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Shit.
Shit, shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
And so on, world of shit without end.
I had been so fucking close, and just like that, just because of a little extra diligence by the guards, the whole fucking thing was off the track. It had been purring along like a well-tuned engine. But the purring stopped when the alarm shut down. It just hadn’t rolled the way I’d thought it would. Taking care of the chief had gone like clockwork—and then, pffft. Like I said, when everything is going right, it just means you’re being set up for the Big Dump. And everything after I short-circuited the big guy had been pure shit salad.
But I wasn’t beat. Not even close. I’ve been doing this kind of thing long enough to know that nothing ever goes exactly the way it should. Riley’s Sixth Law: Shit happens, so be ready with a roll of paper. I was ready.
In a way, I was kind of glad I’d hit a glitch. Like I said, when it’s all going smooth and easy, I get nervous. So when everything was chugging along like a well-oiled bowling ball, I was already antsy. And then when it hit a snag—okay, two snags—when it went just slightly south, I actually relaxed a little bit. A fuckup! Great! Relax and enjoy!
And move on to plan B.
I always have a plan B waiting, sometimes more than one. Which one I choose depends on what shape the fuckup takes and when it comes. At this point, I was in the end game. If it hadn’t been for a couple of small bumps, I would’ve been home free.
I still would be, just a little bit later. There was never any doubt about that. The only question was how I would do it. Or—to be more accurate—who.
So when things got quiet, I slipped away into the night. I put on my music and headed across town via rooftop express. It was a good night for it, cool and clear. I played some Buddy Holly: “Think It Over,” followed by “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” and “What to Do.” Then I stopped on a roof, right before I went down t
o the street, and switched it to Mose Allison. No reason for either choice. It just felt right.
By the time I got to my storage locker I was on the Pretenders and feeling pretty good. Sing it, Chrissie. I went into the locker and closed the door, pulled out a folder that held a bunch of alternate identities. I sat on a steamer trunk and flipped through them.
Who would work best this time? I had more than a dozen choices, each one right for a different situation. Full set of IDs, credit cards, and so on. That stuff is simple to get. You just need the right connection and a little bit of cash—or bitcoin, which is usually better. The so-called dark web has made everything easier and cheaper, but cryptocurrency works better than cash there. It’s safer.
So a new identity is cheap and easy, and I always had a bunch of cool ones ready. The trunk I was sitting on had the rest of each identity—hair, clothes, etc. Like I said, Monique helps me design them, especially the details and accessories. She never knows which one I’m going to use when. That would be too much like telling her what I was doing, and that’s a stupid risk—even with Monique. But it is kind of fun to have somebody to try them out on, and she makes them all better.
I studied each identity and thought about how I might work it from here on. Who was I this time? Aging Art Critic? Maybe—it fit the scene, but there was no real usable scenario. I flipped through a couple more. Big Fat Gawker. He would come in, have a heart attack, wait for a moment when everybody was running around panicked—and I had the fat suit already. It was hanging up right behind me.
But it bumped into the same problem that had blown up plan A. These guards wouldn’t panic. They were too good. The second Big Fat hit the ground, they’d flip their safeties off and look for somebody to try something. And there were too many of them. I flipped past Gawker and looked at a few more. I needed to be somebody who gave me some way to create a distraction that could get the guards to react my way—and still leave me free to make the move when they did. Each one depended on the same kind of distraction, and each one ran smack into the same problem. Too many too-good guards.
What would work with these guys? They were so much better than the usual rent-a-cops, it was like a brand-new concept of security. What could get them to leave me an opening? I just needed five seconds. These bastards hadn’t even given me two.
Near the end of the stack, I had a thought. The problem was not how good the guards were or how many of them there were. The real bitch was that it was too complicated for one guy, even me. What I really needed was two people. One to make the distraction and one to make the play.
That made sense. Except, of course, the part about the second person. Who? There was nobody else in the world I trusted that much. I mean, nobody at all. And why would I get somebody I didn’t trust to help me?
Stupid idea. I shook it off and flipped through to the end of the file. Possibilities, but nothing really—
A moment, please.
Just one tiny fucking moment.
Every now and then, something comes at you from left field. If you’re any good at all, you pick it up, look it over—and nine times out of ten, you throw it back into left field.
But that tenth time . . .
Riley’s Tenth Law: There’s always at least two ways of looking at everything.
I had figured that my problem was I needed a second person, and I didn’t know anybody I could trust. I didn’t have friends, and honest to God, how could I trust my enemies? And there were a lot of them.
Except—and here comes the thought—if I looked at it the other way around, I actually could trust my enemies. I could trust them to do the same thing every fucking time. They would always act in their own interest, and mostly against mine. That’s what made them enemies. So if I knew they were trying to help themselves and screw me, all I had to do was set up a little booby trap that counted on them doing exactly that. So that whatever they thought they were doing, they were really doing something else. Something that helped me.
I was pretty sure I was onto the answer. I put down the folder and switched my music back on to think it over.
