Devil in the Wires (12 page)

 

Chapter 28

Reunion

“T
hey gave me baritone sax,” she said. “No one else was tall enough.”

A small gray man in a tuxedo—­chief among her audience—­gazed up at her, clasping his hands as if in prayer.

“But you were good?”

“Hon,” she told him, “I was ten years old.” She touched his arm, confidingly. “I sounded like a
duck
.”

“Oh, my.” His head began to nod. His shirtfront trembled, and he shook with laughter. “Oh, but that's hilarious—”

I doubted I'd have raised even a smile with that line, but I daresay I lacked Angel's charm.

Someone was playing Mozart, somewhere. Glasses clinked, and drink flowed. I'd come up on her blindside, savoring the chance to check her out that way before we spoke, to see how much she'd changed. It had been jeans and hoodies when I'd first known her, but tonight she wore a floor-­length dress of peacock-­blue, and the light just seemed to dance across it, up the curve of her back, the muscle of her shoulder, winding through the fabric as if woven in. And I was watching that, just utterly wrapped up in it, when she turned, without missing a beat, and said, “Hi, Chris. You're late.”

She had a lovely, lovely smile.

The smile looked pleased to see me, anyway.

I wasn't sure about the rest of her.

So I gave her my excuses—­the meet and greet, the endless introductions, the stack of business cards filling my pockets . . .

But she cut me off.

“No,” she said. “You're two years, three months, and, oh—­some handful of days late.
That
kind of late. Know what I mean?”

The smile came back, only it wasn't quite so reassuring now.

“Ah,” I said.

“Ah. Right.”

Somewhere, I knew, there was a perfect answer to all this, a magical riposte to instantly absolve me of any blame, to set us laughing, joking, reminiscing like the old, dear friends we almost were.

But for the life of me, I couldn't work out what it was.

T
here was a time, more recently than I'll usually admit, when I believed that you could learn things from a person's name. Nothing major, perhaps, but little things, the way that ­people say, “You look like a Chris,” or whatever your name is. With Angel, though, I'd pictured her, almost the moment that I'd heard her name, as pale and waif-­thin, with huge eyes and a wardrobe full of hand-­me-­downs. The heroine of some Victorian romance novel . . . which goes to show how good my theory was, and why I don't much talk about it anymore.

Angel Farthing was a smidgen under six foot two, and built like a tennis player. Her skin was dark. Her hair, once short and spiky, had now been fluffed up in a kind of ragged Afro, tinted so it caught the light in red and gold. Angel was Registry, though part-­time—­office and PR—­and when she wasn't there, she was, as Shailer had so feebly grasped, studying. That she had got herself into the doctoral program at the University of Chicago was a measure of her intellect, and that she'd stayed there, a measure of tenacity. In a school filled with rich kids, she was the one working her way through college. She took on teaching jobs for extra money, and I'd known her to work into the night when necessary, grading papers or else painstakingly editing her dissertation. She sang opera. She also, as I'd found out, forgot to eat, grew light-­headed and dissociative, and had once fainted during class as a result. After that, I'd tried to make sure she was eating regularly. I'd assisted in her training for the Registry, showed her something of how Field Ops worked. And since we were both at something of a loose end, romantically speaking, I suppose one thing had led to another. Though not, if I'm honest, for very long.

I had known her as a newcomer, a student looking for a part-­time job while I was on a brief assignment in Chicago. Shy, a little awkward, her confidence at least a small part bluff. Here, though, I could see how much she'd changed. In the Palm Court of the Drake, the epicenter of Old Chicago, she had poise: an athlete's grace, a diplomat's charm.

The rich may not be noted for their looks, but Angel would have stood out anywhere, in any company you cared to name.

I told her, “Looking good.”

“You too, Chris.”

She reached out, touched the hair above my ear. “Little bit of gray there. Suits you. Distinguished.”

“Your hair's nice, too. I mean . . . like that. That style . . .”

“Uh-­huh?”

She held a purse in one hand, a glass in the other, and she seemed to lean back, trying to get perspective on me. Then she said, “I hear you work for Mr. Shailer now.”

“No.”

The band, a string quartet, struck up a jaunty version of “Eleanor Rigby,” abandoning the classics as things began to shift to a less formal gear.

“It's what I'm told.” That teasing little lift there in her voice, not quite doubt, but . . . not quite believing, either.

“It's a secondment,” I explained. “I'm here—­” I looked around, at the fountains, the potted palms, “I'm here as long as I want to be. I can walk out when I want.”

“Oh yeah?”

I nodded.

She said, “You were requested. You were summoned, Chris. Mr. Shailer's flavor of the month these days, and Mr. Shailer gets what Mr. Shailer wants. Mr. Shailer,” she added, “has been making a royal pain of himself around the office for the last six months.”

“Yeah. That sounds like him.” I shrugged. “Still. London wants me here, and what London wants . . .”

She put her head on one side.

“Really?”

“That's about it.”

“Huh. Kinda disappointing,” she said. “Not what a girl likes to hear, you know. Even if it's true.”

“Uh—­”

“
I came back to see you, darling. I've missed you so much . . .
Though if you did,” she said, “you took your own sweet time about it.”

“Christ, Angel, I'm sorry, I just—­”

“Don't make excuses. You sound like an idiot when you do that.”

“Do I?”

“Uh-­huh. Too late now, anyway.”

You can dress up in the smartest suit there is and it won't make these things any easier. I scraped one shoe over the carpet. I scratched my ear.

“I wanted to, I just—­” and I said some more, and she was right; I sounded stupid. And I went on sounding stupid, too.

She said, “You want something, you do it. You don't, you find excuses. You went back to Europe. Fine. It's done. And now,” she said, “since that's out of the way, let's get on with the evening, shall we? We'll be spending time together, I expect. Better be friendly, huh?”

“Friendly. Right, right.” I went to take a drink and found my glass was empty. “I suppose, you know, you're seeing someone . . . ?”

I tried to make it teasing when I said it—­a twinkle in the eye, that kind of thing. I tried. I don't think it came off.

“Cutting to the chase a bit, aren't you?”

“No! Just curious. Hope things are going well, and all . . .”

“That's what your last e-­mail said, too. You want to know? Really? Well. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Do you care?”

“I . . .”

“Jesus, Chris!” She shook her head. She mimicked me. “ ‘Seeing someone.' ” She clicked her tongue, half turned away, the light suddenly sliding down the blue dress like a film of oil. She turned back, surveying me full on. “ ‘Seeing someone.' When d'you think I have the fucking
time
?”

“Uh—­”

“I'm busy, right? B-­U-­S-­Y. And that's how you'll be, too, I bet.”

And that's the way I was, as well.

 

Chapter 29

Newark

I
flew to Newark. It was easy. Everything was easy now. I was ushered through the terminal and straight into a waiting car. This was Shailer's life that I was living, business class and chauffeur driven, and while I loved the comforts—­who wouldn't, after all?—­some deep resentment made me mistrust their pleasures and conveniences, as if, like fairy gold, they'd turn to dust by morning.

We drove for twenty minutes to the holding center. It was utterly anonymous, a former warehouse in a ghost town of old warehouses and factories. All the windows had been bricked up. There were no names, no signs, not so much as a
Keep out
. Only the shine on the wire fence gave it away; that, and the security behind the gate, a tubby man who screened my ID, made a call, then swung the gate open. Once inside, all sense of privilege dissolved. I waited fifteen minutes to be let into the building. I am not always a patient man. I got out of the car, went over to the little wooden door expectantly. I strolled about and stretched my legs. I talked to security, who answered me in grunts. Went back to the car. Sat down. Talked to the driver. Another age and then, at last, the door cracked open and a thin, pale-­looking face peered out, glanced quickly right and left. A hand came up and beckoned me.

I told him, “Lucky you caught me. I was just about to go for lunch.”

“You're Shailer's guy?”

“I'm a Registry operative.”

“But Shailer sent you?”

I couldn't easily deny this, so I said, “I'm with the Chicago project. I'm here for Assur.”

His gaze went past me. “Anyone else?”

“Driver . . . ?”

“Anyone else around? See anyone?”

“Don't think so . . .”

He stepped back, nodding me through. “Come in, come in.”

He might have been twenty-­five or thirty, a pudgy man with a rounded belly and a soft, round face, masked by a short beard. One arm—­the left—­was in a sling and strapped against his body. I could see the hand protruding at his waist, swollen with fluid, skin stretched smooth. It looked like a mannequin's hand.

“Been in the wars?” I said.

“No—­it's nothing. Just an accident.” He shut the door, slid the bolt. “We get kids. That's the trouble. Kids and then, the other ones. The creepy guys.”

“What?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. They
can't
know what we do here. There's no record, not anywhere. But they come around, and—­”

“You call the cops?”

“That's the thing, see? They've got to break a law first. They know it, too.”

His name was Nickols, and his badge said he was a Registry Officer Grade 4, which I was maybe meant to be impressed by.

“Someone,” he said, “someone left a human skull on the gate. A
human skull
.”

“Really?”

“A, a,” he corrected himself, “a
picture
of a human skull. Taped to the wire. What do you make of that? That somebody would do that kind of thing?”

I didn't make anything of it. I let him take me to an office, where I was fingerprinted, photographed and, rather less high tech, signed in. In reward for this I got a sticky label with my name on it, and a picture of such crude resolution it could have been anyone. This went on my jacket front. Nobody spoke. Nickols dug into a filing cabinet and took out three forms. Each had carbons in white, pink, and green.

“Fill these out.”

He dropped them on the tabletop in front of me.

“I signed forms for you ­people to take the thing. Now I'm signing forms to get it back.”

I looked them over, scribbled names and dates in all the necessary spaces.

“Can't be too careful,” Nickols said.

“Oh, I think you'll find I'm careful, all right.”

“They stand by the wire,” he said. “Just stand and stare. It isn't right. We've had them try and sneak in with deliveries. There are armed guards here. We'll use them if we have to. There's a certain kind of person drawn here, Mr. Copeland. That's why we have security.”

“Yeah, well. I can see the interest. Fun place, and all . . .”

He led me down a flight of concrete stairs.

“Crazies, Mr. Copeland. Fuckheads.”

“Technical term, no doubt.”

He pulled a swipe card, led me through a heavy door marked
Authorized Personnel Only
.

“That's the gods,” I said. “Can't live with 'em, can't live . . . well. You know the rest.”

The hallway looked like something in a cheap hotel. There were doors on either side, a ­couple of 40-­watt bulbs. A noticeboard was tacked onto the wall. It had theater listings—­two years old—­the menus for a ­couple of fast-­food joints, and a faded sign that read,
Smile More, Worry Less
.

“None of those things say, ‘Work harder,' ” I said.

Nickols giggled awkwardly. He stopped. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he was studying it carefully. There were rows and columns of letters and numbers.

“This—­no.” He glanced around. “
This
way.”

Two minutes later, though, he stopped again.

“What's up? You lost?”

“No . . .”

“ 'Cause it's taking us a long, long time to get there. And the place isn't that big.”

“It's—­” There was a low-­grade panic in his eyes. I could see him grasping after something—­an excuse, or an explanation. “Paperwork,” he said at last. “I think there's—­I'm sorry. I forgot it. There's another form to fill out. We'll have to go back to the lobby, you can sign it, then we'll—­”

“I can sign it when I leave.”

“No! Oh no! There's protocol, there's—­”

“There's no more forms.”

“It's special,” he said. His voice was very small. “For this facility. Only for this . . .”

I moved in close. I didn't touch him—­HR tends to frown on that—­but I let him know I could do, if I chose. I just bulked over him a moment. It was decent bit of bluff. Things went much faster after that.

Assur was in the low level. The basement labs.

Assur wasn't alone.

Three ­people waited in the hallway. They sat on hard plastic chairs and didn't seem to have a lot to occupy themselves. One was a large man with heavy, sullen brows. There was a woman, cheekbones jutting, eyes too large. She scratched at the same spot on her thigh repeatedly. Her jeans had been worn pale there.

The third, not much more than a boy, had a cut on his cheek, a long, thin slice, reminding me too much of the young man in Dayling's room. I stared at him, even while Nickols fudged and prevaricated, pretending not to know which room we wanted.

“The Assur flask—­left five, or . . . ?”

“You guys work here?” I said.

Their eyes moved. The woman stopped her scratching.

The big man said, “We're . . .” he seemed to yawn the word, then drawled at me, “on a break.” He leaned back, watching me with quiet insolence.

My gaze went back to the boy. “Nasty cut.”

“It's OK.” He raised a hand as if to hide it.

“I hope so. Let's get on with this, shall we? This room? Or that one?”

Nickols opened his mouth, said nothing.

“That one, then.”

Nickols nodded. He gave a glance to the big man I could only call apologetic. The woman glared at him.

I've seen some weird things in my time, but these three, sitting in the corridor, just sitting there, doing nothing—­they gave me a chill.

There was another door, unlocked with a very conventional key, which he took from his pocket. It gave into a cold, brick-­lined room, a bare lightbulb hanging on a cord from the high ceiling. The flask stood in the middle of the floor, resting in a rubber-­tipped wire cradle. It had been cleaned up since I'd last seen it; the blood and hair were gone.

“It's isolated,” he said. “We do that to all of them. Keep them off the floor . . .”

Some tools were lying in the corner. They looked like they'd been lying there for quite a while: a wrench, a sledgehammer, a thing that might have been a water pump. The plastic shield from something—­a lathe, perhaps? Several wooden pallets had been stood on end and leaned against the wall. There were strings of dust and cobwebs hanging from them. It looked like the whole place had been abandoned. There was graffiti on the wall, mostly names and tags in marker pen, and some bigger, spray-­painted items. One was all jagged lettering, incomprehensible to me. Another said:

EACH MOMENT

OPENING AND OPENING

INFINITE

FOREVER

The letters were in white with a blue border and about half of them had a black shadow drawn around them. They were familiar to me. What I didn't see was how they'd wound up scribbled here.

I went over to the flask and inspected it, eyes only. Then I put down my carry-­all, unzipped it, opened it. Gently, I took the flask from its cradle, powered it up, and checked the readings.
Hello, Assur
. Powered it off again. I placed it in the bag, fastened the straps to hold it, zipped up, and slung the bag over my shoulder.

I looked back at the wall.

“So who's the poet?”

He shrugged.

“I'm serious,” I said. “I want to know. Especially that one.”

He held his hands out. “It could be ten years old. There's no way—­”

“No, that's recent. Look at it, compared to the other stuff. Weeks, months at most. One of the guys outside? You didn't introduce us, by the way. Is it one of them?”

“I, I—­”

“All right, forget it. Probably not important anyway . . .”

“I've got a theory,” he said. “I think the gods are memory. Not memories, but Memory itself, condensed out of our—­our thoughts and feelings, our parents' thoughts and feelings, back and back. They're how the universe recalls itself. The memory of the world . . .”

“OK,” I said. “I get any insights into that, I'll let you know . . .”

W
hen I left the room, the three sentinels were on their feet. They were looking at the hold-­all on my shoulder. It was a subtle thing, but for a moment they seemed to block my exit, all staring, filling the corridor in front of me. It wasn't quite a confrontation, but it had that kind of feel to it. I said, “Excuse me,” and the boy stepped back. The other two did likewise. Nickols, his head down, led me through, shut the door behind us.

“Memory,” I said.

“I was planning—­that is, I was going to write a paper, explaining . . .”

He pulled a face. The swollen dummy hand twitched slightly.

He said, “You're taking something from us. Something we all valued. Perhaps it's just as well.”

There was no more paperwork. Of course not.

As we drove away, I noticed a ­couple of figures standing on the street outside the wire. In their hoodies and their baggy pants I couldn't tell their age, but they didn't look like kids to me. They had been watching the facility, but as we drove out, one tugged the other's sleeve, and they watched us, glaring with a fierce intensity. One took a quick step forwards and then stopped, mid-­stride, swaying for a moment, off balance.

“It's drugs,” my driver said. “Look at their eyes. It's obvious.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “Thanks for the enlightenment.”

I took the next plane west, the flask there on the floor between my feet. Tucked in its stylish leather carry-­all. I thought of it as like a neutered atom bomb, a tamed eruption. I preferred, just for the moment, not to think of it at all. I drank champagne because it was offered and ate an indifferent meal for much the same reason, and fell asleep to dream of falling, falling through infinity: each moment different, each the same, till by the time I woke, we'd already begun our real-­life drop towards Chicago, where my next car, and my next driver, were already waiting.