Bad Memory

By Robert N. Chan and Zahirah Abdulah

For a fat fee, Z dresses as a chicken and harasses lawyers until they respond to her employers' unreturned phone calls. She can't remember ever doing anything else. Indeed, she can't remember anything that happened more than four months ago. That isn't a problem until a mysterious Mr. Wilson starts using increasingly gruesome threats to compel her to kill Abbey Cotton, the blonde liberal-basher who has become an embarrassment to Wilson's right-wing movement. Though Z discovers that she has a wide range of assassin's skills (which she cannot remember acquiring), she refuses Wilson's offer and becomes a hunted woman as well as a haunted one. Are her recurring daydream images ill-defined snippets of memory or something far worse? As Wilson's men close in, can she find a way to recover her past, kill and discredit Wilson, and find romance? Or is she to chicken to carry it through?

A must read for anyone who wants to understand the true hidden menace of international terror, to read a darn good thriller or to have a couple of hundred mean-spirited belly laughs. Not for the illiterate or those who cannot afford the cover price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 12, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440102424

Robert N. Chan

Robert N. Chan, a founder of the New York City boutique law firm, Ferber Chan Essner & Coller, LLP has been litigating for thirty-five years with appalling success. His six prior novels—Apparitions, Axe of God,, Science Fiction, Bad Memory, and Painting A Burning House—have been hailed as transformative underground classics of unparalleled brilliance…and people actually enjoyed them. Visit www.robertnchan.com

Book preview

Prologue

Stanislaw grasped the bottom rung of a rope ladder hanging from the hundred-foot yacht. The choppy Mediterranean pitched his inflatable boat, and his blood-slick gloves lost their grip. Timing the next roll, he lunged and got a solid grasp. Pain shot from the bullet wound in his right thigh, but he managed the climb and yanked his two wounded comrades onto the deck of the Lamb of God. One promptly vomited, sickened neither by her wound nor the physical stress of the ordeal but by an unfortunate mistake. The other collapsed in a heap, a loopy smile on his rodenty face.

The warehouses in the distant harbor, silhouetted by flickering orange flames, looked like teeth in hell’s jack-’o-lantern. The time-delayed napalm-and-white-phosphorus bomb they’d set went off on the horizon; with the yacht now in international waters, half a minute separated the eye-searing flash from the ear-shattering thud. All that would remain of the half dozen human targets of the raid would be a sprinkling of fine white ash buried under a growing mountain of slag. Stanislaw didn’t care whether the Sunnis, Hezbollah, or Druze took the blame—or claimed the credit—for the conflagration. No one in Lebanon would suspect his boss, and the mutual recriminations would surely claim many from each group.

Ducking his head and bending his knees to accommodate a ceiling designed for the normal sized, Stanislaw frog-walked down the ship’s mahogany-paneled stairway to an austere, all-white private chapel. He knocked on the open door, but the man in the white suit didn’t interrupt his prayers.

After waiting a respectful minute, Stanislaw knocked again. The pink-cheeked man stood, brushed nonexistent dust off his knees, and turned slowly, his irritated gaze settling on a crimson spot on the bleached oak floor.

Stanislaw looked down at the cause of his boss’s disturbance—a small gobbet of blood had fallen from his glove.

Sorry, Mr. Wilson, I didn’t mean to—

Wilson stopped him with a languid wave of his seigniorial hand. Success?

John John didn’t make it back, and we caused some collateral damage. A man—a Westerner, I think—is dead, wrong place wrong time. He pressed a button on his cell phone, calling up a photograph of the dead European.

Wilson faced the altar, bowed his head and whispered a short prayer.

His face now radiating the saint-like serenity of a subject of a medieval painting, he turned back to Stanislaw. Their bodies?

Burnt beyond recognition, along with those of the targets.

Wilson studied the photo and subsequent ones Stanislaw scrolled to. The dead Westerner had been curly-haired, elf-nosed, blue-eyed, and athletically built. A star-shaped port wine tattoo or birthmark on the man’s cheek seemed to catch Wilson’s attention. From the way he stroked his chin, Stanislaw knew his boss had already thought of a use for the photos, one that would’ve escaped anyone not blessed with the ability to see as many moves in the future as a world-champion chess player.

Who killed him? Wilson asked.

Bullets flew in all directions. Maybe one of the bad guys, maybe John John, maybe… Stanislaw tilted his head toward the upper deck. Wilson would know which of the two surviving comrades Stanislaw feared pulled the trigger. After all, only one would be upset by an unintended casualty.

As if on cue, the sounds of retching on the deck filled the silence.

Pointing in the direction of Stanislaw’s head tilt, Wilson asked, Oh, dear, taking it hard?

Stanislaw shrugged his broad shoulders, in an attempt to communicate a casualness he didn’t feel. Rough job. Cat-in-the-Hat chaos.

Wilson smiled. Not your words, I assume.

I’m not that well read. Stanislaw didn’t return Wilson’s smile. Wilson didn’t like friendships among employees, even professionals at the level of Stanislaw and his team. Of course, Wilson knew how Stanislaw felt about his nauseated comrade with the fondness for clever turns of phrase—Wilson’s ability to read people verged on the clairvoyant—but protocol had to be preserved. I’d be happy to never see Beirut again. More retching from the deck made Stanislaw’s stomach cramp in sympathy. I don’t want to remember what went down tonight.

Don’t worry, you won’t.

They both laughed—Stanislaw from fatigue and accumulated stress, his boss from something else.

A dull boom shook the yacht. The lights blinked.

The fire’s reached the oil storage depot, Stanislaw said. "The combined CSI teams of Las Vegas, New York, and Miami wouldn’t be able to sort out this one."

Wilson looked confused. The standing joke among Stanislaw’s team was that Wilson’s TV couldn’t pick up anything but Fox News and CNBC Business. Standing on his tiptoes, so his head reached Stanislaw’s chest, Wilson gave him a paternal hug.

I know this was a tough one, but you performed a great service for God and your adopted country.

Stanislaw didn’t return the embrace lest he get blood on his boss’s immaculate white suit—one of two dozen identical ones.

Before I get my people medical attention, please double check that we got rid of all the bad guys.

Wilson examined the photographic evidence, then patted Stanislaw’s forearm. You saved tens of thousands of American lives, and if your heroism leads to another round of the natives killing each other, all the better. Had the Islamists succeeded in detonating their bomb in Times Square… He embraced his minion again. We had no choice but to go in ourselves. We had enough information to be certain but couldn’t have gotten the CIA to act within the necessary time frame. I intend to improve our credibility, so in the future The Company can do the wet work. Wilson’s use of hackneyed thriller terminology sounded strange on his patrician lips.

I have complete and total faith in you.

You ought to have faith in him. Wilson raised his eyes toward the heavens.

Working on it.

Wilson tossed the phone back to his protégé. Please send the photos of the collateral damage victim to my encrypted e-mail. Then toss the cell into the sea.

My people could use medical attention. He turned toward the door.

Wilson noticed the wound on Stanislaw’s thigh. The doctors are ready. I’ll thank your team personally while they’re being prepped and won’t sleep until the surgeons sign off. Good work tonight. He snapped his fingers, and a stick insect of a man in a white linen uniform cleaned the blood from the bleached oak.

I.

I, Chickenwoman

My vibrating BlackBerry scuffles along the polished surface of the dining-nook table and attempts a triple Lutz off the edge. I kick it before it hits the floor, sending it end over end toward the ceiling, then head the thing soccer-style and catch it behind my back. A swirling hourglass icon communicates the device’s pique, but I stare it down. The screen clarifies into an e-mail, containing only a name and address.

This is a job for Chickenwoman! I say to Pad Thai, my part Siamese part Burmese kitten.

She puffs her gorgeous pearl gray tail. She has enormous empathy, rating higher on the compassion scale than most people—and I’m not just talking about lawyers and politicians. In fact, I’d put her up against an entire gender.

The scratchy sound as my chicken suit slides up my legs tells me I ought to shave. But not now—now, I’m primed for action. I zip up the outfit and snap the headpiece into place. From the mirror, a big chicken covered in fluffy saffron feathers stares at me with black glassy eyes. She rocks on her three absurdly long toes and kicks back her right leg, flaunting a dangerous, sharp-pointed rear-facing spur. I tell myself that my long, lean body fills out the suit well and that no one seeing me would doubt that a woman of above average sex appeal is under all those feathers. I’m not convinced, but wearing the suit somehow provides a respite from the images that otherwise bubble through my brain like methane from a garbage dump, leaving me terrified. I sense they’re inspired by something in my past—something just beyond my severely limited memory. I wish I knew what it was. No, I don’t. The dead are buried under six feet of earth for a good reason.

My skin feels clammy and sensitive against the satin lining of my outfit. The image of a cute teenaged boy fills my head. His lips quiver, and tears streak his downy cheeks. He’s replaced by a naked, emaciated, white-bearded man draped across my lap. His eyes gaze lifelessly while his cold deathly weight compresses my thighs. I believe I knew him, but before I can recall who he was, I see my own corpse. A low-rent butcher-shop stench fouls my nostrils. An arid wheeze rises from my throat, suddenly sandpapered raw by scream after scream—all of them unheard, perhaps even unuttered. So much for the respite theory.

The images and sensations disappear. Before they have the chance to regroup for another attack, I make a placard and close the door behind me. Staying busy keeps them at bay.

Probably everyone is plagued by flashing mental snapshots similar to mine; they just have the good sense not to dwell on them. Surely, though, most people remember more than incidental images and disjointed details about events that took place over four months ago. Undoubtedly I ought to seek medical help, but I’m paranoid about going to doctors—even the thought of doing so cramps my stomach and dampens my brow. If I were less paranoid, perhaps I’d consult someone about my paranoia. No. I’m happy with things as they are and shouldn’t rock the boat.

Maneuvering my extra large chicken-feet down the stairway, I concentrate on my coming assignment and stop brooding. On the first floor landing I run into my landlord, a vulpine doctor in the midst of a thermonuclear divorce.

I’m sorry, didn’t see you there. Having knocked him down, I help him to his feet and dust him off—feathered wings come in handy for dusting. My peripheral vision isn’t so good in this outfit.

Not a problem, he says, eyeing me like a hungry fox who happens to own the chicken coop. Come by for a drink this evening, Z. I’ve got some wines that will knock your socks off.

I don’t wear any. I raise one of my feet. Besides, my schedule’s deeply unresolved.

His light brown eyes become dull. He no longer looks fox-like but sad and all too human.

It’s not you. I don’t socialize these days—a phase I’m going through. At least, I hope that’s all it is.

I’ve got a terrific story for you. Okay, so my lawyer filed these dynamite motion papers….Wait here, I’ll go get—

Not a great time to talk. Really got to fly.

Not with those stubby wings.

I move my beak as if laughing, flap my wings as if trying to take off, and I’m out the door before he stops chuckling.

Within twenty-five minutes of receiving the e-mail, I enter the lobby of 343 Park Avenue, hop to the head of the security line, and cluck insistently. Forget their undeserved reputation for cowardice—chickens, particularly 140-pound chickens, are assertive creatures.

I take off my headpiece and hand the security guard my ID, a New Jersey driver’s license procured at a novelty print shop near Times Square. The point of this exercise is to follow established procedures, which are apparently designed to exclude all terrorists except those with access to sophisticated facilities such as novelty print shops.

The security guard thrusts out his chest, rooster-style. My tawny complexion and tangle of black curls appeal to security guards, recidivist felons, and—sadly—lawyers. At thirty-four I still retain a dewy, verdant look, or maybe I’m just used to seeing my face in my misted-over bathroom mirror. I’m not Indian, but this week I kind of look as if I could be. Maybe next week I’ll look Latina. Besotted males sometimes describe me as exotic.

He takes my photograph. Rather than smile I treat him to my tough-girl pout. He hands me a building pass with my photo printed in grainy color.

I thank him and hold out a wing. He shakes it, grinning as though I just made his day, and I’m off to the elevators. Piece of cake. Chickens have a far easier time getting through security than the average person. While I deplore racial profiling, species profiling makes perfectly good sense. Who ever heard of a chicken taking hostages or blowing up a building?

The elevator opens onto the Hawkins & Thatcher thirty-eighth-floor reception area, a three-story atrium festooned with pseudo-classical sculptures reminiscent of Albert Speer’s designs for the glorification of the Third Reich. Three receptionists wearing identical white blouses and matching blue skirts sit behind an enormous mahogany desk. Dark-suited Japanese businessmen try to look comfortable on couches designed for giants, and a cluster of briefcase-toting lawyers of both genders pace in testosterone-fueled circles.

After determining the feng shui of the room, I hop into the middle of the salarymen, cluck loudly, and hold up my placard: Tom Stein is too chicken to return Rob Kahn’s phone calls and e-mails.

The attorneys, after gauging each others’ reactions with rapid rodent glances, break into raucous laughter. The salarymen smile uncomfortably. The trio of receptionists clatter away at their keyboards like airline ticket agents rerouting flights for a family of twelve. After checking to make sure her companions are focused on their machines, one flashes me a thumbs-up. I respond with a raised wing.

Several minutes later a gaggle of uniformed guards escorts me out. I go limp, forcing them to drag me away while a crowd stares, amused and bemused.

For the next twenty minutes, I cluck and flap my wings in front of the 343 Park entrance. My placard hangs from a red ribbon around my neck. Finally my BlackBerry vibrates. The e-mail says, Success! He returned my call.

I cease my antics, and the crowd dissipates, except for a huge man whose hair appears to have been cut with a weed-whacker. I turn toward the curb to hail a cab, and he steps across my path.

Hi, Z. His smile would inspire a dental student to switch to seminary school, yet there’s something almost sexy about him. Forget the almost.

I don’t know you, I say, despite a stomach clench of déjà vu.

He tilts his head and narrows his eyes, as if he thinks I’m joking. He grimaces when he realizes I’m not.

I’m Stanislaw. His tight-jawed smile resembles a squiggle drawn by a child. Mr. Wilson has a job for you. He speaks the name as if I should not just know it but genuflect upon hearing it.

I’m sorry, but all the name calls to my mind is Dennis the Menace’s next-door neighbor.

Stanislaw looks seriously disappointed.

Okay, have him e-mail me the details.

Not that kind of job. Nothing threatening or ominous about his tone, but still my teeth grit.

What kind is it?

I try not to let his X-ray stare make me squirm. The ever-present New York City background noise fades, replaced by my heartbeat. An odd calmness comes over me. I rock on my feet, a martial arts expert about to stab him with my back spur. I laugh at myself. That breaks the spell, and I’m anything but calm.

His face reddening, he says, You’re joking.

Can’t be. You’re not laughing. Those more fortunate than I hiccup when nervous, tie their hair into granny knots, suffer though weird facial twitches, or sweat profusely. I make wisecracks.

Neither will you be. His Central-European-accented voice communicates sadness, not threat.

I take a sixty-second vow of silence.

He walks away, the back of his head receding into a crowd of pedestrians. He stops. He turns back toward me. His big steps bring him within two feet of me before I have the chance to move. His huge right hand comes up.

I duck and spin.

His cheeks flush with what I’m pretty sure is embarrassment, and his gaze drifts down to his arm, now hanging limp at his side. Seems he intended to tenderly stroke my cheek, rather than knock me senseless.

Do you really believe someone would pay you for putting on that outfit and clucking? he asks, his tone appropriate for addressing a child, a not particularly bright one at that.

"Not only do I believe it, but more important my bank account is thoroughly convinced."

Shaking his head, he utters a part wistful, part pitying guttural sound of the sort rarely heard west of the Vistula. His mouth opens, then snaps shut.

Have you been having nightmares? He waves an arm as if wiping a blackboard. Of course you have. A long pause. When he again speaks, his voice sounds like somebody reading from a script. When you’re tired or stressed, do frightening images show up in your head, accompanied by hyper-intense sounds, smells, and sensations?

A hyper-intense jolt shorts out my nervous system. I… I can’t say that I do. Had young George Washington claimed to know nothing about how the cherry tree came down, his father would not have looked at him more sorrowfully than Stanislaw is looking at me. Recovering somewhat, I say, Why did you just ask me that?

I don’t want you waking up as if from a bad dream and realizing you’re actually in a far worse one—a dream from which waking isn’t an option. Either he’s discarded the script or his delivery has markedly improved.

Avoiding his gaze, I look at his huge feet, clad in black socks and gladiator sandals.

The silence becomes oppressive.

His shoulders hunched and head tilted forward, he turns and leaves without another word.

Soon he’s no longer visible. Perhaps he wasn’t there at all. Wilson? Never heard of him. No, not quite never. His name rings a faint but frightening bell.

Living in New York, you get inured to weird encounters. I focus all my energy on hailing a cab.

Just as I stick my key in my door—my second attempt, as my wing tips are shaking from my run-in with the giant—a call vibrates my BlackBerry. Damn. Either I have nothing to do or so many assignments that I’m running around like a chicken with… well, you know. I hop downstairs and head downtown.

I reach the reception area without incident, and after a half-hour of non-stop clucking, wing flapping, and hopping, my mark returns my client’s call.

Jumping around in a feathered suit and squawking for thirty minutes is as aerobically demanding as running four miles, but a chicken can’t pause to down a bottle of Gatorade. Due to the superior wicking properties of silk lingerie—today an Italian silk leopard-print camisole and matching boy shorts—my skin stays relatively dry. I prefer not to think about the chafing problem between my too well endowed upper thighs.

By the time I hail a cab for home I’m exhausted. I settle into the back seat and close my eyes, risking an onslaught of disturbing thoughts and images. But what comes to my mind is recent history, entirely benign.

The Chickenwoman bit started seventeen weeks ago. My lawyer ex-husband, Rob Kahn, knowing I was short of funds, hired me to harass an unresponsive litigation adversary into returning his call. I’m not sure how—word of mouth, I guess—but within weeks I had a flourishing enterprise. Rob’s still my largest client; people seem to have a particular aversion to returning his calls. Some commercial landlords have alerted their security guards to me but most haven’t. Rob says it’s a diversity issue. Are chickens a protected group now?

We’d been separated for a decade and hadn’t seen each other for months, maybe years. I pride myself on my intelligence, independence, and creativity, yet I let Rob set me up in business and take care of me almost as if I were a child. Guilt over my role in our split-up made me malleable, particularly as I could discern no downside to letting him help me. But everything has its price, and as the cab bounces from pothole to pothole, I wonder why what I accepted so easily a few months ago now makes me so uneasy. With my memory of most everything else from that period vague to nonexistent, how do I even know that Rob and I really did split a decade ago and that I was mostly at fault? Christ, I’ve let that pituitary case Stanislaw get to me. Now I’m questioning everything.

Probably my doubts stem from low blood sugar. I knock on the Plexiglas divider that separates me from the cab driver.

Excuse me, sir. I hate to bother you, but would you have some chocolate or something? I seem to be having a mild attack of hypoglycemia.

Without bothering to slow down, he turns and rolls his eyes. Having made his point, he hands me a warm Pepsi.

Noticing his Iranian name on the license mounted on the divider, I say, "Motehshakeram, which I’m pretty sure means thank you" in Farsi, although I haven’t the slightest idea how I know that.

He grins. "Kha:hesh mikonæm, you’re most welcome."

I chug the sweet, bubbly liquid, and my thoughts return to normal dangers, easily dealt with: the driver, for his own amusement, has run a succession of red lights, cut off most of the cars he’s seen with out-of-state plates, and almost hit a pair of jaywalking nuns, one of whom flips him a discreet bird.

In halting Farsi, I say, If you’re intent on killing yourself, kindly at least wait until after I leave your cab.

He laughs so hard the taxi almost jumps the curb.

At home, I’m more than ready for a bath. I rub the scar on my forearm that looks like a bite from a werewolf—teeth marks, not quite human, not quite animal. Stanislaw, I whisper, in the hope that it will stimulate a coherent recollection that will calm, or at least explain, my inarticulable fear. Instead, the name makes Pad Thai arch her back and fluff her tail.

Adjusting the taps to the perfect hot-but-not-scalding temperature and turning on the CD player, already loaded with John Coltrane, A Love Supreme, I drown out the unpleasant tintinnabulation of my memory bell that the giant’s name calls forth. The water gurgles, the mirror mists. I pour in two capfuls of a bath blend containing almond, jojoba, rose, sandalwood, ylang ylang, and additional ingredients so exotic that their identities cannot be revealed on something as prosaic as a label. I add a capful of organic Babassu oil and three of white musk bubble bath. The oil swirls and bubbles bubble, as they are wont to do. I inhale the rich aroma. After standing perfectly still in the darkness and concentrating on the water flow for several minutes, I light a pair of summer-sorbet-scented candles. Clearly I’m not self-obsessed; if I were I’d be concerned about my increasingly elaborate bath ritual.

I slide into the water. Ahhhh!

While I soak, I slowly slather syrupy soap on my skin—now a dusky dark pink, maybe mauve—attending to every part of my body. I lie on my back and adjust my showerhead until water spurts out in warm, rhythmic bursts. Because my tub isn’t long enough to contain my supine form, I stick my legs up in a V; the water shoots down between them.

To prolong the pleasure, I study the tile pattern in the ceiling. Time warps in its cute little Einsteinian way, winks, then disappears entirely. I close my eyes and arch my back. My hips thrust up and forward. I turn a knob, increase the water pressure….

My screams echo off the bathroom tiles. The waves slosh onto the floor. My entire face is under water, but that’s okay. Who needs to breathe?

I resolve to have sex with a real person in the not too distant future. I’ve made the same resolution in the past, but this time I might actually go through with it.

I leave the tub, suppressing the urge to blow the receding water a goodbye kiss.

So, PT, I say, you think I ought to get out more?

Pad Thai strolls over, carefully avoiding the wet areas of the bathroom floor. With her pearl gray coat and sapphire eyes, she’s astoundingly beautiful. She purrs.

"You’re right, of course. It’s just a curious string of successive coincidences that I haven’t been outside in four months, except as Chickenwoman. I don’t even know the meaning of agoraphobia. I’ve never been in an agora, so why should I