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Maravich found Ramirez in his office doing a deep-background profile on the MacCauley woman. It did not surprise him to find his partner had collected a mammoth amount of data on the suspect, everything from her birth certificate and property tax records to her private emails and net search history, including texts from phones she once owned.
“Anything?” Maravich jerked his chin at the screen.
“Nothing.”
“Hey, I came by to tell you, our guy’s telemetry went dark last night. Fast, like the chip blew, not like he died. I checked the logs a few minutes ago.”
“I know. I got the ping.” Ramirez didn’t look up from the search string he was typing. “They pulled the chip, so he must have made contact.”
“You think he’ll come through?”
The shorter agent sneered. “Joseph Warren is a cowardly little shit who’ll sell his mother’s ass on the street if he had to. He’ll come through; he’s too scared not to.”
“We should just snatch up one of them Children. Beat the shit outta him until he gives up the file. Then we can roll in the front door, pop everybody, and be done with it.”
“And what if they’ve made copies? It would be the smart thing to do. We can’t assume they’re stupid simply because their belief system is screwed up.”
Maravich shrugged. “They can’t get it on the news or the Net; we’ve got that shit locked down. We get a sniff of that file hitting the ether and bam! Phone, pad, or server, that IP is toast.”
“Agreed. I suspect they will attempt to copy the data on hard media—wafer or chip—and distribute it manually, like they do their flyers. They’ll need a lot of them to make a dent in the public’s apathy, so that means mass production. I told Warren to find where they’re replicating the files. We find that, we net the whole operation.”
“Suit yourself.” Maravich turned away, calling over his shoulder, “As long as I can have ’em when you’re done.”
Ramirez’s voice followed Maravich down the hall. “Of course.”
***
TRUE TO HER WORD, MOMMA Rose fixed scrambled eggs and warmed a plate of cornbread muffins she removed from the fridge. The latter she cut in half and layered with a chunk of real butter. I ate three before my stomach reminded me I’d had little in the way of solid food for the past couple of weeks, and it wouldn’t tolerate another bite without open rebellion.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” I told my hostess and... jailer?... when she asked if I wanted any more. “My stomach has shrunk to the size of a peanut over the past few months. Another muffin would be suicide.” I eyed the plate of beautiful yellow-gold muffins. “Although it would be a good way to go.”
“Well, here. I’ll put some in a poke for you to take with.”
Like the bathroom, everything in the kitchen was at least sixty years old, but every bit of it was spotless. Momma Rose opened a wooden drawer next to the sink and popped out a paper bag, into which she dropped the remaining three muffins. Twisting the sack closed, she handed it to me.
“Best you hold on to that. I don’t know if you comin’ back here or not.”
“That sounds ominous.” I put the sack in my jacket pocket.
She put a hand on a prodigious hip and frowned. “Now would I waste food on a dead man? Won’t nobody do away wit’ you, Mr. Joe Warren, as long as yo’ intentions on the up-and-up.”
“Well, yes ma’am,” I told her with a straight face. “They surely are.”
“Mm-hmm.” She didn’t seem convinced. “Well, daylight’s wastin’. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“This way.” Momma Rose trundled to the front door and waited for me to catch up. She didn’t lock the door behind her when we left the apartment.
The hallway was nothing special: a central light strip, ten identical doors along each side, stairs at either end, and a landing in the middle where the elevators were located. Momma Rose’s apartment was the third down from the middle, on the side opposite the elevators. I expected to find that Precious Rose Dalrymple lived in an oasis among the destitute. That somehow she’d carved out a corner of normalcy in the middle of the toughest ghetto, the meanest of mean streets, and the territory of the most vicious gang-riddled, drug-addicted, pee-in-the-hallway tenants that a negligent god could spew from the asshole of the world. After all, like she said, this was bad old Cabrini-Green.
My expectations failed to be met.
Clean, well-lit, and neatly painted, the hallway breathed a sense of self-possessed, middle-class pride. I followed Momma Rose like a baby duckling on its first trip from the nest. What the hell kind of alternate reality had I fallen into? Did they pop me with some psychotropic drugs and implant a V-Real viewer in my head while I slept? Where were all the savage bangers with dead eyes and burned-out souls? What happened to the shit-stained and graffiti-covered walls? So far, nothing I had seen jibed with the stories circulating about the Green and its inhabitants—its inmates, I should say. Last night, it was Stonehenge and his five carbon copies, the true-to-life bangers who held me down and stuck a knife in me. They were the reality I expected, not this make-believe scene from daytime vids.
The elevator dinged, and we rode in silence from what turned out to be the top floor (15th) to the 4th. The elevator opened to a landing much like the one we left, except this one had signs on the opposite wall pointing in each direction, with labels like: BLDG REP and COUNCIL. We turned right toward CMD CTR. I followed Momma Rose past open office doors, beyond which uniformly dressed black men worked on data terminals. Each wore a black shirt and khaki pants. Everyone was clean, apparently healthy, energetic, and efficient.
Just your typical gang-ridden cesspool.
The door at the end of the hall stood open, and Momma Rose waltzed in without knocking. I tagged along in her wake, slowing at the doorway and stopping inside the threshold as the man behind a mahogany desk stood up.
“My Precious Rose,” the man boomed with a laugh. “How good it is to see you again.”
“Franklin Rogers,” she scolded, “keep that devil’s tongue in your head and don’t try and sweet-talk me. It won’t get you nowhere in Council, y’hear.”
I’d heard of people called dynamos before, but I’d never seen one until I laid eyes on the man in the corner office. Franklin Rogers and I shared the same height, at a goose bump under two meters. And that’s all we shared. Where I had a vampire’s complexion, his face was a warm chocolate tone. Steel-belted muscles wrapped his iron frame, whereas my build resembled a men’s room symbol. Energy radiated from Rogers, while I radiated only body odor and frustration.
“Yes, ma’am,” the powerful, vibrant Rogers lamented, “I am properly chastised. I shall speak no more of your winsome beauty.” They hugged, a clash of titans, the grandma and the aging middle linebacker.
Either Rogers worked from his living room, or he decorated his office like a living room. By the far wall stood a desk the size of a pool table. Behind it a window showed gray sky and the red brick of a far building. Bookcases bracketed the desk, each shelf packed with real paperbound books. Lamps lit the room. Paintings and photographs of famous African-Americans hung on every spare bit of wall space. The caption on the painting nearest me said, “Frederick Douglass, Emancipation Memorial, April 14, 1876” and depicted a lion-maned black man delivering an address to a crowd of whites.
“Is this the condemned?” Rogers’ voice penetrated my woolgathering, and I nearly snapped to attention.
“It is,” Momma Rose admitted. “He says his intentions are pure, but I’m not so sure. I can’t get a good read on him.”
“That’s not like you, Rosie. What’s wrong?”
“Mixed signals, is what I’m getting.”
“Well, we’ll soon see.” Rogers clapped the old lady on the shoulder in a friendly way. He pinned me with narrowed eyes, and the bonhomie slid away to be replaced with a cobra’s death stare. “You understand, Mr. Warren, that if Millicent MacCauley does not vouch for you, a squad will escort you to the most convenient light pole, where you will be hung by the neck until dead. Are we clear on that?”
I tried to swallow past a tightened throat and nodded rather than attempt speech.
“Good,” Rogers said. His eyes released me, and he hugged Momma Rose with an arm draped over her shoulder. “Rosie, did you bring any cookies? Company will be here shortly.”