REKT - Chapter 31

The New Year

Outside the sky is alive with fireworks, explosions in the night, a shower of gold and greens. The flash and thunder of celebration rocking the city as we enter another year. Niko’s mother traces her small, gnarled hands across my face. I look into her sunken eyes. She pulls me close. My ear to her lips, my eyes shut as I try to follow a whisper I do not understand. She trembles with the words, shivers in exhalation, then lets me go. Her hand reaches for a glass on the tray of her hospital bed. She holds it to me, then to Niko. She smiles and pours a sliver of red through her shallow lips. Niko’s hand is in mine, tears pooling in her deep dark eyes. The night sky of Nicosia glowing through the window. The neighborhoods of the city calling back and forth to each other in ecstatic explosions. We have lived to see another year. Nikola’s mother shuts her eyes. I leave the room to let daughter tuck mother in. The wing of this hospital is empty, staffing at a minimum over the holiday. Her mother will be able to come home now, the coins are no longer imaginary fake money. They have become real money, euros that will be put to use for real things, human things like health care. Her mother will die, this year or the next, but she’ll die in her home where she belongs. This is the reality Niko has made. This is what she fought for. Dignity for the past and a future full of possibility.

We walk down the tiled hallway arm in arm, closer than we’ve been in months. She met my family on our way from Hawaii, now I’ve met what’s left of hers. Gold glows around the red of her fingernail as she calls for the elevator.

“What did she say to me?” I ask.

“Don’t let your youth go to waste.”

Bittersweet and fitting. I don’t know what to think of the last year, but wasted youth is a good starting point. The bubble has blown out, collapsed. I think of all those kids who put their hopes and dreams into it. The startups, the speculators, the ones who drained their life savings a little too late in the game. I think of the Lamborghinis caught halfway to the moon, now out of gas, and falling back to Earth. How badly will it hurt when they crash into the hard crust of reality? What lessons will they take from this moment in time? An ice age is settling in. Will these kids seek shelter in the warmth of Blockstar Gives or will they march away from the entire space embittered by the experience? Have the hardhearted cheats and scammers like Andy, Niko, and myself throttled their sense of wonder forever?

What has been lost in this galactic abuse of trust?

Trust. That’s the hardest question for me in all this. There’s no one left to trust. I can’t even trust myself. My instincts failed me so many times over the last year. That I am here with Niko speaks to a need for someone, no one can be alone, but all I can give her is today. She has to remain good with that, and who knows how long it will be enough. Who knows if we’ll ever have a tomorrow? We took the expectations of the future and fast forwarded them through the greed of the present. When that wasn’t enough, we inflated the expectations of the future, we blew hot air until we had a bubble, and then did horrible things in the shelter of the bubble.

The elevator doors open, we step inside. This could be Maui Lutheran. This could be West Palm Beach Memorial. I could still be out there chasing. I could be collecting the broken and trying to put them back together, all the while ignoring my own disintegration. The thing is as the shock fades, suspicion builds. Something is not sitting right with me. I had been leaving it untouched, waiting to see where the feeling went. I wanted to give it a chance to form more fully before poking at it. I turn to that suspicion now as we depart the hospital. It is not naïve or optimistic. No, this suspicion is world-weary, emanating from the low trust environment we live in. It is a grave suspicion that requires my attention. I think I’ve been conned again. I cannot even trust death. Tomorrow, I need to look into whether Andy and Joe are really dead. I have a suspicion they are not.

***

One body returned to America, Erskine. He was the one who was supposed to die. The unexpected deaths, Andy and Joe? They never came back. Both cremated within twenty-four hours of death. Both done on the authorization of the one family member traveling with them, Andy’s father and Joe’s sister. The deaths occurred in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, easy places to buy the police. The timing, Christmas, is also suspicious because no one works that day. What better time to fake a death? Who better to use as an alibi? It would take a special sort of fucko to question the word of a grieving father, a mourning sister.

This entire affair has made me that special sort of fucko. I have no qualms questioning the word of Hank Hansel. I always enjoy a masterclass in bullshit, and he was Andy’s teacher, the maestro.

“Hank, it’s Ryan Declan. Andy’s old partner. How are you holding up?”

“Goddamn Christmas lights Ryan. The landscaper was supposed to come by and take them down yesterday. He gets caught on another job, I wake up this morning and the HOA has fined me for being out of season. It’s January 4th for Christ sakes. Meanwhile, Millie Fairbanks has a twelve-foot high inflatable Frosty on her lawn and that’s okay? They have it in for me. Ever since I tried unseating that prick, Emile Diaz, as block rep.”

Hank Hansel, a real piece of work. I try to imagine him back in the day as a smooth operator, as the man who taught Andy how to manipulate the world, but that man is out of reach. I can only see the present-day version, the mean old guy desperately holding on, raging against a world passing him by.

“Sorry about those lights. I’ve got a bit of a delicate situation here Hank. It’s with the insurance. You see, the business took out key man policies on Andy and me in case anything happened. I’ve been talking with the company, and they don’t want to pay.”

“Of course, they don’t. Insurance never wants to pay. What’s the problem, is it because he offed himself?”

I cringe at the crude casualness. This isn’t an act either, this is Hank. His attitude is tailor made to be the defender of a fake death. He’s coarse, he’s glib, he’s zero fucks incarnate. He comes off as a man who cares about nothing, not even his son’s suicide. Then again, we never had life insurance policies, so I’m no better at this moment.

“No. There’s no exclusion of suicide in this case. I made sure of that due to Andy’s history. The thing is, they don’t like the circumstances of Andy’s death. Seems suspicious like.”

“Suspicious how?” Hank asks.

“They are questioning whether he’s dead.”

“Jesus Ryan, he’s dead as can be. Not coming back. Gone baby gone.”

“So, here’s the delicate part Hank. They want to test some of the ashes, well not the ashes, they need some ground-up teeth and bone for DNA.”

“Are you asking me if I can send Andy’s unburnt bits to an insurance company?”

And here we are, the moment of truthiness, “I am Hank.”

“Well Ryan, you should have thought of that when I asked you last week. Turns out his sister doesn’t want to bury him next to his ma. She wants me in that hole, like I want to spend eternity next to my wife. Anyways, I left Andy in Mexico. Borrowed a shovel from the grounds crew, walked out to the beach at low tide and planted him in the sand. Didn’t realize how heavy the ashes were. Wasn’t going to pay extra to bring him back. You know if you want to cut me in on that policy, I could fight the insurance for you. I’m very persuasive.”

He dumped Andy in the sand behind the hotel. As big a jerk as Hank is, I can’t see it. He’s too racist to leave his flesh and blood on foreign soil. This smells like a lie. It’s enough ammunition to move on to the next piece of prying.

“I’m sure you are Hank. Let me get back to you on that.”

I wish we really did have key man insurance. I’d take perverse pleasure watching Hank try to double dip on Andy’s fake death. He’d win too. That’s the sort of family they are. I wonder if Hank did it for the money or the laugh? Probably both, he’s not the sort that works pro bono. Should I have tried for the ashes first? No, it's too easy to send someone else’s dust. I needed to put the specter of testing out there, to eliminate the possible existence of fake ashes. With that out of the way, it’s time to have a more difficult conversation. I need to admit my culpability to Kelvin at MercuryOne.

“Kelvin, Ryan from Icarus here.”

“You mean formerly of Icarus. Tell me you’re bored and looking for work.”

“Sorry Kelvin. After this call, you’ll never want to hire me again.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, I take this as my cue to keep on talking. “Kelvin, we embezzled money from you guys. We took your money and put it in the crypto market.”

Silence as Kelvin digests that piece of news.

“I always thought you were an honest guy. Andy not so much, but you were there to keep him in check. Guess not. We got all our money back, so why are you telling me this now? Why the conscience?”

“Conscience? I wish that’s why we are having this conversation. The money we made went missing when Andy died. I’m trying to find it. Some of his trading was on MercuryOne.”

“Hold on, you had the balls to trade my company’s money on its own exchange?”

“Andy did. I was against the whole thing, but I lied to you in Austin. I covered it up, but you knew that didn’t you? That’s why you asked for it all back.”

“I could tell something was wrong. If you were trading our money and it’s still on MercruyOne, there’s no way in hell we are giving it back to you. Part of me wants to prosecute you Ryan, part of me won’t do it because Andy is dead.”

The road forks and here’s my chance to take a different path. I can pretend that this is a simple settling of affairs and con Kelvin into giving me the information I need, or I can be truthful. I can give Kelvin an opportunity to seek justice from the two of us. Why should I use Andy’s death as a shield if he’s not really dead?

“I don’t think Andy’s dead.”

More silence on the line.

“Andy’s not dead?” Kelvin asks.

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think he is.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because the answer is in your exchange. There was a series of trades made in BSTR right before Christmas. On your platform, there was a big seller and an even bigger buyer. The seller was Andy. I want to know if the money is still there. I want to know what happened with that account. I can send you a screenshot if you want to isolate some trades.”

“No, don’t do that. I don’t want you incriminating yourself just yet. I’m going to put you on hold while I check the system.”

This comes down to the trading bots. Niko thought they were running on autopilot after Andy and Erskine died. She thought Erskine buying, Andy selling happened because no one shut the programs down and Erskine had a bigger balance to buy with. If Andy wasn’t really dead, then there’s a much different way to look at those trades. They were intentional. Andy was draining Erskine’s money.

The hold music ends. Kelvin returns to the line, “Hollow Point Trading Partners LLC, a Grand Cayman Corporation. The account was opened in October but was not funded until November 20th, two days before we talked in Austin. Only traded in BSTR. Liquidated its position on December 26th. I remember approving this wire out. Big sucker, about nineteen million.”

Andy’s alive. MercuryOne was one of five exchanges he was working on. God knows how much money he bilked Erskine out of, then he had us kill him. We didn’t kill him, Joe did. Are Andy and Joe in cahoots here? I never considered Joe in all of this, always thought of him as an innocent. Was it him all along? Something to consider later on, let’s not leave Kelvin hanging.

“I’ll cooperate if you choose to prosecute us.” I say.

“Prosecute who? Hollow Point is a shell. Unless you have proof of opening it, what am I going to get from you?”

“Andy’s not dead. He has that money somewhere. You could follow the wires. You could find him.” “You sound like someone who wants me to do their dirty work. Take out a pen and a pad. I’ll give you the information I have. If you want to find Andy, you need to do it yourself. MercuryOne was made whole. Bringing charges would just bring scrutiny to our business and it’s hard enough being a crypto exchange already.”

“I’m sorry Kelvin.”

“I don’t care. You were right, I don’t want anything to do with you.”

***

Niko folds the paper back into quarters. She turns it in her hands, looking out from the patio to the city below. She’s silent, but gears are spinning in her head. I can see her turning over my story, poking and prodding at it. I can see her running calculations, trying to figure out how much Andy got away with, what her third share of that would be.

“The right people could find him,” she says at last.

“Do you know the right people?”

“I know we can afford the right people, so finding them is a matter of a few phone calls.”

“What’s the number?” I ask.

“The right people? A half million retainer, then a finder’s fee. That’s not what you’re asking though. I think Andy ran off with a hundred fifty million.”

“And you want your end of that?”

“No.”

Niko shocks me with that answer. I’ve never known her to let a dollar go.

“Why not?”

“The money is all dirty. There’s a much better chance we end up in jail with him than get our cut. I’m not going after Andy. If you want to, I can introduce you to the right people. There’s another reason though, the real reason. We have enough money from what was left. I want you Ryan, not more money. Enough chasing after Andy. We can have a shot at vengeance, or we can have a life together. We can’t have both. I want you Ryan, not a shell of you chasing a ghost of Andy.”

A bell rings from an open window in the villa. It’s Niko’s mother. She’s come home for Orthodox Christmas, a trial run for a more permanent return. Niko gets up from her chair, I feel her soft lips on mine, her hair falling across my face, the warmth of our bodies in the sun. She breaks our kiss, is a retreating shadow across my face. I watch her climb the stairs. I’m alone with her declaration. She wants me, not more money. Is she enough for me or do I need an end to this story?

***

Deacon Joe is alive. Andy is dead. This is how I’ve chosen to end their story. I know the odds are slim that one faked their death and the other did not. I have no proof that Joe is still out there. I have plenty of proof that Andy is. What I’ve learned this last year is we either make our own reality or someone forces theirs upon us. To believe that Andy is alive would mean to submit to his reality. I’ve spent enough time living out on the edge. While there were plenty of brilliant moments, that reality stunted my growth. It left me processing experiences, but not building any sense of self.

There’s too much of this world for me to handle. There’s too much demanding my attention. There are not enough moments of peace. I have come to crave peace. What I want is to live a simple life. Too few voices speak for peace, and when they do, they speak quietly. They speak in a whisper because peace does not demand attention. Peace exists underneath the noise. To be happy, I need to live with as little noise as possible.

My brain is wired to hear too much, see too much, process too much. For much of my life, that was an advantage. All that information gave me a leg up on the world. It made me think I belonged out on the edge living an extraordinary life, but I didn’t see the coming flood of unreality. We are a decade into everyone being online all the time. The noise has escalated exponentially. In order to cut through that noise, the methods of capturing attention have become military grade. The manipulators have realized that the best way to capture someone’s attention is to serve them an all-consuming alternate reality. That’s what Andy was. That’s what crypto was. The marriage of the two spun me out onto an edge I could not process. Information overload. The torrent captured my attention and blinded me to alternatives. I choose to believe that Andy is dead because I want his reality to be dead to me. It is a simple survival mechanism. I’ve been exposed to a drug that I cannot handle, so I need to cut it out. Any notion that I need to seek justice or vengeance against Andy is a final ploy for my attention. It is the trump card designed to draw me back into a game I cannot win. Andy is dead because I choose not to play. His reality does not matter anymore. Let him use his stolen money to buy his own country. I don’t care. Games within games within games. I think back to Barcelona, and I wonder if Joe was playing Andy this entire time. Joe was so irrational in his defense of Andy. Was that an overreaction because his agent was coming apart at the seams? That makes sense, then what was Joe’s goal in all this? Simple, freedom. Andy wanted to get away with it, but Joe wanted to be free.

Blockstar’s goal is to put people back in control of their lives. To let them own their memories instead of Facebook owning them, to let them express preferences without that data being sold to marketers, to let people send money to each other without banks taking a cut, to vote without governments deciding who has the right. We have this awesome power of connectivity, yet in every instance someone is in the middle deciding who can do what. The dream of decentralization is to do all of that on a system that no one controls, that no one can stop or police. Joe wants to free people, to return agency to the individual, and make the gatekeepers irrelevant so they’ll stop trying to grab our attention twenty-four seven.

If Joe wanted that freedom for himself, then what better way to do it than officially die? If Kim Haggerty is no longer on this Earth, then Deacon Joe is free to build his project without worrying about the people he is threatening. He is out there somewhere creating the future he wants to live in. He’s building an alternate reality, something that may one day replace a system that no longer works for the little guy.

I want to believe that Deacon Joe is alive. If he used Andy who used me in order to achieve his freedom, then I forgive him. I forgive him because I believe Joe is pursuing a path to peace. If two people can control what they want to do without a gatekeeper checking them, then we’ll be able to handle this ever-present, always-on world we’ve created. I hope Joe succeeds because I don’t want to see my children living in the nation states of Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon. They’ve given rise to a world I’m having a hard time living in. We can do better than this. Joe is trying for all of us.

Perhaps I am naïve, most likely I am naïve. Deacon Joe could just be a dude with a crazy way of looking at the world. He could just be a guy that wanted to disappear after being put through a bizarre smear campaign. Maybe it is far simpler. It could be that someone lost a ton of money investing in Blockstar and then shot him for it. The official version could be the reality, but it’s not the one that I am choosing to live in. In my reality, he is out there laying the groundwork for peace.

Niko nudges me in the elbow. I’ve been staring at the fresco on the ceiling of the bank. The same fresco from a year ago during our diamond charade. Our relationship man has returned from the back room. He hands us a binder and two ATM cards. There’s twenty-one million euros in a joint account. It is fake money made real, whatever Andy didn’t take with him. I was going to give my half away, but Niko convinced me to hold it for now and consider a future together. There is more than today. There are ten thousand tomorrows. We stand up and walk out arm in arm determined to spend each one together, in peace and in love.

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