Dead Man's Hand (3 page)

A curtained door to the left likely led to a
bedroom, and to the right the room opened onto a small kitchen. I
glimpsed a little fridge and a very old looking oven. I noticed
right away that the apartment had an odd smell, a strange mixture
of brown rice and bananas. I didn’t want to ask, but figured Pixel
had eccentric taste in food and left it at that.

“
Please,” said Pixel,
waving an arm toward the sofa, indicating that I should
sit.

Pixel planted herself at the far end, half
turned toward me. If I’d been thinking there was going to be some
intimacy here, the thought had left me when she’d mentioned satyrs
and I’d seen that look on her face. She was all business, and it
was likely to stay that way between us. Which was all right, and
only a little disappointing. I’d had enough complications
lately.

“
It’s funny, you know?” she
began. And then went on before I’d had a chance to respond. “I
heard the click of their hooves before they came out of the dark,
and I just knew I was in trouble, knew there wasn’t a damn thing I
could do to make it not happen. They had me surrounded in a second,
just looking at me with those leers and those grunts. And that
smell.” She shuddered. “God. They stink, you know?”

I nodded.

She hesitated for a second, and her eyes
went glassy. When she spoke again, it was quieter, like she really
had to draw the words up and out of her throat and they were barely
making it. “I knew that once they charged, they’d have me down and
I’d be dragged into the bushes.” A little exhale and a resigned
shrug followed. “So…I got ready to do as much damage as I could.
But before they could make their move, I heard a car skid to a stop
and a door slam. It was Pete. He was driving past and saw what was
happening.”

“
A lot of people would have
kept going.”

“
I think a lot of people
actually did. I kind of remember taillights going away from me
before Pete got there. It’s shitty.”

“
It is.”

We let the thought hang there for a second,
and then I said, “So Pete saved you.”

“
He did,” she said with a
contemplative nod. “He already had his knife out before he was up
the curb, and one of the satyrs lost an ear before they even knew
what was happening. They scattered.” She shrugged, a bit forced.
“And that was that.”

I shook my head. “You were lucky. About as
lucky as I was tonight.”

“
I know it.”

I was intrigued by her story but still
wondered what any of it had to do with her father or me or how I
could do anything to help him out of his bind. So I kept the
interview going. “And then?” I asked.

“
And then Pete hustled me
into his car, just about threw me inside and took off before the
satyrs could regroup. Not that they would, but Pete said there was
a chance. He drove me a few blocks away and then just circled
around a bit before he took me back to my car, just to give the
satyrs time to move on so they wouldn’t see me driving away and be
tempted to come after me somehow.”

She stopped talking again, and I had to
remind myself that she’d been the one who’d wanted to talk, that
she’d brought me here to get help of one kind or another. It wasn’t
entirely odd that she needed to have the questions dragged out of
her. Given the trauma she was talking about, I could see she was
still on shaky ground.

“
So where do I come in?” I
asked after giving her a few seconds to start on her
own.

She crossed her legs, a deft little move
that drew my eye to her calves and those spiked heels for just a
moment. When I met her eyes again, they gave no indication that
she’d caught me looking. She just started talking again.

“
Pete drives one of those
little red Getabouts. You know where they’re so small you’re
practically driving from the back seat? So before we headed back to
my car, I noticed he had an ice chest on the seat behind us. And I
asked him if he was just coming from a picnic. Trying to joke, you
know? And he gets real nervous. Which gets me curious, of course.
So I let it drop for a minute and then I say, ‘So really, Pete,
what’s in the chest?’ And he looks at me for a second and says, ‘A
hand.’”

Pixel looked at me a bit challengingly when
she said it, as though she expected me not to believe it. “A hand,”
I said, obligingly.

She nodded. “A dead man’s hand.”

I raised an eyebrow, inviting her to
continue.

“
Like I said, he sounded
nervous as hell, but after a few seconds, he started
talking.”

That sounded like Neat Pete. Get a beautiful
woman in front of him and he’d start doing exactly what he wasn’t
supposed to if it meant there was a chance it would make an
impression on her, even the wrong kind. Anything to make her think
of him as different from all the other apes who thought she was
gorgeous.

“
You know who Lester Rincon
is?”

“
No,” I said.

“
Big time hacker on the
south side. Yancy Grommet’s number one. Pete said Clancy’d been out
to find Rincon for a while just to mess with his brother’s
operation. But Rincon knew it, laid low, had walls within walls of
security. Real and virtual. So Clancy couldn’t get at
him.”

“
But he screwed
up.”

Pixel nodded, a little smile on her lips
that told me she thought Lester Rincon had gotten what he deserved
for getting into bed with one or the other of the Grommets. “He
screwed up,” she echoed.

“
And now?”

“
And now,” she said,
sounding a little mischievous. She got up and went to the kitchen,
opening her refrigerator. I knew what she’d have before she came
back.

She carried a clear plastic bag, the kind
that zips shut. In it was the dead man’s hand, cleanly severed. I
had no doubt that this was Neat Pete’s work.

“
Pete brought it to me
after he satisfied Clancy that the job was done. He’s funny, Pete.
So eager to please.”

I could easily imagine Pete’s nervous
excitement at finding that he’d not only been Pixel’s knight in
shining armor but that he could also give her something she wanted,
something only he could supply.

She set the bag down on the plain pine table
before me, her own hand lingering above it for a second before she
reached down to poke at the pinky finger; it let her push it down,
still quite pliable. It looked well preserved.

The thing was repulsive, but I’d seen worse.
Looking at it, though, I was glad Pixel hadn’t offered me a snack
from her fridge when we’d first come in.

“
I don’t suppose you have
any idea how much money you could get for tracing Lester Rincon’s
keystrokes?”

I shook my head. “Kind of hard to trace now,
though, aren’t they?”

“
Not necessarily.” She sat
down again, a little closer to me this time, and caressed the edge
of the bag. “Muscle memory. You know? When I’ve been doing almost
nothing but programming, I’ve been told I punch code in my
sleep.”

By whom?
I wanted to ask, but kept my mouth
shut.

“
Lester Rincon wouldn’t
have been any different,” she went on.

“
I still don’t get it,” I
said, and I didn’t mind sounding like an idiot now.

“
Or where you fit
in.”

“
Right.”

She shrugged casually. “It’s simple, really.
I need a re-animator. If I can wake that hand up and put it on my
keyboard, it’ll start punching code that I can retrace.”

“
To trade with Clancy
Grommet in exchange for your father’s debt.”

“
Exactly.”

“
You think he’ll
bite?”

“
He’ll bite. If for no
other reason than to find out what Yancy had Rincon working on
before Pete got to him.”

I looked at the hand for a moment. I wasn’t
an expert on such things, but it did still look viable. I’d seen
things far more decayed brought into use by skilled
re-animators.

“
But you’ll only have
half,” I said. “One hand, half the code. Where’d Pete put the rest
of the body?”

“
He just said it was gone.
I didn’t want to know. Just having one hand’s not a problem,
though. I’ll run a program that can detect the gaps, the split
seconds that this right hand waits for the left to do its part.
Once I get enough fragments and see where the gaps are, it won’t be
much of a problem to fill in what’s missing. There’ll only be so
many possibilities, after all. I can run all the possibles, discard
what’s not viable code.”

“
Brilliant,” I said.
“You’ve got two more problems, though.”

I could tell she didn’t like the sound of
that, so I let her sit with it for a second before saying
anything.

“
One, you don’t know for
sure it’s Lester Rincon’s hand. It didn’t strike you as odd that
Clancy Grommet would let a trophy like that walk back out the door
with Pete? He’d want to rub Yancy’s nose in it, don’t you
think?”

“
Pete said Clancy never
keeps the trophies he brings. Squeamish, if you can believe it.
Plus, he said it’ll mess with Yancy more if he doesn’t know what
happened to Rincon. He may find a way to make him think Rincon’s
gone over to the other side. Tough to do if Yancy knows Rincon’s
dead.”

“
Or only has one
hand.”

She nodded, a satisfied smile on her lips.
She’d thought that one through all right, but how about the
rest?

So I went on. “Two, I don’t see why you need
me to get a re-animator. Once they know what you’re doing, there’s
plenty that would take the job even if you don’t have the money up
front.”

“
Yes, but not any of the
good ones,” she said. “Anybody with a decent reputation is bound to
pass on this unless I can offer them a hell of a lot more cash than
I’ve got right now. And the idea isn’t to get money out of this
deal but to buy back my dad’s debt. I don’t need a cut-rate
re-animator for this. It’s top shelf or it won’t work. I’ve got no
pull with people like that, but you do.”

“
How do you
know?”

“
I know a lot, Ace. That
shouldn’t surprise you.”

It didn’t. Still, I needed to make sure she
wasn’t bluffing.

“
Okay, I’ll bite. Just what
is it you think you know?”

Her smile turned sly now, like a cat’s would
be if cats could smile. “You pulled Bascom Quibble’s ass out of the
fire not two months ago. He’s who I want.”

I nodded. It made sense. Bascom Quibble was
the best re-animator in the city, the most in demand. He could name
his price. Most of his product went to his uncle’s toy factory. A
lot of people would be bothered to know that all the Quibble brand
dolls and puzzles and race cars they bought for their kids were
produced by zombie labor, but that was the elder Quibble’s problem.
The word was that most of Bascom’s money came from re-animating
recently deceased pets. The bereaved, it seemed, were willing to
hand over baskets of cash just to have Fluffy back for a week or
two until the decay set in and made the whole thing ghoulish.
Bascom had needed me about six weeks ago when he’d done a bad job
on a Great Dane that had done some serious damage at a dog park.
The settlement had cost him a fortune, but at least I’d kept him
out of jail for criminal negligence.

“
Bascom and I are square,”
I said. “And besides, he has bad memories associated with that
case. If I show up at his shop, it’s not likely to make him feel
all cuddly.”

“
Will you try?”

She had the dignity not to go into a pout,
not to lean forward and let her cleavage do the talking. She was
asking me honestly, one person to another. Even so, I shook my
head.

“
I don’t see much point,” I
said.

Her expression turned grim. With those dark
red, sharp nails of hers, she reached up to finger the silver chain
around her neck. The crucifix popped out of her blouse. “Not even
to return a favor?” she asked.

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“
I won’t be able to get him
to do it for nothing. A discount may be the best I can
swing.”

A smile spread across her face, and she
dropped the crucifix against her chest. “Anything would help.”

I hesitated a moment, then said, “And I want
a cut.”

“
A cut? I told you there
wasn’t going to be any money in this. Whatever program Rincon was
hacking for Yancy, I’m giving straight to Clancy.”

I shook my head. “Not without figuring an
angle for yourself first. You profit from the information that
thing gives you,” I said with a nod to the hand in the bag, “and I
get a cut. Just a little. But a cut.”

“
How will you know what I
get from the hand?”

“
I’ll have to trust
you.”

She nodded, raised an eyebrow, and extended
her hand. “Two percent?”

“
Five,” I said, reaching
out to shake on it.

“
Done. Can you get me
Bascom by tomorrow?”

“
I’ll do my
best.”

“
Good. I don’t know how
long this thing will stay viable.”

She stood up to put it back in the
refrigerator. Then, our dealings done, she offered to drive me back
to my office building, but I insisted she call me a cab instead. We
shook hands one more time at her door before saying goodnight.

It was closing in on one in the morning by
the time I got downstairs. Most nights, I’d have just been getting
started, but tonight I was beat—maybe from the lingering effect of
the attack in the Mirage, the drinks I’d consumed, or just dealing
with Pixel and the sight of the dead man’s hand in the baggie. I
couldn’t have said for sure what had gotten to me, just that I was
done in and wanted to get myself home and behind a locked door. On
top of all that, I noticed a sleek black van parked in front of the
building across the street from Pixel’s complex, and in the
moonlight I could see the ForeveRest logo on its door. The funeral
home was doing an intake, and for some reason, it gave me goose
bumps up my forearms and across my chest. The cab couldn’t get
there soon enough.