Zero Sum Game

by SL Huang

  “‘Can’t I just’—no, I can’t ‘just!’ Not on this scale! Not fast enough!”

  “Getting arrested is not an option,” I hissed. “End of discussion. If you don’t have anything else for me—”

  “You’ll what? Teleport?”

  I was glad I could count on myself, at least. “I can shoot my way out if I have to.”

  “Shoot your way—? What the—I don’t even know why I’m helping you,” he groused.

  “Then don’t,” I bit off, and hung up, turning off my phone for good measure. Calling him had been a bad idea after all. If shooting my way out was Plan B, getting myself arrested was at least Plan Double-Y-and-a-Half.

  But he said he could get you back out, said a small voice in my head. And even if he couldn’t get me cut loose quietly, I’d be able to break myself out in short order anyway…and leave the police with an even more complete record of me, I thought. Getting arrested was a bad plan.

  Not to mention that it would mean depending on a guy I barely knew to pull through for me in a complicated gambit. I’d never trusted anyone aside from Rio to have my back, and I wasn’t about to change that habit now. No, I was much better off relying on myself, even if it meant violence. Grenades it was.

  Your first solution is always to pull the trigger, said Arthur’s voice in my head, sadly.

  “Shut up,” I whispered. I started measuring avenues of escape and blast radii with my eyes.

  Life is cheap to you.

  Shut the hell up!

  I had a hand on one of the grenades in my pocket, the weight of the Ruger firm and solid against my back. I couldn’t depend on anyone else, I reminded myself. Myself, my skills, my gun—those I could rely on. Those were all I had.

  Except in this case someone had offered me another way out. An insane, uncomfortable way that I really hated, but a way out.

  One that didn’t involve hurting anyone.

  You’re a good kid. You ain’t gotta be like this.

  “Shit,” I said aloud, softly, and even to myself I sounded pitiful.

  I peeled off my jacket and wrapped the grenades, gun, and spare magazines in it. Then I squeezed back along the cinder block wall behind my hiding place among the dumpsters and inched out until I could roll under a nearby parked car and wedge the whole package into the exhaust system. I measured tensions and pressures with my eyes: it wouldn’t be falling out unless someone started taking apart the undercarriage. I took note of the plate so I could track down the car and get my toys back after this was over.

  I squirmed back to the dumpsters, turned, and snuck along the wall toward the rear of the supermarket, putting some distance between myself and where my hardware was hidden. I was unarmed now, and it was not a good feeling.

  Fuck. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  I crouched for a whole minute at the end of the wall, still off the beaten path of all the police officers, one more parked car between me and them. I tried to will myself out, but it was like stepping off a cliff. Harder, because I could probably do the math fast enough to survive stepping off a cliff. I can’t do this, I thought.

  If Checker doesn’t come through for you, you can always get yourself out, another voice in my head reminded me. This isn’t all that big of a deal. You won’t be in a much worse position than you are here.

  Not a big deal? I’d be getting arrested!

  I’d be putting myself in someone else’s power. In the authorities’ power. Voluntarily. They would be able to take whatever they wanted from me. It was lunacy.

  Maybe, if you do this, he and Arthur will work with you again.

  I wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, but I suddenly knew how much I wanted it—because they were still working the Pithica case. I’d told Rio I’d drop it, but in that instant I knew I couldn’t: I had unfinished business with Dawna Polk, and Courtney might still be out there, and Pithica…Pithica had a lot to answer for, and I was staying on the case until they did.

  The resolution made me certain.

  “Christ, this better be worth it,” I muttered, and stood up, my hands in the air. “Hey, you, officer people! Uh, don’t shoot; I’m unarmed!”

  Boots stampeded on the pavement all around me, and I heard one or two pump actions chamber off to my left. Within seconds, I was surrounded by a ring of blue uniforms in bulletproof vests, a wall of police bristling with semiautomatics, mostly Berettas and Glocks.

  I sighed and raised my hands higher. I hate Glocks.

  Chapter 21

  I was reminded just how much this was a bad plan when I had to let a couple of overzealous, hulking male officers tighten cuffs against my wrists and manhandle me into a police car. Forcing myself into helplessness made me feel exposed, as if acting vulnerable somehow made it so. I suppressed the urge to kick their ribs in, and dearly wished they knew how much self-control it required.

  I mollified myself by calculating escape routes. Particularly ones involving permanent injury to certain meathead cops.

  They drove me to a police station in a caravan of cop cars and jostled me inside. Someone patted me down—again—and they took my fingerprints and mug shots. I kept involuntarily flinching away from it all, from these people who thought they lorded power over me, these people who were prodding and recording and keeping a piece of me here forever.

  Checker better do as he promised.

  The booking officer kept trying to get my name and information, but I ignored her. Finally they brought me into a small, stark interrogation room, handcuffed me to the table, and left me alone, though I was sure someone was keeping an eye on me from behind the long one-way mirror.

  “Hey,” I called after a few minutes of waiting. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  There was no response for about ten minutes, and then two female officers came into the room—one short and black and one tall and Hispanic, with identical tough-as-nails expressions—and took me without speaking. I didn’t really have to go, but I’d need to get rid of the alcohol I’d chugged eventually, and I wanted to get a better lay of the land anyway in case I did need to break myself out. Yeah, I could do it, I concluded. Harder without grenades, but I never claimed I wasn’t up for a challenge.

  I wondered how long I should wait before taking the situation into my own hands. Checker had already taken too long for my taste. I contemplated asking for my phone call so I could harass him.

  After I waited in boredom in the interrogation room for a while longer, they brought me out into a lineup, where I stood in a row with a bunch of other short, dark women and stepped forward and back when ordered to. Then they brought me back to interrogation and I waited some more. Really, it was a ridiculous amount of waiting—I would have been tempted to make a joke about my tax dollars, if I had paid taxes. The quip made me think of Anton, a sharp burst of painful memory. One more score to settle.

  I sat back in the hard metal chair and tried to relax. Well, at least I was back on the job, not stuck in my flat in Chinatown with nothing to occupy me. Ironically, waiting in handcuffs for the best chance at escape from police custody was a far better headspace for me than being at loose ends: this was the type of situation my mind could handle, even after I’d metabolized all the alcohol that had started the whole fiasco. Better this than being alone with my brain.

  Yeah, I had a problem.

  Finally, the door opened, and a dark and statuesque detective entered the room. “I’m Detective Gutierrez,” she said, and sat down across from me to open a folder in front of her. “You’re in quite a lot of trouble. If I can, I’d like to help you out.”

  I wondered if her implied offer meant they hadn’t found any hard forensic evidence. Maybe their plan was to push for a confession and deal because they weren’t sure they had a case—at least, not one a good lawyer couldn’t tear apart by pointing out how all short brown women would look alike to most people. Or maybe they thought Arthur was the better catch. In the theme of racial profiling, he did have the scary black
man image going for him as the chief perpetrator.

  Or maybe she wasn’t making any offer at all, but merely employing a tactic to coerce me to talk.

  “We have an eyewitness who saw you at 19262 Wilshire Boulevard yesterday morning,” Detective Gutierrez continued. “What were you doing there?”

  I stayed silent, letting my mind drift, toying with whether I would give Checker a few more hours or arbitrarily decide his deadline had been ten minutes ago.

  Gutierrez kept asking questions for quite a while, the same ones over and over and over again. I tuned her out. She got in my face a bit for a change of pace, then stood up and left the room. They let me sit for almost an hour before she returned, this time with a partner, a younger male detective who kept condescending to me and then tried to play good cop while Gutierrez got aggressive, but I was about as responsive as a rock. I thought about asking for a lawyer, but figured if I did that they’d chuck me in a prison cell until one got here, and the interrogation room was probably marginally more comfortable—and easier to escape from, if Checker didn’t come through. Besides, I didn’t mind being talked at.

  I hadn’t been keeping track of time too closely, but it had to have been getting on in the evening when a knock came at the door. Gutierrez stood, gazing at me stonily before stepping outside. Her partner leaned back in his chair and smirked at me, as if that would bother me or something.

  After a minute, Detective Gutierrez came back in with some papers, a sour pinch to her mouth. “You’re free to go,” she said.

  The decree was so sudden and so without fanfare that my brain took several seconds to catch up.

  The other detective jerked out of his superior slouch, equally shocked. “What?”

  “It isn’t her.” Gutierrez snapped the folder in her hands shut. “Miss, one of the officers outside will process you out. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

  Dazed, I wondered if this was what being around civilized people was usually like: that they would give up their power over someone just because the evidence said so. Gutierrez uncuffed me, and I sort of nodded at them as I beelined for the door.

  “What do you mean, it isn’t her?” I heard the male detective demand of his partner as I stepped out. “We can’t just let her—”

  “Must’ve been a false ID. They got a match on this girl and verified her whereabouts all day yesterday. Nowhere near the crime scenes.”

  “Then why didn’t she say anything?”

  “Apparently she’s not quite all there. Brother takes care of her,” Gutierrez said.

  “We can still hold her for—”

  “No. Look who her family is.”

  After that I didn’t hear anything else.

  Bloody hell. It was this easy?

  They had me sign some paperwork, which I did with a shapeless scribble, playing into whatever slightly mentally challenged character Checker had created for me and allowing me not to have to know what name I was supposed to have.

  “Do you need us to call someone for you, Ms. Holloway?” one of the officers asked.

  “No, I’m good,” I said, feeling this was exceedingly anticlimactic.

  “Okay. You be safe, now,” he told me, and I stuffed my cell phone and cash back into my pockets and headed out of the police station a free citizen.

  I forced myself not to run, walking away from the station at a moderate pace instead and figuring I should put some distance between myself and a building full of officers before stealing a vehicle. Night had fallen, and it was late enough that the usual bumper-to-bumper traffic had died down, the cars whizzing by in blazes of red tail lights. An almost-full moon hung above the busy city, gazing down like an enormous white eye.

  My phone buzzed as I hit the sidewalk. U OUT?

  I punched the “send” button to dial back.

  “Oh, I’m good, aren’t I? Tell me I’m good,” crowed Checker in my ear.

  “Sort of slow,” I said, affecting nonchalance.

  “Slow? Slow? Do you have any idea how much paperwork I had to forge here? This was record-breaking. I never do ‘slow’ unless there’s cuddling afterwards.”

  “Are you my brother?” I asked.

  “Dear Lord, I hope not, considering what a turn-on your knowledge of statistics is. But I might’ve pretended to be. We have very important parents, by the way. Everything go smooth?”

  “So smooth. Infinite differentiability, in fact,” I assured him, maybe just to be a little funny.

  He cackled. “I knew I liked you.”

  I cleared my throat. “What about—they took my fingerprints and everything…”

  “Disappearing as we speak.”

  Was that even possible? “Wow. Uh, thanks,” I said. Checker, I decided, was a good person to know.

  “Sure thing. You made it easy; having nothing in the system meant I had a window to work with. So, how does it feel to be a free woman?”

  I took a deep breath, intending to say something about an arrest in the civilized world being kind of a letdown, but the truth was, it felt good not to be trapped in the station anymore. And Checker had made it so I didn’t have to hurt anyone this time around. The copy of Tresting who had taken up residence in my head was starting to keep track.

  “How much do I owe you?” I asked, to cover the fact that I was having feelings.

  “Oh, on the house,” he said. “I owed you one for saving Arthur anyway, and besides—”

  “We were even already.”

  “Maybe he was, but I’m kind of grateful you kept him kicking, too, so, no charge.”

  “Oh.” I mulled over whether I was okay with that. I don’t like owing people any favors.

  “Just don’t tell Arthur. He, uh, doesn’t like it when I do things like this.”

  The mention of Tresting’s self-righteousness soured me. My conscience deciding to take on his persona was frustrating enough; I didn’t need the real-life version harping at me any more than he already had. “I don’t get it,” I complained. “I’ve seen him break more laws than I can count, and he gets all hung up on the littlest stuff.”

  “Hey, he’s good people,” Checker said sharply.

  “Inconsistent people,” I muttered.

  “Cas Russell, you may impress me with your knowledge of Bayesian probability, but don’t insult Arthur to me, okay? Just don’t.”

  Apparently I’d hit a nerve. Oh, brother. “Uh, okay.” When he didn’t say anything, I probed, “You still there?”

  “Yeah.” I couldn’t read his tone.

  Best get back to business. “Didn’t you need my help with something?” I’d help him with his favor as payment, I thought. Then we’d be even.

  He sighed. “Arthur isn’t going to like that I’m asking you this, either.”

  “Asking me what?”

  “He needs backup.”

  Oh, good. Backup I could handle. “Sure,” I said. “On what?” If Checker was inviting me back onto the Pithica case, that wasn’t even a favor—I would jump at the chance. Even if it meant working with Tresting again.

  Checker hesitated, then said in a rush, “Polk’s tracker came back on.”

  “It did? Where is she?”

  “The signal’s here in Los Angeles.”

  “Why would she have flown back h…” I trailed off. “You think they figured out we had a GPS on her. You think they found the tracker.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense otherwise. Why would it go offline and then pop back up again? Here?”

  “But that doesn’t make sense either! If they make it that obvious it’s a setup, why would they think we would be stupid enough to—”

  Checker made a strangled sort of noise.

  I groaned. “Tresting’s going in, isn’t he.”

  “That would be a yes.”

  “He thinks they’re waiting for him, and he’s going in anyway.”

  “Hence the needing backup.”

  “Okay. When and where?”

  There was a short beat of s
ilence, as if Checker had expected a different response, but he recovered quickly. “I’m texting you the details now, including the location and the tracker frequency. Satellite imagery was no help, unfortunately; it only shows some buildings in the middle of the desert. As for when…he’s going in tonight.”

  I looked up at the stars. “Uh, it’s night already.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, I’m in kind of a hurry here, huh.”

  “He left a few hours ago,” said Checker. “I tried to stop him.”

  His words had become heavy with worry. It made me feel strangely isolated—no one gave a damn if I decided to make a suicide run. I wouldn’t even be missed; I’d disappear into the fabric of the Los Angeles underground as if I’d never existed.

  “I’d better get going, then,” I said, starting to walk faster. “Anything else I should know? Is anyone else with him?”

  “I swear, I tried to get him to call in help. He got all idiotic nobility complex on me about not wanting to involve anyone else.”

  That might have been why Tresting hadn’t phoned his other contacts, but I was pretty sure he’d had a different reason for not calling me. It made me perversely eager to save his bacon again. I wanted to rub it in his face. “Gotcha. Anything else?”

  “Is it true?” Checker asked. “What Dawna Polk can do?”

  I swallowed. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it is.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “Are you still there?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, listen,” I said, trying not to let his concern for Arthur irritate me. “Stop worrying about it. I’m on my way.”

  “Thank you. Really—thank you. I owe you big time. Anything you need, really, just say the word.”

  Well, that might be a useful favor to call in someday. But first I’d have to make it through the night. After walking into a Pithica trap. Goddamn Tresting.

  “And watch yourself, okay?” Checker added.

  I blinked. I hadn’t expected him to be concerned for me, too. I doubted he would miss me if something happened, but still, it was…nice of him.

  “Oh, don’t be stupid,” I said, a little too brusquely. “I’ll be fine.”