“Why, Fres,” Max asked, “you wanna go out?”
Fresca lighted up a ciggie and started to jitter. “Max, that would be great... that would be perfect. Been up all night waitin’ for you to get back!”
She nodded. “Moody and me, we gotta go take care of a couple of things... Then we can blaze, okay?”
“I’ll wait right here,” the redhead promised.
Moody — standing patiently through all of this (Fresca was one of his favorites, too) — led the way. Just before he got to the double entryway of the auditorium, he opened a side door at left and ducked up the stairs, obviously heading to Max’s crib, in what had once been the grand old theater’s projection booth.
Max wondered why they were going there. Moody usually conducted business in his own quarters, the former manager’s office; not that he hadn’t dropped by Max’s crib before... but this just seemed unusual.
Then again, the Heart of the Ocean was an unusual prize.
The tall man in black turned the knob and entered as if this were his room, not hers. Max’s door was always unlocked — living with a building full of thieves made locks unnecessary if not outright absurd — and, anyway, Max knew of no one who might enter that she couldn’t handle.
The young woman followed her mentor into the modest chamber and he closed the door behind them. Other than Moody’s office/living quarters, this cracked-plaster-walled room was the biggest private room in the place. The dead projector had been shoved into a corner, a decaying museum piece unworthy of the institution Max had just looted. This provided Max a window into the auditorium where most of the Chinese Clan slept.
Down there, the rows of seats — except for the first half a dozen rows — had long since been removed and replaced with items better suited to the needs of the Clan: cots, jury-rigged walls, small camp cookstoves, and other paraphernalia, scattered around the huge room in little living-quarter pockets. The movie screen — with CHINESE CLAN! emblazoned in huge orange spray-paint graffiti — still dominated the wall behind the stage, and Moody used this platform when he addressed his shabby but proficient troops.
The projection booth itself was the biggest room Max had had to herself in her entire life. Her earliest memories were of the Manticore barracks; then she’d shared a room with Lucy, after which she lived in a hole in the ground barely big enough for one, back in Griffith Park.
Ten by sixteen, with its own bathroom, the booth seemed huge to Max, a suite all to herself. Of course, the bathroom would have been a greater luxury if the plumbing worked on a more regular basis. The theater had been abandoned because of the quake cracks in the ceiling, and had even been scheduled for demolition by the city, except someone had stolen the work order and — with all the other troubles in the city — Mann’s seemed to have been lost in the shuffle.
The plumbing, which only worked some of the time in Hollywood anyway, worked even more infrequently within the theater — usually only after Moody had laid some green on local power and water reps.
Max’s bed — rescued from the rubble of the old Roosevelt Hotel across the street — was a luxurious queen-sized box spring on the floor, mattress on top. A Coleman camp lantern, a prize from her days of living in Griffith Park, sat at the head of the bed near a short pile of books, mostly nonfiction (subjects Moody wanted her to study), and a dog-eared paperback copy of Gulliver’s Travels, the one novel she owned, also provided by Moody. Her new motorcycle, a Kawasaki Ninja 250, leaned against one wall, and a padded armchair, also lifted from the Roosevelt ruins, squatted near the projection window. Her only other possession, a small black-and-white TV, sat on a tiny table to the left of the chair.
Moody gazed down at the books. “Traveling to Lilliput again, Maxine?”
Moody knew full well that Maxine wasn’t her name: it was just an affectionate nickname.
She smiled. “Can’t help it — I like the guy.”
Her mentor chuckled. “You and Gulliver — your lives are not that dissimilar, you know.”
“Yeah, I’d noticed that.”
Moody eased his lanky frame into the chair; Max remained standing.
“So, Maxine... the score — was it difficult?”
Max recounted the evening, draining it of any excess melodrama; still, Moody seemed impressed.
Shaking his head, he said, “Mr. Kafelnikov will be... displeased with you.”
“I hope he doesn’t know who borrowed his security plan. That poor traitor would die slow, I bet.”
“Very slow... but our Russian adversary may well have made you, you know.”
“How could he I.D. me? I never met the guy before.”
“You underestimate your renown within certain circles.”
Max frowned. “What circles? I don’t know any ‘circles.’ ”
Arms draped on either side of the chair, as if it were a throne and he a king (the latter was true, in a way), Moody arched an eyebrow. “You think the other clans don’t talk to each other? You think these... superhuman feats of yours have gone unnoticed?”
“I don’t care,” she said with a shrug.
“Perhaps you should. You’ve given them all one sort of trouble or another over the years, haven’t you?”
A slow smile crossed Max’s full lips. “Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
Moody’s eyes seemed to look inward. “That security plan meant a great deal to the Brood. They meant to obtain the bauble in your pocket — and they won’t take this defeat lightly. Kafelnikov will search long and hard to find out who wronged him.”
Finally, casually, she withdrew the necklace from her pocket. “This old thing?”
Moody’s eyes went as wide as the stone. “My God, Maxine... It’s even more breathtaking up close.”
Max held the stone to the dim light and studied it for a long moment. “It’s pretty cool, I guess.” With another shrug, she handed it over.
“Pretty cool,” Moody said, taking the stone. “If they connect you to us... and they will... we’ll have a real enemy.”
“They try to storm this place, we’ll hand their asses back, with change.”
Turning the stone over and over in his hands, Moody seemed not to have heard her. “The necklace alone would feed the Clan for a year.”
“That was a good plan you had — ’cept for those dogs. For rumors, they had some teeth on ’em.”
He shook his head, ponytail swinging. “My apologies... Anyway, a plan is worthless without proper execution. That was key... and the only one in this city who could have executed it was you... Which, my dear, you did.”
“No biggie,” she said, with yet another shrug.
Rising, he tucked the stone into a pocket as he moved to her. Putting an arm around Max, Moody kissed the girl’s cheek, as he had many times before... only now, his lips perhaps lingered a moment too long. “You did well, my dear... you did very well.”
“Thanks,” Max said, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. Oddly, the image of Mr. Barrett entering the bedroom after midnight, to fetch Lucy, flashed through her mind. “I... I better get Fresca — he’s probably wet his pants by now. I promised to get something to eat with him, y’know.”
Moody didn’t move, his arm still around Max’s shoulders. “If they come... if the Brood dares breach our stronghold... God help them when you reveal your powers of battle.”
“Thanks.” Sliding away, not wanting to anger him, but still feeling that something wasn’t quite right, she made another mumbled excuse and slipped out of the room and down the stairs. She could hear Moody on the steps behind her, but didn’t turn to see where he was.