The Peripheral

108

Tommy came in and squatted down on his haunches at the foot of her foam, hat in his hand. She was groggy from the pill she’d let Tacoma give her, but she’d had her best sleep in about a week. “Sit on the foam, Tommy, you’ll wreck your knees.”

“Best they got for you in here?” he asked, swiveling on his heels and dropping his butt on the corner of the slab.

“Hospital beds feel like hospital. And Burton and Conner both fart a lot. What’s that with Luke 4:5 packing up? Are we sure we didn’t buy them?”

“You sure shit didn’t buy ’em,” he said. “Why I’m waking you up before anybody wants me to. To tell you about that.”

“What?” She got up on her elbows.

“I think the other guys pulled them out because they’re a media magnet. Not that much on their own, anymore, but you add something else to the mix, media’ll be all over it. Or even if they just do something off-script, like leaving here now, they’re more interesting, maybe just for a news cycle. Like your PR operation’s been dialing them down, keeping your face pretty much out of it, but there’s still been a blip from them leaving.”

“So why would someone want them to leave?”

“So they won’t be an add-on draw when something else hits town,” he said. “Something they really don’t want any spare attention on, if they can help it.”

“Like what?”

“Homes. A strategic shitload of Homes. Vehicles, personnel. Grif’s connections are showing two big convoys headed this way. Serious lot of white trucks. Meanwhile, over at what’s left of Pickett’s, Ben Carter’s cousin’s in that quite sizable detachment of Homes, right there. And he’s telling Ben that the rumor’s they’re headed here, today, to mop up the armed remnants of the evil Cordell Pickett’s multicounty drug empire. Which incidentally they’re now behaving as though they put a stop to, as opposed to your vigilante brother, his best friend, and a prosthesis from the Veterans Administration.”

“They’re coming here?”

“Don’t doubt it.”

“And we’re the evil remnants?”

“You got it.”

“They’re that corrupt?”

“In today’s modern world, yeah, at least as of maybe twenty-four hours ago. They sure are. But you’re probably holding too big a stake in one of the prime corrupters to want to have too much of an attitude about that.”

“And when they get here?”

“We’ll resist arrest. Regardless what we might actually do, we’ll have resisted arrest. Those stacks of shingles won’t stop smart munitions. This is exactly the kind of improv urban fortress they were designed to be used against. The roof on this building might as well not be there, and Homes has real attack drones anyway. Wouldn’t matter if we were in bunkers. Plus your brother’s boys are constitutionally disinclined to go peacefully, in spite of odds.”

“Why’s it happening now?”

“Griff’s best bet is that both the two hands are slap up to the top of the handle of the bat, and there’s no room for another. Just worked out that way. They bought whatever it took to get Homes in their pocket, and there’s nothing left for us to buy to get ’em into our ours.”

“What if Griff got tight with Gonzales?”

“I think he already is, though you can probably still see some daylight between them. But there’s politics, and Homes isn’t on her side of the table, president or no.”

“When do they get here?”

“This evening. But they tend to operate after midnight.”

“You could just meet ’em as they come in and help keep order, Tommy. I don’t see that this has to be your fight.”

“Fuck that,” he said, perfectly pleasantly. “You want a breakfast burrito? Brought you one.”

“How come I can’t smell it?”

“Had ’em double-bag it, so it wouldn’t ruin my uniform,” he said, reaching into one of his jacket’s big side pockets.