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“That’s one of the meeting sites. We move around, churches and schools. She went to the first one with Don, with Dukes. It brought her back up, pulled her out of the depression. It gave her a grip on things again. I went with her the next time. It makes sense,” he insisted. “The program makes sense. You want to clean up the city, you gotta take out the trash. Cops and courts are cuffed. Nobody respects the law because the law doesn’t work. It doesn’t fucking work, and you know it.”
She looked at his face, the flush brought out by beer and righteousness. Not always, she thought. It doesn’t always work because it’s not going to put you in a cage.
“Who runs the meetings?”
“It’s a democracy,” Dwier told her with some pride. “We all have a say. Dukes is one of the founders. We’ve got cops, doctors, judges, scientists, preachers. We’ve got thinkers.”
“Names.”
He dipped his head. Rubbed the bottle over his brow. “We go by first names, but I recognized some, ran some others. You have to know who you’re in bed with. Look, we had some glitches with the program. Maybe we pushed things too fast. The techs figured they could delete the virus after Absolute Purity was achieved, but there was some snafu. They’re working day and night to fix it. We took up a collection for Halloway. We’re making a contribution to the Police Officers’ Survivors’ Fund in his name.”
“I’m sure that’ll give his family a lot of comfort, Dwier. Give me names.”
“You think it’s easy to weasel?” He slammed the nearly empty bottle on the table. “You think it’s easy to flip on people you’ve worked with?”
“Was it easier to kill? Easier to throw a few bucks in the hat for a dead cop because there was a snafu? I don’t want to hear about your pain, Dwier, or your skewed sense of loyalty. I want names. It comes down to you or them. No names, no deal.”
“Bitch.”
“Yeah. Keep that in mind. Donald Dukes? His wife?”
“No. He kept her out of it. He doesn’t much like working with women.”
“But he recruited Clarissa.”
“I figure there was some pressure on him to pick her up, since they had a history.” Dwier jerked a shoulder. “Matthew Sawyer, big-shot doctor out of Kennedy Memorial. Brain guy. Keith Burns, one of those computer geeks. Worked with Dukes on the virus. He was the kid’s, Devin’s, godfather. Stanford Quillens, another doctor. Judge Lincoln, Angie and Ray Anderson—their kid got raped by Fitzhugh. Angie runs her own media consultant firm midtown.”
He continued to reel off names. Eve recorded them. He ordered another beer. He wasn’t sloppy yet, she noted. Four beers in less than an hour and he wasn’t showing it. It told her his body was used to the steady intake.
There were other doctors, other cops, a city councilwoman, more programmers, two former social workers, and a minister.
“That’s all I got confirmed. Clarissa might have a couple more.”
“What about funding?”
“Everybody kicks in what they can, donates time.” He sucked on the bottle. “Some of the members got deep pockets, and put their money where their mouth is. We’ve got powerful support—political support—and we could’ve expanded on that without the accidents.”
“Who’s your political support?”
“The mayor. Peachtree, he doesn’t come to the meetings. But he sends statements, and contributions. My take is he lined up Sawyer and Lincoln, Dukes, too.”
“Are you telling me this organization generated out of the mayor’s office?”
“That’s how I see it, yeah. Peachtree wants reform, and he can’t get it through the polls. He found another way. He’s a goddamn hero.”
She stored it, clamped down on another wave of disgust. “How do you select the targets?”
“We put the names, the sheets, to the membership. We vote.”
“Who else is nominated?”
“Only got one more infected. We decided t
o hold off until we worked out the glitches. Dru Geller. Runs private clubs, sells young meat to patrons. Runaways mostly, she scoops them up and pumps them full of Erotica. Her AP’s scheduled within ten hours.”
“How do you know when it’s achieved?”
“That’s mostly tech stuff. Not my area. But we can track usage on their infected unit or units. They ran sims so they know how long it takes to finalize.”
