The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Mandy tells me about how she bought land in Goa and sold it for a dream. She talks about investing in broadband pipes while she was in her twenties so she could get out of lapdancing. She really did lap dance. I try to get her to talk more about herself. The only thing I get out of her is that she lived with her mother in a trailer until her Mom met a car dealer and they settled into a little bungalow in Jersey. “I’d go into my room and run shootemups on my video. I kept pretending I was shooting him.”

Finally I say, “I better go and see if they found Jazza.”

She nods and we both get up. And she says to me, “It’s real cool the way you still look out for him after all these years.”

I say, “He’s part of my crew.”

“Come off it,” she says. “He’s the only crew you got.” But she says it in a real sweet way.

The next morning, I got a mail on my TV.

It’s from the Kid. They’ve found Mr. Novavita on a Greyhound bus going to south Maryland. Jazza hasn’t lived in Maryland since he was a kid and his parents moved to Jersey. How the hell did he do that?

They bring him back in about noon and he looks like the night has been beating him up: purple cheeks, brown age spots, clumps of thick greasy grey. It wasn’t the night: this is how Mr. Novavita looks now and keep forgetting that. But he still climbs trees.

“He’ll be OK. He’ll sleep,” says the Kid.

I see his glasses on the table, and there’s another feather duster thought. “He was wearing these?”

I put them on. There’s a transcoder, but it’s built right into the arm. High tech. Higher than mine. There’s glowing fire all along the Kid’s arm. Heat vision. For night?

“Fancy glasses,” I say.

I go down to my crew. We’re all hacked back, so we’re sorted for cash flow. Thug has done some work on the suits. He has this little radio he plays, so they can’t snoop our dialogue.

Thug says, “XOsafe’s iced solid. So we hacked into the police files.”

“What!” My voice sounds like an air pump on arctic ice.

“We have a plant on the police computer,” says Jojo. Tells us whenever we’re mentioned. We added Brewster. Got a lot. They reckon Silhouette could be you.”

“What, ME?”

Mandy just barks, and waves at the smoke like she’s waving away the dumbest thing she’s ever heard.

I’m still stuck in high gear. “They think I’m Silhouette!”

“You were the prime suspect. Until your own granddaughter got it.”

I’m outraged. “Dumb shits!”

Jojo says: “Not so dumb, apparently. There’s a line they’ve been following, right into the Happy Farm.”

Mandy barks. “Oh I don’t believe it. This place?”

I take a look at her cheekbones. There’s this funny tickle in my head. It’s recognition. Of something. All of a sudden it’s like I’m hearing someone else ask her, “Is it you?”

Only it’s me that said it. The room goes cold. The radio plays dorky lounge. “Mandy. I asked are you Silhouette?” What I mean by this is strange: I really want to tell her don’t worry, we’ll protect you if you are, I kind of feel like I’ve said that. But that’s not what’s coming out. Actually, I’m just not in control. Because, as you will see, there’s something else going on here.

Mandy’s face kind of melts. All the lines in it sag, like she holds them up by constant effort. Her eyes go hollow and suddenly you see how she would look if she let herself become a little old lady. Hurt, confused. She shakes her head and the jowls go in different directions. She stands up and her hands are shaking. “Dumb old fucks.”

I get a feeling like I’ve just been real mean to someone, who I shouldn’t be mean to. And I don’t know why.

Gus shouts after her. “You haven’t exactly shown much concern about the people they hurt.”

I go gallumphing after her in my callipers. “C’mon Mandy, nothing personal.” She just shows me her back. “Mandy?”

She spins around and she’s got a face like a cornered porcupine. “Space off!”

“Mandy, the cops think there’s a line out on this stuff from here and they’re not dumb.”

Her eyes point towards the floor. She’s talking to the air. She’s talking to her entire life. “Every time I think maybe, just maybe, there’s somebody who has any idea… who just… SEES! ME! That’s when I get kicked in the teeth again.” She looks up with eyes like a mother tiger, and she’s sick and mad. “Just space off back to your little crew. Go play your little boy games.” Her voice goes thin like mist. “I don’t have time.”

None of us have.

“I’m sorry.”

She stays put, staring out through the grey window onto the lawn.

“Mandy. I’m sorry. You know why I asked? It’s because I know I know that face under the black stuff. I’m sure I know who it is, if I could just remember. And for a flash I thought… hey. Who says Silhouette is a guy? I just said it, the minute I thought it. I’m sorry.”