IGMS Issue 9 (13 page)

I started toward my car. As I walked I pulled out my cell and dialed Beth's work number. We'd only been seeing each other for a couple of months, but already it felt substantial, like something that might last.

She picked up after the second ring. "Beth Danbridge."

"Hi," I said. "It's me."

"Hey, you." She sounded happy to hear my voice.

I smiled in spite of myself.

"I didn't expect to hear from you 'til later," she said.

"Yeah. I just wanted to say hi."

"You all right?"

"I'm fine."

"How'd the interview go?"

"All right. It was hard."

"I'd imagine."

I didn't say anything, and for a moment we were both silent.

"You sure you're all right?" she asked.

"I haven't hurt you, have I?"

"What?" She sounded confused. I could almost see the frown on her face, the crease in her forehead above those dark brown eyes.

"Never mind." I took a long breath, rubbed the bump on my head. "I'm sorry I bothered you. Why don't we eat out tonight? My treat."

"Yeah, all right. That sounds nice."

"I'll come by and get you around seven-thirty."

"Okay. See you then."

"Right. Bye."

Before I could close the phone she said, "Eric?"

"Yeah?"

"You haven't. We're doing okay."

I smiled. "Thanks." For a heartbeat or two I said nothing. I just enjoyed the silence, the feeling that she was enjoying it to. "Bye."

"Bye."

I closed the cell and returned it to my jacket pocket. Reaching my car, I glanced back at the prison, taking in the institutional brick, the small barred windows and the floodlights, off for now, but gleaming in the sun. I couldn't help thinking that it looked like a terrible place to die: sterile and cruel and lonely.

Not that there was much I could do about it. Her death, her choice. She'd made it clear that she didn't want my help, at least not with that. There was only one thing Cassie expected of me.

I climbed into the car and began the long drive back to the office. In my head, I had already started to write her story.

Miguel jogged up the last flight of stairs to his grandfather's fourth-floor apartment, but stopped short when he realized a bald guy in a gray herringbone suit had just closed his grandfather's door and was now walking toward him. The guy had the look of a lawyer all over him. He paced down the hallway and tried to sidle past Miguel, but was forced to stop when Miguel placed his linebacker's frame into his path.

Miguel glanced at the briefcase. "Were you here to see Sandro Rivera?"

"That's confidential." The man at least had the decency to look a little nervous.

"Not when my grandfather's the one you're talking to."

"Do we have a problem here?" He asked while touching his ear. He'd no doubt primed his net phone and could have the Vero Beach P.D. here in minutes.

"Look --" Miguel softened his expression and jutted his chin down the hallway. "He's my grandfather. I'm just trying to protect him."

"Be that as it may, any business I have with Mr. Rivera must remain between me and him."

Miguel wanted to wipe the I'm-the-one-in-control expression off the guy's face, but instead he tongued the control that activated the camera embedded in his artificial eye. Miguel's vision blinked almost imperceptibly as the shutter release captured the image. Over the next few milliseconds, the microprocessor at the base of his brainstem intercepted the picture, sent a copy to permanent store and embedded another inside a message addressed to Rich Carlsen, asking him to track the suit down with the
Post's
facial recognition software.

He'd find out who he was one way or another.

Miguel stepped aside. "Got a card?"

"Sorry. Fresh out." And with that the suit was past him and headed down the stairs.

Miguel continued down to his grandfather's apartment. When he stepped inside and saw Sandro, he shifted up three f-stops and immediately tongued the shutter release.

Sandro's gaze is lax and unfocused. The beaten armchair cradles him, as if he might shatter if released. His weathered cane sits forgotten between his knees, and though the shade behind him is pulled low, the sun is bright, casting ochre shadows over the geography of Sandro's face.

He labeled it:
Sandro, just before I tell him I'm moving back to D.C.
He wasn't all that surprised that Sandro looked so morose -- he'd been like this for the last several months -- but he expected something different with the lawyer having just left. He scanned the room, trying to find any papers or memchips or anything else that might give him a clue as to why the lawyer was here, but there was nothing.

The newsfeed was playing on the holovision in the corner. It showed a portion of the U.S.-Mexican border wall in Nogales, Arizona, one of five cities receiving strong opposition against the newly announced Customs and Border Patrol project to control immigration, but the sound was muted, and Sandro might as well have been watching a children's show for all the attention he seemed to be giving it.

Five minutes ago, Miguel would have said that the drama unfolding in Nogales was the cause of Sandro's depression -- Sandro had entered the U.S. through Nogales when he was only thirteen, and Miguel had simply assumed it was the yearning for his childhood that had started his latest bout with depression. But now? Now he wasn't so sure.

"You alright, Grandpa?"

Sandro's gaze shifted to Miguel as if it pained him to make that one small effort.

Miguel took a seat on the bright orange couch, sending dust motes to dance in the air between them.

Sandro lifted a finger and motioned toward the HV, which was playing a clip of armored border patrolmen routing three Mexican men into a van. The Border Patrol had just activated the one-week test of their new immigration control system. In a single day, seventeen migrants had been tagged by the new RFID launchers and ferried back across the border. A press release from the Directorate of Border and Transportation Security deemed it an "unmitigated success."

"I haven't been following it much," Miguel said.

He pointed again. The camera view, apparently captured from one of the new border patrol bots, showed an elevated view of the American side of Nogales' thirty-foot wall in night-bright green. Ropes hung down from the top and four men wearing tattered jeans and wife-beaters were slipping down the ropes. The footage slowed. Even so, the RFID devices were barely visible as they slid across the distance and struck each of the men in turn.

"They're shooting them like dogs," Sandro said, "dragging them back across the border."

The view switched to 3D. A diagram of a human skeleton, skin highlighted in transparent blue, floated out from the plasma and twirled a few times. A blue graphic of the RFID spyder landed on the shoulder. The view tightened on the spyder, which was burrowing beneath the skin, using local anesthetics and anticoagulants. Once subcutaneous, it made its way down the ribcage before settling posterior of the sternum. It was meant to make the devices nearly impossible to remove without great expense.

"They're hardly getting shot like
dogs
."

"What do you call being tagged and tracked and thrown back across the fence? Told to stay where you are?"

"I'm not climbing over my neighbor's fence after the sun's gone down." Miguel showed Sandro the back of his right hand, and tapped the location of his RFID chip. "I cross them legally."

The comments seemed to drain Sandro even further. "You'd think you didn't have Mexican blood running through your veins."

Miguel leaned back into the couch, wondering where the hell Sandro was going with this.

"They could use a man like me there," Sandro said.

A shiver ran down Miguel's back as Sandro continued to stare at the HV. Miguel actually believed, right at that moment, that Sandro meant those words.

"What did that lawyer want?" Miguel asked, trying to break the spell.

"Who?"

"The lawyer, the one that was here five minutes ago."

Sandro glanced up at the door. His eyes regained a bit of their usual intent, and his back straightened. "What? Him? Nothing. Something to do with my IRA."

"You didn't sign anything, did you?"

Sandro frowned and opened up the battered wooden chess box on the table next to him. "I'm not stupid, Miguel."

Sandro continued preparations for their weekly match, so Miguel moved to the chair across from Sandro and helped place the pieces.

"Then what did he want?" Miguel asked, moving the final piece, the black king, into its starting square.

"Nothing." Sandro slid his King's pawn to D4.

"Grandpa . . ." Miguel countered with his Queen's pawn.

Sandro looked up, annoyed. "Aren't you always telling me I need to take better care of myself? That I need to be more responsible?" He made another move, slapping the piece down noisily. "Well maybe you're right. Maybe it's long overdue. This is
my
business, Miguel. I'll handle it."

It was true. Miguel was always saying that -- from Sandro's gambling on Vero Beach's "riverboat" to buying too much World War II memorabilia to his penchant for giving downtown bums wads of cash. One time he'd even paid for three of his Vnet friends to fly in and visit, this from a man who lived on the joke social security had become and his vet benefits and the not-insignificant amount Miguel contributed to his bank account every paycheck. So why would a lawyer suddenly make him shape up?

It wouldn't, Miguel told himself. Something had clearly shaken Sandro up, but it would wear off in a few hours or a few days, and he'd be back to his same old self.

The chess match progressed to middle game, and Miguel's mind shifted to the reason he'd come here in the first place. His mind kept trying to formulate the right words to tell Sandro his news. Nothing sounded quite right, especially in light of Sandro's odd mood. But then he realized he was only stalling. Sandro was going to act wounded no matter how carefully he formulated the message.

Miguel suddenly realized Sandro was leaning back and smiling broadly. He inspected the chess board. Sandro had won, something he accomplished only once or twice per year.

"Grandpa," Miguel said, "I got the call from D.C."

Sandro's smile withered. "Oh."

Miguel had been bucking for a promotion for years now, and he'd been given the chance to head the
Post's
photo studio. Twice. But both times Sandro had developed debilitating migraines that went away after Miguel had turned down the promotion.

"I'm going to take it," Miguel said. "They want me to fly up tomorrow to start working out the details, then I go straight to the G10 gig in Tokyo, and then I'll be back here for a week or so to get things settled before I move."

Sandro leaned back in his chair, frowning at the chess board. "Oh." He glanced across the room at the HV, which showed a CGI image of a man running down a street lined by transparent trees and buildings, the spyder in his chest pinging his location like a sonar beacon every few seconds. Sandro raked his fingers over his stubble a few times, then nodded. "That's good, Miguel. That's good."

Miguel could only stare. He was speechless. Both of the last two times he'd told Sandro about the promotion offer, he'd immediately listed a dozen reasons why it was a bad idea to accept. He'd practically begged Miguel to stay, though he'd never come right out and said so. He was too proud for that.

Using his cane, Sandro levered himself out of the chair and shuffled toward his armchair. "Mind if we cut it short today?" He pointed toward the holovision on top of the bureau. "I have a meeting with the boys."

Miguel stood, feeling completely out of sorts. He thought he'd be here all night reassuring Sandro that everything would be all right. "I thought you met on Thursdays."

"Emergency meeting."

"About what?" Miguel quickly surveyed the landscape of Sandro's apartment again, hoping to find some clue about the lawyer.