The Nervous System (15 page)

Rose watches the far wall, struggling with her face. Clearly she's hearing me. Clearly she knows what I'm talking about. I push forward.

“I'm truly sorry that your people got in the middle here, but I am simply doing some follow-up, and this leads me straight down to your hood. No way around it. That's my word, that's the truth. Now, of course I never knew Song. But in my own fucked-up way, I wanna see some justice done up in here.”

My little monologue is met with silence. I wait it out. After a full minute, she speaks.

“Well, buddy, I'll put it to you like this,” Rose says, setting her glass aside. “It's my responsibility to make sure things run smoothly around here. As for justice, I don't have a whole lot of faith left.” She clears her throat, shifts gears. “Look. My one purpose, I mean, all I'm good for, is to keep business flowing in this neighborhood. I'm talking about our construction contracts. My father … anyway. This is all we got. And at this point, you pose a threat to the business side of things here. You get me? I have a board to answer to, believe it or not. Shareholders. Rocking the boat, this is a tricky thing.”

Swirl my glass, the amber liquid. Pace the tiny area I have available to pace.

Rose is gauging my energy, my language. Am I for real? Sure I am.

Eventually homegirl says, “It doesn't add up, mister. Unless you're completely crazy and just want to stir shit up. Now sit!”

Still fucking antsy but I sit. Cross my legs casual-like, which sends a jolt of pain up my right side and causes me to blink. Between my leg and my busted-up hand there's jockeying going down as to what can pain me the most.

Rose shifts ass cheeks, tensed on the couch like a hummingbird, her aura buzzing and raw.

“So, this is your big chance to charm me, Mister X, you get This. One. Chance.” A fingernail taps her glass thrice, accenting each word.

Her tone is light and easy but I know better. Here in this video fish tank I swim with the barracuda. Straight, calm talk is in order. Clear my throat and take that one chance.

“I got no interest whatsoever in your comings and goings and whatnot. I know how it is out here. Don't give two fucks about construction contracts and all, entirely your scene.”

I carefully place my glass on the table as well, lean forward, an earnest gesture. My hand that much closer to my gun. Leg shaking. Talking faster now.

“All I wanna know is the skinny on Song's murder. That's it. You wanna share, you wanna help me out, for the sake of a girl who I know featured in your life somehow, darling—don't deny it now.”

Pause to read the air. She's trying to vibe steely but I sense subcutaneous emotional activity.

Say, “Those tears earlier? Doesn't take a detective to savvy those tears, they come from a deep, real place.” I lightly tap my chest.

Rose is watching me. Eyes a touch unfocused, part of her elsewhere, lips parted, she says, “More bullshit from an expert bullshitter.” Quiet-like.

Spread my fingers and press them to my chest like I'm pledging allegiance.

“I'm just as this cold world has made me, Rose. Yeah, I can bullshit, but when I get locked onto something I don't let go, especially where I smell some injustice. That's real, Rose, what more can I say? Got a compulsion.”

Rose taps out a Capri, eying me.

“Uh-uh,” she says, nodding at my gloves. “Looks like you got more than one compulsion. Okay, I get it. Senator Howard put you up to this. You're working for him. Somehow you fucked up and now he let out the dogs on you.”

“No, flip that around. Howard put the dogs on me first. I had no prior encounters with this motherfucker. Naturally, I got interested in the man when I discovered what he's accused of.”

She's studying her Capri. “I take it you're referring to … Song Ji-Won.”

“Yeah,” I say, hoping this is headed in the right direction.

She lights the cigarette, leans in a bit herself.

“Let's talk more about you, shall we, Mister X?”

“Call me Dewey.”

“I'm not calling you that. It's not your real name. I'm calling you Mister X.”

Lift a shoulder, say: “Whatever floats your junk.” Bounce my leg. Counting the bounces even as I speak. Can't help it. Forty-two, forty-three …

“Now Mister X,” she continues, “you're up to your ears in four dimensions of shit. You got the senator, you got Cyna-corp, you got the Chinese AND the Koreans disappointed in you. You're looking for the exit, and you got nowhere to go but down.” She grins at me, blinks those eyes. “Am I warm, Mister X?”

I don't say anything. She knows she's right. Gives me a sad face.

“Poor baby. Well. What can you do?”

More than aware it's a rhetorical question. I exhale, momentarily stumped. Exhaustion rushes in to meet me. Certainly must show cause she offers up the sad face again. Then knocks the ash off her cigarette and carries on.

“You're running out of gas. Less and less options. So I tell you what we can do here, Mister X. We can cut a deal.”

I'm listening and I tell her so. My leg and hand are competing for most-painful-body-part status. I want to sleep. Wonder if I've been drugged, don't care.

“Here it is,” says Rose. “We want Senator Clarence Howard.
Alive,
please, you fucking psycho.”

“Were I in your skirt I'd feel much the same,” I say, letting the psycho dig slide. “Why not get him yourself then? He's a big bastard, difficult to hide a dude like that.”

Shakes her head. “Can't do it. Tried reaching out, he won't come out and play with us. Song and everything. He thinks we'll whack him. But his office hands out the contracts. We need their continued support, more of it. We need our own contracts, not just subcontracted Chinese shit. So if we look bad, negative ramifications on the business. Everything goes to the Ukrainians or your American Cyna–corp types. He favors them as it is. They're his boys, as you pointed out yourself.”

She tips her head and blinks at me, girlish.

“The senator … well, he just needs a little convincing as to our merits. So we need you to pull him in, I take it from there. See our position?”

“I sympathize. But here's the thing: if you're asking me to do this, I can't know what you're gonna do with him. So I gotta know he's guilty of this murder. Directly or indirectly.”

“Oh he's guilty, Mister X. But that's not why we want to talk to him, as I just explained,” says Rose evenly. “I see an opportunity here to open up a channel previously unavailable to us. But don't worry yourself, he's a guilty man. This is just history.”

“You saying you don't crave some payback? Please.”

Rose shakes her head, expression like she doesn't give a hot shit what I believe.

I put out my palms, show her my gloves.

“Yo,” I say. “Let's back up. I gotta independently confirm this man, this very powerful man, is responsible for the murder of a young woman and her child. It's a thing I have, a deal-breaker for me. Confirmation. And hey, you may not give a shit about Song—”

Rose snaps: “I cannot afford to give a shit. I have a business to run. A whole lot of people are watching me close, so I wouldn't fuck me around, Mister X.”

A pause. Hit a nerve.

“Listen, I'm just trying to …” I stall out, then say, “Are you trying to tell me you want the senator's business, and are willing to let Song slide, just like that? I don't buy that noise for a heartbeat.”

Rose doesn't respond, studying her glass.

“My read? You're gonna do your Black Widow–Ice Queen gig, and you're gonna look real good doing it. But it's not you. Ain't your heart talking.”

“You don't know a goddamn thing about me,” Rose responds thickly, raising her eyes to rendezvous with mine.

“Maybe not, darling, but gotta say I think it's truly fucked up that I'm the only dude around here who gives a shit about Song Ji-Won.” I'm trying to think fast through a cloudy head. “I don't believe that's the case, I can't believe it. I see you struggling. Okay. I haven't figured you out yet. But I will. Okay? I'm gonna work you out, lady.”

More silence from Rose. Then: “You are one strange man, Mister X.”

Shrug. Shaking my leg. “I'm a shade quirky,” I concede.

Rose chews on her lip. “You're a shade shady. Can you not fucking shake your leg? Let me fucking think.”

I will my leg to stop. In my brain I'm still jiggling it. Rose puts her hand to her forehead, her nails carefully sculpted. See her hand shaking a bit. This is tougher than she's letting on. I clam up.

She rises, clear-eyed. “What would that require, Mister X? Confirming the senator's guilt, I mean.”

“So y'all have no evidence here on your end, a little something you could share with me …?”

She just looks at me. Take it as a no.

“Leverage. I'd need a heavy angle. I got nothing. I'm only one little dude, one little, slightly handicapped dude. I can't go straight at this guy. As you well know, those are his people out there playing at tearing up your block.” I pause. Thinking. Say, “And more still. Gotta get past them, if I were to agree to your proposal.”

The girl looks at my knee, which is bouncing around again. I can't help it.

“That's something we might be able to assist on, Mister X.” Rose tilts her head, birdlike. “As for leverage, here's a tidbit—do with it what you will: Howard's wife arrives on the island this evening. We know when and where. Maybe that's somewhere to begin.”

Upend my glass into my mouth. Chew on some ice, and this bit of new information.

“It is. Somewhere to begin,” I say.

“Good—”

Cut her off: “But please, now—how could you be privy to such info, Miss Hee? These people are beyond paranoid.”

Rose does her canary imitation again, a sideways tilt.

“We have resources. And this woman, she loves to goose her handlers. It'll be the thing that gets her killed.” She runs her hands along her skirt again. “So. We'll get you to that white bitch. We'll get you that far. If we have an agreement, Mister X.”

Chew on it further. Homeless. On the lam. This whole thing not making sense, but what the hell: nothing better on tap. What the fuck. Say, “Swapsies. In exchange, Rose Hee. Regardless of how it goes down with the senator, you all help me get my library back a.s.a.p. We do that first, or no dice.”

Rose blinks, confused. “Library,” she repeats.

“I live and work in the Main Branch Library up on—”

“I know where it is. Hence the nickname. What do you do up there, Mister X?”

I don't know how to answer that. Say, “Point is I need to get back in there, I'm gonna need what files I have on Senator Howard in order to get his attention at all, wife or no wife. Everything I got on him is in there. Can you get me back there, Rose? Key to your request, can't be done otherwise. I got those Cyna-folks in my way so it won't be easy, they got the building locked down tight. Throwing a lot of resources at it. I wouldn't be able to get five blocks from the place …” I trail off, realizing I've started to sound needy.

Rose is turning this over. I'm looking at her in profile. Both of us breathing. Watching the wall, the exotic underwater holograms.

The woman says, “You've got some balls, setting some pretty steep terms and all, hon. Look at you.”

“I'd much rather look at you,” I counter. It's true. “Far more pleasant.”

Is she blushing? She averts her gaze, a small smile, vibing teenager. Flips her hair and gives me a stern look, gets serious again. So do I.

“Take it or leave it, sweet stuff,” I say. “My terms. Otherwise, I'm happy to go my own way and play it as it lays, even if the odds are bad. If you can dig that.”

Rose goes back to staring at the wall. She then starts to nod, almost imperceptibly at first, then decisively.

“Okay, Mister X. We're going to have to do this so we sidestep the Chinese as well. Only way to do what you're describing is to give you up.”

“Not gonna fucking happen, honey bun.”

“That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about handing over a body. Won't be you, darling. It'll buy us some time.”

Oh, I don't like this.

“Body? What body?”

Rose wears a coy grin. I get it. My stomach churns.

“Oh, fuck no—”

“This is something we're good for,” she says soothingly, “providing bodies. One of our primary exports. Now, we will do this your way, but you'll have to cooperate, sweetie.”

I'm looking at bad bad and way worse than bad bad. Fish out my pill bottle and toss one back.

“Koreatown has a biohazard response team. Everybody else being so shorthanded,” says Rose, thinking aloud. Looks at me. “Basically, we send our people into holes to die, as we're considered expendable like that. Anybody in town sees something suspect, they just call us and we get down there and remove it. At whatever cost. Anyways, that's going to be the ticket.”

“I'm not following you,” I say, cause I'm not.

Rose waves her nails in the air. “You don't need to. Do we have a deal, or what?”

Need time to process but I hear the survivor in me saying, “Deal.”

She stands, slides open a closet.

“Deal,” says Rose Hee, dropping a bathrobe in my lap and making air quotes. “Now, Mister X. Let's have that suit, and get you over to the dentist.”

_______________

At approximately three thirty p.m. our biohazard response unit rolls up on the Forty-deuce Main Branch entrance. Kim is on my left, us sitting rigid in our gear like pastel-colored astronauts, he exhales audibly, I imagine at the sight of the concentration of soldiers, perhaps twenty-five heads total, who knows how many more at the other exits.

I'm seeing straight U.S. military in addition to the black-clad Cyna-corps, it's a two-vehicle-deep presence, NYPD as well, emergency bars cycling blue and red, the general energy frenetic, confused. All of which amounts to that snafu vibration.