Max Collins - Skin Game

He thought about it long and hard. If he went down this path with White, his career could be over; but if he didn’t — his career could be over! Nice options.

Obviously, White was up to some bad shit here — Otto just didn’t know what, exactly. He found it difficult to believe that the government’s agenda was White’s, that Washington was behind this antitransgenic crusade. But if he went in now and tried to rat out White, who would believe him? He had no evidence, and what did he have besides his own suspicions?

Suspicions of what? Evidence of what?

And what if Ames White’s antitransgenic agenda was the government’s?

As much as Otto hated to admit it, there seemed only one way to go. Shaking his head, listening to the cover-your-ass voice once again, Otto pulled out his cell phone and dialed Clemente’s home number...

... once again, doing the bidding of Ames White.

Most of the transgenics were deep asleep, catching the peace the waking world refused them, when the call came in from a guard post near the main gate.

But Max was awake — waiting.

She keyed the radio. “Say again?”

The guard said, “Got a guy approaching the main gate. Black dude with two white uniforms tagging along.”

Looking up at the security camera, she saw Detective Ramon Clemente and two other officers at the gate. “Tell him I’ll be right down,” she told the guard.

“What’s up?” Dix chimed, unrumpling his clothes as he came up the two stairs to his work area. He apparently slept in that half-goggle “monocle” of his; Whatever , Max thought.

“Light sleeper?” she asked him.

“Always. Gotta be, if you wanna make a habit of waking up in the morning... We got visitors?”

“Time to start talking,” Max said with a nod. “You got a discreet transmitter?”

The mashed-potato-headed transgenic looked injured. “Of course I do.”

She grinned. “That’s what I like about you, Dix — always ready.”

“And willing, and able.” He pinned a tiny microphone to the inside of her black leather vest. “This baby’ll pick up both of you, easy deezy.”

“Thanks, Dix.” She started off, then had a thought. “Do me a favor?”

“As long as it’s illegal, sure.”

“Record this, will you?”

“You want the audio equiv of a paper trail, huh? No problem.”

Max skipped down to the door, then snugged on a ball cap and stepped outside. Rain fell steadily, as if God was trying to calm the world, and the night felt damn near cold. As she strode toward the gate, she could make out Clemente, bundled in a dark overcoat, the two cops behind him looking like they would rather be anywhere else.

“You reading me, Dix?” she said easily.

“Loud and clear,” came his voice in the minuscule earpiece she wore.

Max passed between two transgenic guards — fearsome critters designed to give the ordinaries pause — and approached the gate.

“You wanted me?” Clemente asked by way of a greeting.

The detective looked only slightly more rested and less stressed than the last time she’d seen him. He wore no hat and the rain ran down his impassive face like tears. His large brown eyes still appeared red-rimmed, and Max couldn’t help but wonder what sort of debriefing the detective had endured.

“I missed you,” she said, smiling at him.

The two people who had done the most to keep Jam Pony and its immediate aftermath from turning into a bloodbath faced each other with respect and perhaps a smidgen of affection.

He gave her a little grin. “I missed you too, Max.”

“You’re here because you want to be here?”

“Of course.”

She didn’t believe him for a second. “If we’re going to make progress here, Detective, you’re going to have to start telling the truth.”

“It’s the truth, Max. You know I don’t want this to get any uglier than it has to — and that’s not true of everybody on my side of the fence.”

She knew who he meant: Ames White. And she knew too that White’s influence might spread within the police department. That was why she had wanted Clemente as her police liaison.

Nodding, she said, “That’s part of what I want to talk about.”

“So, talk.”

She shook her head. “Alone — you and me.”

Now Clemente shook his head. “I have orders to maintain my bodyguards and stay on this side of the fence.”

“Orders are always contingent upon field conditions, Detective. We talk alone — inside.”

His expression revealed genuine frustration. “Max... I’ve got no power — this is way over my head.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Detective Clemente. You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“Obviously.”

“And how did it go down? You’re home asleep in your warm dry bed, and someone very important — the police chief maybe, possibly a general — demanded that you get your ass out of bed and haul it down here to the siege site.”

He grunted a tiny laugh. “That’s about it. Are you psychic, Max?”

“No — but I was bred to this kind of shit. I don’t like it, but we can’t choose our parents, can we?”

If so , she thought, I wouldn’t have picked a test tube.

She gestured in a welcoming fashion. “Come on in out of the rain — somebody on the Seattle PD must be smart enough to do that, right? We’ll get a cup of coffee and talk.”

He gave her a long look. “If I come in, what about my guards?”

“The bookends stay out here in the rain. Just you.”

Clemente eyed the two transgenic sentries. “ You’ve got two guards.”

“They’ll stay here keeping your boys company. Just the two of us, Detective.”

Nonetheless, Clemente looked uneasy.

Max stepped closer to the gate. “If I were going to kill you, Detective, you would have been dead Friday — think back... I had half a dozen chances.”

His eyes tightened, acknowledging the truth of that.

“I need someone trustworthy on your side of this thing, and unfortunately for you, you’re the closest candidate the Seattle PD has provided me, lately.”

“And you trust me?”

“So far. You trust me?”

He thought about that. “You know... I think I do.”

“Then you got two choices, Detective — come in, or leave.”

Clemente wheeled, said something sotto voce to his two companions, then turned and nodded, curtly.

“You’ll love it here,” Max said, and pulled the gate open a little.

Clemente came cautiously through. Slowly, he scanned the twisted metal and derelict buildings rising around him, making ominous abstract shapes in the rain-streaked night.

“They’re around,” Max said, referring to the transgenics he was checking for. “But they’ll leave us alone.”

She led him inside a nearby building that had once housed a stem cell research facility. It was a low-slung brick structure and the glass door had long ago been shattered, but at least the roof didn’t leak. The receptionist would have sat to the right. A door on the left led to what had once been offices, while another door in front of them went to the former labs in the back.

Inside what would have been the receptionist’s cubicle sat a desk with a straight-back chair on either side. A single lamp perched on one end of the desk, and in the middle was a tray with a pot, two cups, two spoons, a carton of milk, and a bowl of sugar.

The walls were white, the floor dusty but free of clutter, and a window was to their right. Looking out the window, they could see the main gate, and would be able to make out any movement around it.