They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy (30 page)

I kept at it for t
wo
full
cigarettes
of bullshit until
Lee and the
Rasta
didn't know
up from down.

After all of it, I got a, "Look, let me think about it and get you--"

I cut Lee off. "You don't sign up now, I'll just find somebody else to roll for the information. Nine times out of ten when guys go sleep on it, they get a case of the chickenshits. I'm coming to you because you're a good guy, and I know you don't wanna go to Stone Pass."

"Me nei
der," The Rasta said in my ear.

Lee waved my smoke out of the air in front of him. "I've been in the system in DC, and there's not a damn thing in there about you being a badge, Don. And I know you can talk like a motherfucker. You're tellin' me that you and Rosemary were
both
Feds in that set-up? That little bit about her came through the grapevine, but ain't shit come through 'bout you."

I smiled. "Y'know, before the internet there was this stuff called paper that people wrote shit down on. Or they just remembered it. And when you got guys that can read computers from a thousand miles away, sometimes it's
smart not to put everything on one
. Come on, my balls ain't big enough to make something like this up, man. I'm completely putting my life in your hands. You can have me killed, can't you? You're a swingin' dick around here. The ball's in your court. These individuals, Bob, Earle, Two-Stroke, are all high-value targets."

Lee tested me with, "What's the Skee-Ay's think is going on down here?"

"That Bob and his friends are trying to figure out how we're linked to the unicorn
fairy
k
ingdom,"
I shot back. "
I don't know what they think, that's above my pay grade. I'll tell you what
I
see. I see people are getting so pissed off around here the whole place is gonna get wiped off the map in a Poster war before the cops can even get here. No plumbing, turf fighting already, food shortages, man, everybody's ready to go off. My office is more concerned with rounding all these assholes--"

"And the only way you can make this work is for me to hide you and all this info from Silvy."

I shrugged. "I thought I could count on you for that.
They've taught me a few tricks to deal with psychics, but I need some insurance."

"Seems like you been hidin
'
all this pretty good up to now,
"
Lee said.

"I just thought what I had to get a meeting with you.
And it worked.
If you don't want this deal, I'll find another way. I just hope Silvy doesn't read some bad thoughts I plant for her or any memories of this meeting that accidentally slip through. But she's too busy for that like you said, right?
"

The way I figured it, Lee wouldn't have even been alive for this meeting if not for me, so I had every right to put the ass I had saved in danger. Still felt shitty as hell doing it, though.

Lee shoved his hands in his pockets. He had gotten injected with Spencer's nanites, yeah, but he was still that guy that told me he felt like he was in over his head around people with serious abilities
. I hoped he still was, anyway.

He locked eyes with me. Emotionless tears came from the circuitry in his eyes.
"So now I have to choose between
keepin' this a secret and
helpin' you so she doesn't find out I kept
it
from Bob and them or
tellin' them we talked and
signin' your death sentence to save my own ass."

"I made that same kinda choic
e for you in Missouri," I said.

Damn, I was an asshole.

He
looked at the ceiling
and rubbed his eyes
. He didn't k
now what the hell to do
.

"Lee--"
I started.

"Don't talk, man," he said. "Don't say no more."

He took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes at me. "You put me in a fuckin' spot, man." He nodded his head and said quietly, "But I might be able to assign you a new IP so you just show up in the new user log
, all right?
I'll set your 'bots to default settings so they block
Silvy
. The
bosses
probably won't cross check the logs right now, they got all kinds of other stuff goin' on. If I can
do it
, your 'bots are gettin' turned on
for a day
. We already heard the cops were comin' in hard tomorrow. I don't know how
you
knew
that
, but maybe you are a cop like you say. You better deliver 'cause I only half believe this shit you talkin'. And you're an asshole for doin' this to me."

"Half belief still gets you full benefits," I said. I tried to sound like a cop but th
at just sounded fucking stupid.

He pointed to the bundle in my hand. "You gonna give that ass back to
Tracey
when you see her?"

I looked down at the red-brown newspaper. "Man, I don't know. I don't know why I've even got this damn thing. This place is fucking with me or something.
What about you, man, d
o you believe this shit they're talking about changing people? They told some guy I talked to they'll give him powers
like us
for helping out.
He's not even a Poster. Can they do that?
"

Lee glanced at the Rasta
and shifted uncomfortably
, "What they're doing, man, we seen some shit. They keep sayin' the laws of physics are like the laws of a country. You can break 'em if you got the guts. The rest of what they
keep sayin' is way over my head, but it's one of those things where it's better to go along with it because if they're right, you don't want to be on the wrong side of it.
" He told the Rasta, "Let's go," and left me with, "I'm helping you nail the rest of Tracey's ass, not Bob's. Don't tell anybody different
and fuck me out of another reward
, man
."

"
I won't
," I said. "Let me know
when you get it done
."

"Yeah, I know. Give us a few minutes before you leave
. Don't follow us."

Lee
and the Rasta headed out
.
The side door slammed shut.

They
weren't
gone thirty seconds when the Yin Yang twins appeared again and started barking at me and pointing at the door
for me to go
. I told them to shut the fuck up and blew some heat their way before I lit another cigarette and walked out. They came out the side door and stood guard
at it
to make sure I kept moving off their turf. Little pricks.

My mind started racing
about getting to Tracey
, but I had to get
all this shit
out of my head. Silvy wasn't blocked yet. But the fact that I knew I couldn't think about what I was gonna do made my mind try to think about it more. I went back to
humming 'Ice, Ice, Baby,
'
but there was only one really good way to really fuck up her reading me.

Across the way, a building said:
'There are no facts, only interpretations' - Friedrich Nietzsche.
I took a deep,
smoky
breath. A
burger was on the ground
at my feet
. It had been stepped on but it was still in the wrapper.
Fuck it, a
fter what I had just done
to Lee
, I had no pride left. I picked it up and bit into it. I picked dirt out
of my mouth
and gave the
spray-painted
tag the finger. "Fact: you suck dick, Need-chuh, w
hatever the fuck your name is."

I headed over to
the cantina that had
been set up in
a
school cafeteria. 3-D hologram posters were plastered all over the walls
labeled
with shit like 'FAKE,' 'THE GREAT LIE' and 'DON'T BE FOOLED.' The beer at the self-serve bar tasted like rice, so I traded up for bottle of some kind of alcohol I couldn't pronounce that tasted like airplane engine degreaser. It would have no
damn
problem killing a train of though
t.
I sat down at one of the few tables without loud gambling or people passed out in vomit, lined up a few plastic shot cups and drank for Will.

T
he next halfway sober thought I
had didn't come
until sun up. And it was to get the hell out
of bed
before the Indian girl I ended up with woke up.

I untangled myself from her as slowly as I could and put Agent Red's clothes back on, taking care not to let the belt buckle clink, and eased her door shut behind me. I didn't even rustle my cigarettes out until I was a block away because I thought I remembered her saying something about having an enhanced hearing thing.

Walking through P
yramiden that early felt like
being the last person on earth. There were no sounds at all. I walked with my eyes shut for the sake of my pounding head, only opening them
to the bright orange sun enough that
I didn't run into shit. I had no idea where the fuck I was in town or where to go to lay low that
preferably
didn't involve skinheads. I was still alive,
though,
so
at least
Lee
probably hadn't sold my ass out. I'
d give him until lunchtime before I worried about trying to figure out how to get in touch with him.

I stopped walking
, and my hand went to my belt and my pockets when I realized
I didn't have the newspaper bundle with me. I must have lost it
while I was drinking
.

"
Well, fuck," I muttered.
There went my fucking peace offering.

Between two apartment blocks, I co
uld see part of the
metal building in the tent city. I wondered what the hell could be going in there
. And how much shit I would be in if I set the whole thing on fire.

Shit. "Silvy?" I asked, 'you punk bitch slut' my thoughts added. "Goddammit, stop that shit," I cursed at myself. Nothing came back from her.

I kept
walking through town
trying
to get my bearings until I heard
something in the distance beating
at the quiet air.
I looked around
; there were black dots all around the rising sun.
Below the dots, s
and kicked up
behind
flashes
of light
. Like sun light off glass. Or windshields.

Ten-foot tall letters and numbers took shape above buildings all over town. The apartment block nearest me had a giant glowing 'C-9' appear over it. The one next to it was 'C-10.' The labels went
to every building
order like that. And all of them were glowing in Delta-fucking-Blue's signature color.

My cigarette fell out of my mouth.

There went my smooth fucking plan.

Shit Rolls Downhill

"How the
fuck
is this gonna be the first thing I've been right about?" I bitched as I ran for the door at C-9 because hell if I knew what else to do other than get off the street.

The sun dimmed from bright morning to dusk like a flashlight with batteries going bad. Somebody had turned the light away from town or sucked its intensity or something.

"Lee, are you there?" I asked out loud. If my nanites were turned back on, I thought I might be able to talk to him like on a cell phone, but I didn't get an answer.

The door to the C-9 building wouldn't open, so I melted the lock until it did. From three floors up, glass rained down on me. A flier in his underwear had gone through a window and bolted over rooftops and out of town. Those fuckers were always the first to bail the second anything went even a little wrong, and once Underwear Johnny was
out first and drawing attention,
more fliers went out windows all over town. Most of them had enough sense enough to open the damn things first.

I made it one step over the threshold of C-9 when a fist that felt galvanized drilled me in the chest like a fucking prizefighter. It took the wind out of
me
and put me on my ass on the sidewalk; bits of glass still stuck to my shirt cut into my back. The fist's owner yelled at me in French while I clutched my damn sternum and tried to
get my breath back
. I had gotten decked by a fucking Frenc
hman. It probably spun my granddad
in his grave.