The Nexus (23 page)

“I think you know why I’m here.”

“Sketch sent you.”

“You bailed out on the job.”

“I got spooked,” she lied.  “Someone was watching me.  I didn’t want to blow our cover.”

“
We
were watching you.”

“And you came back here when you saw I was leaving?  You must have put the pedal to the metal.  You beat me here, and I’m not exactly a slow driver.”

“I’m here to make you another offer.”

“I already have another offer, thanks.”

“We know.  That’s why I’m here.”

Jill regarded him thoughtfully.  “Go on.”

The young Korean pulled back his hood.  “You’ve been in contact with a government department—a department no one is supposed to know exists.”

She raised an eyebrow.  “You have your connections.”

“We do.  But we could use another.”

“What are you saying?”

“Our source inside the department has not been as helpful as we had hoped.  We would like another inside man.”

“Or...inside woman,” Jill guessed.

He nodded.  “Accept the department’s offer.  Join them.  Learn all you can about them.  Report back to us.”

“Why?”

He smiled.  “Simple.  We’re taking down the department.”

“So I’d be a double agent.  Sounds dangerous!” she whispered in phony amusement, flopping down on the other end of the couch.  “I suppose you’d be offering me quite a bit for the job.”

“That’s correct.  The more you tell us, the greater your compensation will be.”

“Okay.  I’m in.”

The guy looked at her skeptically.  “Just like that, you agree?”

“I agree to give it a shot.”

“A shot?”

“Right.  I mean, yeah, the department recruited me.  But I doubt their offer still stands.  I don’t know if you heard, but I kind of snubbed them by breaking out of jail and everything.”

“But you will try to convince them that you will join them?”

“Sure.  It probably won’t work.  If it does, I’ll get back to you.  By the way, how
do
I get back to you?”

That’s when the guy told her about the “out-of-order” public phone at the mall.  She memorized the number to call to reach Sketch.  Jill told the guy she figured that was all they needed to talk about at the moment...in other words, time for him to leave.  He did.

Later that night, Jill headed out to a classy hotel near the west rim—not far from the Harvest, in fact.  Off the lobby was a row of empty payphone cubicles.  She took out a screwdriver, opened the inner workings of one of the phones, and made some personal modifications including the addition of a device she’d brought along.  Then she dialed.

A few seconds of canned music played on the other end of the line.  Then:

“Anterran Governmental Complex.  How may I direct your call?”

By the end of the conversation, Holiday had told her:  “Take it or leave it, Jillian.  If you’d like us to extend our offer one last time, demonstrate your worth one last time.  It’s only reasonable.”

It was.  And she did.

AMBER took off her helmet, shook out her blond hair, and sighed.  “That’s why you joined.  You’re Sketch’s spy.”

Corey still had that same cold look.  “Mr. Love’s client,” he said.  “It was the same guy who recruited you for Sketch, wasn’t it?”

Jill smiled wryly.  “I figured you might have caught on to that.”

THAT had only been a day ago.

Jill had waited on her skybike, as instructed, behind a building fifty yards from the office park’s parking garage.  She was the safety net of the mission.

It didn’t take long for her presence to be required.

She’d gunned into the air along one side of the garage, seeing the hooded guy running across the empty parking spaces of the third level.  She angled her bike over the barrier at the edge of the garage and went after him.  Concrete columns whipped by her on both sides.

She was closing in.

He knew she was closing in.  He got to the end of the level and heaved himself over the edge...

He caught the barrier at the rim of level two and swung himself back into the garage.

It was only a temporary escape.  A moment later Jill had swooped down to level two, right in front of the hooded guy.  She parked, leaped off her bike, leveled her gun at him.

That’s when things got interesting.

She switched off the microphone in her helmet.  “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

The same Korean face she’d seen at her apartment two weeks earlier was smiling out at her from beneath the hood.  “The mask will do you no good,” he said.  “I know who you are...Jillian Branch.  I bring greetings from Sketch.”

She lowered her weapon and tugged off her helmet.  “What are you doing here?” she repeated.

“Meeting Mr. Love—or so I planned.”

“Don’t give me that.  I know you have another source inside the department.  You knew we had Love.  You knew he’d eventually give you away.  You knew there would be a mission tonight, and you knew I’d be on it.”

“Perhaps I did.  Perhaps I’ve been sent to remind you to hold up your end of the deal.”

“We haven’t made a deal yet.  You were supposed to wait for me to make contact.”

“We’ve waited quite a while.  Sketch is getting impatient.”

“Give me some time.”

“We’ll give you a little.  Meanwhile, it’s time for me to be getting back.  Your friends will be arriving any moment.  But of course, we can’t let them know we work together!”  The hooded guy drew his own gun.  “We’ll make it look like I escaped, what do you say?”  He aimed at her shoulder.  “Don’t worry; I hear the armor in these uniforms is very strong.”

The shot’s impact knocked her over.

When Corey, Amber and Bradley got there, the skybike was roaring away.  Jill wasn’t on it.  Jill was alone in a heap on the cold cement floor.

THE storage room of the Ace of Hearts was silent for several long moments.

“You let him get away on purpose,” breathed Amber.

“You nailed it, Corey,” said Bradley.

“What about when Corey showed us the fish cannery exit?” Amber said at length.  “The guy we saw spying...was that him too?”

“Maybe,” said Jill.  “I never saw him.  He got away fair and square that time.”

“This is all really interesting,” said Bradley, “but could we talk about it later?  Like back at HQ, with Jill in handcuffs?”

“A rather good idea,” said Holiday.  He took a set of cuffs from a pocket inside his coat, and handed them to Corey.  “Would you mind?” he asked.

Slowly, solemnly, Corey took the cuffs.

“Why?” Amber asked Jill weakly.  “Why’d you do it?”

Jill didn’t answer.

“What would you expect from a half-blood?” Bradley muttered.

Corey’s punch came so quickly that no one knew it had happened until Bradley was sprawling into a storage shelf.  The impact knocked several tacky figurines onto the floor.  Bradley ended up on his seat among the broken pieces.  There was shock written in his eyes as he rubbed his face and looked up at Corey.

But Corey wasn’t looking at him anymore.  Corey was staring with questioning eyes at Jill.  Then he cuffed her hands behind her back.

“See you at HQ,” Holiday said, expressionless, and left the room.

Corey and Amber escorted Jill out.  Bradley stumbled two paces behind them.

No one seemed to notice that the little red light on the video camera over the television was still on.

A minute later Jill was in the backset between Amber and Bradley.  Corey had just started the car when Holiday’s voice came over the car’s com:

“Desiree, did you get it?”

“Sure, I got it!” Dizzie reported.

“Got what?” asked Corey.

Amber noticed Jill’s face.  “Hey, what are you smiling about?”

“There’s actually just a little more to my story,” said Jill.

WHEN he got back to HQ, Holiday headed straight to Dino’s lab.  “I’m not interrupting anything?”

“Not really,” said the funny little man.  “Just checking out these VCRs we got from Love’s clients.  I’m still trying to get them to work so we can use them at the trial.  What can I do for you, Mr. H?”

“I need your help on a matter, if it won’t inconvenience you.”

“Not at all.”

“This way, please.”

BETWEEN songs on his phonograph the boss heard a noise.  It sounded like it was coming from out in the arcade.  But the arcade had been closed since midnight. 

He grabbed a gun and opened his office door a crack.

All game areas and consoles had been switched off.  The arcade was dark except for streetlights glowing through the painted windows.

The boss heard another sound.  He opened the door a little more, and leaned out for a better peek with his one good eye.

He saw a glow coming from up a ramp in one corner.  He’d forgotten to turn one of the games off.

...Or someone had turned it back on.

“UM, no offense, Mr. H, but I don’t have to go.  Even if I did, I’d rather go alone.”

Holiday smirked extra widely, but didn’t reply.  He led Dino into the men’s restroom at the back of HQ, then into the janitor’s closet at the back of the men’s restroom.

THE boss hesitated.  The custodians weren’t scheduled to be here for another four hours...though when they got here they’d be plenty busy.  Candy wrappers, popcorn bits, cigarette butts, even coins littered the carpet.

So who turned the game on?

The boss drew a gun and slunk toward the glow.

As he got closer he saw it was one of his oldest consoles—an invaluable antique.  It glowed and chimed an electronic tune while blocky letters asked him or anyone else around to insert coin(s) to play.

ON a shelf in the janitor’s closet in the restroom was a telephone—a really old telephone.  It had a rotary dial on its bulky base, and a hefty receiver perched on top.

“You know what this is, I presume?”

Dino scratched his head.  “What it is, yeah.  What it’s doing here, no.”

“It’s here so someone can make calls,” said Holiday.  “Calls that Sherlock doesn’t know about.”

Dino chuckled.  “If someone wanted to make a call from this thing, it would have to be hooked up to—”

Holiday turned the bulky phone around, and showed Dino the phone wire plugged into the back.

Dino whistled.  “Still,” he said, “unless there’s a switchboard or something at the other end, and other old phones routed into the switchboard...”

“This wire has been fed through the wall,” said Holiday.  “I haven’t yet searched to find where it leads.”

“So is that why you need my expertise?  I do know a little about these things.”

“I never said I needed your expertise.”

“You said you needed—”

“Your help.”

Dino’s eyes shifted uncertainly.  “What sort of help?”

“A confession, ideally,” said Holiday.

THE boss didn’t approach the game console.  Someone was baiting him.  He knew it.  And he wasn’t taking the bait.

Sure enough, he heard a gunshot.  A bullet—or, if he wanted to be optimistic, a stunner—whizzed by him and cracked into the screen of another priceless game console.

The boss ducked around the snack counter to an exit.  He was in a passage along the side of the building.  He ran on old patterned carpet beneath dimmed lights glowing from along the ceiling.

Another gunshot behind him.

He ducked and whirled, firing his own shot.

Cops—at least they were dressed something like cops.  He thought he saw three of them.  One had the Korean taegeuk and trigrams on his mask.  They leaped out of the hall and back into the arcade as the boss fired again.

He took his opportunity.  He ran the rest of the way up the passage and through a door to the back stairway of the building.

There were only three floors.  He skipped the second, got to the third.

The cops were still close behind.

“YOU think I put this phone here?”

“I know you put this phone here,” said Holiday.  “How else were you going to call your contact—the man who calls himself Sketch?”

Dino was sweating majorly now.  “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you’re spying on our department for a criminal ring.  You have access to Sherlock—which means the man who calls himself Sketch now has access to Sherlock through you.”

Dino sputtered.  “I don’t know what you mean.”