Gatac
On the eve of December 4th, 1989, a dead man came home1Welcome to the footnotes. In here you’ll find supplemental information, expnations and some general thoughts on particur story and character aspects. So like the commentary track on a home movie release, but with less binge drinking. Anyway, I’ll be here with more smartass comments whenever you feel like checking these annotations.. His name was Robert Morrison, father of Susan Morrison and, despite some efforts to the contrary on both sides, husband of Jana Morrison. The dead man had often wondered how much longer they would stay together and what he had done wrong to get to this point. Was thirty years of breaking his back and working his way up the dder down at the port not enough? Was it the hours, was it the car, was it the house? Well, it couldn’t be the house. The house was plenty good enough for anyone. It was a cozy house, nestled into a cul-de-sac in the Roseville neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. Two floors, attached garage, walk-in pantry, the works! He had bought it in 1976 from an African-American couple whose names he could no longer quite recall, though when he brought them up he always hastened to stress they were very nice people indeed, and this part of the neighborhood was also very nice and safe. It was entirely the kind of pce to be expected when moving to a cul-de-sac in Roseville. Heck, the mortgage was paid off already! They were set, the dead man had told his wife, they were set and if she want to get a new car or renovate the kitchen or fly to Aruba for two weeks, that would be no problem, no problem at all. Wasn’t that enough? It had to be, right?
So why wasn’t it?
Morrison groaned at his train of thought. He left his lunchbox next to his leather shoes in the foyer before heading straight on, past the stairs, into the dark living room. He had not taken off his coat in the foyer, and so it rustled slightly when he switched on the light. His eyes fixed on a newspaper lying on the couch, apparently forgotten in the morning rush but now inviting him to take a few minutes for himself. He walked toward the couch and tried to shrug out of his coat.
“Hold it.”
It was a woman’s voice behind him, one Morrison did not recognize, and so he did stop in pce. His heart, however, picked up the pace considerably. Morrison couldn’t figure out what else to do and having his arms caught up in the coat wasn’t helping. Gravity eventually took pity on him and slipped the coat all the way off. It settled to the floor with barely a sound. For a few seconds, Morrison heard nothing else. Maybe he had imagined the voice.
“I will warn you once, Sir,” the woman said, “that I have a weapon trained on you.” Morrison swallowed, as if he could fight the dryness in his mouth. “If you shout or make any sudden moves,” the woman continued, “I will drop you where you are. That will be quite messy. I don’t care for such an outcome. I should like this to stay decent. Do we have an understanding?”“What do you…what do you want?” Morrison said.“We will get to that in a moment, Sir,” the woman replied. “First I need to hear from you that we agree on the tone of this conversation.”“Yeah,” Morrison said. “Yeah. Sure. No shouting, no sudden moves. You got it.”“Good,” the woman said. “Now, please turn around slowly.”
Morrison did as instructed, slowly shuffling in pce and inadvertently treading on his coat. The view of the situation behind his back was less than encouraging. A broad-shouldered woman with a pistol stood next to a bookshelf by the door, having used its bulk to hide herself. Morrison’s eyes were drawn to the gun. Its grip was hidden beneath the gloved hands of the woman, and from his vantage point, the rest of the gun disappeared almost entirely behind the bulky tube attached to its front. Morrison swallowed again. He tried to look the woman in the face, but couldn’t quite summon the courage. Even the gnce at the gun squeezed sweat from his palms. Therefore, he lowered his head and stared, very intently, at the woman’s feet. She was wearing pstic bags with drawstrings over her shoes. Her bck scks had an immacute crease ironed into the front of their legs.
She was there to kill him. Nobody would have gone to the trouble she had for any less than that.
“Please open your jacket, Sir,” the woman said.Morrison reached up and the woman let her gun waver slightly.“Easy,” the woman said. “We are in no hurry.”“I’ve never even held a gun,” Morrison said. Yes, good, he thought. Maybe he could garner some sympathy here. “I just…I need to know…my family,” Morrison said. “What did you —““Your daughter and your wife are safe, Sir,” the woman said, cutting him off. “This is not about them. They are out for dinner with the grandparents today, aren’t they?” The woman paused. “I am not here to bring harm to your family — indeed, I have nothing against your family. And I suppose I have nothing against you, either. How about you sit down on the couch? That would make this a little more comfortable for both of us.”
Morrison walked backward one step at a time, throwing constant gnces over his shoulder to judge how far away from the couch he was. When he reached it, he looked to the woman for some sort of confirmation. After a moment, the woman nodded, and Morrison sat.
“Take the newspaper,” the woman said. Morrison did so. “Now, please read to me out loud what the big headline says.”“But why —”“Please do it,” the woman said. “You will understand why I am here.”Morrison cleared his throat. “Two dead, four injured in port drug bust,” Morrison said, and skimmed the rest of the article.
A warehouse near the docks had gotten a visit from Newark PD's Emergency Services Unit, a no-knock warrant 2Generally speaking, w enforcement officers executing a warrant are required to clearly announce themselves before attempting entry. Where there is concern this might give the suspect an opportunity to dispose of evidence, hurt a hostage or other such immediate concerns, a no-knock warrant may be issued. The LEOs can go straight to entering the premises by force, also known as breaching or dynamic entry. It should come as no surprise that breaches are very dangerous to both the LEOs and anyone in the building. served at 4:30 AM with a battering ram through the front door. The three gentlemen inside objected to that rude awakening with lots of shouting and scattered automatic gunfire, and so the battle was joined. When the smoke cleared, two of the gentlemen were dead and one in critical condition. As it turned out, they had been sitting on a few dozen kilograms of cocaine. The article went on for about the family of the ESU team's pointman 3The officer who is first through the door during the breach. The term originates in the military, where the soldier at the front of a formation is said to be taking point., who was still in critical condition from a gunshot wound to the chest with a colpsed lung and three broken ribs. Morrison checked the date on the newspaper: November 27, 1989. He looked up at the woman, the sudden movement overwhelming his fear. He needn't have worried about seeing her face. It was hidden underneath a bacva.
“I’ve got nothing to do with that,” he lied.“You may wish that to be true, Sir,” the woman said. “But I am reliably informed otherwise.” Taking her left hand off the pistol, she used it to lift the bacva off her neck. It took Morrison a moment to realize the lighter shade of darkness beneath the mask was the color of her skin.“You…you're one of them?” he said.The woman put the bacva back into pce and returned her hand to its pce at the grip of her gun. “Tell me what happened, Sir,” she said.“Nothing!” Morrison said quickly. “Nothing, I did it, like you guys told me! Everything went fine, I kept my mouth shut, that’s all that happened. Listen, you gotta believe me, I don’t know nothing about this, okay? I left a door open and looked away, okay? And I told nobody, I swear to God —”“Are you certain you told nobody?” the woman asked.“Yes!” Morrison said. “I’m no dummy! It wasn’t me, I swear to God, it wasn't me!”The woman nodded.“I believe you, Sir,” she said. “Is there anything else you know needs telling, Sir?”“I don't know nothing,” Morrison said. “Please, you have to believe me. Please. I had nothing to do with this. Please, just…look, just take the money and go, I didn’t see nothing and I won't —““Sir, please stop,” the woman said. “I did not ask you to grovel before me or pay me off. My sole interest at this point is what you know. I asked if there is more yet untold. Is there?”Morrison shook his head.“Alright,” the woman said, and her stance softened again. “I am going to lower my gun for a moment. I will still keep my eyes on you. The tone of our conversation has not changed. Are you still with me, Sir?”“Y…yeah,” Morrison muttered.
True to her word, the woman lowered the gun. With her now free left hand, she pulled her coat to the side, exposing a rge belt pack. She unzipped it, and whatever Morrison had expected her to pull out, it wasn't a flip-open cellphone. Her eyes flicked between Morrison and the phone as she dialed. She put the phone to her left ear and waited for the line to pick up.
“I am there,” she said. “Yes. I have him right here. He says he knows nothing. Yes. Yes. Hold on.”She lowered the phone to her side.“Mr. Morrison,” she began, “I am not much for making people chew their cabbage twice, but my boss wants me to ask you one more time: is there anything you can tell me about the deal and how the authorities knew about it? Anything at all?”Morrison shook his head. The woman raised the phone back to her ear.“He is shaking his head,” she said, held the phone away from her ear again and breathed before resuming. “No on nje snajet. Ya deystvitelno dumayu. 4By way of a transtion convention, dialogue in a foreign nguage (Russian, in this case) will only appear as untransted ‘spelled as spoken’ words on rare occasions, namely to signal the viewpoint character doesn’t understand what is being said. In most instances, the dialogue will be written as its English equivalent but formatted as italics. This is because a) ScribbleHub has appalling support for subtitles, b) I don’t have the time or energy to put into deciding on a proper Romanization scheme and c) it mostly limits my butchering of foreign nguages to English.” She gred at him. What was she angry at him for? He had told her everything! “Da,” she said. “Uvidimsja, gospodin Dolzhikov.”The call had clearly been hung up on her, and she let out a sigh as she folded the phone's mouthpiece with the help of a brush against her thigh and pced it back in the belt pack. At the same time, her right arm came up again, aiming the gun at him once more.“Was that…was that Russian?” Morrison muttered. “I thought you were —““Sir,” she said, “I suppose you had better take a deep breath now.”
He took a deep breath. He didn’t have a lot to his name in the moment, so he held onto this breath and didn’t dare to let go of it.
“I am going to kill you, Sir,” she said. He said nothing and she sighed again. “I am not here to make you suffer. With your cooperation, you will find your passing greatly eased.” Her eyes met his. “But I need to be clear here: you are not getting out of this. This is important. I need to make sure you understand that, Sir. You are not getting out of this. It is over. You are going to die here tonight. There is nothing you can do or say to prevent it. What you can do is choose how you are going to die. Do you understand?”The breath Morrison had held onto was gone.“Please,” he croaked, squeezing his eyes closed. “I have a family.”“I know,” the woman said. “I asked you a question, Sir. Do you understand you are going to die?”He nodded. The first tears rolled down his cheeks.“Would you like to tell me about your family?” the woman asked. She lowered her gun again, though Morrison couldn't know whether it was weakening resolve or simply giving her arm muscles a rest. He shook his head, shaking loose more tears. “Would you like to look at pictures?” the woman continued. “A drink or a cigarette? Or would you like to pray? Most people want to pray, in my experience.”“Most people,” he said. “Most people. Listen to you, pying at being nice, you cold-hearted bi—5You know what Mr. Morrison would have said if he hadn’t been cut off. I felt no need to type the b-word out. If you’ve read my discimer, you know why.”“Let's not act ugly, Sir,” the woman cut in. “Unless you wish to raise my ire.”
Morrison shook his head. Oh, how quickly he shook his head.
The woman sighed. “I know this is grim,” she said. “I believe you are a good man, Sir. That is how I know you will breathe easier once you accept what has to happen. Now, everything I said we could do is still on the table. Or would you like to do something else? I am open to your ideas, Sir.”“Why are you even talking to me?” Morrison said. “There's got to be something I can offer you —”“There isn’t,” the woman said. “I am not your problem, Sir. The people who want you dead are. They are not open to negotiation in this matter.” She let the implication hang in the air for a moment. “I am in no hurry, Sir. Take a few more breaths, to start. That always calms me down.”
Morrison did, indeed, take a few breaths, though he didn't dare to move from the couch. The woman was still standing in the distance and Morrison considered his situation. He had tried pleading, he had no weapon to defend himself with, not that he knew the first thing about shooting a gun, and — what if he made a dead run for the kitchen? Ten feet wasn't that much of a distance and he hoped he had a second, maybe two, before the woman could bring up her gun again and take aim. It was possible, Morrison thought. Wasn't it? His eyes traced the path between himself and the door, as if he was trying to burn into his mind every footstep he would have to take in his escape.
“That is not a good idea,” the woman said. Morrison felt himself freeze up. “Even if you hadn't given it away just now, Sir, I locked all the doors.”“Okay,” Morrison said. “Okay.”“You should lie down on the couch,” the woman said. Morrison's heart skipped a beat or three. “You will not feel a thing. I promise.”Morrison turned in pce and id down on the couch, resting his head on the pillow. He wasn't lying down quite right, so he squirmed until he was. The deep breaths were helping, in a way.“My family…my family,” Morrison said.“They will grieve,” the woman said. “But their lives will go on. All the things you didn't see eye to eye on won't matter anymore. Your wife will make sure your daughter remembers a father who loved her very much. The union will take care of the funeral, you know they are good for it. Your life insurance will pay out more than enough to cover everything your family will need. I don’t mean to sugar-coat what I am about to do to you, but all things considered, there are worse ways to go.” She paused. “Now, I do hate to ask this, but does your wife know about the bribe?”“…no,” Morrison said.“I am not here to pick your bones clean,” the woman said. “If you don’t want to tell me where it is, that is fine. However, you ought to consider what will happen when somebody else stumbles upon it. The cops, your wife…your daughter.”Morrison stared at her. “But you want it?” he said.“I can get rid of it for you,” the woman said.“Fine,” Morrison said. “I don’t want you tearing the house up — you’re gonna go looking anyway, aren’t you? In the bedroom closet, there’s a shoe box. My wedding shoes. It’s stuffed in there.” He chuckled to himself. “I knew someone would come for it. And here you are.”“Here I am,” the woman said. “I will take care of it. Now, Sir, are you sure you don't want to pray? I could speak on your behalf.”“Well, are you…what would you even say?” Morrison asked.“Something appropriate,” the woman said. “What is your creed? I know most all the Bible and a couple standards besides.”
Morrison said nothing.
“I do think the Book of Micah has a beautiful one,” the woman said. “How does that sound to you, Sir?”“Yes, that sounds…” Morrison said, trailing off.The woman moved closer, stepping past Morrison's coat, and Morrison met her brown eyes, the white around them brilliant against the bits of her skin showing through her mask. He wanted to beg one more time — considered it, at least — but the woman shook her head softly, as if she could already read the reluctance from his face.“But as for me, I will look to the Lord 6Micah 7:7-9. If you looked it up and thought “That doesn’t read like the KJV!”, you’re right. This is quoting the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.,” the woman said, and Morrison’s eyes tried to pierce the ceiling. “I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”“Rejoice not over me, O my enemy,” the woman continued. Morrison clenched his eyes closed. “When I fall, I shall rise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.”
Morrison took a deep breath. At first it didn’t seem to do much, but he kept breathing, hoping for this to be over already. It was too te to fight back. Had been for a while.
“I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him,” the woman said. “Until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me forth to the light. I shall behold his deliverance.”
The woman had lied. He felt it, though he could not shout or cry, for all the good it would have done him.
The two gunshots didn’t echo. The bulky suppressor 7In this day and age, it feels almost superfluous to mention real-life suppressed weapons do not sound like the wispy ‘Phwip!’ most Hollywood Silencers produce. It’s still a chunky THWOCK, and if the suppressor is particurly effective, you’ll be able to hear the gun cycle over the sound of the gunshot. Which is also much louder than you’d expect. attached to the handgun had taken the sound down from fireworks going off next to his head to a steam hammer punching through his heart with two swift strikes. He bucked in pce, not enough to throw himself off the couch but still too energetic for a dead man. The bloody mess started almost immediately, the fine mist from the entry wound making way for several smaller spurts. The shots hadn’t quite torn his whole heart to pieces, but close enough. Within seconds, even the smallest twitches stopped. The still bigger mess on the exit side was hidden from view. The woman checked herself quickly as to whether any of the blood had gotten on her. Finding herself unhurt, she went on a hunt for the cases 8If you want to ruin thriller movies for yourself, pay attention to how many times an assassin is depicted shooting somebody with a suppressed semi-automatic weapon without bothering to hunt down the ejected cases, which could well be the clue the police need to track down where the assassin bought their ammo and what weapon they used (via deformation of the case due to expansion in the chamber/ejection or the primer strike). Advanced pyers: pay attention to how often these guns are fired in movies where there’s no visible case being ejected at all. Modern movies have gotten much better at this with CGI adding cases in post-production, but for a long time, the use of fshpaper stand-ins for scenes where bnks would be too dangerous to use meant that screen guns would not consistently eject empty cases when fired. her gun had thrown across the room. Both of them secured, she stole a gnce back at her target. Morrison was now quite sincerely dead, and while his blood was mostly seeping into the couch, some was dripping down the side onto one of the rugs. Not quite as good as dropcloth, she reasoned to herself, but it’d hopefully keep the stains out of the wooden floor. Be a shame to burden the family with having that torn up and repced, too.
“Rest in peace, Sir,” the woman said to nobody.
She unscrewed the suppressor from her gun and holstered it. She stripped the bck vinyl gloves from her hands and dumped them into the pstic bag, along with the case. Stashing the bag in her coat, she withdrew two new gloves from another interior pocket and pulled them over her hands. Taking long, slow strides and avoiding the rugs, she moved back into the hall and up the staircase. On the second floor, she found first the guest bathroom and second little Suzie’s room with little Suzie’s toys all strewn over the floor, to be cleaned up ter. The woman moved on to the st door, to the bedroom. It looked barren, and if there had ever been picture frames of happier times on the nightstands, they were long gone. The woman moved past the bed toward the closet. She removed a stack of folded sweaters from the boxes arrayed on the bottom of the closet, finding the one Morrison had talked about after shifting aside the Christmas decorations box and a big box wrapped in colorful paper. The woman took a breath. She opened the shoe box and found the bribe money, bundles of bills stuffed like dunnage around the shiny bck leather shoes. She pocketed the cash and repced everything else the way she remembered it, finally pushing the closet door closed once more.
Her way to the back door took her again through the living room. Morrison was still dead, and she moved past his body — the virtual new centerpiece of the room — as if it wasn’t there at all, unlocking the kitchen door and closing it behind her. Inside the dark kitchen, where a row of knives on a wall board glinted from the shine of the porch lights outside, a phone hung next to the door.The devil told her to keep moving. But she felt she had to deny him this, at least. She took the receiver off the hook and dialed 911. It rang for a few seconds before an operator on the other end answered.
“911, what’s your emergency?” 9Thanks to a bundle of technologies collectively known as E911 or Enhanced 911, it is today possible to quickly get a location fix on just about any call made to 911 within the US. However, adoption of this throughout the states was uneven, to say the least. According to the website of the State of New Jersey’s Office of Emergency Telecommunication Services, E911 was only legally required from 1989 in New Jersey and took until 1995 to fully implement. Which is not to say that tracing a call was impossible before, you’d just have to have someone look up who a phone number was registered to instead of automatically getting the info. What response a 911 call with no sound on the other end would get also depends on a variety of factors. A welfare check of sending a police patrol car to investigate the origin of the call seems a pusible enough outcome to me, though. he said. “Hello?”
The woman put the receiver down on the kitchen counter. She left the house as quietly as she had entered it.
