by David Wong
“Right, everything is terrible. I’m getting discouraged, Budd, tell me a joke.”
Without hesitation, Budd said, “A pirate walks into a bar. He’s got a steering wheel sticking out of his fly. Bartender says, ‘That looks uncomfortable’ and the pirate says, ‘Yarrgh, it’s driving me nuts!’”
“I don’t get it.”
“There’s one more thing,” said Echo. “I’ll, uh, let Andre explain.”
Andre looked up. “What? Why do I have to do it?”
“It will sound better coming from you.”
Zoey said, “What?”
Andre, in a strangely apologetic tone, said, “Shae LaVergne, the hostage girl? She just bought a house for her and her momma in Salt Lake. Put half a million in cash on a down payment. She’s moving her momma in from Tampa, where they’re from. But right now they’re both on vacation in Ixtapa, at the Cala de Mar. For two weeks.”
“So what? She’s spending our payoff money.”
“Well,” chimed in Budd, again looking uncomfortable. “That’s the thing. We didn’t give her any cash. She agreed to reimbursement for moving and that we’d cover some to-be-determined education or job training, but that’s it. This is new cash that we are unable to trace.”
“It seems like we’re unable to trace a lot of things these days.”
“And whatever the source,” said Echo, having judged it safe to join the bad news delivery, “she’s covering it up. Budd has talked to everyone in Shae’s social circle, plus three of her extended family back in Florida. The mother is telling everyone Shae won the money in a lawsuit against the owners of the Night Inn, because of the hostage situation.”
“But that’s not true, right? I feel like I’d know, since I am said owner.”
Will said, “Not only is it not true, but Shae waived the right to sue when we made our deal.”
“Okay? Somebody is paying her off, and it isn’t us. Why is everyone acting like it’s a funeral?”
Zoey noticed that Will looked genuinely puzzled, which on his face was an expression like he’d put cash into a vending machine that refused to dispense his drink. It always chilled her when Will looked like that. Both times.
“If it was Chobb who paid her off,” said Will, “and I can’t think of who else it would be, that would almost imply that it’s to shut her up. Like maybe she had detailed knowledge of the Tilley situation that he didn’t want getting out.”
“How would she know anything?” asked Zoey. “We don’t even freaking know and we’re supposedly experts at knowing things. And not just knowledge of Tilley’s murder, but detailed knowledge that Chobb is willing to pay seven figures to keep quiet?”
No one wanted to say it, so Zoey finally said it for them. “Wait. Are we seriously back to Shae LaVergne having had Tilley murdered out of vengeance? I mean, under what other circumstances would she have this information, unless she hired Chobb’s people to do it?”
“Maybe she didn’t do it out of vengeance,” offered Echo. “Maybe just to ensure her own safety.”
Andre said, “So, hypothetically, let’s say a few weeks after her hostage ordeal Shae decides screw it, I want Tilley taken out. So she reaches out to somebody, and somehow Titus Chobb gets involved. Chobb sees this as a prime chance to screw with us, so he has his henchman Vikerness spend hours cuttin’ out Tilley’s organs. Then he starts spreading the rumor that Zoey was behind it, backed up with a large amount of anonymous money put up as a bounty. So then Shae gets a guilty conscience, maybe she sees all the mess it’s created for Zoey, and she says she’s going to confess the whole thing. So then Chobb pays her some equally large amount of money to not do that.”
Echo said, “It’s … not implausible.”
Will said, “In the grand scheme of things, does it actually matter?”
Zoey looked at him, incredulous. “It matters because it would mean Shae LaVergne is the murderer. Regardless of who took the contract, she’d be the one who ordered it done. She did the crime that a hate group then pinned on me, and she is apparently fine with the city descending into open war over it. Yes, it matters.” To Budd, “Can we reach Shae in—where did you say she was?”
“A resort in Ixtapa. Mexico.”
“We need to talk to her. Oh, and what about the other theory?”
Echo said, “Other theory?”
“That Titus Chobb is a cannibal who eats the young to preserve his youth.”
“Zoey…”
“I actually did follow up on that,” said Budd. “Asked a lot of my sources, people who’ve got their pulse on the streets, plus some influencer types on Blink, like Chopra. They hadn’t heard it. I instructed them to ask around, and to have others ask around, too. It’s curious, I came back an hour later and suddenly you could find quite a few people who’d heard the rumor, and some were citing it as gospel. Everybody’d been asked about it enough that they just assumed there was fire under the smoke. Curious how that works.”
“But you got no actual information. Fine. All right, we’re wasting time. We need to stage a cat rescue operation and, on very short notice, I need a Devil’s Night outfit that hides my face. How quickly could we get a convincing costume-slash-disguise together, complete with some kind of makeup or mask that’ll let me walk through a crowd without getting abducted or pelted with rocks?”
Will said, “The amount of time it takes you to pick something out from the disguise closet.”
“The what?”
26
Arthur Livingston’s old quarters on the third floor were untouched, aside from the man’s personal effects having been cleaned out and the clothes donated (the man had owned a lot of suits). Zoey had never claimed the room for herself, she just found it creepy. That’s why she didn’t know that if you passed through Arthur’s five-hundred-square-foot walk-in closet, once full of hundreds of tailored suits, you’d find a slim, hidden door that led to a room full of wigs, fake facial hair, and shelves full of latex makeup appliances. The man had led a ridiculous life.
Zoey sat in front of a vanity in said room, having Echo apply thin sections of latex to her cheeks. There was still a smelly ashtray on the counter where Arthur would apparently puff away at a cigar while he was getting his disguises applied.
“There should be a lot of blood and swelling around my nose. My whole face should be a mess, really. What time is it?”
“Quarter to nine. We’re almost done.”
In the mirror, Zoey saw a mass of fake fur pass behind her. Wu, in costume.
Zoey said, “You’re going to be hot in there.”
“I once took part in a firefight on a one-hundred-degree day wearing a full biohazard suit,” he said. “It will be fine.”
Will walked up, glancing at Zoey’s reflection.
“They’re almost done in the garage.”
Santa’s Workshop had spat out the last of the components of Zoey’s Halloween costume, but a lot of assembly was still required. Andre and Carlton were snapping it together.
“Also,” he continued, “Andre has secured an infrared scanner that can penetrate walls, they’ll be able to get an analysis of the Screw’s occupants from about a hundred feet away. They just have to come up with a plan to get close enough to scan the building without drawing the notice of the dozen yellow jackets patrolling the grounds. No ambush this time, they’re just there in the open. Waiting.”
“Then our guys just have to find a cat-sized heat signature, right?”
“Well, lots of the people who live in the Screw presumably have pets, so they’ll have to figure out how to narrow it down to your specific cat. Then there’s the minor issue of extracting him without triggering a pitched battle with the VOP that leaves thirty people dead.”
“Right, because that would upset Stench Machine. What you’re saying is that it’s way better if they actually are bringing him to the costume contest.”
“You mean, if they’re using him as bait in what almost certainly is an ambush? Think about how Re
dd Gunn staged his attack yesterday, drawing what looked like random bystanders from the crowd. The Blowback’s people don’t wear uniforms. For all we know, they actually have their thousands-strong army, only interspersed through the park.”
“Yeah, that would be … unfortunate.”
“And even if there are zero of them waiting there, there’s still the bounty on your head. The moment word gets out that you’re in the crowd, the same gaggle of possibly-enhanced and probably-drunk vigilantes will try to snatch you up to collect. It’s very possible that Chobb’s mob doesn’t intend to show up with the cat at all, that they only want to draw you into a public place and then let raw financial incentive wreak havoc for them. Do you have your necklace?”
“You can see it on my neck, Will. Is my mother safe?”
“Your mother is doing exactly what she wants, same as always. You understand the plan?”
“I helped come up with it!” He had a coin out now and was making it somersault across the top of the fingers on his right hand, his fancy way of fidgeting. It was driving Zoey nuts. “Actually, why don’t you go help Echo figure out how the catnapper thwarted the estate’s security?”
“She has a theory, but you’re not going to like it.”
“As opposed to everything else I’ve heard today?”
“She thinks the intruder snuck into the house days ago. Or weeks ago, even. Came in with the crews that dropped off the Halloween supplies, or during some other routine maintenance, then just laid low until the right day. Then they wouldn’t have had to worry about getting in when our guard was up, just getting out, which is in fact easier, if not exactly easy.”
“Wait, her theory is that I had some psychopath from The Blowback secretly living in my house with me for who knows how long? While I slept? While I took baths? And who knows what else?”
“It’s a big house. Security should have immediately detected another person but if their gear is sophisticated enough? All measures have countermeasures. Again, remember who’s pulling the strings behind all of this. I said you wouldn’t like it.”
“Well, my mom always told me that when life is overwhelming, just pick one thing and worry about that. Block out everything else. For right now, we’re getting Stench Machine back. That’s our only job. Once that’s done, we’ll move on to the next thing. They want us to be frantic and confused. We have to respond by keeping focused. We’re smarter than they are, right?”
She dug into her pocket for her tube of her mother’s pyramid scheme confidence-daisy skin cream. She wondered how much you’d have to apply to get so confident that you’d just lose all awareness of your own mortality, because that’s kind of what she needed right now. She actually looked for a label about dosage and instead only found a single warning in all-caps: DO NOT USE ON GENITALS.
27
The $10,000 Inappropriate Costume Contest was being held in the Arthur Livingston Memorial City Park, which meant making it through the Arthur Livingston Memorial City Gridlock. This was the part of being an action hero nobody had ever told Zoey about, that half of the problem is always just getting there. As such, her ICC team was taking three vehicles to get to the site. Of the three, Zoey’s was by far the least secure, but also the most discreet.
She was on the back of one of the city’s electric pay-by-the-hour Vespa scooters, Wu weaving it around stalled traffic, Zoey trying to keep the fur of his costume out of her eyes. On one hand, leaving the house in anything that wasn’t a luxury-model military vehicle felt like she was cartwheeling down the street naked. On the other, after having gotten trapped inside the overturned armored van earlier, she decided she preferred the feeling of open air around her, passing through crowds as just another nobody on a scooter. She got some glances, but they were clearly reactions to the costume, not her.
Echo’s voice spoke from her earpiece. “The guy in the Zoey costume just went live on Blink. He’s in the back seat of a car, says he’s heading to the park. The cat carrier is visible next to him.”
Zoey, hoping that her attached mic could discern her voice from the wind and traffic noises whooshing around them, said, “Can you see Stench Machine in the vehicle with him? If so, can you detect his mood?”
“Uh … no, the carrier is solid plastic on the top, that’s all I can see at the moment. We’re nailing down the make and model of the car.”
A moment later, Head of Security Hank Kowalski was patched into the line. “It’s a black Geely Series X Towncar, we just grabbed it on a traffic cam on the corner of Rhoades Road and Streeter Pike. In front of and behind the sedan are armored VOP escort vehicles. Four of them, total. Who the hell is this guy? What are you people up to?”
Zoey said, “We think they have my cat.”
“To make myself feel better, I’m just gonna tell myself that’s code for something else.”
Echo asked, “Do you know where the vehicle originated? Did they pick him up at the Screw? The old storage units on Avenue Lane?”
“It emerged from a secure vehicle switch location.”
Zoey said, “Nobody else thinks it’s strange that Chobb’s security team is escorting this random dropout kid to the costume contest? Just openly surrounding him in armored vehicles? Wasn’t the whole point of riling up the trolls that he could wreak havoc from the shadows?”
Before anyone could answer, Wu pulled onto the sidewalk and parked the scooter in the customary way, by disdainfully dumping it over right in the middle of where people were trying to walk (in this city, doing anything else would have drawn attention as aberrant behavior). He and Zoey walked the final two blocks to the park, hundreds of faces passing them on the sidewalk, every brief moment of eye contact stopping Zoey’s heart for a beat. She imagined the whole crowd suddenly swarming her, burying her, tearing her to pieces. Instead, she passed through unmolested, shoulders brushing past her, Zoey feeling like a sausage rolling through a pack of hungry dogs.
They arrived to find the park was a train wreck. Literally; that was the theme of this year’s decorations, a locomotive accident with hundreds of gruesome fatalities. A line of smashed, overturned, and burning train cars—real ones, brought over from an abandoned rail yard—snaked through the park, partygoers shuffling around and climbing over them. Unsettlingly realistic corpses and severed limbs littered the ground. Massive zombie buzzards the size of pterodactyls swarmed overhead and occasionally swooped down on tattered leathery wings, snatching up some body part in a jagged beak and hauling it back into the sky. Again: Devil’s Night was not for kids.
Zoey jumped as the nearest corpse opened its mouth to speak. Then she saw that the mouths of all of the mangled corpses were moving in mechanical unison. In a ghostly chorus, the dead announced that the Inappropriate Costume Contest was due to start in fifteen minutes.
“The five vehicles in the Stench Machine convoy were just waved through the VOP security cordon,” said Echo, in Zoey’s ear. “They’re parking now, looks like … I’m going to say eight guards.”
“Where?”
“Northwest of you.”
“What am I, a goddamned mountain man?”
Wu nudged her and pointed in the direction that was presumably northwest. They pushed their way through the crowd of costumes. She saw one guy dressed as Margot Greggor, a woman who made headlines for killing her two toddlers and stuffing them into an oven (the costume required two charred dolls). There was a couples costume, Congressman Whitley and the teenage girl he allegedly raped and murdered (the girl made up to look exactly like the recovered corpse as it appeared after five days in the Potomac, wrapped in garbage bags). Another couple was dressed as Jesus and Muhammad in fetish gear. She saw a man in blackface and an orange Afro dressed as pop star Latrell La’range, who had been arrested a few months ago for masturbating in public and the man wearing the costume was crudely simulating that.
Echo said, “You’re almost there.”
Zoey already knew. Partygoers were turning, pointing, recoiling from a team of armed g
uards acting like Secret Service clearing the way for the damned president. Zoey pushed through gawkers and saw the kid in the bad Zoey Ashe costume emerge, now about fifty feet away.
And it was just a kid, maybe eighteen. He hadn’t covered his face in anything but sloppily applied makeup he’d probably borrowed from his mom or girlfriend, including mascara applied to look like it was running, as if his Zoey had been crying. He was saying something to one of the guards and Zoey noticed he’d painted three of his teeth black, to look like they were missing. The real Zoey was missing a lower canine from a skateboarding accident when she was a kid and had a chipped incisor from a hard slap administered by a stepdad wearing a bulky class ring. Her tormenters loved to exaggerate her bad teeth and that was the only reason Zoey hadn’t gotten them fixed, even though she’d had a couple of unrelated oral surgeries since inheriting the money. It would feel like giving in.
Echo said, “Everyone is in position.”
Zoey momentarily panicked when she saw the kid had emerged without the cat crate, but he then turned and reached back into the vehicle and pulled it out. She caught hints of movement and fur through the narrow slots in the door and sides.
Breathe.
She forced herself to focus through a rage that was crawling through her body like fire ants. She wanted to run over and rip the carrier away from him but took some pride in the fact that she knew better. The VOP team would cut her down before she took a step. Cool and methodical wins the race.
As such, they had discussed every possibility for this part. That the crate would be empty, or contain a stuffed cat, or a bomb, or some prank device that sprayed acid or diarrhea in Zoey’s face. The first step was to have Wu scan for—
“There is no explosive device,” he said, his voice muffled from inside his costume. Under there, he was wearing glasses that sprayed threat data across his field of vision. “I see no mechanism of any kind.”
The kid walked toward them through the crowd, heading for the staging area for the contest. He was unspooling a trail of yellow-topped guards behind him and they looked ready to blaze a path back to the safety of the vehicles should he be accosted. Again, this was no ambush, this was deterrent all the way. Zoey didn’t understand, too focused on her cat to put it together.