“He refused to adjust its level of difficulty. Sparred with it at the highest setting. It always won. And was far the better dancer.”
The peripheral had slowed to a trot. Now it leapt off the treadmill and began jogging in place, in loose black shorts and a sleeveless black top. Two closets in the yacht had now been filled with clothing Ash had had made up for it, which meant quite a lot of black.
It looked up now, seeming to see him.
Lev turned then, going back inside. Netherton followed, unsettled by the peripheral’s gaze. The space felt more inhabited now, or perhaps simply cluttered, with the antique monitor array and the peripheral’s support kit.
“Lager,” said Lev. Netherton blinked. Lev pressed his thumb against a small steel oval set into the bar’s door. The door slid up, out of sight, the counter silently extruding an opened bottle. Lev took it, then noticed Netherton. He passed Netherton the chilled bottle. “Lager,” he repeated. The bar produced another. “That will do,” he said, and the door slid down. Lev clinked the base of his bottle against the base of Netherton’s, raised his, and drank. He lowered it. “What did she have to say, on the way back, after you’d returned your friend’s rental?”
“She told me about Wu.”
“Who?”
“Fitz-David Wu. An actor. She and his mother were friends.”
“Wu,” said Lev. “Hamlet. Grandfather’s favorite still. Forty years ago, at least.”
“How old is she, do you think?”
“A hundred, more,” said Lev. “Is that really all you discussed?”
“She seemed unsettled. Off-task. She’d lit a scented candle.”
“Candles, essences. I’ve seen them do that. Something to do with memory.”
“She said she’s had some muted. Something to do with bombing, I supposed.”
“They go in for that,” said Lev. “Grandfather views it as a sin. Getting on himself, but he’s quite Orthodox. I could do with more of an idea of what she’s up to.”
“You were the one who made a deal with her,” Netherton reminded him. “And you’ve rather pointedly not shared what that was.”
“True,” said Lev, “but it’s not to be shared. If I didn’t adhere to her terms, I imagine she might find out.”
“She might ask you,” said Netherton, “and you might find yourself telling her.”
Lev frowned. “You’re right about that.” He drank off the rest of his lager, put the empty bottle down on the marble desktop. “Meanwhile, though, there’s progress in the stub. The technicals you sourced through the polt’s sister have impressed Ash. They’re readying their best approximation of a neural cutout. And Ash’s quants at the LSE have abundantly solved any in-stub financial worries. Though if they keep it up, we’ll be noticed. More than noticed.”
“What are they doing?” asked Netherton, after finishing his own lager. He wished he had several more.
“Herding trading algorithms, basically. The stub doesn’t quite have the capacity to do that, though they’re aware that it sometimes happens naturally. They would have started to do it soon enough themselves. But we’re definitely funded to deal with contingencies now. Which has already proven necessary.”
“It has?”
“Assassins turned up to fulfill that contract, four of them. Who were disposed of, prior to doing so, by one of the polt’s associates.”
“Requiring money?”
“It was illegal,” said Lev. “He’d been set to watch for anyone who looked as though they might be coming to do that. He didn’t like their look, killed them. Cost something to make it go away. Their immediate political unit is a county. The head of law enforcement is the sheriff. The county’s most viable economy is the molecular synthesis of illicit drugs. The sheriff is in the pay of the most successful local synthesist.”
“How do you know that?”
“Ossian.”
“You had the polt and his sister pay off the police?”
“No,” said Lev, “he paid off the drug manufacturer. Ossian judged that to be the appropriate channel, and the polt agreed. But someone tried to kill you, earlier today. Aren’t you concerned?”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” said Netherton, discovering that this was true. “Lowbeer said that if they had done, it might have been meant to serve as a warning to you.”
Lev looked at him. “I know I don’t seem like a gangster,” he said, “and I’m delighted that I don’t, but I wouldn’t have been frightened. Sad, and I suppose angry, but not frightened.”
Netherton imagined Lev being sad that he was dead, or tried to. It didn’t seem real. But neither did what had happened in Covent Garden. He wished Lev’s grandfather’s bar would give him a cold German lager whenever he asked.
37
She hadn’t decided to tell Janice everything that had been going on, she just did. Janice had been starting to make them coffee, in the kitchen, with one of Madison’s bandanas on her head, a black one with white skulls and crossbones. Macon had once said that Janice and Madison looked like schoolteachers with biker DNA, and Flynne guessed that that was close enough. She could tell Janice anything, and not worry about her telling anybody, except probably Madison, and Madison wasn’t going to tell anybody anything.
Janice had brought up the scene at Jimmy’s with Conner and the football players, said that Flynne had saved Conner’s ass. Flynne said that that was a major exaggeration.
“Those fuckers,” Janice said, meaning the football players, “they get me doing hate Kegels. Always have. New crop of them every four years.”
“It’s Conner,” Flynne said now, as Janice finished cranking the grinder, which she’d done with a practiced lack of hurry. “He gets them going. He’s the one bullying them.”
“I know that,” Janice said, dumping the ground beans into a jelly jar and weighing it on a scale like a drink coaster, “but they fucking don’t. They think they’re bullying him. I’m supposed to give them points for being stupid? Seen him since?”
“Over at his place. Just now.”
“Not that he’s crazy,” Janice said, transferring some exact number of grams of coffee to the beige paper filter in the ceramic funnel, which she’d already wetted down to get the chemical taste out, “but that he’s tedious with it. I know he’s got reason, but I’m tired of it.” She checked the temperature of the water in the kettle, then poured a little on the coffee, to let it sit awhile. “But you don’t look very happy, and I don’t think that’s much to do with Conner.”
“It’s not.”
“What is it, then?”
So Flynne told her, starting from Burton hiring her to sub for him while he went up to Davisville. Janice listened, continuing her ritual, which shortly produced two cups of very good strong coffee. Flynne had hers with milk and sugar, Janice took hers black, and Janice hardly asked her a question, just listened and nodded at the right times, and widened her eyes at the weirder parts, then nodded again. When Flynne got to the part about going out on Porter with Tommy and Burton, to the tent around the car she’d never seen, the four dead guys, Janice raised her hand, said, “Whoa.”
“Whoa?”
“Conner,” Janice said.
Flynne nodded.
Janice frowned, shook her head slightly, then said, “Go on.”
So Flynne told her the rest, not being specific about what she thought Macon and Edward had been up to at Conner’s, but seeing Janice got that too, and right up to Leon driving her over here, and how there’d been a pair of small drones, each with its square of aquamarine duct tape, spelling each other, watching them all the way from Conner’s.
They moved to the couch in the living room, the one where she’d played her last game of Operation Northwind.
“The man from Clanton,” Janice said, “the one who brought the bag of money. You know who he was?”
“No. A lawyer?”
“Name’s Beatty. Lawyers in Clanton.”
“How do you know?”