In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6)

by Randall Farmer

  I was here for information. I read and snapped pictures with a noise-free spy camera I had lifted from McMillan Security. Since she didn’t appear to want to roll over and play dead for me, I needed more information. I figured the best place to start was her home office.

  Biggioni had juice patterns all over her office. They metasensed as not very complex, at best on par with Teas’s tricks and nothing as dangerous as Rogue Focus’s. Focus witchery wasn’t Biggioni’s strength, but I still didn’t want to play with them. Her strength was easy to find: I had never run into a Focus able to keep so high a percentage of her people employed. This meant Focus charisma in spades, matching Lori and Hank’s predictions.

  She wasn’t stupid, either. She took voluminous notes, all well written, and they showed her to be highly intelligent, methodical and cautious. Her Focus bosses had recently given her a new project to work on, mentoring newly transformed Focuses, and meeting Hank’s expectations she was doing a stupendous, albeit slow and complete, job. For one thing she hadn’t made it to Focus Rickenbach yet, which she needed to, soon. That overpowered walking disaster needed all the help she could get.

  Biggioni kept a copy of her house accounting books in her desk, and they showed repeated transfers to the house accounts from her personal money stash. About a quarter of the house take. How in the world did Biggioni get the money for that? Her background, which I had already researched, was firmly middle class. I suspected a trick, so I looked harder. I finally found her personal books in a locked hidden compartment in the back of a file cabinet. I read them as I took pictures. Jackpot.

  A complex jackpot. She brought in some money from various single-men’s-name sources reeking of organized crime, my sort of people. She also brought in some money, but less than her mob jobs, from rents and other real estate deals. I wasn’t amused to find out that the bitch had once owned Keaton’s warehouse, but sold the place after Keaton left Philly. This wasn’t easy to put together, as most of the entries in her books were to and from Focuses. At first I thought she was extorting the poor dears, but doing the math I realized her dealings with Focuses were well in the red. The big money sink was one Focus Schrum, the first Focus Bitch and Region President of the Northeast Region. Even if I subtracted out the Schrum payments, Biggioni was still in the red with the Focuses, but only slightly. If I had put the pieces together correctly, she ran a goddamned bank for the local Focuses.

  I put her private books down and took a moment to think. Hank had told me that if I took a close look at Biggioni I couldn’t help but be impressed. He had been right. From what little I knew, her net worth was pushing three quarters of a million, with a high percentage socked away in tangible investments. She wasn’t ostentatious, she didn’t have her people breaking their backs to keep her in luxury, she showed no signs of clinical insanity or Teas’ style Focus insanity, her Transforms were well adjusted and certainly slept well, and unlike Laswell, my closest Houston Focus ally, her guards had been a bitch to bypass. If she had any obvious flaw, it was excess caution; hell, given my own history I would be willing to wager her excess caution had served her much better than my more moderate caution had served me.

  I found nothing to hint that she was a rogue Focus who I needed to take down. The evidence showed the opposite: under other circumstances, this was someone I would be able to work with. I also had the uncomfortable sensation that a fight with her was more than I had the chops to win, not with a whole Focus organization backing her up. The smart thing to do would be to settle our differences peaceably. Unfortunately, according to Lori, Biggioni had no interest in making peace with me; according to Hank, Biggioni wanted to undo the Arm tag structure and work with me independent of Keaton.

  Oh, and there was this little issue: a strong desire on my part for some payback for what she had done to me while I had been a captive of the CDC. It took a lot of my will and effort to keep from charging into Biggioni’s bedroom and trying to throttle her while she slept. Or shoot her. I wanted to feel her neck in my hands and hear her squeal. Sending her into withdrawal for a few days would have been even better.

  All of which left me trying to figure out what to do next. My letter had won over some Focuses, but Biggioni’s return shot had likely won a few back and hardened the positions of some other Focuses. I was a predator, and to quite a few overly womanly Focuses my predatory nature was enough to poison me in their minds. All Biggioni needed to do was keep exposing my predatory behaviors and I would be sunk, even if I dealt with the Focuses on a friendly basis. I wasn’t ready to let bygones be bygones, though. Not with this bitch. Not after what she did to me. Her help in my recovery wasn’t anywhere near payback enough, and I needed payback. Forget revenge – my self-respect demanded recompense. No one did to me what she did to me without paying some sort of price.

  Reality, though. I had learned a long time ago the cost of letting my instincts lure me into stupid behavior.

  I took out my incendiary bomb and put it on her desk, after removing the detonation mechanism. I would try making peace with her Eissler style. I wrote her a short note to explain my position:

  Focus Biggioni

  Kaboom! Well, in theory. I’m sure you can take the hint. I like what I’ve learned of your operation so far and I’m willing to make peace. What I want is a formal public apology from you and for you to drop your interference in my dealings with Arm Keaton. She is my boss, which you and the Council must learn to respect.

  I’m looking forward to meeting with you and chatting, someday. With Keaton’s permission, I’m sure we can do business together. PS I like your ‘Focus savings and loan’ operation and I think I’ll follow your lead and set up something similar where I live.

  Arm Hancock

  Tonya Biggioni: August 18, 1968

  “Lori. I’m glad you could finally make it to a phone.” Focus Tonya Biggioni, member of the Focus Council and experienced in all forms of politics, incendiary and otherwise, clenched her fist and forced herself to relax.

  “What’s wrong, Tonya? I’ve never heard you so angry. Whatever it is, I assure you I didn’t…”

  “Hancock was in my office last night,” Tonya said, interrupting a likely trip to Lori-land. “She left a dummy bomb, stripped of its detonator, and a note filled with ridiculous threats.” She wasn’t sure she had ever been so pissed in her life. She had to clear all of her Transforms out of her juice manipulation range, just to keep from killing them by accident. In her own household!

  The past weeks had been Tonya’s worst since the horrors involved with the Julius Rebellion. That extended incident had been the last time enemies broke into her household. Of course, then it had been a small army, but still. In the past three weeks, Council President Polly Keisterman had dumped the Hancock problem on her, exposed her as a liar at a Focus Council meeting, and, with the backing of the first Focuses, assigned her to run the Focus Mentoring program, in Tonya’s mind the worst of all the Focus Council-controlled jobs. Then there was the forged letter found after the Focus Frasier kidnapping, tarnishing her good name, and Hancock’s inflammatory letter blaming Tonya for Hancock’s incarceration and withdrawal. Lori had tried to blame the Frasier kidnapping on the Hunters and took the opportunity to lean on her, again, about convincing the Council to acknowledge the existence of the male Major Transforms. Tonya, cornered, had promised to force the issue if Lori (read Hancock and Gilgamesh) came up with proof.

  Now, Hancock had invaded her own home and she was furious again, but this time at Hancock. She wanted to tear the Arm into shredded bits of hamster food.

  “A dummy bomb?” Lori snorted. “You’ve forgotten what dealing with Arms is like. If you don’t have any dead bodies, you got off easy.”

  Tonya growled. Lori did have a point. Not too long ago she remembered a similar conversation with Lori that had gone the other way. Hancock’s invasion disturbed her at levels that hadn’t been disturbed for years. “My office! She didn’t even bother putting anything back that she’d taken
out of my private safe! If she wants a war, then…”

  Lori cleared her throat to interrupt. “Read me the note Carol left.”

  “Fine,” Tonya said, not sure this would help in the slightest. Because of her age and experience she looked at the world in a far different way than Lori, who wasn’t yet thirty. She read the note over the phone.

  “Okay, I know what this sounds like,” Lori said. “If I got a letter from you along those lines, I would be ready to declare war as well. But Hancock’s an Arm and she doesn’t even see the Focus nuances. For instance, she’s serious about her ‘Focus savings and loan’ comment; if the two of you crazies were on better terms she would probably welcome your advice on the subject. This is not a blackmail threat like it would be from a rival Focus.” Lori was safe with this knowledge, as she ran the same off-the-books bank for her ally Focuses in New England. “Yes, she’s saying you can’t protect your people from her, but you knew that already from your dealings with Keaton. That’s a legit Arm style peace overture you’ve got there.”

  “Nobody gets a free pass after invading my office and rifling through my private business!”

  “What, you’re saying you can’t deal with anyone who uses your own standard tactics?” Lori said, artfully arch. “I have noticed what you’re training your people to do using my advanced Transform training techniques.” Sensory enhancements and stealth, not the combat skills Lori trained. “Not that I’m going to complain about the technique theft.” Pause. “Compared to the last Focus who Carol fought, you’ve come off pretty well indeed. You should do what she wants and apologize.”

  Interesting. Lori failed to keep the disgust out of her voice. Knowing Lori’s strong Monster-hunting-trained stomach, Hancock must have done some Keaton-style intestinal decorating or something similarly disgusting.

  Tonya smelled an opening among the gathering nuances. She pounced.

  “So you got to witness the darker side of Hancock up close and personal when you were being an ‘observer’ during the Focus Peshnak takedown?”

  “Up close and personal doesn’t come close,” Lori said. “I was riding on Carol’s back when she raped Peshnak with a street sign.”

  Hmm. Carol had pushed Lori’s big red button and likely didn’t even realize it. “Arms consider rape to be their privilege,” Tonya said, icing this cake as thickly as she could without revealing her manipulations. “They’re as much sexual predators as they are every other kind of predator.”

  Lori didn’t respond. “Keaton is less bothered by killing than the most sadistic Focus is about repeatedly juice stripping her Transforms, and as you know Keaton’s got far worse sadistic kinks. I’m convinced all the Arms have them, though I will admit the type of kink differs from Arm to Arm. Hancock’s into domination and control.”

  Through the Crow letter circuit, which she joined after the Arm Flap, she had learned a lot from the Focus’s male counterparts. Some Crows, such as Sky, were total blabbermouths, and much of what they said sounded exaggerated. Sky had told several Crows a story about calming Hancock down by letting her rape him during one of her recovery rampages. Tonya had ignored the story as another exaggeration, but what if it was true? With a little bit more work, she might be able to drive a wedge between Lori and Hancock. Permanently. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about the foolish kick-the-can-down-the-road promise she had made to Lori about pushing the male Major Transform issue with the Council.

  “Hancock likes to break people and she gets off on breaking them,” Tonya said. “Psychological breakage, not torture for torture’s sake. I’m sure what she did when she broke Focus Peshnak was more enjoyable than any sex, even counting whatever Crows she’s lured to her bed.” She also knew about Lori as the ‘soap opera Focus’, and how both of the Crows she was amorously linked to had also found their way to Carol’s bed. The fact had to gall, and rouse her jealousy.

  “I don’t think so,” Lori said, angry. “This happened in a frigging battle, not during one of Carol’s over-the-top recruitment efforts.” Bingo!

  “Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking that’s what she’s working up to doing to me,” Tonya said. “Which is why I’m angry.”

  “If so, she’s not going to be listening to me on the subject,” Lori said, her emotions dissonant to the meaning of her words. Definitely trouble in paradise. “I’m not even sure I want to stop her. You want my help reigning in Hancock? Publicly apologize to her first.”

  Click.

  Tonya smiled. She had called to vent, and instead ended up driving a starter wedge between her two biggest pains in the ass. This showed promise, a lot of promise.

  Part 2

  Politics By Other Means

  Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.

  Arthur Miller

  Chapter 4

  Never startle a Crow.

  “The Life of Crows”

  Tonya Biggioni: August 20, 1968

  The office had walls now. Simple drywall, not yet painted, but walls. And a door, which Tonya appreciated. A file cabinet occupied the northeast corner of the room, just shipped in from Faith Corrigan, COD, holding the Council’s files on every Focus in the United States. She was already far behind Polly’s schedule, not even done with this year’s crop of new Focuses. Her household remained unsettled two days after Hancock had broken into her office and left a bomb on her desk.

  Tonya wished she had never even heard the word ‘Arm’. The only reason she had been stuck running the Focus Mentoring program was her supposed Arm Flap failures.

  “So you let me know if you need anything,” Tonya said into the phone. “I’m glad everything’s going so well, and congratulations. It’s a tough job.”

  Tonya updated Frances Raker’s file as she put the phone down. Cathy Elspeth had been mentoring her and Frances was in good shape; Raker had transformed young, and had enough sense and stomach to allow her mother to run the day-to-day household details. Tonya hadn’t been surprised at Raker’s success. She had a lot of respect for Cathy, unlike some of the other Focus mentors. Tonya had already run into two disaster cases and wondered how long it would be before she ran into a third.

  She put Raker’s file into her Out box for Delia to file later and pulled the next file on the stack. Tonya had pulled the recent transformations to target first. There had been thirty-two Focus transformations already in 1968 and she had five more left to go. The next on her list was Focus Gail Rickenbach, and her file had little more than her name, age, and Clinic. Tonya rolled her eyes. Wini Adkins, a first Focus, Tonya’s old friend and current chief adversary was mentoring this baby Focus and showing her usual lack of bureaucratic polish. Delia, responsible for running down contact information, had clipped a little white piece of paper to the outside of the file with a phone number on it.

  Tonya looked at the round wind-up clock on the file cabinet, which said 10:07 P.M. She wished she remembered whether eastern Michigan was on Central Time or Eastern Time. After all the years dealing with Wini Adkins of Detroit, she ought to know.

  A Focus wouldn’t be in bed at this hour, in any case.

  The people on the other end of the phone took over fifteen minutes to track down their Focus. Tonya wished she had one of those modern expensive phone systems, where some secretary like Delia could make the initial call from another room and then transfer it to Tonya when she got through. However, her household didn’t have the money, and so here she was with a phone on her ear, trying to update records while she waited.

  “Hello?” a female voice said from the other end of the line. An unfriendly voice.

  Tonya wasn’t surprised. Focuses got a fair number of crank phone calls, and Focuses often answered the phone with a certain lack of warmth. The fool who answered the phone must not have told the Focus who was calling.

  “I’m Focus Tonya Biggioni,” Tonya said. “I’m the new Director of the Focus Mentoring Program.”

  “Yeah?” An openly hostile voice. “Betha told me. Rickenbach here. What do yo
u want?”

  Ah, now this was something new. Tonya mentally noted number three and wondered if this disaster would turn out to be as bad as the last two (one young Focus who killed off any Transform she didn’t like and had attracted police attention, and the other presumably enslaved, as Tonya hadn’t been able to talk to her).

  “We’ve just recently transferred responsibility for the Mentoring Program, and so I’m calling all the young Focuses to find out how you’re doing,” Tonya said in a friendly tone, ignoring the other Focus’s hostility. “In your file, you’re listed as…”

  “You have a file on me?” If the Focus’s tone had been cold before, it was frigid now.

  Almost, Tonya responded with some reassuring platitude. Her mouth was open to say the words. It was the end of a long day and she came within an instant.

  Just as the words were about to come out, though, she realized who she talked to. Some young kid, twenty-two years old, with little or bad mentoring, and no trust in the Focus Council. Perhaps no knowledge at all of the Focus Council, the Network or even the existence of the first Focuses. A Focus with the younger generation’s distrust of authority, and files, and information collected in secret, and too old to have her parents running her household for her. She hoped.

  Tonya decided to spin a different tune. “Would you like me to read it to you?”

  “What?” the other Focus said, startled. “Okay. Sure.”

  Tonya read her the first page of the file. It didn’t take long. Tonya didn’t tell Gail about pages two through five.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “I know,” Tonya said, feigning sadness. “We’re just a group of several hundred Focuses trying to support each other. We do the best we can.”