Head On: A Novel of the Near Future (Lock In #2)(16)

“And they didn’t even have to call you in,” Tony said. “You were already there.”

“Damn it.” Tayla had flubbed her shot. Tony was now lining up his. “At the very least, you’ve had a busy day today,” she said.

“It’s going to get busier,” I said. “I have to go to Philly. I need to interview Duane Chapman’s wife.”

“Jesus,” Tayla said. “That’s no fun.”

“The rumors say they were estranged,” the twins said.

“Do the rumors say why?” I asked.

“The usual. Infidelity. Stupidity. Groupies. Stress because he’s Haden and she’s not.”

“How are you getting to Philly?” Tony asked. He sank his shot.

“The FBI office there has a visitor’s threep. I’ll use that. Also, Tony, I need to talk to you privately before I go.”

“I’m busy humiliating Tayla at the moment,” Tony said, and then shanked his shot. His ball clicked against the eight ball, which had been in front of the left side pocket. The eight ball sank into the pocket. “Shit.”

“You were saying?” Tayla said, to Tony.

“Chris cursed me,” Tony said, and then looked over to me. “You totally cursed me.”

“Sorry.”

“I demand compensation.”

“Well, as it happens, the thing I wanted to talk to you about can probably take care of that.”

The Philadelphia FBI’s guest threep was a late-model Sebring-Warner Galavant, which was mildly surprising to me. The Galavant was a midprice, midspecced model, and since the FBI’s loaner threeps tended to be gotten through civil forfeiture, they were usually either barely functional basic models, gotten from street-level miscreants, or high-end luxury gigs, gotten from miscreants higher up. With the Galavant, either some suburban Haden had gotten tangled up in a questionable enterprise, or the Philly FBI office actually bought a guest threep, and this was what they could get past the bursar.

The loaner threep was stored in a storage closet. When I accessed it, the first thing I noticed was that it was at 13 percent power. I looked down and saw that the threep had been displaced off its induction plate, shoved over by a pile of boxes.

“Well, crap,” I said out loud. I shoved the boxes back, and stood full on the plate to see if it was a high-speed charger, and got nothing. I followed the power cord. It was unplugged. I cursed and plugged it in and got back on the plate. It informed me that a full charge would take eight hours.

The door to the equipment opened and an older gentleman peered in. “Hello?”

“Do you know if there’s a high-speed induction plate somewhere in this office?” I asked.

“A what now?” the man asked.

I suppressed an urge to groan. “Are you an agent here?”

“No, uh—”

“Agent Shane.”

“No, Agent Shane. I’m custodial staff. Nearly everyone else is at home. It’s Sunday evening. I didn’t even know you were here. I just heard noises.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I just thought the rats might have come back.” He held open the door to let me out.

I exited the storage room into a hallway and called up a map of nearby fast-charge induction plates open to the public. There weren’t any. The FBI office was in a part of Philadelphia’s downtown. The area had lots of federal buildings and museums, but not a lot of places open on a Sunday evening. Looked like I would be trying to coax a charge out of the Bureau car that I’d reserved.

“I don’t have any notice of a reserved car for you, Agent Shane,” the lobby security officer said to me, when I went down to find out where the cars were.

“I sent in the request at the same time I requested the threep,” I said.

“I’m sure you did,” the security officer said. “But unfortunately that request never got to me, so I can’t unlock one of the vehicles for you to use.”

I posted up my FBI ID on the Galavant’s small chest monitor. “You can check to see I am who I say I am. I mean, beyond the fact that the only way I can access this threep is to use the FBI’s encrypted network.”

“I believe you,” the security officer said. “But I literally cannot unlock a car for you without an authorization code.”

“I sort of need a car,” I said. “Not only to get where I’m supposed to go but to charge this threep.”

“I can call you a cab. Maybe you can charge in there.”

I resisted the urge to throw a fit, because the lobby security agent wasn’t doing anything wrong. “Please,” I said.

Five minutes later the cab appeared at the front of the FBI’s building. I went out of the lobby and tapped the passenger-side window. “The cab wouldn’t happen to have an induction plate in it, would it?”

“A what?” The cabdriver appeared confused.

“Never mind.” I gave him the address of Duane Chapman’s town house. As we drove along, I shut down every possible threep system I could to conserve energy. This was going to be a long night, but if I didn’t watch my power usage, it would also be a paradoxically short one.

The Chapman town house was thronged by reporters and journalists and also by Hilketa fans, wearing Boston Bays colors. Philadelphia itself didn’t have a Hilketa team yet, although it, like Washington, D.C., was slated for an expansion team. Pittsburgh had the Pitbulls. The fact that Pittsburgh had a Hilketa team before Philly was a source of irritation to many Philadelphians.