Now for the next one.
Tails belongs to Sega Corporation. What can I do about that? Little.
I bumped into Vinny Lee on the way out of the room.
Shouldn't have been so surprising, I know. Honestly, you can't take her into any buildings without her going off and exploring them – floor by floor, room by room. But I wound up running into her while I was leaving the room of investigation – practically when I was five feet out the door.
She wasn't exploring this time. She looked quite frantic, as if she'd been looking for me, specifically. Couldn't she have just commed me now that we had the actual devices for it? Although I guess some things have to be brought to attention when you're face to face. Also, I wasn't sure I wanted to know what news she was carrying. This was Vinny Lee, after all.
"Amos! ¡Amigo!" she shouted. "Where have you–"
I clapped a hand over her mouth and indicated sha. No telling what the soundproofing was like in a place as run-down as this building, and I didn't want anyone hearing me. And she was being a little loud.
Vinny Lee shoved my hand away, but I guess she knew to be quiet in a villain's lair. She walked out and headed to the elevator. Like an idiot, I followed her.
"This better be important," I muttered as we went along. "I just blundered into Horse Vet's private crime investigation setup. And I'm in a bit of a scattered mood for bad news."
Vinny Lee tilted her head, but she knew better than to ask when I was like this. I quickly changed the subject.
"How'd the tour go with Charlie?" I asked.
"Oh, just fantástico," she replied, looking around the room, perhaps checking to see if the building staff – if any – had left her any tidbits to scoop up. (She is seriously obsessive about picking up trash – more for the uses she can get out of it than anything else. Don't ask.) "But then it got a little boring, talking about stuff I already knew. But Charlie struck me as a little… tragic." Now I really wasn't sure I wanted Vinny Lee to elaborate on that. "Apparently Starr doesn't treat his empleados well at all. The situation with her… it's like The Devil Wears Prada, only the overbearing boss is a forger."
"Great." Now I felt really scared for Charlie. And if her being Starr's assistant was indeed Horzvedt's idea, I didn't think he'd thought it through very well. Certainly not as far as her mental health went. I was starting to think that thirty years chasing after an amoral forger had warped Horzvedt's judgment.
"Didn't she say it was Horzvedt's idea?" I asked Vinny Lee, remembering what Charlie had said to me back in the pottery shop.
"The suave? Why would he ask her to do that? Moreover, why would she listen to him? Let alone keep it up?"
"I think Charlie and Horzvedt are pretty tight, if she's taking suggestions from him at her own risk. She must really trust him, too. Some sort of family relationship?"
That conclusion wasn't terribly far-fetched. There was a good twenty years' gap between him and Charlie, enough to be some close relative – uncle and niece, perhaps, or something even closer than that. I wasn't even sure I wanted to think about it. The prospect that the two were colluding with each other was scary enough.
Vinny Lee tilted her head, considering this. "That sounds about right. Although I certainly wouldn't have trusted him that much."
I frowned. Vinny Lee might've been a little off in the head, but her words were usually pretty on point. This was why she was the unofficial genius out of us. If she said it was about right, usually it was the best conclusion we could come to.
On the other hand, Horzvedt had sought me out. And I really didn't trust him. Of course, he'd already known that, he'd said so himself. So why was he even talking to me? Not to mention, he was probably our only shot at ascertaining Starr's guilt. I remembered what he'd said in parting: whose heart is heaviest? That still bothered me. Something told me he wasn't referring to remorse or anything of the sort.
"And what were you so concerned about talking about with me?" I asked, shifting onto another tangent. Although something told me I didn't want to know what it was.
"Imira."
"God," I muttered. "Not this again. You have to be bluffing."
"I'm dead serious, amigo. Don't you think there's a reason Tails chose hoy to dole out the Comclips for us? You think DJ would lift her Three Taboos just willy-nilly? We need better communicación in the team. Especially now. You need to get this cleared up with her. The sooner, the better."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
Vinny Lee shot me a stern look as we reached the elevator. "I should probably get this out of the way," she whispered as she mashed the down button. "I don't support the ataque de misiles, and neither does DJ."
"Really? How so?"
Vinny Lee gave me another look, this one a shouldn't it be obvious? look. "Well, Tails found out before either of us – any of us, really – and he wasn't particularly happy about it," she answered me. "He was playing juegos de rompecabezas on the Holo when the breaking news came up in his tracker. He caught the report and, well…"
I remembered Tails' sour look earlier at Fadjir's Fancies. "So it wasn't just the fact that it was on his birthday, just the news in general."
Vinny Lee nodded. She generally had the best sense for her fox's reasoning, and in turn, he was the most open with her. "And if mi zorramigo finds it revolting, it's a pretty good indicator of how wrong it is. Also, avatars just don't approve of genocide in general. That's too many humans lost to them. Vidas demasiados."
I'd guessed as much but hearing it from Vinny Lee it made all too much sense. Avatars, in general, tend to look out for the little guy – in this case, the humans. And they will do anything to defend them.
The thing about that attitude – any taking of human life (by anyone) affects them a great deal, to say the least. I remembered how the avatars reacted to the loss of Selene and Bruce in the fire at St. Francis Inn. Loss of life on this scale… they had to be taking it really hard. And since we were in league with the avatars, we'd have to respect their beliefs. Yay.
Not that that bothered me. I personally thought the avatars were some of the most sensible and honorable people – human or otherwise – that I could surround myself with. At least they thought my life was worth something.
"And…" Vinny Lee chewed her lip. There was a loud ding as the elevator opened up for us. We stepped on, but instead of hitting a floor button, Vinny Lee hit the doors closed button, shutting the doors of the elevator but not going down. Clearly, whatever she had to say, she'd much rather say it in private.
"Okay, just spit it out, VL," I muttered. I didn't care what Vinny Lee's message was, or whether I wanted to hear it, but all this beating around the bush was starting to get to me.
She sighed. "You probably don't want to hear this, and I don't mean to preach, but – Jesus was a Jew himself. We Christians have roots in your religion and traditions. That's awfully hard to deny. I mean, you can't change your familia."
I waved my hand in a go on gesture. Not that I wanted to be given a lesson in Christianity, but something told me that it wasn't even the point Vinny Lee was trying to make here. And I wanted her to be finished quickly so we could get out of this elevator car. I also imagined she knew what she was talking about with not being able to change your roots. She had some areas of her own roots she wasn't proud of – specifically, her absent-even-at-home mom, who'd neglected to see her gender fluidity for the problem it really was, leading to her parents' divorce and her leaving her hometown.
"And… Well, you know the framework of a car. When you dent even a small bit of the frame out of alignment – even the smallest iota – it winds up totaling the whole car. And then the car is completely useless."
Now I understood – sort of. It sounded like the sort of thing Tails would tell her. "You're saying anybody going at me threatens you and DJ? Or makes your beliefs seem meaningless? That seems a little extreme."
"It's a hecho. And it isn't just us they attack when they go after you."
"Okay, now you're not making any sense whatsoever."
Vinny Lee stared at me, her dark eyes hard with experience. Of course. She'd been through all sorts of bullies who'd target others just to get to her. Her father had been threatened because he didn't agree with her gender – the one the teachers wanted. She'd known a thing or two about coercion and hate – and the repercussions of those two.
She hit the button for the third floor. (How she did that while still glaring at me, I tried not to even wonder.)
Finally, as we went down, she spoke in a low voice that I didn't think was due to concerns about soundproofing. "The hatred that those terrorist groups have for Israel, the hatred that blew up Gaza, the hatred of everyone we've had to deal with… that sort of hatred eats away at itself until there's nothing else left. That's why I don't indulge in it. And neither should you. Or any of us. It's not going to get us anywhere."
That much I understood about our situation. The avatars had beaten it into us constantly. They're all humans, and all that. Now I was starting to see why Tails had chosen this day to dole out the Comclips. He didn't give out gifts without a very good reason. He must've realized we'd catch the missile strike on the news – that we'd hear about it one way or another, anyway (I wasn't that attentive to Fox News, thank goodness) – and wouldn't be pleased about it. All along, he'd been trying to keep solidarity in our team.
The avatars, it seemed, always thought of everything.
The elevator doors opened onto much of the same view as the floor we'd left – hallways and doors and a ton of ugly wallpaper. Was this trashy decoration a thing for Terminal Commerce, or what?
"Okay, where are we going, really?" I asked Vinny Lee. "Just curious."
"There was something I wanted to ask Charlie about," Vinny Lee said. "I got directions to her office from another of Starr's employees. El tipo de café. Knew a great deal about how Starr and Charlie liked their café, and how they liked it delivered."
I only picked out one thing from all the chaos – she'd been keen on looking for Charlie. I imagined Vinny Lee wasn't really curious about anything but just checking up on her. Of course, struggling with gender drama as she was, I was hardly surprised she was even expressing concern for Charlie's own mental-health state. She might have even known how Charlie was struggling.
"Which room?" I asked, because I, too, was concerned for Charlie.
"Tres-cero-cuatro," Vinny Lee replied. "Shouldn't be far."
She was right about that fact. Faster than you could say, Starr sucks, we reached the room.
The door was plain and simple, with a knocker just below the room number – 304, in brass letters. (Just the sort of thing you'd find on a once-snazzy room door like this.) I didn't think that knocker ever got used.
"Should we knock?" I asked.
Vinny Lee glanced at me, then jiggled the knob. "Seems unlocked to me," she replied, and opened the door.
In retrospect, she probably shouldn't have done that.
We found an office room, all right – and found Charlie sitting at her desk, pulling a gun on the two of us.
Don't you just love suspense?
Verse for the update: Lamentations 2:18. Stay tuned!