Taking the Highway (29 page)

“Not Trinidadian?” Danny asked with concern.

“Apparently not.”

“You need to stay out of it, Andre.”

“Trinidad?”

“No, I mean—”

“I know what you mean.” Despair threatened to roll over him like a wave again. He swallowed it down and chased it with another gulp of oddly sweet beer. “All my clearances have been cut off and no one from the task force will even take my calls.”

“No one?” Danny said it with a casual lift of the eyebrows and a polite look of interest.

“You know about Sofia.”

“I’m a detective. I detect.”

“You’re a nosy bastard and I’m not describing her body for you.”

“How is it?”

“Stellar. Athletic, flexible, ass like you’d not believe.”

“I’d believe. She giving you the shoulder too?”

Andre drank again, deeply. “No. I can’t say that. She showed up yesterday. I wouldn’t let her in. Told her to stay away from me. This is big enough to wreck her career too.”

Danny snorted. “Your career ain’t wrecked, you melodramatic fuck.”

Laughter, hoarse and unfunny, bubbled up and Andre belched at the same time. “Yeah. I can hear the Commissioner’s speech now as he hands me an award.”

“No.” Danny’s tone was infuriatingly reasonable. “You won’t be getting a promotion anytime soon out of this. But you didn’t kill those people.”

“Sixty-four people.”

“I know how many people. Everyone knows. Sixty-four dead. Hundreds injured. You tried to save them.”

“If I hadn’t—”

“Stop.” Danny waved a beer bottle at him. “Just stop. Now. I had to crawl through five kinds of gridlock to get here because you can’t live Downriver like a reasonable cop. I brought you the beer, I’m letting you be slushy-mushy-weepy. The least you can do is listen to my bullshit as if it’s actually cheering you up.”

“Yeah.” Andre scrubbed a hand over his face. “I saw the newsnets. Even with timed lights, the surface streets can’t handle that many cars.”

“The monorail would have been worse. They’re packing them into the aisles.” Danny drained his first bottle and reached for a second. “The road wasn’t that bad. I cop-patrolled my way around the worst of it and once I got through the oh-zone—”

“Is 75 shut down too? I thought it was just 94.”

“Chill, my man. Chill. This will pass, right? It will pass.”

“I don’t know.” Andre gestured to the comscreen. “Everyone loves a good controversy. The conspiracy theories are very . . . hell, even I’m convinced half of them are true.”

“The first thing you need to do is shut that shit off.” Danny set his beer down and used both hands to make his point. “You don’t just sit here, you man up.”

“And do what, exactly?”

“When one job goes into the shitcan, you find another. I hear fourths are scarce on the ground these days.”

“You think I can fourth.”

“I’d pick you up.”

“After I told the two biggest spinners in Detroit that a fourth—that I—crashed Overdrive.” Andre levered himself out of his armchair and marched to the companel. He scrolled through calls from the last two days until he found the one he wanted. He pressed the button and Bob Masterson’s face filled the screen.

“You don’t know how long it’s taken us to get even a slice of credibility.” Bob snapped his fingers. “And it’s gone, like that. My
regulars
didn’t even want to pick me up today and then they demanded a discount for hazard pay. Like I’m going to crash their car!
I’m
the one who needs hazard pay. You ruined us, Andre LaCroix. You shit on our heads and made us take the blame for it. Don’t even think about fourthing again. No one will answer your FITs. In fact, if any single member of the union sees you fourthing, we have been cheerfully instructed to pound you into human purée.”

The recording ended there and the companel automatically started on the next message, this one from his mom. He cut it off before the repeat of her latest tirade.

“He can’t stop you from fourthing,” Danny said.

“He can stop me from wanting to.”

Danny gestured to the screen where the face of Andre’s mother stood frozen mid-sentence “How’s she doing out there? Santa Fe, right?”

“Sedona.” Andre made a small scoffing noise, grateful for the change of subject. “Mom’s all right. She’s worried.”

“I guess she heard. National news and everything.”

“Not me. She’s worried about herself. She wants me to help her with some finance stuff. I’ve been putting her off because of the task force, but now—”

“Now is the perfect time to help her.”

“She sent me every file on her hard drive. It will take hours, days.”

“Hours and days when nothing more is going wrong.” Danny put a hand on Andre’s shoulder and gave it an almost imperceptible squeeze. “You’ll get through this.”

Andre felt his eyes burn a little with Danny’s simple kindness and he widened his eyes and looked out the window until the excess moisture evaporated. It was getting dark.

Danny stood. “Time for home.”

“You aren’t going to drive.”

“I had like two beers. One and a half. From halfway around the world. I told Julie I’d be home for dinner. If I leave now, I just might make it.”

“How is Julie?”

“Great. Good. She said to say hi.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Well, she sort of said it.”

“‘Daniel, if you don’t stop helping that mangy dog out of trouble, you’re going to end up with fleas yourself.’“

Danny grinned. “Like I said, she said hi.”

Andre saw him to the door. “Get home safe. Use the siren.”

N
ikhil parked his car
in the weed-infested lot and double-checked his locks. He turned away from the car, then back to it, linking the geopoint alarm to his datapad. It wouldn’t stop anyone from trying to boost his car, but it would at least let him know if it happened.

The apartment block was a square of concrete, crumbling at the corners, the layers of spray-painted graffiti the newest thing about the place. It sat on the western edge of the oh-zone, close enough to claim solidarity with the zoners, but still within the city borders. Roads were repaired here, trash picked up, streets lit after dark. The people here had city water and electricity, not to mention police and fire protection.

Nikhil walked around a pile of animal dung and up two flights of exterior stairs, taking the shared balcony walkway to the number that Topher had given him. He knocked, and after a terminal pause, the door opened, but instead of Topher, it was Wilma Riley on the other side of it, wearing jeans and a halter top that did nothing for her stick figure. Her hair was piled on top of her head and secured with one of those beaded clips all the girls on campus wore.

“Oh. Hi, Wilma.” Nikhil shifted his package to the other hand. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I live here.” She opened the door wider and walked into the apartment. Nikhil followed.

Topher jumped up from the kitchen table, which stood on foldable legs and didn’t look big enough for two dinner plates, much less the papers and electronics that were strewn across it. The only other furniture was a futon, covered with clothing and hardcopy books. The narrow kitchen counter along the back wall held take-out containers and dirty dishes. The sink was half full of scummy water, as if the drain had clogged.

“Good, you brought it.” Topher reached for the plastic bag and tore into it. He pulled out the new datapad and frowned at the protective packaging. “You didn’t open it?”

Nikhil smiled proudly. “Brand new, like you said.”

“Jesus, Nikhil, do I have to tell you everything?” Topher examined its tell-tales. “Not even a passive solar charge. Where have you been keeping it?”

“In the trunk of my car. Look, Topher—”

“It’s okay. I got it.” Wilma took the datapad and plugged it into the wall behind the futon. She immediately flicked it open and started poking its surface.

“Wilma, how long?”

“Eight hours,” she said. “Ten for a full charge.”

“Too long.” Topher held out his hand and flicked his fingers toward himself. “Let me see yours a sec.”

Nikhil took a step back. He didn’t care how good Topher’s cause was, or how many plans he had. No way was Topher taking his pad. “All my stuff is on it.”

“I’m not going to zorch it. Just let me see it.”

Nikhil folded his arms. “Pay me for the other one, first.”

“Sure, sure. Wilma?”

She stood and pulled a wad of cash out of the front pocket of her jeans. She counted bills into Nikhil’s hand. He put his backpack on the floor, stowed the cash, and sighed. There was no helping it. He handed over his datapad.

Topher tossed it underhanded to Wilma, who scooted back to the futon. She married Nikhil’s datapad to the new one, gulping all of its information into the memory before he could stop her. She unplugged the new pad from the wall, and thrust it toward Nikhil.

“Bullshit,” Nikhil said. “Give me mine.”

Wilma hooked a thumb into the waistband of her jeans and slid Nikhil’s datapad down the front of them, where it bulged at her crotch. She pointed to the new pad. “You’re upgrading. All your stuff is on it, so what’s the zoo act? Charge it a few hours and you’ll be fine.”

Topher clapped him on the back. “I need a working pad, buddy. I can give you a few more bucks for the inconvenience.”

“This isn’t about the inconvenience!” He grabbed Wilma and tried to fit his hand down the front of her jeans. He didn’t care if it was in her underwear, he was getting his datapad back. Wilma bent forward at the waist, stopping his access. He held tighter as she struggled and squeaked and kicked his shins. He pressed downward on the pad, trying to force it through the leghole of her jeans.

The blow came out of nowhere, Topher’s fist materializing at his face to connect with his cheek and knock him away from Wilma. “Keep your hands off her!” he yelled.

Wilma skipped to the other side of the room, putting the table between herself and the men. The datapad still tented her jeans.

Nikhil held one hand to his throbbing cheek and the other in the air, palm out, surrendering. He’d never be able to fight them both.

Topher was breathing hard. “Do you think I like this? Do you think I enjoy hiding like a rat? I could have bought ten datapads better than yours. But thanks to you, I can’t leave the house, I can’t use my multicard, I can’t do anything!”

Nikhil looked from Topher to Wilma and back again. A door slammed nearby. The neighbor’s toilet flushed. Wilma crossed her arms and glared. The datapad never moved. Shit, it really was stuck in her underwear.

Nikhil bent to pick up the new datapad. “You seem to be doing fine.”

“I’d be doing a lot better if you hadn’t involved your uncle.”

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me.” Topher moved to the kitchen wall and pulled ice out of the freezer. He wrapped it in a stained towel and handed it to Nikhil, gesturing toward his face. “I don’t want to fight about it. I just know that things would be a lot easier if the cops weren’t involved.”

Nikhil held the cold towel to his face. It smelled like yogurt, and stung where it touched his cheek. “Can I talk to you privately?”

Topher glanced at Wilma. “Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of her.”

“No, it really can’t.”

Topher shrugged and opened the front door, gesturing Nikhil to go first. Nikhil shouldered his backpack, catching Wilma out of the corner of his eye. She smirked and waved before handing his datapad to Topher. Topher put the pad in his pocket and the door closed behind them.

Nikhil put his elbows on the balcony rail and pressed the ice to his cheek. He stared down at the weedy lot full of even weedier cars. “What are you doing, Topher?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long have you been tied to Wilma?”

“Since . . . you know. For a little while.”

“What about Sandor?”

“What about him?” Topher faced the opposite direction, leaning ass and elbows on the metal railing. “Sandor is great at organizing and all, but Wilma’s the one who’s working on a new virus. It’s beautiful, man. So much more powerful than anything she’s made before.”

“So if Sandor was the programmer, you’d sleep with him?”

“Fuck you. It isn’t like that, okay? I care about her.”

Sirens in the distance, coming closer. Topher stiffened and slunk into the shadow of the doorway. More than one siren, but fire trucks, not police cars. They waited, not speaking, as the sound grew louder, then softer as it passed, eventually blending into the other city noise.

Topher took up a position at the rail and they gazed into the parking lot together. “This place sucks.”

“Yep.”

Topher jerked a thumb over his shoulder, at the oh-zone. “That one sucks worse.”

“Yep.”

“It’s time, my friend. It’s time to do something so big that the mayor’s office can’t call it a malfunction, or try to play it like it never happened. Madison Z will finally listen to the CEJ and the city will bow to our demands.”

“Then you can go home.”

“Then I can go home.”

“Except you can’t.” Nikhil removed the wet towel from his face and let the chunks of ice fall out of it. He didn’t watch to see where they landed. “You can’t set up an Overdrive failure just to save yourself.”