“What’s wrong? You two are nude. I am fucking celibate and not liking it at all. You are either monsters or dumb-asses or both.”
I could hear them both giggling. I never knew Ukrainian dykes could make that noise—like evil Campfire Girls. “But you are angel, Bobby!” called Oxana. “That means you are like doctor.”
“No. No, it doesn’t mean that at all. And do you get naked and lathered up to go to a medical appointment? I hope not. Seriously, don’t do that shit to me.”
“Sorry, Bobby.” But they didn’t sound sorry at all. I hate it when people take advantage of my kind nature, because I never fucking wanted to have a kind nature in the first place. “I was going to tell you the boys are here. Come on out so we can get to work.” I paused, realizing I’d left them a loophole. “Come on out with clothes on that cover all the important bits. Clarence and Wendell may not care, but I’m wired differently than they are.”
“That’s true,” said Clarence from the other room. “You’re wired to be an asshole. My name is Harrison, remember?”
I went back to the living room and sat down heavily. “Look, I promised I’d try. I make mistakes sometimes. Do me a favor and don’t correct me every time, okay?” I started laying out the maps, waiting for the women to make their appearance. “How are you two, by the way? Everything okay with work? Not too many questions?”
“Most of the others don’t even know we’re a couple,” said Wendell, smiling at the kid. “We’ve been kind of keeping it on the down low, because of this.”
“That’s not really what I was asking.” I made a few marks on the museum map. “Maybe Wendell’s really keeping quiet because he’s ashamed of you, Harrison. After all, nobody likes a nag.”
“Trying to get you to behave with normal human decency is not the same as nagging, Bobby.” He rolled his eyes. “As angels go, you’re a complete pig.”
“Yeah, which is why I just shut the door on a couple of naked women in my tub without standing there long enough to read all their tattoos.”
“You couldn’t anyway. The words are all Ukrainian.”
“Hmmm. Wonder if they have a word in that language for ‘vicious, premeditated exhibitionism.’”
“The only people who needs medication is you, Bobby,” said Halyna, her hair up in a towel-turban, the rest of her clothed in a t-shirt and shorts. Things were swinging and bumping in there as she moved, but at least I didn’t have to see them live and in person.
“Not medicate, meditate. Shit, they run around naked, have loud sex in the next room, and then I still have to explain all the funny things I say. I’ve had better roommates in prison.”
“Probably you got more of the fucking there, too,” said Oxana, appearing in her bathrobe.
“Shit, and they tell jokes as well,” I said. “I assume that’s what those are. I’m sure they’d be rip-snorters on the Siberian gulag circuit. Come on, sit down. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
• • •
“I don’t want to stay outside if Harrison’s going in,” said Wendell. “I have experience in this kind of thing. He doesn’t.”
“I can take care of myself,” said Clarence, sounding like he was nine years old. But it reminded me that these were real people, and unlike the Harps or Wendell’s Clouds, I couldn’t promise them I’d get them into new bodies if anything went wrong.
“That’s not the point,” I said. “Don’t worry, I promise I’ll keep an eye on Harrison.”
“Hey!” he said. “I’m not a child.”
“But,” I continued, “he’s already sort of compromised. I mean, our bosses know he chose to stay an advocate after being their spy, and that he’s been hanging out with me. But nobody knows you’re with us, Wendell.”
“So?”
“So if things go wrong, we need someone on the outside to make sure they don’t just disappear us.”
“You think it go wrong?” asked Oxana.
“I don’t know, but let’s face it, it certainly could. We’re going into enemy territory. At the very least, even if there’s nothing there at all, we’re breaking into a very prestigious museum. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to shoot my way out and kill any innocent humans, so it may come down to us surrendering. That’s why we need you to stay out of the worst of it, Wendell. Besides, you’ll have plenty to do on the outside. Can you do that trick with the cameras you mentioned?”
“What, looping the footage? Yeah, but it’s not foolproof. The clocks won’t move, if any of them are visible on the video feeds. Plus I’d really like to know how many guards there are.”
I consulted my notes. “Two in the Asian wing, from what I can tell. Four more and a supervisor in the other building, where they keep the video monitors. But I’m going to need you to watch the feeds and let us know where they are, so you have to stay on top of it.”
Wendell waved at this. Handled.
“But why all the weapons, Bobby?” Clarence asked. “If you don’t want to shoot anyone, you’re sure packing a lot of firepower.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to shoot anyone, I said I didn’t want to shoot any innocent humans. As far as we know, this may be Anaita’s second most important spot to protect in all of San Judas—maybe the most important, if the horn’s really there. I literally have no idea what we might find, especially if she’s got some kind of secret room. There are things that can sleep for years and only wake up when a stranger approaches. I know, because some of them have tried to eat me in the past.”
“Yeah, we know, we know,” said Clarence. “Bobby Dollar, deadly stud, no stranger to danger, a lethal combination of Sam Spade and Eddie Murphy . . .”
“I think that’s Audie Murphy,” said Wendell quietly. At least one of them watched the right movies.
“Whatever. But you can overthink this stuff, Bobby.”
“No, you can’t, Junior—not if you enjoy being alive. That’s why we’re going to go over it again.”
The Amazons were playing tic-tac-toe on one of my maps. Clarence groaned. “We’ve been through it all three times!”
“And we’ve got time for once more before I have to leave.” I gave them a stern look. “Daddy has a meeting in forty minutes at the Crown Roast.”
Clarence gave me the eyebrow. “The Crown Roast? Doesn’t seem like your kind of place, Bobby. Meeting an informant?”
I was going to lie, but I was asking them to risk their safety and even their lives, after all. “Sort of. Not really. I’m having dinner with Monica Naber, to thank her for setting up that Vanity Fair thing. She said to pick someplace that didn’t serve raw fish eggs or noodles made from radish whiskers—I’m quoting—so I decided we’d go to the kind of place she likes. Surf and turf. Endless Sangria pitchers.” I shook my head. “Just another sacrifice your fearless leader is making for the greater good. I’ll bring you back some jalapeno cream cheese poppers or something.”
“Ooh, does that mean you will be doing some sex tonight, too?” asked Halyna.
“Maybe then not so grumping.” That was Oxana.
“Bite your tongues. I mean, really, don’t even say that. This is going to be complicated enough without any of that crap. And remember, we go in forty-eight hours. Get everything ready and get your cover stories straight. You all know what to do, right? But just in case, I’m going to tell you one more time.”
• • •
By the time Monica had brought me up to date, we had almost finished our meal. I had prime rib, a baked potato, the whole schmear. Being female, Monica had a tiny little steak you couldn’t put on a hamster’s black eye, and a huge salad. If you’d dumped that salad on the same hamster, the little bastard could have lived in it for weeks.
We drank sangria. We gossiped a little. Apparently Young Elvis had a new girlfriend, a mortal. “She’s exactly what you’d expect,” said Monica. “False eyelashes, ratted hair. If she was wearing a poodle skirt, you’d be positive she was waiting for poor Buddy Holly to come home from his tour. But he never will.”
I smiled. “If she goes for Young E., she’d be more the Big Bopper’s type.”
It was good to see Monica. For one thing, she understood the same things I did. For another, she didn’t have a Ukrainian accent. “How about our friend Sweetheart?”