The Solid-State Shuffle (Sunken City Capers Book 1)

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  "Ugh!" Puo stomps out.

  I peek at the two as they leave and see Winn give me a morose look and shake his head as he follows Puo out into the world. Then again, maybe getting zapped didn't clear up anything.

  I pick up my coffee and head upstairs to get started.

  * * *

  I'm running support for Puo and Winn from an upstairs bedroom we converted for the purpose.

  The room is plain by the rest of the house's standards: bare wooden floors with two vents near the lone window, faded daffodil-colored painted walls with wide wooden baseboards, regularly spaced, matching flat wall trim running vertically up three-quarters of the way to a trim that wraps the room. The pattern is only briefly interrupted by a built-in closet. It gives the plain room a very Tudoresque feel.

  The inside wooden shutters on the lone window are closed and there's a black four-panel room divider in front of it. That way, the window looks like it's open from the street. Nothing says "I'm up to no good" like an aluminum-foiled window.

  I have a second cup of coffee next to me, a couple of old-school flat-screen monitors up and running in front of me on two square foldout tables and a comm-link in my ear. Puo's always preferred the old-school monitors, the physical ones over the float screens. He says it's far more satisfying and useful to be able to slam his finger against a screen to point to something or sort through some code.

  "How we doin' boys?" I ask. I'm tempted to return all the favors of Puo messing with me over the comm-link, but Puo was pretty tight when he left, so I'm being nice.

  "Fine," Puo says.

  "You'd think the computer science building would look tech-ier," Winn says. "The glass door entrance is rather plain."

  They're entering the computer science building now—Winn knows what he's about. Trained him well, I did.

  I swivel in my chair and bring up the camera in the lobby. Didn't even need to hack in. Everything's on the internet. Want to come visit the University? Come online and look around. Nervous parent? No worries. Click here and see if your screaming primate child is going to class.

  I love academics. Bunch of shmucks.

  "All right," I say, "I got both of you. Puo, try and loosen up, it looks like you're trying to fart out long-stemmed roses."

  Winn remains straight-faced, while Puo makes a face somewhere between annoyance, nervousness, and trying to fart long-stemmed roses.

  Puo looks the part of a college student with jean shorts, flip-flops that have his footprint permanently embossed on them in dirt, and his loose deep-blue buttoned down shirt. He even has a dilapidated maroon and black backpack that's carrying the external drive and two squeegees in it.

  Winn on the other hand is dressed as a professor type in midrange expensive clothes like tan dockers and a white buttoned shirt with a stitched logo over the left chest. But true to the rushed, absentminded-professor style, neither fits his muscled frame quite right and he's wearing a shiny black belt with roughed-up brown shoes and white socks.

  The lobby is a cubic space, open to the three stories above it and covered in a well trodden blue-green carpet. Pale wooden tables are pressed up against the edges, and students sit with their tablets and laptops, presumably studying—I don't have any audio, except what I have through Winn and Puo. But the students don't appear to be talking much. Or interacting.

  "I'll lose sight of you once you enter the hallway," I say. While the university helpfully stuck a camera in the lobby, they didn't stick any others anywhere in the building. Can't hack into things that don't exist.

  Winn and Puo cross the center of the lobby, walking toward the camera. The dead room is off the main hallway, below where the camera is perched.

  "Did you remember your I.D., Blade?" Winn asks. "There'll be someone sitting at a desk outside the lab, checking us in."

  "I remembered," Puo says, keeping his gaze straight ahead. Then he adds, "Professor Cuddle Bumpkins."

  "Uh," Winn stammers. "I've told you before Blade, please call me Professor Thorton when in public—" They both disappear out of my view into the hallway. Winn drops his voice to a whisper, "That other name is only to be used in private, my little love puddle."

  "As you wish," Puo says. "My velvety snuggle sausage—"

  "Hey," Winn says in surprise. "Where are you going?"

  "Abort," Puo says. "Abort."

  "Love Puddle," I cut in. "What's going on?"

  Puo says in a low voice, "Tweedledee on the register. Tweedledum at the marina."

  Damn. Why can't anything ever be easy?

  "What?" Winn asks in a huff.

  I explain, "Lobby girl from the marina is the check-in girl for the dead room."

  I concur with the order. "Abort."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PUO AND WINN HAVE returned to the house, tails tucked between their legs. We congregate in the kitchen again—I really need to deck out this house properly. I'd like to use the upstairs library with a bay window, but all the empty built-in shelves just distract me.

  The shutters on the double-hung windows above the kitchen table are closed again, even though the room faces west and doesn't get the morning sun. It strikes me then just how often those and other windows are closed more than they're open. They make the kitchen, the house, feel small, closed in. And we're almost always here.

  Until the new headquarters is properly set up, there's no division of work and home. No place to let your guard down, to be more open, just a tiny bit. Work requires those shutters to be closed.

  "Isa," Puo says, breaking my train of thought. His voice is higher than normal, and faster. He sits at the round kitchen table up against the wall, hunched over with his hands on the table in front of him. "What are you thinking?"

  I inhale slowly through my nose, feel the slightly stale air from the closed windows fill my chest. Despite the stuffiness, it feels real, solid. I exhale slowly out of my mouth. "This is the only dead room?"

  Puo nods. "Certainly the most accessible one."

  "We'll have to pull a job—" I start to say. It'll be easy at a University.

  Winn, still in his professor clothes and leaning up against the white marble countertops opposite me, shakes his head and breaks in. "Why do we have to pull a job here?" he asks.

  His tone instantly annoys me. "We need to know what's on that external drive—"

  "So," Winn speaks over me, "why can't we just try again? She can't be the only check-in girl."

  I'm silent—I can't think how to respond to that.

  Puo leans back from the table at the suggestion. "Isa," he eventually says, "close your mouth."

  Chagrined, I oblige. Just try again. It's so stupid it's practically novel.

  And then Winn goes and ruins it with, "I don't understand why we have to make everything so complicated." His voice is rising. "Constantly do things illegally. We have modified citizen chips now, we should—"

  "We'll do it your way," I cut in, my voice tight. I want to scream at him not to lecture me. "But first, we'll figure out check-in girl's schedule and find a time she has class elsewhere."

  "I'll go take care of that." Puo gets out of the chair with a creak and heads out.

  Me and Winn are alone again. Great. I make to follow Puo.

  "Isa—" Winn says in that same lecturing tone.

  I round on him. "Ya know, I don't mind suggestions, but either do it playfully or neutrally, not this self-pompous windbag crap—"

  "Crap," Winn says. "Is this all I am?"

  "What is going on with you?" I ask, frustration beginning to take over.

  "You hold me on the outside," Winn says forcefully, standing up straighter, dropping his arms from being crossed in front of him. "You and Puo form this singular unit where there's no room for me—"

  I can only shake my head at him. "There's room for you!"

  "No, there isn't. "

  "We're sleeping together," I counter, getting pissed off. "We pull jobs together. Jobs we can't pull unless you're there—"


  "That's all I am to you! A toy and a means to an end!"

  Patently untrue. But I don't know what to say to him. This conversation is coming out of nowhere.

  When I don't say anything, Winn continues, his voice no less heated, "It's like you and Puo have a secret language, your own damn vernacular, that you refuse to give me the decoder for. 'It's a rager,' 'Tweedledee on the register,' 'going cross-town.' Whenever anything goes wrong, Puo is the one you seek out. You talk to him first, you decide things with him first. I'm an afterthought."

  "We've been together a long time," I say quietly. Puo is like my brother, but closer, much closer. I'm not going to ever cut him out for any man.

  I think Winn sees the darkness of my face because he quickly backpedals. "I'm not saying to interact with Puo less. Just include me more."

  "And this will clear up your—" I was about to say mansies, but think better of it. "—issues?" I was also about to tell him we could go to the gag-inducing neighborhood party. But I made that decision based on talking with Puo. Would that upset him more?

  "It'll help," he says. And then adds, "I think."

  "You think?" I can't help but asking, annoyed.

  "Yeah, Isa! I think! It'll help. But don't you ever just stop and think where we're going—"

  Ugh!

  "Where are you going?" he calls after me as I flee the kitchen before I really say something I shouldn't.

  Anywhere but here. "To see if Colvin's left a message for us."

  * * *

  When Colvin contracted me to look into this mess, we agreed on an intermediary to send messages between us. Colvin didn't ask for my comm-link—he's too business savvy to understand how that would raise my hackles.

  Hayes on the other hand is a combination of stupid, cocky and rude. It galls me that we're going to have to work with that prick. But after my fight with Winn, I'm almost hankering to put Hayes in his place.

  I land the Pelican in a garage on East Prospect Street on the Center Island. Seattle Isles Total Fitness is my destination, a Colvin-owned enterprise. He has his hands in all kinds of things, I assume for laundering purposes. But what do I know? Based on all the minivan and SUV hovercars parked here with my-kid's-better-than-yours bumper stickers, maybe it's even profitable.

  A fitness class of some kind must've just let out since a group of women ranging from twenties to forties-pretending-to-be-thirties come out of the building past me. They're still wearing their gym gear to make sure the world knows they work out. They chatter at each other, not really listening, just waiting to one-up the other person.

  I'm wearing loose, ripped-up jeans that my left knee sticks out of, and an apricot-colored T-shirt. I should fit right in at the gym.

  The midmorning sun is up, steamy and reflecting off the glass building in front of me. The pearl necklace rests hotly against my chest, which only festers my frustration at Winn.

  I break through the middle of the exiting women like a bowling ball. Most scatter; those that don't get hit with real muscled shoulders, not those fake, "toned" bony shoulders they sport around.

  "Hey!" one of them shouts. "Watch where you're going!"

  I'm already past them as I hear them as a group stop and shuffle around to watch me.

  I flick them off over my shoulder without looking back.

  "I'm going to talk to management!" that same voice calls out. "If you're a member I'll have you thrown out—"

  I raise my other hand for a double-handed salute.

  Winn wants to be part of this faux world? These trite, soulless parasites who care more for appearance and status than actually enjoying anything in life?

  I'm practically seething as the glass doors slide open at my arrival. I drop my hands as the cool air-conditioned air washes over me, and I become aware that the treadmills in the gym face toward the street and that all the running gerbils watched my bowling act coming in.

  Oh, well.

  I walk up to the olive-colored lobby desk topped with gray granite, which makes a large circular island near the front. There's enough room in the center for three different check-in people, desks, and printers.

  Apparently, all three people saw my little act walking in as well. The lone guy, a physically fit, attractive African-American man, but in a ridiculous pale-blue loose muscle shirt, walks over and asks me guardedly, "Can I help you?"

  "Yes," I say, reciting the code phrase, "I received a coupon in the mail. It told me to ask for Ms. Anglin."

  "I see ..." he says.

  There's a second silence filled with the clinks of weights hitting together, the scuffs of shoes against the rubber floors, the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the treadmills. The sounds echo off the large, warehouse-like ceiling.

  I think gyms always put in large ceilings in the hope that the stink rises up and away from people's noses. If that's true, muscle-man here and company failed. It smells like sweaty people and the chemical solution they constantly wipe everything down with to try and prevent giving each other rashes.

  Muscle-man continues, "If you would like to step into my office, we can go over the various membership options."

  "That'd be great." I smile. "Do you offer complimentary donuts?"

  * * *

  About forty minutes later, I stand on an empty floor of One Fritz Tower waiting for Colvin to show up. Forty minutes. Forty, freaking, minutes.

  I've only been waiting about ten minutes in the tower, but I hate waiting. The attractive African-American muscled goober actually forced a tour on me after delivering Colvin's message to meet. And then the muscled goober actually went over the options. "Appearances must be maintained, Ms. ... ?" he had said. I just gave him the finger. So now I'm "Ms. Finger" to him.

  That took close to twenty minutes. I spent another ten minutes getting here. So now I pace on the empty floor with empty cubicles half-heartedly scattered around the floor. Loose wires in the cubicles poke out, waiting forlornly to be connected so that the floor can be filled with poor human beings getting their souls sucked out. The whole floor is ringed with floor-to-ceiling windows. It's like the building designers wanted the poor soulless workers to see freedom just outside, but make it unattainable, use it to crush them into the cogs management wants them to be to get rich off of.

  The elevator dings, drawing my attention. The polished nickel doors slide open and out steps Christina Chavez followed by James Colvin.

  "For someone so cagey," Colvin says as he walks over, "you do manage to make an impression." To emphasize the point he flicks me off with a glance asking what that was about.

  I shrug an answer.

  Colvin is wearing the full power suit this time in a dark navy-blue suit coat and all. Normally, I'd give that suit a little more consideration, but it's Christina who's arresting my immediate attention.

  She's wearing a fitted pinstriped black suit coat over a darker black satin buttoned shirt with the top two buttons left undone. Her straight-legged, pinstriped matching pants travel all the way down her long legs and end in four-inch black strappy open-toed heels. But the most defining feature of her appearance is the pair of black evening gloves she's wearing that extend up past the cuffs of her suit coat.

  I always seem to be underdressed with these people.

  Colvin pulls my attention back to him, "We'll need a new way to pass information."

  "Why?" I distractedly ask. There's something about the way Christina is moving that is pinging my instincts.

  "That woman you bowled over is Caprice Dubos," he says, like I should know that name. When I look at him blankly, he says, "Never mind. Someone with enough social currency and ability to squawk, that it's just easier to tell her we banned you than to remind her we're an independent business."

  "Didn't imagine you for a placater," I say. Christina's heels aren't clicking on the floor in the normal staccato rhythm of a person walking.

  "Learn to pick your battles." Colvin comes to stand opposite me and slides his hands in his pockets. His dark brown eyes reg
ard me. "Come, let's talk." He pulls one of his hands out and holds it up like a traffic cop for Christina to stay put.

  We walk away from the elevator deeper into the haphazard cubicle maze.

  "So, what can you tell me so far?" Colvin asks.

  Right to business. "That you haven't been entirely truthful with me," I say. We turn left past some large cubicles designed to hold four people—bad enough to be in a cubicle, but to have to share? I think I throw up a little in my mouth at the thought.

  "Why in the world would you expect me to be truthful?" His dark eyes pry further into me, as if he's surprised I would expect him to be.

  I stare right back at him. "If you tell me to recover a brown cuddly-wuddly teddy bear—"

  The corners of his mouth quirk.

  "—I will spend a lot of time looking for a brown cuddly-wuddly teddy bear. That's time wasted I could've used to find your hot-pink cuddly-wuddly teddy bear. And several nights you go without cuddly-wuddly."

  "What," he says tightly, "have you learned?"

  "Look—" I can't help myself. "—I don't judge what other people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, or what they choose or choose not to sleep with—"

  He stops his slow walk and stares at me until I shut up. "You are a trial," he says and exhales out of his nose.

  "It's purple isn't it?" It slips out of my mouth before I can think to stop it. Whoops. Based on his face—too far. I hurry to say, "Never mind. You take Valle's boat out to the site, not your own. Why?" Until I know who is setting us up, I'm not going to reveal any more of our hand than we absolutely have to—to anyone.

  Colvin slips his hands behind his back and stares at the blue-gray carpet for several steps while he thinks. Eventually he says, "My yacht has been inexplicably inoperable the past few times."

  Well that point's confirmed. "Sabotage?" I ask. It has to be based on the discrepancy in the maintenance records.

  "I think so," he says.

  "That's why Rodrigo's on the list, isn't it?"

  "There are a number of people who could be responsible for the damage to my boat, but only a handful know my schedule."