“Really? Because I was under the impression the story’s almost over. Shouldn’t this have come at the beginning?”
“Sure, if I was an honest person…I wanted to forget it all, you know? What happened to Phil, or even that I had a brother. Well, I couldn’t do that. I got good at lying about it, but that’s not the same as forgetting. But this…” She nods at the piece of paper on the table. “This I almost did manage to forget. I thought I was the only one who knew—other than Phil, I mean. But it turns out it’s not just Panopticon on the lookout for bad behavior.”
“You’re losing me again, Jane.”
“Just listen,” she says. “I’m getting to it.”
The Good Jane and the Bad Jane
WHEN LOVE FINALLY LET ME GO, I went down to the street and stood there taking deep breaths until I was sure, absolutely sure, that I was really outside, on the actual Vegas Strip, and not in some ant-farm extension of the Mudgett Suite. What ultimately convinced me wasn’t the air quality so much as the sheer number of tourists bumping past me on the sidewalk: even the organization, I figured, couldn’t afford to hire that many extras.
It was late afternoon. Which afternoon was harder to say, but that didn’t matter: I had a job to do. Panopticon had confirmed that John Doyle was in his suite at the Venetian. It was time to pay him a visit. I joined the flow of pedestrians headed north, past the Casino Royale to the fake Doge’s Palace.
The tourist crowd inside the Venetian was salted with Clowns, white-faced Italian mimes and harlequins. None of them made eye contact with me, but I knew they were watching—when I started to follow the hall of shops towards the Grand Canal, a passing mime caught me by the elbow, spun me around, and pushed me back in the direction of the escalator bank. I rode down to the lower level and found the hotel lobby, where a red-headed bellhop, his long hair combed in a Bozo flip, was waiting to slip me a keycard.
It wasn’t until I’d boarded the elevator that I really let myself think about who I was going to meet. I took out my NC gun and checked, twice, that the dial was on the narcolepsy setting. “Do not pick up any other weapons,” I reminded myself.
The elevator arrived on the penthouse floor. I located Doyle’s suite and used the keycard to open the door, stepping through into an entry hall that was larger than most hotel rooms. The walls and ceiling were mirrored and the floor was polished marble, so whichever way I looked I saw infinite Janes holding infinite NC guns that they didn’t dare fire.
I followed the hall to its end, to an enormous sitting room with still more reflective surfaces: another mirror wall; a line of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Strip; assorted glass-and marble-topped tables and cabinets. Here, though, my gaze was drawn to the body on the floor, the blood fanning out from it in all directions already beginning to dry to a dull finish.
John Doyle’s throat had been slit, and his face, palms, and chest all bore slashing cuts. His legs were curled under him, like he’d been on his knees and flopped over backwards. The thought that he’d died begging for mercy didn’t exactly break my heart, but this was obviously a problem as far as interrogating him was concerned.