Double Cross Page 3

  Simon smirks. “Vests are for pussies.”

  Helmut says, “When he gambles with his life, he gambles with all our lives. Of course I count him as a friend, and yes, the man saved me. But a man can’t develop a symbiotic relationship with a group of people and then go out risking his life. I don’t have to remind you what happens to us if we lose Packard.”

  For the second time in an hour, I picture the drooling, catatonic Jarvis.

  Simon raises a finger. “I’ll put a bullet in my head first.”

  “So will I,” I say.

  Simon turns to me. “Maybe we can do a bullet-in-the-head exchange. I wonder if there’s a way to work it into a game of Russian roulette.”

  I smile. Simon’s as devious as he is messed up. I don’t always like him, but I’ve come to see him as a kind of ally.

  “It won’t come to that if we protect Packard,” Helmut says. “Now, I’m proposing that we hire human security professionals to shadow and secretly protect him. I’m taking a disillusionist poll, and if the majority is for it, we’re going to do it, and support the team and help make their jobs easy. And we will all participate.”

  “You’re overreacting,” Simon says again. “If Packard wants to take chances, that’s his business. You’re into freedom, Justine. Shouldn’t a man be free to gamble with his life?”

  Helmut’s dark eyes flash. “His own, fine. But not ours.”

  “Oh, we’d figure something out,” Simon says. “Maybe he’s made contingencies.”

  “I’m not betting my life on it,” Helmut says.

  “How boring of you.” Simon crosses his lanky legs.

  Helmut’s black beard catches the light as he turns to Simon. “Our gambler prefers to gamble. Now that’s boring.”

  “Excuse me if I see the upside,” Simon says. “For one, with Packard out of the picture, his deal with Otto would be off and we wouldn’t have to go around rebooting all these prisoners.”

  “Nobody’s stopping you from walking away,” Helmut says.

  “I’ll walk when it suits me,” Simon says.

  Helmut snorts.

  “You don’t like rebooting the prisoners?” I ask Simon.

  “Too much like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  Helmut crosses his arms over his big belly. “We’re forcing killers to turn over a new leaf.”

  “I liked it better when we were vigilantes.” Simon wraps his shaggy coat around his chest and raises a hand, preacher-like. “Reverse emotional vampires, doomed to roam Midcity, on the hunt, shooting our crazy, fucked-up darkness into our victims.”

  “Stop it, Simon.” I hate when he calls us reverse emotional vampires. “We’re human beings.”

  “And they’re killers,” Helmut says. “Those are killers he’s got sealed up.”

  “I have one who might not be,” I say. “When Packard looked at Ez, he was like: That’s funny, she doesn’t look like somebody who’d be a crazed murderer. He was reading her structure when he said that. And I was like: Well, shit! What if she’s innocent? He wants me to disillusion her anyway.”

  Simon sniggers. “Packard would disillusion Mary Poppins if it kept him out of that restaurant.” He turns to plunk a few quarters into the jukebox.

  “Well, I’m going to talk to Otto,” I say. “I need to know for sure.” An old Hank Williams tune comes on. “What if it’s a mistake? And he’s got her cut off from touch. I need a descrambler just to touch her.”

  Simon looks intrigued. “The highest security.”

  Helmut looks disgusted.

  “I have one of those coming up,” Simon says. “Belmont Butcher. Chop-’em-up telepath. Otto has him in a butcher shop.”

  This surprises me. “Otto sealed the Belmont Butcher in a butcher shop?”

  Simon shrugs. “Keeps him a productive member of society. He gave me a descrambler to get around the counter.”

  Helmut turns to me. “You know you’re not going to get much assurance about Ez’s guilt. Weren’t you following that whole story online back then?”

  “I’m not the news junkie here,” I say.

  “Ezmerelda was in hiding for weeks,” Helmut says. “Extensive manhunt. Supposedly she was the lead Satanist.” He makes air quotes for lead Satanist. “She gave all these online interviews to the highcap watcher sites and Midcity Buzz, places like that, where she revealed her status as a dream invader, but claimed her innocence on the Krini Militia. She said it was her boyfriend, this guy Stuart Dailey, and that she couldn’t free those people from the dream link because it wasn’t hers to break. She offered to talk to telepaths, but naturally a girl like that knows how to skunk her thoughts.” He pulls his swizzle stick from his drink and regards it with a thoughtful air. “The authorities had a great deal of physical evidence, but it linked her home to the victims, not her. And this Stuart Dailey claimed never to have met her, and they couldn’t find anybody who ever saw them together or would corroborate the relationship.”

  “Right,” Simon says, turning a chair backward to take a seat across the table. “But who would rat on a guy who might make sleepwalking cannibals eat them alive?”

  “You,” I say.

  Simon grins.

  “Soon after that, she disappeared,” Helmut says. “Sophia, Otto’s assistant, likely revised the memories of friends and family to make it seamless, so who knows what they think? Meanwhile, Ez is stashed in an obscure bar. But here’s the thing. As soon as they sealed her up, the fifteen remaining sleepwalkers all climbed to the top of the tangle and threw themselves off.”

  “The tangle?” The tangle is the dilapidated, complicated, and dangerously curly system of highway entrances and exits that has long been the symbol of Midcity’s decrepitude. It’s maybe twenty stories high. “How did I not hear about that?”

  Helmut says, “Think of the PR nightmare. Crumbling rustbelt city, and then mass suicides.”

  “Definitely didn’t make it into the Midcity Eagle,” Simon says. “The big jump, they called it on the blogs. Some of those sleepwalkers were tying themselves to their beds toward the end, right? So they couldn’t move without waking up. But other sleepwalkers came and untied them, and then they all threw themselves off. Like lemmings. Fifteen of them. It was the clincher on Ez’s guilt, because it looked retaliatory.”

  Helmut says, “They say some of the bodies are still down there in the tanglelands.”

  “Wait,” I say. “If I was imprisoned and had command over a group of people, the last thing I’d do is make them kill themselves. I mean, at the very least, they could bring me stuff.”

  “Piping-hot pizza pies,” Simon says.

  “What if it was her boyfriend?” I ask.

  Helmut raises his swizzle stick. “Then why did the killings stop when she got sealed up?”

  Simon shrugs. “Smart boyfriend?”

  “One never really knows for sure on cases like these,” Helmut says. “Most juries would’ve convicted on less than that, though. All those people dead—”

  “Maybe the acquaintances would talk now,” Simon says, “especially to somebody who’s not the cops. I’ll have a look into it. If there was a boyfriend threatening them, that might be over now.”

  “You would look into it for me?” I ask. Simon is an excellent investigator.

  Helmut eyes Simon. “Aren’t you the humanitarian.”

  Simon shrugs. “I didn’t know she was so hot.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if she’s innocent,” I say.

  “You would make Otto free her,” Simon says.

  I nod. “Of course.” I don’t tell them about the complication that she’ll have nightly control over Packard and me.

  Helmut raises his swizzle stick again. “Justine, I need you on board with this bodyguard plan. You have the most contact with Packard.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do,” they say in unison.

  “You just saw him,” Helmut says.

  “He had to deliver some gloves to
me,” I explain.

  Helmut raises an eyebrow. “And he couldn’t have sent them with one of his people?”

  I don’t answer. I’m thinking about those pretty gloves, clearly chosen to match that specific dress of mine. So thoughtful. Did he pick them out himself?

  Helmut snorts. “And what was he wearing?”

  “A dinner jacket,” I say, “but just to blend in with the crowd.”

  “And did you share any food or beverage—”

  “It wasn’t a date.”

  Simon tips his glass into his mouth and chews ice loudly.

  “It wasn’t a date. And yes, Helmut, I’m on board with your plan.”

  Chapter

  Three

  THE EL BURRO MEXICAN RESTAURANT occupies the ground floor of a brick building that’s squeezed between a little grocery and a pawnshop on the southwestern edge of town.

  I pull the door open and step inside the spicy warmth. Blocky wooden furniture and stained-glass windows of sylvan forest scenes say German restaurant, but colorful tapestries and sombreros say not anymore. Otto and I have dined here every Monday for four weeks now; it’s our special secret rendezvous spot for our do-over. Not only is the food great, but the place is full of hidden nooks and cubbies. We like to be incognito when we go out. It’s as much for me as it is for him.

  I spot Otto way back, nose in a book. He’s partly obscured by a riot of plants, as well as being in disguise, which means he’s taken off his beret and put on blue-tinted wire-rimmed aviator glasses. Technically, it’s not much of a change, but it’s all he needs. His beret is so much his trademark that people don’t recognize him without it.

  Sometimes he jokes that if he took off his beret and walked around the eighth floor of the government building, his own staffers would throw him out. Most people think he wears the beret as a fashion statement, or to cover a bald head. The truth is that he wears it to protect his head from bumps that might precipitate a vein star episode. In rare cases, a sharp bump on the head can aggravate the condition, or even cause a vein to rupture if it’s already bulging. Though I share his paranoia, hats were never a permutation I had. It’s a bit extreme, no doubt, but I’m hardly in a position to judge. It’s a great compliment that he’s willing to remove it to facilitate our secret dates, because I know how he hates to go without some head protection. Probably he still sleeps with it on, or at least he did last summer. We haven’t slept together, in any sense of the word, since then. Our do-over isn’t up to that point yet.

  He looks up, as though he feels me coming, and smiles. I smile back, and walk a little faster. He could wear the most ridiculous glasses in the world and they wouldn’t detract from the dark elegance of his features, the kissable arc of his curved nose, the dark wavy hair that brushes his shoulders, or his nobility and goodness. He’s the only real hero I’ve ever known.

  Soon I’m in his arms, laughing, locked in a kiss. For a second I forget we’re still not on solid ground yet.

  He draws back. “Hello.”

  “Hi,” I whisper.

  He presses his lips to my forehead, seeming a bit somber suddenly. He’s heard about Rickie. I sigh, breathing in the scent of his neck.

  He snakes his hands under my coat, pushes it back off my bare shoulders. “Oh,” he says.

  I still have my pretty silver cocktail dress on. Overdressed. His bodyguard, Covian, won’t approve. Covian doesn’t like us to be noticeable when we’re sneaking around.

  Otto kisses my cheek. “My lady in silver.”

  I smile, enjoying his whiskery goodness on my cheek. Back when my hair was dyed blonde, I would’ve never worn silver. But it works for a brunette. My real hair color.

  “Ah. It would seem that Covian wants us to sit.”

  “I don’t even see him,” I say as we settle in. Same side.

  “Three tables over,” Otto says without looking.

  I glance casually through the fern fronds and spot Covian, Otto’s bodyguard, staring sternly, juice in hand. He’s one of the few black men in here. His angular cheekbones are set so high, they seem to squish his eyes upward, and his short hair clings to his head in small, defined curls that look almost carved. He wears a beige khaki shirt. Beige is his favorite color, he told me once. I tease him about it whenever I can. I mean, beige?

  Covian’s a highcap, of course. A precog, which means he can sense things before they happen, like ocean waves from the future, he says. He lets his perception flood out all around him.

  “So you heard,” I say.

  Otto nods gravely. “They say Rickie will be okay, but …”

  “You’ll figure it out. You’ll catch them.”

  A crease forms between Otto’s heavy brows. His long silence tells me he’s not so sure he’ll catch them. He says, “People are staying in. It’s happening all over again.”

  “Not like before.”

  “Just wait. Snipers have a way of emptying streets.” He sighs heavily. “If the citizens knew it was only us highcaps being targeted, they wouldn’t be so fearful. I wish I could tell them, People, don’t hide. If you aren’t a highcap, you have nothing to fear.”

  I tuck a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “All you’d do is destroy your credibility. It would be like announcing that only Martians are being targeted.”

  “A lot more people accept our existence now. I’ve heard as high as forty-five percent.”

  “If you go out there and start talking about highcaps, you’ll just give the citizenry a new fear. Guess what, Midcitians—the good news is, the Dorks aren’t targeting you. The bad news is, all those rumors about highcaps in your midst having freaky powers? They’re true.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if it would change things if I stepped forward and announced that I myself am a highcap. Would it help citizens to see that we aren’t to be feared?”

  “No way. How many times have you said the citizens aren’t ready for highcaps to be officially acknowledged?”

  “Will they ever be ready?” Otto says. “And this ignorance of highcaps prevents the police from investigating the Dorks properly.”

  “Packard has people on it.”

  “Packard has highcaps on it—the very people who can’t touch the Dorks. Did you hear about that part?”

  “Yeah,” I say, rubbing a circle on his back.

  “They’re shielding themselves somehow.” Weariness has robbed his voice of its usual richness. Here he is, a new mayor, and his beloved city is being terrorized, his secret identity threatened, and all the while he’s mentally maintaining countless prison force fields. He’s seemed gloomier lately, too, but who can blame him?

  I say, “I’m sure he’s got nonhighcap thieves and thugs all over the case, too.” Packard commanded Midcity’s underworld before Otto sealed him up eight years ago. “Send a thug to catch a thug,” I add, trying for levity.

  Otto stares sullenly toward the front window.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper, continuing the steady circles, palm warming. “I wish I could do something more to help.”

  “You are helping,” he says. “Right here, right now. You have no idea.”

  I decide it’s a bad time to question him on Ez’s innocence, and it’s definitely the wrong time to tell him about Packard and me conferenced together in dreams. Otto can’t take much more.

  The waitress makes it back to take our order. Otto has some questions about the new tamales.

  Will Ez really try to go into our minds tonight? And what if she does stir up memories about my time with Packard at Mongolian Delites? I don’t want Packard to have access to my side of that memory. I barely want it myself. God, am I charging it up even now?

  Otto opens his napkin. “Who are you working on this week?”

  “Ezmerelda. Dream invader.”

  “Very dangerous.”

  “We’ll handle her,” I say, and with that I allow another opportunity to tell him about my screwup to slip away. Am I a coward? Yes, I think bitterly.

  But from Ot
to’s point of view there’s nobody worse I could be connected to than Packard. Something horrible happened between them, something that made them hate each other. All I know is that it stretches back two decades, back to when Packard and Otto were boys, living with a gang of kids down by the river in an abandoned school, discarded for being devil-children like so many highcap kids are. Otto was known as Henji back then, but he hates it when the name is uttered. According to rumors, there was an epic battle between them. The school was reduced to rubble. Packard and Otto clearly have a pact of secrecy about it.

  I’ve come to hate the secret. I feel like it’s huge and formative, and my ignorance of it prevents me from truly knowing Otto—or Packard, for that matter.

  “I saw Simon and Helmut today,” I offer. “Helmut wants to put bodyguards on Packard.”

  “I bet he does,” Otto says. “That’s a good idea.”

  “And Simon said disillusioning your prisoners is like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  Otto harrumphs. “Yes, it would be exactly like that if we were killing the people, but we’re not. We’re doing them a favor. We’re inducing them to turn over a new leaf and setting them free.”

  “What if they don’t want to turn over a new leaf?”

  The corners of Otto’s generous lips turn up. “Oh, Justine.”

  “Seriously. What if a target would prefer to stay the way she is, and stay imprisoned for life, instead of being law-abiding and free?”

  Otto gives me a thoughtful look. “I think most targets would choose to stay what they are, but it doesn’t matter what they want. When you take people’s lives and terrify the citizenry, you give up certain rights. We’ve got to look at this from the point of view of what’s best for Midcity, not what’s best for the criminal. But yes, they probably don’t want to change. People rarely want to.”

  “Then do we really have a right to change them? Isn’t it a human right to be who you’ve become?”

  “It’s not as if you’re brainwashing these people. You’re rebooting them.”

  “Still—” I pause as the waitress delivers our sodas and chips and salsa.