Taking the Highway (30 page)

“I’m not!” Topher grabbed the limp rag and shook it out. “Wait until you see it. Shutting down Overdrive is one thing, but what good does that do when everyone hits the brakes and the on-ramps redlight themselves? We don’t need to shut down Overdrive, we need to take it over. Proximity sensors be damned. We’re going to throw cars right into one another. It’s everyone’s worst nightmare when they find out that they can’t manually override.”

“You mean . . .” Nikhil stared at Topher in horror. It was one thing to simply turn off Overdrive. It was quite another to deliberately cause crashes. “The ramps?” he squeaked.

“Wide open,” Topher said “Everyone has to know what we can do. They have to see it with their own eyes. Once the mayor and the city council sees our power, they’ll have to make some changes, bring the oh-zone back into the city, start paying attention to what’s really going on around here.”

“And it has nothing to do with saving your ass.”

“It’s your ass too, Nikhil. I’m saving the entire organization.”

Nikhil stood straight and adjusted his backpack strap. He wondered when things had changed, when it became more about saving the CEJ itself than fixing the city.

Topher pulled Nikhil’s datapad out of his pocket and held it in front of Nikhil’s face. “If it means that much to you, take your datapad back. I’ll make do with the other.”

Nikhil could almost smell Wilma’s scent on it. He pictured her dirty apartment, the sour rag, her none-too-clean clothes. He pictured her underwear. “It’s all right. I’ll take the upgrade. But you’ve got to erase that one, man.”

Topher started scrolling through menus. “You got pictures on here?”

“Names and numbers.” Nikhil caught Topher’s arm, make him look up. “Listen. You don’t need a virus. The highways have been shut since Monday. It’s been two days and they haven’t opened 94 yet. You’ve shown your strength, now it’s time to negotiate.”

“They’re scheduled to reopen tomorrow.”

“So?”

“Unless I deploy the virus, I’m not in a position to—”

“Yes, you are.” Nikhil patted his backpack. “I took some of my dad’s hardcopy files he kept at home. I’ve got names, dates, numbers.”

“So?”

“I’m sure they denied it. They had reasons and covers and explanations for everything. It’s not like anyone would complain, not if they were making the city safer. The city council didn’t even know what they were doing, and it happened right under their noses.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Madison Zuchek.”

“What about her?”

Nikhil pulled out the files and gave them to Topher. “Looked at one way, these files are completely innocent. Looked at another way, Madison Zuchek has her own personal hit squad. It’s been going on for years. It’s usually drug dealers, mafiosi, people like that. But now she has a new target.”

“Us? Shit.” Topher riffled through pages, forward, back. It didn’t take him long to reach the same conclusion that Nikhil had. He bit his lip and exhaled one quick breath through his nose, then opened the apartment door. “Wilma!”

Nikhil slammed the door and held the knob. “No.”

“I’ll use every weapon I’ve got. I’ll take down the entire city.”

“Don’t you see? We have the power.” He tapped the stack of papers. “Use these, Topher. These are so much better than crashing innocent people’s cars.”

“Fine. I’ll do it your way.” Topher flicked on Nikhil’s old datapad and started scrolling through it.

“Who are you calling?”

“Madison Zuchek. We’ve got to call her, make our demands.”

“Not yet! I’ve got to . . . there are some things I have to do first.” Nikhil looked over the railing. Uncle Andre would kill him if he tried to call. He said not to contact him no matter what. But there had to be a way to tell him what was going on. “Don’t do anything until I say so.”

“Sure, right.” Topher still had his head in Nikhil’s datapad.

Nikhil snatched it out of his hands, wound up, and threw it as far as he could into the parking lot. It cracked in half the moment it landed on the cement. Nikhil sprinted down the stairs, ran to the biggest half, and jumped, coming down hard with his shoe. The pad splintered under his foot with a satisfying crunch.

He hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder, brandished the new datapad, and looked up at the second-floor balcony. Topher still stood at the rail, his arms full of paper, watching him. “I mean it, Topher,” Nikhil called. “You want my help, you don’t make a single move until you hear from me.”

“V
isitor.”

Not again.
“Audio.”

“Andre.” Sofia’s customary coolness was gone, and the two syllables of his name sounded white hot. “Open the door. I mean it. Open this door right now or I will kick it in.”

“You may have good legs, but you could not kick in the door.”

“Try me and see. Three hundred fifty bucks and change to fix the lock and the frame. I’ve checked.”

Andre opened the door.

“I’m wearing my boots.” He looked. She was. Tall boots. Boots that were not so much made for walking as for kicking the shit out of things. With the dangerous boots, she was wore the same black pants and blazer she’d worn to Oliver’s party—an outfit for sipping cocktails or arresting bad guys with equal ease. He stepped aside and let her in.

Sofia moved into the room. She clicked off the companel, and frowned at his datapad, which sat propped against the open comscreen.

“I was listening to that.”

“So?”

“Did you know that The Chicago Development Commission dropped out of the economic summit? So did Quensis and Boeing. Without Overdrive, Detroit’s playing to an empty house.”

Sofia waved her arms at the comscreen. “Look at this. You’re trapped in some virtual nightmare. This is not real. This is not healthy.”

“Why are you here?”

“You didn’t answer your phone.”

“I know. I was the one not answering it.” Andre turned his back on her and walked to the kitchen.

Sofia followed. “Why weren’t you at the funeral this morning?”

Andre shrugged. “Black isn’t my color?”

“Andre, the last thing I want is to hurt you, but it’s still on the list.”

“Me being at Elway’s service would have been like spitting on his grave.”

“Not being there is like pissing on it!”

He couldn’t look at her. He opened the refrigerator and stared into it as if it were modern art in need of interpretation. “I’ve got spinners calling me at all hours. It’s only a testament to the strength of the privacy laws that they haven’t found my house yet. You know they were staking out the funeral.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“If I had shown up, the attention would have been on me, not on Elway.”

“Elway is beyond caring. Everyone else isn’t. You should have been there.”

Andre reached into the fridge and rearranged the bottles there. “I just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t take the idea of everyone hating me.” He closed the door and leaned forward against it. “I guess that makes me a coward.”

“Just human.”

He could stand straight now, could turn and look at her. “I should have let you in the other day.”

“Well, it’s probably for the best. Last time, I just wanted to kick your ass. But that isn’t why I’m here. I need you. I may have a lead on our Overdrive terrorists.”

Andre stared into her eyes. Did she have Nikhil’s name? Was that why she came here? “You got the court order to unseal the database?” If the false fourths still didn’t know the badges could be tracked . . .

“Honeywell is still stalling and she’s got the U of M legal machine in gear. No, I got an anonymous tip. Routed through an info broker. They didn’t know it was one of ours. I got a name. A girl named Wilma Riley.”

Not Nikhil then. He counted to ten, hoping she’d go on, but she waited him out. “How did she know to call you?”

“She didn’t. She called you. I’m still showing up as the head of the task force—for now, at least—so all of your calls are coming to me. There’s been a hell of a lot of them, thank you very much.”

“Spinners?”

“Anchors too.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “You don’t think I can handle them?”

“This tip. Why’d it come to me? I’m off the task force. Even if I weren’t, this isn’t our case.”

“Don’t be an idiot. We’re investigating dead fourths, you saw fourths sabotaging Overdrive. Don’t tell me it’s not connected.”

He said nothing, letting the question eat into the silence. Finally, her lips compressed into a line, she forced a breath through her nose. “I’m trying to save your ass. You don’t deserve the roasting you’re getting. At least not all of it.”

“Did they mention any names?”
Did they say Nikhil? Did they say LaCroix?
But he had to tread carefully, even here, even now.

“No names. This Wilma Riley says she knows who the terrorists are, where they are. Might just be a pissed-off girlfriend. Sounded angry and scared. She said she’d meet with us, but only face to face. Gave me an address near River Rouge Park.”

Doubt spread small wings in his stomach. “In the zone? I don’t like that.”

“We’re not delivering pizzas, we’re armed law enforcement.”

“You’re armed.”

She rolled her eyes toward his empty gun holster hanging near the door. “Do you—”

“I’ll be right back.” Andre marched to the bedroom, knelt on the floor, and ran his thumb over the lock to open the hidden safe. The Yavorit had almost the heft and size of the Guardian, if not its range and accuracy. He holstered it, wondering if he was just reacting like a typical Detroiter to the oh-zone. Or maybe just like a typical cop, who wanted his informants in an interrogation room, in broad daylight, with recording equipment at hand. If he wanted the terrorists stopped, he had to go where they were. Still, something about it didn’t sit right. He called to Sofia from the bedroom. “If she wanted to name names, why not just tell you on the phone?”

“You could have asked her that yourself if you’d taken the call.”

“Leaving Overdrive, take manual
control,” the Banshee’s dashboard announced. “Leaving Overdrive, drive safely.”

Sofia resettled her hands on the wheel a moment before she absolutely had to, a gesture Andre wouldn’t have noticed last week. He wondered if that was a universal habit and if so, how that kind of thing began. He resolved to look for it in the future then dismissed the idea.
Let it go.

Houses at the edge of the zone showed token efforts toward renovating. Some were lit by kerosene lights or electric generators. Others had smoke coming from the chimneys. It was too warm for a fire, but people still had to cook. As they moved deeper into the zone, occupied houses and rudimentary businesses gave way to the sad emptiness of the truly abandoned.

The display showed their path moving through a complicated maze of once-suburban neighborhood, their headlights piercing a bright path through the fading twilight. “I’d love to meet the genius who laid these streets out in looping curves,” Sofia said through gritted teeth.

Andre had liked neighborhoods like this when he was a kid, but he saw her point. His nostalgia disappeared altogether as another thought occurred to him. A story he’d heard from an older patrolman about these neighborhoods and sightlines from a patrol car. He reached out and accessed the companel.

“Who are you calling?”

“I just want to see if there’s anybody in the area if we need backup.”

“Backup?” Her voice shaded between amusement and scorn. Andre understood. If she were on her own, without a disgraced partner in the car, then maybe she could ask for some. As it was, unless things went very shitty very fast, they were on their own.

Sofia spun the wheel around a sharp corner with an obstructed bend and stood on the brakes.

The active and passive restraints held Andre tight against the passenger seat, but his head still bobbed forward. Across the narrow road, two derelict cars, burnt-out minivans from thirty years ago, stood nose to nose, their side-mirrors sticking out like handles.

Sofia swore and was about to move to reverse when a gunshot slapped her window, fogging it white-gray in an instant. She and Andre ducked down, fighting their seatbelts for room just as the window sagged and fell away, followed by the one on Andre’s side.