Shadowrun 44 - Drops of Corruption

by Jason M Hardy (epub)

  X-Prime wandered slowly through the crowd, stopping at various tables and widening his eyes in authentic-seeming amazement at the large sums of money being wagered, the bright colors, and the spinning wheels. Prime wasn’t playing anything yet, though. For that, he’d need some money.

  While X-Prime kept laying the groundwork for his part of the mission, Cayman turned his attention to the rest of the bar, looking for the right tourist. Finding a tourist in the Gates Casino was about as difficult as spotting a felon at San Quentin, but finding the right tourist was another matter. He needed someone impressionable and confident, who’d listen to what he had to say and act on it.

  He found one. A woman in a simple black dress, leaning on the bar, swatting away cheap pickup lines like flies. She could almost have been a native, except most natives would have long grown weary of the parade of flirting tourists and moved on to another bar to do their regular drinking.

  He didn’t try to look charming as he walked toward her—she’d sense that right away. He just ambled over, though he made an effort to raise his chin a little, making sure the light from above didn’t cast dark shadows from his brow across the rest of his face. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t scowl.

  Still, she looked at him warily as he approached.

  “Hi,” he said. “If I tell you that the last thing in the world I want to do is buy you a drink, could I sit on this stool?”

  She didn’t quite smile, but his bluntness amused her enough to lower her defenses a touch. “Go ahead.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “It’s nothing personal. I just gave all my money to the blackjack dealer, is all.”

  “Then why are you staying at the bar?”

  “I’m thirsty. Sometimes watching other people drink helps ease the pain.”

  Now she laughed. “God. You’re quite pathetic, aren’t you?”

  He gave her a half grin back. “Yeah. Thanks for noticing.”

  “Look, the last thing in the world I want to do is buy you two drinks. But you seem like you could use at least one. What’ll you have?”

  “That’s very kind of you. Gin and tonic, thanks.” The safest drink order in the world. Cayman thought. Makes you appear civilized but not snobby, thirsty for alcohol but not desperate to get drunk. Tougher than a daiquiri, less aggressive than bourbon. The perfect, nonthreatening order.

  The drink soon sat next to Cayman. He took an appreciative sip. “Thank you,” he said after swallowing. “This is actually much better than just watching.”

  “I would hope so.”

  He sat silently for a moment, putting all his effort into looking casual and relaxed. The next part of the conversation would be tricky.

  “What I’m going to say next is going to sound awfully cheesy, but bear with me for a minute. Do you come here often?”

  The woman in the black dress rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on.”

  “I know, I know. But that’s not how I mean it. I’ll just put it right out on the table—I come here a lot. But I think I’m going to stay away for a week or two.” “Why’s that?” Suspicion still dominated the woman’s voice, but she was still talking.

  “You see that guy? Bigio family. So’s that guy. The woman over there. The dwarf. The guy in the black hat. All Mafia.” They weren’t, but Cayman said it with conviction.

  The woman seemed to buy it. “It’s the city,” she said. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I know, I know, but I thought the standards were higher here. I mean, I don’t like the Mafia looking over my shoulder when I’ve got a big stack of chips in front of me. That makes me tighten up, and if I play tight, I lose more.”

  The woman was still watching the people Cayman had pointed out. “There do seem to be a lot of them here.” “Yeah. I was thinking of talking to someone about it, but who? What are they going to do about it?”

  “You could talk to security,” the woman said. “Have them beef up their presence. If it’s making you not want to play here. I’m sure they’ll listen.”

  “Really? Naw, I’m just one person. They’re a bunch of mobsters. The guards won’t care about one complaint.” “Then I’ll come with you,” she said. “I don’t want them in here, either.”

  The two of them stood and crossed the casino, looking for a guard to talk to. On the way, Cayman lifted a few chips from the woman and passed them to X-Prime, so he could start the gaming part of his evening.

  Cayman thanked the woman profusely once they registered their complaint, then surprised her by leaving her alone for the rest of the evening.

  By the time he was done, Gates Casino security had received a dozen complaints about the quality of people on the casino floor. In response, the security chief decided to put some additional guards on the floor over the next week or two. Extra eyes should make sure everything proceeded smoothly.

  * * *

  At 12:35 a.m., Bannickburn walked right in front of Cayman. He paused briefly, making sure the big man had a good chance to see his face. Cayman saw him but didn’t recognize him, and Bannickburn moved on.

  He smiled, sweating a little beneath the layers of his disguise. Perfect, he thought.

  He lingered in the casino longer than he should have. He wasn’t really having fun—the costume only grew hotter, and he didn’t have any extra money to wager at present. But standing around the casino sweating was still more fun than what he had to do next. He’d put it off as long as he could, but there could be no more waiting. As soon as he left the casino, he was going to drag himself to a meeting with a mage named Twitch. He was going to ask this lowly street mage to help him, the mighty Robert Lionel Bannickburn, with magic.

  The utter humiliation of it had gnawed on him all day. He’d reviewed the plan for the run over and over, seeing if he could cut magic out of it entirely. He almost had it—he was a hair’s breadth away from being able to cancel this stupid meeting altogether. But there were a few stupid things—minor things, emergency measures really—that he couldn’t handle, that he had no answers for besides magic. He would have to swallow his pride— a big, bitter pill that he was pretty sure his throat was nowhere near wide enough to handle.

  12

  The bottle sang sweetly. It was a wordless melody, lilting and seductive, reinforced by the rich red-brown color of the cognac. Bailey had placed it on a higher shelf, hoping that would silence it, but the move had no noticeable effect. He’d just have to keep ignoring it until the time came when he could give in to its siren call.

  Maybe it would help if he left his office. Couldn’t hurt. He walked out his door, down the silent, dim hall and out into the quiet Tacoma night. Too quiet—he could still hear the cognac’s attempted seduction.

  He had only a short walk in front of him. Several people, over the course of his life, told him that the amount of walking he did was unnecessary. There was this thing called the Matrix, they told him, that would allow him to visit just about anyone, anywhere, instantaneously. He could work with a decker in New York, in Germany, in the Philippines, if he wanted. There was no reason to stick with a decker who was just down the street.

  But Bailey valued face-to-face contact. You couldn’t read an icon like you could a person, which was why all the serious gamblers in the world avoided Matrix-based casinos. There was no sense in playing with pigeons who could hide their tells.

  He had a handful of deckers he employed in various capacities, but for crucial tasks, he turned to Slidestream, who was conveniently stationed two blocks away from Bailey’s office.

  Slidestream’s building was built to discourage attention, whether from passers-by admiring the architecture or surveillance teams trying to find out what was happening inside. The curtains were drawn across all the windows, and Bailey knew that lead panels sat behind each window. More lead was embedded in every yellow brick wall. The building was a plain rectangle, the roof was brown, the doors were steel, and everything about its appearance was bland.

  The front door glided open as Bailey approac
hed. Bailey was being monitored and, he was happy to note when no alarms went off, recognized. He passed through the door, and it slammed shut behind him. Around him, various security systems allowed him to pass. The corridors looked like a neglected high school—chipped off-white linoleum, chicken-wire windows in the doors, harsh fluorescent light spilling everywhere. No one but Bailey was out—none of the tenants here shared his view of the importance of physical travel.

  Slidestream’s office was on the first floor, at the back of the building, close to the rear emergency exit. Like the front door, the yellow plastic door to the office opened automatically as Bailey walked up.

  Slidestream was, naturally, jacked in. He claimed to do his best work on his back, so he lay on an enormous bed that dominated the office. There really wasn’t anyplace for visitors to sit—-Slidestream wasn’t in the habit of having anyone else in his office.

  “You don’t have to be here,” Slidestream said, his eyes barely able to focus on Bailey. “I have nothing to show you.”

  “Does that mean there’s no progress, or you’re just not going to show me what progress you have, in fact, made?”

  Slidestream’s disdain came off him in waves. He was small, no more than 1.3 meters, of stout but not heavy build, and clean-shaven, mainly to prevent people from mistaking him for a dwarf. His most notable skill, besides his decking, was his ability to radiate intense contempt and scorn that far outdistanced his size.

  “I would show you if I could, but it’s impossible. First off, you don’t have a datajack implant, so my machines are not available to you. Second, even if you could see what I was working on, I wouldn’t have anything to show you now. The routine’s designed to give me access to the Gates surveillance systems for a pretty brief period—tomorrow evening. If I go in too soon, just to give you a sample look, there’s an increased chance they’ll detect the intrusion, and by tomorrow the entire access structure will have changed. I’d blow the whole thing just to give you a quick look in. And I’m not doing that.”

  “Okay,” Bailey said. “Then we’ll have to work it this way. I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to answer it honestly. Before you answer, though, I should tell you that I highly value honesty and integrity in the people I deal with, and that I treat people right if they treat me right. If that’s not enough incentive, I should tell you about this neat chip I have that fits right into a cranial jack and delivers enough amps to make an elephant go up in smoke. You have no idea what it does to your prefrontal lobe.”

  He paused to let Slidestream decide if the threat was serious or not, then threw out one more piece of information.

  “And it smells terrible. Like bacon soaked in tar and burned on a charcoal grill. So I’d like to avoid using that if I could.”

  Slidestream nodded, looking a little shaky. The description of the odor usually did the job.

  “Okay. Lucky for you, the question is simple: will I get a good view of the Gates Casino tomorrow night in my office?”

  “Yes.” His head might have trembled a little, but his voice was firm.

  “Good. Good. That’s all I needed to know. You have yourself a good evening.” He strolled away without any further niceties, since he found that people who’d just been threatened with possible brain burn usually weren’t interested in polite chitchat.

  The cool night air was refreshing, but less so than getting the answer he wanted. So far, so good. He needed his own eyes on this run. He trusted Bannickburn to a point, but there was nothing like watching things unfold for yourself.

  Back at Bailey’s office, an impatient James Shivers paced back and forth in front of the locked door. His black leather trench coat made his red hair—spiky today—look that much lighter. He glared at Bailey as soon as he walked in.

  “You told me to meet you here at nine,” Shivers said.

  “And here I am.”

  “At nine twenty.”

  “Why, James. I had no idea you were such a stickler for promptness.”

  “It’s nighttime. The last place I should be is in some slaggin’ office.”

  “All right, all right. I won’t keep you long. Did you see our friend Robert today?”

  “Yeah. He was in the makeup chair for a while and was pretty bored, so I kept him company. He felt like talking.”

  “You mean about his plans for tomorrow?”

  “No, about Glasgow’s football team,” Shivers said. “Of course about tomorrow. He gave me most of the details.”

  “Then come inside, spill your guts, and you’ll be free to go.”

  Shivers, still impatient, walked through the doorway on Bailey’s heels. He threw the door closed behind him.

  Ten minutes later, the door opened again, and Shivers stalked out, no happier than when he arrived. Bailey, by contrast, sat in his leather armchair, hands behind his head, feet on his desk. Things were lining up just fine.

  Then he remembered one thing he’d forgotten to say. “Jimmy!”

  Shivers whirled quickly and stalked back, his face Iwisted, ready to yell at Bailey if he made a stupid joke.

  Bailey, though, just had a simple order. “Stay away from Gates tomorrow. No matter how much Bannickburn wants you to watch his handiwork. Stay away.” “Yeah, yeah. Okay if I go there tonight, Dad?” Bailey would have appreciated it if Shivers would at least feign respect on occasion, but since Bailey wasn’t big on fake shows himself, he supposed it was only fair to let Shivers get away with expressing himself honestly.

  “Yeah. I want plenty of us there tonight. Go bleed some tourists of their hard-earned dough.”

  Shivers left without another word.

  The office was quiet again, except for the high, clear song of the cognac. He now had tomorrow squared away. He had no pressing need to think clearly. He could give in.

  13

  "It’s not just the bad pay and the life-threatening situations I love about a run,” Jackie said. “It’s the glamour. ”

  She sat in a worn lawn chair whose seat would probably have given out if she weighed five kilograms more. A trideo display in front of her showed the image of a sewer in all its murky glory. The tiny attic room she sat in was dark, and small mammals and large insects skittered through the darkest corners. They were only a few hundred meters from the Gates Casino, but they might as well have been in a different world.

  “Maybe we can get the ork to eat a few of the roaches,” Spindle said. “Clean the place up a little.” The ork, Kross, sat silently behind them and did not bother to dignify Spindle’s remark with a reply. His arms crossed and his right leg folded over his left, he wore his impatience poorly. Spending a whole run merely as an observer was clearly not his style.

  Jackie watched the trideo as Spindle moved her drone forward. There wasn’t much time—the drone needed to be in place by the time X-Prime started playing, to get as much useful footage as possible. Sadly, they wouldn’t be able to just leave the drone’s surveillance on the whole time and watch the entire show unfold—the risk of detection was too large. They’d have to make do with small snippets: a minute here, a minute there, using any clues Cayman managed to pass along about when they should start filming and when they needed to have the whole project done.

  Light, cut into long narrow strips by a grating, dropped into the sewer ahead of the drone.

  “That’s it,” Spindle said. “We’ll sneak through there and get this show on the road.”

  Jackie leaned back and watched some sort of beetle crawl near her toes. Her part wouldn’t come for a while. All she could do was wait and watch as Spindle gathered the data she’d need.

  The guy at table eight had more tics than patch of tall grass in the woods. He had more tells than an old gypsy woman with a crystal ball. Anyway you sliced it, he was easy money. And as soon as he ran out of chips, he signaled one of the wandering cashiers and bought a new stack. The gamblers would’ve been lining up to get a shot at him, but that would tip off too many people to what was going on. Ins
tead, those who didn’t have a seat lingered a table or two away, or made irregular circuits around the casino, checking for an opening every few minutes, or, if they were smart, paying the dealer to save a chair for them when a spot at the table was empty.

  That was how Murson Kader got his seat. Not that he personally paid off the dealer. He always had a few associates tour the poker tables an hour or so before he arrived, checking for the best table and making sure their boss would be able to play there. They had found the pigeon at table eight without too much difficulty, and secured a space for their boss. Eight minutes after he walked in the Gates Casino doors, Kader was seated two chairs away from the young man with the slick brown hair and the large but dwindling pile of chips.

  Kader’s head was half flesh, half grinning metal skull. The odd thing was, the two halves didn’t really look much different. His flesh was pulled tight over broad, firm bones, and his one real eye bulged in its socket. His permanent grin carried no hint of humor.

  His fingers, long and bony, were built for a game like gin, where he would need to hold numerous cards. Texas Two-Step, which only required the spidery extremities to grasp two cards at a time, seemed like a waste of his abilities.

  Kader dressed like an undertaker, which was wholly appropriate, right down to the black, brimmed hat covering his bald, gleaming metal-and-flesh scalp. When he played poker, he always took exactly five seconds, no more, no less, to decide whether to call, raise, or fold. Compared to the mark at table eight—or even compared to a good player—he was a poker-playing robot, an efficient, chip-raking machine.

  The mark did not seem too pleased to see Kader. He probably would have been happiest to sit at a table with just the dealer and himself—but even then he would have found a way to lose.

  Kader wasn’t much for niceties at the table. He didn’t introduce himself to anyone or direct remarks to his fellow players. In the course of conversation, it came out that the mark’s name was Alex, but that meant nothing to Kader. The mark only mattered for his chips, not his name.