“I don’t think that’s necessary.” Megan sat up a bit more; her hands were clenched upon her lap, and she stared directly at Gray as she spoke. She thinks I’m going to shoot them, he thought. “Listen, it’s true that we’re trying to get Moody – you already know that. And yes, we’ve asked you for your help. What I don’t understand, however, is why you think we’re using this girl, Angie, as well? We don’t want her, Gray, we’ve just been asking for your help on this.”
“Interesting you say that.” Gray stared back at Megan, his eyes on hers. “Tell me why Moody wants Wilson Hammersmith so badly. He owns the club she works at, and that’s why Moody wants her. You tell me why he wants him, what that’s got to do with you two, and maybe I’ll change my mind about dragging you two down to Central.”
Marowitz made a dark sound in the back of his throat. For a fat little shit, he sure seemed to have some menace in him. Gray found himself having a little more respect for the man at the moment, though he also started sizing him up in case Jack decided to throw himself into a charge. “Look,” Jack said through gritted teeth, “You’re going to put yourself into something you want no part of if you keep pushing on this, Gray. Just get us the information we want, and we’ll leave you alone. Didn’t I give you enough for that already?”
“Not when I find out that Moody’s trying to take down some kind of criminal real estate broker and you’re trying to get him removed.” Gray shook his head. “This Hammersmith guy buys up properties, facilitates crimes under their roofs – and you two want to get in the way. I know that Moody’s a fucker, but standing here right now you two are the ones who look a whole lot more guilty.” Now he did draw his pistol; Jack said nothing, though Megan flinched. “Up, the both of you. We’re going to see Human Resources.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dan.”
Gray glanced up. A shadow stood in the foyer, one he knew very well – by voice, if not by detail. Brutus Carter stepped into the doorway, the blunt, snub-muzzled design of a compact submachine gun braced on one arm. A white-banded snail cassette clung to its belly in front of the grip, signifying flechettes inside. Gray might get a shot off but he’d be ground to dust by a cloud of tiny arrowheads; it wasn’t the way he wanted to go. “Brutus,” he said carefully, lowering the Hornisse’s muzzle. Confusion flooded through him, confusion and anger. “You’ve got a gun on me, friend.”
Carter nodded. “I’ll keep it on you, too, until you put that little mag-job away.” He nodded toward the pistol in Gray’s hand. “Go ahead, Dan, nice and slow.”
Gray stared at Carter for a while in silence, leaning against the wall, the Hornisse in his hand pointed at the gray carpet, weighing the situation in his mind. Finally he put the gun back in its holster. “All right,” he said, “You’ve got me, Brutus. And now that you do, why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on.”
Carter nodded. “Gladly,” he said, and though he relaxed his grip a bit on the gun in his own hand he did not let the muzzle dip. “Why don’t you have a seat, Dan, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Jack and Megan moved down to one end of the sofa as Gray moved to take a seat on the other; Carter walked around, the muzzle of his gun dipping rhythmically with each step, a leashed beast waiting to be loosed. Gray did not bother thinking of heroics; even if Carter intended to kill him, for whatever reason, he wasn’t going to escape it. Best just to look casual. “All right,” Gray said as Carter took his position leaning against the wall, “I’m listening.”
Carter reached into his coat with his free hand and took out his wallet. “Well,” he said, “You’ve seen this…” He let the wallet flop open, exposing his Amber Shield; it glowed serenely as it floated over his identification card. “But you haven’t seen this.” Carter brushed his ID with his thumb; the shield shuddered, paled – and then, much to Gray’s surprise, shifted in form and color so that it became a shining, golden triangle inside of a circle.
“A Golden Shield,” Gray breathed. He knew what was coming now. “You people are Executive Affairs.” EA was the stealthy end of the company’s operation, corporate investigations and subterfuge – rooting out threats to corporate assets, inflicting harm on competitors. In the world of the corporation, they were the Inquisition, the FBI and the CIA all rolled into one. Gray felt the blood freeze in his veins; his job might be upholding the law, but EA upheld profit margins. The law wasn’t going to apply to them, not in any meaningful sense, especially since CivPro was the law. Marowitz was right; this was something that he hadn’t wanted to get into. Staring at Carter now, Gray had the distinct feeling of a man slipping off the edge of a very high cliff, his fingers giving way from the ledge one at a time.
Presently Carter nodded, though his face was not unkind as he spoke. “I’m afraid so,” he replied. “Dan, you’re a good officer, we all know that. It was why we reached out to you in the first place. Marowitz here was meant to be your contact earlier, but you managed to find the Spine Thief far earlier than anyone expected. You’re a good cop, but damned if that wasn’t a pain in our ass.”
Gray stared at him. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Are you telling me that EA was responsible for the murders?”
“Oh, lord, no!” Carter shook his head, looking slightly aghast. “Hell no, son, you did a real service finding those people out – no, that’s not what we’re talking about. Here, let me lay it out for you?”
With a nod, Gray settled back in his seat. Might as well be comfortable. “All right,” he said, “I’m listening.”
Carter nodded. He let his arm drop, and to Gray’s surprise, began pacing the floor in front of the couch. It put Gray at ease; this was known behavior, not machine guns and golden badges. This was the Carter he knew. “We’ve been investigating reports of severe abuses committed by Vice Management,” he began, “stretching back to when Bud Moody signed up with the company. He’s a young fellow for his rank, but he’s proven ruthless. Well, you know his reputation; if he can’t find something he’ll invent it, or he’ll find a way for you to get where he wants you in the first place. If he weren’t such a motherfucker he’d had been a great asset to EA. But…”
“Fuck him,” said Marowitz. “Anne’s in the freezer because of him.”
“Jack’s right,” said Carter. He paused in mid-pace, turned toward Gray. His free hand was in the pocket of his slacks. “We really got turned on to Moody with the arrest and subsequent conviction of his sister for driving around with all that Hax in her trunk.”
Marowitz shook his head. “She was just a college student,” he rumbled quietly.
Carter nodded. “She’d have to be one hell of a mover to be carrying around twenty million or so in product like that,” he said. “But the facts didn’t line up. She was a college kid, but that in itself didn’t mean anything – you see that all the time, trust-fund kids, bored, going into business for themselves. But she just didn’t have the contacts, hell, she didn’t even have the time with all the tests she was clearly seen taking. The alibi should have stood up. But…”
Megan spoke up now. “Moody had arranged for evidence,” she said darkly. “That’s why I was called in. You knew it happened from time to time, sure, but not on the scale that I was seeing. Nobody was listening, though. Not until I started talking to Carter here.”
“Right.” Carter clucked his tongue, rocking on his heels. “Megan’s been a senior coroner in Evidence for several years, but it wasn’t until we took her in that she had the authority to make inquiries, check security records, that sort of thing. The evidence in Anne’s case had always been freaky on the surface, but it stuck. Now we’ve got a girl in the freezer, who knows how many people on the slab, and millions of dollars’ worth of evidence and product getting recycled with the profits going directly to officers in Vice Management.”
Gray sat there, taking this in. That explained a lot, of course, and his heart did go out to Marowitz and his sister. That was some hard shit to have to deal with, he knew. “S
o whose drugs were they, if not hers?”
“Ahhhhh.” Carter nodded Marowitz’s way. “I’ll let you handle that one, Jack.”
“The Hax belonged to the Koreans,” said Marowitz. “Anne was seeing a boy who ended up being indebted to one of the White Center gangs. He was the one who put that shit in her trunk, and had her drive over to pick him up – she never knew it was there.” His eyes narrowed, and Gray found himself shrinking a bit from the sheer force of malice that crackled in the those ordinarily sleepy pools. He felt the same way when Angie was involved – though he didn’t think plotting revenge with the authorities was his style. Gray thought about the red rage that boiled up inside him when she was threatened, and he knew that it would be swift and bloody should he ever have to deliver vengeance.
Better not to think about that too much.
“So we believe that Moody had his hands in the whole thing, and had been allowing it to happen under his watch so long as he got a cut of it. Would’ve been a hell of a share.” Carter clucked his tongue again. “Problem is, the Koreans apparently reneged on their end before the deal could be completed. Moody had Vice pick the girl up, she got the heat for it, and now there’s a shit ton of narco sitting in Evidence storage for him to quietly get rid of when a convenient time allows. He’ll either sell it back to them, or he’ll sell it himself. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Gray thought about this for a moment. “All right,” he said, “But what about Hammersmith? Why does Moody want him so bad? And where do Angie and I fit in?”
Carter’s face split into a grin. “Well,” he said, “Funny you should mention that. Moody’s been putting deals together for ages through people who owe him for getting them out of serious jail time through evidence corruption and bribes, right? So he’s been able to regulate a lot of what happens in the city, if not directly controlling it. He’s a smart boy, doesn’t want to look too obvious.”
“Everybody expects Vice to be a little corrupt,” said Megan, “But not to the scale we’re talking about.”
“Exactly.” Carter shook his head in his shaggy-dog way, and chuckled. “So here comes Hammersmith, buying up these properties and sponsoring the activity that previously Moody was carefully engineering. Suddenly the same stuff’s going on, and Vice is getting record arrests – but that’s all, you see? There’s no money coming his way. He’s being thwarted, and he doesn’t like it. And so…”
“And so he decides to take him down.” Gray pursed his lips. “All right, so who is Hammersmith?”
Carter looked from Gray to Jack and Megan for a moment. “Well that’s the thing, Dan,” he said. “I can’t tell you. Not unless you agree to work with us.”
“Work for Executive Affairs?” Gray’s brows arched. “That’d be a hell of a promotion.”
“Not ‘for’ us,” Marowitz said with a grunt. “‘With’ us. Carter’s the only EA operative in the room.”
“He’s right.” Carter shrugged. “Jack and Megan are working with me to make this happen, but they aren’t part of EA themselves. Going to look real nice on their company records, though.”
Gray looked at the other two. “I thought Jack wasn’t working with the company anymore,” he said. “Because of the mistake with the terminal. Moody said he had a drug problem.”
“The only problem I have is not being able to shoot that motherfucker.” The black fire in Marowitz’s eyes had only built, now that it was visible, and Gray wondered now if they didn’t have more in common after all.
“Yeah, well.” Carter glanced between the three of them before settling his gaze back on Gray. “Well, what about it, Dan? I think Jack’s already shown you that we’re happy to play ball with you.”
“What, because of the pictures?” Gray lifted his brows. “That seemed more like a distraction tactic to me.”
“It was meant to show you that we can be trusted.” Marowitz very nearly hissed the words. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“That’s…enough, Jack.” Carter took his free hand out of his pocket and gestured to Marowitz in a way that matched his tone. Gentle command; it was something Gray was seeing in a new light thanks to the revelation of his position. “Look, Dan. Everything’s above board here. If you want to keep going on with Homicide, fine, we drop this and you just look out for your girl until we finish this thing and Moody’s put away. But if you want to really make an impression on Administration? Really take a lasting step forward? You’ll work with me on this. Everything will pay off, I assure you.”
Gray sat there in silence. Everything will pay off. He’d heard that come from the man’s mouth before, when he was a subordinate. It had never been anything that he regretted – certainly, he hated the man’s guts sometimes, he hated the way he acted in the past and the way he handled himself, and yet…well, this was hardly the man he had known! Could he trust the same man’s word now?
But on the other hand, the rough hand of his ambition pulled at him. He could really do something in the company with an EA nod. Hell, he’d never even thought of EA before – could it be possible for him to join up with Carter? What would that mean? He thought about Angie, what it could do for her as well. His girl. His smart, pretty, gutsy girl.
That was enough. “I’ll do it,” Gray said. “Tell me what I can do.”
“Took you long enough,” Megan’s tone was dry as she turned his way. “Took me inside of ten seconds to say it.”
“Dan doesn’t do things lightly,” Carter said. He looked on Gray with an expression that was somewhere between fatherly approval and grim satisfaction. Gray wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “He likes to think about them. It’s a good trait.”
“Didn’t think about taking those pictures,” said Marowitz. The smirk was returning to his lips. “You should have seen him.”
“Enough.” Gray said it with more steel than he had meant to. Did the job, though; Marowitz shut up and settled back into his usual sullen slouch. “Now. Brutus. I’m working with you. Tell me what’s going on with this Hammersmith guy.”
Carter began pacing again. “Wilson Hammersmith is the name we’ve given to a farm-and-capture operation that we’ve put together,” he said. “Sort of a passive dragnet. The company likes to make sure it stays in business; we make sure that certain areas are set up where crime can happen. It’s going to happen anyway, so why not on our watch? At least that way we ensure that the public is kept from excessive damage and the company retains its market share.”
That wasn’t at all what Gray had been expecting. “Wait,” he said, blinking slowly. “You’re telling me that he’s chasing after a company operation? That you people have been–”
“Farming criminal activity in controlled locations to ensure that information and arrest flow is optimal? Yes, that’s about the long and short of it.” Carter shrugged. “And don’t give me any lecture on the nature of justice or whatever the hell you have in mind, Dan, you and I both know that a month ago you’d have invented the plan if you thought it would get you ahead. I know you, son, and if you’re nothing else you’re ambitious.”
Gray scowled faintly at that. He knew that he shouldn’t be surprised, considering the outfit he worked for – Civil Protection was a business, after all, and it dealt with a resource that was on its own predictable only on the macroscale. Criminal farming, as it were, was definitely a way to get a better grasp on things; somewhere, granular data was no doubt being processed in order to both control and perpetuate certain strains of desirable crime. At least in the civilized areas. Who knew what would go on in the Verge? What anarchy ruled in the Old City? If this was a method of keeping crime levels to a manageable level, he’d take that any day over the chaos that tried to boil in through the southern wall a few years ago. The Verge Riots, or so they had been called, were nothing that he wanted to see repeated. “I see the wisdom of it,” Gray said, and shook his head. “Okay. So, you’re basically baiting him into showing his ass, is that it?”
Megan cleared
her throat. “Not entirely,” she said. “I was telling the truth when I said that the chemical that showed up in the so-called ‘Spine Thief’ victims was an exotic substance; we had originally tempted him with the idea that there was some kind of illegal Shard operation going on at the Autumn Heights, but he saw through that. There’s something else going on there. What it is, we don’t really know for certain – and, ultimately, it really isn’t our focus unless it turns out to be something really big. We want Moody to push for it, whatever it turns out to be, and demonstrate to what length he’s willing to take things in order to get what he wants.”
“So in the end, you really were using Angie and me as pawns.” Fresh resentment and anger began to well up inside his heart.
“Yeah, kid, I’m sorry.” Carter shook his head. “But that girl of yours, that’s something else we need to talk about. I told you that she would be bad for your career, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Gray said with a nod. “But considering what’s going on here, I don’t think my hanging out with a stripper really shows up on the radar, man.” Marowitz snorted; Gray shot him a dirty look.
Carter shook his head again. “It’s a little more than that,” he said. “Look, I’m just going to be straight with you, Dan. We think she’s involved with whatever this situation is.”
“What,” said Gray, his brows lifting high upon his brow. “You mean the murders?”
“Could be,” said Carter, “But probably not. The drug situation itself, however…”
Bone Wires Page 25
