Mind Games (30 page)

T
WO DAYS LATER
, I run into Simon coming out of Mongolian Delites. He tells me the Silver Widow signed over the condo in Cubby’s building to her lawyer.

“She’s in arrears, if you know what I mean.” He gives me his innocent blue-eyed look. “We’re trying to make up her losses, which isn’t going well, I’m afraid. Never quite goes as well as one would hope,” he adds. “Come here.” He pulls me down the sidewalk and into a doorway in the next building over. “Packard knows about the gas station. What else did you tell him?”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “Just that we saw the face and went in and found the body. And that you tried to move it and couldn’t. Nothing about your quest for leverage or the fact that you whipped the guy’s finger bones all over the place.”

“I don’t care if he knows about that.”

“Go ahead and tell him, then. I’m not interested in getting between you two.”

Simon seems impressed by my free-agent attitude. “Spot any more faces lately?”

“Have you?”

Simon looks at me intently. “You’d tell me if you had, right?”

“Just as you’d tell me,” I say sweetly.

He looks at me for a long moment. “Glad we’re clear on that.”

I’m sure he’s been looking; Shelby and I have absolutely got to find a way to cover the other faces.

Even though Shelby had explained to me that Henji’s force field makes it so the restaurant can never be permanently altered, it’s still a shock to walk back into Mongolian Delites not forty-eight hours after Packard destroyed the place and see diners casually sitting in the chairs and eating at the tables that Packard so thoroughly broke. The pagoda mirror is its old cheesy and unblemished self, hanging front and center, and the painted horse heads he smashed are intact, too, perched in their usual spots.

I head back to Packard’s booth. He’s wearing the blue chain bracelet formerly worn by the skeleton of Diesel. He must have sent somebody out there to get it. I feel sad for him, and obviously it shows, because Packard gives me a dark look. He’s in no mood for pity. “The day this comes off is the day I strangle my nemesis with my bare hands,” he says.

   Over the next two weeks I prepare for an important upcoming target—a civil servant of some sort who moonlights as a crime boss; his code name is the Engineer. His most feared disease is the same as mine, vein star syndrome, which is quite convenient since I already know everything there is to know about it.

Helmut has been working on the Engineer for nearly a year, exploiting the Engineer’s distress about current events—most specifically, the plight of African elephants: the way they’re hunted for their tusks and how they cry when they lose a mate. Helmut and the Engineer have gone so far as to create a grade-school educational program about habitat loss.

They tell me a number of disturbing anecdotes about
the Engineer. He shot a man in the face. He cracked an informant’s head in a giant vise. And he gouged out a traitor’s eyes with his bare thumbs. Packard provided me with a photo of the eye-gouging victim that I deeply regret viewing. There is something profoundly disturbing about a face where the eye sockets contain nothing but bloody gristle.

In spite of all this, the Engineer assignment feels like a lucky break. Surely somebody who is involved in both the Midcity government and the criminal underworld would know something about Henji. Maybe the Engineer even knows about Packard’s history with Henji. I just have to find a way to get it out of him.

My motivation for wanting to find Henji has become somewhat murky. Some days it’s because I want to help Packard. Other days, it’s to have an ace up my sleeve, like Simon, whom I must prevent from finding Henji. But above all, the crime wave needs to stop.

Helmut has determined that opera will be my best way to get in with the Engineer, who is apparently a fanatic and currently not on speaking terms with his usual opera companions.

“I’ve been building you up as a passionate neophyte,” Helmut tells me during one of our endless Engineer meetings. “You’ve only just been introduced to the world of opera and you’re crazy about it. If he thinks he can teach you about it, he’ll ask you to accompany him repeatedly.”

Packard says, “You’ll find that the Engineer’s happiest when he’s the biggest know-it-all in the room.”

So I listen to operas, read translated lyrics, and think up good neophyte questions to ask. I also work with Strongarm Francis to create a fake identity as a neuro nurse in a Dallas hospital. Francis has connections there, and key people are ready to vouch for me if anybody decides to check. Our big story is that I’ve just
moved to Midcity with assistance from my Uncle Helmut, whom I’m supposedly staying with.

I continue to miss Cubby. Now and then I lurk in lobbies across from his office building, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, maybe soak up something from him. I suppose you could qualify it as stalking.

Once I see Cubby heading out to lunch with a group of workmates. I examine his body language, his face. He looks happy, but then he usually looks happy. Does he see my departure as a blessing in disguise yet? Eventually, Cubby sees every negative event as a blessing in disguise.

Already life with him seems like a distant dream.

   If life with Cubby is a distant dream, then my meeting with Helmut and Packard the day before I’m to start on the Engineer is a hands-down nightmare. That’s when Packard tells me the identity of the Engineer. Our murderous, eye-gouging crime boss is none other than Police Chief Otto Sanchez.

It’s so outrageous, I just laugh. “Come on.”

“It’s true.”

“No way.”

“Do you know him personally?” Packard says. “I wasn’t aware you knew him personally.”

I say, “With some people, you can just tell.”

“You
can’t tell,” Packard says. “But I can.”

“I won’t accept it.”

“He’s an image to you,” Packard says. “A man playing a role in the newspapers and on TV. Do you really imagine that when a man plays a hero on TV, it means he’s a hero in real life?”

“Sanchez is,” I say.

That’s when the dossier comes out. When my heart starts pounding, I stand up from the booth where they’ve laid out photos of dead bodies, and Sanchez meeting with shadowy figures.

“You can show me as many photos as you want,” I say. “It won’t change the fact that Chief Sanchez is one of the good guys. He cares. He fights for what he believes in.”

Packard looks at me wistfully. “You see that in him only because it’s in you. It’s called projection.”

“What about him chasing down the Brick Slinger on foot? He wasn’t even wearing a helmet. He could’ve been killed. But he went after him and he got him, and the city is safer for it. That is what a hero does. That is not what a crime boss does.”

Packard sits back. “And the man was shot twice and his head was crushed by a cinder block.”

“That fell from above.”

“So says the lone witness. Pretty convenient, that the telekinetic would execute himself.”

“Screw you.”

“I’m sorry,” Helmut says. “I’ve been working with him for months. I can’t see into him the way Packard can, but it’s crystal clear to me that this is a man with a dark double life. He is not what he appears to be.”

“Why would he fight crime on one hand and support it on the other? It’s ridiculous.”

“He’s controlling who gets caught,” Packard says.

Helmut nods. “While the overall crime rate rises faster than ever.”

“No,” I say.

Packard says, “Sociopaths are brilliant at fooling people.”

“Justine—” Helmut hands me a photo of Chief Sanchez in a car with a man who looks vaguely familiar. “I took this myself,” he says.

I hold it, trying not to shake. “So he sits with guys in cars.”

Helmut gives me another photo—the eye-gouging victim. “Hours before he was found.”

I look from one photo to the other. The man in the car with Sanchez
is
the eye-gouging victim. I feel like throwing up. “Did you see Sanchez do it?”

They both just look at me.

“Just because he was in a car with him beforehand doesn’t mean Sanchez did it. And I’m not going after him.” I grab my purse and get out of there.

The heat out on the street makes me feel woozy and crazy. I know Sanchez only through the TV and newspaper. Still.

Footsteps behind me. Huffing and puffing. Helmut. I slow and let him catch me. We walk in silence.

“I didn’t know you felt so strongly about the chief,” he says after a while, wiping sweat from his eyes. “I may have pushed to warn you sooner if I’d known.”

“I don’t think I’m wrong about him,” I say. “I don’t believe he’s bad.”

“I understand. I didn’t believe it at first, either.” We pause at a light.

I turn to him. “You don’t understand. I don’t think I’m wrong about him.”

Helmut nods.

“He’s like this symbol …” I’m fighting not to cry. I don’t trust Packard, but I’ve always trusted Helmut. “What convinced you? Because those photos—just because he was with the guy …”

“I’ve spent a year in his company. I’ve caught him in lies. I’ve seen him with people who later disappear. Justine, you know I have suspicions about those other cases. We both do. Questions about a larger intent on Packard’s part.”

I nod, feeling empty.

“I have no question as to the need to disillusion the Engineer. I guarantee you he’s leading a double life. I spoke to that victim’s widow. He’d been terrified of Sanchez leading up to that. I could send you to her. We’d have to be delicate, but …”

“The man whose eyes were gouged out was terrified of Sanchez? His widow told you that?”

Helmut nods. “I went and got the story from her afterwards. I wanted to believe in Sanchez, too, but the facts just kept piling up.”

I stare at the blur of heat over the pavement. “It’s too much.”

“You’ll see for yourself.”

I study Helmut’s rueful expression. I trust him. I do. And unlike Otto Sanchez, I know Helmut in person. I know he has a good heart. “You swear it, Helmut? You give your word on all this?”

Solemnly he nods. “Chief Sanchez is a man leading a double life. A life of lies. I give you my word.”

“Damn it,” I say.

“Come back. I’m sure Packard would let you zing him—”

“I don’t need a zing. I need to be alone.”

“Our assignation is tomorrow night.”

“Give me a few hours,” I say.

   I spend my hours rollerblading, which usually makes me feel in control of things, though I don’t feel much in control, and I almost pass out from the heat, too. Maybe it was childish, but I believed in Sanchez and now I feel disillusioned myself. I return to my apartment and shower. Little by little, I move from disillusioned to angry. I’m angry at Packard for the usual reasons, and angry at him and Helmut for not informing me sooner of all this.

But most of all, I’m angry at Chief Otto Sanchez. All this time, he was just another criminal? To think I was worried that Henji might go after him! It would serve Sanchez right if Henji went after him.

Three hours later I’m back at Mongolian Delites, still red-faced from my hot-weather workout and high emotions. “You two should’ve told me earlier who I was up
against,” I say. “Evil or no, you’re sending me to attack somebody who’s both a superstar detective and a crime boss. I could’ve used a few weeks to get used to the whole idea.”

“I didn’t want you to psych yourself out,” Packard says.

Then it hits me. “Oh my God. The berets he always wears.”

Packard smiles. He knows where I’m going with this.

“It’s not because he’s balding, or a fashion statement. It’s vein star. He wears the berets for protection from bumps on the head.” I sit back. “He’s more extreme than I ever was.”

“Your zing will devastate him,” Packard says.

I find myself hoping it does. I’m as angry about Otto Sanchez’s deception as I am about Packard’s.

The three of us review images of his associates, paying particular attention to Sophia, Otto Sanchez’s personal assistant and quasi-girlfriend.

“She’ll attend the opera now and then,” Helmut tells me, “but she hates it.”

“Wait—dates at the opera? I’m not willing to go romantic with this guy.”

“God, no!” Packard says. “Keep it on a platonic level and Otto will follow your lead. He’s a bit of a Boy Scout like that.”

“Boy Scout, sociopath, loves elephants … This guy doesn’t add up.”

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing never adds up,” Packard tells me. “He mesmerizes his victims with a fluffy, innocent exterior, right up until he rips their throats out.”

“Or eyes,” I say.

“This is a man who will toy with people and torture them for pleasure,” Packard says. “If you think he’s onto you, or if you find yourself feeling too comfortable with him, walk away.”

          Twenty-seven

H
ELMUT AND
I
ASCEND
the broad stone steps with a throng of glamorous people and move through the grand gilt doors of the opera house into an interior so dizzyingly lavish that I have to hook my arm in his just to keep my balance. We pass polished marble pillars and ornate statues of toga-clad women extending golden candelabras above their heads. A white marble staircase curves up and up; crystal chandeliers hang like shimmering upside-down trees from high above.