Punks, p.6
Punks, page 6
“Keep it in place?” she asked the office.
“For now, yes,” Mr. Bankov answered. “That appears to be the music feed.”
“Catchy stuff,” Trevor heard her mutter under her breath.
She moved to rise, so he backed up. The scanner came out again and she followed it to the corner where Night Butterfly had installed the retransmitter, the thing she had called a range extender, hidden to look like a nightlight.
That corner actually needed a little something there. When Mr. Bankov ripped it out, Trevor decided that he might just go ahead and buy a nightlight himself and install it.
Assuming he didn’t end up getting fired or prosecuted for all this, if the truth ever came out.
Any version of the truth.
Trevor looked around the parking lot of the old fish and chips place. Mr. Bankov used to get all his oil to drive the Spudsmobile from these folks and the burger joint next door. Saved them the cost of disposal and gave him oil for his mechanic to convert to biodiesel for the Cadillac.
He was still following Melanie around, mostly walking wingman with her, back a step and to her left. She was following that handheld wifi sniffer around.
Early morning rush meant that cars were heavy on the road, folks thick on the sidewalk, and at least three different guys had yelled propositions at Melanie as she walked and ignored them.
Southern California in the summer.
She paused now in the middle of the abandoned lot, waving her gadget back and forth as it did stuff. Trevor had no clue.
Then she was in motion again. He followed.
Up to the side of the building, where she held the thing up in a way that did distracting things to her chest as he watched.
“There’s another transmitter up there,” she said. “The one that connects to the one in the corner plug, back at the store.”
“Okay?” Trevor replied.
He could honestly say he had no idea what was going on at this point, because he didn’t have the geekery to follow those conversations, back at the warehouse.
“We need to get up there,” she announced.
Trevor didn’t feel like breaking and entering a boarded up shop, so he started walking around the back, where there was a space for a dumpster contained in how the drive-thru looped around. The store had been here forever, but it had been a couple of different things, as others got bought out or ran out of cash.
Melanie had followed him, because she suddenly tugged on his arm and turned him.
“There,” she pointed.
“Where?” he fired back.
“We can hop up on the fence, then grab that one coping and step across,” she said in an excited tone.
“Lady, are you nuts?” he had to ask.
“Oh, c’mon, it’ll be fun,” she said.
“You and I have very different ideas of what constitutes fun.”
Then she gave him a look that was one hundred percent honeytrap. The seductive smile. The hand on the hip she cocked out at him. The head tilt with the little hair flip.
“You never know ‘til you try it,” she offered in a most leading way, drawling her syllables now like a movie star or something.
Any other day. Any other woman, he might have considered it.
Felicia had warned him about girls like this. Even better than his mom had.
“I don’t get to stay down here and watch, do I?” he asked glumly.
“Afraid of heights?” she teased now in a friendly sort of way.
“Afraid of falling off and breaking everything,” he retorted. “Being off work for six months and maybe unemployed. Or getting arrested for trespassing if some cop or corporate security drone happens by on his usual sweep.”
“We’ve got permission,” she said in an offhand way.
“How?” Trevor demanded. “This place is out of business.”
“The Chamber of Commerce licenses folks like my boss,” she turned serious now. “I can pull rank on any cop or goon that shows up.”
Trevor honest to God blinked at her in surprise.
Just who the hell had Mr. Bankov hired? That Suit was way more trouble than a situation like this warranted.
Right?
“Now, we’re going up,” she said, reverting to flirtatious, however serious. “You feel me?”
Figure of speech, but it sure sounded like an invitation.
Right up there with touching a hot stovetop, but an invitation.
“Sure,” Trevor replied with a deflated shrug.
Melanie hooked everything back in place and went from bollard to crossbeam to fence top like an acrobat. And made it look easy.
She smiled down at him, so Trevor suppressed the profanity and did the same.
Nowhere near as gracefully. She ended up grabbing him when he almost face-planted.
“Okay,” she said in that bright way that gym teachers had about them, first thing in the morning. “Now I’m going to grab that post and pull myself up. You’ll need to put a hand on my bottom to push, then my feet. Got it?”
Sure. Nice bottom. Not a trap at all, lady.
Trevor nodded and shifted around.
She reached across the sidewalk gap and put a hand on the post. She had more muscles than he expected, too. She lifted one leg, swung it out, and planted a tennis shoe on the roof deck before she smiled at him.
Trevor shrugged and put a hand on her bottom. Lifted as she started to move and got a handful of serious muscle he hadn’t been expecting inside those loose tan chinos.
Got her across without having to grab anything else she might be offering.
Melanie turned around and squatted, holding the post with one hand and bending forward in such a way that he could see her cleavage, bra, and belly button as she held out a hand.
“Here, I’ll pull you up,” she offered.
Trevor’s only option was to put his foot between her legs where she was squatting and hold out the hand not on the post.
She grabbed him and pulled, standing without stepping back in such a way that he was back with Mrs. Spuds in the back room, pressed up against her chest.
Wasn’t as big as Ilyana’s. Maybe as big as hers had been before the surgeries.
Melanie was about his height. Trevor hadn’t processed that before, but now they were eyeballs apart.
He couldn’t go anywhere without falling backwards off the roof. She smiled like maybe she knew that.
“See, you never know what kinds of fun you might have until you try,” she said, still in that teasing, flirting way.
Trevor faked a smile at her and wondered what else she might be planning on this roof. It would be dirty, dusty, and probably oily. He liked this pair of jeans too much to ruin them.
After a long breath, she stepped back and let go of his hand. He scrambled after her so he was away from the edge. The roof was mostly flat. Just enough pitch for spring and fall rains to run off, like most of SoCal.
She pulled out her sniffer again and followed it to an antenna-looking gadget on the side, kind of hidden from the street by the way the franchise letters stood above the gutter.
Melanie bent over at the waist to examine it, but Trevor had seen that coming and stayed an extra step back. Otherwise, he might have had another handful of ass.
Didn’t figure it would be an accidental thing.
She grinned up at him, inverted.
“Know what this does?” she asked.
“Don’t even know what it is,” Trevor replied.
“Communications maser,” she said, standing up again and then squatting next to it.
“What’s a maser?” Trevor asked.
“Know what a laser is?” she asked.
“Sure,” he nodded.
“So instead of visible light, this uses microwaves.”
Trevor took a fast step backwards.
“Is it dangerous?” he asked sharply.
“Only to a bird that might decide to sit in front of it for about thirty seconds,” she grinned. “Low power transmitter, connected to the thing in the store.”
“In English, lady?”
She studied him for a long second, trying to gauge how much of this was an act, how much was stupidity, and how much was ignorance.
He was good at all three. And telling her he was gay probably wouldn’t do any good. Like Mrs. Spuds, she’d just see that as a challenge, if Mr. Bankov had hired her and The Suit to seduce him into spilling too much information he shouldn’t have.
“This device looks like it connects to something over in that park,” she explained, less flirt, less hostile, and more helpful.
“Okay,” Trevor nodded.
He really hadn’t followed those planning conversations that well.
“The signal comes across the street, then gets sent over to the Everymart and picked up by the nightlight in the corner,” she said. “From there, it bounces across to the server and gets played on the speakers.”
“So we’re just supposed to follow this all the way across town?” he asked. “That’s what Mr. Bankov hired you for? Glad I wore comfortable shoes.”
“No, silly,” she said with a grin. “If the people that did this are even halfway competent, it will dead end at some point and we’ll have to bring in some cyberriggers to follow the trail.”
“Wazzat?” he asked.
“Cyberriggers?” she asked back.
Trevor nodded.
“Expert computer techs, but they live in the internet mostly,” she smiled grimly. “Those dark, scary corners where they can see what happened and track it. Everything that happens out there leaves a clue. A trail. They can usually follow it, unless someone is really that good.”
Trevor shrugged, impressed.
For a practical joke that was apparently making Mr. Bankov a lot of money accidentally, he seemed to be investing it in strange ways.
Had his accountants told him that he might be able to see the same kinds of returns at all his stores if he played his cards right?
Still, this was the part where Trevor was utterly lost. Why he didn’t belong to the collective that was occasionally known as Analog Exile, among other names. He didn’t do computers like they did. Nor music.
Just danced and did odd jobs.
Still, he thought they liked him enough if Mr. Bankov was getting stupid.
Melanie was watching him like a hawk.
“What?” he demanded.
“Waiting for you to say something,” she said.
“You lost me at cyberriggers, lady,” he replied honestly. “Hell, you lost me at the point where you apparently have some sort of badge you can flash at folks if someone pitches a fit about us being up here. Not even sure what the hell I’m supposed to be doing. You seem to have it all in hand.”
It was only a little bit of an act. Mostly just raw irritation at having to be up early, dressed nice, and climbing on roofs with strange women who wanted to be felt up like exhibitionists.
She studied his face. His eyes.
“Nothing?” she asked.
“Server, nightlight, fish and chips, park,” he said, pointing as he went. “I followed about that much of the conversation, so I presume now we hop down off the roof and take a walk in the park?”
“You got it,” she said with softer smile than before.
Like maybe Trevor wasn’t some sort of criminal mastermind that was supposed to monologue all over the place right about now
How stupid do you people think I am?
He turned and moved carefully across the almost-nonexistant slant, not wanting a broken leg or head. Shuffling, mostly, arms out like that one time his parents had taken him to the ice skating rink to play without blades on his feet.
Melanie, of course, moved around him like a gymnast, grabbed the pole, and swung out to stand atop the fence.
He hurt just watching.
Slowly, Trevor joined her, letting the woman have a handful of his ass if that got him safely to the fence. She didn’t linger.
Much.
Then she was down on the asphalt. He got there without tearing, banging, or breaking anything.
Avery, aka Hex Caster, had no fear of heights. Man climbed anything and everything.
Trevor was just a dude.
“How are you doing?” Melanie asked, studying him once they were down on level ground.
“Better,” he said honestly. “Gonna need to pee at some point. Then probably more coffee, but better.”
“Let’s hit the park,” she offered. “I think I know where the next step takes us.”
Trevor grumbled in her wake and watched her ass wiggle as she walked.
Night Butterfly watched on a monitor from a safe distance away as Trevor and the woman technician progressed from the Everymart to the fish and chips place, and now across to the roof.
He was doing an excellent job of playing dumb, especially with how hard the woman was trying to flirt with him. At some point, she hoped he was smart enough to give in and start flirting back, so she didn’t get suspicious that he was avoiding her.
She knew Trevor liked girls. Heteroflexible was probably the best label to hang on the boy these days, but that just meant he fell in with a great big chunk of the population. Mostly het, but open-minded in the right circumstances.
Made him a lot of fun in bed, because she was ultimately omnisexual these days, having gone beyond pan, if that was a thing.
The blacked-out minivan was down the way at the corporate coffee shop Trevor always called the Mermaid. Two on every corner, as the joke went. Unless there were three. She knew a few spots that hit that level.
Zen Sabotage was inside having a coffee and pretending to be harmless, so nobody would think twice about the vehicle.
The turret camera on top had a boom microphone built in and looked like a luggage rack. She had both zoomed now as they gotten back down on the ground before heading to the corner. Traffic was too heavy to just run out. And it was LA.
Someone would try to hit you if you did.
Night Butterfly had watched the woman find the maser. Then explain it to Trevor.
Shortly, they would find the other end of the maser beam and the box connected to the telephone lines for a data feed.
She wondered if the woman was as good as Avery. He’d put it in better than a professional lineman might. Would the tech just rip it out?
Or were they going to try to trace things even farther today?
Night Butterfly smiled. The woman tech had nothing with her that would let her trace that box. She’d have to call for help.
Night Butterfly was all set to listen in as she did.
Trevor let himself relax as they crossed the street and got into the park. Nobody was playing basketball this early. They’d come out when it got hot and play, which made no sense. At least then they would head over to Everymart and load up on either soda or energy drinks before heading home.
He saw them almost every day that he worked.
Melanie seemed to know exactly where she was going, walking unerringly to a pole not quite across from the fish and chips joint. It had a box at the top. Gray-green steel.
Trevor presumed it was a junction box or something. Every time something broke around here, a truck with a folding arm and a cage platform lifted folks up to open it up and do stuff.
Avery had just climbed right up with a belt around his waist and spikes pointing down from his ankles, like the old days. Nobody had even looked at him twice when he worked.
Melanie stopped and looked up at the thing. He was close but had figured out her rhythm now, so he didn’t walk into her when she stopped.
“Know what that is?” she asked, nodding up.
“Telephones and stuff,” he said.
“Data junction,” she corrected him.
His eyes might have crossed a little in confusion.
“All the internet access on these blocks routes up and across to that box,” she explained. “There is a node inside.”
“A node…” he repeated blankly.
“You know how the server at the store had a bunch of plugs on the back?”
“No, but I’ll assume you know what we’re talking about,” Trevor nodded at her.
“That’s a whole lot of plugs up there,” she said. “Like you have at home where the line comes into the house.”
“I live in a coffinbox,” Trevor grinned grimly at her. “Use a cellular signal for my data. The first computer I ever touched was in high school, and those were older than the teachers. I kinda know how the Point of Sale systems work at the store, but only because the Everymart Operations Manual™ has an entire chapter on what all the screens do and how to troubleshoot them if something gets wonky. I’ve been bored enough some days to actually read it.”
“Oh,” she said, deflating some.
Trevor realized that he’d just missed stepping into a trap of some sort. Like maybe he’d been playing with the server at work so he’d know what it looked like. No honest employee ever had a reason to open the case and look at it. Even if it broke, you called in one of the techs from a service Mr. Bankov retained to fix shit.
Additionally, he got a better idea of her background. At least middle class growing up. Maybe upper middle or higher. Not folks who were free, but bosses and managers who held the chains on the serfs for the ownership class. The ones just below the top five percent who owned the entire world.
The ones Trevor had a problem with.
“So we can’t do anything to that box without making a lot of people nervous,” Melanie continued. “That includes opening it up, even to look at it, because that’s the cell phone companies’ property and they get really twitchy…Are you even listening?”
He was, but he’d stopped looking at her. Walked right by the woman when something caught his eye, stapled to the wood post.
Flyer. There were a bunch of them, advertising band gigs, dances, parties, energy drinks, and people willing to trade sourdough starters and other weird shit.
This one showed a beautiful woman, topless but covered over with body paint heavy on death imagery. Nice tits, if you liked skulls for nipples.
Across the top, the name read Ereshkigal, with the words Goddess of Death in small letters below it. The bottom said Analog Exile: cross the street to Everymart to listen.
