Market Forces (18 page)

“Fair enough.” He found a stupid grin crawling onto his mouth and twitched it away. “Garden?”

“I’ll meet you out there.” She withdrew, nodded casually at James and the powder man, and wandered out of the kitchen, leaving Chris holding the spliff. Patricia watched her go with enough venom in her gaze to poison a city water supply.

“Who is that woman?” she asked.

“Friend,” said Chris, and drifted off in Liz Linshaw’s wake.

Either Troy’s garden was larger than he’d expected or the Thai grass was already beginning to kick in. It was full dark by now, but Troy had thoughtfully provided half a dozen garden torches, driven at intervals into the long tongue of well-kept lawn. The garden was bordered by a mix of trees and shrubs, amid which the dwarf palms seemed to be doing the best, and at the far end a gnarled oak tree raised crooked limbs at the sky. From one lower branch someone had strung a simple wooden swing on blue plastic ropes that picked up the flickering light of the nearest torches and glowed. Liz Linshaw was seated there, one long leg drawn up to wedge her body back against one of the ropes, the other on the ground, idly stirring the swing in tiny arcs. There was a fresh spliff burning in her hand.

Chris hung from the moment, and felt something happen to him. It wasn’t just the fact that he knew she was waiting for him. There was something in the air, something that caught in the luminous blue twistings of the swing ropes, in the casual elegance of the way she had folded her body like an origami sketch of sexual appeal. The lawn was a carpet laid out under his feet, and the other people in the garden—he only registered them now—seemed to turn in unison and approve his passage toward the tree.

He grimaced and threw away the spliff. Made his way warily to her.

“Well,” she said.

“You wanted to talk to me.” It came out rougher than he’d intended.

“Yes.” She smiled up at him. “I’ve wanted to. Talk with you since the Tebbit Centre. Since the first time we met, in fact.”

It felt as if the ground beneath his feet had gone suddenly soggy and unsupportive.

“Why is that?”

She lifted a hand. “Why do you think?”

“Uh, Liz, to be honest, I thought you and Mike—”

“Oh.” The crooked smile was back. She smoked some more, and he struggled with his doped senses. “He told you about that. Well, Chris, how can I put this? Mike Bryant and I are not some kind of exclusive event.”

The ground was, apparently, gone now.

“In fact,” she said very softly. “There’s no reason why I can’t ask you for what Mike’s been giving me. Is there?”

He stared at her. “Sorry?”

“Interviews,” she said, and laughed. “Your life so far, Chris. My publishers are promising me a half-million advance if I can come up with another book like
The New Asphalt Warriors.
It’s a guaranteed best seller. And with the Nakamura thing, Cambodia, and the rest of it, you’re the man of the moment. Ideal focus.”

The ground came up and hit him in the heels, so hard he almost stumbled.

“Oh.” He looked away from the level gray-green gaze. “Right.”

She was still grinning. He could hear it in her voice. “Why, what did you think I was talking about?”

“No, I. Yeah. Fine, that, that’s good.”

She pushed with her foot and cranked the swing back a little, then let go. The edge of the wooden seat hit him across the front of the thighs. Her weight swung with it, pressed against him.

“Was there something else you wanted, Chris?”

Sprawled, airbrushed bodies on the exercise bench, liquid moans

Carla, the house, the stagnant anger through empty rooms

You’re a good guy, Chris.
Bryant, lolling semiconscious on the hotel bed.
That’s you. You’re a. Fucking good guy

It fell through his head like an avalanche, images crushing each other.

Liz Linshaw’s cleavage loaded into an open-necked blouse

Carla, soaping him in the shower, hands still gritty with the work on the Saab

Mitsue Jones, trapped in the wreck of her Mitsubishi, struggling

what we value here at Shorn is resolution

you’re a fucking good guy

was there something else you wanted

“Chris!”

It was Bryant. Chris took a sudden step back from Liz Linshaw and the swing. He saw her face, and the way it changed. Then he was facing Mike as he strode up the garden toward them.

“Been looking for you everywhere, man. Hi, Liz.” The conjunction appeared to strike him for the first time. His eyes narrowed. “What are you guys doing out here?”

“Talking,” said Liz, unruffled.

Chris scrambled for cover. “Book deal.” He made a gesture at Liz that felt like a warding off. “She says.”

“Yeah?” Bryant gave Liz an unfriendly look. “Well, my advice is, don’t tell her anything too realistic. You wouldn’t want to get labeled an animal.”

Liz, smiling to herself, turning away, unfolding herself from the swing. Chris shut it out and focused on Bryant.

“So what’s happening?”

“Ah, no big deal. Troy needs a favor. Liz, you want to give us a little privacy?”

“Already leaving, boys. Already leaving.”

They both watched her walk back down the garden and into the house. Mike turned and mimed a pistol at Chris’s face. He wasn’t smiling.

“Hope you know what you’re doing here, Chris.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mike. I’m married. She just wants another half-million advance from her publishers.”

“I wouldn’t count on that being the whole story.”

“Mike, I am
married.
”

“Yeah, me too.” Bryant rubbed at his face. “Not like you, though, huh?”

“You said that, not me.”

“Yeah.” Bryant smiled sadly and slung an arm across the other man’s shoulders. “You’re a good guy, Chris. You’re a good fucking guy.”

Chris stowed the unease slithering through him.

“So. What’s the deal with Troy?”

I
T WAS ALL
in the zones.

Mike said he’d drive, though Chris wasn’t convinced he was in any way the more sober or straight of the two of them. They went out to the car together with Troy, who for the first time since Chris had known him seemed angry and uncomfortable.

“I’d come with you, Mike . . .”

“I know you would, man. But you can’t.” Mike held up his corporate plastic. “We’re the only ones can do this for you. You know that.”

The Jamaican shook his head. “I owe you for this. Big time.”

“You don’t owe me shit, Troy. Remember Camberwell?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, well as far as I’m concerned, I’m still paying off the interest. ’Kay? Now give Chris the camera.”

Troy Morris swallowed and handed over the shoulder set. His features were knotted up with rage and frustration. Chris remembered him at the Falkland, the sawn-off shotgun propped against his shoulder as he left laughing, the sense of street competence that radiated off the man. It was a brutal transition to the Troy he saw before him now. Chris felt a jagged pang of sympathy. He knew the feeling of sudden impotence from his own youth, knew how it could cook your brains in your head, chew up your insides until you couldn’t sleep.

He got in the car. Stowed the shoulder set in the backseat.

“Be back before you know it,” said Mike as he swung himself into the driver’s side. The engine rumbled awake. Gears engaged and the BMW swept out into the street.

“What was that about Camberwell?” Chris asked as they came up on the checkpoint lights.

“Yeah, first time I met Troy. About ten years ago, back before he had this place. I was out in the zones, hitting the whiff pretty hard, went home with the wrong woman.”

“For a change,” Chris said sourly.

Mike chuckled. “Yeah, guess you never can get all the spots off the tiger, huh?”

“Leopard.”

“What?” They pulled in beside the checkpoint. A nervous-looking kid in guard uniform came out of the cabin and glanced into the car. He seemed unsure of himself. Mike leaned out and handed over his plastic.

“Leopard,” said Chris, while they were waiting. “Tigers used to have stripes, not spots. Leopards were the spotted ones.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, saw it on some nature digest a while back. They used to be able to climb trees, just like a real cat.”

“What, tigers?”

“Leopards.”

The young guard finally got his hipswipe unit to work, and Mike’s card chimed through. The barrier rose, and they were waved across.

“I swear these guys get younger every time we do the zones,” said Chris. “I mean, is it
really
a good idea to give automatic weapons to teenagers like that?”

“Why not? They do it in the army.”

They hit their first pothole. Mike took a left. Around them, the housing grew increasingly haggard.

“So yeah, Camberwell. This was before I met Suki. I was pretty wild back then. Pretty stupid. Used to get through a can and a half of Durex a month, easily. And the drugs, ah, you know how it is when you’ve got money. Anyway, this tart wasn’t really a tart, or maybe she was a tart and she changed her mind, I don’t know. End result, there were these three guys waiting outside her apartment. They threw me down a flight of stairs and started dancing on my head. Troy was living in the apartment downstairs, he heard the noise, came out, and chased them off.”

“All three of them?”

“Yeah, that’s right. He’s pretty fucking hard, Troy is. Or could be he faced them down. Don’t know, I was out by then, semiconscious. But, yeah, maybe he just talked them out of it. See, they were black, I was white, Troy was black. That maybe had something to do with it. Or maybe not. Anyway, the guy saved me getting hospitalized for certain, maybe saved me from a wheelchair. I owe him forever, and then some.”

They drove in silence the rest of the way, parked outside a nondescript little row of three-story houses and sat for a moment. Mike hauled the camera out of the backseat and dumped it in Chris’s lap.

“Okay, now just follow my lead. Back me up.”

They got out of the car, went through an ungated garden gateway and up a short, decaying concrete path. The door was cheap beige impact plastic, scarred and ugly. A Sony securicam lens and speaker grille gleamed incongruously from the chest-high panel in which it had been set. The installation looked professional. Mike touched the edge of the panel with one finger.

“See. Going up in the world. Just like the man said.”

Chris shook his head and whispered. “I can’t believe—”

“Believe it.” Mike hit the doorbell. “Now turn that thing on.”

Chris found the on/off in the camera’s grip. A cone of hard light leapt out of the front end and splashed on the scarred plastic of the front door. He wondered if this was going to play. Most state-of-the-art shoulder sets these days would shoot the whole range from infrared to ultraviolet with no external lighting at all.

Movement behind the door. He shouldered the set and tried to look like a cameraman.

“You know what fucking time it is?” said a female voice from the speaker grille. “This had better be fucking important.”

Mike pitched his voice media-bouncy. “Ah, Mrs. Dixon? This is Gavin Wallace from
Powerful People.
Is your husband home?”

A silence. Chris imagined her peering into the securicam screen at the two expensively dressed men on her doorstep. The voice came, tinged with suspicion.

“You from TV?”

“Yes, Mrs. Dixon, that’s what I said. Your husband has been selected from—”

A second voice, male and farther from the speaker pickup. The woman’s voice faded as she turned away from the door.

“Griff, it’s the TV.
Powerful People.
”

Another pause, laced with muffled voices. Someone had a hand over the pickup. Mike looked at Chris, shrugged, and put on the media voice again.

“Mister Dixon, if you’re there. We don’t have a lot of time. The helicopter has already left Blackfriars, and we need to get through the preliminaries before it arrives. We’re on a very tight schedule.”

It was the right chord. Half the draw of
Powerful People
derived from the breakneck pace the program sustained from the moment the names came out of the studio computer. There was much aerial footage, cityscapes tilting away beneath the swift-flying pickup copters, locator teams sprinting through the zones in search of the night’s contestants—

The door cracked open the width of a heavy-duty security chain. A lean, pale face appeared in the gap, blinking in the light from the shoulder set. There was a thin pink streak of artiflesh smeared over a cut on one temple.

“Mister Dixon. Good.” Mike leaned in, beaming. “Gavin Wallace.
Powerful People.
Pleased to. Oh. That looks nasty, that cut. Makeup’ll need to see that. In fact, I hate to say this but in all conscience—”

It was a stroke of genius.
Powerful Peoples
’s selection teams had been known to pass over a candidate for as little as recent dental surgery. The door hinged in, the chain came off. Griff Dixon stood before them in all his midnight glory.

“It’s just a scratch,” he said. “Honest. I’ll be fine. I’m fighting fit.”

It was an appropriate expression, Chris thought. Dixon was stripped to the waist, taut-muscled torso rising from a pair of jeans with real stains on them. His hair was a razored single centimeter all over, there were heavy black boots on his feet, and in his hand was a crumpled-up white T-shirt that Chris somehow knew he had just tugged off.

“Well,” Mike said richly. “If you’re quite sure you—”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Look, you want to come in, right.”

“Well, all right.” Mike made a show of wiping his shoes on the doorstep and walked into the threadbare hall, smiling a big TV smile. “Hello, Mrs. Dixon.”

A thin, worn-looking woman about Carla’s age stood behind Dixon’s sculpted musculature, one thin-boned hand resting on his shoulder. She squinted into the camera light and brushed vaguely at her shoulder-length brown hair.

“This is my colleague Christopher Mitchell. I’m sorry. Could we maybe film this in the living room?”