Circuit Of Heaven (28 page)

“Good for you. You always wanted to love somebody. I never wanted that. It’s like being in jail.” She spoke in a quick, dry voice like flames crackling, her hands still on top of her head. “Why tell me? I used you to escape, Nemo. I couldn’t leave my crazy father outright, but I could leave you.”

Nemo wished he had another drink, but not here, not now. “I figured that much out.”

She put her feet on the table and looked up at the ceiling. “How’s the crazy asshole doing, anyway?”

“He’s fine.”

She snorted in disbelief. “No, he’s not. He’s totally fucked. You never could lie worth a damn. Earnest, that’s what you are, Nemo.” She made it sound like an insult. “What’s he up to now? Sacrificing goats? Speaking in tongues?”

“He’s gotton involved with the underground.”

“Suits him.” She sat upright, shaking her head. You could almost hear her father rattling around in there. The night she’d come in he’d kept chanting:
I have no daughter. I have no wife
. But here she was. She still hadn’t escaped him. She looked at Nemo. “You want anything to eat, drink? Kitchen’s in there. Why’d you come see me, Nemo? I’m still the same bitch who walked out on you.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve changed.”

“Yeah, well. Just showing my true colors. Living my dreams, as they say, in the glorious Bin.” Her face contorted. “Nothing for me in this shithole but that bitch who used to be my mother.”

“Do you see her?”

She laughed. “See her? This is her house. She should be home pretty soon. I’ll introduce you.”

Maybe Justine was right. Maybe he should ask her. “Rosalind, do you ever think about the crematorium?”

“Think? No. Never. I don’t
think
about it. That’s your department. Don’t want to talk about it either. Why are you here, Nemo? You looking for a sign, like my old man? Or are you just looking to get laid, like my mother?”

Nemo sighed and stood up. He’d had enough. “Neither one. I wanted to see what had become of your anger.”

“Alive and well, Nemo. Alive and well.”

There was laughter from the porch, and a man and woman walked in together. They were both gorgeous. He was tall, broad-shouldered and muscular. She was like a porcelain doll. They both smiled at Nemo.

“Nemo,” Rosalind said without getting up. “I’d like you to meet my mom. Mom, Nemo.”

Nemo recognized her from her photograph, though now the lines were all gone, the haggard eyes. She looked twenty years younger, looked a few years younger than her daughter. “Linda,” she said shaking Nemo’s hand. “This is Kurt.”

When the introductions were done, Linda and Kurt sat down.

“I was just leaving,” Nemo said.

Rosalind turned to Nemo. “Mom looks pretty good for a middle-aged woman, don’t you think? How old are you, Kurt?”

“Shut up, Rosalind,” Kurt said evenly, the muscles on his neck swelling.

Rosalind smiled wickedly. “He’s twenty-one. That’s about your age, isn’t it, Nemo? Why don’t you hang around? Maybe Mom would like to fuck you, too.”

“Shut up, Rosalind,” Kurt repeated.

“Or what? If we were outside you could strangle me.” She got up from the sofa and stood in front of Kurt. “What are you going to do in here, you muscle-bound cretin—bench-press the sofa?”

“Sit down, Rosalind,” Linda said.

Rosalind straightened up and laughed, but she did as she was told. “Don’t worry, Mom. I won’t hurt him.”

“You’ll have to forgive my daughter,” Linda said to Nemo. “As you can see, she still hasn’t learned any manners.”

Rosalind rolled her eyes. “Who am I supposed to learn them from,
you? The Etiquette of Humping Hunks
by My Mom.”

Linda shot to her feet and stood over her daughter. Even though she was a tiny woman, she had a commanding presence, and Rosalind cowered before her. “That will be enough out of you. Don’t you dare judge me. I had you when I was barely nineteen on the floor of a garage, dragging across the countryside with your father too busy talking to God to ever find any food. If it hadn’t been for me, you would’ve been dead a long time ago. I’ve paid my dues, Rosalind. I’ve
earned
my life in here, and I’ll live it any damn way I please. Nobody’s forcing you to live here.”

Nemo headed for the door. He was completely sober now. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going.”

ROLIND
CAUGHT
UP
WITH
HIM
ON
THE
STREET
. “
HEY
, Nemo. I’m sorry. I guess this wasn’t what you had in mind.”

He looked up and down the street. There weren’t many lights on. Everybody was in bed asleep. “That’s okay. I didn’t have anything in mind.”

Somehow she’d softened. She ran her hands through her hair. “So, do you want to hang out? Do something?”

“No thanks.”

She nodded. She took one of his shirt buttons in her fingers and twisted it back and forth. “Yeah. You’re right. Stupid idea.” She dropped her hand to her side. “Goodbye, Nemo.”

“Good-bye, Rosalind.”

NEMO
CAUGHT
A
TRAIN
TO
PENTAGON
STATION
,
DOZING
most of the way. He found his coffin and settled in. Maybe this time, he thought, I’ll wake up dead. Anything would be better than this. When
DOWNLOAD
flashed in his face, he fell into a pit of blackness.

LENNY
KLIMT’S
OFFICE
WAS
IN
THE
EAST
SIXTIES
, not too far from Central Park. Justine had the address from the letter in her bag, though she couldn’t remember ever receiving it. There wasn’t much to it—the details of her booking at the Black Dog, and a list of cities and dates where she’d be playing next. The building was an elegant deco structure with holo-operators on the elevators, a typical bit of Bin nostalgia. Justine was fairly certain she’d never been there before, but that didn’t mean anything. Lots of people did business in the Bin without ever being in the same room. She remembered Lenny’s face, recognized him on his answering tape, but she couldn’t remember much else about him—like why he was handling her in the first place. He seemed like a good place to start finding out who she was and what she was doing here.

She had no reason to expect he’d be in his office—he hadn’t returned any of her phone calls—but she suspected he would be. He was just avoiding her. Like most businessmen in the Bin, he had a holo-receptionist. This one was a dapper young man with a thin mustache and a Latino accent. As with all holos, you could tell when you looked in his eyes that he couldn’t really see you.

“I’d like to see Lenny,” Justine said. “I’m Justine Ingham. I called earlier.”

“Won’t you have a seat, please?” the holo said, as if to someone standing a foot to Justine’s right.

Justine sat down next to a long, skinny aquarium in front of the window. Angelfish the size of pie pans swam back and forth, while catfish wriggled along the bottom looking like mud-brown thumbs. There was a huge neobaroque oil on the mahogany-paneled wall opposite. A stream of elongated, windswept angels rose into a wreath of clouds encircling heaven. Beneath them, in the lower right corner of the canvas, was a blue globe in eclipse.

There were two doors other than the one she’d come in, one on either side of the receptionist. They were made to blend into the paneling. Except for the slender steel pulls, you might not even notice them at all. The one on the left was a little smaller than the other one.

The receptionist looked vaguely in Justine’s direction and spoke to the top of her head. “Mr.Klimt is gone for the day, I’m afraid. Perhaps you could leave your number, and he’ll get back to you.”

Right. If he was out for the day, why had the holo told her to sit? She chose the door on the left, and it wasn’t locked. “You can’t go in there,” the holo said behind her as she stepped into Lenny Klimt’s office through his private entrance. Lenny was at his desk, talking on the phone.

“I’m Justine Ingham,” she said. “I believe you work for me?”

Lenny turned from the screen, seemingly more amused than angry. His eyelids blinked in slow motion. He was a precise man, with a permanent ironic smile. “I’ll call you back,” he said without looking at the screen, and hung up.

Justine sat down in one of the club chairs in front of Lenny’s desk and smiled at him. “We’ve never met before, have we?”

Lenny leaned back in his chair and swivelled in a small arc as he studied her. Not, she guessed, because he was trying to remember her, but because he was figuring out his story. Finally, he brought his chair upright and rested his arms on the desk. “Our professional relationship was initiated by a third party. Pleased to meet you, Justine. Is there some problem with your booking at the Black Dog?”

“It’s fine. Who was the third party?”

Lenny smiled indulgently at her directness. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

“What, exactly, did he ask you to do?”

“D.C. is beautiful this time of year, don’t you think? He swiveled to the panel beside his desk. ”Coffee? Tea?“

“What did he ask you to do?”

Lenny swiveled back, pursed his lips. “Nothing sinister. He merely asked me to arrange a booking for you in D.C. for this week. Now if there’s some problem with the booking—”

“He had demo tapes?”

“I don’t see that it matters how the booking was arranged, Justine. If everything is satisfactory, I don’t believe I can help you.”

“You’re my agent. I’m asking you a simple question. Nothing sinister, remember? Did he have demo tapes? Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“What songs were on them?”

He laughed. He was good at it. You could almost believe it was real. “Justine, I watch thousands of tapes, I really can’t remember every single song—”

“One. One song.”

He looked at her for a moment. She could see him weighing the odds. He had no idea who she was. She was hoping he didn’t want to risk alienating her in case she turned out to be somebody. “To tell you the truth,” he confessed, “I didn’t actually watch them. I sent them on to the band.”

“If you didn’t know what kind of music I did, how did you know what musicians to hire?”

He sighed. “I was also given the names of the musicians I was to hire.” It sounded dumb even to him.

“And you didn’t know
them
either?”

“That is correct.”

“So somebody asks you to book a singer and a band you’ve never heard before, and you blithely agree to do it?”

“I did it…as a favor.”

“So this person who’s so interested in my career is a friend of yours?”

“An acquaintance.”

Justine smiled. He couldn’t let it pass that the guy was his friend. She figured it could only be one person. “I’ll take that coffee now, if that’s all right. I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

He got her coffee, Earl Grey for himself, relaxing a little bit, figuring he was out of the woods. “Is this your first time in New York, Justine?”

She looked around his office. It was a nice place. She had a first-class agent. “Why did this acquaintance need you at all, Lenny? Why didn’t he just set it up himself?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“I’d say it was because he didn’t want me to know he’d done it. He wanted to make it look like a regular booking.”

Lenny sipped on his tea and didn’t say anything.

“This acquaintance must be somebody important, somebody with pull. You’re obviously not hard up enough to do something this squirrelly just for money.”

“I do not object to making money, but you are right. Money was not my motivation in this case. However, it would not be in my best interests to tell you what it is you wish to know. I’m truly sorry.”

“Did this acquaintance tell you that I’m a Construct mistress?”

That got to him. He set down his cup and shook his head. It took him a moment to gather himself together. “Construct mistresses are illegal. He doesn’t trust me enough to take me into his confidence concerning anything that might be used against him.” The little smile was tighter now.

“But he has no problem implicating you. Hardly seems fair, does it Lenny?”

“Many things aren’t fair. I’m afraid I still can’t help you.”

“I gather you’re more afraid of your acquaintance than your are of the law.”

“As you should be as well, Justine. As you should be as well.”

Justine shook her head and slighed. “But I was counting on your help, Lenny. Now I’ll have to figure out something else to do. How about I run crying to Winston Donley and tell him that
you
told me he set this whole thing up—called me up out of the blue, told me not to breathe a world, but of course I didn’t believe you—
Oh Winston, what am I to do?
If he didn’t have anything to do with it, you can just tell him I’m nuts, maybe no harm done, but if he did, he might be pretty pissed about you telling his secrets. What do you think of that plan?”

Lenny made a tent with his fingertips and smiled. “That’s a pretty good plan. I gather that in exchange for my candor, however, you would be willing to forgo this performance?”

“Precisely.”

Lenny pondered it a moment. “What would you like to know?”

“This demo tape—I don’t remember making it. Did he tell you how he came by it?”

Lenny shook his head. “If you don’t remember it, it’s probably just a simulation. I have tapes of Elvis performing with Nirvana. Anything’s possible in here.”

“So I keep hearing. Did the good senator tell you
why
he wanted you to do him this favour?”

Lenny shook his head. “No. I think he was doing it at the request of someone else. He found it annoying, a bother. He said he had some other errands to run concerning you, but he didn’t say what they were.”

“Errands?”

“That is the very word he used.”

“Did he say anything else about me?”

“Only that I shouldn’t ask too many questions.” He smiled. “Are you, by the way, an illegal Construct?”

“I think so. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“That son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Well, I wish you luck. And if you ever tire of singing, come to work for me. You have a knack for negotiation.”