Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

by David Wong

  Will said, “Fine, if the issue is that we don’t have enough data about the enemy’s capabilities and strategy, then we need to gather more data.”

  Zoey said, “Perfect. How do we do that?”

  Will said, “Molech’s strength has always been loyalty, nobody on the inside of his crew ever turns—it’s more cult than crew. The rumors about their initiation process are … unsettling. But you can’t build a headquarters with a bunch of meathead enforcers, you need professionals. That means he’s had to hire contractors. You want to turn somebody, you shoot for one of them—they’re basically invisible to a narcissist like Molech, he doesn’t even see them as people. So step one would be to find out who—”

  “Rob Winkle Construction,” said Budd before Will could ask. “Brought in from out of town, staying in temporary quarters a few blocks away from the Fire and Ice.”

  “So they’re never far from the job site,” said Will. “Meaning we’d have to walk right to up to Molech HQ and interrogate his day laborers right under his nose.”

  Everyone went silent for a moment, thinking.

  Andre took a long look at Zoey and then said, “You know what we need? A massage truck.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Andre said you could stand near any construction site in Tabula Ra$a and see the “massage” trucks crawl past, stopping to pick up clients at break time. He led them down to the black panel truck and programmed in its disguise—when the graphics faded in, it literally had “massage” in sarcasm quotes (MADAM LE STRADE’S MAGIC RELAXATION “MASSAGE”), the logo in pink letters that followed the contours of a naked woman. Prostitution was legal in the city, of course, but the fact that the trucks offered legit massages gave the customers plausible deniability for the wives and girlfriends who should notice their man climbing out of one. Vices were legal, but Blink made it damned hard to indulge in secret.

  Andre said, “The construction crew walks over from a makeshift dorm every shift, we just gotta catch ’em on the way in.”

  Zoey said, “Guys, this is the single most conspicuous vehicle in America. It literally has a naked butt on it.”

  Will shook his head. “The hardest part will be fighting for space with the other trucks, we’ll be indistinguishable from the rest of the ass fleet.”

  “Really? That many guys want mobile whores at six in the morning?”

  Andre said, “Well, the construction dorms have group bathrooms. No privacy, if you know what I’m sayin’.” She didn’t.

  A short time later they were all piled in the truck, parked about ten feet from a charred patch of pavement where a helicopter had crashed the evening before, and in the shadow of Molech’s own headquarters—probably no more than a hundred yards from the man who could vaporize them with the flick of a wrist. Will had assured her that this was actually the one spot Molech wouldn’t think to look for them, but Will’s good intentioned lies were always the most halfhearted.

  Zoey, Echo, and Will sat on a red leather sofa that ran along one wall of the truck opposite a bank of feeds that played on the other. Will had changed into a suit with the color and texture of a newly paved road, Echo was wearing a black catsuit with a series of belts crisscrossing at the waist (it was the sort of thing Zoey wouldn’t have had the confidence to wear in a daydream). Wu stood guard by the door, Budd and Andre were leaning against the bar, the latter eating a leftover pork chop he found in the bar’s minifridge. They all watched the feeds as they scanned the passing workers, returning facial recognition profiles in real time.

  Budd said, “Now what we want is the foreman, fella named A. J. Skelnik. Tall, white, bad posture, balding in the back.”

  They found him three long minutes later, a pale slumped-over man who trudged along the sidwalk like he was heading to his own funeral. Zoey supposed it wasn’t like there was any denying the nature of the job he had taken at this point. Echo hopped out of a sliding side door to intercept him. She whispered something in the man’s ear and he made a beeline for the truck.

  Zoey shook her head and said, “We’re all fortunate she uses her powers for good.”

  Skelnik climbed into the truck, looked around the interior, and froze when he saw the Suits.

  Zoey said, “We’re going to watch, if that’s okay.”

  Echo closed the door.

  Will said, “Do you know who I am?”

  Skelnik nodded. “I ain’t got nothin’ you want. I don’t know nothin’ you wanna know. They find out I talked to you, just this much we’ve talked so far, they’ll kill me, and they’ll kill me for days. But you know that, don’t ya?”

  Will, showing no sympathy, said, “These are the risks we take when we choose the wrong employer.”

  Zoey said, “You’re working for the bad guy. The worst guy.”

  Skelnik scoffed and glanced around the truck interior, briefly making eye contact with Wu. “Not like you guys, huh? Arthur Livingston. Great philanthropist. His warehouse that blew sky high, well, he was prob’ly makin’ porridge for the orphans in there, right? Spare me all that. Ain’t no heroes in this city.”

  Zoey threw up her hands and said, “Hey, I’m not even from here, and a week ago I was working at a coffee shop. I’m just regular folk, and I’m telling you you’re getting paid in dirty money.”

  “Coffee shop? So, you’re a drug dealer. You think folks are payin’ ten bucks a cup because they like the taste? I seen documentaries about where they grow the beans, too, some of the workers young enough to call you grandma. I don’t care who you are, trace your paycheck back far enough and you find it’s all dirty money. Lemme out.”

  Will said, “Fine, think of me as another employer bidding on your services. At least listen to my offer. Besides, if you leave now, it’ll look suspicious—the average massage truck session is eight minutes.”

  Zoey said, “Our job will pay enough that you can retire. Hire your own massage truck to follow you wherever you go.”

  Skelnik kept his eyes on Will. “You know how I interview prospective employees, Mr. Blackwater? I ask ’em one question, I say, ‘Show me your knife.’ Man don’t got a knife, I got no use for him—it’s the universal tool. Even apes know to keep a sharp stone within reach. Then if he shows me his knife, I scrape it on my arm, to test the edge, see if it’ll shave the hair off. If the blade’s dull, I say, ‘Get outta here, you only got one tool on ya, and it don’t work.’ But mine? It’ll circumcise a fly.” Skelnik reached behind him and suddenly there was a gleaming blade in his hand. “You know I got to try to kill you, right?”

  Will showed so little reaction to this that it took a moment for Zoey to register what the man had said. “Wait, what?”

  Wu edged forward, but Will just sipped his drink and said, “No reason you can’t listen to what I have to say first.”

  Zoey said, “Hey! No, nobody is killing anybody!”

  Skelnik said, “I tell Molech about this meeting and tell him anything other than that I slit yer throat, he turns me into hamburger.”

  Will said, “You ever killed a man with a knife? It’s harder than you think. Your chances of success are extremely low with that course of action.”

  “So you see the predicament you put me in by luring me into your vehicle. Looks like that was a bad move on your part, ’cause my best case is I give Will Blackwater scars he’s got to explain every time he takes his shirt off for a lady.”

  Andre said, “If Molech’s people knew we were here, this truck would already be a smoking wreck. There’s nothin’ suspicious about any of this from the outside, you just got to listen and walk out the door with a spring in your step.”

  “Then you got one minute to say your piece, at which point I’m gonna turn ya down because a millionaire hamburger is still a hamburger.”

  Will brought up a feed on the wall opposite the sofa—a street-level view of The Naked City, where they’d had their meeting/standoff the previous evening. “You know that place, Mr. Skelnik?”

  “Driven past it. Place for sli
ck-haired cuckolds who got cash but still got to pay for pussy.”

  “You know who owns it?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “Molech. Through a corporate front. What you’re seeing there, the visible part of the building, that’s not what makes the real profit. The real money comes belowground. See, there’s a rumor that you show a special little card at the front door—made of solid gold, they say—and you head downstairs. Down to the real club.”

  Budd said, “We’ve never been down there, but they say that with each subbasement, the girls get younger. And there are … several floors, if you get what I’m sayin’.”

  “You don’t got to convince me that Molech is a sick f—”

  Will said, “Look, there. You see the concrete in front of the main entrance? Let me zoom in. You see it?”

  “I see concrete, yeah.”

  “You see the cracks? All through the middle there?”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “You know what causes that?”

  “Dry Utah air, prob’ly. Leeches moisture out of the wet concrete before it can cure—”

  “Gases, from the decomposing bodies. Get a jackhammer and bust up that concrete and you’ll find bones. At least forty bodies, of the building’s construction crew, and their families. Migrants, mostly. See, Molech couldn’t have them walking around out there, knowing about those secret basements, spreading rumors about their intended purpose. So on the last day of the job, he lines everybody up, and one by one they get a hollowpoint severance to the back of the skull. Buries them out front, before they poured the concrete, like a ritual. They say it was because he heard the pharaohs used to bury the slaves in the shadow of the pyramids, for good luck. Think about it, Mr. Skelnik. You say you don’t know anything, but he’s not going to risk it. For every man and woman on your work site, this is their last job.”

  Skelnik stared hard at the screen, studying the cracks in the walk, imagining the expanse of dry bones that Zoey was pretty sure weren’t there.

  Will said, “Can you deny the logic of what I’m saying?”

  “You’re sayin’ I got a narrow chance of livin’ either way, only your way I stand to make more money on the way out.”

  “No,” interjected Budd. “We can get you out. You and anyone you want to bring along. We got a big ol’ people mover network—it’s what we do best. New name, new start. Molech won’t find you. You and your daughter both.”

  They had been saving the daughter thing for now, Zoey thought. She watched the man’s fingers tighten on the knife he was still gripping in his right hand. Wu’s eyes never left that hand.

  Will said, “So to start, just tell us what you know. Even if it doesn’t seem useful.”

  The man chewed on his lip, then said, “Job came in back in August, boss told me it was a cash-paying job for a kid who had bought the old casinos and wanted them built back up in the shape of his own head.”

  Andre said, “His head? You mean, literally?”

  The man nodded. “Wanted both to be made of obsidian, one carved to look like the guy’s own face, scowling, the other would be a giant middle finger, like he was flipping the whole city the bird. I thought it sounded shady, and said as much—I mean it’s one thing to get a building made into your own face, but when you insist the face be scowling, you can’t be up to anything good. Ain’t nobody gonna stay in a hotel with a big angry obsidian face on the front.” Zoey thought she would totally stay in a place like that, but didn’t want to contradict him. “We had to talk him down from actual obsidian—you can’t get it in those quantities and it’s impossible to work with—”

  Impatient, Echo asked, “What’s your interior access like?”

  “Zero, that’s the point I’m tryin’ to make. I came up with a way to do a facade out of a rigid polyurethane foam, we just put it up in blocks and then they got these remote-controlled grinders that crawl up the front and sculpt the guy’s face into it. Then we’ll do a black glaze, should do a good job of hidin’ the fact that the building behind it is junk. And it is junk—we’re not renovating the interior, it’s a burned-out wreck. All the work has been done on the outside. It’s all for show.”

  Will said, “Well, we need you to get inside. With a camera. We’ll tell you what you’re looking for. When you find it, we’ll tell you what to do. You get caught, just say you got lost, or you’re looking for some duct tape. Play dumb.”

  “Riiiight. And maybe I’ll crawl through an air duct like James Bond, cut through a window with a laser watch. Do I fit the profile of an imbecile in your eyes, or did you just figure you had nothin’ to lose by askin’ me to go on a suicide mission on your behalf? Here, how about we switch clothes and you go into the lion’s den. Your minute’s up. Lemme out.”

  Echo was blocking the door. “Stay a little longer, your friends will be impressed with your stamina.”

  Will said, “We’re giving you a way out. Your only way.”

  “And what about the rest of my crew? Got more than twenty guys up there, they got kids, too. You can get all of ’em out?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I go inside and help you sabotage Molech’s operation.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if not, then whenever we finish the job, Molech dumps me and all the rest in a mass grave.”

  “Yes.”

  The man stared at the floor, then at the feed.

  Before he could answer, Zoey said, “No.”

  Zoey felt Will staring at her now, and could somehow feel him clenching his jaw.

  She said, “We’ll get you and your people out either way. We’re asking for your help. As a favor.”

  The man’s expression changed—he was clearly trying to figure out if this was some good cop/bad cop scam Zoey and Will were running. But then he looked at Will, who was just barely restraining an urge to strangle Zoey. It didn’t matter how hard he tried to play the robot, his thoughts might as well have been flashing across his forehead in scrolling red letters: YOU JUST TOOK OUR LEVERAGE AND FLUSHED IT DOWN THE TOILET.

  Skelnik said, “I’ll think about it. Lemme out.”

  Echo looked at Will, who nodded in resignation. She stepped aside and Skelnik stepped out into the chilled morning air, still wielding his knife. There was actually another guy waiting outside the door for a “massage” but at the sight of the knife he backed off, presumably figuring that whatever was going on inside the truck, he didn’t want anything that kinky so early in the morning.

  Once the door was closed, Will emptied his drink and said, “Well, that was very generous of you.” He glanced toward the front of the truck and said, “Take us home.”

  As they pulled into traffic, Zoey said, “He said he’d think about it.”

  Budd said, “In my travels, that’s meant ‘no,’ exactly one hundred percent of the time.”

  Zoey sighed, and stared at the wall feed. It was acting like a window now, showing the morning traffic passing by. Zoey’s only sleep in the previous twenty hours had been that brief, fitful bathtub nap, and exhaustion was catching up to her. Echo was leaning in the corner, eyes closed, holding on to a rail along the wall so she wouldn’t topple over at the next stop. Wu actually looked like he had positioned himself to catch her if she did. Zoey turned to Will and could see it creeping onto his face, too—just a slight drooping of the eyelids, a blankness in the pupils. They were running down, like batteries, and time was running out.

  Will saw she was looking and sat up straighter, tightening the knot of his tie. It was silver and black, in a pattern that reminded Zoey of chain mail. Afraid to so much as loosen it for comfort’s sake, as if his suits and ties were the source of all his powers …

  Then the idea hit her, all at once.

  Zoey said, “Andre, is there any chance your crazy designer brother Tre would know who Molech uses as a tailor?”

  There was a pause, as if Andre was trying to process this nonsense question. “Your words sound like you’re makin’ a
joke but your face is all serious.”

  “I am serious.”

  “Zoey, the dude doesn’t even wear shirts, why would he have a tailor on staff?”

  “He doesn’t have one on staff. That’s my point. But he’s had to hire one within the last few weeks, or maybe even the last few hours.”

  “Why?”

  Zoey made an exasperated sound. “To make him a supervillain costume. Duh.”

  Both Andre and Will started to make some dismissive joke, then stopped themselves.

  Zoey continued, “Come on, you think he’s going to carry out his flamboyant terror attack on the world in ripped blue jeans and a backward baseball cap? No, he needs a suit, and I guarantee you there’s nobody in that building capable of creating one that wouldn’t look like a child made it. I bet whoever he hired, they’ve been inside the headquarters for a fitting and that Molech has talked to them as recently as last night.”

  Budd fussed with his phone, Echo now snoring softly in the corner.

  Finally he looked up and said, “Contract’s with Ballistic Couture, they work out of that shop in West Hills, one that looks like it’s floating. Finished costume was supposed to be delivered this morning.”

  Zoey said to Will, “Okay, you have to admit that despite my faults, I am the smartest person on planet Earth.”

  Will said, “This time, you let me do the talking. In fact, why don’t you just stay behind in the truck while I go in.”

  “How about instead, this time you actually tell me what the plan is before we start the conversation?”

  “We won’t know until it starts. You have to find out how the person wants to present themselves to the world and work back from there. The LoB guy wouldn’t have gone for the same amount of money if I’d offered it as a check—you cut that guy and he bleeds Mountain Dew, that’s somebody who needs a treasure hunt. So here, Ballistic Couture is run by a designer named Aziza Richards, she’s a character, and deals exclusively with clients who want designer suits that can withstand a burst of high-velocity assault-rifle rounds. We’re asking her to betray the trust of a client, but she gets caught doing that once, she’s out of business. And as soon as she’s not valuable to these people anymore, she’s dead.”