The Skill of Our Hands--A Novel Page 20

  Menzie shoved his rugby player’s body back in the little wooden chair so hard Irina thought it might splinter.

  “It’d be more work, I know.” Irina gave him a moment to feel challenged and equal to it. “But I can help you. It’s time to go public with the local insurgency story.”

  Wrong word. She saw it in the softening of his nasal-labial folds. Menzie wanted to be national.

  “You have incredible depth and detail to support a nationwide trend that spans from the heartland to the beltway,” she said. “Use these incredible pictures to highlight how insanely off the rails the war on drugs and terrorism has run. The generals are insane and the foot soldiers are brutes. And now here, in our own town, the police have assassinated a civilian. And I’m not talking Kennedys and MLK, or even the US citizen the president authorized the CIA to hunt down, target, and kill in Yemen. This guy’s name wasn’t Anwar, it was Chuck.”

  Under an African nose, Menzie’s island lips curled in disgust. “Think I don’t know that happens? I’ve never smoked a joint. I didn’t drink til I was twenty-one, and I still don’t get drunk. I’m flawless, and I’m no pussy, but I have to have a ‘yes sir!’ plan because those fuckers who are supposed to protect and serve us? They’re out to make my ass obey, and it’s even worse in Phoenix. You think I don’t want to grab this state by the scruff of its neck and rub its nose in the shit it took all over me?”

  “I know.” Irina wanted to touch him, and not just to meddle him back in her direction, but to comfort him too. She knew what it cost him to admit he was afraid. Instead, she shifted back from him to make sure he had a clear view of Amber as she made her first approach. Look Menzie, see the enemy get the girl.

  “Vee, I know we’re living in a police state,” he said, eyes focusing over Irina’s shoulder, but sounding tired rather than enraged. “We’re training paramilitary police units with tanks and drones and AK-47s. I’ve been running those stories since I was in college. The one-hundred-and-seven-year-old guy the snipers shot. The SWAT operation that killed the dude in the apartment downstairs. It happens every god damn day. And everybody nods and agrees it’s terrible. No, not terrible…”

  Derision savaged Menzie’s face as he combed his memory for the word he wanted. “Everyone agrees it’s outrageous. And they’re all justly outraged. They’ve seen the pictures of the cops pepper-spraying Occupy kids sitting on the ground. They know. Our government has declared its right to eavesdrop on any of us without a warrant and to kidnap, torture, and kill us on the President’s declaration. And the people know that too. But what are they going to do?” He closed the file. “Nothing. What am I going to do?” Menzie pointed the folder at Irina. “This is one man. The head of the fucking NSA. I can take him down. More people have been killed by cops since nine-eleven than died in the towers, but there’s no way we’ll ever tease the military and the police apart again. I can’t win that.”

  “You know,” Irina said again, her voice as gentle and comforting as her rising panic would allow. “You probably can’t win that war.” But god, she needed him fighting it. At least for one more battle. Irina took a slow breath and unknotted her hair, shaking the saksak-cooking-over-the-fire-in-bamboo smell out of it. “But is that what you want, Menzie? You want to win?”

  He looked up at her, and Irina pushed a piece of hair behind the ear with the flower to draw his eye. See the Kumal colors.

  “This isn’t a game,” Irina whispered. “You’re a warrior.”

  He looked away from her, but sat so still that Irina pressed it. “You fight the battle that’s right, not because you can win.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. Amber was due to visit the cop again soon. “That’s what they do.” Irina leaned closer, fingers on her crucifix again. “That’s the point of overwhelming force, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, ever so slightly.

  “That’s not who you are,” she said.

  Menzie looked at her and Irina wanted to kiss him, he was so brave and troubled. But not yet.

  “Link the stories. Get Alexander and Harris both recalled.”

  “It’ll never happen.” Menzie’s stubborn shoulders sagged.

  “It might,” Irina whispered. Menzie was too young and strong to be defeated. “Keep the pressure up, maybe he’ll do something stupid.”

  “He does something stupid every day. His constituents are good with that.”

  “A wider audience won’t be.”

  “Maybe not. But what would they do about it? What could I even ask them to do? Stop the drug war? Vanessa, I’m brown. They’ll call me a stoner and write off the whole thing.” He scooped the folder off the table and shook it at her. “This will be great. We’ll point and laugh and embarrass the fuck out of the head of the NSA, Mr. ‘Collect-it-All’ himself, for wanting to cosplay Picard.”

  “And he’ll step down early.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “It won’t change anything on the ground.”

  “I know.” He looked at Irina again, but his eyes were locked up tight as a SWAT tank. “Only widespread involvement can do that.”

  “Menzie—”

  “And this isn’t something individual citizens can fight.”

  “We can support the ones who fight in our name.”

  “I can’t write an exposé with ‘donate to the ACLU’ as its action item, Vee. I’d sound like an ad.”

  “Menzie.” Irina put her hand on his muscular forearm, but Menzie stood up.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m done with Arizona.” Menzie was out the door before Amber even made it back to the cop. Before Irina could tell him about the SWAT raid coming up at the library.

  The expansion of surveillance and militarization of enforcement was the most critical pivot Irina had ever seen, and one only the Incrementalists might tip the right direction, and only if they were unified. Phil’s death had brought Ren out from his shadow, forcing her to act or break, as Irina had hoped Phil’s arrest would do. But it hadn’t brought them all together. And it hadn’t galvanized the populace.

  Irina forced herself to watch Amber’s performance as if she were taking research notes, but she was nearly gagging on tears. She needed male hands and someone’s complete attention. She called Jimmy, but he didn’t answer his phone. Menzie had been her lover, off and on, for almost a year while Irina had learned his secrets and read his e-mail, but he’d walked out of the coffee shop like he didn’t owe her a damn thing.

  Irina made a phone call, and had the little shit arrested.

  * * *

  Back at Ren and Phil’s, Oskar sat alone and watched the empty pool. Inside, Ren was already asleep. Jimmy was at his hotel, Sam and Jane had gone home, either taking Frio with them or dropping him off somewhere. Irina was off somewhere doing something. Ramon was due to arrive tomorrow morning, which left—

  The door opened. Oskar looked back as Matsu emerged. Oskar made up his mind to ignore any mystical platitudes Matsu might spout—whatever the group needed right now, more conflict between the two of them wasn’t it.

  Matsu sat next to him. “Ren is in her own bed tonight,” he said. “You slept in the chair last night, so you can have the guest room. I’ll take the couch.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “Any progress?”

  “On finding Phil’s killer? No. I’ve been grazing. Nothing anywhere. The detectives assigned to it are already working on something else. Frio says it was probably a SWAT marksman, which is possible. But he was shot at close range with a handgun, which isn’t the usual SWAT M.O.”

  “Could that be deliberate? To avoid making it look like what it was?”

  Oskar nodded. “Yeah, I thought of that. It’s possible.”

  “How was dinner?”

  “Tense.”

  Matsu was silent for a few minutes. One thing that Oskar did appreciate about him was he never felt the need to fill silences.

  “We should probably rest,” said Matsu eventually.

  “You know,” said
Oskar. “Finding a recruit for Phil has been taking all of our attention. That’s part of why we—I—have been so slow to work out what happened to him.”

  “Yes,” said Matsu.

  “But somewhere out there is whoever shot Phil, and until we find out who, it’s going to be hard to find out why. And if we don’t know why, we have no way of being sure that whoever we recruit isn’t just going to be murdered again.”

  “Yes.”

  Reluctantly, Oskar asked, “Do you see anything I might be missing?”

  “I spoke with Irina briefly tonight.”

  Oskar remembered Irina’s cavalier introduction of Frio as Phil’s obvious new Second. He remembered the subtlety of her fingers on his own arm. “Oh?” he asked with careful neutrality.

  “She said it was about Ren. That it was always about Ren.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. But I think if we can figure that out, we’ll have it.”

  “In that case,” said Oskar. “If it’s about Ren, then, right now, it’s about Irina. Tomorrow I’ll find her and ask her some questions. Maybe this time I’ll be the one to shoot her in the face.”

  Matsu said nothing. His silence irritated Oskar. “Is there a pattern there?” he asked at last. “Anything that might help, a piece that stands out?”

  Matsu closed his eyes. A minute later he opened them and said, “When I examine the nodes of Phil’s death and Irina, I can see a missing set of points. There is some overlap.”

  Oskar stood up and began pacing. “I should have followed her tonight.” He stopped when he saw the stillness of Matsu’s jaw. “What else?”

  “When I overlay Ren’s grid, all I can see at the nexus of Irina and Ren and Phil’s death is a vortex, or a tornado.”

  DECEMBER, 1857

  ABOLITION AND WAR

  I’d already decided to find somewhere near the Adair cottage, because it was one of Brown’s favorite haunts. I studied the area, working out a place where I could get close enough without him seeing me. There was a long, gentle slope to the east, leading down to a creek bed. It was deep enough that no one could see me, and I could even get a fire going if I were careful to keep it from smoking too much during the day, and to hide the flame at night. I wouldn’t be able to see the cottage, of course, but I could hear anyone approaching in plenty of time.

  I got the fire going, then waited and shivered.

  The next few days were about as unpleasant as any I’d had since the War. Almost as cold, almost as hungry, lonelier, and that had been a younger, hardier Second. And he’d still been too frail to survive the winter.

  There was a lot of activity at the cabin, with Adair and his family coming and going. Brown’s wife and two of his sons arrived, which gave me hope that the old man himself would be there soon. Every time I heard someone crunching through the snow, I’d creep up like an animal, stick my head out just high enough to see, then slink back down. The effort of moving quietly through the snow was the hardest part. And then, after two days of waiting, when he finally showed up, my heart near leapt from my throat. It was mid-afternoon, and I saw him from a good distance. He was alone, walking toward the cabin with his determined stride.

  I lay in the snow, and checked the load in the Sharps. I flipped up the sight and waited. I focused on his head as he came closer, his arms swinging stiffly.

  The sky was gray; there was no sun to reflect off the barrel. I cocked the Sharps. It seemed very loud, but Brown didn’t react.

  Closer, closer. I was hidden behind a mound of snow at the top of the ridge, and he was close enough that I knew I could hit him. My finger curled around the trigger.

  SEVENTEEN

  A Mischief That Will Hurt Our Cause

  Daniel called at 6:00 in the morning, before Kate had even checked the forums to see what everyone had to say about her post announcing she’d given him up as her recruit for Phil’s stub.

  “Kate, I have to see you.”

  “No, you really don’t, dear,” she told him. “Read the research I sent you. Go to PT with Annie. Everything you’re feeling will be gone in two days. If it’s not, call me then and we’ll have coffee.”

  “No, Kate, really. I need your help.”

  There, he said it. Like he knew her switches and was willing to use them. Kate was a doctor because she helped people. It was what she did. The fact is, most doctors she knew went into medicine because of a fascination with how people worked, and a calling to make them right not unlike the way an auto mechanic feels about cars—helping people was almost an afterthought. But not for Kate—for her, that’s what it was all about, and always had been, before and after the spike that gave her access to the Incrementalists’ shared memory of history. Sometimes she thought it had changed her less than it should have.

  She told Daniel to meet her in the cafeteria of the hospital where they’d first met, but changed her mind and called him back when she got out of the shower.

  “Does your hotel have a restaurant?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, but the food’s no good.”

  “How’s the coffee?”

  “Worse.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you there.”

  * * *

  In the crappy hotel room where last night, at the last minute, she had given her name as Vanessa Pulu rather than Surya, Irina stroked the hair back from Frio’s broad forehead and fought back an odd, keen sadness. “Are you sure?” she asked a final time.

  They had been talking about it since he woke up, a little shaky and pale with the hangover nemones always get the day after being taken into the Garden, but Irina had made up her mind watching him sleep as the morning seeped into the room. Frio wiped his clean hands on the sheets and nodded. “What do I do?” he asked her.

  “We go to the Garden. Same as last time.”

  The last time had been only yesterday, for Phil’s dust ritual, but Jimmy had been the one with his fingers on Frio’s temple then. Frio got out of bed, pulled on his jeans, and took Irina’s waist in one hand. She allowed herself the comfort of wrapping her arms around him a final time. She closed her eyes. Frio put two callused fingers to her temple.

  Irina listened for the sound of surf—the purr and smash of waves gathering and breaking, wearing the world into sand, and she felt for the worn-smooth wood under her palm. As the ocean receded, the long staircase of her Garden came out of shadow behind her closed lids. She climbed the creaky stairs up, not to one of the hundreds of claustrophobic hallways this time, only to the center step where she stopped and looked up.

  To Frio, Irina knew, it would look like she was having a seizure, the way her eyelids stuttered, but she figured he wasn’t watching her face, so it didn’t matter.

  She steadied herself with one hand on the rickety banister and stretched, reaching up through the skylight, down a hall, past doors closed on whimpers and panting, and onto another landing. Its open window marked the start of Phil’s Garden as it was represented in hers, usually as a floaty vista of fat clouds and flittering birds. It was stormy today, but what Irina needed was just outside, planted in the window box.

  “We can’t be touching now,” she told Frio.

  He had been so eager, at the hotel half an hour after she’d called him from Revolutionary Grounds, and so adamant that Sam must not be allowed to get Phil’s stub. He’d told her everything, unapologetic and brass, but he was frightened now. Irina felt it in the way his fingers tightened on her hip before he let her go. She put her hand through the window and pulled the tiny, single-bullet pistol from the dirt just outside it. Phil’s stub was cold and inert, but messy. Irina tried to dust off the brown powder and strange white flakes clinging to it. She wiped it on her skirts, and scented cinnamon. Odd. She tested the pistol’s balance and slid her finger into the oval trigger guard. It felt snug and compact in her hand. She curled her finger at the trigger, and put the muzzle square between Frio’s dark brows.

  He blinked twice, two rapid beats of his lashes, but
he didn’t flinch. He stared back at her. He had closed his eyes the first time they’d kissed, and mostly watched her breasts as they made love. Near the end, he had bowed his head, like he was praying over her, and he’d come without making a sound.

  Now, for the first time, he looked right into her eyes. Irina liked it, but the gun was growing heavy in her hand. The bullet in the cold chamber twitched. It shuddered like a fledgling and, with a strong whiff of blood, broke free of its metal shell. It stretched itself backward into time and forward into Frio, molting flakes of bark. Its leading edge burned ember-bright, and its telescoping growth rings compressed all of who Phil was into a single stake, and the ritual ignited.

  Irina never remembered what happened from the moment she shaped the stub until she used it, but hours or minutes later, the bullet was a stake and the stake was a wager. It was a picket. It was a signpost in the ground, and a club in her hand. It was a torch of stolen fire. It was Phil, and Irina drove it into Frio, right between his eyes.

  * * *

  I pulled the, no, he pulled the trigger.

  He was pointing the rifle at himself. But that was impossible; his arms were too short and the odds were too long. Either he was Captain Brown, or he was—

  I was Carter, and I was jumping into the hole left by the bullet.

  Carter can’t do it. I can’t do it. Frio can’t shoot. There is too much of the noise of history, of the spiraling Fibonacci pattern of multiplied suffering. He can’t do it, but he, I, did, and the carbine, the Sharp’s, no, the Sharp’s, couldn’t take .9 mm bullets, everyone knew that, even Fred.

  I can’t won’t do it, but I do he does.

  Some of me fractures, and some of him remains like the afterimage on the retina from cannon fire at night. It smells like cordite and pomander, and I must not he must not go, but staying would be terribly, terribly wrong. Folding a hand has never before required such exertion.

  The bullet hits, splinters, misses, and I dissolve.

  * * *

  Frio gave a stifled scream like Irina had shot him, then made a worse sound. Irina staggered back, knocking her hip hard against the sharp edge of the cheap dresser. What the fuck? Frio doubled over and clamped his palms to his forehead, growling with the pain. Why wasn’t he sleeping? Irina grabbed him by his shoulders and steered him to the bed, pushed him to sit on the edge.