Her Beautiful Monster
Page 16
Jarrod rolled his eyes.
“Do you always see everything in terms of symbolism and metaphor?” Julia asked Ariel.
“Just my way of getting through boredom,” Ariel said cheerfully.
“Or deflecting from the killing,” I said.
“Ehh.” Ariel shrugged. “That’s just the job.”
“And that’s the problem,” I said. “ ‘Just a job’ should not be about shooting people so casually.”
“Maybe,” Ariel said, “I’m just covering up my own inner darkness and emptiness with forced cheer, because otherwise I’d eat a bullet.”
Julia and I looked at Ariel, then we saw that Jarrod was shaking his head.
“Uh-uh,” he said. “She really doesn’t feel a thing about shooting people. What you see is the real thing, brother.”
Julia reached over and lightly brushed Ariel on the cheek, an odd gesture of pity and tenderness. Damage recognized damage, and Julia could only offer kindness where Ariel might not be capable. Ariel closed her eyes and purred like a cat. Or a panther. I still remembered that Julia would not hesitate to slit Ariel’s throat the moment she posed a danger to us.
Jarrod introduced the other two men as Reyes and Mikkelford. They went into the panic room and carried out the crates with the guns.
“You did the right thing, brother,” Jarrod said. “Took cover while the professionals took care of business.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a relief to be patronized by a private military contractor.”
Jarrod grinned behind his mirrored sunglasses.
“Guilty Prince and People’s Princess are secure,” he declared to his earpiece.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“That’s the code names we have for you two,” Ariel said.
“That’s what you call Julia and me?”
“We have a code name for everybody,” Ariel said. “Marcie Holder’s ‘the Siren.’ Mark Oldham is ‘the Stoner.’ ”
“Too easy,” I said
“Olivia Wong is ‘Dragon Digital.’ David Okri is ‘the Scholar.’ Benjamin Lee is ‘Chaotic Tech.’ ”
“Sounds like you got everyone’s number,” I said. “What about Ken and Clive?”
“The Thompson Twins,” Jarrod said.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what you call Roger,” I said.
“Nothing printable,” Jarrod said. “Colonel Collins personally thought of that one for your boss.”
“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” I said.
“So what does he call Cheryl?” Julia said.
“The Muse.”
So Collins still carried a torch for Cheryl, the one that got away. Everyone had their unrequited love. I almost felt for Laird Collins there. Almost.
Reyes and Mikkelford gathered in the living room to regroup.
“I need you to clean up the blood and take the bodies out of here,” Jarrod said. “We were never here.”
“So you’re taking the guns and the car, then?” I asked.
“Our mission is to escort you,” Ariel said.
“Sorry, what?”
“You drive the SUV with the stash to the safe house. We’re your guard. Once we get there, stand by.”
“Wait, once we drop the guns off,” I said, “Julia and I are done.”
“Where are you gonna go?” Ariel asked. “With the fires in the hills, the 405, the 105, and all the roads are gonna be jammed up. You won’t be getting out of the Valley for hours, if not overnight.”
“That’s just terrific,” I said.
“You’ll be safer cooling your heels at the safe house until the freeways open up anyway,” Jarrod said.
I did not want to hang around these professional killers longer than I needed to. There was the possibility that we would be drawn into something else.
“Hang on, you’re the professionals in this top-secret black-bag bollocks.”
“Sorry, babe,” Ariel said. “You took the job. You’re part of the deal now.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
Behind me, Kali laughed and clapped her hands.
“We’ll want to exfil ASAP,” Jarrod said. “Brush fire’s spreading and heading this way. The hills are going to be covered in smoke by sundown. Traffic’s going to be a bitch, and you can forget about getting a cab or an Uber to come pick you up anywhere tonight.”
“Look at it this way,” Ariel said. “This is your only ticket out of here. With us riding shotgun, you’re safer in all of LA than the President in a motorcade down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Reyes and Mikkelford loaded the guns into the back of the two black SUVs.
I didn’t trust Interzone with our safety. I took out my smartphone and dialed one of our own.
“Ravi, how’s it hangin’, mate?”
“Benjamin, I may need your help.”
“Can it wait? I’m between locations right now.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Still out in sunny, airy Venice,” he said. “The winds are making everything a bit odd, I have to say. Colder than usual, smell of ash in the air from the brush fires.”
“What happened to the self-driving car?”
“I crashed it.”
“You what?”
“I finally narked off the AI. Gave it so many complex commands it finally kacked itself, and the car drove into a wall. Air bag deployed and everything! Stonkin’ good time!”
He sounded awfully cheerful.
“Mission accomplished!” he declared.
“Isn’t crashing the car in a wealthy neighborhood a bit drastic, what with the public hazard and all that?”
“I picked a secluded spot.”
“Aren’t you in trouble?”
“Nah, mate! This is the job I was hired to do! And I bagged a bonus because I did it sooner than they expected! Result!”
“Why this self-driving AI, though? Loads of other carmakers are doing them.”
“Well, they were considering this one for military and governmental personnel. It has to be foolproof and hack-proof, and we all know there’s no such thing.”
“Ah. So what happens now?”
“They go back to the drawing board. Me? I’m waiting for my ride and the crew to come recover the car, take it back to the lab, and review my diagnostics to unpick all the shit I put the AI through. What do you need?”
“Julia and I are stuck with an SUV full of military-grade guns with Interzone as our escort.”
“Wa-hey! My kind of jam!”
“We need backup.”
“Say no more, mate. Where are you now?”
“About to leave the Hollywood Hills.”
“All right. Once you do, keep driving. Have Julia text me the make and registration number of the car. I’m going to track you. I’ll get back to you when I’m back at my computer.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Drones, dude!” His enthusiasm was over the top. “And not just any drones. High-altitude drones with satellite imaging! I get to field test them for this other company. Ultra surveillance! Give you a heads-up where you’re going.”
“Don’t take too long.”
“Word of advice: keep the radio on as you drive. Keep the traffic news on. Some nasty jams all around ’cause of the brush fires.”
“Yes, I know. That’s all everyone’s been talking about for hours.”
“Race the devil wind, mate!”
I saw Ariel approach the S&M wardrobe and look at the corset and boots Julia had worn to seduce me. She held the corset against her face and inhaled. Was she sniffing for traces of Julia and me?
“Ariel,” Jarrod called from the living room. “We’re leaving, you freak.”
Ariel took the corset, knickers, and boots Julia had worn and slung them over her shoulder as she came out.
“Souvenir,” she said, winking.
NINETEEN
From Olivia’s recordings:
“Time to go clubbing in Wan Chai.
&nbs
p; “I found out where Brother Bull’s favorite club was and arranged to go with some of the wives. God knows they were bored enough to want to get out of the house while their husbands were off at some meeting or seeing their mistresses or usual chickens.
“Oh, when I say ‘chickens,’ that’s Hong Kong slang for prostitutes. Sorry for the confusion. And of course the wives hated them, but not as much as they hated the mistresses. God forbid that the husband fell in love with his favorite chicken and threatened to leave his wife. No, the risk of that lay with the mistresses. These wives lived in their own states of war, against their husbands, and against any woman who threatened to steal their husbands and their money and status. Is it any wonder that I’m reluctant to get married? My parents despaired, but I’d rather be financially independent first, thank you. Benjamin I can at least predict and control. I’m out of his league, and he’s so shocked and grateful to have landed me that he would never cheat on me, no matter how much we rib each other. The more he jokes about finding someone else or a bit on the side, the more I feel confident that he won’t. He finds my kind of controlled chaos too much fun, and he’s not going to find it anywhere else. I chose Benjamin for his loyalty, no matter how much of a troublemaker he likes to be. He enjoys me driving him around the bend with confused lust, and I enjoy his attempts to ruffle my feathers. It’s all very perverse, I know.
“Anyway, we dressed to the nines, in our tightest dresses and shortest skirts, and showed up like a posse of bored rich women from Central in the mood for a bit of slumming. Here was where I began to draw both threads of my inquiry together without anyone on either side noticing. This was a club where pop stars, actors, and yuppies rubbed shoulders with gangsters, dealers, and hustlers, where hard liquor and cocktails flowed, joints were lit, coke was snorted in the loos, and bonding was achieved through copious karaoke matches. Brother Bull recognized some of the wives I was with, which means he knew their husbands. Good to know. Mental note made.
“Brother Bull was in his early forties, had the stocky body of a boxer, with a round, friendly face—because not all gangsters looked like snarling comic book villains—sported a polite crew cut, and wore sunglasses even at night. He had risen up the ranks ever since he joined the On Wah tong at the age of eighteen, and had seen his share of gang wars and upheavals. He was a bit wistful for the old days, when they had hundreds of recruits at their beck and call. He had tattoos to cover up all the knife scars he’d gotten from the fights he was in during his early years in the gangs. These days, recruitment numbers were down. They didn’t have rickshaw boys, coolies, construction workers, and shampoo boys to draw their numbers from anymore. The old clichés of guns, drugs, and prostitution rings that fueled crime movies are falling by the wayside. The gangs were now moving into lower-risk high-reward venues like selling stolen and forged goods online, selling black market seafood and fake upmarket fish. The penalties for those were not as bad as a bullet in the back of the neck. No Triad was going to be sent to jail for twenty years for getting caught with cheap tilapia treated to look like lobster meat. Being aboveground and not in jail was the preferred state for gangsters like Brother Bull these days. You can’t blame them, really.
“We danced and flirted with Brother Bull and his friends, but they all seemed to observe the ‘look but don’t touch’ rule with us. They knew whose wives my posse of women were. Brother Bull was in a jolly mood after five cocktails and was perfectly happy to tell me about the deal he had going with the Chinese government. They still used the Triad for information, to occasionally lean on people, even duff them up. None of this was a surprise to me, given what I already knew about what had been going on in the last few years. It was merely confirmation. I welcomed it.
“I had bought a new burner smartphone, and created a new ChattyMe account. Everyone got very chummy by the end of the evening and exchanged contact details. That should be useful.”
TWENTY
It was dark by the time we got through the traffic jams and left the hills, arrived in North Hollywood. The brushfire smoke gave the sky a reddish tinge. The sounds of helicopters and sirens filled the air for miles. For those of you not familiar with Los Angeles, North Hollywood was not the glamorous hub of show business and movie companies, but a rather faceless residential basin full of anonymous Californian houses and shops in the San Fernando Valley. There was no sense of history here, only a kind of dystopian eternal present, a blank slate where you might have quiet dullness in the heat, or, as with tonight, a dry, cold wind blowing from the Santa Anas and roving gangs of looters enacting a minor Armageddon. We actually heard the occasional crack of gunfire in the distance.
“Santa Ana winds, man,” Ariel said as she made a right turn into Cahuenga Boulevard. “Makes everyone a little crazy.”
Jarrod grunted.
Reyes was listening to the police bands. Turned out he was their communications expert. He and Mikkelford communicated from the other SUV via radio.
“Sounds like we got out of the hills just in time, folks,” Reyes said. “Cops, emergency services—the brush fire gettin’ worse means the 405 is closed off, the 105 is closed off. We’re boxed in down here in the Valley.”
“Not good,” Jarrod said. “Best option is we get to the safe house and hold out till the morning.”
“Damn,” Reyes said. “ICE is doing a sweep in the Valley tonight.”
“ICE?” I asked.
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Reyes said, listening on his headset. “Roundin’ up illegal immigrants in their houses starting around Oxnard Boulevard.”
“Picked a hell of a time for that,” Mikkelford said. “What with the looting going on.”
“They must have been planning it for a while and decided not to let the brush fires stop ’em,” Reyes said. “A lot of people are going to be holed up in their houses tonight. The ones that don’t speak English or know their rights will get scared into opening their doors when they don’t have to, and that’s when ICE’ll have ’em.”
“Is that even legal?” I asked.
“A lot of gray areas here,” Reyes said. “They’ll say they’re after unregistered immigrants who committed felonies, but they’re sweeping up families, too. You don’t have to let ’em in the door unless they have a court order. You don’t have to say anything to ’em.”
“Land of the free, home of the brave,” Ariel said, full of sarcasm. Of course she could drive and be sarcastic at the same time.
“Fuckers are grabbing people when they leave church or a courthouse,” Reyes said, seething. “Arresting a grandmother who’s getting her brain tumor treated at a hospital. All because they’re here illegally. Soft targets before they go after the supposed violent criminals and gangs. Total gestapo shit!”
“Committing a criminal act makes an illegal eligible for deportation,” Mikkelford said. “You know that’s the law.”
“Entering the country illegally is technically a criminal act,” Jarrod said. “So they are criminals. Just saying.”
“Hell, they’re arresting people who are in this country legally! They arrest green card holders! How do you explain that? Huh? What the hell happened to the difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law? Fuck all of you!” Reyes spat. “Shit.”
“If they grab this many people in a sweep,” I said, “where do they take them? Surely they don’t take them to the border right away.”
“They take ’em to a holding center somewhere in Arizona, out of the state, then they keep ’em there till they can deport ’em, and who knows how long that can take,” Reyes said.
“They sound like black sites,” Julia said.
“You say ‘tom-ah-to,’ we say ‘tom-ay-to,’ ” Ariel said.
“Fact is, ICE’ll lie, say anything to scare people,” Reyes said. “They’ll kick down the door and raid a house even if they don’t have a warrant.”
“Worried you got an uncle who’s gonna get grabbed and deported to Mexico?” Mikkelford
asked with a chuckle.
“Fuck you, man,” Reyes said. “My family’s Puerto Rican. And they live in New York.”
This only made things even worse for Julia and me. We were here without the need for visas since we had British passports, but here we were riding in a car full of guns, with a group of heavily armed mercenaries, the most conspicuous thing you could possibly imagine driving around Los Angeles during a virtual state of emergency, with riots and looting, police making arrests all over. Julia could plead ignorance, that she was a tourist who went along with her dodgy dark-skinned boyfriend, i.e. me, and what the bloody hell was I doing in possession of the most illegal-looking firearms you could possibly think of? I would be lucky if I just got deported. I could end up being interrogated under suspicion of terrorism and sent to Guantánamo and forgotten about.
Great, now I was seeing the Pandavas’ army fighting against the Kauravas’ army, straight out of the Mahabharata. I really didn’t need the lamp-lit streets of North Hollywood to be livened up by this vision. The soldiers were shouting as they rushed into battle with their swords and spears, but I heard only silence. North Hollywood really could be eerily quiet after dark.
As we drove, a small crowd of kids were smashing the window of a sporting goods store and making away with sneakers.
“Look at all that,” Jarrod said. “Just total godless chaos. It’s like Babylon. This is why Colonel Collins is right. We need a cleansing fire to burn all this darkness away.”
“You really believe that?” I said.
“Colonel Collins is the one with the vision. He believes we’re working to bring the Second Kingdom to Earth. Gotta be better than this cesspool. I’ll do my part.”
“Do you believe that all the people you kill are going to hell?” I asked.
“That’s above my paygrade, brother,” Jarrod said. “Better to let God sort them out.”
“So you’re just following orders, then?” The hackles were rising in my voice. “Is that how you justify it to yourself?”
“I’m doing a job,” Jarrod said. “And a lot of the people we killed were trying to kill us at the time.”
“Including the women and children in those villages you shot up?” I asked.