by David Wong
“Jesus.”
“Freedom isn’t free, Mr. Livingston.”
In the end, the choice was no choice at all. Arthur made his phone calls. A lie had gotten the officer’s daughter, Choi, onto a private plane at Salt Lake. When she realized where she was going, she started screaming. It took three men to restrain her. She tried to get off the plane when it landed to refuel in Los Angeles. She tried again in Tokyo. She talked about what her father had done to her, and what he had promised he would do to her if she ever tried to leave. None of that mattered, of course. The market is a machine, and these are just the noises the gears make when they turn.
Meanwhile, Arthur paid a local man to provide him with the three stand-in bodies, and he delivered in less than twelve hours. Arthur didn’t ask where they came from, or whether or not they were alive when the man found them. It was a war zone, and the price of life had dipped into negative territory—many of the citizens were simply worth more dead. The market is what it is.
The “attack” on the convoy transporting the American hostages occurred right on schedule, though maybe “attack” shouldn’t be in sarcasm quotes considering that, as far as Arthur could tell, thirteen real people had been killed in the assault, and ten more had been maimed. One guy got his legs blown off. Arthur assumed that none of the victims knew that their deaths were intended to be a form of very convincing method acting to carry out a CIA ruse.
After all of that, when the deadline for him to set sail arrived, no one showed up at the docks. It would be nearly five hours before the three American captives showed up to be hustled onto Arthur’s submersible “fishing” vessel, two of them with serious wounds that he did not have the equipment on board to tend to. And so as they sailed away, a gruff Texan named Budd tried to put pressure on a spurting artery that had drenched his left leg, while the blue-eyed “Will Blackwater” was wearing a shirt doused in his own blood. As the vessel sank under the waves, a strapping young black man with a goatee and big brown eyes watched nervously as the water covered the windows and said, “It’s supposed to do that, right?”
Will sat next to Arthur at the controls, holding a compress against a freely bleeding head wound, and shook Arthur’s hand with fingers that were slick with fresh blood.
Arthur stared down at his blood-smeared palm and said, “Pleased to meet you.”
The man said, “When we get a free moment, I want to know how you managed to pull this off.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
Arthur thought for a moment, and tried to tally up the dead bodies and ruined lives that had pried this group loose from the People’s Republic of North Korea, and lost count. He surely didn’t know about all of them anyway. And it didn’t matter. He had a job, that job was going to get done, and that was that. You get sentimental and you might as well walk away. Go sit in a cubicle and run out the clock until you die.
Arthur stared into the murky waters churning outside the portal window, wiped off blood onto his three-hundred-dollar slacks and muttered, “There is always a way.”
So anyway, no, Arthur couldn’t tell you how many of the girls he squirreled away from the Korean peninsula and other parts of the world either never made it to America, or if they did, never made it to old age. Statistically, the moment a woman accepts money for sex, her chances of being murdered shoot up five thousand percent—a woman who stays in that line of work has a life expectancy of thirty-four. But, he would say, would any of them have been better off where they were? Whether they were born in Pyongyang or Pennsylvania, they didn’t wind up in that life unless they were out of prospects, and Arthur kept them clean and comfortable right up until the day they stopped being profitable. The market is the market, and it’s not his fault the market says young women are cheap and plentiful and spoil faster than green bananas.
And as for Zoey Ashe, well, it simply wasn’t all that unusual to find a twenty-two-year-old female dead on the pavement outside some Livingston property. It just didn’t happen on this particular day.
THIRTY-ONE
Zoey fell, the freezing air rushing past her ears, waves of mortal panic and terror crashing through her nervous system. Limbs trying to climb through the air, uselessly grabbing for purchase that she knew wasn’t there.
Just a few seconds.
An eternity.
Her last thought was “I’m going to die with a hot dog wrapper in my pocket” and then,
WHAP!
Zoey impacted pavement that was much softer than she had expected.
Her face was crammed into something that felt like rough canvas, and then she was sinking, gently being lowered until she was resting in what felt like a gigantic hammock. A split second later Armando landed five feet away from her and sent a jolt through the cloth that sent her bouncing. Zoey thought for a moment they had lucked out and landed on an awning, but Armando was laughing when she sat up and saw it was some kind of massive inflatable trampoline thing, which Zoey believed stuntmen used when jumping off buildings for movies. This one seemed to extend forever in both directions, covering the sidewalk and part of the street. It was black, with huge yellow letters printed on it that said simply “DROP.”
A moment later Andre, knees drawn up in a cannonball, landed nearby, sending another ripple through the bag. It rolled Zoey into the dent in the canvas where Armando was lying, and she rolled on top of him and giggled and poked him in the chest.
“That was some real good bodyguarding you did there, buddy! You just let somebody push me off a roof!”
“I knew this was down here. Otherwise I would never have let you get so close to the—”
She kissed him, right on the mouth. She didn’t even know she was going to do it until she did it.
Armando didn’t kiss her back, but was very gentle in the way he pushed her off.
Very sternly he said, “Zoey. No.”
“Okay, okay.”
He sat up, trying to figure out the quickest way off the high-fall bag.
He said, “Don’t be embarrassed, this is a very normal reaction when you have had the kind of experience that—”
She started crawling away from him while he was still muttering his explanation and stumbled/rolled toward the edge, finding she was still six feet off the ground.
A piercing horn sounded and suddenly there was a rain of people falling from the ledges of the buildings along the park. They fell, landed on the bags, rolled off, and ran into the buildings to go back up and do it again.
Zoey rolled awkwardly off the bag. Andre was already standing in the street, which was covered in a soft mat that she assumed was there to catch people who accidentally fell off the edge of the bag on impact. He had a ridiculous grin on his face. Zoey shoved him and laughed and Andre put on an innocent look.
“What, nobody explained to you what a Drop party is? You ain’t felt adrenaline until you’ve jumped off a tall building and seen the ground flyin’ up at you. Arthur kept wanting to set it up around Livingston Tower but that’s way higher than what these bags are rated for.”
Zoey brushed snow off her skirt while Armando attempted the impossible task of dismounting from the high-fall bag gracefully.
She said, “Ugh, I’m all wet now.” She said to Armando, “Take me back home, you need to get me out of these wet clothes.
“Zoey…”
“Calm down, grumpy pants. I’m just joking. But seriously, these tights are cutting off circulation to my legs and you may have to take me to the hospital if I don’t get them off.”
Andre said he had three prospective ladies waiting for him back at the party, so he excused himself while Zoey and Armando made their way to the waiting car. Armando checked it from stem to stern to make sure there wasn’t a bundle of dynamite strapped to the engine, despite the fact that it hadn’t been out of the sight of four armed guards for the entire night.
Armando slid in first, and as Zoey climbed in the passenger side he shook off his suit jacket, and unbuttoned the
top tree buttons of his crimson shirt, revealing a gold cross on a chain, and a square Band-Aid on his chest, as if he’d cut himself shaving his body hair.
As Zoey settled in she said, “It’s that tea, right? It makes you feel like you’ve got a fever or something.” The second Zoey’s door closed she said, “Turn your head,” then kicked off her shoes, hiked up her skirt, and shoved the tights off her legs. She wadded them up and stuffed them into her pocket along with her hot dog wrapper.
“That’s better. And I’m—wait—yes, I am wearing underwear. Whew.”
Armando sighed, pulled them out into traffic, and hesitated as if trying to formulate his words.
“Zoey … I have had a lot of female clients, this sort of thing, it comes up more often than you think. It is actually covered in training, during licensing. The client is under stress, in a vulnerable place, coming down off a rush of adrenaline. They start misinterpreting their feelings. The reaction is chemical, nothing more.”
“Okay, okay, stop lecturing me. I’m blaming the tea all the way.”
“I cannot continue with the contract if it is going to be like this. Even if it was mutual, it is strictly forbidden by our code of ethics.”
“You’re right, and using the word ‘forbidden’ definitely doesn’t only make it hotter.”
“Zoey, this is not a joke.”
“I get it. You’re a handsome Latin action hero. I’m a trailer troll with the wrong eating disorder. Stop freaking out about it, you can surely resist the temptation of little ol’ me.” She shrugged out of her blazer. “Even if I’m not a hundred percent sure I can make it home before I have to get these clothes off. Are these windows tinted?”
“Just so you understand, this is the last we speak of it.”
“Of course. Jeez, you’re so tense. I don’t think you were this tense during the actual life-and-death standoff.”
Silence, of the awkward variety. They crawled through the coagulated downtown traffic.
After several minutes, Zoey said, “You know what would help you relax? A nice massage.”
THIRTY-TWO
Zoey’s butt was so cold it literally woke her up.
She pulled her eyes open and saw water, and she had the bizarre sensation that she was out in the middle of the ocean, drifting naked on a raft. But she was in a bed, though one where the pillows had been knocked off the side and the sheets were knotted up around her feet.
She raised her head, which weighed at least fifty pounds, and saw that the bed was on a circular island in the middle of a small indoor pool, a narrow glass walkway connecting it to the door. Was this some cheesy hotel in town? She craned her head around and saw that the wall behind her was entirely glass, looking out into the snowy courtyard of the Casa de Zoey, under mid-morning sunshine. So this was another of Arthur Livingston’s ridiculous bedrooms. There was a member of the house landscaping crew out in the courtyard messing with some of the Christmas decorations, and Zoey hoped the glass was tinted from the outside. She lay back down and waited for the pain to go away or for her to just die, whichever. Something black was floating in the water just off of the bed island and she realized it was her underwear. Zoey rolled over and found she was alone in the bed. She looked up and saw herself looking back from above—the entire ceiling was a mirror. She looked like she had been tossed out of a tornado.
But she lay there, on a world-class mattress, listening to the sound of water lapping gently against the walls of one of her palace’s many bedrooms, and decided that she could totally live like this. This mansion was a ridiculous museum to Arthur Livingston’s deranged tastes, but what difference did that make? She could have the whole place bulldozed. She could build her own. And if anyone else wanted to mess with her, well, look at what they got.
It suddenly occurred to Zoey just how badly she had to pee, and she wondered how many hundred yards away she was from a bathroom in this place. She glanced over at the pool water and had a shameful thought, when her phone rang. The tiny holographic ghost of Will Blackwater appeared on her nightstand.
Zoey frantically covered herself with the sheet, as if Will could see her through his hologram eyes (he couldn’t). She grunted and let it ring through to voice mail.
“Zoey? Where are you? Come to the conference room. It’s an emergency.”
Zoey groaned. She again thought of how ridiculous it was to have a house so big that you had to call a person to find out if they were even in it.
She pulled the sheet around her and tried to sit up. She had no idea what part of the house she was in, though another glance out the glassed-in wall told her that the East Wing of the house was visible across the courtyard, so that meant she was in the West Wing unless this was some kind of M. C. Escher house that existed in five dimensions. The landscaping guy waved.
She wrapped the sheet around her and thought about fishing her clothes out of the pool, but saw that by the door was a folded-up bathrobe and slippers next to a silver tray offering a selection of fresh-cut fruit, orange juice, bottles of water, and aspirin. Carlton had done this before. She tried to do a juggling act with the sheet and robe that would let her drop one and put the other on while protecting some last shred of modesty, but failed spectacularly. Instantly she had the chorus to “Butt Show” stuck in her head again.
Finally, wrapped in a robe that felt as thick as a mink coat, Zoey emerged from the room and was immediately met by Carlton himself.
“Good, you found the robe. I would have come sooner but we were not sure where you had landed last night and I’m afraid a bedroom-by-bedroom search of this estate can occupy most of a morning.”
“Where’s Armando?”
“I do not know. His understudy, the Chinese gentleman, is here.”
“Will called, he’s in a state. Am I walking toward the conference room?”
“Yes, Ms. Ashe. I trust you had a pleasant evening?”
“Yeah and, uh, that room is kind of a mess. I’ll go back in there later and just … fish my underwear out of the pool and all that.”
“No need, that task was always part of my Sunday morning to-do list. Will you be attending church services?”
“No.”
“Very well.”
“Did Arthur do that, when he was alive?”
“He never missed. Whether he found spiritual fulfillment there or merely a prime networking opportunity, I do not know. Perhaps that’s where Armando is. Maybe he needed … spiritual cleansing for something.”
“Heh. Yeah. I never really thought about the religious stuff, all I know is Christians are lousy tippers. I used to wait tables at a Cracker Barrel when I was in high school and that was the first thing the other girls told me—don’t expect tips from the after-church crowd. Bitter, fussy people leaving coins on the receipt.”
“The foyer is just ahead. Follow the scent of fresh pine.”
“Got it. Look, the way I see it, two people walk in the restaurant, a Methodist and an atheist. The Methodist says, I’m not going to tip because I just came from church and I’ve already done my good deed for the day. The atheist says, I’m not tipping because life is meaningless and we’re all just animals. To me, they’re both members of the same religion, because they’re doing the same thing. Whatever little story they tell themselves to justify it is irrelevant. It goes the other way, too—if a Muslim and a Scientologist come in and both leave a tip, they’re on the same team. It doesn’t matter to me if one did it because of Allah and the other was obeying the ghost of Tom Cruise, what matters is it resulted in doing the right thing.”
“I would say you have devoted more thought to it than most.”
At the foot of the grand staircase they ran into Will, who was hanging up from a phone call. He was still wearing last night’s suit, which hadn’t acquired a single wrinkle or strand of lint. Had he slept?
She pulled her robe closed and said, “Sorry I’m such a mess. I got high on magic tea and had sex with Armando.”
“You have a keen a
bility to quickly answer every question I have no intention of ever asking. We’ve got a problem.”
“Can I put on some clothes first?”
He answered by saying nothing and hurrying across the foyer, toward the Mold Room. It was the fastest Zoey had seen him move.
“What is it?”
“Molech is about to make a public statement.”
THIRTY-THREE
Echo was waiting in the Mold Room in a neon pink tracksuit, as if she had been interrupted from a morning run. Zoey asked her if she’d seen Armando.
“No, the other guy is here, he was looking for you.”
“Okay. I hadn’t seen him since last night. In the bedroom with the pool in it.”
Echo said nothing.
“Where we had sex.”
Will said, “This is it.” He brought up a feed that, at the moment, was just a black screen. “Supposed to start a few minutes ago, he’s keeping everyone waiting.”
“Who?”
“Molech. Maybe.”
“No. Stop. Back up. He isn’t dead?”
“We assumed he was until ten minutes ago. His truck was run off the road by some Pinkerton contractors, between Ventura and Twelfth. There was an altercation with his henchmen, but Molech got away.”
“‘Got away’? He was leaving a gallon of blood behind him with every step, I can’t believe he even survived the truck ride. He had no arms!”
“He fought off six Pinkertons with his feet, then ran into a construction site. Had belts tied around his forearms as tourniquets. They went in after him, never found the body. But there was no place for him to go, we were confident that … we wouldn’t be hearing from him again. Then his publicist put out a press release an hour ago. We wrote it off as a hoax, but our sources are now suggesting it’s not.”
Echo said, “It would actually be an inspiring story of survival, if he wasn’t such an asshole.”
“Hold on, Molech has a publicist? Where’s Budd and Andre?”
Will said, “They spent all night sorting through Blink feeds from around that neighborhood, to see if there’s a glimpse of Molech somewhere. They wound up finding some kids who claimed they gave him a ride home. Probably a long shot, though, those are usually just boasts the Team Molech types tell each other.”