“And Onbekend came over the Texas border and started with Tanaka.” Marsalis nodded. “He could have stopped right there, if he’d only known. But he doesn’t know, doesn’t get the chance to get it out of Tanaka, maybe wouldn’t even have been able to afford to trust him even if he did, so he’s committed. He kills his way across the Republic, because those are the easiest ones—underfunded police departments, low-grade data tech, highest murder rate on the planet, and a massive underclass to hide out in. He only heads on to the Rim when the easy work is done, moving slower now because he’s got RimSec to contend with. But still, Jasper Whitlock and Toni Montes, he’s getting through them, probably only a handful left, and then…”
They both turned to look at Jeff Norton.
“What happened?” Marsalis asked him softly. “You lose your nerve, playing both ends against the middle? Thought maybe Ortiz had worked you out, knew you were part of it after all? You start to think maybe Onbekend’s last bullet was going to be for you?”
“No!”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
“Then what happened in New York?” Norton peered at his brother’s face. “Someone had Ortiz shot. Sure as hell wasn’t Tanaka, he was already in the ground. That leaves you, Jeff.”
Jeff looked away.
“They were Tanaka’s,” he muttered. “Dead hand insurance. If anything went wrong, he’d given me this Houston number, in case he didn’t have time to set it off before he ran. Or in case he…didn’t make it. The contract was already paid, I just had to call to set it in motion.”
“Waited long enough, didn’t you?” Marsalis coughed out a laugh. “Or did it take this crew of geniuses four months to get from Texas to the Union?”
Norton snapped his fingers. “Whitlock.”
He saw the way his brother flinched at the name. Oh Christ, Jeff. Made it into words so he’d have to hear it, so he’d believe it.
“Onbekend came across the fenceline into the Rim States and he killed Whitlock, October 2. You must have caught it on the feeds, recognized Whitlock’s face.”
“Yeah, right here in the Bay Area.” Marsalis whistled long and low, mock concerned. “Just a little too close for comfort, right, Jeff?”
“So you made the call,” Norton said flatly.
“All right, yes, I made the fucking call!”
Marsalis grunted. “And it all comes grinding to a halt. Onbekend on hold, at least until he finds out if Ortiz is going to live or die.”
“It was right after Whitlock you called me,” Norton realized suddenly. “Suggested I get Marsalis out of Jesusland and hire him. What was that, just a little added pressure, keep Onbekend on his toes?”
Amazement on the black man’s face. “You got me out of South Florida State, Jeff? I owe you for that?” A chuckle broke out of him. “Oh man, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I got sick of waiting,” Jeff snapped, voice tight with sudden, puny fury. “A week after I called the Houston crew and nothing. I didn’t know anything about them, how good they’d be—”
“They weren’t very good,” said Marsalis somberly.
“Yeah, well, I thought maybe they’d gotten caught at the fence, trying to get into the Union. Or maybe just faded with the cash and walked. I had no fucking way of knowing, Tom. I was scared. I knew you wouldn’t bring UNGLA in, I tried to persuade you, thought maybe that’d scare Ortiz into pulling the plug. But you wouldn’t do it.” Jeff looked across at Marsalis. “I thought maybe he’d scare Ortiz instead.”
Norton saw the black man walk to the desk and pick up a paperweight Jeff had brought back from a trip to England when he and Megan were first married. He weighed it in his hand.
“There’s just a couple more things I’d like to know, Jeff,” he said absently. “Then we’re done.”
“Yeah?” Jeff tugged at his drink. Grimaced as it went down. “What’s that?”
“Ren. She didn’t know anything about Onbekend. Where does she come into this?”
“No. She’s freelance, we’ve used her in the past. I pulled her in because we needed someone who knows the Rim systems. Ortiz wanted to keep the Merrin end of things separate from the rest.”
“And Daskeen Azul. They’re your people?”
A shrug. “Associates. You know how it works, Human Cost did them some favors in the past, they owed us.”
“So who sent them up to find that corpse in the nets? You?”
Jeff shook his head. “Onbekend. He heard from down south that you and this COLIN cop were poking around. Told me to bring the denouement forward.”
Marsalis came back to the sofa, paperweight in his hand. He was frowning. “Against Ortiz’s orders?”
“Ortiz was in the hospital.” Jeff gestured wearily. “No one knew which way to jump. You ever met Onbekend?”
“Briefly.”
“Yeah, well, when he tells you to do something, you don’t argue with him.”
Marsalis hadn’t lost his frown. “And the soldiers?”
“What soldiers?”
“Someone sent a uniformed death squad after Ertekin and me. They pulled us over between Cuzco and Arequipa.”
“I don’t know anything about that. Maybe someone panicked down there.”
“Bambarén,” the thirteen said softly. He crouched to Jeff’s eye level. “Do you think Manco Bambarén knows that Merrin existed? The other Merrin?”
“I don’t know Manco Bambarén from a hole in the fucking ground.” Jeff stared bitterly back at Marsalis. He seemed completely drunk now. “How the fuck would I know what he does or doesn’t know?”
“That’s unfortunate,” said the black man softly. “Tell me, Jeff, did you set Onbekend on me when I got back from Bulgakov’s Cat?”
“No! That wasn’t me, I swear. Onbekend wanted you out of the picture, I think he’d maybe talked to Ortiz, but he was furious about something else anyway. I told him it was better to let things lie, but he wouldn’t listen. You don’t understand what he’s like. Once he’s decided, he doesn’t listen to anything or anyone who gets in his fucking way.”
“Right. And I don’t suppose you know where I can find him now, do you?”
Jeff knocked back the rest of his drink. Shrugged. “You guess right. Last I heard, he was on his way back to the altiplano with a shoulderful of holes from a Marstech gun.”
“You treated him here?”
“At a Human Cost walk-in clinic, yeah. Over on Carmel.”
Marsalis came smoothly back to his feet. Norton saw how the thirteen’s fingers tightened on the paperweight, saw the heft in the arm. He stepped swiftly across, blocked Marsalis body-to-body. His eyes locked with the black man’s stare.
“No,” he said, very quietly. “Please.”
Marsalis stood coiled. His voice came back, also barely above a murmur. “Don’t get in my way, Norton.”
“He didn’t kill Sevgi.” Norton looked back at where Jeff sat slumped in one corner of the sofa, staring listlessly into his empty glass. He barely seemed aware of the other two men. “Look, you want to go after Onbekend, I’m with you. Ortiz, too, if that’s what you want. But this is my brother, Marsalis.”
“He’s going down anyway, Norton. He’ll do thirty years in a RimSec facility for this, minimum. I’d be doing him a favor.”
But a little of the tension seemed to drain from the thirteen’s stance. Norton raised his hand, palm-out. The small gesture for enough.
“Marsalis, please. I’m asking you for this. He’s my fucking brother.”
Marsalis stood there locked for a moment longer. It was like facing off against a wall.
“Ortiz, and Onbekend,” he said, as if checking a list.
Norton nodded. “Whatever you need.”
And the moment passed. Marsalis let go; Norton saw it go out of him like dark water down a drain. He shrugged and lobbed the paperweight down into Jeff’s lap. Jeff jolted with the shock, dropped his empty glass, fumbled with both hands to catch the spherical ornament
before it rolled to the floor.
“Fuck d’you do that for?” he mumbled.
“You’ll never know,” Marsalis told him. Then, turning away to the door, voice trailing back. “Keep him here, Norton. Don’t touch the phones, or use yours in here. We’ll need to freeze and store their whole net as it is. I’ll clean-call Rovayo from the street, get a RimSec CSI squad over here. Going to make her day—this should be enough to lever the Cat bust wide open all over again.”
“Right.”
He paused at the door, looked back. “And don’t forget. We’ve got an arrangement now.”
Norton listened to him walk away down the corridor. Then he turned back to face his brother. Jeff looked disinterestedly up at him.
“What now?”
Sudden, pulsing rage, up from the soles of his shoes and into the space behind his eyes. He bit it back as well as he could.
“You know,” he said, almost evenly. “I told Megan about you and Nuying.”
Jeff gaped up at him, eyes cognac-veiled and confused.
“Maybe that’s simplifying it. I guess you could say she got it out of me. Or maybe not that, either, maybe we both wanted it said and we just helped each other get it out. If I’m honest, I think she already had a pretty good idea something was going on.”
Clumsily, his brother started to get up.
“You fucking traitor,” he said thickly.
“Stay in your seat, Jeff.” Suddenly, the rage came washing up out of him, would not be contained. “Because if you don’t, I will fucking kill you myself.”
And now, here it was. The moment that had been festering inside him for over two years. His brother blinking at him, like a deer staring into the headlights.
He drew in breath. He really was going to do this.
“You want to know what Megan did when she found out?” Another hard breath. “She fucked me, Jeff. We went to some motel up near Novato, and she fucked me raw. All afternoon and night. Best sex I ever had.”
And now Jeff came flailing up out of the sofa, roaring, fists swinging. Norton blocked, twisted, and punched his brother in the side of the face. The first time he’d used his enforcement training in better than a year. It felt creakily unaccustomed, but it felt unexpectedly good as well. The blow connected solidly, put Jeff down, crawling half on the sofa, half on the floor. Norton grabbed him by the back of the collar, balled fist raised again.
And stopped.
No. You’re not Carl Marsalis.
Fist slowly unflexing, dropping away. He let go of the collar. Overpowering urge to shake himself, like a drenched dog. Instead he stepped away, leaned against the edge of his brother’s desk.
“This is going to be hard on her,” he said, still breathing unevenly. “Megan and the kids. But don’t worry. When they send you up to Quentin Two for what you’ve done here, I’ll make sure she’s okay. I’ll take care of her.”
A low, grinding howl came up out of his brother’s throat as he propped himself up on the sofa, as if he’d swallowed broken glass. Norton felt a peculiarly comfortable calm settling into place on his shoulders. His breathing eased.
“We’re good together, Jeff. She laughs when she’s around me. We’ll work something out.”
“Fuck you!” Spat out like blood.
There was a timid tap at the door. Norton glanced up, surprised. “Yeah?”
The door opened and the stout Asian woman peered around the edge. “Mr. Norton, are you…?”
She stared, eyes wide.
“It’s okay,” said Norton hurriedly. “I’m Jeff’s brother, Tom. Jeff’s been under a lot of strain recently. I’m sure you’ll have noticed. It’s, uh, it’s gotten pretty bad.”
“I, uhm—”
“He really needs to be alone right now, just with family, you know. We’ve made the calls. If you could—”
“Yes, of course, uhm…” She looked across at Jeff where he now sat on the floor with his back to the sofa. Blood-flecked tissue in his nose, face smeared with tears and rage, uncapped bottle on the table in front of him. “Mr. Norton, I’m so sorry, if there’s anything at all I can do…”
Jeff Norton stared back at her.
“It’s okay, Lisa,” he said dully. “Everything’s going to be fine. Could you show my brother where we keep our medical records from the Carmel clinic.”
“Yes, of course.” Imbued with a solid purpose, Lisa seemed to grow visibly stronger again. “You’re quite sure that—”
Jeff dragged up the husk of a smile. “Quite sure, Lisa.”
He turned to look at his brother, and there was an odd note of triumph suddenly in his voice. “Go ahead, little brother. You want to see something I kept back from your thirteen friend?”
Lisa vacillated in the doorway. Norton stared at Jeff.
“This is about Onbekend?”
“Just go look, Tom.” He saw Norton’s hesitation and chuckled. “What am I going to do, make a dash for the airport while you’re gone? Seriously, go look. This is something I saved just for you. You’re going to love it.”
“It’s, uh.” Lisa gestured along the corrior. “This way.”
“Jeff, if you knew something else about Onbekend, you should have—”
“Just go fucking look, will you!”
So he went, left the door ajar and followed Lisa out into the corridor. In the doorway, he paused and turned, looked hard at his brother, pointed at him.
“You stay right there.”
Jeff snorted, rolled his eyes, and reached for the bottle of Martell.
Down the angled corridor, tracking Lisa’s stolid progress, floating behind the eyes with all that he was still trying to assimilate. He wondered vaguely if Marsalis hadn’t gone out into the street as much to clear his head as to keep the call to RimSec clean.
They were almost at the door marked carmel street clinic when the single shot slammed behind them, so flat and undramatic that at first he mistook it for the sound of the door to Jeff’s office, the exit he hadn’t bothered to close.
CHAPTER 51
T hey had Alvaro Ortiz in a monitored convalescence suite on the newly nanobuilt upper levels at the Weill Cornell Medical Center. He was tagged with microdoc subdermals that would broadcast a scream to the hospital system if his life signs dipped in any way, the receptionist explained with an enthusiastic smile, and he had panic buttons in the bathroom, next to his bed, and on his wheelchair. A full crash team and a dedicated emergency room doctor were retained at all times on idle, specifically for the patients on these levels. Norton thanked her, and they went upstairs. A COLIN Security detachment was on duty outside the suite, two hard-faced men and a woman who met them out of the elevator with professional tension that evaporated when they recognized Norton. Carl let them pat him down anyway, not sure if it was his thirteen status or just procedure that made them do it. The more relaxed they were, the better. Norton told the squad leader not to bother seeing them in, they’d be fine. Mr. Ortiz knew they were coming.
The doors to the suite hummed smoothly back and they walked through. Ortiz was in a wheelchair in the living room, parked by the floor-to-ceiling windows. He wore loose gray silk pajamas, held a book apparently forgotten in his hands, was lost instead in contemplation of the view out across the cubist thickets of the city to the park. He looked thin and breakable in the chair, the tanned face hollowed out to a worn gray, the grizzled hair gone to white in places. He didn’t appear to have heard the door open, and he didn’t turn as they stepped into view from the entryway hall. Carl wondered if he already knew why they’d come.
“Ortiz,” Norton said harshly, moving a step ahead.
Ortiz prodded at the chair’s arm controls, and it coasted silently around on the spot to face them. He smiled, a little forcedly.
“Tom Norton,” he said, as if it were a philosophical question that had been troubling him. “I’m so very sorry to hear about your brother, Tom. I’ve been meaning to call you. And Carl Marsalis, of course. I still haven’t had the
chance to thank you for saving my life.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“Ah.” Something happened to the planes of the ravaged face. “Well, I didn’t imagine that this was a social call.”
“Jeff talked.” Norton was trembling with the force of what he’d carried inside him across the continent. “Scorpion Response. Wyoming. The whole thing. So don’t you tell me you’re sorry, you piece of shit. You did this, all of it. You’re the reason Jeff is dead.”
“Am I?” Ortiz didn’t seem to be disputing it. He placed his hands palm-to-palm in his lap, pressed them together, maybe to hold down his fear. “And so you’ve brought your avenging angel with you. Well, that is fitting, I suppose, but I should warn you this chair has—”
“We know,” Carl said bleakly. “And I’m not here for Norton’s benefit. I came for Sevgi Ertekin.”
“Ertekin?” A frown crossed Ortiz’s face, then cleared. “Oh yes, the officer you stayed with in Harlem when we had you released. Yes, she died, too, didn’t she. A few days ago. I’m afraid I’ve not been keeping up very closely with—”
“She didn’t die.” Carl held down the fury with distant, trained reflex. His voice was quiet and cold, like the faint bite of winter in the New York air outside. “Sevgi Ertekin was killed. By your avenging angel, Ortiz. By Onbekend. Merrin. Whatever you call him. She died saving my life.”
“I am…very sorry about that as well.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“For you? No, I don’t imagine it would be. I assume there was some.” Ortiz frowned. “Some connection between you and this Ertekin.”
Carl said nothing. The words would take him nowhere.
“Yes, there must have been. You people care about so little in the end, need so little, of the material world and of other people. But when you do choose to own something or someone, when you consider that something or someone to be yours…”
“Yes, then,” said Carl. “Nothing else matters.”
He met the COLIN director’s eyes, saw the way they flinched away.
“I’m afraid,” said Ortiz shakily, “that events have run rather out of control in my…my absence from the bridge, as it were. Your involvement, Onbekend, other changing factors. Had I not been removed so unexpectedly from managing the operation, perhaps things would not have become so tangled. I truly regret that, you must believe me.”