by J. N. Chaney
“Ozzie… I’m sure we can come to an agreement that not only satisfies your discriminating needs but takes care of your pesky PR problems as well.”
Ozzie cast me a curious stare. “As in public relations?”
“And who’s to say what kind of infighting you’re going to have? And a mountain of financial issues to follow. Probably an investigation from the Union too? I mean, unless your distributors don’t squeal on their source.”
“You’re talking about the recent headlines.” Ozzie didn’t seem fazed in the least.
“I am.”
“Ah.” Ozzie gave a wave of his hand. “Trust me, Landry. That won’t be a problem. And if that’s your angle, I’m sorry to say that—"
“I’m buying your mine,” I said, blurting the words out before I knew I’d said them. But we were desperate, and I needed something fast.
That got his attention, and Rachel’s judging by the alarmed look she gave me. “What did you say?” Ozzie asked.
“I must concur with Mr. Oppenheimer,” Lars added. “What are you doing?”
“I’m buying your mine.”
Ozzie acted like he wanted to say something but didn’t know what. Then, suddenly, he laughed so deeply and so loudly that I thought I felt the floor tremor. “Oh you’re funny, Landry!” He looked at Rachel but pointed at me. “Your sugar daddy’s got wit, I’ll give him that.”
But Rachel didn’t share Ozzie’s laughter. In fact, her face went deadpan. Gods, was she going to strangle him with her eyes or something?
Ozzie looked back and forth between the two of us, his face eventually betraying a sense of confusion. “Wait, wait, wait,” he said, leaning forward, trying to catch his breath. “Are you… you’re not actually serious right now, are you?”
“He’s dead serious,” Rachel said, leaning forward.
When Ozzie looked back at me, I gave him the subtlest of nods.
“We’re here for the mine, Ozzie,” I said. “And we’re not leaving until you name your price.”
Ozzie worked his jaw, tongue moving across the fronts of his teeth. Boy, did this guy need a vacation.
I was tempted to step back as the beast of a man stood up, but Samuel Landry wouldn’t do that. His money and connections did all his talking. If I assumed a defensive stance, this guy might see right through me. For all intents and purposes, Samuel Landry was buying this mine and wouldn’t take no from anyone.
“The mine is not for sale,” Ozzie finally said, lips tight.
“That’s funny,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “To quote you from earlier: everything’s for sale… for the right price. Isn’t that correct, Mr. Oppenheimer.”
“While that may be true, mate,” Ozzie said, standing up, “I promise you this mine is something you cannot afford. Now, if you’ll excuse me”—he pointed us toward the door—“I have important work to attend to.”
“Do something,” Rachel hissed over comms as she hid her face in her shoulder. Ozzie walked toward the exit. “We’re losing him.”
“I believe I have a suggestion,” Lars said suddenly.
“It’s now or never,” Rachel said, standing up.
“He wants his old life back,” Lars said.
“Excuse me?” I said out loud, completely by accident. It was a rookie mistake. I stood to try and cover the error.
“What did you say?” Ozzie asked, turning around.
“The crime syndicates,” Lars continued, “they’re like families with incredible amounts of control. And I suspect that Mr. Oppenheimer hates the mine—I can explain later. Therefore, while he may have the money to leave this place and put a crew together, he doesn’t have the—”
“Permission,” I said.
“Correct,” said Lars.
Ozzie looked at me angrily. “What was that, Mr. Landry?”
Lars added: “What Ozzie really wants is the one thing money can’t buy.”
“I want to offer you more than just the fair market value on your mine, Mr. Oppenheimer. I want to offer you permission.”
“Permission to do what?”
I had him. Instead of returning to my chair, I took a long walk around the room and ended up behind his desk. I turned his leather office chair around and sat down, swirling my scotch.
“You know,” I said, letting my words come out slowly, “I was a fan of your work. A real fan. Everyone was.”
“Mr. Landry, if you don’t—”
“The Sunday Massacre in Grendale, the Bloody Neck Ties of San Somas, the Karamanka Twins…” I stared into my glass. “We loved waiting for the news channels to name your escapades. They always gave them a nice ring, you know? And then one day… poof!” I looked up, my fingers spreading apart in a miniature explosion. “You were gone. The Union assumed you’d been killed. Every police precinct in ten systems went looking for your body. But we”—I tapped my chest lightly—“we knew what happened. Because we did it to you.”
Oppenheimer was moving toward me. I wasn’t even sure if he was conscious of it, but he was. The giant beast was actually moving toward me.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Rachel asked softly.
I nodded. Come to poppa, I said to myself, reeling the murderer toward me with the silver thread of lust that I knew ran through this man’s veins.
“We put you here, atop this tall mountain, over these dull mines. We knew we couldn’t kill you… you had mechanisms to release enough evidence to bring all the syndicates down.”
Oppenheimer was stepping around furniture and heading right for his desk. But I didn’t show the slightest cause for concern. This beast could smell fear, and if I made one wrong move—one muscle twitch in the wrong direction—I knew he’d try to end my life. And, chances were, he’d succeed. But if we were going to keep him, this was our only shot.
“But we also couldn’t let you keep going. The Union was too close, because you made too many mistakes.”
“I didn’t make mistakes!” Ozzie yelled, suddenly slamming his hammer of a hand on the desk. It startled the shit out of me. But I somehow managed to keep it together, because I was peeling back the flesh and getting to the heart.
“Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie,” I said, shaking my head ever so slightly. “You know that, and I know that, but the rest of the dons… they didn’t see it that way.”
“And they were bastards for it,” he said.
“I agree. But for that moment, I had to play along. That is,” I said, taking a sip of the scotch and then placing the glass down on the mahogany tabletop, “until now.”
Ozzie looked at the glass and then looked back to me. “I don’t understand,” he replied, scrunching his face up. “You’re not one of the dons… your name…”
“Samuel Landry?” I smiled. “Of course, where are my manners…” I shot Rachel what I hoped was a barely imperceptible glare.
“Lars, I need a top syndicate family name,” she said under her breath.
Gods, she’s amazing.
“McBride,” Lars replied. “Last known kingpin of the McBride Black was Lewis Helman McBride. He hasn’t been seen in three years and is believed to be—”
“You might know my late uncle, Lewis,” I said to Ozzie.
He eyed me for a moment. I felt a challenge coming on—that, or he didn’t believe me. Maybe Lewis didn’t have any siblings, so a nephew was impossible. Or maybe the family was a different skin color. Or maybe—
“Lewis McBride is your uncle?” Ozzie said, still not seeming convinced.
“Was my uncle,” I said, growing impertinent. “Was.”
“But last time he and I spoke—”
“He was a damned fool,” I said, swiping my glass off the table and letting it shatter against the ground. “So that’s why I killed him.”
Ozzie’s eyebrows went up. Catching him off guard like this was fun, but it was also risky.
“You… you killed Lewis McBride?”
I returned Ozzie’s look of astonishment with one of my own
. “Do you have a problem we need to discuss, Mr. Oppenheimer?”
“No, it’s just that…” He paused, studying my face. I was beginning to get uncomfortable. Suddenly, I saw a glimmer of an idea twinkle in his eye. “Tell me, what color were his eyes when you plunged your knife into his chest?”
“It’s a trick question, sir,” Lars interjected. Gods bless that wonderful AI. “Lewis Helman McBride only had one eye, and it was blue. Secondly, it’s been rumored that he was shot, not stabbed.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said to Ozzie.
The man responded like a lion about to roar, reaching toward a shoulder holster.
“Because I didn’t stab him. I shot him.”
“Twice,” said Lars.
“Twice,” I added.
Ozzie’s mouth was agape with his hand frozen inside his jacket.
“And he only had one blue eye, you bumbling ignoramus. Just who the hells do you think you’re dealing with here anyway? I do suggest that you listen to my proposal before I tire of you, because—if you haven’t already figured it out—you have no blackmail on me. Therefore, I have everything to gain by killing you. Your fail-safes exposing the deep dark secrets of the past will merely make me the head of every crime syndicate in the sector, almost overnight. So, I will only make this offer once, because, right now, I’m not sure which of my many options I like best.”
Ozzie tried to say something, but the words never came out.
“Sit down, Mr. Oppenheimer, and quit your stammering.”
Right on cue, Rachel pushed a large leather seat toward the back of Ozzie’s knees, giving it a final little jerk to force him to sit.
“Now then, let’s talk about my proposal, shall we?”
10
My supposed plan to give Ozzie permission to run his own crew and recover his place in the syndicates came off as easily as if I’d made it up. Because I had. Every last damn word of it. Lars had been right—the only thing this man wanted was his old life back. He dreamed of having the blessing of the syndicates restored… to do what he felt he was born to do. Wasn’t that what we all wanted? Most peoples’ dreams just didn’t include carving up human corpses with their mouths.
But there was still the matter of initiating the mine purchase, which was something I insisted that I wanted to do. Ozzie had become so engrossed with my offer to give him free reign in the galaxy again, endorsed by the McBride name, that he’d all but forgotten about the acquisition.
“But in order for you to do your job,” I said to Ozzie, enjoying a new glass of scotch, “I need to continue to build the power to do mine.”
He grunted. At what level he comprehended all this, I wasn’t sure. Ozzie downed several beers as we went over the finer points. Granted, the man’s body mass probably allowed him to drink several times what anyone my size would consider buzz worthy before he felt a thing. But I noticed his mood begin to lighten as the hour passed. That, and Rachel was doing her best to distract him with coy looks. Perhaps a little too well, I noted.
Most of the last hours entailed Ozzie retelling some of his grandest escapades during his glory days. Had I still been on the force, I’d have had enough of a confession to put this guy and half the syndicate families away for life.
“You and me, mate,” Ozzie said, his speech growing louder, “we’re going to make an excellent team, you know. I promise you that.”
“I believe you’re right,” I replied.
“I still don’t understand why you want the mine though. It’s a terrible place to live. Plus, you’re just going to draw the attention of all the families.”
“Which is precisely what I want,” I said, lying more easily as the single malt soothed my racing heart.
“You want them to find you?”
“Ozzie, I’ve been biding my time for years, waiting in the shadows. I was dismissed as a side show. A triviality at best. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”
Ozzie nodded.
“Yes,” I replied. “I suppose you do. Well, the time has finally come for me to take my rightful place. It began with killing my uncle, and the first phase of my rise to power will end with releasing you and acquiring this mine.”
“I like it,” he said.
“Now…” I took my time in standing up from Ozzie’s office chair. “I believe it’s time for me to see the heart of this operation. Shall we?”
Ozzie led the way down several corridors while Rachel and I walked arm in arm. I was impressed, once again, by Ozzie’s sheer size as he marched down the hallway, his shoulder’s seeming to brush the walls as we went.
The corridors themselves were declining in appearance, each successive one becoming a little less opulent and a little more industrial. Additionally, we rode down several elevators, each of which grew more utilitarian in function. I felt the cars rock each time Ozzie shifted weight on his feet. While I couldn’t be sure, I was willing to bet credits that we were descending into the mountain beneath Oppenheimer’s office.
“Sir,” came Lar’s static-laden voice over comms. “I am… signal… with… -omms. Please… position.” After that, the channel went silent.
Rachel looked over at me. I raised an eyebrow, and then went back to being Samuel Landry. Or was it Samuel McBride? Maybe I needed to lay off the scotch for the day.
The last elevator we stepped into was the most rickety of them all. It smelled like urine, old cigarettes, and rust. It also shook more than the others. Suddenly, our momentum slowed and the cage clattered to a halt at the bottom of what I assumed was a shaft that had plunged us deep underground.
“Welcome to the top of Myst City,” Ozzie said. “Don’t get too close to anyone, or else we’ll have to shoot them. And replacing them can be such a pain in the ass.” Then he stopped and seemed to consider something. “But, then again, that isn’t my problem anymore, is it?” His giant hand came around and landed on my shoulder with such force I thought it might drop me. The nerves in my shoulder and spine flared in protest.
Ozzie stepped from the elevator and was greeted by a thug covered in more grease than skin. His sleeveless shirt probably hadn’t seen the inside of a washing unit for several years by my count. Tattoos started at the man’s wrists and traveled up his arms, stopping just short of his flattop haircut. He wore several weapons against his sweating body, and carried what looked to be a high-voltage shock prod between his hands. The thug nodded to Ozzie and stepped aside.
Clear of the elevator, we turned out of the main corridor and into a strange command room that, stylistically, seemed to straddle the fence between advanced technology and primitive cave. Computer workstations sat on bare rock floors, while sleek light fixtures clung to the cave walls like large bioluminescent caterpillars. It smelled of mildew and plastic, and of three operators who’d not seen the inside of shower stalls for several weeks.
“Look alive, rats,” Ozzie announced as we stepped behind what I guessed was the main control station. The three goons snapped their heads back and sat up straight. “We have some special guests.” He gestured toward me and Rachel.
“From here,” Ozzie said to me, his speech still slightly slurred, “we are able to control all the hover lines that transport the myst and the miners. We also monitor their habitats and keep them… you know… orderly.”
I nodded. “And we all know how disorderly they can become.”
One of the operators let out of snort, as if saying “Ain’t that the truth.”
“We also control myst refinement, distillation, and packaging, all sub-level. Keeps us off the radar if and when the Union gets too close.”
“The Union inspects you?”
Ozzie shook head. “Not yet, but you can never be too careful, can you, Mr. McBride?”
“No,” I said. “You certainly cannot.”
I leaned in to examine a few of the holo displays, trying to act interested about the operation. But I didn’t have to try hard: I really was interested. What’s more, I could hardly believe that our
plan had worked and that we were getting a private tour from Ozzie himself. Granted, I wasn’t thrilled about how he’d taken to Rachel, and feared what he might want to do with her if I left them alone for more than a minute. But Rachel could take care of herself.
I needed to get the lay of the land, bring down some of the Horizon’s scanning equipment, and conscript a few of Ozzie’s miners to help us dig, all in the name of “testing the product.” This was going better than I thought.
“How far down do these tunnels go?” I asked the man at the nearest workstation. My eyes looked at a flickering feed that showed several miners using jackhammers on the walls of a tunnel that was about fifteen meters wide.
“That one there’s three and a half kilometers down,” the man said between rotting teeth. It smelled like an animal had died in his throat.
I winced, repeating the number. I’d never heard of any mine being this deep—and I’d never smelled a man’s breath so foul. I studied the picture more closely, wondering what kind of equipment they’d used to bore so far. The smooth walls had an undulating wave-pattern to them. “These markings… what equipment did this?”
“That’s not us, mate,” Ozzie said. “Those were here long before any miner got here.”
“You’re saying they’re naturally occurring?” I asked.
Ozzie nodded. “If you call giant monsters natural.”
“Giant monsters?” I asked, glancing at Rachel. “More like lava flow, you mean.”
“That ain’t lava, mate. Creatures bore those holes, I’m telling you. And sometimes, we still hear ’em.”
There was an awkward silence as I decided whether or not to challenge the man further. That deep, there were plenty of reasons to hear strange sounds—giant monsters were the least likely explanations.
“They lurk down there in the abyss,” said the man behind the workstation. “They eat people too.”
“Eat people…” I repeated, my tone flat. “And you’ve seen this?”
“No, mate,” Ozzie said. “But we’ve lost plenty a miner. Damned creatures knock our feeds out when it happens too.”
