by Rachel Caine
As he pulled the brake, she looked over at him and said, “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For…not trying to make me believe he’s guilty.”
Borden shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s guilty. And what I think doesn’t matter, it’s what you think. You took on the job to have the resources to find out, right? You should use them.”
“I intend to.”
“Even though he told you not to try?”
She smiled slightly, and tasted bitterness. “Especially since he said that.”
Borden finished the business of unbuckling himself from the seat, turning off the engine, and handing her the keys before he asked, “Are you going to see him again? Even though he told you not to go back?”
“I don’t do everything I’m told,” she shot back, and got out of the car.
She could have sworn he muttered, “I think you mean anything,” but when she checked, his face was polite and bland, and he had the good sense not to smirk about having the last word.
Out of habit, she grabbed a paper from the dispenser near the mailboxes, then collected the daily mail carrier’s allotment of bills and circulars. Took the stairs. She had started taking the stairs again as soon as she was sure the sutures wouldn’t tear loose, and now she was nearly back up to strength, able to trot up the six flights at a good clip without elevating her heart rate more than a few beats a minute. Borden loped next to her without breathing hard, too. Like Lucia, he was a runner. She wondered if he was a swimmer, too.
She put the vision of Borden in a Speedo out of her head with a heroic effort.
Inside the apartment she dumped the mail on the kitchen table as she poured herself a tall glass of orange juice, then another for Borden when she remembered her manners. She sorted through things one-handed, absentmindedly, thinking over how McCarthy had looked, how he’d acted…
She stopped in the act of shoving the newspaper aside and pulled it slowly toward her, then unfolded the front page.
“What?” Borden asked.
She held up a finger for silence, reading, and then turned the front page toward him and pointed to the black-and-white photo of a woman on the front. “Her,” she said. “I recognize her.”
“What?”
“I followed her last night.”
She went back to the article.
Wendy Blankenship, 42, was found dead in an alley near the bar where she worked. She was last seen yesterday evening at six o’clock by co-workers, who described it as a “normal day.” “She didn’t seem different or anything,” said Janelle Vincent, who covers alternate night shifts at Jaye’s Tavern. “She just clocked out and went home like usual. It’s terrible, you know? She was just getting her life back together. She was like a den mother around here, we’re going to miss her so much.”
Police have not released the details, but have confirmed that they believe Blankenship’s death is a homicide, and are searching for witnesses to put together a timeline of events leading up to her death.
There was no mention of time of death, but Jazz had a sick feeling that she would have been one of the last people to see Wendy Blankenship alive. She remembered Wendy checking her lipstick and walking down the street to the building. Buzzing the intercom.
Last one on the bottom left.
“You knew,” she said, and looked up at Borden. He paused in the act of raising his orange juice to his lips. “You knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Don’t give me that crap! Why else would you send me?”
He put the glass down carefully and extended his hand for the paper. She watched him read the entire article, face composed and emotions hidden, and when he was done he folded the paper again and set it on the table between them without meeting her eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know why we sent you there.”
“Bullshit. Why didn’t you have me stop her? Save her? I was right there!”
He looked up, then, and she saw the suffering in his eyes. “I don’t know, Jazz.”
She stared at him for a few long seconds, then reached over and picked up the cordless phone and dialed a number from memory. “Yeah,” she said to the woman who answered. “I need to speak to Detective Stewart. I have some information about a murder.”
“Don’t,” Borden said.
“It’s worse if I wait,” she said to him. “They’ll have surveillance footage, security-camera video, something. If Stewart thinks I’m hiding something…”
“You can’t do this.”
“Why didn’t you save her?” she screamed at him.
He looked back at her, stark and pale, and shook his head. “Because we can’t save everybody,” he said, and he sounded just as sick as she felt. “Because it isn’t possible. You know that, Jazz.”
“Where the hell does this stuff come from?” she demanded. “All this…this…bullshit! Go here, watch this, videotape this—? Who tells you where to send me? Who tells you why?”
She was so intent on his answer that the appearance of Lucia in the kitchen doorway made her flinch. Lucia, looking sleek and dark and dangerous, put down her black nylon bag and backpack, crossed her arms, and said, “I knocked. I guess you were too busy screaming at the top of your lungs to hear.” She transferred that fierce black look to Borden. “She asked you a question, Counselor.”
“You, too?” he murmured.
“Yes. Me, too. I’m just as tired as she is of the cloak-and-dagger, and I’d be willing to bet I’m just all-around more tired, period. Tell us, or get out and take your red envelopes with you.” Lucia couldn’t possibly have a clue what they were arguing about, but you’d never have known it from the self-possession she displayed—then again, hell, for all Jazz knew, Lucia had the apartment wired for sound and vision. Maybe she knew everything.
Maybe she always did.
Borden looked from one of them to the other, wordlessly, and Jazz didn’t blink. Neither, so far as she could tell, did Lucia.
“I need to make a phone call,” he said.
“Then dial,” Lucia said softly. “Before we pick up the phone and tell Detective Stewart everything we know about Gabriel, Pike & Laskins. You put my partner in a compromising position, Mr. Borden. I don’t think I like that very much. Make amends.”
He visibly swallowed. Jazz might have felt sorry for him, except the fierce gratitude and pride she was feeling for Lucia crowded all of that out.
He reached in his pocket and retrieved his cell phone, and dialed. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “It’s Borden. I need to take Callender and Garza to the next level.”
Silence. His eyes fixed on the newspaper lying folded on the table. The picture of Wendy Blankenship, who hadn’t survived the night that Jazz Callender barely remembered after the blur of drinks.
“Yes,” he said. “I understand.” He hung up and looked at each of them in turn, Jazz last. His eyes were asking her for something, but she couldn’t understand what it was, and she wasn’t in the mood to grant him any favors anyway. “We need to go downstairs,” he said. “Right now.”
“I just got off a plane,” Lucia said. “Mind if I change clothes first?”
“Actually, I do,” he said. “There’s a car waiting.”
“What?” For the first time, Jazz actually saw Lucia thrown off her stride. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Borden didn’t answer. Jazz, after a few unmoving seconds, answered for him.
“They knew,” she said. “They had to know all of this before it happened. Why else would they have a car here, now?”
“That’s insane,” Lucia said flatly.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Like hiring two people who don’t know each other. Like paying them to set up a detective agency and carry out assignments that don’t have any purpose. That’s insane, too. Remember?”
Lucia stared at her, a frown grooved over her eyebrows, a light in her eyes that Jazz hadn’t seen before. Wary. Mistrustful.
“Yeah,” Jazz agreed. “My point exactly.” She turned to Borden. “Let’s go see the wizard, Tin Man.”
It wasn’t just a car downstairs, it was a limousine. A big, black stretch limo, with tinted windows and a uniformed chauffeur who looked vaguely familiar. Jazz blinked at the sight of him—it was odd, seeing a stretch limo and a liveried driver on the streets of Kansas City—but it was Lucia who said, “We’ve met you before.”
The driver doffed his cap and nodded with military precision. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and Jazz remembered. Same driver from New York City, from the visit to the Gabriel, Pike & Laskins offices, only more formally dressed and captaining a bigger land yacht. He opened the back door and handed Lucia inside, then reached for Jazz, who avoided him and climbed in on her own.
Milo Laskins, Borden’s boss, was the sole occupant of the car. He was dressed in another natty suit, this one charcoal-gray, with a navy tie and a diamond stickpin.
“Ms. Garza. Ms. Callender.” Laskins offered them a gentlemanly nod. “I understand you have questions. That’s perfectly reasonable. I’m authorized to answer them.”
Jazz had been prepared to argue, but his easy, courteous manner threw her off stride. Not so Lucia, who stepped in to say, “Fine. Who are you?”
“That’s simpler than you might think,” Laskins said, and raised thick eyebrows. “I’m just like you. I’m an Actor.”
Jazz heard the capital A. Didn’t understand what it meant, but she heard the emphasis.
He tapped the thick, tinted divider behind him. The limo pulled into traffic, smooth as silk. Jazz fisted her hands. She felt helpless, moving out of control.
“Which means what, exactly?” Lucia asked. “Conspiracy theory dinner theater on the weekends?”
“I will give you a very simple overview of what we—or, more properly, the Cross Society—now know about the world, Ms. Garza. There are two kinds of people in it.”
“Only two?” Lucia murmured, sounding amused.
“For our purposes, yes. There are Actors and Chorus. At any given time on this planet, out of the billions of human lives being lived, only a handful—about ten thousand, all together—are doing anything that really matters on a larger scale. These are people we term Actors. Everyone else…” Laskins made a languid, elegant motion with one hand. “Chorus. Extras, if you will. It isn’t the same ten thousand from moment to moment, understand. Almost every life on Earth will experience at least one decision, one event in their life that has large ripples of consequence—almost everyone moves from Chorus to Actor once in their lives. But it turns out, rather unexpectedly, that once you begin to analyze the world in this manner you find that it doesn’t look as random as you would expect.”
“I don’t understand,” Lucia said. She did sound interested, though Jazz had ceased to have any investment somewhere around the Actor/Chorus explanation, which was a load of horseshit; she was waiting for Laskins to stop spinning fairy tales and get to the point.
Unexpectedly, Laskins focused his gaze on her.
“Do you?”
“Afraid not,” she said, and shrugged. He sighed.
“Have you ever heard the old adage, nothing succeeds like success? Or, it takes money to make money? They share a common theme. The more you have of one thing, the natural tendency is that similar things attract.”
“I have no idea what the hell you’re saying,” Jazz said. “Can we move on to the part where you tell me why you had me let a woman die last night? Because that’s the part I’m really fascinated about.”
Laskins’s smile vanished. He looked tired and old and, suddenly, unhappy. “I wish I could explain it to you in a way that made sense. I can’t, not really, but I’ll try.
“Certain people are never Chorus in this life, Jasmine. They are, quite simply, always Actors. Everything they do ripples and has consequences, even the smallest thing. They are rare, these…Leads. We have identified perhaps a hundred of them. The woman that you were asked to follow was a Lead, and you were there to counter a move by the opposition. It was the right move, but it simply failed.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“We put you in place to save her life.”
The limo made a right turn. Jazz glanced out the windows, half-claustrophobic, and saw that they were on the back side of the office building.
Circling the block.
She took a deep breath. “Hate to break it to you, but it didn’t work.”
“Yes,” Laskins said quietly. “I’d like to tell you that it was a foolproof system. It doesn’t always work out.”
“Doesn’t always work out?” Jazz repeated hotly. “She’s dead! If she’s so damn important and you knew she was in danger, why didn’t you use one of those—those Actors or Leads or whatever to protect her?”
Laskins leaned forward, fixed her with a look, and said, very softly, “We did.”
Borden sucked in a breath. Jazz looked sharply at him, but he didn’t say anything. He avoided her eyes.
“Are you telling me that I’m a—whatever?”
“Yes. A Lead. Both of you are. That’s why we chose you. That’s why we’ve financed you, and we’ve put you in a position to do things on our behalf. Because you can. Because you must.”
“Then I guess the fact that Wendy’s dead in the morgue is proof that you’re all insane,” Jazz said grimly. Lucia, next to her, was oddly quiet, watching Laskins. “If we’re so important, why the hell haven’t we made any difference? You know what? This is useless. You’re all crazy, and I’m out of here.”
She shoved on Borden, trying to get him to move, but he was more solid than he looked, and she was hampered by the close confines of the car. He didn’t look at her.
“You have made a difference,” Borden said. “Jazz, listen to me. I know what we’re saying sounds crazy—”
“Let me out!” Jazz was half-standing now, furious, reaching over Borden for the door handle. He grabbed her hand and held it, trying to get her to look at him; she flatly refused. She was shaking all over. “Dammit, I’m done, do you hear me? Let me the hell out now!”
But it wasn’t Borden who stopped her from getting out, it was Lucia. Lucia’s quiet voice, unnaturally calm. “The woman loading boxes in the van,” she said. “The first job we did for you. She was going to be killed?”
“If you hadn’t been there, yes. At least, we think so.”
“So we put the chaos in chaos theory,” Lucia said, leaning forward, hands clasped between her knees. “It’s like chess, isn’t it. You move us like pieces on a board. We’re pawns, protecting your bishops and knights and castles.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Laskins grunted in reply. “Pawns don’t rate this explanation. And although Wendy Blankenship had the potential to become important, she wasn’t a castle.”
“If you’re any good at chess,” Lucia continued, “then you know there are a limited number of outcomes when you have three pieces interacting—especially if the point is to take one of the pieces off the board. Why didn’t you warn Jazz and let her save Wendy?”
“None of this is an exact science, Ms. Garza. Every action, by any of the Actors at the moment, can turn events. We can’t warn against specifics, because we only are sure of generalities. We knew Ms. Blankenship was marked for death, and indeed, we couldn’t find an outcome in which she didn’t die. But we chose the moment most likely to make a difference. If events had gone a bit differently, if their Actor had made an error, Jazz would have saved her. But sometimes it isn’t possible.” To his credit, Laskins sounded almost as if he gave a damn. “Chess is my specialty. And the focus is not upon pieces that will inevitably be lost, but on making that sacrifice meaningful.”
“You used Jazz to take out the killer, after the fact.”
“We put her in a position where she could provide the police with a vital lead, yes, without placing her in danger. She’s already taken far
too many risks.”
Jazz parted her lips to fire off a response, but nothing came to mind.
“As I said,” Laskins continued, “chess is my specialty. And while this isn’t the outcome we’d hoped for, it’s far from a lost cause. Jazz can safely come forward with her information, and we achieve our goal in a different way. We stopped a serial killer, who will shortly leave the chess-board himself, and we did it with only inevitable losses. It isn’t always about bullets and bombs, you know, Ms. Garza. Or lying.”
There must have been a hidden message in that. Jazz saw a flicker in Lucia’s eyes, a downright flinch in her body language. “If you’re playing chess,” Lucia asked, “who do you play against? And don’t tell me God. I don’t believe you’re quite that good.”
The privacy screen between them and the driver suddenly eased down with a whir, and their ex-Marine chauffeur turned to look back at them. “Excuse me,” he said, “but you wanted to know when the other car left. It’s leaving now.”
“Thank you, Charles,” Laskins said, and checked his expensive watch. “Right on time. I’m sorry, Ms. Garza, but we’ll have to cut this meeting short. Some things simply won’t be postponed, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”
“Answer my question first,” she said.
“No.” Laskins nodded toward the door. “Charles, if you please—”
Lucia, without seeming to be in a big hurry or doing anything important, reached around and pulled out her gun. She pointed it directly at Laskins. “Nothing personal,” she said, with a hint of a smile, “but I’d really like an answer to my question first. And Charles, don’t do anything foolish, please, because two of us shooting in here really won’t help the situation.”
Laskins threw out a warning hand to the Marine. “Interesting. There was only a very small chance that you would do that, you know.”
“Unless you’re wearing bulletproof armor under that Hugo Boss suit, I don’t think that means much,” Lucia replied. They exchanged cool little smiles. “How is it done?”