The inside of the van was nowhere near as immaculate as the outside. Spindle’s chair was in fine shape, covered in brown leather a shade lighter than the rest of the seats. It clearly had been reupholstered recently, while the other seats were left to rot. X-Prime kept shifting on his bench to avoid being stabbed by a loose spring beneath him.
There wasn’t much to do inside the vehicle, and, despite X-Prime’s whining, the van still crawled at about thirteen kilometers per hour. Bannickburn decided it was time for a distraction.
“All right,” he announced. “I’m starting a pool. Fifty nuyen for anyone who wants in. Person who makes the best guess about why Martel wants a bottle of water wins the pot. You can talk among yourselves, but you can only make one official bet. When you’re ready, hand over your cash and make your wager. I’ll keep track of the winner.” He waved his hand with a small royal flourish. “That’s all.”
Kross folded his arms and frowned, apparently not thrilled with the topic. The others in the van, though, seemed already deep in thought.
X-Prime snapped his fingers. “Tir Tairngire mountain spring water,” he said. “Best tasting water in the world. Never exported. Who wouldn’t want a bottle?”
“For what he’s paying us?” Cayman scoffed. “Please.” “Blood of a flesh-form insect spirit,” Jackie said. “Blood ritual drek. That’s worth plenty of cash.”
“Is that clear?” X-Prime said. “I thought bug blood was kind of white and milky.”
“Maybe it’s bug plasma,” Jackie said.
“Ew, gross,” X-Prime said.
“But possible,” she said, and the others nodded slowly.
Bannickburn decided to throw out one of his own. “A sample of water from the Mediterranean. So Martel can uncork it and enjoy the pleasant aromas of southern Italy whenever he wants.”
Everyone in the van—even Spindle, who was mostly wrapped up in driving—scoffed and jeered. Bannickburn just smiled.
“Maybe it’s not the water he’s after,” Cayman suggested. “Maybe it’s the bottle. Could be the base is a gemstone. Could even have a microchip embedded in it. Could be almost anything.”
“I’m afraid we can’t count ‘almost anything’ as an official guess,” Bannickburn said. “Too vague.”
X-Prime tapped his index fingers together, still working on a solution. “Okay, so we know how much it’s worth to Martel. We figure if he thinks he can sell it, he’ll get more than he’s paying us. We don’t know how much profit he’s expecting, but we can make a reasonable guess. Twenty percent wouldn’t be out of line for a retailer, but I’d expect Martel to be looking at getting at least a fifty percent markup.”
Bannickburn shot a look at Cayman, and the big man, hunched awkwardly on his bench, shrugged. “Finances and accounting,” he said. “You finally got the boy in an area he actually knows something about.”
Jackie was looking at X-Prime thoughtfully, though she might have been looking past him to a piece of shredded gray fabric dangling from the ceiling.
“You may know the value Martel puts on it,” she said slowly, “but I’ll tell you something—pretty soon, the value of that bottle’s going to go up.”
“What do you mean?” Bannickburn asked.
Jackie flicked her eyes quickly toward Kross, a move so fast the ork didn’t notice it. But Bannickburn did. Right, he thought. Can’t talk freely with the spy sitting right there. It would have to wait.
Bannickburn let half an hour go by, to avoid raising Kross’ suspicions. They skirted south by southwest on small roads, occasionally passing another car, but most of the time not seeing anyone. Just the way the route was supposed to be.
After he thought enough time had passed, Bannickburn stretched his arms and yawned.
“That’s it,” he said. “I can’t nap while I’m upright like this. I want a bench. Who wants the front?”
Kross, Cayman, and X-Prime all shot their arms into the air. Cayman’s calloused hand went up so fast it banged into the van’s ceiling. A few pieces of disintegrated foam insulation drifted onto his head.
Bannickburn looked at X-Prime and Cayman. “The only way one of you can come up is if the other will let me rest my legs on him,” he said.
The two men exchanged a glance, with Cayman looking particularly unhappy. Then they looked at Bannickburn and shook their heads.
“I guess the ork gets the front.”
Bannickburn quickly settled in next to Jackie, resting his head on her shoulder, partly for comfort, partly to be able to talk quietly to her.
“Have I ever told you how much I admire those twin pools of wonder that are known as your eyes?” he asked.
“Have I ever told you that you talk like a bad trid romance?” she returned.
“Ah, but how else am I to talk when confronted with the miracle, the glory that is you.'' Bannickburn continued on in this way for a time, doing his best to discourage Kross from any attempted eavesdropping. It seemed to work—after a good ten minutes, the ork was slumped in his seat, breathing evenly, either asleep or on the verge of it.
“Okay,” Bannickburn said. “I think we can talk. How’s the value of the bottle going to go up?”
“Who are we taking the bottle from?” she asked. “Some Finnigans,” Bannickburn replied. “Or at least, some people working for the Finnigans.”
“Right. So we go in and take it from them, which means they no longer have it, even though they want it. And once we’ve got it, we’re transporting it back to Seattle to other people who want it, but until we get there, haven’t got it, either.
“We’ll have a couple hours in the van,” she continued, “and in that time we’ll have something that the two most powerful mob families in Seattle want but don’t have. I’d say that makes the value of that bottle go up considerably. Now, let’s say we use our time wisely on the drive, and we talk with representatives from each family, and we tell them what’s what.”
Bannickburn saw it now. “We make it clear that we know both sides want it,” he said. “We tell them that one family’s going to get the bottle, the other isn’t. We start a bidding war. We clean up.”
“We might,” Jackie agreed. “But there’s a risk. We’re doing this to try to keep the Mafia from killing you. We play the families off each other, we might just be giving them extra incentive to do away with you, and fast. A little extra cash is nice, but not that useful if we’re dead.”
“They won’t kill us while we have the water,” Ban-nickburn said confidently. “They won’t want to risk losing it.”
“And after we sell it to one or the other? Doesn’t the loser come after us?”
Bannickburn chewed on his lower lip. “That could be a problem,” he admitted.
“Yeah.”
Bannickburn shifted his head a little, looking out the front window, watching the side of the road where black trees whizzed by in front of a black sky.
There had to be a way to turn this around, he thought. To get back in control of the situation.
“We need to know what the water is,” he said. “Why it’s important. When we know that, we may figure out the best way to use whatever it is. Get both families off our backs. But we’ll need to know what it is before we get back to Seattle. Got any ideas on how we could get some analysis done on the fly?”
Jackie snorted quietly. “Of course. Been thinking of that since the moment you dragged me into this.” “Dragged? Didn’t you volunteer?”
“For the fun part. Not for the running-into-the-lair-of-psychotic-elves part.”
“Oh. Right. Well, the point is, you’re thinking about it.”
“Right.”
“Good.” He felt himself growing drowsy. Spindle was in complete control of the van, and Bannickburn wouldn’t be needed until the Tir border—assuming they didn’t run into unfriendly Salish authorities. But they could wake him up if they needed to. He could sleep now, and when he woke up, he could take the first steps toward getting his life back.
&nbs
p; 20
Poor Slidestream, Bailey thought. The boy really had done some nice work for him. Most of the equipment Bailey had on his desk—the stuff that allowed Bailey to keep track of the fifteen thousand things he needed to worry about at the moment—was from Slidestream. The kid had some real talent. Just no discipline.
Bailey wasn’t the most rigorously disciplined person on the planet himself, but he knew how to get things done. He had to. Without any innate talents, aside from being a champion bulldrekker, he needed to compensate. Maybe that was why he’d been so harsh with poor Slidestream—he knew how much talent the boy had. If Bailey possessed that much ability, there’d be no telling how far he’d go with it, instead of scrambling for every little thing, spinning twelve plates at a time like some poor schlub he’d once seen on a terrible black-and-white 2-D video. People like Slidestream didn’t realize what they had. They just coasted along, thinking everything in life would come to them as easily as their talent did.
Perhaps he should have recorded Slidestream’s demise. It would make a fine cautionary tale on the dangers of sloppiness.
“Would you be inspired by a trideo of a man having his brain roasted from the inside?” he said.
Shivers didn’t move. He sat in one of Bailey’s thickly padded chairs, right ankle on left knee, hands clasped near his stomach. He had been watching Bailey all night.
“Depends,” Shivers said. “Inspired to get revenge on someone? Maybe. Inspired to go get some dinner? Probably not.”
“Inspired to work harder,” Bailey said. “To make more of yourself.”
“You want to make a motivational trideo where a guy gets his brain cooked?” Shivers said. His expression remained blank, but his tone was heavily skeptical. “I don’t know. Aztechnology might use it.”
Bailey nodded. “That they might. That they might.” Then he waved his hand. “Ah, it’s no matter. I missed my opportunity to make such a recording, and probably won’t have another in the near future. It’s a shame, but there it is. Oh, well.”
Bailey then slowly, exaggeratedly, turned his head to look at the clock on his desk. He did his best to make his eyes bug out like a cartoon character’s. “My! Will you look at that! Did you have any idea it was getting so late? I certainly didn’t. Time to turn in—or at least time to head out of the office and tie one on, don’t you think?”
“Go ahead,” Shivers said. “I think I’ll just stay here. I’ll be waiting when you get back.”
Bailey sighed. It had been like this all night. Shivers had arrived six hours ago, towing along several well-armed, heavily scarred individuals who had made Bailey’s receptionist ask to go home that very minute. Shivers’ friends, as far as Bailey knew, had been camped out in the reception area ever since, keeping a close eye on Bailey’s regular muscle. The two camps were ostensibly engaged in a standoff, each preventing the other from causing a problem, but the situation didn’t seem overly tense—Bailey had heard them start rolling dice about three hours ago.
The interlopers served their purpose, though, by making sure Bailey couldn’t forcibly eject Shivers. However friendly the standoff was, it was still an aggressive move by the younger man. Bailey had something Shivers wanted, and Shivers was willing to use the threat of violence (and, if it came to it, actual violence) to get it.
Over the course of the evening, Bailey had carefully reviewed the pros and cons of simply shooting Shivers in the head and being done with the whole situation, and so far the cons had won out. The biggest pros were that Bailey could finally leave his office, and the secrets he was trying to conceal would remain hidden. The cons were that Shivers’ friends were likely to retaliate swiftly, and that Martel seemed to like Shivers and might not react well to Bailey simply offing him in a fit of pique. Besides, for all Shivers’ icy manners, Bailey kind of liked him, too. He recognized a high level of skill and intelligence in the boy, even if Shivers didn’t have the grace to laugh at Bailey’s jokes.
So they were stuck here, together, with Bailey making constant remarks about Shivers leaving and Shivers deflecting them. Bailey desperately wanted to get about his business—to at least check on the progress of Kross and his cohort—but he couldn’t as long as Shivers was there. He didn’t want the merest hint of this particular mission drifting toward Shivers—he might like the boy, but that didn’t keep him from seeing the predator in him.
“On second thought,” Bailey said, “why go out when I can enjoy a fine meal here? I’ll just put in a quick call to Rivelli’s.”
“Make mine veal parmesan,” Shivers said.
“I don’t recall inviting you to have dinner with me.” “No, you didn’t. But if you don’t order for me, I’ll just call as soon as you’re done and place my own order. Thought it would be more efficient to do it in one call instead of two.”
Bailey sighed. This really was too much. The first thing he'd do tomorrow is change his security protocol—next time. Shivers would have to leave his friends outside the fragging building. The second thing he’d do tomorrow is work on a detailed plan for paying Shivers back for his insolence. Hopefully, by the end of the day tomorrow, Bannickburn would be back, water in hand, and Bailey would be in Martel’s good graces. That might give him more leeway to teach Shivers a lesson.
“I hope I’m not keeping you from getting things done,” Shivers said after the food had been ordered. “If you’re here so late, I imagine you have important things to do.”
“I imagine I do,” Bailey replied flatly. “Unfortunately, the things I’d most like to be doing are things that are best done without other people in the office.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
“Jimmy, please. Lots of people in the world can get away with acting stupid, but it’s not convincing on you.” “Fair enough. It’s like this, Quinn. I know you’re working on something. I know it’s something important to Martel. I want to know what it is, and I’m going to find out. One way or another.”
“You are? God, I admire that sort of manly confidence. Are you dating anyone right now?”
“Shut up. Best thing you could do right now is tell me what you know. Not only do you get your office back, but you get me as a friend.”
“A friend?” Bailey pouted. “But I wanted you to be so much more that that.”
Shivers ignored him. “I could help you out. Make sure whatever’s going on succeeds. Make sure Martel’s impressed.”
“Make sure you take plenty of credit for yourself,” Bailey added.
“It’s your choice. I’m going to find out, one way or another. And I'm ready to stay here all night, if I need to. Take the easy way out. Just tell me what’s going on.” Bailey smiled. He didn’t say anything. He just grinned. It had taken a long time, but the night had finally turned in his favor. It shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but times were busy—extra help wasn’t always immediately available. But it had finally arrived.
The call to Rivelli’s had been a ruse, Bailey’s order part of a long-established code. The response on the other end told him that the help he needed was available. A mage had been dispatched—a mage who knew how to quickly and effectively put a group of people to sleep.
Part of Bailey wanted to point out to Shivers the clue that told him his mage had come through. But a bigger part of him wanted to smile irritatingly at Shivers until Shivers finally figured out what was going on. He deliberately pushed the corners of his mouth deeper into his cheeks, forming the smirk he’d first perfected in adolescence.
“What?” Shivers asked. Bailey didn’t respond.
Shivers sat up straighter in his chair, planting both feet on the ground. He looked around the room cautiously, as if he expected a third party to leap out at him. Nothing happened. He looked back at Bailey; Bailey was careful to make sure his smirk appeared exactly the same.
“What?” Shivers asked. Again, Bailey didn’t say anything, but he cocked his head slightly, as if listening for something.
Shivers caught on immediately.
“Dice!” he said. He’d finally noticed the complete lack of sound from the reception area. He jumped to his feet and ran to the door, but froze before grabbing the knob. He turned slowly to Bailey.
“What happens if I open this door?”
Bailey furrowed his brow. “Hmmm ... I believe you enter the reception area. If I remember correctly.”
Shivers took a step back. “Get over here. Open the door.”
Bailey leaned back in his chair, feeling happier than he had in hours. “James, you weren’t in a position to give me any orders before, and you really aren’t in such a position now. But, to show there are no hard feelings between us, I’ll go ahead and open the door for you.”
Bailey slowly sauntered over to the door, then pulled it open. His two thugs stood there, arms crossed, looking stern, but with their weapons holstered.
“You see, James? No one had any intention of hurting anyone. Stephen and Bruce there were just going to escort you out. That’s all.”
Behind them, the reception area was empty. There was no sign of Shivers’ friends.
“Where did they go?” Shivers demanded. “What did you do to them?”
“Such accusations. It’s late, James. Your friends were tired after a long night of gambling with Stephen and Bruce. I imagine they went somewhere to catch a few winks.”
Shivers leaned closer to Bailey. “Where do you imagine they went?”
Bailey sighed. “I’m sure they were quite tired. It’s possible they stumbled out the door of this building and fell right asleep in the nearby alley. If I were you, I would look for them there.”
Shivers glared at Stephen and Bruce, then at Bailey. None of them seemed at all taken aback. Knowing he was outnumbered, Shivers stomped off. Bailey heard the echo of his footsteps until Shivers was down the stairs and out of the building.
He turned to Stephen and Bruce. “Thank you, gentlemen. Let’s be sure to have a chat tomorrow about ways we can avoid having me held prisoner in my office for six hours while you play dice with my captors, hmmm?” Bailey smiled, knowing the two men would see right through his pleasant tones. They knew the meeting tomorrow would likely be quite painful for them. Most likely, neither of them would show, and Bailey wouldn’t see either of them again. Which was probably the healthiest choice they could make.
Shadowrun 44 - Drops of Corruption Page 17
