“Yeah?” Gray shifted a little in his chair. He didn’t like rumors when he was involved.
“Yeah.” Carter leaned forward in his seat, fixing Carter with a narrow squint. “What the hell is this I hear about you working with Bud Moody?”
Gray felt his blood temperature drop. Did everybody and their mother know? Was Moody just swanning around bragging to everyone, or something? “You’re not the only person to hear that rumor,” he said, giving Carter a brittle smile. “I had no idea it was so widespread.”
“It isn’t,” Carter said bluntly. “If it was, you’d probably have a little love note from the V.P. about it. But I hear more than I really probably should, so here we are.”
“Fair enough,” Gray said, and in truth he felt a little better. “I’m not working with Moody, though.”
“So who is?”
Gray pursed his lips. “A friend,” he replied. “Moody asked if they’d serve as an informant.”
Carter sat back in his seat. “Ah. That makes better sense, then. Anyone I know?”
It took him a few seconds’ consideration before Gray answered him. If he didn’t, Carter would just hold it against him and dig until he found it anyway. No point in causing himself more problems. “Angela Velasquez,” he replied.
“Anderson’s girl.”
“Well….yeah,” Gray nodded. “He’d heard about some potential narco activity going on at her club, wanted her to look into it for him.”
“Narco, huh.” Carter squinted at him again. “What do you know about it?”
Gray put up his hands. “Look, Brutus,” he said, using Carter’s first name for what he realized was the first time. “I’m trying to stay out of it. She agreed to it, said there wasn’t anything there in the first place but a little light drug use and prostitution.” Which she very well may have been party to, his mind sang up again. “And he came to see me, man. You know what that means.”
“That he’ll get his way one way or another,” Carter said with a nod. “Yeah, to be as young as he is, Bud Moody is as old school as they come. People been writing about that kind of guy since the dawn of cop novels.” He took a deep breath. “All right, I’m going to give you some advice, Dan, since we’re fully on a first-name basis and all.”
A few weeks ago that would have been meant as a slap, and despite their even ranks Gray felt himself flinch inside. “All right,” he said, “I’m listening.
Carter nodded. He took a deep draw from his cigarette, which was followed by a pungent exhale of cloves, and he laid the busy hand to his forehead. “This girl. Angie. You need to cut her loose.”
Dan flinched again, this time externally. Couldn’t hide it a bit. “What do you mean?”
“I mean cut her loose.” He looked at Gray from under his hand as if he were looking out from under the eaves of a cabin, its chimney slightly askew. “Look, I saw the way you two acted around each other, I’m not stupid. You wouldn’t be the first cop who fell for a person of interest – hell, plenty of suspects, too. Used to happen all the time. Still does, too, but mostly for the lower ranks. You’ve got a future ahead of you, Dan, and you’re young enough that you might be running this place by the time you get my age – sooner than, you pull off a couple more cases like the one you just did.” Carter shook his head. The youth that he projected fell, and he looked at Gray as if the younger man had already voiced refusal.
Far from it. Gray stared at Carter as if it had been years since they had last spoke and not just a week or so. “All right, he said, “I hear you. But why is she such a problem? I mean if I was dating her, the case is closed, right? She’s a smart girl, you said that yourself.”
“Smart and honest are two different things,” Carter said with a shrug. “Look, I’m just saying – look out, okay? This shit doesn’t always go smoothly. I’d rather you not go the way of that girl in Pacification that the company strung up for fucking the wrong person.”
Carter stared at him again. “I’m not breaking company policy, Brutus,” he said, flexing their new familiarity like a just-discovered muscle. “And I’m not breaking the law.”
“This is a publicly-traded company, Dan,” Carter said. He took another draw off his Cardinal, which was growing very short indeed. “And like it or not, you’re their new poster boy. What you do reflects on Civil Protection, screws with profit margins. Doesn’t matter if you don’t break any rules – if you end up making this company look bad, the Board will find a way to get rid of you. Right now, all our fates are tied with you to some degree. Do you understand me?”
“I see,” Gray said automatically, but the truth was that he didn’t. Oh, he got that what he did reflected on the company and that his face was very public right now, but would they hang him just for being with Angie? She was a smart girl, very telegenic. Why couldn’t they just use her as part of the media package?” Stripper, party girl and potentially a hooker or directly complicit in potential blackmail, that little voice that he now took to be his ambition said. Is this the kind of company you want to continue keeping? In public? Are you fucking thick? He was quiet as he thought about it, and the answer was that yes, he was thick, as thick as stone for her. A fool. Right now though, he didn’t care. He just wanted to defend her.
Carter took a deep breath. “I’ve said what I have to say,” he declared. “I wouldn’t be a decent cop – or a friend – if I didn’t. But you gotta consider yourself warned. She may be fine by herself, but she’s going to fuck your career one way or another.”
Gray nodded. Well, he couldn’t argue with that. If Moody was allowed to have his way, then his career was going to be invariably fucked; the Devil would have his due, and he’d keep on until he was satisfied. Which, of course, meant never. “I don’t know that I can at this point,” he said after a moment’s pause. “He’s the one who sought me out. You saw my car, right?”
“I haven’t yet, no.” Carter’s brows arched. “What are you driving now?”
“A brand new Cerico. Fully loaded.”
Carter let out a low whistle. “Shee-it,” he muttered. “That’s not standard to your tier. How did you get it?”
“I thought it was because of the case,” Gray said. “You know, because of the high profile.”
“Right.” Carter nodded. “But…?”
“But it was apparently Moody who arranged it.” Gray let out a deep sigh. “I don’t know, man. I feel like he’s got his hooks in me good.” His stomach felt as though it had filled with lead slugs, weighing him down in his seat. “He’s not doing anything illegal.”
But Carter only lifted a shoulder. “Well,” he said, “If he does, tell me. Maybe I can help you out.”
Gray was quiet for a long moment. “Help me out,” he repeated. “How can you do that?”
“Moody’s not the only person with friends in this company.” Carter’s eyes glittered. “Just keep an eye on him. You just keep an eye out, all right? All he’s done right now is the usual Vice recruitment process, by which I mean strong-arming you into going with him and then showing you he’s got clout. Since you’re a fellow employee that means demonstrating his muscle in the company, not a gang. That was…unusually showy, I think.” He took a final puff off his Cardinal and then tossed it into the trash basket by Gray’s desk, where it coughed a final sputter of fragrant vapor and died. “Right now he’s just using you and that girl to get what he wants, which I doubt is legal – but then again, he’s managed to get his hands in a lot of bad places and come out untouched. Just keep your eyes open, see what you can dig up.”
With a nod, Gray got to his feet and came around to stand by the desk. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do that. I think I should get home, do some thinking.”
“You do that.” Carter rose as well, and slipped his hands into his pockets. “I don’t envy you for what you’ve gotten yourself into, Dan, but I wouldn’t worry too much. This can’t come back on you if you don’t let it.” He glanced at his shoes. “Just, ah, remember what I said about you
r career, okay? Nobody’s worth sacrificing your career over. Not in this town, anyway.”
There were a hundred different responses that flooded to the fore with those words, all of them full of defense and invective, but Gray pushed them back. Carter just didn’t understand, he knew that. He didn’t always understand himself. “I will,” he said instead, and nodded to him. “I appreciate your speaking up. It’s nice to know, you know…”
“That you’ve got some sort of a friend in this company?” Carter grinned. He took a hand out of its pocket and laid it on his shoulder. “Look, Dan, I’ve always liked you. I know you’re a professional guy, ambitious and all, but I think you’ve got more of the old school in you than you think.” Carter gave Gray’s shoulder a squeeze before drawing away. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”
Gray nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Soon.”
Then he was alone in his office, standing there by his desk, staring at the open doorway where Carter had just passed. Moody, he thought. This all hinges on him. At the time, however, he wasn’t certain what ‘this’ was – his career? His life? Angie’s? Or maybe Moody had pissed off the wrong people, people like Jack Marowitz and Megan Cinders, and he was a new weapon in their war against the beast that squatted at the top of Vice’s pyramid of sins. Well, he was sure that he’d find out soon enough, whenever Megan got back in touch with him. As he got into the Cerico that afternoon he thought about how Megan reset the console, wondered how many bugs were actually in the car with him, if any. He found himself missing the Vectra. He found himself missing much of the recent past a great deal.
No point in looking back, though.
When he got home that night the lights were on, and the wallscreen was blasting high-energy dance music. A Gauss race was on, the wedges of steel that were the grav-lift cars hurtling themselves across a long loop of magnetized track. He wondered where it was taking place – Phuket, probably. This time of year the best races were going on in the Wonderland magnodromes.
The smell of cooked meat curled its way from the kitchenette. Gray turned toward it, squinting; there wasn’t anyone there, but the obvious signs of food being prepared were evident on the counter: packages open, a white ceramic chef’s knife that he never used laid upon a red plastic cutting board. He smelled meat, but not blood, and his curiosity led him to the convection oven where he saw rectangular slabs of printed protein steak grilling away.
The other smell caught up with him right after that – the wonderful cinnamon smell of her, rich and unmistakable. Angie, his brain announced, and everything that had been wrong about the day, all the dark and uncertain thoughts, vanished. He smiled, wide and stupid, and he fished a bottle of Heineken out of the fridge before shedding his jacket and dropping onto the middle of the sofa to watch the race. He had steak on the grill, a gorgeous woman in his apartment, and people were driving at ridiculous speeds on the wallscreen.
It made no sense. Intellectually, he knew it. This had to be the grand stupidity that came with certain kinds of affection. But as he heard the bedroom door slide open and her delighted laughter at seeing him there, Gray knew that whatever he had – as long as he had it – would be well worth all the hell that he would probably go through.
They spent another night together without sex, which at this point was starting to make him really, really wonder; he woke her up around two o’clock and asked her about it, but she only sighed, half-asleep and sounding as though she spoke to a much younger man than he was.
“Oh, baby,” Angie murmured, turning herself into him, draping an arm over his chest, “I like what we have going on, nice and slow. Don’t you?”
Says the woman draped naked against me, Gray thought to himself. “I guess,” he murmured, “Yeah. I’m just not used to it. I mean, you still…you like me, right?”
She opened her eyes then, looking at him in the near-dark of the room; he saw them gleaming slightly in the glow of the clock. “Of course I do,” she said, her voice very soft and low. “It’s not you. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of bad experiences, going too fast. I’ve…been pulled into things. I don’t like to talk about them.”
Gray nodded, looked up at the ceiling. “I see.”
There was silence between them, he couldn’t tell how long. He’d thought maybe she’d fallen back to sleep, but she spoke again. “I should tell you something,” Angie said in the tones of someone who had been holding something back and dreading giving it voice. “It’s…important.”
“Go on,” he said.
“Well.” He felt Angie pull back from him a bit, pull herself up on her side. Gray felt her eyes fixed on him. “I told you that Ron was involved in selling information off, right? Civil Protection stuff, I mean.”
Gray paused, unsure of what was coming. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
She nodded. “That…wasn’t all. I mean, that’s not all he sold off.”
More silence. Gray was aware of his pulse quickening, and the unmistakable feeling of something heavy coming his way. “Go ahead.”
“I…well. I mean, he used to have me….sleep with people. I mean he’d pick them out, when he saw them come up to the club. Executive types, mostly, people stopping at the hotel for secret meetings, or maybe just an overnight stop before moving on.”
Now his pulse began to thunder – was she going to admit it to him, the whole crime? “Go on,” he repeated, and he heard the strain in his own voice.
Angie must have as well, because she sounded very far away when she replied. “He used to take pictures of us,” she said, like a shamed little girl. He could almost see her eyes staring up at him, wide and sorrowful. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I didn’t want to, but he had me over a barrel. I just wanted –“ She stopped, then fell silent.
Gray felt a flush of heat roar up the back of his neck. His fingers clamped down on the bed sheets at his side, and he closed his eyes for a moment as he counted backwards from ten in his head. She admitted it to him – but it wasn’t her fault, oh no. She didn’t want to. Except he’d seen the pictures, how she’d enjoyed herself. He kept his eyes closed, took a deep breath. He felt the desperation that radiated from her as she sensed his anger, the fear. Did she think he’d arrest her? Or was it rejection that she feared? Could he reject her now, in point of fact? “Tell me how he had you,” he said, instead of giving voice to the invectives that swirled around in his skull. “You said he had you over a barrel.”
Angie took a deep breath. “He caught me stealing from clients,” she said. “I mean, overcharging them, nicking from their wallets. I mean it’s great that they can be generous, but at the time I was really working hard to try and save up for school, but nothing was adding up, you know? So I nicked a little here, a little there…and Ron caught me. I don’t know how. He caught me, threatened to turn me into the club’s owner, or worse, Vice. With a criminal record I would probably never get into college, not even with good grades and test scores – and I’m twenty-four, you know? It’s already way later in my life trying to get in than most people. I didn’t see any way out of it.”
It was as if a layer of frost had settled on Gray’s skin. “I just want to know one thing,” he said, expression hard and grim there in the dark. “Did you kill him?”
“Did I — no!” The little-girl act broke under a wave of shock and anger. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that! It was that crazy girl, you said it yourself.”
“That’s what evidence suggests,” he replied with a nod. “But everyone else laid down and were cut up alive. Anderson, though…he had the back of his skull cracked with something heavy. It could have been on accident – anyone could see how it might have happened. Yin could have tracked him down later, found his body, and taken his spine as a prize.”
She sat up in bed now, and though he couldn’t see her he could imagine her face. “Well I didn’t,” Angie said, her voice stony. “I didn’t. God knows I wanted to, but I’d never have…I’m not that kind of person! I can’t unders
tand why the fuck you’d even accuse me of such a thing!” He felt her weight shift, and the bedside lamp came on. She sat straight up, her hair mussed, her eyes wide and brimming with hurt and anger.
His heart wrenched at seeing her like this, and honestly he wasn’t certain where he had been going with this. Gray took a deep breath and shook his head. “Look,” he said, rubbing at his forehead with one hand. “It isn’t what you think – I’m not accusing you. I’m asking. If you did kill him, even if it was an accident, I have to know.”
“It isn’t what I think?” Angie’s voice was a searing shriek. Gray winced. “Unless, by some miracle of misunderstanding, you aren’t actually asking me if I killed Ron, then yes, it’s exactly what I think it is!” She got up, reaching for her jeans which had been folded on the dresser, and furiously began pulling them on. “I can’t believe that you’d ask me that,” she said, more to herself now than to him, and her words had taken on a hard, cold timbre. “I have to get out of here.”
Gray drew a deep breath. It wasn’t like her reaction was any kind of a surprise, after all. People took rather unkindly of being asked if they’d murdered someone – that her boyfriend had just done it must have been…well, he felt like shit for asking, but it didn’t change the fact that it should be asked. “Look,” he began, “I’m sorry. I just want things to be clear between us, and this…”
“This?” She buttoned up her jeans and reached for the shrug top she’d worn over them. “This? Seriously, Dan? This what?”
He took a deep breath. “I knew about the pictures already,” he said. “I just wanted –”
Angie stared at him. “You knew?”
Gray had the feeling that he was treading across a minefield now, and every step was most likely going to blow up in his face. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “I found out through a clandestine source.”
“A clandest–” her eyes widened. “Oh, God, does someone have the pictures? Do you know what they’d do to me if they found out that they were taken?” Angie sat down hard on the edge of the bed, her top clutched tightly in her hands. Her face had gone a little pale. “Oh God, they’d find me, and they’d…”
Bone Wires Page 21
