“Mr. Tien,” I said, sitting down at his table in the back of the empty restaurant where he did the daily books. The warm mid-afternoon sun shone through the thin spots in the faded velvet drapes. “So glad to see you.”
He about died on the spot, not having noticed my entrance. I was good at stealth these days. “Ma’am. What can I do for you?” His hands shook so much the pen he had been holding went flying into the air. I snagged the pen as it went by.
“Someday, I’m going to be coming back to Chicago to live,” I said. “I’d like your family to still be here, safe and sound, when I get back. Is Ying around? I’d like to talk to her and Greg.”
“I, I can call. They are engaged, yes?”
I nodded, and he went and called. In the meantime, Joey drifted by, a big smile on his face. Thirteen now, and his voice had changed. I remained his hero, more so because I was an Arm. He wanted, of all things, an autograph. He promised to keep my identity a secret. I wouldn’t tell him the stories he really wanted to hear, though.
Mr. Tien came back and saw the money I had slipped into his ledger. “Do you know anyone in Houston?” I said. I had weighed my options back and forth for hours. Should I start over in Houston, or should I breech my own security, connect myself to Chicago and use what I had put together here? I could make the argument both ways, but good people were hard to find, especially for legitimate business purposes.
I studied Mr. Tien’s face. He could have made a phone call to the police, but hadn’t. Business with me was lucrative; and since I hadn’t involved the Tiens in any of the darker aspects of my dealings, my business was mostly legal save for the part about who they dealt with. Also, he had seen my fight with the Chimera in his parking lot. A demon I might be, but a friendly demon had potential.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “Cousins.” He immediately understood what I wanted, and why. “You want addresses, phone numbers? You make sure Ying not get in trouble in Houston with this Mr. Petroski she engaged to, yes?”
I nodded.
We talked. I let him vent his frustrations with Greg and the failure of Greg’s gym. He envisioned some rather large positives to getting Greg and Ying out of his hair, mostly on the Greg side of things.
A little over ninety minutes into my meeting with Mr. Tien, Greg and Ying walked in, entering through the gaudy restaurant doors with their carved dragons and peeling paint. Ying, as elegant as I had taught her to be, ran up and gave me a hug, all worried about me, and asking if I was okay and why I had lost so much weight. I smiled and remembered how much I cared for her. She had figured out I was a woman in disguise long before my capture, it turned out. This wasn’t the first time she had surprised me with her nerve and smarts.
Then, oh lord, Greg tried to pull a pistol on me. Here I was reunionizing with Ying, and he decided I would blame him for the gym bankruptcy. Panic, pure and stupid. I removed the pistol from his grasp before he clicked the safety off. “Calm down,” I said. “The past is the past, not worth worrying about. However, if you want another chance at running a gym…well, I’m going to need one in my new home.”
Greg damned near peed his pants. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, reflex, without thinking, his mind still confused by panic. He would get a tag as soon as this meeting ended.
“It’s all right,” Ying said to Greg, with a snap of command and of tone a frustrated exasperation. “Just do what she says and don’t do anything else stupid.”
Greg blinked, said, “Right,” and calmed down.
Well, what do you know. Ying had gotten to Greg. When I thought about those two together, I hadn’t expected she would be the one on top. Greg liked his ladies meek. Or had.
Ying, I decided, was one hell of a lady.
I tagged Greg as soon as I got him out into the parking lot. The tagging went fine, though it felt empty, as if something this significant, with one of my inner circle, should have a little more ceremony. The oddest thing happened afterwards, though.
“Ma’am, what about me?” Ying said.
I blinked. I hadn’t planned to tag Ying. I figured she would follow along with Greg and keep him in line. I certainly didn’t plan to expose her to the serious side of my business.
“What about you?”
“Well, ma’am.” She stopped. Started again. “Don’t you want me to work for you?” She kept her face straight, but she radiated hurt underneath as loud as a siren.
Wonderful. Just wonderful. “Ying,” I said, “Greg may be involved in some things that are a little bit dangerous.”
She tilted her chin up. “So you’ll need help, then. I can help.”
I just looked at her, and gradually her eyes fell. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t want to impose. I’ll certainly do whatever you want me to. I don’t mean to ask for some special role.”
Oh, hell. She worshipped the ground I walked on and here I was rejecting her. Didn’t she understand people shouldn’t want tags? That tags were something I forced on them against their will?
I sighed and touched her head. I had never been able to resist her. “I supp–”
The juice moved before I even got the words out. I blinked again and she smiled, and then gave me a huge hug. “Oh, thank you! Thank you! You won’t regret this, I promise.”
Dammit! I hated when the juice did things on its own. It made me feel like a puppet instead of a human being with free will. I smiled down at her, though. How could I do otherwise?
Her personal devotion reminded me of Ann Chiron, Focus Rizzari’s Transform anthropologist, and the way Ann interacted with Lori. I bet Ying would chew the crap out of me if she thought I got out of line, and worship the ground I walked on all the while.
This had to be a variant on my predator effect, this version working more like Focus charisma. However, I wasn’t a classical beauty, and I didn’t have a melodious voice, though I swore both my looks and my voice had been slowly improving over time. This wasn’t my ‘go take a flying leap’ command charisma, either. This aspect of my charisma was seductive, but not sexually seductive. I was a pillar of strength that others, some others at least, wanted to follow.
I liked this particular Arm talent just fine.
“Ying,” I said, changing dozens of pages of plans in the blink of an eye. “You and Greg are going to put together a gym in Houston. You’ll be dealing with an ally of mine, a Focus Laswell, and you’re going to treat her right.” Not that Thelma needed any protection from anyone except the predators. She had straightened out Rogue Focus’s captive Focuses with ease, and those two were now functional members of the new Houston order, nicely under Thelma’s wise leadership. “Plus, I’ve got some other stuff I’m going to give you besides.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ying said, as we all piled into my car. Greg nodded. He respected me, but he still worried. His biggest worry? He feared I would demand to sleep with him and mess up his relationship with Ying. Interesting. I kept running mental notes, for my project for Keaton regarding people control. Chapter exityex – how to control people by not sleeping with them. Good for at least one raised eyebrow and perhaps a ‘huh’.
“You two are going to find a place for me to live in Houston. I’m too busy to do this in person.” For one thing, I had a bunch of money to steal to finance this whole mess. Despite Keaton’s newstolen wealth, none would be flowing my way. “You’ll end up dealing with other people in my organization as well. Legitimate types. You won’t know their real identities, and you shouldn’t try and find out.” I didn’t need Frances anymore; she would be working for Zielinski now. I suspected Zielinski and Ying would be working together, at least to start with. He could teach Ying a lot about running shady operations.
“Of course,” Ying said, all ready to take charge and carry out my wishes. I had a lieutenant. A legitimate, loyal lieutenant, one who would be happy working for me. I shook my head and marveled as we worked out the details of how the money for the gym would appear out of nowhere.
---
“Buy the damned
house,” I said, to Ying. I was more than ready to be out of this claustrophobic little hole of a hotel room with its stinks and cramped quarters. I knew, intimately, every stain on the carpet and every nick in the sink. If I didn’t get out of here soon I would do something drastic.
“Using all our tricks, ma’am?” Ying said. She was surprised. The tricks consisted of an intricate web of money connections, through her extended family, tricks I hoped the authorities would never be able to figure out. I was having trouble, myself, and I was the one who had set up half of them.
“Yes,” I said. Ying smiled.
“We have the gym equipment from Chicago now,” Greg said, and spread the paperwork out on the small hotel table. The equipment was being stored in a local warehouse in Houston. “However, you need to take a look at the latest models…”
I patiently looked over the latest models. Greg was a sucker for ‘new’ and this year’s improved gym equipment was out. I approved too many of them, alas. I was a sucker for the stuff as well.
“So,” I said. “How soon can I move into my new house?”
“Tomorrow,” Ying said. “The house has been on the market for nine months, vacant, and the sellers were getting desperate. I arranged things so you can move in early.” Ying had the bright idea of going through her local relatives for ideas and had discovered a large market in Houston for cash-only housing deals the local property tax collectors didn’t need to know too much about.
Anticipation grew. Houston was already mine, but I would feel much better if I owned where I slept at night.
Rolling Balls
(Henry Zielinski’s POV)
“I’m yours,” Zielinski said as Carol entered his motel room. He had taken to reaffirming the tag after every multi-day separation from Carol. One of Carol’s new people, a young oriental woman, studied the tableau with far too much interest. Carol was living in a quickly acquired Houston home, her new lair. Delivery people were stacking the new furniture for the place in boxes out front.
“You’re mine.”
Carol introduced him as Doctor Frank Madison, a man of many names, to Greg and Ying, who had left their last names behind. These two were inner circle people who knew Carol as an Arm. They appeared to be at least a step up from Fred Raindorf, Ricky Sanchez and Frances Casaubon. Thank heavens.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked Carol, once the introductions were over.
She licked her lips and paced the room. “Start the on-the-ground planning on the research center. We’re going to start moving on it within two weeks. Help me figure out what’s going on in the Transform community. We’ve upset a lot of apple carts with what we’ve done here and I don’t know the details. Oh, and we need to set aside a bunch of time for you to run me through your tests. I got dipped in shit again during the fight, the usual, and it’s time to see what stuck to me this time.”
Carol was back at full Arm speed, the immediate aftereffects of the Rogue Focus fight completely gone. “So Houston’s now officially yours?”
She nodded. “Yes. I finally have a real territory again. You would not believe how good this makes me feel.”
“You and everyone around you,” a soft voice said. Startled, Zielinski turned and found Gilgamesh in the hotel room with them. He had been sitting on a hotel bed the entire time. Reading. Technical documents for electronic devices, it looked like. Zielinski wasn’t sure how he had missed the Crow. “Pardon, but Arms do share with Crows the need for a good place to call home.”
Carol laughed. “4 PM in the warehouse, Hank. For the tests?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
---
“I’m surprised Hancock’s willing to let you talk to me,” Tonya said.
“Phone conversations only; she’s convinced I’m the only one of us who can handle you without knuckling under or dropping into a stalk,” Hank said. “I’m calling for several reasons. First, I’d like to formally pass along to the Focus Council that Arm Hancock has declared a territory in southeast Texas. If you need to contact her on official business, the contact should come through Arm Keaton.”
“The Council won’t accept any such restriction, Hank,” Tonya said. “They’ll demand to deal with her directly.”
“This is your prerogative, certainly, but proper dealings with the Arm organization requires you accept their internal rules of organization, not just your own.”
Tonya didn’t respond. This wasn’t good. He had gotten the opinion the Council had matured regarding its dealings with the Arms. He hadn’t expected Tonya to be one of the holdouts. “The other reason I called was to get your opinion and the Council’s opinion about the recent events in Houston.”
“You know the drill, Hank,” Tonya said. She snorted. “We’ve already decided that our official opinion, should anyone bother to ask, is that the events in Houston happened without Council approval and we are opposed to any future activities of that kind. We all know Focus Northwest Region President Fingleman approved the action ahead of time and is quite pleased with the results.” The last sentence practically came with spit attached. “Hank?”
“Yes?”
“Focus Fingleman is not my friend, nor is she Hancock’s,” Tonya said. Dark emotions leaked through the phone, causing him to shiver. No, Tonya wasn’t at all happy. “She’s one of the ones who leaned on the Council to get the FBI to capture Hancock. She’s specifically the one who forced the other first Focuses to trap me in a no-win situation when I was sent in to clean up after Focus Teas’ mess. She’s even now tacitly supporting negotiating an end to the Rizzari Rebellion, trying to talk up acceptance of a majority of Rizzari’s points of contention, and replacing me on the Council with Rizzari.”
There had to be a way to defuse this needless fracas. A negotiated end of the Rizzari Rebellion would be good news, dammit. “Tonya, you need to look at this from the Arm perspective,” Hank said. “Carol knows your opinions about Focus Fingleman, but the Arms’ goal is to no longer be hunted and hassled. If what it takes to secure their goal is doing business with a powerful Focus who’s dealt with them badly in the past, then that’s what’s going to happen. But you of all people shouldn’t mistake doing business for alliance.”
“It would be foolish of you, and Hancock, and Keaton, and Lori to continue with what you’re doing. You’re making powerful enemies who won’t back down from a fight.”
“The last thing we want to be doing is making any enemies at all,” Hank said. “If anything, we’re interested in making friends and helping the Network recover from…”
Tonya hung up the phone the instant he said the word ‘Network’.
That didn’t go well. No, not at all.
---
“Yes?” Zielinski said, looking up from the architectural plans of three of the places he was considering for the research facility. Frances slipped him a note saying ‘Caller, male, no name’. He walked over to the hotel phone in the room he shared with, alas, Fred Raindorf, and picked up the phone that lay on the low dresser beside the bed. At least Fred spent most of his time elsewhere.
“Hello?”
“I hope you don’t mind the phone call, but I was able to bargain for this phone number from Hephaestus. My name is Shadow.”
Zielinski sat up straight and pulled out his notepad. Shadow! He had been trying to find a way to contact the Crow Guru who taught Gilgamesh, Sinclair and the others for months. “I’m currently working under the name of Doctor Frank Madison, but I’m still answering my Crow correspondences as the Good Doctor.”
“Yes, of course,” Shadow said. “I’m afraid I must pass along a warning as well as ask for information.”
“A warning?”
“Yes. Although I have no problems with what transpired in Houston, I’m afraid certain other senior Crows are not of the same opinion. I’m not sure how far your group can continue along the road you have been traveling without attracting negative attention and action. I must also admit that I and your friend, Occum, have r
eceived identical warnings. Furthermore, Hephaestus has been told he will lose his Guruhood if he participates in any more large scale activities such as what just happened in Houston.” Zielinski wasn’t sure who was worse, the senior Crows or the first Focuses. They were running a damned annoyance race.
“I recently learned it isn’t wise to present challenges of that sort to the Arms,” Zielinski said. Carol had practically bitten his head off when he reported his conversation with Tonya, and was muttering about learning to fly F-4 Phantom jets just so she could steal one and bomb Tonya’s household into rubble. He hadn’t been able to calm Carol at all. “I recently had a similar conversation with a Council Focus, one that didn’t go well when I relayed the conversation to the Arm. You might want to consider that if the hand of friendship is shot at, it won’t be extended again.”
Shadow chuckled. “I feel the same way. I personally approve of what your group is doing and I’m doing my best to support it, in a safe and politic way. I believe the other senior Crows are acting like fools. However, it would be remiss of me not to pass along the warnings of the other senior Crows to those I consider my friends.”
Well, this was a surprise, a very direct statement from a Crow who had a reputation for reticence and hesitation. “Thank you, then, sir,” he said.
“You are quite welcome. Unfortunately, I must press on to a more difficult topic,” Shadow said. “Several of my students have recently relocated to the Houston area, one of whom who is stuck on an uncompleted mission of moderate import. I was wondering if I could draw on your knowledge of my students’ doings, as they hold you in high regard.”
“Certainly, Guru Shadow,” Hank said. He got out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘Moderate import’ his ass. Shadow wanted the information on Gilgamesh’s completed mission; as Shadow was one of their prime suspects, Zielinski would need to obfuscate to an unusual extent. He did owe Shadow, as Shadow had been the one who had helped him the most while he was in the Addison.
The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Eight Page 2
