Crawlers by John Shirley Page B

just—”
    Naturally the yellow cab chose that moment to show up. A bearded guy in a turban looked at her from the driver’s seat, and she waved. He got out to help her with the bags.
    “Lacey, claiming our publisher is in league with death squads? What did you expect? Come on, that was extreme and unreasonable.”
    “I didn’t say he was in league with them, I said he was covering up the activities of death squads in Colombia, because he’s backing the right-wing agenda down there. Get the Colombian oil, no matter who gets hurt. And why? Because he’s also on the board of a major oil company, and the newspaper was bought by a multinational, and because he’s got ties to the—”
    “Do you know how paranoid you sound? In these times we have to be tough. You’ve got to be supportive of antiterrorism efforts.”
    “I support the war against terror. I don’t support death squads. You wouldn’t run my column about death squads, you were censoring me, so I’m taking my toys and going home. I’m sick of L.A. I need to get away.”
    “I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to come back.”
    “Is that another way of saying, ‘You’ll never work in this town again’? I’ll tell you what, Chuck. If you tell me you’ll run my column as written, I’ll take my bags out of the cab that’s waiting for me over here.”
    A crackle—she thought she’d lost the connection. But then he said, “I can’t do that. He won’t let me.”
    “Then I’ll send you a card from the Bay Area.”
    “Lacey—”
    Another call was coming in, and she broke the connection to Chuck and took the call waiting as she picked up the remaining bag and walked over to the cab. “Lacey here.” She put the bag in the trunk.
    “Lacey? It’s Suze.”
    “Calling to tell me not to come? You Bay Area types don’t want the sleazy Angelenos up there?”
    “I’m calling to make
sure
you’re coming. Thanksgiving plans, for one thing. The kids are stoked.”
    Lacey got into the backseat of the cab, turned the cell phone away long enough to tell the driver, “Union Station.” She shut the door and said, “Suze, I’m coming unless you don’t want me to.”
    “Of
course
I want you to!”
    The cab started away. Lacey looked through the back window at her little house, the palm tree, the bird-of-paradise plant. Jerve, the little kid who lived next door, was skating up and down the sidewalk on his silvery scooter. “Then I’m coming. I’m in the cab on the way to the train station.”
    “I wish you were coming on the plane. It’s faster.”
    “I don’t take them unless I have to. What’s the hurry? I mean, are you okay?”
    “Yes, I just . . . I’m a little scared, I guess.”
    Lacey rocked back in her seat. It wasn’t like her strong, athletic, independent older sister to admit being scared. “Go on.”
    “It sounds so stupid. It’s Nick. I just—he’s so distant and . . . I don’t know.”
    “Since when has he been Mr. Warmth?”
    “I know—especially when he gets depressed. But he’s been doing pretty good. I had to sort of push him to take a job recently. You know how he gets in that defeatist mind-set.”
    The cab drove up the on-ramp and slid onto the freeway. “Yeah, I remember Nick’s ‘why bother, it won’t work.’ But that’s nothing new.”
    “It’s . . . just that he goes off to work but he’s really
secretive
about it. Doesn’t even take his gear. I thought he was having an affair, but . . . Then this morning he said something weird. I mean, I came into the kitchen and he was standing at the sink and he didn’t hear me, I guess, and it was like he was talking to the air. He said, um—what was it? He said something about a ‘conversion.’ But he didn’t seem to be talking about religion.”
    “Um, he smoking pot again?”
    “No. I don’t think so. It’s like—like he’s really gone into some odd kind of . . . fugue state.”
    “You think he could have given up his meds, and not told you?