Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (32 page)

“Just so you understand, this is the last we speak of it.”

“Of course. Jeez, you're so tense. I don't think you were this tense during the actual life-and-death standoff.”

Silence, of the awkward variety. They crawled through the coagulated downtown traffic.

After several minutes, Zoey said, “You know what would help you relax? A nice massage.”

 

THIRTY-TWO

Zoey's butt was so cold it literally woke her up.

She pulled her eyes open and saw water, and she had the bizarre sensation that she was out in the middle of the ocean, drifting naked on a raft. But she was in a bed, though one where the pillows had been knocked off the side and the sheets were knotted up around her feet.

She raised her head, which weighed at least fifty pounds, and saw that the bed was on a circular island in the middle of a small indoor pool, a narrow glass walkway connecting it to the door. Was this some cheesy hotel in town? She craned her head around and saw that the wall behind her was entirely glass, looking out into the snowy courtyard of the Casa de Zoey, under mid-morning sunshine. So this was another of Arthur Livingston's ridiculous bedrooms. There was a member of the house landscaping crew out in the courtyard messing with some of the Christmas decorations, and Zoey hoped the glass was tinted from the outside. She lay back down and waited for the pain to go away or for her to just die, whichever. Something black was floating in the water just off of the bed island and she realized it was her underwear. Zoey rolled over and found she was alone in the bed. She looked up and saw herself looking back from above—the entire ceiling was a mirror. She looked like she had been tossed out of a tornado.

But she lay there, on a world-class mattress, listening to the sound of water lapping gently against the walls of one of her palace's many bedrooms, and decided that she could totally live like this. This mansion was a ridiculous museum to Arthur Livingston's deranged tastes, but what difference did that make? She could have the whole place bulldozed. She could build her own. And if anyone else wanted to mess with her, well, look at what they got.

It suddenly occurred to Zoey just how badly she had to pee, and she wondered how many hundred yards away she was from a bathroom in this place. She glanced over at the pool water and had a shameful thought, when her phone rang. The tiny holographic ghost of Will Blackwater appeared on her nightstand.

Zoey frantically covered herself with the sheet, as if Will could see her through his hologram eyes (he couldn't). She grunted and let it ring through to voice mail.

“Zoey? Where are you? Come to the conference room. It's an emergency.”

Zoey groaned. She again thought of how ridiculous it was to have a house so big that you had to call a person to find out if they were even in it.

She pulled the sheet around her and tried to sit up. She had no idea what part of the house she was in, though another glance out the glassed-in wall told her that the East Wing of the house was visible across the courtyard, so that meant she was in the West Wing unless this was some kind of M. C. Escher house that existed in five dimensions. The landscaping guy waved.

She wrapped the sheet around her and thought about fishing her clothes out of the pool, but saw that by the door was a folded-up bathrobe and slippers next to a silver tray offering a selection of fresh-cut fruit, orange juice, bottles of water, and aspirin. Carlton had done this before. She tried to do a juggling act with the sheet and robe that would let her drop one and put the other on while protecting some last shred of modesty, but failed spectacularly. Instantly she had the chorus to “Butt Show” stuck in her head again.

Finally, wrapped in a robe that felt as thick as a mink coat, Zoey emerged from the room and was immediately met by Carlton himself.

“Good, you found the robe. I would have come sooner but we were not sure where you had landed last night and I'm afraid a bedroom-by-bedroom search of this estate can occupy most of a morning.”

“Where's Armando?”

“I do not know. His understudy, the Chinese gentleman, is here.”

“Will called, he's in a state. Am I walking toward the conference room?”

“Yes, Ms. Ashe. I trust you had a pleasant evening?”

“Yeah and, uh, that room is kind of a mess. I'll go back in there later and just … fish my underwear out of the pool and all that.”

“No need, that task was always part of my Sunday morning to-do list. Will you be attending church services?”

“No.”

“Very well.”

“Did Arthur do that, when he was alive?”

“He never missed. Whether he found spiritual fulfillment there or merely a prime networking opportunity, I do not know. Perhaps that's where Armando is. Maybe he needed …
spiritual cleansing
for something.”

“Heh. Yeah. I never really thought about the religious stuff, all I know is Christians are lousy tippers. I used to wait tables at a Cracker Barrel when I was in high school and that was the first thing the other girls told me—don't expect tips from the after-church crowd. Bitter, fussy people leaving coins on the receipt.”

“The foyer is just ahead. Follow the scent of fresh pine.”

“Got it. Look, the way I see it, two people walk in the restaurant, a Methodist and an atheist. The Methodist says, I'm not going to tip because I just came from church and I've already done my good deed for the day. The atheist says, I'm not tipping because life is meaningless and we're all just animals. To me, they're both members of the same religion, because they're doing the same thing. Whatever little story they tell themselves to justify it is irrelevant. It goes the other way, too—if a Muslim and a Scientologist come in and both leave a tip, they're on the same team. It doesn't matter to me if one did it because of Allah and the other was obeying the ghost of Tom Cruise, what matters is it resulted in doing the right thing.”

“I would say you have devoted more thought to it than most.”

At the foot of the grand staircase they ran into Will, who was hanging up from a phone call. He was still wearing last night's suit, which hadn't acquired a single wrinkle or strand of lint. Had he slept?

She pulled her robe closed and said, “Sorry I'm such a mess. I got high on magic tea and had sex with Armando.”

“You have a keen ability to quickly answer every question I have no intention of ever asking. We've got a problem.”

“Can I put on some clothes first?”

He answered by saying nothing and hurrying across the foyer, toward the Mold Room. It was the fastest Zoey had seen him move.

“What is it?”

“Molech is about to make a public statement.”

 

THIRTY-THREE

Echo was waiting in the Mold Room in a neon pink tracksuit, as if she had been interrupted from a morning run. Zoey asked her if she'd seen Armando.

“No, the other guy is here, he was looking for you.”

“Okay. I hadn't seen him since last night. In the bedroom with the pool in it.”

Echo said nothing.

“Where we had sex.”

Will said, “This is it.” He brought up a feed that, at the moment, was just a black screen. “Supposed to start a few minutes ago, he's keeping everyone waiting.”

“Who?”

“Molech. Maybe.”

“No. Stop. Back up. He isn't dead?”

“We assumed he was until ten minutes ago. His truck was run off the road by some Pinkerton contractors, between Ventura and Twelfth. There was an altercation with his henchmen, but Molech got away.”

“
‘Got away'
? He was leaving a gallon of blood behind him with every step, I can't believe he even survived the truck ride. He had no arms!”

“He fought off six Pinkertons with his feet, then ran into a construction site. Had belts tied around his forearms as tourniquets. They went in after him, never found the body. But there was no place for him to go, we were confident that … we wouldn't be hearing from him again. Then his publicist put out a press release an hour ago. We wrote it off as a hoax, but our sources are now suggesting it's not.”

Echo said, “It would actually be an inspiring story of survival, if he wasn't such an asshole.”

“Hold on, Molech has a publicist? Where's Budd and Andre?”

Will said, “They spent all night sorting through Blink feeds from around that neighborhood, to see if there's a glimpse of Molech somewhere. They wound up finding some kids who claimed they gave him a ride home. Probably a long shot, though, those are usually just boasts the Team Molech types tell each other.”

Wu appeared at the door.

“Ms. Ashe, we met last night, I don't know if you, uh, remember—”

“Yes. Wu. The sword guy.”

“Armando asked me to—”

Will shushed everyone. The feed blinked to life.

It was a man in a hospital bed—a nearly unrecognizable Molech, so pale that Zoey thought he looked like he'd been gang-bitten by vampires. His handless stumps were now thick clubs of stained gauze. At the sight of him, three different people in the conference room spat three different curses. Zoey was proud that her's was the most profane.

Zoey whispered, “So he
is
in a hospital, can we find out which one? Go pull his plug?”

Echo said, “We've been watching every hospital within driving distance since last night, he didn't check into any of them. He didn't charter a flight, either.”

The camera settled on Molech's pale face.

“First of all,” he said, “I want to say that was a lovely funeral last night and I'm sure Arthur Livingston would be pleased if he weren't burning in Hell right now. Second of all, I want to thank the Livingston crew for the new hands. See, I had been wanting to add robot hands for months now and they've finally given me an excuse to stop procrasturbating and get it done. As my dad always said, you can use space-age technology to give your joints and muscles godlike strength, but you can't punch through a wall if your fragile little hand bones are going to get turned to powder on impact. The new ones are titanium. We're gonna fit them right after I'm finished with my message here, then I'm gonna see what it's like to get jerked off by a robot. And third of all, I want to show you somethin'. Zoey Ashe, if you're out there, pay attention. This is live.”

The feed switched. They were now looking at the interior of a car, two gloved hands on the steering wheel—the feed from a glasses camera. A coffee cup was raised up to the bottom of the screen. As the driver drank, he turned toward his passenger.

Sitting there in the passenger seat, visible above the curved white rim of the cup, was Zoey's mother.

Zoey heard herself say, “No…”

Molech said, “Say hi to your mom. She and the craziest bastard in my employ are currently driving together toward an undisclosed location in Colorado, where I assure you the local bumpkin cops will not find them. Now, don't be alarmed. My man is not going to kill her. He's just going to temporarily paralyze her with a spinal block. Then he's going to nail her into a box, and put a live cam in there. Then he's going to bury that box. I'm going to broadcast that coffin feed live, round the clock, for you and the whole world to watch. When I get you—and I
will
get you—I'm going to lock you in a room and put that feed on every wall. You'll get to see the moment your mother regains control of her limbs, and then the moment she realizes she's been buried alive. You'll watch her scream and claw and cry and beg. For hours. Until she slowly runs out of energy, and air, and hope. You'll wake up to it, you'll go to sleep to it, day after day, week after week. You'll watch her die. Then you'll watch her skin turn gray, as the fluids ooze out. You'll watch as the maggots turn up, first in her nose, in her eyes, in her mouth. You'll watch the first face you saw when you were born slowly rot, lips turning black and shredding away from the teeth, eyelids eaten away to reveal that blank stare, frozen forever in that awesome last moment of panic.”

Zoey screamed, “Don't touch her, shitspider!”

Will said, “He can't hear you, it's just a broadcast.”

Molech continued, “So, the box goes in the ground one way or the other. The only question is who goes in it. You got two hours until we nail her in. Two hours to bring me the gold, and that's only because I got to take an hour to install my new hands and give them a test drive, if you know what I mean. My people will meet you in the lobby of Livingston Tower. If you bring security, we'll know immediately, and the clock on your mother instantly winds to zero. If you hand over the gold, my man will walk away from your mom, we'll take you into custody, sew your filthy mouth shut, and let my fans vote on what to do with your various holes before we put
you
in the ground instead. Remember, you brought this on yourself.”

The feed clicked to black, replaced by white numbers counting down from 120 minutes.

Zoey stood and dug her phone from her bathrobe pocket. “I'm calling Armando.”

Wu said, “Ms. Ashe, Armando has resigned. You, of course, are free to hire protection of your choosing, but Mr. Ruiz asked me to take on his shift in the interim. If you do not find my credentials satisfactory I will take no offense.”

A message popped up over her phone, telling her the user had blocked her number.

Zoey said, “You call him. Tell him the job isn't done. Tell him Molech is back. Tell him I won't show any boob, not while he's on the clock.”

“I honestly don't think he will—”

“Tell him Molech has my mother. And tell him…” she stopped, not sure how to phrase it. “Tell him I know the truth, and that it's okay. Tell him I still trust him.”

Nobody in the room knew what that meant. Wu dialed.