Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (13 page)

I went to my coat and grabbed some bills and put them on the table next to the laptop boxes. “You get my software,” I said, referring to the program I’d need to do the actual designs. Once I had the castle computerized and the drones and materials designed and ready, it would build itself automatically.

Bubu had a mischievous little grin on his face.

“What,” I said.

“I’ll get you software,” he said. “We’ll crack it.”

“No,” I said, putting down the spoon I was using to eat my meat broth. “I don’t want any trouble with the goddamned RIAA about stealing software.”

Bubu’s grin formed into a full smile. “Like they would come here to get you,” he said, gesturing out the window.

He was right. I was creating a fortress to defend against superhumans, insane A.I.’s, and whoever else might try to interfere with my plans. I was a felon, convicted of attempted genocide as the topper of a list of crimes I had committed, and many more that I had not, and here I was getting squeamish about violating the terms of service for some obscure piece of software.

I laughed and went back to my soup.

“I have more numbers for you,” Bubu said after a moment of taking in the beauty of the valley. He walked over to the stack of bills and made them disappear.

“Talk to me,” I said.

“Looks like first part of the list is going to be forty-five thousand,” he said.

“Show me.”

He reached for his messenger bag and pulled out a laptop that was an exact duplicate of the ones I had just paid two thousand for apiece. I bet he’d bought all three for less than what I was paying, and kept the change, which was fine by me.

Bubu opened the laptop and the thing fired up in a few seconds.

“What you say?”

I laughed, “It’s fast, Bubu.”

“Yes, not like other shit I threw into river.”

“You mean sold for a few hundred bucks,” I corrected, and he gave me an acknowledging nod.

“Here’s the list,” he said, opening a text document. Bubu had divided it into four different categories, covering my needs per phase. Every item had was marked by notes, names, and numbers, but the sub-tallies were clear and the list organized.

“You an accountant in another life,” I said.

He nodded, “What I studied in school. Never helped me for shit, until now.”

I studied the first category to make sure everything was accounted for, that his listing was thorough, and found it to my liking. So it was going to take forty-five thousand to build the first device. I took a glance at the costs for the second part, seeing it was almost four times phase one and decided to add the whole thing up. Though there were many items missing, the amount he had was a rough estimate: about a million dollars.

Not bad for a proper castle.

*              *              *              *

A winter storm rolled through that night and Bubu and I stayed on our separate floors as the heavy rain beat down on the townhouse. Ours was the sturdiest structure in the hamlet, with the fewest leaks, and I worried about everyone in town as I rotated pots and pans as they filled with water pouring through holes in the roof.

Folks had lived in this area for thousands of years, weathering the Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Barbarians, Tartars, Huns, Ottomans and Germans like waves crashing on the shore. Even the heaviest surf would rush deep into the shore, only to wash away, leaving the land changed, but the people much the same.

I knew Bubu was still awake by the stink of his cigarettes filtering up the stairs into the second floor and a tune he whistled softly from time to time. I was tempted to go down and share a beer with the guy, but I barely knew him, and I was afraid that he might get caught up in the crossfire. The best conclusion to our little relationship was for him to get me the items I needed, make a bundle of money, and be on his way. Maybe he would make enough to restart his accounting career, or start a business. It didn’t matter in the end as long as he didn’t get hurt.

My company that night would be a shitty 13-inch television playing an old episode of Baywatch. The reception was terrible, and the actor’s voices all dubbed in Romanian, but I recognized the Pacific Ocean and it felt like being home. I smelled the salt air as the tide licked the beach, felt the cold water between my fingers as I paddled my board out to sea, looking for a wave. Never had life been better than those days spent on the water, my ambition nothing simpler than seeing how long I could keep my balance before the ocean tossed me askew.

The show went to a news break and the image shifted to a squat, one story office building. I froze. Smoke poured from a dozen holes and despite the bad reception, I could see fires still burned within the husk. The image cut again, this time focusing on street level images of police and emergency workers, but my eyes were drawn to a gutted sports car, turned on its side. One of the wheels had been torn off the axle, and the hood had been thrust into the passenger compartment diagonally. The next image was that of men from the coroner’s office wheeling away a body from the scene.

The footage disappeared and there he was, Sandy, my lawyer. He was pictured in a suit that cost more than the GDP of the entire town of Liteni, his hair thinner than I remember, his paunch a little more pronounced. Then my picture appeared in a small rectangle in the bottom left corner of the screen. It was the same picture from my Wikipedia page, more text filling in under it.

I watched the whole report, which lasted only a few minutes, the bleak images filling whatever gaps the language barrier would have omitted. I reached over and turned the television off. I brought my hand back and it was shaking. I clenched it, the small flex a salve for the nuclear anger simmering just beneath my skin.

Sandy was dead.

Part of me wanted to think it was random. Sandy dealt with all types of bad people, all of them super powered. One of them might have been unsatisfied with their service. I wanted to believe it, but I knew that was bullshit. He was dead because of our association.

Godammit, Haha.

The storm howled outside, and the room temperature had plummeted in the last hour, but I didn’t feel it. The four walls were a cage keeping the world safe from me, a tenuous protection, at best, because at that moment, I felt like running to the top of the nearest mountain and screaming until Haha found me. Let him come, I would tear it all down. Nothing would keep me from him. I didn’t need an intricate plan, just my fingers threaded through his mechanical guts.

Blood thundered in my ears, and a low growl burbled up from my chest, the sound an octave lower than the piercing howl that buffeted the walls. I felt my body clenched into a ball, ready to spring, and forced myself to calm. The long sleeves were sweltering, so I took off the heavy sweater, the white T-shirt beneath damp with sweat. I knew there would be no solace in loneliness tonight. The room was cloying and musty, I needed to get out.

Stepping into the hallway, I saw a light on down the hall. Bubu’s whistling was a warbling counterpoint to the storm outside, and as I reached his door, I found it ajar. He was sitting at the table, dabbing out a cigarette, the laptop open in front of him, but his attention was on his phone, which he propped up with a small box. He stopped whistling and whispered a few words of Romanian. I held at the door, waiting to hear the answer, but I couldn’t hear anything.

Peering through the small crease, I heard him say something else, his demeanor suddenly dark. I still wasn’t close enough to hear a response and realized I wouldn’t, because he was wearing a single earbud, the other dangling over his shoulder. He threw his hands up in the air, pointing up at where he thought I slept, his speech animated. I scowled deep, and felt my insides churn. I knew he was playing me, marking up prices, skimming money. I knew, he knew, it was the nature of our relationship. Maybe he recognized me. He was no idiot. Beside’s Haha’s bounty on me was two billion dollars, more than a nest egg. Going on reputation alone, it was safer to turn on me than breaking the law to acquire the things on my list. If I had half of his brains, maybe I would have turned on Retcon, saved myself and a lot of other people a lot of pain.

The same guy who blindly fetched for Retcon would have killed Bubu. Not because he wanted to, but because he would have had to. That guy was a criminal and in that world, there was only one way to repay betrayal. I had since learned that there was more than one way to sell someone out and the reason always mattered. The world was made of terrible choices, and most people had to sift through and find the one that made the most sense to them.

Pushing the door open, I stepped into the room. Bubu turned to look at me, shock on his face, the words stilled in his mouth. He flipped the phone face down and plucked the earbud from his ear. “Bro, you don’t knock?”

“Who is it,” I said, pointing at the phone.

Bubu stood, bringing his hands up defensively. “This is not what you think.”

“This is not the time to be fucking with me,” I said, taking a step deeper into the room. I didn’t want to kill him, but his weak, cliché bluff pissed me off. “Who are you talking to?”

His expression turned indignant. “You think I flip on you like that,” he said snapping his fingers for effect. “Like some little bitch who runs to the police?

“I’m not going to ask again,” I said, my anger simmering to match his.

Shaking his head, he flipped the phone back over, popping an earbud in and walking up to me. Were I a normal man, I still would have towered over the skinny Romanian, but he entered arm’s reach without fear. He turned the phone towards me and I saw a very angry young woman staring back at me with a toddler sitting in her lap. He held the earbud near my ear so I could hear the child babbling away.

He said a few words in Romanian, but the woman’s mien did not improve. Turning to look at me, his eyes cold and a little afraid now, he said, “My wife, Anica, and my son Emil.”

The little boy smiled at hearing his name and laughed loudly as Bubu gestured that I pop the earbud into my ear. I did and when the woman spoke, there was steel in her voice. “You took my husband to Liteni?”

“We here for business,” Bubu said. “Tell her.”

The woman’s expression shifted so quickly from angry to sardonic that I knew not only Bubu’s relationship dynamic, but that nothing I said in the next minute would be taken for truth. I almost told her the truth, but in the end I settled for, “Its legitimate business. I promise.”

“You better pay,” she said, before launching into a Romanian tirade I was perfectly happy to be excluded from. I handed Bubu the earbud and he ended the call.

The room was still for a minute, the wind outside dying down to an interminable screech. We looked at each other, and I started laughing. It was a hard guffaw that almost doubled me and I gave in to it, feeling the itch in my guts and the warmth behind my eyes that foreshadowed more. It was Bubu’s turn to scowl, as I sat down hard, the wood floor shaking under my weight.

I sat cross-legged, still laughing, tears burning down my cheeks, and thought of Sandy. He had been loud, brash, and in the eyes of the law probably guilty of many crimes. He had flipped on me after Hashima, another lesson in terrible choices. It was always my intention to reconnect with him after Utopia, if for nothing else than to let him know there were no hard feelings. Another regret added to an ever-growing list.

My head still hung low, my laughter dead, but the tears still tracing down my cheeks, when I felt a cold poke in the shoulder. I looked up to find Bubu with a couple of beers in hand. I took one, using the bottle opener he offered to uncap both. We toasted; the glass clinking in the quiet room and drank.

“So, wife and a kid, huh,” I said.

“Yeah, she got pregnant when we were in college. I was supposed to be the big time accountant and she was studying nursing. She dropped out to have the baby. I got my degree, and found out nobody wants accountants unless their brother, cousin, nephew is someone important.”

“Amazing how some shit is universal,” I said, thinking of my own mishaps in the private sector. “So what happened?”

“My uncle needed another person driving cabs. I thought it would be just that, but of course he want me to take illegal shit with passengers. He paid me three hundred to do it, cash. Driving cabs is shit money otherwise.”

“And Anica doesn’t like it?”

Flinging a warding hand at the inert phone, Bubu said, “What do you think? She a good girl. Smart. She didn’t want to marry low life, but that’s all I can give her now.”

I took a swing, “She’s gorgeous, Bubu. You’re a lucky man.”

“Gorgeous?” he said and a smile played on his face. “Maybe when she’s not mad at me.”

“Why not watch the kid and let her go back to school?”

His glare told me what he thought of that notion, but he said, “What about you, wife, kids?”

“Nah, not good in my line of work.”

“You sure? When I look at you, you look like a guy who has people.” He took a drink of beer, “I was honest, bro,” he said. “Be honest.”

“There’s a woman,” I said, numbly. “But I don’t know what’s going on with it. She’s a hard one to read.”

“Mine too. When she’s yelling at me, it’s always about how she loves me and worries, but to stop being such an asshole.”