by Jeff Somers
Behind him the screen lit up with a quick flicker of my various busts, fifteen years of my life told in progressive mug shots.
“You’re smart, Mr. Cates, but something’s holding you back, yes? You fulfill your contracts and play by rules-you’re trusted out there. Which is rare, these days. Criminals fear each other, they respect force, but very rarely do we find a criminal who is trusted.” He whirled to grin at me again. “You’re unique, Mr. Cates: a thinking killer. I hope maybe your approach will be more effective.”
“So you’re hiring me because I’m a mediocre Gunner,” I croaked. This sounded interesting. My day was improving. “How rich?”
Marin nodded, once, curtly, and produced a slip of paper from one pocket, which I was amazed to think he’d had waiting for this moment, ready. I took it from his cold fingers and stared down at the unusually large sum written upon it. I thought at first it must be one of those imaginary numbers I’d heard about in school.
“Deposited into a secure account under any name you wish, within two hours of proof of completion. Do we have a deal?”
I kept staring at the number. “I have one requirement.”
Marin was silent, but I could feel that fucking grin on the top of my head like heat from a sun. “A requirement, Mr. Cates?”
“Gatz,” I said, looking up and squinting into his smile. “I need Kev Gatz. He gets out with me, and he gets a cleared file, too.”
Dick Marin laughed, a single bark of noise. “I see, Mr. Cates! A reasonable request. We have a deal?”
I didn’t answer right away, and then frowned. “Wait a sec-who am I supposed to kill?”
Marin might have blinked behind his glasses, I couldn’t tell. “Why, Mr. Cates… I want you to assassinate Dennis Squalor. Of course.”
I blinked. “Jesus fucked, why?”
Marin didn’t answer right away. He stared just over my head for a moment, once again listening to something only he could hear. Finally the King Worm shivered and returned his attention to me.
“Why? Mr. Cates, haven’t you been listening? The Electric Church is using its status as a religion as a cover. Dennis Squalor is not converting fanatics, he is aggressively acquiring slaves. If I do nothing, within the decade we’re all working for him-and digitally prevented from doing anything about it, or even complaining. Time is short. I have no evidence, which restricts my options, and he’s got the political acumen to make trouble for me if I act without evidence-highly unusual for me, and highly inconvenient. I have got to go through back channels. Buried channels. Nonexistent channels. I am seeking a loophole. If Dennis Squalor goes down, the resulting confusion will give me the leverage to order a full investigation, temporarily suspend the EC’s exempted status-don’t worry over how. You just do your part. Kill the high priest.
“Let’s be clear.” He was suddenly calmed and relaxed, orienting on me as if really noting my presence for the first time, his manner suddenly fluid and focused. “There is nothing official about this. You will be denied. I can offer you no help. On the other hand, you are free to act. I am not concerned with collateral damage. If SSF officers take notice of you, I will do whatever I can to help you. But a man like you knows how to avoid the cops when necessary, doesn’t he? And if you succeed, Mr. Cates, all will be forgiven, no matter how messy.”
I shrugged, trying to smile back at him. “I’m here, though, right? Is that how you keep things secret, by sending a goddamned hover to scoop me up in the middle of the street?”
In the face of that shining sun beaming from Marin, my own grin felt weak and brittle, and quickly faded away.
“Colonel Moje is… overly enthusiastic, sometimes, I admit. But no one knows, or would believe, that SSFDIA Marin is behind this, Mr. Cates. SSF officers often disparage the use of uniformed officers-what do you call them? Crushers? — to acquire assets, and misuse hovers and Stormers like that just to make an impression. To overawe the population, you see. A show of force is very effective for that. As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, Mr. Cates, you were picked up for questioning concerning the Dawson and Hallier incident, and released.”
I thought about pointing out the sheer implausibility of this story, since the Pigs hardly ever released anyone, but didn’t want to tempt this madman into going for a more realistic approach. Like beating me within an inch of my life, just for effect.
Marin leaped up and the door snicked open again. “We have a deal, then, Mr. Cates?”
He was walking briskly to the door. “I’ll need start-up costs!” I shouted.
And he was out the door, which snicked shut again. I waited a moment to see what would happen, but nothing did. I glanced down. My coffee had gone cold.
VIII
THEY MAY NOT BELIEVE THEY’LL SURVIVE
01110
“So, what’s the deal?”
I didn’t look at Gatz. I sucked on a cigarette and considered my options. They were very few, and it didn’t take long, so I kept going over them again and again, to keep myself busy.
Marin had transferred a few thousand yen into my account, not much but a start. I had a few thousand scattered here and there, as well, and after a few debts were collected I figured we had about ten grand to get started with. You could have a pretty swanky night in Manhattan with ten grand. Almost everything else cost about twice that. Still, it was a start, and I figured whatever we couldn’t afford Gatz might be able to finesse.
“Avery, come on,” he said, struggling to keep up with me, turning his head this way and that as we walked down Broadway, ruined buildings on either side of us. “We got pinched, we got released. No one even talked to me. So what’s going on?”
I exhaled smoke into the densely polluted night air. “We’ve got a job, chum. We’re working for the Worms.”
He stumbled and I gained a step on him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I shook my head, my eyes scanning the crowd that pushed past us. No one took any notice, but you never knew. “No kidding. But the catch is, we’re on our own. No one’s going to acknowledge us. And the shit we’ll be doing is going to be kind of high profile, some of it, and might attract trouble.”
“So what the fuck is it?”
All of a sudden, we were partners. Gatz had proven to be a reliable buddy so far, I had to admit, but I wasn’t used to having a partner.
“Let’s get a drink.”
At Pickerings, where all ventures great and small in our neighborhood began, I explained everything to the twitchy little fucker, who sat with his glasses on, slumped back in the booth, his gin and ice untouched, a layer of sugar floating on top-without the sugar, the fucking stuff would blind you, no shit. In the gloom and smoke of Pickering’s he looked like a reverse shadow, pale and blurry.
When I was done, he leaned forward and took a long drink from his lukewarm cup, coughed a webby, chunky cough that didn’t inspire confidence, and leaned back again. “Fucking hell,” he murmured. “What now?”
I waved at Melody and held up two fingers for a second round. The thing with the unlicensed liquor was, once you started drinking you might as well get trashed, because it was going to hurt like hell when it wore off no matter how much you drank. In the light of day, Pickering’s looked almost clean, its scavenged tables gouged with a million carved messages, its bare concrete floor still reeking of the morning’s bleach. The whole place looked like it might collapse in the next stiff wind. Pickering’s was the very edge of halfway-civilized New York; two blocks south and you were in no-man’s land.
“We’re going to need a team. This is fucking huge.”
“A team,” he murmured.
I held up my hand and began ticking off fingers. “I’m the Gunner-okay, fine. You’re the secret fucking weapon, Kev, off the charts. You can handle all sorts of unexpected situations, just like you handled those two System Cops for me. But that leaves a lot of jobs for us. We’ll need a technical guy. We’ll need a transportation guy. I can do security, too, unless there’s
someone brilliant just kicking around New York. “
Melody brought our drinks and set them sloppily on the table and had already half-turned away when I snaked out a hand and grabbed her arm. “Mel,” I said just below the din of the crowd. “I need to talk to Pick.”
She blinked down at my hand; a spongy, pale girl getting slowly fat, missing one front tooth. “Yeah?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She nodded, and disappeared. Gatz and I sipped our drinks uncomfortably for a few moments, and then she reappeared, swimming up from the crowd with a dirty towel in one hand, the other extended, its finger curled at us.
“Come on, then. He ain’t gonna live forever.”
Gatz and I got up, shrugging our longcoats back into place. I checked my weapon-Pickering’s wasn’t a good place to be unarmed-Gatz looked like he was negotiating with gravity to stay off the floor, and we followed her through the crowd, around the back of the bar, and through a nondescript steel door she held open, smirking at us.
“Be careful,” she said, smirking, as I passed her. “He’s in a mood today.”
The back office of Pickering’s was small and crowded, dimly lit and choked with dust. Old Pickering had once been a biology professor of some sort, back in the day. In the gray years just before Unification he’d lost his position and had begun a career in crime-and been pretty good at it, at least the nonviolent sort. Good enough to open his bar and retire, kind of, becoming a central gathering point for everyone in Manhattan. Old Pick knew everything that happened in Manhattan, and everyone.
The place was filled with paper and boxes. I remembered how to read, but didn’t get much practice these days, and didn’t bother deciphering the lettering on everything. Pick had his reasons. In the far corner, bathed in the bluish light of an ancient cathode-ray monitor, which was connected in turn to an ancient, tiny computer, pre-Unification, was a huge wooden desk, piled high with more paper and dominated by a huge round ashtray, in which sat a day’s worth of cigarette butts, a huge pile of ash, and cheap, unfiltered remnants. Pick himself was a fat, immobile man with long, dirty gray hair and a round, punched-looking face. He managed to give the impression that he hadn’t stood up in years, that the office had grown around him organically. He didn’t turn around as we entered. He didn’t look like he could turn around, this fat blob of a man hunched in front of a fucking keyboard-a keyboard! — and staring at the ancient screen.
“That’s primitive,” I said lightly, like always-we had a running joke. I snaked my way through the piles of crap. Behind me, I heard the hum of the bar, distant; the room was reinforced and bugproofed.
He grunted. “Fuck you, Cates. It’s pre-Uni, so it’s clean of trackers and serials and spyware, yes? Can’t do much, but what it can do the fucking System Pigs can’t see. So fuck you.”
I leaned against a tall pile of boxes next to his desk and tried to look casual. “You’re looking fat, Pick.”
He scowled and leaned back from his work. “All right, I see I’ll get no peace until you have my undivided attention. What can I do you for, Mr. Cates? And, uh,” he peered thickly at Gatz, his jowly face screwed into a permenant frown of concentration, “Mr. Gatz? The infamous Mr. Gatz, the man with the googly eyes. Your name’s come up.”
Gatz sank against a tall pile of paper. He looked ready to quietly expire. “Oh yeah?”
Pick nodded, turning back to me. “So?”
“I’m putting together a team.”
“Yeah? Pay, or share?”
“Share. I’ve got some startup costs, but not much.”
“Score?”
“Huge, potentially. Also hugely dangerous.”
“Hmmph,” Pick grunted. “Typical. Listen, Cates, you ever get tired of running in the hamster wheel out there and decide to do some real work, let me know. Okay. Let’s hear about it.”
I shook my head. Pick was of the opinion that we would all be better served by trying to destroy the System, and I’d heard his speech many times. “Uh-uh. That would ruin the surprise.”
He grinned, his teeth the strong white ones of the older people, pre-Uni people. My own were yellowed and ached a lot. Gatz had about ten teeth left in his mouth, mostly in the front. We didn’t get to eat often enough to worry about our teeth. In the middle of his cauliflower face and steel-gray hair, they were shocking and looked fake. Everything real looked fake, these days. Fake looked real. “I’ll find out, soon enough,” he declared easily. “Okay, what you looking for?”
I gave him the general outline of our requirements, keeping it vague and terse. Pick was right: He’d know everything soon enough. The man was a lightning rod for information around these parts; it was part of his livelihood, because everyone knew he knew everything.
The fat man whistled. “That’s quite a team. Getting good people to work on commission’s gonna be hard.”
I nodded. “I’ve got a good rep. Remind people of that.”
Pick held up his stubby hands, his panting breath loud. “Hey, Avery, I’m not saying you don’t have a good rep. One of the better reps I know of. People will believe you’ll pay them-but they may not believe they’ll survive.”
I shrugged. “Not my problem. Who’s in town?”
Pick was a living, breathing directory. When people drifted into town, or got out of jail, or came out of retirement, Pick knew moments later, somehow.
He smiled at me. “Standard fee, of course?”
I fished out my newly fattened credit dongle, slightly dulled and battered over the years, but still functioning. “Of course.”
He took it and slid it through the equally aged and battered reader built into the desk. He began punching buttons on the reader. He handed the disc back to me and then collapsed back in his chair. “Let’s see… no one sitting out in the bar is right for this, but there’s always people available in the city. You want the full list, or you want me to edit it based on who I think you can actually get?”
I was pressed for time, with the King Worm breathing down my neck. “Edit it, Pick. I’m in a rush.”
He nodded. “For a Techie, then, I’d suggest Ty Kieth out of Belfast. He’s on the run and living under an assumed ID over on Charlton. Heard of him?”
I squinted at him. “London Museum job, couple of years ago. A few other things.”
Pick nodded. “He’s good, but hard to like. Does his job, but pisses people off. He needs work, I happen to know.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Transportation.” He sighed, rubbing one of his many chins. “That’s tougher. Things ain’t what they used to be, in that area. Fucking Joint Council’s spent the last five years mandating DNA locks on all vehicles. Jumping hovers just isn’t all that easy anymore… but, there’s an old team laying low up in Chelsea these days. Retired, but always liked a challenge. If you floated it as a challenge, you might have some luck. Ever hear of Milton Tanner?”
I shook my head.
Pick snorted. “Fucking kids. Before your time, I guess. Take my word for it, Milton and Tanner are your people.”
I shrugged. “Like I said, I’m in a rush. I’m prepared to accept your opinion.”
He ignored me. “Security’s always the problem, isn’t it? Fucking security experts are all fucking ex-SSF, all fucking assholes. Macho bullshit. They all think security’s the most important aspect of any job, and they always want to run every job, huh?”
I shook my head. “I’ll handle security myself. Whatever this guy Kieth can’t handle on the side, that is. Security’s all tech these days anyway.”
Pick rolled his buggy, porcine eyes. “Like I said, security’s all assholes. Shit, Cates, I thought you were world-class. You’re just a shitkicker after all, huh? Handle security yourself, you cheap bastard. That don’t impress me.”
Impress him. “I think I’ll manage, thanks. Give me three backups for each, too. I’ll take a hardcopy of current contact if you have it. Put the word out, too. I don’t think I need warm bodies, but just in case
I’d like it to be known that we’re in business, okay?”
Pick nodded, sour, mouth kinking up in one corner as he swallowed bile. “Fucking hardcopy.”
I shrugged. “I got no memory.” I gestured at Gatz. “He’s barely got a brain.”
“Everything’s going to fucking hell,” Pick complained, gesturing at the hardcopy as it rattled out of the ancient printer. “Twenty years ago, we fucking knew how to fuck with things. These days…”
I pushed off from my perch and grabbed Gatz by his collar, pushing him toward the door. “Wasn’t the fucking System back then, was it? Everything was better, yeah yeah, I heard it all. We all went to school and had jobs and were fat on milk. Fuck that.”
The door opened for us as we approached. Behind me, Pick coughed loudly and then growled, “Fuck you!” And then we were back in the crowd at Pick’s, where every fucking lowlife in the place was already staring at us hungrily, wanting in, word already going around.
IX
IT’S THE HIGHEST LEVELS AND LEAVE IT AT THAT
00100
Charlton Street was mostly residential, packed with sagging old brick buildings with no amenities, rooms rented by the night. Ty Kieth was in number 3224, up on the tenth floor, waiting out some overseas heat. We were expected, so we just stepped onto the escalator. I’d come armed, of course; not with anything insulting, just basic protection. And Gatz, of course. He slumped against the escalator railing next to me, dead weight borne aloft on metal tracks. On floor ten I had to grab at his collar and lift him off the fucking thing. Dragging him behind me, I found the right door and knocked, carefully. Pushing Gatz to the other side, I moved to my left and stayed out of the way, just in case Kieth was one of those touchy types who liked to answer the door with a shotgun blast.
