Richard Morgan - Black Man / Thirteen

“Marsalis, please . I’m asking you for this. He’s my fucking brother.”

Marsalis stood there locked for a moment longer. It was like facing off against a wall.

“Ortiz, and Onbekend,” he said, as if checking a list.

Norton nodded. “Whatever you need.”

And the moment passed. Marsalis let go; Norton saw it go out of him like dark water down a drain. He shrugged and lobbed the paperweight down into Jeff’s lap. Jeff jolted with the shock, dropped his empty glass, fumbled with both hands to catch the spherical ornament before it rolled to the floor.

“Fuck d’you do that for?” he mumbled.

“You’ll never know,” Marsalis told him. Then, turning away to the door, voice trailing back. “Keep him here, Norton. Don’t touch the phones, or use yours in here. We’ll need to freeze and store their whole net as it is. I’ll clean-call Rovayo from the street, get a RimSec CSI squad over here. Going to make her day—this should be enough to lever the Cat bust wide open all over again.”

“Right.”

He paused at the door, looked back. “And don’t forget. We’ve got an arrangement now.”

Norton listened to him walk away down the corridor. Then he turned back to face his brother. Jeff looked disinterestedly up at him.

“What now?”

Sudden, pulsing rage, up from the soles of his shoes and into the space behind his eyes. He bit it back as well as he could.

“You know,” he said, almost evenly. “I told Megan about you and Nuying.”

Jeff gaped up at him, eyes cognac-veiled and confused.

“Maybe that’s simplifying it. I guess you could say she got it out of me. Or maybe not that, either, maybe we both wanted it said and we just helped each other get it out. If I’m honest, I think she already had a pretty good idea something was going on.”

Clumsily, his brother started to get up.

“You fucking traitor,” he said thickly.

“Stay in your seat, Jeff.” Suddenly, the rage came washing up out of him, would not be contained. “Because if you don’t, I will fucking kill you myself .”

And now, here it was. The moment that had been festering inside him for over two years. His brother blinking at him, like a deer staring into the headlights.

He drew in breath. He really was going to do this.

“You want to know what Megan did when she found out?” Another hard breath. “She fucked me, Jeff. We went to some motel up near Novato, and she fucked me raw. All afternoon and night. Best sex I ever had.”

And now Jeff came flailing up out of the sofa, roaring, fists swinging. Norton blocked, twisted, and punched his brother in the side of the face. The first time he’d used his enforcement training in better than a year. It felt creakily unaccustomed, but it felt unexpectedly good as well. The blow connected solidly, put Jeff down, crawling half on the sofa, half on the floor. Norton grabbed him by the back of the collar, balled fist raised again.

And stopped.

No. You’re not Carl Marsalis.

Fist slowly unflexing, dropping away. He let go of the collar. Overpowering urge to shake himself, like a drenched dog. Instead he stepped away, leaned against the edge of his brother’s desk.

“This is going to be hard on her,” he said, still breathing unevenly. “Megan and the kids. But don’t worry. When they send you up to Quentin Two for what you’ve done here, I’ll make sure she’s okay. I’ll take care of her.”

A low, grinding howl came up out of his brother’s throat as he propped himself up on the sofa, as if he’d swallowed broken glass. Norton felt a peculiarly comfortable calm settling into place on his shoulders. His breathing eased.

“We’re good together, Jeff. She laughs when she’s around me. We’ll work something out.”

“Fuck you!” Spat out like blood.

There was a timid tap at the door. Norton glanced up, surprised. “Yeah?”

The door opened and the stout Asian woman peered around the edge. “Mr. Norton, are you…?”

She stared, eyes wide.

“It’s okay,” said Norton hurriedly. “I’m Jeff’s brother, Tom. Jeff’s been under a lot of strain recently. I’m sure you’ll have noticed. It’s, uh, it’s gotten pretty bad.”

“I, uhm—”

“He really needs to be alone right now, just with family, you know. We’ve made the calls. If you could—”

“Yes, of course, uhm…” She looked across at Jeff where he now sat on the floor with his back to the sofa. Blood-flecked tissue in his nose, face smeared with tears and rage, uncapped bottle on the table in front of him. “Mr. Norton, I’m so sorry, if there’s anything at all I can do…”

Jeff Norton stared back at her.

“It’s okay, Lisa,” he said dully. “Everything’s going to be fine. Could you show my brother where we keep our medical records from the Carmel clinic.”

“Yes, of course.” Imbued with a solid purpose, Lisa seemed to grow visibly stronger again. “You’re quite sure that—”

Jeff dragged up the husk of a smile. “Quite sure, Lisa.”

He turned to look at his brother, and there was an odd note of triumph suddenly in his voice. “Go ahead, little brother. You want to see something I kept back from your thirteen friend?”

Lisa vacillated in the doorway. Norton stared at Jeff.

“This is about Onbekend?”

“Just go look, Tom.” He saw Norton’s hesitation and chuckled. “What am I going to do, make a dash for the airport while you’re gone? Seriously, go look. This is something I saved just for you. You’re going to love it.”

“It’s, uh.” Lisa gestured along the corrior. “This way.”

“Jeff, if you knew something else about Onbekend, you should have—”

“Just go fucking look, will you!”

So he went, left the door ajar and followed Lisa out into the corridor. In the doorway, he paused and turned, looked hard at his brother, pointed at him.

“You stay right there.”

Jeff snorted, rolled his eyes, and reached for the bottle of Martell.

Down the angled corridor, tracking Lisa’s stolid progress, floating behind the eyes with all that he was still trying to assimilate. He wondered vaguely if Marsalis hadn’t gone out into the street as much to clear his head as to keep the call to RimSec clean.

They were almost at the door marked carmel street clinic when the single shot slammed behind them, so flat and undramatic that at first he mistook it for the sound of the door to Jeff’s office, the exit he hadn’t bothered to close.

They had Alvaro Ortiz in a monitored convalescence suite on the newly nanobuilt upper levels at the Weill Cornell Medical Center. He was tagged with microdoc subdermals that would broadcast a scream to the hospital system if his life signs dipped in any way, the receptionist explained with an enthusiastic smile, and he had panic buttons in the bathroom, next to his bed, and on his wheelchair. A full crash team and a dedicated emergency room doctor were retained at all times on idle, specifically for the patients on these levels. Norton thanked her, and they went upstairs. A COLIN Security detachment was on duty outside the suite, two hard-faced men and a woman who met them out of the elevator with professional tension that evaporated when they recognized Norton. Carl let them pat him down anyway, not sure if it was his thirteen status or just procedure that made them do it. The more relaxed they were, the better. Norton told the squad leader not to bother seeing them in, they’d be fine. Mr. Ortiz knew they were coming.

The doors to the suite hummed smoothly back and they walked through. Ortiz was in a wheelchair in the living room, parked by the floor-to-ceiling windows. He wore loose gray silk pajamas, held a book apparently forgotten in his hands, was lost instead in contemplation of the view out across the cubist thickets of the city to the park. He looked thin and breakable in the chair, the tanned face hollowed out to a worn gray, the grizzled hair gone to white in places. He didn’t appear to have heard the door open, and he didn’t turn as they stepped into view from the entryway hall. Carl wondered if he already knew why they’d come.