Zero Sum Game

by SL Huang

  “I appreciate anything you can get us,” I said.

  He pulled a file folder from among the machines. “Some fishy things here. Could be more we ain’t hit yet. You don’t mind, me and Penny’ll keep digging on this.”

  “Sure,” I said, surprised. It was the first time he’d said something like that in all the times I’d hired him. “If you think there’s more to find, go for it. Usual rate.” I opened the file and gave it a cursory glance—the contents were puzzlingly varied; I’d have to sit down with it later.

  “I bet we get more,” said Penny optimistically, hopping back up on her dad’s chair and rolling it over to a computer keyboard. “Hey, Cas! I cracked an IRS database yesterday. All by myself!”

  “She’s got the talent,” murmured Anton in his quiet, gravelly way, but anyone could see he was glowing with pride.

  “Nice job,” I told Penny. “Too bad you don’t pay taxes.”

  “Well, Daddy does, but he told me not to change anything. I want to try some White House systems next.”

  I turned to Anton in surprise. “You pay taxes?”

  “I use this country’s services,” he said. “I pay the taxes them people we elected says I owe. Only fair.”

  Wow. “Your call, I guess.”

  He gave one of his trademark grunts. “Want to teach my girl right.”

  Courtney made a squeaking sound. I decided I’d better get her out of sight before Anton felt the urge to reach out his thumb and crush her like a bug. Besides, Anton’s reference to more weirdness was amplifying the alarm bells that had been going off in the back of my head ever since the cop had cornered us at the motel.

  The feeling got about a hundred times worse when we got to Courtney’s house.

  “That’s—that’s my…” She trailed off, her hand shaking as she pointed. Two white men in dark suits were standing on her doorstep talking, the front door cracked open behind them. As we watched, one of them pushed open the door and went inside. The other stubbed out a cigarette and followed a minute later.

  “What are they doing in my house?” whispered Courtney weakly.

  We were still a block away. I pulled the car over and turned off the engine. Courtney’s place was a little guesthouse-type cottage, and most of the blinds were shut, but one of the side windows was the kind of slatted glass that didn’t close all the way. Through it, we could see more suits—and they were in the midst of tossing her living room. Thoroughly.

  “Who are they?” asked Courtney. “Are they police?”

  “No.” Some of them moved like they might have military backgrounds, but I wasn’t sure; we didn’t have a good view and I didn’t have the numerical profiles of every type of tactical training memorized anyway. Definitely not cops, though.

  “Do you think—are they with the Colombians?”

  “Possibly.” The men were the wrong ethnicity to be on the Colombian side of the cartel, but maybe they were American connections. Why would the cartel be searching Courtney’s place, though? If they were after the girl herself, they would be lying in wait, not turning the rooms inside out. “Did you steal anything from them? Money, drugs, information? Anything?”

  “No!” Courtney sounded horrified. “I have money there like I told you, but it’s what they paid me. I’m not a thief!”

  “Just a drug smuggler.” As someone who did dabble in what one might call “stealing,” when paid well to do it, I resented her indignation a bit. “Let’s keep our moral lines straight and clear, now.”

  “I didn’t know,” repeated Courtney hopelessly.

  I reached for the car door handle. Maybe these men were only burglars after her little stash of savings, but I wasn’t going to bet on it. “I’m going to get closer. Stay here and keep out of sight.”

  “What if they come this way?” Courtney had gone pale, her freckles standing out across her cheekbones.

  “Hide,” I said, and got out of the car.

  I still hadn’t had a chance to clean up my face, and despite this not being the best part of town—unkempt, weedy lawns buttressed trash-filled gutters, and most of the houses sported cracked siding and sun-peeled paint—I got a few looks from people on the street as I strolled toward Courtney’s cottage. I ran a hand through my short hair, but it was a tangled, curly mass and I was pretty sure I only made it worse. Undercover work has never been my forte.

  I meandered down the sidewalk, keeping a sidelong view of Courtney’s house. The dark-suited men became points in motion, my brain extrapolating from the little I could see and hear, assigning probabilities and translating to expected values. As I drew up to the house, the highs and lows of conversation became barely audible, but I ran some quick numbers—to decipher the words, I’d have to be so close I’d be the most obvious eavesdropper in the world. The plot of half-hearted grass between the street and the houses didn’t have any handy cover I could use to sneak closer, either.

  I ran my eyes over the surrounding scenery, a three-dimensional model growing in my head. A stone wall curved out from just behind Polk’s house and ended in a tumble at a vacant lot, and it very nearly fit the curvature of a conic.

  Sound waves are funny things. They can chase each other over concave surfaces, create reinforcing concentrations of acoustics at the focus of an architectural ellipse or parabola. Some rooms are famous for the ability to whisper a word on one side and have it be heard with perfect clarity on the other.

  I only needed a few more sounding boards.

  I wandered back down the street and kicked at a trash can as I went by so it turned slightly. Ran my hand along the neighbor’s fence, pulling the gate closed with a click. Flipped up a metal bowl set out for stray cats with my foot so it leaned against a fire hydrant. Tossed a rock casually at a bird feeder so it swung and changed orientation. I ambled down the street twice more, knocking the detritus of the street around, making small changes. Then I ran my eyes back across the house, feeding in the decibel level of normal human conversation.

  Close. All I needed was an umbrella. It wasn’t raining, but plenty of cars were parked on the street, and I found what I needed after a quick survey of back windows. I jimmied my way in, retrieved the umbrella from the back seat, and left the car door cracked at an angle for good measure. Then I headed over to a tree at the edge of the next lot, one that stood exactly at the focus of my manufactured acoustic puzzle, put up the umbrella, and listened.

  The voices in Courtney’s house sprang up as if they were right next to me.

  “—utter rubbish, that’s what it is,” a man was saying in a British accent. “FIFA’s got no right to blame Sir Alex. They got a scandal, it’s their own damn fault.”

  “You two and your pansy-ass soccer players,” put in an American voice. “You’re in fucking America, you know. Watch some real football.”

  “Oh, you mean that boring little program where they prance around in all the pads and take a break every five minutes?”

  “Aw, fuck off. At least we score more than once a game.”

  “Gentlemen. Focus.” This voice was smooth, deep, and oozed charisma, cutting off whatever the American’s retort would have been like he’d hit a switch.

  “I don’t think it’s here, Boss,” said a fourth guy in a nasally voice with an accent I couldn’t place. “I think she stashed it somewhere else. Or she—”

  “‘Stashed it’?” cut in the talkative Brit. “Where? She doesn’t have a safe deposit box, they made it so she’s got no friends—”

  “So she buried it in the front yard, or spackled it into a wall,” said the American. “Who knows what she was thinking?”

  “The only place left to look here is if we come back with a sledgehammer and a shovel,” agreed the nasally man.

  Their words fell off while they waited for the leader to make a decision. I found myself holding my breath.

  “Hey, momma, it look like rain to you?”

  I was jerked out of listening to see an arrogant teenage kid wearing far too many cha
ins laughing in my face. “You expecting rain? Ha! Whatcha do to your face, or were you born that way?”

  My first instinct was to knock him on the head and get him out of my way. But he was only a kid—a shrimpy Hispanic teen, probably part of a gang considering the area and the colored bandanna knotted around his bicep, and aching to prove himself. Even if he was doing so by picking on a small woman who resembled a disturbed homeless person at the moment.

  “Are you trying to pick a fight with me?” I asked evenly, lounging back against the tree and letting the grip of the cop’s Glock peek out of my belt. The kid’s eyes got wide, and he stumbled back a step.

  I glanced back at Courtney’s house. The men in dark suits were filing out the front door, either leaving for good or planning to return with a sledgehammer. Either way, I had missed it. I sighed and turned back to the gang member. “Hey, kid. Watch this.” I leaned down, pried up an old tennis ball from where it was embedded in the dust, and threw it hard off to the side.

  A series of soft pings sounded—across the street, behind us. The kid looked around, confused. Then the tennis ball came rocketing from the other direction and bopped him lightly on the head.

  “Whoa!” He stared at me. “Fuck, momma! How’d you do that?”

  “Learn enough math, you might find out,” I said, keeping an eye on the suits out of the corner of my eye. Conveniently, this conversation provided a neat cover if they happened to look this way. I no longer appeared to be lurking. “Stay in school, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay. Okay.” He nodded rapidly, eyes wide. Then he turned and hurried off, looking back over his shoulder at me.

  Like I said, I have a soft spot for kids.

  The Dark Suits had headed off at the same time, appropriately in a dark van. I glanced around the street and walked casually over to Courtney’s front door. The jamb was already splintered next to the bolt; I nudged the door open.

  The living room looked like a herd of rambunctious chimpanzees had been invited to destroy it. Cushions had been torn off the furniture and rent open, their polyester filling collecting in puffy snowballs on the floor. Every chair and table had been upended. Cabinets and closets stood ajar and empty; clothing was tangled with DVD cases and broken dishes in haphazard piles amid the chaos. True to the Dark Suits’ lack of sledgehammer, however, the walls and floor were still intact.

  I hesitated on the threshold, wondering what the chances were that the Dark Suits or anyone else might have left surveillance devices behind, but if so, they had probably recorded my skulking already. I picked my way through the destruction to the corner Courtney had told me about, a growing sense of urgency making me hurry. What the fuck was Courtney Polk mixed up in?

  I didn’t have any tools, but breaking boards is all about the right force at the right angle. With one well-placed stomp from my boot, the floorboard splintered, and I pried back the pieces and fished out a paper bag filled with neat piles of loose bills.

  My gaze skittered around the room, wondering where else Courtney might have hidden something…something small enough to spackle into a wall. But the only option I could see was breaking every floorboard and then tearing down all the sheetrock, and that would take far too long. If Courtney still insisted on claiming ignorance, maybe I could stash her somewhere and then get back with tools before the Dark Suits did.

  And maybe I could get some of my questions answered another way before then. Tucking the paper bag under one arm, I headed out, pulling out the cell phone as I did so and dialing Anton.

  “Mack’s Garage,” chirped a girl’s voice.

  “Penny, it’s Cas. Can you put your dad on?”

  “Sure!” She shouted cheerfully for her father, and in moments Anton grunted in my ear.

  “Anton, it’s Cas Russell again. I need you to look up something else for me.”

  Grunt.

  “That client who was with me today. Courtney Polk. Check her out for me.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, just—”

  A deafening explosion tore through the line. I heard a girl’s scream, and Anton shouting, and then any human sound was swallowed by the chaos of more explosions, multiple ones at once—and the call went dead.

  Chapter 4

  Shit shit shit shit shit!

  I tore back along the street, my boots pounding against the asphalt, the math blurring and every other thought evaporating as I dove toward the car. I yanked open the door and ignored Courtney’s panicked questions as I wrenched the transmission into gear and spun us out into traffic with a squeal of tires; a cacophony of horns deafened us as other drivers swerved and slammed on their brakes, but I only heard Penny’s scream, echoing endlessly, high and terrified—we had to move—faster faster faster faster faster—

  LA traffic is forever fucked, but it helps to know the calculus of moving objects—and to drive like a maniac. I slued between lanes, skidding in front of other cars by a hairsbreadth, cutting it as close as the numbers told me I possibly could, and when I started hitting traffic lights, I laid on the horn and popped the wheels up over the curb to sheer down the sidewalk, horrified pedestrians hurling themselves out of my way and traumatized citizens howling expletives in my wake. Courtney made small sounds in the passenger seat, bracing herself against the dashboard and trying to hang on.

  This part of town didn’t have a huge police presence, but if I’d seen blue lights behind me I wouldn’t have cared. Or stopped. Within minutes, I was careening around the last corner toward Anton’s garage.

  A tidal wave of heat and light and smoke crashed over the car, overloading every sense, blasting, overwhelming. We were still a block away, but I jammed my foot down on the brake, sending Courtney tumbling against the dash.

  Anton’s building was a roaring inferno, the flames towering into the sky, black smoke pouring from the blaze and rolling thick and acrid over the street. I scrabbled at the door handle and stumbled out—the heat slammed into me even at this distance, an oppressive wall of blistering air. My skin burned as it flash-dried, and every breath scalded, as if I were swallowing gulps of boiling water.

  The building was melting before my eyes, collapsing in on itself, the walls and roof folding with slow grace in massive flares of sparks. My brain catalogued materials, heat, speed of propagation…this horror had used chemical help; it must have. I did a quick back-of-the-envelope timing back in my mind, holding my breath and closing stinging eyes against the smoke that clogged the air.

  I ran the numbers three different ways, and only succeeded in torturing myself. Even with the most generous estimates, nobody had made it out.

  Fucking math.

  I stumbled back to the car. The metal of the door was already warm. I slid into the driver’s seat, wrenched the steering wheel around into a U-turn, and accelerated back the way we had come. We’d ditch this car a block or two from here in case any traffic cameras had glimpsed my vehicular stunts, then put some distance behind us before the authorities arrived.

  “Did they…are they…” Courtney asked timidly.

  “Dead.” My eyes and throat scratched from the smoke.

  A small sob escaped her. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” I couldn’t help wondering if it was her fault.

  Or mine.

  My mind buzzed. I’d contacted Anton a little over five hours ago—the traffic going into the city had held us up for a good chunk of time, but then I’d headed straight here. Five hours. Ample time to set this up, if someone had caught onto Anton’s search. If that someone happened to be motivated enough.

  I tried to tell myself Anton’s work had encompassed a multitude of other projects, any of which might have generated enemies. Whoever had targeted him had overcompensated like fuck to take all of his data and information with him, but even so, a case from months or years ago might have provoked this. Some old client with a grudge. This didn’t have to be because of what I’d brought him.

  Did I really believe that?

&n
bsp; The platitudes curdled in my head.

  Jesus Christ. This was supposed to be an easy job. Rescue the kid, get her out of the country, be home in time for dinner.

  Nobody should have died on this one, least of all two people sitting at a computer looking things up for me.

  My grip tightened on the steering wheel until my fingers hurt.

  I studied Courtney out of the corner of my eye. She was hugging her knees to herself, her shoulders shaking, her ponytail falling across her and hiding her face.

  She was involved in this somehow.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” The words came out too harsh. I didn’t care. “Those men at your place were looking for something. What was it?”

  She raised a blotchy, tear-streaked face to look at me. “I don’t—I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”

  Right.

  My client might be lying to me. My client, who was already on the run not only from the authorities, but from a drug cartel who wanted her dead, government men in dark suits, a dirty cop, and some unknown player willing to commit arson and murder to cover its tracks.

  And, on top of everything, I’d lost my information broker. I tried not to think about Penny, the twelve-year-old kick-ass hacker who’d been taught to pay her taxes on time.

  Courtney cried softly in the passenger seat the whole way to the bolt hole I drove us to. If she was playing a part, laying it on thick in the hopes I’d buy the tearful façade, she deserved some sort of acting award.

  Maybe she really was just a naïve kid who had gotten in too deep, too scared or too stupid to tell me what was going on.

  Still, the crying pissed me off. What right did she have to sob her eyes out for people she’d barely met and seemed to judge from moment one? “For Christ’s sake,” I growled, as I swung the car into a grimy alleyway. “You didn’t even know them.”

  “How can you be so cold?” she murmured tremulously.

  I slammed the car’s transmission into park. “Are you feeling guilty? Is that it?”

  Tears swam in her red-rimmed eyes. “Guilty? Why would I—” Her face contorted in horror. Could someone really fake that? “This was about us? Oh, God—that was only this morning!”