We drink alone, p.13
We Drink Alone, page 13
Brad took a sip of his whiskey. “Fair?”
The natural blonde nodded. “Honest assessment.”
“Is there a bet or something?”
Both nodded.
“Well, I suppose I can’t let Nissa lose…”
Brad had dated plenty of girls but had few girlfriends. If Nissa was counting on him to blow a couple core girls’ minds, he could hop on that tram.
He fumbled his drink onto a pedestal beside a marble bust of some dead dude. Arms wrapped him tight. A body pressed against him. Lips. Tongue. Clumsy and inexperienced but eager, one of them backed Brad against a wall with a thud that drove breath from his lungs into hers.
He hadn’t even noticed which one had gotten to him first.
After the initial shock of the sudden assault, Brad relaxed and enjoyed his part in this bet.
Someone pawed at his belt buckle. He pulled his lips free. “Not out here.”
The whole second floor was bedrooms. He wasn’t going to get busy out here in the hall. Hands other than the ones wrapped around him grabbed the back of his belt and started towing.
He shuffled backward, huge grin on his face.
From down the hall, he heard a struggle.
Princess Rucker stumbled up the stairs, well past her limit on whatever she’d been drinking. Two athletic guys, one in a New Chicago U jacket, bracketed her. She shoved and elbowed and slurred non-words at them, but they kept her upright and climbing.
A tug, and Brad’s planted feet almost got him falling over.
He unhooked the hand dragging him. “Hold up.”
When the Rucker heiress swooned and fell, she didn’t hit the floor. Two pairs of hands caught her up. One of the guys supported her under the armpits. The other grabbed her by the ankles.
They entered one of the bedrooms.
Nissa’s two friends were having none of it. “Stay out of it,” the natural blonde warned.
“She’ll be fine,” the tinted blonde added.
Fuck that.
Brad burst in just as they were trying to close the door behind them. “What the fuck, you guys?”
The Rucker girl looked even younger, lying there asleep. All that fire and dominance had masked an overgrown kid too young to be at a party like this.
Her attackers had taken off jackets and tossed them aside. Beneath the obscuring outer garments, taut muscles strained against sleeves. “Beat it, kid. Before you get hurt.”
With one running interference like a nightclub bouncer, the other slipped the dress straps off the Rucker girl’s shoulders.
Brad lunged.
The bouncer stopped him with a forearm that sent Brad tumbling to the floor.
Brad scrambled to his feet. A fist met him halfway up.
The room spun.
A foot connected with his ribs.
Brad struggled to get his bearings.
It was a kid’s bedroom. Older kid. Probably middle school. Model starships on shelves. Sports gear lying around.
Brad grabbed a lacrosse stick and swung.
Stronger hands caught it. The improvised weapon sailed aside, landing by the room’s giant windows.
Another kick, and Brad felt a crack.
He went limp.
“Stay down. You’re next.”
Playing possum had been a ruse, but Brad knew that even an ambush wouldn’t win this fight. Lying on his side, he scanned the bedroom.
There! A hockey puck called out to him.
Brad crawled to it. Before the two college assholes could stop him, Brad flung it against the window with all the strength he had left.
Thonk.
“Dumb shit.” A kick to the gut drove all the wind from Brad’s lungs.
But this pair of dickweeds didn’t know that Brad hadn’t expected the glass to break.
He expected it to have an alarm system.
Chuck had his datapad. He had his wizard.
One held a special presentation. The other ensured he’d get a chance to give it.
The service entrance was packed with more people than a lot of successful companies employed total. And these were just the folks that had business at Hal Ladenburg’s house. Chuck could hardly imagine the lifestyle, but he tried to fill in the details from whom he could see while waiting in line.
Lifeguards.
An equestrian coach.
Personal trainers.
Kitchen staff.
A few of the nondescript individuals—at least based on their clothing—could have been anything from tutors to personal assistants.
Construction, repair, and labor took up a hefty share as well.
But the only other wizards Chuck spotted were at the end of the lines. Four technological security scanners. Four lines. Four wizards giving new arrivals the once-over with the evil eye. Then, past those, another pair double-checking the work.
“All this,” he muttered to Mort, “and it won’t be enough.”
Mort harrumphed softly, unimpressed.
Someday, Chuck wanted to see the wizard just blown away by something. He’d known the guy for years, and the things he could fail to be impressed by was, in itself, impressive—at least to Chuck.
The security people checked his datapad for explosives. Checked his person for biowarfare chemicals. Checked his ID.
“Good morning, Mr. Vice President,” the security checker greeted him with a nod once Lex’s recent promotion showed up on the screen. Domingo hadn’t felt it appropriate to set up a meeting with Hal for someone below the level of VP. The post was tenuous at best, but it was his for now.
He suspected that if he’d held the job for longer than a day, Chuck would have been given an alternate means of accessing the main house. Then again, maybe Hal was just paranoid enough to run his top executives through this rigmarole every time they came by.
The wizard at the magical checkpoint didn’t take long to approve Chuck, and they pretended Mort didn’t exist at all.
Once through, they approached the final checkers. The younger of the pair turned to her partner. “Good. Parthenope, you have the line. You two, with me.”
“Lex, Wizard Cora. Cora, this is Lex Shuman, newly anointed VP of Solar Marketing.”
“Charmed.” Cora clearly was anything but.
She led a forced march through the underbelly of a home that was more a convention center than a residence. All the surfaces were immaculately maintained, yet plain and utilitarian. Doors with security locks paired with magical runes that Cora unlocked with ease. He hoped Mort was getting all this, on the off chance he needed to replicate all her twiddly-fingered gestures and glowing finger painting to get them back out later.
A silent lift car could have been traveling in any direction for all the sensation of motion it lacked. But a floor indicator started at B2 and the numbers got larger.
“We’re going down?” Chuck asked. He’d assumed that there would be some great views of the grounds from the upper floors. Panoramic. Peaceful. The kind of view few on Mars could afford. They made flatpic walls for a reason, so the merely well-off could afford high-res replicas of what the actual rich could see from home.
“You’re here about a security breach. Hal has deigned to humor you, against my countermanding advice. We’re heading to the secure residence. I shouldn’t have to say this, but the very existence of this facility is not public knowledge. The repercussions for revealing this haven will be dire.”
Mort harrumphed.
“Fine. They’ll be dire for him,” Cora clarified, jerking her head toward Chuck.
Mort harrumphed even harder. “Look. I already told you who I am. I’m helping you protect Hal from people who haven’t been able to lay a finger on me. Doesn’t it stand to reason that anything you try to throw our way would be less of a threat than we already face? Besides, I keep secrets that would turn your hair gray. Actually, some of them could kill.”
Clearing his throat, Chuck interposed himself. “Can’t we play nice? We’re all on the same side here. The side of beer.”
Cora rolled her eyes but didn’t press the matter. At B23, the doors opened.
“Hey! Welcome! Cora, you staying?”
“Yes, Hal,” Cora replied. She sounded like a mother invited to a daughter’s tea party. Maybe she had other stuff to do, but she wasn’t going to tell the kid that.
Hal Ladenburg… wasn’t what Chuck expected.
The age was right. That face that showed up in so many adverts was a dead ringer. But he wore an unkempt beard, striped pajama pants, a bathrobe, and sandals. If he’d combed his hair or showered this week, Chuck would have eaten the Radio City.
“How about a drink?” Hal offered, hoisting a traditional pint glass.
In fact, “traditional pub” described at least the lift entrance view of the home. Wood floors. Wooden bar. Wooden tables. Brass chasings. Dark polish. Tall stools. Brass taps.
“Sure, Hal,” Chuck agreed readily. Hey, maybe it was about nine in the morning on a Saturday, but if meeting the mortal God of Beer didn’t excuse day drinking, nothing would. “But we do have some important matters to discuss.”
Hal bobbed his head as he poured from the tap with a barman’s expertise. “Yeah. I got that impression. So, we talkin’ Mars’s Preferred, hit squads, or just a few strings of bowling?”
“Bowling?” Mort asked.
Hal laughed from his belly. “You wouldn’t believe the lengths some people have gone to just to get down here and bowl a few frames. Wizards, mostly. Word gets around a guy has a dead-fair lane, and they want to see for themselves.”
Chuck glanced over at his companion and maybe saw the first signs that Mort might actually be looking forward to trying that bowling alley for himself.
They convened at the bar, with Cora less enthused about her beer but sipping politely, nonetheless. Three of them took stools, while Hal busied himself as bartender, wiping up spills and wet rings of beer from the surface with a monogrammed rag.
“I’m serious about the Mars’s Preferred thing, but the real reason we’re here in the first place is the plot to get you out of the way on that senate seat thing.”
“They really that bent out of shape?” Hal asked, sounding more put-upon than worried. “Man, I was thinking this one was a quad goal. Fair is fair, you know? One Mouth, One Vote is all about us being equals. OK, yeah. I see it. How’s a guy equal if he lives in a palace, right?”
“You said it, not us,” Mort replied. “For what it’s worth, I can relate better than most of your employees. My family owns half of Boston Prime.”
Hal reached across the bar to place a hand on Mort’s shoulder. “Then you know. Being rich is different problems. I wouldn’t want to trade. I mean, I’m not dumb or anything. But real, sentient connection. That’s what it’s all about. Use the money to do good stuff. Build hospitals. Feed refugees. That’s the real shit. Then you try to share a beer with someone and talk about your problems, and it’s like… they don’t hear the words.”
“Look,” Mort told him. “The Convocation, and in particular the Chief Inquisitor, is highly invested in that new senate seat. You are the unwanted branch of the bonsai tree of their efforts.”
“I’m a tree?” Hal asked. He hung his head and shook it. “Man, I wasn’t trying to be.”
Chuck knew that Mort wasn’t going to get far if he didn’t understand his audience. “Let me do the explaining. Do you have a holo-projector?”
“Sure. But in here we only show sports. Wrong ambiance for serious business. Let’s head down to the theater. You can show your… whatever you brought… down there.”
Hal’s “theater” wasn’t the typical rich-guy mini-theater with a couple dozen seats. It was a full bowl, five-hundred-seat personal megaplex.
“Do you ever have this many people down here?” Chuck asked.
“Nah. Just want to be able to pick any seat. Sometimes, you know, you want that reclining, front row experience. Some days you just want to chill in the back with a couple lady friends. Gotta have options, man. Go ahead, Lex. Crank it up.”
Chuck looked up from fiddling with his datapad’s connectivity settings as it struggled with a lack of direct omni access in this shielded subterranean bunker. “Since we’re being all forthright, the name’s actually Chuck. Chuck Ramsey.”
“Oh, sweet. That’s a way better name. This other guy’s really Mordecai, right?”
“Mort’s fine. Everyone not trying to kiss my ass or indict me calls me Mort.”
“Super. Chuck. Mort. Cora. Hal. Can’t make an acronym out of that. We need to invite some vowels down here, man. Cora, can you run upstairs and—”
“Hal, we’re trying to prevent an assassination,” Cora replied. “Temporarily, how about we call me Ursula. Then you can make CHUM out of our names.”
“Oh. Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. All right, CHUMs, let’s see what the Chuck’s got going on here.”
In the twenty-meter holo field, giant letters popped up. The title of Chuck’s presentation was:
THEY’RE NOT GOING TO KILL YOU
Subtitle:
SO LONG AS WE’RE HERE TO STOP THEM
“Heavy,” Hal commented. “There better be a cartoon.”
“There is,” Chuck assured him. Domingo Pañero had warned him about Hal’s attention span before cluing him in on the marketing department’s secret weapon: an app called Haltoons.
As the giant letters faded, a cartoon representation of Hal walked onto the screen. Below the action, the caption “WHY THEY’RE MAD” kept things in context.
“I think people should get the same number of votes. Fair’s fair. No cheating, you wizards.” The cartoon Hal shook a finger off-field as two wizards emerged.
One wizard wore a nametag that identified him as “Azrael.” The other was “Wenling.” Both wore black robes and pointy hats.
“Wizards need more senate seats,” Azrael exclaimed.
“I’m going to be senator,” Wenling shouted.
One by one, little shadowy wizards popped into the background, indistinct, menacing, and nodding in silent agreement.
Behind Hal, a crowd sprang into existence, quicker, more numerous, bearing signs supporting and praising Hal. They lifted Hal on their shoulders like a hero and carried him off.
“That doesn’t happen as often as it should,” Hal muttered to himself. Yet his attention fixed on the action.
Left alone, the wizards plotted. A third wizard, wearing a sweatshirt, appeared. His nametag read “Mort.”
Hal slapped Mort in the chest. “Hey! It’s you!”
Azrael and Wenling surrounded Mort. “You owe us. You’ll do us a favor. Kill Hal, so we can win.”
Cartoon Mort raised a middle finger on each hand. “Hell no. I won’t do it.”
The action then followed Mort as he met “Chuck.” Cartoon Chuck had his limitations. He was neither as handsome nor charming as the real thing, and the anatomical advantages he possessed didn’t come across in animated form. “Hi, Mort. Why are you happy?”
“I quit my job working for assholes. They wanted me to kill Hal, and I said no.”
“But won’t they find someone else to kill Hal instead?”
“I don’t like how often they talk about killing me,” Hal commented, brow furrowed.
“We have to save Hal,” Chuck announced, pumping a fist in the air.
Hal gave a thumbs-up right off the label of his product. “That’s more like it.”
“How can we save Hal?” Mort asked. “No one will believe us.”
Chuck crossed his arms. The look of determination on his animated features had taken half an hour to get just right. “We have to get our message to Hal, no matter what it takes.”
The scene then went blank.
“That’s it?” Cora asked. “I’d really expected more.”
“Ursula’s right,” Hal added. “Needs a big, heroic confrontation or something.”
Chuck spread his arms. “Welcome to Act 2. We’re living it.”
Hal gaped. “Whoa.”
Cora rolled her eyes. “Fine. Message delivered. Did you have a plan or was this all an elaborate variant on the singing telegram?”
“We have intel. We need Hal for the planning.”
Cora’s expression warned that the CEO was a figurehead, a simpleton, and probably dependent on alcohol.
Hal wasn’t in on that story, though. “We’re going to need Robby and Karmen from security. Have Heather get down here for taking notes. Do either of you have an assistant?”
“No,” Chuck and Mort answered in quick succession.
“Kay. No biggie. Cora, make sure we find PAs for my boys Chuck and Mort here. No one I hate. Actually, I don’t hate anyone in the assistants’ pool. Don’t let it get around that I might. OK? Is sushi good secret-plan food? Get catering to lay out a sushi buffet just in case. Snap measurements of my friends here. Smoking jackets. Tuxedos. Swimsuits. Track suits. The works.”
If an eye-roll could be an entire person, Cora was that person.
Apparently, according to Mort, she was some bigwig in the magical side of the company. But all the bank deposits came from the same company, and this guy was the company.
“Oh,” Hal called after Cora as she departed. “Get some t-shirts with CHUM printed on them. Make sure there’s enough for everyone.”
With his head swimming, Brad lost track of time.
He was still lying on the floor when the door burst open. C-man and the other guy from the door grabbed the pair of college assholes. The scuffle that ensued was brief and decisive.
The blood on the floor wasn’t all Brad’s.
“Oh my God! Someone get a med kit!” “Is she all right?” “What happened?” “Who invited those guys?” “I have no idea.” “Get her some coffee, dumbass.” The cacophony made Brad’s head spin.
“We should get out of here.”
Whoever stated that self-serving fact started a stampede of an exodus from the party.
By the time Nissa helped Brad sit upright, they were alone in the bedroom. He groaned. “Did I win?”
She kissed him on the forehead. “You’re one stupid fucker. Lucky for you Corey and Nails got here in time, or you’d have been mulch.”
“Wasn’t luck,” Brad grunted between stabs of pain. “I—”
