by Eric Brown
‘Is that a threat, Culaski?’
‘If you do continue with the case, buddy, you’ll suffer good.’
‘I’m sure the authorities will be delighted to take action against your threats when they see the evidence . . .’
Culaski smiled for the first time, and the sight of something approaching bonhomie, on a face manifestly unused to the gesture, was ghastly. ‘And what the fuck evidence do you have, Kluger?’
Barney touched the keyboard, accessing the file containing the recording of the meeting so far. He routed it through the wallscreen and sat back, wondering how Culaski might react when he saw his threats recorded for posterity.
The wallscreen filled with snow. Barney checked the file. Something, he discovered, was wrong. The file was empty. The recording had never even started.
Barney looked up.
‘You were saying, Kluger? About evidence?’ Culaski pulled something from the breast pocket of his suit, a slim silver box like a cigarette case.
Barney retained his composure. Other than the loss of face, he was not unduly put out. He would have the last laugh. He made a back-up recording of every meeting, not that he would let Culaski know that.
Culaski pushed himself away from the wall. ‘If you or your partner follow up the Nigeria case, you’ll wish you never set eyes on my pretty mug
Barney laughed. ‘You don’t know how shit-scared that makes me feel -’
He should have known that the black guy would not be content to remain a passive spectator throughout the verbal duel. He saw the movement from the corner of his eye, but too late.
The guy moved around the desk in a split second, grabbed Barney by the neck and hauled him from his chair. The next thing he knew, he was slammed against the wall, his feet inches off the floor, and gasping for breath.
‘I don’t like to hear my partner insulted like that, Mr Kluger. I think it’s impolite.’
The punch, when it came, struck cobra-fast. Barney saw a flash of gold-decorated knuckle, felt the pain. The guy let him go and he slumped to the floor.
Culaski and partner strolled to the door. Before they departed, Culaski turned. ‘Consider that down payment, with more to come if we find you’ve been sniffing round the Nigeria case, okay?’
They left the office and Barney raised a hand to his face. His nose was bleeding, but it didn’t feel broken. He climbed unsteadily to his feet, found a handkerchief and mopped up the mess.
He’d live, he told himself. He’d suffered worse in the past, much worse. Still, it’d shaken him.
He smiled to himself. The bastards didn’t know who they were up against if they thought he could be scared off that easily.
He composed himself and left the office. He made his way down the steps and paused in the entrance. The Lincoln Delta was halfway down the street, edging its way through the crowds that surged between the food-stalls.
Now, why the hell did Culaski want him to ditch the Nigeria case? He wondered if this might be the break he’d been waiting for.
He decided to celebrate with a beer.
He called Casey over from the food-stall.
She stared at the blood on his shirt-front. ‘Hey, Barney - you okay?’
‘I’m fine, sweetheart. Hey, run along to Olga’s and grab me a Ukrainian wheat beer, okay?’ He gave her ten dollars and told her to keep the change.
He watched her sprint along the sidewalk, the bill clutched in her fist. ‘I’ll be upstairs,’ he called after her.
Smiling to himself, Barney turned and slowly climbed the stairs to the warmth of the office.
* * * *
Seven
Halliday was awoken suddenly from a dream about Kim. She was starring in a holo-drama, her breasts and hips inflated to absurd proportions. She kept returning to the edge of the performance area and looking directly at him. ‘Do you love me now, Hal?’
He came awake, gasped. The gross image receded. He reached out for Kim, as if to reassure himself, but the bed beside him was empty and cold. He experienced a sudden disappointment: he wanted her beside him. They had not spoken since yesterday, when she had broken down and accused him of not loving her.
He reached out to kill the alarm, and only then realised that he had been woken by his communicator. He fumbled it from his jacket pocket and lay back in bed. ‘Halliday here.’
‘Hal,’ Barney’s gruff voice sounded. ‘It’s like waking the dead. Get yourself down here.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘A development in the Nigeria case.’ He left it at that and cut the connection.
Halliday hauled himself from bed, shivering. He looked at his watch. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and a pale, disinterested sunlight filled the loft. He dressed and splashed his face with cold water in the bathroom in a bid to wake himself.
He’d gone to bed at dawn, after spending long hours making the report for Simmons. Before falling asleep, his thoughts had strayed from the case and he’d considered Kim, and then what he had experienced on the beach in VR. It was almost as if something in his mind had been triggered by the interface with the virtual world, some long-buried memory concerning his dead sister. He was unsure what he dreaded most, the sudden, overwhelming melancholic fugues, or the sight of the spectral Eloise, walking away from him.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, he thought of the Latino assassin and his narrow escape the other night. He told himself not to worry. The Latino had left him for dead, after all.
He hurried downstairs.
Barney was leaning forward in his swivel chair and staring at the desk-com, his cigar shuttling from one side of his mouth to the other. ‘Take a seat.’
Halliday looked at Barney. ‘Hey, what happened?’
Barney touched his nose, swollen and discoloured. ‘I had a visit, about an hour ago. Couple of heavies tried to put the frighteners on.’
Halliday moved around the desk, fixing himself a coffee on the way, and sat down on the chesterfield. ‘You okay?’
‘I’ll live.’ Barney was peering at a blurred image on the screen. Halliday recognised the office, two indistinct figures across the desk from Barney. It was not the usual surveillance shot they used to record every interview, but a poor video image. Barney was running it through an enhancement program.
‘Are you going to tell me what the hell’s going on?’ He took a long bracing hit of caffeine.
Barney swivelled. ‘Hour or so ago, these two guys show up. The white guy called himself Culaski.’
‘What they want?’
Barney rewound the tape and played it from the start. The image showed the heavies as they entered the office. The white guy, Culaski, said something. The words were an incomprehensible hum.
‘Dammit!’ Barney ran the tape through another clean-up program.
‘Why the video?’ Halliday asked. ‘What’s wrong with . . .?’ He gestured at the wallscreen.
‘I’ll get to that,’ Barney said. He left the program working through the videotape. ‘So Culaski tries to warn me off the Sissi Nigeria case, told me to drop it. Just like that.’
‘And you told him to go take a flying fuck, right?’
Barney gestured. ‘Not quite so economically, Hal. But I asked why he was interested. To cut a long story short, Culaski said they were a private investigators working on the Nigeria case for a rich client, and he said we were getting in the way.’
‘Most unprofessional.’
‘Too right. So I reads Culaski the ethics of the charter, the non-exclusivity of cases bit. He waved it away, said if we didn’t drop the case he’d put us out of business. So I said, “That’s a threat the commission won’t like when they see the evidence.” He looks pretty smug then and says, “What evidence?” So I reroute the surveillance through the wallscreen - or rather, I try to. He’s scrambled the program.’ Barney smiled. ‘But the bastards didn’t reckon on us having the old back-up video, did they?’
‘And I was all for getting rid of that da
mned thing years ago.’
Barney shrugged. ‘If I can get a clean image, a good soundtrack, we’ll be able to take these mugs to the cleaners.’
‘You followed them?’
Barney shook his head. ‘There’s no hurry.’ He smiled to himself, rubbed his nose. ‘Before they left, the black guy decided to leave me a little reminder of the meeting. Didn’t see the bastard coming. This wouldn’t have happened ten years ago.’
‘We’re all getting older,’ Halliday said.
Barney turned to the video image on the screen, enhancing the visuals and scrubbing the soundtrack. He ran it again and Halliday watched Barney as a voice, muffled but audible, filled the room. ‘You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying, Kluger. It’d be in your best interests if you dropped the Nigeria case, okay?’
‘We got ‘em, Hal.’ Barney copied the tape to a needle and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.
Halliday moved to the desk and activated the wallscreen. He hacked into the city police surveillance cameras and called up the street-scenes of the area, covering a period of ten minutes one hour earlier.
Seconds later, the office was flooded with a watery image of the street outside as seen from the police surveillance camera mounted by the lights on the corner. The projecting sign for the Chinese laundry marked the point where the heavies would emerge in the mid-ground.
‘There,’ Barney said. He stood and hurried around the desk. He stood before the wallscreen, indicating Culaski and his sidekick with the stub of his cigar.
Halliday watched the guys cross the sidewalk and slip into a big maroon-coloured Lincoln Delta, which quickly drew away from the kerb and headed north.
The Lincoln moved to the end of the street and turned right. Halliday entered the times and positions, and for the next ten minutes he and Barney watched as a series of surveillance cameras tracked the car in relay as it left El Barrio and entered the Bronx.
The Lincoln pulled into a sidestreet and braked. The two guys climbed out and entered a three-storey walk-up.
He looked at Barney. ‘What now?’
Barney fingered his nose. ‘You up to paying these guys a visit, Hal? I reckon it’s payback time. We’ll take the freeze, find out who the hell hired these jokers.’
Halliday armed himself with an automatic and a canister of freeze, which he concealed in the arm of his jacket. Barney slipped a gun into his shoulder-holster and took a pair of knuckledusters from the draw. Payback time.
They quit the office and Halliday eased the Ford from the kerb and headed north, towards the Bronx.
Five minutes later he turned into the sidestreet and drew to a halt behind the Lincoln. He peered out at the sign beside the doorway. Culaski and Gaines, Security, had an office on the third floor. It was a run-down area populated by welfare cases and refugees, the sidewalks blocked with the temporary accommodation of the homeless in the form of lean-tos fabricated from billboards and tents fashioned from scrap polycarbon sheets. Groups of men and women warmed themselves around braziers in the middle of the street. Halliday was aware of their hostile glances. He would be relieved when they got what they wanted from Culaski and Gaines and quit this neighbourhood.
Barney coded his com to disguise his voice and tapped in the phone number listed on the sign. Seconds later he said, ‘That Gaines, buddy?’
‘Who’s speaking, man?’
‘Just call me a friend. I have some information you might be interested in.’
‘Who is this . . .?’ Gaines said.
‘You did my company a good turn last year, and you know what they say, one good turn . . . Look, your woman’s been putting it around, you know?’
‘Molly?’ Gaines said. ‘Just who the fuck are you, man?’
‘Like I said, a friend. I have pictures.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Know Breslin’s Bar, two blocks south? I’ll be there. See you in five minutes, okay?’
‘What you want, man? How much for the pictures?’
‘We’ll talk about that over a beer, yeah?’
Gaines cut the connection. Barney nodded and Halliday slipped from the car and crossed the sidewalk to the entrance of the walk-up. A foul-smelling flight of stairs, conveniently dim, rose before him. Halliday checked for security cameras. There were none. He climbed to the first floor and stood beside the door of the restroom, making a show of trying the handle. A minute later he heard footsteps descending from the third floor. He glanced around. The tall figure of the black guy, Gaines, appeared at the top of the steps and hurried down.
As Gaines passed the restroom and turned to take the steps, Halliday looked up. ‘Excuse me.’
The guy paused, glanced up. ‘Yeah?’
Halliday raised his right hand and sprayed a cloud of freeze into the guy’s startled face. He held his breath against the stench of ammonia, reached out and grabbed Gaines by his jacket. He opened the restroom door and dragged the heavy inside, kicked open a stall door and dropped Gaines onto the john.
The guy was immobile from the chest up, his face drawn into a pained rictus and his eyes streaming with tears. Halliday grabbed a towel from the rail and draped it over the guy’s head. He stepped out onto the landing and got through to Barney.
‘I’ve sorted Gaines,’ he said.
‘I’m on my way.’
Ten seconds later, Barney came panting up the steps. Halliday indicated the restroom. Barney slipped inside, and Halliday heard a quick crunch and a satisfied grunt. Barney emerged, pocketing his dusters, and nodded at Halliday.
They made their way to the third floor.
The office of Culaski and Gaines, Security, was even smaller and shabbier than their own. The door was ajar, and Halliday saw Culaski wallowing in an armchair, eating a burger and staring at an old computer screen hanging from the ceiling on a boom.
He shouldered his way into the room, nodding amicably at the heavy. Culaski got up quickly, sensing trouble, and reached out to kill the screen. Before he reached the controls, Halliday hit him with a dose of freeze. Culaski gave a strangled gasp and fell to the floor, legs twitching.
Halliday extended a foot and rolled Culaski face-down onto his stomach. He looked back through the door and nodded to Barney.
Halliday sat on the edge of the desk, one foot lodged on Culaski’s head. He pulled down the ancient, hanging computer and accessed the files while Barney went through the paperwork on the desk. From time to time, Culaski gave a strained wheeze as he fought to overcome the paralysing effect of the freeze. Halliday pressed his foot down a little harder.
The files contained hundreds of case notes going back ten years, mainly two-bit security work for local companies, the occasional bodyguard commission and surveillance job. They were exactly the type of low-key and amateurish outfit someone would hire on the cheap to do a botched warning job.
There was nothing on file to indicate that they had been hired to frighten Kluger and Halliday off the Nigeria case. Not that it would be the kind of commission they’d necessarily log on their files.
‘Hey,’ Barney said past his cigar, ‘I think this is it.’
He was leaning over an open ledger, staring down at a scrap of paper covered with near illegible scrawl.
Halliday moved around the desk.Kluger and Halliday, Wilson Street, El Barrio, he read. And beneath this,Sissi Nigeria.
Barney looked at him. ‘So where does that get us?’
‘Looks like it was written quick, taken down while on the phone or computer
He pulled the computer towards him and accessed the history file of incoming calls. He watched half a dozen low-life individuals rap about nothing in particular before he came up with something. This one was voice-only.
‘Chuck,’ a refined upstate voice said. ‘I have something you might be interested in.’
‘I’m all ears, Wellman.’
‘Private eye outfit, name of Kluger and Halliday. I want them . . .’
‘Hold it, Wellman. Let’s
meet in private, talk business, okay?’ The recording finished abruptly, overlaid by another call.
‘Dammit,’ Barney spat.
Halliday accessed the case files again. He typed in a search for Wellman and came up with half a dozen references. Culaski and Gaines had worked for Wellman over a period of three years, mainly surveillance work and background investigations on certain individuals.
Halliday accessed Culaski’s financial files, and found what he wanted. A month ago Culaski had billed Cyber-Tech and Wellman Industries for a thousand-dollar investigation.
