The Neon Boneyard

by Craig Schaefer

  My resolve was a wall with a hundred cracks, the mortar crumbling with every strike of reason. All the same, it held fast, molding itself to the contours of Desi’s face.

  “I’ll think about it,” I told him. That much I could promise.

  He patted my arm and reached behind him, rummaging through one of the storage shelves.

  “Good. Now then. I suspect you received a number of terrible gifts tonight.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “I asked Caitlin if gift giving was appropriate, given your…recent elevation, and she told me about the custom. Sounds dreadful.”

  “It was pretty bad, yeah,” I said. “I now own a tie bar that induces death pooping. I’ve also got a poppet that’ll come alive in the night and eat my eyes if I ever leave its box open. And those are just the good presents.”

  “Allow me to offer a counterbalance.” Bentley handed me a black velvet pouch. I opened it and peered inside. My fingertip poked at a cluster of tiny balls, the size of marbles, rolled from chalky white clay. I felt a grin coming on.

  “Alchemist’s clay? Nice.”

  “I finally found time to whip up a fresh batch,” he said. “Thought you might appreciate having a few to keep on hand for emergencies.”

  I put my arm around him and pulled him into a hug. Bentley’s creations had saved my life inside Eisenberg, covering an escape attempt with clouds of billowing green smoke. Purely defensive, as far as occult weapons went, but essential for those times when you absolutely, positively needed to live and fight another day.

  On the far side of the stockroom, Pixie had set her laptop up on a packing crate. Jennifer, standing at her shoulder, waved me over. I was glad to see them hanging out together. Jen had carried a torch for Pixie for months, not too discreetly, until I found out Pixie wasn’t into the whole amorous-affection thing in any capacity. It didn’t make much sense to me; as far as I was concerned, sex was one of the four essential food groups along with alcohol, red meat, and whatever the fourth one was. Coffee, probably. But that’s the thing about your friends: you don’t always have to understand them, you just have to respect them and love them for who they are.

  Jennifer agreed with that sentiment. She’d waved a white flag on the romantic pursuit and settled into a comfortable friendship, which seemed to suit them both just fine. I ambled over.

  “Your girl’s a genius,” Jennifer told me.

  “Well, I knew that.”

  I squinted at the screen. Pixie was sifting streams of data between three different windows, juggling them back and forth with her mouse, tossing them underhand and doing tricks like a bartender in a tropical tourist trap.

  “Okay,” Pixie said, the words rat-a-tatting as fast as she could think. I always knew she was onto something when she developed motormouth. “Remember how you put me onto Weishaupt and Associates, that phony lawyers’ office?”

  “Sure,” I said. Weishaupt was a shell company with Network ties and fake employees straight from a stock-photo website. They’d been sponsoring the gladiatorial games at Eisenberg, among any number of other dirty deeds, but it was impossible to pin them down. I’d only met one of their alleged lawyers in person, a shyster calling himself Mr. Smith. He came and went like smoke, sticking around just long enough to murder a former drug mule and stage it as a suicide. I got the impression he did that kind of thing a lot.

  “So far, I’ve gotten nada from their company servers. They’re like, Death Star levels of impenetrable.”

  “The first Death Star, which blew up, or the second Death Star, which also blew up?”

  Pixie glared at me over the rims of her Buddy Holly glasses.

  I shrugged. “I’m just saying, as analogies go…”

  She ignored me and typed with one hand, holding up a finger with her other. “But. I started digging into the computers you and Jen liberated from Donaghy Waste Management and probing their Internet traffic.”

  “Liberated? You mean ‘stole,’” I said.

  “No, I mean liberated. I used to go after corporate polluters and pharma companies that ripped off poor people. That was a crusade. By comparison the Network, as far as we can tell, is basically trying to take over the entire planet. That makes this a war. It’s not immoral to steal from the enemy in wartime. That’s called ‘liberation.’”

  I didn’t argue. I was used to Pixie’s mental gymnastics, the moral calculus that let her feel righteous while hanging out with people like us, and I didn’t see a need to fight her on it. The mercenary hacker could wear any halo she wanted, as long as she was on our side.

  “So what did you find?” I asked.

  The columns of numbers froze on her screen. Two of them, framed in white highlights, matched. I knew enough about computers to recognize it as an IP address, the Internet designation that any given server called “home.”

  “If I’m right,” Pixie said, “I found a way to spy on the Network.”

  27.

  “According to the network logs,” Pixie told us, “right about the time you were busy laying waste to the garbage plant—pun intended—a tiny burst transmission passed from Elmer Donaghy’s personal computer to a server—this one—which I’ve already identified as belonging to Weishaupt and Associates. He ran before he had time to purge his records, and the computer kept a copy of the outbound message.”

  I leaned in over her left shoulder. Jennifer mirrored me on the right.

  “What’s it say?” I asked.

  Pixie shook her head. She opened a fresh window, a rectangle filled with random letters and characters.

  “That’s the problem. It was just a single two-hundred-byte text file, which is nothing. Like, your grocery list is probably longer than two hundred bytes. And as you can see, it’s…this. Garbage data. Or it’s supposed to look like that, anyway.”

  She ran her cursor over a string of repeating numbers in the middle of the file, highlighting it.

  “But this isn’t. This numeric string isn’t random garbage. It’s just buried and obfuscated.”

  “Like some kind of code?” I said.

  Pixie nodded. “That’s my guess. You can fit a ton of information in an alphanumeric cypher.”

  “Like, ‘oh no, we’re gettin’ our heinies kicked, send reinforcements,’” Jennifer said.

  “So how does this help us?” I asked.

  “On its own? It doesn’t. But here’s the thing: I think Weishaupt, if it isn’t at the top of the Network, is at least a clearinghouse for signals traffic. Sort of the Network’s central mail room.”

  “With you so far.”

  “If I can crack the code,” Pixie said, “figure out what kind of encryption they’re using, and how to reverse-engineer it, then I can focus on sniffing Weishaupt’s server traffic for anything that matches the same criteria. As it stands, they’re passing massive amounts of network traffic in and out all day long, most of it disguised. These little packets are the needles in the haystack. Learn to spot those needles…”

  “And we can read their mail,” I said.

  “Bingo. Well, not their actual mail, but whatever’s hidden in these messages. And the best part is, it’ll be like the Enigma machine from World War Two: they won’t even know we’re reading their stuff. Heck, I could even spoof messages between Network computers. Maybe send fake emergency messages, or cancel real ones.”

  Progress. Real progress. We needed this.

  “I’m sold,” I said. “So what do you need from us to make this happen?”

  Pixie waved a hand at the screen. “More samples. Hit a Network front, scare them into sending a distress call to Weishaupt, then grab their computers before they can erase anything. Ideally, hit every one of them you can find. The more data I have to work with, the more false positives I can weed out while I’m hunting down the pattern.”

  “Unfortunately,” Jennifer said, “we only found the one. They don’t exactly advertise.”

  I drummed my fingers on the back of Pixie’s ch
air as I considered our options. The fight at Donaghy Waste Management had been a solid victory, for once, but that was where the trail dead-ended.

  “Well, we know Elmer’s going to come back for a rematch,” I said. “He can’t not come after me. Also, he told me about his ‘phase two’ project with the roaches, but without his old safe house—and without the breeding pits—he’s going to have to start from scratch. If we can pick up his scent when he lands in Vegas and keep an eye on him from a safe distance, that’d be our way in.”

  Jennifer gave me a pat on the back. “Looks like you get to be the bait, sugar. It’s your lucky week.”

  I had another slice of cake.

  * * *

  The next morning, reasonably refreshed and with only a mild hangover, I swung by city hall. I wanted to update Mayor Seabrook and see if her attitude on that liquor license was softening any now that we’d delivered some solid results. Also, I needed to know where she stood on this Metro thing. I knew Jennifer had read her the riot act over Commissioner Harding’s impromptu raid at Container Park, but depending on what Gary’s investigation turned up, this situation was primed to go nuclear.

  Bottom line: if some cops were on the Network’s payroll, then some cops were about to disappear. I needed to know she’d yank tight on Harding’s leash to keep him from retaliating.

  The undercarriage of my Elantra had a rattle in it, just persistent enough to be annoying. I parked at the edge of the lot and made a note to run it over to the rental place, maybe see about swapping it out for another set of wheels. And also get my damn Barracuda back, I thought. My car was out there, somewhere, and I tried not to imagine Harmony Black enjoying it. It was like picturing your ex with a new lover.

  The mayor had some new security on the scene: men in severe suits with Secret Service style earpieces, thick white coils snaking down into their starched collars. They stopped me in the hall outside her office door and asked for my bona fides. I told them my name was Emerson and flashed a fake driver’s license to prove it. Two minutes later, they waved me inside.

  “You’re tightening things up around here,” I said.

  I shut the pebbled-glass door behind me. Seabrook was at the credenza, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She paused a moment, pot in hand, then poured a second mug. She slid it across her desk. I took a seat when she did, raised the mug in salute, and had a taste. Her peace offering went down bitter and strong.

  “I hired Tall Pines to coordinate security for the United Conference of Mayors, since it’s outside Metro’s jurisdiction and I don’t know how much I trust the locals in Boulder City.” She paused. “After recent events, not sure how much I trust anyone. This is a shakedown cruise, showing me how they do things. They’re sweeping for bugs this morning. One’s in the bathroom, finishing up.”

  Her sharp glance to the mahogany-paneled door drove the point home: mind my words until the hired help left.

  “Do you trust the commissioner?” I asked her.

  “With my life. I’ve known Earl for twenty years. But men have their pride. Once the news ran with that story about the house party massacre, it didn’t take long for the headlines to turn into ‘Vegas Police Impotent in Face of Drug Crisis.’ He needed a win. For the force’s morale, he said, but…well.”

  “Men have their pride.”

  She sipped her coffee. “Your colleague said I should thank you for some forward momentum in the matter under discussion.”

  “We won a battle,” I said. “The war is ongoing, but the people responsible for recent problems are being dealt with.”

  “That’s what I like to see.”

  I couldn’t say more on that subject until our company left. I heard rustling behind the bathroom door.

  “So, about that other matter,” I said. “The liquor license?”

  “I like what I’m seeing. I’d like to see more of it. You’re on the road to convincing me, Mr. Emerson. I’m just not quite there yet.”

  I had to smile. I’d earned a cup of coffee, but that was where the ride ended for now.

  “You’re no pushover, Mrs. Mayor. I’ll give you that much.”

  “I haven’t held my seat for this long by being an easy touch,” she told me. “But I’m fair. Hold up your end, I’ll hold up mine.”

  “On a side note, extra security or not, I still don’t think you should go to the mayors’ conference.”

  Seabrook was already sorting a stack of paperwork on her desk, the meeting half-dismissed. She opened her top desk drawer and took out a steel-rimmed pair of glasses, polishing them with a cloth as she glanced up at me.

  “That’s nonnegotiable. We need to show a unified front in the face of this epidemic.”

  “The problem with a unified front is that it puts you all in the same place at the same time.”

  “Tall Pines Security is renowned for their skill at managing public venues,” she said. “Also, sweeping for explosives is a specialty. I’ve already considered the risks, believe me, and so have they. Everything is under control.”

  The bathroom door swung open. A short, tow-headed man in a black suit poked his head out, toting an aluminum briefcase.

  “Sorry to interrupt, ma’am, you’re all clear—”

  He froze. So did I. Seabrook’s world may have been under control, but mine spun right out from under me in a dizzying lurch. I knew her hired help. It had been over twenty years since we’d spoken, but I knew him.

  You don’t forget your brother’s face.

  “Um, that—that is—” Teddy stammered, eyes fixed on me while his cheeks went pale.

  Seabrook glanced between us. “Do you know each other?”

  “No,” I said, hoping he could get his act together and follow my lead. “Sometimes people think they recognize me, until they look closer. I’ve just got that kind of face.”

  “Sorry, I’ll get out of your way.” Teddy hustled to the door. “I’ll be outside.”

  That was more for me than for her. I slid my hands down below Seabrook’s line of sight and squeezed my legs to keep myself steady. I couldn’t let myself get distracted, couldn’t let myself care right now. We were alone. Time to tackle the elephant in the room.

  “One other thing,” I said. “About Metro.”

  “Your colleague suggested the possibility that the man who sold that tainted ink is…in a position of public trust.”

  “We’re looking into it now,” I said.

  Seabrook pushed her chair back. She walked to the credenza, her back turned as she prepared a fresh pot of coffee. Her hands worked slowly, deliberate, every movement precise.

  “Earl is loyal to his men, to a fault. And he doesn’t believe in extra-judicial measures.”

  “I understand that,” I replied. “But the people we’re dealing with…they can’t be fought by legal means. And if we do uncover a mole in uniform—or several of them—conventional methods of questioning aren’t going to yield results.”

  She didn’t answer at first. The office fell silent save for the muted clinking of her coffee pot, the burble of fresh water flooding a chamber of glass.

  “Earl won’t get on board with that,” she finally replied. “Which is why, if you need to take aggressive action, you will cover your tracks in a manner that doesn’t point back to you. Or to my office.”

  Green light.

  I finished my mug and pushed my chair back. “Thank you, Mrs. Mayor. We’ll be in touch.”

  She didn’t say goodbye. I’d earned coffee, not pleasantries. And we weren’t friends. I let myself out, nodded to the two bruisers at the door, and made my way back out through the corridors of power.

  My brother was waiting for me on the steps outside, just like I knew he would be.

  28.

  Out in the desert sunshine, Teddy rushed toward me. Then back two steps, bouncing like an overexcited terrier. The look on his face was somewhere between wonder and panic.

  “Dan—”

  I stopped him, fast, and shot a glance over
my shoulder.

  “Emerson. My name is Paul Emerson. Understand?”

  He understood. I walked down the steps and followed the sidewalk at the edge of the parking lot, getting out of the path of foot traffic. He trailed me.

  “I don’t know where to start,” he said.

  I took him in, now that I could think clearly enough to see. He was fit, his broad shoulders holding up more muscle than flab. He’d spent a few bucks on his suit, but not too many, and his shoes were department-store leather.

  I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at his face. That’s where all the bad memories were hiding.

  “I don’t know either,” I said. “I guess I’m sorry. For not keeping in touch.”

  “Me too.”

  Silence fell, as if that was all we had to say to each other. It felt more like I had this torrent of words shoved down in my belly, a giant balloon stuffed with them, jammed up and twisted and knotted, too many to get a single one of them out.

  “I tried to reach out once,” I managed to say. “You were in the military, I guess? Navy?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled, sheepish, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Did a couple of tours to pay for college. Overseas. I would have been hard to reach.”

  “Yeah.” I looked for something to add to that. “Were you on a ship?”

  “Big one. I signed up to learn electronics. Got a little of that, but mostly I got really good at painting and cleaning.” He ducked his head, still looking at me like maybe I wasn’t really there. “Got married when I came home. We spent a few years out in Fort Collins; the company just transferred me to Vegas last month. You, uh…you have a niece. She’s six years old. You want to see a picture?”

  I had a niece. I didn’t expect to get gut-punched out of nowhere, but that did the trick.

  “I’d like that,” I told him.

  He tugged a photo from his wallet. She was gap-toothed with blond pigtails, riding a tire swing and grinning like a loon.