After the Golden Age

by Carrie Vaughn

  She couldn’t let him see that. She only showed him blank. Like Arthur would do.

  His lips pressed into a tight, unfeeling smile. “On the other hand, keeping you around might prove amusing.”

  Set the hook, reel him in. As if she were actually having an impact on him. She’d imagined herself doing this, thinking it would give her some power over him. Imagined how she might possibly win some power for herself in this world, where men flew and women played with fire.

  She stalked around the table. It was a long walk, it seemed like. She’d always pictured him in a huge leather executive chair, the kind that dominated a room, massive and luxurious. Like the kind her father had. Instead, he had a simple office chair, flat and dark, with a low back. It didn’t even have wheels. He perched at the edge of it, watching her progress.

  When she reached his chair, she put her left hand on his desk, her right on the chair back, just behind his thin, dark-suited shoulder. Not touching it. Leaning forward, keeping her eyes open and looking, she kissed him on the lips. It was just a press; he didn’t respond. His lips were dry, frozen. She pulled back, waiting for a response.

  “Don’t do that again,” he said. He pointed to a door behind her. So much for her vast powers of seduction.

  In the days that followed, she spent a lot of time sitting on tables at the periphery while he plotted, planned, schemed, whatever. She didn’t pay much attention. He ignored her. Kept her around because it might be amusing. She fetched coffee sometimes. At his command, all his henchmen ignored her as well. She might have had a little fun, otherwise. They all treated her like a kid.

  His latest plan—bombs set to destroy government buildings all over the city—was nearing fruition. She could stop this, she occasionally considered. Sabotage the mechanism or call her parents. Redeem herself.

  She kind of wanted to see how they stopped it on their own. It would be interesting, watching from the other side.

  She perched in the window of the skyscraper where he worked that day, looking down on the canyons of a tiny cardboard city. Cars crawled, people were only specks of dirt shifting around. Everything looked flat.

  “I read what the papers say about me. Do you?” The Destructor spoke to her for the first time in weeks. He stood beside her, gazing out the window with her, amusement brightening his features.

  “Lots of speculation about why I do what I do. Am I mad? Disturbed? Was I abused as a child? Why am I so bent on destruction? There is so much they don’t consider, you know. They don’t consider how much worse I could be.”

  She quirked a smile.

  “You’ve been watching me. I think you’ve been taking notes. If you wanted to be worse than me, what would you do? What could be worse than mass destruction?”

  Mass destruction sounded pretty good to her. It was partly why she was here. She’d never been able to create or save. Maybe she could destroy. Except she didn’t seem to be very good at that, either.

  “The pundits are wrong about me,” he said. “I’m essentially lazy. Mass destruction is for the lazy. It’s not difficult. Anyone can crash an airplane. But using an airplane to destroy a cultural icon? That creates despair. That’s where the real power lies. In symbols. Money is easy to steal. But a rare gem? A unique painting? These things are truly worthwhile. People will die for them when they will not die for money. So tell me, what can be worse than mass destruction?”

  She said, “Specific loss. You choose your target.”

  He smiled, and she felt as if she’d been rewarded. “How much worse for your parents, to turn you into their next great adversary. Better I had destroyed you last year. How does that sound?”

  “Like you’re planning to use me to get your own revenge. Again.”

  “Maybe when the time comes I’ll let you push the button,” he said.

  SEVENTEEN

  SHE never got around to ordering dinner. Too much ice cream made her lose her appetite. She didn’t even pull herself off the sofa to go to bed. It was much easier to flip channels until she found a decade-old action movie playing on cable. It looked more dated than it should have, and the good bits of dialogue had been edited out. When that movie ended, another one started, and she stared at the TV until she fell asleep.

  Halfway through the next morning, her doorbell rang. She flinched to wakefulness and looked at the clock: ten. Sunshine filled the living room. She wanted it to be night again, to get the day over with.

  If she stayed quiet, whoever it was would go away. Some kid selling magazine subscriptions or a charity looking for donations. She didn’t want to deal with it.

  Then the thought burst upon her like a migraine.

  —Celia, it’s me. Open the door.—

  Arthur Mentis. Couldn’t hide from him.

  She looked at her unshowered self, ratty pajamas and all, wondered if she ought to tell him she needed to change clothes. On the other hand, he could read her mind; what did it matter what she was wearing? Running her fingers through her unkempt hair, she reached the door, opened it, and moved aside to let him in. He studied her, his brow raised, and remained standing in the doorway, hands shoved in the pockets of his trench coat.

  “If you don’t want me here, I can leave,” he said.

  She sighed. “If you were anyone else I’d never have opened the door in the first place. Come in.”

  He did, and she closed the door after him. He said, “You weren’t at the courthouse yesterday. I tried calling you to check on you, but there wasn’t an answer.”

  “Worried I was getting in trouble?”

  “Just worried,” he said.

  “I had my phone, I would have gotten your call— Wait.” The cell phone was still lying on the floor. She retrieved it, checked the display, hit a couple buttons. “I think it’s broken. I threw it.”

  “Did it make you feel better?”

  “Not really.”

  “I see you’re not at work.”

  “I thought everyone would have heard by now. I’ve been fired. Well, not fired. But almost.”

  “I see. That’s hardly fair.”

  “That’s what I thought. And Mark isn’t speaking to me. That’s why I threw the phone.”

  “So when I ask, ‘How are you?’ the answer is, ‘Not good.’”

  “I’m fine.” She said this through gritted teeth.

  “Right. Is there anything I can do?”

  She could scream and throw him out. But he was only trying to be nice. It was hard having him around when she didn’t want to talk about it. With him, she didn’t have to talk about it. He just knew, and while that was often convenient when she was trying to explain things to her parents, she didn’t need that now.

  “I’ll be okay. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

  He started to turn, then hesitated. “What’s your plan B?”

  “Plan B?”

  “I don’t expect you to stay at home moping.”

  “What do you expect me to do? My career is ruined. No one will hire me to pick up trash after this. My friends aren’t speaking to me. Maybe I can find a nice dry hole to bury myself in.” She rubbed her face, which was warm and flushed. “If I haven’t made up for what I did by now, what hope is there? Maybe I should just go be a criminal mastermind myself. Prove everyone right.”

  “I know you don’t mean that.” And he did, because he could see it in her mind.

  She probably wouldn’t make a very good criminal mastermind, either.

  “Plan B, huh? What do you recommend?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe stop trying to prove to everyone you’ve reformed, and just do what you think is right.”

  “The old ‘ignore them’ ploy? How often does that work?”

  “Just because everyone else is looking backward doesn’t mean you have to. Call me if you need anything.” He closed the door behind him on his way out.

  Do what’s right, she thought. Maybe that was part of the problem—she was having trouble locating right, at the moment.
Her gut was tied up in too many knots right now for her to listen to it.

  If she had to work this hard to prove that she had worth, that she wasn’t a bad person, maybe that said something about her. If she really were good, she wouldn’t have to work so hard. In the end, she hadn’t left the Destructor’s clutches of her own free will. The only reason she hadn’t stayed with him was because he’d abandoned her. Not because, deep down, she was good.

  She’d been seventeen and out of her mind. Dr. Mentis said so.

  She was still out of her mind.

  At any rate, if she wanted more ice cream, she was going to have to leave the apartment.

  She considered it a supreme act of will that she managed to put on real clothes and walk herself to the convenience store down the street to pick up ice cream and frozen burritos. Protein—she’d need her strength if she was going to keep eating all that ice cream. In her scruffy state—unbrushed hair, jeans, and a rumpled sweatshirt—she didn’t at all resemble the photos from the courtroom that some of the newspapers still had splashed on their front pages, so no one recognized her to give her any trouble.

  The headline on The Commerce Eye drew her attention. That was what it was designed to do, bordered in red and filling the entire page. It didn’t matter how outrageous it was; if it screamed loud enough everyone would have to listen.

  “Is the Destructor Controlling Crime Spree from Prison? Mayor Vows to Beef Up Police!”

  The recent robberies cum kidnappings—even the Baxter Gang episode, which had the same MO—had all been planned by the same person. It didn’t follow that person had to be Simon Sito. But he’d been responsible for most of the crime sprees of the last twenty years. People had trouble pointing the finger in a different direction.

  She couldn’t get away from the belief that Sito wasn’t responsible. If the press and general rumor kept talking about Sito, they deflected attention from who was really doing this.

  It occurred to her that just because she didn’t have her job didn’t mean she couldn’t work.

  She had real food for lunch and saved the ice cream for later. Microwaved burrito in hand, she fired up her computer.

  She approached the problem as if it had been presented to her as part of her job. How do you hide unique, expensive assets? If she were studying the books of someone selling such assets illegally, what would she look for? High-dollar money transfers without claiming assets or deducting depreciation. Someone spending money with nothing overt and legal to show for it.

  The Destructor wasn’t spending anything; the DA had had all his assets frozen. All the ones they could find, at least. If Sito were smart—and he was, no question there—he wouldn’t touch his hidden assets just yet; he wouldn’t risk revealing their location. But if he did, would he be buying up unique and priceless cultural artifacts? Or paying someone to do steal them?

  It wasn’t his MO. He was the Destructor for a reason. He liked blowing things up, taking them apart, and disintegrating them, not collecting them.

  Cultural artifacts. That was the pattern. She got online to search the city’s events calendar. What else out there would interest a thief who’d already taken rare violins and prize koi?

  There it was: The Commerce City History Museum was hosting a philately exhibition: rare stamps, one-of-a-kind printings, unique and priceless to the right collector. The exhibit opened Saturday.

  She had to leave the apartment again to replace her cell phone—then hesitated, because she didn’t know who to call first. Her parents, came the first impulse. The Olympiad would want to know. They’d be able to stop the theft. They’d even be likely to listen to her. The cops, not so much. Even so, she ought to call them as well. Mark, maybe. The chance of Mark listening to her was microscopic right now. Same with Analise.

  Hell, maybe she should call everybody. Then maybe at least one of them would believe her and do something about it.

  She called Suzanne’s cell. The voice mail picked up.

  “Hi, Mom, it’s me. This is going to sound weird, but I think I know what the Strad Brothers’ next target is. There’s a special philately exhibit at the history museum opening Saturday. Rare stamps—it fits their target profile. I suppose we have to assume they’ll attempt a kidnapping to go along with any robbery. Anyway, call me so we can talk about it.”

  Mark and Analise weren’t answering their phones, either. With them, however, Celia’s paranoia kicked in. Either they were busy, or they saw her name on the caller ID and decided to ignore her. She left messages.

  Somebody had to call her back.

  She had to make one more call. She looked up the number to police headquarters. “Yes, I’d like to speak to Chief Appleton,” she told the receptionist, who asked who was calling.

  Celia took a deep breath. “Celia West. And yes, it’s important.”

  She spent time on hold. They didn’t even bother putting on bad music for her. Eventually, her name got her through to the chief.

  Appleton didn’t bother with a greeting. “If you’re calling to yell at me about making your record public, I had nothing to do with it. I haven’t shown it to anyone. That information got out all on its own, just like I always said it would.”

  “Hello to you, too,” she said. “That’s not what I’m calling about.”

  “I only sealed the record in the first place as a favor to your parents.”

  “That’s not what I’m calling about.”

  “People deserve to know about you, you know.” It was as if he’d been keeping this secret for eight years, and he was damned well going to take advantage of the fact that he could now rant about her as much as he wanted.

  “Chief, I think I know what the Strad Brothers’ next target is.”

  The following pause was nerve-shattering. Finally, he said, “And how, may I ask, do you know this?”

  “I don’t know it. It’s a guess. They’ve gone after unique cultural objects, right? The history museum is hosting an exhibit of rare stamps. It seems like this would be just the kind of target they’d go for.”

  “You don’t know this because you’re still in the Destructor’s pocket?”

  Goddamn him, Celia thought. “Sir, I don’t think Sito has anything to do with the Strad Brothers. The MOs are completely different, Sito can’t organize anything from the asylum—”

  “If anyone could organize anything from the asylum, it would be Sito.”

  Calling him had been a mistake. “I’m sorry to bother you, Chief. But I have this hunch, and in good conscience I had to tell someone about it. I thought you might listen to me.”

  She hung up on him, because she wasn’t brave enough to hear what kind of response he’d give to that.

  * * *

  Suzanne listened to her. The Olympiad had always had the attitude that vigilance never hurt. It wouldn’t cost them anything to be on alert. It wasn’t too far from their usual routine, after all. Spark did insist that Celia spend the weekend at the West Plaza penthouse, to secure her against another kidnapping attempt.

  Celia couldn’t argue. It was only a matter of time before one of these debacles got her hurt. But she could bargain. “I’ll stay there if Dad lets me into the West Corp archives.”

  Her mother hissed out a breath that clearly said, Now isn’t the time for this argument. All the more reason to have it.

  “Celia, this is too serious for you to be playing games like this.”

  “I’ve never played games.”

  “Then here, ask him yourself.” The phone rustled as Suzanne handed it over.

  Warren’s gruff voice came on. “What’s going on?”

  Suzanne hadn’t had a chance to tell him anything, so Celia had to explain it all.

  “I’ve got a guess at the Strad Brothers’ next target. Since they’ll probably try a kidnapping along with it, Mom wants me to stay at the penthouse. I said I would if you let me into the West Corp archives. So how about it?”

  “I don’t make deals, Celia—”

/>   “Well, it was worth a try. I’ll see you later—”

  “Don’t hang up!”

  She didn’t.

  He said, tiredly, “Can you just tell me why you want to see those files? Please?”

  Enough of a pause preceded the please that Celia wondered if Suzanne had prompted him.

  It didn’t matter. The please was enough. “I found evidence that suggests Simon Sito worked for West Corp about fifty years ago. I need to confirm that.”

  “Simon Sito worked for my father?”

  “It was a long time ago. He wasn’t crazy then. He wasn’t the Destructor.”

  “If it’s true … what does it mean?”

  She shrugged. “I hope I’ll find out when I see those records.”

  He didn’t answer right away. She could hear him breathing, not talking. She could picture him and her mother looking at each other, having one of those silent conversations that longtime couples shared. She probably wouldn’t have been able to interpret their looks even if she’d been there, watching them.

  Finally, Warren said, “I’ll make sure there’s a key card for you in the lobby.”

  That was easier than she thought it would be. She hadn’t wanted to bring up Sito. She hadn’t known how her father would react. She hadn’t expected him to hold his temper. “Thank you.”

  EIGHTEEN

  AS she entered the lobby of West Plaza, she called up to the penthouse. No one answered. The Olympiad was already gone.

  Damon Parks smiled a greeting and held up a plastic card to her. “Your father left this for you.”

  Damn. She’d half-expected him to back out of his part of the agreement.

  “You coming to work for him now?” he said.

  “Who knows? He might be the only person in town who’ll hire me.”

  “I doubt that. This mess of a trial will blow over soon enough. Especially if this sort of thing keeps up.” He held up the front page of the Eye, the issue that screamed that the Destructor was controlling the crime spree from prison. Parks clicked his tongue. “Good old Destructor, at it again.”

  She frowned. “I don’t think it’s the Destructor. He’s in prison, out of commission. Someone else is behind this.”