he was a drunk, and a gambler as well, not to mention a coward. Col. Forrest said he’d deserted his post during the war, didn’t want anybody to know.”
“What was his wife’s name?”
“Nellie Barton.” Bodie scoffed. “She was a real piece of work. Had an affair with their co-star, George Willis—at least until I came along and caught her interest. They were raisin’ funds for a Confederate commander who was hidin’ out in Juarez, but Nellie tried to talk me into takin’ the money and runnin’ off to Europe with her. Said Willis was plannin’ to do the same thing.” He shook his head. “Can’t tell you how glad I was to be shed of her.”
John chuckled.
“I don’t know a lot else that might help you.”
“That’s all right. We can fill in the rest. Thanks. You hungry?”
Bodie hesitated. “Well, I ain’t had lunch, but… my stomach’s still none too happy.”
“I think we can find you something that’ll sit well.” A few turns later, John was pulling into a parking space outside the Lyric Diner. “They serve breakfast all day,” he assured Bodie as he shut off the engine, “and they’ve got things like soup if you want something more than pancakes.”
“Stack o’ pancakes sounds kinda good, actually.”
John had to show Bodie how to unfasten his seatbelt and where the door handle was, but once they were out of the car, Bodie followed John’s lead like a champ. Other than ordering pancakes and black coffee when the waitress prompted him, he let John carry the conversation with ridiculous college stories that never happened for either of them, reacting appropriately but not contributing much of his own accord. John had already eaten and contented himself with a slice of cheesecake, which left him plenty of time to talk.
They had almost finished eating when Finch, who had of course been listening to the entire conversation by phone, said through John’s earwig, “Mr. Reese, there’s a patrol car circling the block around the diner. I can’t tell whether they’re HR, but this is the third time they’ve passed your car. It might be prudent to leave as quickly as possible.”
John swallowed the sip of coffee he’d just taken, watched out the corner of his eye as the cruiser passed the diner again, and noticed that Bodie had noticed. He covered by asking, “So, do you ever hear from Nellie?”
Bodie seemed to fold in on himself, and it was clearly as Merritt that he answered with a quiet “No.”
“I mean, I know she left you for George—”
“George is dead, and as far as Nell’s concerned, I am, too.”
“Dead? What… what happened?”
“He got shot, that night down in Juarez. I don’t want to talk about it.” Bodie cradled his coffee cup in both hands before he drank.
“All right, I’m sorry. I just….” John broke off, pretending to realize that Bodie’s left wrist was bare of anything but the wristbands remaining from the hospital.
“What?” Bodie prompted.
“Where’s your watch?”
Bodie frowned slightly in genuine confusion and set down his cup. “My what?”
“Your wristwatch. The gold Rolex your dad gave you before you left for college.”
Bodie glanced blankly at his wrists and shook his head. “I must have lost it.”
“In a poker game?”
Catching on, Bodie threw his napkin onto the table. “Don’t start.”
“That’s what happened to your wallet, too, isn’t it?”
“John….”
“I warned you about those illegal casinos last time you were here—”
“Confound it, man, I said I don’t want to talk about it!” That was just loud enough to attract attention from the neighboring tables.
John huffed and pulled out his own wallet. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”
“The patrol car’s just turned onto 21st,” Finch reported as Bodie put his hat and shades back on. “If you leave now, they won’t know which way you’ve gone.”
John dropped a $20 on the table and herded Bodie out to the car. He might have sped slightly, but they had crossed 2nd Avenue before the cruiser turned onto 22nd again, and they were on 1st and headed uptown before Finch confirmed that they were clear.
“Do we need to take more detours, Finch?” John asked, earning him a very odd look from Bodie.
“I don’t think so,” Finch replied, “but I’ll keep you apprised.”
“Thanks.” John tapped his ear, hanging up, and glanced over at Bodie again. “I’ve got a wireless telephone in my pocket,” he explained. “It connects to a device I wear in my ear.”
“Oh,” said Bodie, although he didn’t seem to understand the explanation so much as chalk it up as another piece of the day’s weirdness. “Finch?”
“He’s a friend. You’ll meet him this evening. Carter still has your gun, by the way—she’ll bring it by after her shift.” John turned onto the nearest cross-street to start the loop back toward his loft.
“All right.” Bodie nodded over his shoulder, in the direction of the diner. “So what was all that about back there? Why’d you want people to know we were leavin’?”
“In case the police came in looking for us.”
“For us? Or just for you?”
“Eh, they gave up officially looking for me last year when I was declared dead, again. But there’s an organization of corrupt cops called HR that we’re trying to bring down—Carter more so than the rest of us, although she doesn’t know that Finch and I know yet. Fusco’s probably guessed, but we haven’t talked to him about it.”
“So?”
“There were two officers circling the block when we left. I can’t be sure they actually were with HR, but we have information that your life is in danger, and the only potential threat that makes any sense is HR.”
“Why? Were they behind the shootin’ I supposedly witnessed, or was it the Russians?”
John shook his head. “No, that was us. I was helping a woman and her kids escape her abusive husband, but he caught up to us. My other colleague, Shaw, shot him in the head.”
“Well, then, what reason would HR have for takin’ any interest in me?”
John sighed. “Because one of ’em thought you were me.”
Bodie frowned. “I don’t look anything like you.”
“No, but you’re tall, dark hair, blue eyes, former Army. If they’d never shown Laskey a picture of me, you’re close enough.”
“Laskey!”
“He’s the only person it could have been. Carter confirmed it when I called her; she’s known he was working for HR from the start. That’s one reason she sent him away so she could talk to you in private. And Finch checked his phone records. He called a known member of HR’s inner circle while he was waiting for the ambulance to arrive.”
Bodie shook his head. “I knew that boy needed watchin’. Meant to warn Miss Carter, but there wasn’t a chance. Glad she already had his measure.”
John blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I know his type—barely a man, wantin’ to prove himself, but not wise enough to see when an older man’s tryin’ to use him to a bad end. Even the ones that aren’t trailin’ after the wrong types can get themselves in a mess o’ trouble if they get in over their heads. Fill ’em up with liquor an’ lies, and they’re capable of anything… even murder.”
“Well, in this case it’s more likely to be money than liquor, but still.”
“Money goes to a man’s head just as quick.”
John nodded. He was pretty well immune to that temptation himself, especially after having been homeless until Finch had rescued him, but he’d seen it work often enough.
Bodie paused, seeming to give John a searching once-over. “Anyway, what do they want you for, besides wantin’ to clean up the town?”
John smiled wryly. “Didn’t they tell you? I’m an urban legend, ‘the Man in the Suit.’”
Bodie frowned again. “Anybody can wear a suit.”
“You’d be surprised.” John’s smile faded. “Like you, I never knew my birth family. My adoptive father was a soldier, a war hero. I grew up wanting to be just like him. After he died, and then after Mom died… I got in trouble, and the judge gave me a choice. I took the Army, Special Forces. I was good at it, but after eight years, I got tired of it. Was all set to get out, marry my girlfriend, have a normal life, and all of a sudden, we were attacked. I had to reup.”
Bodie nodded slowly.
“Few years later, I was recruited as a spy and assassin by the Central Intelligence Agency—it’s… after your time. Worked for them for about five years until they tried to kill me. Since then, they’ve tried again several times, and they used some of my legit ops to convince NYPD and a different federal agency that I’m a serial killer.”
“And HR?”
“The only reason anyone in the general public knows anything about HR is that Finch and I keep getting in their way. So do Carter and Fusco. They’ve almost killed Carter twice, and they did kill her boyfriend a few months ago.”
Bodie huffed. “Woulda thought that kind of thing died with Boss Tweed. Guess cities never really change.”
“Hell, Tammany Hall outlived Boss Tweed by about ninety years, and even after it died, the mobsters kept the graft going for another couple of decades. But cities don’t change because people don’t change. That’s bad in a lot of ways… but there are ways it can be good, too.”
“Reckon I can see that.”
They had, by this point, reached the turn to head east to Chinatown, but John paused with his hand on the turn signal. “Actually… since we’re headed this way anyway… I wanna show you something.” He took his hand off the turn signal and went straight through the intersection.
“What is it?”
“Just… trust me. You’re gonna want to see this.”
Bodie lapsed into skeptical silence as John drove through the Financial District toward Battery Park. As they emerged from the maze of skyscrapers, however, Bodie glanced out his window and suddenly straightened as he evidently spotted a sign that gave away their destination.
“They finished it?” he asked, turning back toward John.
John smiled. “They finished it. Dedicated in 1886, just finished the latest restoration last year.”
Bodie swallowed hard. “You’re right, I… I would like to see that.”
“The ferry ride out there would probably be too much for you right now,” John admitted as he hunted down a parking garage. “But we should be able to get a good view from the park that won’t be too hard on your eyes.”
Bodie nodded. “Thanks.”
They fell silent again as John parked and led Bodie out of the garage, across the road, and down the park paths to where the trees parted and one could see the Statue of Liberty in all its glory. Bodie gasped, slowed to a stop, and removed his hat.
“Yeah,” John whispered.
“I’d… seen a stereoscope,” Bodie admitted quietly, his voice cracking with emotion. “A few years ago, just her arm with the torch. I never dreamed….” He trailed off.
“Beautiful, huh?”
“Yeah.” Bodie nodded a moment, then gave John a sidelong look. “Worth dyin’ for.”
“She is,” John agreed, knowing neither of them meant the statue in itself.
They stood there in silence a moment longer before Bodie put his hat back on and they left the park.
When they got back to the car, however, Bodie paused and took his shades off briefly to look John in the eye. “Thank you, John.”
John smiled. “You’re welcome.”
* Just in case it wasn’t clear, this is me positing a difference between POI-verse and our world, in which Cheyenne, the first hour-long Western on television, was wildly successful, ran for seven seasons, generated two spinoffs, and launched the screen career of the late great Clint Walker. (POI is itself a Warner Brothers show.)
** TBI = traumatic brain injury, better known to most of us as a concussion
