“Yep.”
“Carla? This is Terri Pastuszka. Got a minute?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. Why didn’t you just call me?”
“I did. On the … never mind. Just buzz me in.”
Down in the office, she found Carla surrounded by the same pile of clutter she’d seen last time, maybe even wearing the same sweatshirt, swirling a mug of oily coffee with a stained wooden stirrer that obviously held some sentimental value.
“I need my shades set to zero location,” Terri said. “Is that the right term?”
Carla removed the coffee stirrer and slipped it into her mouth.
“I have no idea. Whaddya wanna do?”
“I need my PanOpts configured for basic undercover field work.”
“Are you doing ‘basic undercover field work’?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly. Huh. You sure you know what ‘zero location’ means?”
“It means I can’t be located.”
“Right. Meaning you are literally on your own. The force can’t see you. The Wall can’t see you. You have no backup. Pass by anything in progress, and you’re solo. The cavalry wouldn’t be any closer than 911 by way of Layer one. And you’re at a distinct disadvantage in public, since everyone can still see you’re a cop, unless you go with a full-face dust mask.”
“I won’t be in public, so it won’t be an issue.”
“Zero location is used maybe twice a year by Internal Affairs. Otherwise, there’s no reason for anyone to fool with it. I’m not trying to stick my nose in your business, and I can make a waiver, but …”
“I just need it.”
Carla rubbed the back of her neck, muttering, “Christ, I’m tired.” As if by transference, a wave of fatigue passed over Terri as well, hollowed her out, and she tried to lean against the door jamb as nonchalantly as possible.
“Sure. Okay. Gimme.”
Terri reached for her empty breast pocket and actually felt a stab of panic until she realized she was holding the PanOpts in her left hand.
“How long does something like this take?”
“Maybe … ten minutes. I just have to do the I/O box. Take a seat,” she said, motioning to the vinyl sofa and then disappearing into the back workroom. Even if this hadn’t been occupied with stacks of mysterious packing boxes, she couldn’t imagine sitting down and staying awake, so thorough was this new wave of fatigue.
On the desk Carla had been working on, almost lost amongst piles of rubber-handled tools that had no obvious meaning outside this room, a photo frame of dull brass sat on its side. She picked this up, seeing it was a picture of Carla on a deck or back patio, flanked by two teenagers, boy and girl, obviously hers. In the photo, Carla wasn’t exactly smiling. But something about her eyes and pinched grimace made her look entirely different, like someone captured during a fleeting brush with serenity.
Terri smacked her lips and placed the picture back on its side. Up until this moment, she’d never actually thought of Carla as another fully-formed human being with thoughts and emotions and a life outside of this low-ceilinged bunker.
Terri had the car drive her to a shabby strip mall. She ate dinner in the back corner of a Hawaiian barbecue joint with muted overhead lighting that gave the place another dirty aquarium vibe. Afterward, she had the car drive her around the Eastside for a half hour, finally finding a seemingly identical strip mall to land in, someplace to make a few calls before she crashed for the night. The car circled around a bankrupt and boarded big box store, bringing her back to park alongside dumpsters that appeared to have been padlocked and forgotten years ago. A bank of security lights lit a long corridor of weeds, hearty plant life rising triumphant through the weathered asphalt. It was perfect for her scenario: too thin for anyone to effectively hide in, too thick for a lone cop car to attract any sort of attention.
The obvious thing would be to send drones to peek in on her apartment. Too obvious, she decided. She’d already established that her place was being watched, that strangers had been traipsing in and out at will. Drones would be the most predictable move she could make. She pictured the view through her window, a rogues’ gallery of creeps and perps partying it up in her living room.
She dialed Zack, who answered on the first ring. In zero location, he came up audio only.
“Jesus, I thought you were going to call me!”
“I am calling you.”
“This isn’t a joke. I was worried. Where are you?”
“On the Eastside. I’m fine. What’d you dig up on your end?”
“Something’s happening. I don’t know what. I bought some kids’ drones at 7-Eleven, cheap crap no one would think twice about if they got spotted. Set one for Reynoso, one for Blanco, two more for your place …”
His pause went on too long. “My place,” she said.
“Shit, I’m sorry to have to be the guy who tells you this, but yeah. It’s trashed. I got a good look through the living room window, and, from what I could see, it didn’t look tossed. It looked like someone slipped an orangutan in there. Like, punitively trashed, not seeking-something trashed. Someone’s trying to send you a message.”
She was quiet for a moment, realizing the news didn’t affect her as badly as she’d assumed it would. The few things she actually cared about were back in Jersey. All she felt was pissed.
“What about Blanco?”
“Nothing yet. The best I can tell, she’s been in her office all day. But there’s something else. Remember that piece of shit lawyer from the shoe store stabber thing?”
“Yeah. ‘Red’ something.”
“Red Oquendo.”
“He was disbarred not long after, right? Moved up north?”
“Well, he’s back now, and reinstated, too. A little after noon, he walked into the Temple. So I looked him up. And guess who’s his only legal client now? That ‘I’m Sane’ kid.”
“Mansaray? That makes no sense. The kid is barely felony.”
“And then, when I sped the footage up, I see Red exit two hours later, practically arm-in-arm with the Assistant Chief.”
She tightened her mouth and ran a hand slowly over the top of her hair. It was a bad combo; genuinely scared and deeply tired.
“So where exactly are you, anyway?”
“I told you. The Eastside.”
“And why are you audio only?”
“I got my shades zeroed out.”
“Oh shit. Hey, that’s not the …”
“Look, let’s skip the warning talk. I know what I’m doing. Whatever it is that’s happening, it’s obvious that someone inside the department is watching. So I need to be able to move around anonymously.” She thought of Reynoso: go on the low. That prick.
“You’re not staying in a hotel or anything, right?”
“No, I’m parked.”
“Listen, I don’t mean to be the voice of doom, but … parked where? Somewhere you can be seen?”
“Jesus, Zack. I’m behind a boarded-up Romance Outlet near the reservoir. There’s no one here.”
“You in a gumball? You got a people alarm set up?”
“Yes. Stop. I have the proximity alarm on. I’m totally safe.”
“Okay. Alright. Good. Call me tomorrow. Stay vigilant.”
“Yeah,” she yawned. “Vigilant.”
“Good,” he said with a surprising tenderness. “Good. Sleep well, Terri.” He hung up, the whisper of ambient noise coming from his end going mute with a strange finality.
Terri pulled her PanOpts up onto her forehead, halfway popping out the earpieces, absorbed in silence. The car had parked itself directly facing the backside of the abandoned strip mall. Even without headlights, she could make out the dim outline of a loading dock, a forsaken, sunken square that reminded her of a stage in an elementary school assembly room. All it needed was the theater lighting back on the equally desolate Mulholland Drive.
The lane leading to the loading dock was scattered with an assortment of mini-
liquor bottles and discarded hobo detritus and flattened home appliance boxes that had themselves served as homes. The bend that once allowed trucks to pull around the mall and back into the dock had been coated with hard tarmac. Almost nothing grew in this channel. But the rest of the wide lane had been set with porous concrete, capable of absorbing rainwater, and in its abandonment, plant life had snuck up through the pores. Each hearty, waist-high weed stood immobile and sculptural in the still-air silence.
Even though she’d picked the general location—“behind that mall”—it still felt as if the car had brought her here for the sole purpose of contemplation, forcing her to mull her actions, to weigh self-correction. It dawned on her that this was the first moment she’d been able to sit and mourn Mutty. If that was indeed appropriate. She’d never known him that well. In many ways, Mutty Posada had functioned as a caricature for everyone in her social circle, the amiable stoner in a crowd of angry drunks. Had Mutty’s highness gotten him killed?
A sudden heaviness seized her throat, making her audibly swallow. Of course not: she’d gotten Mutty killed. Her single-mindedness, her stubborn bullshit tunnel vision, had flushed a good person out of this world. Mutty was gone because of her. She’d erased him, would never see him again. This fact settled down on her, oppressed her, squeezing out a feeble whimper as she bent over and prepared herself to sob.
An alarm shrieked. It was a high-pitched sizzle, not as deafening as the falling objects alert, but startling enough that she’d yanked her shades down and replaced both earpieces before consciously registering that she was doing so. A red banner read PROXIMITY WARNING with multiple arrows pointing off into the weeds. She squinted and saw two figures, maybe three, crouch-walking up on her, the closest producing a long, L-shaped object as she thought, Don’t go into shock just move. Seeing this object come up in the stranger’s hand, she heard herself say in a soft, agreeable voice, “Wait.”
The crack of the gunshot knocked her off the seat, hitting the car floor as she reached up and pulled the control box down, wondering, strangely, if the floating box itself could shield her from bullets, hearing the second deafening crack overhead, the ricochet echoing off the walls of the loading dock. The car roared to life as a third figure pulled up to her starboard side, aiming down just as she roared out, the forward motion knocking her back onto her head. A third and fourth gunshot sounded, something tinking off the metal frame of the vehicle, and Terri crouched low, holding her skull, trying to make herself as absolutely small as possible, still whispering, “Wait, wait, wait …”
She arranged for a car swap at LAX. It was the most secure and heavily populated public spot she could think of at this time of night. Because she didn’t have a dust mask with her, Terri zipped up her arlando jacket and pulled the neck up to her nose. It looked out of the ordinary and certainly wasn’t comfortable, but made her a hard trace while she waited for the replacement car at the terminal curb.
Rich people flowed past her, thin with wealth, jetting to or from whatever professions allowed them to whiz across the globe. No one gave her a second glance. Nearby, a child in an expensive miniature pea coat moved his little arm in a see-saw motion, finally saying to someone unseen, “I’m not fist bumping you, I am slowly punching you out.”
Terri turned to take in the concourse on the other side of the glass, her own hot breath steaming up the jacket neck. She’d heard that one could get a passport remotely in less than a half hour. She had enough in her bank account to just leave. It was a jarringly real thought. All she had to do was do it.
A sleeper car crept to the curb. It was a long pod with one glorious reclining bed, plush, padded walls, recessed reading lights, and a retractable moon roof. Pulling out, she glanced back at the bright apparition of the terminals, the county still shoveling cash into its airport—even now that it was only a port of call for the world’s wealthiest—still determined to prove that the city was functional long after it had resumed functionality. She directed the sleeper to drive at full speed in a huge clockwise freeway loop, 405 to 605 to 210, a holding pattern for its rootless occupant.
A light drizzle fell as the car picked up speed. Terri felt blank, and oddly awake. As a kid, her dad used to take her out on long, aimless drives. Would this even be possible now? Probably not: unless you were a cop, all car services would almost definitely require a destination. Tonight’s loop was a perk of the job, one of the few left for her. Perhaps the Overholsers, as owners of cars, could still order any of the vehicles in their fleet to drive them around without a target.
She passed automatons designed to sweep up debris on the freeway, and larger automated vehicles, huge, lugging giant slabs of drywall and lumber. A truck synced with her car, and she caught a flash of a dirty plush teddy bear lashed to its bumper. A city bus passed in a blur, its illuminated interior vacant. Another car synced, a compact, its curtained mystique making her nervous.
Rain surged. Traffic flowed as smoothly and orderly as a factory assembly belt. She thought of the network of cars, watching, judging their operatives, communicating with every other car on the road, exchanging load and speed info, alerting each other who was in danger of hydroplaning, how to take the turns, how much to adjust gearboxes for an incline or decline and when to hold the gear through a bend, which car posed any variety of subtle but statistically real dangers to its fellow vehicles, a million different brains holding a vast, unheard, ceaseless conversation. The rain let up to a light sizzle, the windshield wipers groaned once and then shut themselves off.
She leaned back, trying to will herself asleep. Terri hated lying awake in bed, alone with her thoughts. There’d been so many nights of staring up at the ceiling, replaying loops of disaster footage, people screaming and running from the hideous flashes lighting up the night sky. No matter how hard she’d tried to contemplate pleasant things, she always came back to that stark choice, global horror or local horror.
When she’d been married, it seemed like she was always contemplating their deaths, exhaustively churning over scenarios. There’d be a bad biopsy, or a blood test gone wrong, or a lump detected in the shower. This would be followed by weeks or months of suspense, then the final goodbye in a hospital room somewhere, a scene that resisted, in its bottomless misery, actual contemplation, registering as an abstraction no matter how hard she’d tried to conjure its actuality. Or there’d be a phone call in the middle of the night. Or there’d be a call during the day. Or a fellow cop would approach, hat in hand. Then she’d picture one of them alone in their house as a very old widow, tottering about like Gabriella’s senile grandfather in Houston, never sure if his late wife was gone forever or just in the next room. In all these scenarios, Terri had pictured both of them as the survivor, each circumstance having a different emotional edge. But she’d never pondered desertion. It’d never crossed her mind.
Of course, she was avoiding thinking about Zack. In zero location, no one else could have known where she was. She’d only told him. Terri probed around his betrayal, finding it something else that registered only as an abstraction. He’d been her partner for six years, the guy who complained about his kid’s attitudes and friends and tuitions, who’d saved her ass twice from three hundred-pound berserkers, who’d had to get drunk, as a rookie, to put his dog to sleep. How could this man not be this man? The enormity of it made it impossible to conceive, although she knew when it clicked—when her brain finally did admit his treachery—the grief would be cataclysmic.
At some point, she woke with a jolt from a lack of motion. For a moment she wondered if it was a dream, her mind clearing as soon as she heard a faint fumbling around the side of the car, feeling for her gun in the curtained darkness. Terri parted one drape with the muzzle, doing something she had seen in many movies, peeking out and realizing that the car had driven itself to a fuel island. She watched the reedy nozzle of a power cord reach out tenuously toward the vehicle, finding its tiny port and connecting with a barely audible snap.
When the
car pulled out again five minutes later, her heart was still thudding from the action of drawing her gun. She was sure she wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. But then she was climbing down a steep embankment, the loose dirt clouding around her ankles because she was underwater, and she found herself in a cave the size of a cathedral, surrounded by seahorses, and when she touched the walls, she realized they were made of leathery brown fungi which broke off in her hands, and the bottom of the cave was carpeted with thousands of tiny pigtails that had drifted down to the ocean floor.
To be sure she caught Carla as she entered the complex, Terri camped out in the scrubby forensic parking lot at dawn, unsure if the front entrance was even the right one to watch. She’d been left so acutely paranoid from the night before that she’d used the civilian shades to subscribe to three different pay-service face alerts in the neighborhood. As the first long shadows crept across the asphalt, she watched a homeless woman, white, a non-refugee, totter from one end of the lot to the other. There had been a point in her life when she’d felt strangely envious of people with nothing left to lose. She realized now she had become such a person, set apart from this nameless street urchin only by the shelter of a car.
A rush of vehicles entered the lot all at once, a synchronized procession of cars slowing and disgorging. She heard the chime of a Face Alert from her disposables on the seat even as she saw Carla disembark and walk toward the entrance kiosk, squinting into the oblique early morning sun. She was again struck by the woman’s rugged unhandsomeness, her face chapped, like she’d just flown in from the Arctic. Terri intercepted her at the door, Carla seeming to accept her presence with inscrutable silence, as if they’d already had a prearranged meeting.
Downstairs, the cluttered office smelled of fried meat and ketchup. Terri laid out her case again, giving the same presentation she’d delivered to Zack, but with the slight compression of practice. She included Stacy, Nuestro, the bag, the shirt, adding the one new coda of Zack’s own betrayal. Halfway through, she wondered why she was taking in Carla as a confidant, then realizing that she needed someone inside the force, not just for her own sanity but from the sheer truth that she simply could not go it alone. If others inside the department were gunning for her—if the entire city was gunning for her in one way or another—she would have to have someone helping on the backend. She’d have to trust that she could trust.
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