بخش 03 - فصل 11

11

Around the time Z-Boy is proving that he can still count to ten, Freddi Linklatter’s blood-caked lashes come unstuck from her blood-caked cheeks. She finds herself looking into a gaping brown eye. It takes her several long moments to decide it isn’t really an eye, only a swirl of woodgrain that looks like an eye. She is lying on the floor and suffering the worst hangover of her life, even worse than after that cataclysmic party to ­celebrate her twenty-first, when she mixed crystal meth with Ronrico. She thought later that she was lucky to have survived that little experiment. Now she almost wishes she hadn’t, because this is worse. It’s not only her head; her chest feels like Marshawn Lynch has been using her for a tackling dummy.

She tells her hands to move and they reluctantly answer the call. She places them in push-up position and shoves. She comes up, but her top shirt stays down, stuck to the floor in a pool of what looks like blood and smells suspiciously like Scotch. So that’s what she was drinking, and fell over her own stupid feet. Smacked her head. But dear God, how much did she put away?

It wasn’t like that, she thinks. Someone came, and you know who it was.

It’s a simple process of deduction. Lately she’s only had two visitors here, the Z-Dudes, and the one who wears the ratty parka hasn’t been around for awhile.

She tries to get to her feet, and can’t make it at first. Nor can she take more than shallow breaths. Deeper ones hurt her above her left breast. It feels like something is sticking in there.

My flask?

I was spinning it while I waited for him to show up. To give me the final payment and get out of my life.

“Shot me,” she croaks. “Fucking Dr. Z shot me.”

She staggers into the bathroom and is hardly able to believe the train wreck she sees in the mirror. The left side of her face is covered with blood, and there’s a purple knob rising from a gash above her left temple, but that’s not the worst. Her blue chambray shirt is also matted with blood—mostly from the head wound, she hopes, head wounds bleed like crazy—and there’s a round black hole in the left breast pocket. He shot her, all right. Now she remembers the bang and the smell of gunsmoke just before she passed out.

She tweezes her shaking fingers into the breast pocket, still taking those shallow breaths, and pulls out her pack of Marlboro Lights. There’s the bullet hole right through the middle of the M. She drops the cigarettes into the basin, works at the buttons of the shirt, and lets it fall to the floor. The smell of Scotch is stronger now. The shirt beneath is khaki, with big flap pockets. When she tries to pull the flask from the one on the left, she utters a low mewl of agony—all she can manage without taking a deeper breath—but when she gets it free, the pain in her chest lessens a little. The bullet also went through the flask, and the prongs on the side closest to her skin are bright with blood. She drops the ruined flask on top of the Marlboros, and goes to work on the khaki shirt’s buttons. This takes longer, but eventually it also falls to the floor. Beneath it is an American Giant tee, the kind that also has a pocket. She reaches into it and takes out a tin of Altoids. There’s a hole in this, too. The tee has no buttons, so she works her pinky finger into the bullet hole in the pocket and pulls. The shirt tears, and at last she’s looking at her own skin, freckled with blood.

There’s a hole just where the scant swell of her breast begins, and in it she can see a black thing. It looks like a dead bug. She tears the rip in the shirt wider, using three fingers now, then reaches in and grasps the bug. She wiggles it like a loose tooth.

“Oooo . . . ooooh . . . ooooh, FUCK . . . ”

It comes free, not a bug but a slug. She looks at it, then drops it into the sink with the other stuff. In spite of her aching head and the throbbing in her chest, Freddi realizes how absurdly fortunate she has been. It was just a little gun, but at such close range, even a little gun should have done the job. It would have, too, if not for a one-in-a-thousand lucky break. First through the cigarettes, then through the flask—which had been the real stopper—then through the Altoids tin, then into her. How close to her heart? An inch? Less?

Her stomach clenches, wanting to puke. She won’t let it, can’t let it. The hole in her chest will start bleeding again, but that’s not the main thing. Her head will explode. That’s the main thing.

Her breathing is a little easier now that she’s removed the flask with its nasty (but lifesaving) prongs of metal. She plods back into her living room and stares at the puddle of blood and Scotch on the floor. If he had bent over and put the muzzle of the gun to the back of her neck . . . just to make sure . . .

Freddi closes her eyes and fights to retain consciousness as waves of faintness and nausea float through her. When it’s a little better, she goes to her chair and sits down very slowly. Like an old lady with a bad back, she thinks. She stares at the ceiling. What now?

Her first thought is to call 911, get an ambulance over here and go to the hospital, but what will she tell them? That a man claiming to be a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness knocked on her door, and when she opened it, he shot her? Shot her why? For what? And why would she, a woman living alone, open her door to a stranger at ten thirty in the evening?

That isn’t all. The police will come. In her bedroom is an ounce of pot and an eightball of coke. She could get rid of that shit, but what about the shit in her computer room? She’s got half a dozen illegal hacks going on, plus a ton of expensive equipment that she didn’t exactly buy. The cops will want to know if just perchance, Ms. Linklatter, the man who shot you had something to do with said electronic gear. Maybe you owed him money for it? Maybe you were working with him, stealing credit card numbers and other personal info? And they can hardly miss the repeater, blinking away like a Las Vegas slot machine as it sends out its endless signal via WiFi, delivering a customized malware worm every time it finds a live Zappit.

What’s this, Ms. Linklatter? What exactly does it do?

And what will she tell them?

She looks around, hoping to see the envelope of cash lying on the floor or the couch, but of course he took it with him. If there was ever cash in there at all, and not just cut-up strips of newspaper. She’s here, she’s shot, she’s had a concussion (please God not a fracture) and she’s low on dough. What to do?

Turn off the repeater, that’s the first thing. Dr. Z has got Brady Hartsfield inside him, and Brady is a bad motorcycle. Whatever the repeater’s doing is nasty shit. She was going to turn it off anyway, wasn’t she? It’s all a little vague, but wasn’t that the plan? To turn it off and exit stage left? She doesn’t have that final payment to help finance her flight, but despite her loose habits with cash, there’s still a few thousand in the bank, and Corn Trust opens at nine. Plus, there’s her ATM card. So turn off the repeater, nip that creepy zeetheend site in the bud, wash the gore off her face, and get the fuck out of Dodge. Not by plane, these days airport security areas are like baited traps, but by any bus or train headed into the golden west. Isn’t that the best idea?

She’s up and shuffling toward the door of the computer room when the obvious reason why it is not the best idea hits her. Brady is gone, but he wouldn’t leave if he couldn’t monitor his projects from a distance, especially the repeater, and doing that is the easiest thing in the world. He’s smart about computers—brilliant, actually, although it pisses her off to admit it—and he’s almost certainly left himself a back door into her setup. If so, he can check in anytime he wants; all it will take is a laptop. If she shuts his shit down, he’ll know, and he’ll know she’s still alive.

He’ll come back.

“So what do I do?” Freddi whispers. She trudges to her window, shivering—it’s so fucking cold in this apartment once winter comes—and looks out into the dark. “What do I do now?”