He didn’t notice Keaton move, but move she did, grabbing him and tossing him across the hood of his car, arms akimbo, sacrifice style. She squeezed his neck, tight. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was Keaton’s enraged face, muscles corded like iron on her neck.
Hank woke in the same position, splayed out on the hood of his Mercedes. His neck ached, as did his lower back.
“…that’s fucking crap.”
“Ma’am, someone who’s talented enough to ditch a tail isn’t someone you want to discard in thoughtless annoyance.” This, from the Monster hunter? He hadn’t expected an actual give-and-take relationship between them. Hank levered himself up, thankful to be alive and not in traction. Keaton paced, double-time, across the vacant warehouse, fifty feet away. Several large former stacks of wooden pallets were now strewn across the floor, some in splinters.
“I spent a fucking week setting up this fucking trap for those motherfucking idiots,” Keaton said. “God damned motherfucking cunt doctor!”
Oh, shit. He was supposed to lead Focus DeYoung’s people here. No, Keaton hadn’t made a mistake by sending the summons through the Network. She wanted her messages intercepted.
“Ma’am,” Hank said, a quite croak. “I…”
“Shut the fuck up,” Keaton said. She stayed away, her rage still boiling over. “I fucking understand that you thought you were doing me a favor by not leading them here.” She picked up one of the scattered pallets, raised it over her head, and smashed it, with her full Arm strength, down to the floor, fifty feet away. The pallet shattered like an eggshell, some of the wood flinders landing on him.
“Focus Martine DeYoung,” Hank said. He wasn’t impressed with Keaton’s plan, or her reaction to failure. Seeing her overreaction, he wondered how in the hell Keaton had survived as a free Arm for this long.
Keaton stopped, turned to Hank, and stalked over.
“You know the bitch behind this?”
“I learned her name today,” he said. Keaton stopped ten feet away and put her hands on her hips. “If you wish, ma’am, I can tell you the…”
“Spill.”
He told the tale, and after an invective laden question, the story about where he had learned the ‘losing a tail’ trick. The latter part of his story earned a low wolf-whistle from the unnamed Monster hunter, and likely bumped Hank several notches higher on the Monster hunter’s man-meter.
“Tonya warned me to stay away from De Fucking Young, but didn’t say why,” Keaton said. “She implied the people hunting me and bedeviling her belonged to some old Focus, though.”
Crap. “She probably didn’t lie,” Hank said. Having one of the older Focuses after Keaton, and perhaps after him, was about the worst news possible. “Tonya’s comment means Focus DeYoung isn’t acting on her own, but being used as a pawn.”
“Do you always state the obvious?”
What could he say? “Yes, ma’am, far too often.”
Keaton stopped cold and slapped her forehead. “Fuuuck me.” She turned and stalked over to get in his face. Her rage had vanished again, replaced by a bad attempt at a stone face that to him revealed utter glee. “Teach me this shit. Now.”
“Ma’am, I’m an amateur at this, at best.”
“Fuck, I’m still a goddamned housewife at this. I’m guessing a ‘brush pass’ isn’t something one does with your fucking hair. Right?”
Hank barely repressed a wince. “A brush pass is a way of passing a message without people watching you seeing you passing a message. Two people meet at a prearranged location, they walk past each other without publicly noticing each other, and one passes a message to the other using simple sleight of hand.”
This impromptu lesson continued for two more hours. Keaton finally let Hank go, and, shaking, he got in his car and left, searching for someplace close by that served food. Somewhere not too ritzy, given what Keaton, the concrete floor, the hood of his car, nearly four hours of sweat, and blood from Keaton’s abuse had done to his suit.
“She knows a lot more about how the world works, compared to the first time we met,” he said, on the phone to Tonya. “Unfortunately, my read on her is that her mental state is deteriorating. She’s losing her humanity, as well as her grip on logic.”
“Unless we do something, she’s a goner, you’re saying,” Tonya said.
“I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time before she gets herself killed by doing something boneheaded, doing something based on her strong emotions instead of anything resembling thought.”
“I’m not sure how bad that would be,” Tonya said.
Hank smiled. “You’re telling me you and the Council would throw away a weapon such as Keaton? During a Focus faction fight between the Council and some First Focus and her flunky Focuses?”
On the other end of the phone, Tonya slammed down her coffee cup. “The Arm’s not our weapon.”
“I hear a ‘yet’ in there, somewhere.”
“How, in God’s name, do we save her from herself, though?” Tonya asked.
Hank had given that knotty question some thought. “Have you ever thought about hiring her in person?” If Tonya got close to Keaton often enough, Tonya and her damned charisma might be able to help Keaton retain her sanity.
Besides, he would rather be volunteering Tonya for the bell-the-cat duty, than having her volunteer him. As she had just done with this episode.
Tonya answered his question with a typical low growl, and hung up the pay phone on him.
Mutie Mill Briefing
Sky sat down, nervous. Bad vibes filled this basement room, the vibes of illicit sex and private knock-down drag-out fights between Transforms who wanted their disputes to stay private. Ostensibly, this was the basement teen lounge. Three trucked-in card tables occupied the center of the room, and he sat between Ann and Tim, waiting. Connie walked in and sat at the head of the table, followed by Eileen, Shelly and Deborah. The team for the Mutie Mill reconnaissance.
Lori walked in a half minute later, a sheaf of paper in one hand and a poster of one of the uglier Focuses Sky had ever seen in the other. She leaned the poster board of the Focus against a well-grafittied wall, and handed out bits of the paper stack to all of them.
Sky scanned the handout, a mimeograph of information on Focus Abernathy and her household.
“You wanted a briefing? Here I am,” Lori said. She appeared distracted, and to Sky, cold. To him. She had been cold and distant ever since he had tracked her down Saturday morning and tried to understand what was going on in her head. Apparently, she hadn’t appreciated waking up next to him Saturday morning. Surely you can figure out I didn’t take advantage of you in any way, he had said.
She didn’t even bother with a response. Ice, ice, ever since.
“Where do you want me to start?” Lori asked.
“How about with Focus Abernathy?” Ann said, after a glance at Connie and a juice signal response from the Inferno household leader.
“Fine.” Lori licked her lips, closed her eyes momentarily, and pointed at the poster. “That’s her. She transformed in November of 1959, got placed in the New Haven, Connecticut Transform Clinic, and, four months later, got moved to Beechwood Court, the Boston public housing project. She and her new household lived in abject squalor there until March of 1961; during that time she had no direct contact with any Focuses, just the Focus Network, her main contact person being, um,” a pointed look at Sky, “the Doctor.”
“You’re kidding.” “He sure does get around.” “Unbelievable.” “That’s just what we need.” Connie whistled and restored order, half way through Sky’s comment of “Sacre bleu! What are you doing letting an enemy into this place!”
Lori shook her head and continued, ignoring all their comments. “He advised Focus Abernathy to use the juice weapon to keep her Transforms in line, and she did so. After Kennedy pardoned the Breakout Focuses and the UFA went public, she got a talking to by Focus Schrum and made a deal – Schrum could have Abernathy’s vote
in the regional UFA meetings if Schrum kept Abernathy safe from Focus politics. Their deal holds to this day.
“Focus Abernathy ordered her household to pool their money and purchase a working farm, outside Bridgeport, Connecticut. They did so, and her household still lives there. Abernathy lives in a mobile home; when too much bad juice builds up in her mobile home she sells it and gets another. Her people also live in mobile homes; the household purchases run-down mobile homes, lives in them while they fix them up, and later sells them. During summer heat waves the household lives in tents, by choice. Although they are poor by most standards, their mode of living gives them more living space than any urban Focus household, Inferno included. Although their farming does not bring in much money, they produce around three quarters of their own food on the farm.”
Some of this was in the mimeographed handout Sky read, but not all. He smiled at the setup; Lori was a natural teacher, and the Inferno Transforms loved to hear her teach. He suspected they invented excuses for her to ‘brief’ them on all sorts of things.
“As a Focus with eight years of experience, Abernathy should not be taken lightly. Note that she’s what we Focuses term ‘second generation’; she never spent any time in the bad juice polluted Detention Centers, nor were she and her people scarred from the excesses forced on the early Focuses during the Quarantine and post-Breakout period. As far as her strength as a Focus is concerned, she’s considered tied for being strongest of the second generation, with Lupe Rodriguez.”
Lori’s last comment brought everyone at the table to sitting attention. None of them had expected it.
“However, raw strength as a Focus isn’t a good measure of a Focus’s overall power. To be tops in overall power, a Focus must train her tricks, must be smart enough to realize she needs training, must have the willpower to do the training, and must have the political acumen to find teachers and gain permission to do the training. Of these, Focus Abernathy only possesses the willpower. My best estimate of her IQ is in the 95 to 100 range, she’s a high school dropout, reads at a Junior High level at best, and she has no interest in cooperating with any other Focuses other than Focus Schrum. So, as far as overall power as a Focus, Abernathy is near the bottom of the heap for Northeast Region second generation Focuses, about the same as Focus Garrisi and Focus Untermeyer.”
Sky had never heard of either Garrisi or Untermeyer. The others had, and they nodded.
“Her strength at home, though, should not be underestimated. Like me, she hasn’t ever had to move. Because of her penchant for using mobile homes, our Crow friends report that her household is extremely easy to approach and cadge dross. She won’t have any bad juice issues. Also, because she’s never had to move, and because her living area is so spread out, she has quite a few advantages most Focuses don’t possess. For instance, and yes, I find this interesting and intriguing, Focus Abernathy can move juice beyond her normal 94 yard metasense range…but only at her farm. The comments I’ve managed to squeeze out of people imply Abernathy doesn’t even realize she’s doing the impossible. In addition, Focus Abernathy can do many of the upper end raw power Focus tricks, such as identifying the tags of other Focuses she’s met, instantly move juice from one Transform to another, tag, untag and retag at range, and see using her metasense. Her charisma is powerful but erratic; as you can see in her picture she’s physically strong; she enjoys manual labor and if the anecdotes are correct, she can lift over five hundred pounds.
“The men in her household who serve as guards are well armed, but there are only six of them. Abernathy supports eight Triads and her household are all manual laborers, doing farm work. They aren’t very loyal to her, though, meaning her household superorganism is going to be weak, likely weak enough to totally discount. The household raises cattle, pigs, goats, but no horses. Also wheat, corn, hops, and squash, all of which they sell; plus extensive vegetable gardens for household use.
“Lastly, Focus Abernathy has a trick apparently unique to her – she can tag multiple Transforms at once. Other than pointing out to us that we don’t understand the upper limits of Focus capabilities, I’m not sure this is relevant to you at all, or the mission.” Lori paused. “Any questions?”
“I have one,” Sky said. “From before. If this doctor you’re keeping here is an enemy, why have him here at all? Aren’t you worried he’ll figure out what we’re doing and warn Abernathy?” Crazy Lori.
“He’s not an enemy,” Lori said. She sighed. “I don’t know what his current ties to Abernathy are, but, no, I’m not taking any chances. He doesn’t know about the Mutie Mill mission, and we’re going to loan him out this week to Occum to keep him occupied, just in case.”
“Why is he here?” Sky said. “He’s likely a spy.”
“True,” Connie said. “But he’s not spying for who you might think. He’s working with the American Arms. None of us realized how much he worked with Arm Keaton before he started getting two or three letters a week from her. Right now we’re filtering both his incoming and outgoing mail; the problem is that he and the Arms are using private codes, something out of the dark days of the Quarantine and post-Breakout underground days.” She shrugged. “From what we’ve read, the Arms show little interest in Inferno as a household, and they are as gung ho about the, um, doctor’s current project he’s working on here, to help us, as we are.”
“The First Focuses, or at least their leaders, have a contract out on his life,” Lori said. “His old backers turned on him, which makes him a perfect recruit for me, as we now share enemies.”
“You’re converting him to your damned Cause, aren’t you?” Sky said. “If he’s who I think he is, he’s way too dangerous for you to be dealing with.” The doctor sounded like the ‘truck driver’ Annie had sent with him to the States, and if he was also Annie’s long-time unnamed doctor contact, which Sky suspected, said doctor had a reputation for corner-cutting, devious tricks, and having a cavalier disregard for human life.
“Can’t convert the converted,” Lori said. “What I am trying to do is get him on my side, instead of on his side. He’s stubbornly self-centered, though, and for some reason doesn’t trust me much.”
Look in a mirror lately, Sky thought. I don’t trust you, milady. “You don’t want him turning on you. Us.”
“Yes, he’s dangerous,” Lori said. She smiled. “I’m dangerous. You’re dangerous. Anyone worth recruiting to the Cause is dangerous.”
With that, she stood and left, leaving Sky unsure what he might do or say.
Shopping with Ying
[Carol Hancock POV]
Ying and I pulled into the parking lot of Macy’s Department Store in downtown Chicago in my Mercury Cougar. Ying Tien was an elegant young lady of sixteen years, composed, reserved, and a little bit shy. But she smiled at me. We were going shopping.
I’ll admit I was making up reasons to go shopping with Ying. In theory, I did this to support one of my scams. However, the real reason we went shopping was that I liked to shop.
My scam? Buy myself a gym and ditch Pete. The main funding for the gym would be Mr. Oldman. Bedazzled Mr. Oldman and his ample money supply were now all in my hands. My prospective gym manager and front man would be Greg Petroski, who I picked out of the crowd at Pete’s gym, specifically for this purpose. My twenty-three year old draft dodger wanted nothing more in the world than to own a gym of his own.
Greg’s friends knew Ying Tien as Ying Chen, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese businessman. Ying and Greg dated, or at least pretended to date. In a month or so, Ying’s wealthy Chinese daddy would decide to invest in Greg’s dream of a gym. I would fund the gym myself out of Mr. Oldman’s accounts, of course, after running the money through some complex bank arrangements. When I finished my scam, I would own the gym through Greg. I also planned to siphon off some of the equipment for my personal use, to give myself a decent private gym at my own house.
To pull this off, though, Ying had to present a convincing imitation of a wealthy you
ng Chinese woman. At this, she was manifestly unqualified, in so many ways. So we went shopping. This would be the third time in two weeks.
I understood enough about teenagers and fashion to know what she should be wearing, and I used the clerks liberally for what I didn’t know. I bought her clothes and stockings and shoes and underwear and jewelry. I got her expensive soap to use and had her spend a good hour at the make-up counter learning to do make-up properly. I took her to a hair salon to have her hair done. My efforts took all day, and by the time we finished she presented as a classy looking young woman.
It took Ying about an hour to catch the shopping spirit. She started out afraid and determined to hate me, but something about having a dangerous man (man, damn it) protecting her and buying presents for her is hard for a sixteen-year-old girl to resist.
The clerks held a different opinion. They thought I was her sugar daddy and they didn’t approve. They also didn’t approve of a white man with a yellow girl. I ignored all their disapproval.
I, of course, loved it. I enjoyed shopping and had little opportunity to enjoy it since my transformation. Shopping for myself was business rather than pleasure, when I had to function under so many disguises. I found it difficult to take pleasure in dressing the over-muscled thing that was my body.
Shopping for Ying was different. She was young, attractive and mine. I loved to buy things for her. I had plenty of money, and what better use for money than to dress her up and make her smile?
“So is Greg behaving himself?” I asked her as we got out of the car in the Macy’s parking lot.
Ying turned away and didn’t answer. Greg understood he was supposed to be a perfect gentleman with Ying. I made that clear. However, he seemed constitutionally unable to resist taking advantage of someone as sweet and vulnerable as Ying. He would cause problems if I didn’t keep an eye on him, so I checked with Ying at every opportunity. This wouldn’t be the first time I needed to knock Greg back.
The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Four Page 7