Skin Game

Chapter four Otto body experience

Bobby Kawasaki could feel the inner him — the real him — coming out. He had more energy now, though he still had not been off the sofa all day. The drug was finally winding down, and he could feel his true strength returning.

On a normal weekend Bobby would have already been out; but even before it started, this weekend had been screwed up. He felt lucky that he’d gone out Thursday and gotten a jump on the weekend’s shopping. If he hadn’t done that, he’d be further behind — further from his goal — and he would have felt even more lethargic than he did now.

The hostage situation at Jam Pony had almost screwed up everything. Bobby was a transgenic passing as an ordinary, and not even Max or Alec had known; not CeCe, either. Max and Alec he admired for helping other transgenics; but he’d been unable to find the courage to join in.

Maybe he would find that courage, one day soon — after he reached his goal.

In his run-down rattrap of an apartment on the eighth floor of a condemned building, Bobby was glued to his tiny used television — which he’d liberated from a sector checkpoint — carrying coverage of the hostage situation at Terminal City. This shabby studio apartment with its tiny stove, dwarf refrigerator, a coffee table that Bobby also ate on, and worn-out sofa was not going to be his home for much longer. Once he reached his goal, and finished his project, and could truly pass as human, things would change for the better.

And Bobby Kawasaki would finally have everything he wanted.

Rising, Bobby wandered into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. He stared at himself — the white face, the features sort of pinched, the bone structure vaguely reptilian — in a manner reserved only for the vain and the self-loathing.

He knew very well he’d been an experiment — something involving splicing chameleon DNA into his human genetics — though the Manticore scientists (his abusive “parents”) had reminded him over and over that he’d been a disappointment to them. Their goal, their project, had been for him to blend in with his surroundings on command; but as it turned out, this ability only manifested itself when his adrenaline spiked — something over which he had no control.

Fear, anger, anxiousness, any extreme emotion set him off; but any other time — zippo. Oh, he sort of blended in anyway, in a more subtle manner; just not to the extremes his Manticore creators had intended for their projected military uses.

The scientists had tested him extensively. In a crowd of Asians, Bobby appeared somewhat Asian, while in a crowd of Caucasians, he took on the poly-Euro cast thought of as all-American; if he’d been sitting with African-Americans, they’d remember him as a light-skinned brother, albeit a quiet, unremarkable, definitely undistinctive one.

Of course, that had been too distinctive for Manticore — the point had been for him to blend in so well, he would virtually slip away, and if anyone remembered Bobby at all, that was seen as a failure.

Manticore was looking for an invisible man.

And sometimes Bobby was just that — that was the worst part. On occasion the blending effect happened at the most inopportune times, as well. He’d lost a couple of job interviews and more than a few first dates when he’d simply blended out of sight in his nervousness to please.

And once the blending began, once he had faded into the woodwork, he could not speak, did not dare call attention to himself, lest he expose himself as the freak he was.

That had been the case until the drug, anyway.

The drug — Tryptophan, to be exact — worked differently on his X3 metabolism than it did on his later X5 brothers and sisters. He knew that in them it controlled their seizures, made them more human. In Bobby the results were much more extreme. Sure, it kept him from blending in, but it also kept him from living.

The pills made him feel like a hundred pound weight had settled on his chest. He felt drowsy, slow, and unable to connect with the world. They did allow him to hold down a job, though they had made him a different kind of invisible man: no one, not even at the hectic Jam Pony, seemed to notice either Bobby or his lethargy. His boss, Normal, dismissed Bobby’s listlessness as typical behavior, commonplace conduct among his regular layabout employees.

“Bip bip bip, Bobby.”

The words still echoed proudly in Bobby’s head. When Normal yelled at him, he was just like everybody else — human.

The recent hostage crisis had exacerbated his already high anxiety level, however, and he’d had to double his Tryptophan dosage to keep from blending during the crisis. If he’d blended then, there was no telling how much damage it would have done. The ordinaries would have seen him as a transgenic — he would have been exposed, as Alec and Max had been — and any chance to keep up his human life would have been gone.

Even the transgenics might have reacted badly, would finally realize he was one of their own, and perhaps see his blending as a betrayal. Either way, both sides would have hated him.

And hatred was one kind of attention Bobby Kawasaki did not crave.

Now, though, Bobby struggled to fight off the dulling throb of the drug. Tomorrow he’d have to be at work, and Normal wouldn’t expect any less from him. That meant by tomorrow he’d need to get back on his damn meds, so he’d have to pursue his project tonight, or else it would need to wait clear till next weekend. Though Thursday’s shopping hadn’t been discovered until yesterday, the effort of a midweek foray had weakened him considerably, and the double dose of Tryptophan on Friday had practically turned him into a zombie.

He needed to go shopping — he was so close! One, maybe two more trips, then the big one...

... and Kelpy — the name he’d been called by the other transgenics at Manticore — would be gone forever, and so would Bobby Kawasaki... gone, history, a ghost... as he evolved into the person he’d always wanted to be, the one person that would gain him access to the affections of the only woman who had ever meant anything to him...

... Max Guevera.

Looking into the mirror again, Bobby — for now he was still Bobby, stuck with Bobby — realized that he was starting to blend into the bathroom wall behind him. The drug was almost gone now. He would soon be at full strength and then he’d go shopping for material.

After all, he had a human suit — a suit of flesh — to complete.

Even though he bore a German name, Otto Gottlieb strongly resembled the Hispanic portion of his lineage.

Otto’s Jewish great-grandfather had smuggled his wife and two boys out of Nazi Germany just before the onset of the Second World War. The family had ended up in South America, where the two brothers, Otto and Fritz, had grown up safe from Hitler’s clutches. Though many Nazis came to Argentina after the war, the Gottliebs were already firmly entrenched and the family furniture business had flourished.

Otto’s grandfather had eventually married an Argentinian woman and they had a son, Samuel, who went to school in the United States, where he married an American woman and put down roots. Samuel and his wife, Eliza, lived the American dream. Selling furniture to families in Bloomfield Heights, Michigan, the Gottlieb family included Samuel, his wife, and two children — a girl, Elizabeth, and Otto, named after his father’s uncle.

Brought up with a deep love of justice and an even more deeply ingrained sense of patriotism, Otto joined the Army straight out of high school. Then, following his service stint, where he had nearly made a career of it, he went to the University of Michigan for his bachelor’s degree, followed by earning a master’s degree in Criminology. Not long after that, Otto had been recruited into the NSA and — after four years of dedicated service — found himself partnered with the enigma known as Ames White.

Not quite six feet tall, Otto liked to play basketball to stay in shape, but mostly he jogged, or really, ran — like he was right now. Sweat dripped onto the front of his gray T-shirt and his feet thudded on the concrete of the street as he ran alone in the cool evening silence. The shirt and his matching gray shorts were both emblazoned with the logo of the FBI; but being with NSA, Otto had many clothes and many IDs with the names of various agencies on them.

Working on mile seven of a ten-mile run, Otto huffed a little, but otherwise ran easily, arms and legs pumping in a natural rhythm. He loved this time of night. Darkness settled on the city, a gentle blue softening the edges of what Seattle had become, post-Pulse; no one to bother him, the job wasn’t pressing on him, the day’s work behind him, and, most important, time to himself, to sort out whatever problems occupied him at the moment.

Tonight’s problem had to do with his boss and partner — that lovely specimen of humanity known as Ames White.

Something was going on behind Otto’s back — or anyway, White was up to something behind Otto’s back — and the NSA agent hated that. He’d suspected White was pursuing a secret agenda, well before the crisis situation at Jam Pony; but, before, Otto had always been able to write off his suspicions about White to the man just being a little... odd.

Otto knew plenty of government agents, and they were all — including himself, he realized — wired up wrong, in some way — even twisted in one fashion or another. Scratch a cop, and find a guy who’s looking for a little piece of personal power; scratch a government agent, and find the same sickness, writ larger.

For the most part, though, these quirks were harmless, outweighed by the sense of civic responsibility that attracted a man to government service. White, however, was a weird, self-absorbed, negative son of a bitch... no question. The man seemed to have two saving graces: competence and patriotism. Only, Otto had started to doubt the latter attribute, wondering if White served some secret master...

Running like this, getting the poison out, usually made Otto dismiss such thoughts as absurd, even silly. But now — after the weird climax of the Jam Pony hostage crisis — whatever suspicions Otto had about White were only magnified, and given weight.

His feet pounding the pavement, Otto let the movie of that night run in his head...

The Seattle detective in charge of the situation, Clemente, seemed to have things in hand until he tried to trade a truck for hostages. Sometime during the exchange, shooting had erupted from somewhere. Otto had seen Clemente order his snipers to pull back, and the snipers did visibly withdraw.

Though he couldn’t prove it, Otto had a suspicion that one of the endless phone calls White made that day was to bring in the group of shooters that queered the exchange.

Otto didn’t know why he felt that — it was just his gut — but over the years, he’d learned to trust his instincts. Then later, after dark, after White had used the botched exchange to gain control of the hostage crisis, Otto approached White just as his partner was slipping on a Kevlar vest handed to him by the female leader of some kind of tactical insertion team — a team unlike any Otto knew of in the NSA lexicon. The group — bizarrely bulked-up types — kept moving, and Otto fell into step with them.

“Sir, what is this?” Otto had asked. “Who are these people?”

White glared at him with typical impatience. “They’re assigned from another agency.”

“What agency? I don’t understand...”

Stopping and turning to face Otto, his sneering features only inches away, White growled, “And let’s keep it that way. You’re not cleared for this op — so pull the men back and secure the perimeter.”

Otto froze, his mind bubbling with protests that couldn’t seem to find their way out through his mouth.

White’s expression tightened further — a handsome man, Ames White became ugly when lines of anger grooved his face... which was frequently. His voice rose: “Walk away. Do it now.”

Not understanding, but unwilling to question a senior officer, Otto had done as he was told.

And it had been less than a half hour later — after the unknown agency’s super-SWAT team emerged from Jam Pony with the perps, loading them into a van and a commandeered ambulance — that one of Clemente’s uniformed cops came up to Otto near the perimeter. The man seemed on the verge of laughter, and Otto couldn’t imagine what there was to laugh about in a hostage crisis.

“They need you inside,” the uniform had said, the words burbling out, mixed in with chuckles.

How weird, how inappropriate, that seemed...

Otto started to call to the other agents, but the uniformed cop put a hand on his shoulder.

“You better go in alone, sir,” the officer said, his amusement lessened, but still there.

Confused, Otto made his way inside the building. He walked slowly through the first floor, where some other uniformed cops were leading three of the hostages toward the door.

“Can you direct me to Agent White?” Otto asked.

One of the uniforms pointed toward the ceiling and walked out, laughing.

What the hell was this?

Climbing the stairs to the second floor, Otto thought he heard what sounded like muffled voices — angry muffled voices. The building was supposed to be secure, but Otto slipped his pistol out of the holster anyway and pulled a penlight from his jacket pocket. Checking carefully, he went through the door of the second floor — it appeared to have been a dressmaker’s loft, long since abandoned, a few naked female mannequins holding court surrealistically among various detritus — and moved closer to the voices.

Coming around a corner, he found the TAC insertion team, in their skivvies, and a fully dressed Agent White — all secured to pillars with Jam Pony packaging tape... all screaming what seemed to be obscenities through the tape gags that covered their mouths, in particular Ames White.

Suddenly Otto knew what the cops were all laughing about, though he himself found the situation humorless.

He holstered his pistol, pocketed the flash, and rummaged in his pants pocket for his knife. “Sir, what happened?” he asked.

White’s answer was thankfully muffled — and for a split second Otto considered turning around and walking out; but he knew it would mean his career. Biting his tongue, he cut them loose, White first, then the others.

The muscular, half-naked commando team left without so much as a thank you — their displeasure (with themselves?) palpable.

Standing there in his ripped suit, peeling pieces of tape off his jacket, his scowling face bloodied, White said, “Go home, Otto. I’ll write up the report and let you see it in the morning.”

“But... what happened here, sir?”

White closed his eyes, obviously fighting for control. One fist balled at his side while the other grabbed a hank of his own hair. He stayed like that for a long moment. Otto realized his boss considered himself a cool customer; but Otto knew that White was in reality a hothead. Anger, frustration, desperation, and finally a kind of unearthly calm all crossed White’s face before he opened his eyes again.

“Now is not the time, Otto,” he said. “Go home and wait for me to call... It might be tomorrow, it might be the next day. Maybe it’ll be Christmas. But just go home — relax. And wait.”

Otto was about to tell White that he couldn’t do that — that standard agency policy demanded otherwise — when the superior agent simply turned and walked out of the cluttered loft. A voice in his head told Otto not to follow, and because the voice — whose message had often been, Cover your ass — had been right so many times in the past, he listened to it.

So instead of going after his partner and bringing the craziness to a head, Otto simply went home and waited.

That had been two days ago, and the phone had yet to ring. Tomorrow, whether White called or not, Otto was going to report back to work. There might be hell to pay, if White considered that a breach of orders; but maybe it was time to go over Ames White’s head and report what he suspected... what he’d observed...

As he entered the eighth mile of his run, Otto prayed that he was doing the right thing... because Otto Gottlieb truly wanted to do what was best not just for himself, not just to cover his ass, but for his job. His country.

That settled, Otto tried to empty his head of everything except the run. The sound of his own blood in his ears, the smack of his shoes on the pavement, breath rushing in through his nose, out through his mouth, feeling the sweat run down his face... this became his world. Everything else was left behind.

The rest of the eighth mile flew by. He was nearly to the end of the ninth mile, really getting into the run now, when the cell phone clipped to his waistband chirped.

“Damnit,” Otto muttered as he slowed to a walk, and tried to control his breathing so he wouldn’t sound winded. He answered on the third ring.

“It’s me,” came Ames White’s voice.

Otto cursed silently. He wanted to ask where the hell White had been, but he said, “Yes, sir.”

“Sounds like you’ve been running.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. You could stand to take off some of that gut.”

“... Yes, sir.”

“Have you talked to anyone since we last spoke?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. We need to meet.”

“Yes, sir.” Otto hated himself for falling back into ass-kissing mode so easily, but he didn’t really know what else to do at this point.

“I’m bringing you in more fully on this op. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Otto?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know the Three Girls?”

“Yes — bakery at Pike Place Market.” White couldn’t have picked someplace closer, of course; he had to pick somewhere clear across the city from where Otto lived.

“You being watched, Otto?”

“No.” Why would he be watched?

“Good. Twenty minutes. Come on foot.”

“I’ll never make it.”

“Half an hour, then. And run faster.”

Otto knew that not only was White a sucker for the meat-loaf sandwiches at Three Girls Bakery, the man also liked the fact that the L-shaped counter only had thirteen seats. Most people didn’t hang around long, and the chances of them being spotted by someone from the office were minimal, especially at this time of night.

White sat at the far end of the counter, waiting over coffee and a scone, when Otto — in his running togs, breathing hard — entered thirty-five minutes later. Two days had allowed White a change of clothes and the opportunity to clean his wounds. They seemed to be healing nicely, from what Otto could see.

The runner sat down next to his partner and boss, and when the counterman promptly came over, Otto said, “I’ll have the same. Decaf, though,” and gestured toward White’s meal.

A skinny man in his late fifties, and obviously not one of the three girls, the guy grunted and went back to the other end of the counter.

“You’re late,” White said quietly.

Otto ignored that. “Are you going to tell me what happened at Jam Pony?”

The counterman brought a cup of coffee, a scone on a small plate, and set them both on the counter in front of Otto. “Anything else?”

“No,” Otto said.

The counterman left the check and went away.

Finally, satisfied they were alone, White shrugged. “They got the best of us. They are transgenics, after all.”

Otto nodded. “That TAC team of yours looked like they coulda been transgenics themselves.”

“You think the NSA has transies working for them now, Otto? Please. Those were just top physical specimens — the kind who could’ve run over here in less than half an hour.”

“Maybe so — but, like you said, the bad guys got the best of them anyway.”

“Let that go. We have something more important than that now.”

“Yes?”

White sat forward, kept his voice down. “You recall the thermal imager that was taken off Hankins?”

Otto took a bite of his scone, but wished he hadn’t when the picture of the red-glistening skinned Hankins popped into his mind. He washed the bite down with some coffee. “Hard to forget,” he managed finally.

“The imager has turned up.”

“Good news. Where?”

White took his time now, nibbling at his own scone and taking a swallow of coffee before continuing. “A sector cop found it, not long after the murder at the warehouse. He was one of the perimeter guys. Apparently the monster that skinned Hankins didn’t know the device’s value — just threw it away. Interestingly, Hankins’ skin didn’t turn up — the perp took it with him.”

Otto put down his scone.

“Anyway, the sector cop who found it knew the thing was valuable. Somehow he got my cell number and got through to me. Name’s Dunphy, Brian Dunphy. He’s willing to return the imager — for a price.”

“How much?”

“Ten grand.”

“No way!”

White’s smile put nasty grooves in his face. “That’s what I told him. He settled for five.”

“That’s still robbery.”

“More like blackmail. But the agency is willing to cover it — if one of those transgenics got hold of an imager, and was smart enough to figure out its use, well...”

“When’s the drop?”

“Tonight.”

“Where’s the money?”

Glancing down, White drank some more coffee.

Otto followed the man’s gaze, saw a briefcase on the floor next to White, and looked back up at his partner. “You brought it here?”

“I needed to pass it to you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” White said. “You’re going to make the delivery.”

The scone and coffee rolled over in Otto’s stomach. “Sir, without proper paperwork, I don’t think I can—”

White interrupted. “You have to. I’m going to be in meetings for the next twenty-four hours trying to clear up that Jam Pony fiasco. You want to keep your job, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” The answer popped out before Otto could stop it.

“Well, then, accept the responsibility of being part of this op. Take the briefcase, and take this, too.” White handed him a photo and a sheet of paper with the drop point written on it. “That’s where this Dunphy will be at three A.M. tonight, and a picture so you don’t give five grand to the wrong asshole.”

Holding the items at arm’s length, by the tips of fingers, like they were toxic materials, Otto finally asked, “What am I supposed to do until then?”

White’s brow furrowed. “Run home. Take a shower. What am I, your mother?” Tossing a five spot on the counter, he got up and looked down at Otto, in several senses of the phrase. “Three o’clock. Call me when it’s done.”

Otto didn’t like this at all, but he didn’t know what to say either. He had no idea what he would do with his life if he lost this job.

“Yes, sir,” he finally managed.

“Good boy,” White said, and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Otto Gottlieb to ponder his future.

Otto looked at the photo of a forty-something Irish-looking cop. What a cliché, he thought. Redheaded with a few freckles, Dunphy had the red onion nose of an alcoholic and the hooded green eyes of a sociopath. The photo brought Otto no comfort whatsoever. Looking down at the remains of his scone and the cup of coffee, he realized he wasn’t hungry anymore.

Having some time to kill, Otto caught a cab, went home and got on his computer. By one A.M. he knew everything there was to know about sector cop Brian Dunphy — forty-four, suspended twice for being overweight, with no money in the bank, an ex-wife who left him nearly ten years ago, a daughter he only saw on the weekends, and nothing to look forward to at the end of the road. No wonder this guy was looking to score any way he could.

Two hours later Otto found himself in Sector Eleven heading for the checkpoint with Sector Twelve. Not much happened out here on the edge of town, and he hoped to dump the money, get the imager, and get back home without any hassles. He parked his car a few blocks away and started to walk. He wasn’t taking any chances that he’d be identified by having his car seen at the checkpoint. Still, he didn’t much like walking down the street with a briefcase full of cash.

A light rain peppered the ground and Otto pulled his black topcoat tighter around himself. The night air had a chill, and he had a childhood memory of Michigan, which was similarly cold. He could see his breath as he neared the small shack that served as the checkpoint’s guard post. Looking through the window of the shed-sized building, he couldn’t see anyone inside. The light was on, but no one seemed to be home.

Moving around to the door, Otto opened it, walked in, and knew immediately that something was wrong.

The desk against the left wall held a coffeepot that was still on, a cup filled with steaming joe, and an ashtray with a cigarette burning in it, a pack of Winstons nearby. Every-thing was right where it belonged...

... except for the sector cop.

A door in the back right corner led into the closet that served as a bathroom, but the door yawned wide open, the room empty.

Otto checked his watch — 3:02. Brian Dunphy should be here.

But he wasn’t. Where the hell is the bastard?

A five-thousand-dollar appointment wasn’t something an underpaid sector cop would normally be late for...

His own cop instincts twitching, Otto went back outside. The gate separating the two sectors was locked. He looked through the eight-foot chain-link fence, down the street into Sector Twelve, and still saw no sign of the officer. Then he looked back up the street in the direction he’d come and saw nothing there either.

The rain grew more intense, and for a long moment he considered calling White, then decided he better look around a little more. He considered leaving the briefcase in the guard shack to keep his hands free, and thought better of it.

An old factory neighborhood, Sector Eleven was mostly run-down vacant buildings for blocks in every direction. Some had been taken over by squatters, who seldom ventured far at night, especially not on a rainy night like this one. Otto gazed down the street into Sector Twelve again and still saw nothing, the rain blurring anything beyond a few hundred feet anyway.

His heart fluttered, his stomach was in knots, and he had a warm, loose feeling in his bowels. Otto hated being scared, but something was terribly wrong here and he had no idea what it was. He withdrew a small flashlight from his coat pocket, turned it on, then struggled to hold it in his left hand along with the briefcase as he drew his pistol with his right from under his topcoat and started back in the direction from whence he’d come. His rubber-soled shoes moved silently over the concrete, his flashlight jabbing holes in the night, seeking any sign of the missing sector cop.

Halfway back down the block, an alley bisected the street. Otto was worried that if Dunphy had gone off to check on a prowler or something, the sector cop might be coming back down the alley, see the light and the gun, and wind up drilling Otto.

Wouldn’t that be a son of a bitch.

Pushing himself flat against the brick building on the west side of the street, Otto moved back north. When he got to the alley, he first looked across the street to the east and could see nothing but rain in that direction. Feeling like a putz on the empty street, Otto peeked around the edge of the building, saw nothing, and risked shining the flashlight down that way.

Nothing.

He turned west in the alley, the flashlight and briefcase clumsily in front of him as he meandered ahead, careful to stay in the middle and aim the tiny pen flash at any shadows. Keeping his pistol ready, he moved forward slowly.

Five feet, ten feet, fifteen, twenty, nothing, the flashlight sweeping back and forth, the briefcase growing heavier by the second, his fingers aching, then stiffening, as the case wobbled back and forth.

Damnit, he thought. Where is this asshole?

Ahead, on his right, something tapped on metal in the shadows.

He swung the flashlight over and saw a dumpster. He couldn’t tell whether the tapping came from the inside or from the far end, where he couldn’t see. The tapping continued, slow, rhythmic — something man-made, for sure.

“Dunphy?” he asked quietly.

No answer — just the tapping.

Otto took a wider arc, so he could see around the far end of the dumpster.

Nothing.

The tapping stopped.

His gun coming up, Otto took a step forward, then another. Still no sound from the dumpster. He took a third step, and was now less than ten feet away. Taking a breath in through his nose, he blew it out through his mouth, just like he did when he was running.

The lid to the dumpster flew open, clanging off the wall, and a figure rose up from within the container.

Freaking at the noise, Otto dropped both the flashlight and the briefcase as he brought up the gun in a two-handed grip. The light stayed on, doing its job as best it could, shining crazily toward the foot of the dumpster.

The briefcase wasn’t so lucky.

Money spilled out into the puddles in the alley, and the remaining cash got splattered by the rain. The crash of the lid scared Otto so badly he almost shot whoever-the-hell-it-was without getting a clear look.

Fumbling to keep the gun on the dumpster and pick up the flash, Otto stumbled, went to a knee on the wet pavement, and finally had the light and gun pointed at the new arrival.

“Freeze!” Otto yelled.

The figure looked up, saw Otto, the flashlight, and the gun... and screamed.

Then the screamer ducked back down into the dumpster, out of sight, but not out of mind.

Otto had only a glimpse to go on: the body shape had seemed male, but the scream was as high-pitched as a little girl’s; and the person’s hair was long enough that Otto couldn’t tell whether he’d just cornered a man or a woman.

“Federal agent,” he said, perhaps too loudly. “Put up your hands, then slowly stand.”

No one stood, but Otto thought he could discern a soft whimpering from inside the dumpster.

“I’m not going to tell you again. Hands up and stand up slowly.”

First he saw the dumpster dweller’s hands, then the person slowly stood, the rain dripping off a disheveled mat of dark hair. “I didn’t do nothin’,” the man said.

Older man.

Otto shined the light on the guy’s face — late fifties, kind of frail, wearing a lightweight navy windbreaker. The dumpster dweller had a scruffy beard and bad teeth that he managed to smile with. His way of showing he was on the up and up.

“What’re you doing in there?”

“Gettin’ out of the rain.”

“You were making some kind of noise in there, a tapping — what was it?”

The old man’s face went blank, then he looked down inside the dumpster. “Oh, that?”

“Oh, what?” Otto asked.

“Scrounged me a flashlight. Tried to knock it against the side, to get it to work. But the batteries is bum.”

Otto came up to the edge of the dumpster, shooed the old man to the other end, then looked over the edge. He shone the flashlight in, and on the bottom caught a glimpse of metal. He homed in on it with the light, and when he finally figured out what he was looking at, his heart sank.

The thermal imager — beaten almost beyond recognition.

“Okay, old man — time to get out.”

The dumpster dweller did as he was told, but not without bitching about it: “What’d I do?”

“Did you put that, uh... flashlight in the dumpster yourself?”

“No! It was there already, when I went fishin’ inside. Honest. Swear to God.”

Otto believed the old guy. The man didn’t seem to be strong enough to have taken out a sector cop; and if he had, why was he down rooting in the dumpster?

“Go on, gramps. Take a hike.”

The old man frowned. “Can I take the flashlight?”

“No.”

“I found it. It’s mine. You guys didn’t repeal finders keepers, did ya?”

Fishing into his pocket, Otto pulled out a five and held it out to the guy.

“Bet it’s worth more than that.”

Otto brought the gun up and gave the guy a good look at it. The bum took the hint, and the five spot, climbed out and started to walk off in the direction of the briefcase.

“The other way, gramps.”

The old man held up his hands. “You got it, boss! Other way it is.”

When the old boy had disappeared around the corner, Otto finally took another breath. He shook his head — feelings of fear and anger gave way to relief. But uneasiness remained; what did the imager turning up mean? Where the hell was that greedy sector cop? Five dollars had bought what five grand was supposed to...

Profanity running a race through his mind, Otto went over and stuffed the soaked bills back into the briefcase and carried it over to the dumpster, as if he were about to throw the damp money away.

Now it was Otto’s turn to climb into the soggy filth to pull out the thermal imager. He took a quick look around, set the case on the ground, edging it behind the dumpster, and holstered his pistol. Using the edges of the container, he pulled himself up and over and inside.

The dumpster smelled — not surprisingly — of rot, decay, and, if he didn’t miss his guess, human feces. Otto tried to bring to mind the time when he’d loved his government job, and as he shined the flashlight down and picked up the battered thermal imager, he realized he couldn’t recall the last time he’d liked — let alone loved — his job.

He cast the beam over the imager and saw spatters of blood.

As sure as he was standing in garbage, he now knew Brian Dunphy was dead. That one answer led to countless questions. Where was the body? Who killed him? Why was he killed?

And was Otto’s own life in danger... right now?

Again the urge came to call White. This time Otto didn’t fight it. He pulled himself out of the dumpster, retrieved the briefcase, and headed back up the alley. He’d go to his car, dry off, call the boss.

At the corner of the street and the alley, Otto again looked up the alley across the street. The rain had lightened up just a touch, and he could see the old man he’d chased off, as well as several more street people, standing in a loose circle looking at a good-sized lump of something on the ground.

Without taking another step, Otto knew that he’d just found Brian Dunphy.

Pulling out his gun again, the NSA agent crossed the street and trotted up. The trio around the body split when they saw him coming, and the entire party disappeared into the shadows by the time he arrived.

Pointing the flashlight down, he saw something he’d seen before but had hoped to never see again.

The other time he’d seen a body in this condition, it belonged to that old-timer, Cal Hankins. Sprawled there, in a spreading pool of dark fluids, the bright red corpse that almost certainly belonged to Brian Dunphy gazed up at Otto with huge bulging eyes and a grotesque clown’s grin in a caved-in skull with brains showing.

This made three murder victims who’d been skinned. All Otto knew of the second victim was that he was a cop. His info came strictly from the news, since he hadn’t discussed that second kill with White.

But now he was looking at victim number three — the guy’s uniform scattered around the alley, his gun and boots already stolen — and Otto had a chill. Was there a connection, beyond two victims being cops?

The car and getting dry would have to wait. Moving clear of the crime scene, Otto pulled out his cell phone and punched in the number for Ames White. The senior agent picked up on the first ring.

“Is it done?” he asked.

“Not really,” Otto said. “And we’ve gotta talk.”

For the next several minutes Otto outlined what he’d found, Ames White staying uncharacteristically mute.

When Otto had finished, White simply said, “Fuck.”

“That about sums it up.”

“You sure it’s the sector cop? What was his name?”

“Dunphy. Pretty sure. He’s been skinned, probably beaten to death with the imager, first. And there’s pieces of uniform scattered around the alley — I haven’t looked for ID or anything, but it’s pretty evident that—”

“All right, all right — here’s what you do. Get the hell out of there. You talk to any civilians at the scene?”

“Just the bum in the dumpster.”

“Identify yourself to him?”

“No.”

“Good. Bring me the money and the thermal imager.”

“But, sir, the imager — it’s almost certainly the murder weapon.”

“I don’t seem to give a shit, do I? If the cops get their hands on that device, you know damn well it’s going to end up on the news, and then the transgenics will see it, and then it will be useless. Would that be a good thing, Otto?”

“That would be a bad thing.”

“Right. Bring it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, once you’re safely out of the sector, make an anonymous 911 call and report the body.”

“All right.”

“And then I want you to get hold of Clemente.”

That puzzled Otto. “The police detective?”

“Yeah. Let him know that it was you who phoned in the anonymous call, but that for national security reasons you had to leave the scene.”

“Okay...”

White’s voice had delight in it. “Transgenics did this and now they’re going to hang themselves. Tell Clemente what you saw and tell him that we have evidence the killer’s transgenic.”

“Do we have that?”

“We will, Otto. We will.”

Otto didn’t like the sound of that — the implication, however vague, was that evidence would be manufactured, if necessary.

“Now, Otto, after you talk to Clemente, bring me the money and pick me up at home. We’ve got work to do.”

“We do?”

“This is going to turn into a PR war, Otto. We have a demented serial-killer transgenic to tell the public about; if you think the rank and file are frightened of transies now, just you wait till the media gets their teeth in this. And which side of the PR war do you suppose has the most media on their side?”

“That would be ours, sir.”

“Damn right,” White said. “Now’s our chance to use them too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Got the drill, Otto? 911, Clemente, then get your ass over here.”

Not liking this a bit — neither what was going down nor White’s condescension — but realizing he had fallen in way over his head, Otto said the only thing he could think of, which was, “Yes, sir.”

Hustling back to his car, his feet splashing in puddles, the briefcase pounding against one hip, the bloody thermal imager clutched in his other hand, Otto Gottlieb wanted nothing more than to be done with this awful night. At the car, he locked the imager and money in the trunk, got behind the wheel, started the engine and gunned it.

Time to get the hell out of there.

A few blocks down he found a pay phone, pulled over, and made the call.

“This is 911, how may I help?”

“There’s a murdered sector guard in Sector Eleven, in the alley off Renton.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Just check it out,” Otto said, and hung up.

Knowing the police would try to trace the call, Otto wiped the phone clean of fingerprints and got back on the move again. As he drove toward White’s house, he phoned the office, got the home and cell numbers for Detective Ramon Clemente, and looked for a nice secluded spot to pull over and make the call.

He pulled into the parking lot of an all-night restaurant near the King County Airport. Though the lights were on, the place looked vacant, and Otto figured he’d get the peace and quiet to make the next call.

He thought about it long and hard. If he went down this path with White, his career could be over; but if he didn’t — his career could be over! Nice options.

Obviously, White was up to some bad shit here — Otto just didn’t know what, exactly. He found it difficult to believe that the government’s agenda was White’s, that Washington was behind this antitransgenic crusade. But if he went in now and tried to rat out White, who would believe him? He had no evidence, and what did he have besides his own suspicions?

Suspicions of what? Evidence of what?

And what if Ames White’s antitransgenic agenda was the government’s?

As much as Otto hated to admit it, there seemed only one way to go. Shaking his head, listening to the cover-your-ass voice once again, Otto pulled out his cell phone and dialed Clemente’s home number...

... once again, doing the bidding of Ames White.