Peeps (9 page)

“Sexually transmitted?” She raised an eyebrow. “Wait. Are you
sure
you’re not a stalker?”

I reached for my wallet and flopped it open, revealing one of the items I’d picked up from the Night Watch that morning. We’ve got a big machine that spits out laminated ID cards and badges, credentials for dozens of city agencies, both real and imaginary. This silver-plated badge was very impressive, with the words
Health Field Officer
curving along the bottom. In the ID case next to it, my photo stared grimly out at her.

She stared at it for a moment, then said, “You know you’re wearing the same shirt today as in that picture?”

I froze for a second, realizing that, yep, I hadn’t changed since that morning. In a brilliant save, I glanced down at my Kill Fee T-shirt and said, “What? You don’t like it?”

“Not particularly. So what’s that job all about? Do you, like, hunt people down and arrest them for spreading the clap?”

I cleared my throat, pushing my empty plate away. “Okay, here’s how it works. About a year ago, I was given a disease. Um, let me put that another way—I was
assigned
a specific carrier of a certain disease. I tracked down all his sexual partners and encouraged them to get tested, then I tracked down their sexual partners, and so on.” I shrugged. “I just keep going where the chain of infection leads me, informing people along the way. Sometimes I don’t get enough specific information about someone, so I have to poke around a little, like I was last night. For one thing, I don’t even know Morgan’s last name.” I raised my eyebrows hopefully.

Lace shrugged. “Me neither. So let me get this straight: You tell people they’ve got STDs? That’s your
job
, dude?”

“No, their doctors do that. All I’m allowed to do is tell them they’re at risk. Then I try to get them to cooperate and give me a list of people
they’ve
slept with. Someone’s got to do it.”

“I guess. Wow, though.”

“So far I’ve spent a whole year tracking down the offspring—or rather, the infections from that one carrier.” I smiled at my cover story’s cleverness. Nifty how I worked the truth in there, huh?

“Wow,” Lace repeated softly, her eyes still wide.

Now that I thought about it, the job I’d chosen for myself did sound pretty cool. A little bit of undercover work, some social consciousness, an air of illicit mystery and human tragedy. One of those careers where you’d have to face life’s harsh realities
and
be a good listener. By now, she had to figure I was older than nineteen—more like her age, and probably wise beyond my years.

Her potato salad arrived, and after a fortifying bite of carbs, she said, “So what’s your disease?”

“My disease? I didn’t say I had a disease.”

“The one you’re
tracking
, dude.”

“Oh. Right. I’m not at liberty to say. Confidentiality. We have ethics too.”

“Sure you do.” Her eyes narrowed. “And that’s why you didn’t want to talk in front of my friends last night?”

I nodded. My cover story was sliding into place perfectly.

She put down her fork. “But it’s one of those sexually transmitted diseases that makes people
paint stuff on the walls in blood
?”

I swallowed, wondering if perhaps my cover story might have a few loose ends.

“Well, some STDs can cause dementia,” I said. “Late-stage syphilis, for example, makes you go crazy. It eats your brain. Not that syphilis is what we’re talking about here, necessarily.”

“Wait a second, Cal. You think all the people on the seventh floor of my building were shagging one another? And going all demented from it?” She made a face at her potato salad. “Do you guys get a lot of that kind of thing?”

“Um, it happens. Some STDs can cause . . . promiscuity. Sort of.” I felt my cover story entering the late stages of its life span and suppressed an urge to mention rabies (which was a little too close to the truth, what with the frothing and the biting). “Right now, I can’t be sure what happened up there. But my job is to find out where all those people went, especially if they’re infected.”

“And why the landlord is covering it up.”

“Yeah, because this is all about your rent.”

She raised her hands. “Hey, I didn’t know you were all into saving the world, okay? I just thought you were a stalker ex-boyfriend or a weird psycho cousin or something. But I’m glad you’re the good guys, and I want to help. It’s not just my rent situation, you know. I have to
live
with that thing on the wall.”

I put down my coffee cup with authoritative force. “Okay. I’m glad you’re helping. I thank you, and your city thanks you.”

In fact, I was just glad the cover story had made it through the worst of Lace’s suspicions. I’d never really worked undercover before; lies aren’t my thing. She frowned, eating a few more bites of potato salad, and I wondered if Lace’s help was worth involving her. So far, she’d been a little too smart for comfort. But smart wasn’t all bad. It wouldn’t hurt to have a pair of sharp eyes on the seventh floor.

And frankly, I was enjoying her company, especially the way she didn’t hide her thoughts and opinions. That wasn’t a luxury I could indulge in myself, of course, but it was good to hear Lace voicing every suspicion that went through her head. Saved me from being paranoid about what she was thinking.

On top of which, I was feeling very in control, hanging out with a desirable woman without having a sexual fantasy every few seconds. Maybe every few
minutes
or so, but still, you have to crawl before you can walk.

“Dude, why are you scratching your wrist like that?”

“I am? Oh, crap.”

“What the hell, Cal? It’s all red.”

“Um, it’s just . . . ” I ransacked my internal database of skin parasites, then announced, “Pigeon mites!”

“Pigeon whats?”

“You know. When pigeons sit on your window and shake their feathers? Sometimes these little mites fall off and nest in your pillows. They bite your skin and cause . . .” I waved my oft-pinged wrist.

“Eww. One more reason not to like pigeons.” She glared out the window at a few of them scavenging on the sidewalk. “So what do we do now?”

“How about this? You take me back to your building and show me which apartment used to be Morgan’s.”

“And then what?”

“Leave that to me.”

 

As we passed the doorman I made sure to catch his eye and smile. If I came in with Lace a few more times, maybe the staff would start to recognize me.

On the seventh floor, she led me to the far end of the hall, gesturing at a door marked 704. There were just four apartments on this floor, all the one-bedrooms you could squeeze into the sliver-thin building.

“That’s where she lived, according to the two guys upstairs. Loud and freaky in bed, they tell me.”

I coughed into a fist, again damning my fugitive memories. “You know who lives here now?”

“Guy called Max. He works days.”

I knocked hard. No answer.

Lace sighed. “I told you he wouldn’t be home.”

“Glad to hear it.” I pulled out another of the items requisitioned that morning and knelt by the door: The lock was a standard piece-of-crap deadbolt, five tumblers. Into its keyhole I sprayed some graphite, which is the same gray stuff that gets on your fingers if you fiddle with the end of a pencil, and does the same thing to locks that Bahamalama-Dingdongs do to repressed memories—lubricates them. Two of the tumblers rolled over as my pick slid in. Easy-peasy.

“Dude,” Lace whispered, “shouldn’t you get a warrant or something?”

I was ready for this one. “Doesn’t matter. You only need a warrant if you want the evidence to stand up in court. But I’m not taking anyone to court.” Another tumbler rolled over. “This isn’t a criminal investigation.”

“But you can’t just break into people’s apartments!”

“I’m not breaking. Just looking.”

“Still!”

“Look, Lace, maybe this isn’t strictly legal. But if people in my job didn’t cut a few corners every now and then, everyone in this city would be infected, okay?”

She paused for a moment, but the ring of truth had filled my words. I’ve seen simulations of what would happen if the parasite were to spread unchecked, and believe me, it’s not pretty. Zombie Apocalypse, we call it.

Finally, she scowled. “You better not steal anything.”

“I won’t.” The last two tumblers went, and I opened the door. “You can stay out here if you want. Knock hard if Max comes out of that elevator.”

“Forget it,” she said. “I’m going to make sure you don’t do anything weird. Besides, he’s had my blender for four months.”

She pushed in past me, heading for the kitchen. I sighed, putting my lock-pick away and closing the door behind us.

The apartment was a carbon copy of Lace’s, but with better furniture. The shape of the living room refired my recognition pistons. Finally, I had found the place where the parasite had entered me, making me a carrier and changing my life forever.

It was much tidier than Lace’s apartment, which might be a problem. After seven months of living there, an obsessive cleaner would have swept away a lot of evidence.

I crossed to the sliding glass doors and shut the curtains to make it darker, trying to ignore the clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen.

“You know,” I called, “
you’re
the one who’s going to have to explain to Max how you got your blender back.”

“I’ll tell him I astral-projected. Butt-head.”

“Huh?”

“Him, not you. He had my blender all summer. Margarita season.”

“Oh.” I shook my head—infection, cannibalism, blender appropriation. The Curse of 704 was alive and well.

I pulled out another little toy I’d picked up that morning—an ultraviolet wand—and flicked it on. The demon’s eyes on my Kill Fee shirt began to give off an otherworldly glow. I swept the wand across the same wall that, back in Lace’s apartment, had held the words written in gristle.

“Dude! Flashback!” Lace said, crossing the living room. She smiled, and her teeth flickered as white as a radioactive beach at noon.

“Flashback?”

“Yeah, your teeth are glowing, like at a dance club.”

I shrugged. “Don’t go to clubs much since I . . . got this job.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” she said. “All that sexual transmission just waiting to happen.”

“Huh? Hey, I don’t have anything against—”

She smiled. “Just kidding, dude. Relax.”

“Ah.” I cleared my throat.

Nothing glowed on the wall in the ultraviolet. I held the wand closer, casting weird shadows across the stucco mountainscape. No pattern of a hurried paint roller appeared. I cut into a few spots at random with my fingernail, but nothing bright shone through.

The other walls were just as clean.

“So does that thing make blood show up?” she asked.

“Blood and other bodily fluids.”

“Bodily fluids? You are so
CSI
.” She said this like it was a cool thing, and I gave her a smile.

“Let’s try the bedroom,” she said.

“Good idea.”

We went through the door, and my déjà vu ramped up to another level. This was where I had lost my virginity and become a monster, all in one night.

Like the living room, the bedroom was impeccably clean. Lace sat on the bed while I scanned the walls with UV.

“This goo you’re looking for, it isn’t still . . . active, is it?”

“Active? Oh, you mean infectious.” I shook my head. “One thing about parasites—they’re great at living inside other organisms, but once they hit the outside world, they’re not so tough.”

“Parasites?”

“Oh, pretend you didn’t hear that. Anyway, after seven months, you’re totally safe from catching it.” I cleared my throat. “As am I.”

“So, what’s with the glow stick?”

“I’m trying to see if the same thing happened here as in your apartment.”

“The wall-writing dementia festival, you mean? Does that really happen a lot?”

“Not really.”

“Didn’t think so. Lived in New York all my life, and I never saw anything like that on the news.”

I shot her a look, the word
news
making me wonder if her journalistic instincts were kicking in. Which would be a bad thing.

“What disease is this again?” she asked.

“Not telling.”

I waved the wand at her, and several luminous streaks appeared on the blanket underneath her.

“What’s
that
?”

I grinned. “Bodily fluids.”

“Dude!” She leaped to her feet.

“That’s nothing compared to the skin mites.”

Lace was rubbing her hands together. “Which are what?”

“Microscopic insects that hang out in beds, feeding on dead skin cells.”

“I’ll be washing out my blender,” she said, and left me alone.

I chuckled to myself and turned the wand on the other walls, the floors, inside the closet. Other than Max’s blanket and a pair of underwear under the bed, the UV didn’t get a rise out of anything. Picking at the stucco didn’t help; nothing had been painted over in this apartment.

Max was a lot neater than most single men, I’d say that for the guy. Or maybe Morgan knew not to eat where she slept.

Suddenly, my ears caught a jingling sound. Keys in a lock.

“Crap,” I said. Max was home early.

“Uh, Cal?” Lace’s voice called softly, her vocal cords tight.

“Shh!” I flicked off the wand, shoved it into my pocket, and ran into the living room. Lace was standing there, clutching her wet blender.

“Put that down!” I hissed, dragging her toward the glass doors that led to the balcony.

I heard the lock’s bolt shoot closed. A lucky break—I had left the apartment unlocked behind us, so whoever was coming in had just
re
locked the door, thinking they were
un
locking it.