“Stay sitting, I’ve got a message for you.” He spoke oddly, like he was surprised at each successive word.
“And you are?”
“This is Dereck T. Mouth the Second speaking. President, board chairman, and CEO of Monsanto Agriculture, Biotechnology, and Baseball Concerns.”
I laughed. The Mouth was an older, balder man with gold skin and a bevy of bodyguards. This guy could have been a void-juice junkie begging for change.
“You look different on TV.”
The man didn’t respond. He stared at me, mouth half open and eyes dull as dishwater. “You’re a funny guy, Kobo. This is the Mouth speaking. You’re looking at my human telephone.”
The man’s hands twitched. He reached up and scratched under his hat, and I could see a dark metal tumor bulging under the brim.
“It’s new tech. Beta testing on this beta nobody.” The man’s cadence was off. He’d speak slowly then quickly like he was playing catch-up. “Neural mesh melded onto his gray goop and receivers rammed into the temples. Repeats whatever I say.” He paused for a second. Cocked his head. “Make a fortune. Next time a new disease pops up, hire a temporary body and do your errands without ever leaving home. Want to go on a vacation without dealing with the airport? Hire someone to see the globe through their eyes from your couch.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to call me?”
“Easier but riskier. I’m an important man, Kobo. A rich man. I can’t have anyone intercepting my communiqués. There’s no better encryption than gray matter.” The human telephone spasmed, started to fall, and I jumped up to grab him. His skin was so slippery with sweat I could barely hold him. He trembled in my arms. The Mouth went on talking through him. “Still some kinks to work out. But see how easy it was for my human telephone to get a fix on your real one? We’re calling it Astral, as in Astral projection. I suggested Slaver but our publicists said that’s a no-no. Now let’s talk business.”
I moved away from the man. He seemed to be standing up okay now. I could see there was a camera clipped onto his right ear. I thought about what Natasha and her thuggish friend had done to me back at the sushi restaurant. How the Mets hadn’t protected my brother from dying at the plate. But maybe he had information I needed. So I squeezed a little honey into my voice.
“Hi, Mr. Mouth. I’m a lifelong Mets fan. To what do I owe the pleasure of your… do I call it a call?”
“The pleasure. Haha. You’re like an old movie character. And don’t call me Mr. Mouth. That’s my father’s name. Just the Mouth will do.”
“Okay. The Mouth.”
“You learn quick. Not as quick as I learn, or else you’d be the boss. Right? I need you to come to my office for a little face-to-face with my actual face. I plan to hire you.”
“That’s funny, your girl Natasha is the reason I’m unemployed.”
“Natasha’s not a girl. She’s not even a woman. She’s a Neanderthal. Tough as a triceratops skull and nearly as sharp.” When he laughed, the man in front of me relayed the sound without even a smile. “But she likes you. She’s actually the one who recommended you.”
“For what job?”
“Finding the person who killed my beautiful slugger. Julio Julio Zunz.”
“That’s a coincidence, I’m already working on that on my own.”
“No, no,” he said. I could almost hear his finger wagging even though the human telephone’s hand stayed at his side. “You’re working for me.”
Before I could think of protesting, the Mouth had hung up. The pupils of the man in front of me were dilated. He bent over. Retched a yellow puddle on the cement. He wiped his lips with his sleeve.
“I feel like a hand reached into my skull and used my brain for a stress toy,” he said. He wiped his mouth again and then tried to smile at me. He held out a hand. “Hey, how about a tip?”
“Here,” I said, passing him an eraser. “Smoke it till you can’t feel a thing.”
13
THE GOLDEN SMILE
The butler at Mouth Tower gave me the once-over two or three times. He was old, but his skin was taut around the skull. His face had been stretched and re-stretched so many times it was as thin as wax paper. You could see all the blue veins underneath.
I’d come straight from Penn Station and was in rough shape. There was dried fluid on my suit and my right arm shook involuntarily. A few sparks shot out now and then.
“You’re meeting with the Mouth?” The words wheezed out of a narrow gap between his unmoving lips like steam escaping through a manhole cover. He was wearing a long blue coat interwoven with gold threads buttoned up to the neck with buttons that seemed to emit light. He bobbed back and forth behind the desk. “Dressed that way?”
“I’m not thrilled about it either.”
“I’ll have to check.” The man ran a finger down his screen. “Double-check even. You are Mister…” He spun his gloved hand around in a circle.
“Tell him it’s Kobo.”
I lit an eraser, sent the anesthetic smoke out toward the butler in a little cloud. The man’s lips curled back, like slugs shriveling under salt. He showed me his lengthy teeth.
“It can take a while,” the butler said. “He’s a very busy and important man.”
I went to look at the directory by the mag lift. It listed everyone who lived here, but not their names. Only jobs. The Sushi Chef. The Barista. The Massage Therapist. The AI-puncturist. The Accountant. The Fitness Trainer. There were dozens of these people, the Mouth’s own private economy of workers.
Still, they were the lucky ones. Much of the economy had been replaced by drones, algorithms, and zootech pack animals. The mega-rich considered employing humans to be a sort of charity. Or maybe it was simply more satisfying to order around people than robots.
“Oh, Mr. Kobo, Mr. Kobo,” the man rasped. He bowed as if he’d been socked in the gut. He stayed in that perpendicular position and looked up with his blue-veined face. “The Mouth will see you now.”
Riding up the marble mag lift, I started to worry I was walking into a trap. The Mets had the most access to Zunz. Control over his diet and upgrades. But even if you wanted to kill one of your own players, why do so in public with the cameras rolling? It would have been easy enough for Monsanto to kill him in secret in the compound.
The Mouth was sitting in an enormous wing chair at the back of a massive room. The walls were lined with nude golden statues. Living tissue. Flesh sculpted in re-creations of Renaissance paintings. Madonna and child. Venus trembling on a gigantic marble clam.
The sculptures moved, slightly and erratically. They were just flesh, no brains or nerves. Tubes on their backside pumped in nutrients and electrical currents. The biosculpting was equal parts impressive and disturbing. The fingernails needed trimming and a layer of dust was drying out the skin. They hadn’t been cleaned in a while. When I looked closely, I thought I saw smudged handprints along the rumps.
“You like them?” the Mouth said, leaning back behind his gold-encrusted desk. “Imported from Milan. Cost a fortune, believe me.”
The Mouth was gold too. Or at least a dull yellow. He had a napkin tucked into the unbuttoned collar of his French-cuff shirt. The napkin was a good idea. A little archipelago of ketchup stains had formed on the silk.
I sat down across from him, tried to look relaxed. Pretended sitting in a room where even the chairs were worth more than my entire life was no big deal.
Behind the Mouth, two people sat sporting blank expressions. The Neanderthals from the sushi restaurant. Natasha wearing a doctor’s coat over her leopard-print suit, and then a big squat man built like a refrigerator in a black tailored suit. He had the same Neanderthal features as Natasha, except they were all smoothed out as if his genes hadn’t bothered with the details.
The Mouth waved a hand without turning around. “You’ve met Natasha, my executive assistant. The gentleman in the corner, don’t even worry about him. Coppelius is our liaison to the Department of Human Limits.
Government stuff. Nothing concerning you.”
Neither of the Neanderthals spoke, although Natasha gave me a little wave with her big hand.
The Mouth spoke though, nearly tripping over his words. “This is a mess. Very bad, I don’t like it. I don’t mean the burger. The burger is fantastic, beautiful. Have you had one? They call it the Mouth Burger. We’ll be serving them in the stadium. The chefs who cooked this up are scientists! Literally. You’ve never tasted a burger until you’ve tasted mammoth. You’ll feel like a caveman chomping on one of these. Give me a spear right now, I’d stab a dinosaur right through the lizard’s skull! Ha ha.”
He had a greasy, wet laugh. It sounded like it was dribbling down his chin.
“Never had mammoth, sir.”
“We’ve got ’em all. Mammoth burgers, teriyaki tyrannosaur wings, saber-toothed gyro platters. Those cocksuckers thought they could avoid being eaten by going extinct. Bunch of buffoons. Didn’t count on human ingenuity. We can eat anything these days. Eat the past, present, or future.”
“It’s a wonderful time to be alive,” I said, tucking my injured hand in my pocket to hide the sparks.
“You know what I love about the caveman times? Everything was giant back then. Massive animals, huge trees. A time for heroes and ogres. Now dinosaurs have been shrunk to little lizards. Cold-blooded dorks. Pathetic.”
“I thought they evolved into birds.”
“Birds, lizards, whatever. Dinky pieces of shit either way. My point is they used to mean something. They used to inspire terror. You ever pee your pants at a sparrow? Of course not. We’re bringing the scary ones back though. In burger form.”
He took another bite and groaned with pleasure. “That’s the stuff.” A rivulet of grease dripped down his yellow cheek. His mouth was huge and wide. I’d heard it had been surgically extended about half an inch on each side. When he smiled I could see all the way to his molars. “The burger I like. This thing with Zunz I don’t like. Hate it. He was a heck of an investment. I like juice squirting out of my burgers, not my players. You understand?”
I pulled back my lips into a straight line, pretended it was a smile. “Yeah, I understand.”
There was a freagle in a cage next to him, beak pecking on the wire. It hopped like a frog, but when the Mouth put a bit of meat through the slot the squawk was all eagle. Monsanto had created the freagles on a government contract for Newman’s midterm election campaign. Newman had warned that changing climate was killing off the patriotic species and it was time for new splices that would “eat up the foreign fauna spreading through the homeland.” Now the government was selling them in collectable editions to help pay off the Franco-German debt hounds.
“Look at this, a creature that didn’t exist until last year eating a creature that went extinct millions of years ago.” He spread his hands, smiled with his extra-wide lips. “The future. We’re growing the future in the Monsanto labs. Where were we?”
“You were going to tell me why you wanted to see me.”
“This is a man who gets to the point,” the Mouth said to the freagle. He rubbed the feathered head, pressing down so it couldn’t hop away. It croaked a small squawk. “You know that they killed my star player? My JJ Zunz?”
“Zunz was my brother. Yeah, I’ve heard.”
The Mouth looked confused. His face wrinkled up like a rotting squash. He turned around to Natasha while pointing back at me.
“Did we know Kobo here was Zunz’s brother?”
Natasha walked behind the Mouth’s chair. Ran her thick fingers across his wrinkled bald head. “Yes. Adopted. He’s got a personal interest in this matter. That’s why I suggested him for this assignment.”
She looked at me and scrunched up one eye. A wink, I guessed.
The Neanderthal man stayed sitting, regarding everything with large bored eyes beneath his brow. Every now and then he adjusted his tie.
The Mouth nodded. He looked at me and started speaking as if the thoughts had just come into his mind. “Your personal interest in this matter is why I wanted to give you this assignment. Plus, I hear you’re a wonderful scout. I gobble up all the winning scouts I can. I eat you guys up and take your power. Shit out a winning baseball team.”
“What’s the job exactly?”
“Solving Zunz’s murder.” He raised a golden finger for emphasis. “And letting the press and police know that Monsanto isn’t responsible. That’s important too.”
“Surely there are enough cops and reporters on the Monsanto payroll for that.”
The Mouth laughed. Little chunks of mammoth were stuck to his chapped golden lips. “Bluntness. I like it, but don’t do it again. I’m the blunt one. Don’t worry about the police and reporters. We’ve got that covered. I need someone who knows baseball, ugly underbelly and all. Because someone in baseball killed Zunz. Some jealous bastard working for the White Mice or Novos or the Sphinxes. That bastard Tuscan tried to trade for Zunz last year. Could be him. Who knows? Well, you’re going to know, right?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want the job. I needed it, desperately. But I wanted to know why.
“What about these two?” I said, gesturing toward the two Neanderthals. “They seem like they know how to get their hands dirty while keeping yours clean.”
The Mouth shrugged and placed his hands on his desk. “They have their big hands full with other matters. Remember, I’ve got a whole empire to run. Zunz was a top player, but he’s only a player. Baseball is baseball, sure, but it’s also only baseball. Upgrades are business. We have dozens of divisions, scores of sectors.”
“Zunz’s killer is a top priority,” Natasha said.
“Sure, sure. Listen to Natasha. She’s your contact.”
“We heard you were snooping around the Sphinxes compound today.” She smiled at my change of expression. “We have our spies like everyone else. Don’t worry. We think that shows initiative. Did you learn anything?”
I figured if they knew I broke in, they probably knew who I’d visited. So there was no point in lying. “I went to see a player named Jung Kang. Zunz had mentioned him to me before… well. Before. I thought he might be a thread to pull on but didn’t get much of a chance to tug.”
I saw the government liaison, Coppelius, type something into his screen.
“Good. We have reason to believe that the Sphinxes were involved in the unfortunate matter,” Natasha said. “Keep tugging. See what it unravels.”
“What reasons?” I said.
“We’re hoping you’ll find them out,” Natasha said.
The Mouth was looking down at his hands. They were pale, wrinkled things. The withered fingers looked like the hot dogs Zunz and I would buy from Prospect Park carts after practice. Waterlogged and the color of sand. “I’m losing my color. Natasha! Give me another shot.”
The Neanderthal opened the white coat, revealing a lineup of syringes. She took one out and inserted it into the Mouth’s neck. Smiled a little as she plunged.
The Mouth gurgled in either pain or pleasure. His head flipped back and his mouth hung open. I could see his tongue squirming behind the teeth. His skin started to grow brighter, a metallic sparkle in the epidermis. He shook his head around, ran his hand over his smooth lemon dome. Grabbed a mirror from the desk. “Gorgeous,” he said.
Natasha flashed the syringes for me, offering me a shot of canary juice or whatever the hell it was. I shook my head.
“The World Series is about to start,” the Mouth said. “This is a big marketing opportunity for us. We’ve got a lot of new products to roll out. We can’t have the Zunz business dragging us down. You solve this murder before the World Series is over, and Monsanto will pay off your medical debt. How much was it, Natasha?”
She said the number, my number. She had it down to the decimal point.
Suddenly, I felt like my bones were filling up with bubbles. I was almost floating. I couldn’t remember living without massive medical debt pinning me down. Couldn’t remember what it
was like to wake up and not immediately think of the gigantic number crushing me. If I had my debt cleared, I’d be free of the Sassafras sisters. Free of spending hours looking at spreadsheets, trying to figure out how to escape the numbers in the cells. And I’d be free to buy new upgrades. Good ones. The ones I’d been dreaming about for years.
Then I dropped back to earth. The Mets were without their star player. They didn’t have anyone who could be plugged into the hole Zunz’s corpse left in the lineup. And even if they could make it a series, somehow, I’d only have about a week to solve the case.
“That’s not a lot of time. I’m a scout, sir. Not a detective.”
“The Mouth.”
“What?”
“You said ‘sir.’ It’s the Mouth. Just the Mouth. And I hear you’re more than just a scout, I hear you’re a great scout. Or a pretty good one at least. Is that right, Natasha? I assume you’re good or we wouldn’t hire you. Look, when I was a kid, a scout drove around like a dummy to different high school games. He ate hot dogs with the parents in the shitty aluminum stands and looked at the bodies of young boys. Disgusting.” The Mouth spat a little on his desk. The frightened freagle hopped away from the glob. “We don’t do that anymore. You scouts do real covert operations. My own personal army of ninjas. I send you to grab the scientists I need. Not watch little boys play T-ball like a pervert. That’s what I like about the modern game. It’s more civilized. We’ve got plenty of cops we can rely on, but I want someone who’s a little, how do you say, above the law too. Natasha.” He snapped his greased fingers at her name.
Natasha walked over with a small blue device in her hands. She asked for my palm. “The flesh one, please.”
I held it out and she stroked it with her large fingers, tickling my lifeline. She touched the device to my thumb pad. Clicked. A needle went in.
“Ouch.”
She gave me a small stone-age smile. “The thumb chip will open all the doors you need opened in Monsanto Meadows. You’re officially a Mets employee.”
I wondered how many ID chips I had in my hand. Every job I’d ever worked had injected me with one, but none of them paid to take them out. Just deactivated them and shoved you out the door.
The Body Scout: A Novel Page 7
