I go to the window and look down at the empty sidewalk, pale under the streetlights. A bus rolls by; from up here it looks like a fat, white rectangle. A dark figure emerges out onto the sidewalk and trudges northward, hunched against the bitter wind.
I think about calling one of the bodyguards to head out and follow Otto, but that would just be more managing him. He’s right about so many things.
The dream seeps back down the sides of my consciousness. Packard, keeping Otto from some truth—protecting him—those were the words in the dream.
I press my nose to the cold window, feeling so ashamed. I pretended to myself that keeping the Ez problem from him was in his best interests, but it was all about what I wanted. He was right about that, too.
People love Otto because of the way he looks at you, the way he inspires you to rise beyond yourself. It’s such a wonderful feeling. I didn’t realize until tonight how awful it feels when you let him down, and that warm regard drains away.
He disappears around a corner.
He deserves so much better. I have to find a way to make this right.
Chapter
Twelve
AT 6:30 A.M. Shelby, Simon, and I meet with Ken—the one highcap accountant anybody could locate—at a coffee shop by the river. The wind’s not coming off the lake for once, and the river’s sweetly putrid scent fills the air. The Midcity River never freezes.
Ken gives us a mind-numbing tutorial on tax audit terms and processes. Afterward, we ride in my car to the Paranoia Factory, and Simon takes the opportunity to fill me in on his Ez investigation, which has hit some suspicious dead ends, as he puts it. “Two of the people the cops originally interviewed are missing,” he says. “Vanished into thin air. I also reinterviewed the suspect—”
“Ez?” I say. “You went and saw Ez?”
“Any investigator worth his salt would.”
“That is not okay.”
Shelby harrumphs in the passenger seat. “Reopening target cases. Down this road you will find ruin. Both of you,” she says.
Simon smiles. “I thought you liked ruin.”
“Ez could be guilty,” I say. “It may be as simple as that.”
“Then that’s what I’ll find out,” Simon says.
Shelby opens the visor mirror and arranges her thick dark hair into a bun that sits high on her head, like a black pillbox hat. With her black suit and black cat’s-eye glasses, she looks ultramodern and quite hot. I almost never see her wearing all one color. She glares at Simon in the rearview mirror. “You look like idiot with bow tie.”
Silkily he says, “This is my accountant disguise.” In addition to his bow tie, he’s slicked back his hair, and he’s wearing a pea-green sweater vest.
“Is not Halloween.”
While Shelby’s look is intense, Simon’s is a little crazy. “What matters is how we act,” I say. “We’re not here to convince them we’re auditors; we’re here to put them on the defensive and get them focused on financials while we focus on customer data.”
I merge onto the tangle, cranking my wheel to the right. Around and around we go.
“Simon is a talented bluffer,” I add, “so if he puts his mind to it, I’m sure he could wear a panda suit and get results.” This little speech is designed to ease my mind as much as Shelby’s.
“Pfft. Panda suit,” Shelby says.
Simon says, “It’s true. I would find it motivating.”
“Motivating.” Shelby says. “Does not make it good idea.”
Simon has an arcane theory on why she’s wrong.
“Stop smiling with your idiotic face.” Shelby bends dashboard Gumby over, clear in half.
“Oh, Shelby,” I say as I wing the car off to the left. “Gumby does not like when you do that.”
She snorts.
We’re near the top now, where the sleepwalkers reportedly jumped from. Around and around we go. The city passes in a panoramic blur of gray lake, gray sky, and soot-blackened buildings.
The plan is to spend a week nosing through the company books, trying to find shipping and mailing lists; it’s hard to believe that Avery’s key-chain flash drive contains the only copy of all customer lists, and that it’s so heavily encrypted. Simon wants to drug him, copy the flash drive, and decode the hell out of it. Packard called that a last resort. After all, Janie thought the information wasn’t decryptable off the flash alone. What if she’s right? Drugging Avery would blow our cover, and then where would we be?
I breathe easy once we’re off the tangle, heading west, and I give them Otto’s spider lecture. “We wait. We bide our time. And only strike when certain.” I picture him alone out there, vulnerable to the Dorks. I’ve called him several times, but of course he hasn’t answered. If the Dorks shot him, surely we would’ve heard. And it’s after 9:30; he’d be at his office now.
Ten minutes later we arrive at the Midhaven strip mall. I drive around to the back and park by the dumpsters, as instructed. I straighten out dashboard Gumby, then I reach over Shelby’s lap to grab my stun gun from the glove compartment.
“You have yours?” I ask her.
“Always.” She pats her purse.
“Simon?”
“Naah.”
I can’t figure out if he’s being sarcastic or what. “You need to take this seriously. We don’t know how fanatical and dangerous these people are.”
The Paranoia Factory offices are on the upper level. Simon rings the delivery bell. Then he looks at me and says, “What’s up with the angry glum bit this morning?”
Shelby rests a reassuring hand on my arm. “It will go back to normal,” she says.
“What will?” Simon asks.
“Girl stuff,” Shelby answers.
Simon rolls his eyes and rings again. Before we got to the coffee shop, I told her about the Otto blowout. She was sympathetic—especially for a person who dislikes Otto and thinks everything is doomed anyway.
Mr. Avery Koznik himself opens the door; I recognize him from the photo we got. He’s a big guy with a blocky head and shoulders, even a slight Neanderthal look, but his gray eyes shine with intelligence. That didn’t come through in the photo.
Simon makes the introductions; we’ve agreed he can be the leader.
Avery gives each of us a steely glare as he shakes our hands. His short, choppy, nut-brown hair is very road warrior, likely cut by himself. He couldn’t be more than thirty-five, though his short-sleeved shirt and slacks—and especially his big, black work boots—are things an old man might wear. It’s like he’s part nerd and part thug. I’ve never met a person like him. I almost don’t know what he is.
We give him our business cards, which have our real first names and fake last names, attached to extensive false identities that are only subtly different from our real ones—a Packard trick. You always want to stay close to the truth. Avery probably already checked us out. He would’ve gotten an email and a phone call yesterday about the supposed screwup, with the names of the new team to expect.
“We’re clean, that’s my message to you,” Avery says, dropping the business cards into his breast pocket. “If you find anything, it means that you’re not.” He leads us up a narrow staircase.
“You’ve got a lot of false fronts for a clean operation,” Simon says.
“Secrecy is our brand,” Avery hisses. “Our customers are people who value anonymity, live under the radar, and that’s what they like to see in a vendor. Let me ask you, have the cops found anything illegal about our false fronts? No, but I’m sure they’ve tried. And you won’t find anything, either.”
“We’ll let the numbers determine that,” Simon says.
“The numbers didn’t determine that I was out of line the first time, but I’m getting a second fleet of auditors, due to your people’s screwup. I have half a mind that this is harassment, because I should never have been audited in the first place.”
“You have accounting idiosyncrasies that raise a red flag,” I say.
&nbs
p; “I think I have products that raise a red flag.”
Of course he’s quite right. We head down a slim, low-ceilinged hall.
Simon says, “If your products raised a red flag, you’d be getting a visit from the Toy and Game Commission.”
Avery stops and turns at the lone door at the end of the hall, eyes on Simon.
Simon eyes him right back.
My heart pounds. What the hell is Simon doing, antagonizing him like this?
After a spell, Avery says, “Interesting.” Just that. Then he opens the door and ushers us into a barren room with an even lower ceiling than the hallway. A lonely coat-rack stands next to a metal folding chair, and a bare lightbulb dangles into the center of the space. The windows and walls are bare, save for three doors on the far side. The place would be the perfect setting for an avant-garde play about bleakness.
We hang our coats on the coatrack and Simon starts telling Avery what we need—a workspace and certain sorts of files. Avery listens without comment, then turns and heads, somewhat robotically, through the center door.
“What was up with that comment of his?” I ask Simon. “ ‘Interesting’?”
“A bit of a bluff, a bit of a challenge,” Simon says, seeming unconcerned.
Avery trundles back in with a card table and two folding chairs. Apparently we’ll be working in this room. As he sets the stuff up, I smile over at Shelby, but she’s eyeing Avery rather intensely. Or maybe it’s just that she looks so intense today.
“Thanks,” I say as I take my chair.
Avery hmphs. He won’t be helping us, but he won’t hinder us, either; that’s the feeling I get. Simon and I start plugging in our computers.
“Is nice, this place,” Shelby says to Avery.
Avery straightens, regarding her with piercing eyes. “Where are you from?”
“Velozabad, western city in Volovia,” she replies in her usual monotone as she sets her briefcase on the table.
He says, “My mom was from Speka.”
She stills. “I know Speka, yes. Is north.”
And then Avery says something in a language that sounds vaguely Russian to my ears. Shelby replies—in that same language, it seems.
“Please, slow down,” Avery says to Shelby. “I barely speak it.”
“Accent is good, I think.”
Avery eyes Simon and me. “Just FYI, I was born here, so you can tell the state that they won’t get an immigration charge to add to this harassment.”
Simon gives him a smile and hands him a printout of files we need to rereview or review.
Avery examines it with a frown. “I don’t see why we need to do this over, or why you’d need this other stuff.”
“We have to be thorough,” I say.
He eyes me with that formidable gray gaze. “Perchance to harass?”
I smile. “I assure you, we are not here to harass.”
He stays staring, all mistrust and challenge. “It’ll take me a while.” Then he departs again, shutting the middle door behind him.
Simon and I reposition our tables and chairs—Rondo told us that after Avery set us up, we should move, just in case he’s positioned us in front of cameras, though I can’t imagine where they’d be. In the cracks in the white walls? Too tiny. But then again, this is a place that manufactures protection for the paranoid. I’m thankful our computer screens have special filters so you can only read them from straight on.
“Hmm,” Shelby says, taking a seat.
“What was that all about?” I ask her.
“Nothing,” she says. “Enchanted to meet you and so forth. Volovian dialect. I hoped never to speak it again.”
We pretend to work, examining files. It’s tense, being here, knowing we’re probably being monitored. Whenever we find encrypted material surrounded by nonencrypted material we make copies of it for the people who actually know something back at HQ. Packard says the context can help our people crack the code, especially if we get the flash drive copied. Sometimes we bang on our calculators, and we keep the Internet radio on all our computers at the same time to foil any listening devices. Even so, we turn it up when we talk about anything sensitive, and we have code words. The flash drive, for instance, is the final figure, and customer names are baseline data.
Now and then, Simon knocks on Avery’s door and asks for a few more files. Different people come in and out, but Avery’s made it clear that we’re to deal with him only.
“This guy is some piece of work,” Simon whispers angrily.
I give him a shushing look and turn up my computer radio.
“He’s a surgically implanted freak of paranoia.”
“He is a formidable foe,” I say. “Don’t mess it up.”
At noon we ask Avery for recommendations on neighborhood lunch places, the idea being to mix with Paranoia Factory workers. Avery tells us about a hotdog and burger joint. He addresses Shelby in the Volovian dialect again, and the next thing I know, he’s joining us for lunch.
Avery and Shelby walk several paces ahead of us on the sidewalk. It seems clear, even when they’re speaking Volovian, that he’s pressing her for information on her past. She tells him her story, in English, about how her parents were killed and she left and came to work at a hotel.
Simon and I hang back.
“I feel like you’re being dangerously casual in there,” I say quietly.
“I feel like you’re being awfully white-knuckled.”
“People are dying.”
“Don’t worry; we’ll get the list. This asshole has no fucking clue what he’s up against.”
Something in Simon’s tone makes me study his face. It’s his poker face. He’s up to something. “And?”
Simon slides me a sly gaze.
“Oh my God,” I say. “You’re working an angle.”
“Well, Justine, it’s good to see you don’t have your head completely up your ass.”
“What are you up to?”
“It’s not actually formed. I’m working out an angle. Actually a couple angles. This thing’s full of angles, you know.”
“Our angle is to stop the killing.”
“Our angle is to be free,” he hisses pointedly. “Or have your highcap boyfriends fucked you too far into oblivion for you to remember that?”
“Fuck you, Simon.” I look over at him and wait for him to look at me, so he can feel the heat of my glare. When he does I say it again. “Fuck you.”
He smirks.
“We need to get free,” I say, “but I’m thinking about other people, too. You should try it.”
“Oh yeah? Okay. Let’s think about Avery. Has it occurred to you that once we get the customer list, the man’s life isn’t worth shit?”
This stops me. “No,” I say. “Nobody’s going to kill Avery.”
“So they’ll allow him to keep making antihighcap glasses, and everyone lives happily ever after? Is that really what you think?”
“I’d think they’d reach some sort of agreement instead of killing him.”
Simon kicks a stone; it bumps over the curb and lands in the gutter. No answer. Is he right? I get a new bad feeling to add to my double-wide cache of bad feelings.
Avery and Shelby stop in front of a dirty plate-glass window with a neon sign that reads LENNY’S. Avery’s smiling for once; he seems proud of the little place. Who would kill him? Not Packard or Otto. And Sophia, Rondo, Greg, the others—none of them is going to move on their own. Simon just wants to stir up trouble—especially if that trouble is between me and Otto, or me and Packard. He has a problem with both of them. He has a problem with authority.
We enter the long, narrow space; fryer smells hang thick in the air, and grease glistens on the yellow tiles that line the walls. Three small tables to our left are occupied, but the counter to our right has a row of open stools. Avery directs us to specific seats, putting Simon on one end, then me, and then Shelby. He sits at the very end next to Shelby. Apparently she’s the only one he wants to talk
to.
We order from Lenny himself, who has a thick black beard stuffed in a hairnet. Avery recommends the hot dogs, and insists we each order a Fizzy Yellow, which turns out to be a locally produced citrus soda I’ve seen around, but never tried. After Lenny sets us up with the beverages, he wanders away to start things sizzling.
Avery takes the opportunity to taunt us on the futility of our mission.
“When you’re in the business of helping people protect their privacy, and stand up to oppressive forces—natural or man-made—you learn pretty fast to stay on the up-and-up. You’ll find that I didn’t take half the deductions I could’ve. Not half.”
He seems to be in quite the grand mood as he passes silverware rolls down the line—Shelby, me, and Simon on the far end. “You’ll find out that the auditors who came before weren’t incompetent as you imagine,” he continues. “I’m just that careful and law-abiding.”
Simon leans forward to address Avery across me. “I hope you are, my friend.” His manner is jolly. Is this his accountant persona?
Avery leans forward and eyes Simon. “I am.” Avery directs us to watch Lenny, who is slicing real potatoes into French fries and throwing them into the fryer. “None of the frozen crap,” Avery says. Apparently the burgers and hot dogs here are genuine, too, whatever that means.
I’m wondering what Simon’s angle is, and if I should get him thrown off the project. My allegiance is to catching the killers and making the streets safe. And making things right with Otto.
Lenny slides our baskets in front of us. Simon and I pass the ketchup back and forth, and are simultaneously horrified that Avery and Shelby both load their hot dogs with horseradish paste, and nothing else.
“Yuck,” I say.
“Is good,” Shelby says.
Simon grabs an abandoned newspaper while Avery asks Shelby more questions. I stiffen when they stray into the area of her career.
Double Cross Page 13
