Watch Dogs

by John Shirley

  It was cold out here, too, despite his long two-thousand-dollar camel hair coat. Kiskel was almost sixty, getting fat, and regretted making this overture to Pearce. But he did owe Pearce a few favors and he did want to do the right thing. What would happen to Blume if things continued the way they’d been going?

  Still—being out here on a teeth chattering night. Not desirable... And here came a wino, or a homeless person of some kind anyway, going to ask him for spare change.

  “Kiskel?” said the deformed man in the floppy hat, in a gurgling growl.

  Kiskel gaped at him. He looked around, then said, in a hoarse whisper. “You’re from...Pearce?”

  “I am. See that big flowerpot in front of the old hotel across the street? There’s a phone in it. Phone’s not good for anything except this one call. After this call, it’ll melt. So don’t keep it in your hand after he hangs up.”

  “Uh—okay. Should I give you some money?”

  “He already paid me. What—you think I’m a bum or something?” The man made a low cackling sound that might’ve been laughter as he walked away.

  Kiskel looked around, saw no appreciable traffic, and jaywalked, making a beeline for the flowerpot in front of the funky old Wiggins Hotel.

  It was one of those big antique hip-high pots, this one cracked and occupied only by a dusty artificial plant, cigarette butts crowding it. He couldn’t see a phone—wait, the cigarette butts were piled up in one place. He dug under them, found the phone, shoved it in his pocket and hurried on.

  Kiskel went fast as he could without running, around the corner to his car. Before he got there he used his key control to tell the Jaguar to fire up its heaters. He got into the warm car, locked it, and, hands shaking from the cold, activated the phone.

  A man’s face appeared on the screen. The man had a black kerchief bandit’s mask pulled up to cover much of his face under his leather billed cap, but Kiskel knew it was Aiden Pearce.

  “Kiskel,” Pearce said. “I can’t stay on this frequency long. Let’s get this done. You really got something I should know?”

  “It’s just...you asked about Verrick. If I had anything interesting on him.”

  “And you acted like you didn’t want to help me.”

  “Okay, well, I thought it through. He’s going to destroy the company if he isn’t stopped. And...he’s up to something else too. I don’t know what it is, but it feels shady. Could be illegal in a big way.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Nothing I can prove—it’s just the way Verrick’s covering things up. Where his investment money came from. I mean—I’m not Blume CFO anymore, I’m mostly just doing consulting for Blume, but Verrick was pretty mysterious about his investors and there were rumors of money laundering.”

  “Rumors from where?”

  “Not at liberty to say. I know he met with a cop named Tranter more than once, and I don’t know why, or anything about it, but he’s not talking to rest of us about these meetings. His secretary told mine, but...”

  “I’m limited on what I can find out right now. Somebody’s been trying to shoot me in the head.”

  “What? Right now?”

  “No—they tried recently and they’re likely gonna try again. I’m saying, if you can find out anything more...”

  “I do know one thing. He’s connected with a real estate investor from Idaho. Owns land all over the country—made his nut in Florida and Montana. I heard at the club this guy’s got serious connections to white imperialists.”

  “And who’d that be?”

  “His name’s Marlon Winters. Billionaire. He’s on the Iceberg Investments board of directors along with Verrick. So he knows your pal Verrick.”

  “Marlon Winters. I’ve heard the name. Anything else?”

  “Ally of mine in Blume has suspicions that Verrick is lining up money—from Winters amongst other people—to buy a whole hell of a lot more of Blume’’s shares. And he’s hinting that the price of those shares may ‘suddenly go down’. Verrick might be planning to take over Blume!”

  “That’s interesting. Thanks, Kiskel. You’re one of the good ones. They keep trusting people like you at Blume. I may buy some shares myself. But not if Verrick takes over.”

  Pearce chuckled—and cut the connection.

  Kiskel stared at the blank screen, then remembered what the deformed man in the floppy man had said.

  He just managed to get the driver’s side window down before smoke started to hiss from the seams of the cell phone.

  He tossed it out the window—and watched it melt into slag on the sidewalk.

  Lou Kiskel shuddered, closed the window, and drove hastily away.

  #

  Mick Wolfe was standing across the street from the old Elks Lodge on 77th. The Elks no longer owned it; they had sold the place, and taken their sign down, but it was a classic big city lodge building. Built in the mid 20th century, it was designed to be an auditorium as well as a meeting place. It was in the general style of an old Greek temple, but with concrete elk heads at the corners as spouts and chipped old columns holding up the big triangular gable.

  If this was another lodge of some kind now, as Keeting had hinted, it was sure one that had its meetings late at night. Wolfe glanced at his watch—the time was nearly eleven-thirty.

  The Hawk sheered and veered, chasing pieces of newspaper and fast-food wrappers ahead of it, as Wolfe crossed the street.

  It had been Pearce, not Keeting, who’d gotten him here tonight.

  “Wolfe? Wake up!”

  Wolfe had been asleep, stretched out on the closed sofa bed. “What? Pearce? Couldn’t you just call me on the phone?”

  “No.” Pearce was up on that television screen again. “Listen, I’ve been doing a search for people associated with Stan Grampus. Only one I could find who might be in Chicago is named Winters. Grampus used to work for Winters—but there’s no clear record of what Grampus did for him. Does seem though that Winters and Grampus have some obscure ideology in common...And tracing Winters, I find he’s in town. And he’s called for a limo to take him to a place on 77th...Here’s a picture of Winters...”

  And now Wolfe, crossing the street, was trying to figure out how to get into that old lodge on 77th, which normally would’ve been easy. Only it wasn’t easy now. There were three guys out front in civilian coats, identical British macs—but Wolfe knew instantly they were military-trained. Chances were, judging from the comm earpieces and the fact that one of them had a G within an eagle tattoo on his neck, they were Graywater Security. Mercenaries. Some of these Graywaters were fumbling idiots, but some of them were good at their job, and all of them were heavily armed thugs with itchy trigger fingers. Which made all of them dangerous.

  Wolfe had the .45 he’d appropriated from Keeting under his coat, and he’d bought extra ammo for it. He had the .38 as a backup pistol. But he had no desire to shoot it out with Graywater Security on the streets of Chicago. If he lived through it he’d end up shooting it out with cops and maybe a S.W.A.T. team.

  No, time to use covert entry training...

  Wolfe walked up to one of the Graywater Security men, looked at him with a vacant expression, then walked past. He just wanted to get close enough to get a sense of what weapons these guys might have under their coats. Wolfe thought he’d made out just enough of an outline under the guy’s left arm— a machine gun pistol, probably a Mack 10.

  Wolfe walked away, muttering nonsense to himself so the merc would dismiss him as a homeless crackpot. “I told ‘em don’t talk to me like my ma, my ma wouldn’t say that...” Wolfe said.

  He heard the Graywaters laughing at him. And that was good.

  Wolfe kept walking past the building, on past the next one, a closed-down Dollar Store, then cut into the narrow walkway between the empty Dollar Store and the SRO flophouse on the corner. He stepped over a shapeless pile of rain-mushed paper trash and went to an old garbage can lying on its side. He turned the can over and set it up
, and climbed up on it, jumping from there to the lower rung of the fire escape’s hinged ladder. His weight pulled the ladder down on its spring till his boots touched the ground.

  Wolfe climbed up the ladder, easing it back into place slowly from the first landing, so it wouldn’t clang, then he climbed the rest of the rusty old fire escape to the roof.

  It was windy, cold and dark up here, outside the cones of light from the streetlights. He could see a handful of baleful stars through a temporary break in the clouds.

  Wolfe worked his way across the roof, circling old brick chimneys and vents, stepping over puddles formed where the black tar roofing sagged.

  A cigarette lighter flared on the next roof over—the roof of the former Elks’’ auditorium. Wolfe ducked down behind an air conditioning duct, then slowly lifted up till he could see the guard’s face illuminated by the momentary red glow. The mercenary snapped the Zippo shut and darkness closed down around him except for the orange coal of his cigarette.

  The cigarette’s coal blotted out as the man turned away. Wolfe smiled and advanced again, hunched down, placing his steps to make as little noise as possible.

  He got to the edge of the roof abutted against the next building, stepped over, then ducked behind a chimney as the mercenary turned around and exhaled smoke, the red eye of his cigarette winking.

  Wolfe wondered if he should take down the guy the hard way, or the easy way. He didn’t know anything about this guy. Some of the Graywater mercenaries had been Special Forces, in their times; at least the mercs who knew what they were doing. This guy could be Special Forces. He could be someone Wolfe had known. He could even have been Delta Force once. Be a shame to kill him unnecessarily. If any of these mercenaries tried to kill Wolfe, then Wolfe would defend himself with lethal force. But until then...

  Besides, Wolfe didn’t have a sound suppressor on his gun. If he shot the guy he would alert the other Graywaters on the sidewalk below.

  Unless he wanted to break the guy’s neck, he’d have to take a chance on trying to knock him out.

  Wolfe sighed. Would’ve been so much easier to shoot him.

  Watching around the edge of the brick chimney, Wolfe waited till that cigarette glow blotted again, then he crept around the chimney, pulled the .45 out, rushed up and buffaloed the sentry Wyatt Earp-style, cracking him hard behind the right ear with the barrel of the gun.

  The sentry’s knees buckled, and he went down. He seemed out cold. Wolfe reached down, disarmed the man, and took the small flashlight off the mercenary’s belt.

  Wolfe regretted not bringing along something to tie and gag the guard with. No time for that. They’d have a check-in on the ear comm. In a few minutes the sentry would be asked to report in, and when he didn’t reply...

  Better get this scouting trip over pronto.

  Wolfe took out the PearcePhone, and set it up to pick up the comm frequency. It took a little less than a minute to locate the channel they were using.

  “Five, this is one, how you doing out front?”

  “We’re cold and bored down here, One, what you think? But I got eyes on Two and Three. Everything quiet.”

  “Copy that. Four, everything quiet on the roof?”

  Wolfe tapped “hack into conversation” and, making his voice hoarse, said, “All clear up here.” He coughed. “But cold as a witch’s tit. Gettin’ laryngitis or some damn thing.”

  “I can hear that in your voice, Four! We’ll send you relief in an hour...”

  An hour. That should be enough time...

  Flashlight, phone and .45 tucked away, silenced Mack 10 in his hand, Wolfe moved to the outbuilding on the roof that housed the entrance to the stairs. It was unlocked. He went inside, into a rising column of warm air and the musty smells of an old building.

  He came to the door that led onto the top floor, pressed it open—and got lucky. There was a Graywater sentry walking down the hallway to Wolfe’s right, but he had his back turned.

  Wolfe eased the door almost shut and peered through the crack, watching—till he saw the sentry turn the corner into an adjoining hall.

  Opening the door as quietly as he could, Wolfe slipped through, closed the door, and moved off to the left. He turned the corner, hurried to the end of a short corridor, and opened the only door. It was dark in there.

  Wolfe stepped through, closed the door behind him. He took out the flashlight, shone it around the room. Much of it was stacked with old theater seats; a big plaster Elks Lodge seal was leaning against the wall wrapped in cobwebs. To the right, a wooden ladder was built into the wall, rising to a padlocked trapdoor.

  Wolfe slung the Mack 10 on its strap over one shoulder, put the small flashlight in his mouth, and climbed the ladder. It took three sharp karate punches, using the heel of his hand—with Wolfe wincing at the noise from each blow—to break the padlock bracket.

  He pushed the trapdoor back and, flashlight bobbing in his mouth, climbed up to the attic. It was mostly rafters and dust here, he discovered, as he flashed the light through the low, narrow space. But on the right were pulleys with ropes looped tautly over them, probably relating to the curtains for the auditorium down below.

  Wolfe closed the trapdoor and, hunched over, worked his way down a wooden walkway, two boards wide, laid over the rafters. He could hear an amplified speaker now, from below; points of light from the stage winked in the dust, here and there. Applause came periodically from the unseen audience.

  On the right side, about the center of the attic, a shaft of attenuated light rose up. Wolfe made his way to the beam of light and lay on the boards, looking down at the stage to find he was staring directly at the top of the speaker’s head. He had a bald spot. The man was speechifying at a podium, reading from notes. No telling who he was, from here. Maybe that Marlon Winters character?

  In the attic, the speaker’s voice was distorted and muddied by echoes, but Wolfe could hear most of what he said. “...the second and tenth amendments are under attack...There are forces in this country that have worked toward undermining the civilization that the founders of our Western European heritage have worked so hard to build!” Build, ild, ild...

  “We are threatened from every side!” the speaker boomed. “Socialism pops its ugly head up any time you don’t flush its holes out with poison—like the holes of rabid gophers!” Gophers, ers, ers...

  Western European heritage, Wolfe knew, was speech code for the White Race. But “rabid gophers”? That summoned up some interesting images...

  “Purity is not just about saving our culture, our right to bear guns, and our right to a free market without regulations. We have created Purity to defend civilization itself against the forces who would erect a New World Order in its place, an order controlled by a dictatorship that will enslave us to decadent cultures and mud races!” Races, aces, aces...

  The crowd roared and clapped with approval at that one.

  “And now, I’d like to introduce General Van Ness, who will talk about strategy on the ground...and the development of militias that will take control of our streets following the coming chaos...” Chaos, os, os...

  Applause. The Elks Club, Wolfe thought, would not be happy at all if they found out who it was who’d bought their old theater. Racist insurrectionist scumbags.

  The microphone started feeding back and Van Ness had a mumbling way of expressing himself so Wolfe could only make out occasional phrases. “...while we cannot discuss the means of setting the stage for...” Something, something. “And hence all we’re asking you is to be ready for the call to...” Something something. “...I have stood up for the values of Western European...” Something something. “...but in North Africa we saw again and again that whenever the locals were...And thus....and so you see...but again, we cannot...Yet the time will soon come to...”

  Wolfe gave up. He had another agenda to follow up on. He had to see if he could find Stan Grampus here—Grampus, the assassin who’d tried to kill Aiden Pearce.

  It
was important to find the bastard, fast. Sooner or later, the Graywater bunch was going to realize that one of their own was down...and that something was up.

  #

  Aiden Pearce was using the encrypted comm system to talk to Pussler on a computer monitor. And Pussler looked worried.

  Pussler kept glancing over his shoulder at the door, then looking pensively back at the webcam. “Boss...I’m telling you I don’t feel safe here.”

  “That’s one of my own safehouses. The idea is: a safehouse is safe, Pussler. Right? No one knows about the place but you, me, Blank, and Merwiss. So if anyone’s made out you’re hiding out there, it’s because you stuck your dumb head outside and got noticed. I told you to lay low!”

  “I did lay low, boss! Ever since you told me that one of those ambulance guys told Tranter who I was...”

  “He wasn’t supposed to know who you were.”

  “Well, see, that EMT recognized me! I used to ride those ambulances regular, when I was using that synthetic morph!” Pussler grimaced. “I swear that stuff gave me overdoses about every third time I used it...”

  “So why’d you keep using it, Pussler?”

  “Well, ‘cause it’s what I could get. Keepin’ it real, I’m a drug addict. Or I was...I’m trying to stay clean, boss, and all I got here is....ah, almost nothing.”

  “That girlfriend of yours been coming around?”

  “No! She don’t know where I am! Boss—you got other safehouses that Merwiss doesn’t know about, right?”

  “Merwiss?” Was Pussler really worried about Merwiss? The programmer had seemed harmless enough...although there were recent indications of a gambling problem.

  “Merwiss knows about two of the safehouses,” Pearce said. “The one you’re in and the one over on the waterfront.” Pearce was careful to keep some of his safehouses known only to himself. “There’s three more he doesn’t know about. Including the one that Wolfe is in.”

  “You gotta let me move into one of those others! I don’t trust Merwiss!”