by Greg Rucka
We wound through the empty streets, finally entering a cul-de-sac with five of the largest homes I'd seen yet. Three cars were parked here on the street, a Lexus convertible, a Porsche SUV, and a large Ford 4×4. The garage door opened automatically as we approached, and Mike parked us within. The door was closing before he'd shut off the engine.
“Here we go,” Bradley told me. “If you'll follow me, Mr. Twigg.”
I followed him, and Mike followed me. Mike was shorter than Bradley, but with much the same look, maybe even the same age, though his hair was a light brown, not black. I also noted that Mike was wearing a pistol in a holster on his hip. He stuck with us into a marble-floored hallway that we followed into the front hall of the house. A wide staircase in the center of the room split the space neatly in half, with hallways running off on either side, and an archway leading to a sunken living room to our right, what would've been the left if we'd entered through the overlarge front doors. There was nobody in sight, and I wasn't hearing anything but a distant stereo, playing classical music, what was maybe Chopin.
Bradley took me down another hallway lined with framed black-and-white photographs, artsy pictures of children, some of them smiling, some on slides, some on swings, some simply staring into the camera. Wall sconces were placed regularly between them, throwing soft light up at the ceiling. At the end of the hall was a closed door, another sconce beside it. This one, I noted, was unlit.
Bradley knocked and opened the door enough to lean in, saying, “Mr. Twigg is here.”
The voice that answered matched the one I'd heard on the telephone the previous evening.
“Send him in.”
Bradley opened the door wide, closed it behind me as soon as I was through. He stayed outside.
The room was fairly large, half home-office, half library. A large wooden desk with a laptop and cell phone, one chair positioned facing it. A couch to the side, leather upholstery. Bookshelves filled with tomes of identical spines, the kinds of books bought by the yard and not by the content. Two more framed photographs, still black-and-white, but more erotically charged: one of a dramatically lit woman's bare back, with just enough neck to see the dog collar she wore; the other of a man's hips, angled so his erection was apparent, a drop of fluid falling from its tip.
The woman, Bella, wasn't what I'd expected. She might've been as young as mid-thirties, maybe as old as mid-fifties. Her hair was expensively styled in a way that made me recall Ia, Bakhar's wife, and similarly dyed, though hers was black, and Ia had favored blonde. She wore a navy blue blouse and long black skirt, and a string of pearls around her neck. Her shoes were black leather, low-heeled. Aside from the necklace, there was no other jewelry.
She moved to greet me, smiling, and offered me her hand.
“Matthew,” she said. “Bella Downs, very nice to meet you in person.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
Bella Downs indicated the chair opposite the desk, then moved around behind it, taking a seat. Her hands stayed out of sight, and I thought of the unlit sconce outside. There was a switch, probably, something she could hit with a finger or a foot, that would turn that light on and bring Bradley and Mike running.
“No trouble finding us?” she asked.
“No, the instructions were very clear. Brad—Bradley?—has the money you told me to bring.”
“It's Bradley.”
“He searched me.”
“Of course. We're an extremely exclusive business, Mr. Twigg. We can't allow just anyone to come through our doors, especially people we know next to nothing about.”
“I understand. I just didn't think he'd search me. That's never happened before.”
“We're required to be more careful here than in Eastern Europe.” Bella smiled again, and I nodded, thinking that I hadn't told her that on the phone, that the car had to have been bugged, and that she must've heard our conversation on the way in. “So, what can we do for you?”
“I'm looking for a specific kind of girl,” I said.
“I should hope so. What do you have in mind?”
“I'm not sure, exactly. I'd like to see what you have.”
Bella Downs shook her head, still smiling, but it was less friendly, more remonstrative. “That's not how it works here, Mr. Twigg. This is a specialty location, not the Mustang Ranch. You tell me what you'd like, and I will provide it for you.”
“See, I don't think I'm going to know what I'd like until I see her,” I said.
The smile thinned. “That's not an option.”
“I just want to see them.”
“Our girls are not for display.”
Behind me, I heard the door open.
“Mr. Twigg is leaving,” Bella Downs said, and now there was no sign of a smile on her face at all, not even its memory. “Please take him back to his car.”
“Mr. Twigg.” I could hear Bradley approaching, his voice now almost directly over my shoulder. “If you'll come with me.”
I looked at Bella Downs, and she stared straight back at me, and I realized I'd blown it. Somehow, someway, I'd stepped wrong, had violated protocol. I had pushed too hard, or had said yes when I should've said no, or had stayed silent when I should've spoken. I didn't know. It didn't matter.
“I'm sorry if I've offended you,” I said. “I'm new at this and—”
“Obviously,” Bella Downs interrupted. “And now you're leaving. Goodbye, Mr. Twigg.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder, no squeeze, not very much pressure, even. Just its presence to let me know that my time here was up, and that if I wasn't willing to leave on my own, Bradley would be happy to assist me. Violently.
“My apologies,” I said again, and got to my feet.
Bradley escorted me to the door, where Mike was waiting. He hadn't drawn his pistol, but his hand was resting on its butt, the intention clear. With the right timing, I could probably take them both, but the fact was that I still hadn't recovered from Amsterdam, and I wasn't certain what it would give me, anyway.
I had more than I'd arrived with. I had the location. I could come back on my terms, in my time, and get what I was after.
CHAPTER
Thirty
Mike and Bradley drove me back to the Albertson's parking lot without a word, dropping me off exactly where they had picked me up. I watched the Town Car pull away into the night, then unlocked my rental and climbed inside. I retrieved the BlackBerry, tucked it away, then started the engine and pulled out.
On my way out of town, a New Paradise police car fell in behind me, holding maybe three lengths back. It held the distance for almost two miles, until we were securely into the desert's darkness, and then hit its lights. I pulled off to the shoulder, slowed, and stopped. The cruiser came in behind, maybe three or four meters back. I left the engine running, watching in the rearview, leaving my hands on the wheel.
The cop kept me waiting for almost two minutes, and I figured that was because he was running the plates. The interstate was quiet, very little traffic running in either direction. Then I saw another set of red-and-blues coming my way, flashing lights but no siren, another police car speeding out from New Paradise. This one pulled in close behind the first, and I could just make out an officer stepping out of the car in my mirrors.
Then the cop driving the car that had stopped me got out as well and, together, the two of them approached my vehicle. I got a flashlight beam in the face, a hand motioning me to lower my window.
“Problem?” I asked, already with a very good idea what that might be. As far as it went, I was running clean. I hadn't carried a weapon since I'd left Dubai, not counting Mesick's knife, and that was currently at the bottom of an Amsterdam canal. The papers for Matthew Twigg were watertight.
“License,” the cop said.
I dug out my wallet and handed it over. When he took it, I caught a glimpse of the watch on his wrist. It was a Rolex, platinum, the same model that Bradley had worn. It occurred to me that I had yet to meet an honest cop w
earing a platinum Rolex. I supposed there was always a first time.
I didn't think this was going to be it.
“Mr. Twigg,” the cop said, handing my license back to me, “kill your engine and exit the vehicle.”
I unfastened the seatbelt, following his orders. “What'd I do?”
“You were driving erratically, sir. Have you had anything to drink?”
“Nothing but water.”
“Turn around, hands on the vehicle.”
“I didn't do anything.”
“Turn around.”
The other cop was drawing his weapon.
I turned around, put my hands up, and immediately found my right with a cuff around it. The cop who'd stopped me yanked my arm around, secured my wrists together behind my back. He gave me a quick patdown, then began maneuvering me toward his car. He had the door open to the rear seat when I tried again.
“I didn't do anything.”
“Mr. Twigg,” the cop said, “shut the fuck up.”
The second cop followed us, and we didn't go far, maybe half a mile from where I'd been pulled over, then off the freeway and into desert scrub. Both cars came to a stop, and the officer who'd pulled me over waited until his partner had exited his vehicle, then came around, and together they pulled me out of the back. We weren't so far from the interstate that I couldn't see the occasional light, hear the soft whisper of the traffic. The sky was clear and bright, and the moon had risen.
I was starting to get very worried. If their plan was to kill me, there wasn't going to be much I could do to prevent it. The only glimmer of hope I could find was, if that was their intention, they'd have taken me further from the road to do it.
“Ms. Downs asked us to give you a message.” The one who'd pulled me over seemed to be doing all the talking.
“I think I've gotten it,” I said.
They shoved me forward, hard, and I tried to keep my balance, but with the terrain and the force of the push, it was a lost cause. I managed to catch myself on my knees, started to turn my head back to them, and even though I was expecting it, even knowing it was coming, the pain of the blow exploded bright through my vision and sent me down on my side. The fleeting hope came and went that my glasses would somehow survive whatever happened next.
What happened next was a beating.
I tried to tuck up into a ball, to protect my left side and my right arm while both cops went at me using their sticks, but with my hands cuffed behind my back, there was no way to do it, and I was at their mercy. They worked my back and shoulders, hit me a couple of times in the head. My perception fractured, began dropping time. All I could do was lie there and take it.
After a while, they stopped. The one who did all the talking used a kick to flip me onto my back, then jabbed me in the sternum with his collapsible baton. I made yet another noise I wasn't proud of.
“It'd be a good idea,” the cop said. “It'd be a very, very good idea for you to forget you ever came to New Paradise.”
I groaned in agreement. He was making a lot of sense.
“You come back here, Mr. Twigg, and we'll have to have another talk with you,” he said. “There's a lot of desert between here and Vegas. A lot of desert. It could be years before somebody found what was left of you. Are we clear?”
I tried to nod.
“Don't come back.”
I tried to nod again.
He motioned for the other cop, and they rolled me onto my stomach, unfastened the cuffs. I didn't move, feeling fresh misery rush into my shoulders. One of them hit me in the back again, and then I heard them walking away, the sound of the car doors slamming closed on each patrol car. Their engines started, one after the other, and their tires ground the earth, then faded away into the night.
I rolled myself onto my back slowly, trying to guard my left side, checking the site of the knife wound with my fingertips. When I brought my fingers up to see them in the moonlight, I saw blood, but not a lot. Hopefully it was only a couple of torn stitches. I dropped my hand back to my side and just lay there, feeling the earth beneath me still hot from the day's sun, trying to get a grip on the pain, thinking.
Bella Downs had members of the New Paradise Police Department on her payroll. At five thousand dollars just to get through the door of her house of horrors, she certainly could afford it. A town the size of New Paradise, there couldn't be more than six, maybe eight cops on that force. It was possible she'd bought them all. That was her strength, how she guarded her home turf. Bradley and Mike inside, and the cops on speed dial should they ever be required.
She'd shown me her best cards, I realized, and I started to laugh, and kept on laughing, not caring how much it hurt, because I saw it then, saw what to do and the way to do it. Bella Downs didn't know who Matthew Twigg was, she couldn't be sure how I'd found her, and she didn't know what I really wanted. As far as she was concerned, I'd strayed off course and into her operation, and so she'd shown me her best cards to convince me to go away and not come back.
If I'd been a man named Matthew Twigg, I probably would've listened.
With effort, I pulled myself to my feet. The walk back to the rental was going to be a long and painful one, but I knew the car would still be there. The cops from New Paradise would make sure of that. The drive back to Vegas would be even longer, and probably hurt worse. But none of that mattered.
Tiasa was close, and I finally had a way to reach her.
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
There were three students at work in the RF lab at the Howard R. Hughes School of Electronics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, when I walked in during lunch hour the next day. Of them, only one looked up, a young Hispanic man in wire-frame glasses and a Green Lantern T-shirt, apparently mid-process of assembling some piece of electronics or another.
“Dude,” he said. “What happened to your face?”
“Lost a bet,” I said.
“Some bet. Can I help you with something?”
“I'm looking for Sharala Chandna. Professor Blackstone gave me his name.”
The other two at work—another man and a woman, each perhaps in their mid-twenties—broke off from their respective tasks, listening. The man was Caucasian, and the closest to the cliché I'd walked in expecting, despite myself, in black cargo pants and white work shirt, pens and a calculator in his breast pocket. The woman looked to be Indian, wearing torn and weathered jeans, and a faded light blue T-shirt with the words Big Blue Marble barely legible beneath an iron-on Planet Earth.
“That would be me.” The woman pushed the laptop she'd been working at to the side. There was a decal on the lid of the computer, a caricature of a girl in horn-rim glasses with a mop of black hair. The words Flirty, Dirty, and Nerdy had been printed beneath.
“Beg your pardon,” I said. “He led me to believe I was looking for a guy.”
“Yeah, Blackie does that.” Sharala Chandna nodded. “Likes to poke holes in the stereotypes. He tell you to look for the one with a pocket protector, too?”
“Nerd glasses, actually.”
Sharala Chandna approached, leaving her workbench and her laptop behind. Various pieces of equipment that I hadn't the first idea about populated the workshop, along with circuit boards, spare antennae, soldering equipment, oscilloscopes, voltmeters, and tools of every shape and size. The two men went back to their respective projects, and I didn't even try discerning what they were working on.
Sharala looked me over, and I had a good idea what she was seeing, and so didn't take it personally. Aside from my jeans, T-shirt, and boots, I had a new selection of bruises, including a cheerfully swelling one rising quickly on my right cheek. My lower lip had been split at the corner. In my short sleeves, the bandage covering the stitches on my forearm was clearly visible.
“I'd offer to shake your hand, but I'm afraid it'd fall off,” she said.
“The right one works fine.” I offered it to her. “My name's Matt.”
She shook my hand
briskly. “What can I do for you?”
“I'm looking for someone to build something for me, and to build it quickly. I'm willing to pay for the time and materials. Professor Blackstone said I should come down here and ask for you. He said you were a, uh, ‘maker’?”
She grinned. “He said that? He'd know. What sort of thing are we talking about?”
I pulled the schematics I'd printed out that morning from my back pocket, handing them to her. I'd found them online, at a website that had offered the designs as open hardware. Once I'd found them, I'd brought up the website for UNLV, and in short order that had led me here.
“Oh fuck!” Sharala said. “Oh fuck yeah, it's Limor!”
Both men looked up sharply from what they were doing, immediately and visibly curious. The one with the pens in his pocket asked, “Which one?”
“The Wave Bubble! He fucking wants a Wave Bubble!”
“No shit?” This from the other one, the one who'd asked what had happened to my face. “Let me see!”
All three of them crowded around the schematic, and then Sharala handed them the sheets and grabbed her laptop, pulling it over to the worktable nearest them. She opened her web browser, typing in a URL from memory, then clicking once, twice, giggling to herself the whole while.
“Yeah, it's Limor's Wave Bubble, all right!” she said gleefully. “I made her Minty MP3 like a year ago, that was so cool.”
“The POV—”
“On the bicycle wheels! Fuck yeah!”
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Did you see the new Arduino stuff? Fucking awesome.”
“No, the TV-B-Gone! The TV-B-Gone is genius, I fucking love that thing. You heard about Greenberg, right?”
“What'd he do?”
“He built one, took it down to the Strip. Started going through the casinos, hitting each of the sports bars, fried every LCD screen he could find. Got all the way to Caesar's before they caught him.”