Busted Flush

Yeah, he thought, and what’s your excuse? For a second he didn’t know what he was thinking about, and then it hit him. She’d never been far from his mind since she’d left, but thoughts of the Angel intruding on business time were unproductive. Even dangerous. It didn’t help that he had no real answer for that son of a bitch in his head asking these stupid questions. She’s gone, asshole, he told him. Deal with it. I’ve got Rodham to deal with. She’d use this sorry mess as another excuse to chew on his ass. She was already on him to fly to Hollywood to recruit promising contestants from the second season of American Hero. Promising. Yeah. He’d seen their dossiers. Buffalo Gal. Eight feet tall, horny, hairy, and humped. Fucking great. Or maybe Professor Polka and his frigging accordion. One bullet in the bellows and the dancing would stop, wouldn’t it? Christ. Well, he wasn’t inclined to put up with errands like that. Important shit had to be done, and he needed to do it. Trips to Hollywood, endless meetings talking budgets, hiring quotas, mission statements for the twenty-first century, blah, blah, blah. Only one solution to this problem.

Road trip.

Ray looked at Ink, his gaze narrowed. “Whistle me up a Lear. I’m headed for BICC. When Hillary calls tell her I’ll report on conditions as I observe them personally.”

Ink cleared her throat. “Are you sure that’s wise, sir?”

The “sir” irritated him. He didn’t like hearing it, especially since most of the time it was insincere blather covering up the speaker’s real feelings. He wished he had someone he trusted to discuss problems with. Someone who would tell him the truth. Someone to make up for what he realized was sometimes his own hardheadedness and, let’s face it, recklessness. He saw where this train of thought was heading and consciously derailed it. He almost sighed, but stopped. It was all over when you started sighing to yourself.

“Hell, no,” Ray said. “But that’s what I’m doing. Who’s on the EDR?”

That was another thing about this fucking job. He’d been talking in acronyms ever since taking it. Ray watched a Chinese-style dragon fly through a bank of puffy clouds and glide across Ink’s left cheek as she leafed through the memoranda in the in-tray, eventually finding the Emergency Duty Roster. “It’s a light night,” she reported. “Just Crypto and Stuntman.”

Ray nodded. Crypto was a longtime SCARE man. He was good at figuring out codes and shit, but not much in a fight. Stuntman was another hire out of that American Hero crap. In fact, he’d won the damn thing, but apparently his hoped-for movie career had never developed, so he’d gone into government service. Ray had never worked with him, but had read his file. He was supposed to be pretty much indestructible. That was something, at least.

“All right,” he said. “Crypto can stay home and work his crossword puzzles. Tell Stuntman to meet me at the airport.” Ray’s face was looking fairly normal, though his smile was still crooked. It was almost endearing. “What can I bring you back from New Mexico?” he asked. “How about a piñata?”

Ray had known Jamal Norwood, aka Stuntman, for only an hour, and hated him already. He was a young, good-looking African-American with fairly light skin and more Euro than Afro features. Ray approved of his clothing sense, though his suit was a little too flashy and expensive for so young an agent. It was his attitude Ray couldn’t stand.

“I’m Billy Ray,” he’d said, strapping down next to him as the Lear was prepped for takeoff.

“Yeah,” Norwood replied, unimpressed. “Heard all about you. They call me Stuntman, but I’ve given up that shit. No future in it. Doubling for Denzel and Will Smith and low-life ghetto rap stars making the real money while my ass—”

“I thought you were a millionaire. Didn’t you get that much for winning that crappy show?”

“Un-uh, Carny. After taxes and agent’s fees there was barely five hundred thousand left.”

“Carny?” Ray asked.

“What?” Norwood looked at him. “That’s what they call you.”

“My code name is Carnifex.”

Norwood shrugged. “Not what I heard. Everyone calls you Carnivore.”

Ray looked at him blankly, finally understanding a little of what Nephi Callendar had gone through all those years. Norwood fiddled with his iPod, and fell asleep a minute after takeoff. And he snored. Loudly.