Cumulus (12 page)

“Ma’am, we may have a situation,” said Karl in his deep baritone. He wasn’t one for small talk, another reason she liked him.

“What’s up?” She rubbed her hands together slowly. Her palms were raw from spending hour after hour shooting last night. Tiny blisters were forming on the pads of her fingers. She hadn’t played basketball for far too long.

“You told me to keep you in the loop about out-of-the-ordinary public safety situations.”

“I remember.”

“Well, to be honest, I’m not sure if this will amount to anything, but we have a crowd of a few hundred people marching up a street in West Oakland.”

Huian frowned. “That’s well outside the Green Zone.”

“Correct, but we try to keep an eye on outbursts like this in order to deploy resources if we have to. If they reach the Fringe, we want to be ready.”

“Why are they marching?”

“We actually don’t know yet,” said Karl. “Some kind of protest. I have people working on it.”

Just what they needed, another spate of Slummer social activism. Vera would probably know what was going on, but Huian couldn’t just call her and ask. No matter how hard Cumulus worked to build a better world, there were always people complaining. It was all well and good to point out other people’s mistakes, but if you weren’t actually going to step into the arena and present a viable alternative, you might as well just shut up. There were few people who frustrated Huian more than critics who produced nothing but hot air.

“Keep it under control,” said Huian. “And let me know once you find out what it’s all about.”

“You got it, ma’am,” said Karl.

She closed the connection and pulled up a feed on her office window. The protest was already all over the news. Bird’s-eye view panoramics showed the group marching up the middle of Market Street in Oakland. Traffic was snarled, but Fleet’s algorithms were rerouting around the disturbance.

Huian sighed. Sometimes, you just couldn’t catch a break. Not that she was asking for one.

22

“I’M SORRY, MA’AM,”
said the detective. “But there’s nothing else we can do at the moment.”

Lilly’s face puckered up in frustration. “How can that be? I just told you I saw the murderer leaving the scene.”

The detective nodded, his face haggard. “You did, and I have all of that testimony recorded. Although the evidence you’ve provided is circumstantial, it will be taken into consideration. Thank you for coming forward. I or someone from the district attorney’s office will likely be following up with you as the case moves forward.”

Lilly didn’t know what she had been expecting when she showed up at the Oakland Police Department, but it wasn’t this. She had hoped to find a frenetic investigation in progress, with whiteboards covered in complex scribbles and someone standing in the middle taking charge of the situation. She looked around the room. The entire floor was deserted but for her and the weary detective. Empty desks and exposed air ducts were the only denizens. The faded beige carpet smelled of mildew.

“Where is everyone?”

The detective gave a defeated shrug. “Right now, most of our resources are deployed trying to keep the protest under control,” he said. “But to be honest, it’s pretty empty even on a good day. The city’s been cutting our budget every year for the last decade, and the department’s had no choice but to lay off many of our officers. I’d blame Mayor Gonzalez if I didn’t know that it’s happening to every other municipal department too.”

“The protest?”

“You haven’t heard? Almost seven hundred people are marching up Market Street. It’s peaceful for the moment, but I’d recommend avoiding that area.”

Lilly’s stomach did a somersault. Her apartment was only a few blocks west of Market.

“Thanks, I’ll keep well away,” she said, recognizing it for a lie the minute the words came out of her mouth.

The detective nodded. He seemed about to say something but then held back.

“Good luck.” He stood up and extended a hand.

She took his drift, shook the proffered hand, and headed for the door.

“Thanks,” she said over her shoulder.

Back out on the street, she decided to walk. Her bike was locked up behind her apartment building. The Land Rover was still in Sara’s driveway, BART didn’t service her neighborhood, and the busses never ran on time, so she didn’t have much of a choice. She would keep her eyes out for signs of the protest and skirt around it.

She worked her way northwest of downtown Oakland, deeper and deeper into the Slums. Early twentieth-century Edwardian houses had been converted into group homes. Laundry flapped from lines strung between the windows of monolithic concrete blocks of low-income housing. An intricate graffiti mural on a wide brick wall depicted the deeply lined face of a tired old woman. The portrait was powerfully evocative, and memories of Lilly’s great aunt in the La Jolla nursing home rose from the dusty archives of her memory. Lilly reached for her camera before remembering she was out of film.

Pausing, she cocked her head to one side and pulled her phone from her pocket. That error message had been strange. She’d never had that issue before. She stepped down from the curb and snapped a few shots of the mural from various angles. The photos automatically uploaded to her Backend account without a hitch.

Well, at least on top of all of her other problems, she didn’t need a new phone.

What she did need was a next move. The police had been a dead end. The file would likely be added to the stack of cold cases that piled up day after day. From what the detective had said, they weren’t going to be making headway on Sara’s murder anytime soon.

Lilly wasn’t about to leave the investigation into her friend’s killing to rot in red tape. She wasn’t a Green Zone resident, so she couldn’t go to Security for help. She could do her part, but Lilly knew she didn’t have the skills or the resources to become a vigilante. Bruce Wayne had been a billionaire before he became Batman. The woman she had met the night before, Huian, had the means to help but not the motive. Lilly needed to find someone who cared as much as she did about finding the man she’d followed, and seeking justice for Sara’s killing.

She almost tripped as she stepped off the next curb. Of course. It was blindingly obvious. She should have gone to him before the police anyway.

It took her another twenty minutes to make her way to the Compound.

23

TWO DOZEN PIT BULLS
fought to break through the double-high chain-link fence topped in razor wire. Slobber flew from their mouths, and their lips retracted to display vicious sets of teeth as they jostled each other for the opportunity to eat Lilly alive. She hunched her shoulders and tried not to make eye contact as she walked along the sidewalk outside the fence. It surrounded an area the size of a city block with a massive warehouse in the middle. The dogs appeared to have free rein on the ring of bare asphalt around the building.

After what felt like forever, she reached the gate halfway down the block. The dogs followed close beside her on the inside of the fence the entire way, their barks echoing through the deserted street. Two enormous men with long dreadlocks stood in front of the gate, assault rifles dangling from straps on their shoulders. Although she’d heard many stories and rumors about the Compound at the heart of West Oakland, she’d never actually been here.

The men stared her down as she approached. One of them took a pull on a cigarette and the tip glowed orange. They didn’t look like the kind of people used to accommodating casual visitors. She held her breath as she arrived in front of them.

“Quiet!” One yelled back at the dogs. To Lilly’s amazement, they complied.

The other guy raised his face to the sky and blew out a cloud of smoke. “What do you want, girl?”

Lilly’s palms were sweating. “I need to see Frederick.”

“Hah.” The men looked at each other and guffawed. “She
needs
to see Frederick. Maybe we should bring her a fresh coffee and donut while we’re at it.”

“I’m serious,” said Lilly, forcing herself not to drop her eyes.

“Oho, she’s
serious
.”

The man dropped his cigarette to the pavement and ground it out with his heel. “Look, girl,” he said. “Today is not a good day to see the boss. He’s busy instigating insurrection. Come back in a week or two, and pitch whatever game you’ve got.”

“Make that a month or two,” said his friend, dreadlocks swirling as he shook his head.

“Yeah, a month or two. In the meantime, you can earn some brownie points by joining the protest.”

“He’ll want to see me,” said Lilly, trying not to let her frustration bleed into her voice.

“Boss knows his own mind and his own wants. We don’t get paid to prognosticate that shit.”

Lilly steeled herself.

“I know who killed Sara Levine,” she said.

They both tensed.

“What did you just say?”

“I said, I know who killed Sara Levine.”

The glance they exchanged conveyed no humor this time. One stepped away, unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt, and started talking into it.

“You better not be fucking around,” said the other. “Or things are about to go very badly for you.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

The guy just shrugged.

A minute later, his partner returned.

“Come with me,” he said. “And give me your hand.” He extended his own, not for a handshake but like someone offering to hold the hand of a sweetheart.

“My hand?”

“The dogs,” he said. “So they know you’re a friend.”

“Sit!” yelled the other guard. The pit bulls all lowered onto their haunches in unison. He proceeded to enter a code and the gate slid open.

The guard holding Lilly’s hand led her through. As soon as the gate closed behind them, the dogs came up and sniffed at her. One licked her forearm with a wide, rough tongue.

“They like women.” His tone had lost its edge.

Lilly looked up at the huge building they were walking toward. Brightly colored murals covered walls that stretched hundreds of meters in both directions. She recognized some of the scenes from history textbooks. Malcolm X stared out through his signature circular glasses. Aung San Suu Kyi spoke into a microphone in profile. Bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossed Pancho Villa’s chest. A black-and-white feather rose from behind the head of Sitting Bull. A bloody ice ax hung from Mara Winkel’s hand. Lee Kuan Yew waved to an expectant crowd. Along the bottom of the walls, stylized Oakland trees rose as if growing from fertile blacktop.

The dogs hung back as they approached the entrance. A corrugated metal door slid open and closed behind them as they stepped inside.

The interior of the building was a vast open space segmented into sections by waist-high partitions. The sections varied in size and shape, and were connected by walkways that wove the entire building into an intricate puzzle. But Lilly realized this later. The overwhelming first impression was of prolific activity.

People were everywhere, doing everything. Workers in masks and gloves separated and bagged a white mountain of cocaine in the middle of a wide table. A group of teenagers sweated through a workout routine as an instructor barked out instructions. A small army of people typed away at keyboards in front of large computer displays. Heavily muscled laborers piled crates into trucks in the loading dock at the far end. Analysts argued in front of whiteboards covered in diagrams and scribbles. Cooks tended a pit barbecue the size of a bus with a complex system of air ducts venting through the ceiling. Three fighters sparred in a mixed martial arts ring. An early
1990
s De La Soul album played at low volume over a unified speaker system that connected the entire space.

“Holy shit,” Lilly said under her breath. Nobody gave her a second glance.

“That about covers it,” said her escort, and Lilly thought she could detect an undercurrent of pride in his tone.

They made their way through the maze to a relatively quiet far corner. Unlike the other sections, this one had full walls and a ceiling so it looked like a box inside the larger space. The guard rapped his knuckles on the door.

“Send her in,” said a muffled voice from inside.

Her escort gave her a mock salute. “I really hope you’ve got something for him.” Then he turned away and walked off into the mayhem.

Lilly opened the door and stepped through. Beyond was a large sunken conference room. A table filled much of the space in the middle, chairs scattered around it. From inside, Lilly could see that the walls of the room were actually windows of adjustable opacity, currently displaying various dashboards, graphs, and video feeds.

Three people looked up at her from where they stood around the table. A middle-aged woman in a denim jumpsuit chewed on the end of a pencil. Tattoos covered every inch of the exposed arms of a thickly muscled younger guy with dreadlocks in the same style as the gate guards. And then there was Frederick. He was a tall, slender, aristocratic black man in his mid-fifties with short-cropped gray hair and the physique of a former athlete. He wore his trademark immaculate tuxedo.