Strange Flesh (60 page)

“Things don’t look as clean as you might like.”

“Uh-huh . . . But remember, you’ve been read into this situation. So what you see isn’t what everyone else sees.”

That line pops the bubble of uncertainty that’s been swelling in my head. I’d been asking myself: why did Billy see something so different from the police when he watched that video? Most of his voodoo forensics were unconvincing, but what about the pale figures in her pupils? No one who watched the recording, including me, ever saw them before he got it. As if they represented a hidden message intended only for him.

I feel an itch deep in my brain stem. How uncanny that in both
Getting Wet
and her suicide video, Gina’s eyes would transmit recondite information. Life imitates art.

Too perfectly, I think. More likely that detail is a product of the same artifice Billy used in
Getting Wet
.

How do I know the copy of Gina’s suicide video I took from the NYPD server was anything like the original?

I’ve been overlooking the crucial attribute of that file: chain of custody. McClaren could easily have gotten Nash to upload a different version. Those tiny ghosts could be the result of a couple hours with After Effects. A capability well within reach of someone who works for one of the biggest media companies on earth.

Relieved by my newfound certainty, I decide to push it. “Is that because you had Nash swap in a doctored recording of Gina Delaney’s suicide, knowing that Billy would eventually get ahold of it?”

McClaren laughs. “Buddy, you don’t seem to understand that nobody cares anymore about your questions.”

“I think after what happened . . . that I deserve to know the whole story.”

“You’re just killing me here. Look, the only ‘story’ you should be worried about is your own. Right now you’re getting a happy ending. With your line of work, you can probably have as many as you want. Billy? Now, Billy’s story is a very, very sad one. You don’t want to get caught up again in that kind of story.”

“You want to make that threat explicit?”

He watches me, his face shut and barred, bonhomie doused like kids pissing on the coals of a campfire. My mind is still racing.

Why would McClaren want to give Billy a doctored video? To make him believe that Blake murdered Gina? Could it have been a scheme to enrage Billy to the point of recklessness?

If so, I guess it worked, but not before endangering Blake’s life and risking that this fraud would be discovered. As a strategy, that would be akin to defusing a live artillery shell with a hammer. I remember the look on Blake’s face when Billy started dumping his stock. If that video was a key piece of some plan hatched by his own employee, why did Blake act so surprised when his brother’s actions then spiraled into violence?

McClaren sighs as though he expected better of me. “Threat? I’m not making any threats. The only threat we’re discussing is the one Ms. Randall might see in you going around trying to dig up the family cemetery for some ridiculous nonsense you got banging around in that head of yours. You should chew over the possibility that maybe things won’t go so smoothly for you if she has to withdraw her helping hand. If I was you, the last thing I’d want is for that hand to become a fist. That’s just a little friendly advice. Me to you.”

Helping hand? My stomach drops as I realize what he’s talking about. Blythe called Coles about my new IT enterprise, and I thought that was the end of it. But isn’t it interesting how quickly a currency quant was
able to raise venture funds? Coles is loaded, but he wouldn’t have
that
much just lying around.

Christ, is my company built once again with Randall money?

As the thought settles, it starts to make even more sense. Blake was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. Most of the infrastructure he built to profit from IT is still in place. Blythe has already won the contest for control of IMP, so why not appropriate Blake’s idea as well?

Which leaves me once again a legionary serving the IMPire. That’s a hard thing to swallow right now. But there’s nothing to be gained by acting out with McClaren. I need time to think about all this.

I stall. “So that’s how it is?”

McClaren makes a hospitable gesture at the space between us, as if to say, “We serve only the finest of fecal foodstuffs. Please enjoy.” He looks inquiringly at me.

I have to bite. I’m not prepared to start a rebellion here and now. “I absolutely never meant to cause Ms. Randall any aggravation.”

“You haven’t yet. That’s why we’re talking. So that you don’t.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

McClaren gets up and puts a hand on my shoulder, giving it an ungentle squeeze. He nods at me solemnly.

“Thanks so much, Jimmy,” he says. “You’re a real prince.”

S
usan Mercer has lunch by herself at the Sichi Zhilu teahouse in Chinatown at noon nearly every day. Many of my former colleagues believe she secretly owns the place. I find her pouring herself a cup at her regular table.

“Now, James, if you wanted lunch, you could have called my girl. I believe your new vocation is impinging on your sense of decorum.” She says this with a smile, but it still throws me.

“I, ah, Susan—” I hadn’t expected her to bring up my new job.

“Please, dear boy, no need to blush. Perhaps I’m not the withered old prune you imagine.”

“No, of course, I—”

“You came here to discuss something else.”

“I just met with John McClaren.”

“I know. Johnny and I go way back. I take it you’ve developed questions that he declined to answer.”

“That’s right. But he implied that my asking them was dangerous, which leads me to believe there’s some truth to their premise.”

“You want to know why he set about manipulating certain information.”

I nod.

“Let me suggest the traditional follow-on:
cui bono?
” She sits back to let me ponder that.

Who benefits?

There’s only one answer to her question: Blythe. She ended up with all the chips.

Supporting evidence: isn’t it funny she didn’t fire McClaren, despite that for a security specialist, he failed utterly in protecting Blake?

For that matter, Blythe acted suspiciously forgiving of me, the man who
actually killed
her brother. She explained her lack of malice by saying she believes that he brought his fate upon himself. But she can’t claim to have done much to stop it. I had always framed the battle of the Randalls in terms of the brothers. I never really placed Blythe in the action.

Mercer sees the light go on in my head. She shrugs. “Consider that while old John is certainly formidable, he’s not nearly so formidable as his boss.”

“You were working for her. From the beginning.”

“We both were. Your Blythe is a student of history. She knows that if you wish to be emperor, you must entice the Praetorians to your side. And we all know the value of picking the right side in a civil war.”

A civil war with a faction the other two combatants didn’t know they were fighting. The Randall brothers had been openly at odds since Billy had his supervotes yanked. Through it all, Blythe played the appalled bystander to the hilt. But at the same time, she was contending with her twin in the friendly competition for control of IMP. Surely she saw that Billy distracting Blake redounded to her benefit.

“So she planned all of this?”

“I think that would be impossible. But . . . Well, perhaps you know that her twin brother was given to dismissing her as an unimaginative ‘pipes’ person, while presenting himself as the family visionary. But in my estimation, Blythe is better seen as a
network
person, a weaver of webs. Someone who thinks not only about information itself, but how it’s distributed. Someone who understands that you can get a person to accept even the most ridiculous proposition when you present it in the right context.”

So how did she ensnare her brothers?

Blythe sets feelers on the shaking strands of their lives. Eventually, she sees this shared pursuit of the male Randalls reemerge: Gina Delaney. Billy’s bipolar love interest, and now Blake’s conflicted money shot. She watches, pretending to dampen their burning enmity with one hand while secretly mixing nitroglycerin with the other.

Gina’s death provides the spark.

Blythe intuits that Billy’s terrible grief can, with a judicious reframing, be focused, amplified, and turned to rage aimed straight at Blake. She makes sure he gets a warped view of Gina’s last moments and leaves his dark paranoia to do the rest. Like a Soviet spy who only believes information he steals, Billy trusts the video’s authenticity because he lifted it from me.

“She used Billy’s own puppet-master techniques against him.”

Mercer says nothing, but her eyes twinkle with satisfaction that I’m finally getting it.

“And yet she seemed so hurt by everything that happened. After her brother broke into her apartment, she cried . . .”

I think back to that night. Billy knew Blythe was attending that Women in Media panel. Remarkably unlucky that a freak carbon monoxide leak sent her back to the apartment to surprise him. She winds up bleeding in her twin’s arms.

Was that the incident that finally did it for Blake? Or was it her sobbing as Billy sold his stock and then asking him, “Is it never going to stop?”

For a woman who supposedly wanted peace between her brothers, she shed quite a few tears in front of Blake. Tears she must have known would inflame his hatred for Billy.

Mercer says softly, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”

So Blythe wasn’t lamenting, she was recruiting. And she found eager volunteers in Blake and Mondano. Then I get stuck again. How did they ever locate Billy? They’d shown no ability in that regard before, and suddenly he winds up dead before I get to his apartment?

Maybe “old John” already knew where he was. That day when he showed up at Amazone after ignoring my calls for over an hour, he told me he was “far afield” protecting Blythe. But I’ll bet she adheres to the “good offense” school of security. Let’s say she ordered McClaren and his surveillance teams to monitor what Blake and Mondano were going to do at the Cloisters from a safe distance. They see me release Billy, and so McClaren sends a detachment to follow him. Later that day, he “discovers” Billy’s whereabouts and passes that information along to her brother. Blake in turn passes it to Mondano’s people, who then pass a lethal jolt of current through Billy’s brain.

If all this is true, it’s a hand well played. Using Mondano, McClaren, and me as the fuel, the brothers incinerate themselves in their feud, leaving Blythe to cool their ashes with her tears.

Weeping, but standing alone on the field.

I say, “Okay, Billy I get. But Blake wound up dead too. Was that just luck?”

“Well, you pulled the trigger. What did it feel like to you?”

I light a cigarette, still thinking. Mercer surprises me by reaching for one as well.

Standing there, facing off amidst all the blood, I remember both of us being dumbfounded that things had gone so haywire.

Mercer continues. “I think we taught you well enough to appreciate that one can never plan everything to the last detail. Chaos will reign. But that doesn’t mean you can’t devise scenarios that tilt the odds to your advantage. That put others in impossible situations.”

So if Blythe was an even better puppet master than Billy, might she also be a better social engineer than I am?

After that initial meeting, I’d asked myself, “Why me?” The answer: Blythe knew I’d be especially easy to beguile into serving her aims. Thinking back through the past weeks, I see how she used each of our encounters to deploy a specific technique we Soshes use to worm our way into the good graces of our victims.
Establishing trust.

At our Harvard Club chat she delivered the classic
appeal for help,
while providing
privileged information
about her brother Blake. She then offered me
special assistance
with her father’s records, at which point she also directly contradicted a few of Blake’s lies and evasions. She said he was “slow to trust.” The message I took to heart: “You should not trust him. Trust me.”