And when she was sure it was safe, she walked to her car, and then she drove back to the smokestack district.
CHAPTER FIVE
DIEGO
Diego was down at the Loro, sharking the pool tables while he waited for Garcia to show up with Batista Almeida’s money. The bartender had the radio on, tuned to a news station; the newsman was going on about the electrical troubles that had been plaguing the city the last few days. That was the phrase they used—“electrical troubles.” Everybody Diego knew was calling it what it was: blackout. The lights had been growing dimmer and dimmer, and flickering sometimes. You’d hear the hum of a heater, and then, for two or three seconds, you wouldn’t.
The news was blaming it all on the AFF, of course. Probably got their information from the city. The city was always blaming the AFF or the robots for their own damn problems.
Diego was in the middle of a thirty-dollar hustle when one of Mr. Cabrera’s robots showed up, sliding in through the maintenance hatch next to the jukebox. The guy Diego was scamming, some poor lost soul from Madrid, saw it first, jerking his head up and then missing his shot by a mile.
“The hell?” he asked.
Diego looked over his shoulder and scowled when he saw the robot. One of the newer ones, egg-shaped and covered in lines of lights. Its shell had been carved up with that flower from the Florencia’s sign. Mr. Cabrera left his calling card on anything he could.
The lights glowed green. It had a message.
“What the fuck is that doing in here?” the Spanish man asked.
“They come in sometimes.” Diego leaned his pool cue against the table. “Excuse me.”
He walked away. The robot whirred behind him. Diego could feel the Spanish man watching after them both, but Diego knew better than to finish up the game if Mr. Cabrera was waiting.
“Hey!” the Spanish man yelled as Diego pulled open the door leading outside. “Where are you going?”
Diego ignored him. He went out onto the street, the robot tagging along like a puppy. This part of town, the streets stayed empty, even during the day.
“I’m waiting for Garcia,” Diego said.
The lights on the robot’s back flickered.
Diego sighed, rolled his eyes. “Come on.” He led the robot down the street a couple of blocks until he found an alley where no one would bother them.
“All right, you little asshole,” he said. “Show me what you’ve got.”
The lights flickered again. The damn thing wanted authentication. Jesus. This wasn’t going to be anything Diego wanted to hear.
He pressed his palm against the robot’s sensor. A pause, then the lights went blue, and the robot spoke in Mr. Cabrera’s voice.
“Are you alone?”
“Yeah, man, I’m alone.”
The robot stalled out, lights flickering again. It didn’t like his answer.
“Yes,” Diego said, all proper like he was talking to Mr. Cabrera himself.
The lights went still. “I need you to come to the Florencia as soon as you get this. Not as soon as you’re able. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Confirm you got the message.”
Diego kicked at the gravel in the alley. Garcia was going to be fucking pissed, showing up at the Loro without a contact. No way to say that to the robot, though. It only understood two things: “Yes” and everything else, which pretty much amounted to “no.”
“Yes,” Diego said.
The robot didn’t move, and for a minute Diego thought he might have answered wrong. But then with a click and a whir it shot straight up in the air and disappeared into the dome lights. Dim, of course, dimmer than they ought to be.
As soon as you get this.
The Florencia wasn’t far from here, maybe twenty minutes on the train. He left the alley, heading for the closest station. It never occurred to him not to.
Mr. Cabrera asked him to show up, he showed up. The man had seen something in him when he was a little kid—a hardness, he’d told Diego once, a strength that the other kids lacked. And so Mr. Cabrera had dragged him out of the streets. He’d saved Diego’s life. Coming when he was called was the least Diego could do.
* * * *
The Florencia’s CLOSED sign was blinking in the window when Diego got there, washed out by daytime lights. Mr. Cabrera closed the Florencia sometimes in the afternoon. He liked having the cooks make a special lunchtime steak just for him.
Diego banged on the front door of the Florencia until Mateo answered, his pale, thin face set into his usually snooty frown. “You’re late,” he said.
“I was at the Loro, doing my fucking job. Let me in.”
Mateo sneered, but he pulled the door open. The Florencia was eerie when it was all shut down like this, no afternoon regulars smoking cigarettes while the girls danced onstage.
“Making you stick around, huh?” Diego asked as he sauntered in. The stage lights were still on, he noticed, that dark murky blue that was supposed to make the girls look their best.
“Someone had to be here to let you in.” Mateo slunk back over to his place at the podium. A stack of menus sat waiting for the evening crowd.
“He’s back in the office,” Mateo added.
Diego didn’t answer, just made his way first through the dining room and then through the swinging doors that led into the narrow hallway that took you out to the docks. Mr. Cabrera’s office was the first door on the left. Diego knocked once to be polite and then went in.
“I got your message,” he said.
Mr. Cabrera was at his desk, smoking a cigarette with slow, considered movements. A record played in the background, some jazzy number Diego didn’t recognize.
“Good afternoon, Diego,” Mr. Cabrera said. “I trust it’s been going well?”
“Sure.” Diego lingered in the doorway. It was funny, how Mr. Cabrera could make him nervous like that.
“I’m sorry I had to call you away from the Loro,” Mr. Cabrera said. “But I have a job for you.”
“Yeah?” he said.
“Sit, sit.” Mr. Cabrera gestured with his cigarette, the pale smoke drifting in thick lines through the room.
Diego’s skin was already crawling, but he couldn’t let Mr. Cabrera know that. Showing Mr. Cabrera his weaknesses always made him feel like an orphan again, like Mr. Cabrera would decide he didn’t want to take Diego in after all.
He sat.
“I had a meeting today,” Mr. Cabrera said. “With a little weasel of a man. An engineer from the city.”
“That so?”
“It is indeed, Diego. He’d been trying to get in contact with me since yesterday, in fact, claiming he had something that could destroy an old acquaintance of mine.”
Diego shifted in his seat, waiting. He wondered how involved this job was going to be.
“You know who that acquaintance is, Diego?”
“No, sir,” said Diego, “I don’t.”
A pause. Mr. Cabrera breathed in his cigarette smoke.
“Marianella Luna,” he said.
Oh. Her. Mr. Cabrera’d had it out for her ever since her husband had passed six months ago. She’d taken up with Ortiz and his ag domes, a little scheme that threatened Mr. Cabrera’s whole wintertime smuggling enterprise.
“You finally ready to take care of her?” Diego fucking hoped not. Too high-profile, and he hated that kind of work.
“No.” The answer was slow to come. Considered. “At least not at this juncture.”
At least not ever, Diego hoped.
“No, your target is the man I was supposed to meet with this afternoon. He’d promised me a way to remove Lady Luna from the equation, without the risks of our—usual methods.”
Just come out and say it, Diego thought, feeling hollow. Killing people.
“Unfortunately, he showed up for our meeting empty-handed. The story he gave me was elaborately far-fetched—he claimed one of my call girls ran off with his proof.” Mr. Cabrera laughed. “Suggested I search the whorehouses. I did, but we didn’t turn anything up.”
“Proof of what?” Diego asked.
“Come again?”
“You said the girl ran off with his proof. What was it for?”
“I’ve no idea, which is what I need you for. He refuses to tell me outright—wants the reward for his effort, I suppose. The man’s a complete idiot. Too used to dealing with city bureaucrats. But I’m sure with a bit of your persuasive techniques he’ll give up the information easily enough.”
“Why would a whore steal proof from him?”
“Feeling chatty today, Diego?”
Diego shrugged.
“I doubt any of my girls was involved at all. Who knows what the man was playing at, but it didn’t work. Which is why he needs to be punished. No one toys with me like that.”
That was really what this was about, Diego knew. Not just getting the information from some city engineer. Mr. Cabrera was big into honor and vengeance and punishing the stupid. It was a code Diego had learned after Mr. Cabrera had taken him in, but not one he’d ever completely understood.
Mr. Cabrera rummaged through his desk drawers and pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded over three times. He handed it to Diego, and Diego opened it up. It was an address.
“He lives there. I don’t know if he has a family or not.”
Diego didn’t say anything.
“I don’t need him dead, but I’d like the information before sunup tomorrow. Do whatever you feel is necessary to get it.”
Diego folded the paper as small as he could make it and then slipped it into his wallet. “Sure,” he said. Then, “And his name? Just to make sure I got the right guy.”
“Oh, of course.” Mr. Cabrera smiled. “Sala. Pablo Sala.” He stood up, and Diego did the same. They shook hands. Always the businessman, Mr. Cabrera was.
“Feel free to take one of the cars,” Mr. Cabrera said. “You know you’re one of the few men I trust with them.”
And Diego couldn’t help himself, hearing that. He smiled.
* * * *
The dome lights were dim by the time Diego arrived at Sala’s house, despite it being the middle of the afternoon. A boon for Diego, since darkness made him seem more sinister, which got the mark talking faster. About the only benefit to these blackouts.
The houses cast long shadows across the patchwork yards. Diego drove past Sala’s house and then parked half a block down. His gun was a weight in its holster.
Get in, get it over with.
The houses all seemed abandoned, their doors and windows shut tight. Diego walked up to Sala’s front door. Rang the doorbell.
A minute passed. Another. Diego shifted his weight, started looking for ways to break in. Maybe Sala wasn’t here. That was always easier anyway, hiding out in the dining room until they got back home.
The door creaked open.
“Yes?”
“You Pablo Sala?”
The man in the doorway blinked, his eyes round and enormous behind his glasses. “Yes,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I work for Mr. Cabrera.” Diego smiled, although he didn’t do it to look friendly. “Sent me to get some information out of you.”
“Oh, well, I don’t—”
“You mind if I come in? It’s fucking freezing out here.”
“I guess—”
Diego pushed through the doorway. Sala turned and stared at him. Diego pulled the door shut. Flexed the fingers in his right hand.
Sala took a step back. “Look,” he said. “I’m not ready to meet with him yet. I’ve got to get the documents back first, okay? Some little bitch stole them—”
Diego lashed out at Sala and hit him square in the chest. Sala went flying backward and hit the floor hard.
“He doesn’t give a damn about your documents,” Diego said. “Just tell me what was on them.”
Sala scrambled backward. “I told him to search—”
“He didn’t find anything.”
Sala’s face darkened, and Diego kicked him in the side. Not too hard, not enough to do any permanent damage, but enough to hurt. Sala gave a yelp of pain and curled in on himself.
“He wants to know what’s in the documents.” Diego pulled out his gun. “He thinks you’re wasting his time.” And then he dropped down to his knees and slammed the gun across Sala’s face, hard enough that Sala’s nose cracked and blood gushed over his mouth.
“I’m not, I swear!” Sala tried to squirm away, but Diego pinned him down. Sala’s eyes were wide with fear, but his voice didn’t tremble when he spoke. “I’m not stupid. I want credit for this. I put my job on the line. Does Cabrera really think he’s the only one who has thugs in this town? If Alejo Ortiz found out—”
Diego paused, ready to hit Sala again. “The councilman? The guy from the commercials?”
“Yes!” Sala fumed. “But I’m not telling you any more, Mr.—”
Diego struck him rather than offer a name.
Sala bucked against the floor. “I can get the proof again,” he gasped. A few drops of blood sprayed across Diego’s face. “She wouldn’t let them go missing this long, no way in hell. Probably paid off the girl who stole them from me.” Sala pushed himself up to sitting. His arms trembled. Diego watched with that cold detachment he’d cultivated over the years. It wasn’t something that Mr. Cabrera’d had to teach him either—that, he’d learned as a child, scrabbling for his survival.
“That’s why you couldn’t find them,” Sala said, peering up at Diego, his eyes already turning dark and swollen. “The girl’d taken them over to her.”
“None of Mr. Cabrera’s girls would do that. They’re loyal.”
Sala laughed. Blood oozed between his teeth. “So maybe it wasn’t one of his girls. Maybe it was someone pretending, ever think of that? I bet some detective sent his secretary after me. Tell him to shake down the PI firms.”
Diego’s heart stopped beating. He took a step toward Sala.
“What?” he said.
“The girl who ran off with the proof!” Sala rubbed at his temple. “God, I should have seen it earlier. Marianella hired someone—”
“What’d she look like?” Diego wrapped his hand around the gun’s grip. Properly. The way you grip a gun for shooting. His thoughts whirred in panic. “The girl who ran off with your proof?”
“Why does it matter?” Blood gleamed on Sala’s face. “I told you, just go to the PI firms—”
“It matters.”
“I don’t kn-know,” he stuttered. “Young. Good-looking. She was wearing red lipstick.”
Diego thought about waking up in Eliana’s bed after a night out, his face and neck smeared with red. Red on the pillows and the sheets.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Diego stared at Sala, and Sala crawled backward across the floor, eyes darting back and forth. Looking for some weapon, probably. Diego couldn’t stop shaking. How could she be so stupid? So fucking stupid. He’d told her to stay away from Mr. Cabrera. That fucking PI who’d hired her had told her to stay away from Mr. Cabrera.
“You tell Cabrera,” Sala said. “Tell Cabrera about the girl. Once he finds her, then he’ll find the documents, I swear—”
Diego lifted his gun and shot him.
He did it without thinking. It was the idea of Mr. Cabrera finding out about Eliana that moved his hand, that pulled the trigger. If Sala was dead, he couldn’t tell Mr. Cabrera himself.
Diego stood up and reholstered his gun. Sala’s blood crept across the floor. Diego always felt disoriented after it happened, like he wanted to curl up and go to sleep. It’d been that way since he was a kid,
but you did what you had to. Diego remembered the dismantled robot, the way its insides had glittered in the studio lights. It was the same thing he had just done, really, only broadcast on television. Maybe that was why he’d watched it.
Diego left Sala on the floor and walked out of the house. The street was still empty. No cars, no people. Just another desolate Hope City neighborhood.
The lights were still too dim.
Mr. Cabrera wouldn’t be happy about Sala’s death. Diego would have to come up with some excuse. But at least Mr. Cabrera wouldn’t find out about Eliana. At least he wouldn’t go looking for her.
Diego hoped.
CHAPTER SIX
ELIANA
Eliana waded through the golden grass, the train rumbling away in the distance. The brown envelope was tucked inside her coat. So was her gun.
She still couldn’t quite believe it had worked, the grab-and-run back at the Florencia. She’d gone back to her office afterward, locking the door and keeping the CLOSED sign displayed. Then she sat at her desk with the lights off and smoked a cigarette to calm her nerves. The envelope sat on the desk and seemed to hum along with the buzzing in Eliana’s head. She wanted to look. What could it hurt, as long as she didn’t tell anyone? She’d even held the envelope up to the weak, dim dome light filtering through her window, looked at the outline the document created against the brown paper.
In the end, she didn’t do it. Lady Luna had paid her too much. That meant it was probably something Eliana didn’t want to know about.
Now it was late in the day, coming on into evening, and her adrenaline had mostly worn off after a glass of beer and a couple of cigarettes down at Julio’s. The dusky light was both brighter and more subtle here than in the city proper. Soft and glowing like golden dust. It was a troubling contrast to the city lights, which had been dim and flickery lately.
Lady Luna’s house was as stark as Eliana remembered. She pressed her thumb against the doorbell and waited. Her heart fluttered. She didn’t know why she was nervous—something about that sea of golden grass, the imposing house, the whisper of wealth everywhere around her. Or maybe she thought Cabrera would come slinking out of the shadows, a gun pointed at her head.
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