No Good Deed

by Victor Gischler

They moved fast down the sidewalk. Francis recognized where they were now and thought they were headed toward a subway station. And then what? Where was she taking him? If she thought he’d just blindly accompany her to—

  The squeal of tires and the roar of an engine drew Francis’s attention. His head snapped around to see a black sedan rounding the corner behind him. It gunned the engines again, bearing down with alarming speed.

  “Run!” The girl sprinted ahead, not even waiting to see if Francis followed.

  He chased after her without thinking, pain flaring in his knee. He ignored it, but the howl of the engine filled his ears as if the sedan were right on his heels.

  The girl cut right suddenly, blazing down a narrow alley, and Francis almost tripped over himself trying to keep up with her.

  They fled together past trash barrels and high brick walls.

  Francis chanced a glance over his shoulder. More squealing tires as the sedan fishtailed into the alley. It was a narrow fit, about six inches of clearance on each side of the car. The sedan smashed into the trash barrels, crunch-popping them out of the way. A stab of fear spurred Francis faster. When was the last time he’d run this fast? High school gym, maybe. The sedan was close enough; Francis could see it was the bald one driving. In five more seconds, the sedan would run them both down.

  They sprinted past a large Dumpster. Even with death bearing down on him, part of his brain noticed something odd about the way the Dumpster sat, an odd angle, like the back of it had been jacked up or something.

  The girl reached for a thin length of rope dangling from the Dumpster’s side and shouted, “Keep going!” right before giving it a yank. There was a metallic tunk, and the Dumpster began to roll. Francis ran past just in time to avoid getting clipped.

  The Dumpster rolled into the path of the sedan. The car slammed on the brakes but too late. It plowed into the Dumpster, the impact making Francis flinch, a calamity of mangled metal. The Dumpster and sedan made a wedge in the narrow space. The car revved its engine, tires smoking, trying to bully its way past the Dumpster, but it was stuck tight.

  Francis realized he was just standing there, gawking at the spectacle. The girl was still running, almost at the far end of the alley. Francis sped to catch up. At the end of the alley, he spotted the subway stop across the street.

  Instead of heading for the crosswalk, she dodged cars, horns blaring, and made it to the other side, Francis still in tow. They flew down the stairs and through the gate, hitting the platform right as the C train was pulling into the station.

  “You still live at a that place on 105th?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  They boarded the train heading uptown.

  Francis latched on to a pole, chest heaving as he sucked breath, his shirt pasted to him with cold sweat. “What the fuck?”

  The girl didn’t offer a reply.

  “You know where I live?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where I work?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Probably better that way.”

  4

  Cavanaugh sat at the back table of a dank saloon with his two bruiser sidekicks. He held a ziplock baggy of crushed ice on the wrist the bitch had cracked with the fire extinguisher. That shit fucking hurt. He couldn’t bend the wrist for an hour.

  The one with the shaggy mustache sat with his head back, wads of torn paper napkin shoved up each nostril. Dried blood caked his mustache.

  “Jesus, Ike, what the fuck are you shooting for?” Cavanaugh said to the bald one. “That brings the authorities ten times faster. You know that.”

  “I didn’t want him to get away.”

  “Idiot.”

  Ike shrugged and took a swig of beer.

  “You need to stop telling people you’re a cop,” said Shaggy Mustache. With the busted nose, it came out You deed do dop delling beople dou’re a gop. “And definitely don’t use your real name, for Christ’s sake.”

  Cavanaugh frowned. “Fuck you, Ernie.”

  “Not cool, man.” Nod cool, ban.

  “Damn it, we were so close,” Cavanaugh said.

  “She’s slippery.” Ike waved at the girl tending tables to bring him another.

  It was a local place, and the after-work crowd had been slowly filtering in since Cavanaugh had arrived. They’d abandoned the stolen sedan, disappeared into the subway, and come back up to sunlight eight stops later. They’d slipped into a nondescript watering hole where Cavanaugh had thrown back three shots of Wild Turkey in ninety seconds, trying to numb his hurt wrist from the inside. Ike had chugged a beer, and Ernie had just sat there and groaned, prodding delicately at his flattened nose.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Cavanaugh said.

  Neither Ike nor Ernie commented. Cavanaugh’s outburst could have meant anything. Maybe he didn’t like the décor of the saloon, or maybe they were on the verge of nuclear holocaust. Who knew?

  “I’m going to have to call him,” Cavanaugh said.

  They still said nothing.

  Cavanaugh took out his phone and stared at it without dialing. He did not want to make this call. It would basically be saying that he couldn’t handle the job. But if he waited and then shit got out of hand, it would be much worse. Better to eat a big slice of I fucked up pie now than face the chop later.

  “Yeah.” Cavanaugh sighed. “Yeah, I definitely need to call him.”

  “Then fucking call him.” Den fugging gall him. “That’s Bryant’s job to coordinate us.”

  “I don’t mean Bryant,” Cavanaugh said.

  Ike froze, his beer mug halfway to his face. “No, man, don’t. Come on.”

  Cavanaugh shook his head, started dialing.

  Ernie groaned.

  Cavanaugh didn’t have the kid’s direct number, so really he did have to call Bryant after all.

  * * *

  Technically, Reggie Bryant was always on duty. If the call came in the middle of the night, an alarm would buzz him awake, and he’d roll out of bed and take his station in the next room.

  His “station” was an enormous semicircle of a desk, surrounded by twenty computer monitors.

  Reggie Bryant was plugged into the world like nobody else in history.

  Okay, maybe the NSA. Or the Pentagon. Maybe. He could surely give those agencies a run for their money. Why not? Reggie Bryant had the best equipment money could buy. The best access money could buy. The best influence money could buy.

  It helped that it wasn’t Reggie’s money. Oh, yeah, he was paid well.

  But not that well.

  So at anytime, anywhere, Reggie Bryant was on call. He’d been promised the budget to train an assistant to take the overnight hours, but the enterprise hadn’t yet progressed that far. For now, Reggie was the whole show.

  And what was Reggie’s job?

  To assimilate and coordinate the entire world into information that was useful to his boss, to route it to those who could most effectively use it to his boss’s benefit. He was the gatekeeper of the information superhighway, the traffic cop at the intersection of ten billion avenues of data.

  So, yeah, no stress at all.

  Although in truth, the computers did most of the work. The new algorithm was a miracle to behold. When the calibrations were complete and the parameters fully in place, the system might not actually need Reggie at all.

  Not that Reggie would mention this. He liked job security.

  By all normal ways of measuring, Reggie was a genius, but the team who’d developed the algorithm were in a completely different category of brainpower. They’d integrated the algorithm with all the other analytical software. It was almost intuitive, teaching the other programs how to talk back to it, how to recognize what it valued and facilitate the flow of information and analysis that the algorithm required. It was almost as if the new algorithm enslaved all other programs, but not through any kind of brute force one usually ass
ociated with hacking and infecting.

  It was more like a seduction.

  Reggie’s old Caltech computer professors would have frowned and tsked at such fanciful notions, but the next generation of programmers would need to think this way. Creativity and imagination would need to blend with cold logic. The entire industry was on the cusp of a major innovative shift.

  Already the corporation’s stock acquisitions were 17 percent more profitable. The analytic programs were predicting the movements of nations with startling accuracy.

  The phone rang, and Reggie saw who it was from the caller ID. Not all of Reggie’s tasks, alas, boasted the gravitas of predicting global events.

  “What do you need, Cavanaugh?” Reggie said into the phone.

  “We missed her,” Cavanaugh said.

  “I practically served her up on a silver platter,” Reggie told him. “The Ghost Girl email was flagged, and we traced it. You knew exactly where she was going to be. How could you botch it?”

  “Hey, shut up, okay? She’s smart. She knew we were coming.”

  “Well, she hasn’t used that email again or any of the other ones we’re tracking,” Reggie said. “She hasn’t used any of her credit cards either.”

  “What we need is more boots on the ground,” Cavanaugh said. “I know some guys.”

  “I don’t have the authority to authorize anything like that.”

  “I know,” Cavanaugh said. “I need you to patch me through to him.”

  Reggie hesitated. “You know he likes to keep a certain distance between himself and … field operations.”

  “Look, hey, we’re all professionals, okay?” Cavanaugh said. “We got a job, and we want to get it done. This will all go faster if I can talk to the kid direct.”

  Reggie sighed. “Okay, then. Stand by. But if you want a word of advice, don’t call him kid.”

  * * *

  “Ten minutes, Mr. Middleton.”

  Aaron Middleton looked up from his magazine at the pretty young blond production assistant who’d stuck her head into his dressing room. The magazine was the latest issue of Tech World. Middleton’s picture was on the cover, big, innocent blue eyes, shaggy mop of brown hair making him look even younger than he was, an old T-shirt. He wished they’d taken one of him cleaned up. A haircut and a slick new suit. But they didn’t want the corporate professional.

  They wanted the Silicon Valley boy genius. That was the draw. The interior story had been mostly fair and complimentary, but there was always that undercurrent, the usual question. When will this blow up in his face? The whiz kid had come so far, so fast, surely he was due to crash and burn.

  Don’t hold your breath, naysayers.

  Middleton smiled at the production assistant, and that made her blush.

  “Thank you,” Middleton said.

  “Someone will be in soon to double-check your hair and makeup,” she said. “Although I think you look just fine.”

  “Understood. Thanks.”

  The production assistant lingered a moment as if trying to think of something else pertinent to say, smiled again, and backed out, the door clicking shut behind her.

  A sigh from the corner of the room.

  Middleton’s gaze shifted to Meredith Vines, perched atop a stool and tapping at a smartphone.

  Without looking up, she asked, “Do you ever get tired of it?”

  “Tired of what?” Although he knew full well what she was asking.

  “Being a young, handsome, eligible billionaire.”

  “Oh, that.” He thought about the production assistant, maybe twenty-two, brimming with youth and energy and a raw need to please. “I don’t really have time for much.”

  “The good thing about being a powerful billionaire,” Meredith told him, “is that girls like that are usually willing to accommodate your busy schedule. There certainly are enough of them. They could take shifts.”

  “Meredith, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you sound jealous.”

  And now she did look up, frowning and narrowing her eyes. “Not in my job description.”

  Middleton laughed.

  Meredith had come to him via Harvard and Stanford with an MBA and a stack of recommendation letters from various bigwigs, CEOs, congressmen, and whatnot. Short and slight, but with such a striking presence, she owned any room she entered. Her red hair was pulled back tightly against her skull. Sharp, angular features made more severe by makeup applied with the precision of a Nazi rocket scientist. Gray suit, skirt just above the knees, pumps giving her a little more height but not much. Eyes such a pale blue they were almost ice.

  Meredith was a year younger than Middleton’s thirty, and he’d long ago set aside his attraction to her. She was far too valuable as his chief of staff. Aaron Middleton ran TomorrowCorp, and Meredith Vines ran Aaron Middleton. A hundred small but vital tasks clicked exactly into place each and every day thanks to her dogged ministrations, freeing Middleton to focus on the big picture. A few months ago, Meredith had taken off two days to attend a sick sister, and Middleton had barely been able to dress and feed himself.

  Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. But only a little.

  “Are we still on with the chamber of commerce after I finish this interview?” Middleton asked.

  “No, that’s pushed to next Wednesday,” she said, consulting her smartphone. “You need to see the marketing presentation as soon as possible if we want the launch to go off in time. That means getting all the department heads in line so they can break out and have meetings with their own—”

  Meredith’s smartphone began to play “Big in Japan” by Alphaville.

  “Let it go to voice mail,” Middleton said.

  “It’s Bryant,” she told him.

  “Answer it.”

  “Hello, Mr. Bryant. It’s Meredith. Oh? Let me check his availability.” She looked at Middleton, raised an eyebrow.

  He thought a second, held out his hand. Meredith gave him the phone.

  “Hi, Reggie. What can I do for you?” He listened, nodding. “I see. No, please don’t worry about it. You should always use your own judgment, of course. I suppose you’d better put him through. You can secure this line, yes? I’ll stand by, then.”

  A click and a beep.

  Middleton said, “Hello, Mr. Cavanaugh. I infer progress on our project isn’t all we might have hoped for.”

  “Sorry for that,” Cavanaugh said. “And sorry to have to call you like this.”

  “Let’s just work the problem. Reggie implied you needed additional resources.”

  “I just need more guys,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s like playing fucking Whac-A-Mole.”

  The makeup woman came in to check Middleton’s face and hair. He held up the Just a moment finger, and she backed out again.

  He cleared his throat, fidgeted in his chair, trying to force patience. “I understand you’re being figurative, but I don’t follow.”

  “We go where she is, and she just runs off someplace else,” Cavanaugh explained. “If we got enough guys to chase her and then more guys waiting at wherever she’s running to, we can nab her a lot easier. It’s pretty simple, really.”

  “Yes, it does seem simple when you explain it like that,” Middleton admitted.

  “And something else.”

  “Please do go on.”

  “I feel like we’re being fed the bare minimum information-wise,” Cavanaugh said. “Who is this girl really? What did she do? I need to know how to track her down. I’m feeling a little hamstrung here.”

  Middleton opened his mouth, closed it again.

  Meredith looked at him with open concern, and Middleton realized he was sitting with legs crossed, bouncing one foot nervously up and down. He made himself stop. Meredith knew him too well, his every tic and quirk.

  “Middleton?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Cavanaugh, I was momentarily distracted,” Middleton said. “I’ll have a dossier prepared on the girl that you will hopefully find helpful. In the
meantime, please submit the names of the men you wish to add to the roster so Reggie can do a background check. I’ll have payment vouchers issued through the proper channels. Good day.”

  Middleton hung up before Cavanaugh had the chance to irritate him further.

  The makeup woman entered again tentatively. “They’re ready for you on set now, Mr. Middleton.”

  He stood. “Of course. Remind me when this will air again.”

  “Later tonight.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be along in a moment.”

  The woman nodded and left.

  Middleton headed for the door, but Meredith put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

  Her eyes searched his. “Something’s upset you.”

  He forced a smile. “You know how I am about loose ends.” Middleton could be pretty anal about them, actually. The construction of his new house is Sonoma was a perfect example. Middleton had been frantic about every little detail. Meredith had basically thrown a net over him and pulled him back from the brink of madness.

  But this … Meredith didn’t need to know about this. “It’s being handled.”

  She clearly didn’t like being out of the loop but knew better than to press it. “Okay. Let me know if I can help.”

  “I will.” Although Middleton didn’t think there was really anything Meredith could do about his wife.

  5

  Francis emerged from the Patty Melt, spotted the girl across the street waiting for him. He frowned and shook his head. She didn’t seem to like that. She pointed left, motioning for him to meet her at the corner.

  He crossed at the light and they stood together, the early evening crowd flowing around them.

  “Amanda wasn’t there.” He’d told her about the waitress to whom he’d given the suitcase.

  “You said she’d stashed it.”

  Francis sighed. “Neither of the evening shift waitresses knew anything about it, and when I asked the night manager to check the cooler, he didn’t see it. He frankly seemed a little put out that I asked.”

  “Maybe she took it with her.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “I don’t even know her last name,” Francis said.