“Now you,” Pickett said, looking her in the eye, “you’ve actually met our Colombian adventure capitalists.”
Tommy, on her left, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, one hand around the other, which was curled into a loose fist. From where she sat she could see there was a pistol, smaller than the one in his belt holster, down the front waistband of his pants.
She met Pickett’s hard stare. “I have,” she said.
“Tell me about them,” Pickett said. “Your brother either doesn’t know or isn’t that eager.”
“They have money,” she said. “You’ve had some of it yourself.”
“What flavor, though? Chinese? Indian? I’m not even convinced it’s offshore. Maybe it starts here, goes out, comes back in.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. Company’s Colombian.”
“Columbia S.C., for all I know,” Pickett said. “You and Burton in partnership with them?”
“Trying to be,” said Burton.
Pickett looked from Burton to Flynne. “Maybe they’re government.”
“Wouldn’t have occurred to me,” she said.
“Homes,” Pickett said, “on a sting?”
“Not Homes as we know it,” she said.
“Milagros Coldiron,” Pickett said, as if foreign words tasted bad. “Not even good Spanish, people tell me, ‘cold iron.’”
“I don’t know why they call it that,” she said.
“Your Milagros bought an interest in a Dutch bank. Just while I was driving over here. Spent a lot more than this county’s worth, this one and the next three over. What have you and Burton got that they want?”
“They chose us,” she said. “So far that’s all they’ve told us. Could you have bought that bank, Mr. Pickett?”
He didn’t like her. Maybe didn’t like anybody. “You think you can be in partnership with something like that?” he asked her.
Neither she nor Burton answered. She didn’t want to look at Tommy.
“I can,” said Pickett. “I can right now, and the result, for you, if I do, would be money you don’t even know how to dream of. If you don’t partner with me, though, you don’t have a statehouse connection. As of now.”
“You aren’t comfortable not knowing where the money’s from?” she asked him. “What would you need, to be comfortable?”
“Access to who I’m really dealing with,” Pickett said. “That company didn’t exist, three months ago. I want somebody with a name to explain to me what they’re a shell for.”
“Netherton,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s his name. Netherton.”
She saw that Burton was looking at her. His expression hadn’t changed.
“Tommy,” Pickett said, “nice to meet you. Why don’t you go and make sure that business with the two boys has been taken care of. Jackman tells me you’re good with the details.”
“Yes sir,” said Tommy, and stood. “I’ll do that. Burton. Flynne.” He nodded to both of them, went into the kitchen. She heard him putting on his jacket, zipping it up. Then she heard the blinds on the backdoor rattle, as he went out.
“Got yourself a smart sister, Burton,” Pickett said.
Burton didn’t say anything.
She found herself looking at the plastic tray propped on the mantelpiece, the one with the aerial-view cartoon map from Clanton’s bicentennial year. Her mother had driven the three of them over for the celebrations, when she was eight. She remembered it, but it seemed like somebody else’s life.
60
Don’t be pettish,” said this Wu, whose name was the only thing Netherton seemed to recall about him. He appeared to be dressed for a cosplay zone, one Netherton was mercifully unfamiliar with. Something to do with the Blitz perhaps. “I hope you aren’t going to be sick.”
That was a possibility, Netherton thought, as this small windowless room did seem to be moving, though mercifully in a single direction, and smoothly. “You’re that actor,” he said. He knew that, though not which actor he meant. One of them.
“I’m not Wu,” said Wu. “There happened to be one available here. I’d seen your former colleague in one earlier. You must try not to drink so quickly, Mr. Netherton. It impairs your memory of events. I need to discuss your conversation with her, since I only have access to what I could see you say.”
Netherton sat up slightly, in his own little armchair, his role in any of this now somewhat identified, if still largely unclear. He remembered being led through narrow, absurdly tidy subterranean corridors of brick. Under squidlight, not the least fleck of dust. That deadening cleanliness of the assemblers, London’s microscopic caretakers. “Who?” he asked.
“Daedra West.”
Netherton remembered her voice mail then, the oppressive height of it. “We’re in your car,” he said. “Where are we going?”
“Notting Hill.”
“We’ll be invited,” Netherton said. He remembered hoping that, at any rate.
“It did seem to me that you set the hook. Assuming, that is, that she’s so self-centered as to be literally impaired. I don’t feel I can afford to be quite so readily convinced of that. Perhaps you shouldn’t either, Mr. Netherton.”
So deliberately difficult, actors.
61
I’ve got to sleep,” she said to Burton, in the kitchen, after Corbell had gone with the big man who’d brought in a golf umbrella to walk him back to his car. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open.
“You think Netherton can handle Corbell?”
“Lowbeer and the others can tell him what to say.”
“Who’s that?”
“Conner’s met her. I think we’re actually working for her, but getting paid Lev’s money. Or Lev’s money here, as much as it’s his. Damn. I’m about to fall over.”
“Okay,” he said, squeezed her shoulder, put on his jacket, and went out. The rain had stopped. She put out the kitchen light, went through the living room to check there was no light showing under her mother’s door, then up the stairs. They’d seldom been as steep.
Janice was in her room, cross-legged on the bed with half a dozen Geographics. “Kills me,” Janice said, looking up, “national parks before they privatized. Asshole gone?”
“Burton too,” Flynne said, touching her own wrist and then all four pockets of her jeans before she remembered her phone was in the trailer. She pulled her t-shirt off, tossed it on the chair, then had to root under it for the USMC sweatshirt. Put that on, sat on the edge of the bed, and got her wet shoes and socks off. Undid her jeans and managed to get them off without standing up again.
“You looked whacked,” Janice said.
“Time difference, they said.”
“Ella okay?”
“Didn’t look in,” Flynne said, “but her light’s out.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch.” Picking up the magazines.
“I have seen so much weird shit,” Flynne said. “Woman who told me about the time difference has two pupils in each eye, animated tattoos of animals running around on her ass.”
“Just on her ass?”
“Arms, neck. On her belly once, but then they all ran off to her back, like cartoons, because they didn’t know me. Maybe to her ass. Can’t tell.”
“Tell what?”
“Whether I’m getting used to it. It’s weird, then it’s the way it is, then it’s weird again.”
Janice sat up. She was wearing handknit pink acrylic slippers. “Lay back,” she said. “You need to sleep.”
“We just bought ourselves the damn governor. That’s weird.”
“He’s a bigger asshole than Pickett.”
“Didn’t really buy him. Got a deal with Pickett to pay him on a regular basis.”
“What’s it supposed to get you?”
“Protection. Two of Burton’s guys killed a pair of ex-military who were trying to sneak in. Not just thugs. Down past the trailer.”
“I wondered what they got all quietly excited about.”