Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead (24 page)

I blow a smoke ring.

--You got a jerk like me down here to handle things in case the shit hits the fan. And a
toady like Philip to keep an eye on me.

I blow a stream of air that rips my smoke ring to shreds.

--So Horde goes to work. He infects Whitney Vale. Tell me?

He focuses his eyes on me.

--Did you know he had been fucking her and that she was blackmailing him? 'Cause I'm
guessing you never would have signed off on her as patient zero if you had known.

He blinks, slowly.

--Let's call that no. He probably sold her to you as a porn hustler no one would miss. When
you found out the truth you must have flipped. And when I stumbled across Vale, you must
have shit a brick. Metaphorically speaking.

Predo taps an index finger on his thigh.

--Will you be concluding soon?

I nod.

--I'll pick up the pace. How 'bout this? Horde fucks Vale; Vale blackmails Horde; Horde has
one of his goons hold down Vale while he rapes her and infects her with the bacteria; Vale
shambles around; I catch sight of one of Vale's victims and start tracking a carrier; I
catch up to Vale and her pals at the school; shit hits the fan; Philip lets you know shit
is hitting the fan; you call me in. You have to call me in, a scene like that one at the
school, the TV news involved and all, if you don't call me in I'm gonna start wondering
why, and you don't want me wondering shit. Back at the ranch, Amanda Horde finds out about
daddy and her buddy fucking, and runs away; Horde calls Dobbs; Dobbs finds the girl; the
girl bribes Dobbs off the case; Ms. Horde hears about Whitney being killed and gets a
little more worried about her husband than usual, and she asks for help; you give her me
to keep me . . .

I stop, smoke in my lung. I blow the smoke out.

--You give her me?

Predo scratches his upper lip.

--Lost your thread, Pitt?

He puts his hand back in his lap.

--Not as easy as you thought?

I look at him.

--You gave her me. But you shouldn't have wanted me anywhere around the Hordes. I was
looking for the carrier already. Get me looking for the girl and I might put it all
together. I
did
put it all together.

The slightest smile creases the corners of his mouth.

--Apparently not.

He stands.

--Are you done showing off now? Would you like to know what it is you are missing?

I nod.

--All you had to do was ask, Pitt. Why should I have secrets from a dead man?

He pushes the chair back to its place next to my desk.

--What you are missing, Pitt, is information you could not possibly have in the first
place. That being the case, I do not think you should be at all embarrassed. You did quite
well, all things considered. The information you are lacking has to do with Horde Bio Tech
and the disposition of that company's stock. HBT is not a publicly owned company. Indeed,
until recently it was owned entirely by the Horde family. They still control the majority
of the stock. Specifically, preferred stock shares that carry weighted voting rights, the
shares that control the company. Those shares comprise sixty percent of HBT's total value,
and Dale Horde owned all of them. Of the remaining forty percent, the non-preferred
shares, the vast majority are held by elements of the Coalition. We came into possession
of these shares at a time when Horde was in need of funding, and not quite as liquid as he
might have liked. Fortunately, we were able to help. Does the pie' ture begin to leap into
clarity?

I stare at him.

--I think it does. Horde owns and controls HBT, controls every aspect of its operations,
including to what questions it may or may not devote its considerable research
laboratories. Those laboratories are central to the Coalition's interest in Horde and HBT.

He leans down a bit, looks at my eyes.

--I think I may see a little light dawning in there, Pitt. Good. Let me be brief before
that light dims. It is true that Dr. Horde wished to research the bacteria, but his true
interest was in the Vyrus. That was an interest we were unwilling to allow him to pursue.
There is so little we know about the Vyrus, it would never have done for Horde to perhaps
make significant discoveries. Discoveries we could not be certain he would share with us.
Discoveries he might use against us. Still, the resources HBT can bring to bear far
outstrip any that we have previously had at our disposal. Which led to the proposal that
we should investigate strategies which would allow the Coalition to take control of those
resources.

I watch the smoke drift off my cigarette.

--The stock.

Predo wags a cautioning finger at me.

--Careful, Pitt, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But yes, the stock. If the
Coalition were in control of HBT, we might steer whatever course of research we wished,
secure in the knowledge that we had installed our own people in the key positions
necessary to protect the nature and results of that research. How to take control? We
thought to take advantage of Dr. Horde's appetites and maneuver a subject not unlike Ms.
Vale into his path. That plan was discarded. If cornered by blackmail, Dr. Horde might
become a fierce adversary, an adversary with knowledge of far too many of our secrets. So
we came to assassination. If Dr. Horde should die, his shares would fall to his wife. And
she, we felt, would be quite easily convinced to relinquish control of them. But even with
our advantages, assassination is difficult, much more difficult when the subject is a man
like Dr. Horde. Any investigation into his death would be exhaustive. And if an
assassination should go awry, he would certainly retaliate against us. We were, in fact,
mired in the planning stages when you became involved. And I had a thought. Why should the
Coalition assassinate Dr. Horde when you might be made to do it for us?

I lick my fingertips.

--It is not generally in my nature to work on the basis of instinct, but I felt this was an
opportunity that warranted some little risk. The question was whether or not you could be
depended on to act in a predictable manner. I felt certain that you could.

I pinch out the cherry at the end of my cigarette.

--You are, as you have proven, not an utter fool, and could therefore be expected to
discover a certain amount of the truth. You have a notorious temper. And though you seem
to be the only one not aware of it, you are famously unmerciful with those who abuse
children. Was there any doubt that when you learned some very little about Dr. Horde that
you would lose that temper? Very little doubt. You are an independent contractor. If you
failed, Dr. Horde could not hold us accountable for your actions. If you succeeded, we
would be prepared to conceal the few threads that connect you to the Coalition. If
captured, the authorities would likely interpret Horde's murder as the action of a madman.
Once in the hands of the police there would be little you could tell them before you
expired in custody. And if you survived and found yourself at large?

He gestures to the room.

--Well, here we are, tying up loose ends. Is there anything else you would like clarified,
anything that might make your position more apparent to you so that we might move ahead
with the unalterable course of events?

I drop the snuffed butt into the ashtray.

--Why'd he cut Leprosy?

He looks at the ceiling.

--Leprosy?

I rub my thumb and index finger together, brushing the gray ash from them.

--The kid.

He looks back down.

--Yes. The one you had asking about Dr. Horde's daughter. Well, I can't say for certain,
but I think he viewed your involvement as a balm to his wife. He never intended that you
should lay hands on the girl. He hoped perhaps to track your progress so as to find young
Amanda first. For himself. I think it likely that he got carried away questioning the boy.
His taste for youth seemed to have more to do with inflicting pain than with receiving
pleasure.

I think about lighting another smoke, decide not to.

--Why infect him?

--He infected the boy?

I nod. Horde shakes his head.

--To play with his toy? He was quite proud of having isolated the bacteria. I am just as
curious about why he killed the detective Dobbs. Do you know?

I rub my forehead.

--He didn't.

--Who did?

--Dobbs was Horde's peeper. He had all the goods on his wife and her lovers. She had her
own plan. Wanted to take off with her daughter, but knew Horde could make her out as an
unfit mother. She went to Dobbs for the pictures and whatnot, and he balked. So she choked
him to death and grabbed the stuff.

--You are certain?

--When we met she asked about my sense of smell. Could I tell her scent? Next time I saw
her she was scrubbed and clean, just like whoever did Dobbs. It was her. She wanted to get
her daughter out.

--Yes, I can see that. And it brings us back around to where we started. Back to my
question.
Where is the girl?

--You don't need her.

--The girl.

--Let the girl be, she doesn't know anything. She was fucking unconscious when it happened.
I got rid of Horde, let the girl be.

--Yes, Pitt, you got rid of Horde. And you got rid of his wife, as well. Which leaves the
girl as Horde's heir, heir to the stock, Pitt.

He takes off his jacket.

--An underage girl.

He tucks his tie inside his shirt.

--For whom that stock will now be held in inviolable trust.

He unclips his cuff links.

--Controlled by the Horde family's rather too incorruptible lawyers.

He rolls up his left sleeve.

--Until she comes of age at twenty-one.

He rolls up his right sleeve.

--Unless she dies in the same horrible, disfiguring fireball of an automobile accident in
which her parents will be shortly dying.

He puts his hand out to the giant.

--In which case the stock will be made available to the other shareholders. And, I believe,
I have already told you who those shareholders are.

The giant places a pair of black leather gloves in his hand.

--So.

He pulls the tight gloves on and snugs them over his knuckles.

--Where? Is? The? Girl?

I look at his hands, then his face.

--I gave her to Lydia Miles.

He doesn't move.

--Lydia Miles?

--You know, the Society's resident gay rights loudmouth.

--Where did she take the girl?

--Got me. But if I don't call in a couple days she'll give her to Terry Bird.

I decide it's time for another smoke, so I get one ready.

--And did I mention that I have Horde's teeth?

Light it.

--Not his real teeth mind you, just those fancy fake dentures of his. Now those are some
interesting dentures. Not too many reasons for dentures like those, full of a nasty
bacteria and all. Unless you plan on making a bunch of zombies on someone else's turf and
you want them to look normal. Normal for zombies, I mean. Shit like that would be just the
thing to make Terry ready to hook up with Grave Digga and launch a two-front offensive on
the Coalition. Something like that he could take to all the small Clans. The Dusters, the
Wall, even the Outer Borough freaks, they'd all flip. Hell, Daniel might be interested in
something like that. Picture that: Daniel and a dozen Enclave knocking on your door. Gives
you the chills.

Predo's fists close tight. I can hear the leather squeak.

--Where are the teeth?

After I got Amanda dressed, I stripped and wiped blood from myself with Horde's clean
undershirt. He was far too skinny for anything of his to fit me, but I managed to scavenge
an outfit from the enforcer and the goon. Then I went through the pockets of my own
discarded clothes and found the picture of Amanda, the one she had ripped in two. I fit
the halves together and translated the torn and stained phone number on the back. I had
the girl in my arms when I remembered the teeth.

I found the case in Horde's clothes. The hinge creaked slightly when I opened it. Inside,
the teeth were fitted snugly in a foam rubber nest. They gleamed. He must have cleaned off
Marilee's blood before he put them away. I eased them out, careful not to touch the biting
surfaces. They looked perfect, like the healthiest teeth in the world, a bit on the sharp
side perhaps. I opened them. The canines had tiny black dimples at the tips, holes smaller
than those of syringes. Inside they would be hollow, a delivery system for something that
isn't supposed to exist outside a human body. I closed them and returned them to the case.

I collected the girl, found the door she had told me about and carried her out of the
school. It was raining, hours after midnight and the street was empty except for a couple
scuttling past, trying to share a too-small umbrella. I got to the pay phone on the
corner, called Lydia and gave her the girl.

Then I came home, got cleaned up, left the teeth sitting on the bathroom sink, and forgot
about them until right now.

--The teeth are someplace safe. Someplace they'll stay as long as the girl stays safe.
Something happens to her, I send the teeth to Bird

He frowns

-Who sends them if anything happens to you? I blink. And that's enough for him to know. He
smiles. -You did not give them to anyone. They are simply
hidden
someplace, are they not?

Quickly, you only get one chance at this.

--I gave them to Lydia with the girl.

He shakes his head.

--No. You did not. They are hidden someplace. Someplace close at hand, I would say.

He exhales.

--And so. Here we are again. But with a variation. Where is the girl,
and
where are the teeth?

I think about making a break for it, but I'm done. So I take a drag instead and say what's
on my mind.

--Predo, you're a dick.