Dues of Mortality (58 page)

Nathan
Brisby had been a godsend, swooping down on Wallace's hit man before
he could lay a glove on Cassandra. Brisby and his partner had
commandeered the on-the-market house next door to the Hawkins’s
the previous day. The agents were on top of the scum from the second
he showed his face. Brisby regretted not taking Kimbrough alive, but
when he went for his gun, while Brisby was trying to make the arrest,
all bets were off.

Xavier
laughed when he found out Brisby was the cousin “Nate”
that Max Porter had mentioned years ago in passing.

“
The
CIA, NSA, or some shit?” Xavier had repeated.

Brisby
heckled his cousin when he heard that. “No, it was the FBI,
dummy,” he said to Max. “For a guy with such big ears,
you never did listen very well.”

But
Max Porter
had
listened when it counted. He’d listened
to Xavier’s story, and just like any soldier worth his salt,
paralleled some of the details. Nate Brisby had been coming into the
Blacklight Tavern—the only bar in Cleveland where he could get
free drinks—a bit more frequently to assuage some extra job
stress. He'd been bemoaning places like BioCore and Millenitech to
his cousin.

“
I
hate those biotech bullies,” Nate had said. “They’re
so goddamn irresponsible! They have no concern for the threat they
bring to the community. Who gives a shit if they make my job harder?”

With
the same rant being on the tip of his tongue nearly every time Max
poured him a Whiskey Sour, it hadn’t been too hard to get a
line on the cause of his cousin’s recent headaches. So when
Xavier came in stinking of a runner’s sweat and pointing out a
connection to Millenitech, Max went to his cousin and relayed the
story. He tried to leave out names, but Nate convinced him otherwise,
sighting the couple's need for protection should worst come to worst.
It was even Max who was asked to provide a meeting with Andrew
Roberts—an action which bolstered Max’s confidence that
he’d done the right thing. FBI agents weren’t known for
sharing their candy with the other kids, but Marcel McCutcheon was
more about “us against them” than he was about “us
against us.” He and Roberts had made a fast connection when
they met in the Blacklight, like two soldiers in the field. They
weren’t sure if their cases were related, but being the
experienced lawmen that they were, knew instinctively that criminal
activity had a tendency to spread outward from a central source like
ripples in the water. The two compared notes on their cases, drawing
parallels—of which there were admittedly few—and agreed
to keep each other abreast of their progress. If one of their paths
led to the other’s at least they would know who had their back.

Xavier
stood next to Max Porter, sipping on ginger ale—what he
supposed was the drink of choice for most recovering alcoholics—and
watched the ends of the checkered table cloth flutter under the
afternoon breeze. Max had shown up at the barbecue with a crate of
baby back ribs and his son, Patrick Porter, in tow. There wasn't a
single guest who didn't nearly laugh out loud at the toddlers ears
which were already threatening to outgrow his head.

“
Daddy,
I hit it out of the park, see?” the toddler said as he danced
around the Hawkins's huge backyard with a chicken leg in his greasy
fist. A plastic Wiffle ball covered in barbeque sauce was ensconced
in the thick green grass, ants already descending.

“
You
thought I turned you in, didn’t you?” Max asked Xavier
with a “cat who ate the canary” face.

Xavier
nearly dropped his pop. The sneaky little jerk just busted out with a
question that was best left unasked, knowing damn well Xavier wasn’t
prepared to answer. Where did he get that shit? “Max...I uh...I
never...”

“
Never
what?” Max interrupted, his voice becoming pensive, and almost
hostile. “Never meant to get my knee cap blasted off?” He
punched the knee in question with the side of his fist. “Never
meant for me to end up with a piece of space age fiber that doesn’t
quite work as well as the original? Never meant to ruin my military
career, which was all I knew I was good for? Well guess what,
asshole?”

Xavier
fixated on the lush lawn like it was about to open up and swallow him
whole.

“
You
didn’t,” Max pronounced.

Xavier
looked up at him, shocked.

“
Damn,
you really are kind of an idiot,” Max stated with genuine
wonder. “Only a dumb sack like you would allow himself to
believe that he could single-handedly ruin someone else’s life
like that. Did you really think that after all this time I’d be
stupid enough to blame
you
for what happened?”

Xavier
was terrified, but plowed ahead anyway. He suddenly couldn't stand it
anymore and wanted it all out in the open. “I was the one who
froze up. It was my fault he got a hold of my gun. It was my fault
that you got shot.”

“
No.
It was
his
fault I got shot.” Max
paused. “And mine.”

“
Yours?”

“
Yes.
I was just as much a soldier as you were, Zave. I knew what the job
was about. Just because we weren’t in the middle of a war zone
when it happened, didn’t mean there were no risks involved. I
could've remembered to do a pat down once we were outside.” Max
paused again, placing a hand on Xavier's shoulder. “Nothing
happens by accident, man—the universe doesn’t work that
way. I was supposed to leave for Fort Bragg a week after that night.
If I hadn’t taken that shot in the knee, I’d probably be
on a suicide mission somewhere right now treating my life as if it
wasn’t important. I know
damn
well
I wouldn’t
be with my son. Man, I joined the army because I thought it was what
I was supposed to do. It was what I was
expected
to do
. Just
because I was good at it didn’t mean shit.

“
Now,
look at me. For the first time, I’m actually enjoying life,
without throwing it on the crap table in order to feel useful.”

Xavier
shrugged. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I
always thought that...”

“
I
know what you thought. I would’ve said all of this to you then,
but you weren’t talking to anybody. You think I didn’t
know what you must’ve have been feeling? Not just about me, but
about Elana Hatten, too?”

Xavier
averted his eyes.

“
I
always understood
why
you ran away,” Max said.
“Doesn’t mean I approved of it.”

Xavier
sighed and hung his head.
“
Yeah,
well, running was what
I
was good at. Old habits, I guess.
I still can’t believe I let myself ask for your help.”

Max
shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you?” He
slapped his knee and grinned. “
I
owed you one
.”

Xavier
looked up, finally smiling. All this time he'd been dragging his
guilt about Max around like a rickshaw full of sumo wrestlers. And
now it was suddenly gone. He felt lighter, stronger, wanted to put
Max on his shoulders and parade him through downtown. The two friends
locked palms and drew their corresponding shoulders to the link—a
grand gesture of affection between guys, but as subtle as a falling
leaf.

“
Thank
you,” Xavier said.

Glenda
wandered over just as the two men parted. “Hey, hey, I thought
you guys had a rule about male bonding in broad daylight.”

“
That’s
only on Sundays,” Max joked.

Glenda
smiled then unfolded a freshly printed copy of a news stream printed
out from Benny’s webscreen. She handed it to Xavier. “Check
this out,” she said.

Xavier's
eyes cast down over an article detailing that Michigan Senator Shane
Beaumont was to be formally indicted on a whole host of federal
charges. They included murder, arson and a number of conspiracy
charges—not the least of which was domestic terrorism. It went
on to say that the government’s case got a well-needed boost
when Isaac Williams, the senator’s press secretary, came
forward with evidence of suspicious e-mails and communiqués
from the senator’s office. Despite Beaumont's disgrace, it
still wasn’t known how the senate would vote on the biotech
regulations bill, but the president bit at the carrot and was taking
the opportunity to change his tune in favor of “economic
concerns”.

“
I
find it all very disturbing that Senator Beaumont has been charged in
this matter,” the president had said. “In my opinion, it
may require, at the very least, a
reevaluation
of his supporters' motives.”
Political double-talk for being able to veto the bill and regain
campaign contributors for his reelection.

“
Well,
Wallace
wanted
the bill defeated,” Xavier
reminded them.

“
But
he still got what he deserved,” Glenda noted.

Sharing
the page of the copy was a related story headlined: THE ONLY GOOD
CLONE IS A DEAD ONE. This article explained how a group of wealthy
potentates and celebrities had recently used cloned bodies to
successfully fake their deaths. It was the tail-end result of the
follow-up investigation into the names on Jerome Wallace's personal
client list. At least two of the names immediately jumped out at
Xavier.

Prince
Ahmad Kassim was found alive and well when security officials from
his native country tracked him to and raided a whorehouse in Bangkok.
It seemed princely duties and appearances had long since outlived
their appeal for Kassim and he thought he could better exercise his
tawdry interest in twelve-and thirteen-year-old children
outside
the confines of the royal palace.

Singer
Deanna Robinson was found living a life of
spiritual
solitude near a monastery outside Budapest. She claimed that she was
losing her soul in the voracious, dispassionate recording industry,
and faking her death was a spiritual imperative. Sales of her
posthumously released album were expected to plummet. Another article
mentioned the name Tamashii
Kurosawa
,
but no details were given on his involvement with the cloning
operation, only that he was a Japanese crimelord with disturbing ties
to American industry.

“
A
lot of biotechs out there,” Xavier said. “I’ll bet
Wallace wasn’t the only one afraid of that bill. For all we
know, somebody a whole lot worse than him is throwing a victory
party.”

“
In
that case, my job’s only just begun, said” Det. Andrew
Roberts. He had stopped by the picnic to update Glenda on the details
of her case ten minutes ago. He had a savory smile on this sunny day,
looking very much the gentle patriarch he'd impressed upon her when
they'd first met. He had told her and Xavier that the coroner’s
office exhumed the remains of Peter Simonton’s clone with plans
to do a targeted autopsy. He pointed out that there wasn’t much
to play with, given the damage to the corpse, but there was always
hope. Even if
the
coroner
found
nothing, investigators, at least, knew the implant existed and that
it was assuredly not the real Peter Simonton, whom the police had
found blown in half in the old Halite warehouse on the lakeshore.
Roberts would never forget the look on Marcia and Amanda Simonton's
faces when they learned that they would have to grieve all over
again, not only for Peter, but for his seven-figure life insurance
policy. All the facts of the case were yet to be revealed, but the
insurance company's lawyers had so much ammo to tie it up in court,
that by the time Marcia and her daughter saw a single dime, they
could make their
own
fortune selling bootleg
stickdrives.

“
What
happened to the real Perry Jones?” Glenda asked.

Roberts
waxed sullen. He explained how an extensive search of Miles Gabriel’s
home and office had produced some definitive leads to a group of
H-ball dealers and money launderers with known connections to a one
Sanford Bonanno. It seems they’d had a little get together in
Florida around the same time of Jones's vacation. Roberts was already
planning a trip to the area to confer with local law enforcement. He
had also found the information that Jones's clone had delivered to
Gabriel concerning the illegal dumping sites. Roberts's call to
Camille Cosgrove had so elated her it had practically segued into
phone sex.

Xavier,
on the other hand, was much more interested in the case against a
certain dirty cop named Marcus Northcutt. Thanks to his personal
twist on the protect-and-serve policy, which he apparently applied to
just his own ass, Northcutt had nearly gotten a pregnant Cassandra
Hawkins killed. Xavier had taken an instant liking to his
sister-in-law and even though no one was angrier than Benny about
what had almost happened, Xavier was determined to see Northcutt
hanging from the end of a rope...by his balls.

“
So
Glenda's officially in the clear?” Xavier asked Roberts.
Roberts had already said as much, but Xavier wanted to hear it in
more concrete terms.