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Eliana walked over and sat down at his table.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Someone told me about you.” Eliana tilted her head, smiled. “Said you like to have fun.”
He drew the cigarette out of his mouth and exhaled smoke. His hand was shaking.
“Who,” he said, “are you?”
“Just one of Cabrera’s girls. Is it true? You like to have fun?”
“No.” He turned away, took a long drink of his wine. In the dim light it looked like blood. “Go bother somebody else.”
“What you got there?” She laid her fingertips on the edge of the envelope.
Sala went still. Onstage, the girl twirled around and around, her skirt flaring out from her hips. Then that skirt was flying through the air and landing in a sparkling heap at the edge of the stage. Someone off to the side applauded.
“Take your hands off that,” Sala said, in a cold, hard voice. Eliana jerked her hand back as a reflex.
“Touchy,” she said, trying to make her voice light.
Sala glared at her and sucked hard on his cigarette, the ember flaring. Then he jammed it into the half-full ashtray. Beads of sweat shone on his forehead, jeweled in the red lights.
It was warm in here. Rich-man warm. But Eliana could tell that wasn’t why Sala was sweating. The guy had no idea what he was doing.
“Must be important,” she said, leaning back, toying with the end of a lock of her hair. “To get you so worked up.”
“It’s nothing.” Sala lit another cigarette. He kept glancing nervously around the dining room. Eliana wondered if he had a gun. She hoped he didn’t. Because she was about to do something very stupid.
The music was still carrying on in the background. The girl was still dancing. It was an old song. Eliana remembered her mother listening to it, dancing around the living room alone. It was after Eliana’s father had died, around the time when her mother went to work at one of the atomic power plants. Her mother had hated that, making energy for the mainland when she couldn’t afford to return there herself.
“I’m really not interested,” Sala said, not looking at her.
“That’s really too bad,” Eliana told him, and then, before she had a chance to think about it, she shot her arm out and grabbed the envelope out from his hand. He resisted. Sala’s eyes widened and burned with anger.
“What the—”
Eliana used up all her strength to rip it away from him, and then she ran. She tore through the dining room, music pounding in her ears, hoping she hadn’t torn whatever was inside the envelope. Sala shouted something. The businessman looked up at her, bored, and then she was in the entranceway, and then she was outside, the dome lights blinding.
“Get back here, you fucking bitch!”
Sala. Eliana whirled around, caught sight of him in the doorway. His hands were empty. No gun.
She shoved the envelope into her coat and ran, down the side street and out into the open bustle of the docks. Sala was still shouting behind her. People stopped, looked at her, looked at him. She ignored them. She just kept ru
Mr. Vasquez had taught her, when he’d first made her his assistant instead of just his secretary, that she needed to learn how to run and she needed to learn how to shoot. She’d never really learned the latter. But ru
She collapsed onto a bench beside a fish vendor and sucked in air. White dots of light kept flashing in her vision, but the more she breathed, the more sporadic they became until they disappeared. Sala wasn’t anywhere in sight. She’d lost him.
Eliana reached into her coat. Pulled out the envelope. She undid the fastener and slid out the contents—not enough to read, but enough to check. Looked official, whatever it was. Parchment paper, rows of smudgy boxes filled with off-center typing, like a birth certificate.
Weird.
She slid the document back into place. Fastened the envelope. The fish vendors were shouting at each other, swapping dirty jokes and roaring with laughter. Eliana set her purse in her lap, dropped her hand inside. She still expected Sala to appear out of the crowd, but he never did.
And when she was sure it was safe, she walked to her car, and then she drove back to the smokestack district.
CHAPTER FIVE
DIEGO
Diego was down at the Loro, sharking the pool tables while he waited for Garcia to show up with Batista Almeida’s money. The bartender had the radio on, tuned to a news station; the newsman was going on about the electrical troubles that had been plaguing the city the last few days. That was the phrase they used—“electrical troubles.” Everybody Diego knew was calling it what it was: blackout. The lights had been growing dimmer and dimmer, and flickering sometimes. You’d hear the hum of a heater, and then, for two or three seconds, you wouldn’t.
The news was blaming it all on the AFF, of course. Probably got their information from the city. The city was always blaming the AFF or the robots for their own damn problems.
Diego was in the middle of a thirty-dollar hustle when one of Mr. Cabrera’s robots showed up, sliding in through the maintenance hatch next to the jukebox. The guy Diego was scamming, some poor lost soul from Madrid, saw it first, jerking his head up and then missing his shot by a mile.
“The hell?” he asked.
Diego looked over his shoulder and scowled when he saw the robot. One of the newer ones, egg-shaped and covered in lines of lights. Its shell had been carved up with that flower from the Florencia’s sign. Mr. Cabrera left his calling card on anything he could.
The lights glowed green. It had a message.
“What the fuck is that doing in here?” the Spanish man asked.
“They come in sometimes.” Diego leaned his pool cue against the table. “Excuse me.”
He walked away. The robot whirred behind him. Diego could feel the Spanish man watching after them both, but Diego knew better than to finish up the game if Mr. Cabrera was waiting.
“Hey!” the Spanish man yelled as Diego pulled open the door leading outside. “Where are you going?”
Diego ignored him. He went out onto the street, the robot tagging along like a puppy. This part of town, the streets stayed empty, even during the day.
“I’m waiting for Garcia,” Diego said.
The lights on the robot’s back flickered.
Diego sighed, rolled his eyes. “Come on.” He led the robot down the street a couple of blocks until he found an alley where no one would bother them.
“All right, you little asshole,” he said. “Show me what you’ve got.”
The lights flickered again. The damn thing wanted authentication. Jesus. This wasn’t going to be anything Diego wanted to hear.
He pressed his palm against the robot’s sensor. A pause, then the lights went blue, and the robot spoke in Mr. Cabrera’s voice.
“Are you alone?”
“Yeah, man, I’m alone.”
The robot stalled out, lights flickering again. It didn’t like his answer.
“Yes,” Diego said, all proper like he was talking to Mr. Cabrera himself.
The lights went still. “I need you to come to the Florencia as soon as you get this. Not as soon as you’re able. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Confirm you got the message.”
Diego kicked at the gravel in the alley. Garcia was going to be fucking pissed, showing up at the Loro without a contact. No way to say that to the robot, though. It only understood two things: “Yes” and everything else, which pretty much amounted to “no.”
“Yes,” Diego said.
The robot didn’t move, and for a minute Diego thought he might have answered wrong. But then with a click and a whir it shot straight up in the air and disappeared into the dome lights. Dim, of course, dimmer than they ought to be.