“My God, Mal. What have we done?”
“The police talked to you, too?”
“No—it’s on the goddamned news. Somebody murdered him.”
“What? The cop said—”
“Drug overdose; that’s what the news said. But you can’t overdose on a DD like José y Maria, and people who are on it don’t take other drugs. They don’t work.…”
“But why would anybody want to kill him? Just a hacker who wasn’t as good as he thought he was.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was hacking for someone besides me, besides us. And he found out something dangerous.”
“Yeah. I doubt it was Rory Bell.”
“The damned drug might have been involved. You don’t buy it at Eckerd’s.” She blotted her eyes with a tissue. “If he had a source in jail, they could have killed him easily by putting poison in his dose.”
“So maybe they were oversimplifying for the press, when they said overdose.”
“Or covering up. If he was getting it in jail, he was probably, getting it from the police.”
Malachi winced. “Deedee! Maybe we shouldn’t talk about such matters over the phone. Can I meet you somewhere?”
She looked at the clock. Lecture in ninety minutes, but she could do it in her sleep. “Down at the mercado? The coffee end? As soon as you can get there.”
“I’ll be right over.” His image faded to black. She hung up and turned off the privacy shield and looked around; nobody else in the office. She got the makeup kit out of her purse and worked on her eyes and sharpened up the tattoo. It would take Mal ten minutes to huff and puff his way to the mercado.
Somewhat fixed, she grabbed a sun hat and her lecture notes and went down the hall to the stairs. A little exercise, not using the elevator, and smaller probability of running into someone.
It was already hot and muggy, under a sky like polished metal. She remembered a New York childhood when sometimes it would have snowed in October, at least by Halloween. But New York was hotter now, too.
Her parents’ weekend place on Long Island under water for the past decade.
She got an iced coffee from a black kid wearing an Italian peasant outfit, and sat at a picnic table in the shade, pretending to study her notes.
Poor Ybor. She already hated herself for having set him up for jail. And he’d been loyal during the trial, not implicating her. Had he kept that silence in jail? Did the people who killed him know that she was an accomplice?
Accomplice, hell. She was the criminal, and Ybor was just a convenient tool. Or she and Malachi shared the guilt; didn’t he start it?
He sat down heavily across from her, mopping the back of his neck and his various chins.
“No hat, Mal?”
“Forgot it till I was outside. So it couldn’t have been an overdose?”
“No; that’s impossible with bioreflexive DDs. If you shot yourself up ten times, the effect would be the same intensity and duration as one dose. I suppose your penis would hurt more.”
He made a face. “I asked for a copy of the police report. That’s legitimate. We’re still his employer of record. But I doubt it will have anything of interest.”
“Better hope it doesn’t. Anything of interest probably would point back to us. Or at least to me.”
“It might be me as well. During the confusion of the arrest, I picked up the crystal he’d been working on. The policeman saw me do it, or do something, and asked about it later. I sort of bulled my way through it. But if that was on his report, they might come around asking questions.”
“Probably not. A prison drug death, they probably just cleaned out his cell for the next guy, and closed his file. Could you read the crystal?”
Malachi nodded and wiped his face with the damp white handkerchief. “You’re on there as well as Aurora. Did you ask him to do that?”
“No.” That was interesting. “I suppose he was trying to find something on me, for future use. Did he?”
“Oh, I didn’t read through it,” he said slowly. “The file on Aurora is ten times as big; it took me a week of evenings. Nothing there, as far as I can see.”
“You might not be devious enough. Let me see a copy.”
He brought a cube from a side pocket and set it between them. “Take the original. I don’t have any use for it.”
She rolled the crystal between her thumb and forefinger. “I think this is where we vow not to betray one another.”
“I trust you, Deedee.”
“A good thing, too.” She removed her sunglasses and looked straight into his eyes. “I could hang your ass so high.…”
“Is the coffee good?”
Deedee turned around, startled. It was that crazy woman who pushed the grocery cart around. “Yes. Yes, it’s good.”
“I’m sorry someone died.” She leaned into the cart and rattled past. “Get my coffee, too.”