Blind Spots, page 14
Lance is much thinner than Owens remembers, like he’s gone vegan or survived cancer. Head shaved, downright vicious tattoos climbing up his neck. They are otherwise obscured by his flowing brown robe. Looks like a former gangbanger turned monk, which is exactly what he is.
Vidderless, too, like the rest of Reverend Miriam’s followers.
Owens stops a few feet away. Lance seems to sense Owens’s presence, and he extends a pamphlet to him.
“Are you ready for the truth?” Lance asks.
Owens lets the pamphlet dangle. “Does this mean you go by Brother Lance now?”
Lance’s face clouds. “I recognize your voice. But … from a bleak time.”
“This explains why I couldn’t find you anywhere. I heard you got out after twelve months. I also heard that you’d come to this, but I didn’t quite believe it.”
The Lance he knew was evil through and through. The murder Owens charged him with was simply the best case they had, the lowest-hanging fruit. On higher boughs were pimping, running an underage prostitution ring, several assaults. In none of those cases had they gathered enough evidence or managed to find a witness willing to testify. The murder case, albeit not perfect, had seemed their best bet. The fact that Lance only served a year burns.
“I did my time,” Lance says. “Leave me alone.”
“We need to talk about what happened to your friend Ollie.”
“Why? You still think I killed him?”
Owens doesn’t dare answer. “Remind me what you saw that day.”
“You’re a government devil. You use the vidders to control the rest of us. I see that now.”
“I don’t control anything, man. If I did, you’d still be in prison for what you did to those girls.”
Lance starts walking away. In search of a better perch to spread his creed, distribute his little tracts. He makes his way swiftly and surely, with the disconcertingly certain pace and posture of those who have gone over to The Darkness, as if they can somehow still see.
Owens follows, puts a hand on Lance’s shoulder, spins him around.
“Let me go!”
Owens keeps his voice down. “I’ve seen what you saw. You hear me? I’ve seen it too.”
Lance’s face goes from angry to confused to … frightened.
“The black marks.”
“Yeah. I saw one flee a murder scene.”
Lance’s face goes back to angry. “You … You didn’t believe me.”
Owens releases him and steps back.
“I … I may have been wrong then.”
Lance stands there another moment, then he leans over, catches his hands at his knees, as if Owens just gut-punched him. The tiny pamphlets crinkling from the pressure.
Okay, yes, the case had always troubled Owens. They get a call about a shooting, they show up in a seedy apartment that Lance was rumored to use for housing his girls. They find the body of Ollie Rice, one of Lance’s “business partners,” shot in the head, point-blank, by a .45. They find Lance slumped in a chair, big bruise on his forehead, fresh blood. They find a .45 on the floor, missing one bullet. Tests would later show both he and Ollie had BAL’s indicating shit-faced drunk.
Easy case: the two pimps had a drunken argument, Ollie hit Lance in the head with a gun, Lance then wrestled control of said gun and shot Ollie in the head before passing out.
And Lance’s side of the story? Sheer lunacy: he’d claimed someone else entered the apartment, someone he couldn’t see. A black blur. Vidder malfunction. Sorriest excuse out there. The black blur, he said, attacked them. It shot Ollie and knocked Lance out.
In Owens’s and Peterson’s opinion, Lance had been crazy fortunate to get only a year for manslaughter. But also this: why didn’t the gun have any prints on it? They figured Lance wiped it down, then dropped it before passing out. Still, weird.
And this: why didn’t the gun have any of Lance’s DNA on it, from him being hit in the head? Could he have been struck by some other object, which was no longer in the room? In which case, who had fled with that object?
Like Peterson, Owens chose not to obsess over minor incongruities. Sometimes things didn’t add up right but you trusted that God just fudged his arithmetic sometimes. Owens was glad one asshole was dead and the other would do time for it. Combo Special #1, cops called it.
Now Lance’s story makes a bit more sense.
The street prophet slowly regains his posture. “They put me in prison. For a year.”
“Your story seemed crazy then. But … I think I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
Lance laughs. A horrified kind of laugh.
“A mistake? That’s…” Shakes his head. Blind eyes darting all about as if hoping to conjure invisible witnesses. “When you ruin someone’s life, you don’t call that a fucking mistake!”
Lance knows a thing or two about ruining lives, Owens remembers. He thinks of the girls, the many who were too terrified to testify in other cases. He wonders where they are now, if they’re still alive. He’s already told Lance he was sorry once. That’s all he gets.
“Maybe it was all for the best, huh? It appears you’ve been rehabilitated, and now you’re in with the true believers. You’ve discovered all that’s right about mankind.”
Lance’s shoulders sag. “It’s not that easy. For some of us, maybe. But for the rest … it’s a constant struggle.”
Owens waits for a moment, then says, “I need to meet with Reverend Miriam.”
Lance recoils, like Owens asked him to donate a kidney. “She doesn’t just ‘meet with’ people. Only her followers. You need to become an acolyte first, then go through weeks of purification and—”
“Free manual labor, right? Transfer all your savings to her spiritual rescue fund? Quite a racket she’s got.”
“Reverend Miriam is an amazing person. She’s done so much for me.”
“Well, I’ve always wanted to meet her. And I need you to get me to her.”
“Why … Why would I ever want to help you?”
Owens steps closer, and even though his shoes didn’t scuff, he knows Lance feels it.
“Because somewhere out here is a person who fucked with your vidder and killed your friend right in front of you. They’ve killed other people too, and they’re going to do it again.” He pauses to let this sink in. “Unless I find them.”
Lance’s sightless eyes seem to peer through Owens’s skull. Then the pimp turned street prophet shakes his head.
“Bullshit,” Lance says. “You’re trying to pull something. Pull me into something. I don’t know what it is, but, hell no. Stay away from me, and stay away from Reverend Miriam. She may preach peace, you fucking pig, but we don’t always follow her advice.”
With that, Lance turns, opens his retractable cane, and taps it before himself as he makes his way, his steps appearing less certain as he reaches the first corner and turns out of sight.
CHAPTER 19
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art was not looted during The Blinding, which made it luckier than most. Some of its front windows were destroyed, but armed, robotic SecuriGuards—vanguard of the future, Owens and other cops had been warned—managed to dissuade anyone from trying to break in and make out with priceless works that they couldn’t even see.
Tonight, three days after Owens tracked down Lance, the wide first-floor gallery is hosting a gala cocktail party, a fundraiser for the city’s elite. Many rich old ladies in attendance, all of them dressed a tad more seductively than Owens thinks appropriate for women of their age; money lets you get away with it, apparently. Interspersed among the wealthy elderly are some of the young and hip, artists themselves, maybe, or successful tech business folk who like to feel artistic by donating money at events like these.
Cathedral ceiling soars overhead, Modernist mobiles dangle. The walls in this room are normally bare, Owens remembers, but today he sees several of the paintings and collages that used to reside in his apartment. The museum moved fast.
He feels uncomfortable in his jacket and tie. He occasionally dresses this way at work, but here its lack of style marks him. The wrong pattern or the wrong cut or the wrong lapels or, surely, something wrong. Some whole category of wrong he doesn’t even know exists, but they all do. He wills this to end quickly.
He’d known this event was coming. The anniversary of her death, and also the anniversary (five years earlier) of when the museum added a collection of her work. That was partly why he finally decided the time had come to tell Maxine he wanted to donate her remaining pieces. They could add the announcement about the new donation to tonight’s already-scheduled proceedings, and then it would be done and he could try to move on. In theory.
Beside him, Amira is better dressed for the occasion, in a colorful red-and-white dress with a beat-up black denim jacket, just the right combination of formal and fuck-you. He knows this must be awkward for her, and he feels bad for inviting her. But he feared that not inviting her would have been worse. She’d surprised him by accepting.
“You’re a saint for coming.”
“I wanted to be here.”
Either she is a fabulous liar or a wonderful person. Possibly both.
He thinks about the other day, when he thought he saw Jeanie but felt it was Amira. This is what Ballantine had been talking about at that shareholder meeting. CleerVu: the ability to look different than before but still have people intuitively know that it’s you. He wants to confirm with her that this is what happened, and somehow she has this new functionality in her vidder already. If so, did she really do that on purpose?
But he fears the answer. And, worse, he fears that if he’s wrong, and he asks her that, she’ll think he’s either crazy or an asshole or both. You think I want to look like your dead wife? Why would I do that?
Yeah, why would she do that?
So he keeps the questions inside for now, where they hurt less. Or so he hopes.
A waiter walks by bearing drinks, and she relieves him of two. Hands one to Owens, then takes him by the forearm. “C’mon, let’s mingle with the artistes.”
The invitation claimed that the speeches would start at seven but of course things are running late. Artists. Or maybe that’s the idea—get the rich folks drunk first so they’ll open their wallets by the time the speeches come. His job provides plenty of challenges but he’s thankful it doesn’t involve asking people for money.
He’s never been particularly skilled at small talk. And artist crowds, Jesus, they’re the worst. He knows there are levels upon levels in every conversation, yet he’s usually stumbling through the ground-floor level of literalness, unclear what any of the rest even means. Jeanie would always tell him to relax, that artists and critics are just colossally insecure, so they invent their jargon and strange social customs and unwieldy hierarchies to cloak those insecurities. All the sideways looks and cultural references merely the protective layer of porcupines. Without those sharp quills, they’re just little rodents.
Still, his face is starting to hurt from all the fake smiling when he and Amira bump into a couple he hasn’t thought about in a long while.
“Mark. How are you?”
Ursula, prematurely and defiantly white hair combed in a swoop across half her face, wears a dress made from what appear to be found objects: rubber from old car tires, weird strips of plastic, pieces of dulled sea glass, even part of a street sign. Beside her is her lifelong yet seemingly asexual partner, Ash, a thin man dressed in standard-issue all black. Last time Owens saw him, he still had some hair.
“Doing all right,” Owens says. “Amira, this is Ursula and Ash. He shared a studio with Jeanie.”
They shake, stiffly. Ash always struck Owens as in dire need of a surgeon to remove the metal pole that ran from ass to skull.
“Nice to meet you,” Ash says to Amira. Lying, surely. He turns to Owens. “How’s detecting these days?”
“Chasing more people than I’m catching. How’s the painting going?” He never knows how to ask. Once he asked a painter if he ever literally watched paint dry. Didn’t go over well.
Ash doesn’t answer. Instead, he theatrically addresses his next comment to Ursula. “Detective Owens here liked to threaten me with jail time when Jeanie wasn’t in the room.”
Owens mirrors the trick, telling Amira, “Ash here liked to offer Jeanie drugs to, quote, help her art. He still owes me for the fact I never busted him for dealing.”
“And how should I repay that favor? What sins have you committed that I can pardon in return? Anything to confess?”
Owens can’t keep up with the witty ripostes, so he just raises his glass in a mock toast. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
“He’s been clean for two years,” Ursula snaps at Owens. Her voice calm but her eyes livid.
“Congratulations. Good seeing you both.”
Owens walks away, gently steering Amira with him.
* * *
Two miles away, Kai Ballantine is leaving his office earlier than usual.
Workaholism has skyrocketed thanks to vidders. With the difference between day and night all but meaningless, legion are those who work insane hours, borderline living at their offices. The youngest generation faces the worst of it, all the pressures of keeping the economy going with none of the benefits, no time to see the kids off to bed, or even have kids. Birth rates dropping, everyone blaming one societal ill or another.
So Ballantine has done his part to make EyeTech the greatest company to work for, which shouldn’t be hard, since it’s the wealthiest one on earth. Every perk you can imagine. Chefs from a dozen cuisines in the free cafeteria, exotic coffee drinks on every floor, yoga rooms, nap rooms (almost never used), masseuses (frequently used), and alcohol in all the fridges (not indulged in as often as one would think). All Kai does is work, and he expects the same from his staff, and they meet his expectations. Whether it’s out of peer pressure or love or fear, he doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
He’s talking on the phone to the COO, Seema, who manages to stay on top of every important issue while Kai tries to stay laser-focused on only two or three at a time. She reminds him of tomorrow’s most important calls, the crisis in Indonesia, the latest decision they need to make about government censors in China. Half the world’s dictators have made clear to him that they want—no: insist on—ways to censor their citizens’ vidders. Restrict what they see and how they see it. Turn the entire physical world into text they can erase or obscure at will.
“Chairman Zao is threatening to shut down our factories in Guangdong again,” Seema says.
“He’s smart—being difficult right as we release the new product.”
“Have you heard his speech yet?”
“Saw the bullet points.”
As he approaches his red sports car, the single acknowledgment of his insane wealth (not counting the houses, which he does his best not to flaunt by never inviting anyone but young women and sometimes young men to them), its doors automatically open.
Seema says, “He’s calling CleerVu a capitalist abomination.”
“Hey, he used to say that about us in general. And it’ll only help sales. His people fear him, but they still love to buy what he hates. It’s like a dysfunctional parent-kid dynamic.”
“Sure, but if he outright bans it, they can’t buy it.”
“He won’t go there.”
“Maybe not, but read between the lines. He’s angry because he thinks that if we have the ability with CleerVu to let people alter their appearance, then surely we have the ability to meet all his wonderful censorship needs.”
“You know my answer on that.”
“I understand. I’m only saying that CleerVu will make it much harder to keep walking that tightrope.”
The tightrope of letting people see the world around them, while also appeasing the many world leaders who aren’t into the whole transparency thing. Of course, it helps when you have zillions of dollars because your product is borderline essential to human functioning. Kai’s weathered plenty of storms, chitchatted with leaders of every political and governmental inclination, so this problem seems no worse than several others he’s navigated.
“Our tightrope skills remain impeccable,” he tells Seema, opening a door and tossing his bag into the passenger seat.
“I’m just worried we’ve tipped our hand. Made it too strong.”
They’ve had this argument before. He still hasn’t won her over.
“There is nothing wrong, ever, with having a superior product.” One of his slogans. “Period.”
“But people are going to be expecting more. The wrong people, expecting the wrong things.”
“We don’t do value judgments.” Another slogan.
The debate continues as he lets the e-driver take command. Leaning back into the comfortable leather seat, he’s so engaged in the conversation that he doesn’t notice he’s being followed.
* * *
Amira finds herself alone during the interminable cocktail party phase of the evening as Owens searches for the restroom. She’d never thought she’d so look forward to hearing some art curator give a speech, but she wants this over with. She feels awkward in her dress—she wears flats to minimize her height, but she still feels like an ungainly Amazon among all these precious artistes and their patrons.
She hadn’t wanted to come, no, but she knew it was an important night for Mark.
And also, yes, she wants to watch him. Wants to see how he reacts to everything. If he seems to act guilty.
She still can’t tell if it makes her a horrible person to be suspicious of her own boyfriend like this. Or, if it makes her deluded to be with a man who might possibly be a killer. Maybe she’s both.
She tries not to look too obviously stranded as she wanders between groups of people when she sees, a few feet away, Ursula. She, too, seems to be without her date for a moment, and not locked in conversation, so Amira makes a move.
