False Memory

flights, five percent.”
    “Well, then—”
    “Maybe others, a hundred percent.”
    Looking at the pistol in his hand, Dusty said, “It’s a legal gun— but I don’t have a permit to carry.”
    “And crossing state lines,” Fig warned.
    “Even worse, huh?”
    “Not better.” Winking one owlish eye, he added: “But I have something.”
    Fig disappeared into back rooms of the trailer but returned only a minute later, carrying a box. From the box, he extracted a gleaming toy truck. With a swipe of one hand, he spun the wheels. “Vrooooom! Transport.”

     
     
    From black sky, black wind. Black, the windows of the house. Does wind live within?
    On the back porch of the Rhodeses’ miniature Victorian, which Ahriman found too precious for his taste, he hesitated at the door, listening to the maraca rhythms of the shaken trees in the night, and to the black-wind haiku in his mind, pleased with himself.
    When he’d first come here to conduct programming sessions with Dusty, a couple months ago, he had acquired one of the Rhodeses’ spare house keys, just as he had kept a key to Susan’s apartment. Now he stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.
    If the wind lived here, it wasn’t home. This blackness was warm and still. No one else was in residence, either, not even the golden retriever.
    Accustomed to a royal right of passage in the homes of those whom he ruled, he boldly switched on the kitchen lights.
    He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was confident that he would recognize it when he saw it.
    Almost at once, a discovery. A padded mailing envelope, torn open, discarded on the dinette table. His attention was snared by the return address on the label: Dr. Roy Closterman.
    Because of Ahriman’s spectacular success both in his practice and with his books, because he had inherited considerable wealth and was a figure of envy, because he did not suffer fools well, because he was more disposed to feel contempt rather than admiration for others in the healing community, whose self-congratulatory codes of ethics and dogmatic views he found suffocating, and for a number of other reasons, he made few friends but more than a few enemies among fellow physicians in every specialty. Consequently, he would have been surprised if the Rhodeses’ internist had not been one of those harboring a negative opinion of him. That they were patients of the self-beatified Saint Closterman, therefore, was only marginally more troublesome than if they had consulted one of the other doctors to whom Ahriman disdainfully referred as pokers-and-prodders.
    What concerned him was a handwritten message that lay with the torn envelope. The note was on Closterman’s stationary, signed by him.
    My receptionist passes your place on her way home, so I’ve asked her to drop this off I thought you might find Dr. Ahriman's latest book of interest. Perhaps you’ve never read him.
    Here was another wild card.
    Dr. Ahriman folded the note and pocketed it.
    The volume to which Closterman referred was not here. If it was truly the latest, then it must have been a hardcover copy of Learn to Love Yourself
    The doctor was pleased to know that even his enemies contributed to his book royalties.
    Nevertheless, when this crisis had been resolved, Ahriman would have to turn his attention to Saint Closterman. Some balance could be restored to the boyfriend’s head by clipping from it the remaining ear. From Closterman himself, perhaps the middle finger of the right hand could be removed, reducing his capacity to make vulgar gestures; a saint should not object to being relieved of a digit that had such obscene potential.

     
     
    The fire truck—five inches wide, five inches high, and twelve inches long—was constructed of pressed metal. Nicely detailed, hand-painted, made in Holland by craftsmen with pride and flair, it would charm any child.
    Sitting at the dining table, as his guests gathered around to watch, Fig used a tiny screwdriver with a quarter-inch head to remove eight brass screws, detaching the body of the truck from the base frame and wheels.
    Inside the truck was a small felt bag of the type used to pack a pair of shoes in a suitcase to prevent rubbing.
    “Gun,” Fig said.
    Dusty gave the .45 Colt to him.
    Fig wrapped the compact pistol in the shoe bag so it wouldn’t rattle, and he placed the bag inside the hollow body of the fire truck. If the weapon had been much larger, they would have needed a bigger truck.
    “Spare magazine?” Fig