They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy (29 page)

T
wo nearly identical little Asian guys with matching suits, one white, one black had come barging into the stairwell when we came in the side door. The
Filipino
showed them something on his phone that got them to stop barking, and they settled down to just watching us, feet apart, fists clenched, knuckles forward like they were ready for a martial arts showdown. The metal stair rail gave me a shock like the whole place was flush with static electricity.

For twenty minutes, they stood there watching us while Filipino played a game on his phone and didn't talk to me.

"Lee on his way?" I asked him
.

He didn't look up from his game.

I
eyeballed the little Asian guys
. Creepy little pricks.
Whatever, though, it would only take a second to burn all these motherfuckers.

"Hey, you know they got no plumbing in these buildings?" I asked the
Filipino
. "People're pissing out windows."

He still didn't look up from his phone. "Pipes didn't come with the place."

I pulled a cigarette out to smoke but put it back when Ching and Chong's fists started to crackle.

Nearly a fucking hour after we got there, t
hree knocks came at the side door
to the stairwell
, and the
Filipino
put his phone game away to open it. Two
more
guys walked in: one in a dark green hoodie and jeans, the other a
dreadlocked
Rastafarian
in
Adidas shorts and a pearl-snap western shirt. The Asian twins shook their heads and wagged their fingers at them, so the guy in the green hoodie got into
it with them in their language.
The voice was
Lee
's
.

The Rasta in the shorts came and stood uncomfortably close to me. I backed away a step, but he stepped with me. "Stay
close,"
he said. "
I ke
ep you safe from mind readers."

I shifted Tracey's ass
to my other hand
and confronted fears of intimacy with another man
.

Ching and Chong retreated deeper in the building, still shouting a
t Lee
as they went, him shouting right back
at them
until the door to the stairwell closed
.

"Goddamn, they some assholes,"
he
said, nodding to the
Filipino
, who took his cue and made his exit. Lee
pulled his hood off and
jerked
his head at the Rastafarian.
"He fuzzes psychics up, but you gotta be within a couple of feet of his brain. Stay close to him. He's fine. He's just a car
thief, got paroled last year."

"They
got
cars in Jamaica?" I asked the guy standing six inches from my face.

The black as midnight Rastafarian sucked a swallow of beer from a green
Heineken
bottle. "Yeah, they gots five cahs in Jamaica. I had to steal the same one ovah an' ovah." He turned to Lee. "You were right 'bout dis guy, Mistah Lee."

"'Mistah Lee,'" I said. "Look at
you. And you speak Chinese now
."

In the dim emergency light of the stairwell, I could see the whites of Lee's eyes were grayish with little patterns like circ
uits
. "What'chu want, Don? I'm gettin' asked too many damn questions about why you keep thinkin' about me and wantin' to find me.
Put that with the fact that you don't like my bosses, and I'm gettin' some difficult questions.
"

"
Good to see you, too," I said. "You want the questions to stop, t
hat's an easy fix. Just turn my nanites back on so Silvy can't read me. That's all I want. You put them in me, right?"

Lee shook his head
and rolled his eyes
. "'That's all.' You
act like that's not a big thing, turnin' them back on.
I didn't put them in you, either, so don't start that up.
Tracey gave you some water at the bunker, right?
Outside?
They were in there so if you got picked up by the cops they couldn't read you.
Your boy got 'em, too.
Tracey and her bottles, man. Don't trust 'em."

Fucking Tracey
again
.

"Where is she?" I asked him. "
Will's dead. I want to discuss that with her. She in t
he tent city?"

"That's right, she is. Good luck gettin' to her.
As for turnin' yours back on, these nanites in me
log everything I do with 'em. I command 'em, but I ain't got the programming skills
to do anything they can't already do
.
That's probably why Tracey made me take 'em.
Every action I task is dumped to a server, and every IP address in somebody's head I alter gets sent to the bosses in a daily spreadsheet report.
I can't do anything for you, man. Get this off your mind 'cause
You're makin' problems for me thinkin' about
it
, and I don't got time to fool with petty shit. Go roll one up and relax."

Again
with the 'petty' shit. Goddamn. "Well, I'm sorry my needing your help is such a goddamn inconvenience for you," I
said to him
. The Rasta pulled me closer to him because I was getting out of range of his mind field or whatever. I shrugged his hand off my shoulder. "Can't you hide the file or upload a virus or something so they don't see?"

"They're nanites, man, not magic fucking genies. I don't know shit about programming a virus, and they don't work like on TV."

"Can you download one from the I
nternet?"

The Rastafarian let o
ut two solid laughs in my face.

Lee wiped the sweat from his forehead with a clammy-looking hand. "Go get high or something
, man
. I really ain't got time for this. Silvy's got her attention focused elsewhere right now anyway, all right? Don't worry about her
, just stop thinkin' about me
. She'll leave you alone if you shut up and think about something else." He stepped closer to me. "But tell me right now,
with him here blockin' you. A
re you plannin' something?
"

The interior door squealed on its hinges. An ugly, short sonuvabitch with a ponytail stuck his head in, the
twins
in the white and black suits behind him. Lee nodded to the
pony-tailed
guy, the guy nodded back
,
and
he
closed the door. Then he screamed at the Yin Yang twins.

"You com
e up in the world," I told him.

"Yeah, well, I'm bringin' shit to the table now. Now, like I just asked you, are you plannin' something?"

I leaned against the stair railing. "That depends. Am I talking to
Stagga
Lee from Branson or am I talking to
Stagga
Lee, Uncle Bob's salaried boy?"

Lee put his hood back on. "No, we done here. Go back to your room. I heard they set you up with some nice boys to play with."

I didn't budge. "That's bullshit,
and a
re you really gonna stand there and throw me out with nothing after what I did for you
at that meeting
? You're really that kind of guy?"

He bowed up involuntarily.
"You cost my girls private school is what you did," he said defensively. "I didn't ask you to talk for me to Tracey, and you didn't
need
to talk for me."

I went into my pocket for a cigarette. "I did it to keep you alive. You don't know Tracey like I do, man, but you know her enough--" he tried to interrupt me but I just got louder "--
that you saw her kill a man right in front of you because he annoyed her, Lee.
Fucking
think
about that."

Lee pointed to my bundle with a twitchy hand and changed the subject. "Why you carryin' that piece of her around
? 'Cause you hate her so much?"

The Rastafarian coughed and something wet hit my face. "Fuck, man," I growled at him and wiped it off. "Man, I don't know
, Lee
.
It d
oesn't seem right to just throw it out, and if I leave it somewhere, who knows what the fuck somebody'll do with it. Did you see the video
of what they did to her
?"

"No, I didn't. But that's going a lot outta your way for someone you're tellin' me is a murderin' bitch."

I ran my fingers through my hair.
"
Yeah,
I know that, Lee. I know that. It's fucking complicated, all right?" This wasn't getting me anywhere. I lit my cigarette and put my
free
hand back into my pocket for the stroke of godda
mn genius I had felt in there.

I pulled out Rosemary's agent badge and flipped it open,
keeping
the flap with her ID pointed at me. "Here's the thing, guys. I work for the SCEIA. You help me out and I can make things go a lot easier."

That caught them both completely of
f guard. Like, fucking shocked.

"You
what
?" Lee said.

The Rasta's eyes rolled back in his head. "Oh, fuck, mon." He instinctively backed away from me, and I pulled him back to my side.

"That's right, Dreadlock King. 'Oh, fuck.'"

Lee stared at the silver piece of metal. "Uh-uh, man. No. That's, I don't know what that is, but you ain't a Skee
-Ay
. If you're smart, you'll go melt that thing down and get rid of it. That's a death sentence if anybody sees it."

I stuffed the badge back in my pocket. "Oh, I'm not one of them? Why do you think I didn't kill Agent Red in Dakota? We were working together to get Will out; Tracey just fucked that part up. Why do you think the first thing I did after the bunker job was get busted? Come on. That's pretty convenient, isn't it? I just gave myself up to them? Do I seem that retarded?" That fucking hurt to say. "How'd I take down a fucking speeder like Run ALC if I wasn't trained for it?"

Lee shook his head. "No way."

"That was how they brought me in," I pressed him. "
They arrested me s
o they could debrief me. I gave them what was what and sat in a cell waiting because we knew you guys would get worried about what I
'd say and make a play for me."

So much bullshit I could almost smell it.

The Rasta pointed at me, nodding, "Yeah, I seen dat shit on
The Wire
."

"Let me see that badge again," Lee said. "They don't give informants badges."

I put the badge back in my pocket. "I don't want your nanites all over it. They gave me a badge just like they gave Rosemary. She was undercover like me. Tracey screwed up and let two UCs onto your crew. With Agent Red on standby. The SCEIA is serious about brin
ging this whole operation down.

"So here's what comes next
, guys
: I don't want to see you get fucked over here just for going with the flow. There's gonna be a raid soon, but if they can't get it organized by tomorrow, I'm burning this place out myself. Anybody you know that wants a good word from me, and I mean legitimate guys here not fuckers with a death toll, you hook me up with their names and tell 'em not to resist arrest. That includes you, Rast
a Man, you can get in on this."

God
damn
was it a power trip acting like a cop.

"But this is the thing, man: everyone that wants to get in on this deal will have to surrender peacefully to the cops. All the details will be worked out after processing. I'm telling you I'll fight for you, I'll fight for your boys, too. Or they can fight DeltaBlue and the US Government on their own."

I couldn't let up, I couldn't waver; that was the key to pulling off a lie this big. I had to invent details and I had to make it so big that they wouldn't believe somebody would just make that shit up. But I couldn't make it too good to be true. If I promised Lee walking away scot free, he would never buy it. I had to make him feel like he was making a real choice and taking a chance helping me.

"If you want
a real shot at
immunity,
though,
you gotta hide me, you gotta keep me off their radar. You're just a guy they forced into this. You don't owe them shit. And your girls will go into protective custody. Now,
like I said,
I can make you all these promises, but it really all has to be approved by Washington. They get final say. I'll fight for you, but they make the call based on how much you cooperate.
And that means I need the nanites, and I need Tracey.
But both of you will come away with shorter sentences, minimum, maybe time served if this goes very fucking smoothly."