Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change

by Robert J. Crane

I’d cure them of that silliness yet, I thought, slipping phone six hundred and eighty five into my pocket. Fortunately, cell phone companies hadn’t tumbled to “Acts of gods” as an excuse for denial of claim yet.

  When my phone buzzed with the first message, my contacts hadn’t quite synched from the cloud yet, so I wasn’t really sure who it was from. Knowing that was critically important, because if it was Dick-o, I was totally going to ignore it. In fact, as soon as I figured out how, I was going to block all his texts and calls.

  But for now, I listened to the voicemail on speaker, and immediately called back after hearing only a fraction of the message.

  “Yo yo yo,” J.J. said as he picked up the phone, the sound of explosions going off in the background behind him.

  “J.J.?” I asked, frowning. It sounded like I was visiting him with five hundred of my closest enemies. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, and I heard fumbling, then the sound disappeared. “My bad. Had the speaker system cranked up, playing some Halo multiplayer.”

  I felt my eye twitch. “Aren’t you supposed to be helping track down Redbeard?”

  “Who?” J.J. asked. “Ohh, is that your name for the guy? Public enemy number one? Not bad, not bad. I would have gone with ‘The Red Lebowski,’ personally, because he looks kinda like Jeff Bridges, but younger and ginger, you know?”

  “I toyed with that one, but—hey, did you find anything?” I turned on a dime, realizing that if I didn’t, I was bound to get sucked into J.J.’s world, and that was not a place I wanted to be. He was not exactly my own personal Cisco Ramon.

  “I did find something,” he said with exaggerated confidence, “which is why I am playing Halo right now instead of scouring the ’net for signs of your Red Duck Dynasty.” I held my breath. “Red—”

  “Does J.J. stand for ‘Jar Jar’?” I asked.

  “Ohhh,” he said, sounding wounded. “Owww. You have cut me to the quick, madam.”

  “I’m about to fly up there and cut you about a foot lower if you don’t tell me what you know, you little geek.”

  “Okay, so,” J.J. said, all business again, “no idea who this guy is, but I used traffic cams, GPS and satellite imagery to track him back to his bolt-hole. Turns out he stole a police cruiser in his escape from MacArthur Park and ditched it in a parking garage near downtown, but I got him exiting the structure driving an Oldsmobile, of all things—”

  “J.J.,” I said.

  “I mean, who drives an Oldsmobile?” J.J. asked. “They don’t even manufacture them anymore. It’s a dead brand. It’s like he’s trying to draw attention to himself, but he’s blending in at the same time—like a cry for help, but whispered—”

  “J.J.—”

  “—but like a stage whisper, you know? Because why not drive, like, a Jeep, or a Tesla—hell, in LA, why not a Lamborghini? You can’t tell me he couldn’t just reach into the ignition with a formless finger and trip the switch—”

  “J.J.!”

  “Oh, right,” J.J. said. “Texting it to you. It’s in the Elysium neighborhood, though, so watch your back.”

  “The—what?”

  “Elysium neighborhood,” J.J. said patiently. “You know, one of the highest crime areas in LA, yet surprisingly close to both downtown and the beach, right off the freeway—”

  “What the hell? Are you secretly an LA realtor when you’re not gaming and tormenting me?”

  “Million Dollar Listing LA,” J.J. said casually.

  “What?”

  “One of my numerous lady friends enjoys the program,” he went on. “Naturally, I’m an accommodating host, so I watch it with her. You can learn a lot from—”

  “J.J.,” I said with rapidly thinning patience, all nicety gone, “if you’ve ever had a lady friend that wasn’t a cat, I’ll eat my phone.”

  There was a long pause. “You’re just not nice at all,” he said in a choked whisper and hung up on me.

  “And so say all of us.” I stared at my phone, willing it to buzz. It did, a moment later, with an LA address. I started down the sunny street toward the clothing store where I’d purchased the destroyed suit I wore, intending to purchase some form of replacement, when the first hint of remorse struck. “Dammit, J.J.,” I muttered to myself, feeling sorry for how I’d just bombed him.

  I did that sort of thing. Dr. Zollers had told me it was a defense mechanism, as though I hadn’t known that already. Keeping emotional distance between myself and others was a trick I employed to avoid feeling exposed in my relationships. Psycho-babble aside, the doctor had a valid point. I didn’t feel comfortable with people, really, which was probably why I did everything I could to get them the hell away from me. It wasn’t that I objected to them on a theoretical level—I liked people. Some people.

  Well, I liked Reed and Augustus and Dr. Zollers and mostly Ariadne and sometimes J.J. And Scott, once upon a time.

  And me, said Zack.

  “And you,” I whispered.

  And me, said Bjorn.

  “Screw off, Nord.” That one drew a dirty look from a tall, blond-haired guy passing me on the street. “Wasn’t talking to you, skinny Dolph Lundgren.”

  I was about to text J.J. my apology when my phone buzzed again, and I figured he was going to hit me with a worthy return volley. J.J. wasn’t the type to take an insult sitting down, after all. The little geek might not be able to throw a punch, but he could—

  Aw, dammit.

  Ricardo

  I am lying in bed naked, thinking of you as I—

  SON OF A BITCH.

  51.

  Instead of immediately flying back to Minneapolis, tracking down Dick-o and beating him to death with my bare fists in what could only be described as the most satisfying thing I had done recently, I went instead toward the address J.J. had steered me to. I did this mostly because it was the right thing to do.

  Also, because since I had just alienated J.J., tracking down Dick-o would probably not be the easiest thing to do at the moment. I mean, I could just text him back with, “Where are you?” and coming in the wake of his last message to me, he’d probably ecstatically give me his location, but I’d have to text him back without vomiting on my new phone, which was a hell of an imposition.

  I could have apologized to J.J., I guess, but following it up with a request for some random schmoe’s location would have made it sound like a self-serving apology, and I meant to give him a sincere one. At some point.

  Anyway, I went to the address J.J. texted me, taking advantage of my phone’s GPS and maps. Confusing the hell out of the program was always fun. “Off route,” it told me as I flew over a lake that looked like it was way down from its usual level.

  “No shit,” I muttered to it as I flew over a neighborhood of houses that were probably worth umpteen-billion dollars just by virtue of being not so far from downtown. I passed over what seemed like an invisible wall in the middle of the city, and suddenly the streets were not so well kept, the houses were not so nice or modern, and the sidewalks and avenues were kind of broken.

  I set down on a pretty run-down street and flipped through my contacts, hoping that Detective Waters’ number had made its way into cloud storage before my phone had suffered its tragic fate in the subway tunnel. A city bus rumbled by, lights glowing in its interior, people slumped down inside, graffiti painted along the sides. I ignored the beeping of the GPS program vying for my attention as I scanned my contacts.

  “Hey!” some guy called as I walked up the street. The houses here were all showing their age. The guy who’d called out to me came walking up, wearing baggy clothes, more than a little lumpy beneath them, his face lit by a phone clutched in his hand, pale light on a tanned face, a couple days' worth of beard growth blending with a sorry mustache and goatee. He looked late twenties, maybe. “What are you doing here?”

  “Walking,” I said, looking up from my contact search. “It’s this new thing. All the rage, really. You should try it some
time.” I looked him over. “Probably soon would be a good idea.”

  He gave me an icy look. “How about you give me all your money?”

  “How about you give me a pony?” I asked.

  He blinked his surprise away after about ten seconds of struggling with it. “What?”

  “I figured since we’re making requests,” I said with a shrug.

  “I ain’t giving you no pony,” he said, informing me about the state of his education.

  “Well, I’m not giving you my money,” I said, “so it would appear we’re at an impasse.”

  “Pshhh,” he said, making a face. “Bitch, I said—” And he went for a gun under his saggy clothing.

  I drew mine first, because—well, because I’m me. His eyes widened in surprise as he stared down at Shadow. “Uhm,” he said.

  “‘Uhm,’ yeah,” I said. “Now, about that pony …”

  His eyes widened in panic. “Yo, I ain’t got no pony.”

  “I’m going to count to ten,” I said calmly, “and then I’m going to shoot you if you don’t give me my pony.”

  “I got no pony!” he said, panic starting to shine through. He held up his hands, pushing them toward the sky like maybe if he could just reach a little higher I’d believe him. “Yo, do you see a pony anywhere on me?”

  “You could be hiding one in your pants—oh, no, never mind, you definitely aren’t hiding anything down there.” I made a show of looking and being disappointed. “Maybe in your shoes?”

  “You think I got a horse in my kicks?” He looked at me in disbelief.

  “I suppose not an actual horse, just a horse’s ass.”

  “Hah,” he said without mirth. “How long we going to stand here?”

  “Empty your pockets,” I said, “and carefully. Toss out your gun, and if I see a finger go anywhere near the trigger … well, I’m a dead shot, and that lack of pony you’re hiding in your sweatpants is going to become a quarter-horse.”

  He wordlessly emptied his pockets, carefully placing a shitty revolver on the pavement along with a beat-up wallet, a new-model cell phone, and a set of car keys.

  “Now take off all your clothes,” I told him.

  “I told I ain’t got no pony in—”

  “I believe you,” I said, still holding him at gunpoint, “but I don’t want you to walk away from this encounter thinking it’s totally okay to just rob people on the street, so I’m going to teach you a lesson your mother apparently failed to.” I thumbed back the hammer on Shadow. “Now … clothes off. I promise you, I’m not going to enjoy this any more than you are.”

  “Pshhhh,” he said, clearly bummed, but he stripped down right there in front of me. I was right; he wasn’t hiding a pony. He wasn’t even smuggling a toy horse. He stood there fidgeting, covering himself with one hand. “You happy now?”

  “About as happy as you are,” I said, nodding at his easily concealed manhood. “I didn’t realize it was cold tonight.”

  “Now you’re just humiliating me for the fun of it.”

  “Yes,” I said, “duh. That’s what the lesson is—don’t steal from people, especially in the form of armed robbery, because at some point, as my mother was fond of saying, no matter how bad you are, you’re eventually going to meet someone badder than yourself.” I pointed my hand at his little pile of clothes, phone, gun and wallet and sent a burst of fire at it that caused his eyes to widen explosively as he jumped back. “Tonight’s your night, Sparky.”

  “Shit!” he shouted, legs trying to withdraw into his chest as he leapt back from the little bonfire I’d just lit. He looked like a cartoon character trying to scramble away. “What the—who are you?”

  “Someone who’s badder than you,” I said, holstering my gun as I started on my way to the address J.J. had given me. I thumbed through my contacts to find Detective Waters' number, leaving my mugger behind to watch his personal effects burn, his eyes haunted, like he was imagining himself in the flames instead. A different night, a different me, it probably could have been. But tonight, I just left him naked in the street, too dumbstruck by what he’d just seen to even reply.

  52.

  Kat

  Flannery had paraded herself into Kat’s room in the suite with all the flair needed to make an impression for the cameras, but the cameras weren’t here. They were coming, Kat was sure, because Taggert would want to capture footage of her post-attack, but they weren’t here yet.

  That didn’t stop Flannery from acting like they were, which Kat fully understood. She was trying to keep her guard up as well, preparing for the moment. Sometimes the camera guys gave her ample warning, and sometimes they just snuck in and filmed. They probably wouldn’t get past Guy Friday without a stop; even her new bodyguard had been given the careful once over by the big Guy—and so had Flannery. She hadn’t protested, but only because she was playing to nonexistent cameras.

  “I just, like, have so much sorrow for you right now,” Flannery said. “So much sorrow. My thoughts and prayers are with you.” She paused, looked around then lowered her voice. “Do we still say ‘thoughts and prayers’?” she asked at a whisper. “Or is it just ‘thoughts’ now?”

  “I … don’t know,” Kat said. “Do you … actually pray?”

  Flannery’s eyes flashed with mischief. “I mean, I shout, ‘Oh my God!’ a lot, but usually—”

  “Probably just go with ‘thoughts,’ then,” Kat said, feeling a little worn out and melancholy. Flannery wasn’t who she needed to perk her up right now. It had been just such a long couple days, with all the attempts to kill her, and the photo shoot for Vanity Fair. She only hoped some of the photos had turned out usable. “Hey … about Bree …”

  “I know, right?” Flannery lit up again. “Do you know how many interviews I’ve done today?” She smiled brightly. “I had to actually carry some diluted pepper around under my fingernails so I could rub it in my eyes toward the end, you know, just to keep the crying going a little.”

  Kat stared at her. “That’s … uh …”

  “But you,” Flannery gushed, “you had that whole park thing today. I mean, that had to keep the spotlight going. What marvelous luck!”

  Kat froze. “I don’t know if I’d call it—”

  “Excuse me,” the new bodyguard said, breaking in tentatively, like he expected to get hit for it. “Ms. Forrest?”

  “Yes,” she said, “uhm … what was your name again?”

  “Butler, ma’am,” he said, his dark skin a brilliant contrast to the white and cream décor in the room. “I just … wanted to introduce myself before the cameras came up, because Mr. Taggert, uh … wanted me to also introduce myself on camera.”

  Kat felt a peculiar twinge. “None of my bodyguards have done on-camera work before. I mean, they get seen sometimes, but we don’t do … on-camera.”

  “Well, that was the deal he gave me when I took the job,” Butler said, clearly uncomfortable.

  Kat looked at Flannery, who gave Butler a pitying look. “Get used to conflict,” Kat said, remembering what Taggert had told her the first week of filming. Butler straightened. “You’re going to see a lot of it. Nature of the business is conflict, caught on camera.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Butler said, like he was taking some energy and encouragement out of what she’d said. “I’ll—I’ll get used to it fast. Just nervous, I guess.”

  “So you’re on-camera talent now,” Kat said, thinking it through. “Taggert wants to put this threat front and center in the storyline this season, of course, and he’s having you do on-camera stuff because …”

  “It was our deal,” Butler said simply, and Kat almost kicked herself for not seeing it before.

  “Of course,” she said with a nod and a fake smile. It was all she could do; it wasn’t like she could tell him what she’d just figured out.

  Taggert is having you introduce yourself and be an on-camera role so that when you die, it plays to the audience. The Bruces weren’t known to the audience because
they weren’t part of the story, and so when they died, it got us nothing. But you …

  Butler smiled faintly in reply to her. He was a handsome young man, and so well built. She felt a twinge of guilt. “I appreciate the opportunity,” he said sincerely.

  “Welcome to the team,” Kat said to cover up the faint screaming of that little voice that she hated in her head.

  The knock at the doors was the camera and microphone crew for the day—Mike on the microphone, Mitch or something on camera. As they set up the shot, everyone fell into silence—Kat and Flannery were pros at this by now. Kat watched Flannery go through her mental preparations as Kat did her own. Butler just looked nervous—of course, it was his first time on camera. Guy Friday just stayed the same lump in front of the door, unmoved by the sight of the cameras setting up.

  When they were rolling, Flannery launched right into it, laying out her reason for being here in a way she hadn’t before the cameras showed. “So … are we going to the premiere party tonight?” She had a devilish grin.

  Kat blinked; she’d forgotten about the premiere. “Which one is it?”

  “The new Nick Elfman movie,” Flannery said, enthusing for the camera. Kat knew Flannery couldn’t stand Nick Elfman; he’d turned her down when she tried to nail him in a closet at one of Seth Rogen’s parties. “I forget what it’s called. Some superhero movie, I think? It’s at Grauman’s, and it’s probably a snooze, but the after party is in the penthouse at the Hotel Luxuriant.” She said the hotel’s name with a French accent and made a pouty face. “Come on, Kat. You can’t let this terrorist push you around. We should make an appearance. Put up a strong face.”

  Flannery was totally playing to the cameras, and Kat knew it. It didn’t stop her from being at least a little right, though. “I don’t know,” Kat said, hedging. She didn’t want to look too reckless, either. “So much has happened,” she let her voice quiver a little, “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head slightly. That was the right tone—worried, conciliatory, fearful for others.