Agency

99 A Budget for Illegalities

They’d been parked for a while now, near what Verity assumed was a homeless encampment, though it seemed deserted. Eunice had said she’d check in soon, giving no reason for going.

Now she sat with her eyes closed, the others all having heard her side of the conversation.

“Time to talk?” Joe-Eddy in her earpiece.

“You aren’t texting.”

“Got my goggles upgraded. I’m up at Stets’ with my lawyers, but they’re here for him. I think their whole firm’s here, except for the two newest junior partners, who’re stuck with minding my place.”

“What’s happening?”

“I’m waiting to find out,” he said, “in this oddly placed trailer. Not all of the top-end Valley out there, over a hundred people, but invitations were literally last minute. He has some major faces, though. Shows what he can pull if he invites people over for a look at something really new.”

“What are they doing?”

“Having drinks and trying to guess what this might be about. Front-runner, currently, is that Caitlin’s pregnant.”

“Is she?”

“If she is,” Joe-Eddy said, “and I don’t think so, it’s unrelated. This is Eunice-centric. You’ll be seeing for yourself soon.”

“I will?”

“You’re close by, expected soon. A minute ago I heard Caitlin ask a stylist what they have for you to wear.”

“It’s dressy?” She looked down at the hoodie. At least it was bunched under her blazer, not the other way around. “What’s Caitlin wearing?”

“Futuro-goth workout gear, last I saw her, but she’ll be changing for sure. This is a big deal.”

“Stets told me he didn’t even know what it was going to be.”

“Whatever it is, there’s a budget for illegalities.”

“For—?”

“Crimes. They’re going to be breaking laws tonight. Mostly bylaws, if they can help it, so they’ve figured out which ones and how many they can afford to break. Fines aren’t a problem, so the budget’s about what they can do without going to jail, however briefly. But it looks a lot like finding the weirdest shit you can get away with in one night, in San Francisco, if you’re willing to blow a metric fuck-ton of money to do it.”

Hearing the window power down, beside Virgil, she opened her eyes.

“Carsyn!” exclaimed Manuela, beside her, delighted.

“Sorry,” Verity said to Joe-Eddy, “gotta go.”

“See you up here,” he said, “bye.”

“Girl”—a young woman greeted Manuela, smiling in through the open window, her hair dark red—“time you guys get in there, Virgil,” she said. “They have the extra set of lifters now, for Manuela.”

“What lifters?” Manuela asked. “Where’ve you been?”

“Working for the man here,” the woman said, squeezing Virgil’s shoulder.

“All out,” Virgil said, unfastening his seatbelt. “Voices down, please, and follow me. Bring your belongings. Carsyn’s taking the car.”

Dixon getting out now, as this Carsyn opened the passenger door for Manuela. Now Dixon opened the opposite one for Verity. Making sure she had both her purse and the Muji bag, she got out.

“You’re going?” Manuela, obviously disappointed, asked Carsyn, who was taking Virgil’s place behind the wheel.

“Some of us have to work, lady,” Carsyn said. “You, however, are going to one seriously exclusive party. And you’ll never forget how you got there, trust me. I’ll see you tomorrow and you can tell me about it.” She started the Mercedes.

“Carsyn can’t go with you,” Virgil said, to Manuela. “We’re stretching things to take you. Come this way.”

They followed him as Carsyn pulled away, Dixon now nowhere to be seen. Along a stretch of the same blue tarps that screened Stets’ penthouse project from cameras, though these seemed to be draped over shopping carts and some internal network of taut ropes.

To where Dixon waited, his cap on backward, sunglasses off, holding up a length of blue plastic, to wave them in with his other hand.

Virgil stepped aside, gesturing for Verity to duck in, Manuela behind her. Into darkness. Verity fumbled forward, pushing aside another tarp, into a low, dimly lit blue space, empty save for the drone, facing her. “Hey, hon,” said Conner, from it.

“Hello, Verity,” said Wilf, likewise.

“Eunice showed me footage of that thing,” Joe-Eddy said, in her earpiece. “Beating seven shades of shit out of four guys in an alley.”

“I seriously hope this isn’t the party,” said Manuela, behind her.

“Why are we here, Virgil?” Verity asked.

“Getting up to Stets’ place,” he said. “Method’s extreme, last-minute, frankly insane, but safer, under present circumstances, than trying to do it any other way. There’s a police cordon we might not get through, elevators might be turned off any time, and Pryor, Cursion’s contractor, who was doing his best to blow us all up in the Honda, back Coalinga way, has himself a fresh crew here, a dozen or more, all looking for us and you in particular. How are you with heights?”

“Heights?”

“Fifty-two floors up,” he said.

“Who’s first?” asked a young Latino on his hands and knees, an LED headlamp on his forehead, just then emerging from another opening, even lower than the entrance from the street.

“She is,” Virgil said, indicating Verity.

“I’ll need to weigh the bag separately,” the boy said.

She unslung the bag, knelt on what she now realized was white Tyvek, and slid it over to the boy.

“Thanks,” he said, backing out of sight, pulling the bag after him.

The drone wheeled over, legs retracted, offering her something that jiggled greenly as it rolled.

“Kneepads,” Conner said, “and gloves. They only had a few minutes to sweep the concrete, before they rolled the Tyvek out. Loose gravel under there, broken glass, maybe needles. You want these, and gloves, to get over to the hammock. You’re the yellow. On your back, on top of it. They’ll give you noise-protection muffs, printed to fit over that earpiece. Basically they need you to play dead, all the way up. You’re imitating a figure in an art piece.”

“A what?”

“A stuffed doll. We’ve got one upstairs, of you, wearing what you’ve got on now. When the cops show up, we’ll claim that that was what they saw.”

She took the kneepads from the drone, sat gingerly on the Tyvek, and put them on, over her jeans. Took the gloves from King City from their hoodie pocket. “Got my own,” she said, pulling them on. She looked up at Virgil.

“Crawl in,” he said. “Manuela’s next.”

Manuela looked, very dubiously, from the opening to Verity.

“I know,” Verity said, “but it’s the only way to get there. I don’t know what it’s about, but I don’t want to miss it.” She got up, on hands and knees, and crawled to the low opening. She looked back at Manuela, finding her crawling after her, and smiled. Then into a few feet of low tarp tunnel, emerging in a space no higher. This was equally dark though surprisingly large, and quietly but busily crowded. More LED headlamps, moving. The boy was waiting for her, her bag beside him.

“This is a scale,” he said, indicating a flat white rectangle of rigid plastic, about a yard square. “We need to weigh you.” Verity crawled onto it. He glanced at his phone. “Hello,” he said to Manuela, now emerging from the tunnel, “I need to weigh you.” He pointed at the scale. Manuela looked unconvinced.

“I know it’s weird,” Verity said, crawling off the scale, “but I just did it myself.” Manuela, with an eye roll, on gloved hands and padded knees, crawled onto the scale.

“Yours is there,” the boy said to Verity, pointing across the space.

Verity started in the direction he’d indicated, then remembered her bag. She looked back. Manuela was squatting on the digital scale, her parka gathered around her. The boy looked up from his phone. “Your bag’s going with her,” he said to Verity, “she’s lighter.”

Verity crawled on, past a crew-cut girl with floral neck tattoos, in a white jumpsuit and orange sneakers, kneeling intently beside one of many vaguely aerodynamic gray shapes that reminded Verity of countertop dishwashers, their tops invisible from this angle. The girl’s forehead-cone of LED light found her, briefly.

“No way,” Verity said, seeing a net hammock spread on the white Tyvek, woven from bright yellow nylon rope, a varnished length of wood spreading either end, each of these fastened in turn to one of the gray machines.

“Better be a good party,” Manuela called, Verity looking around to find her already reclining on a fluorescent green hammock, someone with a headlamp kneeling over her.

“Lie down on the hammock,” Virgil said, likewise gloved and kneepadded, crawling up to Verity, Dixon behind him.

“These are dollar-store hammocks,” Verity said, but did as she’d been told.

“Costco,” Virgil said. “Here.” Tossing her what looked like a black knit ski hat.

“Why?”

“It’s your dummy disguise.”

“Not sure I even need a disguise, for that, the way this is going.”

“Keep your head still, all the way up. No rubbernecking. You’re all playing big rag dolls. We’ve cut you out of the feed from the drone now, because we don’t want Conner making you airsick.”

She lay down on the hammock, pavement hard and cold beneath yellow nylon rope and Tyvek. The boy knelt beside her, fitted Dixon-style orange noise muffs over her ears and the earpiece. Abrupt silence. She lay, looking up at blue tarp, while the boy quickly fastened her wrists, waist, and ankles to the hammock, with nylon straps.