Into the Fire(81)
As he crossed North Vignes Street, he took another healthy swig, let tequila dribble through his lips and down his chin. Headlights bored into him, an oncoming rush from a just-changed traffic signal. A Subaru veered to miss him, the driver laying on the horn, a sharp blare in the thickening night.
That drew the cop’s attention.
Evan passed right before him, swinging the open container at his side, letting the tequila slosh over and douse his fist.
“Christ on a stick,” the cop muttered. And then, “Sir? Sir.”
Evan wheeled around drunkenly, one shoulder lowered, the bottle dangling. The front edge of the booze was hitting, making the colors jump, cramping his vision at the sides. His throat felt raw, the air pleasingly cool on the inhale. The booze roiled in his gut, a molten slosh. The symptoms were just starting to return, light-headedness and nausea urged back to life by the booze. If they held here, he could manage them. The streetlamps started to bleed into streaks of yellow, the glare assailing his eyes.
“Come here please, sir.”
Evan staggered up to him. The cop was handsome, fresh-faced, spots of color dotting his smooth cheeks. Uniform pressed and starched, duty boots buffed to a reflective shine. He stayed tilted back against the driver’s door, one thumb hooked through his belt. It was affected and vaguely endearing, as if he’d studied what pose a cop should strike in this situation and was doing his best to measure up.
“You have an open container.”
Evan looked at the bottle of Cuervo, feigned surprise at seeing it there on the end of his arm. “Guess so.”
“Listen, it’s a Saturday night.” The cop barely bothered with eye contact, speaking at Evan while looking around, as if reserving his focus for more important matters. “You look like you’ve had a tough day. Maybe things aren’t going so well for you right now. What do you say you just toss the bottle there in the trash and we call it even?”
Just his luck. A kindhearted officer.
Evan pretended to register the offer on a tape delay. Then he rocked forward onto the balls of his feet. “Don’ tell me wha’ ta do.”
Finally the cop broke from the cool act, coming up off the car. “Look, man, I’m really trying to help you out here.”
Evan had to figure some way to break the guy out of his hearts-and-minds campaign. As the cop came forward, Evan set his feet clumsily and swung at his face. The officer leaned back, and Evan missed by two feet. He pretended to lose his balance on the follow-through, letting the bottle slip from his booze-greased palm and shatter on the sidewalk. He wound up doubled over, breathing hard, fists on his knees, doing his best to signal that he was too compromised for the cop to bother restraining. The last thing he needed was for Officer Friendly to choke-hold his concussion back into high gear.
“Hey,” Evan said. “You made me spill my drink.”
The officer’s voice washed down at him. “Whoa, pal. Settle. Let’s pretend you didn’t do that. That’s a whole other kind of trouble, and you look like you don’t need any more.”
Evan blinked hard at the pavement and grimaced. Wondered what the hell he had to do to get arrested.
The cop was still talking to the top of his head. “I’m gonna give you a final warning. You do one more thing, I’m gonna have to take you in.”
He’d arrived at the point of no return. This was it. The last hurdle and the highest. If he wanted to save Max. If he wanted to put down the RoamZone for once and for all and ride off into the sunset.
Bent low to keep his face out of view, Evan jammed his finger down his throat and vomited onto the cop’s shiny boots.
43
Arrangements of a Muscular Nature
A conference room.
Bad things never happened in conference rooms. They smelled of dark roast and Pledge wood cleaner. The happenings within were illuminated by fluorescent overheads and the clear light of reason.
The Steel Woman was nothing if not aboveboard.
The office building in which she presided, an unassuming ten-story rise wedged into the skyscape at the north edge of downtown, housed midlevel hedge-fund firms, mortgage lenders, and limited-liability partnerships like the one she ran.
Well, perhaps not just like it.
Stella Hardwick was a businesswoman by trade. She’d aged into being something more than that, and she wore the signs of her experience proudly. Her face heavily lined, features accented with ellipses and underscores. She wore the gunmetal-gray hair from which her nickname derived in a bun that was so tightly wound it resembled a stone.
The boys had arrived a few moments prior, shuffling in with their dark suits and briefcases like escapees from the 1950s.
But if this were the fifties, she wouldn’t have been running the show. She’d have been taking dictation.
They sat in the aforementioned conference room on the seventh floor, the picture windows offering a mediocre glimpse of the city. She could afford richer views, but she’d learned that ostentation carried risks, and if the Steel Woman believed in anything beyond profit, it was risk reduction.
She occupied her seat at the table’s head and observed them. A group of men with similar proclivities. She’d painstakingly assembled them through a byzantine process heavy on allusions and reliant on introductions made by like-minded souls. The departments and agencies in which they operated were by and large clean. In each one she required only a single well-placed worker with flexible standards. They were the clockwork to her grand design, able to operate the levers of power without leaving any fingerprints. Investigations were steered, cases misfiled, dockets shuffled.