Benny whistled softly. “No wonder you got the whole town stepping on eggshells around you. It’s nutso. I never seen that about nobody outside the Borgata, you know?”
“The louder the gab, the bigger the target, kid. Trust me, I’d rather not be mentioned at all.”
“I guess. And this psycho chick is your ex?”
“Yeah. Not that I remember her. Apparently she’s not all that good at the whole ‘letting go’ thing.”
Benny shook his head. “Damn. And I thought I’d met some jingle-brained dames.” He glanced out the window. “Hey — where are we headed, anyway? I told you my uncle wanted you to come in.”
“Gotta make a detour to the last place I wanna go to see the last person I wanna see, like I told you earlier.”
“This Hunter Valentino pal of yours?”
“He’s not my pal.”
“Then who the hell is he?”
I sighed. “He’s an ‘it’, actually. A synoid. A synoid that happens to be in possession of my old memories.”
For once Benny and Natasha were too shocked to say anything else.
“Hell, Mick.” Benny took an uneasy glance around. “Think your synoid pal could’ve picked a crappier part of town?”
I couldn’t argue. Hunter hung his hat in the crummiest section of the West Docks. If there was a worse stretch of gutters and ramshackle dives in New Haven I didn’t know about it. The air reeked of old fish guts and fresh urine. The sunlight was smothered by thick cloud cover, casting the entire district in a tangle of fog and shadows.
The rain returned just as Maxine rolled to a stop in front of one of the ugliest houses on the street. On the opposite side was the West River. The waters were as black as the night I emerged from them with no memory of how I got there.
Benny looked on the verge of another breakdown. “A lotta rubes get fitted for cement shoes and dropped off in the river around here. I seen it happen a couple of times. My uncle thought it’d make a man outta me.” His whimpering tone indicated the experiment was a complete failure.
“Who would put a synoid here?” Natasha peered into the gloom from the relative safety of the back seat. “There’s nothing for it to do.”
“Hunter’s not your average synoid, sweetheart. He put himself here, probably because it’s the last place someone would look for him.”
“Why do you keep calling it ‘him’? And how could it put itself anywhere? Synoids can’t override their programming. Someone has to be in control, or they automatically shut themselves down.”
I opened the door and stepped out. “Like I told you. This one’s not your average. You’re right about him being unnatural. Synoids function according to their design and purpose, but Hunter’s different. He’s a highly advanced prototype that just so happens to host my downloaded memories.”
“What does that even mean, Mick?”
“It means he knows me far better than I know myself.” I stared at the forbidding doorway of the ramshackle house. “It also means he’s about the creepiest thing I’ve ever encountered. Benny, stay here and—”
“—watch her with my life. I got it by now, Mick.”
Natasha stared at the busted-up dive we pulled up to. “You’re going in there by yourself? That’s crazy.”
I pulled out my deck of smokes and lit a gasper. “Crazy is the last thing I’m worried about, kiddo. Be back in a hot sec.”
I strode up the broken stairs real casual-like, but I felt my heart try to beat its way outta my chest. Hunter had that kind of effect on me.
The door was unlocked as usual. The interior was the same as the last time I walked in there, meaning the place looked like the previous occupants had taken blunt instruments and beat the joint to hell in a fit of drunken fury. Something rotten hung in the air, stinging my nostrils. A single flickering light bulb hung from the ceiling in the kitchen, swinging back and forth from the slight breeze. A figure sat at the rickety table, lost in the shadows of the room. One the tabletop was a cordial glass, a bowl of sugar cubes, a glass of water and a bottle that glimmered green in the dim light. I already knew what it contained.
Absinthe.
I nearly groaned out loud. The last time Hunter served me absinthe ended up in a hallucinogenic episode involving green fairies and an underwater conversation. I didn’t exactly want a repeat of that incident, but I didn’t wanna get on Hunter’s bad side, either. I sat in the wobbly chair opposite him, hoping it didn’t collapse and put me on my ass.
“Have a drink.” Hunter’s dark-suited silhouette didn’t move at all.
“Look Hunter, why don’t we just — hey what the hell?” I nearly fell over backward when I caught a look at what I thought was Hunter. A corpse sat in his place, unrecognizable because the vermin had already cleaned most of the flesh away. The skull that remained grinned at me as if appreciating the joke. Twin cameras whirred in its empty sockets as they adjusted in my direction.
“I apologize for not appearing in person.” Hunter’s voice emitted from a microphone clipped to the stiff’s suit lapel. “But I’m not sure what means Natalie has employed to tag your whereabouts. I can’t afford for you to lead her directly to me, you understand. That might result in ramifications beyond my ability to control.”
“Think you could’ve warned me first?” My stomach churned as I took in the gory details of the stiff, which looked half as bad as it smelled. “Who’s this dead chump?”
“No one you knew. What’s the term wise guys use? Oh yeah: fuggetaboutit.”
My eyes narrowed. Hunter’s tone sounded amused, which indicated a sense of humor. The Hunter I knew was never amused and usually had the personality of a stale biscuit.
I edged as far away from the stiff as I could manage without toppling out of my seat. “So you know Natalie is in town? Think that’s something you could have let me in on? Two women are dead because of that psycho.”
“That’s to be expected. It’s just one of the many tactics Natalie employed to control me. I was afraid to display affection to anyone else, relying on her as my only avenue of sexual release. More importantly it was a form of psychological control. Natalie was my handler, the mistress that kept me on a tight lease. The Secret Service needed my skills but feared my questioning attitude. Natalie was the answer. She was as skilled in psychological manipulation as she was in cold-blooded killing.”
I felt a chill, and not because of the information. It was the way Hunter spoke. Something had changed. It was as though the downloaded memories had been assimilated into his synthetic consciousness, causing him to relate them as though from personal experience.
He spoke as though he was human.
“So what — you’re scared of the dame or something? Not possible. You’re a synoid. A synthetic humanoid, Hunter. You’re not capable of emotions. That’s a human thing.”
The eye cameras whirred and clicked. “I’m an assimilation of the most advanced synoid technology combined with downloaded human memories. Your memories. That makes me something else entirely. And from what I recall of Natalie, I don’t want to be anywhere near her. She had a… hold on me. There’s no telling what would happen were I to come face to face with her in this state. It’s too risky.”
I stared at the grinning skull, trying to fight the bizarre sensation I was conversing with myself. “We need to talk, Hunter.”
“We are talking.”
“We need to talk about my past.”
“You never wanted to know anything about it before. The last time we spoke you indicated you were content in your ignorance.”