Off the Edge (The Associates) (3 page)

That was the worry, that the weapon would change hands before the auction, and the Associates would never see it again. Until people started dying.

“The new thinking is that Jazzman is here already,” Rio said, “mingling, assessing his buyers, waiting to unmask himself.”

“That’s what I’d do if I were him,” Macmillan said. “If he’s here, I’ll find him.”

Rio nodded once. A simple, precise reply.

Nobody escaped Macmillan. Back when he had been a rising star in the linguistics world, he could spend entire months studying the way different people pronounced a diphthong like the
ow
in
low
, and draw all kinds of conclusions about what that meant. He could see a universe in a single word choice. He used his expertise to understand people, and by extension, humanity itself.

These days, he used his ability to ferret out scum. Fugitives who’d used plastic surgery to change their appearance. Killers.

The TZ could turn out to be the most prolific killer of all. This was the case he’d been born for.

Jazzman had stolen the TZ in a bloody attack on an independent lab in Panama over two years ago—freelance scientists working on their own designs to sell on the world market. Governments across the globe went on red alert when the news got out that the TZ had been stolen. Nobody talked about it publicly, but contingency plans were made from Washington D.C. to Tokyo.

Then Jazzman and the TZ had simply fallen off the map. For two and a half years, the security community had held its collective breath. There was some hope out there that Jazzman had hidden the TZ and gotten himself killed.

Until last month, when talk of this auction started up. Jazzman was back, and he was hot to sell. The sale was announced during a series of conference calls, during which Jazzman used sophisticated voice distortion software that disguised his gender and his accent during the calls—everything but his word choice.

And that’s all they had to go on to find Jazzman. His choice of words.

Worked for Macmillan.

Macmillan had studied the recording extensively, charting the man’s errors and idiosyncrasies. He mined his word choices and frequency of use. He got to understand Jazzman’s speech habits well enough to be able to recognize him to a 99.5% certainty—
if
he could hear him speak. Not just a few words; it had to be a real conversation.

That would be the trick. To get close enough to the dealers to hear conversations.

Rio, on the other hand, was hunting the old fashioned way. With a very powerful rifle and a list drawn up by Dax, the leader of the Associates.

“How many of them are staying at this place?”

“About thirty so far,” Rio said. “Turns out the Shinsurins own this place.”

“Ah, Shinsurin hospitality. Ideal for the romantic exchange of weaponry.” The Shinsurins were a powerful clan with strong connections to the Chinese business community and the New Tong out of Texas.

Rio speculated aloud on ways to get close enough to the tables of dealers to record their conversations. The Arabs would be the problem—they weren’t mixing with the other arms dealers.

Macmillan didn’t think Jazzman was an Arab. English could be Jazzman’s second language, but Arabic wouldn’t be his first. But he let Rio spin on. He was soaking in Rio’s tone, the gestalt of his speech and manner. Rio had lost his wife some years back and he’d turned darker and more nihilistic since. Anybody could see when a man held himself apart from the crowd; Rio was smart enough not to do that. But Macmillan could hear Rio’s remoteness in his language itself. More passive constructions. Fewer content words and third person pronouns. The tone, the delivery, even the unsaid. As if Rio was drifting away. Sometimes when Macmillan listened to him, he had the impulse to clamp a hand onto his friend’s arm, to be his anchor. Macmillan knew what it was like to lose somebody.

The assassin gave him a steely glance. “I know that look. I know what you’re doing.”

Macmillan tilted his head.

“Back off,” Rio said. “I won’t be one of your puzzles.”

“Fair enough,” Macmillan said.

The waiter set down two teas and a plate of honey cakes. Rio thanked him, smoothing a stray bit of dark, wavy hair back out of his eyes. “Will the libidinous student body survive the week without their eminent guest lecturer?”

“They’ll have to parse their tender sentences without my strong, sure hand, I’m afraid,” Macmillan said.

A smile in Rio’s eyes. He always seemed so amused by the groupies Macmillan got when he was forced to play tousled, self-effacing Doctor Peter Maxwell. Macmillan wasn’t one to sleep with students, though. There were classes to teach, papers to grade, books to write, and severed hands to not think about. 

Macmillan had a lot of sex, but it was always for the job—just him, gathering intelligence, a shining blond Viking with ill intent.

Macmillan caught sight of various players: The Russian clan leader. The Valdez brothers. Then he spotted Thorne, the notorious Hangman lieutenant. “Thorne’s here,” he mumbled.

“Party’s really starting now,” Rio mumbled. Things got dangerous when Thorne came around.

Up on the stage, a boy in a white, short-sleeved shirt set up a microphone stand. Then he set out a stool and pushed two large vases of roses onto either side of it, so that they would frame the singer.

A minute later, a lone woman with a mass of loose, dark curls walked out onto the stage. She had on a pillbox hat with a net that came down to conceal the top half of her face. Her dress was a classic little black number, worn with knee-high panty hose, pulled up like tall socks, of all things. She lifted a hand in a wave, smiling at the audience, then she adjusted her microphone with deft movements, pale skin glowing in the torchlight.

His eyes fell to those knee-highs with their crass stripe of too-tight elastic squeezing the flesh just below her knee, the hose itself just a titch darker than her skin.

Macmillan knew, from his extensive experience undressing the opposite sex, that knee-highs like those had been designed for wearing under 1970s pants suits. You rarely saw them anymore what with today’s fashions, but such out-of-date garments were still available in Bangkok. This woman was wearing them wrong, like socks. The effect was dirty and delicious.

Macmillan couldn’t take his eyes off her.

He wished she would pull off her hat so he could see her face. And good God, he wanted to hear her speak. Her tone. Her words.

Macmillan could feel Rio’s eyes on him. He needed to stop staring at the singer. He tore his gaze away and focused on Thorne, who stood up and moved to where the Finns sat. He fought to find something intelligent to say. “Tenacious, painful, annoyingly indestructible. Have to admire a man who lives up to his name.”

“Thorne?” Rio asked.

Macmillan nodded. It wasn’t like him to get distracted. He’d been feeling a little feverish in the last day or two, maybe that was it. Or maybe it was the hat, hiding her identity.

“I would love to hear Thorne speak,” he continued. “Thorne could be Jazzman. Or the Finns. Or Valdez. That whole table is suspect. What I wouldn’t give to be that potted palm.”

The potted palm stood at the intersection of four tables of arms dealers. They wouldn’t be saying anything sensitive out there, but Macmillan didn’t care. A rambling conversation about the weather would work for his purposes.

“If we could get a listening device in that potted palm—”

“Wouldn’t work,” Rio said. “The dealers cluster in different areas every night. And these minimalist tables. Candles and drinks.” Nowhere to hide a microphone, he meant. Putting it underneath would be ineffective in this din.

“We should have tech look all the same.”

Up on the stage, a boy brought the singer a guitar. She hooked the strap around her neck and tuned a string or two, then strummed a chord. “How’s it goin’ out there?”

Macmillan straightened. Rio had thought her
unmemorable? Walking wallpaper?

Nobody answered, but she kept on. “I’m pretty goddamn happy to be here tonight, singing for y’all,” she said.

The accent. Florida, or maybe lower Alabama, Macmillan thought.

Again she smiled. “Now my mama always said, Laney, you want to have a friend, you gotta be a friend. And my mama was one of the best friends I ever had, I’ll tell you that right off. A little bit crazy maybe…” She tuned a string, strummed. “But a girl’ll forgive her mama a whole lot of things if she’s just doin’ her best.”

With that she began to sing in a breathy, husky voice. You could barely call it singing, though there was a certain cadence to it.

The lyrics were unusual; hardly lyrics at all, really, more a list of commonplace things. But as he listened on, it came to him that this was a list of things lost. Lost forever.

Macmillan’s throat began to feel thick as he dug into the song. It was relentless, the way she piled up the details. Out-of-ink pens in the kitchen junk drawer. An inside joke. The phone-answering voice of somebody long gone.

He swallowed, chest full of ragged energy.

Stop.

Was it possible his fever was worse than he thought? That sometimes happened in the tropics.

“What?” Rio’s whisper was like a shotgun in the torchlight.

Macmillan shook his head. “Nothing.” He had to pull himself together. Quickly he set to analyzing the song, breaking it into manageable parts. The objects on the list: commonplace enough to evoke the universal, but specific enough to feel real. Style: folksy, even a bit alternative. Basic singer-songwriter stuff. Yes, she was a decent songwriter. Clever, that was all.

He took a deep breath. Analyzing her did the trick. He was feeling much more under control.

She was clever with words, and he had a fever. Case closed.

“What is it?” Rio asked, scanning the audience. He’d thought Macmillan had seen trouble.

Macmillan waved his hand at the stage. “Please. Couldn’t Jazzman have picked a hotel with an Elvis impersonator? Or maybe a Thai act?”

Rio furrowed his brow. “You have a problem with her?”

“Don’t you find this song a bit…emotionally manipulative?”

“What do you mean?”

“Designed to pull at people’s heartstrings,” Macmillan said. “She’s a clever wordsmith, but these emotionally manipulative, hyper-nostalgic lists...”

Rio smiled.

“What?” Macmillan asked.

“Heaven forbid the great Macmillan should be made to feel something.”

Macmillan crossed his legs. “I feel the urge to put an ice pick through my ear right now. Does that count?”

Rio kept smiling. He stirred his tea in a very
no comment
way.

She went on in that Southern twang. He added a bit of Georgia and West Virginia as influences laid over that Florida accent. She made a little joke using the word pixilated in the old hills way—referring to pixies, not pixels. Something of a magpie with words, this woman. He’d been like that, way back when. Back when words were a pleasure. Back when language was about interacting instead of hunting.

As she sang on, he found himself getting sucked back in. Damn, the list just wouldn’t stop.

He put his hand to his chest, wanting to push down the sharp feeling. He flashed on a memory of his fiancée Gwen, standing in the rain in a party dress, laughing. It was then he’d known he loved her.

He fought the memories but they came anyway—that night ten years ago. He saw his parents and sister and Gwen, playing the adjective game as the train rolled through the dark jungle. His father had pantomimed drinking a soda standoffishly. It had taken forever for the four of them to guess
standoffishly
. They’d felt sure he was drinking the soda
impudently
or
superciliously
. Macmillan had guessed
presumptuously
. God, they’d all been such nerds about that game. That was the last time he’d seen them alive. After his father drank his soda
standoffishly
, Macmillan had taken a walk through the cars, stretching his legs, listening to dialects.

He was three cars down when the bomb hit.

He pressed on his chest harder but the emotions wouldn’t go down. It was with great effort that he fixed his attention back on the arms dealers. “Blue hat sitting with the New Tong of Texas,” he mumbled. “Who is that?”

“We think he’s Valdez cartel.” Rio pointed out the new Valdez players. “We heard chatter that Jazzman is picking up some sort of package here.”

“What sort of package?”

“We don’t know,” Rio said. “Dax thinks it’s unrelated to the TZ. Maybe drugs. We don’t know anything.”

They discussed the idea of getting other Associates close enough to record the conversations. Macmillan had created a quick and dirty software program they could feed a transcription into. Even if Macmillan was killed in the next five minutes, the program could help them recognize Jazzman from his speech habits.

The Association tended to look to Macmillan for magic. Well, linguistics
was
a kind of magic, a way to see hidden worlds.

Her next song was about a childhood home. Another listing song.

Good God, she couldn’t just say kitchen—she had to get in the needlepoint hanging with an ancient spatter of tomato sauce on it, and a dog’s nose touching your knee under the table. A darker subtext was in there, too—he’d done enough time in the English lit trenches to take apart a verse. Back in his old life, he used to love getting muddy with a multi-layered text. He’d once engaged with language, heart and soul. Now he mined it for parts. Commodities. Weapons.

His family had been so proud of his career. They’d be sick to see him now, hollowed out by vengeance. All the goodness gone.

Well, they weren’t the ones left behind.

Rio was staring at him.

Macmillan forced a smile. “I can’t say what I need more at this moment—to stop Jazzman from selling the TZ or to stop this woman from singing another song.”

“Mmm.”

“What?”

“You know you always joke when you’re distressed.”

“Distressed.” Macmillan spat out the word.

Rio jotted something on the small pad. Noting the dealers’ social movements. Funny how unaffected he was by Laney’s web of sentimental cues and signs. Macmillan tried hard not to focus on her. Or on those hose, but he found them so powerfully sexy. He found her powerfully sexy. He couldn’t see her face, but it didn’t matter; this thing was beyond physical. He put the back of his hand to his head.