by Cat Rambo
Velma stood in the door, mother henning. “I’ll see you later Jack. Call might not come until tomorrow. If at all.”
I nodded. “He works late. I think I’ll hear from him.”
She nodded and left. She wasn’t telling me everything. I knew she was scared. If I opened this box and Natalia’s hackers came through and sprung that last veil, there was a decent chance he’d figure it out. What was my stopper?
I took Betsy out of my desk. Stripped and cleaned her. Betsy’s been with me a long time, since the Teamsters dropped us on the Floating Islands off Incheon and we cleaned out the Texaco thugs. Good times. Things were simple then. Clear. Richman lives a nice quiet life. If he comes after me, if he stops coloring inside the lines, I’ll do the same, and I’ve got a lot less to lose.
Pulled back the slide, chambering a round. Ka-chink.
A lot less to lose.
Time crawled along. I kept looking at the clock, because nothing else was even half as interesting.
I was right. Richman called me at just past nine o’clock. Or at least had me called.
“Mr. Laff?” A lawyer’s voice. No vid.
“Hah hah hah! This is Laff.”
“This is Miles Gilford. I’m on RichCorp’s legal team, and I’ve been assigned to this case. There will be no further contact with Mr. Richman.”
I could live with that. “You are empowered to negotiate for him?”
“I am.”
“Then how will this work?”
“We can meet at my offices at eleven hundred.” He gave me the address. “We will open our seal and allow the young lady to meld for the public record, but only the hour in question, is that understood?”
“That is understood.”
“The lady will be present?”
“I’ll represent her,” I said.
He seemed surprised. “She trusts you with her codes. Excellent.”
“I think so.”
“Very good. The entire process will take no more than a few minutes. Shall we say . . . three o’clock tomorrow?”
“Three o’clock,” I said, and he replied by hanging up.
So . . . it was set up. If he suspected anything . . . I was covered. If after this was all over he went after Natalia . . . well, that wasn’t my problem. She hadn’t asked me for protection. If they went after me, or Velma . . . that wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.
I didn’t go home that night, and I’m not sure why. But I was still in the offices when Velma arrived bringing coffee. She looked as if she hadn’t slept much more than I had. “You been here all night?”
“Just about.”
A tiny smile. “So, way down there where ordinary human beings have doubts, you’re worried about this too?”
“He’s a bully,” I said. “Used to getting his way. Someone has to show him he’s wrong.”
“And that’s you.”
Nodded. “That’s me. Laughter is the best medicine.”
“Not everything is funny.” She said.
Sure it is, if you know where to tickle.
I shaved and brushed my teeth.
I wanted to be ready for this. Was this man, this guy with the ghoulish son, as much of a monster as Velma seemed to think?
I was with her. But that other woman. Natalia. Natalia could be in trouble. This window was only going to be open long enough to retrieve one hour. If her hackers couldn’t do it before the law downloaded that one sixty-minute chunk of dayveil, we were out of luck. I had to buy her the time.
Velma and I sat in the car outside the fifty-story boxes of black glass lining Wilshire Boulevard like tombstones and watched the cabs float past. “I’m not going in, Jack. I’ll wait for you at Capital burgers.”
“Try the Obama melt.”
“Barack or Malia?”
“Whichever has the Kenyan beef. You’re sure?” I asked. “You’d be safe.”
“No one is safe, Jack. You’ve never understood that.” And she kissed me. She . . . didn’t do that often. I mean, we’d had a few laughs in our time, but there was generally a line between us, one I rarely crossed. But she knew how I felt. We sort of had an understanding. I just wasn’t ready yet.
I rode the elevator up, feeling just a little jacked up. Five suited types around the table. No faces I recognized.
The gang was all there. The lawyers all there. “Is the lady coming?” the guy at the head of the table said. Same voice I heard on the phone. Miles Gilford. He looked like one of those monkeys that died out because they were too nice. Bonobos?
“No. I have all the information we need.”
“I see.” Gilford steepled his fingers, and then came to a decision. “Well,” he said. He got on the phone, made a call, talked quietly. A connecting door opened. Cory Richman, the son, walked in. Oily. All cheekbones and big knobby hands. Hate at first whiff.
“So you’re Mr. Laff,” Cory said.
“Hah hah hah. You’re Cory Richman.”
“Yes, I am.” Thin lips smiled without a trace of humor. “Shall we proceed?”
The lawyer waved his hand and a window opened in the air, streaming numbers that meant nothing to me and words I didn’t understand.
“You can enter the lady’s information. Cory is here representing his father. I’m sure you understand the need for delicacy. The hourveil will be lifted, the files will be exposed for fifty minutes. In that time all the information you seek must be accessed, and we will monitor every movement.”
It all depended upon Natalia. The instant the files were unshielded, her people would have to go to work, invisibly and fast, to get to the hour she needed. I typed in Velma’s password. It was odd, having it. Intimate. I realized in that moment how much she trusted me. I don’t know why, but that idea made me uncomfortable.
“Very good. Mr. Richman? Your password?”
Richman fidgeted a bit, then stood. “I guess it’s my turn.”
He typed in his password, provided his eye to the scanner.
“The lady has already provided her biometrics, and now the password has been entered on both sides, and the dayveil has dropped. You will hold, please.”
The legal eagles conferred. I sat, patient. Everyone in the room smiled. And I triggered the alarm for Natalia. I had to assume she was standing by. That her team would be able to do what needed to be done. And that I’d be able to pick up the rest of the bits.
The clock ticked and tocked, and the time expired.
The lawyer noticed. “Well, I assume that your download has been completed?”
“Yes, I believe it has.”
“Then . . . our business here is done.”
We shook hands all around. Richman’s hand was cold and boneless. He smiled. I felt a little sick and didn’t know why. The veils slid back into place.
Mr. Bonobo spoke again. “I believe that you told Mr. Richman that there would be consequences for his competitors.”
“Yes,” I said. “Consequences.”
“I trust you will keep us posted.”
Everyone in the room was smiling. I was smiling. But damned if I wasn’t starting to wonder why.
I was a little nervous that night. Velma was too, so we played chess and Senat for almost twelve hours, until I got an excited call from Natalia, and my bank had its bits twelve seconds later. All was well with the world. I was flush again. I tried to talk her into a celebratory dinner, but she talked about having to take the noon suborbital to Moscow, and I could tell by the way the honey had left her voice that that bird had flown.
Oh well, can’t win ’em all.
Still, things were good. Bills paid. Velma even started to smile more. All we had to do now was wait for Natalia to drop the boom on him. I wasn’t sure I’d even hear about it. Guys like Richman settle out of court.
A month passed,
and another. I didn’t see anything in the papers, but I wasn’t sure I would. Didn’t someone once say that the best con artists are never discovered? Not sure how that was going to apply here, but I found the line bouncing around in my head.
Winter came, and Velma and I were walking down Wilshire Boulevard. Mood-linked holos capered around us, trying to lure us into gaming or floatsynth parlors. Normally I might have gone for a little poker or Mah Jong or a virtual tryst with a bored Angolan housewife. But I still felt like we’d skirted some unseen disaster, and right now Velma was all I wanted.
I wanted her. That felt different. I wondered why.
“Thank you for breakfast,” she said.
“I can afford it.”
“Not paying your bookie, huh?”
“Hah hah. Sure I am.”
“Will wonders never cease,” she said, and squeezed my arm.
We’d been closer after the Dayveil caper. After the sky didn’t fall in, after the sword of Damocles didn’t cut my head off. I’d pulled a perfect joke, and gotten away with it, and gotten paid for it damned well. And the world rolled on. I wanted to know that Natalia had been paid off, though. That’s she’d gotten what she wanted.
And then . . . it all went south.
I didn’t realize it had until I watched the blood drain from Velma’s face. She said two words: “No, God . . .”
She was staring at the newsie headline. It read Richman for Senate Run.
Her coffee cup bounced on the ground. Brown liquid ran through the racks to the gutter. She inverted her two words. “God. No.”
Richman for Senate Run.
I didn’t understand. So the prick wanted to run for office. What difference did that make in the wider scale of things?
“No no no no no . . .”
She wouldn’t tell me a damned thing, but I felt sick to my stomach. Why would she react this strongly about someone she’d never met? She almost ran to our office, and when she got there, she locked herself in her little cubby. I went to my own office and stared out the window, sipping the Chevas, wondering what I’d missed.
Velma came out of her office an hour later, makeup smeared, a triumphant expression on her face. There was something behind her mask that scared me.
“I . . . need to go out for a while.”
“Why?”
Her answering smile was terrible. Her answer made no sense. “I have to meet with some girlfriends.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks, boss.” She paused at the door. “Hah hah hah!”
“Hah hah hah.”
And . . . she left. And while that was the last time we were together, it wasn’t the last she ever spoke to me.
I didn’t leave my office that night. Velma didn’t come back. I kept waiting. She didn’t answer my pages. I finally got worried at almost eight o’clock the next morning and after calling over a dozen times, got her at home on vid. Scrubbed face. Hair a fright. Funny, but it hit me again just how beautiful she was. Strange how we notice things like that when it’s too late.
She talked in her little girl voice. “Hello, Jack.”
“Velma . . . ?”
“Hi, Jack,” she repeated. She still sounded like a little girl. A wounded little girl.
“You always know what to do, Jack. You know? Always did, always do.”
I hadn’t seen that hurt look in her eyes for a very long time. It felt as if the bottom was falling out of my stomach. “Baby..? What’s going on?”
“Nothing, Jack. Why don’t you come on over, and I’ll tell you about it?”
There was something in her voice that singed the hair on the back of my neck. I took a cab over to her place, and by the time I got there the smell of burnt hair was blinding.
I made it to Velma’s apartment in record time.
I knocked on the door. No answer. I had a vision of Velma lying on the floor. Something had happened. While I was making money and taking care of business, some monster had lurched from the shadows and snatched up the woman I . . .
The woman I . . .
I used my key. Velma had given me a key, a long time ago. I remembered that I used to use it. Wondered why I’d stopped. Wondered why my mind was spinning as it did, and why the sick taste in my mouth was more and more like some small stinking creature had crawled to the back of my throat and died.
Betsy filled my paw as I went through the door, but as soon as I got in the room, I knew what I’d missed. And why I’d made the worst mistake of my life.
On the walls were pictures of Cory Richman, with headers and footers about him running for office. There was a letter leaning against a computer screen. It was addressed to me. My hands were shaking as if I’d had too many drinks. Or not enough.
I had this horrible feeling that if I opened that envelope, I’d never be able to drink enough again. I sat, heavily, surrounded by pictures of Cory Richman. And opened the envelope.
Unfolded the foil sheet. She was smiling at me, and after a pause, she started talking.
“Hello, darling,” she said. “Because that is who you are. I think you know that. You’ve always known. I just couldn’t seem to get you to feel toward me the way I felt toward you . . . so I just stayed with you any way I could, smiling and tolerating and pretending not to care. But . . . in some way I suppose that you love me as much as you can love anyone or anything you don’t see in the mirror. So I should be honored.”
Found a bottle in her cupboard and a glass and poured myself one.
As soon as I put the image down, it had paused. When I picked it back up, it started again.
“I didn’t want to do this job. You knew that, but talked me into it anyway. And in some way, I trusted you. And it gave me a small victory. I guess I’ll tell this backwards. After I saw Richman’s picture in the newsfeed, I called a series of friends. Women with . . . a common history. And we decided that Corey Richman couldn’t be a senator. It was about December twentieth, Jack. That day you and the lawyers had me unseal. But you know what? When I went to my account, that day had been wiped clean.”
I felt that. Hard. Along with a sense of the shape of what was coming.
“You got conned, Jack. The laugh was on the comedian. Funny, isn’t it? Richman wasn’t the target. You weren’t the target either.
“I was.”
I took another drink. And knew it wasn’t going to be enough.
“I don’t know who that Natalia woman was. But thinking about it now, it’s pretty obvious she was an actress, hired because she looked just the way you like. They knew her accent would turn your brain off. That good mind you have when you aren’t letting your monkey-mind get the best of you. Doesn’t take much, does it Jack?”
No. No, it doesn’t.
“They tricked you. Got you to convince me to unlock the dayveil. What did ‘Natalia’ say? That she had a hacker who could unseal and copy Richman’s verbal contract? That was a lie. What they had was a hacker who could erase an entire day once the escrow was unsealed. We walked right into it, Jack.”
“But . . . why?”, I said out loud.
Velma laughed. “You’re asking ‘why?’ about now, aren’t you?I know you so well. Well, ask yourself, Jack . . . what happened on December twentieth?”
“You worked at Richcorp. Planted a bug. That’s all.”
“Yes. I worked at Richcorp. And after the day was over, what else happened?”
My brain wouldn’t work right. The world spun. “There . . . there was a Christmas party . . .”
“Right! There was an office party. I never talked about that, did I? I never told you about that party. But now I will.”
I took another drink. “Velma . . .”
“Take another drink, Jack. You’re going to need it. I never talked about that party because Cory Richman is more than a mean drunk. I think he had someth
ing going on with the secretary we bribed to call in sick. Or wanted to. Maybe she had her own reasons for not wanting to come to that party. If you want to know why I didn’t want to go back to their office, it was because I didn’t want to run into Cory. Not then. Not ever.”
I could barely hold the glass. She went on. Yes. Cory was more than a mean drunk. When he drank, he thought he was a lady’s man. And that night, Velma had been the lady. Dear God.
“That’s the truth of it, Jack. The truth I could never speak. I thought I was clever, that I could get more information out of him, but realized too late he was luring me into his office. Soundproof. No one to help. And once I was there, I couldn’t get out until he was done. I . . . I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to forget about it, as if it had never happened. A man like you lives on hate, Jack. You can’t understand that. Any of it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t I tell you? Because self-righteous Sir Laff on a white horse would have ridden off to handle it himself. And there isn’t anything to handle, Jack. It happened. I guess I’m not the kind who goes to the police. I think he knew that. Men like him have an animal sense of what they can get away with, who they can hurt. Just like they knew you were the kind to fall for a con if it was wrapped in mink.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“That’s the story, darling,” she said. “You’ll know the rest of it soon. Good-bye. Your loving . . . Velma.”
I replayed the letter, staring at it as if it was a snake. At the computer, I called up the screen and went into the cloud. I used her password, saw the word DELETED across the screen.
A day of her life. Gone. Just evaporated, like a teardrop on a griddle.
I started walking home, then got a horrible feeling and hopped a cab to the office, paid double for it to get up above the buildings and beat the traffic.
