This was not exactly a punishment. Sasha preferred her room to any other place in the house, and Esperanza knew this. Sasha spent hours there reading, or watching crime dramas that Grandpop would not have approved of, or using the house to spy on the adults. But there was no time for that today: Sasha had to call out the Deck Council.
Bucko the Pirate Bear sat on the bed, propped up between two pillows. He was her oldest friend, with fur rubbed thin in patches, and a wobbly eye that Esperanza had stitched back into place more than once. (He could not afford to lose another one.) He considered it a point of distinction that he was not confined to the Deck like her other friends.
Sasha closed the door, and Bucko hopped up. “So I was thinking,” he said. “Me, in the middle of a pack of zombies. I’m fighting ’em off with a cutlass in one hand, and in the other I’ve got my flintlock, right? And I’m shooting it right into the face of a zombie.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Emergency council meeting.”
“Oh jeez. You’re not bringing out Zebo, are you? He’s a pompous ass.”
“I’ll bring out whoever I need.” She climbed over the bed and dropped down into the space between the bed and the wall. The blue drinking straw still lay across the floor vent. Good—Esperanza hadn’t been cleaning back here. Sasha popped the floor vent from the carpet. A thin cord was tied to the underside of the vent. She pulled up the cord and retrieved a black bag that had been hanging down into the ductwork. The bag was something she’d found in Eduard’s office. The little tag on it said it was a “Portable Black Hole,” made by Sony. She’d looked up the product online. It blocked all electromagnetic fields, which was exactly the kind of thing you needed if you were trying to prevent people from geolocating their misplaced data devices.
She opened the bag. Inside were seven smart pens, two data fobs, a set of electronic keys that opened the high-security doors in the house and most of the cars, a tangle of data cables and adapters, and a deck of playing cards secured by a thick rubber band wrapped twice around: the IF Deck.
She rolled the rubber band from the deck and fanned through the cards. Most of them were ordinary playing cards, useful as decoys. But in the middle of the deck were eleven special cards that had been decorated and colored in, the newest in permanent marker, the oldest in crayon. But which did she need now?
Mother Maybelle, definitely. Her card was the eight of hearts, the two red circles of the number fattened with red crayon, the topmost circle sprouting two chubby arms. Then Zebo, the jack of diamonds, heavily redrawn with black marker. And of course Tinker, the three of clubs, to serve as secretary.
Her fingers hovered over a fourth card, the seven of spades. He was an old card, but she’d rubbed out the black crayon outline she’d scrawled when she was five, and had redrawn him as accurately as she could in black Sharpie, no colors. The 7 was the spine of a thin man in a black coat, leaning back against a wall, his wide hat covering his eyes. The card had been torn in half, width-wise, and taped back together. The Scotch tape blurred his face.
The Wander Man. She tilted the card, and he seemed to shift and nod.
Howdy, Miss Sasha.
She quickly pushed his card back into the deck. She may not have been able to get rid of him, but she did not have to bring him out.
The remaining three cards she turned faceup and tapped them: One, two, three. Immediately she smelled cigar smoke.
“My oh my,” said a deep voice. “I sense that we are on the cusp of a momentous decision.”
Sasha raised her head over the top of the bed. Zebo the Zalligator reclined in a chair that had not been there before, one hand tucked into the pocket of his red, diamond-pattern vest, the other nonchalantly holding a cigar to the side of his long, toothy mouth. He chuckled dryly. “A ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ type situation.”
“Pay no mind to the carnivore, sweetness,” Mother Maybelle said. She glided across the room in a cloud of petticoats, her golden curls swaying and bouncing. Sasha’s friends never appeared in a puff of smoke or a flash of light. She simply noticed them, already in place like actors on a dim stage, waiting for the spotlight of her attention. And when it was time for them to go, she merely had to glance away and they’d slip into the shadows.
Mother Maybelle said, “There is always a right decision, and we will make it.”
Tinker the Robot Boy trundled forward and clanged in agreement.
Sasha climbed back onto the bed next to Bucko. The bear said, “You don’t even know what the question is, damn it. Let her talk.”
“We know what the question is, bear,” Zebo said. “It’s all she’s been thinking about. Does she, or does she not, tell ol’ Grandpop that his son is pulling the wool over his eyes, and darn near covering his entire head?”
Mother Maybelle said, “Are we talking about the secret messages, again?”
“Yes, it’s the secret messages,” Sasha said. Months ago she’d discovered that Eduard was not delivering messages to Grandpop, even though they were explicitly addressed to Edo Anderssen Vik. They were text messages, emails, phone messages—scores and scores of them. Grandpop’s account, by contrast, received only messages from Eduard. Sasha had called a Deck Council to decide what to do. The council had advised to table the issue until more data could be collected. Sasha had set to work. In this house, there was no room and no account she couldn’t get into. And it had become clear that Eduard was continuing to keep others from contacting his father.
Bucko had the same opinion as last time: “Eduard’s a grog-sucking weasel.”
“Young man! That’s Sasha’s father you’re talking about,” Mother Maybelle said.
“Adoptive father,” Bucko said. “Junior’s trying to steal Grandpop’s money and take over the business. I say we expose the rat and let the bodies fall where they may.”
Mother Maybelle said, “We still do not know if this is something sons regularly do for their fathers.”
“Then I hope to never have sons,” Zebo said. “However, let us not lose sight of the possibility that Edo told Eduard not to give him the messages. A firewall, if you will, protecting him from the tawdry world of business.”
“Well,” Mother Maybelle said, puffing the syllable full of air. “When it comes to the world of business and the world of adults in general there is too much that we do not understand.”
“If Grandpop is okay with this, then he won’t mind when we tell him,” Sasha said.
“But Eduard will,” Zebo said. “If you demonstrate that you’ve been snooping through his personals, he will come down on you like a mighty rain. There will be no more access to electronics. You will be a prisoner.”
“Then you got to make it count,” Bucko said. “Eddie Junior’s been away for weeks. Get the latest messages off his pen and show ’em to Grandpop. Leave no room for Eddie to bitch out of this.”
Sasha frowned. Even with a roomful of IFs, deciding was so hard. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll get the latest messages tonight. If Eduard’s still hiding things, then I’ll tell Grandpop tomorrow morning. Did you get all that, Tinker?”
The robot boy dinged twice. Of course he’d gotten it; Tinker forgot nothing.
“All right then,” Sasha said. “Back in the deck.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Somehow, impossibly, Rovil got up and went to work the next morning. I ate a rock star breakfast: dry toast at noon.
Ollie watched me eat. She said, “You want to tell me what that was about?” “That” meaning several things: the freak-out after seeing Eduard, the night with Rovil, my decision to flood my bloodstream with toxins.
“Not really,” I said.
“You’re not solving anything by not talking to her,” Gloria said. She sat in the living room, and if I didn’t know better I would have thought she was nursing her own hangover.
“I know about Sasha,” Ollie said.
“You know?”
“That day in the Marriott. I looked at your face, and I lo
oked at hers. She has your cheekbones. Your eyes.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“I should have put it together earlier, but I wasn’t on my game. I knew you’d had a child. And four years ago, Eduard and his wife Suzette became foster parents for a mentally handicapped girl from a group home in Lockport, Illinois. They adopted her a few months later. She was mixed-race, and six years old. The same age as your biological daughter.”
“Is this what you’ve been doing? Digging through my life? Can you even help yourself?”
“You know I can’t.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Obviously Edo was behind the adoption,” she said. “I have a theory on why he’d do it.”
“Of course you do,” I said.
“It’s a legal maneuver,” Ollie said. “Vik can’t make Numinous legally because he doesn’t own the intellectual property outright. You could sue him. He owns only forty percent of the company and its IP. Gil owns ten, and you and Mikala split the rest, with two percent for Rovil.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
She blinked. “I read the corporate filings.”
“Ollie, people don’t … nobody does that.”
“They should.”
“Rovil’s percentage came out of Mikala’s share,” I said. “He wasn’t a founder, and we hadn’t promised him anything, but she said he ought to get something when we were bought out.”
“That was generous of her.”
“She was probably already on Numinous when she decided that.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Out.”
“Out? Where?”
“Just—” I raised a hand. “Give me some fucking space, okay?”
She followed me to the front closet, where Rovil had put my coat. “Mikala’s shares went to you when she died, but you officially transferred them to a trust. For your daughter?”
“Get to the point,” I said.
“When she comes of age, that trust can only be hers if she’s mentally competent. Otherwise the guardian gets control.”
I opened the front door. “I can’t believe you knew about her.”
“I was waiting for you to tell me,” she said.
* * *
An addict off the wagon is a fundamentally boring creature, an animal with one dietary requirement, one habitat, and one schedule. It’s a fucking koala bear, minus all cuteness.
For the next four days I clung to my barstool as if it were a eucalyptus tree. When the bars closed I made my way home down spotless streets to Rovil’s apartment, slept hard, and got out of there before he returned from work. Ollie of course knew what I was doing; there was no fooling her brain. My strategy for dealing with this was to see as little of Rovil and Ollie as possible. I wanted to ditch Dr. Gloria as well, but I wasn’t able to do that until the second night.
We were in a faux-Czech bar that served tall pilsners and short vodkas. “This is just cowardice,” the angel said. She sat on the empty stool to my left, sipping water as if she were the designated flyer for the evening.
I said to the guy to my right, “A horse walks into a bar—”
“Good one,” he said. He was in his mid-fifties, and he’d been trying to look down my top for the past two hours.
“Wait for it, damn it!”
“If you want your daughter back, go see her,” Dr. Gloria said.
“So the bartender says, ‘Hey buddy, why the long face?’ And the horse says, ‘My wife just died.’”
He smiled uncertainly.
“Fuck you,” I said. “That is an excellent joke.”
“Sitting here self-medicating is not going to accomplish anything,” Dr. G said.
“Physician, heal thyself,” I said.
The man next to me said, “Pardon?”
“It’s funny,” I said, “because the horse is clinically depressed.”
“Ollie knows where he lives,” the doctor said. “Rovil can drive us.”
I wheeled on her. “You think we can just roll in to Little Edo’s estate? Did you see those fucking bodyguards? He’ll have us fucking arrested!”
The bartender appeared in front of me. “Okay, I warned you once. Get out.”
Shit. I’d been talking out loud again. “It was a joke,” I said. “These two guys with multiple personality disorder walk into a bar, and the fourth one says—”
“Let’s go, or I’m calling the cops,” the bartender said.
“Do as he says,” Dr. G said.
“Goddamn it!” I yanked the stool out from under her, but she recovered gracefully. “You think this is making anything better? Do you? You think you can nag me into doing what you want? Get the fuck away from me.”
Dr. Gloria’s expression had turned stony.
My departure was assisted by the bartender and one waitress. They did not toss me into a back alley like a 1930s’ drunk, but the exit was just as firm. It was three in the morning, and the sidewalk was empty, not an angel in sight. I was free.
For the next two days, the space in my head was cavernous, an empty warehouse in which I heard only my own footsteps, my own voice. Paradoxically, I had to work twice as hard to muffle those few remaining thoughts. But I was ready; I had trained for this moment for ten years. Yes, I’d dabbled with many substances over the past decade, but booze was the mortar of my addiction, making all other abuses possible. I knew how to build that wall. My body, like a good horse, had learned the way home to Rovil’s place, and whatever crime-stopping fairy circle was in effect continued to protect me. On none of those early-morning trail rides home did I run into anyone who made me nervous, much less made me fear for my wallet. When I passed a figure sleeping in a doorway it was almost a relief.
I started to point him out to Dr. Gloria, but of course she was long gone, missing for days. I walked on, then stopped. There was something odd about that homeless person, and I walked back to him.
He lay on his side upon a cardboard box, one arm under his head, his face toward the street. A black garbage bag was wedged into the space behind him. Most of his face was in shadow, but I could see that his eyes were closed. His hair was a wild expanse of gray.
No, I thought. Information that is too strange to process is literally too strange to process. The mind’s first defense is to recoil, retreat, deny. My body, responding to that mental whiplash, jerked back. I told myself, It’s not him.
Then he opened his eyes, instantly focusing on me. “Hey now,” he said.
It was the homeless man from the park in Toronto. The man who’d watched me try to summon Dr. Gloria with a box cutter.
I backed away from him, then stumbled as I stepped off the curb. I crossed to the other side of the street, already trying to shove down the memory of what I’d seen, my head roaring like an ocean.
* * *
“I need to show you something,” Ollie said.
It was daytime, though I wasn’t sure of much more than that. I tried to roll back over, but she dragged me out of bed. “It’s important.”
The living room was lit up like Times Square, every wall screen vibrating with color. I winced and said, “Why would you do this to me?”
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” she said.
The images kept changing. Each one was a digital re-creation of an abstract oil painting, and each done in fireball colors of yellow, red, and orange. There were dozens of them, varying in size from a few feet square to rectangles three meters long. They faded in and out on the walls according to the apartment’s slideshow program, so there was no telling how many paintings were in the collection. But it was clear that they were all by the same school, if not the same artist.
“I’ve seen these,” I said. “Or something like them.”
“You said that Eduard Jr. told you that if you sent Edo a picture he’d pass it on. That seemed like an odd thing to say. So I started looking at Edo’s art collection.”
“He posts his entire collection onlin
e?” I said. “People do that?”
“These are special,” she said. “They weren’t on Edo’s personal site, or his corporation’s. They’re on a government site, for artwork created by federal prisoners in a rehabilitation program.”
“Edo funds it or something?”
“Through the Vik Group. There are thousands of pieces, almost all of them crap. But these are the paintings that are highlighted in the collection. They’re the only ones available in archival-quality hi-res files. And they’re the only ones that the Vik Group bought outright.”
“So where are they now?”
Ollie looked smug. “Edo’s private residence.”
“All of these? They went directly to Edo?”
“One a week, for months.”
I looked up to see a four-foot by four-foot painting start to fade, and I jumped up. “Bring that one back.”
Ollie touched it to make it stay. “This one was hanging in the pastor’s office,” I told her.
“We didn’t go in the pastor’s office,” Ollie said.
“I did, the first time I was in the church. There were two other posters just like it on the wall.”
“All these are a series,” Ollie said. “They’re numbered with major and minor version numbers, like software: one point one, one point two, two-oh. The major numbers get more and more dense, like sketches getting filled in. The minor versions seem to be alternates of the same picture.”
“There’s something else,” I said. “They remind me of something, not just the church posters … shit.”
I sat down on the couch, trying to concentrate, but I couldn’t put my finger on where else I’d seen them. My brain felt … dull. It wasn’t just the alcohol, though there was enough in my system that any traffic cop would qualify me as drunk. No, my body could handle that. It was that I was trying to function without Dr. Gloria.
Afterparty Page 21
