Manny put his hand to his forehead and stopped FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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talking. "I knew this would be bad. You should have seen that 747—"
"Are you all right?"
"I'll be fine, it's nine-thirty, you better read your messages if you want to meet your client on time. I'll drive you to Lakeview.''
Nohar had forgotten about the messages he'd had the cabbie fetch for him. So much had happened since—
He turned on the comm and got the ramcard out of his wallet. He put it in the card-reader. He called up the messages. There was a predictable—and out of date—message from Harsk about how, if he turned himself in, things would go easier for him. In retrospect, Harsk wasn't lying. Then there was a message from the late Desmond Thomson, the press secretary.
Thomson's face was sunken. The skin looked hollowed out and the vid anchorman's voice had turned into the voice of a jazz musician who smoked too much. "I have no idea what your interest in this is. Whatever you've uncovered, I am supposed to request that you refrain from making it public until Congressman Binder's press conference tomorrow."
Damn, if Term copied this message some time Tuesday night, when they wrecked his home comm . . .
He played the next message. It was John Smith, the frank, in the same unidentifiable location.
Light was glistening off the frank's pale polyethylene skin. The glassy eyes stared straight ahead. A pale, mittened hand adjusted the comm. Manny stared at the screen, fascinated by the figure of Smith.
*'It is worse than I think before. We meet in Lake-view and we must go public. I discover it is not one individual responsible. The whole company is involved and condones the violence. I cannot let them do this, the organization is not supposed to physically intervene. MLI is corrupted and we must make it known who they are and what they do here. I bring all the evidence I can carry to the meeting tomorrow."
226
S. ANDREW SWANN
Nohar sat back. It looked like he didn't have to threaten the guy to get the full story.
Manny was looking at him now. "Didn't you say these Zipperheads had probably copied your messages off your home comm?' *
Oh shit, Terin had that message! They knew the meeting was at Lakeview, today. They blew a 747 to get Binder. They'd certainly be willing to ambush the frank—if MLI hadn't dealt with him already.
"Manny, we got to get to Lakeview now!"
The green Medical Examiner's van sped down the Midtown Corridor. Manny drove. Manny had wanted in. He was in, and God help him—Nohar caught the thought and told himself what he had told Stephie, figure of speech.
He almost missed telling Manny where to take the turn. It was the opposite side of Lakeview that he was used to using. Nohar yelled, and Manny skidded the van into the driveway of the Corridor gate. There was an immediate problem in that this was the Pink entrance, so the gate was closed and chained shut. No-har's normal entrance was the gate on the Jewish section, which was rusted open.
It was ten-fifteen. They didn't have time to circle around East Cleveland to get to the right gate.
In a pinch, Manny's van could double as a rescue vehicle—a half-assed rescue vehicle, but a rescue vehicle—so, it had its share of equipment to deal with these situations. Nohar pulled a pair of bolt cutters and got out of the van. He walked up to the wrought iron gate and looked through.
No pinks, no security, nothing but darkness, graves, and the surreal image of a tarnished-green bronze statue of a natural buck deer. It stared at the Corridor gate. Nohar cut the chain. They had twelve minutes to beat the frank. He pushed the gate open and waved Manny into the cemetery. The headlights targeted the FORESTS OF THE NIGHT 227
statue, and for a moment it looked like luminescent jade.
Nohar jumped into the passenger seat—pain shot through his right leg—and started yelling directions at Manny.
Lakeview was a large place, and it was a good thing Nohar knew its layout by heart. They were racing through at the maximum safe speed, and it felt to Nohar as if they were crawling up the hill that formed Lakeview's geography. When they crested the bluff where President James A. Garfield resided in his cylindrical medieval tomb, it was ten-twenty.
They rounded the turn on the other side of the concrete barrier on the Mayfield-Kenelworth gate, and Nohar saw a familiar green van in the distance. The bastard was early.
CHAPTER 22
Smith's remote was pulling up to Eliza's marker, and the damn headlights were fucking with Nohar's night-vision.
"Manny—kill the lights."
There were still the lights on the remote, but they were pointed away from them. Nohar could start making things out in the gloom, like the pneumatic
doors opening on the frank's van. The frank stepped out carrying a briefcase. Almost immediately, the remote drove away.
"Stop here." Nohar had a slight hope, maybe they'd be lucky and there wouldn't be an ambush. "Radio the cops."
Nohar got out and limped up to the frank.
Smith stood alone, clutching a briefcase to his flabby chest. Now that Nohar saw him standing upright, Nohar realized he was looking at a creature that wasn't designed for bipedal motion. The frank's mass seemed to slide downward, reinforcing the basic pear shape. He still smelled like raw sewage, but in the open air, Nohar could make an effort to ignore it.
Nohar stared into the frank's blank, glassy eyes. "If I'm going to help you, Smith, you have to tell me everything, now."
"Please, let us move. We tell everything to media. We must—"
Nohar put his hand on the frank's shoulder. Even under the jacket, a jacket much too heavy for the weather, Nohar could feel his hand sink in and the FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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flesh ripple underneath. "You're going to tell me first. You've been using me, withholding information—if you'd told me abut MLI up front, that 747 might not have been shot down."
Smith said something that must have been in his native language. It was low, liquid, and sounded like a dirge. Then he went on. "Do not say that!" There was the first real trace of emotion in the frank's voice, even if it didn't register on his face or in his odor. "They do not let me know what they do.
You must understand, violence is anathema. Murder is unforgivable. They do this without me—"
Nohar shook his head. "What are they doing, and why are you out of the loop?" "We must go—"
"Look, the cops will be here any minute. So calm down and tell me why you set me up in this mess."
"No, I do not intend, you do not understand—" More words in that odd sounding language. "When authorities find out what goes on, they will not let us go public. You must make this public." Smith handed Nohar the briefcase. "It is mostly in there. I tell you what is not."
Smith loosened his tie, and the roll of fat around his neck flowed downward. The frank was trembling, as if he was in pain. "You know our purpose is to support politicians. We do so fifteen years for the benefit of our homeland. I am not just an accountant, I am—" The frank let out a word that sounded like a harsh belch. "Perhaps the right term is political officer. I enforce our laws not to physically intervene. We do not engage in violent acts. To do so will prelude a war."
The frank sounded despairing. "Fifteen years in a foreign land is too long to do such work. Laws from so far away become less binding. I am supposed to prevent this. I fail. An operation has left its controls. They try to isolate me and accelerate things beyond safe limits."