Capital City Chronicles: The Island (2 page)

I now held Pan’s hairbrush at my chest as I bent to pick up the PDA next to the ottoman. Plopping down into her chair, I tapped the small, spinning envelope in the corner of the screen, and leaned back to read the job.

My official GlobeCorps International title was Inter-Departmental Liaison. What I really did was closer to departmental espionage. Decades before I was born, GCI had managed to privatize and monopolize almost every industry and public entity imaginable. As a result, many of these entities, now departments of a single company, were in competition, and often all out war with each other.

That was where people like Pan and I came in. Whenever a particular department needed information, or, more often, information disposed of, the little envelope on my PDA screen began to spin. Whenever a
person
needed to be disposed of, Pan received a call. Naturally our jobs often complimented each other. Where there was evidence, there was usually a witness to go with it. So far, though, we had never worked together, and as far I could tell, we both prefered it that way.

Tonight’s gig was coming from a department I’d never worked with, and would have never expected to:

The Department of ParaMilitary Intelligence.

A shrouded, secretive department that most, probably including those within the DPMI itself, had only a vague idea of its purpose and function. I leaned forward as I read, my thumb rubbing up the side of the hairbrush. But for the source, it seemed a rather straight forward job.

And then there was the money.

The compensation was in the “final retirement score” range.

As usual, it involved infiltrating another department, one I had many, many times.

The Bureau of Internal Investigation was charged with investigating allegations and evidence of police corruption inside the Capital City Police Department. I was to break into the BII evidence storage garage in NerveTown, steal a small flash drive, and turn it into the DPMI. They gave no drop location, no time. Only instructions to send proof of completion in the form of a password, located in a text file on the flash drive, to an unregistered inbox. The location of the flash drive was in a file in one of the many hundreds of cabinets:

DRAWER BII-330124 - 341624 Sec. W

I knew the garage as well as my own living room, and knew exactly where the cabinet would be by the number. It was an ideal area, two thirds of the building away from where the nightwatchman sat, and tucked into a dark corner. There was even a computer nearby, but I didn’t anticipate needing it, nor would I dare send the password from it. But it was reassuring to know it was there.

The name of the file itself caught my attention:

FILE # BII-331524_Whitten_J.

It was a common enough name, but the likelyhood of it not being James Whitten was slim. With Carter Cole somehow involved, and the BII and the DPMI, it had to be him. James Whitten, a former Capital City Police Officer, was GCI’s latest and greatest Senatorial golden boy. When he began to pursue politics, he had risen at once on a platform of piety, traditional “family values,” and hardnosed imperialism. Naturally, he was as corrupt as they come. It made even more sense that one of Pan’s contracts, probably her main contract, was the incorruptible Carter Cole. Cole and Whitten had both been cops at around the same time, but Whitten had outlasted him by ten years. Cole, along with at least three others, must have known or seen something, and it must have been documented in some way. And now, as much as 15 years later, GCI had an investment to protect.

It was an unequal combination of the outrageous amount of money, and sheer curiosity that moved my finger to the ACCEPT CONTRACT icon. If all went well, I would be back in my living room within three hours.

I was never as fast as Pan to get ready, but it didn’t take long. In the bedroom closet I kept my usual gear:

One pair of black non-slip boots, a fitted black jumpsuit with a zippered pocket just under the neck, that held a StretchMesh face mask, and a small backpack filled with lightweight tools, lights and an array of computer components that varied widely in legality. I carried no weapons.

After I had changed, I went to the bathroom and filled the sink. Leaning on the edge with my forearms, my hands hanging into the water, I put my head down. I scooped water onto my head, scrubbing into my hair with my palms to remove the hairspray. Once the sculpted curls that had framed my face melted into a wet, shaggy mess, I slicked it back. This always worked better than a thorough washing, as the residual hairspray was just enough to keep it in place. With the washcloth that hung on the large brass ring next to the mirror, I wiped away my makeup. Behind the mirror I kept a stick of black eyeshadow. I used this to trace thick black lines, and colored my lids. My purpose for this was two-fold. One, it cut glare in low light, and two, it broke up the contrasting white of the skin around my eyes when the mask was up. I shaped it into a winged, trashy look that would get by in public.

In the living room, I slung the pack over my shoulder and snatched up my PDA as I walked to the door. With my fingers hooked over the door handle, I turned and scanned my apartment. Before leaving, I always did this, perhaps in some attempt to soak in all the quiet stillness I could before stepping out into the chaos. With a deep breath, I swung the door open and stepped out.

The wide, clean hallways were normally empty save the occasional sighting of the housekeeper. Tonight was different. It wasn’t full by any means, but people rushed up and down the hall with the same urgency as the ones on the sidewalk. Most of them here, however, wore tuxedos and suits, shimmering gowns and sparkling heels. Their personal drones followed close, dressed just as luxuriantly and seeming to be in the same hurried, gay mood as their masters and mistresses. It appeared that all of the supercilious employees who shouted their indignance over how the president ran the nation, weren’t hesitating tonight to celebrate his return. As apart as I felt, had always felt, from them, I supposed I was one of them. I had no real worries about money, I lived in their building, my lover was one of their heroes. Yet I owned no slaves, employed no servants, and could care less what the president did, unless it affected my work.

I walked among them, unnoticed and unacknowledged even as I pressed into the stuffed elevator. In a few short moments it dropped eight floors and the doors slid open to the packed lobby. I hurried through, unable to stand another moment among the cloud of cologne and perfume and elitism. As I weaved through the crowd, I picked up bits of overlapping conversations:

“-heard it was jihadists-”

“-stencils of dogs-”

“-Whitten will be opening for him, I do enjoy his oration-”

“-rebels-”

“-you just want his head between your thighs-”

“-at Glass’ memorial-”

All at once the voices cut to the deafening noise of traffic, and the energy of the street hit me, like coming out of a tunnel into a hurricane. I was almost knocked over twice in just my first steps into the crowd. I saw glimpses of the people from the elevator pushing their way to the line of limousines that waited, stretched the entire block. Exhaust hung hazy in the air above the street, car horns blared at each other for no discernable reason. The smell of fish and mustard snuck across from the mobile sushi bus that parked and opened onto the sidewalk. As I walked, I watched the ancient asian chef scream at his chained teenaged thrall to open faster. The boy rushed around the side of the bus to pull out a shelf of condiments from where the luggage compartment used to be, yanking and jerking at the not quite long enough chain that connected his collar to the counter on the inside of the bus.

Just as I passed, I heard the old man scream again, this time somehow different, and I knew it was at someone else. I turned in time to see a rickshaw racing toward me and stepped back, bumping into at least three other pedestrians. The thrall was not as lucky. The runner plowed into him, both of them crumbling into the gutter, their chains tangling them both in a hopeless bundle as the cart itself flipped forward, slinging the rich, beautiful young couple into the shelf of the bus. I jumped back again, stumbling now into a fat man in a pink tux, to avoid the explosion of sauce bottles, mustards, spices and wasabi that spun and flipped and shattered all over the sidewalk. The old man now was gesticulating so wildly, I thought his arms would unscrew themselves and go flopping along the street. The pretty young couple struggled to stand, the man holding his screeching, bleeding and spice blinded girlfriend as his feet continued to slip and skate underneath him on the pools of soy sauce. One slave lay unconscious, and the other laughed maniacally at the woman, pointing from inside a ball of wound chain. The spice that now seemed to hang motionless in the air began to burn my eyes, and I turned away from the carnage. Tonight would be anything but routine.

Once I turned off Heart Steet, down 2nd, the crowd thinned. This neighborhood all used private vehicles or limo services, and the CCTA platform was empty as usual. I climbed the four floors to the platform, slid my GCI employee ID through the box next to the turnstile and pushed through. The giant, rusted ornate clock above the rails told me I had three minutes until the next train. I leaned against the handrailing and again stared down at the madness of Heart Street, enjoying the cool breeze that wafted out from under the platform and hit my face. It wasn’t a particularly pretty area, it was dark and rusted and held an air of loneliness that only develops after years of neglect, but this platform was one of my favorite spots in the city. It wasn’t quiet, but it
felt
quiet, even peaceful. The proximity of Heart Street, just far enough away for the noise to blend into a drone, and still close enough to smell the traffic, created a contrast that couldn’t be felt even from my eighth floor window.

My thoughts again drifted to Pan. It had already been almost an hour since she left, and by now she was surely on the heels of one of her targets. Tonight was the perfect night for her. It occurred to me, not suddenly, that she had chosen to stay in with me on a night when her celebrity would have demanded her to be on some long carpet somewhere, waving and smiling for the strobelights of reporters, fans and paparazzi. Her adoring public. Capital City held her up as a shining example of everything this city was, and the rest of the country considered her a hero, a patriotic servant of the people, laying her life on the line for God and Country. Mercenaries and movie stars, these people loved nothing more. Pandora Demour had turned murder into a brand.

Yet she had chosen
me
over them. She knew how much I hated “the scene” and she had stayed away to keep our date night. Still, in the end, she had left me to work. The work I understood, though. If my PDA had chimed before the phone rang, I would have left her behind the second I saw the offer. And she would be getting at least as much for Cole alone. I found myself wishing I could have made out that voice in the receiver. The curiosity of how much she was making tonight was almost overwhelming. It had been that blissful, nearly orgasmic sigh of hers that meant it was more than even my imagination could conjure.

That sigh. I replayed it on a loop in my mind as I leaned further against the railing, pretending it had been me that made her breath purr from her small mouth. My nipples grew hard and sensitive and I found my bottom lip between my teeth. My eyes slipped closed as I pictured her feet, her hips and her shoulders, the sharp pain of her teeth clamping down onto the web of skin between my thumb and forefinger when I-

I gasped when the clanging roar of the train pushed hot wind against my back, shooting my still damp hair out into a wild, spiked halo around my shocked face. With both hands I pushed it back and down again. I felt my face grow hot, embarrassed and ashamed, as if the train itself had caught me looking at something I shouldn’t have been. Collecting myself, I stepped to the line. The loud buzz signaled the door and it opened with a hydraulic hiss.

There were only a dozen or so passengers, spread throughout the car. Night train people were a surprisingly diverse lot. You saw every flavor here: A vagabond with a beard down to his belt, spoons and forks, old coffee cans and random keys all sewn into a vest with a thousand pockets. Hispanic gang members with fighter’s faces, two of them squaring off and reciting a rapid string of television commercial song lyrics into the face of the opponent as their amigos cheered them on. A terrified old woman refusing to watch the show and clutching onto her giant handbag. Privileged hipster students riding the train for the enriching experience of seeing the proletariat in their natural habitat.

I sat across from a woman in a smart suit, holding a briefcase across her lap and blankly watching the cholos hoot and holler and trade jingles, as if she’d seen it for the millionth time. And it was quite possible she had. She smiled demurely at me as I sat, then went back to watching the show. I watched her for a bit, musing on how content she seemed despite the intricate, jeweled collar she wore. On her hand was a stylized, high quality tattoo of a pigeon, signalling to authorities that she was permitted to travel alone on her owner’s behalf. She was traveling now, probably handling million dollar negotiations while her owner was enjoying a cocktail party somewhere. Despite the celebrations tonight, some of us were still working.

The conductor’s voice scratched over the ancient PA system.

“Green line, leaving 2nd Ave. Next: Gabrielle Square… Market District… Interstate Junction, Nerve Town…”