Black Heart (10 page)

I shuffle down the stairs.

It’s Agent Jones. I’m surprised. I haven’t seen him or Agent Hunt since they turned me and Barron over to the Licensed Minority Division. He looks unchanged—dark suit, mirrored sunglasses. The only difference I detect is that his pasty skin looks red across his cheeks, like sunburn or maybe windburn. He’s standing in the doorway, shoulder against the frame like he’s going to push his way in. Grandad obviously hasn’t invited him over the threshold.

“Oh, hey,” I say, coming to the door.

“Can I talk to you . . .” He gives my grandfather a dark look. “Outside?”

I nod, but Grandad puts a bare hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to go anywhere with him, kid.”

Agent Jones is staring at my grandfather’s hand like it’s a snake.

“It’s okay,” I say. “He was working Philip’s murder.”

“Fat lot of good that did,” says Grandad, but he lets go of me. He walks to the counter and pours coffee into two mugs. “You take anything in your coffee, government leech?”

“No, thanks,” Jones says, and points at Grandad’s hand. “You hurt yourself there?”

“Wasn’t me that got hurt.” Grandad hands me one of the cups.

I take a swig and follow Jones out through the sagging porch and into the front yard.

“What do you want?” I ask under my breath. We’re standing near his shiny black car with the dark tinted windows. The cold breeze cuts through the thin fabric of my T-shirt. I cup the mug closer to me for warmth, but the coffee is cooling fast.

“Something the matter? Afraid the old man’s going to find out what you’ve been up to?” His smile is gloating.

I suppose it’s too much to expect that just because Jones and I are on the same side now, he’s going to start acting like it.

“If you’ve got something to say to me, spit it out,” I tell him.

He folds his arms over his chest. I can see the bulge of his gun. He reminds me of every mobster I’ve ever met, except less polite. “Yulikova needs to see you. She said to tell you that she’s sorry for bothering you on a weekend,
but something really big has come up. She says that you’ll want to hear it.”

“Too big for them to tell you what it is?” I don’t know why I’m taunting him. I guess I’m scared, what with him flaunting my connection to the Feds right in front of Grandad. And I’m angry—the kind of anger that burns you up from the inside. The kind of anger that makes you stupid.

His lip curls. “Come on. Get in the car.”

I shake my head. “No way. I can’t. Tell her I’ll come later today. I just have to come up with an excuse.”

“You have exactly ten minutes to square this with your grandfather, or I’ll tell him that you framed your own brother. That you ratted him out to us.”

“Yulikova didn’t tell you to do that,” I say. A shiver runs through me that’s only partially from the cold. “She’d be pissed off if she knew you were threatening me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, you’re the one who’s screwed. Now, are you coming with me?”

I swallow roughly. “Okay. Let me get my coat.”

Agent Jones is still grinning when I go back into the house. I swallow the rest of the coffee, even though it’s like ice.

“Grandad,” I shout. “They want to ask me some questions about Mom. I’ll be right back.”

My grandfather comes halfway down the stairs. He’s wearing gloves. “You don’t have to go.”

“It’ll be fine.” I tug on a long black coat and grab for my phone and wallet.

I feel like a terrible person.

Whatever else I’m shaky on, I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to con the people you love.

Grandad gives me a long look. “Do you want me to come along?”

“I think someone better stay with Sam,” I say.

At the mention of his name, Sam looks up from where he’s draped on the couch. A strange expression passes over his face, and a moment later, he lunges for the wastebasket.

Hard to believe it, but someone’s about to have a worse morning than I’m having.

I don’t say anything while Agent Jones drives. I play a game on my phone and look out the window from time to time, checking on our progress. At some point I realize we’re not taking the right roads to get to Yulikova’s office, but I still don’t speak. What I do is start planning.

A couple more minutes and I am going to tell him I need a rest stop. Then I’m going to lose him. If I can scope out an old enough car nearby, I can hot-wire it, but it would be better if I could con a ride. I go over various stories in my head and settle on looking for a middle-aged couple—a husband who’s big enough not to be intimidated by my height or my brown skin, and a wife to argue on my behalf, ideally a couple who might have kids about my age. I’m planning on giving them a story about a drunk friend who wouldn’t give me his keys and stranded me without a way home.

I’ll have to work fast.

As I am thinking it through, we pull into the parking lot of a hospital, three huge brick towers linked at the base,
with an ambulance blinking its red lights in front of the emergency room entrance. I let out my breath. Escaping from a hospital is a piece of cake.

“We’re meeting Yulikova here?” I ask incredulously. Then I think better of it. “Is she all right?”

“As all right as she ever is,” he says.

I don’t know what that means, but I don’t want to admit it. Instead of responding, I try the handle, and when I can get it open, I jump out of the car. We walk together to one of the side doors. The hallway is antiseptic, typical. No one questions us.

Jones seems to know where we’re going. We pass a nurse’s station, and Jones nods to an elderly woman behind the desk. Then we walk down another long corridor. I glance inside an open doorway to see a man with a big grizzly beard and balloons around his wrists, so that he can’t bring his own hands to his face. He turns to me with a haunted look.

We stop at the next door—this one closed—and Agent Jones knocks once before heading inside.

It’s a regular hospital room but clearly both larger and better-furnished than some others we passed. There is a multicolored afghan thrown over the foot of the hospital bed and several jade plants along the window. There are also two comfortable- but generic-looking chairs sitting across from the bed.

Yulikova is in a batik-print robe and slippers. She’s got a plastic cup and is watering the plants when we come in. She’s not wearing makeup, and her hair looks not so much wild as uncombed, but she doesn’t otherwise look unwell.

“Hello, Cassel. Agent Jones.”

“Hi,” I say, lingering in the doorway like I might with a sick relative that I haven’t seen in a long while. “What’s going on?”

She looks at her surroundings and laughs. “Oh, this. Yes, it must seem a little bit dramatic.”

“Yeah—and Agent Jones hustled me over here like a house was on fire and I was the only bucket of water in town.” I sound only half as annoyed as I am, which is plenty. “I didn’t even get to shower. I’m hungover and probably stink like I’ve been using booze as aftershave—except that I also didn’t get to shave. What’s the deal?”

Jones glowers.

She laughs a little and shakes her head at him. “I’m sorry to hear that, Cassel. There’s a bathroom through there that you are welcome to use, if you’d like. The hospital has little packets of toiletries.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I might.”

“And Agent Jones can go down to the commissary and get us something to eat. The hospital doesn’t have much, but it’s not as terrible as hospital food used to be. They have decent burgers and snacks.” She walks over to the other side of her bed and opens one of the drawers in the side table, taking out a brown leather pocketbook. “Ed, why don’t you get a bunch of different sandwiches and cups of coffee. The egg salad isn’t bad. And a couple of bags of chips, some fruit, and something for dessert. Get some extra packets of mustard for Cassel. I know he likes them. We’ll sit down and have a nice lunch.”

“Very civilized,” I say.

Agent Jones ignores her looking for her wallet and goes to the door. “Fine. I’ll be right back.” He looks from me to her. “Don’t believe everything that little weasel tells you. I know him from before.”

When he walks out, she gives me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry if he was difficult. I needed to get an agent on this, and I wanted someone who’d worked with you before. The last thing we need is lots of people knowing you’re a transformation worker. Even here, I can’t count on total discretion.”

“You worried about a leak?”

“We want to be sure that when and if people find out about you, they receive that information directly from us. You know there’s a rumor that there’s a transformation worker in China? Many people in our government feel that that information was carefully planted.”

“If they have one at all, you mean?”

She nods, a smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. “Exactly. Now go freshen up.”

In the bathroom I manage to slick my hair back with water and take a safety razor to my stubble. Then I gargle with mouthwash. When I emerge, I do so in a cloud of mint.

Yulikova’s gotten a third chair from somewhere and is arranging them near the window. “Much better,” she says.

It’s something that a mother would say. Not
my
mother, but
a
mother.

“You need help with anything?” I ask her. It doesn’t seem like she should be moving furniture.

“No, no. Sit down, Cassel. I’m fine.”

I grab a chair. “I don’t mean to pry,” I say, “but we’re in a hospital. You sure you’re fine?”

She sighs heavily. “No getting anything past you, huh?”

“I also often notice when water is wet. I have a keen detective’s mind like that.”

She has the good grace to smile. “I’m a physical worker. Which means I can alter people’s bodies—not to the extent that you can, but brutal basic things. I can break legs and heal them again. I can remove some tumors—or at least reduce them in size. I can draw out an infection in the blood. I can make children’s lungs work.” I try not to show how surprised I am. I didn’t know physical workers could do that. I thought it was just pain—sliced skin, burns, and boils. Philip was a physical worker; I never saw him use it to help anyone.

“And sometimes I do all those things. But it makes me very sick. All of it, any of it, hurting and healing. And over time it has made me sicker. Permanently sicker.”

I don’t ask her about the legality of what she’s doing. I don’t care, and if she doesn’t care either, well, then, maybe we have something in common after all. “Can’t you heal yourself?”

“Ah, the old cry of ‘Physician, heal thyself!’” she says. “A perfectly logical question, but I am afraid I can’t. The blow-back negates any and all positive effects. So occasionally I have to come here for a while.”

I hesitate before I ask my next question, because it’s so awful. Still, I need to know, if I’m about to sign my free will away on the strength of her promises. “Are you dying?”

“We’re all dying, Cassel. It’s just that some of us are dying faster than others.”

I nod. That’s going to have to do, because Agent Jones walks back into the room with an orange cafeteria tray, the whole thing piled with sandwiches, muffins, fruit, and coffee.

“Put it on my bed. We can buffet off of that,” she tells him.

I retrieve a ham sandwich, a cup of coffee, and an orange and sit back down while Jones and Yulikova choose their food.

“Good,” she says, pulling the wrapper off what looks like a lemon poppy seed muffin. “Now, Cassel, I’m sure you’re familiar with Governor Patton.”

I snort. “Patton? Oh, yeah. I love that guy!”

Jones looks like he wants to choke the sarcasm out of me, but Yulikova just laughs.

“I thought you’d say something like that,” she says. “But you should understand—what your mother did to him and then what was done to fix him—he’s become more and more unstable.”

I open my mouth to object, but she holds up her hand.

“No. I understand your impulse to defend your mother, and it’s very noble, but right now that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who’s to blame. I need to tell you something confidential, and I need your assurance that it won’t leave this room.”

“Okay,” I say.

“If you’ve seen him on the news recently,” Yulikova says, “you can almost see Patton losing control. He says and does things that are extreme, even for anti-worker
radicals. But what you can’t tell is how paranoid and secretive he’s become. People very high up in the government are worried. Once proposition two passes, I’m afraid that he’s going to try to lock down the state of New Jersey, then round up and jail workers. I believe—and I’m not the only one—that he wants to bring back the work camps.”

“That’s not possible,” I say. It’s not that I can’t believe Patton might want that; it’s that I can’t believe he’d actually try to
do
it. Or that Yulikova would admit suspecting all of this, especially to me.

“He has a lot of allies in Washington,” she continues. “And he’s been putting more in place. The state police are behind him, and so are more than a few folks at Fort Dix. We know he’s been having meetings.”

I think of Lila pressing her hands to the bars as Sam, Daneca, and I sat in the jail cell after the protest rally in Newark. No phone calls, no charges, no nothing. And then I think of the other people, the ones that were reported as held there for days.

I look over at Agent Jones. He doesn’t look like he much cares either way, but he should. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it, the fact that he’s working in this division of the federal government means that he’s a worker too. If Patton is really that crazy, a badge isn’t going to save Jones.

I nod, encouraging her to go on.

She does. “I’ve been in conference with my superiors, and we agree that we have to stop him before he does something even worse. There are rumors of murders—rumors of terrible things, but no hard evidence. If we arrest
him now, he could use that to his political advantage. A very public trial, where we don’t have enough evidence, would play right into his hands.”

I nod again.

“I’ve gotten permission for a small operation to remove Patton from power. But I need your help, Cassel. I can promise that your safety will be our first priority. You can abort the mission at any time if you don’t feel completely secure. We’ll handle all the planning and manage the risks.”