Signwave (15 page)

He was a hefty man, but he moved like a poisonous snake. Smooth and silent. Pinky thought rifles were for cowards. He carried three pistols, one on each hip, the third in a shoulder holster. Another strap held the tube silencers. All of his pistols were the same. H&K, chambered for NATO rounds.

Pinky would get
close
. He'd drop two or three of the enemy before they realized they were under attack.

And I'd seen him standing, his back against a tree, dispensing death from each hand. No silencers then. Not much use in a firefight. The man was either fearless or seeking death—the way he fought, it was impossible to tell.

In the jungle, there's a deep, powerful belief in magic. I don't know what went through the mind of a hired rifleman at the sight of native boys wearing pink chiffon scarves, reeking of perfume, charging headlong into bullets. Despite dropping one of them after another, they would keep coming, as if the rifleman were playing some lunatic's video game.

Their belief in magic would hit the rifleman as surely as his bullets hit those crazy boys.

When we all went our own ways after that job was done, Pinky was still alive. But not before he shot a guy named Abel. The man he shot had called him some kind of name. I didn't hear anything but the cough of the shot. One shot.

Nobody did anything. Nobody said anything. This wasn't La Légion. We had none of their lies controlling us, no orders to never abandon our wounded or our dead.

We just walked off, in different directions.

—

I
learned a lot from Pinky.

From watching him, I mean. How he handled whatever came his way. Maybe he'd once wanted to prove something to himself, but, whatever that test might have been, he knew he'd passed it.

If Pinky asked you if you wanted to “put it where it's nice and pink” and you shook your head, he would just shrug. And leave you alone. That was Pinky: he'd either leave you alone or leave you dead…and that was
your
choice.

Maybe what I had learned branded me in some invisible way. All I know is that Johnny and Martin accepted that I had no feelings about what they did, how they lived, or even how they came to be that way.

That last part was something I figured out for myself. It wasn't a choice; it was in you or it wasn't. Like being born with blond hair. You could dye your hair, but you'd still be blond underneath the covering.

I never had their feelings, but I realized that didn't make me anything special. I loved Dolly, and it seemed I'd never had a choice about that, either.

—

“A
re you sure you wouldn't like something to drink?” Johnny asked. “I'm going to brew some tea for Martin and me anyway….”

“No, thank you.”

“All right,” he said. “Let's just get to it, whatever it is.”

“Do you know anything about a man named Benton? That's George B-as-in-Byron Benton. Hedge-fund guy. He started something called PNW Upstream in Portland. Mid-forties, looks a little younger, maybe. Moved to the village we—me and Dolly—the one we live in, about a dozen years ago.”

“Why do you ask?” Johnny said. Like he was just curious, not probing.

“He's a danger to Dolly.”

“And you…?”

“Shut up, Johnny.” Martin sliced into whatever his partner was going to say. “You're sure?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“Whatever you want, just say it.”

“I just did.”

“That's all you want? Whatever we know about…him?”

“Yes.”

Johnny walked over and sat down next to Martin and put his hand on his partner's arm, telling me he stood with Martin. All the way.

—

“W
e don't know him,” Johnny said. “But we
know
him.”

“I'm sorry….”

“He's a fraud,” Martin said, no emotion in his voice.

“He doesn't really manage a hedge—?”

“He's not gay,” Johnny said, making it clear he was telling me a fact, not expressing an opinion.

“Then why would…?”

“He's an infiltrator,” Martin answered me, trying to speak a language he thought I'd understand. “Where you live—actually, all along the coast—it's political suicide to be ‘homophobic.' Or even not a liberal. You have to support the ‘arts,' ” he went on, hitting that last word with a light acid bath. “You have to be eco-conscious; you have to recycle, you have to be a ‘Dem.' You have to write letters to the editor, even if nobody reads that rag. And it goes without saying that you have to support ‘gay marriage.' ” He didn't spare the vitriol on that last phrase.

“Aren't there plenty of…I don't know, people who call everything
they
want ‘small government'? Like lowering property taxes, or being against abortion, or…?”

“Yes,” Johnny said. “No shortage. But Martin said ‘political.' Which means you can leave out all the trailer trash—not my term—because, whether you're white or Mexican, if you don't have money, you don't vote. Nobody runs for office as a Republican or Democrat at the local level—everybody's ‘nonpartisan.' Makes it a lot easier to control all the decision making.
How many
local
Republicans do you think you'd find in Chicago?”

“Okay, but why the masquerade, then?”

“That's a good question. But I can tell you this for sure: Martin and I had dinner with George and Roger—that's the man he lives with—a couple of years ago, and they are
not
a couple. They may be partners, but not romantically. I don't mean they gave it away by
not
camping it up—that's not a test, that's a personality.

“But when you've lived your whole life as we”—he pushed his shoulder against Martin's—“have, you just can…feel some things. Especially between another couple. I'm not talking about some ‘gaydar' nonsense. That's a signal you deliberately send out, and theirs was the opposite: a cover-up. But I can tell you this. I can tell you this, for sure: those two are the first closeted fag-bashers I've ever met.”

“They
hate
…you? I mean, not you personally, but—”

“That's right,” Martin said. Like he shouldn't have to say any more than that.

“That's a lot to go through, keeping your face on all the time,” I said. “They can't be doing it just to fit in—it wouldn't be worth it. You have any idea what this Benton could be planning?”

“Not now we don't,” Johnny said, softly. “But you already said the magic words, Dell. And you can take this to the bank: we
will
.”

“That's a bank that doesn't draw interest,” Martin added, just in case I missed the point.

“I don't want Dolly to know,” I said, just in case
they
had.

“Can you say why?” Martin asked.

“Yeah. Dolly's no good at keeping emotions off her face. She's already sorry she even told me what Benton said to her.”

“And if something were to—”

“That's enough,” I told them both.

“We're entitled to protect Dolly, too. We're
obligated
to. You don't say you love someone—and we
do
love her!—and not stand ready to prove it.”

“You already are,” I assured them. “There's things you're good at that I couldn't ever learn to do. And there's some things I'm good at. We're each working our part of the job.”

“And what we don't know won't hurt us?” Johnny said, half sulking.

“It won't hurt
Dolly
,” I answered, handing him a blank business card with a burner-cell number on the back. “Okay?”

We shook hands. All of us.

I believed them. And I knew they believed me.

Now
I knew.

—

O
n the drive back, I kept thinking how most folks would think being gay was something you'd hide, not fake.

But, the more I thought about it, the better I understood—or, at least, thought I
could
understand—why MaryLou had played that role all through high school. And how Franklin could sense things even if he couldn't spell them.

Dolly wasn't home. I went right to the basement, snapped together the machine, and…Yes. While I'd been away, the ghost had visited.

|<(1) Confidential senders all ID'ed at their end. (2) Member added 2009 = R/N Rhonda Jayne Johnson. S/N changes, floating IP. DOB = 2/2/19A7. Contacts back-channel for PNW, ongoing. Approved for >< question-phase, check-out ><*only*. Grad O State U this year. Concentration: economics. Also: coaching athletics, empha soccer. Accept'd MA program.>|

Then a lengthy list of vitals, from birth certificate to transcript to address. And a photograph.

There was something off about the photograph, but I couldn't put a name to it. I knew better than to try and print anything off the machine—it didn't have a connector port, and any message would disappear within a minute or so after the ghost's system would tell him I'd viewed it. I needed that time to copy off the information.

I did that. Then I stared at the photograph until the machine blinked off. I wouldn't need a printout to keep the image in my head. The career Olaf had started me on had forced me to learn that skill. Being caught with weapons could always be explained. But a photo of the target, that would do its own talking. Whoever was in such a photograph was soon to be dead, and clients of professional assassins expected anonymity to be part of every contract.

Dolly wouldn't be surprised if I didn't come to bed. Sometimes, I can't sleep—not with film strips being pulled across the underside of my eyelids, forcing me to watch a slow-motion movie. Most of the time, I could follow the script. Could be something I'd done that I wasn't proud of. Or something that had been done to me. I
had
to watch.

But a replay of whatever my life had been before the “retrograde amnesia” the doctors in that clinic had told me I already had when I was brought in
—that
had never come up on the screen. Still it
could
, I told myself. Maybe that veil would lift. Maybe I could learn…I don't know what. Or even why I cared.

After a while—I don't know how long I'd been there, and they wouldn't tell me—I left. I always thought of it as “escaped,” but there really was no security, not even a fence. The drop from my window was cushioned by the soft, carefully tended grass. It was dark, but you could hear the shadows. Some of the
other kids said those shadows were grown-ups who had been there for years and years, wandering the grounds after night came. I wasn't afraid of shadows. Not afraid enough to remain caged, anyway.

From some place in Belgium to the gutters of Paris. A different kind of cold. A ravenous wind always blowing. Then Luc found me.

I used to think about what I'd do if ever I found that “clinic.” I knew things now that no child could ever know. I had skills no child could ever be taught. Tools no child could ever use. I could make whoever was in charge tell me whatever I wanted to know…if they knew it themselves.

I was good at that. One time, I was alone in a hotel's penthouse suite with a man who owned the hotel, and a dozen more like it. He was rich enough to travel the world on his yacht; he kept private jets in different places, and employed a security force powerful enough to overthrow some small countries. I needed to know where and when a massive arms shipment was to be delivered. If he wouldn't tell me, I'd put a venom-tipped round into his brain.

“You can't be serious,” he said, not a hint of anxiety on his face or in his hands. “You kill me and you'll never get out of here alive. And even if you managed that…You're a professional—you
have
to know you're already on video. You'd be hunted down sooner or later. Then you'd be boiled to death like a lobster.”

“I get the coordinates, or you get dead,” I said, just as calmly. I had good reason to be: A man who buys too much security never thinks that what he paid for, another could pay for as well. Pay
much
more—traitors don't come cheap. That's why my job was to get the information and pass it on over the sat-phone I had with me. Then put the rich man to sleep.

But the threat to kill him was a bluff. Dead, the traitor inside
his organization would be of no more value to the people who had hired me.

“You can kill me, I suppose,” he said. “But you'd just be killing yourself, don't you see that?”

“I won't ask you again.”

“Didn't you hear a word I said? Are you
insane
?”

“Not as long as the shot they gave me is still working,” I answered his question. “I kind of know what it is, some mixture of lithium and Thorazine, some other stuff, too, I
t
hink. But I don't know the formula. Only they do. That's why I have to do this. They're the only ones who can keep the voices away, so I have to do what they say.”

My voice had already started to wobble, so I made a concentrated effort to separate my words. The rich man didn't miss what he thought I was trying to hide.

“Please…” is all I could get out by then.

I could see inside his head just as he thought he could see inside mine.
This man is a lunatic. A robot. What's one arms shipment, anyway? Not worth my life
.

He told me. I let him hear me speak it into the phone, my voice barely getting the words out.

And then
I
got out. But not before I put a flat metal box on his desk.

Even if that clinic still existed, even if I could find it, it was all so long ago. I could think of a hundred reasons why no records about me would still exist. And not a single one why they would.

—

I
learned this very early in my life: all knowledge isn't power.