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CHAPTER 21
The wait while Bobby's electronic gears whirred into motion gave Nohar a chance to think. For the most part he thought about Daryl Johnson. He now had a connection, however tenuous, between Johnson and the Zipheads.
But then, there was so much junk in Johnson's system when he died, he had to be hooked on something. It was too bad flush addiction didn't show up on an autopsy unless they looked for it. That's what it must mean—had to be flush. Bobby had traced one of Nugoya's financial threads and it led back to, of all people, Johnson. There were only two reasons why Nugoya would be receiving money from Johnson. Since Nugoya only pimped female morey ass, it probably wasn't sex.
Nugoya was ofled for reselling the flush he got from the Zips.
Johnson was buying that flush.
Was he? Nohar wondered. If he was, Young had taken all trace of that drug from Johnson's ranch. Bobby had only found three weekly payments—if it was tiie sign of an addict, it was a recent one.
Blackmail? No, the deposits were much too small for Nugoya's taste had he known anything damaging. There was plenty of information that was damaging. .
It was another piece of the puzzle that didn't quite fit.
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The comm beeped. It was time for Bobby's ride to show up.
A familiar Nissan Tory pulled in front of Manny's house, Ruby again. It would be a long time before Nohar would trust a remote van. Nohar opened the front door and waved at the cab. Then he turned to Angel and Stephie. Stephie had somehow made some of Manny's clean clothes fit her even when the proportions were all wrong.
She still looked good in them.
"You both know what you're supposed to do?"
"Sure, Kit, no prob."
Nohar shook his head. He was trusting the rabbit, but he wanted to be sure she got it right. "Let me hear it."
Stephie and Angel looked at each other. Stephie cocked her head and motioned with the palm of her hand, Angel first. "Right, Kit, urn, we go to the Hertz counter at the airport—"
"Hopkins."
"Lady above, I know that. There's a prepaid '51, ah-"
"Maduro, it's a black, General Motors Maduro sports coupe." Stephie gave him a critical look and Nohar reined himself in.
Angel rolled her eyes so the whites could be seen. "Lemme finish the rundown,
Kit. Paid for with Pink— Stephie's—new name." The little scar pulled into a smile at Stephie's expense. Stephie didn't seem to mind.
The name was Bobby's doing. He had programmed a shell identity over Stephie's card. It wouldn't fool a real close scrutiny. However, it would run up false data trail on any casual ID scan. It was a total software construct—Bobby didn't even need to see the card. The software would self-delete when its usefulness was expired.
"—then we blow to the other end of the country, and shack up together across
the line in Geauga—she
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drives so pink law don't stop us. Woodstar Motel is in Chesterland, off highway 322."
"Good enough. I'll get word down as soon as the shit clears."
Nohar smiled at the rabbit, and, to his surprise, he got a full smile back.
He piled them into the Tory and paid Ruby. The cabby must have been getting used to moreys. She didn't even comment on Angel, who was buried in one of Nohar's old concert T-shirts.
Stephie mouthed, "I'll miss you," out the window as Nohar shut the door.
The cab drove west, toward the airport. Nohar was left alone in front of Manny's house. He kept looking down the road long after the Tory had passed from view.
He yawned, walked back into the house, and planted himself next to the comm. The chair still smelled of his blood.
Tonight was the meeting with Smith. He'd pretty much decided he was going to tell that blob of flesh to go straight to hell if he didn't get the full story on MLI. Things were too dangerous now to cater to his client's sense of secrecy. Smith's lockjaw might have already cost a few hundred people their lives.
He stretched and tried to make sense out of it all.
Johnson's death had an air of precision and forethought about it.
Staring with the 4th, the deaths in the Binder campaign were loud, messy, and seemed to fit into a nationwide spree of violence by the Zipheads. Violence that seemed engineered to resonate with the riots of eleven years ago. Up to and including starting the violence on the generally accepted anniversary date, August 4th. It was a coordinated effort by the Zips to scare the pinks shitless.
Nohar raked his claws across the armrest of the chair. The upholstery ripped. The Zips weren't making sense. The Zipperheads FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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were drug dealers, not terrorists. What kind of profit would there be in encouraging the pinks to clamp down? If there's a new wave of morey riots, nobody wins.
Somehow, it also seemed MLI was involved with the Zips. That made little sense either. It was also hard to deny. The rats'd kept showing up, ever since he'd discovered Hassan. He wouldn't be surprised if MLI was using those green remote vans to smuggle the rats back and forth. Especially after he saw that van shooting out of Thomson's building. There was also no denying that there was some higher authority than the Zips, represented by Hassan. From Angel it sounded like Terin was under somebody's thumb—her supplier?
Was it MLI?
And, even embedded in a wave of rodent terrorism, the deaths were going to focus everyone's attention on the Binder campaign. If there was some information buried in the campaign they—Young's nebulous them— were trying to cover up, this would be counterproductive—wouldn't it?
Nohar fell asleep feeling like he had forgotten something.
Manny woke Nohar up. He was home early.
"Where are the girls?"
Nohar yawned and sat up. "I sent them to a motel out of town, out of harm's way—"
"As opposed to you . . . and me."
Nohar was stung by that. "IVe been trying to keep you out of this. That's why I sent them—"
Manny sighed and sat down on the couch, across from him. Manny formed his engineered surgeon's hands into a peak before the tip of his nose. "Has it ever occurred to you that I don't want to be left out?"
Nohar didn't respond.
"Why do you think I told you you could come here if things got rough? Why do you think I help you with all those missing persons investigations? Why do you
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think I took that slug out of your hip?'' Manny shook his head. "When you left home and disappeared with that gang, I knew there was no way I would ever talk sense to you. But I have the right to know what you get mixed-up in. I promised Orai I'd keep an eye on you."
Manny stopped talking. The only sounds now were the faint buzz of a fluorescent and Nohar's own breathing.
"I've already involved you in enough to lose your job—"
Manny cast a glance out the window, toward the driveway where the van was parked. "I was trained to save lives. Today, we had an emergency, the 747. So damn many bodies to identify. We needed all the help we could get. They dismissed me from the scene because there weren 't any morey dead. You think I really care about conflict of interest?"
Manny deserved to know.
Nohar told him everything, including the money, the frank, Hassan—everything. Manny didn't interrupt, didn't ask for elaboration. He just sat and listened. Nodded a few times. Fidgeted a little with his hands. Otherwise he let Nohar explain the last week—
By the time Nohar was done, the sky outside had turned blood-red.
Manny seemed to weigh his response before he said anything. When he spoke, it was in the even tones of his professional voice, as if he was describing a corpse he had dissected. "You're right. Your frank is not from South Africa. All their franks have been cataloged since the coup d'etat in Pretoria. What you describe isn't anything they came up with, and it doesn't sound Israeli or Japanese. On the other hand, the way you describe Isham, it's pretty clear she's a Mossad assassin strain, something they co-opted after the invasion of Jordan. Hassan's Afghani, a strain they abandoned after the war, likes killing too much—"