The kid in the cell was a scrawny thing. A stick figure in a tunic. She was leaning against the back wall of the glass cell, twirling a lock of black hair around her forefinger. The tray of food on the floor was untouched.
“Not hungry?”
“I’m a picky eater.”
“You look like you’re hungry all the time,” I said. “You look like someone who’s never been full in their entire life.”
She picked up a slice of pale meat from the tray with the farthest tips of her fingers. A flat, off-white oval. Held it toward me with a stiff arm. “You see how white this is? It’s the color of a sheet of paper. What’s it supposed to be? Tuna? Pork? Chicken? No animal is this white.” She sniffed the circle. “Real meat doesn’t smell like soap either.”
She flung it against the wall, where it stuck in front of my face on the glass. A gigantic pupil-less eye. It slid down, leaving a pale trail down to the floor.
I let a puff of eraser smoke bounce off the wall. It rippled out along the glass, then faded away. “You like baseball?”
“Sure. But I don’t like talking to cops.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“You look like a cop.”
“And you look like a guilty little girl.” I sat down at the interrogation table and watched as her data streamed in. Her heartbeat and vocal pitch were steady. She was apparently used enough to interrogations to not be intimidated. “What’s your name?”
“My friends call me Nails.”
“Are we friends?”
“Nope. That’s why I’m not giving you my real name.”
Despite my better instinct, I was starting to like her. Twelve years old and already good with the sneer.
“All right, Nails. Since I’m not a cop, I can give it to you straight. A star baseball player has been killed. Julio Julio Zunz.” She flinched a little at the mention. “The cops, the media, and Monsanto are going to throw all their weight at anyone they can pin it on. And there’s evidence tying your Edenist friends to the murder.”
She showed me her sneer again. “Unless you’re planning to frame me, I’m not worried.”
“FLB players have been getting lots of death threats from your little group. What were you doing in JJ Zunz’s house?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t know him. I’m sorry he died. People shouldn’t die like that.”
“You live in his house yet you’ve never met him?”
The girl sat down on the floor, began tracing inscrutable shapes on the dusty floor. “If you aren’t a cop, what are you?”
“Right now, I’m a guy trying to solve a murder. I used to be a scout.”
“A cyborg scout? Aren’t you banned from the league?”
“Only from playing.” The FLB had banned all cybernetics after the failure of the Cyber League, but only on the field. They still let cyborgs like me work off camera.
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“My landlord isn’t picky about where the cash comes from.”
The girl hugged herself, staring at the floor. She seemed to be having trouble breathing. “That’s how the whole country ended up this way. No one cares about anything except money.”
“You say that like it’s a new thought. They’ve been singing that one since cavemen crawled out of caves.”
“Look at your arm, your eye. Even your body parts are another thing they buy and sell.”
She was right but also young. You could afford to be right when you didn’t have bills to pay and loan sharks to avoid.
Suddenly she bent over, began coughing wetly. When she wiped her mouth, I saw blood on the back of her hand. A red smear from the knuckle to the wrist.
“Are you okay? Do you need water?”
“What do you care, pig?” she said, still coughing a little.
“I keep telling you, I’m not a cop.”
She finished wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve.
I sat down on the floor on the other side of the glass. Tried to look her straight in the face. “You seem like a good kid. Let me tell you something. Whoever killed Zunz didn’t just kill a baseball star. Didn’t just murder a symbol of corporate human manipulation, or whatever you believe. They killed an actual human. And a good one. You know how few of those are left?”
She was shaking her head, looking back at the floor. She said something that sounded like “a piece of shit.”
“I thought you didn’t know him?”
“I said I hadn’t met him. Why do you care about him anyway?”
“He was my brother. Maybe you’ve never lost someone important to you, but I need to know what happened.” She hadn’t looked up for a bit but did when I said brother. “If you can tell me anything, I’ll do what I can to help you.”
She laughed sadly at the line. “Old men are always saying they can help me. I’m sorry about your brother dying. It wasn’t me who killed him though. Go bug someone else.”
“Maybe not. But I know you’re connected somehow.”
Her head shook back and forth.
“Don’t deny it,” I said. I was getting angry again. My blood was speeding through my veins. I stood up and walked around.
The girl looked at me, shaking a little. Her face scrunched up. Something was building up inside her. I couldn’t tell if she was going to laugh or scream.
“I know you were at Zunz’s house,” I continued. “I saw you staring at his statue in the park. I want to know how you’re connected.”
Then it came. It was laughter.
And it was a laughter I recognized. As soon as I heard it, I could see it all. Those dimples the size of dugouts in her cheeks, just like his. The curve of his eyes and that strong jut of jawbone.
“You’re his…” I started. “Jesus, you’re his daughter?”
She was still laughing. “Wow. You really are a bad detective, Uncle.”
24
THE ENGINEERED GARDENS
I’d always thought no matter how our lives diverged, and no matter how we drifted apart after my baseball career collapsed and Zunz’s took off, that Zunz trusted me. That I was someone he could lean on. Confide in. The one true friend among the yes-men and fair-weather fans who flutter to a star player like moths to a streetlamp. But Zunz had never told me about a daughter. Much less a daughter he’d paid to have hidden away.
The girl was standing up now, leaning against the cell wall with her arms crossed. She regarded me with an amused pity.
“JJ was your father?” My mind tossed back and forth between betrayal and confusion.
“Technically. And only technically. I got his genes and nothing else, not even a birthday card.”
I tried to picture Zunz and her together. Him hoisting her on his shoulders at the beach. Or giving her an ice-cream cone as they strolled through the park, a little robopup tugging at the leash. The images didn’t make sense. They formed and dissolved. I guessed they didn’t make sense to Zunz either.
I thought back to Kang’s house. The pictures on his wall. “Your mother. She was Hana Kang?”
She nodded while looking away.
“Is that how you became an Edenist?”
“My grandparents were Edenists but my mother didn’t really believe. She drifted away from the church for a long time. Guess that’s when she met my dad.” She tried to sneer again but it came out more of a frown. “It was him and my uncle who sent her back to the church. Seeing what they did to their bodies. Uncle Jung was good to me. Helped me out when he could, but I know my mom thought he was juicing his body to oblivion trying to chase fame. Anyway, I’m glad she raised me with principles. Those are hard to come by these days.”
“And Zunz? Your father, I mean.”
“The only thing I have from him is a spare key to his hideaway house. Uncle Jung gave it to me when he died, said he figured my father owed me that much.”
I was still trying to imagine this other Zunz, the father he’d decided not to be. The Zunz who existed in an alternate universe where
he hosted playdates and swung by concert recitals instead of away games. For some reason, I felt angry. “Why didn’t JJ take you?”
She might have been the twig, but her look almost snapped me in two. “Why did my father abandon me? Geez, I dunno. Great question.”
I heard someone knocking on the door behind me. Five loud thunks. It was Okafor, telling me my time was up by waving their hand across their neck. But I needed to figure this out. To understand. Or maybe to explain.
“Zunz wasn’t that way when I knew him. He liked taking care of things. Had lots of pets.”
“Pets.” Her face was as sharp as a needle.
“I just mean. I don’t know. I just meant that’s not how I knew him.”
“Well hooray for you,” she said.
“We’d had it hard, back then. He and I. We grew up pretty poor.”
“Save it,” she said. “I’m twelve. Both of my parents are dead. My uncle too. It’s all crappy water under the crappy bridge of my life.”
The door opened behind me. I could hear several people shouting. Okafor grabbed my shoulder, forcefully turned me around. Their voice was hot in my ear. “You have to leave now. The lawyers are here.”
I looked back as Okafor pulled me out of the room. The girl gave a sad laugh. “Bye-bye, Uncle.”
Okafor kept pulling me, down a side hall, past the training rooms, and out onto the street. They pushed me into the wall. People on the streets started filming.
“You said you’d go when I needed you to go, Kobo. Damn it. I knew it was a mistake to help you.”
Okafor stared at me hard. But I must have been staring off somewhere else. They relaxed and let me off the wall. Stepped back.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I shook my head. Tried to get the pieces of my mind to click back together. “Never mind,” I said. “Thanks, Sil. I owe you. I won’t bother you again.”
“What did she say? Did she know who killed JJ?”
“No,” I said. “She didn’t have anything to do with it. Nothing to do with it at all.”
I stayed against the wall thinking, or trying to, after Okafor went back inside. At first my mind simply denied. Said it couldn’t be true, that it was an elaborate joke, or else some conspiracy I didn’t understand.
I went across the street and around the corner to see the station entrance. A group of Edenists in gray-and-blue tunics came out with the girl in the middle. They all got inside a large black van and levitated away.
I had to follow them, force them to let me talk to her again. But as I was getting in a cab, I saw a man sitting on a bench in the terrarium park across the street. A tiny triangle of land with a glass bubble to block out the smog. The man was bulky with big, knobby hands. Most of his face was hidden behind a screen, but I could see his thick brow. Coppelius.
“Just take me around the block,” I told the driver.
We flew off down the street, away from the Edenist van.
When we circled back, Coppelius was gone. Which meant he was following me. I could see a cab behind us, bobbing low in the smog.
I called Dolores. Didn’t tell her all the details. That a Neanderthal spy was following me or I apparently had a quasi niece. I only asked her if I could still take her up on her partner offer.
“What do you need, Kobo?”
“I want you to tail a little girl,” I said.
Coppelius’s taxi followed me as we zigged through the city’s skystabbers. I told the cabbie to tag behind a Plethora Emporium blimp. I watched the pelican drones drop out one by one, packages in their pouches. But Coppelius didn’t get bored. So I decided to get dropped off at Monsanto Meadows. Figured that was a place where I couldn’t lead the Neanderthal to any more clues. Plus, maybe I could uncover a few more if I talked to some of Zunz’s teammates.
“It’s closed for the playoffs.”
“I’m part of the team.”
The driver’s cam in the backseat looked me up and down. “Think they only take full human types there.”
I could hear the distaste on his tongue. This guy was the same species of asshole who made jokes about my childhood arm on the playground. Then they mocked the replacement I’d gotten. I didn’t let it faze me. I knew he was as antiquated as me. A human taxi driver in a self-driving car. The industry had paid off enough senators to pass a law requiring a human in any flying vehicle. A live body if the algorithms failed. But everyone knew the law would be changed soon, and they’d be shoved out the door without a safety net.
“I’m a scout. Got the chip in my palm and everything.”
The man squinted. “They used to have rules back in my day.”
“What day was that?”
“The good old days.” He spat out the words like they’d been phlegm in his throat.
I was confused and bitter by the time I landed. Yet, the Monsanto compound still took my breath away. Since the FLB was run by international biopharms, they’d been able to expand the league to other countries and international waters. There were stunning parks all over. But Monsanto Meadows might have been the most beautiful. Better than even the snowcap stadium of GenSlice Future up north or the silver ziggurat of Los Tigres de Plata del Bayer de México. It was called the Meadows, but we scouts called it the hanging gardens. Babylon.
The Meadows took up the entirety of what used to be Central Park. Monsanto had bought up the park after the city went bankrupt trying to kill the rat population with zootech sewer snakes. It worked, but then they had to purchase a designer virus to kill the snakes flowing out of the subway tracks and snacking on tourist toes.
The park was ringed with a high wall, dotted with massive filter fans to keep out the smog, spies, and external fauna. The stadium itself was at the north end. The research laboratories, staff quarters, and corporate communications offices were scattered between gardens and lakes. The waters were filled with fluorescent fish, swimming in dreamlike patterns in water the color of candy. Small gardens of flowers floated around on levitating plots. Flightless birds hopped between the floating plots as they passed. Green parrots, pink flamingos, spotted pigeons. Everything was moving and alive.
The public could stroll through part of the grounds for a fee, and I saw couples walking around, holding hands and gawking at the zootech. Convenience store blimps floated between the trees, selling the latest Mets-branded products.
Dolores called me as I was approaching the stadium. “I’m following this girl, but the van dropped her off at a supraway station. She was gone by the time I got to the platform.”
“Maybe she’s going back to Zunz’s island house. Can you check that out? I’ll owe you.”
“That Neanderthal blood sample?” Dolores laughed. “No, sorry, K. I’ve got a presentation on the best transgenic splicer prospects in the university circuit.”
I figured the girl would avoid the house, since I’d found her there. My best bet was the Edenist center in Queens that had sent out the lawyers. But while I was here, I figured I might as well talk to a few of Zunz’s old teammates.
The golden Monsanto Meadows stadium was up ahead. I strolled toward it through the hanging gardens.
25
THE FORMER TEAM
I found Lex Dash on the edge of the field, soaking in a stim tank. Thin needles were nestled into each of her muscles, stimulating them with little electric shocks, while tiny beetle-sized drones rolled over her body and massaged as the muscles were flexed. She opened her eyes when I rapped on the tank.
“Yes?” She looked me over, realized I wasn’t a coach. “Oh. I know you. Zunz’s brother, right?”
I gave her a surprised-you-remembered-me smile. I’d only met Dash a few times when Zunz let me tag along to Mets events.
“Right. Kobo. I’m working for the Mouth on a special case. JJ Zunz’s case, actually. I was hoping you had a couple minutes to chat.”
“I’ve been trying not to think about him.”
Few players in the FLB were truly close. The pla
yers’ lives were managed down to the minute when they were playing or training, and then they went home to their separate cloud condos to recuperate alone. But Dash and Zunz had been close to something like friends. They were known to frequent the downtown clubs and uptown galas, buying rounds of champagne wherever they went. They’d been the fun, public faces of the Mets franchise. There were even rumors they were lovers, which Zunz denied. Still, whatever was between them might make her sentimental enough to talk. Indeed, Dash’s eyes looked a little watery when I said his name.
“Okay, maybe I can find five minutes.”
Dash yelled over to her coach who told her she had a couple minutes till they rebalanced her hormones.
“I’m transitioning after the playoffs. Takes about six months to complete so we’re getting it started now.”
“You’ll be starting next season as a man?”
Dash smirked as she picked up a duffle bag. “We’ll see how the HL East pitchers deal with me bulked up and batting third. We need slugging with Zunz… well. You know. Anyway, you’re going to have to let me swing while we talk.”
“Sure thing.”
We walked over to the first base foul line and Dash opened the bag. Inside was a bat and a red, fleshy drone in the shape of a gigantic mouth. The drone flew out a couple dozen feet, spun, and spat a ball in her direction. Dash popped it high and the drone flew up to scoop it out of the sky.
“Was Zunz acting strange before—” I hesitated a second. “Before the incident.”
Dash bent her knees and spun the bat’s tip in little circles over her shoulder. “He seemed a little out of it. You know, forgetting big things like what position to play. Then suddenly remembering extremely specific things. Like, he kept asking me about my dog, Oats, who I’d had to put down the year before. Fuck, curveball.”
She swung awkwardly but tipped the ball, which bounced beneath the pitching drone’s lips and hit the safety net. The drone floated over and unrolled a red tongue to slurp up the ball.
The Body Scout: A Novel Page 14