“He sounds like a reasonable fellow,” Milo said. He could see Alunsina laughing to herself, from the corner of his eye. “You have to understand, though, that most people in the Shadows commit crime not to save money to get into the Towers. That’s too grand a mission for the hungry and the weary. They simply do not have the energy to plan their life that way. Most of them are forced to commit crime just to get by.”
“Is that so?” Alunsina said. “Huh. I knew I should have felt sorry for the man who gouged my eye out.”
“There are those who have no choice,” Milo said, “those with an exit plan, and the twisted few who just really enjoy hurting people.”
“Which one are you?” Alunsina asked.
THE DOOR TO the main room opened, spewing out Hover Guards like a police cruiser. They filled the anteroom with bleeps and whirs. One of them flew past the bone chandelier, making it shiver. Milo tried hard not to look concerned, but he stood up and stepped away from the chandelier’s landing zone.
A man in a three-piece suit strode out and shook their hands. “Pleasure,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you. My apologies for being late, I had a business call and a long-winded assistant. Would either of you want some coffee?”
The client, Mr. Fonacier, was a forty-year-old businessman who served as Member-at-Large of the Sapphire Block C – East Homeowners’ Association. He was a dust mote in the grand scheme of things, but he paid big. He paid even before he told them the job, which was unheard of. In fact, meeting like this, face to face, was unheard of. Clients usually went through an intermediary, or reached them through indirect, impersonal means.
But Fonacier insisted. His confidence intrigued Milo. The job was probably one of those stupid tasks that would get him laughed out of the room, if he bothered to blackmail the client with it. I want you to scare this guy into letting me head the Christmas Party Committee. Or something equally insulting.
“I need you to kill a woman,” Fonacier said, when the coffee came.
Milo watched Alunsina stir several spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee. Her eye patch glowed, when she sat back to look at Fonacier over the rim of her cup.
“Infra?” Fonacier asked.
“X, actually,” Alunsina said, and smiled at him. “You’re carrying a gun.”
“Just in case I come across the woman I just mentioned.” He turned to Milo. “Coffee?”
“Mr. Fonacier,” Milo said, “we are grateful for the invitation, but you didn’t have to be inconvenienced by this. You could have relayed this to us by text or phone call.”
“You are too kind,” Fonacier said, “but I like discussing business face to face, and this time a video call won’t cut it.”
Milo had had clients like him before. Sweating bullets over the little details, tripping over their moral justifications. “You don’t need to explain the ‘why’ to us, sir,” he said. “We don’t need to know the motive. Just give us her name and location, and it will be done before morning.”
“She might open her mouth and start telling you things that will make you walk away,” Fonacier said. “That’s what worries me.”
“We’ll never walk away from a job,” Milo said.
“Especially a job that pays this well,” Alunsina said. The rim of her cup now bore a purple kiss-mark, a bruise.
Milo glanced at her and shook his head.
“That’s all right,” Fonacier said, catching the gesture. “I like her alacrity. It’s refreshing.” He put down his mug. “Are you ready now to hear the details?” He told them the name of the target and her unit number. “I want her electronic devices destroyed. Computer, phones, tablets. She’s not Modded like your lovely friend here, so that should make things easier.”
The target (‘Karen’) lived more than four hundred floors down. That surprised Milo. He was expecting someone on the same floor. Or even in the same Block. “What’s her security situation?”
“She doesn’t have any personal Hovers, as far as I know," Fonacier said. “There are Tower Hover Guards patrolling the hallways, of course, but I hear you have enough people on the inside that I need not worry about logistics?”
“We’ve got it covered,” Milo said, and turned just in time to see a little girl burst into the room, followed by a woman wearing a maid’s uniform.
The woman was apologetic. Fonacier’s face darkened, like a dog about to snarl, and he waved the woman away. When he turned back, he was his bright, jolly self again. It was a magic trick Milo had seen several times before.
“I’m very sorry,” Fonacier said, letting the girl stand between his knees. “This was not on the agenda. Smile and say hello to our guests, Mathilde.”
Milo said nothing. He didn’t know how to deal with children. Even Alunsina looked confounded, staring at the child as if she were a bomb about to explode.
“Hello,” Mathilde said, not smiling. There was nothing welcoming in her eyes. She was already judging them, the way children do. “Did you come from the Shadows?”
“Mathilde!” Fonacier said. “That’s not a very polite thing to say.”
Alunsina tilted her head. Her eye patch glowed. “Do we look like we came from the Shadows?” she said.
Mathilde thought for a moment, and shook her head. “No,” she said. “You don’t smell bad.”
“Oh?” Alunsina said.
“But you look weird,” Mathilde said.
“Oh.”
“They say people in the Shadows eat each other, because they don’t have money to buy food.”
“All right,” Fonacier said, standing up and pulling Mathilde after him. “That’s enough. I think it’s time for bed.”
“But, Uncle –”
The Hover Guards followed them. “We’re done here, yes?” Fonacier said, glancing back. Mathilde, throwing a tantrum, tugged at his arms and cried.
Milo stood up and smoothed down his suit. “Yes, we’re done,” he said.
“I WANT TO step on that fucking kid,” Alunsina said.
They took the air car out of Fonacier’s unit, and swooped down to the 315th-floor parking lot. It was protocol not to park on the exact floor of the job location, so from there they took the elevator. They had the elevator car to themselves.
Alunsina crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, watching the dial drop to floor 301. “We look weird?” Alunsina said. “We should take her to the Shadows on a Friday night, show her what weird really is.”
“You do understand you’re getting worked up over a five-year-old girl?”
“Sheltered little shit,” she said.
They reached the floor moments later. Milo reached into his pocket and took out his black leather gloves.
Alunsina’s gloves were as red as blood. “Good thing these things came back into vogue inside the Towers,” she said, fitting a glove over her left hand. “Or we would stick out like a sore thumb. But you know one fad that I can’t understand? Glitter on the face. I don’t get that. Glitter in your eyeshadow? Maybe. Glitter on your lips? Kind of eh. But on your whole face? How is that pretty? Then that damn Sparkle Mod launched on the market, and it just made things ten thousand times worse –”
“I’d appreciate it,” Milo said, “if you’d shut your mouth for a second.”
“Oh, please,” Alunsina said. “This job is so easy you can do it with your eyes closed. You can shut down your brain! I bet we’ll be done before dinner. Who do you think she is? A former mistress? That kid’s mom?”
They passed through a bright cluster of small restaurants selling sandwiches and beer, the milling crowd momentarily silencing Alunsina. They reemerged on a residential hallway, which got dimmer and quieter, as they walked closer to the target’s unit.
The unit was at a cul-de-sac, at the very end of a hallway. The light outside the door flickered and died like lightning, and flickered back to life seconds later with a sharp bzzt.
“We are still in the 300s, right?” Alunsina said. The light died again. Her eye patch glowed red in the
darkness.
They stepped closer to the door, and Milo wrinkled his nose. He could smell something rotting from inside the unit.
“The door has an alarm system,” Alunsina said, “but it’s nothing special.”
Milo turned the knob. “And it’s disarmed.”
“Well,” Alunsina said, “what do you even need me here for?”
Milo pushed the door open, and was hit by the smell of wet garbage, the dank aroma of rotten food. There was a trash bin right next to the door, and it was stuffed with noodle cups, soft drink cans, paper takeout boxes crawling with ants and cockroaches.
The apartment was dark. From the doorway, he could see a wall monitor and a table lamp, blinking in unison. When was the last time he’d seen a unit inside the Towers with the power cut off? He couldn’t remember.
They stepped inside and closed the door. They passed a couch covered with clothes. There were shoes on the floor, cell phone cables, an upended drawer cabinet. A fly was drowning inside a coffee mug sitting next to the lamp.
“Should I check upstairs?” Alunsina said.
“Stay here,” he said. He could hear something. A soft murmuring. He turned left and found a door to the kitchen. The sink was dotted with beer bottles and dirty dishes. A compact fluorescent lamp on the floor gave off a dim glow.
There were bare feet sticking out from a corner, the person hidden by the bulk of a refrigerator. The murmuring abruptly stopped. Milo saw the toes curl.
“HE SENT YOU, didn’t he?” A woman with wild, greasy hair was sitting on the floor, next to the CFL. Karen. She was wearing a pair of leggings and a stained sweater. She was hugging an envelope to her chest. “Oh – oh god –”
She started heaving and sobbing. She had the look of someone who had been crying continuously for hours – their visit just interrupted her. Milo could feel Alunsina staring at him.
“Well?” she said, impatient. “She’s unarmed.”
Karen bolted to her feet, in a clumsy attempt to run out of the kitchen. “Help!” she screamed, when she slammed into Milo’s chest. Alunsina jumped back to lock the door. “Help me!”
Milo threw her back to the floor.
“Wait!” Karen said. She struggled back to her feet, her hands raised in surrender. One hand still held the envelope. “Wait, wait. You need to understand.” She paused to gulp in air. “You need to understand that you’re helping a monster.” ‘Monster’ dissolved into sobs. “Look,” she said, handing him the envelope. “Look, please.”
Milo didn’t move a muscle.
The woman tore open the envelope and pulled out several photo prints. Some of them fell to the floor. “Is this the man you want to help?” she screamed.
The photos showed Fonacier, in bed with a boy as small as Mathilde.
“These were screencaps from a video,” the woman said. “The boy is my brother.”
Milo saw Alunsina bend to pick up one of the prints that had fallen to the floor.
“I was –” Karen began. She wiped her face, composed herself. “I was hired as a tutor for his nieces and nephews. There was no one staying with my brother at the time, so I asked if I could bring him with me during the sessions, and he said yes, and –”
“I found a copy of the video by accident,” she continued, her voice shaking. Milo tried hard not to break eye contact. “He knew that I knew, so even before I could go to the police, even before I could spit in his face, he told me he would have me and my family killed if I –”
She covered her face, pulled at her hair. “I don’t know what to do. Two weeks ago someone broke in here and stole my laptop. He threatened to have someone come back and kill me, if I breathed a word of this to anyone. I’m so scared. I haven’t left my unit in seven weeks. I’m so scared but I want to kill him.” Karen’s eyes blazed when she said this. “I want people to know what he’s done to my brother.”
A silent pause.
“Ah, shit,” Alunsina said. “You shouldn’t have let her open her mouth. Now we have to be burdened with a moral choice.”
Karen fell to her knees. “Please,” she said, her hands together. “Please, don’t hurt me, I beg you.”
Alunsina took a small step forward, and Milo found himself raising his hand and saying, “Wait.”
He saw hope bloom in Karen’s eyes.
“Relax,” Alunsina said, pushing his hand away. “I’ll just help her stand.” She stood behind Karen and placed her gloved hands on her cheeks.
Milo felt a split-second prickle of (fear? dismay? horror?) surprise, as Alunsina snapped her neck. It was over, before he could even say a word.
Karen’s body fell to the floor, over the glossy prints of her brother’s sexual assault. Milo felt like throwing up. He could feel Alunsina’s eyes on him. He could feel her waiting for his reaction.
“What if you find out your client is a rapist, and the target was his victim?” he said. His voice sounded too loud, in the kitchen that suddenly felt too empty.
“That is an interesting question,” she said, “but that is not the question here.”
“It’s not?”
“She’s not the victim, her brother is,” she said. She looked angry. “And she did her brother a disservice with how sloppily she handled her discovery. Found a copy of the video ‘by accident’? Fuck that. She probably had an inkling about what’s happening, and snooped around, in a unit filled with Hover Guards. Maybe even confronted Fonacier with it. How stupid can she be? An au pair, fighting a man with a high net worth. You have to be smart about these things. If you want to take matters into your own hands, take matters into your own hands. Don’t rely on the police, or the media, or two hired assassins to do right by you.”
“So she deserved to die?”
Alunsina laughed. “Sol warned me about you,” she said.
Milo was surprised by the change in tack. “What?”
“He said you’re smart enough to handle high-level clients, but you –” she paused and sighed, thinking of the word – “hesitate. You’re choosy, with a side order of messiah complex. He said the first person you ever shot was a man who had hacked a neighbor’s child to pieces. He said you’ve looked for the same kind of targets ever since.”
“So to answer your question,” she continued, “we don’t even need to ask that question. This is not about merit. This is a business transaction. We’re contractors, not vigilantes. And believe it or not, I actually take pride in my work ethic. If I were hired to paint a dresser table, I wouldn’t ask if the dresser table deserves to be painted burgundy when it obviously clashes with the mint-green wallpaper – because I already agreed to do the job. You know what I mean? Why burden yourself? Just do your job. Keep it simple.”
Milo knelt next to Karen’s body, and stared at it for a few seconds.
“It would be nice if the people who could pay were decent people,” Alunsina said, with a mock-frustrated sigh. “Alas, just one look at some of the tacky home decor inside Diamond Tower, and you’ll know that this is not the case.” She handed him the envelope and the prints she had managed to scoop up. “I assume you can handle the rest?”
MILO CALLED AHEAD, and met up with Fonacier inside the same anteroom where he had kept them waiting, just three hours ago. He saw Fonacier sitting in the same chair, under the same chandelier, maybe even sipping coffee from the same cup. He was surprised, however, to see Mathilde in the room. She was wearing pajamas and sitting by Fonacier’s feet.
“That was fast,” Fonacier said, standing up to shake Milo’s hand once again. “I believe a sizeable gratuity is in order.”
Milo had taken off his gloves. He handed Fonacier the envelope, now inside a resealable plastic bag.
“Ah,” Fonacier said. He seemed impressed. “So she made hard copies.” He looked at Milo, his stare sharp, lingering. “You didn’t look inside this, did you?”
“Of course not, sir,” Milo said, forcing a smile. “We like keeping things simple. Get in, get the job done, get out.”
/> “A good work ethic,” Fonacier said.
Mathilde paid no attention to them. She was playing with a stuffed bunny, telling it a story, making it walk on her knees. Milo didn’t know he had been staring at her, until Fonacier said, “Do you have any children?”
Milo felt sick to his stomach. “No,” he said.
“Not surprised,” Fonacier said, nodding to himself. “Most of the young ones today wait until they’re much older.” He smiled at him, just an old man sharing words of wisdom. “Children are wonderful companions. They keep you on your toes. It is a pleasure to tell stories to them.” He leaned toward his niece. “Unless they are being a pain, and refuse to get in bed on time!”
Mathilde looked at Fonacier and giggled. “Ten more minutes, Uncle.”
“That’s what you said ten minutes ago.” Fonacier turned to him again. “I hear you are planning to set up a bar in this Tower?”
Milo was taken aback. “Yes. But how did you –”
“I have my sources,” Fonacier said. “If you’re looking for investors, give me a call.”
Milo said nothing. Fonacier put a hand on his back and led him out of the room, signaling the end of the conversation.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Milo began.
“Yes?”
He gestured to the ceiling. “Your chandelier looks magnificent. Is it –”
“Real?” Fonacier smiled, looking proud. “You know what it’s made of?”
Milo looked at him, and Fonacier stared back, his smug smile a challenge, and Milo understood that Fonacier knew he had seen the prints, and knew that Milo’s lie, spoken right in front of a child, a potential victim, meant that Milo posed no threat. He could be bought, he could be made to forget such terrible knowledge. He was a nobody, just a side character who could play along with the farce.
“Bones?” Milo said.
Fonacier’s smile widened. “Children’s bones,” he said.
ALUNSINA HAD GONE on ahead. Milo walked alone in the parking lot, his steps echoing, and sat in the car. After what felt like hours, he sat up and pressed the Call icon on the dashboard screen.
Philippine Speculative Fiction, Volume 10 Page 23
