Down in the Zero b-7 Read online

  Her face was white under the artificial tan, hands shaking. "I thought…"

  "What? That I was some kind of vigilante for kids? Because fucking Cherry told you?"

  "Yes!" she sobbed, her face in her hands. I watched her cry for a minute, her body shaking under the blue T–shirt.

  "Cut it out," I told her. "That's a fairy story. You're too old to think there's a Santa Claus."

  She leaned her head against my chest, still crying. I put my hand on her shoulder, pulled her into me. Held her while she cried.

  The outfit Michelle bought for me would look good in the movie the blackmailers were making, but even a Grand Jury of cops wouldn't indict Ice–T on the contents of the audio track.

  The light was on in the kid's bedroom— I could see it as I turned into the garage. Maybe he was scared of the dark.

  I took off the camouflage clothing. It was about two–thirty in the morning. I wasn't sleepy— too much to sort out.

  What Fancy told me was true. It takes a player to know the game. Even the child molesters who call what they do "intergenerational sex" know what "domestic discipline" is all about. But why would Cherry tell Fancy about what I do? What I did. How much did she know? Or was it all a bunch of guesses, needing my own words to drop me for the count.

  Today, people don't think about working to get rich. Or stealing either. It's all upside down now. People hear someone they know was in a car accident, they envy them…what a great lawsuit. Lawsuits and lottery tickets, that's the way you do it now.

  You don't run across straight blackmail much anymore. Why risk doing time when you can make a bigger score from selling secrets to the media? Treason is fashionable today. You have an affair with someone famous, there's a cash market for letters. For tapes, whatever. It helps if you're willing to pose nude later— show the people what the famous man wanted so bad.

  The important thing is to do it for the right reasons— because you got this desperate need for the public to know the truth— the media likes its whores better when they dress up.

  There's a bounty on famous people. Everybody knows where to go with the tapes.

  A celebrity's sister sells her diary to the garbage press. Sells her own sister. A young man writes a book about how some industrialist needed bondage to get off— a private game turned public for cash. A spoiled–stupid little girl pleads guilty to attempted murder of an older woman. She says she was having an affair with the woman's husband, that he told her to do it. He says it never happened, the girl is delusional. She's out on bail before she goes away to prison. She goes to see her boyfriend, another older guy. They talk, play with each other. She says spoiled–stupid stuff, jokes about the shooting, tries so pitiful–hard to be cool, sound tough. The boyfriend has a video going the whole time, sells it to a TV show.

  I guess that makes him famous too.

  It's not against the law, selling secrets. Why bother with extortion? Threats to expose are a waste of time when you can score more by actually pulling the trigger.

  Save those letters. Tape those calls. When I was first coming up, the worst thing you could be was a rat. Now it's a respected profession.

  There's a bull market in betrayal.

  But the tape I took from Cherry's hidden safe…I didn't recognize the man in the video— whoever he was, he wasn't that famous. Private blackmail. Leave the cash in a drop and you'll get the negatives…you don't see that stuff much anymore. There's money in it, sure. But not enough to buy fistfuls of gems.

  Unless it was a pyramid. Show some sucker who works for the government the tape. You want the tape back? Maybe we need to talk about being the low bidder on a defense contract. Or a judicial appointment. Or…

  No, it didn't add up. You can't be sure your target has any particular fetish. It takes years of work to set something like that up.

  So why would Fancy show me her video? Why would she talk about kids?

  I didn't have enough. Like trying to cross a fifty–foot chasm over a forty–foot bridge— I could be jumping to conclusions.

  If I did that, I didn't want it to be an accident.

  The kid was outside when I got up the next morning, waiting around downstairs like he had something on his mind.

  "I saw your light when I got in last night," I said. "You leave it on when you went to sleep, or what?"

  "I was awake. I was going over some stuff I had."

  "About race cars?"

  "Yeah." He shot me a smile. "I was wondering— "

  "Look, I gotta make a run into the city, okay? I won't be long, probably be back before this afternoon. Can we talk about it when I get back?"

  "Sure, I was just— "

  "Randy, is it important, kid?"

  "Not that important."

  "You get a call? Somebody say something to you?"

  "Nothing like that. It can wait, all right?"

  "Sure. Keep the phone with you if you go out."

  "I will. Uh, Burke…?"

  "What?"

  "Could you take the Lexus? I thought I'd…"

  "You got it," I told him.

  The Lexus was right at home in the commuter traffic, common enough among humans who worship products. I took my time, not pushing it. When I turned off at Bruckner Boulevard for Hunts Point, the Lexus fit in just as well— they're as popular with the dope boys as Mercedes used to be.

  I motored past the deadfall near the filthy water, watching the rapacious gulls circling. Meat–eaters all, they battle with the wild dog packs for the refuse from the nearby meat market, unafraid of earthbound humans who occasionally trespass.

  "Nice car, Burke," Terry greeted me, running his palm over the sleek flanks of the Lexus. If the dogs noticed the upgrade in my transport, they didn't let on. I told Terry the Lexus wasn't mine, but I'd be driving it for a while. He nodded, holding his eager kid questions, imitating the Mole's way of doing business. I showed him the pistol. He nodded again, sagely pondering the obvious problem. "I got something that'll work. Wait here, okay?"

  I fired up a smoke, watching the dogs work their way across the junkyard in the studied Z–pattern of the predator pack. They were like the Mole too— they were used to humans, but didn't like many of them.

  The kid came back with a flat piece of black metal. It had a pair of black rubber grippers bonded to the back, two heavy suction cups on the front. He walked around the Lexus, finally found the place he wanted under the fender— he showed me the exact spot. I fitted the metal piece into the spot, pushed down. Nothing.

  "Push real hard, Burke," he said.

  I locked my forearm, shoved with all my strength. I felt it pop home, lock in place.

  "You want to take it off, you have to push this little button on the side…see?" He guided my hand to the spot. I pushed, and the metal bar dropped into my hand. I put it back in place, shoved the gun's barrel between the rubber grips. It held like it was welded.

  "Can I get the gun out without taking the whole thing off?" I asked him.

  "Sure. Just grab the handle and pull in the direction of the barrel— it works like a fulcrum, see?" He pulled it out as easy as drawing from a holster.

  "Pretty slick, Terry."

  He blushed like a kid with a perfect report card. It was another minute or so before I realized he wasn't going to say anything. Waiting the way his father always did.

  "Mole around?" I finally asked.

  "He's got…someone with him."

  I looked a "Who?" question at him. The kid shrugged. Whoever it was, it wasn't Michelle.

  "Should I…wait, or what?"

  "I'll see," Terry told me, moving off.

  He was back quickly, mouth working so he'd get the message just right. "Mole says, the man with him is someone he works with. Not your business. You can trust him. Come down if you want."

  I knew the only kind of people the Mole worked with. Knew where his priorities were. But I was just curious enough, just enough in a hurry.

  "Let's go," I said.

&nbs
p; Walking over, I handed Terry the key to the Lexus. "Can you make a copy?" I asked him.

  He gave me another one of those "Are you kidding?" looks teenagers do so well.

  The Mole was in his bunker, his pasty white skin shining like a mushroom in a cellar. His workbench was littered with printouts from the computer. A pad at his elbow was covered in his tiny, crabby handwriting, mostly with numbers and symbols I didn't recognize. A short, wiry man was standing next to him, dressed in a simple khaki summer suit. He was dark–skinned with thick, curly black hair and a mustache, dark brown eyes regarding me neutrally.

  I greeted the underground genius— he grunted an acknowledgment, absorbed in another list of symbols scrolling down the screen.

  I took the pad from his desk, puzzling over the Mole's strange writing.

  "It doesn't print graphics," the Mole said, glancing over his shoulder at the printer.

  "Ah, Mole…"

  He turned to look at me. "This is Zvi," he said. "My cousin."

  The dark–skinned man stepped forward, extending his hand. "Cousin" told me the whole story— Zvi was an Israeli, an operative in one of the dozen agencies they had working all around the world. High–placed too— if he knew where to find the Mole. Zvi was the Mole's landsman — of his blood, not of our family. Even his grip was neutral, promising nothing.

  "Did you…?" I began.

  "I showed the disks to Zvi," Mole said, his eyes ready for a challenge. I didn't react— he'd told me the rules a long time ago. If his country could use something, he'd turn it over no matter what.

  "One set of data is my area," Zvi said, his voice neutral as his handshake. "The other is not."

  "Which is yours?" I asked.

  "This one," he replied, holding up the red disk. "Look at the printout."

  I picked it up. A fan–folded sheet with rachet–feed perforations along each side. It ran to dozens of pages all told. Looked like ID information: names, addresses, height, weight, hair and eye color…couple of hundred names, at least.

  "What is this?" I asked.

  "It's a before–and–after," Zvi said. "See this man," he said, indicating with a pointing finger.

  I looked. R21ANDERSON, ROBERT M.669 EAST 7933–C NYC74190lRNXBLUSMT=CAT2. Height in inches, weight in pounds, color of hair and eyes. More numbers followed: a pair of nine–digit sequences, one separated by dashes, the other solid. Social Security and passport, sure.

  "What's this SMT CAT2 thing?" I asked him.

  "Scars, Marks and Tattoos. I don't know what the Category means— it would be in their coding. If they're operating at this level, they'd have a way to alter things like that too."

  "So?"

  "So he could be this one now," he said, pointing to another name, different in everything but the height, with a Houston address. "Or this one," showing me still another, this time living in New Zealand. "This is a record of new identities. People who disappeared."

  "What about fingerprints?"

  "There's new technology. And even without it, people at this level don't get fingerprinted unless they're already caught— your local agencies don't really have a strong Interpol interface. They'd need a document generator too, probably on–line with government computers."

  "How do you do the before–and–after? How do you know which is which?"

  "There's a program that would do it. A sorting program. That's what the code is before each one. See? The R21 here. The MM8 there? That's what the computer would do, match them up."

  "Could you crack the code?"

  "It would take months, and even then we couldn't be sure, not without a reference point. We'd have to know at least one correct match to check."

  "So what good is it?"

  The Israeli lit a short, unfiltered cigarette with a butane lighter. Rubbed his face as though in concentration on my question, but I caught his glance at the Mole. The Mole moved his head maybe an inch, but it was enough.

  "We know one of the people on the list," the Israeli said. "He vanished almost three years ago. We would like very much to locate him."

  "How did you…?"

  "I called them," the Mole said, taking the list from the Israeli, his stubby finger touching the paper next to a name. The name didn't mean anything to me— the Mole was telling me what the Israeli's job was— Zvi was a hunter.

  "A sorting program is a simple thing," the Israeli said. "It would be a macro… a series of keystrokes stored in sequence. When you invoke the macro, the whole sequence runs.

  "I brought everything when I— " I said.

  "I know," he interrupted. "It would be somewhere else. Did the…place where you got it have a computer? A small one would be enough, even a laptop."

  "I didn't see one."

  He looked at the Mole again. The Mole looked at me. "What was on the other disk?" I asked him.

  "An experiment of some kind. A scientific experiment. This much I could tell, only— there are a number of subjects, each subject is given the same…thing. The thing could be a substance, a stimulus…I can't tell. Then there are results…something happened to some of the subjects, I can't tell what. The rest is all probabilities, chi–squares, standard deviations."

  "Yeah, okay," I said, puzzled. "Do you know what…?"

  "I told you everything I know. The subjects have codes too."

  "So there's a sorting program for them too?"

  "Maybe." He shrugged his shoulders.

  "I could take a look around," I said.

  "You wouldn't know what to look for," the Israeli said. "You wouldn't recognize it if you saw it."

  I lit a cigarette of my own, buying time, thinking about what I'd just learned. The Israeli sat stone–still, as if any movement would spook me into the wrong decision

  "What do you want me to do?" I finally asked.

  "The…place where you got this from…could you give us the address?"

  I exhaled through my nose, watching the twin streams of smoke in the underground bunker.

  "The Mole can copy this for you," I said, handing over the key to Cherry's house. "I'll call…here…when it's clear. You'll have a minimum of three hours. After dark better?"

  "It doesn't matter," the Israeli said.

  I gave him the address.

  I left the two disks with the Mole, picked up the key to the Lexus, confirmed that Terry kept a copy for himself, and headed back to Connecticut. It was way ahead of rush hour— the drive didn't take long.

  But I had time to chew on it, work it through. They hadn't told me the whole story— I didn't need to know it. That was their business, not mine.

  I've got my own business too. I hadn't told them I recognized one of the names on the printout.

  Bluestone dust was still dancing in the driveway when I drove up. The kid was lying under the Plymouth— I could see his sneakers sticking out. He pushed himself free, rubbing something off the front of his sweatshirt.

  "I changed the oil and filter," he said. "Hey, what kind of injectors are you running? I checked my hooks— that's a four–forty in there, it came with carbs, right?"

  "I guess so…I don't know."

  "But…"

  "Randy, I'm telling you the truth. The car's pretty much the way I got it. I didn't build it— I just drive it."

  "Yeah, okay. Burke…"

  "What?"

  "She was here. While you were gone."

  "Fancy?"

  "No. Charm. She asked about you."

  "Asked what?"

  "How come you were here. What you were doing, you know."

  "No, I don't know. What did you tell her?"

  "That you were the caretaker. To, like, look after the place while my mother was away."

  "So?"

  "So she…didn't believe me, I think. She gave me a look, like I was lying. It was…I dunno…kind of scary."

  "Did she go upstairs, Randy?"

  The kid hung his head. "Yeah."

  "You told her it was okay?"

  "No. I told her s
he couldn't. She said I wasn't going to stop her…and I'd better not tell you she was there either."

  "All right, take it easy. How long was she up there?"