Like a Boss (6 page)

“Holy shit.”

“You got that right.”

Sirikit made all kinds of happy moaning noises as she ate. “How could she leave this? It’s so
good
.”

“No idea,” said Keiko. She stopped in mid-scoop, her hand shaking. “I don’t think it was drugs or drink or hormones. Sammy had a steady girlfriend, and she was doing all kinds of great research at Open School. It was so
sudden
, so unlike her.”

Sirikit gulped some tea. “You know, same thing happened in my family. I live in the city, but my folks are still in Lualua, you know? Couple days ago, Mom comes to the shop and tells me my youngest brother had up and left. Grabbed everything valuable he could, said we were foreclosing on our legacies as Freeborn, and marched out into the cane. No one’s seen him since.”

Huh. First Ly Huang quits in a huff of misapplied Marxism, then Sammy, and now Sirikit’s brother. There was no way this was coincidence. But how were they connected, except they were all young, Freeborn, and pissed off? I thought about Evanrute Saarien, how he’d grabbed workers to staff his secret and highly illegal cane refinery and left cloned bodies behind to cover his tracks. He was still in prison, wasn’t he? Would I have to start checking morgues?

“Well,
I’ve
sure seen Sammy,” said Keiko, going back to making the omusubi. “Two days ago, Magdalena, a girlfriend who runs a veggie shop, she calls me, says Sammy had just boosted a case of carrots. Instead of siccing the cops on Sammy, Magdalena tails Sammy to this run-down spot on Hudson and Hawkes. Sammy goes in with the veggies, and these two giant people at the door stop Magdalena from going in. They said only those wanting salvation can enter. Magdalena just wanted her carrots.”

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Saarien used former Big Three security goons as his heavies. “Have you gone to this place, Keiko?”

She nodded. “I got the same treatment: two big people at the door, bit about salvation. All these other people keep coming in and out, and I can hear a lot inside: people laughing, someone preaching. It was weird.” She made a sour face. “I kept bugging the big guys, and then someone comes out, this white guy I’d never seen before.”

I swallowed. “Freeborn?”

Keiko shook her head. “His skin was terrible, but I could make out some ink. He gives me a smile, and asks if I’d come to be saved. I told him I’d come to get my niece. He just smiles, says there are no nieces here, just brothers and sisters in the struggle to liberate their souls, and he leaves.”

My spine turned to ice. The Struggle. Saarien wouldn’t shut
up
about The Struggle between the Union and the Big Three. “You get a good look at this guy? The smiler?”

Keiko shrugged. “Mid-forties. Looked beat up. Wore a suit that was too big for him.”

Oh, no. No no no no no. “What color was the suit?”

Keiko didn’t look up. “White. Sparkling clean, too. I don’t know how he did it.” She handed me the omusubi.

“Make it to go,” I said, getting up. “And give me the address.”

Fucking hell. Evanrute Saarien was out of prison.

It was five after five when Sirikit screeched in front of 1801 Hawks Street. I used to come to Hawks Street all the time, back when my dentist had an office on the corner of Hudson Drive. She retired two years ago, right around the time Evanrute Saarien was being sentenced. My teeth hurt. I had been grinding them the entire drive over.

There was nothing that made me think Saarien had magically appeared at this blank storefront on Hawks Street. He had pulled double duty as the Ward Chair of Sou’s Reach and the manager of the old cane refinery that squatted in the middle of the neighborhood. Both the Ward and the refinery had fallen apart under his watch, thanks to his neglect and embezzlement. He should have been rotting behind bars until we both were old and decrepit.

1801 Hawks looked like someone had taken care of it, at least from the outside. There was no sign in front, just a stenciled picture of a Union fist holding a star going supernova. The walls were scrubbed clean of dirt and graffiti, and the double doors swung open easily for the few people who came in and out. Even the former goons stationed at the doors wore clean clothes. I noted they wore glass pins with the same fist-and-nova as the sign in front. Saarien had had a thing for glasswork back at Sou’s Reach.

I had blinked up Saarien’s record and found that he didn’t exist anymore. There was a data footprint that began the day he arrived on Santee Anchorage and ended when was remanded into custody on Maersk. No mentions of release or parole. He just vanished, leaving behind a lot of pissed off people and a giant black mark on his Union profile.

Was it really him? Or did someone just copy his act and open a storefront church? It happened a lot on Santee; revivalist fevers would sweep the planet, burn bright for a few months, then fade when the congregations would either mellow out or realize they’d been taken in by a con man. At first, I would laugh at the suckers, but then The Fear would remind me that some people needed a little extra to get through the day. Whether it was the belief in the Virgin Buddha or Vishnu Christ or the Great And Unfeeling Void, I had no use for religion, but I understood the need. The universe was a big, scary place, and knowing that something bigger and scarier was looking out for you (or out to get you) gave people a sense of order and peace.

Evanrute Saarien had believed in The Struggle with the ferocity of a religious fundamentalist. Or, at least, he’d convinced everyone that he did. I took no small amount of satisfaction in seeing Saarien taken apart one piece at a time during testimony. All the talk about how he was leading the Union in the epic fight against the Big Three, about how he worked to help us maintain our basic human dignity, all while he was fleecing his Ward and trying to burn down the entire world… it was a sweet sight when he blubbered to the judge and threw himself at the mercy of the court. Fifty years was too good for him.

I looked at Sirikit, munching on an omusubi. “I have a favor to ask. Will you come in there with me?”

She swallowed. “You scared of something?”

I nodded at the blank door flanked by two beefy men with barrel chests and no necks. “I think the guy in there is someone who tried to kill me.”

“Over what?”

I sighed. “Money. Turf. The purity of my commitment to the Universal Freelancer’s Union.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

I laughed. “I’m sorry?”

Sirikit pursed her lips, then gave me a polite nod. “How did that make you feel?”

I laughed again until she put a hand on mine. Her face softened, and she said, “I’m not just a tuk-tuk driver. I’m putting myself through school to be a post-traumatic stress counselor. Do you want to talk about what happened to you?”

For a brief moment, I thought about opening my mouth and just spilling
everything
: how my transit had screwed with my brain, how Old Windswept kept it working. And not just that: I wanted to tell her about the frustrations with my jobs, my astonishment at how Saarien went from being a mere pain in my backside to trying to burn me alive, the way the Co-Op and the Union and the Big Three and every institution I knew tried to suck all the life out of me and her and everyone else.

I looked at Sirikit and said, “Not yet. But thank you.”

She nodded and patted my hand. “Whenever you’re ready. Words matter.”

Then I saw him.

In the evening hustle, I spotted another pair of former goons, each of them two meters tall and a hundred kilos heavy. Between them marched a man in an immaculate white suit that hung from his shoulders. All of them had the same glass pins as the goons at the door.

The man in the middle looked like a skinnier, balder, blotchier version of Evanrute Saarien. It sure as hell looked like someone aping his style. How had he kept those suits so clean when he worked in a cane refinery? During the trial, I kept hoping someone would ask him that, but I supposed it wasn’t relevant to the crimes he’d been accused of committing.

“Is that him?” asked Sirikit.

I leaned forward in my seat, holding my hands together. His walk was stiff, as if his joints were full of glue. This was a man who used to glide into Union meetings like he was on greased rails. The guy on the sidewalk looked like he was scared someone would leap out and take his lunch money.

But there was the suit. There was the smile.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“What do you want to do?”

Saarien stopped at the door. The two goons standing guard reached down and grabbed him. They crushed him in their massive arms. I felt my knuckles pop at the sight:
Holy crap, they’re killing him…

Then they let him go, and they all laughed. The goons weren’t assaulting Saarien; they were
hugging
him.

Well.

I sat back, all the tension draining from my body. “Ten minutes ago, I would have said I wanted you to punch his light out. Now? I have no idea.”

“Whatever you do, just keep calm.”

I nodded, more to myself than to her. “Right.” I got out of the tuk-tuk and marched across the street before Sirikit could respond. “Hey!” I yelled as loud as I could. “HEY!”

The four goons and Saarien turned. The goons all tensed and turned toward me, their hands clenched into fists. Two of them pulled billy clubs from thin air. I didn’t care. I felt a hot rush come up from my chest, as if someone had lit a fire in my lungs. I wanted to burn the goons down. I wanted to burn Saarien down. I wanted to burn his crappy storefront church down.

Fear flickered across Saarien’s face as the goons with clubs shoved him behind their giant backs. “Can we help you?” one of them asked.

I pointed at them. “You can step out of my way. I have to talk to
him
.”

Sirikit ran to my side. I had no doubt of how she’d do in a fight against four goons. But I also knew that starting a fight was a good way to lose track of what had happened to Keiko’s niece. I cleared my throat and thought about what to say. “I need to talk to Evanrute Saarien. He knows who I am.”

The goons froze, then looked at each other. I considered using command presence on them to get them to freeze when a pair of beat-up hands appeared on their shoulders and nudged them aside like curtains. Evanrute Saarien stood before us, his eyes watering. “Sister Padma? Is that you?”

I nodded. I felt bile at the back of my throat, but I nodded and gave him a tight smile.

He took a few careful steps toward us, and I had to work to keep my face from crinkling in shock. Saarien’s cheek bones jutted out from a hollow face. Liver spots dotted his thinning pate. He looked like he’d aged thirty years. Maybe Maersk had been harder than I’d realized.

He held out a hand, wrinkled like a crow’s foot. I punched him in the nose.

It was a perfect punch, a right hook that caught him square in the middle of his face. His smile didn’t have time to fade as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. His body tilted on his heels. I didn’t wait for him to hit the ground. I jumped on Saarien, and all the air whuffed out of his lungs as his back met the pavement and my knees hit his waist.

I hit him, and I hit him, and I would have hit him again and again if it weren’t for the fact that The Fear filled my skull in a way it hadn’t since I first woke up from hibernation. I couldn’t make out the words, but I understood the tone. It was an animal sound, high and shrill and furious. The Fear wanted me to hit Evanrute Saarien until I had pulped his face. I let Sirikit pull me off him, my fist still cocked.

The goons helped him up. His left eye had started swelling shut, and blood streamed from his nose. He leaned forward and spat a red gob on the sidewalk, still careful to keep his impossibly white suit clean. One of the goons handed him a handkerchief, which he pressed to his nose. He looked at me with his other eye and said, his voice wavering, “I’m sorry. I deserved that and more.”

I didn’t say anything. Sirikit’s hands gripped my upper arms with enough force to keep me from leaping forward for a second go-round.

Saarien tried to smile around the handkerchief. His teeth were ruined, and not from my punches. They were stained, and one of his upper incisors was gone. “Actually, I’d hoped we could meet. I have a lot of apologizing and explaining to do.”

“I don’t think I want to hear it.”

“I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect you to.” He hawked a little more blood on the ground and fingered the glass pin on his lapel. “This must all seem strange.”

“You have no idea.”

“Oh, but I do!” He waved a hand toward the storefront. “I have been humbled, Sister Padma.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Of course, of course!” He gave me another gap-tooth grin. “I forget, I’m not in the Union anymore, even though we’re all united together in the Struggle.” Jesus, he was still speaking like those words were capitalized.
The Struggle
.

Saarien beckoned us to follow. “Services are going to start soon. There’s refreshments, though no rum, I’m afraid.” My face must have twitched, because he laughed and said, “But we’re not teetotalers! Oh, no. We just don’t have the budget right now.”

“If I let you go, are you going to hit him again?” whispered Sirikit.

“I make no guarantees,” I said. Oh, for a sidekick with a pai, just so we could text.

The goons crowded in front of Saarien, but he waved them off. “Won’t you let me show you around? Just a brief tour. There’s so much I have to do to atone, and this is part of it.”

I looked back at Sirikit, who gave me a stern eye. “You start swinging again, I’m not going to stick around.”

“Okay,” I said, and she let go. I flexed my fists and willed them to relax. “Okay, Saarien. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He coughed, and the blood flowed from his nose again. He clamped the handkerchief to his face and led me toward the door. “I’ve wanted to talk with you, but I was sure you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. I’m very thankful that you’ve come here.”

I nodded, making my mouth turn into a convincing smile. I didn’t want to smile. I wanted to grab him by the lapels of his baggy suit and demand that he tell me why he wasn’t rotting in prison. I wanted to kick this man in the head and yell at him for trying to immolate me and Banks and Wash before bringing down all of Occupied Space. My stomach roiled, and The Fear raked across the back of my brain. It didn’t say anything. It didn’t have to.