straight.”
“You are a little too straight,” Twist laughed. “I’ll jack those two up and the word will get around.”
Lou handed Twist a brown paper sack and said, “This is all there is.”
“How much?”
“A little over twenty thousand,” Lou said.
“It’ll have to do. Listen, has anybody been upstairs, in my studio? Anybody at all, besides you?”
She shook her head. “Nobody. I took a cot up there and started sleeping near the elevator, just in case.”
“Thanks,” Twist said. “Did you call Danny Dill?”
“Yes. He’s still there, still operating,” Lou said.
Emily asked, “How’s Shay?”
“She got her brother back,” Twist said. “We’re all in trouble. I wanted to talk to you, see if it might be possible for you to move in with your mother. Probably only be a couple of weeks, or a month.”
He explained that they were worried about residents of the hotel being paid to betray them to Singular: “If they know you were Shay’s roommate, and there are people here who could tell them that, they might think you’re still in touch. They could try to come in after you.”
“I’m safer here than I would be with my mom,” she said. Emily’s mother was a lifelong alcoholic, and her devotion to bad choices was why Emily had left home at fourteen. “I’ve got Dum and Dee right downstairs; they’d have to get past them to get to me.”
“What about when you’re working?” Twist asked.
Emily was a “picker,” who found items that looked like junk but could be sold for more than she paid for them. “Well…I’ve got a whole pile of crap down in the basement, in that old coal bin, that I’ve been meaning to inventory. I can stay inside here for a couple of days doing that and put all the numbers on my spreadsheet. That would limit their opportunities.”
Twist thought about it, then asked Dum and Dee, “Can you watch her?”
They both nodded.
“All right,” Twist said. “I’m going to go show my face around—talk to Miz Hemme and Mr. Duke, give them some advice about their personal conduct. Knock on a couple more doors.”
“Only ten minutes, in case somebody snitches,” Cruz said.
Emily picked up the dress that Twist had thrown on Dum’s couch and shook it out. “This is your dress? This? I could have done you a lot better. Let me see what I’ve got in my room. Something that would make your shoulders narrower, but still show off your butt….”
“Dum, kill her,” Twist said, and Dum and Dee did their silent laughing thing, and Twist went out the door to kick some ass. Enjoyed every minute of it: slapped backs, snarled at Hemme and Duke, got a sandwich from the kitchen. Took too long doing it.
But nobody made a call, as far as they could tell. Nobody followed them from the hotel.
By the time they got back to Dave’s Chicken and Flapjacks, Odin had determined that his software had not been touched, that nothing had been added.
—
One more stop. Driving across town, Twist told the others about Dr. Girard and the covert medical practice he’d operated for years.
Odin, sitting beside Fenfang in the backseat, said he liked the idea of having X-rays done but wasn’t sure he wanted to put Fenfang in the hands of an unlicensed doctor.
“How do we know he’s not going to blast her with about ten thousand times too much radiation because he doesn’t know any better or his X-ray machine is screwed up?”
“Nothing unmodern about the clinic or the doc,” Twist said. “It’s just that he’s illegal in this country, and there’s no way for him to get legal. I’m not the only one who knows—but nobody else is doing his kind of work with street people and the poor, so everybody pretends he’s, you know, a branch of the Mayo Clinic.”
“I’m gonna want to take a look at it first,” Odin said.
“You’re smart, Odin, but everything you know about a modern medical clinic could be written on the back of a postage stamp with a paintbrush,”
“You are a little too straight,” Twist laughed. “I’ll jack those two up and the word will get around.”
Lou handed Twist a brown paper sack and said, “This is all there is.”
“How much?”
“A little over twenty thousand,” Lou said.
“It’ll have to do. Listen, has anybody been upstairs, in my studio? Anybody at all, besides you?”
She shook her head. “Nobody. I took a cot up there and started sleeping near the elevator, just in case.”
“Thanks,” Twist said. “Did you call Danny Dill?”
“Yes. He’s still there, still operating,” Lou said.
Emily asked, “How’s Shay?”
“She got her brother back,” Twist said. “We’re all in trouble. I wanted to talk to you, see if it might be possible for you to move in with your mother. Probably only be a couple of weeks, or a month.”
He explained that they were worried about residents of the hotel being paid to betray them to Singular: “If they know you were Shay’s roommate, and there are people here who could tell them that, they might think you’re still in touch. They could try to come in after you.”
“I’m safer here than I would be with my mom,” she said. Emily’s mother was a lifelong alcoholic, and her devotion to bad choices was why Emily had left home at fourteen. “I’ve got Dum and Dee right downstairs; they’d have to get past them to get to me.”
“What about when you’re working?” Twist asked.
Emily was a “picker,” who found items that looked like junk but could be sold for more than she paid for them. “Well…I’ve got a whole pile of crap down in the basement, in that old coal bin, that I’ve been meaning to inventory. I can stay inside here for a couple of days doing that and put all the numbers on my spreadsheet. That would limit their opportunities.”
Twist thought about it, then asked Dum and Dee, “Can you watch her?”
They both nodded.
“All right,” Twist said. “I’m going to go show my face around—talk to Miz Hemme and Mr. Duke, give them some advice about their personal conduct. Knock on a couple more doors.”
“Only ten minutes, in case somebody snitches,” Cruz said.
Emily picked up the dress that Twist had thrown on Dum’s couch and shook it out. “This is your dress? This? I could have done you a lot better. Let me see what I’ve got in my room. Something that would make your shoulders narrower, but still show off your butt….”
“Dum, kill her,” Twist said, and Dum and Dee did their silent laughing thing, and Twist went out the door to kick some ass. Enjoyed every minute of it: slapped backs, snarled at Hemme and Duke, got a sandwich from the kitchen. Took too long doing it.
But nobody made a call, as far as they could tell. Nobody followed them from the hotel.
By the time they got back to Dave’s Chicken and Flapjacks, Odin had determined that his software had not been touched, that nothing had been added.
—
One more stop. Driving across town, Twist told the others about Dr. Girard and the covert medical practice he’d operated for years.
Odin, sitting beside Fenfang in the backseat, said he liked the idea of having X-rays done but wasn’t sure he wanted to put Fenfang in the hands of an unlicensed doctor.
“How do we know he’s not going to blast her with about ten thousand times too much radiation because he doesn’t know any better or his X-ray machine is screwed up?”
“Nothing unmodern about the clinic or the doc,” Twist said. “It’s just that he’s illegal in this country, and there’s no way for him to get legal. I’m not the only one who knows—but nobody else is doing his kind of work with street people and the poor, so everybody pretends he’s, you know, a branch of the Mayo Clinic.”
“I’m gonna want to take a look at it first,” Odin said.
“You’re smart, Odin, but everything you know about a modern medical clinic could be written on the back of a postage stamp with a paintbrush,”
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