One of Us (13 page)

"Back?" Stratten said quickly, and I realized I'd made an error. I'd patched my calls through Quat's system while in Mexico, making it look like I was still in LA.

"Had to go upstate yesterday," I continued as smoothly as I could. "That's why I wasn't there for your calls."

"Business trip?"

I'm not that stupid. "Personal, of course." I left it there. Extraneous details always sound like lies.

"Next time set a redirect. I've got a lot of work stacked up for you."

"I can't do a memory," I told him. "My head still isn't right."

"Migraine?"

"Yeah," I said, and at that moment it was pretty close to the truth. A sudden gout of Laura's vacation slewed down through my head, filling it with hangover and sour margaritas.

"But you'll do dreams despite that?" Stratten was too polished to let suspicion into his tone, but I knew it was there.

"They're different, as you know. Plus I need the money." Not true. I had around a quarter million hidden in various places on the Net, not including the money I intended to give back to Laura Reynolds. But I figured it would make Stratten happy to think I was beholden to him.

I was right. "Okay," he said, apparently satisfied. "Take one more day off. But make sure it's a restful one. Tonight's going to be very tiring."

You don't know the half of it, I thought.

I DROVE BACK to Griffith, and took a pass in front of The Falkland. There was nothing to see, but I still didn't like it, so I parked on the far side of the square and sat outside a bar, drinking beer on credit. Deck's phone remained unanswered, there was no message on my machine, and a call to Tid's cellular told me there'd been no sign of the two men in gray suits. I didn't try Laura's number again.

I was halfway through my third beer, trying to work out a way of checking out my apartment without laying myself open to the possibility of being killed, when the phone finally rang.

"Where the fuck are you?" I shouted, scaring some of the other early afternoon drinkers.

"On the Net, where else?" answered a calm voice. "You running a little tense there. Hap?"

"Quat," I said more quietly. "Thought you were someone else."

"Well, be glad it's me. Got some good news for you."

About time. "What?"

"You lucked out. I found a guy who lashed a part-working device up less than a week ago for a woman who wanted to make a large transferral. Sound familiar?"

"Sure does." Laura's hacker. Had to be. "When can I have it?"

"Guy's in the area. Tonight soon enough?"

Better than I'd dared hope. I felt light-headed with relief. "What's the deal?"

"Thirty thou, one-time usage. Guy delivers, waits, takes it back."

"Can't do it that way. I have some logistical problems." Like not having my receiver at hand. "I need it overnight at least."

"Hold a sec." There was silence, then Quat came back on the line. "Okay, but the price goes to fifty, and the device is back by six A.M. Guy's doing me a favor here. He wants it back in pieces pronto."

"Deal." It was actually less than I was expecting, and in the current situation cheap at the price. "What about the delivery? Time and place?"

"Why not your apartment?"

"I'm going off the color scheme." I thought for a moment. "You know the Prose Cafe?"

Quat sniggered. "I know of it."

"Tell your guy eight o'clock, there. Will you arrange the money transfer?"

"As we speak. And you might want to go alone, Hap. I think this is a guy who scares easy."

At least he makes it out into the real world sometimes, I thought. "How will I know who he is?"

"You'll know," Quat said, and was gone.

I took a celebratory swig of my beer and beamed goodwill at my fellow drinkers. The most difficult piece of the puzzle was now in place. True, the easier bits—like having access to my own machine, and to the woman whose head the memory needed to go back into—had gone a bit complex to compensate, but at least I was getting somewhere.

I had an idea, and dialed the Tidster's number again. He answered on the first ring. He always does. He doesn't seem to have anything to do except run errands for people like me.

"Got a fifty-buck job for you if you've got ten minutes."

"That rate, you can have half a day. What do you want?"

"I left something that I need in my room. Thought maybe I could give you the key and you could go up and fetch it." For a moment I understood why Woodley would operate only through remotes. Maybe he was more in tune with the times than me.

"Sure. But why can't you go?"

"There are reasons. But listen—when you get to the room, you've got to knock first. Don't just go barging in there."

"Whatever you say, boss. Where are you?"

"Just across the square." Abruptly I stopped, realizing I couldn't do this. Tid could knock on the door all he liked, or more likely he'd ignore my advice and just open it right up. Based on past performance, if the two men had come back to my apartment, they'd shoot him either way. If they weren't there, he'd earn fifty bucks. It wasn't enough. No amount of money was enough for that kind of risk. Plus I remembered I didn't have any cash left.

" Listen, Tid. I've changed—"

"Hey hey hey," he said, voice distant. "Talking to a man who's been looking for you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked, but then realized he wasn't speaking into the phone. Frowning, I listened to a muffled exchange, and then someone else's voice came on the line.

"Hap," it said urgently. "Where the hell have you been, man?"

Luckily my phone was made of the stuff they used to fashion space shuttles from. "Deck? Are you okay? Have you got Laura?"

"Yes and yes, though I'm pretty spooked. Been trying to get hold of you all morning." Deck sounded relieved.

"How?"

"On the phone, Hap. How do you think, spirit guides?"

"Don't go up to the apartment. I'm across the square outside the Twelve Bar. Get the fuck over here."

I stood up, stared across the square. There was a three-second delay, and then the doors to The Falkland opened. Deck came out, Laura's upper arm gripped firmly in one of his hands. She was wearing the green dress and looked nice, though pretty pissed. At least she wasn't bothering to dig her heels in, which would have been merely tiresome.

Deck was talking fast from five yards away. "Jesus H. Christ, Hap. You leave it off the hook or something?"

"No," I said. "And I've had it in reaching distance all the fucking time. You sure you've got the right number?"

He spieled it off like a machine gun.

"I am getting really, really fed up with this," Laura said. "Being dragged around dives by this monkey all morning is my idea of a very dull time."

"Shut up," I said. "I fetched your purse, so be polite."

"Oh, yeah, like that's some big favor."

I ignored her, turned to unlock the car. "What happened?" I asked Deck.

"Don't know," he said, looking sheepish. "Got twitchy. Hap, there's something a little weird going on here."

"No shit, Scully."

Deck helped Laura into the back, then settled in the passenger seat. I locked the doors and set the car on an auto-tourist route, then got their story as we tooled around the neighborhood.

Deck had waited until Laura got out of the shower, then gave her a coffee. They were exchanging unpleasantries, when the phone rang. Deck was going to let the machine take it; then he realized it might be me calling from the Net with a change of plan. So he picked up.

A deep voice came on the line. Asked to speak to Laura Reynolds. Deck said she wasn't there. The voice chuckled quietly, then asked for me instead. Deck said I wasn't there, and was asked to deliver a message. "The wrath of nothing will fall swiftly." the deep voice said.

"Not very nice," I said.

"No, and quite threatening, I thought. Plus a little incomprehensible. So I wait for a few minutes, thinking maybe I should call you, and then I get a nervous feeling. Something about the guy's voice made me think that 'swiftly' might mean not, like, 'tomorrow,' or 'sometime later in the week, possibly Friday.' It might mean actually now. So I went to the window, looked down at the street. I didn't see anything unusual, but I didn't know what I was looking for. Then I called you, but the line was busy."

"When was this?"

"Exactly a half hour after you left." At which point I was sitting in the parking lot below The Falkland, smoking a cigarette and not talking to anyone at all. Deck shrugged. "So, well, you know how I get sometimes."

I did. Deck has a sixth sense. Sounds corny, but he does. A while ago he saved the life of someone I cared about, simply by keeping them talking. I wasn't there for a variety of reasons, but I heard about it afterward. My friend and Deck were drinking together in a bar, killing time. She was supposed to meet up with someone and drive out of the city, but Deck got the Fear and kept her there, talking nonsense and pretending to be trying to convince her of something else. He managed to delay her for only ten minutes, but that was enough. The guy she was due to meet got impatient waiting for her, ran to his car to go look for her. Couple of seconds later he was spread in a thin red mist over a hundred cubic yards, and it was raining bits of motor vehicle.

The car had been wired. No way Deck could have known about the bomb, none at all. Make of it what you like, but if Deck gets nervous, I do what he says.

"So I grabbed Little Ms. Charming here and we left." Laura scowled.

"You didn't check in the parking lot under the hotel?"

Deck looked embarrassed. "Er, no. Not then. I forget that when you say you're going to Quat's you aren't actually, you know, going there. Anyway, I dragged us around Griffith, keeping on the move. It felt ... I don't know."

"What?"

He shrugged. "It felt like someone was following us. But I couldn't see anyone. Tried your cellular at like fifteen-minute intervals. Busy. In the end decided I had no choice but to come back. This time I did check the lot, but you weren't there."

"I made about five calls once I was out of the Net, all of them very short. Mainly to the machine at your place."

"Well," he said, "then your phone's fucked. Talk to the weirdo about it. Where you been anyhow?"

"You were right. The guy who called the apartment did mean now. They turned up about five minutes after you left. I must have missed you by seconds."

"Who's 'they'?" Laura demanded.

I looked at her. "The guys in the gray suits."

"What the hell were they doing there?"

"Looking for you, I would guess," I said. "What are the chances of you answering some questions?"

"About what?" she said, digging around in her bag. "How stupid you guys are?"

"About why you blew Ray Hammond's head off. And who these other guys might be."

"Don't know what you're talking about," she said, smiling sweetly. "It never happened. You can polygraph me if you like. I'm clean."

"Yes, but not for much longer." I was on the edge of losing my temper. "I've got hold of a transmitter—from the same guy you dealt with." Her smile vanished. "He's delivering it tonight, and ten minutes later all this is going to be back in your head. And guess what? Deck and I get to walk away. But not you. You're the only one the cops will be able to connect to the murder, and that's just the least of your problems."

"So what's the biggie, in your humble opinion?" she asked, eyes hard.

"Those guys in suits. They're a lot tighter on the case than the police are. They dropped by the Nirvana this morning. And I called your house. They were there. Looking for you."

"I don't believe you. How would you know my number?"

"Your organizer. Your best friend is called Sabi and your birthday's in November."

"That's
private
!" she shouted. "That's
my
life."

"So's what I've got in my head, but you didn't mind sharing that. Question is: How did those guys know where you live?"

"I don't know. They don't mean anything to me."

"You obviously mean something to them. They got to your house far too quickly from the Nirvana, by the way. Either there's more than two of them, or something real strange is going on, which is why I'm not keen on going up to the apartment just now. Whoever these guys are, they're real close on your tail."

"Not just mine," she snapped. "You heard your little friend here. After me, they asked for you."

"They're looking for me only because they know I've got you. The flunky at the hotel snitched me under duress."

"Bullshit. You know what I'm saying is true."

We were passing Herbie's Crouton just then, included in the route in its capacity as one of Griffith's finest architectural achievements. I sent the store my customary beat of ill will, but not with much attention. When I turned back, Deck's eyes were on me.

"She right?" he asked.

" Probably. The guy I spoke to said something pretty weird. I don't know what it meant, but it meant something."

"No one just walks away," Laura said quietly. "That's not how life works." I couldn't really disagree. In the rearview mirror she looked small, and alone, and for a little while I wasn't angry at her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Hard Prose Cafe is over in the warehouse district of Griffith. It's not really a warehouse district, of course, just another chunk of reality-flavored life. During the eighties and nineties people got so used to overpriced bars and restaurants being in cavernous old buildings that they forgot they weren't originally planned that way. So, when they were laying Griffith out, they built a couple of blocks of looming edifices and redeveloped them
during
construction—building walls and then knocking them out again immediately, to get that authentic feel. The block the Cafe is on actually has a fake wharf out front: It's only when you walk right up to it and look down that you realize the "river" is a Plexiglas roof over the subway. Sometimes I think we've gotten so used to chocolate-flavored drinks that real chocolate would make us break out in a rash.