You and I, Me and You (15 page)

“We have some excellent insight into Sussudio,” I told her without preamble after her distracted “Come” in response to my knock. “And are going to see Dr. Gallo to follow up new leads. Also, Cadence discussed the funding issue with Paul Torn.”

“Coward,” she said, not unkindly.

“Yes indeed.” I would take a bullet (and, in fact, had) before choosing to comfort someone deeply upset. I never knew what to do with my hands (pat, pat) or what to say (“There, there”). Cadence had a gift, in that she did not especially enjoy upsetting people, either, but did not shy away from comforting them. “He took it well.”

“You mean she told him in some clumsy transparent way, and then he—what's the saying? lost his shit?—but she broke it down for him and so he decided not to blow up the building on a trial basis, leaving you and your worthless partner shivering with relief.”

“Why, it's like you saw the whole thing on closed-circuit television.”

She smiled, a rare and lovely thing. “Well done, all of you. Well, some of you. And now off you go.”

“Off we go,” George said once we were on the way to my car. (I flatly refused to be devoured by his Smart Pure coupe twice in two days.) “You know, I wonder if this funding thing was maybe inevitable.”

“What does that mean?”

“You mean, like, literally? What do those words I just said literally mean, or where am I going with this? Because if it's the latter, you should have said the latter.”

“George…” How could he make my head hurt without ever touching me?

“Maybe there's no BOFFO at all.”

“Shush.” There were too many paranoids about, Saturday or no. And schizophrenics. And—“Just shush.”

Sensible when his safety was on the line, he changed the subject. “I get why you're in denial about Gallo. Hey, he's a compelling guy, if you like tall lean doctors with strong hands and flashing eyes, a good heart, and a mysterious past.”

I swallowed a giggle at his accurate summation.

“But if you've just got an itch, for the zillionth time—”

“You are having a terrible idea and it is coming straight out of your mouth.”

“—then come to your old pal, Georgie! I've got the ram for your ramrod, whatever that means. One hop in the sack with
moi
and it's itch-be-gone!”

“I could kill you with a grain of sand,” I reminded him.

“I know! And I bet you'd look super hot while graining me to death. Sanding me to death? Either/or, don't care. I'll go quietly if you promise to have sex with my corpse. I'll need that in writing, by the way. And notarized.”

George Pinkman was a walking talking migraine. There were times I actually felt my temples throb when he spoke. That really happens. Blood vessels dilate under stress and your body can sense the change in pressure if you pay attention.

He went back to his odd earlier subject once he was belting himself into my passenger seat. “Come on. An elite branch of the FBI staffed purely by nutjobs? Armed nutjobs, often heavily medicated?”

“So, what?” I started the car, a used Ford Fusion hybrid. Normally I would disapprove of buying another car owner's pile of problems on wheels, but in this case I was buying our friend Cathie's problems, and her problems with the car had more to do with her OCD than with the products built and maintained by the Ford Motor Company. “BOFFO does not exist? We only dream we work here? It is an illusion, a hologram?”

“Of course not, dumbass. But what if it's not BOFFO? What if it's another agency, maybe even for-profit. Not the government at all. Ooh, what if BOFFO pulled an
Alias
and we only think we're working for the CIA and we're really working for SD-6?”

“I do not understand what you just said.”

“Holy shit!” George was clearly thinking out loud. “Does that make you Sydney? You're self-righteous and annoying enough.… So does that make me Michael Vaughn or Marcus Dixon? I vote for Dixon, because of his sheer bad-assery. And Michaela is definitely Arvin Sloane.”

“George, you are not speaking words I understand.”

“Then listen hard! What if BOFFO's not only lost funding, what if it was never part of the FBI?”

“But we were all recruited. We all went through the training.”

“But not at Quantico.”

“No, of course not. Most agents don't even know about BOFFO.” At George's triumphant silence, I added, “As they don't know about the black ops agencies. We all know they are unconstitutional as of 1972 and we all know they still exist. Of course your average field agent would know nothing about them. We are the same.”

George shook his head. “I dunno, Shiro. I've been thinking about it even before Michaela sprung her little ‘You're maybe all fired but maybe not either way shut up about it' surprise. I've been thinking about it for a couple of years.” He paused. “Okay, since she recruited me.”

“But if you had concerns all this time, why not say anything earlier?”

He shrugged. “Why would I? I don't care if we're real or not. I get to do stuff like arrest Jesus and trick Emma Jan into looking into mirrors. Why would I fuck with that?”

“You are a simple creature, George.” I said that not without admiration. He was a wretch, but he also spent little time on self-examination-induced fretting. It freed him up to do whatever nasty things he did by himself.
To
himself, most likely …

“If you think about it, it makes sense.”

“I have, and it does not.”

“Look, I know you collect mom figures and think she can do no wrong—”

Shocked, I cried, “I do not!” Right? Correct.

“It's no secret Michaela has money. She didn't get that Lexus on a government salary.”

I nodded as we drove across town to Regions—Dr. Gallo ran one of the local blood banks. (That was how we met, in fact—Cadence makes us all donate platelets.) Even the AiC could not expect to make more than $95,000 a year, and that was with at least a decade of experience.

“Well, what if BOFFO was always a lie? The good-enough-for-a-five-star-restaurant kitchen? All that amazing equipment, just for the boss? All the shrinks in-house, the meds, the hours of therapy, our get-out-of-jail-free cards—tell me that doesn't cost a mint and a half.”

“But there are several unprofitable government agencies.”

“Yeah, like,
all
of them. But we're allowed to be super expensive with no real return?”

“There is a return. We catch killers no one else can.”

“Sure. But for who?”

“Whom.”

“Sure, focus on my grammar, not my words.
That's
not typical or anything.” He covered his earlobes again and added, “I'm just saying, it's weird. Not BOFFO-weird. Weird-weird.”

I shook my head. “I believe in Michaela. She would not lie.”

“Why?”

“What?” I was so rattled I nearly drove through a red light. It was only four miles to the hospital, and it was taking entirely too long. Why couldn't George focus on the dreadful things he would wish to do to, say, the attractive brunette jogger waiting for the light?

“Why wouldn't Michaela lie? She's killed people, but— Whoa, look at that hot bitch in the jogging bra waiting for a— Hey, baby, I got your green light
right here
! Anyway, Michaela's shot more people than I have, but lying's a no-no? Even if she thought, in her twisted Arvin Sloane-y mind, it was for the greater good?”

I shook my head so hard I was momentarily dizzy. “She wouldn't. She would not.”

“All right, take a pill. No, literally. I can see this is upsetting you, which normally would be awesome for me in sooo many ways. But I hate the taste of air bags and that's twice you've almost rear-ended someone.” He mimed zipping his lips closed, then ruined it by talking. “Subject closed. At least until we can talk about it without me dying in a horrific car crash.”

He was half right, at least.

I thought about how I had been recruited, and knew in my heart that George was wrong about all of it. BOFFO was not a lie. It was the finest thing we had ever done.

How, then, could it not be real?

 

chapter thirty-five

When I first
saw Michaela, it was through prison bars.

“Ah,” she said, spotting me. “Right on time, too. Excellent.”

I waited while the guards took the chains off her but left the handcuffs on. They were both men in their late twenties, strong, fit, and in their prime, but they were very, very careful with the woman almost old enough to be their mother. She looked surprisingly good in (1) orange and (2) a jumpsuit. She took a seat across from me and they left us in the interview room, though I could see at least one guard standing just outside the door.

“We could have rescheduled,” I told this older woman in her early forties, who looked like a socialite and was under arrest for a brutal homicide. (Yes, I know, all homicides by definition are brutal. This one particularly so.) “The
Minneapolis Star
isn't going anywhere.” (I had no way of knowing that the newspaper was in fact about to be swallowed by a merger, and was indeed going somewhere.)

“I loathe postponements.”

“That would explain why you waived your—”

“We aren't here to talk about me, young lady.”

“We aren't?” Since I was the journalist, and she was the subject, that came as a surprise.

“After you graduate, what are your plans?”

“Ah…” This was a complicated question for anyone, never mind my sisters and me. Of course we wanted to work. We wanted to get a home of our own, something not affiliated with the hospital where we'd lived most of our lives. That was not easily done when a third of us was psychotic and a third of us was a coward. That left the bulk of responsibility on me, and frankly I resented it. Wouldn't anyone? “I hope to—”

“Freelance for a variety of papers? Work as an independent contractor for various companies in the hopes none of them tumbles to the fact that you're a multiple?”

It was said with such matter-of-fact dryness that I did not bother to muster a protest. It was unlikely to be a random guess; there were only some forty thousand diagnosed multiples on the planet. “How do you know that?”

“The study you and your ‘sisters' participated in last year, the one testing the new drug for multiples.”

“Hailmaridol,” I remembered. “Like the Hail Mary pass. The doctors described it as the long bomb made in desperation.” I managed a thin smile. “That amused us enough to sign up. But we ended up with the placebos.”

“Yes. My husband and I funded the study. He was … a complicated man.”

“Was?”
Complicated? Is that code for multiple? That would be interesting.

“I'm a widow now.” She made a gesture with her cuffed hands as if sweeping her dead spouse off the table. “And onto a new project. Have you ever heard of BOFFO?”

“No.”

“Good. We're supposed to be a secret.” She smiled at me. “You're a black belt, yes? And a certified sniper, and a designated markswoman? You're fluent in Mandarin as well as—”

“If you've seen all our paperwork from the study, you know I am.”

“Meaning Cadence is the one with the near-perfect test scores—”

“She reads a lot,” I conceded.

“—and high empathy quotient, and Adrienne is the one with the genius for getting you two out of trouble.”

“Almost as often as she gets us into trouble.” Was I really discussing my other selves with a stranger? I was!

“We could use you. In fact, we need you. Do you know how many FBI agents there are in the country?”

“If I did, I have forgotten.” This was the oddest interview I'd ever conducted.

“About thirty-five thousand. Do you know how many of those are special agents? About fourteen thousand. Do you know how many violent crimes are committed each year?”

That I did know, thanks to some journalism classes and my part-time job. “It averages to one and a half million. But the FBI isn't a national police force. It's more of a national security org.”

“Yes. And they're still wildly outnumbered. My late husband and I had an idea about that. You joined our research study, so you've got a taste for adventure. I think we can help each other.”

“You're saying that as if you will have your freedom sooner rather than later.”

She just smiled.

“Why did you kill him?”

“Whom? Oh.” She raised her hands again, displaying the cuffs. “Mr. Lavik.”

“Yes. You do not deny the killing. Why did you become a vigilante?”

She threw back her head and gurgled laughter. In all other respects she was a dignified, chilly, polished older woman, but she had the giggle of a toddler who has successfully swiped a cookie. “Don't pretty it up, Ms. Jones! I shot him because he revolted me.”

“Surely you should have left it to law enforcement. You were alone in the house—your neighbor's house, the paper said. You could have been hurt.”

“Yes. Well. That will teach me to knock on someone's door for the clichéd cup of sugar.” She shrugged. “I was craving homemade fudge.”

It was almost a minute before I realized that was the last she would say about any possible danger to herself. Questions crowded my mind and I tried not to show my excitement. I had not met her before; I would have remembered.
She
had called
me
for an interview, ostensibly about her trust's new shelter. Then she had been arrested. Then she had declined to reschedule. Was she using the failed research study as a way to find people with particular psychiatric “quirks”? To form some … some elite police force peopled by the clinically insane?

Is this really happening?