Two weeks later, Frank called her but Maddie didn’t answer the call, because she had nothing to tell him. From Maddie’s perspective that was just fine because there was no last node problem, no partner who had developed a new algorithm that was being field tested, no opioid pills to be distributed.
The same couldn’t be said for Frank. He’d never planned on going legit. Not if the windfall of a lifetime was coming his way. He’d promised two high powered dealers five hundred thousand untraceable opioid pills each against substantial advance credits. Anticipating the score of his lifetime, he preemptively upped his lifestyle dramatically—a new apartment in a swanky residential tower, a new car, new outfits that cost more than some people’s rent—all of it leveraged with the advance credits. His social life jumped a couple of tiers and he appeared in the feeds of people who wouldn’t have noticed him two weeks earlier.
When the crucial commodity wasn’t forthcoming, his new world collapsed. Within a day, the credit advance was gone. A day later he was on the street, his belongings repossessed. His IRX reached heights that made onlookers dizzy. The dealers who’d fronted the credit, were convinced he’d pulled a fast one and wanted to recover what he’d spent. Frank ended up sleeping rough in a new spot every night just to keep ahead of their goons.
Maddie saw him a couple months later, scruffier than ever, panhandling Burmese ear buds near Pioneer Square. She almost didn’t recognize him. His eyes were dull, his posture slumped as if defeat had crept into every cell of his body.
She almost felt bad. Until she remembered that she still had to recover approximately twenty-five-hundred delivery bots to get the van back. That’d be another eight months, maybe seven if she worked like a dog. So screw Frank.
Not for the first time did she consider leaving that dead end job. There was plenty of money to be made, as Ellen kept telling her. Except most of it was illegal in one way or another. Not that she had a problem with breaking the law. She just didn’t have to nerves to do it.
* * *
