The Peripheral

33

Leon was finishing a second breakfast, at the counter in Jimmy’s. Flynne sat beside him. He’d had to come into town to do contractually obligated promo media with a crew from the lottery, with, he said, the douchebag he’d bought the ticket from. Burton had driven them.

“If he’s a douchebag,” Flynne asked, “why’d you buy the ticket from him?”

“’Cause I knew it would burn his ass so bad, when I won,” Leon said.

“How much did you get, after taxes and the Hefty Pal fees?”

“About six million five.”

“I guess it’s proof of concept.”

“What concept?”

“Wish I knew. Nobody’s supposed to be able to do that. Some security company in Colombia?”

“All this shit’s like a movie to me,” Leon said, and belched softly.

“You put anything down on Mom’s meds?”

“Eighty grand,” letting his belt out a notch. “That latest biological she’s on does burn through it.”

“Thanks, Leon.”

“When you’re rich as me, everybody’s always after your money.”

Flynne gave him the side eye, saw him keeping a straight face. Then noticed, in the mirror behind the bar, way back in it, in the glare of the gravel lot, the cartoon bull. It winked at her. She resisted the urge to give it the finger, because it would just add that to whatever little profile it kept on her.

Being here was making her think of Conner, of the square white tent out on Porter, the drone swarm sucking up molecules of tires. She still hadn’t had the face time she needed to talk to Burton about that. Conner, she figured, his first night on the job, had killed those four men.

He’d done it with speed, intensity, and violence of action. That was the Corps’ fighting ethos, and maybe more so for Haptic Recon. As she understood it, it meant that your intel might not be great, your plan iffy, your hardware not the best, but you made up for it by just going for it, every time, that hard and that fast. In Burton, that coexisted with his idea of there being a right way of seeing, but she guessed that might at least partly come from hunting to put food on the table, something he’d always been good at. Conner, on the other hand, would be purely the other.

“What were you doing over at Fab?” asked Leon.

“Meeting with Shaylene and Macon.”

“Don’t do anything funny,” he said.

“You’re telling me that, today?”

“All I’ve done, today,” he said, “is help get people around here to pay their damn stupidity tax, next lottery.” He slid off his stool, hitched up his jeans.

“Where’s Burton now?” she asked.

“Over at Conner’s, if his to-do list went okay.”

“Rent a car and drive me over there,” she said. “I’ll hang my bike on the back.”

“Leon can rent the car, he’s got money.”

“Burton’s hoping you’ll have to get used to that.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Leon, suddenly serious. “Those people you and him talk to sound made up. That story that went viral, about the pediatrician who gave all his money to his imaginary girlfriend in Florida? Like that.”

“Know what’s worse than imaginary, Leon?”

“What?”

“Half imaginary.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Wish I knew.”

After she’d called for the car, they waited outside while it drove itself over.