The Perdition Score

I watch the screen for a few minutes. The guests mingle. Abbot presses the flesh. Spends a few minutes with Tuatha Fortune, the wife of the previous augur. Waiters bring in drinks and food and take out the remains. The most exciting thing that happens is when a waiter runs out of shrimp puffs and Charlie Anpu, the graying, liquored-up patriarch of a heavyweight Sub Rosa family, gets bent out of shape about it. Like the poor-slob waiter is supposed to bend over and shoot seafood out of his ass. What a creep. My hoodoo is good enough that I could probably do it, but I hate to show off at parties.

I pull out my phone and check the time. More than two hours down here in Glitter Gulch. The best night of my life.

“So, Willem. How long were you a cop?”

“I told you to stop saying my name.”

“It’s a simple question. How long were you on the job?”

He shakes his head.

“You don’t get to ask about my personal life.”

I point to one of the screens. The augur laughs at a billionaire’s dirty limerick or maybe the guy does a mean Ed Sullivan impression. Anyway, the laugh looks real, but I can see Abbot’s eyes and he’s dying inside. That makes two of us.

“Abbot seems to be having a good time.”

“He’s doing his job. And he’s not the one you’re supposed to be watching.”

“I’m watching plenty. But I can’t hear a thing with you talking all the time.”

He freezes for a minute, but doesn’t say anything.

I take it back. I don’t want to machine-gun the party. I want to find the fault line that will drop California into the ocean and toss a nuke down there. No one on this boat, me included, will benefit the human race by living one more day. Let’s just blow the whole shebang into the Pacific and give Nevada a shot at some prime beachfront property.

I look at other monitors. Waiters go in and out of the kitchen. Security patrols the walkway to the boat. A seagull swoops low and shits on the deck. Lucky bird.

“Did you know Audsley Ishii?”

Willem nods. “Ishii is a good man.”

“And you don’t like me because I got him fired.”

“I don’t like you because of who and what you are.”

I swing my chair around to face him.

“Enlighten me, Willem. What am I?”

He turns to me.

“You’re nothing but a loudmouth hustler. You have the skills to watch the room? Bullshit. You’re some hotshot killer? Bullshit. You’ve been to Hell? That’s the biggest bullshit of all. But it’s a nice line to the right people. The kind of unhinged street trash you spend your time with.”

I check the time on my phone again. I swear time has stopped completely.

“Ishii wants to kill me. Did you know that?”

“Good luck to him, I say,” Willem says.

“But I work for Abbot.”

“I know.”

“Which means you sort of work for me. I mean, as part of security it’s your job to fall on a grenade for anyone on the council.”

“I know.”

“That means me.”

“Unfortunately.”

I lean back.

“Still like your job?”

“I like my job fine. I just want you to stop talking.”

“You got it, pal.”

We watch the party for a while. The monitors hurt my eyes. I’m afraid they’re going to give me another Trotsky headache.

“Audsley was a friend of mine,” says Willem.

“You need better friends.”

“It really would be a black mark on the whole security team’s record if he was to kill you.”

Abbot looks up into one of the cameras and twirls his finger a little, saying it’s almost time to wrap things up.

Willem zooms in on him.

“The thing to remember about security is we’re only human. We have good days and bad. If Audsley was to show up …” Willem shrugs. “It could be one of our bad days.”

He grins at me and I grin back, but his smile is bigger because I know he means every word of it. Some people just can’t take a joke.

AS THE GUESTS straggle out, Abbot comes into the surveillance room.

“What do you think?” he says. “Did you see or hear anything?”

I shrug.

“It was all manicures and shrimp puffs down here. Did you pick up anything, Willem?”

“I’m not the Wormwood expert,” he says.

“Still, did you notice anything unusual?” says Abbot.

“No, sir.”