Angelica put her hands flat on the table and leaned across it. She looked into each set of worried, frightened, pissed-off eyes in turn. All of Feeney’s main people, or most of them: Neha “Sparks” Laghari, who ran the chop shop; Zackie Morgan, who wrangled the sex workers; Peder Finn, who ran the distillery and brewery; Xiao Han, who ran the drug lab; Rafael, who managed smuggling operations. Then, too, there was that Anaconda guy, whats-his-name, Gordonson, who was pretty thoroughly in the old man’s pocket and insisted on having his say at length about this little trouble with Wilfred. Only Shine was missing, since he refused to have anything to do with it, and Mary for obvious reasons. Raj leaned against the back wall, playing with his knife and looking uncomfortable.
“If you’re asking me to turn on John Feeney, the answer’s no,” she said when she thought one of them might break the silence on their terms instead of hers.
“Not turn on him,” Sparks said. She’d done most of the talking so far. “Make him see sense. God’s sake, Angelica, this is a nuclear device we’re talking about – and I swear, if you say ‘a small one’ again I’ll stab you in the neck.”
Angelica put her palms up in a placating gesture against her and the others muttering.
“Fine. I admit that was a poor choice of words. I’m sorry. Look, we don’t know that it’s actually rigged to explode. All we know is Wilfred tells us it is, and he was under sedation when Joff put it in.”
“What does, uh, what does Joff say?”
“He doesn’t know, Finn. Wilfred told him it was some kind of police black box or something. He’s so freaked out it’ll be a year before he sobers up.”
“So he can’t take it out?” Sparks challenged.
“Would you trust him to operate on you in this condition?”
“Christ, I wouldn’t trust him to bandage a paper cut.”
Angelica gestured. “There you go. And Mills won’t touch it. What do you want the old man to do?”
“Something! Anything! Stick him in a torpedo and shoot him out the airlock, I don’t care.”
“He’s not going to do that. Wilfred’s his grandson.”
“Kid’s a bleeding psycho,” Xiao grumbled. “Did you know he’s going around telling people to call him ‘Nuke’? He’s enjoying this.”
“For now,” Angelica said. “The thing’s got a battery in it, and it’s not intended to stay armed for a long time. Worst case scenario, we ride this out a couple months.”
“Months!” The Anaconda man’s face went red again. Angelica always thought he looked like Santa Claus like that, rosy-cheeked. “Mr Feeney told me that this would ‘all blow over’ in a week!”
“You’re too close to the old man,” Rafael said, scowling at her. “You take his side no matter what. Can we trust you not to go straight to him after this, rat us all out?”
Angelica didn’t answer right away. If she said yes too fast, they’d never believe her. So she sat down, ran her tongue over her teeth, and looked up into the anxious faces. “I’m not going to say anything to him about you. Look… I don’t like this either. Don’t look at me like that, nobody sane would like this.”
“The old man thinks it’s funny,” Sparks said. “And you know what, I’m pretty sure he has more little military toys squirreled away. He won’t give me a straight answer where Wilfred got that thing in the first place.”
“He doesn’t owe you one,” Angelica snapped.
“The hell he doesn’t! This has gone too far, Angelica. Way too far. We’ve put our necks on the line for the Feeneys plenty of times, all of us. How many times have I been raided now? Six? Seven? We don’t have to prove our loyalty to him, we’ve done that. It’s time he proved his to us.”
Angelica massaged the bridge of her nose, willing away the headache that had been her constant companion for the last two weeks.
“I understand. I’ll talk to him again, try to get him to see reason.”
“And if he won’t?”
“I’ve known John Feeney a very long time. He’ll see reason.”
“And if he won’t?”
“Then I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it,” she said, and looked again from face to dubious face in turn. “You’ve said your piece, and I’ve said what I’ll do. That’ll have to be enough.”
They seemed to understand themselves to be dismissed then, or at least they stood up. Sparks sat the longest, pretending to fiddle with her prosthetics until the others had excused themselves and let themselves out of the restaurant back room.
The mechanic looked at her cohort leaving through the closed main dining room, darkened except for the little fake candles on white-clothed round tables. She looked up to Angelica as she stood and said thoughtfully, “I’ll be honest, I expected them to open that door to find the old man and a bunch of guns.”
“I don’t work that way,” Angelica said. She glanced at Raj, who had half-heartedly advocated exactly that course of action, and gotten exactly that reply. He either hadn’t been listening or his poker face was getting better.
“You going back to the hotel?”
Angelica nodded.
“I’m moving out,” Sparks told her. “There’s a cot in my office that’s comfy enough.” Angelica looked a question, and she shrugged. “The old man’s got a magnetism to him. You stay around him too long, you listen to him too long, you start to believe him too much. I’ve got work to do anyway. There’s room for two, you know.” She grinned at Angelica’s discomfort. “Anyway, if you ask me, that’s the safest place to be if Willy’s little insurance plan goes ‘pop!’.”
Angelica shuddered. “Don’t even joke about it.”
Sparks shrugged elaborately and walked past Raj, giving him a long look but saying nothing.
“If you’re going to say you told me so,” Angelica told her brother, “let’s not and say we did.”
Raj imitated Sparks’ shrug. “Shitting hell,” he said philosophically, “I don’t know what to do either. This is crazy, but the old man’s done us right so far.”
They walked out through the Casablanca dining room. The owner, a short woman whose name Angelica always forgot, stood in the doorway twisting her chef’s hat in two hands. Angelica made an effort to smile, and left it to her brother to pay the woman off. He caught up to her a few minutes later at a jog.
“So what’s the plan, sister dear?”
“I’m going to talk to John Feeney, that’s the plan. Maybe Mary can help me get through that skull of his.”
“Maybe,” Raj said, in an odd tone of voice. Angelica looked at him, but his expression didn’t betray anything. “The thing is, what’s the old man going to do, hey? Joff won’t slice him open again, the other guy won’t slice him open at all. Pushing him out the airlock’s no good. Maybe load him up on a ship and make him somebody else’s problem.”
“I thought you were friends.”
“Best pals,” he said, and meant it. The elevator opened for them, and they made for the galleria deck. “I think it’ll all blow over, me. I think the battery in that thing won’t last, and then he’ll be giving me shit for letting him do it in the first place.”
Angelica gave him a look. “Did–”
“Didn’t have a clue. Cross my heart and hope to snuff it. But he’ll say I did when he’s got a dead lump of metal under his skin.”
Angelica fell silent, listening to the slow elevator rumble. “What about the dead man’s switch? Anything we can do about that? Who made it?”
“Sparky.”
“What!” She stared at her brother. “Are you kidding me? After all the trouble she’s stirring up over this?”
Raj laughed. “That’s why! He told her it was for a grenade, and she figured that was all right. When she found out – whoo!”
The doors opened and they strolled toward the galleria. She didn’t want to continue the conversation with people around, though there weren’t many tourists and they weren’t paying attention. By unspoken agreement they made for home at the hotel, Angelica deep in thought and Raj strolling without a care in the world, hands shoved in pockets and attempting badly to whistle.
Angelica froze at the top of the big staircase to the hotel lobby. Wilfred and that buddy of his, the dishwasher, stood loitering out front, passing a bottle between them and a couple of his other pals. Wilfred Feeney was a tall, skinny kid, and lately he’d taken to wearing all black: slacks, a tuxedo jacket, and a top hat, but with no shirt so that the big ugly thing under the skin of his chest pushed out obscenely. It blinked blue and red through his stretched pale skin with the angry red scars that bristled with sutures.
“What’s the deal, brother?” Wilfred sounded surprised and hurt, and it took Angelica a panicked moment to realize that he wasn’t talking to Raj or her, but to a big beefy-looking guy in gray spacer’s togs coming out of the hotel, some trucker chewing his thumbnail as he ambled through. He didn’t seem to realize he was being addressed until Wilfred stepped out in front of him, getting right in the guy’s face.
“I’m talking to you, brother. What’s the deal?”
“Shit,” Raj muttered.
“What the hell are you talking about?” grumbled the trucker, taking a step back and giving the kid a confused look.
“You bit your thumb at me, bruv. That’s not nice. I think you ought to apologize.”
The dishwasher chortled and took a long swig.
“I didn’t do shit,” said the trucker. “Get out of my face.”
He walked around Wilfred, putting his forearm out as a guide. Wilfred sprang back as if struck, and his top hat fell and rolled.
“What the blazes, brother! First you make obscene gestures, and now you hit me? What’s your game? What’d I ever do to you?”
Angelica looked at Raj, a sense of panic welling up in her. Raj’s face was wooden as he watched.
“I didn’t hit nobody, ‘brother’, but if you don’t piss off I’m gonna.”
Wilfred got up in his face, and the guy threw a punch. Wilfred sprang back, untouched and laughing his fool head off. Angelica felt sick with adrenaline, and then she saw the guy pull a knife.
“Raj!”
Her brother had already shot into action, as did the dishwasher whose face had gone from stoned amusement to horror. They tried to get in between Wilfred and the trucker, but the two were both eager for a fight. The trucker got the dishwasher with a punch and went for Raj with the knife, but Raj danced out of the way and grabbed the guy’s arm.
Wilfred took the opportunity to land what looked like a solid punch in the gut. The trucker stumbled and staggered back, and Angelica saw blood spread dark across his gray jumpsuit – Wilfred had knifed him.
Roaring, the wounded trucker sprang up, free of Raj’s grip. Bellowing rage, he went for the laughing fool with his own blade up. Shouts of panic and warning came from all around them and Angelica stood rooted to the spot, frozen in terror. Wilfred stood his ground, grinning like this was the best fun in the world.
And then suddenly the trucker bent back, eyes wide. Raj’s other hand came around, and he slashed the man’s throat from behind. They both fell hard.
Angelica dove to her knees, pulled the dying man away, and grabbed hold of her brother: dazed but alive. They both shook as she helped him to his feet, just as a pair of security guards rushed up.
“This fellow attacked me,” sniffed Wilfred. “Made an obscene gesture and attacked me. With a knife!” He gestured dramatically at the big man bleeding out on the deck in a wide circle of horrified onlookers. “Why, if my good friend wasn’t here to step in, things could have really blown up.” He snickered, and his stoned nervous-looking buddy half-heartedly chuckled along.
“I’m sorry for the trouble, Mr Feeney,” one of the station guards managed. Angelica stared at him. “We’ll, uh, we’ll take it from here.” He looked back at her as Wilfred sauntered away. “Ms del Rio. Uh, sorry to ask. Does that… uh… is that what happened?”
She couldn’t spare a glance for her blood-soaked brother. “Yes,” she said, summoning her iciest voice. “Of course it is. You’re lucky my brother was here, or young Mr Feeney would have been hurt.”
The guard blanched. Word had gotten around among security, she gathered. They didn’t even have their stun batons out, probably worried what might happen. They went to help Raj, who waved them off, heaving. He staggered, and she caught her breath, but he shook his head and managed a weak laugh.
“I’m fine, but I could use a drink.” He looked down into the lobby, where past a knot of people was the promise of a well-stocked hotel bar.
Angelica nodded. “I’m sure you don’t need us, officer, but we’ll be downstairs in Ama no Gawa.”
She steered her brother down the stairs through the onlookers; he leaned on her and was as easily led as if he was dead drunk already. The Japanese restaurant wasn’t too busy, and she shooed a couple away from the end of the bar so that she could make him sit with nobody nearby. The frowning bartender came out, and he put on a poker face when he recognized them.
“Vodka,” she said. “Make it a double.”
“Make it two,” Raj managed. The bartender nodded, and two shot glasses appeared almost instantly. Raj threw his back and blew out a long sigh, putting his elbows on the bar top and his head in his hands.
“Are you all right?” she murmured. They were attracting stares, or the growing puddle of blood under his bar stool was.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine!” He grinned, and anyone else in the universe would have believed him. He picked up the empty blood-smeared shot glass absent-mindedly, and the hand holding it trembled. He saw her looking, pushed it away, and rubbed his face with both hands. “That was close, hey?”
Angelica couldn’t respond. She felt sick, almost dizzy. She hadn’t intended to order a drink for herself, but it suddenly seemed like a damned good idea. She picked it up with three shaking fingers and knocked it back. It went down smooth, just a burn in her throat and a warmth in her unsettled belly.
“I want to get out of here,” she said.
He nodded. “I might need a minute.”
“No. Out of here. Out of all of it.”
He looked at her in surprise. “The station? The hell for?”
“You could have been killed. Both of us. All of us. That stupid laughing son of a bitch, he’d have been delighted.”
Raj shook his head. “We’ve built up a lot here. Feeney’s been good to us. And…” He got a faraway look for a moment, then just shook his head again.
“You’re my only brother, Raj.”
“I want to stay,” he managed. She stared.
“Why? God, why? What is there here to stay for?”
“Never mind,” he said. He put on that grin of his again, and she knew that he’d shut down that window of vulnerability. Whatever he was thinking, he wouldn’t share. “It’s not so bad. And why should we get pushed off?”
“Feeney’s never going to do anything about his grandson,” she said.
Raj leaned in toward her. His grin was gone and he looked her in the eyes. “Maybe Feeney shouldn’t be the one deciding, hey?”
She sat back, looked around to see if anyone might be listening in. She shook her head, but even she knew it was just a reflex.
“They’d go along with it,” he said, his low voice urgent. “Most of them, anyway. You’ve been with him forever, Angelica, you’re practically family. It’s different coming from you.”
“Practically family isn’t family. Not since Jack died. Anyway, what if we do force him to act? What happens after that?”
Raj shrugged. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
She stared into her empty shot glass, then swiveled in her seat. She couldn’t see the casino from the back of the bar, but its lights reflected off the tables in the galleria. After a long while in silence, she made a call.
“Hey, Shine,” she said when he answered.
“I’m busy, what do you need?”
“The high roller suite still open?”
“This morning. Haven’t cleaned it yet.”
“That’s fine. I need it.”
“How long?” She glanced toward the hotel and its magnetic pull.
“A few days should be enough. Just a few days.”