Taking the Highway

by M. H. Mead

  Of course. No one could come to Detroit without visiting the Castle. The games alone could occupy a family for the entire day before they even got to the petting zoo or the night market. Some people didn’t bother to pay the admission fee, content to stand outside and watch the exterior holographs change the building’s appearance through a rotating series of famous landmarks—from Himeji to Neuschwanstein.

  “You know they open at noon, right?”

  “What?” the wife squawked. “They’re not open twenty-four hours?”

  “Not after Labor Day.”

  She reached over and smacked her husband on the arm. “I told you!”

  Lauren closed her eyes and slumped against the door. “You mean we got up early for nothing?”

  Andre shrugged. “Lots of places for brunch in the New Center.”

  The mom glared at her husband, who kept his eyes on the road, even though the Overdrive system was taking care of that. “We ate a huge breakfast.”

  “You could visit the Pier.”

  “We did that yesterday.”

  “Shopping?”

  “Michael hates to shop.”

  “You could see the Heidelberg Project.”

  “We did that on Monday. We’ve been everywhere.” The mother sighed. “This is our last day in town and we wanted to spend it at the Castle.”

  “Mom,” Lauren whined. “What are we going to do?”

  Andre looked over her head at the passing traffic. All around them, four-adult carpools were laughing, working, listening to music, drinking coffee. How many of the cars contained fourths? How many of the fourths wouldn’t be here at this time next week?

  The bitter smell of burning tires wafted through the car as they moved through the last bit of the oh-zone. Something was always burning in the oh-zone. Both sides of the highway were strewn with garbage, dumped there by people who insisted on living someplace uninhabitable.

  Then they were through and everything was soft and green and shiny, as if they’d been transported from Kansas to Oz. Trees lined the highway, maples glinting neon orange in the morning sun, surrounded by still-green grass. The buildings grew gradually taller, like stair steps leading to the city center.

  Andre returned his attention to the job at hand. There were other things he could suggest. These people hadn’t been everywhere. Not in a week. He walked through a mental map of the city. Eastern Market, The Motown Museum, Autumnland.

  Lauren pointed out the window. “There’s a Java Jungle. Can I go play there?”

  The wife looked at Andre. “Is it different here?”

  He spread his hands. “I have no idea.” Andre usually thrived on shaping his social interactions and a wild, unscripted conversation like this should have given him a thrill. Any other day, and he’d make it a point of honor to deliver the perfect half day of entertainment. He’d make this little family’s whole vacation and they’d go home telling all their friends about their adventures in Detroit.

  He shifted in his seat and crossed his legs. Everything was wrong about this carpool. He wasn’t into them and they weren’t into him, and the awkwardness extended far beyond them being tourists, or having a kid along. He didn’t care about their morning plans. He didn’t care if they hired him for the return trip. He didn’t care if they pushed him out the door and drove back to Chicago.

  He settled in his seat, and felt the butt of the Guardian dig into his left armpit. It wasn’t the tourist’s fault. It was his. He’d been on the clock from the moment he’d stepped into the bowling alley parking lot. He might as well just flash his shield at this family and demand a ride to police headquarters, where he could hand Captain Evans all the cash he’d earned this morning, because he certainly hadn’t earned it fourthing.

  He sat up straight and leaned forward. “Ah, ah, ah. You missed the exit.”

  “What do you mean?” The husband pointed to the dashboard navigator. “It’s not for ten more—”

  “That’s the exit to the Castle. You have to drop fourths off at the very first Cityheart exit.”

  “But how are we supposed to—”

  “Surface streets.” Andre spread his hands helplessly, hoping the guy would buy it. What are you going to do? “New regulations. The city council voted on it last week. Let’s see. The next exit is Warren Avenue. Drop me there and I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Thank you.” The husband punched in a new exit number and prepared to take manual control at the end of the ramp.

  “Don’t mention it.” And thank you for bringing me right to work. Andre directed him to Perrien Park on Grandy Street. He left the car, then leaned in for a final word. “You’re probably going to stay at the Castle pretty late.”

  “Until Lauren collapses,” the wife said.

  “There are always strays downtown at night and the later it gets, the cheaper they are. It shouldn’t cost you more than fifty to get back to the suburbs. I’ll find my own way.”

  The family drove off and Andre sat on a bench near the fountain, soaking up its ions. He watched two more cars slow and discharge fourths. The first took off walking at a fast clip. The next couldn’t seem to leave the car, the laughter and the “just one more” pulling him back. The fourth finally gained the sidewalk, and the car’s occupants shouted their goodbyes and see-ya-laters.

  Andre looked around to make sure that nobody was watching, then flipped open his datapad, cupping it in his hands so no one could see that he was checking the stream. He kept his head up, pointing to the street, and only moved his eyes downward. He skipped over the departmental business, figuring anything truly important would come through his phone implant. He scanned down to the box marked “social.” Wallingham was celebrating his promotion and invited everyone to the Pen tomorrow night. Dubnar wanted sponsors for his 10k run for Slopes disease. Delandra Kelso turned fifty today. Andre made a note to stop by Kensington’s on his way in. Del-Kel loved those muffins they made, the cranberry nut ones bigger than her head.

  He opened his other inbox. Blip after blip, most of them a list of locations, fourths telling other fourths where they were. It was a way to meet up with friends, make connections, or just shout into the world that you existed. Andre blipped his own location. He was on his way to work and didn’t have time for a single cup of coffee, but nothing was lonelier than a fourth’s day downtown. If he could ease that for someone, even if it was nothing more than an electronic high-five through the ether, then it was worth broadcasting his whereabouts.

  A pale green Mustang slowed, then sped up and continued around the corner. Andre frowned. Hadn’t it passed once before? Come to think of it, he remembered seeing the same car back at the bowling alley.

  He sent Jordan Elway a blip, glad his favorite tech was working for the task force. [NEW MUSTANG. PALE GREEN. PERRIEN PARK. ANYONE WE KNOW DRIVING?]

  He frowned at his pad and Elway’s almost immediate answer. [YOU KNOW I CAN’T DO THAT.]

  Technically he could, but Andre knew that can’t meant won’t. He played a hunch. [LIMITED TO MAYOR’S TASK FORCE MEMBERS?]

  [OKAY.]

  A list scrolled across his screen, all six members of the newly-formed task force, make and model of any vehicles registered to them, license plate numbers. Halfway down the list, Jae Geoffrey Talic was listed as driving a Ford Mustang. No color mentioned, and the license plate wouldn’t do Andre any good unless he saw the car again.

  He clicked in his phone implant and direct-dialed.

  “Yeah,” came Talic’s voice.

  “Get off me.”

  “LaCroix?”

  “Quit tailing me.”

  “I’m not tailing you.”

  “Newish Mustang? Color of one of those mints you get at weddings? I saw it three times. Your lid is off. Go home.”

  “What if I’m your backup?”

  “No you’re not. Your lid is off.”

  “Shut up, man. You think I like this detail? I hate it as much as you do.”

  Andre clicked off the
phone, pocketed his datapad, and strode away. Whose asinine idea was it to give him backup? Sofia’s? Now he had to ditch Talic before he could get any work done.

  He paced to the other side of the fountain, head down, arms swinging, feeling the morning sun on his neck like a spotlight of police scrutiny. Not too long ago, he would have considered Talic’s tail a compliment. Backup used to swell him with pride—proud to give it, and even prouder to need it. Backup meant the officer was doing something important, even dangerous. It would be watched and approved of by a whole team.

  But Talic’s actions felt less like approval and more like a test. Andre had tested other cops when he worked Internal Affairs and he didn’t appreciate being on the other side of it now, especially from a self-righteous prick like Talic. He patted the tailored pocket of twenties he’d earned that morning and walked toward Warren Avenue, intending to duck through an alley, but stopped short when his datapad’s alarm signaled a priority blip.

  He grabbed it and held it at reading level, heedless of how he looked. He’d programmed his pad to make an audible alarm in only two situations, neither of them good. Either his phone implant was malfunctioning, or somewhere very nearby, a fourth was in trouble.

  [FIT. BOB MASTERSON. WHITE BMW. APPROACHING PERRIEN PARK. FIT.]

  Andre stowed the datapad. He was obligated to respond to a Fourth In Trouble if he was nearby, and this one was practically on top of him.

  The geo coordinates were next, but Andre didn’t need them. He reversed his steps and half walked, half ran back to the fountain. Bob Masterson was more a friend-of-a-friend than someone he actually knew, but he was still shocked that Bob needed help. Bob was the best fourth he’d ever met. The man had regulars. Andre had a hard time imagining a situation so bad that Bob Masterson couldn’t charm his way out of it.

  But if Bob wanted witnesses, then he needed them, as many as possible. Who better to apply social pressure than society’s most manners-conscious people?

  At the plaza fountain, Andre turned in a slow circle, scanning the street. He didn’t know which direction Bob would be coming from, although the west would be most likely. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two more fourths desperately searching the approaching traffic.

  Andre waved to the other fourths. He pointed two fingers at his eyes, then out to positions opposite his own. They nodded and took up points covering the north and south sides of the plaza. Andre took the west. Gray Lexus, Purple Octave, Gray Ford. No white BMW. Where the hell was Bob?

  A summoning whistle from the south side of the fountain brought Andre running. He did the geometry in his head, overlapped with a mental map of the city. Commuting in from the south wouldn’t take you anywhere near Perrien Park. The utter wrongness of the situation tightened his breathing and upped his heartbeat.

  By the time he got to the car, half a dozen fourths stood in a loose oval around the BMW. All were distance-familiar in the way that fourths were, but Andre didn’t know any of them by name. The odds of this many fourths being close enough to respond were miniscule. He couldn’t imagine the size and power of Bob’s network. But maybe he could. It wasn’t much different from cops responding to an officer down. If he were in trouble on the job, every police officer in the city would try to help.

  The fourths loomed but did not threaten. Silent witness. Pressure. Often, that was enough. The driver of the car, a middle-aged woman with severely teased hair and dark eye makeup, took one look at the assembled fourths, threw a few bills over the seat, and pointed to the door.

  Bob bent over to pick up the cash, then tumbled out to the sidewalk.

  The fourths surrounding the car hadn’t moved, and Andre signaled the ones in front to hold their ground. “You okay, Bob?” he called out.

  “Sure, great. Thanks.” Bob’s long, blond bangs had flopped over his face. He pushed them back and slicked his hands along the short sides. He straightened his floral tie, which had gone crooked in whatever dispute they’d had in the car. Even his wingtips were scuffed on the edges and Andre wondered if he’d been kicking the seat. Bob looked at the bills in his hand before frowning, shrugging, and shoving them in his pants pocket.

  The frown told Andre that the money wasn’t enough. Probably less than half the amount they’d agreed on. The shrug and casual acceptance said that Bob felt lucky to get even that much.

  Setting his expression in its most neutral, pleasant lines, Andre tapped lightly on the window.

  The driver lowered it a fraction. The man next to her, slightly older and much fatter, had gone red. The man in the back seat stared at the floor. The driver showed him a smug face. “Yes?”

  “Let’s see what we can do to get you out of here as quickly as possible.”

  “Would you kindly tell these fourths to move? Taking the surface streets the rest of the way is going to make me late enough without being hung up here too.”

  “How much did you contract for?”

  “Fifty,” she answered, while the man next to her said, “Two twenty.”

  “We paid him fifty,” the driver said. “More than he deserved. This was hardly an entertaining trip.”

  “Excuse me?” Andre said. “You’re downtown. He did his job. Two twenty.”

  The woman looked at the fourths surrounding her car, frowned at Andre, then tilted her eyes upward with a heavy breath. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She reached into her purse and Andre instinctively shied back, but the driver only pulled out a trio of twenty-dollar bills and fed them through the window. “There! Can we go now?”

  “The contract was for two twenty.”

  A murmur went through the crowd of fourths. Bob sidled up to Andre. “I think we should leave it alone,” he said softly.

  Andre kept his face impassive. Allowing his frustration to crack through would tip the balance in the driver’s favor. He’d made himself the spokesman for this group, but what power did they have? He could solve this in seconds by flashing his police credentials, but there was no way to show his shield to the carpool without showing it to the fourths—fourths he needed for information.

  Andre stood his ground. “You owe this man one hundred ten more dollars.”

  “Nobody pays in full in the morning. I am not going to pick him up again.”

  “If you don’t pay this man, you’re not picking up any of us. Did you notice how fast we all got here? Fourths talk to each other. Pay now, or your little carpool is going to be driving through the oh-zone for a long, long time.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not at all. I’m just telling you how it is.” Andre motioned for the other fourths to step away from the car. He spread his hands and waited.

  “No. This isn’t right.”

  “Claire!” the man in the back seat yelped. He reached into his suitcoat, took out a wad of cash and lowered his window. He thrust the money at Bob. “Here. Take it. Can we go now?”

  Bob folded his hand around the bills and they disappeared into his pocket. Claire put the BMW into gear and shouted “Whores!” out the window before driving away.

  Bob watched her go, then shook Andre’s hand. “Thanks, man.” His grip was firm, but an uncomfortable dampness stuck their palms together. Nervous sweat. They’d really gotten to him.

  There were handshakes, pats on the shoulder, and congratulatory wishes from the others. A few of the men spoke to Bob, promising to have lunch soon. Then the fourths dispersed as quickly as they’d arrived. The FIT was over, nothing to see here, time to move along.

  Bob shook his head a miniscule fraction, before smiling at Andre and backing off a step. “That is so solid, what you did for me. I didn’t think I’d see a penny. Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d live.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was smear the queer day.”

  “That’s faked.”

  “I know, but it was an easy hook to hang a robbery on. If it hadn’t been that, I would have been too tall or too white or they wouldn’t like my tie.” Bob looked out to
where the BMW had driven off. “I don’t suppose you got the license plate number?”

  “Of course.” It had been the first thing he’d noted. “GBDD2127.”

  Bob took out his datapad with an apologetic look.

  Andre averted his eyes. “Come on, man. Put it away.”

  “I have to try.” Bob cupped it in his hands and keyed in the information.

  “I don’t care about the tech, I’m saying it won’t do any good.” A fourth’s database of suspect cars was a great idea, but nobody would whip out a pad and cross-check a car’s tag before accepting a ride. Not if he wanted to keep riding.

  Bob stowed the datapad with a sigh. “I should have known better than to get in that car. There was something about it. The men were too twitchy and the driver never bargained. And women—”

  “Always bargain,” Andre finished the sentence with him. “So why’d you do it?”

  “It was already late second rush. The lot where I wait was full of guys.” Bob spread his hands and raised his eyebrows.

  Andre clapped him on the back in sympathy. “Yeah.” Bad luck could strike even first-rate fourths like Bob. That thought, of Bob’s experience and expertise, led him to another. Bob knew things. More importantly, he knew people. Time for some fishing. “Do you think things would be better if we had a union?”

  “That’s what we’re working for.”

  “Let me guess, you’re in the movement.”

  Bob quirked an eyebrow. “All the way up.”

  “Can you get me into the next meeting?”

  Bob waved a manicured hand back toward the fountain. “After the way you handled that FIT, there is no way you’re getting out of it. Come to tomorrow’s meeting. You know the Bank of America on Wilson Street? Nine o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there.” Here was his chance. Bob had made fourthing a lifestyle. Bob was in the union. If anyone was threatening fourths, Bob would know.

  “Can you tell me . . .” Andre trailed off as a green Mustang circled past them, then nosed in at the curb half a block away. “Damn.”

  Bob followed his gaze. “What?”

  “I have to go. Catch you later.” Andre flipped his middle finger at Talic and rushed through the narrow alley between a Jinwon department store and a bank. He came out the other side, saw a Kensington’s across the street, and dashed through the door. Even if Talic circled the block, he wouldn’t know where to find him.