Leverage

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  I grimace at the thought that I should’ve just confronted Winn the day we arrived and then gotten the hell out of here. Then this all would’ve been avoided, and we’d be safely back in the Seattle Isles with two clean CitIDs and enough cash to pay the Citizen Maker off at a time of our choosing.

  Thinking of Winn, he’s again in the kitchen, looking like he’s doing some food prep. He looks like he’s been up for a while, in a pair of jeans that fit well and a buttoned black-and-white plaid shirt. He’s freshly showered, his black curly hair dry and settled in for the day. There’s a little bit of stubble on his angular face—bastard, he knows I like that. He was clean-shaven at the hospital.

  “Whatcha making?” I ask, as I enter the kitchen and head straight for where the espresso is in the shiny gray cabinet next to the refrigerator. See, I can be cordial.

  “Chicken chili,” Winn answers. “For dinner.”

  I get the espresso down, and make a face. Pre-ground. I like to grind my own beans even with the ungodly associated sound. But I shrug it off; coffee is coffee first thing in the morning. And yeah, I know the difference between coffee and espresso, but I use the terms interchangeably. It’s fun to piss off the coffee snobs.

  And I mean really—whether it’s whole bean, pre-ground, fresh, three months old, instant—first thing in the morning, Isa Schmidt is going to drink it. She might bitch incessantly about it, but she’s going to drink it.

  Winn says, “I saw at the hospital that you kept the necklace I gave you.”

  I resist the instinct to reach up to my neck and instead pack the portafilter. I’m not wearing it this morning, having left it upstairs. “It’s useful,” I say, not turning around.

  “I figured you would’ve gotten a new one to serve the same function.”

  Damn. Why didn’t I do that? I shrug. “Like you did?” I peek back at him.

  He’s leaning against the counter, his arms crossed in front of him. He nods to himself. “Yeah,” he says simply, but then doesn’t elaborate at all.

  “Yeah? That’s all you have to say?” I blurt out. Annoyed with myself about why I would even I care, I hit the button on the espresso machine and go to the refrigerator to get some milk to warm up.

  Winn seems to struggle with himself. “Well ... yeah.”

  Ugh! It would not be wise to throw a coffee mug at him, I repeat to myself while not looking at him. It would not be wise to throw a coffee mug at him.

  “I don’t know how to explain what it was like,” Winn continues. “How I felt when I ... when I came here.”

  Winn falls silent, completely missing the point of why I’m upset. I pour my milk into a mug, and the espresso machine chugs, pushing out warm espresso. I suddenly feel very self-conscious, aware that I haven’t washed my hair and that it’s tied up in a clumsy greasy ponytail.

  My motions feel very deliberate in the silence between Winn’s thoughts. The clink of the mug as I move it around on the glass countertop sounds extra loud.

  Winn exhales audibly through his nose. “I don’t know, Isa,” he finally says. “But you were wrong.”

  “What?” I whip around from hitting “start” to warm the mug of milk in the microwave.

  “It did too mean something to me,” Winn says, his blue eyes staring intensely into mine. “Being a team, with you and Puo.”

  Puo suddenly asks from the other side of the kitchen, “Then why’d you leave?”

  Both Winn and I jerk toward Puo in surprise, so absorbed with each other we didn’t even notice his arrival.

  Damn good question. I watch Winn to see how he’s going to answer.

  Winn stands up from the counter to face both of us, and stares at the floor, searching for an answer. He gives slow shakes of his head as he thinks of responses and tosses them out. Finally, he settles on mumbling, “I don’t know. I—I just don’t know.”

  Puo and I stare at him.

  Then Puo pronounces, “Weak.”

  The microwave beeps at me and I take my warmed milk out and add the espresso. It is a weak response, but Puo’s show of solidarity has me feeling much better, stronger.

  I walk over and sit at the counter near Puo. Why should I have to flee? If this is uncomfortable for Winn, then good.

  Winn blushes, and clears his throat. “Right. There’s some whole grain bread. You could have some toast, or I can make you some oatmeal.”

  Puo purses his lips, staring at Winn. It’s clear to me that Puo is thinking about pressing the issue.

  I catch Puo’s eye and subtly signal him to drop it. It’s better to let Winn stew on what just happened, rather than force the issue now.

  “Oatmeal,” Puo says, and comes to sit next to me.

  “Want anything in it?” Winn asks, turning around to get started.

  “Bacon,” Puo answers. “With some eggs.”

  “Uh, well,” Winn says, still facing the stove. “We have some nice raspberries and walnuts, how does that sound?”

  “Not as delicious as bacon and eggs,” Puo says.

  I smile into my mug of coffee. “Learn anything yet?” I ask Puo. I had a text from Puo waiting for me this morning that the chip we planted last night made it through Mountie security. Yay for Indian woman agent working weekends.

  Puo’s face changes from an undertone of anger to resignation. “Yeah. We’re going to need a Cleaner.”

  Damn it! Cleaners are not cheap, and they don’t take payment plans. More freaking money! Poof! Gone!

  That even gets Winn to turn around. He was part of the game we ran on Ham the Cleaner to steal his code.

  Cleaners are a bunch of pricks that banded together to form a guild to protect the software that lets a person break into, and more importantly, out of a building with smart house technology. Which nearly all the houses worth hitting have. But it’s 2112, so it’s like, a guild? Really? Who even does that? Ergo, a bunch of pricks.

  Fortunately, the bunch of pricks aren’t aligned with Bosses, or anyone else for that matter. They’re independent contractors—prima-donna ass-glitter-loving independent contractors—but so long as your money’s good, they don’t give a fuck what you’re doing. So we should theoretically be fine hiring one.

  The only requisite to becoming a Cleaner, near as I can tell, is you have to be an arrogant prick. Which is why stealing a copy of their code made so much sense—save money and avoid assholes. What could go wrong?

  Winn asks, “You don’t have the, uh—” He gestures helplessly with his hands. “—anymore?”

  The code we stole? “Yes, we still have it,” I say. “But not with us.” I ask Puo, “And crossing the border ... ?”

  Puo finishes the question with, “Would be a very stupid thing to do right now. We’d be picked up before even crossing. Malfunctioning CitIDs at the border arouse a whole lot of attention, and we’ve gone missing. Both sides are looking for us now.”

  “I could go back and pick stuff up,” Winn offers.

  “Yeeaahhh,” I say. “That won’t work.”

  “Why?” Winn asks.

  Puo answers, “Because we still don’t know if either side is aware you’re with us, so you might get picked up and questioned just as we would. And since you left, the Seattle house may have been set up with some nasty surprises for you if you ever returned.”

  Winn looks between us.

  I stare right back at him. Damn right we set the house up to catch you if you ever set foot back in it. Dumbass.

  “So where does that leave us?” Winn asks.

  I bristle at the use of “us.”

  Puo answers, “We’ll have to hire a Cleaner.”

  “This stupid side trip is costing me more and more money.” I shake my head in frustration, tallying it all up. I’m starting to wonder how much cash we’ll have left over and how many payments to the Citizen Maker that will translate to. We won’t be able to pay the damn things off anymore, not when we need two new CitIDs. We’re royally screwed. We need the CitIDs to be able to pull the jobs necessar
y to pay them off in a timely fashion. It’s an expensive catch-22. Citizen Makers are laughing all the way to the bank, happy to make loans with high interest rates. Grrr.

  “Since when do you care about money?” Winn asks in mild surprise.

  “Since I have to subsidize your Leave it Beaver life in the suburbs,” I snap.

  I’ve always cared about money. Thing is, when you grow up without any, wondering at times how you’re going to eat, wondering if you’re going to need to sell your body to survive, you appreciate having it, and never stop caring about. It’s only by the grace of God that my second pickpocket lift was successful and that they didn’t manage to catch me after the first bungled one.

  “Why do we even need a Cleaner?” I ask Puo, before Winn can snipe back.

  “The plant worked,” Puo says. “I got the cop’s password into their unclassified system. They order their computer hardware parts through Ajex, which has a distribution center on the South Island.”

  “And?” I ask. So far so good. Any information on Nix and her cohorts is going to be classified on a closed network, which means we either need to physically enter their classified closed room, or we need to somehow get the information out. The latter one is substantially safer, so that’s what we’re going with.

  Puo answers, “They use Ajex because they classify them as a tier-one security business.”

  “You’re going to have to translate that for me,” I say.

  “We need a Cleaner to get in and out to make the switch,” Puo says simply.

  Damn. “You place the order?”

  Puo smiles to himself before answering. “Yeah, back-dated it too, to a guy that’s out on vacation right now. Someone’s probably going to get their ass chewed out on Monday. The work is scheduled for Tuesday.”

  Clever.

  There are two main flavors of getting information off of a closed network. The first is the insider route, but that takes a ton of time to profile and line up someone, and isn’t guaranteed to work if the insider suddenly grows a conscience or is getting sniffed out.

  The second flavor is to plant a bug of some kind in the closed room. This, too, takes some time to line up properly if you’re interested in a long-term retrieval of data. But if you want something quickly and don’t care if the authorities find the bug, then it can be managed by gaining access to their unclassified system, spoofing a work order to replace their graphics card, and making sure the graphics card they replace the old one with is the one you prepped.

  We’ve covered the first two of those steps. Now it’s time to make sure the graphics card they install is the one upstairs in Puo’s room with a benign looking extra chip that wirelessly transmits to a relay on the underside of one shiny mauve down coat. Which means we need to pay Ajex a visit. And to do that: “We’re going to need a Cleaner,” I say resigned.

  “Yup,” Puo answers.

  I hate Cleaners.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EVERY MAJOR metropolitan area possesses at least two things: a Boss that runs all the crime in the area, and a Cleaners’ Den, an ultra-private gathering place where the Cleaners gather and vote on how best to apply ass-glitter to themselves.

  The locations of most Cleaners’ Dens are secret on principle. But it doesn’t take much legwork to find where the den is, just time. Time we don’t currently have.

  Fortunately, there’s another way to get hold of a Cleaner—Cleaners always maintain an easy way for someone to locate and hire them. Unfortunately, the method is to keep a Cleaner posted at each of the city’s professional bars—the bars designated by the criminal underworld as neutral territory and only patronized by criminal types. And, even though the bars are supposed to be neutral, with a Boss hunting us a professional bar is one of the last places we want to be.

  This is why, for the past two hours, Winn and I have been sitting in some office space that’s empty for the weekend in the building across the street from McComb’s Pub, a professional bar. Puo is back at the floating house combing through the digital domain to see if he can find anything useful.

  At least we’re out of the wind up here. The icy gusts that get funneled between the buildings are enough to cut through all my layers. But there’s a bigger problem with the weather. All these winter clothes people wear obfuscate anything they might be carrying, like squeegees, the blocky hand-held devices Cleaners use to implement their code, making it difficult to identify them.

  We’re no closer to identifying and hiring a Cleaner than we were two hours ago.

  “Any luck?” I ask Puo over the comm-link.

  “No,” Puo says with an edge of frustration. “But there never was any expectation of any.”

  Cleaners make their living by erasing digital footprints. So it’s unlikely Puo could sniff them out digitally. But sometimes you get surprised by the combined stupidity and hubris of some people.

  “Can you make contact digitally?” Winn asks. “Hire them that way?”

  “No,” Puo answers.

  And therein lies one of the great oxymoronic dickish policies of the Cleaners Guild: zero online presence. It makes sense to a certain extent, but still only heightens their dickish, difficult-to-work-with personas.

  I say, “We’re going to have to go in there.”

  “Too dangerous,” Puo says.

  “I didn’t mean me,” I say, and look at Winn.

  We’re about positive that every criminal in the Vancouver area is familiar with my face and Puo’s. Winn’s face we’re less sure of. He wasn’t with us on the boat, and wasn’t integrated into the criminal underworld here until two days ago. And he had a digi-scrambler necklace activated when he was in the hospital.

  “Still too dangerous,” Puo says.

  “We have to do something,” I say. “We need to find a Cleaner soon so we can start the dog-and-pony show of hiring them and still have time for the job.”

  “How about I just wait outside the bar and tell the next person going in that I need a Cleaner?” Winn asks.

  I used to find that simple innocence charming. Now it’s mostly jaw-droppingly stupid.

  “Uh, Isa,” Puo says dumbfounded, “Any reason you don’t think that will work?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “One: who says the lucky recipient is even going to deliver the message? And two: even if the message is delivered, who says that the Cleaner on call is going to respond? Would you or I trot out like a dumb-struck lamb to a request like that?”

  “No,” Puo says, “but we sure as hell would investigate who’s asking after us.”

  Winn chimes in with, “I can tell the person that I’ll be browsing for antiques at the shop on the corner.”

  Puo says, “He’ll get the Cleaners to come to him. You can then watch for and identify them.”

  Damn. Not bad. And we still don’t think Winn’s presence with us is known. We’ve been keeping Winn hidden out of an abundance of caution, but we need to the take the risk here since we’re not getting anywhere.

  “Not too shabby,” Puo says.

  Ugh. “All right lovers,” I say, “go ahead with your plan. But don’t get too cocky yet. We’re still running out of time.”

  * * *

  I watch Winn stop the next person heading in McComb’s, a squat woman whose winter clothes hide her bulk, and give his pitch. The muffled exchange sounds like it should over the comm-link in Winn’s unzipped chest pocket: like a distressed laci (law-abiding citizen) needing help, which should be pretty tantalizing bait. I’ve also given Winn my scarf to help hide his face, so he at least doesn’t appear suspicious (he’s lucky the scarf was a plain black one and not hot pink or a rainbow one to match my socks).

  Twenty minutes pass uneventfully. Winn is in the antique shop on the corner where he said he would be, and I’m watching the street for signs of the Cleaners. Muffled sounds come through his comm-link as he moves around, but otherwise he’s quiet.

  “I got something,” Puo says. He’s watching the surrounding area through the mun
icipal cams. “Two people, an older gentleman in a green-and-black skiing coat, and a punk kid in a heavy hoody. They arrived together, but split up as soon as they got out of the hovercar. The older guy is headed your way. The punk looks like he’s headed to the back to plug in.”

  Well that’s certainly suspicious. Aside from the odd couple, plugging in would unequivocally announce a Cleaner. It’s how they operate—they have to connect their squeegee to the local system to use their software.

  “I have a visual on the old guy,” I say. “Let me know if the punk plugs in.”

  “Roger, that,” Puo says. “Hang on. Yeah. Yeah, he’s plugging in.”

  I text Winn, Rachel and Bob are here. When are you coming home? Real meaning: Two are headed your way now.

  Winn replies, Soon. Do you need anything? Understood. Anything else I should I know?

  Yes, I write back. Hang on. I need to tell him it’s the old guy, but my mind is blank on how to convey that while still reading like a normal conversation. Why would I need mothballs? It’s the only thing I can think of other than, old guy.

  The old guy lingers outside for a few seconds while I rack my brain, but then the old guy must receive the punk’s signal and heads toward the entrance.

  Mothballs, I write. Oy vey. Then I type out quickly, Bob says he accidentally erased all his pictures. Wants to know if we have any. The Cleaners’ software is running.

  Winn doesn’t respond.

  I strain to listen to the rustling, cackling feed from the comm-link in Winn’s pocket. There’s some light coughing, the sound of someone browsing through clothing racks.

  Puo whispers, “Another car pulled in front of the one the old guy and punk got out of.”

  My heart rate increases. Is this overkill for them? Or are they just being cautious about an unknown entity asking after them.

  “Spiffy outfit,” a muffled old man’s voice comes through. “What’s with the scarf?”