Later. Worry about it later, Sev.
She let her mind coast in neutral, watched the lights.
And presently, the COLIN jet whispered down from the cloud base toward them, studded sparsely with landing lights of its own. It kissed the ground, silent with distance, and taxied in like a jeweled shadow.
She yawned and went to fetch her stuff.
In flight, she dozed off and dreamed about the Lindley statue. Murat stood with her in winter sunlight—as he had when she was about eleven, but in the dream she was an adult—and pointed at the chiseled legend in the base. From the discomfort of truth there is only one refuge and that is ignorance. I do not need to be comfortable, and I will not take refuge. I demand to know.
See, he was saying. It only takes one woman like this.
But when she looked up at the statue of Lindley, it had transformed into the black-sketched perpetrator from the Montes CSI construct, and it leapt off the base at her, fist raised.
She fell back and grappled, one from the manual, cross-block and grab. The figure’s arm was slick in her grasp and now ended, she saw, not in a fist but a Greek theater mask cut out of metal. As she wrestled with the sketch, she understood with the flash logic of dreams that her opponent intended to press the mask onto her face and that once it was done, there would be no way to get it off.
Across the park, a mother pushed a baby in a stroller. Two kids sat in the grass and dueled their glinting micro-fighter models high overhead, fingers frantic on the controls in their laps, heads tilting wildly beneath the blank-faced headsets. Her own fight went slower, sluggish, like drowning in mud. The construct murderer was stronger than she was, but seemed disinclined to tactics. Every move she made bought her time, but she could do no damage, could not break the clinch.
The mask began to block out the sun on her face.
I have done everything I can, said Murat wearily, and she wanted to cry but couldn’t. Her breath came hard now, hurting her throat. Her father was walking away from her, across the park toward the railings and the water. She had to twist her neck to keep him in sight. She would have called after him, but her throat hurt too much, and anyway she knew it wouldn’t do any good. The fight started to drain out of her, tiny increments heralding the eventual evaporation of her strength. Even the sun was turning cold. She struggled mechanically, bitterly, and overhead, the mask—
The plane banked and woke her.
Someone had lowered the cabin lights while she slept, and the plane’s interior was sunk in gloom. She leaned across the seat to the window and peered out. Towers of crystalline light slid beyond the glass, red-studded with navigation flash. Then the long dark absence of the East River, banded with bridges like jeweled rings on a slim and slightly crooked finger. She sighed and sank back in her seat.
Home. For what it was worth.
The plane straightened out. Marsalis came through from the forward section, presumably on his way to the toilet. He nodded down at her.
“Sleep well?”
She shrugged and lied.
CHAPTER 17
By the time they disembarked and came through the deserted environs of the private-carrier terminal at JFK, it was nearly 3 am. Norton left them standing just inside the endless row of glass doors onto the pickup zone and went to get his car out of parking. The whole place was full of a glaring, white-lit quiet that seemed to whine just at the edge of audibility.
“So what’s the plan?” Marsalis asked her.
“The plan is get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll take you over to Jefferson Park and get you hooked up with our chain of command. Roth, Ortiz, and Nicholson are all going to want to meet you. Then we’ll look at Montes. If your theory checks out, there’ll be some trace of a previous identity somewhere in the data record.”
“You hope.”
“No, I know,” she said irritably. “No one disappears for real anymore, not even in the Angeline Freeport.”
“Merrin seems to be managing.”
“Merrin’s strictly a temporary phenomenon.”
They went back to staring averted angles around the terminal space until Norton rolled up in the snarl-grilled Cadillac. He’d held off putting the top up until a couple of weeks ago, but there was no way to avoid it now. The early-hours air beyond the terminal doors had a snap in it that promised the raw cold of the winter ahead.
“Nice ride,” said Marsalis as he got in.
He’d taken the front seat. Sevgi rolled her eyes and climbed in the back. Norton grinned at her in the mirror.
“Thanks,” he said, and gunned the magdrive as they pulled away. It didn’t quite have the throaty roar of the vehicles from the period road movies he occasionally dragged Sevgi to at art-house theaters in the Village, but the car thrummed pleasantly enough and they took the exit ramp at rising speed. Norton drifted them across into the curve of the citybound highway. The airport complex fell away behind them like a flung fairy crown. Norton raised his eyes to the mirror again. “What are we doing about accommodation, Sev?”
“You can put me in a hotel,” Marsalis said, yawning. “Wherever suits. I’m not fussy.”
Sevgi faked a yawn of her own and slumped back in the seat. “Let’s sort that out tomorrow. Too much hassle coordinating it all now. You can stay at my place tonight. Tom, I’ll bring him in and meet you at the office for lunch. Somewhere on the mezzanine. Say about twelve?”
Peripheral vision showed her Norton trying to make eye contact in the mirror. His face was the carefully immobile deadpan she associated with his witnessing of mistakes made. He used it a lot in briefings with Nicholson. She gazed steadfastly out of the side window.
“He could stay with me, Sev. I’ve got the space.”
“So do I.” She made it come out casual. Still watching the dull metal ribbon of the crash barrier as it whipped smoothly along beside the car in the gloom. A teardrop taxi blipped past on the opposing side of the highway. “Anyway, Tom, it’d take you the best part of an hour just to clear out all that junk you keep in the spare room. All I have to do is crank down the futon. Just drop us off, it’ll be fine.”
Now she turned and met his eyes in the mirror. Matched him deadpan for deadpan. He shrugged and punched up some music on the car’s sound system, ancient Secession-era punk no one played anymore. Detroitus or Error Code; Sevgi never could tell the two bands apart despite Norton’s best efforts to instruct her. She settled back to the outside view again and let the vitriol of it wash over her, lulled by the familiar high-stepping bass lines and the stuttering, hacking guitars. She found her mouth forming fragments of lyrics:
Got what you want at last, got your
Closed little world
Got your superhero right and wrong
And your fuckin’ flag unfurled
Marsalis stirred, leaned forward to read the player display, and sank back again without comment. Guitar fury skirled out of the speakers. The car slammed on through the night.
When they pulled up outside Sevgi’s building, Norton killed the engine and got out to see them to the door. It was a nice gesture, but it felt wrong—Harlem hadn’t seen serious crime in decades, and anyway, in among the carbon-fiber skeletons of the market stalls, figures were already moving around with crates, setting up. The place would be coming to noisy life in another couple of hours. Sevgi made a mental note to make sure the windows were all tight shut before she slept. She smiled wearily at Norton.
“Thanks, Tom. You’d better get moving.”
“Yeah.”
He hesitated.
“See you on the mez, then,” she said brightly.