I’d wanted to stay at the Lucky Deal, but I needed to sleep before carrying out the plan we’d hatched together. There would have been little chance of that if I’d stayed. Besides, I didn’t want to draw attention to our relationship; the other Trustees would assume I was plotting to sell Flo the box directly. That would lead to trouble neither of us needed.
I hurried through the casino, which was still half-full despite the impending daybreak, and, after a quick check for any prying eyes, dashed to my car. I drove past Bruno a hundred feet up the road. He was sitting on the curb, looking as wrinkled and soggy as a squid hauled from the ocean, taking deep breaths and staring at the lightening sky. At some point during the night, when I was dozing, Danny had risen and spoken to the guards. I’d heard the sloshing of water and hoarse shouting. I’d said nothing when he returned to bed, too keen to burrow back down into our cave of intimacy. Looking at Bruno now brought an uncomfortable knot to my stomach. It wasn’t just how hard Danny had become to be capable of wreaking such a brutal revenge that worried me. It was how hard he might have been in the first place. I couldn’t escape the fact that he’d murdered a man, something I would never have thought him capable of—even if the victim had raped his friend. I was also imagining what else the Torment showed him. Did it, for example, take him back to the day when he’d sliced off a philanderer’s dick before bringing him to the motel? I’d never before considered that he might have been the one the wife had hired to do the deed. Now I wasn’t so sure.
It occurred to me then that perhaps my real sin had been pride. I’d always been so reliant on my omniscient gut, always so damn sure that the great Kat Murphy could read anybody. But I’d royally fucked up with Bruno, dismissing the depth of his anger. He always was a sexist asshole, and I’d humiliated him in front of his employees. The whispers had probably run around the casino: a woman had gotten the better of the boss. He couldn’t have let that slide. If I’d engaged my brain better, things could have turned out differently. Franklin had fooled me easily and may have continued to do so had he been more subtle. Maybe I’d also misjudged Danny. I tried to push the doubt to the back of my mind. I didn’t want to poison our relationship before it got going again. Whatever he’d done, however life and death had warped him, we could deal with it.
I didn’t want my shadows to know I’d been absent without leave, so I parked outside Benny’s and knocked on his door until, bleary-eyed and stinking of stale booze, he opened up. He hadn’t found time to put clothes on—he was wearing disturbingly skimpy and suspiciously yellow underwear—but he’d managed to grab the shotgun, which pointed waveringly at my guts.
“I need to use the back door,” I said.
He said something incomprehensible, which I took as permission to proceed. The clunk of bolts followed me as I walked through the bar and out into the hallway that led to Benny’s one-room apartment. I unlocked the back door and emerged into the alley running up to the rear of my apartment. I made the short journey at a jog, eyes peeled in case the watchers had twigged to the back route, and knocked on the ground-floor window. The tenant, a young transsexual prostitute, peeked through the curtains.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, opening the window. “What’s up?”
“Mind if I sneak in through your apartment? It’s a bit crowded out front.”
“They’re out there for you, are they? Thanks for that. I picked up some customers. I owe you one, so feel free.”
When I reached my apartment, I opened the blinds and stood by the window, stretching and yawning as if I’d recently woken up. The watchers were still there, although a new shift had taken over. They didn’t appear to have noticed my car wasn’t there. It was an understandable oversight, since they didn’t know I was free to wander while they suffered and hadn’t seen me leave the apartment. Now that I’d let them know I was home, I picked up the phone and called Laureen.
“Where the hell have you been?” she shouted the moment she realized it was me. “I’ve been trying to reach you since last night.”
“Careful now,” I said. “Somebody might overhear you. We’re supposed to be keeping this discreet, remember?”
“Discreet? I turned up at your apartment a few hours ago and found half the thugs in the city parked outside, giving me the evil eye. There’s a nasty rumor floating around that you’re going to auction something valuable from Avici Rise. It had better not be what I think it is.”
“It’s exactly what you think it is, but I’m not really trying to sell it. I called the auction to draw out the Trustee who had the box.”
“Did it work?” she said, her voice suddenly hopeful.
“I’ll know by tonight. Come to my apartment at ten PM, when they’re all busy with their Torments. We don’t want any of them to see you. You know how people love to gossip.”
I hung up abruptly so that she didn’t have time to ask any further questions about the progress of the investigation. I didn’t want her to start suspecting something was afoot, and I needed her to be tantalized enough to come see me. Not that I would be there. I would be busy breaking into her house.
25
I crouched behind the same bush in which I’d cowered when I’d first seen the Ammit, my car stowed out of sight in the car park of a burger joint on the edge of Il Terzo Livello. I kept my gaze on Arcadia Road, waiting for Laureen to zip past on the way to our meeting. I needed her to come soon. The evening’s victims had been gathering for a while. The crowd was healthy tonight, which was good for me if not for them. I estimated it would take the Ammit a good hour or so to munch through the assembled delicacies, giving me enough time to get in through the gate, turn over Laureen’s house, and make myself scarce before it began considering dessert—which would be me if I wasn’t careful. I also needed some fortune on the timing. Laureen would be gone for about an hour, the time it would take her to reach my place and return when she saw I wasn’t there. These windows needed to open at roughly the same time, or I had no chance of success.
I got lucky. At nine thirty PM, a black limousine drove by, heading in the direction of town, as the number of arrivals began to tail off. I caught a glimpse of a curly-haired woman in the back seat. A few minutes later, the gate scraped open, and down thumped the Ammit. I’d almost convinced myself that this wasn’t an incredibly stupid course of action. After all, breaking in and sniffing around was an integral part of my job, nobody would be expecting a human intrusion during Torment time, and I had to discover Laureen’s intentions. When I saw the creature, though—all teeth, muscle, and appetite—I felt an intense desire to vomit. If anything went wrong, the last thing I saw would be a close-up of its tonsils. The moment it disappeared into the dust cloud, I sprang from my hiding place. Screams pursued me across the open plain, raising goose bumps on my flesh. I sprinted for all I was worth to minimize my time in the open, the exertion doing nothing to settle my stomach. I didn’t exactly blend in with the moonlit desert landscape. If anybody was looking, I would be easy to spot.
I reached the steep incline without any alarm being raised and climbed hand over hand, clutching at tufts of scrubby grass to haul myself up. The plants kept giving way under my clumsy grabs. I wasn’t a cat burglar like Sebastian. The speed I was moving, I was more like a tortoise burglar. Near the top, my hands slick, I lost my grip. The firm and excruciating snagging of my crotch on a jagged rock arrested my descent. By the time I reached the top, I was sweating buckets, and my limbs trembled. When I glanced back at the desert through watery eyes, the Ammit was still busy chowing down. I looked at my watch and saw that I had forty minutes left. It was going to be tight.
I crawled through the gate, hugging the wall, and looked for signs of movement. Bright arc lights dyed the grass an artificial lime green, and figures moved around inside the houses closest to me, but there was no activity outside. At least I’d been right on that score. I’d expected security to be generally lax while the Torments were loose, and Laureen couldn’t have ramped up patrols without w
arning the others that something was up. All the same, I had to be careful. It would take one Administrator to peek out the window at an inopportune moment, and the jig would be up. Luckily, there were gratuitous quantities of shrubbery to duck behind as I zigzagged toward Laureen’s pad.
As I crouched behind a leafy peacock, about fifty feet from my target, a guard appeared around the corner of the neighboring house. I froze. The peacock was a touch on the thin side, yet whoever had crafted it had been so proud of their work that they’d decided to put a spotlight behind it. My and the bird’s shadows were thrown twenty feet high onto the wall of the house the guard was approaching. Fortunately, he appeared to have other things on his mind. He ran his fingers through his hair, cupped his hands to sniff his breath, and knocked on the door. It opened, and a hand yanked him inside by his lapel. He was going to be busy for a while. With luck, they would both be screamers and mask any noise I made.
A few minutes later, I pitched up against Laureen’s house, which was reassuringly dark inside. I was hoping she’d left something unlocked. My absence from the meeting I’d called would be suspicious enough. I was going to claim a mugger had left me unconscious for a few hours and hope Laureen bought the story. If she came home to a jimmied-open door, she’d think twice about my story. Fortunately, Laureen had learned nothing from the previous theft or thought lightning wouldn’t strike twice—the patio doors were unlocked. I slipped through them and into her living room.
I turned on the flashlight and, careful to keep the beam pointing toward the floor, began searching the house. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. A file stamped “Hell’s Evil Plan to Destroy the World” in screaming-red letters would be handy. There was nothing in the living room that looked like a likely repository of secret information, although I wasted a minute running the light over her book collection and salivating. It would have been easy to snaffle a few, but I never stole anything on such jobs unless it was related to the purpose of my visit. As I lingered by the groaning shelves, it struck me that for somebody who supposedly hated humanity, she showed a lot of interest in its culture. I always found the extent of a person’s book and music collections a good way to judge character. I was finding it increasingly difficult to swallow that Laureen was as rotten as Franklin would have me believe.
I reluctantly left the books and headed for her bedroom. The floor safe had been empty save for the replica, which meant she didn’t keep any important papers in there. It was just as well, since I had zero chance of opening the damn thing. The desk drawers contained the usual crap: old pens, half-used writing pads, and loose change. I already had a strong feeling I was holding a busted flush, but I continued my search all the same. Through bathrooms, spare bedrooms, and kitchen I prowled, letting the flashlight swing to and fro, hoping the beam would fall on some small snippet. The only item that stopped me in my tracks was a full-color photograph held to the fridge by a magnet. A dozen people stood on the lawn, jammed together for a group snap. Laureen was front and center, as befit her status as the top banana. Franklin stood behind, one hand on her shoulder, the other thrown around the blonde next to him. Everyone was pasting on a smile for the camera, but his was far wider than the scene seemed to warrant. It looked like he was trying too hard to fit in, but I could have been reading too much into the situation. For all I knew, the unseen hand of the blonde was doing something that was making him look so jolly.
This, ultimately, was why I was at Laureen’s looking for hard evidence. Sure, I’d always set a lot of store by gut feeling, but my increasingly flawed record could mean that that flutter was only gas. The human mind was wired to find patterns where there were none: in the swirl of clouds or the flaking paint of a ceiling. When all you had was your instinct and somebody’s story to go by, you could look at any situation or image and make it fit your favorite theory. In reality, all the picture told me was that Franklin was working as an Administrator—whether as an angelic spy or a member of the regime gone rogue was open to interpretation. The stakes were too high for me to proceed without knowing for sure that I was taking the right course of action.
I checked my watch and found that fifty minutes had elapsed. It was time to make myself scarce. I returned to the living room to slip out the patio door. Through the gaps in the buildings, I could see the gate was still up, which meant the Ammit had yet to return. The compound looked as quiet as it had when I’d arrived. My mind was already turning to what I would do next as I stepped onto the terrace. My lack of focus cost me. Too late, I sensed another presence. I caught the faint impression of a human figure in the corner of my eye before something hard came down on the back of my neck, and I knew no more.
26
I came to on Laureen’s sofa, a throbbing pain at the base of my skull, and fought to focus on the two blurry figures watching me. One of them was the randy guard. He’d obviously finished the job in time to emerge and see my light moving through Laureen’s house. He stood by the door, gun pointing in my direction—all puffed up at his success. The other person, sitting in the armchair across from me, was Laureen. She clearly wasn’t handling the stress of the ticking clock well. Her hair was starting to frizz, her blouse was crumpled, and her skittish eyes were pink rimmed.
“Mind telling me what you’re playing at?” she said as I rubbed my neck and sat up.
I cast around for a good reason to be rummaging through her house, but my head was too fuzzy to scrape up something facetious, never mind a convincing lie. All I had left was the truth and the leverage point of the box. I sincerely hoped the latter would save my ass.
“You’re not going to like it,” I said.
“Do you think you could piss me off any more? Talk.”
My head was clearing fast, which was just as well since I was about to play a risky game. I took up a sprawled position, arm draped over the back of the sofa to disguise the tension jittering through my muscles. “You might want to send your minion outside first. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try anything.”
She gave me a hard look and nodded. He looked miffed but left.
“I know who has your box,” I said. “I’ve seen it. I can get my hands on it anytime I want.”
I detected the sag of relief in her face. “So stop playing silly buggers and give it to me already.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
Her brow puckered. “Why? You know what’ll happen if you don’t cough it up.”
“Too well. But I need to clear some things up first, which is why I came here. Before we get going, understand this: if I don’t turn up to a prearranged appointment by one AM, my associate will bury the box so deep in this city that you’ll need to dig up every square inch to find it. And you know what’ll happen if you don’t have it in the next few days.”
I wasn’t bluffing. Knowing there was a chance I would get caught, Danny and I had agreed he should encase the box in concrete and drop it in the river if I didn’t return. I’d tried, and failed, to dissuade him from the follow-up plan, which was to launch a full-scale assault on Avici Rise to rescue me. If I didn’t show, his crew would come in all guns blazing. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that; no matter how many heavily armed men and women Danny sent, they’d all disappear down the Ammit’s gullet.
“You’re making a big mistake, Kat,” Laureen said, her voice low and hard. “I can make life very unpleasant for you, way beyond the Torment.”
“You mean you’ll set the Ammit on me?”
Laureen didn’t react at my use of the beast’s name. She must have noticed my surprise at her lack of surprise, for she raised an eyebrow. “You think I didn’t know you were poking around? If you saw anything, it’s because I let you. I suppose you went to the clearing.”
“That’s right, and I didn’t like what I saw.”
“You’ll like it even less when I introduce you to the Ammit up close and personal. Don’t be a fool. Tell me where the box is.”
“I’m not telling you a damn thing until you
answer some questions.”
“Brave words. Why don’t we see how brave you really are?” She closed her eyes briefly, features set into grim lines. “It’s coming.”
Nothing happened for what felt like a long time. An arc light outside the patio buzzed, and the white curtains stirred lazily in the breeze. I gripped the edges of the cushion to anchor my rebellious body, which was demanding permission to run. But fleeing wouldn’t do any good. I would never outpace the Ammit; I needed to face both it and Laureen down. I drew out a cigarette, concentrating on not letting my hands shake.
“Got an ashtray?”
“No need. You won’t have time to smoke it.”
I heard a heavy tread on the gravel outside, and that feeling of creeping, unfocused dread I’d encountered at the Ammit’s kennel stole over me. The front door creaked open, and a long snout telescoped into the room. The rest of the beast followed, claws clicking on the polished floorboards. Hulking in the calm, polished interior of Laureen’s house, its black fur glistening in the lamplight, the Ammit looked even more terrifying. Slabs of muscle rippled along its flanks as it stalked toward me, jaws parted to expose rows of sharp, curved teeth. The reptilian eyes were as black as the rest of it and utterly pitiless.
“Is that thing house-trained?” I said with the hint of a wobble in my voice as the Ammit halted beside Laureen. “I’d hate for it to take a dump on your nice white rug.”
“I’ve figured you out, Kat,” Laureen said. “You joke when you’re scared. It’s your tell. Right now, you’re petrified. You should be. Tell me where the box is, or you’re a bedtime snack.”
I didn’t think she would really do it. Not because she was squeamish but because she needed me. Still, I couldn’t be sure, and the beast’s malevolent presence sucked out my confidence. We were playing a high-stakes game of chicken, and such standoffs always had the potential to go terribly wrong.
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