by Kenneth Zink
Robin sat next to Mac and waved the bartender over.
“Whiskey. Best you got.”
The tender nodded and turned, pouring her drink and putting it on a napkin. Her mind melted at the sound of the liquor slithering out of spout. A quiet, sensual glug. Pleasure. That’s what that was. She grabbed the drink like it was water in a world entirely of desert, careful to slow her movements when she actually drank. The temptation was there. She wanted to down the whole thing, feel the pulse and burn as it trickled its trail inside her.
But she wasn’t here to drink. She was here to find the girl.
During her first sip Robin faked just now seeing Mac, who was still curled downward, staring at the bar top, like it was a mirror only he could see.
“Mac?”
He looked up from his drink and scrunched his face. “Detective, right?” His words were loud but they also buckled. She knew that feeling. He was trying to maintain the facade of sobriety. She wondered how many he’d knocked back so far, and how many more she’d have to buy him before he began to talk.
“Right,” she said. “Funny seeing you here.”
He laughed. “Where else would I be?”
“Listen, thanks for your help. With the case, I mean.”
He stared at his glass before downing the rest. “You got it.” He had the bartender top him back up to full. Absinthe. Hard stuff. The kind of poison she drank to feel something, even if all she felt was pain.
“It’s on me,” Robin said.
“Fuck off,” Mac said.
“It’s the least I can do. After everything.”
He scoffed and shook his head. “Right.”
She wondered if he blamed her or himself. If, like the rest of the world, he thought the blame for the dead girl lay not just at the feet of those that killer her but those that failed to find and protect her. Detectives, Secret Service agents. The ones with invisible blood on their hands.
“How much pain are you in?” she asked, looking at his crutches and taking another sip.
Only one.
No more.
“Enough,” he said, taking a drink but wincing when he swallowed. A bullet in each leg and a bullet in the stomach. Three total. It was enough to remind even a mammoth of a man like Mac of his mortality. “Checked myself out of that hellhole of a hospital as soon as I could though. You should’ve seen the doctors. Pleading. Telling me I might die if I left early.”
“And? How’s the dying going?”
“We’re getting there.”
“The others you were with, when the girl was taken,” Robin said, taking another sip. “They were shot in the head, right?”
Mac looked at her, paused, turned away, took another drink. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I’m just wondering why they didn’t pop one in your head too.”
He laughed, a metal filling in the back of his mouth catching the lame light before his lips fell down into a grimace. “What do you want?”
“A drink.”
“What do you really want?”
She stopped to consider his question and wasn’t sure if her answer was the truth or a lie. “Nothing I guess.”
He squashed a burp in his chest. “No one wants nothing.”
Robin took a gamble and looked around for the bartender. “Let’s get you some water.”
“Cut the shit,” Mac said. “No water for me. Never again.”
Good. Lower his defenses. Get him wasted. Nudge answers out of him like a doctor pulling shrapnel from a wound. Gently, and for the greater good.
“More booze it is.” She downed her drink. He’d feel closer to her if she drank alongside him.
“More,” he said. “More more more. The most American word in the world.”
The bartender came over and refilled their glasses.
Three drinks in and they’d swapped a slew of stories about their time served, her as a fragment detective, him as a soldier. By that time the rest of the bar had thinned out. There was only one other patron left, a small man that reminded her of what Tim might look like in old age, if he ever made it that far.
“Hey, what’s it like?” Mac asked.
“What’s what like?” Robin grabbed her glass and raised it to her lips before pausing and setting it back down on the bar top. The reflex. That was what she truly hated about drinking, the feeling that she wasn’t in control of her body. It did what it wanted, and what it wanted to do at all hours of her waking life was suck down vats of alcohol that blurred every sense she had and then some, even her memory if she went deep enough, until she wasn’t dead so much as she was simply numb. Simply not. Period. She had no choice but to drink. That was how it often felt. She realized now how tortuous her life had been, for at least a decade, how she’d handed over her freedom to liters and liters of liquid that seemed malicious but in fact simply reflected an image of herself that she hated but craved.
“Fragging. What’s it like?” Mac asked.
Robin thought about what her honest answer might be. To her, fragging was many irreconcilable things all at once.
The center of her life.
The sore in her soul that would never heal.
The tool on her belt that she’d used to save people. All but one.
“It’s awful,” she said, taking a sip. “Truly.”
“Why’s that?”
“Memories. Thoughts and feelings. Things that aren’t yours are painful, even the good things. They’re overwhelming, and they stick with you. When I frag someone, I don’t just become them, I carry that shit with me until I’m dead. I’ve got lifetimes up here.” Robin pointed to her head and nearly laughed when she remembered the cancer was up there too, hiding in the attic, crouched in the dust, gnawing away at the beams that held her house together.
Mac shook his head. Gripped his glass like he was going to break it. Wiped a tear.
“She was a frag, you know.”
“Who?” Robin asked, slipping the word out like she didn’t care.
“The girl.”
Who was he talking about? Lyla Walker?
Robin devolved her language to make it sound like she was as drunk as he was. “Whatcha mean?”
“The girl. She could do what you do.”
“She had the Erodium mutation?”
“Yup, although she’d put you to shame,” Mac said, chuckling.
Lyla Walker was a frag?
“Whaddya mean?” Robin asked.
“Forget about it. Doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over. We did our jobs.”
“If she was a frag, how could she put me to shame? She was what, six years old?”
Mac hooted. “If you could see what she can do, you’d piss yourself.”
What she can do. Not what she could do, but what she can do. The girl was still alive. She had to be. There was no other explanation.
“I doubt it, the last time I pissed myself I was in third grade,” Robin said, hoping Mac would take the bait and explain what he’d meant, about what the girl could do.
“Forget it. You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“Try me.”
“No.”
Robin was sure that whatever remained of Mac was trying to reel the rest of himself back into his body, attaching the puppet strings back to his mouth so that it would clamp shut.
“I’m game,” she said.
He checked his watch and stood, his stool scraping against the floor. “I’m late for something.”
“I doubt that.”
“You don’t know me.” He strode toward her with enough of a stumble to indicate drunkenness, but enough mass and force for her to know this wouldn’t be an average bar brawl. If it came to that.
There wasn’t time. If Lyla was out there, Robin had to find her, before it was too late.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I didn’t do anything. That’s the point,” he said, stepping up and spearing a finger at her chest.
She grabbed it and twisted.
<
br /> No pain on his face. Only a smile.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Fuck off,” he said, grabbing her wrist with his free hand and twisting it.
She winced but grabbed the back of his neck and slammed it down and held it there, his cheek crushed against the bar top. “What did you do?!”
The bartender spun from where he stood and raised his phone. “Out, or I call the cops.”
Robin let Mac go and he laughed, wheezing where he was, bent over the bar, not even trying to escape. Even drunk and injured, she knew he’d enough power to escape the hold if he wanted to.
“She was the cops,” he said. “Emphasis on was.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Forget it. You’ll be better off, hun.”
Robin hit him in the side and he moaned and laughed.
“Fuck it,” the bartender said, dialing the cops. “I gave you two a chance.”
“Tell me everything,” she said, pressing down on Mac, a sick part of her hoping to split his body in half against the edge of the bar, if only to stop the laughter that was dicing her up into powerless little pieces.
“It’s too late,” he said. “Besides, you don’t want to know. If you knew you’d turn back. Trust me.”
“What the fuck are you saying?!”
“Three minutes,” the bartender said. “Then the cops come.”
Robin released Mac and the man stumbled up and then down, drifting like a drunk, the crutches clattering to the ground as he swerved into the counter and fell, his arms winging up on either side of his body, slumped somewhere between falling to the floor and standing on his own two feet.
“Go on,” he said. “Find the truth and then bury it. I know what you’ll do, when push comes to shove, because I know you, Robin Wray.”
She was shaking and didn’t know why. While Mac laughed, Robin gathered her energy and coordination and left, the cackle digging into her like teeth as she slipped out into the street and ran.
17
It took her until morning to scrape together her next move. Maybe her last. Interrogate the lone surviving terrorist that had allegedly kidnapped and killed Lyla Walker. See what he had to say.
In another cab Robin texted Tim. She offered him more money for access to the terrorist, who was being held at the Hull while awaiting trial. The kid took the deal but she couldn’t get a read on what he thought of her. Crazy or pathetic or stupid. She hoped that when they saw each other he’d be the same flippantly jovial kid she knew before everything went to shit.
He told her to meet him outside the Hull in an hour and she spent that time cleaning up, washing her face in a cafe bathroom, checking the bruises around her neck from the night before, wincing from a sudden headache, downing a green drink outside but almost wretching from the aftertaste of acrid grass, jogging in place on the sidewalk to jolt herself awake. She was okay. She was, she would be. All she needed was the answer to a simple question. Was the girl dead or alive?
When Robin hiked up the high steps to the Hull, she saw Tim leaning against one of the grand pillars guarding the building, surfing his phone while he chewed sunflower seeds and spit the shells into a paper cup.
“Ever heard of fasting?” Robin asked as she approached.
“Man’s gotta eat,” Tim said, splitting a shell open and crunching a seed between his teeth before pelting the shell into the cup with his tongue.
“You eat plenty.”
“Plenty isn’t enough. Never will be.”
“You sound like yourself,” she said.
“Kinky night?” he asked, looking at the bruises on her neck.
“Hitman for the FLF. Tried to take me out last night.”
Tim chuckled. “Haven’t heard that excuse for a rough fuck before.”
“I’m serious.”
He stared at her and she could tell from his eyes, only his eyes, that he wanted to believe her but couldn’t, not with his conflicting view of a legendary fragment detective slowly losing her mind.
“So you still think this is a good idea?” he asked.
“Depends on what you mean,” she said.
“Following this trail, wherever it leads. I mean we’re about to be at war.”
“Technically we are at war.”
“All I’m saying is, what if you’re wrong?” he asked.
“You mean if we’re wrong,” she said, correcting him. “You’re a part of this too.”
“Like hell I am.” Split, crunch, poof.
“You’ve taken my money and you’ve broken protocol.”
“I don’t believe in conspiracies.” Split, crunch, crunch. Tim chewed on the shell, probably soggy and bland, now sucked of salt. “That’s the difference between you and I.”
“You sure were quick to jump on the China bandwagon.”
“And I was right.”
“Were you?” Robin asked. “How do you explain the fact that we found everything but a body, or that I was let go right after we closed the case, or, get this that a hitman tried to kill me?”
“I don’t think you actually want to know how I explain those things.”
“No, you know what, I do.”
He sighed. “Do you have my money?”
“Depends. Do you have my prisoner?”
“Money first.”
“Ruthless,” she said, pulling out her phone and transferring the cash to his account. Half a mil. Far more than what she paid for the report.
“I’m just doing the best I can,” he said.
“Because you know there’s something more to this case.”
“Whatever.” His phone chimed and he pulled up his bank account and nodded when he saw the transfer, like he couldn’t believe the number. She’d done awful things for that money but now bribe after bribe was draining her account by the day. Soon she wouldn’t have much left for the beach she planned to die on. After this was all over. “One step closer to getting out of this hellhole.”
“You’re welcome,” Robin said.
“Thanks,” Tim said, pulling a bag of sunflower seeds from his coat and tipping it to the sky, tilting seeds into his mouth, his cheek puffing out like a slavering cartoon squirrel.
After he used the palm pad alongside the door to the Hull, she followed him in and they went through security. But the guards stared only at her. When she surrendered her weapon she caught the same familiar paranoia she always did, except this time she thought that maybe the kid was setting her up, bringing her in, tricking her into disarming herself, right before whoever was orchestrating the conspiracy around Lyla Walker arrested her. Maybe did something worse. When they were through, they headed for the elevator.
“Did you tell anyone I was coming?” Robin asked.
“Yeah, but only the people we need,” Tim said. “Told them you’re taking one last tour of the place. Figured if they have any heartstrings I might as well tug them.”
“You’re getting good.”
“At?”
“Getting what you want,” she said.
“Learned from the best.”
They took the elevator down to the prison ward, only a floor above the morgue, the nadir of the building holding the dead and dangerous. The lobby was bright and clean but so were the halls leading to the cells, going against the grain of a traditional prison, light everywhere, everything white, now making her feel like the floor, the building, the institution, was trying to convince itself it was the good guy.
The kid took the lead and handled reception. “Tim Avery to see prisoner 143.”
“Hall 1, Cell 4,” the secretary said, black hair pulled into a long ponytail that draped down her back. “And if I may say, I know you’re not officially with the NIF anymore Detective Wray, but as far as I’m concerned, you’ll always be one of us.”
“Thanks,” Robin said, unsure of whether or not that was a good thing.
The door to Hall 1 slid open. She and the kid stepped out of the lobby and into a pristine c
orridor. No doors on either side, only a bend at the far end. They navigated a series of hallways that snaked through the building, a cell in each corridor, no signs of rust on the ceiling or scuffs on the floor, barely any bumps on the white walls, until they reached Cell 4, the hall still just as bright and clean as the lobby. The door was solid, no window or knob, only a black metal slab that had been there since the birth of the NIF. She’d interrogated targets before but this was different. She was going against protocol to chase down a delusion to prove...to prove what? What was she trying to prove? What did she actually want, beyond just finding the girl? The white walls made the black door even blacker. It felt like a forbidden portal, like once she went through, she couldn’t go back. Flanking the door were two guards.
“You guys see any frags?” Tim asked them.
“Nope,” one guard said.
“Never,” the other said.
“Cameras are off,” Tim told Robin, motioning to the monitor beside the cell, a feed of the dark room inside rolling but no indication it was recording. He pressed his hand to the palm pad for Cell 4 and the door clicked out of its lock and slid open, beyond it, nothing but a lightless room. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Sorry, I already am,” she said, stepping toward the door.
“Hold your conspiratorial horses.” The kid put his hand on the doorjamb and blocked the way with his arm. “I’ve got to ask, one last time, do you really want to do this?”
What she’d been doing might turn out to be the most honest detective work she’d ever done. It had to be. If the trail turned cold, she didn’t know what she’d do. She had nothing left but the dim hope that the girl was still alive.