by S. L. Huang
“You might have to remind me,” Arthur said darkly.
I snorted. “Yeah right, Mr. Diplomacy.”
“Maybe usually. But McCabe and I in the same room, it’s a recipe for a fight.” He had stayed standing, and his posture was tense, though I’d assumed that was just because of the entire mess—his guilt and mine, and Rio, and Katrina.
I’d finally texted Checker to ask about Katrina. She was still in the hospital but stable. The intensity of my relief had felt selfish—I hadn’t wanted her death to be on me.
“Don’t tell me the one person we need here is the one person in LA you have a beef with,” I said to Arthur.
He grunted. “We need him. I’m not a child.”
Voices in the hallway. Arthur drew his Glock and slipped to the side; I half raised the PS90 just in case, but I already recognized the blustering ramble of the main talker.
“In here,” I called.
The door opened, and another one of Mama Lorenzo’s private security slid halfway in. “Identify yourself,” he called, over his own weapon.
“We’re with Madame Lorenzo,” I said. “And, uh, her guys. Torvald and company. She’s in the washroom; she’ll be here in a minute.”
There was a brief shuffle in the hallway as someone went to verify this. Torvald must have sent his own people to get McCabe instead of made men from the Family. Smart—if Rio had been tracking any of the other Lorenzos, this wouldn’t have been revealed to them, and in the wake of the attack on her estate, it would keep the internal whispers Mama Lorenzo would have to deal with to a minimum.
Someone called out an “Okay,” and the guy on point nodded and pushed the door the rest of the way open, lowering his weapon. Arthur and I did the same. Another group of troops came in, McCabe in their midst. He was a large, ruddy-faced man clearly used to using his size to intimidate people—fortunately, none of us were people who intimidated easily.
“Hey, whoa,” he said immediately, raising his hands when he saw our guns. He looked askance at one of his escorts. “You telling me they’re on our side?”
“Thought you were all for citizen carry,” Arthur muttered, holstering his Glock.
“As long as they’re the right type of citizens, my man,” McCabe said with a jovial grin, all teeth. “If you’re defending America, I got no complaint. Hey, ain’t this country great? The station owners tell me ‘emergency,’ and here I am. That’s the power of capitalism.”
I preferred the power of firearms myself.
“Now, I know Gabby Lorenzo’s coming,” he continued. The man apparently couldn’t stand not to hear himself talk for more than a few seconds. “I don’t truck with all her goings-on, obviously. But she has money, and money talks. And I’ll admit it, she’s a woman with some grit to her, and I respect that. I respect grit.”
Jesus, this guy was an idiot. Not to mention I didn’t want to know what would happen if Gabrielle Lorenzo heard him call her “Gabby.”
“Now you…” McCabe lumbered into Arthur’s personal space, wagging a finger in his face. “You look familiar. Have we met? Or I could be mixing you all up.” He laughed like it was a joke and clapped Arthur on the back as if he wanted to knock him over.
“We met,” Arthur said. “Several times. Couple decades ago. I worked with Elinor Hershfeld and Diego Rosales.”
McCabe jerked his hand back off Arthur like he’d been burned, his face contorting almost comically. Arthur held his gaze and very deliberately brushed the shoulder of his jacket where McCabe had touched him.
Fortunately, at that moment Mama Lorenzo and her cadre arrived, and everyone shuffled around and went to sit while McCabe made a point of greeting Mama Lorenzo with a loud speech about how good it was to see her again. He kept calling her “Mrs. Lorenzo,” which I’d never heard anyone else do, either. I wondered if it was a deliberate insult or if he was just that ignorant.
I sidled up to Arthur during the momentary chaos. “Really starting this off on the right foot, aren’t you?” I said, keeping my voice low. “What was that about?”
“Neanderthal,” muttered Arthur. “He oughta die or get with the times.”
Great. Arthur springing a secret vendetta on this meeting was all I needed. “You’re supposed to be the person who’s good at talking,” I said tightly. “You know what’s at stake here. Are you going to fuck this up on us?”
He made a sound that was far too noncommittal for my liking, and we followed everyone else to sit at the table. Mama Lorenzo’s security mostly stood behind and around the table, alert set pieces in our ridiculous midnight rendezvous.
“So,” McCabe said. “I hear this is some sort of crisis. You need the McCabe Nation on your side. I’ll need to know everything, of course, so we can fact-check your data—”
Arthur made a little sound in his throat I hoped McCabe didn’t hear.
“—but if it’s good, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve got true patriots on my airwaves, and tens of millions of listeners across this great country. More than all the other programs in the same time slot combined, as I’m sure you know.”
“Uh, sure.” I stumbled to find an opening in his monologue. “That’s why we came to you. And because, uh, the conspiracy crap you’ve been going on about.” I tried to moderate my wording. “Um, people acting against their own interest, that stuff. We know what’s causing it, and we can stop it.”
McCabe leaned back in his chair. “Oh, really?” I thought for a moment he was going to let us respond, but then he started in again. “Because let me tell you, I’ve had investigators out there—”
“Yeah,” I cut in loudly. “Really. But the minute we do stop it, your militia pals and half the organized crime bosses in Los Angeles are all going to start killing each other. We need a spot on your show to tell them not to. And we need it now. When you go on the air in the morning.”
McCabe guffawed.
None of the rest of us moved.
His chuckles died out after a few seconds—he might not really know me or Arthur, but Mama Lorenzo sitting there staring icicles at you was enough to make anybody stop laughing, even someone as weirdly dismissive of her as McCabe seemed to be. “Oh, come on,” he said. “I’ve got a lady of questionable business ethics—no disrespect, Mrs. Lorenzo—and a bleeding-heart liberal activist”—he waved a hand at Arthur, the word “liberal” becoming a sneer—“coming to sit down with me and telling me they can fix everything? Not likely. Where would you have gotten this kind of special knowledge? And why should I grant my airtime, which as you know is a very valuable commodity, to some sort of sentimental plea for goodwill? Real Americans are angry, folks, and they’re angry with good reason, because—”
“Well, Madame Lorenzo owns the company that funds your radio station,” I said, my annoyance rising. “So there’s that.”
“You think you’re going to censor me? The McCabe Nation won’t stand for it. I’ll tell everyone—”
“Whoa, hey,” Arthur said, his soothing calm back in full force.
I slumped in relief. Thank Christ.
“Nobody’s censoring,” Arthur continued. “We’re giving you a scoop, is what we’re doing. As for why a fruity ol’ pinko liberal like me would want to give you the goods, well, I don’t. I don’t like you, Mr. McCabe. But we want the same things for once, and your audience is the folk we gotta reach to stop any fallout when this goes down.”
McCabe harrumphed. “An honest lib. Now there’s an oxymoron.”
“You’ve got nothing to lose,” Arthur went on, before McCabe could start talking again. “Worst that happens is you get a few cooties from other folks’ freedom of speech on your air, but even then, you get to point to us as giving a fair hearing to the other side’s First Amendment rights. So you win anyway. And best case, this is a coup for you—the leader of the American people who solved it all. Trust me, if I could bring this to anyone else I would, but you’re the only one telling the truth to power here. Even I gotta admit it.”
&nbs
p; God bless Arthur. He really was good at this.
I supposed it helped that all of it was actually true. McCabe was the only one. I wondered what that meant for the rest of our news media—or for our opinions of McCabe, come to think of it.
McCabe sat back and folded his hands against his middle. “All right. I’m listening. No guarantees.”
Arthur spun a story similar to the one I’d told Mama Lorenzo, one about subtle leverage and coded language we assured McCabe his audience would understand. “It’s gonna get ’em all back from the brink,” Arthur said. “Then we fix it all, and you get to report on the whole scoop.”
“I can give you a sample of the technology, once we get everything removed,” I said, adding, “Um, both of you,” when Mama Lorenzo turned a burning gaze on me. I’d give them each a mathematically incorrect version of one of the Signet Devices, one no one would be able to make work again. McCabe would report on the truth, all right, but likely nobody would believe him, and somehow we’d figure out a way to convince Mama Lorenzo we’d already brought Malcolm’s killer to justice. Everyone else would comment on the strange dip and resurgence in crime as a random happenstance.
McCabe would be a hero, one who would remain unsung except in the echo chamber of his followers, even after he’d saved all of Los Angeles. The status quo would continue. Everything would go back to normal.
Except for Malcolm. And Katrina. And Miguel and his boys. And all the other people who had died or had their lives derailed because of this.
And me. I wasn’t sure who I would be, tomorrow. Once I gave myself over to Simon …
I didn’t want to think about it.
Arthur outlined the plan. McCabe objected to parts of it. Arthur restated those parts in different words until he agreed. It was impressive: he didn’t try to talk to McCabe like they were friends, didn’t even try to hide his dislike for McCabe’s views. He just … acknowledged the other man’s power, and listened to him bluster and argue where I would have tried to shout him down.
And he got us exactly what we came for.
“You may think I hate people like you, Mr. Tresting,” McCabe said, as they stood. “I don’t. But I love my country, and I have to do what’s best for it.”
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “Me, too.”
“Have your man here at seven,” McCabe said. “I want to interview him. We go live at eight for the morning show, eleven on the East Coast.”
Arthur glanced at me.
“I’ll get him here,” I said.
And I would. Whatever it took.
thirty-two
I NEEDED to hurry. Rio was probably waiting for me with Simon, so the sooner I got this over with, the sooner Rio could rededicate himself to knocking off pieces of the immolating tension he’d plunged LA into.
That we’d plunged LA into.
Instead I drove out to the coast.
The ocean at night is a beautiful thing. I parked at the side of the highway and climbed over the guardrail to sit on the rocky tumble overlooking the beach. The surf rolled in out of the darkness with comforting trochoidal periodicity, the depth and wavelength and breaking pattern outlining the contour of the sea floor. The liquid water spun in never-ending circles as the energy of the waves pulsed through it, stretching into hyperbolic tangents before crashing on the shore as if they had never been.
I sat and watched the numbers furl in and out, the fine spray dampening my face. For the first time in my life, I wanted to call someone just to talk.
But I couldn’t. Arthur had stayed back at the radio station to keep McCabe and Mama Lorenzo monitored, and even I could read how he’d been mired in his own guilt since all this had gone south—he’d listen, but I doubted he wanted to, at the moment. Checker was opposed to what I was doing, full stop. And Pilar …
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how badly I’d messed up my relationship with Pilar.
That left Rio, who not only also wouldn’t approve of what I was doing—in the most violent of ways—but who was the one person in my life utterly devoid of empathy.
Screw it. Maybe that was what I needed right now.
I pulled out my phone.
“Hello, Cas,” Rio greeted me. “Are you on your way?”
I was so angry with him.
“Cas? Are you all right?”
“I’m having trouble…” I said. I swallowed. I don’t want to die.
Rio waited.
“What was she like?” I asked. “Valarmathi?”
Rio considered for a long enough time that I thought he wasn’t going to answer, thought he was again going to tell me I couldn’t know. “Very different from you,” he said finally.
“How?”
“Cas,” Rio said. “I am sorry. I am not certain I am adequate for answering these questions.”
“Please tell me something.”
“She enjoyed books,” Rio said, “and animals. Poetry. Elaborate schemes I am given to understand were practical jokes. She found humor in her surroundings, some of it optimistic, some of it cruel. She was a woman of great conviction; she spoke with passion and laughed with startling frequency. She was also competitive, and persistent—traits you share.”
The only ones, it sounded like. Rio needn’t have worried about my head—his listing was so far off from my reality it sparked no new connection to my misremembered past.
“I really am a different person, aren’t I,” I said.
“Only God can answer that, Cas,” Rio answered. “I do not know if you share a soul.”
Right.
“I don’t remember much of her,” I said. “I remember … how hard she fought. How much she didn’t want to go.”
Standing at the window, pressing one hand to the rain-drenched glass as droplets washed me away.
“I do not believe it will be that way this time, Cas,” Rio said.
“But you don’t know, do you?” I stared out at the black and endless sea. “If he finds me too … damaged, he’ll just—reboot me again, won’t he? Clean up his mistakes.”
The same way I was trying to undo what I’d wrought upon Los Angeles. A hopeless, hypocritical reset button. Erase and try again.
I didn’t want to be reset.
“It is a danger,” Rio said. “But I do not believe it to be a probable one.”
“Would you be able to tell?” I asked.
“Under some circumstances, probably.”
“If I start to go … different…” I stopped.
“Yes, Cas?”
“I want you to end it,” I said hoarsely. “Will you do that?”
“You mean kill you.”
“Yeah,” I said.
The phone was silent. I waited.
“I believe I can promise that,” Rio answered at last.
Some tension inside me unclenched. Perhaps it was simply the notion of having some control, some way.
“I’m coming in,” I said, and turned my back on the crashing waves.
* * *
I ARRIVED back at the apartment where we’d made the phone-hacking devices.
And everything went straight to hell.
Rio and Simon stood up as I came in. And Simon, brilliant people person that he was, took one look at my face and exclaimed, “No! Cassandra, I’m not going to do that!”
Rio glanced between us, in one half second figured out my whole plan, and went for his gun.
I lunged for Simon and tackled him. A shot slammed out over our heads. Rio attempted to adjust his aim but I was in the way now; I kept my body collinear with Simon’s and rocketed up at Rio’s gun hand.
Rio tried to block me and twist around. He was very, very fast—but not faster than mathematical extrapolation. I lurched into where he was going to be and applied the requisite force to either wrench the gun out of his fingers—or break them, if he didn’t let go.
He didn’t let go.
I did, a split second before I snapped his wrist.
I stumbled. My breath heaved. I raised my ha
nds, trying to deny the tremor in them. “What the hell, Rio?”
Instead of pressing his advantage, he’d stopped in midstride, weapon still pointed vaguely toward Simon behind me. A slight frown had appeared between his eyes. “Cas?”
I couldn’t hurt Rio. In the same way I couldn’t seriously hurt Simon.
In exactly the same way.
“Did you know?” I asked. My voice shook.
“No, Cas,” Rio answered. “I … did not.”
“You did this,” I said, my voice raised to accuse the man behind me. “Or you’re doing it, right now.” I honestly couldn’t tell which, but since the latter didn’t make much sense …
Rio didn’t seem to know what action to take. I stayed standing in front of Simon.
The tension in the room teetered on the point of a needle.
“What?” I yelled at Rio. “You don’t want to fight me because—it wouldn’t be fair?” I didn’t even know what I was saying. “Come at me. Come at me!”
“Cassandra, don’t—” gasped Simon. I mule-kicked him without looking, and without moving out of Rio’s way.
“I am unsure of the proper way to proceed,” Rio admitted.
“What else did you do to me?” I screamed, without turning around. “What else?”
Simon coughed wretchedly and didn’t answer.
“Come on, Rio.” I couldn’t seem to stop. “Hit me. Shoot me! I have to be able to fight back then, don’t I? I have to have some control—”
“I am not going to shoot you, Cas.”
“Try!”
Rio lowered his gun. “No.”
I wanted to march over and raise it back up, right at me, and force him to pull the trigger.
I wanted to yank it out of his hands and turn it back on him.
I wanted some modicum of power over my own goddamn mind.
“I’m going to use him to fix Los Angeles,” I said. “I’m going to convince him. That violates every ethical principle you stand for.”
