Double Cross

by Carolyn Crane

  “His political obsessions got so bad, the Slinger actually cut himself off from the news two years ago. I’m catching him up,” Helmut reports. And his way of catching him up will be highly disturbing. You don’t want to discuss geopolitics with Helmut any more than you want to discuss future hopes and dreams with Shelby.

  Enrique snickers and twists his diamond earring. Helmut tells us he’ll hand the Brick Slinger over to Vesuvius next for a crash in self-esteem; then Shelby will destroy his sense of hope.

  Suddenly Helmut’s waving, and a burly bald man with a gray mustache comes over. Helmut introduces him as Parsons, the head of Packard’s secret bodyguard team. Parsons seems very in-charge and confident. Good.

  Outside on the walk, I bump into Simon in his big crazy coat and ask him if he’s got anything.

  Simon shakes his head. “I spoke with three people, one a longtime coworker.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “They all think she made up the relationship.”

  “So the whole my-boyfriend-did-it story was a lie after all.”

  Simon screws up his lips, inspecting my face for a while. “You seem relieved.”

  “I want to get at the truth.”

  “We’re not there yet. I have two more people to speak with.”

  “Three wasn’t enough?” I ask.

  “There was a sameness in their wording. … I have a gut feeling.”

  I smile. “Sure it’s your gut?”

  “I spend my time with liars and bluffers, Justine. I’m not done.” He heads off.

  I leave my car at Mongolian Delites and walk the seven blocks to the Sapphire Sunset piano bar. The air chills my lungs when I breathe deep, freshening me to my toes. My fatigue begins lifting.

  Simon’s right about my being relieved that Ez is looking guilty. Maybe it’s wrong to be glad for that, but it simplifies things. I don’t want to disillusion an innocent person, but I sure don’t want to be a minion in my sleep. It’s bad enough that I’m one when I’m awake.

  Oddly, as I near the bar, my eagerness to see Ez builds.

  Sapphire Sunset comes into view on the next block. It’s a squat rectangle of blue stucco with black trim and shutters, and it sits right in the middle of a motley row of restaurants and antiques stores. Behind it is a hill that leads steeply down to the blocks along the lakefront. As I step up my pace, I spot a familiar blue car parked along the curb, with a familiar figure leaning against it, face turned to the winter sun. Packard.

  I get a pang as I think of him so young and scared. And those corpse fingers in the walls! Him trying to cover them, block them.

  Packard has a cardboard tray with two coffees and a bakery bag with an M logo. Maria’s corner deli—the place where I’d get coffees for Packard when he was trapped. He points to one. “Cow brown.”

  Cow brown. His description for how I take my coffee—just a splash of cream. “Thanks.”

  “And the other’s for you to bring to her.” He hands me the stuff. “She’ll respond emotionally to offerings like this.”

  “Okay, Packard. Thanks.”

  His eyes are light green in the sunshine, shot through with tiny bright lines. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He tilts his head, whiskers a sparkle of sand below his cheekbones. “You dreamed something.”

  “Now I tell you my dreams?” I set the coffees on the hood and open the bag. The fragrant steam of banana nut muffins caresses my nose. My favorite kind.

  “Let’s have it. We need to know how she’s working us.”

  “You had it too, didn’t you?”

  He waits.

  “Fine. It was you. In that place. Bodies. It was horrible, Packard.” I look at him sadly. “You were just a kid.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I can’t empathize?”

  “No. You can tell me the facts.”

  “Fine,” I say. “You were in a ruined stairwell upset about a hand embedded in a wall. Like a body was entombed in there.”

  Packard looks pale. “What did you make of the dream?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what I should make of it? Was that the abandoned school? What were those bodies?”

  “Did you have consciousness during it? Thoughts?”

  “I don’t get to ask any questions?”

  “This is important,” he says. “I’m trying to determine how deeply she’s linking.”

  I sigh. “I wouldn’t say I had thoughts exactly. I knew vague things, like more than one body was entombed in there. I felt dread. Vigilance. And like I had this mission to protect the place, cover the bodies, not let them emerge.”

  A tanker truck pulls into the gas station over on the corner. Two men jump out, open a manhole on the ground, and pull out tubes, connecting things in a frantic fashion.

  “That’s it?” Packard asks.

  “The dread was so intense—this sense that, what if the crack widened, and people saw what was in there? And there was also this sense of being under attack, like there were people outside in the night that might try to get in, and I had all this responsibility to handle it … or you did. A sense of guilt. And those bodies in there …” I turn to Packard. “What was going on?”

  He presses his big, rough lips together—proud, exhausted, and clearly distressed.

  “What happened in that place?”

  He frowns. “Thanks to you, a deadly dream invader is parting the folds of our linked minds. Why don’t you concentrate on getting us out of this mess instead of interrogating me?”

  I flush with shame. “I’m working on it.” A couple of people head into the bar. “Packard, what if we sleep in shifts? So we’re never asleep at the same time?”

  “The dream link is extratemporal. It doesn’t matter when we sleep, only that we sleep.”

  “Should we stop sleeping maybe?” Curious as I am, I don’t want to go back there.

  “Have you ever stayed awake for more than a day or two?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to,” he says simply. “You just need to go at her hard. And don’t let on that you know. She’s going fast, linking our dreams like this.”

  I nod.

  “I’ve got Vesuvius giving her top priority once you’re done. You need to zing the hell out of her. We have to make her release us.”

  I watch the gas station guys wind up the big hoses.

  “You’re not still having problems with that, are you?”

  “As long as she’s not innocent,” I say.

  “Did you enjoy having your consciousness invaded last night? She’ll only go deeper.”

  “Don’t worry—it’s not looking like she’s innocent anyhow.”

  “What do you mean not looking?”

  “Simon’s reinterviewing some people, but the stories are holding.”

  “Justine, we don’t have time for this!”

  “Look, I don’t want her in my head, okay? But if she’s innocent of murder …” I hold up a hand. “She’s probably not, but I need to know for sure. It’s bad enough that we’re forcing these people to crash and transform and, you know … if the target’s innocent …”

  “Losing your taste for Otto’s utopia?”

  “Don’t make it into something. I’m talking to you straight here. About disillusionment.”

  He looks at me strangely. “You no longer think it’s right to disillusion criminals?”

  “Do you?” I ask.

  Packard draws his finger over the top of the side mirror. Says nothing.

  “Come on, Packard. If things were different …”

  He eyes me coolly. Something’s there, I can tell.

  “Can’t you level with me about anything?”

  He crosses his arms. “You’re asking me about right and wrong? The man who runs thugs and thieves and whose word means nothing, as you so love to say? The man who stole your freedom in order to get out of that infernal restaurant? Now you’re asking me how I feel about turning a few criminals around so I can stay free
?”

  “I guess.”

  “How the hell do you think I feel about it? I didn’t see the sun for eight years.”

  “Right. Of course. I guess for a crazy moment there I forgot—”

  “Well, don’t. I never said I was a good person, did I?”

  The ache in his words stops me from replying.

  “And I’d do anything to keep from being trapped in that restaurant again. And you’d do anything to stay sane and alive, so don’t pretend it’s not true. And neither of us wants to hand over the keys to Ez to let her make us do Lord knows what in our sleep.”

  My heart pounds from his intensity, and I have the crazy idea that his pounding heart is making mine pound. I look away, feeling so sad, wanting to undo the conversation.

  The breeze shifts and the gas fumes hit us. The gas station truck guys are hurrying to pack up. “They’re acting like an Indy Five Hundred pit crew,” I observe.

  “Can you imagine if the Dorks shot that truck?”

  “Oh, right.”

  More silence.

  I ask if there are any leads, and I’m surprised when he tells me he has a suspect. His telepaths already nabbed a guy. I’m grateful for this spot of good news.

  “We’ve got him at HQ,” he says. “This suspect is immune to highcap powers and he wears glasses—that’s why we picked him up. The guy doesn’t feel like a killer, though I can’t tell without seeing his structure. Telepaths can’t read him. We’re questioning him the old-fashioned way.”

  “I hope not too old-fashioned.”

  His expression is unreadable. “A little faith, Justine.”

  “What if this guy’s innocent? That’s all I’m saying.”

  He puts on his sunglasses. Mirrored glasses, and I get a pair of distorted Justine images—two long pale faces, long dark hair, dark eyes. I hate my reflection unless I’m steeled for it. It’s the kind of thing Packard would know. Screw you, I think.

  He turns and walks off.

  Fine. I’m eager to get in there and see Ez anyway.

  Wait—why should I be so eager to see her? I stop at the doorway, suddenly uneasy: my eagerness to see her feels like a leftover tidbit from a dream. Did she do something in my head as I slept? The idea of it creeps me out. I pull open the door. She has to be crashed.

  “Nurse Justine! What a nice surprise!”

  “Well, hey, Ez.” I set my purse on the ledge in front of her window, eyeing a couple gazing over the balcony rail, wishing they’d leave. “How are you?”

  “How am I? Aside from parasites probably colonizing my liver?”

  She’s fishing for me to say they’re not colonizing her liver. I paste on a forced-looking smile and hold up the bag and coffee cup. “Look what I brought you.” The coffee cup just fits through the window hole on my side if you pour some out and tip it a little. I set it in the gully between us. “And I wasn’t sure how you take it so there’s cream and sugars.…” I pull them out of the bag and plop them down on the metal tray next to the coffee.

  She stares without touching the stuff. “You think I have them, don’t you?”

  “Did I say I thought that?”

  “In so many words.” She clutches her stomach. “Oh, my God. I have a deadly case of parasites.” She looks up. “I sent off for Klosamine today. The topical and the pill. They’re overnighting it.”

  “If it’s an offshore pharmacy, you can’t trust those, you know.”

  “I don’t have much to lose, do I?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  Her fine little features sharpen with fear. “That was a nonanswer!”

  “No, it was a statement. I don’t know about what you have to lose. Obviously, I just met you.”

  “Yet you don’t deny it’s a possibility that I may lose something.”

  I push the coffee nearer. “Don’t let it get cold.”

  “Obviously I shouldn’t have caffeine. Some nurse you are.” She pushes the coffee back toward me. “God, I have to get out of here. I’m wasting my life away in this stupid job, and for what? For Morgan-Brooksteens parasites to set up an all-you-can-eat buffet in my liver? Fuck that.”

  The man nearby looks over. I’m sure our conversation sounds bizarre.

  “You don’t know for sure,” I say.

  “Another nonanswer! You think I’m dying! No, don’t answer. Because I am going to get out of here, and I am going to set the goddamn world on fire. I am going to set every little corner of the world on fire, and the parasites won’t beat me.”

  I take the coffee back, wondering how exactly I’m supposed to take this fire bit. I lift the bag. “Muffin?”

  She eyes it.

  “Banana nut.”

  She reaches out her hand and I push it through.

  “So, you’re thinking of switching careers?”

  She pulls back the paper muffin wrapper. “Huh?”

  “Getting out of here and setting the world on fire?”

  A silence. “Yeah.”

  “To what? What career?”

  “I’ve got a few possibilities.”

  “What’s your favorite possibility?”

  “Not this, that’s what. I sure never planned on being this.”

  I nod. “I know the feeling.”

  “How can you say that? You’re a nurse. You help people. You didn’t want to end up being a nurse?”

  “No, I always wanted to be a nurse.” I pick a nut off the top of my muffin, feeling shitty. “Come on. What do you most want? If there was some perfect Ez life, your ideal situation, what would it be?”

  She concentrates on her muffin.

  I feel like kicking myself. What the hell do I hope to hear? That she dreams of turning over a new leaf to be a law-abiding person? Or that she plans to make more people into sleepwalking cannibals? So I can feel justified in zinging her?

  She glares at me. “Like, be an actress in the Midcity Rep and marry some guy? And have kids and a Jack Russell terrier, and a lakefront condo, and we all play on the beach and have cookouts? Like that?” She breaks her muffin in half. “Right.”

  The speed with which she produces this portrait of a possible life suggests that maybe that is her ideal situation. I could actually see her as an actress—she enunciates her words so carefully, and moves gracefully, as though she’s conscious of her body in space. “Do you mean you don’t want that, or you can’t have it?”

  “Don’t act like you know me.”

  “I’m trying to know you.”

  She gasps. “You’re trying to get me to not think of parasites!”

  I’m about to protest, but then I think, This is where I want her.

  “You think I have MBP. You’re just trying to improve my last days!” She shoves the muffin away. “Oh my God!”

  I go on to halfheartedly dissuade her, feeling guiltier than ever. Ten minutes in, we’ve worked up to me taking her hand to reexamine her skin and zing her, but a man comes up and practically knocks me out of the way.

  “Hiya, Harry,” she says.

  I move aside. Great.

  “Afternoon, Ez.” He puts his coat in the carousel and she spins it to her side. He says something about the Midcity Maven’s game last night and they have a jokey exchange.

  I wait, not wanting to cramp her style or her tip proceeds. I’d hoped to finish and get the hell out, but now we almost have to start over. Zinging really is a bit like sex. You would never just release your dark emotions into somebody out of the blue; instead you talk with them, get them into the mood.

  “That guy that was here the other day and yanked you away—was he your boss?”

  “Pretty much,” I say.

  “A doc?”

  “Kind of,” I say. “But where were we? Because there was something important I was going to tell you.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Not even a year. But Ez, on this liver thing—”

  “Was he ever on a battlefield of any kind?” she asks.


  “A battlefield?”

  “Exposed to, like, atrocities?”

  I stare at her. Is that what she made of the dream memory? Could she have picked up extra information?

  “He spent time as a child somewhere under attack.”

  “Really,” I say, waiting for her to go on.

  She stuffs more muffin into her mouth.

  He did feel like he was under attack in that decrepit, graffiti-covered stairwell. What the hell happened there? I know there was that battle between Packard and Henji, and Henji, at age eleven, left as a stowaway on a freighter out of Port Midcity, never to be seen again. Or at least that’s what people think. The truth is that he returned a decade and a half later, a grown man with a new name—Otto—and joined the police. Rose to police chief, then to mayor. Most of the people who could connect Otto with Henji are dead.

  Ez munches the rest of the muffin. Taking her time.

  “What kind of attack?”

  Ez gives me a sly look. “Show me the descrambler and I’ll be happy to tell you all that I intuit.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Is it in your pocket? Your purse? What harm can it do to show it?”

  “It’s the rules.” My descrambler chain bracelet rests heavily on my wrist. I have this urge to show it.

  “Nobody will know.”

  “Sorry.”

  Her beseeching look seems to tug at me, and I have this crazy sense that it will be a great relief to do as she says. She already has a kind of hold on me, I realize. Because I really, really want to show her the bracelet!

  I take a deep breath. “You sidetracked me before I could tell you my thing—”

  “Does he carry a field descrambler like you do?” she asks. “He’s a doc. If you do, he should. Right?”

  She wants a descrambler so she can get out. First order of business.

  “Hey! Pay attention. Should he carry one?”

  “Why? Are you worried about the parasites? Because I actually had some interesting news about all that.”

  She straightens to attention. “What kind of news, exactly?”

  I narrow my eyes. “Not news. I mean, not news for the public.”