felt to operate outside the law, how good, how big it made me feel . . .
Reluctantly, I pushed myself away from the wall. “We have to hurry.”
“They didn’t trace us.” But she was already sobering, looking from left to right. Information technology and its finer points did not matter much to the crocodile brain. It wanted some physical distance. We hurried.
I started to feel safe when we were about a quarter of a mile away. I slowed, stopped, started stripping off the plasthene protection. Spanner followed suit. “How much did we make?”
She grinned. “Guess.”
“A lot.” I started to fizz again. A lot of money. For a few minutes’ work. “Tell me.”
“A hundred and four, maybe a hundred and five thousand.”
I laughed out loud, incredulous.
“Shut your mouth,” Spanner said, “you might drown in this rain.”
I was suddenly glad of the rain, glad to be getting wet. It was real. All that money. I felt dizzy. It made a mockery of what I earned at Hedon Road.
The Polar Bear was quiet, only half a dozen people in the place. Spanner had ordered us whiskey. I rolled the glass around in my hands, content to sniff at the fumes. Spanner was on her third drink in thirty minutes. She probably should not be drinking at all with the painkillers she was on. Now that the adrenaline high was fading, I was too tired to care.
“So, what will you do with your share?”
“I don’t know.” I sipped, enjoying the hot, smoky taste. After taking out start-up expenses and paying Tom his share, I’d have more than thirty thousand, tax free. I could drink this stuff every day. Live in a bigger apartment. For a while. “Maybe I’ll give it to someone.” Magyar might be willing to get Paolo’s address from the records. I tried to imagine his expression when he found he was thirty thousand richer. I stared into my glass. Such a warm, welcoming color.
Spanner reached over and covered the glass with her hand. “Who?”
“What?”
“Who are you giving it to?”
Giving the money to Paolo was a stupid fantasy. It wouldn’t help him or me. But I needed to talk—and who was there but Spanner? So I told her about Paolo. About him coming to Hedon Road, about his youth, his strangeness. About his eyes, the way they seemed to open when he realized I wasn’t mocking him, that I would teach him. How young he was, and vulnerable. How he had tried to kill himself. How I felt guilty.
She sipped at her drink. “You didn’t exactly cut off his arms and legs with an axe.”
“No. But I should have done something when I could. So should my father, my mother. Willem. Everybody.” I wanted her to see, to understand. I told her about the hotel room, the judgment in the Caracas case. How, when I had heard, I had shrugged in my air-conditioned hotel room and climbed back in the shower. “But how could I have known then, when I was only sixteen?” They had just been pictures on the screen. Somewhere inside I had thought the dirt on their faces to be makeup, their anguish an act.
But Spanner wasn’t listening. “Money means so little to you that you can afford to just give it away?”
“It’s not the money.”
“Of course it’s the money!” What else is there? She was scared, I realized suddenly. Money was all she had. If I didn’t think much of that, what would I think of her?
“Spanner. . .”
But she was almost hissing. “You make me sick, you know that? You’re an arrogant bastard. You think the world cares what you feel. You think you can make a difference, but you can’t.”
I had never seen her scared before. It made me uneasy. Something had changed. It had always been the other way around. But I wasn’t afraid anymore. She could not make me do anything I didn’t want to do, ever again. She had rescued me, and taught me to stay alive, but I had paid and paid and paid. I had paid enough.
I think she saw that, and I think it frightened her even more. I wanted to explain to her that I wouldn’t hurt her, that I wasn’t like everyone else she knew, but I didn’t know what to say—and I wasn’t sure if it was true.
She saw my indecision. “Poor little rich girl!”
“No.” I was too tired for this. I finished my drink and stood up. “Not anymore. I work for my living. I work