Nightside City

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  That brought some questions to mind. For example, where'd he get the juice? Orchid had always been smalltime.

  And what was he doing that needed that sort of security?

  What was I getting into?

  Whatever it was, I was in, now. If someone had invited me back out again, I'd have given it serious thought- whichever way it went, bribes or threats, I'd have had an excuse to drop the whole case, and a bribe might have helped the credit balance. Even if I had decided to stick, at least I'd have had a chance at picking up a little more information from whatever approach was made.

  I waited at the screen for a few minutes, but nothing came in. It occurred to me, waiting there, that I hadn't eaten lately, that my stomach was uncomfortably empty and it was a reasonable time for dinner, so I got myself some bargain-brand paté, the lousy stuff that Epimetheus grew. I couldn't afford imported food, and tailored paté was about all anyone ever grew on Epimetheus-that, and vat-culture tofu that was worse than the paté. They'd tried to make food out of the native pseudoplankton, but the biochemistry was all wrong, much too toxic to clean up economically, and they needed cheap food for the workers, so the bioengineers whipped up that paté. The stuff I ate was even cheaper than most and tasted like the inside of an old shoe, but it stayed down and kept me going. I ate it, and I waited, and nothing happened. I couldn't wait forever. I touched keys.

  Going after Paulie Orchid didn't look like the fastest approach after all, and the way that searcher had vanished had me a bit edgy about it anyway, so I took another angle entirely, something I probably should have tried right off. I went after the money.

  There's a nice thing about money-it leaves a trail. Always. Sometimes the trail's hidden pretty deep, but it's never gone completely. If you dug deep enough, you could probably trace every damn credit on Epimetheus back to old Earth, right back to the twenty-second, maybe the twenty-first century.

  Before that there's too much data loss, and some people still used primitive money-nonelectronic, I mean-but who cares? I didn't need to go back two or three hundred years. I needed to go back six weeks.

  It was simple enough. Those six corporations had all been keeping their business secret. Their nominal officers were almost all software, written for the purpose and with no history to trace; that was standard for dummy corporations, had been for centuries. They had no business addresses available; that wasn't unusual, either, for outfits that had no regular business. The names of their stockholders were not available to the public-again, no surprise. I couldn't get at them through people or places, unless I went after Paulie Orchid.

  But they had paid out money for property. That meant that money had come in from somewhere. If I traced the money back, I might learn something.

  So I touched keys and plugged in to keep a closer-than-screen watch on developments, but I didn't ride wire. I kept my eyes open and functioning, just taking the data as data.

  I picked a transaction at random, Nightside Estates buying a foreclosure from First Bank of Eta Cassiopeia, and went after it.

  I opened an account at First Cass, bought a share of their stock, and then applied for an audit of operations for a "random" date as a check to protect my investment. I had a file that did this stuff automatically and gave all the right answers to the queries, and meanwhile I did a little illegal maneuvering to intercept queries going elsewhere and feed back the right answers to those. In about twenty minutes I had an account number for Nightside Estates at Epimethean Commerce.

  That was interesting, since I knew that ECB hadn't handled their sale as an in-house funds transfer. That meant the accounts for the dummy corporations were scattered.

  Once you've got an account number these things are easier; it took only ten minutes to break into the account records at ECB. Of course, it was completely illegal, where my maneuver at First Cass had only been a matter of expediting a process.

  Most bank data security is pitiful; they do so damn many out-of-house transactions that there are always a dozen routes in.

  Besides, there are a dozen different legitimate reasons to get at information-bankruptcy proceedings, lawsuits, whatever-so they don't bother with high security.

  Of course, that's only true for information; try and touch any of that money without human authorization, and they'll get tough.

  I got the account records, though. Nightside Estates had an inactive account-net balance of zero. The account had existed for thirty-two days; there had been three deposits and three withdrawals, in matching amounts. In short, somebody had put money in the account a couple of hours before beginning each real estate purchase, just enough each time to cover the entire transaction, from escrow deposit to deed registration.

  The question was, Where had the deposits come from?

  This was getting trickier; I thought I sensed some of the bank software watching me, and the security stuff I had evaded wouldn't play dumb forever, but I kept digging.

  The third deposit had come from Paulie Orchid's personal account at First Cass; that was interesting, but not very helpful unless I went after him, after all. I noted his account number into my own com, then went on.

  The other two deposits came from a number-only account at Nightside Bank and Trust.

  I noted that, too, then pulled out quick.

  I waited a minute for the system to clear itself and any pursuit to have its chance, and then went in, on wire this time-number-only accounts are usually a high-security item.

  I knew I couldn't get a name; that would be in files too secret and too well-guarded for me to crack without a lot of work and risk. It's also what most people would go after, so the security programs watch for it. I was subtler than that-nothing too tricky, but a little less obvious. I went through the records of statements transmitted, trying to find an address that had accepted a statement from the account I was after.

  I found one, too-a com address, not a street. I unplugged, fed that com address back into the system for a little research, and was able to give it a street address.

  At that point I figured I might need to go out and do a little fieldwork, because usually, from what I had, you can't get an exact room or apartment without getting into the building, but I was wrong. The street address was a house-a single-family dwelling in the East End.

  I couldn't put a name to it from any directory-full privacy on everything. Whoever this was, he or she wasn't making it easy. I ran it through the tax records office, though, and finally got a name.

  The name was Sayuri Nakada.

  I looked at that for a long, long moment, acutely aware of the spy-eye hanging around outside; I hoped nobody had a new way of cracking a window shield that I hadn't heard about yet. If I was going to be dealing with Sayuri Nakada, I didn't want it on public access.

  I mentioned Nakada earlier when I was talking about the New York, of course, but I hadn't really expected the trail to lead right to her. Even if you'd never heard of the New York, the name Nakada ought to get a beep out of the system, and Sayuri was the only Nakada in the city. She was the family's representative on Epimetheus, overseeing everything they did on the planet. She hadn't been around all that long, but she was definitely an established part of Nightside City's elite.

  I knew who was buying the West End, it seemed. That explained the connection with the New York, anyway.

  What it didn't explain was what the hell she wanted with the West End. I knew who; I didn't know why.

  More than anything, I needed to know why.

  Chapter Eight

  AFTER A MOMENT'S THOUGHT, MY QUESTIONS STARTED multiplying like the output of a runaway do-loop.

  Was it really Sayuri Nakada buying the West End, or was it someone else in her household?

  If it was she, was she acting alone, or as her family's agent?

  How did Paulie Orchid get involved with it? Why use him instead of some more respectable employee? Just how did he fit in?

  Why keep everything so damn secret?

  Why start s
o suddenly six weeks back? What had happened then to convince her to buy?

  And just like a baby do-loop, I kept coming back to the same place, over and over: Why buy the West End? What did she plan to do with it?

  I punched for "hold and meditate," sat back, and watched weirdly distorted humanoids dance along the big wall holoscreen as the com tried to synthesize music images that might help me think. Pointed legs stretched, thickened, and shrank as they lifted in broken rhythms, while stylized arms thrust out horizontally.

  I could guess at part of it. It had to be Sayuri Nakada buying; who else had the money? Who else would dare work out of that house?

  Even so, I figured that this was not a family operation. That would explain the secrecy and the use of a local small-time operator like Orchid instead of someone who might report back to Grandfather Nakada on Prometheus.

  Presumably she had started her project as soon as she thought of it, or at least as soon as she became convinced it was worth doing; that was why it had begun suddenly six weeks earlier. What had convinced her?

  Well, I wouldn't know that until I knew what she thought she was doing.

  I still needed that one simple answer: Why buy the West End?

  My job was to stop whoever was buying the West End from driving out the squatters. I knew now who it was- maybe I didn't have enough evidence for legal proof, but I was pretty sure. To make her stop, though, I had to know why she was doing it in the first place. It wasn't any obvious scam; Sayuri Nakada really was buying the property. There weren't any tricks with the deeds or the money, or at least none I could see, and of course, with the juice she had, Nakada didn't need any tricks. She really had bought the buildings. I had no simple, legal way to stop the evictions; she was within her rights to raise the rents. If I wanted to collect the rest of my fee, I had to somehow convince her not to try and collect her rents.

  A red holo figure spun on one spike-tipped ankle, arms slashing, while a blue one ducked below, knees bent, torso swaying. If I wanted to convince Nakada not to collect rent, I figured I probably had to know what she was doing with the property in the first place.

  I had never met Sayuri Nakada. I knew almost nothing about her. She was rich, powerful, reclusive-beyond that, I drew a blank. What could she want with doomed real estate?

  The obvious thing to do was to simply call and ask her, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. It's not that I have anything against simplicity, it's just that I didn't think it would work, and in fact I guessed it would have the opposite effect. From everything I knew about her and about this case, she wouldn't want me prying into her affairs, and once she knew that I was prying she could make it more difficult.

  So I didn't want to be quite that obvious.

  As I saw it, I had three lines of approach: Nakada, Orchid, and the West End itself. Those were the three elements I had uncovered so far. The connection with the New York was probably only that it belonged to Nakada's family and was under her personal control; I hadn't found anything else to tie it in. The money led back to Nakada and Orchid, which didn't help.

  It occurred to me that I hadn't checked every transaction; maybe other money would lead me elsewhere.

  It seemed unlikely, though. I'd keep that in reserve for the moment; I still didn't like the way I had lost that searcher, and I didn't care to get too fancy with the com system for a while.

  In fact, I didn't think I wanted to do much of anything with the com just then.

  Nakada and Orchid protected their privacy and wouldn't like me poking my nose into their affairs, but the West End didn't care. Maybe I could learn something if I took a look at just what Nakada was buying. Maybe I could learn something from what the squatters had seen and heard, what the rent collectors had said.

  I brushed the dancers away and called a cab and took a ride-after a pause to fill my pockets, anyway. When I stepped out the door into the wind Mishima's spy-eye dropped like a meteor, then caught itself two meters up and followed me up to the cab.

  I didn't bother to look, but I knew it followed the cab, too.

  This cab was nothing special, just another Midnight Hyundai. It didn't make any small talk; it just left me alone, which was what I wanted. It dropped me at Western and Wall without comment.

  The spy-eye was still with me, of course. I spat at it, just for form's sake, as I got out of the cab.

  I wasted three hours out there in the West End talking to squatters, and damn it, I knew it was a waste even while I was doing it. It was obvious they wouldn't have anything to tell me. Anybody out that far had to be not just down on his luck, and not even just stupid, but both, so what could I get out of them?

  It didn't help any that some of them saw the spy-eye and got nervous. The air out there was empty, since nobody had any messages to deliver, or money to spend on advertised products, or information worth spying out; Mishima's eye was the only floater in sight, and it was pretty damn obvious it was with me. With it hanging there I only talked indoors, well back in the inside rooms, but I think some of those losers still thought the spy-eye was listening.

  Hell, it probably was, but even if Mishima knew I was interested in rent collectors, he wouldn't know why-any more than I knew why Nakada sent them. If she did.

  Even if the spy-eye hadn't been there, I don't think the squatters had much to tell me.

  Sure, I got a description of the muscle that had come around, but so what? Muscle is cheap. I didn't get a single decent door reading that would have named the muscle for me; the equipment out that way is all shot, either just worn or been stripped out for parts. That was one reason I had to go out there in person; there wasn't a single com line I trusted to work properly.

  Shielding against spy-eyes? Not a chance, not on those buildings. I had a jammer in my pocket, and I'd have used it if I saw any good reason to, but I didn't. A pretty good jammer, it put out a wide field, which meant it was illegal to use it around any electronics advanced enough to have civil rights, which meant that it was illegal everywhere in the Trap and most of the burbs-but out in the West End? No problem. I didn't think it would actually hurt the spy-eye, but the damn thing would be blind and deaf while the jammer was on.

  But I didn't hear anything that said go to jammer, so it stayed down in my pocket while I heard about the rent collectors.

  The squatters agreed that the muscle came in two sizes. The small one was a slick-hair, face rebuilt and wired, and the consensus was that he thought the only thing better than him was sex, and he knew that all the women of all the human-inhabited worlds were eager to try combining the two, even including some of the female squatters, which seemed pretty extreme. I figured that had to be Paulie Orchid-the description was just right.

  The big muscle was just meat; didn't talk beyond what he'd been told, but was big enough that he didn't have to. One person told me he growled, but someone else said that was just stomach trouble.

  The two of them worked together, and I guessed that if the little one was Orchid, the big one might be Bobo Rigmus.

  I'd hoped I'd run into these charmers, but it didn't happen. At least, not then, in the West End. I met them later; I'll get to that.

  While I was out there talking, I was looking around, too; I had some equipment up and humming in my pocket -not the jammer, but some wide-band recorders. I was using what my genes gave me, as well-both the ones my parents put together to start with, and the symbiotic ones added later.

  I saw a lot of decaying buildings, damp with mist blown in from the crater rim. The crater wall loomed up behind everything like the edge of the world, which in a way it was, and the stars hung above it in a sky that was still comfortingly dark-but even there in the west I noticed that it wasn't really black anymore, but dark blue.

  A couple of the highest towers were ablaze with light at the top, as if there were a perpetual silent explosion blowing out their uppermost corners, and I felt a little twist of fear in my gut and the base of my brain when I realized that that was early sunlight
glinting off them. It was horribly, blindingly bright.

  I couldn't imagine what it would be like for the entire city to be lit like that-it would be as if it were on fire, as if the walls and streets were burning magnesium. I wondered if the glass would melt, then told myself I was being silly. Glass didn't melt on Earth or Prometheus; it wouldn't melt on the dayside. The sun wasn't that hot.

  But it looked that hot. That light looked hotter than hell.

  And that was just dawn. Most of the dayside had to be worse. Noon, which the city would never see, would be incomprehensible. And I couldn't even be sure that what I saw on the towers was direct sunlight and not a reflection or refraction.

  It was something to see, certainly, something worth looking at-but didn't the tourists see suns all the time, on other planets? And this could be seen free of charge from the street, just as I saw it.

  Besides, the properties Nakada was buying weren't all towers. That stabbing glare couldn't be her reason.

  The wind wasn't as harsh there in the West End as it was in most of the City; I was in the lee of the crater wall. There weren't many machines around, either, and no music was playing anywhere. That had an odd effect on conversation; talking on the street was almost, but not quite, like talking indoors. In the Trap, or my own neighborhood on Juarez, street talk was always shouted, to carry over the wind and noise, but here that wasn't necessary. The squatters seemed to be used to the quiet, but it gave me a little trouble at first.

  Not that I did much talking in the streets; mostly it was limited to, "Let's go inside." But the street talk was different.

  I couldn't see any commercial potential in that, either. Who pays to talk on the street?

  I looked over the whole area and checked out everything on the list of recent real-estate transactions. The properties Nakada was buying had nothing in common. Some were towers, some were parkland, and at least one was nothing but a hole in the ground.