Dirty Job Page 4

  “Gotta love humanity,” Dolph said ruefully.

  “But was it unethical?” I said. “From your point of view?”

  Tierney’s smile faded. “Oh yes. Unethical as all get-out. And I wish to heck they hadn’t destroyed their research.”

  There’s a monument on San Damiano, part of the Big Shift Memorial. It’s a fifty-foot bronze portraying victims in their agony, but in the base of the statue is the debris of about a hundred supercomputers. They actually piled up the fucking things and set ‘em alight.

  Dolph nodded. “They locked in the Shifting ability and then threw away the key. Trashed the archives, wiped the files.”

  “It was a tragedy,” Tierney agreed. “But the real tragedy is that to this day, the entire field is tainted with suspicion and burdened by onerous regulations.” He sighed. “Well, maybe the next generation will do better. In the meantime, all we can do is to keep on doing the right thing. Right? It’s been nice chatting with you boys.”

  Dolph slung a look at cyborg boy, who was standing in front of the factory, cuddling his shotgun.

  “Slim can be a little over-protective,” Tierney said. “It’s the importance of the work. We live every day in fear that this will be our last. But I feel a lot better knowing that our products will be in safe hands. That Ek was a flake, I’m telling you.”

  He unlocked the front gate for us. As we walked along the drive, I looked back. Tierney waved. I lifted my hand in response. The trees hid his solid, white-haired figure.

  “Nice old guy,” Dolph said. “Ego the size of the freaking Cluster.”

  “Of course,” I said. “He believes he’s saving humanity.”

  “You owe me a beer.”

  “Hey, sixty ain’t peanuts.”

  We reached the road. My truck wasn’t there.

  “That’s funny,” I said. “Maybe Irene decided to drive around.”

  “Call her.”

  I did. She didn’t pick up. I connected with my truck and displayed its location on a map of the area.

  “Oh, shit,” I howled.

  My truck was parked out front of Grizzly’s.

  5

  Dolph and I jogged and walked along the shoulder, through the verdant needles of the native Ponce de Leon plant we call grass. Around the next curve, we came in sight of Grizzly’s, a freestanding building with a pagoda roof squatting at the near end of another down-at-heel strip mall. The grill on the verandah billowed smoke. In the parking lot, about a hundred Bruins supporters were holding a tailgate party. The noise of the game, broadcast from a dozen car stereos, mingled with thumping music.

  My truck stood on the verge of the road, this side of the narrow drainage ditch that bounded the parking lot.

  Irene stood with her back pressed to the cab, aiming a handgun at Larry Kodiak.

  The Kodiak twins, Larry and Gary, had been Buzz Parsec’s chief enforcers. Used to be you couldn’t tell them apart. But last month I had gotten into it with Gary K. Broke a couple of his ribs, clawed his face. He was left with a disfiguring red scar on his cheek and jaw. This hulking six-and-a-half-footer, his belly rounding out an XXL Bruins jersey, had no scar, so I knew it wasn’t Gary K. It was his brother, Larry.

  The gun in Irene’s hands, a snub-nosed pistol, pointed unwaveringly at Larry K’s stomach. I didn’t know she was carrying that. But it shouldn’t have surprised me. Out on jobs, Irene seldom went anywhere with only one gun … and although this was our home territory, I realized with a jolt, it was no longer any safer than anywhere else.

  One of the guys with Larry saw us coming. He tugged on Larry’s sleeve. I knew this bear, too: Hokkaido, Parsec’s former engineer. He was squat and muscular, with broad shoulders that compensated for his soft middle.

  The noise died down as Dolph and I crossed in front of Grizzly’s, although the rugby commentary and the music kept going, annoying every normie within earshot. Larry swung to face us, turning his back on Irene. I wouldn’t have done that. “Well, well, it’s Starrunner and Hardlander,” he gloated. “Only one missing is the snake.”

  I knew that the bears hated us. We had put Parsec in jail. But surely they wouldn’t do anything dumb. Especially not in public. Dolph and I stopped a few meters from the knot of bears around the truck.

  “I got no beef with you, Kodiak. What’s going on here?” I looked at Irene.

  “You can’t say a friendly hello to these bears without getting threatened.” Her voice was spiky.

  Why had it occurred to her to say a friendly hello to the bears in the first place? I let that go for now. “You done? Because we got places to be.”

  “You framed the boss,” Larry snarled suddenly, rounding on Irene. “You’re not getting away with that!”

  My blood ran cold. The fact was, Irene had faked evidence against Parsec to make sure he went down for smuggling bio-weapons. Oh, he’d been neck deep in the Founding Day plot—but he hadn’t actually left himself open to criminal charges. Buzz Parsec was too smart for that. In the end, though, Irene had outsmarted him.

  And the bears knew it.

  Well, of course they did. Parsec knew he was innocent of the specific charges laid against him. And he had a pretty good idea that Irene had framed him.

  But he couldn’t prove it, and neither could Larry Kodiak. “Parsec is in jail,” I said, “where he belongs, and that’s where he’ll be staying for the next ten, fifteen years. So you might as well get over it and start job-hunting.”

  “We’re working for Mrs. Parsec now,” Hokkaido blurted.

  Cecilia Parsec was a normie. I had some respect for her, and I would have hoped she had cut these lowlife ursines loose. But it wasn’t my business. “Good for you. Give her my best wishes.” I sliced a glance at Dolph and began to move forward, through the bears.

  They fell back, muttering insults. But Larry K blocked me with an ugly smile. “The boss doesn’t forget anyone that betrayed his friendship.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Parsec and I were never friends. I have standards.”

  Behind me, bears jostled Dolph. Dolph pushed back. The crowd hooted, “Shift! Shift!” They wanted us to Shift and fight. That’s what passes for entertainment in this part of town. A wave of weary disgust overtook me. I pushed Larry K in the chest with an open hand. “Out of my way.”

  He grabbed my shirt. Irene pointed her weapon at his face and yelled, “You need a hole in your head to help you think about this?!” Wrenching free, I threw the truck door open and vaulted up. Dolph twisted out of a knot of bears. He scrambled in and pulled Irene up into the cab as I started the engine.

  I U-turned across traffic. Cars braked, AIs screamed, and horns blared. I gunned it towards Harborside.

  “Well, that was fun,” Dolph said. “What possessed you to go over there, Irene?”

  “Like I said, I got tired of waiting for you guys. Went over there to say hello. Thought maybe I could smooth things over with them.”

  Dolph shook his head, looking as bemused as I felt. “Why bother? They’re finished. The Kodiaks are coasting on Parsec’s coattails, but that’s gonna end when the money runs out. Cecilia can’t keep paying them to sit on their asses forever.” He snorted. “Parsec already sold the Great Bear.” That had been Parsec’s freighter. “He sold his other businesses, some of his real estate … he’s still got his spread at Ville Verde, but you figure they’ll have to sell that, too. The city hit him with a civil lawsuit on top of the criminal charges.”

  “The bears can still bite, though,” I said. “I don’t want any trouble with them.”

  “Nor do I,” Irene said. “That’s why I went over there.”

  “Larry K said something about betraying Parsec’s friendship,” I recalled.

  Irene nodded. “I used to work with Parsec, although I couldn’t say we were friends.”

  I hadn’t forgotten that. Before Irene joined my crew, she and Rex had been freelances. Not to put too fine a point on it, they’d been professional thieves. In th
at capacity, they had worked with Parsec a few times. But that was ancient history. Even before I met them, they had gone (mostly) straight for their children’s sake. And I did not doubt Irene’s loyalty to me … after all, she’d framed Parsec so that I could walk free.

  “They’ve been nuisance-calling me,” Irene said. “Threatening dire retribution.”

  “So you went over there to threaten them back.” Although I believed she had made a mistake in escalating it to a face-to-face confrontation, I had to admire her guts.

  “You should have told us,” Dolph said.

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “We’d have come with you.”

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you before.”

  “What,” Dolph said, grinning, “you think we would have bit their throats out or something?” The confrontation with the bears had cheered him up. This kind of thing was more manageable than exiled princesses, priceless Urush technology, and IVK.

  I turned onto his street in Smith’s End. Turds and gnawed bones littered the sidewalk. Mama tigers and wolves sprawled on their stoops, watching their half-naked children play in the street. The truck auto-braked to avoid a hyena strolling across the street, talking into a custom phone headset and wearing diamanté jewelry over its fur. “Dolph,” I said, “how about moving?”

  The fact he’d suggested house-hunting as a diversionary activity made me think he was at least open to the idea.

  “Meh. I’m used to it here,” he said. “I don’t even smell the recycling plant anymore.”

  He got out and vanished into the chaos like my machete vanishing into the water when I dropped it. I drove through to Creek Avenue and turned north.

  “Well, the traffic’s not too bad,” Irene said. “Looks like we’ll only be half an hour late to drop the girls off.”

  6

  “Daddy!” Lucy hurtled down the steps and jumped me as I climbed out of the truck. “We won!”

  “Who’s we, sweetiepie?” I swung her around, wondering how much longer I could count on having the strength in my arms to pick her up.

  “The Sea Lions, of course! We had to cheer for them, because the Wolves weren’t playing.”

  “At least they got Lions in their name,” Rex said ruefully. He stood on the porch, a majestic lion surrounded by backpacks and suitcases. “Got all the packing done. Don’t blame me that they want to take the whole house.”

  Code-switching. When you’re a parent, you have to learn how to do it. This afternoon, we had murdered an alien. Half an hour ago, we’d been confronting hostile bears. Now, what I wanted more than anything was a drink. Instead, I had to think about underwear, socks, and nametags on towels. I found to my relief that Lucy had packed everything on the camp’s list. I could thank Rex for that. He might be an ex-thug with a chequered past, but I could think of no one I’d rather have living upstairs.

  I boosted Lucy’s luggage into the back of the truck, feeling a pang at the parting which was yet to come. We had spent the last two weeks solidly in each other’s company—painting the apartment, window-shopping, eating out, going to the beach. It was not too much to say that the joys, and the responsibilities, of dadhood had saved my life in the days after my diagnosis. Some evenings, Lucy had been the only thing that stood between me and a bottle of Cristo Rey. Some nights, her sleeping presence down the hall had been the only thing that stopped me from putting my .22 in my mouth.

  Now, while I thought back nostalgically over our days together, she chirped, “Are you looking forward to camp, Mia?”

  “Yes!” said Irene’s blonde, sprite-like daughter. “Are you looking forward to camp, Lucy?”

  “Yes! Are you looking forward to—”

  “I think we get the picture,” I said, smiling indulgently. The girls bounced up and down with excitement as we drove south along the Strip. The ShifterKids Summer Experience!! was located at the Lagos del Mar Resort, at the south end of Shiftertown. In some obscure deal with the city, the mass-market beach resort had opened its facilities to a couple hundred Shifter schoolkids. I pitied the management.

  We drove all the way along the Strip, through the slumbering red-light district, and on through a tangle of little streets, out to the spit where Mill Creek oozes into the sea. Ten acres of reclaimed land. Private beach. Outside the walls, Smith’s End; inside, manicured greenery. They had flying shuttles for the guests, so no one would have to see the slums. We arrived by the dirtsider entrance, at a drop-off circle in front of a pink colonial-style building. A reptile with spikes along its head and back, like a miniature dinosaur, was hopping across the forecourt. “Chupacabra alert!” I said. It was about the size of a wallaby and it moved like one, too. An entourage of Shifter kids followed it, whispering and pointing like it was royalty. Of course, it was just a native Ponce de Leon animal. But most of these kids had never been out of the city … and my daughter was no exception. The furthest I’d ever taken her was the zoo.

  She clung to my arm as I got her luggage out of the back. Insecurity suddenly dimmed her mood. “Is it gonna be OK for me to stay here?”

  “It’s just an animal,” I said. “They’re herbivorous, and I would bet that one’s been declawed.”

  “No. They’re all looking at me.”

  Of course. She wasn’t worried about the chupacabra. She was worried about the other kids.

  “Sweetheart, it’s OK. They aren’t looking at you. Everyone’s forgotten, anyway.”

  Lucy’s kidnapping two weeks ago had made the news. My friend Jose-Maria d’Alencon, a Ponce de Leon cop, had personally ensured that her name was kept out of the media. Nevertheless, I’d had to inform her school about it. Lucy had been a seven days’ wonder in the playground. She hadn’t enjoyed the attention. Like father, like daughter—she preferred to fly under the radar.

  “Most of these kids aren’t even from your school,” I reassured her. “There’s practically no one here from Shoreside Elementary except you and Mia.”

  That was because the ShifterKids Summer Experience!! wasn’t free. It cost 5 KGCs a week. Poorer Shifter families received financial aid, but we in the “good” end of Shiftertown didn’t qualify, so we were out of luck. In fact, I had quietly insisted on paying Mia’s fees, so that she and Lucy could go to camp together.

  We crossed through the lobby into a landscaped garden, and walked along a path that circled ponds and humped over tiny bridges. Another stucco building shimmered through the trees. We followed kid noise to an inner courtyard where camp counselors manned folding tables beside a swimming pool. There were more kids in the pool than water, and at least one chupacabra was wallowing around with them. Mia’s face lit up. She wanted to get in that pool right now. Irene said something sharp to her I couldn’t catch over the noise.

  We lined up at the L through S table.

  My heart clenched like a fist.

  I almost forgot to breathe.

  The counselor checking kids in at our table was Christy Day.

  Christy’s gaudy t-shirt and shorts could not hide her beauty. Her cinnamon hair was tied back in a braid. I watched her animated face as she greeted campers, and remembered how soft those lips had felt on mine, how irresistible her body had looked under me. I’d been trying to forget our night together. Good luck with that.

  We reached the head of the line.

  Christy’s boilerplate breezy greeting died. We held each other’s eyes for an instant. Then she rallied. She was at work, after all. “Hi Mr. Starrunner, hi Mrs. Seagrave! It’s great to see some Shoreside Elementary families here.”

  Christy worked at Lucy and Mia’s school. That’s how we had met. Of course, school was out for the summer. Of course, she had taken a summer job as a camp counselor.

  “Hi, Lucy and Mia,” Christy went on. “Are you looking forward to camp?”

  “Yes!” Mia shouted. But Lucy looked less certain. She was clinging to my arm again.

  “Go on, Lucy,” I urged her. “Say hello to Ms. Day.”

  �
��I just don’t know if it’s OK for me to be here,” Lucy mumbled.

  Christy hesitated. As we had rolled up late, there was no one waiting in line behind us. “Well, it looks like most folks are checked in now, so Mrs. Seagrave, can I hand you over to Amanda, here? I think maybe Lucy needs a minute.”

  “Sure, fine with me,” Irene said. Keeping Mia close, she zeroed in on the hapless Amanda and began to fire questions at her.

  Christy, Lucy, and I walked out of the building, back into the garden. Christy’s hand brushed my arm. An instant, electric jolt of desire took me off guard.

  I moved away, putting Lucy between us. I needed to focus on my daughter right now. “Sweetie, why do you think you shouldn’t be here? You scored in the top ten percent. Actually, in the top five.” I winked at Christy. “Who me, a proud dad?”

  “You have every right, Mike,” Christy said. “Lucy, your results were fantastic. The camp director thinks you show a lot of promise. It’s going to be a great summer. And … you don’t have to worry about anything bad happening here.” She gestured around. “The whole resort has a force field perimeter. There are armed guards.” To keep out the other Shifters, I thought. Christy pointed up. “And see those?” White, hawk-like objects drifted in the darkening sky. “Security drones.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “So no bad guys could ever get in.”

  “Unless they came in a spaceship,” Lucy said.

  “If they came in a spaceship,” I said, “they wouldn’t even be able to start their de-orbit burn before the Fleet blew them to dust. So Christy’s right. This place is one hundred percent safe.”

  The sound of rushing water drew us out of the trees. We had reached part of Lagos del Mar’s famous water obstacle course, a stretch of artificial rapids between high banks. The water came from Mill Creek but it had been cleansed of all impurities. It foamed over fake rocks. Guests in lifevests—and a few daring souls without—swam and tumbled through the rapids, helped along by dolphins and seals. That was the resort’s selling point: many of the staff were Shifters, who worked in animal form.