“Good evening!” said the cab. “Where can I take you today?”
Saif gave it the address and helped Marisa in. Bao followed, tapping his plastic card on a small flat panel.
“We should be there in about thirty minutes,” said the cab, sliding the doors closed behind them. “Would you like a—”
“No ads or offers,” said Marisa. “Ay, I hate these things.”
“Tell me about where we’re going,” said Bao.
“It’s called the Donato Center.” Saif kept his voice low. “It sounds swankier than it is—mostly just rentable warehouses and office space, maybe ten or twelve buildings with a little web of roads between them. But we’re not going right there—I didn’t want there to be a cab on the grid heading to that address, in case these people are monitoring. Instead the cab’s taking us to a little strip mall nearby: taco stands and dry cleaners and that kind of stuff. We can walk the rest of the way, and most of it in the dark.”
“That’s smart,” said Bao. “Does the Kindred guy use one of the offices?”
Saif shook his head. “Just one of the parking lots. The place is empty after hours.”
“Even better,” said Bao. “Any security cameras that see us won’t belong to anyone who cares. We should be prepared for private surveillance nulis, though—a guy selling drugs is going to have at least a couple of those to watch his back.”
“And they’ll be doing more than just scanning for djinni IDs,” said Marisa. “Even Cameron and Camilla have nightvision. And infrared. We can’t let them see us.”
“That’s why you have me,” said Bao, smiling for the first time that night. “This is how I make my living, remember? Item number one.” He opened his jacket and pulled something from an inner pocket: a short black stick with a foam cone on one end. “Directional microphone,” he said. The end opposite the foam had a small earbud, which Bao pulled out on a taut, retractable cord. He let go and the earbud zipped back into its housing. “The first rule of sneaking in somewhere is that the less ‘in’ you have to sneak, the better. This will let us hear everything they’re saying from two hundred meters away. Item number two.” He handed the microphone to Marisa and reached into a different pocket, pulling out a beige cloth cap, like a ball cap, rolled into a wad. He unfurled it to show the logo on the front, the stylized black bear of Monarch Studios, a movie company.
“How is a Monarch hat going to help us?” she asked.
Bao smiled, and reached his finger inside the hat up under the brim. He pressed a button and the logo vanished, replaced by the Cherry Dogs logo Marisa had designed.
Saif frowned. “That still won’t help us.”
Marisa smiled. “It’s electric ink. He can make any logo he wants.”
“The second rule of sneaking in,” said Bao, “is that looking innocuous is more important than not being seen, because not being seen is impossible. The hat has a camera, so I can re-create any logo I see. Hold this.” He handed the hat to Saif, then took off his black jacket and turned it inside out, revealing a second surface the same color and material as the hat. Even the safety pins were gone, replaced by a normal shoulder seam. Bao put the jacket on, then the hat, and looked for all the world like a uniformed employee of some generic company. He reached one more time into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a slim plastic block with a clip at one end; he unfolded the block into a single flat sheet, and Marisa saw that it was clipboard. “This is the costume I use for loitering; anytime I need to just hang around and listen to someone, or stand in a crowded street and snag bank numbers from passing tourists. People get suspicious if you just stand there, and now that nulis do all the menial jobs like groundskeeping and custodial, you can’t just pretend to be picking up trash. But stand around with a clipboard, talking to yourself and making a mark every now and then, and people think you’re official. Better yet, stand in a busy street with a clipboard and try to talk to people, and it’s like you’ve just turned invisible.”
“For a crowd, sure,” said Saif, “but that’s not going to work in an empty industrial park at night.”
“That all depends on which logo I use,” said Bao, and took the hat back from him, pressing the button inside it again. It flipped through a dozen or so logos, most of which Marisa recognized as local megacorps, and then stopped on Los Angeles Department of Water Conservation. “Ideally no one will approach me at all, but if anyone does I can tell them I’m checking the sprinkler system. Now, I only have one outfit, but your faces are anathema anyway, right? You stay by the taco stand; I’ll go check it out and report back.”
“You said your hat has a camera?” asked Marisa.
“Yeah, but this is the best logo for this situation—”
“I don’t want you to change it, I want you to patch your camera to your phone, and send me the signal.”