Never happened was starting to sound good.
Then she heard a familiar voice—Detective Anaka’s.
They had been going this way . . .
Through the double doors she couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, but she suddenly wanted to see what was going on. Especially because Anaka sounded royally pissed.
Angel walked up to the doors, but the windows were much too high for her to look through. If she opened the door, even a crack, the people inside would notice her right off. She draped an ear against the door. Anaka was saying, “What do you mean, accident?”
“An error in the computer. It’s rare, but it happens.” It was Doc’s voice.
“Do you know what your ‘error’ does to our case?”
“I’m sorry—”
Angel wanted to see what was going on, but she needed nearly another meter of height to look through the window. She looked around her, and her gaze rested on the unattended gurney.
How morbid, she thought, smiling.
She unlocked the wheels and rolled the gurney in front of one of the doors. Then she climbed up on the corpse. Something slipped out of her pocket, but she barely noticed when she saw the scene on the other side of the small window.
She already had suspicions about what she was going to see, but it was still something of a shock.
Anaka was standing in the room beyond, running his fingers through jet-black hair. “How the hell could this—”
Doc, in surgical garb sans mask, was seated on a stool in a corner of the room tapping at a small computer terminal. “The computer forgot that he was a flush addict.”
“How the hell did the computer ‘forget’ that?”
Angel stared at the centerpiece of the room.
Earl, the third pink goon, rested, naked, on an operating table under a frosty white light. His eyes were open and staring. His abdomen and waist were a study in browns, reds, and blues—his genitalia purple and swollen. Quite dead.
“Oops,” Angel whispered.
“If we knew that, things like this wouldn’t happen. Somebody flubbed his file, a random power spike, maybe it never was in his file to begin with. As it is, with his flush-weakened nervous system, the muscle relaxant we gave him pushed him into cardiac arrest.”
“You’re not making me happy.”
Angel decided she was overstaying her welcome. Her reason for being here was on a slab. No sense waiting for someone to pick her up for trespassing.
She climbed off the gurney and headed for the elevators.
If Earl was dead, could they try to hang a murder rap on her? It was self-defense, and they’d never even charged her with assault.
But . . .
For the first time, Angel began to worry about her own furry hide.
She made her way to the elevators at a dead run and told the computer “ground floor” three times before it understood her. Ellis’ paranoia had slipped in and had taken root. She was convinced that Earl’s death was no “accident.” It was a rock-solid gut feeling that also told her to get out of the hospital now.
The doors opened on the corridor of the Emergency Room, letting in sounds of nonhuman singing and sirens. She turned the corner and started to bolt for the exit.
And ran straight into a pink cop. At least that’s what Angel pegged him for when she began backing up. Human, two meters, suit, wearing a nearly invisible white crew cut that made him look like one of the Knights if the light was at the right angle. His skin was pale, nearly translucent.
Under his arm was a bulge that spoke of artillery that was ten-millimeter or better—maybe even a machine pistol. As Angel continued to back up, she saw that the suit was too expensive for a local boy, and decided the guy was Fed.
She could see a throat-mike peeking out from behind the knot in his tie, and the nearly invisible earpiece.
She had just decided that she was in really big trouble when she realized that the Fedboy’s smell was out of sync. Hunting excitement tinged by just a touch of fear. He wasn’t even looking at her.
He pushed Angel out of the way and made for the elevators. It gave her a chance to see beyond the Fed’s sunglasses. Angel thought she saw red irises.
The encounter had lasted less than a second, and she was not one to question good fortune. She split Frisco General, deciding that sneaking into the human hospital had been an all-around bad move on her part.
Chapter 7
It was close to midnight when Angel made it home. Lei’s quiet, regular breathing told her that her roommate was asleep in the darkened living room. Angel found Lei curled into a brown ball on the couch, tail wrapped around her muzzle. The comm was in the middle of a pop-political broadcast with a panel of commentators indulging in verbal mud wrestling.
“—Harper is the only potential presidential candidate who’s advocating peace—” one of the ones to the left was saying.
“Appeasement you mean.” An offscreen voice stepped on his line.
“Merideth’s approval ratings have been in free-fall since the crisis began,” he continued, ignoring the interruption. “The Democrats are in the worst position they’ve been in since the CIA scandal. If her Committee manages to reach some diplomatic sol—”
“You must be kidding, Fred. No one seriously thinks a NOA party candidate can win the presidency—”
Angel walked in front of the comm and heard Lei stirring behind her. After a long yawn Lei said, “Finally came back? What did you think you were doing?”
“I don’t know.”
On the screen, a balding pink was leaning into the camera frame to berate somebody. “You remember what you said about the Greens, Dave? The country’s ready for a candidate like Har—”
Angel shook her head. “Wanted to talk to the punk I put in the hospital.”
Lei sat up and stretched, Angel could hear her joints pop. “What could he possibly have to say?”
“—the None-of-the-Abovers are a lot more radical than the Greens,” the one woman on the show was saying.
“I don’t know,” Angel said, “the bastard’s dead.”
“What?”
“—ideth avoided getting tarred with the same brush that hit the rest of the Democrats during the CIA indictments in ’54. He’s bounced back from worse numbers—”
“I accidentally walked into the morgue. The guy was laid out colder than—”
“Sure it was the same guy?”
“—had over two years to recover for the ’56 election, with a better economy, and this “alien” business isn’t helping him—”
Angel walked around the coffee table and sat down next to Lei. “How many tattooed pinks you think check in there with their dicks looking like overripe eggplant? It’s him.”
“Didn’t see anything about it on the news.”
Angel picked the remote off of the table and put her feet up. The argument on the comm was reaching a fever pitch with three or four people shouting at once.
“—Gregg and the Constitutionalists are the Democrats’ only real rivals—”
“—believe those ‘aliens’ were cooked in some gene-lab—”
“—ideth had any sense he’d resign now and give his successor a cha—”
“—NOA never held more than ten seats, and that was fifteen years—”
Angel changed the comm to a sports channel, and hit the mute button. “News is fucked, news’s always fucked. The police’re probably scared shitless about what news of another death’d do.”
“How’d the guy die?”
“Some computer glitch.”
Lei shook her head and Angel could hear her tail batting against the couch. “Why keep digging? What’s the point?”
Angel was silent for a long time before answering. “If I just sit around, I might have to start thinking about this crap, an
d I’m not ready for that.”
“You might have to.”
Angel waited for an explanation.
“Half a dozen reporters called while you were out. It’s not going to be long before you have to talk to them.”
“Why me?” Angel tried to sink into the couch.
“And that priest what’s-his-name—”
“Collor called again, great. Any other good news?”
“Well, this lawyer—”
“DeGarmo?”
Lei nodded. “Wants to know about funeral arrangements for Mr. Dorset.”
“Byron.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Angel sighed.
“So, are you going to tell me where you got this car?”
Angel turned to see Lei staring at her, muzzle cradled in her hands.
• • •
With Sunday came a storefront sweeping in from the northwest. When Angel glanced out the window, the steel-wool storm-clouds seemed to be parked in a holding formation across the Golden Gate and over Oakland. The spires of Downtown were still sunlit, carving light holes in the dark horizon. All backed by the bone-white egg-shell that had swallowed Alcatraz.
Daily, hourly even, the city was becoming more surreal.
A chain of lightning flashes began to her right and shot back to the west.
Angel looked back down to Twenty-third. The Dodge Electroline van was still there. “He hasn’t moved.”
“You’re going to let one guy and a van trap you here all day—”
“He’s been pointing a vid unit up here.”
Lei walked up next to her and waved out the window. “You can’t avoid reporters forever. They’re like children, the more you deny them something, the harder they go after it.”
Angel turned away from the window as the sound of thunder reached them. She didn’t want to mention the fact that she thought that the van wasn’t a reporter. The van was much too generic—a solid unmarked gray job. And the guy with the vid unit bore an uncomfortable resemblance—down to the reddish eyes—to the Fed-boy she’d run into at Frisco General.
Angel shrugged. “What the fuck? Like you said, it’s inevitable.”
Angel walked back to her room and opened her underwear drawer.
In the drawer, under a collection of pink-designed clothing she owned and never actually used, was a Beretta 31-S nine-millimeter automatic—a matte-black carbon fiber design that fired caseless ammo. She emptied a few dozen rounds of ammunition out of a sock that had been balled up near the back of the drawer.
Lei’s voice came from behind her. “What the hell is that?”
Angel didn’t look up. She arranged the various components on the clean area on top of the dresser. “You should know what a gun looks like.”
“What are you doing with one?”
“Cleaning and loading the damn thing.”
Lei watched for a long time as Angel did her best to undo a few years of neglect. When she began to load it, Angel said, “Don’t worry, Lei. I’m not about to take potshots at some vid guy.”
“Thinking of getting yourself into trouble, aren’t you?”
Angel rummaged in her closet until she came out with a loose blouse that would cover the gun when she shoved it in her jeans. “All I’m thinking about is the possibility that a screw-loose morey who offed Byron might still be out there and might have enough reason to do me—”
Lei looked unconvinced.
“Believe me, I am trying hard to avoid becoming a charter member of the paranoia parade.” Angel walked out of her room and back to the bay windows. The stormfront was still stationary, and so was the van. “It ain’t easy.”
Lei stayed by the door to Angel’s room. “What are you going to do?”
“Right now? Visit Byron’s condo. Nice low-risk activity that shouldn’t attract anyone’s attention.”
“I’ll go with you—”
“You don’t have—”
Lei walked up and put a hand on Angel’s shoulder. “To keep you from doing anything stupid.”
Angel sucked in a breath, about to say something, and thought better of it. She spared a last glance at the pink in the van with the camera and said, “Let’s go.”
Down the stairs to the front door, Angel added, “I wish I knew where they got my address and the comm number.”
“It’s their job.”
As they passed the first-floor apartment, Angel heard the ghost of Balthazar’s comm. The explosions and bonging sound effects made everything feel that much more surreal. Angel thought about the old, nearly blind lion sitting alone in his apartment, watching the same cartoons over and over again. For some reason, all the humor had leeched out of the image. Now it seemed nothing if not tragic.
It seemed that even Balthazar wasn’t immune to the change sweeping her life—even if it was only her perspective.
Angel opened the door and stepped down to the sidewalk. The Fedboy/cameraman, who had intermittently pointed a vid out the driver’s side window on the van, was nowhere to be seen. The van was still parked across the street, and the only noise was the distant thunder—
Angel felt her hand creeping toward her waistband. She restrained herself. She looked up and down the street. A few moreys were gathered at an intersection up the street.
“Angelica Lopez!” came a call from down the street. Angel turned with Lei to see a too-perfect-looking Hispanic pink making his way up the hill toward them. Following him was a spotted-white ratboy with a remote vid setup. In an instant, the reporter was upon her. The rat was focusing the camera and Angel had the bad feeling that they were on a live feed, because the Hispanic was already turning toward the camera and saying, “Daniel Pasquez, here with a BaySatt news exclusive—”
“Fuck this.” Angel made an end run around the camera, stepping over the camera rat’s naked pink tail.
The rat panned after her and Angel felt a hand on her shoulder. Angel slowly turned to see Pasquez. “Miss Lopez—”
“Get your hand off of me.”
“Miss—”
“I’m not here to boost your ratings. Move the hand or you’ll shit your own teeth for a week.”
Pasquez gently let go of her shoulder. “If you could please give me a few minutes—”
Angel turned and walked to the BMW. Lei had beat her to it. Apparently the press didn’t think she mattered. Behind her she heard Pasquez saying, “Don’t you want your view heard?”
Angel gave him the finger without looking back. “What an asshole,” she said as she hit the combination on the BMW, letting her and Lei in.
Lei got into the passenger seat. “Do you think spouting off at him was a good idea?”
“I don’t give a shit.” Angel floored the car and rocketed down the hill, leaving Pasquez and the ratboy running for whatever vehicle they were using. “When I find out who leaked my address—”
“Where exactly are we going?”
“South Beach Towers.”
Lei let out a whistle of air from the side of her muzzle.
Angel weaved the BMW past the construction clinging to Sixteenth as she aimed for the coast. Without realizing it, she turned on to Mission and drove toward The Rabbit Hole.
“Jesus Christ.” She had to slow down because there were fire engines crowding the street. Traffic had slowed to a crawl. Angel could smell the smoke through the air recyclers before she even saw the rubble where the bar used to be.
“The bastards burned the place down.”
“It could be an accident—”
“Bullshit.” Angel hit the comm on the dash and started scanning through channels hoping to catch some word on what was happening.
She had to stop because one of the ambulances ahead of her was lifting off. As the ambulance cleared ahead of her, she saw what was happening.
The comm latched on a news station. “—of arson. This bar was the scene of the alleged attack police believe—”
The pink Angel saw across Mission was white, slight of build, and wore a leather jacket. She had a flaming sword tattoo and a stupid smile on her face. She was almost hidden from view in an alley across the street from the chaos.
She was totally bald.
Damn it!
Horns blared behind the BMW. Lei said something, but Angel didn’t listen. Instead, she popped the door on the car and dived out after the pink.
Angel cleared the twenty meters separating them in five running steps. She was in the air in a ballistic arc aimed at the pink’s neck before the woman turned to notice a crazed rabbit pouncing on her.
The pink’s eyes went wide, and she started raising her arms.
“Shi—” she began to say.
Then Angel landed on the evil twitch with both feet. The flames across the street roared in her ears and Angel had to shout to hear herself. “You fucked shitheads!”
Angel’s head throbbed with sirens, the roar of flames, the smell of smoke, air heavy with humidity from the hoses, and the vicious pink face framed by wet, dirty sidewalk—
Pinky tried to push her off, but Angel grabbed both sides of the bald head and put her foot into the pink’s throat. Pinky gagged and pushed harder but Angel had her fingers firmly hooked around Pinky’s ears. A jagged earring was cutting into Angel’s hand.
“You want to burn? You want to fucking burn?” Angel let go of one ear and reached for the Beretta. “You wanna see Hell?”
Pinky’s eyes opened even wider as she saw the gun. She redoubled her efforts to dislodge Angel, but fighting and trying to breathe at the same time seemed beyond her.
“Angel!” called a voice from behind.
Angel brought the gun out of her pants.
“What are you doing?” The voice was Lei.
Christ, what the hell was she doing? Was she going to turn this pink twitch into street-pizza with the cops only a few—
Angel whipped her head around to look back at the fire. Thank God, she thought. Everyone was still intent on the torch The Rabbit Hole had become. It and three adjacent buildings.