“If you need me, explain what’s going on.”
“Not so timid on your home soil, are we?”
“We all have our moments.”
“Since you ask,” she says with a little shrug, “I’m chasing drugs, maybe a few girls. Just Fed stuff.”
I ignore the charade and walk around the bar to sit down next to her. “And my brother, where does he play into your little vendetta?”
“Him?” She smirks. “Nowhere at all.”
“What about your brother?”
That one stops her dead. It’s almost scary, seeing someone with purpose lose themselves for a moment. But she brings it together quick.
“What do you know about the Rapture?”
“A bunch of nuts who think Jesus is going to save them.”
“A scholar, you are.”
“Thanks. I try.”
She pulls out a cross. It sparkles in the light; it’s been years since I’ve seen one—must be fifteen years, since the Inquisition of 2015. Real witchhunt, that. Made religion illegal in the states.
“Pretty,” I say, but my tone says otherwise, “so you’re a crazy.”
“Yeah, I am,” she says, but I knew that already.
“Why’d you come back?”
“Retribution,” she says. “He wills it.”
“Yeah, spare me the biblical stuff, thanks. I’ll just say I don’t believe you and leave it at that.”
“All right. You have your answer.”
“What I can’t figure out,” and I pause here, try to word it in a way that won’t get me murdered, “is how the ledger will help.”
“I told you.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe that’s the whole story.”
“Well it is,” she says, looking to the bottom of her glass.
“You’re a damn good liar, but not this good. That’s my bet.”
“Good thing no one’s taking bets, then.”
“Tell me what this is about.”
“My mother.”
“The whore?” The words slip out of my mouth again, but the slap Kristine lays on me is damn near hard enough to shove them back down my throat.
“I didn’t see Candice for a long time, but she didn’t deserve to die.”
“But we all do anyway.”
“It’s bigger than Henderson killing her. Isaac, he’s…a problem.” She says it like problem isn’t a big enough word for it.
“Isaac killed her, not Henderson.” Her eyes grow wide. She isn’t used to being wrong. “But the Syndicate’s a problem. Isaac’s just a damn nuisance.”
“The Syndicate is nothing in comparison.” I bite my tongue. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth, but that thought has razor blades churning in my stomach. “He’s a radical. Believes it all. Believes he’s the Messiah, saving the world from absolution and depravity.”
“How far does he get?”
“We got some catching up to do.”
Blood doesn’t evaporate. It’s primal. I don’t want to see my brother die, and I don’t think anyone does. But the things he’s done, or will do, they’re bad.
I pour two whiskeys and walk them over to a table in the dining area. Kristine follows—a first—and pulls up a chair. For a long while the only sounds are the slosh of the whiskey and the infrequent musical clink of our glasses meeting in midair.
She gets up, unsteady, and goes over to the corner of the room where a little stereo sits. The smooth cool of bebop rushes into the room like a strong wind in a heat wave. Her head bobs and rolls with the quiet offbeat rattle of the drums.
“Want to dance,” she says, the hint of a smile creasing her lips.
“That works,” and I get up, take her hip and hand, and rock and spin, slow as slow can go. The raspy recording switches again and again, all the same, just different notes.
“I haven’t heard this before,” she says, and I can smell cocoa and lavender in her hair, “do you like it?” I move my head, neither yes nor no, and her hand clutches mine a little tighter. “I can help you,” she says, as if the airy silence has convinced her that I’m worth saving, “disappear.”
The word sounds macabre the way it slips through her glossy lips, like I’ll be devoured out in the high winds of the desert. We sway in the bebop breeze as the midnight light grows deeper and darker.
The playlist fades to the background when I break away from her embrace. I lean against a column, the whiskey and cigarettes going to my head, and slide down to the floor.
Here in the middle of the room it seems like I’m stranded on a distant island. I watch from my new vantage point—she looks lonesome, and I’d like to go back to her. But it’s impossible to retrace your steps in a desert—the sand fills them in as soon as you leave. It’s time to give Kristine what she came for.
I walk outside. Truck cold to the touch, strongbox even colder, metal inside coldest of all. I grab the book and toss it to her when I return.
“Clever boy,” she says, “away from prying eyes.”
But her ass, threatening to burst from its leather confines, distracts me. The heels of her boots click as she walks over and sits on my lap. The faint strains of jazz are the perfect accompaniment for such perfection.
“There might be something here.”
“Right,” I say, refocusing on the task at hand, “good work, excellent work.”
“Either way, you know what this means, don’t you?”
“I’m done?” About time; I need to think this business through.
“We have a meeting.”
Dust and starry night whip by the truck while we pick up speed down the flat road. We’re heading out of Riverton—alas, not for the last time—and into the wild. Past the El Dorado, there isn’t another town for 40 miles.
Kristine works on decoding the ledger in the back.
“Even with the spaces, you can tell that Henderson was up to something.” I mention that it’s not his half. She gives me a look, but I don’t have the answer to who the owner is. I look back in the rear-view, third time in the last minute. Any headlights behind us would induce a heart attack. “What’s this?” I glance back. She’s holding up the switchbox. “You didn’t say you had this.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Damnit, Damien, this is it,” she says, jabbing at the insignia on the back, “this is the one, from the sign. This meeting just got a little more interesting.”
I can’t see how this meeting will be interesting, but then my brain foggy is from sleep deprivation and an aggressive thirst for liquor. I reach into my boot and pull out the bag.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“A little pick me up.” She looks at me real strange when I say this.
“No.” Her voice is loud enough to make me jerk the wheel in surprise, and it takes me about thirty seconds to right us back on line.
“That wasn’t the answer I was expecting. Or looking for.”
“Tough.”
The rest of the ride is silent, and it’s a long ways to wherever we’re going.
17
Freeport
“Turn off.” It feels like we’ve been driving into the void for the past half hour, but I’m mistaken and there’s something out here. I flick on the high beams. Fantastic—now I can see some anemic looking cacti. I slow down to a crawl. “What the hell are you doing?” Kristine’s screaming, the sweetness all gone, leaving only the tart, the rough.
“There’s nothing here.”
“Yeah there is. Don’t you check the old city maps?”
“Saying stuff like that makes me think you’ve been doing some drugs yourself.”
“Doubtful. But it’s here.”
There’s a ditch every fifteen feet. I don’t care what this place is—I’m about to cut the engine and t
urn around when I see the shadow of something civilized emerge through the windshield.
My excitement is muted as I get closer to the little cluster of buildings. It might as well be an extension of the same crumbling town we just came from: shacks and structures made of busted boards and rusted nails. I’m not sure why I’m surprised.
There are five of these decrepit buildings, situated in a sort of half circle around a large pool, behind which is a sign, the paint faded from the elements. Freeport Water Park, it says, and then in an emphatic, edgy font, Escape the Heat! There’s this picture of a cartoon kid riding a wave, like this was South Beach, where the water and good times flowed.
“See,” she says, “same symbol.” The switchbox looks old, but I don’t think it has anything on this little establishment; I haven’t even heard of this place. It’s a strange little ghost town, like a miniaturized version of Riverton—whoever built Freeport thought there was something in the windswept desert besides death and dry dirt. And there is: time’s train station. This is where the switchboard operator resides. We get out, and I leave the high beams on to illuminate the scene.
“Quaint,” I say, kicking my heel against the crumbling concrete basin of the pool, “what are we looking for here?”
“We’re going to find who made this thing.” Door-to-door she goes, rap, rap, rap, no answer. Then, in the fourth one, a shadow moves behind the grimy glass, looking out. Kristine looks poised to slam the whole frame in, but the guy just opens it. I’m not sure why; I can’t imagine anyone good visits you in a place like this after midnight.
“You guys got the stuff,” a ratty dude with thinning, greasy black hair says, “they promised if I stayed, they’d get me a supply.” His voice shakes, the tone all squeaky, like he’s been on a three week meth binge. Torn clothes and a skinny frame suggest that this could be the truth.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask, even though it’s not my turn to speak.
“I’m Freddy,” he says, “you guys are with the Syndicate, right?” Our answer isn’t fast enough for him, and he tries to slam the door. Kristine’s too quick for that, sees it before he even thinks it. Freddy’s on his stomach, face pressed against the floor by the heel of her boot.
“We’re not with them, but we sure would like to know what you’re doing out here alone in such a nice place,” she says, grinding her foot against his neck.
“Running the boards, man,” he says, like there’s some ridiculous conspiracy, “they won’t let me run them in town while eating waffles with the locals, even if I heard they have some damn good waffles.”
“Who’s this they you speak of,” I say, doing my best good cop impression. It comes out a little more desperate than I’d like.
“The Syndicate, man. People disappear, no bodies, no tracking. Not on the manifests. Just gone. Off the grid. They’re losing control, and it makes them a bunch of dicks.”
It’s already starting. A twenty year head start for Isaac will do that. This, right now, it’s the past. It’s my present, but way up ahead, twenty years yonder, that’s where the action is. That’s the part of the candle still burning. This, it’s already burned.
But maybe not, then.
“Yeah? Got anything to do with this?” Kristine shoves the switchbox down where he can see it, but doesn’t let him up.
“Yeah, yeah, I can tell you what that is, I can show you what it does.”
“We’re waiting,” she says, tapping her foot on his head. He’s taking this well. I’d be pissed; he’s just shaking.
“Rod came rooting around after the kid died, five years back just popped in and took that.”
“So this is the Sheriff’s?”
“Yeah, that’s right, I guess. It’s his, now. They gave him a job. But it isn’t his, it can’t be, because you guys don’t have this sort of stuff lying around in 2029.”
“How’d he find you?”
Freddy sneers, and you can see he’s still pissed about getting found out. “Dumbass luck is all. Driving around, stumbles on me. Barges in, knocks me over, starts flipping switches and acting crazy before I can even get a word in. I had to tell him before he caused the world to end or something.” I can’t tell if that last bit is a joke. I hope that Freddy isn’t the arbiter of the world’s fate. We’re all screwed if that’s the case.
Kristine takes the pressure off his head. Freddy doesn’t react.
“What’s it do?” Kristine asks, handing him the device.
“A lot of things. I just need…”
“What?”
“It’s killing me out here, I could just use a taste, a little something to keep me going, anything if you got it.”
Kristine gives me a look. I toss Freddy the bag from my boot. He’s all limbs, can’t catch anything. He scrambles forward to snatch it off the ground and then leaps—in one motion, it seems—from the floor to his desk.
Freddy taps it against the edge with a too long pinkie nail before he begins chopping the powder into lines. His nose sucks up each one in rapid-fire succession.
I grab what’s left from the table, put it back for safekeeping.
Letting loose an oh, that’s good, Freddy slumps back in his chair. I can see his mind dance off into another realm, where another Freddy—one who isn’t depressed or sad—frolics and plays.
He rolls up the excess with a nice cigar, like you might do to cover a cookie in sprinkles. “Evens out the jitters,” he says, legs banging a furious rhythm against the old boards, “and makes your lips tingle like you’re eating the best pussy in the world.”
Kristine’s entire face is creased in a murderous stare. Freddy, though, he’s oblivious to her disgust, happy as a jackrabbit that’s outrun a pack of coyotes.
“So…” she says.
“My God,” and he spins in the chair, round and round, “you and this broad got the pure, the stuff from another world. I thought the Bull’s product was gone from these parts.”
“Who?” So Kristine hasn’t heard of this mythical drug mule. I figured he’d be a staple in the future.
“He’s a legend, gets the best. Real shy, though.”
“This guy got a name?”
Freddy fidgets in his seat and tries to redirect his attention towards the black-ops grade electronics covering his desk. He could run a lunar mission.
“This him?” I ask. I got a picture of Jasper’s dad in my back pocket. I shove it in Freddy’s face.
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“You know him?”
“I’d better.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Well that’s the Bull. But ain’t no one seen him in years. Just rumors.”
“So where do you figure this little treasure came from,” I say, waving the baggie in the air.
“He’s alive. Just hiding.”
“What?” A resilient bastard, if he’s alive—old Officer Monk died twice, and that was within a three day span.
“Just work on the switchbox,” Kristine says, breaking up our little discussion. She seems nonplussed that her daddy is distributing narcotics—or still alive. Freddy races out of the chair and starts drilling away at the sea of computers on his desk.
“Here.” He almost slides out of his damn shoes and through the door on his way back to us. “This is what you need.” It’s a memory card, tiny as my thumb. Kristine puts it in her phone.
“I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
He twirls the cigar in his mouth with a little flourish. “This is what all those numbers meant—they’re coordinates.”
“Of what?”
“Personnel. Red means on duty, blue means decommissioned.” I note our position, see the blue dot. So they were keeping tabs on me. I blink, and my nightvision flickers on and off. One of the implants, it’s got to be the culprit.
“I thought this wa
s a switchbox.”
Freddy looks at her like she’s out of the loop. “Baby, it’s the whole damn grid.”
“And the gray dots?”
“Off the grid. Maybe they’re kaput, blammo, six feet under, bought the farm, caught a bullet, brains splattered on the door, hearts cut out on the floor—”
“I get it.”
“But what you don’t get,” he says, continuing on like a freight train, “is that maybe that isn’t the case. Most of them have just escaped.” He looks at me, as if to say I can help you with that. I don’t know if I want Freddy performing emergency surgery.
“What about this one,” I say, stepping forward to look at the screen. Most of the dots are gray, halted at the person’s last known location, but there’s a giant blinking dot amidst all the others.
“That’s the warehouse.” He smirks. Everyone talks in riddles these days. “You think I’m too gone? Freddy doesn’t make mistakes, no sir, I made the original and that’s everything, analog-to-digital, smoothed out some algorithms and triangulation patterns, picked up some minor harmonic frequencies for fine-tuning…” I watch him speak, wonder how long he can keep this slurry of sounds going. He slams on the brakes.
“Keep this,” he says, tossing the strange device back to us, “it does more.”
“One more thing—what’s in the warehouse?” Kristine has her hand on her holster.
“A power source for the junction.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Kristine’s gun starts to come out.
“Look lady, that’s the truth. I can’t go there. I’m on the grid. I run off where I don’t belong, the powers that be, they start to ask questions, and then I get trussed up by my dick like a goddamn bird.” He pauses. “I’ll send you where you need to go, wherever it is. Just bring me some juice.”
“Let’s go, Damien,” Kristine says, already out the door, resigned to the fact that Freddy knows nothing else.
“Oh, and Kristine, you should be careful.”
She almost drops everything in her hands. “How do you know my name?”
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