Since all the young players involved were Shifters, punches and kickings inevitably led to bites and maulings. “Rippings”—beatdowns in animal form—began to be lauded as a twisted form of sport in and of themselves. Successful holos of rippings—like the one embedded in Robbie’s favorite t-shirt—could multiply a player’s income, as each view generated a micropayment.
The total amount of money involved was maybe three figures per holo. To an older player like Rex, aloof from the scene, that was nothing. To Robbie and his friends, it was the difference between making rent and not. More than the money, though, it was about pride.
As a result, there was now an incredible amount of pressure on young players to perform on the streets, as well as on the pitch. “You only pull the fans if you’re authentic on the street,” Robbie said miserably. “You could be valid on the pitch, but if everyone thinks you’re weak on the street?” He shook his head and sliced a hand across his throat.
So when that black car cruised past our house, he had thought it was players from a rival team, somehow having found out about his new job, who had come to cut him out for a ripping.
He had applied for the job with me in a desperate bid to find a way out of the spiral of violence.
But he had not said a word about any of this to me before I hired him.
“You didn’t ask,” he said, following my pacing form with terrified eyes.
“How can I ask about what I don’t know about?” I exploded, realizing in my heart that it was my own fault for being oblivious to the violence racking our streets. I shook my head. “Go on.”
After the black car passed for the third time, Robbie panicked. He had visions of getting ripped on my front porch. He was indifferent—this is instructive—to the possibility of getting badly hurt. But he was terrified of losing his job, and the only glint of hope in his life. This is why he ignored Nanny B’s advice to go upstairs and talk to Rex. The last thing he wanted was for Rex and me to find out about the trouble he was in.
He fixated on getting away from the people in the black car. But if he left my apartment, Lucy would be unprotected! He would be failing at the task I had set him, and I would fire him anyway.
Then a solution came to him: He’d take her with him.
“You thought it was a good idea to take my daughter out for a walk when these ripper characters were hunting for you?” I yelled.
“They wouldn’t’ve come near me if she was there,” Robbie said simply. “It’s against the rules. Can’t involve kids.”
So he took Lucy by the hand and they walked towards Shoreside.
Lucy was chirpy, he said, talking a mile a minute, not at all drowsy, excited at the idea of searching for me in the forbidden hours of the early morning.
“Why the heck did you think I was on Shoreside?”
“I called you, sir! I called you over and over! You never picked up. I thought, take her down to the Strip, anyway. Lots of people down there. Safety in numbers, right?”
“Right,” Dolph said, encouragingly.
Robbie folded over and hid his face in his arms.
“Talk,” I yelled.
“I was wrong,” he choked. “I was wrong.”
As they walked along the Strip between 90th and 89th, the black car eased out of traffic and crawled along the sidewalk beside them.
Robbie switched hands, putting Lucy on the inside. He walked faster.
The black car kept pace with them.
“Ow,” Lucy squeaked. “You’re walking too fast!”
“We’re going in here,” Robbie said, blindly angling towards the nearest lighted door. As luck would have it, it was a nightclub.
“No kids,” the bouncer said, looking at Robbie like, you crazy?
The black car stopped.
Three people got out. “Two men,” Robbie said, “and one woman. I never saw any of them in my life.”
They crossed the pavement to Robbie and Lucy. As Robbie blustered at the two guys—he still thought they were rippers, although he didn’t know them—the woman bent down. She said in a sweet voice to Lucy, “Hello, love. Guess what? I’m your mommy.” She pulled Lucy into a hug.
I could only imagine the confusion that must have swamped Lucy’s poor little head at that moment. I never spoke about her mother. She didn’t know the woman’s name, much less what she looked like. In retrospect: my mistake.
“Come with me,” the woman went on. “We’re going to take a ride in my car. I’ve really missed you!” She started to move Lucy towards the car.
“Daddy,” was the one word Lucy said. Robbie was quite sure about that, although he was jostling with the two guys, trying to get to Lucy. “Daddy,” she said, a two-syllable entreaty for everything to be OK.
“Sure!” the woman said. “He’s right here!” She gestured at the car’s tinted windows—and pushed Lucy inside.
Robbie heard the soft snap as the door of the car closed. He roared Lucy’s name. He started throwing punches. One of the guys landed a haymaker that sent him to one knee on the sidewalk, his brains singing.
When he struggled to his feet, the guys were gone.
So was the woman.
And the car.
And Lucy.
They’d taken his phone, too, so he couldn’t call me and let me know what happened.
I kept pacing, faster than ever. I was distantly aware of fatigue and muscle aches. Adrenaline kept them at bay. “You’re sure that’s what she said? ‘I’m your mommy’?”
Robbie nodded.
“What did she look like? I want every detail.”
“She was dark,” Robbie began hesitantly. “Dark hair, I mean. Kinda sexy. Like she would be sexy if you met her in a club, even though she was too old. I mean about the same as you. She was wearing this kinda tight top, and bubbles.”
“What?”
“Those pants that flare out into a bubble at the knee.”
“Did she have any tattoos?”
“Um. No. I don’t think so.”
“Did she, or didn’t she?!”
“I didn’t see any,” Robbie muttered.
She could have covered them with liquid skin.
“What did her voice sound like?”
Robbie shuffled his feet wretchedly. “I don’t know. Sweet. Like a voice in an ad.”
Sweet was not the way I’d personally describe Sophia’s voice, but it was so subjective …
“Mike,” Dolph said. “I don’t think it was her. It’s not her style. Would she trick Lucy by saying you were in the car? No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She hates you too much.”
I stared out to sea. I noticed that I could see Space Island, not just its lights. The sky had turned gray.
Dolph got out his phone, saying he was going to look for security camera footage.
Martin went to check on Ijiuto. “He’s OK,” he said when he came back. “Mike? You should call the police.”
“It was her,” I gritted, still staring at Space Island. The skyline of warehouses along the island’s shore had come into blurry monochrome focus. “She doesn’t give a crap about Lucy. She did this to warn me off. How dare she, how dare she use my daughter as a pawn in her games?!” Her daughter, too, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t even think it. I clenched my fists so hard I noticed the pain where my nails dug into my palms.
“Call the police,” Martin repeated.
Martin, the shiftiest of my whole crew, the python, with an unknown number of murders under his belt, said that.
I met his eyes. He nodded emphatically.
I called the police.
I got a sleepy duty officer, and I was only on the phone with him for five minutes. He said he could not initiate a missing persons case until 24 hours had passed. I told him that my daughter had been abducted off the goddamn Strip, and I had a witness. He was in the middle of repeating his spiel when I hung up on him.
“Twenty-four hours!” I said. “By that time she could be anywhere! Jesus!” I decided I’
d call d’Alencon as soon as decent people started to wake up. He might not be best pleased with me right now, but surely he’d help.
“Her,” Robbie said abruptly. “That’s her.”
I rushed to his side, squatted, and pulled Dolph’s phone towards me.
Now the ubiquitous surveillance cameras I had cursed last night were about to work for me. Municipal footage is not technically available to the public. However, there are back doors well known to anyone with an ounce of IT expertise. Dolph had found the camera situated closest to the nightclub in front of which it happened—in fact, we were sitting across the avenue from its shuttered façade right now. He had searched for Robbie’s face, and now we all watched the abduction unfurl, from a crappy overhead vantage point, just like Robbie had related it. He had been truthful as to the way it went down, anyway.
Dolph froze the footage on an instant when the woman’s face was visible to the camera.
“Oh my fucking God,” Martin said.
It was not Sophia.
“So that’s why they did it in public. They don’t care if we find out who they are,” Dolph said.
Because we already knew.
“That fucker,” I said between my teeth, “was just keeping me busy. I thought it was me he wanted. He was just keeping me away from Lucy.”
The woman captured on the security camera footage was Cecilia Parsec, Buzz Parsec’s wife.
38
I reviewed that security camera footage over and over, zooming in until my daughter’s face disintegrated into a clump of pixels. In one hand she clutched the Blobby doll Pippa had made for her. The other hand was hidden inside Cecilia Parsec’s grip. I could see Cecilia’s fashionably pointed fingernails digging into Lucy’s wrist.
Cecilia was reclusive, in contrast to her husband’s outsized, indeed well-nigh inescapable presence in Shiftertown. They had been married for twenty years. For Parsec to resist the temptation to trade up, Cecilia must’ve had something. Presumably, as black a heart as his own. She was a mainstream human. She spent her time at their fancy pad in Ville Verde, one of the gated communities tucked away in the hills of Cape Agreste.
I said, “They must’ve taken Lucy there.” Ville Verde, like all those communities on the Cape, had security that would not disgrace a fortress on one of the Hurtworlds. Force fields to keep out bugs and burglars, 24/7 security patrols, and honest-to-God anti-missile defences. Storming it would be impossible. I thought about ways to get inside by guile.
“Won’t work,” Irene said. “I’ve been there.”
I was sitting in the Seagraves’ kitchen. Dolph had refused to leave me alone with the completely unhelpful Nanny B. He was probably right. Only consideration for my friends prevented me from taking out my fear and rage on the Seagraves’ furniture, the crockpot, the refrigerator, the windows, and the gaudy pink walls. Sunlight streamed into the messy, cheerful room, making my head ache.
“I’ve been there, too,” I reminded Irene. One time, Dolph and I had bullshitted our way into Ville Verde by pretending we were interested in purchasing real estate. I wondered if that might fly again.
“Yeah, but you haven’t been in his house,” Irene said. “That place is booby-trapped out the wazoo. Not to mention half a dozen bears hanging out there around the clock. I don’t know why his neighbors put up with it. Not only living next door to a Shifter, but the biggest asshole of a Shifter on the planet.”
“I’m sure money is involved,” I said wearily.
“Right,” Irene said. She poured hot water into mugs. “Now you’re on the right track. Follow the money.”
“I guess you’d know about that,” I said.
I swear I didn’t mean it that way. The fact was, before they had kids—and even afterwards—Irene and Rex had been professional thieves. I was not well acquainted with the details, and didn’t want to be, but I did know they had worked with Parsec at least once. That’s how she had been inside his house.
I was thinking only of how and whether Irene’s mothballed skills might be leveraged to free Lucy. But she was touchy about her history. She swung around, nearly spilling the steaming mug in her hand. Her eyes flashed. “Mike, I had nothing to do with this. What do you want me to swear on? I swear on my children’s lives.”
I raised my hands. “I never said you were involved, Irene! I never even thought it. I don’t think it.”
“OK.” She put the mug down in front of me.
“I was just thinking about the money.” I picked up the mug. The liquid inside was pale green and gave off an unpleasant herbal smell. “There must be a lot of dough at stake for them.”
“Or this could be a side play to make some more,” Irene said. “They might be having cash flow problems.”
“They didn’t make a ransom demand.” I sniffed the mug and put it down untouched.
“That comes next.”
“Alternatively,” Rex said, coming in, “Sophia might just want Lucy back. Because she’s, y’know. Her mother.”
Rex was in lion form. That’s how he had heard our conversation while he was still on the stairs. He had walked Mia to school without bothering to Shift back into human form, because the threat hanging over us seemed to extend to the Seagrave kids, as well, and because he was so distraught that Shifting seemed impossible. Kit rode on his back, clinging to his mane. As Rex kicked the door shut with a hindpaw, Kit slid off and went into the living-room to watch the holovision. Squeaky voices and manic music tortured my ganglia.
Irene set a bowl of coffee down on the floor in front of her husband. “Yeah,” she said. “If I was in her position—well, I wouldn’t be in her position, but if I was … nah. I’d snatch the kids my own damn self. And I wouldn’t wait seven years to do it.”
“That’s my baby,” Rex said, slurping from his bowl. “But Sophia ain’t on your level, so she had to wait until she could con the Parsecs into doing it for her.”
“Right,” Irene said. ”Because she’s got dirt on them. I can see that.”
I couldn’t. I shook my head, dismissing their theory. “No. They’re either warning me off, or looking for money. Or both.” I propped my elbows on the table and rested my forehead on the back of one hand. Pain stabbed into my skull, reminding me of the goose egg I’d given myself last night by banging my head on the steering wheel. I sat upright. I was past self-destructive reactions like that, like stupidly putting my business interests ahead of my child. “How much would you figure they’ll ask for?”
“About 150 KGCs,” Irene said, naming a figure that was slightly greater than my annual income.
“Is that the going rate for ransoms?”
“Roughly.”
“Then that’s what I’ll pay him. He won’t refuse. This is Parsec we’re talking about. He would sell his own child for 150 KGCs, if he had one.”
Rex raised his head again. Coffee dripped from his chin fur. His lion’s eyes brimmed with doubt. “Where are you going to get it?”
I laughed emptily. “Steal it. Borrow it. I don’t know. Sell the ship.”
Irene reached across the table and put her hand on top of mine. “Wait, Mike. Think.”
“There’s nothing to think about.” I pulled my hand away from hers, rescued my phone from a puddle of spilt milk. I dialed Parsec, while Irene and Rex watched worriedly.
“Yeah,” Parsec said.
My vision hazed over with red. I snarled into the phone, “Give my goddamn daughter back!”
“What’re you talking about?” Parsec said, totally relaxed.
“Your wife kidnapped her off the Strip last night! I want her back, NOW!”
“You’re losing it, bud,” Parsec said. “Did you bump your head falling outta that tree?” He chuckled. “By the way, tell that mangy jackal friend of yours he needs to watch his back. It won’t save him, but Gary K likes to see the look in a man’s eyes as he dies.”
“I’ll pay!” I shouted. “I’ll pay whatever you want! Just give her back!”
“Well
, Starrunner, I got no objection to taking your money in principle. But I don’t know what you’re talking about, and it don’t look good to be making unfounded accusations. That daughter of yours is the sweetest little thing. I wouldn’t hurt her for the world. So don’t go calling me again. We got no business together, and nothing to discuss.” He hung up.
I dropped my phone on the kitchen table. “He denied it,” I said disbelievingly. “He flat denied it.”
“Guess he doesn’t want your money,” Rex said. “Or he knows you don’t have it, anyway.”
I shook my head. I had to call d’Alencon, but in this frame of mind, I’d screw that up, too. I was loopy with tiredness. The normalcy of the Seagraves’ kitchen aggravated me, as if the physical world itself were conspiring to remind me of my helplessness. I stood up. “Back to square one,” I muttered. “Break into Ville Verde.”
“Have some tea, Mike,” Irene said. She came around the table and put the mug into my hand. “You’ve been up for what, two days straight?”
“How come I don’t get coffee?” I said with a humorless laugh, gesturing at Rex’s bowl.
“You’ve also been in a serious fight,” Irene said. “I suppose I should thank you boys for leaving me out of that mess. But actually, I’m kind of pissed. You left me out last time, as well. Do you think I would beat your kill tally, or something, and make you look bad?”
I was so tired I accidentally told the truth. “It was just bad timing, Irene. But in a way you’re right. You’re too damn good at killing. It scares me.”
“Isn’t that why you hired me?”
“Yes,” I said. “but this is different. This is Ponce de Leon. This is where we live. I’m trying to keep the carnage to a minimum.”
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