The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 29

tattoos on this example of manly beauty?”

“Can’t see the moon from here, either. Or the TV remote,” she added. She sat up and looked around. Cody found it on the desk and tossed it to her. “Thanks. You know, carnies would call you a marked man.”

“Carnies?” He gave a short laugh. “Don’t tell me you threw over the bright lights of the midway to keep a low profile in budget accommodations.”

“Higher-end budget accommodations.” She put on the TV and began channel surfing. “For the discerning yet financially-savvy business traveller. Don’t you ever read the brochures?”

He made a polite noise that was could have been yes or no and was neither. The hotspot that had come up over two hours ago was still there, midway between his chin and the point of his jaw, and as far as he could tell, it hadn’t faded even a little. The medic had assured him there was nothing to worry about unless it started to spread and it hadn’t. It wouldn’t have bothered him except he hadn’t had a hotspot in years. Rookies got hotspots.

The sudden recurrence could have been down to any number of things, the medic had said, the most likely being the attack of hay fever he had suffered on arrival. But he’d never had hay fever in his life, he’d told the medic. He’d never been to Kansas City in late August, she’d replied, chuckling.

Technically, he still hadn’t. The airport was thirty miles north of the city and the car they’d sent had taken him to an industrial park about as far to the west on the Kansas side of the state line, which apparently ran right through the middle of town. The most he’d seen of Kansas City proper was a distant cluster of skyscrapers, briefly glimpsed through the tinted window as the driver negotiated a complicated interchange of highway ramps. After that it was generic highway scenery all the way to a generic suburban industrial park, full of angular, antiseptic office buildings surrounded by patches of green landscaped and manicured in extremis, some with a koi pond or a fountain. The access road meandered through it so much that Cody thought there had to be an extra mile of travel. Albeit a very pretty mile; perhaps it was so people coming and going could see at least in passing the flowers they didn’t have time to stop and smell. Cody could have done without it. By the time they’d reached their destination, he had actually begun to feel carsick.

“Yo!” A pillow hit him in the head, making him jump. “And I thought I was vain,” LaDene laughed. “Are you really that fascinating?”

“I was woolgathering,” he said as he threw the pillow back at her. “Thinking, in case you don’t know what that means.”

“I know what it means,” she said. “I also know you’ve got a hotspot. Unclench, honey, I’ve got one, too.” She lifted her shirt and pointed at her navel.

“Oh, very funny.”

“Oh, very for-real.” She was up off the bed and had his face in her hands before he could say anything. “Ah, got it, right there.” She patted his cheek and pulled up her shirt again, exposing her midriff. “Mine’s hotter. Feel.”

Her belly button was only inches away from his nose. Cody drew back and started to protest as she grabbed his hand and pressed it against her skin. His discomfort turned to surprise. “I sit corrected,” he said, extricating himself from her grip. “Yours is hotter.”

“Told you,” she said, plumping down on the bed to stretch out again. “It’s probably the ragweed and who knows what else in the air. Man, I hate KC this time of year.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“I’m from here.” She laughed at his surprised expression. “You couldn’t tell?”

“How could I? We just met.”

“I knew you weren’t from around here, soon as I saw you. No antihistamines.”

He chuckled a bit ruefully. “I thought I was dying of a head cold I caught on the plane.”

She started to channel surf again, then changed her mind and shut the TV off. “If you get cold symptoms a lot when you fly, it’s probably an allergy.”

“Oh?” He gave a short skeptical laugh. “Is there a lot of ragweed on airplanes?”

She shrugged. “Lots of other stuff—mold, dust, newsprint. Somebody’s cheap cologne. Even expensive cologne.”

“Newsprint?”

“Believe it or leave it. You know how if something exists, there’s porn of it? Well, there’s also someone allergic to it.”

“Newsprint,” Cody said again, still skeptical.

“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.” LaDene raised one hand solemnly, then let it fall. “Okay, that was fun. Now whaddaya wanna do?”

Cody leaned over and scooped the remote control up so he could turn the TV back on, mainly to forestall the possibility of her wanting to compare hotspots again. The screen lit up to show a dark-haired, olive-skinned woman speaking directly to the camera with an earnest sincerity that made his own brow furrow in sympathy.

“… found flayed and burned in a midtown Kansas City, Missouri, parking garage have now positively been identified as August Fiore, AKA Little Augie Flowers, fifty-one, and Coral Oh, twenty-nine, of Liberty, Missouri. Fiore went missing two weeks ago from an FBI safe house where he was being held pending the start of the trial of Carmine Nesparini on racketeering charges. The FBI has steadfastly refused to comment on allegations that Fiore was Nesparini’s personal ‘master key’ but sources close to the investigation say that Fiore’s cooperation would have given authorities an unprecedented level of access to mob records.

“Fiore’s attorneys refused to comment, except to say that they were unaware of any escape plans and had no knowledge of Fiore’s whereabouts. Whether Fiore left the safe house voluntarily may never be known. FBI technicians are still working on the sabotaged surveillance system but experts believe there is little chance they can salvage enough data to be useful.

“Coral Oh’s connection to Fiore still has not been established. Oh worked for the Kansas City Convention Bureau for fifteen years as an event coordinator, for the last three in a supervisory position. Coworkers described her as intelligent and well-liked. She was last seen ten days ago in her office by two of her subordinates, who had been working late with her.”

The woman was suddenly replaced by a video of a very young man who looked as if he hadn’t slept for at least that long. The slightly wobbly graphic at the bottom of the screen said he was Akule Velasquez. “She told us to go home, she’d finish up,” he said in a husky voice to someone just off- camera to the left. “We’d’ve stayed but she was all—” he made small shooing gestures with both hands. “‘No, get outa here, I’ll finish, bring me some fancy coffee tomorrow.’ She was like that. I tried to stay anyway but she kept telling me no. I wish I hadn’t listened.”

The woman in the studio reappeared, looking more earnest and sincere than ever. “The mayor’s office issued a statement saying that this unfortunate and tragic incident should not overshadow the fact that criminal activity in the area has been steadily declining for the past twelve months thanks to new policing initiatives—”

LaDene snatched the remote out of his hand and turned off the TV. “Well, that wasn’t fun. Now what do you wanna do?”

“Hey, I was watching that.” Cody reached for the remote but she threw it across the room where it bounced off the wall and fell neatly into a small wastebasket.

“She shoots, she scores! A three-pointer, the crowd goes wild!” LaDene made crowd noises as he stalked over to retrieve the control. The impact had knocked the batteries out and it took him two tries to put them back in properly. “Oh, come on. What do you wanna scare the shit out of yourself for?”

But the news had moved on; now a man was standing near the edge of an empty swimming pool, blinking in bright sunlight as he talked about levels of chlorine. “Oh, well.” Cody dropped the remote on the bed and sat down on the chair by the desk again. “I wasn’t trying to scare myself.”

“Who were you trying to scare—me?”

“No. I just want to pay attention.”

“Set a news alert on your phone.” She was channel surfing again. “It’s probably all bullshit anyway. ‘Little Augie Flowers,’ for God’s sake. Who goes around calling themselves ‘Little Augie Flowers’? For a minute there, I thought they were talking about some old Grand Theft Auto module. ‘Gay Tony Meets Little Augie Flowers, bullets will fly, heads will roll!’ Oh, hey, I love this!” she added, sitting up suddenly.