Intimate Relations, Rebecca Forster [best ereader for manga .txt] 📗

Beyond the city were the hills of Hollywood. The sprawl of everything in between laid itself out neatly from this perch. But the city was not as orderly as all that. It was full to bursting with people who insisted on wedging themselves onto every inch of available land. Freeways wound through it all, spreading tentacles far and wide. They went into Pasadena and Flintridge on one hand, and the valley on the other.  A major artery flowed to the coast. The road to the ocean was clogged on any given weekend as city dwellers flocked to the shore. Behind Finn the mountains, still tipped with snow, rose up. The air was so clear it seemed he could reach out and touch them.

"You've a nice set up here," Finn said as he looked around the roof top.

The three brothers had made the space their home. There were three couches, five chairs, and two barbeques. It all made the roof feel rather cozy.  A refrigerator was rigged to hijacked electricity, and there was a telescope.

Finn walked over, and looked through the lens without adjusting it. There was a direct shot to the third floor window of the Cucas’ place. He could clearly see where the bed had been; where the girl had died.

"Do you and your brothers ever tire of watching the stars and watch your neighbors instead?" Finn asked.

"I cannot tell a lie. We take a peek now and again. I don't know what we thought would go on in there. Orgies with all those plastic chicks, I guess." Peter put his hands on the top of the wall and bounced on the balls of his feet. "But there was nothing that would get a guy all hot and bothered. To tell you the truth, spying on them gets kind of boring."

"But you've seen through the window."

Peter flipped around and put his back against the wall. "Sure. The last couple of months there's been a girl up there. I think they sublet the top floor 'cause she doesn't do much. She sits there, or walks around, or lies on the bed.  I'm not sure she lives there fulltime, and she sure doesn't work. She's got to be bored out of her mind."

"Have you seen her take a bath?"

Finn asked the question even though he knew this was impossible. Even artists couldn't make water flow if  the pipes weren't hooked up.

"I've seen her drop her drawers," Peter said. "We all have. She's pretty enough, but not really my type."

"Would you know her if you saw a picture of her?"

Peter thought for a minute and then said, "Yeah, I might. You know, sometimes I think she was drunk or high. Come to think of it, maybe she didn't live there. Maybe she goes there to get wasted."

"What made you think that?" Finn asked, resting his arm on the telescope having seen what he needed to see.

"I don't know. She would sit for a long time. Then she would get up and weave around like she was kind of drunk. That's the only way I can describe it. Plus, I only saw her now and again. I'm not here all the time, and I have better things to do then check on the neighbors."

The little boy was gone, and Finn saw a different man in Peter. This imagineer was also an analyst. He had to figure out how something worked, before he could imagine how it could work better.

"Was she alone?" Finn prodded him when the silence stretched too long. "Did you see Enver Cuca with her?"

"Not Enver. But twice I saw a man," Peter said. "Now that was super cool."

"And why was that?" Finn asked.

"Well the guy in that window was pretty amazing," Peter said, reenergized to a point of giddiness. "My brother's didn't believe me, but I swear it was him. The first time I wasn't sure. The girl was sitting on the floor and he was sitting in a chair. He was stroking her hair. The second time I saw him sitting on the bed with her. I got a pretty good look that time, but then I stopped looking. You don't spy on this guy."

"And who is it we're talking about?" Finn asked.

"Ding Xiang."

Peter grinned as if he expected Finn to be hearing a brass band given what he had just told him. When Finn didn't react, Peter's arms dropped and his head bobbed.

"Come on, man. Ding Xiang? He's only like the God of tech: immortal, the ultimate mind, inhumanely brilliant. Some people even say he's Satoshi Nakamoto.

"And that would be?"

"Boy, you need to get out," Peter said. "Satoshi Nakamoto is the guy who invented Bitcoin. Digital currency? Big, big bucks. Topple governments and financial institutions. New world order?"

"Do tell."

Finn pulled his bottom lip up, took out his notebook, and sat on the couch under the L.A. sun. He asked Peter to spell those names nice and slow.

11

Cori found it hard to look at the body of a young person, because it could be her daughter dead, never coming back, a life taken too soon. She hated seeing a little victim of crime, too. A dead child reminded her of her grandson, Tucker. Anyone who snuffed out a life not yet begun, or a life half lived, was pure evil in Cori's book.

At the moment, she was looking at a murder victim without a face; the woman found in the artist's residence. Cori could tell she was young and that she came from means. That was evidenced by the cut of her hair and the care of her body.  It would be sad when they figured out who she was because then Cori would have to notify the next of kin. It was her least favorite chore. Right now, though, she was in full cop mode and damn curious about the dead woman.

This girl had been beautiful, of that there was no question.  She was not tall, but she was perfectly proportioned. Her breasts were