Probably Deck might keep looking after I was gone, but I didn’t think he’d stand much chance on his own. And I wanted to do it. I wanted to believe that I could put things right by myself. Maybe that made me no smarter than Laura, when she’d stepped out of the shadows and murdered a man who’d done the world little deliberate harm, in the hope that it would make everything all right. But sometimes life gets so unravelled that you have to stop and fix it, or you’ll never be able to get it working again. You can’t sleep with demons forever crouched at the end of the bed.
Fixing things doesn’t solve everything: your life will still have been broken. But at least you can use it again.
Deck and I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on his back porch, slowly drinking beer and looking out over people’s yards, listening to the flick of lawn sprinklers and the distant cries of children. We loaded up our guns and then set them aside. We ran through five ways of getting me out of the city, and couldn’t get any of them to stick. We tried to think of ways just the two of us could corner Stratten, and couldn’t even find a place to start. So we stopped and just watched the sky getting hazy instead, the first smudge of darkness deepening the sky.
Sometimes it doesn’t do to go running to things. You have to let them come to you.
Twenty
At half past eight Deck and I drew up a little way down the road from Jamison’s house in the Hills. His car was parked in the drive—I’d called him mid-afternoon and told him the time that Quat would be stopping by. Jamison’s assistant had seemed to giggle when she said she’d go fetch him. I guess a new rumour had already started. I hoped the story didn’t make it as far as Pan-Galactic ‘Say What?’ magazine, or I was going to have a trying time on the cell block. Deck let me out of the car and headed off up the road to park and then make his way back on foot to hide on the other side of the street. I waited until he was out of sight, and then walked up to Jamison’s house.
Jamison and I sat in the living room, and waited for a knock on the door. I still hoped that Quat would call first, but if he didn’t the plan was that Jamison would just go answer. Quat wasn’t going to come in shooting when blackmail money was at stake. Meanwhile Deck would be hurtling up behind from the street, and within seconds he and I would take over. I’d never seen Quat in the flesh, and had no idea how big he was. I’d always assumed he was just typical pinwheel hat-fodder, but events of the last week had suggested he might be a little more than that. Deck had clear instructions to stick his gun in Quat’s back at the earliest opportunity and make it clear we weren’t screwing around.
We didn’t talk much. Jamison sat impassively on the sofa, sipping from a glass of scotch. I lurked in a chair fashioned from peach-coloured leather, wishing I could smoke. At eight fifty the phone rang. Jamison jumped, his first real sign of nervousness. He put his drink down carefully, and picked the phone up.
‘Yes,’ he said calmly, ‘this is he.’
Then his face fell. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, turning to look at me. ‘There’s no such person here.’
He kept up the denials for a while, giving them his thespian best, but in the end he held the phone out to me. ‘I think your bottom-feeder’s been playing both ends against the middle,’ he said. ‘Mr Quat knows that you’re here.’
I swore violently and grabbed the phone. ‘Hello Quat,’ I snarled. ‘You not coming out to play?’
‘Very fucking funny,’ Quat said.
‘How did you know?’
‘Romer told me, just before he blew town. You really think you were going to be able to stitch me up that easily?’
‘It was worth a try,’ I said. ‘Because I’m going to do it one way or the other, that’s for sure. However long it takes, I’m going to make you unhappy.’
‘Look,’ he said, and his voice changed. ‘I’m sorry about hiding your money, and I’m sorry about putting your crime back on the ’base. Stratten made me. I didn’t have any choice, man. You of all people know what he’s like.’
‘Yeah, I do. But that doesn’t make any difference. I trusted you, and you fucked me over. You tried to set me up.’
‘He had stuff on me, Hap. Bad stuff. I didn’t have any choice.’
‘You seem to be under the misapprehension that you’re talking to someone who gives a shit.’
‘I want to make a deal,’ he said quickly.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked, keeping the smile out of my voice as everything suddenly swung back into place. ‘Things getting shaky on the home team?’
‘Let’s just say I’d be very happy to see that bastard screwed,’ he said, the words half-choked in his throat. There was no way he was going to admit what had happened to his site that morning—it’s a point of honour among hackers that their domains can withstand anything that other wireheads can throw at them—but the tone of his voice said it all. The crabdaddy had done its work perfectly, wreaking sufficient damage to leave Quat furious and distraught, but leaving enough evidence for him to track where the virus appeared to have been sent from. An address that sent the clear implication that Stratten had decided to hang Quat out in the wind.
‘So come to Jamison’s, as arranged,’ I said. ‘And we’ll talk.’
‘Are you out of your fucking mind? I trust you just about as far as I could throw Texas. The fact you told Romer the cops don’t know about Jamison doesn’t mean that I’m going to believe you. Far as I know they’re lined up five deep in the bedrooms, waiting to blow me away.’
‘Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Thanks to you, the cops want me for the Transvirtual job, remember? Me and the LAPD aren’t exactly hanging out round each other’s houses and swapping cheesecake recipes.’
‘I’m not coming there,’ he said. ‘And that’s final. Plus I’ve got a better idea.’
‘Which is?’
‘You want Stratten. I want him too. Let’s find him and do him together.’
‘Quat—if I could predict where Stratten was and just go hit him, do you think I’d be dicking around talking to you?’
‘No, but I work with him. I can call him and get him to be someplace, tell him there’s something he needs to know and I can’t tell him over the phone.’
Bingo. Suddenly there was a route to the top, and Deck and I weren’t even going to have to try to beat it out of anyone. I was so taken aback at having it dropped in my lap that I took a moment to look at it all ways. Quat could try screwing me around, but he didn’t know I had Deck covering my back—and chances were he really wanted to see Stratten punished for what he thought he’d done to his precious website. If he changed his mind at the last minute, I’d just deal with him. Quat had done more than enough to qualify as someone who deserved whatever he got. I made a mental note to thank God, if I ever saw him again, for the idea of driving a wedge between the bad guys.
‘Okay,’ I said, and gave him the address on Avocado. ‘Arrange to meet him there in forty minutes.’
‘Shit,’ Quat said. ‘How did you know he hangs there?’
‘I’m well-informed. Be there early: we’re going to be a welcoming party. And don’t try to double-cross me on this, my friend, or you’ll find out just how pissed I am.’
The phone went dead.
‘Okay,’ I said to Jamison. ‘I want you out of this house. Go have dinner with somebody, or give Sleep Easy a call and get some exercise. Either way, you’re gone for the evening. I don’t know how far I can trust that guy, and I don’t want him taking anything out on you.’ He nodded, and watched as I ran out the door.
Deck was standing in a hedge on the other side of the street. When he heard the door open he pushed his way out and ran over, face a big question mark.
‘The plan’s changed,’ I said. ‘Romer ratted me to Quat, but Quat’s gone off Stratten all of a sudden. We’re going to hit him together at Hammond’s place, and we’re going there now.’
‘How do you know he’s going to be there?’
‘Quat’s going to c
all him.’
‘You going to call Travis?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This gets settled by us, or not at all.’
The Hammond house looked exactly as it had the first time I’d gone there, just a dim light on in the living room. Deck and I sat in the car and watched it for a while, but saw no sign of someone walking towards it. Either Quat had arrived already, or he was late. I decided to wait for him inside, and opened the car door. At the last minute I got an idea, and picked up the clock from where it had been sitting on the dashboard. I told it to keep quiet unless I expressly requested otherwise, and slipped it in my shirt pocket.
‘How am I going to know when you need me?’ Deck asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Hang on—did Laura ever tell you what Quat looked like?’
‘Yes. She went on about him for half an hour that afternoon before we were abducted: I think he made a pass at her or something, that evening she dumped the memory.’
‘I get the impression that most guys do. Well, let’s keep it simple. When you see someone like that, come over to the house. You hear anything go off, come in.’
‘Hap,’ he said patiently, ‘that’s a shit plan. I hear something go off, chances are your face has been on the receiving end.’
‘So what do you suggest?’
‘How are you going in the house?’
‘Through the back door. The clock has a relationship with the lock.’
‘Okay. So leave it open. This Quat guy’s going to go in the front way. He’s expected. Soon as I see him, I’ll come right in the back and join up with you. He turns up with anyone else, or it looks like things are going weird, I’ll come in making a noise.’
‘Works for me,’ I said, getting out of the car. ‘One more thing: try not to get yourself killed.’
‘Same goes to you.’ He grinned, leaning over to look up at me. ‘The last pair of assholes still standing win.’
I ran quietly over the road, headed straight for the side of the property. The window locks peered at me as before, but again nothing appeared to go off. The clock said he could radio ahead to the lock, and sure enough when we got there the back door was hanging open an inch. I nudged it open a little further, listened.
Nothing. I got my gun out and went in.
The back hallway was empty, and I could see through to the front door. Something about the house was different from last time. You know how it is with places: sometimes they just feel warmer, more full. For some reason I wondered if I wasn’t alone in the place, if maybe Monica Hammond was home.
There was a way I could find out without revealing my presence. The appliances would know. I felt my way along the corridor to the kitchen, and slipped into the room. A faint glow came from downlighters on the kitchen unit, and everything was still. Including what lay on the table.
Romer was spread-eagled, hands and feet dangling off opposite ends. He’d taken a couple of rounds to the face, and someone had gone at his body with an electric carving knife, which still stuck upright in the messy remains of his chest.
‘Hi,’ said a quiet voice. I whirled round with my finger already half-pressed on the trigger.
It was the food processor, sitting on the counter. ‘Sorry,’ it whispered. ‘Don’t shoot.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘A couple of hours ago. It was horrible.’
I put it together from what the machines had overheard. Romer had decided it wasn’t worth crossing Stratten by just skipping town. So after he tipped Quat off, he arranged to see his big boss and tell him what he knew.
Mistake. Stratten murdered him, because Romer let it slip that I had something on him and could use him, and maybe just because he was a psychopath who was losing perspective on what he was doing. Either way, Romer had become a loose end, and been tidied.
Suddenly I heard footsteps in another part of the house. I ran out of the kitchen and into the shadows, to see someone walking out of the living room into the front hall.
‘Stay right there,’ I said, pointing the gun at the shape. It didn’t even jump, just turned slowly and looked at me. It was Monica Hammond.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, voice frosty and perfectly calm.
‘Public Health Inspector,’ I said, walking towards her. ‘You realize you’ve got a mangled corpse in a food-preparation area?’
She’d aged well, for a woman who must now be somewhere in her fifties. I guess a monstrous ego and psychotic gym-attendance will do that for you. The only differences between the person in front of me, and the one I held in memory, were a few lines around the eyes and the fact her hair had been cut into a seemly and expensive bob. She was still the woman who sneered at Laura that long-ago afternoon, and she seemed like she’d been carved out of some cold, hard stone.
She looked at me like I was a son-in-law she’d always tried to pretend didn’t exist. She understood that I knew about her. And she didn’t care. ‘Who are you?’ she asked again.
‘Just someone your boyfriend has fucked over,’ I said. ‘One of a very great many, including Ray. Did you know that Stratten effectively had him killed?’
Her eyes looked like pools of dead blood. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It was my idea.’
‘And you would have let your own daughter go down for it?’
‘I don’t have a daughter,’ she said.
In that moment I nearly lost it, and almost emptied my gun into her there and then. Shaking, not trusting myself to be in the same space, I gestured towards the living room door with the gun.
‘Go back in there,’ I said, as calmly as I could, ‘and shut the door. I didn’t come here for you, but if you get in the way I’m not going to hold my fire. Go sit and look at all the things you’ve got, and stay out of the fucking way.’
She held her ground for a moment, one of those people who’s going to wring a small victory wherever they can. Then she returned to the living room, and closed the door without looking back. I stood there for a moment, still holding the gun out, waiting for my mind to clear.
Then things started happening very quickly.
There was a sound at the back door, and I stepped back to see Deck running in. ‘Quat’s on his way,’ he hissed. ‘I’ve just seen him get out of a car.’
‘You’re sure it’s him?’
‘Oh yeah. Just as Laura described.’
I pointed Deck towards the dining room. ‘Hide in there,’ I whispered. ‘Soon as I’ve got his attention, come up behind him.’
He darted away and I retreated into the shadows underneath the staircase. Trained the gun on the door and held my breath:
Nothing for a couple of moments, and then the sound of footsteps coming up the path.
The scrape of a key turning in the lock.
Big flashing light: how the hell has Quat got a key?
The door opened and a man stepped into the house. He didn’t close the door, but just stood in the centre of the hallway.
‘I know you’re here, Hap,’ a voice said. ‘And I don’t think you’re just going to shoot me. I think you’re going to want to rub my face in it first.’
I felt like I was drowning in cold water, and someone had filled my head with ice. I took a step forward so I could see him more clearly. ‘Stratten,’ I said, ‘what the hell are you doing here?’
He smiled. ‘But this is what you arranged, isn’t it?’
‘I arranged to meet Quat. Not you.’
‘That is Quat,’ Deck said from the darkness behind Stratten, voice strange. ‘I’m telling you Hap, that’s him.’
‘It’s Stratten,’ I said.
‘Actually, you’re both right,’ the man said. ‘And also both very stupid.’ The living room door opened, and three men came out. Deck tried to make a run for the front door, but two of them were after him immediately and within seconds he was squashed underneath them. I hurriedly stepped backwards but tripped over something and fell flat on my back. Next thing I knew I was staring down the barrel of a gun w
ith a foot on my chest.
The big Hap and Deck offensive was over that quickly.
Stratten was Quat, and Quat was Stratten with a voice modulator. It made sense, in retrospect. Stratten’s willingness to trust me with memory work, because ‘Quat’ already knew about the crime I’d had wiped, making me eminently malleable—a fall guy in hand, ready to deploy when required; Stratten’s continual ability to be one step ahead of where I expected, before I stopped using Quat’s call forwarding service; Quat’s unavailability when I was on the way back from Mexico, at exactly the time Stratten had been on the plane to LA from Florida.
Stratten lived at the centre of a web of secrets, and through the persona of Quat he’d had access to all of mine. Guess the fake sending code on the crabdaddy hadn’t fooled anyone after all. I’d misunderstood what God had been getting at, but then his message had been somewhat oblique, as usual.
Stratten’s men dragged us into the living room, where Monica stood by the fireplace. I got the impression she probably hung there a lot, as if posing for a picture. I thought about suggesting ‘Bitch from Hell’ as a title, but I was probably in enough trouble. Deck was yanked to the middle of the room and pushed to his knees. A gun was shoved execution-style into the back of his head, hard enough to almost knock him on his face. I was pulled by the throat over to the sofa and shoved into a seated position, the barrel of a nine millimetre fitted snugly behind my ear. Stratten’s men were big guys, and our own guns were long gone—along with any hopes of making it to a ripe old age. It was dark in the room apart from a few well-placed lamps. At least I was going to die nicely lit.
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