Sims (20 page)

“Well?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“Damn it, Romy!”

He'd half expected some sort of ha-ha-the-joke's-on-you attitude, but she was all business.

“I take it you ran into a few sims.”

“You know damn well I did!” God, he was pissed. He felt besmirched, belittled, diminished. If she'd been a guy he'd be taking a poke at her right now. “Why the hell—?”

She held up one hand to silence him and raised the other to her lips. He realized she was holding a PCA.

“My man inside confirms the sims are there. It's a go.”

“What's a go?” Patrick said.

“A raid,” she said. “Let's get out of the way.”

She led him across the street. The first blue-and-white NYPD units were screeching to a halt in front of the alley by the time they reached the opposite curb. Patrick watched fascinated as a small horde of blue uniforms swarmed toward the dented door.

Patrick stared at Romy. “You're a cop?”

“No. And this sort of work isn't really a kosher part of my OPRR duties, but I've made it so. I snoop around. I talk to people, people talk to me. I've been watching this place for some time. Took me a while to find the rear exit. Once I had that, I brought in NYPD.”

“Then what did you need me for? Why'd you send me in there?”

Her gaze was focused on the alley, her dark eyes hard and bright as she watched the cops knock open the door with a short steel battering ram.

“To make sure the sims were inside. You never know who's got a source in a precinct house. If they got wind of the raid they'd have the sims stashed out of town and I'd have egg on my face and the cops would be less cooperative next time I came to them.”

If she thought that was going to mollify him, she was dead wrong.

“You could have told me, damn it! Why'd you send me in there with no idea what I'd be getting into?”

“Would you have gone in if I had?”

“Well . . .” He let the word trail off but knew the answer would have been a definite no.

“I didn't think so. But because you did, you played a meaningful part in
reeling in some single-celled organisms posing as human beings,
things
”—she managed to inject so much contempt into the word—“who make pond scum look tasty.” A wry smile. “Ain't that cool?”

Patrick had to admit it was, but he wasn't about to say so.

“What happens to them?”

“The humans won't see daylight for a long, long time. Those sims in there have been either abducted or leased under false pretenses. The charges will range from grand theft to fraud to pandering to cruelty to animals to operating a criminal enterprise to promoting bestiality and whatever else the prosecutors can think of. You're the lawyer. You can imagine.”

Patrick nodded, mentally adding a few more charges.

Romy kept talking. “And the perps—do I sound like a cop?—are guaranteed to get slammed with max sentences. SimGen, as you've learned firsthand, is relentless when it comes to anyone messing with their product. Their contacts in the judicial system, the ones who guarantee them favorable rulings whenever necessary, also see to it that anyone who transgresses against them lands lower-lip-deep in doo-doo. And after the criminal courts are through with the bastards, SimGen chases them down in civil court and gets dibs on everything they've ever owned in their life and everything they'll earn till Resurrection Day.”

“Is that admiration I hear?”

Romy shook her head. “No. But you've got to respect SimGen's efficiency. When their ends coincide with mine—as in rescuing sims from these oxygen wasters—I'm only too happy to take advantage of that efficiency. But we part on the
why
: My reasons are personal and ethical, theirs are purely business and public relations.”

“What happens to the sims?” he said, remembering the tarted-up females.

“Someone from SimGen will be by to pick up the poor things and take them to the Jersey campus where they'll rehab the ones they can and retire the ones they can't.”

“Doesn't exactly sound like the Evil Empire to me.”

She turned and glared at him. “Oh, but they are, Patrick Sullivan. That sleazy little operation across the street couldn't have existed without SimGen, because SimGen made the sims that were mistreated in there.”

“Hey, Ford makes cars and some people get drunk and kill people with them or use them to rob banks or rig them with dynamite.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don't see the difference between a hunk of tin and those creatures you're representing in court?”

“Of course I do. I just—”

“SimGen created a new species and enslaved it. Sims feel pain, they feel pleasure, they laugh, they
think
, damn it! And they're slaves. A sentient slave species . . . you don't think that's evil?”

“Well, when you put it that way . . .”

“What other way is there to put it? They've got to be stopped.”

Patrick laughed. “And who's going to do that? You?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

He couldn't believe this. She actually seemed serious. “You don't really think—”

“Something's rotten in SimGen,” she said. “They're dirty. When I was there I could smell it. And when I find out what they're hiding, I'm going to bring them down.”

“You.”

She set her jaw. “Me . . . with a little help from some friends.”

“What friends?”

“Just . . . friends.” She stepped off the curb. “I'm going in to check over those sims, catalogue any injuries or evidence of drugging before the SimGen folks arrive. Want to come along?”

Patrick hesitated. He'd already been inside once and wasn't keen on going back.

“I don't know . . . I've got an early day tomorrow . . .”

“I know. Beacon Ridge has filed some new motions on the federal appeal.”

That gave him a mild jolt. “You're really staying on top of this, aren't you.”

“I tend to keep a close eye on my investments. As a matter of fact, I was planning on coming up to White Plains tomorrow.”

“What for?”

“To see you in action.”

“Ah, yes. Your investment.” He wasn't sure if he liked the idea. He wasn't some trick pony.

“If you hang around awhile you could give me a ride up there.”

Now
here
was an interesting development. “Where are you staying?”

“Don't know yet. How's your motel?”

Whoa! His heart did a pole vault. “Not fancy, but decent. As a matter of fact, you could save yourself a few bucks and stay in my room.”

She laughed from deep in her throat. God, what a sound. He could listen to her laugh all night. Visions of that marvelous tight body began to play in
his head . . . in bed next to him, straddling him . . . Pamela had been gone for too long and right now every Y-chromosome in his body was doing a mating dance.

“I don't think so.”

He raised his hands. “Nothing salacious here. The room's got two double beds. You could have the other one.”

“How generous,” she said with a wry twist to her smile.

“And listen, I'll be a Boy Scout. Really. You can have your bed, I'll have mine, and we'll turn the lights out and just lie there and talk.”

Patrick didn't quite believe he'd just said that, but it was true. He'd settle for talk, anything to stay close to this woman.

“I appreciate the offer,” Romy said, “but I'm a private sort of person. But you will drive me?”

Drive you . . . aw, lady, don't say things like that.

“Sure.”

“Great. We'll have to stop at my office to pick up my overnight bag.”

“No problem.”

And on the way home, lady, I'm going to do my absolute damnedest to convince you that two rooms is one too many.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY
OCTOBER 30

Romy glanced at the clock numerals glowing on the dashboard of Patrick's BMW. Hard to believe it was quarter to three already.

Time flies when you're having fun.

Well, not fun, exactly. But it had been a good night. And she felt very good about putting those sim abusers behind bars.

She watched Patrick as he maneuvered along the winding curves of the Saw Mill River Parkway, deserted at this hour except for the single pair of headlights a couple of hundred yards behind them. He'd handled himself well
tonight. And she'd been heartened by how deeply the sim bordello had shaken him.

“Tired?” she said.

“A little. How about you?”

“Not a bit.” She was totally wired.

“I could perk up,” he said with a grin. “That is, if you decide to take up my offer on the rooming arrangements.”

She laughed. “You don't give up, do you.”

After those splicer slimeballs had been carted off, and the cops had returned to Manhattan South, and SimGen had picked up the sims, they'd retrieved his car from the garage, picked up her bag, and headed for the northern suburbs. Patrick had spent the early part of the trip on the make, pitching his idea of sharing a room. Finally he seemed to have run out of gas.

Romy had to admit that a bout of sweaty, energetic sex would be perfect right now. Might take the edge off this persistent adrenaline buzz. But not with Patrick Sullivan. They'd be working too closely over the next few months. That level of intimacy in their relationship would further complicate an already complicated situation.

And her track record with relationships of any sort was downright miserable. She no sooner got close to someone than she seemed to scare them away.

Like Jeff Hogan, a bright, funny computer game designer who worked for Acclaim out on Long Island. They started going out last spring, grew close, but not close enough that Romy could tell him about Zero and the organization. He must have sensed she was keeping something from him—no doubt thought she had another guy—and one night he went so far as to follow her. Fortunately she spotted him and aborted her planned meeting with Zero. But that was it for Jeff Hogan.

“Give up?” Patrick said. “I don't know the meaning of the words.”

She smiled. “If you're half this tenacious on behalf of your clients, I don't think the sims can lose.” The smile faded. “Still think all sims have it cushy?”

“Not those.”

“Ever hear of a globulin farm?”

“Never.”

Romy said, “When you get sick, when a virus or bacterium invades your body, you fight back through your immune system. It forms proteins, immune globulins known as antibodies, to kill the invaders. That's called active immunity. But let's say you jab yourself with a needle that's infected with, say, hepatitis B or C. You could ward off infection by either of those viruses
through passive immunity—by being injected with antibodies or immunoglobulins from someone already immune to them.”

Patrick was getting the picture. A few months ago he'd have to ask another half dozen questions to fill in the blanks, but after what he'd seen tonight, he felt up to doing some of the filling himself.

“Let me guess: Since sims are so close to humans, some slimeball gets the bright idea of kidnapping or hijacking a bunch and infecting them with viruses and selling off the immunity of whichever ones survive.”

“Exactly,” Romy said. “And sometimes if a sim survives one virus, they infect it with another, and then another, until they can harvest a multi-immune globulin. The more diseases covered, the higher the price per dose.”

“Ain't science grand,” Patrick said.

“But it's not a one-time thing. A sim will produce those antibodies for as long as it lives. All the farmers have to do is keep it alive and healthy and they've got themselves a cash cow they can literally milk for years.”

“Great,” he said in a sour tone.

“But even they don't have it a tenth as bad as some of the cases I've seen. Try to imagine a sim tossed into a cage with three pit bulls.”

“Aw no.”

“Or two sims shoved into a pit, knives duct-taped into both hands, and bullwhipped until they fight to the death.”

“Stop!”

“And some are simply tied up in a basement and tortured for days, weeks.”

“Christ, Romy,
please!
”

She'd seen too much, too damn much over the years. Tears welled in her eyes.

“I don't know why . . . maybe it's because they're so unassertive, or because they have no franchise, but sims seem to bring out the very worst in the worst of us. The racists who're so desperate to feel superior to something, anything, even if it's not human; others who think God gave them the animal kingdom as their playground, to do absolutely anything with that they damn well please; and the sick souls who want to vent their psychoses on something weak and defenseless. Serial killers, teenage gangs, they've found a new target: Kill a sim for kicks. Damn them.” She heard her voice break. “Damn them all to hell.”

“Easy,” Patrick said, reaching across, finding her hand, squeezing it. “Easy.”

Romy couldn't gauge the genuineness of the gesture, whether he really
felt for her or was simply pressing his case to be roommates, but she didn't pull away.

The interior of the car brightened. Romy glanced in her sideview mirror and saw that the car behind them was closer now, coming up fast. Patrick noticed it too.

“Looks like someone wants to pass,” he said.

She felt the BMW decelerate as Patrick eased up on the gas to allow the other car to go by. She looked out her window at the ravine beyond the guardrail and suddenly had a premonition.

“Don't slow down!” she cried.

“Wha—?”

“Hit the gas! Don't let it pass!”

Too late. The other car had gained too much momentum. It pulled along-side—Romy could see now that it was a big, heavy Chevy van—and then cut a hard right into the Beemer's flank.