The Vaults - By Toby Ball Page 0,47
one of the four colors of ink.
“Excuse me,” said Puskis. All four men looked up, apparently startled by the unfamiliar voice. “I’m Arthur Puskis.”
The man at the desk closest to Puskis stood up. He was the youngest and corpulent, his shirt untucked and his pants held up with suspenders. “Mr. Puskis?” he asked, the awe in his voice evident.
“Um, well, yes.”
The other three men were up now. Between them they defined the states that a body takes when deprived of physical activity. One, seemingly the oldest, was skeletal and stooped—not unlike Puskis’s own appearance. The second was not particularly fat, but even beneath his suit Puskis could tell that his body lacked muscular definition. He was like a sausage and his suit was the intestinal lining that held the meat together. The last had the frame of a large man but without any extra weight, so that it appeared that his suit was hanging from a rack rather than adorning a body. They all wore black suits and the dazed expressions of people for whom interaction is a rare and difficult endeavor.
The fat one shuffled past Puskis, leaned out into the hall, checked both ways, then closed the door. The other three had gathered around Puskis, a little too close for a man unused to physical contact. He gazed at them uneasily and for a few long moments there was silence.
The older, stooped man spoke. “What brings you here after all this time?”
Puskis had rehearsed his response, and for once the words flowed smoothly. “I am interested in speaking to the man who used green ink seven years ago.”
The transcribers looked at each other significantly. The fat one spoke. “That was Van Vossen. He left, let’s see, he left five years ago. He was my predecessor.”
Puskis had known that he would not find the man here. The handwriting in green ink had changed since the false DeGraffenreid file was created. Now he had a name. “Do you know where Mr. Van Vossen is now?”
This request led to another round of exchanged glances before the oldest again spoke. “Why do you want to speak to him?” His voice seemed somehow to come from a distance.
“There was a . . . discrepancy in the files. To be clear, it was just one file, but one with a discrepancy that may, well, hold some significance. The pages are marked in green ink. I am hopeful that the person who marked the pages can, um, lend some insight into the discrepancy.”
“What file?” The men leaned in, eager for the answer.
“The file for the murder of Ellis Prosnicki. The trial of Reif DeGraffenreid.”
The old man nodded and the others began to fidget, rubbing hands together or scratching ears. The old man turned to the fat one. “Write down the address for Mr. Puskis.”
The fat man returned to his desk and wrote on a piece of white paper. The large man seemed to lose interest and drifted back to his desk and began rummaging through his drawer, half-looking for something. The man with the sausage body moved closer to Puskis. He smelled of gin. “Do you know what they plan to do with the files?” he whispered.
Puskis recoiled slightly from the smell of the man and the hiss of his voice. “Well, I suppose that I, I . . .”
“Don’t worry,” the sausage man continued, “we know. We know exactly what they are doing.”
The fat man returned and offered the sheet of paper with Van Vossen’s address. Puskis accepted it without turning his attention from the sausage man.
“What exactly are they doing?” Puskis asked.
“You know,” he said, his voice intense now. “You know and we know, and nobody else except for them. They are destroying the past. They are erasing their deeds from history.”
“What are they erasing? Why do they want to destroy the files?” Puskis asked with a pang of desperation. The sausage man stared at him, breathing hard, his eyes wide.
“Maybe,” the old man said, “Mr. Van Vossen has the answer.”
Footsteps were audible in the hall and the three other men scurried to their desks. The old man took Puskis’s head between his spidery hands. “Be careful, Mr. Puskis. They are going to great lengths to destroy this information. I don’t think they will allow anyone to get in their way.”
Puskis stared back into the man’s gray eyes. His head was hammering. “Who are they? Who are they?”
The man released Puskis’s head and turned to the table. The door swung open to reveal the