Double Cross [2] (19 page)

“What? Shit! Something else is wrong. You just thought of something bad, I saw it in your eyes!” She fixes me with her pixie gaze. “Come on, out with it!”

“I thought of something bad, but it’s not connected to you.”

She narrows her eyes. “Of course you’d say that.”

“It’s true.”

“How do I know that?”

“You don’t.”

She screws up her lips and fixes me with a silly look. “Touché.”

I snicker. “Look, stop focusing so intently on the feeling and it’ll go away. Okay?” A woman in furs trundles up. “Okay? I’ll be right back.” I head down the staircase to the bar below.

Stop focusing on the feeling.
That was helpful advice, and I’m not here to be helpful. What was I thinking? I should’ve acted secretly concerned. I have to stop this compassion thing.

I buy myself an ouzo. Up above on the catwalk corridor, the woman’s handing over her coat. Even though Ez hasn’t asked about the field descrambler, I have this crazy urge to give it to her.

I think about what Packard said—that she collages memories to create action. Maybe that’s why she keeps trying to get me to discuss handing the thing over—so that there’s a memory of a conversation to stir up. Could that be enough?

I smile as I sip my drink. She really is sparky, and fun to be around, which is pretty impressive considering she’s been isolated in that booth for three years. It takes a certain amount of inner strength to handle something like that—and to handle the fear I’ve been filling her with. I don’t need Packard’s psycho-sight to get the sense that she doesn’t add up as a sicko killer. I’ve dealt with plenty of lowlifes and depraved murderers at this point, and Ez doesn’t have the same feeling in any way. Is this really a woman who turned people into murderous cannibals for the fun of it?

But an innocent woman wouldn’t be invading our dreams and trying to control us, and certainly Otto wouldn’t have sealed her up without proof. While we were screwing around at the Paranoia Factory, I read the
Midcity Eagle
’s online archive from the summer of
the Krini Militia. It really was horrible how those people were eaten, and there was a great deal of evidence against Ez. She reportedly fled to Brazil. No doubt Sophia revised her friends and family to believe that, just as Packard’s friends and family were revised to think they saw him die all those years ago.

I go back up the stairs. I think about what Otto said:
Extreme circumstances call us to do things we’d prefer not to have to do.
Until I’m presented with evidence of her innocence, I have to work on disillusioning her.

Up top I head down the balcony past a chatty little group toward her little window. Nobody’s recognized her in there—not surprising, when you see the murky photos and police sketches of her. I suppose one day she woke up and found herself in there. What happens if she contacts her old friends, or tells the world who she is, and pleads her case from the coat check booth? Does she meet an even worse fate? Are there rules? Consequences? We disillusionists never get answers to these questions.

I set my drink on her ledge. “I brought you something,” I say, low, so the couple gazing over the balcony rail won’t hear.

“Is it what I most want in the whole wide world?” She raises her eyebrows. “You know how happy that would make me.”

I do know. “Sorry,” I say.

She frowns a pouty frown. “Well, can I just see it? What harm would it be for me to see?”

This suddenly makes a weird kind of sense. What harm would it be? I hold up my arm.

Her face lights up. “It’s the bracelet? That’s the descrambler?”

“Shhh,” I say, feeling happy that she’s happy.

“Let me try it on.”

“No way.” I lower my arm, letting my sleeve fall over it, shocked that I just showed her. What was I thinking?

“The bracelet all this time?”

“I won’t give it to you, though. Ever.” And I’ll be zinging her with my other hand, too. Shit! Why did I show her? She can picture it now. Packard warned that she could gain limited influence during the day. “I have this for you instead.” I pull out Otto’s copy of
Benvenuto Cellini
.

“Another book?”

“I knew you were interested in the ingesting of diamonds—”

She goes a little pale. “No. I really wasn’t.”

“You have to hear this. It’s a fascinating anecdote.”

“No.” She puts her fingers to her lips.

“You’ll love it, Ez.” I launch into reading the passage about Benvenuto in the dungeon. She resists, but she’s simply no match for me. I’ll get her in the mood, I’ll zing her, then I’ll go. Soon I reach the passage where he’s sure he’s eaten the diamonds, convinced he’ll die a grueling death, and Ez and I discuss this thing I learned on the Internet today: that tiny shards of pounded diamonds get these barbed fishhook-like edges that can sink into the intestine walls over months—one person suggested it would be like a stinging jellyfish living inside you. Ez looks like she’s going to fall over. I don’t blame her. The idea of it terrified even me, and I never had perforated organ fears.

I sense that her attention is turning inward. I should take her pulse right now and zing her.

“You wouldn’t be able to even do an operation on that sort of thing,” she says vacantly.

“Not unless they figure out how to transplant intestines.”

“Or maybe they could bypass it. Maybe do a modified gastric bypass down to the distal end?”

I bite my lip. This is not my area of expertise.

“What is this, book club?”

Ez blinks, as though she’s coming out of a trance. “Simon!”

I spin around.

Simon grins. “Hello Ezmerelda. Nurse Justine.” He’s still in his work outfit, but he’s added his big ratty coat and the antihighcap glasses, and his black hair, once slicked back, is now disheveled sideways, seeming to defy physics, for a look that’s insane, and bit menacing.

“Well?” Ez says. “What happens? Justine?”

“What?” I say.

“Does he survive?”

“Oh. Cellini realizes it’s glass,” I say. “Which is digestible.”

She gapes at me, eyes so wide in her small, fine face that she looks downright doll-like.

“Glass is digestible?” Simon says. He comes up right next to me, so we’re both at her window. “Are you guys discussing a book? Is that what you’re doing?”

I show him the cover. “Do you know it?” I ask.

“No.”

I give him a hard look. “Well, then …”

Simon ignores my hint and smiles at Ez. Shit.

There’s a door to the side of the coat carousel. Nobody would’ve passed through it for years, but Simon could; he was given a descrambler for the Belmont Butcher, who has a high-security setup just like Ez. And now he’s wearing antihighcap glasses. He wouldn’t be wearing them if he wasn’t planning on touching her.

“We’re having a private conversation about it,” I say.

“But not
overly
private,” Ez says.

He’s clearly not leaving, so I take the opportunity to inform him how swallowing diamond powder is like having a stinging jellyfish living inside you for months. I go on to talk about the crazy strong squeezing muscles of the intestines. Simon wears an amused smirk, as if it’s all just a lark. He’s messing everything up—a hypochondria attack requires a serious attitude.

I look at the place on my wrist where my watch would be if I wore one. “Sort of getting late,” I say.

Simon gazes at me, all innocence. “You have to go? Too bad.” He pulls a deck of cards from his pocket.

She smiles. “Rematch?”

I raise my eyebrows at Simon.
Rematch?
I push away from the window. So much for interviewing the suspect. He’s been socializing with her.

“Oh, duh, your coat. Sorry, Justine.” Ez retrieves my coat from the carousel.

I could still take her pulse and zing her, but thanks to Simon, her mind’s not in the right place, and I don’t see myself getting her back on track. I’m a little bit relieved, but at the same time, disappointed, because I won’t get to feel that wonderful peace. I try not to think about that too much. I throw a couple bucks into the tip jar.

“Nice to see you again, Nurse Jones,” Simon says.

As I pull on my coat, I stare levelly at Simon. “If you don’t mind, since you missed your follow-up visit to the clinic, I’d like a word with you. A bit of a heads-up on your condition.”

“I hardly think a broken arm is a condition.” He lifts an arm. “It’s healed up fabulously.”

I bore into his eyes. “I really don’t want to tell you the results of the test in front of Ez.”

His smile is a challenging one. But just then, a large group, maybe a dozen, trundles in the door. We step back as the first approaches Ez’s window. “I’ll walk you to your car, Nurse Jones.”

We get out of there. The sky is starry, and the streetlights illuminate tiny crystalline snowflakes riding the chill breeze. “What is this?” I demand, heading toward where I parked. “You’re playing
cards
with her? This is beyond investigation. You’re just after her.”

“I can’t make a friend?”

“Not this one.” I turn a corner. The sidewalks are unusually empty, considering it’s only a bit after seven o’clock. The Dorks.

“Loosen up,” Simon says. “Why not go do somebody else and crash Ez later on? Give me more time with the investigation.”

“Are you even investigating? Because this is important to me.”

“Of course I am, but in the meantime, we’ve been having some fun, me and Ez. She’s been in there for three years. How about you let her have some fun with me while she’s still badass?”

“I can’t. Unless she’s innocent, and I’m not seeing proof that she is.”

He snorts angrily.

“Sorry, Simon. I can’t.”

“I can’t,”
he mimics. “Don’t you ever hate yourself?”

I stop, spin around. His eyes gleam behind the antihighcap glasses. “Here’s the situation. Ez has her dream invader hooks into Packard and me. Know what I’m saying? She’s got us conferenced. So she’s fast-tracked.”

Simon cranes his neck up, incredulous. “What?”

“I messed up, okay? I let her touch me while Packard tried to pull me away, and she got us both. Our sleeping minds are totally conferenced right now. Don’t tell anybody.”

Simon laughs. “You’re conferenced together? You and Packard and Ez?”

“And she’s already been screwing around in our sleeping minds.”

Simon flicks his bangs out of his eyes with a jerk of his head. “Start sharpening the ol’ chompers yet?”

“That’s not even funny.” I continue walking.

“It wasn’t a joke. Has she been trying to work you in any way that would seem like she wants you to eat
people? Does she talk about meat when you see her? Steak tartare?”

“Don’t.”

“I’m not trying to be funny. If she has a cannibal mania, or whatever kind of sickness makes a person do that, she’d be working you in that direction. Has she?”

“She’s been making suggestions.”

“About?”

“She wants us to hand over our descramblers.”

“See? She goes right to getting free.”

“Maybe it’s step one. With your two days of investigation or whatever it is you’ve been doing, have you come to any different conclusions than Otto, the highcap master detective? No.”

“Yeah, I have.”

“Only in your own mind. If you’d found something you would’ve told me by now.” Everything is so complicated suddenly—too complicated. “Think about it, Simon. Ez has taken the power to command us as sleepwalking zombies. We have to crash her and make her break the link. It’s a matter of survival.” I say it as much for myself as for him.

“Even if she’s innocent?”

“How long am I supposed to wait for you to find evidence of that?”

“I think she’s innocent.”

“If she’s innocent, then why is she messing with our dreams? Why is she deepening her hold on us?”

“She wants to get out.”

“Easy to say when you’re not the one who’ll be dining on guts if you’re wrong.”

“I’m going back up there.”

“What? To ruin all my work?”

“Nobody’s ruining your work.”

“You already ruined my work. I didn’t get to zing her because you interrupted.”

“You still could’ve zinged her.” He gives me a quizzical look. “What’s wrong?”

“You took her mind out of it.” I shrug. “She’s rolling anyway. She’s not even all the way sane now.”

“She’s sane enough for me,” he says as we reach my car.

“To fuck?”

“That’s right.”

I give him my most damning gaze. “You would take advantage of her partial sanity and her loneliness like that?”

“What about my partial sanity? And my loneliness?”

“You are sick. And you’re not going in there.” I grab his wrists. They’re bare. “Where’s your descrambler?”

“You won’t find it.”

“You’re not going in there.”

“Or what? Otto will seal me up? Oops, he can’t. Because I’m wearing these glasses now. These fucking things are the best thing since sliced bread. Otto can’t touch me and Ez can’t compromise me, either.” With a smirk he leans on the passenger door of my Jetta, pretends to arrange his hair in the side mirror. “Until I want her to. I understand there are certain benefits to it.”

“Packard can still cut you off and let you turn into a Jarvis.”

“All the more reason to spend my last days having fun.”

“I’m sure he’d manage to send some thugs over to beat you up in the meantime.”

“Packard’s sworn off that shit.”

I narrow my eyes. Why does everybody assume Packard’s out of the crime business?

“Anyway, I’ll take my chances,” he adds.

This, of course, is pure Simon. Always taking chances. Always on the losing end. Which is why I’ve slipped out my stun gun.

He realizes it seconds before I show it. He smiles, thinking about how to get to his, no doubt.

I say, “Don’t move. Just tell me where you have the descrambler.”

“I’ve taken precautions,” he says.

“You never take precautions.” We both know how this will end, but we have to go through it. “One. Two.” He lunges. I press the button.

“Uh!” He crumples. I grab a handful of ratty coat, trying to break his fall, but his chin still hits the side mirror on the way to the ground.