CHAPTER THIRTY
Someone was shaking his shoulder. A voice said “Hello, you okay?”
Rook’s eyes snapped open. Everything was blurry, there were dried tears in his eyes. He rubbed them, blinked. An older lady was bending over him, her eyes filled with concern.
“Hey, can you hear me?” she said.
“Yeah, thanks.” Rook struggled to shake off the effects of being out cold like that. He started to get to his feet.
“You been drinking?”
“Huh? No. Had an accident. Had to lie down. Okay now.”
“Good, because they don’t allow anyone to, you know, sleep here. The janitor finds you here, he’ll call the cops.”
“Right, I understand. You live here?”
“Forty four years, is all.”
“You know Mister Haman?”
“Little fag, lives on the third floor at the front.”
“Not a friend of yours?”
“What? You kidding? If they’d listened to me they’d have taken all those gays and put them in the camps. Give ‘em a choice, either be real men or die.”
“Oh, unh-huh.” Rook was feeling better, and hungry.
“You got some business with Haman?”
“I do, but I have to find him.”
A nasty smile flitted across the old lady’s lips. “He a friend of yours?”
“No.”
“No problem, friend. Come with me.”
He remembered the lobby, that desperate time on that terrible morning. The old lady avoided the elevator.
“Use the stairs.” She lead him to the third floor, tiring considerably by the top of the second. He had to help her to the third.
She paused to recover her breath.
“See, Three D, that’s him. There’s no security cameras out here either.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
She left him, went to the elevators that were down the hallway and rode to her own floor.
He waited, let the sounds of the building filter in to him. The front door closed with a heavy slam now and then. The elevators went up and down. Someone went up while talking in a loud voice in the elevator.
He slid across to the door of Three D and listened carefully. No sound, no indication of anyone being at home. He decided to wait, rather than force the door. There was always the chance of there being an alarm.
Waiting there, feeling weak and hungry left him wanting to call his daughter, but he didn’t. His voice could also trigger an alarm. Most buildings like this were equipped with smart systems that could tell a stranger’s voice in a split second. So he hid in the stairwell with the door open a crack, ready to move if he had to.
After an hour, the elevator stopped at the third floor and two men emerged, went down the hall and turned right. A moment later a door shut behind them. The elevator went back down to the ground floor.
Ten minutes after that, it returned to the third floor and disgorged Pipo Haman, who hurried to his own apartment door, snapped his fingers when he was about five feet away and the door popped open with a little “ping.”
Rook was still not close enough, taken by surprise by the auto-door, and he had to hurry, stumbling as he ran, which alerted Pipo, who looked over his shoulder and saw him coming.
There was moment of shocked recognition. Rook despaired since he was a good ten feet from the door and Pipo could slam it in his face. Then he’d be stuck outside with all surprise gone.
But the surprises kept coming. Haman didn’t shut the door, he held it open instead..
“You are alive. Well, you better come in then.”
Rook didn’t hesitate and inside he took advantage of the opportunity to sit down, filthy pants or not.
Haman had an expression of distaste on his elfin features as he saw the dust settling on his nice faux-Persian rug.
“You look like you’ve been through hell.”
“Y’know, you’re right about that.”
“Something to drink?”
“Yeah, water for now.”
Pipo disappeared into the kitchen. Rook took in the room, which was tastefully furnished in subdued greys and greens with some more colorful abstract art on the walls.
The water was good, almost too good and he had to resist the urge to gulp it all down, because he was sure it would make him sick. Haman took a seat opposite, looking a little nervous.
“I guess I didn’t expect such a warm welcome.”
Haman nodded. “Well, true, the last time you came here you weren’t particularly nice. But, I understand now. It was pretty stressful.”
“Yeah.” That was one way of putting it, Rook gave a mental shrug.
“So, what happened to you? Why didn’t you come back?”
“They were there. They were invisible.”
“But they didn’t kill you.”
“Nope. Tried, but didn’t quite make it.”
Haman’s eyebrows bobbed up and down at that.
“So now you want to know where they went, right?”
“Oakes and Plesur.”
“Right. Well, I contacted Nancy, when you didn’t come back. And we went over to her place. Well, Plesur and me went. Then we borrowed a car and took Oakes to the hospital.”
“Which one?”
“St. Vincents. We just left him there in the emergency. Nancy said we shouldn’t get involved.”
“Who was the “we” in that instance?”
“Oh, Hugo and me. Hugo’s my friend.”
“And Plesur?”
“Nancy took her in, said she’d see about the, uh, operation. Make her a real person and all that.”
Rook absorbed that, filed it with everything else, then relaxed just a little.
“You know something, this isn’t what I’d expected from you.”
Pipo nodded. “Understandable, I’m not exactly cut out for this. Sorry, but you have to remember how scary this was. Is. But, Hugo helped me, he’s like, I don’t know, he’s brave, I guess. “
“You stepped up, Mr. Haman, you took it on. Thanks.“
“You look like you need a shower, and some clothes.”
Rook sighed. It’d been a long day, and it had hardly even begun.
“I do. Also some antiseptic.”
“What happened?”
“Long story. Short version, is, they had me rigged to a set up that turns your brain on and off at a keystroke. They can make you do anything while you’re hooked up to that. I was supposed to shoot myself with my own gun.”
Pipo had gone pale. “Ohmigod.”
Rook grinned without mirth. “They had me meet with god earlier. Some kind of mindfuck. Wrong person for that, I think.”
“What did they want from you?”
“Plesur. They want her.”
“But why? I mean, other than the obvious.”
“She knows something, they think. I mean, she doesn’t know she knows, you got me?”
“Oh, I see. I think. The General did that?”
“Right, something in code, nothing big. But whatever it is they’ll kill for it.”
“And they killed Freddy, too?”
“They’re fighting among themselves. One side of the family against the other. “
“Family?”
“The Marion family. I got the whole lecture.”
Pipo made green tea, got him some antiseptic gel and a skin regenerating pad. There were some vanilla wafers with the tea.
He ate one, wondered if he’d be sick. Sipped some tea. Felt better almost at once. The nausea didn’t come.
“Thanks. Think that’s the first solid food in, like, a week.”
Pipo, bless him, showed genuine concern. “You gonna be okay?”
“Have to be. Feelin’ better now. Tea is good.”
“You’re welcome. You need a rest. You could sleep in the spare room.”
“Sounds wonderful, but I need to find her.”
“Oh, sure, well, Nancy will be at the club in about an hour.”
“I’ll take you up on a shower and some clothes. What I’ve got are pretty shot.”
“Jeans?”
“Yeah. Durability seems important right now.”
“You’re bigger than me, but about the same size as Hugo. I have some of his clothes.”
“I can pay, even have cash.”
“Oh, no, he’ll never notice. And besides, he’d be proud to know he’d helped. Hugo’s so public minded.”
“Okay, just give him my thanks, then.”
Twenty minutes later, Rook was clean and dressed in new street clothes that fit pretty well. Jeans, a belt, some almost brand new sneakers, “retros” they were styled, a white tshirt and over it a shortsleeve shirt in designer hempweave. Rook wore the shirt untucked, and put one gun in front and one in back. He stuffed money, badge, the cards taken from Buck Marion in his pocket.
“Is that comfortable?” said Pipo, observing all this.
“What?”
“All those guns, I mean?”
Rook couldn’t help a chuckle. “You get used to it.” But he had already thought that it would be smart to get a couple of holsters, a small up-in-the-armpit one for his own gun, and an ankle clipper for the other one. Manhattan, however, was not an easy town to find hideaway holsters in.
Rook was also wondering what sort of street press there would be for him after the earlier events in midtown. Full hue and cry? All points with every cop and traffic machine primed with his image? Or something else? How much of all this crazy shit was the NYPD down with, and how far up the ladder did it go? Invisible killer teams might operate in the city without permission, and so might Buck Marion. In which case there might be some awkward questions at a certain midtown building today.
But he’d left Gaines, Marion and Dr. Lisa Berryman on the floor. Any one of them could have died. At the very least, the cops would be looking for a dangerous shooter. But, any investigation would surely come up with his image in no time, and then they’d know who he was and what he was.
Which left him wondering about a lot of things. If it was Buck Marion’s people that tried to kill him, earlier, and then killed Freddy, what about the other side in this struggle of titans? What was their angle? If Buck Marion’s people killed Sangacha, then case closed. Write up the report and send it to central filing. Move on. There had to be three more homicides to look at by now.
Except, well, how did an SIO go home after this one? Well, clearly he didn’t. What evidence did he have for anything he might say? And why would anyone listen to him when they’d be prosecuting him for gunning down two men and a woman in Midtown Manhattan using a licensed police pistol for two of them. Nope, going back to the station in Kingston didn’t seem a viable option.
Freddy had said something about a job offer in Texas, at Sable Ranch. Good idea? Better than nothing? Or just a cover for a quiet execution? With easy corpse disposal on the back forty. Rook didn’t like the odds there. The big people in this game seemed very free with termination papers.
So, what should he do?
He pulled out the Nokia. “Can you get me a clean call in to McEar?”
“Working on it.”
“You want something to eat?” said Pipo, hovering nearby. “I mean, more than wafers.”
Rook nodded. The nausea thing had passed. He was thirsty again, and under that, he could feel a big hunger.
“Yeah, thanks. What did you have in mind?”
“I have some eggit, some toasters.”
“Okay, great.” In the back of his mind he could hear McEar groaning about artificial egg, but he pushed it away. He was hungry. He hadn’t had solid food in days.
“Some orange juice?”
“Yeah, and water. I’m really thirsty.”
While Pipo got those, Rook called Jen.
“Daddy?” She freaked out a bit at that point. There were tears, some yelling and finally.
“Oh, thank god, you’re alive.”
That might have been amusing at one point, but not at this one.
“Yeah, baby. I’m okay. Made it out of there. Bit of a miracle. I mean, I ought to be dead.”
She cried some more. When that was over he went on.
“So, I’ve got a couple things to do, and then I’m getting the hell out of here.”
“Oh, daddy, come to LA. We’ll find a way to keep safe.”
“Yeah. That’s a good plan. You work on that, okay? I’m gonna need an apartment, a job, who knows. Just check that out in a general way. I’m gonna be an ex-cop, there’s usually something we can do.”
“How are you gonna get here?”
“That’s going to take some planning. I’ll get back to you on that. I have to take care of something first, though.”
“Can you take the rail?”
“No, probably not. Have to avoid cams, id checks, all of that. I’ll work something out.”
“Be careful, daddy. Please, be careful.”
“Do my best, girl. But we both have to be careful. Don’t call me. Wait for my call. My phone has capabilities yours won’t have. Don’t want you to get pulled into this. Got it?”
“Okay, daddy, but call soon. And...” she broke off, and he could hear her struggling not to cry again. “Just, stay alive.”
Rook could barely talk, after that. He so desperately wanted to hold his kid then. Encourage her to be a big girl and not to worry. Try to make up for everything that had gone wrong in their lives. Try to get back the lost years. He had such a hard lump in his throat, he could just about croak, “love you.”
Worry! Hah.
“Bye.”
Worry? That was a luxury he couldn’t afford. There was no time for worry.
“I have a connection to AI McEar,” said the Nokia. “Routed through Free Tibet scramble, and the Kokang Mixup.”
“Those are new to me.”
“Kokang is on the border of Myanmar and China. A major opiates marketing center. The FTS is on a ship in the Indian Ocean.”
Rook whistled. The wilder shores of telecommunications just seemed to get wilder all the time.
“So no one’s listening in?”
“Call is booked in on Yak Channel 123, cover discussion is of veterinary issues concerning small mountain breeds. Everything is in tibetan.”
“Yeah? You’re translating?”
“Both ends.”
“How do you do that?”
There was a short pause.
“I doubt that you would understand. It involves Quantum sub-packet switching, and advanced tertiary reachback.”
“You know something? You’re right.”
“Probability is 99.3% that nobody is monitoring the channel. Best I can do in the time allowed.”
“And damned good, too. Thanks. And, we have to talk sometime about independent actions by small super phone equipment. I’m still puzzled.”
“I understand. I hope you will not deactive me.”
“Oh, no, you’re kidding. No, you don’t kid. No, not at all. Just curious that’s all. Don’t worry about deactivation.”
“MacEar has taken the call.”
“MacEar, it’s me.”
“Holy crap. Everyone said you were really dead this time.”
“Not quite.”
“I guess I don’t want to know, though I do. How the hell?”
“A miracle, all I can say. I should be dead.”
“Boss, even cats have only nine, you know, lives.”
“I hear you, I’ve been pushing my luck.”
“The case? Artoli closed it.”
“Interesting, she say why?”
“Nope. Assumed it was because you were, you know, gone.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Sucks, because you won’t believe this but I got a weird little line on our whip girl.”
“Oh?”
“I did all the usual searches. Nothing. No arrests, no charges, no nothing. Not in any police file.”
“Yeah?”
“I was being creative, working a search on older records?”
“Yeah?”
“Lot of these ladies go into this after doing the other thing. They wise up, you know? Like why am I working like this and giving money to this damned pimp?”
“Makes sense.”
“And bingo, got an 89% facial feature match up on a “Sought After Person” back in forty four.”
“Huh, twenty four years ago?”
“Yeah. Sangacha’s domme is fifty, looks a lot younger. Name, Angela Bricken, wanted for questioning, FBI.”
“Say why?”
“No. Just pic, number, and Fed stamp.”
“Sought After Person? That’s old. Haven’t used that while I’ve been a cop.”
“That’s from the Emergency,” said Lindi.
And there it was again. This whole case revolved around something from those dark days.
“Okay, look, if you want to keep digging on this, feel free. I don’t know where we might end up, but I can tell you something interesting here.”
“Shoot.”
“Our vic was a pawn in some kind of war going on in the executive suites.”
“You know who’s on which side?”
“You heard of the Marion family, right?”
Lindi sucked in a breath. “Ohmigod, what...?”
Three presidents had borne that name in the 21st century. One had been assassinated, and though Rook didn’t know the details, it was understood that the assassination of President Neil Marion had started the slide into the Emergency Era.
“They’re fighting among themselves.”
“And the General, why kill him?”
“I was told he did a lot of killing for Louisa Marion. Years back, I guess.”
Lindi had gone silent. Then she spoke in a quiet voice. “No one’s listening to this call, right?”
“No. My little phone is doing something amazing that we’d need PhDs to comprehend, apparently.”
“God, I hope you’re right. You know, some names are more dangerous than others.”
“True.”
“Is the Senator from Texas, you know, Louisa Marion, trying to kill you, Boss?”
“No, seems not. At least so far. We were targeted by the other side. Motives not really very clear to me. Like they wanted to embarrass her.”
“We?”
“Me and the Pleasure Model.”
“Right, sorry. Who could forget, uh, her.”
Rook couldn’t disagree with that. “But,” Lindi continued,”what does this all mean?”
“The little P-mod knows something. She doesn’t know she knows it, if you get my meaning, but they do. God knows how.”
“She knows something, so they killed Sangacha?”
“Something else is going to happen. This case is just for starters. Something big is coming, don’t know what, but that’s my take on it now.”
“Smokescreen?”
“Something like that. Except that whatever she knows is dangerous.”
“Okay, boss. Well, I’m thinking I may get a promotion soon. I’m not gonna tell anyone about our calls. Far as I’m concerned, you’re dead. But, I will keep digging. See what we find.”
“Thanks. Be real careful. Watch your back, young lady.”
“Got it, boss. Madame Lisa was a bit weird yesterday. You might be pleased to hear this, I don’t know, but for a while she was sorta sniffly. Sad. Tears.”
“No kiddin’?”
“Might just have been for show, but I didn’t think so.”
“Amazing. Who knew? Not me.”
“So, what are you gonna do? Rook, you know, you’ve been, uh, great to work for.”
Rook, huh? Lindi never called him that. But, this was close to goodbye. So, he guessed it was time.
“Well, thank you for that. We were a good team. But I can’t come back from this one. You can guess what would happen.”
“That damned robot would be back here.”
“Anything. As for the future. We’re getting out of here.”
“You’re still with the P-mod?” Lindi sounded surprised.
“Yeah. She’s had an upgrade. They do that, you know.”
“Like what?”
“So they’re smart.”
“Doesn’t that, um, defeat the purpose?”
“Apparently not. Maybe it’s buyers’ remorse, I don’t know.”
“Trying to process that. Wow, so what’s she like now?”
And just like that, MacEar had conceded “she” to the little Pleasure Model.
“I don’t know, haven’t seen her yet. But she’s safe and I think she’s had the op.”
“Well good luck with that. I mean, what’s that like. You wake up all of a sudden, and you’re like, normal?”
“I guess.”
“And then you remember what you were before?”
Rook felt a twinge of unease. “Yeah, has to be.”
“God, that would be so tough. I’d be so angry...”
“I hear you. She probably will be, too. But if she’s gonna live, she’s gonna have to listen to me.”
“Well, good luck, boss. Let me know how it goes, if you can. Stay alive.”
“You too, kid. Watch out for Artoli, she’s sneaky.”
“Don’t we know that. Bye.”
Pipo had produced oj, and a plate of creamy looking eggits with a couple of toastits, their cheese flavoring spicing the air.
Rook had to really fight his urge to wolf it all down. He was still concerned that it would come back up as fast as it went down. But, the nausea problem seemed to have ended. Which was progress. Then his eye caught something on a small table in the corner. He waited until he’d finished the eggits, then went over to take a look.
There was some good looking camera equipment, a snout-cam, a lighting system for it, and a processor-pack.
All very nice, but what Rook was looking at was the neoprene web carrier for the pack. He hefted it. It had two straps, and seemed designed to fit on someone’s hip.
“Could I try something, and maybe borrow this?”
“You’re going to film that P-mod?” Pipo was grinning.
“No.” Rook pulled the pack out of the carrier, and put his gun into it instead. It fit, almost as snug as a holster.
“Oh, I see.” Pipo looked apprehensive.
Rook took off the shirt and strapped the pack into place high up on his left side. It took a little juggling, but it was meant to be worn on the side of the body, and he could fit the gun into pretty easily. Getting it out again was not as easy as from a holster, but it was possible.
“Well, it works, sort of. Can I?”
Pipo looked a little unhappy. “Oh, go ahead. Better there than in your waistband, I guess.”
“Lots. By the way, you got any tape, spectape, ducktape, anything like that?”
“Sure, somewhere. Hold on a second.” Pipo vanished into the kitchen. A drawer opened, closed, another. “Here, this might be good enough. Hugo used it to seal a leaking pipe.”
Pipo tossed him a role of a clear poly tape.
“Scissors?”
“Yes, of course.”
A few minutes later, Rook had the gun he’d taken from Buck Marion taped to his leg, above his ankle. The jeans, fortunately, were bootcut and generous enough not to show a bulge there. Rook took a look in the mirror. A trained cop could probably tell there was a gun under his arm, but other than that, he’d pass.
Pipo was clearly impressed.
“I wouldn’t imagine, you know, that you’d be carrying two weapons. Actually, that’s scary. How many, out there, are doing that?”
Rook’s turn to grin. “More than you’d like to know, I bet.”
“You going to Nancy’s now?”
Rook looked at the clock patch on the wall.
“She’ll be there?”
“Oh, yes, she’s always there early.”
Rook looked out the window. Sunny, clear skies, moderately hot day.
“Hey, you wouldn’t have a hat, a ball cap? Something with a brim.”
“Unnh, sure.” Pipo opened a closet, at the top on a shelf were loads of them.
“Yankee fan?” He held out a pink and silver Yankee cap. Rook winced. Not even in the West Village was he going to wear a pink cap.
“Anything a little less, uh, flamboyant?”
Pipo had a funny little smirk going. He came back with a black one, long brim, white circular logo for River Yoga.
“Hey, that’s perfect.”
“Oh, good. It’s yours.”
Rook put that on, pulled the brim down, checked the mirror. It would give him some cover on facial recognition.
“Okay. Well, thanks, Pipo. I’ll send this pack back, soon as I get the chance.” He patted the gun under his shirt.
“Okay. Just try not to get killed.” Pipo was rubbing his hands together with anxiety. “I mean, you probably will be, but it’d be nice, you know, if you weren’t.”
Rook had to smile at this doomladen send off. He shook the little man’s hand, and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Well, you’ve been a big help, Pipo. Thanks, again.”
Out in the hallway, he moved to the stairs. From here on he knew he wanted to avoid street cams, house cams, anything that might be taking pictures that might show up on the net somehow.
Rook had watched a thousand perps on cam, studied them closely. He’d solved a few murders, too, on the basis of careless killers letting their mugs show up on screen. Now, he was in the perps’ shoes. This was going to be a different game, and if he didn’t hit the numbers just right, he was going to be dead, and soon.