Double Cross [2] (3 page)

“You’re willing to lose even more autonomy?”

“I won’t wreck somebody’s life just to save my own ass.”

“I think you will,” Packard says. “You’re saving your own ass each and every time you zing somebody. Because you don’t want to be a Jarvis.”

I picture catatonic Jarvis in his La-Z-Boy, staring vacantly at the TV, a glistening line of drool descending from his bottom lip. Jarvis is like the disillusionist bogeyman for what happens when you break away from Packard and stop zinging—one of those things I wish I’d known up front.

“Finish her,” he growls.

“We’ll see.”

He scowls, then turns and walks off, long and lean and loose, leaving a wake of fascinated onlookers.

It’s not his looks, or his outfit, or the blood on his shirt—which isn’t so obvious, really—that makes people stare. It’s his presence. People notice him. They feel him. They watch him, even from across the room.

I wander out into the crowd as he climbs the stairs. At the top, he turns and strolls, cool and lanky, down the catwalk, and past the coat check window. The exit sign at the far corner makes his cinnamon curls glow fire-engine
red in the instant before he pulls open the door and disappears into the darkness.

I head for the stairs and climb slowly, hoping to hell that Ez really is guilty of the cannibal thing.

She has to be guilty. Otto would never imprison an innocent person; his standards of right and wrong are far too high, and mentally maintaining these force fields costs him too much.

Ez sits behind her window, staring at her hands, stricken by my terror. Packard used to say I have so much terror, he couldn’t believe I wasn’t in a straitjacket. That was one of the things that enchanted me last summer—that he alone admired how screwed up I was.

“Hey,” I say.

She looks up. “How could you leave me hanging? You saw something, I could tell. You saw indications with my skin tonus!”

I go through more concerned-nurse charades. We have another scary disease conversation.

Ironically, there’s a photo of Otto Sanchez on the wall behind her. It shows Otto standing tall and proud at his mayoral inauguration, his medals and finery gleaming, dusky curls falling carelessly around his big brown eyes. The inauguration photo was taken from a lowish angle, making Otto—already a strong, tall bull of a man—seem even more imposing. The whole city is crazy about Mayor Otto Sanchez, including me. But I’m the only one lucky enough to have a date with him tonight. Our fourth date since our hiatus for the election. Our “do-over,” we call it. I’ll ask him about Ez. Surely Otto can give me some sort of reassurance about her guilt. But what if he can’t?

Much as I hate to admit it, Packard’s right: I don’t want her to be able to control me in my sleep, even if it’s just to send me to the 7-Eleven at two a.m. for a carton of milk.

“Don’t you think it would be good if I had a force-field descrambler?” she asks. “What if I suddenly need medical attention while I’m here at work, and the force field malfunctions or something and nobody can get in …”

“I can’t give it to you.”

“What does it look like?” she asks. “Do you keep it in your pocket?”

“I can’t reveal details about it.”

“I’m picturing you giving the descrambler to me. You walk up, carrying it in your hand with that same silver nail polish you have on now—which, by the way, is quite hot—and you slide it through to me. I’m picturing you standing right in front of this window and you so want me to have it, and pass it through … I can picture it so vividly …” She narrates the scenario in weirdly extreme detail.

Stifling a gasp, I pull my hand away. She’s planting the idea so she can work with it later. She’s attacking me psychologically—just what
I
do to people! I cross my arms. “I’m more concerned about your immediate problems,” I say. “Namely, Morgan-Brooksteens parasites.”

We go back and forth and somehow wind up on the topic of ingestion. She mentions the fact that eating crushed-up diamonds rips up your intestines, like it’s something everybody knows.

I find this shocking. “I’ve never encountered a case of that directly,” I say, hoping she’ll explain further. As the nurse, it would be weird to quiz her too much about it.

But the moment is lost when an elderly couple approaches. I move to the side. The man places the token in the metal tray. Ez uses a stick shaped like an L to pull it through.

I can’t wait to tell Otto. He’ll find this diamonds tidbit as fascinating as I do, even though digestion isn’t our specific obsession. Otto and I are more concerned about vein star syndrome. We bonded over it exuberantly when
we first met. God, we bonded over so many things. It tore me apart, because Packard had me convinced Otto was this cunning crime boss I had to psychologically attack.

I zinged Otto while we were having sex the first time—a despicable praying mantis moment I regret intensely.

“Diamonds,” she says once the couple is gone. “Not a hungry girl’s best friend.”

I chuckle. She really is funny, but then it occurs to me that her obsession with harmful substances in the belly connects to what she made her sleepwalkers do.

“Nurse Jones!”

I know who it is before I turn, but of course I turn. And of course it’s Simon, sauntering down the walkway. Simon, my fellow disillusionist.

He slides up between me and the railing, dark blue eyes shining against his pale skin and jet-black hair. Simon always reminds me of one of those translucent deepwater fishes, and the crazy outfits he sometimes wears do not diminish this otherworldly effect. Today he’s donned a long, ratty, white fake fur coat and white vinyl pants, with no shirt—all the better to see the many dragon tattoos on his chest. He looks like a space-age pimp. Simon and I used to argue about which of us was more screwed up. Why did I ever think it was me?

I make a face, meaning Nurse Jones is at work. He flicks his black hair out of his eyes. “I have news. Catch up with me.” ASAP, he means. He heads off.

I turn back to Ez, but she’s staring at Simon, cheek pressed to the glass to keep him in view as he leaves.

“He called you Nurse Jones,” Ez says. “Did he used to be a patient or something?”

“That’s confidential.”

“I love his outfit. I would love to shake his hand for wearing that outfit.”

“Sorry.”

“What? You can make your descrambler work for other people, can’t you?”

I don’t answer.

“What’s wrong with wanting to shake a person’s hand? And I’d like to check his coat, if you know what I mean.”

A coat check joke. “You don’t want to check
his
coat, believe me.” Leaning on the counter, I describe the appearance of a Morgan-Brooksteens parasite-riddled spleen in gory detail.

You always want to close with a disturbing image.

I
T’S JUST AFTER SIX
when I step out of the piano bar into an evening alive with the sound of police sirens and the chop-chop of helicopters. Searchlights illuminate the dusky sky down toward the lakefront. Did they corner the Dorks? I pull my heavy black coat tight around me against the January chill, wishing I had big winter boots instead of heels.

A helicopter’s searchlight sweeps my way, flashing on a row of leafless trees. I pull out my phone and call Simon, who directs me to a bar across the way. We click off without niceties.

The bar is dim and long, and it smells like stale beer. A line of people hunches on stools in front of a presiding bartender. I spot Simon’s ratty white coat in a dark corner. He’s leaning on the jukebox, staring at nothing, looking every inch the unhealthy, unwholesome person he is. Packard loves to claim he saved all our lives, but with Simon it might actually be true.

As I draw nearer, I notice Helmut sitting next to him. Helmut is a large, elegant disillusionist with a clipped little beard and a vicious talent for infusing people with despair about current events. That’s his disillusionist specialty. Simon’s, of course, is gambling and recklessness.

Simon hands me an ouzo. “Your coat check girl, she’s
really …” He gets this faraway look, like a connoisseur searching for the perfect description.

“She’s Ezmerelda, the dream invader,” I say. “Thanks for distracting her.”

Helmut stands. “
The
dream invader? The Krini Militia?”

“Yes.”

“She’s hot,” Simon says.

Helmut rolls his eyes.

Simon swirls the ice in his drink. “I want to meet her. You have to introduce us.”

“She’s dangerous,” Helmut says.

Simon turns to him. “And your point would be …”

Helmut grunts disgustedly. I sip my ouzo and close my eyes, enjoying the licoricy warmth in the back of my throat.

“You’re glorying,” Helmut observes.

“On the end of it. And I don’t have much time.”

“None of us do,” Helmut says darkly. “Especially now. That’s what we’re here about. We need to do something about Packard.”

“In what way?” I ask.

Helmut frowns. “Did you not hear about the Dorks going after Rickie?”

Simon says, “Don’t mind Helmut. He’s overreacting.”

Helmut turns to him angrily. “It’s not overreaction; it’s self-preservation.”

“What are you guys talking about?”

“The Dorks,” Simon says. “Now that they have the mutant radar—”

“
Highcap
radar,” Helmut corrects. “You know Packard was almost a shooting victim, too?”

I jerk to attention. “What? I thought he arrived after.”

“Moments after,” Helmut says. “He was on his way to meet with them—barely a block away, as I understand
it. If he’d left seconds earlier, he could’ve been the one shot.”

I feel hollow, shaky. “Oh my God.”

“Not even a block away,” Helmut says. “And he won’t wear a vest, you know. I bought one for him, but will he wear it? It’s probably still in the package.”

I picture Packard, splayed and bloody on the pavement, green eyes devoid of their bright challenge. I fumble for a chair and sit. “He should wear a vest at the very least.”

Simon smirks. “Vests are for pussies.”

Helmut says, “When he gambles with his life, he gambles with all our lives. Of course I count him as a friend, and yes, the man saved me. But a man can’t develop a symbiotic relationship with a group of people and then go out risking his life. I don’t have to remind you what happens to us if we lose Packard.”

For the second time in an hour, I picture the drooling, catatonic Jarvis.

Simon raises a finger. “I’ll put a bullet in my head first.”

“So will I,” I say.

Simon turns to me. “Maybe we can do a bullet-in-the-head exchange. I wonder if there’s a way to work it into a game of Russian roulette.”

I smile. Simon’s as devious as he is messed up. I don’t always like him, but I’ve come to see him as a kind of ally.

“It won’t come to that if we protect Packard,” Helmut says. “Now, I’m proposing that we hire human security professionals to shadow and secretly protect him. I’m taking a disillusionist poll, and if the majority is for it, we’re going to do it, and support the team and help make their jobs easy. And we will
all
participate.”

“You’re overreacting,” Simon says again. “If Packard
wants to take chances, that’s his business. You’re into freedom, Justine. Shouldn’t a man be free to gamble with his life?”

Helmut’s dark eyes flash. “His own, fine. But not ours.”

“Oh, we’d figure something out,” Simon says. “Maybe he’s made contingencies.”

“I’m not betting my life on it,” Helmut says.

“How boring of you.” Simon crosses his lanky legs.

Helmut’s black beard catches the light as he turns to Simon. “Our gambler prefers to gamble. Now
that’s
boring.”

“Excuse me if I see the upside,” Simon says. “For one, with Packard out of the picture, his deal with Otto would be off and we wouldn’t have to go around rebooting all these prisoners.”

“Nobody’s stopping you from walking away,” Helmut says.

“I’ll walk when it suits me,” Simon says.

Helmut snorts.

“You don’t like rebooting the prisoners?” I ask Simon.

“Too much like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Helmut crosses his arms over his big belly. “We’re forcing killers to turn over a new leaf.”

“I liked it better when we were vigilantes.” Simon wraps his shaggy coat around his chest and raises a hand, preacher-like. “Reverse emotional vampires, doomed to roam Midcity, on the hunt, shooting our crazy, fucked-up darkness into our victims.”

“Stop it, Simon.” I hate when he calls us reverse emotional vampires. “We’re human beings.”

“And they’re killers,” Helmut says. “Those are killers he’s got sealed up.”

“I have one who might not be,” I say. “When Packard looked at Ez, he was like:
That’s funny, she doesn’t look like somebody who’d be a crazed murderer.
He was reading her structure when he said that. And I was like:
Well, shit! What if she’s innocent?
He wants me to disillusion her anyway.”

Simon sniggers. “Packard would disillusion Mary Poppins if it kept him out of that restaurant.” He turns to plunk a few quarters into the jukebox.