Michael Guillebeau - MAD Librarian - You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Library

When she came up with the idea of an imaginary Mr. Jones who made daily contributions to the library, to add some credibility she pictured an image of him: a small man with big round glasses, looking like the bank examiner in It’s a Wonderful Life . He would be a sad, rich man who had lost his wife recently—a wife who had loved the library as much as Serenity. She opened the phone’s email and typed.

Ms. Hammer,

I have made another deposit of…

Serenity looked at the amount Doom had rolled into the Fund yesterday and typed it in.

…in memory of my beautiful wife…

Serenity paused and remembered the name she had made up.

…Joanie today. I have more money than I can spend now that she is gone, and I know she would want some child to benefit from books as much as she did. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to honor her memory. You and your staff are true heroes and I thank you for your magnificent efforts.

She hit send. Boom. A bomb dropped on Franco himself and all of his fascists.

Joy and Doom drifted into her office and she glanced at her watch. Time for their staff meeting already.

“Okay, we’ve each got a million people waiting for us. Let’s get going. Problems first.”

“Yeah,” Doom said. “Guy came by and said we might have a problem with our electric power, now that we’re seven stories, and that it’s going to be almost impossible to solve it in time. Also mentioned that he was good friends with John Henessey at the power company, who could solve it. Said that he could talk to him. Then he mentioned that Henessey needs ten thousand dollars so he can run for district attorney.”

Joy said, “Let’s do that through a contractor.”

Serenity said, “So, we pay this ‘consultant’ ten grand and our problems go away?”

“Sounds like it.”

Joy said, “Not that anyone’s asking anymore, but as long as we pay the consultant for work done, and we don’t know what he does with it, we’re still on the good side of the law. Barely. Maybe.”

Serenity nodded. “And Henessey will be in the pocket of the consultant.” A long pause while Joy and Doom looked at her. “But if I go to Henessey directly with twenty thousand dollars, we’ll have a new friend and maybe the gratitude of the next district attorney.”

“And be on the other side of the law.”

“The law is what people enforce.”

Joy shrugged.

They finished going through the items and Joy and Doom left.

Serenity looked at the book again and thought how much fun the battle was right now. But she knew that, at the end of the book, the fascists came for Robert Jordan. And in the end, all that mattered was how hard you had fought.

She heard a tap on the door and looked up. There was a small man with big round glasses and a cheap suit standing in her doorway looking at her with no expression.

SERENITY SAID, “Mr. Jones? How can you…”

The man standing in Serenity’s doorway blinked behind the round glasses, his eyes magnified and slightly bug-eyed. “No. Name’s Kendall.”

Serenity breathed easier. While she was opening her mouth to welcome him, he said, “Councilman Bentley hired me to have a look at your books.”

She shut her mouth. And her computer.

“We can’t…” she said. “Well, we can’t let just anyone into the books of the city’s library. Besides, without specialized training, I don’t think you’d understand—”

“Well,” he said. He had a way of talking where only his mouth moved. The rest of his body froze like a statue. “I used to work for the FBI, back in Texas and some here, before I retired and went out on my own. Forensic accounting. Called in when people thought there was a crime. Reckon that’ll do?”

“Well, uh—”

“If not, I’ve got a letter from Councilman Bentley.” He reached into his jacket and Serenity saw the gun on his hip.

“Mr. Kendall.” She stood up and put her hands on the desk. “We do not allow firearms in our libraries.”

“Told you, ma’am. I’m retired FBI.”

“Retired. Only active law enforcement may bring a gun in here.” She glanced over her shoulder to be sure her new-found AK-47 didn’t show.

He stood staring at her for a moment. Probably. Hard to tell with those glasses.

“Guess this ain’t Texas,” he said.

“Guess it’s not.”

He turned to leave, and then turned back. “Be back soon as I lock this up.”

“We’ll be ready for you.”

Just before Kendall got to the library front door, he turned stiffly and looked back at her like he expected to catch her at something. Serenity was standing in the doorway of her office, waiting. After a second, he turned and left. As soon as the door closed behind him, Serenity ran to find Doom, who was sitting at her desk in the open area of the library, just outside the door to the server room.

“You need to get to the server,” she said.

Doom looked up from her desk.

“Can’t. The late pregnancy group is meeting with a nutritionist in there.”

“It’s a beautiful morning. Tell them, as a treat, we’re going to let them meet outside at the tables under the oak trees. Good for their soon-to-be babies. But you need to get to the server, now.” She glanced back at the main door and saw it was still closed.

“Why?”

“Bentley has sent an auditor. He’s gone to his car, but he’ll be back. I’ll stall him as long as I can, but you need to create a set of books for him to look at without the Special Projects fund and print it so he doesn’t have to get on the computer. Make it as complicated as possible. And hurry. Call my cell phone and let it ring twice when you’ve got it.”

She looked at the spike sitting on Doom’s desk. Picked it up and put it back on the shelf where it belonged. “And keep that monstrosity out of the reach of children.”

Kendall walked through the door, spotted Serenity, and aimed for her. She pretended not to see him and walked away fast, toward the back, trying to look like she was a woman on a mission and couldn’t be stopped.

Ignoring the volunteer pointing at Kendall, she steamed toward the door marked private, to the back storeroom as fast as she could, yanked the door open, slid in and slammed it behind her. There was a knock on the door and a tired voice saying, “Ms. Hammer, this really…”

The storage room had a door that opened to the back lot for deliveries. Stepping out the door, she looked around for something credible to do next and saw Seth Burroughs chewing out a man over something in the field next door with the now-two-and-a-half-story MAD hulking over them.

“Mr. Burroughs,” she waved and trotted over. “How is your wife doing?”

Burroughs had a face that was a bitter collection of wrinkles, angles and scars. He looked up tiredly. “You mean the bitch that run off and left me high and dry?”

“I meant—uh—your kids.”

“Last I heard, you can’t have kids if your wife won’t let you have sex when you’re married.”

“Oh.” She thought fast. “Then, I’d like to see your updated blueprints. Review any changes.”

He looked at her for a long time. “You want me to go to my truck, drag out my blueprints and go over any changes since you marked up the plans just an hour ago? Which, by the way, are no changes at all?”

He fixed her with what he seemed to think was a withering stare.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I want to do.” She looked down at her phone. Nothing.

He muttered something under his breath and dragged himself in the general direction of the trucks. Serenity checked her phone again.

Something in the library window flashed at her and she saw two round circles bouncing the morning sun from inside. She glanced away but out of the corner of her eye she saw Kendall turn and head for the front door.