At sea level Karl bums a token, finds a pay com.
Reciting the code he waits, cubicle reeking of urinecat, human, maybe both. Laser etchings mar the plexiVato loco, Viva Mexico Norte! Local colorMayan culture's gift to the 21st century.
Back to the screen, he watches passersby, doubtful he could tell one of Raj's cat's paws by looking. Does it matter, anyway? By the time they touch him it'll be too late. Still he waits. Mexican com service is worse than he remembers.
"Yes?" Rick again.
"Karl," he says, back to the eye. "Get me Magnus."
"A public satcom, Karl? You've sunk pretty low. Sorry you wasted your token, he's tied up."
"Ricky, I been taking your crap for ten years. Listen to me, now, I know where you are. If I have to come up there, you'll be lucky to open your mouth wide enough to suck a straw. Tell Tate he doesn't get his face over here, we won't be coming in."
Karl doesn't have to look. He can imagine his pout. "Please hold."
Back to the closed booth, Karl waits, watching the promenade, doing his best to cover all directions at once. But for whom? He's good with faces, voices, buildsthat won't help him now. Raj can be any age, any sex, any body. Step up behind them and with the press of a stud they're worse than deadthey're his. The back of his neck crawls. Not him.
"I told them you were too smart," Magnus says. "If it matters, I was overruled."
He's on the helipad. That means he's on his implant, secure as any. Karl's public unit's okay, tootoo public to be bugged.
Karl turns long enough to let him see his face, and to see his. Magnus looks like hell.
"And would you take it easy on Rick? He'll be in a snit the rest of the day, now."
"Let him."
"You don't have to be around him. I do."
"Got your hint."
"Did what I could."
"So why all the brawn? I made the date. Who's worried I'll flake, you?"
"Not me.
"Auri?"
"I told you, she's got friends."
"You out of the loop, now?"
"Sometimes I wonder."
"But she wants her out, wants her alive. I got her here. Why this, now?"
Magnus looks away over the city, implant giving a good interpretation of his facial expression from brain impulsesjust now hopelessness. "She doesn't talk to me. You want my guess, she needs her testimony and doesn't want to take any chances she'll change her mind."
"She'll never make it. Genie will take her out. She knows that doesn't she?"
"Auri thinks we're her best chance to get her there, and don't forget there's half a Quad riding on Romy if she can."
Karl feels sick. "Then all that about wanting her daughter back..."
"Five hundred trillion, Carl, that's how much she's suing Genesistems for. Five hundred million million. All the experts agree. Romy testifies, she's won. Auri never was real mommy material anyway. That kind of money makes up for a lot of motherly love. Come on in and we'll get you on a bird for home."
There it is. He's that close. Two hours he can be there. All he has to do is send Romy and Willy in to die, to betray the trust he felt in herjust that. A small thing. A minuscule thing. Something only he would know. "Don't think so."
"Karl, you're being stubborn. She wants to testify, doesn't she?"
"She wants to live, too."
"We'll take care of her, but Karl, you've got to bring her in. You don't, Auri won't do her bit with the committee. You forget why you came down here in the first place?"
Blind to the walk before him, Karl forces himself to think. "Tell me the agency hasn't been penetrated."
Tate laughs, breathy, low, "With half a Q riding the toss? Don't be an ass."
"Then we'll stay out."
Magnus smiles in that God-but-you're-a-stupid-son-of-a-bitch way he has, "She'll be upset."
"That's your problem. The deal was I'd get her here to testify. How I do it's my problem."
"Auri may feel differently."
Sensing he's been too long on the line, Karl backs away, "Better get back."
Tate looks at him, disgust plain on his face. "This is nuts, you know that."
It's worse than nuts. "I know."
On the way back he thinks how easy it would be to turn her over and be done, be gone. Tomorrow morning he could roll over in his own bed. Jesus, his own bed...
And where would that leave her?
He's got a feeling about how long she'll last once inabout as long as spit on a griddle. Why he should care he's got no clue, except that to have gotten her out of that charnel house only to dump her in another would leave a rancid taste in his mouth. Then there's that damned trust. Again he curses himselfan ordinary man wouldn't even know. Now he does, how can he wave goodbye? He wishes he could. He can't.
Topping the stairs to where he left her waiting, Karl sees Romy's not alone.
Pug waits on the other side of her, too close for Karl to use the 12, and another agent, small guy, long hair, stands back to him as he comes up out of the well. Pug nods, no happier to see Karl than Karl is to see him.
Hey, Karl," he says in a voice like a diesel with bad injectors, "how they hanging?"
Karl nods, "Stomped any pussycats lately?"
The smaller agent turns.
And the dead rise.
Sara smiles.
Same old big-sister smile on the same wide, maddeningly kissable mouth. "Well, look who's here. Tate said you were back."
When he finds his voice he says, "I thought you ended up on the bottom."
Her laugh, just as he remembers it. "No wonder you look so white. I was on maternity leave, stupid." She smiles at the look on his face. "And get that somebody-stole-my-candy look off your face. I didn't swear off. It's ours, Gina's and mine, little girl." She shows a pocket tablet playing a short clip of the baby, laughing, wobbling, spitting up. "Is she a bug or what?"
"Cute as," Karl says, thoroughly confused. "I'm happy for you, Sare, I didn't know they could do that."
Getting pretty common, now, infertile couples mostly, but we both wanted a girl and I thought, hey, why not, you know?"
"Cut the Y's out of the loop, huh?"
She sighs, "Let's not get started."
Pug, impatient to go, moves to take Romy's arm, and Willy's on him. Pug bellows, spins, but with no chance to get at his knife he's a puppy in the coils of a python. Willy sweeps his legs out from under him, slamming him hard, face-first into the floor, arm around his throat.
Sara draws, racks the slide of her pistol, drops into a half-squat using the Israeli method Karl taught her.
Karl moves in front of her, arms out, "No, no, no, Sare, wait."
Dark eyes suspicious, the muzzle of Sara's 10 mm waivers between Karl's heart and the floor. She can't decide, settles on his crotch, "What's going on, Karl?" She shouts the way she does when she's up against something scares her.
He shows her his palms, keeping his voice calm, thinking of those +P+ 10mm in Sara's pistol a pace away. "It's all right, Willy won't hurt him, he's just protective. Ease up Willy, keep him conscious! You doing all right down there, Pugsy?"
Meaty mouth kissing tile, the big man growls a profane imprecation, crimson spit drizzling from his lips.
"See, he's fine. It's all right, now, Sara, put it away. Will you put it away?"
She hesitates, decides, drops it to her thigh, still not away. He won't press it. Sara's eyes spark dangerous. "Who the hell is this oaf, Karl?"
"A friend is all, just a friend."
"Come on, Karl, we've got a job to do here, you know that, she's coming in, what you and the ape do is up to you."
He shakes his head, "No, Sara, she's not."
He can see her eyes change as she tilts her head. Like a dog hearing a new tune. "She's not? What do you mean, she's not?"
He shrugs. "I mean she's not coming in. She's with me."
"You nuts?" She steals a peek over her shoulder as if she's expecting somebody. "You know how it works. She's coming in.Tate will"
"I was just on with him. He's all right with it. He's being pushed, it's not his call."
She's confused, now, he can see that, which makes him think of the time he took her to see her first homicide. First corpse, first blood. Four a.m. They'd just eaten. The corpse had been dead a week. Waste of good ribs. Afterwards, they went out for waffles.
God, but it's good to see her alive.
"She's with you? What's that mean, Karl? You used to call things like her freaks of nature, said they were a mistake, walking mannequins. That changed?" She looks at Romy as if she were an an inconvenient mistake. "What's going on?"
He knows Pug's calling right now, he has two, maybe three minutes to convince her. Not very long. "She goes in, she's dead."
Sara laugh-sighs, "And you care? This is a freak of engineering we're talking about here. Is this Karl I'm talking to or some recom-liberationist?"
He looks at Romy, sees her watching him, eyes worried, right hand out of sight on the .44. A thrill of fear runs through him when he thinks of these two in an arm-length fusillade. He won't let it happen. Moving just enough to make it impossible, he smiles, not sure why. Eyes never leaving his, Romy smiles back, tense shoulders dropping a little as she relaxes.
"Yeah," he says, embarrassed by the answer, "Yeah, I care."
Pug moans into tile.
"Shut up, Pug," she says, laughing, shaking her hair in amusement. "You find the girl of your dreams and she's a Sister, Karl, a Sister? Why not just come in with her, work her yourself. When it's over"
"I don't kid myself, Sare. They want her, there's no way I'm going to stop them. I got lucky twice, I won't again. She's not going."
She looks at him like he's telling her Bink can tango. "Not kidding yourself, I'm not so sure. Karl, she's a construct. A Sister for the love of heaven! They don't play your game any more than I do. You know that, right?"
He knows. "That doesn't matter. She has the right to decide for herself." He asks her, "You want to go with them? Tell her."
Romy keeps her eyes on him. "I want to live, and I won't go back. I'll never go back."
Sara, impressed, is beginning to get a trapped look about her. "Karl, I've got a job to do. You know what that means."
For one awful second he's sure she's going to bring the gun up, and he holds his hands wide to calm her. "Sara, she's the last. The same people who sent nine of us to the shelf slaughtered the rest of them last night, all but her and one more."
Her face darkens, "I heard it was
"We were there," Romy says. "We barely got out. It was Genie."
Sara turns to her. "Then why not testify?"
Romy pushes away from the rail, slips the gun out from under her coat to let it hang against her thigh where Sara can see it. "I want to, but I want to live, too. If Karl says I shouldn't go in, then I'm not going."
Sara looks at him, face softening. "Not just a pretty face, huh? So, you two are..."
"Friends," Romy says.
Sara gives Karl a tongue-in-cheek glance,"Uh, huh." She leans around, tells Pug to cancel the call, waits for him to do it, holds up a hand for them to wait while she verifies. "Tell Ivan the terrible to let him up and I'll send him down."
Willy pushes himself off, and Pug bounces to his feet, thinks about evening the score with his knife. Karl can see the fingers of his big hand curl, itching to do it. He looks at Karl, knows him, knows he's carrying, looks at Sara, heads for the stairs.
"Karl, know what?" Sara goes to the rail, waves okay to the agents below."I ran into one of the shields from the city a few years ago. Told me a few things I didn't know."
Karl winces. What now?
"They put me with you because of all the guys you disliked gays the most. They put me with you because they knew a hayseed like you would give me a rough time, a miserable time, that you'd run me raw over the rough spots. But you didn't. You know, Karl, the first time I saw you, with that close cropped hair, no jewelry, and those damned dark suits of yours, I thought, oh, Christ what kind of hick is this? I was wrong.
"You taught me more than anybody since. You were the best partner I ever had, Karl. You even came to dinner and were decent to Gina, a little nervous, a little awkward, maybe, but decent, kind. I know how hard that must have been. You know how close I came to quitting before I was put with you, Karl?" She raises thumb and finger. "That's how. It meant a lot."
At the stairs she hesitates, "Subjects eluded agents at scene, that the tune?" She sighs. "I'll see if I can get them to buy it." Again she looks at Romy, shakes her head. "You know, Karl, I don't blame you a bit, they're even more incredible in person." And to Romy, "He's not as bad as he seems, you know, a lot better, really, just acts tough. You can trust himbut then you know that, don't you?"
She stows her pistol under an arm, speaks into the air, looks back, appraising them both, "And Karl, if you love her, get her the hell out of L.A."
Salvation Army Mission, downtown L.A..
Karl follows Romy up the mess line. Next comes Willy, overcoat bulging with Bink. Heaping rectangular pans along the steam tray only vaguely resembling the foods they are meant to, they slide steel trays along to be filled by people with tired faces. A slice of bread like a soiled sponge, a clump of potato, brown gravy with a puzzling aroma, things that if Karl doesn't look too closely might be mixed vegetables, something close to apple pie, but smelling wrong somehow. Just plain food.
"Oh, God...." Karl sighs under his breath, mouth to her ear. Her hair teases his upper lip. "I don't want to eat this."
"It doesn't look so bad," she says.
Behind the counter, an old man with watery eyes sizes her up. Fascinated, he shakes a sticky dollop of potato off his spoon onto her tray, smiles a gap-toothed smile. Romy nails him with crystalline eyes sharp as glass, and his gaze falls away, a severed line.
They find a bench and sit, Romy across from him, Willy at his elbow. Feeling eyes on them, on Romy, still in the same dress, screaming class, screaming money, Karl scans the room around them with unease. Doesn't like being around so many people, so many implants, so many cat's paws for Raj. Food untouched, he watches Romy take a delicate bite of potato, then one of vegetable.
With a face like that she could make eating paste the next fad. With fondness he pictures the meal at Vici's. He hasn't eaten since. He tastes the gravy, sticks his fork obliquely into it where it stays. "Just like Mom used to make."
He can see she's working up to asking something. He doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to share livesnot the way things stand. He's fighting to keep his view of her from changing. Talking will only make it harder and it's hard enough already. Dreading her question, he waits for it.
"Your mother cooked for you all the time?" she asks as if she's delving into some dark territory.
Relieved, he nearly laughs, "She cooked."
"And, did she wear an apron?"
He nods.
She warms to it, "And did she bake cookies?"
"And bread." He understands what she must feel, and wishes there were something he could say to give her what she wants. "She had a temper, though. Liked her kitchen clean and when I made a mess, I had damned well better have cleaned it up."
Over his head she smiles, eyes alight. "I thought you'd be in Sonora by now."
Villar shrugs, running a hand over his head. "One last thing to do, one last job." He looks Karl over as he circles to sit next to Romy. "Still in L.A.?"
"Surprise after surprise. What about you, I thought you quit."
"I did, this is freelance."
Karl remembers the small man whipping off his balaclava, firing as they rose out of range over the scrub cliff and knows he's right. "It was you."
"Seguro que sí." A smile grows on his hard mouth. "Here I am again."
Throat suddenly dry, Karl tries to swallow. This guy's a killer, a good one, deadly as nightshade and sitting with his hands out of sight not a pace away. They might well be dead in a few seconds. "A job you couldn't turn down?"
Villar nods, mouth drooping sadly. "One always needs money."
Romy watches, eyes filled with doubt.
"You could have done it a hundred times, you could have yesterday. If you hadn't called"
"They didn't give it to me until today." He points, smiling, and Karl's glad to see his right hand. "You know that was the only time anyone ever got away from me, that old bruja. I can't believe I forgot the stairs. You ruined a perfect record."
So what, now, he's out to fix it?
Karl sneaks a quick glance at the doors. Nothing as far as he can tell. Nobody he wouldn't expect to see in a place like this. The out of luck, out of time, out of workpeople like himself. To Villar he says, "Luck."
"Not only that."
"The pilot?"
"No longer employed." Villar nods, "Told before he went away."
That would be right.
Karl keeps his eyes on Villar's, unclipping the 12, sliding it free making sure not to move his shoulders, not to clue him. He lays it across his thigh, pointed at the base of Villar's spine.
Villar's eyes smile directly into his, and Karl knows he knows.
"No te preocupres por eso, compadre. If I were here to do more than talk it would already be over. Erin wouldn't take me back if I did." He nods at the crowded room, the door beyond. "You call this watching yourself? You're getting lazy."
It's true and Karl knows it. He shrugs, wiping his eyes with his gun hand, leaving it balanced on his thigh. "I'm tired. So why you here?"
"To talk."
That doesn't sound good. Genie's still interested enough in her to spend some more money. He'd hoped they might just kiss it off, let her go, though he should have known better. Nearly ten bills he's cost them in organs. They're not about to forgive and forget. That's why Villar's here. Karl's hand rests on the grip balanced on his thigh, index finger on the button safety. "So talk."
"She'll never testify."
This is what they sent him for? "Auri seems to think she will."
He laughs, barely audible, harsh with contempt, "Not if the board of directors has its way."
Karl wonders if he can take him out before he gets Romy, decides it's unlikely, regrets letting him get this close. "What's Swindlehurst have to say about it?"
Villar shakes his head, frowns, "The bung up with Auri panicked somebody on the mainland, that's why the party with the gas. Now there's only Romy and Erin. Neither one will live to get within a klick of a courtroom. Auri knows. I was there when Swindlehurst had her on the horn, offered her a proposition."
Romy says, "What kind of proposition?"
"Auri gets you where they can get an easy shot and she gets a hundred bills, consolation prize. Auri took it, hedging her bets, I guess you could say."
Karl can see in her face she doesn't believe it.
When she sets down her fork, her hand trembles. "You lie."
Villar shakes his head, sadly, "Hey, babe, my mom was no prize either."
She covers her eyes with her hands, looks up, "Vincent will know what to do, he always knows. He made it out, didn't he?"
Villar studies the food on Karl's tray.
"Well didn't he?"
Villar shakes his head again and Romy doubles over as if she's in pain. "But...he said he had it set up so they wouldn't...."
Villar nods, "Oh, yeah, deeded his interest to some God fanatics, didn't he." He shrugs, "Guess they loved money more than they hated Genie: quit-claimed their interest back to the corporation. Heard they made out like bandits. End of that crusade, I guess, huh?"
Face blank, she stares through him. Karl's just seen her lose all of what little excuse for a family she has. The desolation of being absolutely alone is a dark pond on a moonless night, you alone in the middle. He's been there in that deep, still water, been there often in the last five years. Often enough to know exactly what it is she feels.
Romy leans forward, "Auri woudn't ask me to testify if she knows I'd never live to take the stand."
"It's a game to her. One she can't lose. You testify she makes out big. If you have a little accident on the way," he shrugs, "no skin off her ass. She takes the hundred bills and runs crying all the way to the bank. She wins whether you testify or not. Me, I'm paid to see you don't." Karl hears the hair hiss as he runs a hard hand over the stubble on his head. "Howthey left up to me."
Villar swivels, eyes always movinga dangerous man. He turns back, speaks softly, "So, how am I doing?"
She looks hard at Karl, jaw set, before she answers. "Lousy."
Villar looks pained. "You won't, you know."
"Oh, yeah, watch me, I'm with Karl, you know."
Hearing this dumps a cauldron of molten lead into the pit of his stomach. She says it like it means something.
Villar nods appraisingly across the table, eyes coldbusiness eyes. The eyes he would have met if he and Auri had been a few seconds late to the stairs. The eyes they would have seen for the one long second they would have seen anything at all. "He's good, but he's only one man."
"I could go in, they have eight agents assigned to protect me."
Villar eyes Karl's tray, "Looks good, mind if I..."
Humbled by her faith in him, knowing it's misplaced, Karl slides it over.
"Not good enough." Villar takes a bite of potato, gesturing with his fork as he fights the paste in his mouth, "All it takes is four or five of them to get distracted for a few seconds. Bam, it's over. They'll get the fall guy, they always do. It won't help you any."
She looks across the table at Karl, eyes hopeful. Karl knows he won't like the question.
"You can protect me, can't you?"
"I can try. I'd probably get the first. I may not be around to get the next oneand there will be one. They want you, they'll take you. And what about Raj? The case will be over the Net like the pox. He'll know exactly where you are, exactly where to come for you, and who to ride to get to you."
She glares at him as if he's turned against her.
"Raj?" Villar says, "Who's Raj?"
Romy disentangles long legs from the bench, slams the .44 on the table, heads out into the street.
Villar eyes the gun, smiles, "Damn, nobody trusts nobody, anymore."
Karl snatches it up and barks his knee going after her.
Dark.
Bad part of L.A.
She's half a block away by the time he catches her. "This isn't very smart," he says to her back.
She keeps walking, long-legged stride making it hard for him to keep up. "Flake off."
He's puffing and she's barely breathing. "I was only telling you the truth. What do you want, you want me to lie?"
"I want you to leave me alone."
"Look, you better come on back."
She keeps going. "So what am I supposed to do, huh?"
They pass three men on the corner. Karl watches them as they pass. Hand inside his jacket, he puts them on notice, meeting their eyes, or trying toothere's only darkness where their faces should be. Masks? He's not sure.
Scenting the air for vulnerability like wolves, they find none, fade back into darkness. Karl can swear she's jacked up her pace. He can't keep up with this gazelle. "Don't ask me what you should do."
She turns on him. "I am asking."
Grateful for the break, he braces hands on knees, sucking air. What does she want to hear? He's got nothing to give. "Look, I gave up on this place five years ago, I'm not the one to ask. Do what you need to. I care about one thing, and one thing onlytaking care of number one."
She moves to a lighted storefront, head down, hair liquid fire catching the glare from inside. "You're a liar."
She can think what she wants.
Looking back at him as if she doesn't understand, she moves to the window like a sleepwalker to light. Arms spread wide, she presses hands and face to plate glass. Inside, animated mannequins couple with mindless energy. She moans in frustration." Oh, God!" she says, voice serrated with desperation, "God, what should I do?"
Behind them, dark shapes hang just beyond the light. Alone out here she'd last as long as a wasp in an ant hill. Afraid she'll run from him, and he won't be fast enough to catch her, he softens his voice, comes up close behind her, close enough to grab her if she bolts. "Why testify?"
Face distorted with pain, she watches him in the mirror opposite gyrating couples, as they keep up their tireless pistoning. "How can you ask that? For them, that's whyfor them."
Again, he smells the sleeping Sisters, sees the one he mistook for her, the track of a scalpal. "They're gone. You're alive. To be whacked in some hallway somewhereis that what they'd want for you?"
He takes her by an arm, turns her to face him, one eye on the predators inching up behind them. Face hateful, hair falling over one eye, she glares. Taking a fistful of her hair, he draws her head back, slamming her shoulders against the glass. Like a drum head it shudders. "Is it? The sisters you loved, the ones that loved you, is that what they'd want for you? A peroxide douche, a slip down steel-edged stairs, China white injected into a femoral artery? There are so many ways.... And all so you can say what?"
"To say they made us!" The words she spits at him, screaming loud enough to echo up the street, loud enough for boats to slow, wakes slapping, heads turning to stare, "Used us, slaughtered us! A thousand of us!"
It's there, he senses. Right there. An open sore out of reach between shoulder blades, a gathering of infection crying out for the lance. Quietly, he says it: "A thousand what?"
"Women..." She whispers it. "...a thousand women." Silently, teeth clenched, she sobs, her pain scalding him, leaving him trembling, wanting to hold her. Instead he props her against cold glass, taking her face in a hand, forcing her look at him. "Auri gets her judgment. Then what? They'll tie it up in appeals, and when the nets have moved on to something juicier, they'll have it quietly overturned. You think you'll hurt themyou won't."
She tries to push away from the glass. He shoves her back hard. "You think this is some novel we're living here? Some bestselling thriller where one spunky guy and gal take on a multinational, the CIA, half the US senate and win? It isn't. This is real life, where people who see things they shouldn't end up assuming ambient temperature.
"You want me to tell you what you're going to do? Okay, I'll tell you. You're going to stay quiet. You're going to stay hidden. And you're going to stay alive. That's what you're going to do. Want to flush your life away, fine, there'll always be time for that."
Hating him for the truth of what he says, she bares her teeth. Nose running, she swipes at it with the back of a hand, stringing a web of mucus. "You think they should get away with what they did? With murdering them, with selling their hearts, their insides like they were animals? You think they should win?"
A wave of hopelessness rises over him, closing over his head, shutting out the light. "They have." He shrugs out of his jacket, drapes it around her bare shoulders. Keeping watch over the dark ebbing about them, right hand on the .44, he leads her, unresisting, back to the light.
"They already have."
Romy safely in the women's dorm and Willy set on watch at the door, Karl walks Villar to the bus stop.
"So," he says, "will she testify?"
"I don't know."
Villar nods. "It won't be me, but I'm not the only one I can't stop the others. I don't know who they are, just that they're there. You told her that?"
"I told her." A drizzle falls, greasy, stinking of sulfur. Karl turns up his collar, slips on a cap to keep it off his hair. "I talk her out of it, then what?"
Villar stops to adjust the Walther under his arm, shrugs, "She's alive. She's free. If she can stay that way long enough to fall off the edge of the earth, nobody's going to follow her."
Karl remembers the eyes watching from the dark. How much would a Sister bring?
A bus slides up, wake breaking through piers, and Villar offers him a coffee-colored hand. He's never taken a Mexican's hand before, not as a friend. His grip is firm, dry. He's been telling the truth, all he knows.
Villar still in his grip, he says, "What is this about you not taking the job because of Erin? She'd never know, not for sure. The money must be good. You could have hosed us down from the door, I'd never have seen you. So why not?"
Villar looks at him, dark eyes reflecting the lighted windows behind Karl's back, "Vaya con Dios, hombre."
"Yeah," Karl says, not knowing the words, getting the gist through his skin. Villar mounts the burbling behemoth and it roars off, leaving Karl alone.
"Yeah," Karl says to no one, heading back thinking of Romy, of what Villar had said, as the dark, the silence clamps back down.
"If she can stay alive long enough..."
At dawn Karl wakes.
Air heavy with the sweat of ten men, he dresses quickly in half light. Outside he finds Willy following Bink as he autographs a row of pier posts. Karl follows, street becalmed, squinting as the overcast brightens.
L.A.the city presses down on him. He wants out. Resentment boiling up into his throat, he watches Willy follow Bink on cat feet. If he were alone, if it were simple, he'd be gone, home as fast as his legs and his thumb could take him. Now...
He could ditch them. Could have done it last night even. Could do it now. What would Willy do here? Genie must know he helped them. The tech would see to that. On the plat he's spare parts. In L.A. what? Bouncer maybe. A quiet, sensitive bouncer. Not too many openings for a man bred to kill with a proclivity for compassion. What about Romy?
If he were to do a fast fade, hop the bus growling its way up the canal right now, where would she be? If she were lucky, sent back to be cannibalized. If not, grabbed off the street, passed gang to gang. Maybe sold into one of the unlicensed houses where the girls are young, and shorter lived. She'd be a draw, all rightfor a while.
Feeling trapped, he squats, back to a spray-painted wall. Where can he go? They don't belong in L.A. They don't belong anywhere. He gives her up to Auri. She's dead. Unless...
Romy comes out onto the street and at once he knows what they've got to do. He leads her up the street by her arm to a pay com.
"What's the hurry, who you calling?"
He hustles her on.
Eyes still misted with sleep, she pulls away, "I won't talk to her."
Finding her surprisingly strong, he holds on, "Yes, you will."
"I won't, why should I?"
He keeps her moving. "To tell her what you're going to do, that's why." When Romy hears this, she stops fighting, though she's still not happy.
To buy them some breathing room. To get her to call off the EPA and give them a place to go, that's why.
He calls collect. "Oh," Rick says, scowling, "not you."
"Get Tate."
The screen blanks and it's him, sunk deep in the murk of his office. "Tate" The voice is oddweak, old, somehow.
"We need to talk to Auri."
"Not here," he says, voice barren as L.A. skyline.
"Where, then?"
"Back to her palace on the hill."
"Why'd she go?"
Tate shrugs, shoulders slumped as he toys with a small sculpture of Quixote on his desk. "Nothing to fear from them now, why not?"
Karl hadn't thought of it that way before, but sees it now. "I'm out of tokens, can you have Rick patch me over?"
"Sure." He tells Rick what he wants him to do, then turns to Karl. "She's used to getting what she wants, that one, better keep your guard up."
A moment later, the screen brightens. It's Auri, on the balcony where they were nearly gunned down a week ago. Can it have been only a week?
"Pronto?"
"Sorry, only me."
Like a cat ready to strike out, she rises. "You! Why hasn't she come in? What are you doing out there?"
"Breathingwe kind of like it."
"Where is she?"
"Right here." He yanks her in front of the sensor.
Auri tenses, takes a rapid breath, "Romy..."
"It's true, isn't it? You want them to kill me."
Auri takes a short step closer, predator edging closer to prey, intent on not spooking it. "Don't be a fool. I told them what they wanted to hear. If you'd come in nothing would have happened to you. With the others dead, you're my last chance."
"Why not just tell me what my chances were and let me decide for myself? You are my mother."
Auri's head drops, mouth open, "I've never been anybody's mother, Sweetheart." She turns to Karl. "I want her in right now. I'll have you picked up in five minutes, stay right where you are."
Of course they'd be tracing the com. Karl gives himself two minutes to get off and gone. "Look, with her dead you get peanuts. Why not play it smart? Get EPA off my neck and she can give her testimony via com from Anglo-Cali. She wants to testify, let her go and she will."
"Karl, she says, voice a rising thunderhead, "I want her in. Now."
Here it comes. Dreading it, he shakes his head. "Auri, you're being stupid."
"Listen, you did what I wanted you to do. You're done. I've already taken care of that thing we talked about. I want you to bring her in, and that's exactly what you are going to do."
Now is the time. "Romy's got something to tell you." He watches the side of Romy's face, wanting to reach out and tuck the hair behind her ear. "Tell her."
She faces the holo, "I want to testify, I do."
Auri sighs in exasperation, laughs a long bitter laugh. "That supposed to convince me? People do change their minds, Karl. She might change hers. I'll tell you what, she's not in in 48 hours I'll make sure they burn that shack of yours, scatter the ashes to the wind. They'll shoot you down if you try to go back. You hear me?"
Romy watches him. Feathers tickling newly healed scar tissue, her eyes tease his soul. "What do you mean? What's this got to do with Karl?"
"We had a deal. You come in and I make sure he keeps his hog farm."
"If I don't?"
"He's got nothing to go back to but a sanctuary for some endangered slime-tunneling worm."
Close enough for him to scent her, Romy turns her back to the screen, blocking Auri's view, face searching, questioning. "So why won't you let me go in?" Her breath is hot on his face.
Looking into her eyes from so close he realizes that somehow in the last few days the rules of the game have changed. Without those eyes, the land's worth nothing. A drug of phenomenal potency, she's insinuated herself into his system. Now he has the need. Reluctant to see how vulnerable this makes him, he fights her gravity, turns away, searching the street. It's like turning away from a glowing stove to face the dark. "It wasn't safe."
"But"
"Look...." He can't take much more of this. "I didn't get you off the plat to throw you into a recycling bin. That would be a waste of effort. I don't like waste."
Saying nothing, she raises a tentative hand to his lips as if feeling for heat, hesitating, fingers just over his skin. "I'll never understand you," she says, and walks out and away.
He checks to make sure Willy goes after her. He does.
"Where is she going? You keep her there, you hear me? Do you? I mean what I say, Karl, you know I do. You get her in or you've got nothing. Nothing!" With a frustrated expletive she breaks the connection. Though it's too dim to see much on the filthy screen in the morning sun, he knows Magnus is back. He can feel him. When he has something to say he will.
Just when Karl decides he must have been wrong, that Tate's not there after all, he speaks. "You always were a pushover."
Karl turns away from the street, not trusting himself to speak, tongue prodding a split lip, nods at the eye.
"I take it you've changed your views on recoms?"
Karl turns away, letting his eyes lose focus, spring sun making him want to sleep after a night among snoring drunks and mumblers. Has he? Does he know what he thinks about anything anymore? Karl can picture Magnus nodding the way he does, fingering the figurine on its horse.
"Like her mother, is she?"
Karl thinks it over. "Stubborn, beautiful, strong, other than that, no."
Tate chuckles as if he's too tired to laugh, "That's something, anyway."
Karl glances over his shoulder. Still no oneas if he can tell. It's the worst nightmare of all: the one where no one is who they seem, where no one can be trusted. Tate, however, he trusts.
"Expecting somebody?"
Magnus doesn't need to knowwhat can he do anyway? "No."
"I wouldn't worry about it. You want to disappear, nobody's going to look too hard. The agency's only out there hustling because she's got a senator leaning on them. He'll lose interest in a few days and so will they." He snaps long fingers. "Almost forgot, I know what a damn Luddite you are, so I took care of something. Sent a worm into Latte's file."
Magnus says it like he expects him to know what he's talking about. It doesn't sound like much of a favor. "A worm, am I supposed to thank you?"
Tate sighs in exasperation at Karl's ignorance. "Anybody calls you up, now, tracks you, traces you, not only will they get nothing, they'll be kissing black death on the mouth. Ever seen what a worm does to an implant?" He laughs slowly, mirthlessly. "Doesn't leave much. '...the invisible worm that flies in the night,/ has found out thy bed of crimson joy,/ and his dark secret love / does thy life destroy.'"
Karl knows he's smiling there in the dark.
"Blake's little worm." Magnus says. "One thing, though, don't go charging a meal or the whole net could come crashing down."
Karl's heard of this sort of thing. "They can filter it, can't they, stop it somehow?"
"Not this one, makes Swiss of fire walls. It'll work its way through everything. Latte no longer existshe's worm castings. I owe you that much, anyway."
"What about you?" Karl says. "Am I causing you some hell?"
"Me? Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Kings go to the scaffold, nations fall, Czars, their wives and children are gunned down in closed rooms. No one hangs whores. Everybody needs whores."
Karl knows he's watching him closely through the dirty eye.
"I wish I could do something about your problem with EPA. I can't. I want you to know she means it. She'll do what she says she will. Think about it."
What's to say? The back of his head throbs like a mashed finger. "I have."
"Company's coming, got to cut this short. Do something for me, though, will you, Karl? Make itthe two of youmake it out of this cesspool."
And he's gone.
Romy waits with Willy in front of the mission.
Bag in hand, dress wrinkled from two nights as sleepwear, bare legs flashing white. Face childishly open, no pretensions, nothing, just a woman on a street in a bad part of town, maybe angel, maybe whore, standing out like ruby in clay.
Willy lounges on the curb. Bink, stupid mutt, worries a strip of cloth in a hand bigger than he is.
"B..." Willy says, struggling to force out the word. "Bink's hungry."
Romy says, "Me, too."
Catching a reek from inside, Karl nods at the mission, "Smells like breakfast."
Romy makes a face, "I want real food. Let's find a Derby."
Karl holds up the back of his hand, extraction wound still fresh. "Just how do we do that?"
She looks at Willy, "How about it, Willy? You must have something."
Fingers under Bink's chin, Willy nods. "T... T..."
"Ten?" she says.
"T..."
"Twelve," she says.
"Twelve hundred," he says to Bink.
"Hot dog!" Romy smiles. "We're filthy rich, let's eat."
Doubt an itch at the back of his skull, Karl hesitates.
Romy takes his arm, "Come on, aren't you hungry?"
He's weak with it, also worried about using Willy's chip. Raj may have read him at his shop. But right now the emptiness in his belly and her hand on his arm outweigh his instincts, "Yeah, sure."
Ten minutes and a short bus hop later, they take the lift to the rooftop Derby on Sepulveda. Inside, they take a booth in back. Willy smuggles Bink in under his coat. At opposite ends of the booth they sit, Willy between, Bink on the seat. Karl takes in the restaurant, breathing deep, enjoying every bit of it. The normalcy of it, the luxury of clean air, good food cooked at their behest, even the clean table top. After a night at the mission it's just what he wants. At last he'll eat. Whatever comes he won't be facing it on legs wobbly from hunger.
Their waitress, a tough old bird with sharp eyes, burned-down Camel dangling from a corner of her mouth, sets water before them. As she does, an ash falls to hiss in Karl's glass.
"Don't worry, Honey, I'll get you another one." Embroidered in longhand yellow thread over her breast: Lynette.
Karl orders eggs Benedict. Romy the same. Willy decides on pigs in a blanket. Romy tries to explain they're just sausages in hot cakes, but it's caught his imagination and he won't be budged. He's got to have it. She orders him two.
Fascinated, Karl watches Lynette as she takes the order, ash clinging precariously to the bobbing butt as she speaks. Order taken and entered, she winks, sets a saucer in front of Willy, arm on his broad back. "Just in case somebody else gets thirsty," she says in the voice of a woman who's smoked Camels most of her life.
Willy says nothing, only flushes crimson to the top of his scalp like a boy caught in a lie.
She leans close, "Come on, honey, gimme a peak."
Willy opens his coat and Bink pokes his nose out.
"Oh, he's a little'n isn't he? What's his name?"
Willy considers this as he looks her over, then seems to decide, "B..."
She waits patiently. "Take your time, Sweetheart, I'm not paid enough to hurry."
Willy seems to go slack. "Bink."
She chews this over, hand to powdered chin, "You know, that's a damned good name for him, I'll bet."
Face deadpan serious as if fearing the worst, Willy leans close, "C..." He struggles, then by an effort of will, makes himself relax. "Can he stay?"
She laughs, coughs long and dry, "Honey, anybody tells Bink to get out he'll have to do it over my dead body." Shaking her head, she goes away, leaving the bill.
Willy opens a thick hand over the screen, hesitating. Leaning close, he speaks in a voice so breathy and low Karl can barely hear. "Raj m... may have r... may have r..."
With surprise, Karl realizes Willy is much more aware than he'd suspected. "He may have read you. It'll be okay, go ahead." He says it, but he doesn't believe it. It's just that here, now, with the smell of bacon in the air, and Romy so obviously thrilled at the prospect of a good meal, he's not willing to leave without eating.
Willy lays his hand down flat and it comes up green. Romy flashes her teeth, a girl's unaffected smile. Stomach tumbling, Karl looks away.
Romy toys with her spoon, "I can't let Auri do that to you,"
He searches the walls for the picture of Mitchum, doesn't see it, and is vaguely worried by the omen. "You're not letting her do anything."
She looks at Willy, runs a hand over his short-cropped head. "We'll be going in."
Karl feels cold fingers grip his spine. It should be a relief. Then why isn't it? "Why?"
"Where else is there for us to go?"
Appalled by her logic, he searches for something to say, comes up with nothing. She's right. Where else can they go? Nowhere. Of a sudden he's desolate, no longer hungry, stomach aching as though he's swallowed a bellyful of cold stones.
With one finger she moves her spoon on its napkin. "Tell me more about yourwhatranch, farm, I don't know what you call it."
He's got no heart to talk about it. "Homestead."
She watches him as if she's interested. "A what?"
"Homestead, home place, that's all it is."
"You love it," she says, stating fact.
He watches her hand as she toys with her spoon, a hand lovely in motion. What's the use in lying? She says she'll go in and if he knows her at all, she will. She'll be dead in hours, and not even Willy will make any difference. "I do."
She looks down at the table top, not seeing it. "For as long as I can remember I've wanted to see woods, deep woods, with a canopy so dense it keeps out the sun." She grimaces, lets her face go slack. "L.A.'s as close as I'll come. It must be wonderful living off the fat of the land like that."
"Lot of work is what it is."
She warms to it, leaning forward, hands reaching across the desert of table top toward him, "But you can grow a garden, trees, chickens, all of it. The Earth provides."
He smiles at her naiveté. An image gotten where, Thoreau's few weeks' commune at Walden with laundry sent to town? It reminds him of the way he thought of life in the city at fifteen. No wood to cut, no garden to weed, no animals to feeda life of ease. She's got a lot to learn. "Between the time when you plant and the time when you bring out the harvest basket, there's a lot to do. It's work, good work, but hard. It doesn't get done, neither does the harvest."
"I'm not afraid of work," she says, without guile, insinuating nothing, just because it's true. He doesn't doubt it.
"Sometimes, even if it does, you get nothing. Rabbits, deer, coyote, turkey, mice, early frost, late frost, drought, cucumber beetles, slugs, aphids"
"Okay, okay, you've disillusioned me. City life's the thing, life on the land is all drudgery and want, I get it."
Frustrated, he sighs, "I didn't say that."
Her gaze moves to the city below and she sighs, musing. "That's what you like about it, right? The life is hard, so you can be, too."
Offended by the thumbnail analysis, he opens his mouth to protest, but she doesn't give him the chance. "I always wanted to be a part of that down there, to be one of them."
"Why would you want that?"
"Why?" She doesn't understand the question. "Doesn't everyonedon't you?"
"I didI wasfor a while."
"And now?"
"Now I want as far away as I can get."
She stares, mouth open, looking hurt, "You can't mean that."
"Why not? It's true, I want no part of it. I mean, those kids out there, the ones who'll do anything for a few tokens, your sisters, hearts and livers on their way to Asia's elite right now, those like Willy we send off to murder and be murdered wherever the underclass resists being buried alive, the unborn we use like tissue culturesall of it... I mean, Jesus, we eat our young."
Quiet, in her calm way, implacable as a glacier, she watches him. "Want it or not, you are a part of it."
"No more than you are." And in that instant he sees it's truethey are alike. Both different, both apart from the main, neither able to change what he is, what he must be. His exile is no less complete for being self imposed. If they knew about him would he be any more welcome than she?
Her eyes pin him to the booth like a beetle to a board. "Oh, yes you are."
Stubborn, God, she's stubborn. "And just how the hell do you know?"
"I know. You're a man. You fit out there like Willy and I never can. Can't you see what a miracle that isto belong?"
"I see that you and Willy belong as much as I, as much as anyone else."
She studies clean, bare nailsa kid's nails. "You didn't used to think that."
There she goes again, flinging words sharp as knives, worse for being on the mark. Not wanting to look her in the eyes, he scans the breakfast crowd. "I was wrong."
Out of nowhere, she laughs. The tension cracks and is gone.
Seeing her lopsided smile, he can't resist, "What?"
"Useach arguing the other is a part of life, and that we're not." Again, she laughs, wiping her eyes with the back of a hand. "Funny, isn't it?"
The waitress sets plates before them, fresh lemon in hollandaise bringing water to Karl's mouth. Without warning he feels every hour of the thirty-six since he's eaten. Reaching for his glass of juice, Karl brushes her calloused hand with his, and ice claws its way down his spine. He gets nothing.
Nothing at all.
Her face changes, lips shrinking back from tar-browned dentures. Leaning close, breath reeking of smoke, Lynette hisses into his ear. "How nice to run into you, Karl." Snatching a steak knife off the table, she stabs at his eyes.
Reacting, he clamps her wrist, arresting the blade a centimeter from his iris and levers her arm back down over the edge of the table. Broken bones grate, radius prodding up against taut skin, gopher under a tarp, wanting out. Letting fall the knife, expression crumbling, she screams, shudders, face gone pallid.
Still gripping her, Karl braces himself against the surge of shocked horror that floods him as she surfaces, Raj long gone, fleeing pain. Karl hangs on, feeling every twang of confusion, fear, the deep, unreasoning fear of someone who has looked into a mirror and seen themselves a stranger. Deeper than this wells guilt, regret for having hurt this sad old woman with her plucked eyebrows and cake make-up, for having robbed her of her job, her living. Doing what he can to calm her, he holds her arm set in place on the table, grateful at least that the bone has not pushed its way out.
"I'm sorry," she says through tears and running mascara, still not understanding, "Oh, God, I'm so sorry, I don't know how I could have done that, I really don't."
Combing hair matted with sweat and hollandaise from Lynette's face, Romy calms her, "It's over, now, it's over."
Awatch, Willy pivots on toes, arms loose, dangling as they await paramedics. Bink boldly explores the ruined dishes on the table, robbing each of its bacon. At last, still confused, still afraid, jabbering, Lynette is gurneyed away.
Falling over himself to appease, the manager offers another meal. Knowing Raj will send more than one, wondering why he hasn't already, Karl refuses. Last to leave, feeling like crying, Karl drains the only standing glass of OJ, dips a finger in a plate Bink missed, and for the first time sees just what kind of a fix they're in.
Raj won't forget, won't quit, won't tire. Unstoppable, unkillable, indefatigable, a digitally encrypted personality substantial as the wind, as airborne plague, he can always find another Lynette. How many bodies does he possess? Karl has no guessa hundred, a thousand? Somehow warped by banishment from the corporeal world, he's developed a taste for torture, for murder, for Sisters.
He will simply keep after them until by one blunder or another they open themselves up. Then he will use whoever is handy to take what he wants.
Again Karl feels revulsion for what the world has become. Again he feels himself cut off as much as if he were of another kind, another species. How can most see the sickness around them as something good, something to be desired? Howwhen all he sees is something vile? Is he so far from the main current, is he so uncoupled from the world?
Jerking involuntarily as he sees again the blurred knife point at his eye, he leaves the ruined table, and hungrier now than he was before they came, follows them down to the street.
If they've got a chance, he'll be damned if he knows what it is.
Still shaking, Karl joins Willie and Romy at water's edge.
A water bus surges to a nearby stop and Karl leads them aboard. Willy pays with his chip. Karl knows what that means and doesn't care. They need to get away, and if he knows the futility of it at least movement is preferable to passivity.
At the rolling dock terminals they transfer to a bus to Hollywood and an hour of stop and go puts them in a seedy section of Hollywood still keeping its head above the sea.
"It was my fault," Romy says, speaking for the first time since the Derby.
"It's nobody's fault. I was as hungry as you were."
Down a hill they find a park, a worn patch of grass in the open. Willy sits, and discouraged, Karl goes down, propping himself on an elbow. Stuck in L.A., they're flitting around like moths in a lantern. Sooner or later they're bound to hit flame. He's tired. God, he's tired. It's good to be out in the sun under broken cloud. It's good to lie, back to the earth. If only he never had to get up.
Five paces away Romy waits. "Willy and I might as well let you be going home."
She's going in. After everything, she's going. And what can he say, what right does he have to tell her what to do? None. He can't seem to meet her eye, the sun's behind her, very bright through the haze. Paralyzed, he keeps his eyes on dirty gray overcast, "Knock it off, will you?"
"Come on Willy, we should get going."
Willy, sitting cross-legged near him, keeps his head down, stroking Bink's freckled snout, not seeming to hear.
"Willy," she says, growing impatient, "it's time we went in."
Face down, lips loose, cropped hair shining damp with sweat, he says, "Bink's asleep."
"You want to come with me, you'll have to wake him." She waits, but Willy doesn't move. Karl can see he has no intention of stirring. Not a foot. Not an inch. God bless him. He looks about as mobile right now as a fire plug. Karl guesses she won't leave without him.
She backs away, lips parted as if she might smile, cry, something. She does neither. "He doesn't want you with him, Willy, you'll have to come."
"No," Karl says, not thinking, not knowing what he should say, "he can do what he wants."
Now it seems to dawn on hershe's going in alone. She swallows, eyes looking hurt, betrayed. Looking awkward, ill at ease, as if she doesn't know what to do with her hands, for an instant she hesitates, and Karl thinks maybe, just maybe she'll change her mind.
"Okay, then." She strides away over grass worn short by foot traffic. Karl watches her go, wanting to bring her back, not seeing how he can.
Willy backhands him with a flick of a spring steel wrist. Pain ignites in his calf. "What the hell? That hurts!"
"She's g..." Willy says to Bink, face down, rubbery lips slack, voice low.
"Going, yeah, I can see that. You'd better hurry if you want to catch her," he says, feeling mean, "and take the dog with you."
Willy swats him again, harder, this time.
"Hey," Karl says, rubbing his leg, "knock it off!" He draws his leg away, out of his reach. Fast as a rattler strike he movesfury from restit's scary. Karl remembers how effortlessly he dropped Pug, and the thought chills him.
"She's g..." Willy wrestles to get it out.
"You said that."
"She won't c..."
He's had enough. "Come back, all right, so, God damn it, what do you want me to do about it, huh, what?"
She's a hundred meters away, now.
"Move," Willy says.
Karl looks at the big man, speculating just what's going on behind that meaty face.
Again, without molesting the dog resting on his lap, reaching out farther than anybody can reach, stretching like gum rubber, he flings a big hand so hard Karl's jeans crack like a flag in wind.
"Son of a..." Karl grabs his leg, presses the shin, smothering fire beneath his hand.
"She has a l... a l..."
No rubber hose, no electric cable could hurt more. "Beats me, what's she got, huh, what, a license, a linguini, what? Come on, spit it out for Chrissake."
"A long st..."
"Ah, okay, a long stride, that she does. I know it. I know she does. Now cut this crap out or I'm going to do something about it!" Empty threat and Willy knows it. All he can do is shoot him and he doesn't have the rounds to spare. Or the desire.
Big cat stretching, Willy reaches out again.
"Oh, all right, all right, I'm going, I'm going!" Ribs jarring every step, he's on his feet and moving. Twelve slapping painfully against his side, Karl runs after her, heart a tennis ball slamming off the backboard of his ribs.
Hearing him, she turns, an odd look on her face. Half surprise, half amusement. Looking absurdly palatable, lanky tomboy in wrinkled sheath. Too tall for her weighta deception he knows, but Christ it makes her look the diamond in tissue.
"You know..." he says, trying desperately to get his breath, now not only from the run, but from her, from seeing her. He fights for air. "You know..." It's all he can seem to say.
She smiles, "Now you're talking like Willy. I know what?"
"How incredibly stupid this is."
She frowns, shaking her head, earrings dangling, single leaves of gold, catching sunlight as they twist and pendulum. "What's so stupid?"
Karl loves those earrings, those ears. "You going back."
Her hand finds her hip again, "And what about what you're doing, huh? What about not sending me in when Auri's got whatever she's got on you? What's that supposed to be, smart?"
A hand presses against his breastbone from the inside, making it hard to breathe. "It's my business what I do."
"Oh, is it? Well what I do is mine."
Not sure how to answer, he watches as a two-year-old boy in sagging wet diapers totters over, fleshy brown face turned up to hers, pudgy hand reaching, pointing. Gracefully, she squats, lips broadening into a smile, hand reaching for his.
Babbling, he gropes for her ear.
"Ah, so that's it. Like gold, do you? ¿Quería tenerlo, m'ijo?"
"Ah," he says, "ah."
Romy slips an earring from her ear, dangles it just beyond his grasp. He gurgles, mouth dyed red from some crap his mother's given him, arm straining. She lets him take it, and with the earring grasped in a chubby hand, he staggers off, cooing to himself, delighted with his booty. Mute, Karl watches as Romy gives away enough gold to feed them for a week. What kind of a woman does something like that?
Smile gone, she stands, waiting for him to say something. When he doesn't she turns, "See you."
He grabs her by the smooth skin of her upper arm. Bracing himself for contempt, he gets desire, shame, a tearing pain that slams the breath out of him. He turns her, "You can't go in, you can't do that."
"Yeah," she nods, eyes hard, "yeah, I can."
"You know what'll happen."
"I know."
"I won't let you."
Head slanted, she looks at him through laughing eyes. Her arm tenses, rocking him. "Tough guy again?"
That's when the ground blindsides him. His heart, still a tennis ball, now served overhand at his ribs five times a second. He looks up at her from the ground, feeling her hands on him, sees the Chinese elm spreading out over her head, sees her kneel, feels her hands entering him, a current spreading out like an electric web, bringing back the rhythm, calming the dove, stroking it.
It's a long minute before he can spare the air to speak. "You did it again." Karl is surprised by the sound of his own voice, so ordinary. "How do you know what to do?"
She takes her hands away and their absence is a dip in water so cold it burns. He wants them back.
"I know, that's all, just know."
From the ground, he smiles, not caring how ridiculous he must look, how weak, not caring about anything but getting her to stay. This he doesn't want to screw up. This, unlike everything else in his life, he wants to work out right. There are words that will do it, he knows there must be. The right words. They must exist. If they do, he can't think of them.
"You'll be okay, now," she says, rising. He gropes for her wrist, misses. She offers her hand and he grabs it. "Stay." That's it, all the eloquence he can muster. Sad is what it is. "Stay."
She sits back on her heels, watching him cynically. Thinking. Tough luck for him. She thinks about him, about what he is, she'll get up and she'll run. Right now he's not sure he could catch her.
"You'll do better without me."
Still weak, he gets up, using her to lean on. Keeping hold of her hand, he walks her back.
"Did you ever think," he says, eyes on the people around them, "that maybe, just maybe," he presses her hand hard into his thigh, "I don't want to do any better?"
He feels her grip tighten in his, and gets a cold flash of something from her that cuts through him. Pressing her hand, giving back all he can, he walks with her across the park under the big Chinese elm, past a softball game to where Willy, a bull-necked guru, sits cross-legged waiting.
Palms pressed tightly enough to mold wax, her thoughts echo cold as spring water through his mind.
Spring sunshine burns its way through smog.
Head pillowed on his hands, Karl lies soaking it up, feeling lazy, and here in the bright sunlight, untouchable.
He cues up a waiting news article, jumping as it comes over the set way too loud.
"On Netnews tonight..."
Thinking he'll never get the hang of the damned thing, he cranks it down to a bearable level.
Close up of kettle drummer's hands, of flailing mallets, crescendo rising to a roar in low A.
"The last first generation Sister is alive and well and right here in L.A.. Yes, it seems that one escaped the Army of God's slaughter on the plat Tuesday morning only to be kidnapped."
Electrified, Karl sits up, as file footage of Romy's genotype, not her, but close enough, comes up in the air in front of him. He swallows hard. Jesus...they don't give up, these guys.
"Now Genie wants her back. How much do they want her? How much is one billion dollarsthat's the reward they're offering for her safe return. So keep your eyes open out there, Angelinos, and you might well find yourself in gel cell, moved on to the latest incarnation, and from there to digital immortality.Happy hunting."
He cuts it off, bends forward, stretching out his back as much as he can with sore ribs.
"Something wrong?" Romy says.
Is there any point in telling? He doesn't think so. "Uh, uh."
Across the diamond, a game breaks up. Several boys come running, gloves skewered on bats, laughing, shoving, all but one. Karl sees, looks away, leans back.
Bink barks and Willy's on his feet, arms hanging loose-jointed, low to the ground as a wolf. Turning to follow his gaze, Karl sees the kid with the bat come with it raised high over his head, eyes calm.
With a forearm across his neck, Willy takes the kid down. As the other boys watch open-mouthed, he writhes in Willy's grasp, spewing filth from a mouth distorted with hate, a font of disease. Unable to contain his gyrations, Willy raises a hand to break his neck.
Karl catches his arm, "No, hold him, just hold him."
As Willy works to keep him still, Karl takes one of his flailing feet in his. Eyes intent on Karl, he stills.
"Raj, stop this."
The kid smiles, a kid he's never seen, the smile familiar, "In here, Karl, it's black, empty."
A man and woman come running, both yelling, screaming. Parents, ready to fight, hear their son speak and stall midstride.
"Without you I have no raison d'etre. Everyone should have a reason for being, don't you think, Karl? Mine's killing you." Impossibly, he cranes his neck to look at Romy. "And making little girls cry."
Savagely, Raj kicks out, clipping Karl's chin, growling, mewling in Willy's grip, finally sagging, played out as his parents stand by, terrified as they are confused.
Karl rubs his jaw where the shoe grazed it. "I can't convince you to leave us alone?"
"I'm used to getting what I want, Karl," Raj says, voice smarmy. "You think I'll reform for you?"
Neck prickling, Karl tries once more. "You were a decent man once, Raj, I thought this was supposed to be the digital you, the real you, what happened?"
"I was tied to the meat, now I'm free. Praise the Lord, I've seen the light and I'm free at last." Suddenly he struggles with such force he nearly pries free of Willy's grip. Willy glances up, worried. Pug didn't give him half the trouble this kid is. Squirming, bare back slick with sweat, Raj not caring how much he hurts him, he's impossible to hold. As suddenly as he began, he stops fighting.
"You don't want to kill this kid, do you, Karl? He's just an innocent boy. That's the only way you'll stop me. Don't you get it? Your scruples are killing you. It's not even going to be an interesting game. I'll have her today or I'll have her tomorrow. Either way..." With a ferocious wrench he frees an arm, flings it out to grab Romy's ankle, making her shriek with surprise. "...I'll have her."
Seeing no other way, Karl grasps the fingers of one of the boy's hands, prying one back hard, snapping it. The kid in Willy's arms screams, a kid again. Willy lets him go to his mother.
Karl gets to his feet, fending off the mother's claws as Willy stays between them and the angry crowd. Though he doesn't understand a word they say, Karl can tell by their eyes he's the object of their affection. Shouting, they push close. Karl smells beer, sweat, hair oil. A kid with hateful eyes shoves him hard in the ribs and Karl's had enough. Cycling the twelve, he blasts the sod between their legs. Magically the crowd parts. He thought they might. Smokeless powderthe universal language. Romy's arm in his grip, they run.
What drives Karl nuts is how Raj tracks them. Willy's clown suit and Romy's hair are bad, but for Raj to pick them up so fast it must be something else. At the mouth of a canal he gets it.
Angry at himself for being so stupid, he grabs Willy, leads him between buildings, fishes a knife out of the duffel and has him hold out his hand. Unconcerned, he complies.
Seeing the knife, Romy hangs onto his wrist, "What are you doing?"
"Blinding Raj." To Willy, he says, "Okay if I take it?"
Willy nods. That half-smile again. What can he be thinking?
Karl finds the bump under the skin. One slash and out it pops. He looks down at it, a glass rice grain in the middle of his palm, flicks it into the oily water of the canal.
Clenching his fist, a slow smile twists Willy's mouth. Can this all be a joke to him?
"And then there were none." Willy says slowly, easily.
On a stoop out of the rain they squat to catch their breath.
"What now?" Romy says.
Hunkered behind Willy, hand braced on his solid shoulder, working hard at getting air, he turns to smile a bitter smile, "What, now?" Scared, angry, no idea what to do, he laughs, "Well, let me see. We're broke. We've got no identity, no friends, nowhere to go. Land in my family for two centuries will be gone before I can even get there to put up a fight."
He raises an arm to the street before them, "We're in a bad part of town. Can't even take a bus. A DMI with a lousy attitude about life's riding hard on our ass. You've got feds and Genie contractors looking for you. I'm wanted for grand theft for Sasha and now they say I've kidnapped you. I've got..." He runs a hand through his pockets. "Half a box of buckshot and one strip for the Smith. When they're gone I've got three kilos of dead weight dangling under my arm."
"Okay," she says.
"No, no, wait, there's more. We're in the middle of a city neither of us knows. And now you've got a bounty on your head, enough to put the average jerk in UR heaven. We've got nothing of value to barter for a way out. A stinking, greasy rain's pissing out of the sky, and we've only got two jackets between us. What the hell do you want to do?"
"You're wrong about that," she says.
He thinks about it, sees no mistake, "About what?
She meets his gaze, eyes clear as the Eel before fall rains turn it to creamed coffee. "About having nothing to sell."
"Hey, hey, hey," he raises a hand, "the guns stay."
She stands, leaning on Karl to steady herself as she slips on her heels. "I wasn't talking about your toys."
He watches her, gets it, sighs, disgusted. "Oh, that's just peachy, that's a great idea. No, no, that's keen. Thirty years old, never been with a man, IQ what, 150, 160?"
She looks at him, eyes frank, no braggadocio there at all, "one-eighty-three."
"And this is the best you can come up with?" Beside himself, he doesn't wait for her response. "This town's a cesspool of disease, more herpes and hepatitis mutations discovered every day, and you're going into business as a whore? Shrewd career move."
"Why not?" She looks at him, eyes hard, smoothing her dress over long thighs, "It's what I always was." She brushes out her hair, glistening even in the gray overcast. "I used to envy the girls who could just go UR and come back when it was over. Me, I used to have to act interested, act enchanted, be pleasant, smile, pretend to be attracted to men who turned my stomach, and politelyalways politelytry to keep their hands off me."
She rips the brush through her hair, making it snap with static. "None of them, not even the punks on the quay, were half the whore I was. No, uh, uh, it can't be any harder than what I did for fifteen years. I've gotten you into this, and I'll get you out."
He knows the despair she's talking about. He's felt it. But this is a joke. She won't do it. She can't do it. "Be my guest." Karl raises a hand in the direction of the street. "Let her rip, kid. Let's see what you got." Keeping back a smile, he leans forward to watch the show. First car stops she'll come running back to him. It's only obvious. It's only logic.
Looking better than she has any right to, she goes to the curb, sticks out a thumb, releases her hair in a cascade of platinum. Moments later a Cadillac skids to a halt and she leansvery professionally, he notes with more than a little discomfortinto the window.
Willy turns his eyes on him, and the look unsettles him more. A worm eating its way out of his gut, he waits for her. "She'll be back."
"Will she?"
Of course she will.
He watches, waiting for her to turn away from the car. Head in the window, she nods, laughs.
What can be so funny? There's nothing funny Karl can see.
The back door opens. She slides in. By the time Karl gets to his feet the Caddy is pulling away. He's too late, with his aching ribs, too slow. He makes the curb as the car disappears in stop and go traffic up La Brea.
Breathing hard, fingers tingling, he stands watching twelve lanes pass by where only a few seconds before she stood. At his side, Willy waits. Karl won't look at him, doesn't want to see the look on his face.
What kills himis she's doing it for him.
Able to think of nothing else, Karl runs after her.
Aware of the absurdity, the absolute uselessness of chasing a car along a six-lane throughway, he jogs up La Brea, pacing himself three strides to an inhale, three to an exhale. Willy follows at his heels, and it's good to have him there. It's good not to be alone. Every time a foot touches the walk, jarring his ribs, he curses himself.
How stupid can a man be?
By now he should have learnedwhat she says, she means. Why is he running? It's hopeless, he knows it is. By now they're on a side street somewhere. By now it's too late.
The thought a hornet sting at the base of his spine, he sprints. Winded, he is about to fall back to a walk when he sees it.
A flood of adrenalin making him dizzy, he picks up speed. Passing stopped cars, he scans them as he goes. Still no Caddy. Then there it is. Up ahead among massed red taillights, second lane overmauve Cadillac with tinted glass. No mistake. Again the traffic begins to slide.
He pounds on the window of a car in the curbside lane. He won't come this close and lose her. With his hands he attacks the next car, pounding.
As he comes up even with the Caddy, its brake lights darken and it pulls away, tipping back on its springs, boat without a wake. One lane away, barely four meters away and it's leaving him behind. His brain locks up, unwilling to accept what his senses tell him. "No!" he says out loud. The only thing he can think of he does.
He cycles the 12, and through a break in the curb lane flow, fires on the run. The first round pocks a fender. The second leaves long leaden prints in the roof as buckshot caroms off sheet steel. Heart held at bay behind a clamped jaw, he stops, holds his breath, raises the receiver to eye level, waits for a passing van, and lets off a third round. A rear tire flattens with a satisfying whoosh, loose tread thumping on the rim as it rolls.
Again brake lights glow an angry red. It slows, stops, and he can't get to it. The curb lane won't stop to let him through. As cars go by, he slaps front windshields with his open hand. A mirror clips his hip and he nearly goes down on slick asphalt.
Impotent, he stands helplessly four paces away from her, not able to see what's going on inside. Moving again, if more slowly, rim clanging, the Caddy signals a lane change. He lets it get away across five lanes and he can kiss her goodbye. Desperate, he raises the twelve, points it at the face of an oncoming driver. The car careens to a stop, man at the wheel shielding his face from buckshot with raised arms. Thank you.
Across the lane, Willy pacing him, Karl limps. Gun up, he throws open the door, reaches in, yanks her out by a wrist, the two guys in the car following her out like hornets out of the ground. Big guyswith the Remington, Karl holds them off.
Doesn't understand a word they say. Sounds like Mex cum French. Never been any good at languages, anyway. It doesn't seem to help either when he says he's sorry but she's changed her mind. No help at all. Karl gives her to Willy, backs off staying between them. Romy's new friends follow, crowding him.
Gun up in their faces, they won't get the idea. When he's sure he's going to have to knee one to get them to back off, she says something in their blurred tonguenaturally she'd know it. Maybe it's that, or maybe it's Willy behind him. Either way they give him some room. Cursing Karl in their slippery lingo, they flash Karl the Esperanto of gestures, and tire thumping and smoking, lurch off down La Brea.
Through gathered gawkers he hauls her by a hand to a couple benches adrift in a sea of paper and plastic. On the less filthy of the two benches he shoves her down.
"Now who's being stupid?" he says, doing his best to be angry when what he is is scared. She tries to get up and though Willy's watching, he pushes her back down hard enough to jar her teeth. Seeing he means it, she gives up, folds her feet under the bench, crossing bare arms in the drizzle.
Tingling, dizzy as adrenalin burns out, he shrugs out of his coat, wraps it around her. Gathering her hair with his fingers, as she watches him with deadly eyes, he tucks it inside the leather, zipping it roughly to her chin. "You do that again, I'll..."
"You'll what?" She looks daggers, unzipping the jacket halfway. "Huh, what?"
The nasty tone of her voice chokes something out in him. Out of steam he drops beside her, suddenly too tired to argue. "Just don't, that's all."
Her eyes scald his face. "Why not? I don't want to owe anybodyespecially not you."
"You owe me nothing."
"I don't hear you coming up with any better ideas."
Too frustrated, too tired, too disgusted to speak, he sits and stares at traffic. "Just..." God, what was the use? "Just...promise."
"Why should I?"
He looks away across the street, searching among sparse foot traffic for more of them, for anyone, for someone hag-ridden. Worn out, hollowed out by fear, he stares, rain trickling down the nape of his neck and inside the collar of his shirt. When he speaks his voice is low. "Because if that's what it takes to make it, I don't want to."
She looks down at goose-fleshed knees, and he feels her move just a little closer to him on the grimy bench. Maybe his imagination, he doesn't know. A drizzle lazes down, chilling him, making everything sticky, slick. Willy squats beside her, Bink peeking out, shaken from the jog, snorting vexation.
Romy takes his hand, draws it into the pocket of his jacket, warming it with hers.
It's not his imagination; she is closer.
She watches him, he can tell, though he faces straight ahead, and whispers so low he can barely hear her over traffic.
"I promise."