by Jackson Ford
His watch is a big digital model, a clunky Casio with a thousand buttons. Jake grabs it with a thought. Alan is jerked forward, a startled “Hey!” on his lips, arm out in front of him, as if Sandy had taken him by the hand.
Jake darts the knife through the air. Alan’s eyes meet his—just for a split-second—then the knife is buried up to the hilt in his ear.
Sandy starts to scream.
THIRTY-FIVE
Teagan
“So what now?”
Nic sits on the edge of the empty pool, arms straight, fingers splayed on the brick. Annie, Carlos and I are opposite, at the bottom, leaning up against the damp wall.
The pool is kidney-shaped, completely drained save for a single tiny puddle of water at the very bottom, a lone leaf floating in it. Above us Paul paces. He looks like a pissed-off principal.
We’re somewhere east of UCLA. It took us a while to find a place we could stop without getting the cops called or having Burr and his goon squad find us. Even here, in one of the better parts of the city, there are empty houses. The one we found was down a quiet side street, a two-storey building covered in Tyvek paper. Some professor renovating his place maybe. Kids have been skating in the pool; there’s an old wheel bearing, logo smeared with dirt, at the edge of the puddle. Good place to skate if the owner isn’t going to stop you.
Don’t ask me how we ended up in the pool. We were sitting on the edge at first, and then we kind of just ended up sliding down.
It’s been a weird day.
The backyard is hemmed in on all sides with thick foliage, and the pool itself is next to a half-assed wooden gazebo, a rectangular structure with old wooden slats. At the north end of the yard, just beyond the trees, the sky glows orange from the fires. We’re still a ways from Burbank by car, but it’s only a few miles as the crow flies. I can’t look at the sky without shivering.
Reggie’s absence is like a missing tooth. We should have gone back for her. I should have been able to control my PK enough to clear a path. I grind the back of my head against the pool wall for the hundredth time, furious with myself.
“Because I’m just trying to get a handle on this.” Nic’s voice is light, but there’s an undercurrent to it.
“So are we, man.” Annie says, head tilted back. “Shit, my moms is gonna be worried sick. Cops probably been up in her place already.” The words are more to herself than to us.
“Not to mention my kids.” Paul sounds resigned. “It’s Cole’s soccer game tonight. I told him I’d be there.”
“You got a phone,” Annie tells him. “Just call.”
It’s a few seconds before Paul answers. When he does, it’s impossible to miss the defeat in his voice. “I’m trying to figure out what to say.”
Annie gets to her feet, which takes her more than one try. She’s just tall enough to put her folded arms on the side of the pool. “Yo. Sam around?”
“Who’s Sam?” I whisper to Carlos.
“His wife. Ex-wife.”
“I think so,” Paul tells Annie.
“Then it’s cool.” Her voice is unexpectedly tender. “Cole’ll be OK. He’s a good kid.”
I frown, wondering when exactly they would have met. I try to imagine Annie hanging out with Paul and his kids at Chuck E. Cheese and can’t do it. It’s too strange.
I look up at Nic. “Well, we know two of the victims. We still need to figure out the link between them.” Another pang: how the hell are we going to do that without Reggie?
“We need a computer,” Carlos mumbles.
“No, but OK, let’s say we figure that out.” Nic hops off the edge, slides down onto the opposite side of the pool. A plane rumbles overhead, headed for the distant LAX. “How do we actually stop whoever this… other person is?”
“Well, you do have a psychokinetic.” I push a tiny bit of confidence into my voice. “Although there’s never been two of us in the same room together, so who knows what’ll happen?” I flush. “Sorry, by the way. Didn’t mean to wreck your place.”
He lets out a sound that is somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “Who needs a security deposit anyway?”
It’s kind of amazing he’s able to joke at all. It’s been an insane day for me, sure, but at least I haven’t had my friend show up, trailed by both the cops and a black-ops team, and had her destroy my apartment using her mind. That’s one hell of a thing to happen to you on the same day you find out that such people actually exist.
“I’m so sorry about N/Naka,” I say. “I really did want to be there.”
“You still mad about that stupid restaurant?” Annie says over her shoulder.
Another one of those sigh-laugh noises from Nic. “N/Naka. Shit. Well, you were mixed up in whatever the hell this is, so you get a pass this once. Although I gotta say, the plum granita was fucking delicious.”
“The… You went anyway?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait, hold on. So you know I’m on the run from the cops… and you don’t miss our dinner date?”
“Didn’t exactly expect you to show up. I figured whatever nonsense you’d gotten involved in, I was probably never hearing from you ever again.”
Ouch.
“Besides, like I’m going to burn a reservation at N/Naka,” he continues. “Took a buddy from work. From the look on his face, it was like they moved the Superbowl to Christmas Day, and the Rams won.”
“I thought the granita was off the menu?”
A twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Served it as an amuse when I sat down.” He leans forward. “It was amazing.”
I give him a half-hearted finger.
“How’d you do that?” Carlos says. “The apartment, I mean. I figured the thing around your neck was organic fibre, so…”
I lift my left hand, waggling the fingers. “Used the power of the one ring, Frodo.”
“Huh?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I exhale long and slow, trying to sort my messy thoughts. “You’re right. We might not have Reggie, but we can still…”
I fumble the words. Saying her name, voicing it, is like admitting to a horrible secret.
“Don’t worry about Reggie,” Paul says.
“Don’t worry? Oh, OK. Thanks, Paul. I’m so relieved. After all, it’s not like she’s in the hands of a psychotic bunch of murderous soldiers who she, I don’t know, just fucked with to help us escape.”
“What I mean is—” Paul carries on as if I hadn’t spoken. “—they won’t hurt her.”
“How do you—”
“Because it wouldn’t help them. If they can’t find us, they can’t use the threat of hurting her to get us to turn you over. They won’t be able to dictate the terms of the exchange.” He sounds like a professor lecturing a class. “They’ll keep her safe for the time being.”
“And if they do find us?”
He says nothing.
“Is she going to be OK though?” Nic asks Paul.
“I just said—”
“No, I mean, like, she had a fit or something. Before Teagan…”
“Guess the acting lessons paid off,” Annie says.
“What acting lessons?” I ask.
“She’s been taking ’em for a while. Playhouse over in Anaheim.”
“Reggie wants to be an actor?”
“Yeah.” She fixes me with a glare. “Is that a problem?”
“No, I just…” I falter, not quite sure what I was about to say. I admit, it’s hard for me to imagine wheelchair-bound Reggie as an actor. Then again, why the hell not? Why can’t she be?
I don’t meet Annie’s eyes, embarrassed, staring into the silent puddle at the centre of the pool. If Burr touches her, if he so much as looks at her funny while I’m around, I’ll take that ring of his and put it somewhere very, very personal.
“I think we should run,” Carlos says.
We all look over at him.
“Just get out of here,” he continues. “We ain’t got Reggie, and we don’t actually know a
nything about anything.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “We know what the two victims did, we just don’t know—”
“How we we gonna find out? We got no computer, nowhere else to go, cops’ll probably find us—’specially since everybody knows what you look like now, cos of that bodycam video.”
“Where we gonna run to, exactly?” Annie says.
“Anywhere. Doesn’t matter. We just scatter, go our separate ways. We’ll be harder to track if we aren’t together.” His eyes meet mine. “We could go up to Point Reyes. Or even over the border—I still got some buddies in Tijuana who could help us.”
“No. Fuck that. We’re not running.” I put as much force into the words as I can, trying not to reveal just how scared they make me. Not the running, although God knows that sticks in my gut. It’s the way Carlos suggested splitting up.
Whoever went with who, I know that if we did that, we’d never see each other again. Not just Reggie—nobody. The thought of that, of losing everyone like that…
Paul’s phone rings. He still has it set to the default Nokia ringtone.
“That’ll be Sam.” He clambers to his feet, moves away from the pool. He sounds like he’d rather throw himself in, head first.
“OK.” Annie is trying to sound reasonable, which is never a good sign. “What do you suggest we do then?”
“We find a connection between the victims. We know one of them was in fashion, and the other one was—”
“You keep saying that, but you don’t actually say how we’re supposed to get that done.”
Paul, speaking in the background, has changed his tone of voice. “No,” he says, sounding annoyed. “I think you got the wrong number. There’s no one of that name here… Look, if you would please lower your voice. I can barely understand you.”
I tune him out. “We go somewhere,” I say. Yes, that will convince them. I keep going. “Somewhere with a computer. Where we can do some more research without grenades and shit getting thrown at us.”
“We lost our hacker,” Annie says.
“I know, but—”
“No hacker, whole LAPD after you, not to mention those soldiers…”
“Could we go to your offices?” I ask Nic.
He grimaces. “I don’t really feel like getting fired on the same day my apartment blows up.”
“You’re not gonna get fired. And this is kind of a life-or-death situation here.”
“Yeah, I got that. But I’m not sure having the people in that video show up at the office of the district attorney is a good idea, is what I’m saying.”
“Ugh. Fine. Be that way.”
“And if the connection was online, we would have found it.”
Carlos cuts in. “That’s what I’m saying. We need to start thinking about getting the hell away from—”
“Teagan.” Paul says my name like he’s offended I even exist. “It’s for you.”
I’m still thinking about our options, not really paying attention. “What’s for me?”
“The phone.”
“I… What?”
“It’s for you.” He dangles the phone over the edge of the pool. “Good luck getting any sense out of him, though.”
I take the phone, staring up at him in confusion. “Um… hello?”
The reply almost takes my head off. “Teggan!”
“Who is this?”
“I say come back four o’clock, you never arrive! You not wanna see me?”
“I don’t… Wait, Africa?”
He bellows laughter. Now I’m almost certain that I’m actually dreaming this whole day—one of those dreams where people you know from your past appear at random. Next to me, Annie mutters, “Who the fuck is Africa?”
“How did you get this number?” I ask.
“Got your phone.”
“My phone was stolen. How—”
“Ya ya. I saw Derek got it. He try sell it but I catch him.”
“Who the hell is—”
Derek. The pudgy dude who tried to bum a cigarette from me outside the LA Mission. Bald head with the single wisp of grey hair. He must have followed me when I was delivering Africa’s package to Jeannette. It feels like it happened a thousand years ago.
Nic spreads his hands in a Who is it? gesture. I wave him off.
“Stupid sai sai. You got the horse on the back, so I know it’s yours.”
My little stoned unicorn sticker. I am never getting rid of that thing. I don’t care how old it gets.
“I hear you got in bad news. But no one know where you are, so I pull up your call list and start there. You gotta put a lock on your phone. When I was guarding Barack, we have to take away his Blackberry, he—”
“Yeah, yeah, got it.”
“Well, I got sometin for you, Teggan. Someone see sometin.”
I sit up a little straighter. Everyone else is looking at me now. “Tell me. Actually, hang on, let me put you on speaker.”
Paul has to do it for me, skidding down into the pool, nearly soaking himself in the puddle. Africa’s voice sounds tinny and echoey in the confined space. “I got a friend. She go sit at Pershing Square to play guitar. Next to this café, yaaw? Edmonds is maybe three, four blocks. I go there, I ask her, “‘Tiana, you see anytin?’ You know what she say?”
“What?”
There’s a pause. One I’m almost certain he’s leaving in for dramatic effect. “She say she see a dead man.”
“You mean Steven Chase?”
“The man from Edmonds. The bad juju. She see him go in the café, more than once.”
“She sure it was him?”
A dark note comes into his voice. “You think we see nothing, know nothing. Tiana tell the truth.”
“So what?” Carlos says.
“Hold on, Africa.” I cover the phone’s mic with my hand. “What’s that?”
“She sees our guy go into a café. Maybe he’s getting a cup of coffee. We can’t use this.”
I bite my lip, wishing he was wrong. “Africa,” I say, lifting my hand from the mic and trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my chest. “Was there anything—”
“Oh, you want more now? You too greedy, you bloody toubab. Course there is more. You think I call you for nothing?” A volcanic clearing of his throat. “Tiana say he go there two, maybe three time. She ask him for money, he give her ten dollar. Ten dollar! And he have a bag with him, all times. She see him go in… but he not have the bag when he come out.”
“She sure?” I say again.
“You want to know or not?” he replies, annoyed.
“Yeah. No, of course.” I ignore the sceptical look on both Annie and Carlos’s faces.
“He not have the bag. But later someone else come out with it. She say she remember because both people with the bag give her money, yaaw?”
Was Chase bribing people? Was that what was in the bag? It makes sense. If he was going to pay off someone, he wouldn’t want an electronic record of it…
“What’d they look like?” Annie says.
“Who is that?” says Africa.
“Name’s Annie Cruz. Don’t feel like we’ve been introduced.” A half-smile. “Maybe when this is over, you let me come buy you a coffee, man. Sounds like you’re a good dude to know.”
I shoot her an evil look, suddenly jealous—he’s my source.
Africa belches a laugh. “Annie Cruz. OK, OK. Ya, maybe.”
“What did they look like?” Paul says.
“Hol’ on.” There’s a muffled conversation on his end with a woman—we can’t hear her voice clearly. Tiana, I’m guessing.
“OK, she say, one look like a heepee.” Hippie, I’m guessing. “Long hair. Glasses. Old man.”
“Hayden,” I mouth. Annie nods.
“And the other guy?” I say.
“Tall. Very tall. Big, you know. Maybe fifty, fifty-five. Bald.” Another muffled exchange. “She say he nice to her. Gave her fifty dollar.”
Carlos shakes his head, and I
can see why. It’s not enough. “Africa, was there… like… Did Tiana see anything else?”
This time the muffled conversation goes on for a good minute. A few times Africa actually raises his voice, scolding the person I assume is Tiana.
“She say he dress smart. He wearing this uniform… His shirt has a logo on it.”
“What kind of logo?”
“Like a lot of faces. Like shadows. Looking the same direction.”
“Fuck does that mean?” Carlos mutters.
“Hm,” Paul says.
We all look at him. When he doesn’t respond, Annie spreads her hands, raising her eyebrows.
“Los Angeles County Department of Public Health,” he says with a lopsided grin.
“How do you even know—” I stop myself. “Never mind. Of course you know. Was there anything else?”
“Tiana say that’s all.”
“OK, thanks. And hey… Idriss?”
A long pause like I said something I wasn’t supposed to. “Ya?”
“When this is all over, I am gonna buy you the biggest steak dinner you’ve ever had in your entire life. You and Jeannette. And Tiana. All of you.”
He roars with laughter. “We be here! I see you soon, Teggan.”
“So your guy had someone on the health department on payroll,” Nic says after I hang up. “Why?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Annie looks dubious. “But I don’t get it. Victim one runs a clothing company. Victim two—” She ticks them off on her fingers. “—works at an environment charity. And this third guy… LA County health. What’s the connection?”
“Well…” Nic has moved into a crouch. “The public health department does handle the water in LA County.”
“You sure?” Carlos says.
“Dude, I work for lawyers. You pick things up. They do all the water testing for the beaches.”
“Yeah, but that’s assuming they weren’t connected some other way, man. Gambling debt or whatever. Something we can’t see.”
“We’ve been over this already,” Paul says, sounding doubtful. “Ultra’s factories aren’t near any bodies of water. They don’t even have any in California. So what would Chase need to bribe people for? And even if this… health department official was getting a bribe from Chase, I don’t see how it gets us anywhere.”