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I get into bed and try to sleep, my thoughts careening between Lila and Sam. I hear her laugh and see his blood, feel her bare hands and hear his scream. On and on until everyone’s laughing and everyone’s screaming all the way down into my dreams.
The next morning I stumble out into the main room. Agent Jones is there, sitting on the couch and drinking a mug of room service coffee. He glowers in my direction in the manner of a man who has taken a shift that started many hours ago. I bet the three of them traded off all night, to make sure I didn’t skip out.
I find another cup and pour myself some coffee. It’s terrible.
“Hey,” I say, thinking suddenly of my mother and a hotel nothing like this one. “Can you really cook meth in a hotel coffeepot?”
“Sure,” he says, looking into his cup thoughtfully.
Guess Mom was right about one thing.
After I take a shower and get dressed, the rest of them are there, ordering breakfast. The whole day stretches in front of us with very little to do. Jones wants to watch a basketball game on the big plasma television, so I spend the afternoon playing cards with Yulikova and Brennan at the table. First we gamble for candy from the vending machine, then for spare change, then for choice of which film we rent.
I pick The Thin Man. I need a laugh.
15
MONDAY MORNING I WAKE up not remembering where I am. Then it all comes rushing back—the hotel, the Feds, the assassination.
Adrenaline hits my bloodstream with such force that I kick off the covers and stand, pace the room with no idea where I am going. Corralling myself into the bathroom, I avoid my own gaze in the mirror. I am nearly sick with nerves, doubled over by them.
I don’t know whether to believe Barron or not. I don’t know if I’m being set up. I don’t know who the good guys are anymore.
I thought that the people I grew up around—mostly criminals—were different from regular people. Certainly different from cops, from federal agents with their shiny badges. I thought grifters and con men were just born bad. I thought there was some inner flaw in us. Something corrupt that meant that we’d never be like other people—that the best we could do is ape them.
But now I wonder—what if everyone is pretty much the same and it’s just a thousand small choices that add up to the person you are? No good or evil, no black and white, no inner demons or angels whispering the right answers in our ears like it’s some cosmic SAT test. Just us, hour by hour, minute by minute, day by day, making the best choices we can.
The thought is horrifying. If that’s true, then there’s no right choice. There’s just choice.
I stand there in front of the mirror, trying to figure out what to do. I stand there for a long time.
When I get it together enough to go out into the main room, I find Yulikova and Jones already dressed. Brennan isn’t with them.
I drink crappy gray room service coffee and eat some eggs.
“I’ve got your props,” Yulikova says, disappearing into her room. She comes back with a paintbrush, a small tube of what looks like oil paint, a brown hoodie, a lanyard with an ID tag hanging from it, and a headset.
“Huh.” I turn the ID tag over in my hands. The name George Parker is on it, underneath a blurred picture that could pass for me. It’s a good piece of identification. The photo is forgettable and would be useless on a wanted poster or blasted across the Internet. “Nice.”
“This is our job,” she says wryly.
“Sorry.” She’s right. I have been thinking of them as amateurs, honest and upright government employees trying to pull off a scam they’re unused to—but I keep forgetting, this is what they do. They con criminals, and maybe they’re conning me.
“I’ll need you to take off your gloves,” she says. “This stuff takes a long time to dry, so if you need to do any last preparations, do them now.”
“She means go take a piss,” Agent Jones says.
I shoulder on the hoodie and zip it up, then go into the bedroom, where I fold the pictures of Patton up and shove them into the back pocket of my jeans. I put the comb in the other pocket, with the index cards. The pen and hair gel I stick into the front pocket of the hoodie, along with my car keys.
I walk back out to the table and take off my gloves, spreading my fingers out on the pressed wood of the table as I sit.
Yulikova glances at my face and then back at my hands. She picks up my right hand with her gloved fingers and draws it closer to her, turning it palm up.
Jones is watching us, readiness in every line of his body. If I grabbed for the bare skin of her throat, he’d be out of his chair and on us in seconds.
If I grabbed for her throat, he’d be too late. I bet he knows it too.
She uncaps the tube and squirts cold black gel onto the back of my hand. She doesn’t look flustered at all, just calm and efficient. If she thinks of me as anything more dangerous than just another worker kid she’s training, she doesn’t show it.
