Castle Danger--The Mental States

by Anthony Neil Smith

  Nope. Nope. Nope.

  But I had to stop and think: was this just more pranking? Konzbruck trying to cover his tracks? Him and Dylan both in on it?

  If so, they sure knew how to commit to the punchline.

  I turned it off and assured the people who were encroaching on my privacy that I was fine. Told them I’d seen something scary on YouTube. When they left, I went back to my email and sent a note to Dylan’s so-called Guardian Angel:

  Not so hot on the Guardian part, are you?

  Last time I’d tried to send one back, the email bounced.

  But not this time.

  And the answer didn’t take long, either: There’s nothing I can do.

  Me: What am I supposed to do, then?

  DGA: HELP THEM!!!

  Me: Need more info. Where are they? How can I help?

  DGA: Can’t tell you. I don’t know.

  Me: Are they OK? Are they safe?

  That took a while. For a minute I thought I had lost my only source of information.

  Agonizing seconds later: No.

  I was tight all over. Breathing heavy. My mind racing through ideas. My stomach churning acid.

  I wrote: Meet me.

  If this person was serious about helping Dylan and Konzbruck, if they truly needed help, I was going to need more leverage. All I had was yet another web link that would probably change again before I could get it to our tech.

  I wrote: I’ll get an army of hackers to find out who you are. If anything happens to them, this is on you.

  Should I have sent it? My anger was getting the better of me. That, and my embarrassment at being played for an idiot.

  I wrote: Help me help them. Meet me. Tell me—

  I didn’t even have to hit send.

  DGA: Okay.

  Then he gave me a time (later that night) and a place (not a place I wanted to go).

  But what other options did I have?

  Okay.

  My next call should’ve been to Tennyson, asking him to get our resident geek Repo Man working on the link double quick.

  It should’ve been.

  Instead, I called Joel and asked for back up. Same as when I’d been due to meet Paula for the first time. Admittedly, that had led to Joel shooting a state agent, nearly killing him. Which in turn had led to both of us being fired from the police department. But this time was going to be different, right? Right?

  Fuck it, I was done with self-delusion. I needed the guy. Simple as.

  Last time, he’d needed convincing, though.

  This time? “Let’s roll.”

  And as a bonus, he told me I was getting some extra eyes on scopes this time.

  I had no way of knowing there and then, but that meant he was calling in his ‘hunting buddies’ from the night rides — Dogged and Soulfather. Itchy trigger fingers and all.

  The three of them met up at Dangerous Man’s taproom for a pre-mission beer. Or two. Or five. It wasn’t Joel’s idea, but it was the only way he could seal the deal. Neither one wanted to go in sober. Too much shaking, too much PTSD. So they downed some brews, except Joel, who stuck to coffee, and talked over the plan.

  Dylan’s Guardian Angel wanted to meet in Frogtown, a neighborhood in St. Paul known for not being, well, inhabited all that much anymore. These days it was better known for lootings and shootings. The meeting place was supposed to be a street where most of the homes had been vacant for quite a long time. So the soldiers would scout out the place hours in advance and settle into three hidey-holes where they could cover all the angles — in, out, alleys, backyards, everything.

  They slipped in after sunset, strapped mercilessly. And ‘unnecessarily’.

  High-powered night scopes on high-powered rifles.

  If I had known, I would’ve called the whole thing off before they’d even got the ammo out.

  Seriously, these Full Metal Jacket freaks might’ve once been soldiers, but now they were just pretending. Why did they want to feel like soldiers again? Why did they want to see everyone on the streets as an enemy? When I’d asked Joel for help, I’d been hoping for someone to keep an eye on the places I wouldn’t be able to see. I most definitely hadn’t asked for three guys who were extra-amped at the chance to turn their real lives into video games.

  Yeah, if I had known that back then, damn right, I would’ve called the whole thing off.

  I would’ve been wrong, though. Even if it did take a while longer to realize it.

  But let’s not skip ahead. At the appointed time, there I was, walking down the sidewalk on a mostly abandoned street in Frogtown. I say ‘mostly’ because who knew how many squatters were holed up in these dilapidated houses? To be on the safe side, I was carrying my .38 in my jacket pocket. Shivering. Me, not the gun. The remaining patches of snow were the ones that didn’t get direct sun during the day, so they refroze at night into miniature ice rinks, hard black portals to hell, treacherous in the half-light after spending all winter absorbing the soot and dirt from this godforsaken wasteland.

  That was almost poetic, wasn’t it?

  I certainly didn’t feel like Dante. More like Poe, but I still had no clue what quoth the raven.

  I didn’t know where the soldiers had positioned themselves. I hoped Joel had told them what to expect from me — tight jeans, black boots, and a fitted suede jacket — but none of us knew who or what we were looking for in Dylan’s Guardian Angel. Part of me was hoping to see a real angel, maybe a fallen one, with singed wings and some sort of God-sword. Fuck me, Dr. Stravinsky would have had a field day with all that phallic symbolism.

  I found the address, a narrow two-story duplex that had six old mailboxes hanging beside the front door, making me wonder just how that shoebox could’ve been cut into six apartments. An old tree twisted dangerously low over the roof, with branches and old leaves in a frozen heap. Good place to ambush someone.

  In fact, great place to ambush someone.

  Hands in my pockets, one holding tight to the gun.

  Some shadows across the street. The streetlights that would’ve shown me more were either too weak or too not-there. A murmur of voices, getting louder. Three people? Yeah, three. Closer still. Louder still. I glanced left and right, looking for a place to keep out of sight, but with the snow still reflecting moonlight, and my own light complexion not doing me any favors.

  Closer still.

  He’d brought reinforcements. That wasn’t fair.

  You did, too.

  Yeah, well …

  Closer still. But the voices were, I dunno, casual? Playful? No idea what they were jabbing about, but I could tell it didn’t matter.

  Closer still. They passed under a murky streetlight beam and finally revealed themselves to be three Somali guys, teenagers most likely. Hardly even looked my way. I was a little insulted, maybe. Wasn’t I at least a nice piece of ass from a distance? Not even worth a wolf whistle?

  No, no. Don’t think like some macho misogynist. You’re better than that.

  Back to the lookout. I checked my phone. No new messages. DGA was twenty minutes late. Shit. How much longer was I going to wait?

  A few minutes later, I thought I heard leaves rustling, crunching, as if someone was walking towards me through a yard. I turned around, scanned the neighborhood. It seemed like all the light had disappeared, the exact opposite of what you would expect after standing in the pitch dark for forty-five minutes.

  Crunch.

  The dark became even blacker when a set of headlights pierced with two sharp beams from down the street. So now I had two problems and I couldn’t see either. The closer the car came, the harder it was to see around me. I squinted. I stepped back until I had nowhere to go, flush against the chain link fence.

  The car was slowing down.

  The steps were coming closer.

  A hand on my shoulder.

  “No!” I spun, tried to yank the gun free from my pocket. But my attacker had already reached out, pinned my arm to my side. I shouted.


  “Manny! It’s me! Manny!”

  I kept struggling, and my eyes were flashing with the afterglow of the headlights. “Let me go!”

  “Manny! It’s Thorn! Easy, easy!”

  The voice was Thorn’s, absolutely, and I felt myself take a deep breath, then deflate. I turned to the car again, a familiar Mercedes, now idling in front of the house. The driver had lowered his window. It was Tennyson.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  I nodded. Gladly.

  As I slid on to the passenger seat of the Mercedes, Thorn climbing into the back, I almost mentioned Joel and his mercenaries. I’d already drawn a breath, but thought better of it and sighed. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

  We got underway. The heat flowing from the vents felt wonderful. I held frozen fingertips in front of one, tilted my head back.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Did you hack my email? Seriously, how’d you find me?”

  Thorn spoke up from the backseat. “This was pretty stupid. What were you thinking?”

  How much did they know? Was this a test? There had to be holes on both sides. They didn’t know about Joel’s Heroes, and I didn’t know exactly how they had figured out my whereabouts. Had to be a backdoor into my phone or email account. Never even occurred to me.

  After all, Thorn had a key for Dylan’s apartment, didn’t he? They had us all dead to rights, inside and out.

  Freaked me the fuck out, I tell you.

  “Why didn’t you ask for back-up?”

  “Maybe for this exact reason.” I twisted in my seat to face Thorn head on. “Maybe because if I had, my source wouldn’t bother showing up. You know, which is exactly what happened.”

  We were mostly quiet for the rest of the ride, which I quickly realized was taking me home. No strategy session to follow, no visit with Marquette. Just: “Bad girl. You’re grounded.”

  Then, my phone buzzed. A text.

  From Joel. Simply: ;-)

  *wink*

  I shoved it back into my pocket. Let the campaign folks figure that one out.

  3

  In a strange way, knowing that the campaign had eyes on me at all times was both frightening and comforting. At least there was no more uncertainty. And while I’d need to adjust my behavior in the daylight to keep from revealing too much of my extracurricular activities — god, think about how long they’ve known all my secrets — it was nice to know that I could sleep soundly at night, assured of my safety. I know I was meant to feel outraged about having my civil liberties curtailed, but right then I was too exhausted and far too afraid.

  But what about right now? Were there people listening to me? Was the apartment bugged, too?

  I was too tired to chase that line of thought, which is why I fell into bed and into a healing sleep. No dreams, just blissful emptiness. I could’ve gone all night like that, except for the noise that woke me at three-nineteen in the morning. It was one of those booms that I couldn’t decide if it had been real or in my dream.

  I listened hard. Held my breath and closed my eyes and tried to make my ears super-sensitive. Maybe someone was stirring out there in my apartment. Maybe not. I really couldn’t tell. I was too warm and cozy in my bed to leap up, grab my pistol, and go charging in. Maybe if I ignored it, blamed it on paranoia or something, I could go back to sleep and—

  Nope, there it was. Definitely someone out there. A little cough, closer than I had originally thought. Seriously? Someone was right there?

  That was a mark against the ‘campaign watching over me’ theory.

  Unless this was the campaign.

  Yikes.

  Had I overstepped the line with this stunt tonight? Was it a test to see if I could be trusted? Was this what I got as a final grade — a bullet in my head while I slept?

  Fear was one thing. Anger, however, made me get up and check it out. After all the work I’d done for the campaign, was this what it came down to? Some secret hit squad?

  I slipped out of bed and reached for my clothes, couldn’t find anything but a t-shirt, though, and even that was entangled with yesterday’s underwear. Quietly I snuck those on and took my gun from its usual spot in the bedside drawer, then stepped lightly across the hardwood floor in the dark, my eyes having a much better time with it than earlier in Frogtown.

  Instantly slipped back into cop training: held the gun in my right hand, left hand cupping the handle. Kept it up and pulled close to my body. Last thing I wanted was someone to knock the gun out of my hand.

  I thought about how few times I’d pulled my gun as a cop, and how much I’d done it since.

  The blue glow of a computer screen oozed from the office door, where Hannah had left an excellent Mac set-up; big screen and high-end speakers. Click-clack, someone typing. I eased my way around the door, giving it a wide swatch so I could check the angles. No idea how many people might be in there. In the faint glow, I saw the outline of someone, fingers on the keyboard, face leaning close to the screen.

  It pissed me off. My own campaign, probably, hacking my mail, now sneaking into my house at night to access my computer. Goddamn it. There was no question now, there never should have been, that Andrew had always had a key to Hannah’s townhouse, and probably the cabin, too. My life was an open book to those people, no matter how much I stumped for Andrew, how much I pledged my loyalty, no matter what, I was still someone to be handled, lorded over. Controlled.

  I let go of my gun with the left hand and reached it straight out, charged straight into the office. The person at the computer heard me way too late as I rounded the desk and grabbed them by the front of their shirt and pulled them up from the chair, face to face, gun under their chin.

  A woman’s voice, panicked: “No, wait, no, don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  I kept my grip firm. “Who are you? Who sent you?”

  “Please, no! I’m on your side! I’m the Angel! I’m the Angel!”

  The bluish screen light illuminating the left side of her face exaggerated her wide eyes and parted lips, while the rest was plunged into dark shadow, yet still I recognized her.

  Blonde hair, straight, and lifeless.

  No make-up.

  “You work for Konzbruck?”

  She nodded, double-fast.

  Several pieces fell into place. “You? You’re the Guardian Angel?”

  “Please.”

  I let go, and she eased back into my chair. On the screen, she’d clearly gotten past my password easily enough, and there were plenty of windows open. I walked across the room and turned on the big light, letting the pistol hang at my side.

  Turned back to the girl. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “I—”

  “And why didn’t you show up when you were supposed to?”

  “Listen to me.”

  “I am.”

  “Because you had guys with guns. And, and, and, then your campaign manager was there, and that other guy—”

  “You were there, then?”

  She nodded. “Only a few minutes away …” Shrug.

  I set the gun on the nearest bookshelf and crossed my arms. Leaned against the wall. “What’s your name?”

  “Nice.” Pronounced Neese.

  “Like the city in France?”

  “Exactly. My brothers are named Denver and Houston.”

  “Is that where you guys were born or made?”

  “Just … just a gimmick, I guess.” She pointed to the screen. “I wanted to know how much you told your people about me. I thought I could trust you.”

  “You can.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re being funny, right? You broke into my house and hacked my computer. I’d say trust is off the table for the moment.”

  It was an awkward stalemate. I kept my mouth shut to see what she had to say for herself. But then I noticed she had a couple of tear tracks down her cheeks.

  I shook my head
. “You want some coffee? Let me get a robe and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  I slipped into a robe and some thick socks. Nice was waiting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, head resting on her forearms. In better light, I took a second look. She seemed the sort to dress down in order to deflect attention. Maybe she thought it would help her out, maybe the pols would take her seriously if she didn’t ‘show off’ her body or highlight her face by spending seventy dollars for a haircut. Or maybe she was just shy; maybe she even had a self-image problem. Like me. It all felt wrong to say things like that, but as I’d discovered in politics, some awful things were sometimes said because that was the honest-to-god truth and there were no excuses.

  Right now, she was in my home, visibly upset, and unsure of whom to trust.

  After I brewed a couple of K-cups, I sat across from her and pushed a mug towards her.

  “You want anything in it?”

  She looked up, inhaled the steam from the cup. “Cream and Splenda?”

  So I went and got those. “Are you going to tell me how you got in?”

  “I had help.”

  “Is that help waiting for you somewhere?”

  “He’s outside in the hall. Want me to get him.”

  I set the cream and Splenda beside her and took my seat. “No. Why didn’t he come in with you?”

  “He didn’t want to get caught. He’d like to run for congress one day, if he can avoid getting a record.”

  Of course, the guy who was in the office with her and the goth girl today. Wanted to get into her pants, but not quite as much as he wanted to get into politics. Charmer.

  “How did you know about Dylan and your boss? About the fancy rooms?”

  Nice sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “What did you expect? You were going to sneak in here, hack the computer and … what, leave? That ain’t gonna happen, darling, so you might as well talk to me. Now.”

  “You’re not who I thought you were. This was a mistake.”

  “Tell your lockpick buddy to go on home. You’re safe with me. I’ll tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know. Deal?”