I didn’t understand half of what she was saying. What was a hopper network?
Ollie saw my look and said, “What? This is what you sprung me for, right? These are basic countermeasures.”
“I get all hot when you do spy talk,” I said.
“Oh jeez,” Bobby said. He went to the bathroom, sans pen.
Ollie stopped me before I walked off to make my call. “I know you’re upset,” she said.
“And you don’t seem to be at all.”
“I’ve seen bodies before.” She shrugged. “Also, I’m in a weird state, chemically. I’m not sure if I’m reacting appropriately. Like, I can’t stop thinking about this falafel—it’s fantastic.”
“Ha.”
She glanced up to make sure Bobby was out of earshot. “We need to figure out who killed them,” she said. “Was it the drug dealer?”
“Fayza has no reason to do anything with the pastor, not yet. I haven’t given her the results of the test.”
“But she thinks it’s the Little Sprout drug. So she kills them now, and if it turns out they weren’t using that particular drug, she still kills them—because they’re competing with her.”
“Ollie, come on, Fayza can’t be that—” I was about to say “paranoid.” But of course she could; she was a drug lord. Paranoia had to be one of the prerequisites for the job. “So this is what? Some low-level drug war?”
“Maybe not low-level,” Ollie said. “Your pastor was Mexican Mafia.”
“Wait, really?”
“He had the tattoos.”
“So he’s, what? Mexican cartel?”
“La eMe’s primarily a prison gang, but it became attached to the cartels.”
“I thought they all wiped each other out in the twenties.”
“The old gangs aren’t gone, just absorbed when the organizations from Ghana and Nigeria moved in.”
“I didn’t think he was faking the spirituality,” I said. The pastor had seemed so calm and centered. Or maybe he was a user as well as a dealer. So Fayza takes him out, and then—
“I just had a bad thought,” I said. “As soon as I give Fayza the results, she has no use for me.”
“True,” Ollie said.
“Jesus, you’re not supposed to just agree with me when I say shit like that! Say something encouraging.”
She thought for a moment. “You’re not a threat to her,” she said. “Not much of one. You’re not manufacturing, so you’re not a competitor. As a subject-matter expert, you could even be of critical use to her if she wants to manufacture the drug itself.”
“I’m not going to let her have the recipe,” I said. “That’s the whole point of this. Nobody gets to make NME One-Ten. Not Fayza, not Edo, not anybody.”
“Oh.” She put down her fork. “Then she’s going to try to kill you.”
“Damn it, Ollie.” I wasn’t mad at her, not really. I was pissed with myself for not taking the printer when I’d had a chance. I hadn’t even gotten a picture of it. Dr. G had recognized something about the engine, but then never got around to telling me what it was. And now she was no longer talking to me.
Bobby ambled toward us. He looked worried. “Are you guys fighting?” he said.
“Don’t worry, Mommy and Daddy still love you very much,” I said. “I need to make a call.”
I stepped outside the restaurant. The temperature had dropped to just above freezing, and the cold, wet air first jolted me, then immediately made me more tired than before. I was not used to being out this late while sober. The streets were mostly empty. No flashing lights in the distance, no sirens.
I fumbled with Ollie’s pen. The interface was older than I was used to, but I managed to search for Rovil’s info and call him. No one picked up. I decided to forgive him because it was the middle of the night. I left a message telling him to call this new number.
Ollie and Bobby came out of the restaurant. I assumed that Ollie had paid. In the car she leaned into me and said, “I can’t go back to that tiny apartment.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been sleeping on hospital beds for two years,” she said. “I want a king-size mattress and you next to me. I want to sleep until noon, have sex without inmates listening to us, and then call room service.”
“You’re wired,” I said. “There’s no way you’re getting to sleep.”
“Okay, sex ’til noon, then room service, then sleep. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Let me just try to call Rovil one more—”
She plucked the pen from my fingers. “Bobby,” she said, “drop us at the Marriott.”
* * *
Sometime later I woke to bright light. I opened my eyes to slits, expecting a winged messenger of God, but it was only the morning sun firing up the gauzy drapes of the hotel window. The bed was empty. Where was Ollie? Then I heard the shower going.
I found my T-shirt draped over Ollie’s big black duffel bag and pulled it on. My shoulder burned from some abrasion. The backs of my thighs ached and my crotch felt sore; the price of sex with a tiny, intense Filipino girl on speed. Ollie had seemed to possess more than one pair of hands, manipulating my body with the fervor and efficiency of an Indy pit crew. Power tools may have played a role. I was already exhausted before we got to the hotel room, so my main responsibility over those two hours was to stay on the bed. I was not entirely successful.
I pushed aside the drapes and squinted at the planet. The room was on the tenth floor, and I looked down on Bay Street at full morning rush. Not a pretty sight. Each lane was a conveyor belt for delivering boxed humans into the mouths of hungry corporations. All those people, thinking that they were unique and special. A million brains throwing off waves of stupidity and pettiness and banality, thinking, I gotta lose weight, I should have charged my pen, Why didn’t I leave that idiot? The telepaths of the NAT had to be fakes, I thought. Any real mind-readers would have shot themselves at the earliest opportunity.
I managed to find my jeans. The pen Ollie had given me last night was in the back pocket, pulsing with a message alert.
It was Rovil. He’d returned my call an hour ago. I pulled on my clothes, then called him back. He answered in seconds.
“Did you get Edo’s address?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” Rovil said. “I’m trying. I’ve left messages everywhere. I didn’t want to be too … indiscreet. I’ve contacted friends in my social network, however, and I’m hoping somebody will have a number.”
“Thanks, kid. Keep trying. Now, do you have access to a GC-MS machine?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Come on—gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer. One-stop shopping for all your molecular identification needs.”
“I know what one is,” he said. “I was just surprised by the question. And the answer is yes, there are several at work.”
“I mean private access. Where you could look at something without having it reported.”
His eyebrows arched. “You found samples?”
“Just one,” I said. “I can FedEx it to you.”
“Amazing! Where did you get it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it just yet.”
He thought for a moment. “If you mail it to my home, I could take it in after hours.”
“You rock.”
He laughed, and I told him I’d get it to him right away.
Ollie came out of the bathroom while I was pulling on my boots. She wore a white hotel robe. Wet hair shining, skin glowing. She seemed ten years younger than she had in the NAT. She looked me over, taking in the information that I was already dressed. She glanced at the duffel bag, the window, then back to me.
“I thought you were maybe talking to her,” she said. “But she’s not here, is she?”
“Dr. Gloria? How do you know that?”
“There’s a thing you do with your eyes when she’s around. You can’t look at someone straight on for too long—your pupils jump around, up to the right, then back again.”