Reapers (Breakers, Book 4)

by Edward W. Robertson

  He lowered himself to a nearby barrel, wincing. "Couple weeks ago, I get a box of pig iron dropped on my foot. Splits a couple of my nails. No big deal. Until they turn green and fall off. Doc says unless I want the rest of me to turn the same color, he's got to take off my toes. Fine by me, at least they're the little ones. Two days ago, snip snip, all better. Yesterday, I was sleeping off the anesthetic."

  "Sound right?" she said to Kerry.

  The man laughed roughly. "Don't tell me you expected me in yesterday. Crazy enough I'm here today."

  "You're fine," Kerry said. He raised his eyebrows at Lucy. "Unless you'd like to see the wound."

  He was needling her, but it wasn't his neck on the block. "Doc around?" she said. "How about I confirm with him?"

  Kerry jerked his chin at the waiting barge. "You're free to go."

  The longhaired man smiled sarcastic-like and hobbled back to work. The doctor's office was housed two piers down. He sat in front his office watching the stevedores hump goods into the barge. He confirmed the longhair's story.

  Lucy wandered down the pier to watch the river. Could rule out Eight-Toe Jones over there. As for Woody Sloan, the man who'd shown up after he heard the shots, his alibi wasn't airtight, but he didn't give off a guilty vibe. She couldn't say the same for Zoe Goodwin. Something off about the woman. Hard to say what, but it was her gut doing the twitching, and her gut was rarely wrong.

  Motion drew her eye to the upper floors of the glass towers across from the piers. Someone dangled a white sheet from the window and waved it back and forth, as if surrendering to life.

  "Woody Sloan lives right across the street," Lucy said. "How about the rest of your crew?"

  "I don't know," Kerry said. "Close enough to get here every day."

  "You don't keep them under wraps somewhere?"

  "We don't keep slaves. Everyone who works here wants to."

  "Except me," she said. "You got a car, big boy?"

  Kerry stood there. "You're not filling that sharp little head with ideas, are you, Lucy?"

  "I intend to put the Feds' bureaucracy to my advantage. You got a problem with that?"

  "You sure you aren't more interested in the guards they post out front?"

  Lucy rolled her eyes. "For Pete's sake. I got the impression the Feds aren't eager to tangle with Distro. If I try to bug out on you, shoot me in the head and tell the soldiers whatever damn lie you like."

  He bent to put his gaze level with hers. "I will, Lucy. Play it straight or you win a permanent swim in the East River."

  "My heavens, you'd kill me two days sooner than planned? What a terrifying threat."

  He didn't have a car, but he allowed her to take her bike. He rode back and to her left with a pistol holstered on his right hip. She thought about rabbiting just to spite him, but she had the impression he know how to use his gun. Besides, if she ran out on Distro now, she was going to have a hell of a time using them to get to Tilly.

  The sky grew overcast, spitting itty-bitty drops of rain on her face. She wove downtown, passing a pedestrian or another cyclist every few blocks, but after the bustle at the piers, it felt downright ghostly.

  Outside the building that couldn't decide if it were a hotel or a Swiss castle, a soldier stopped them and tried to confiscate Kerry's weapons. Kerry produced three different registrations. The man read them, mumbled to himself, then entered City Hall, locking the door behind him. Five minutes later, he came back with a second soldier.

  "You're cleared." He gave Kerry a lopsided smile. "Corporal Ruiz will be behind you at all times."

  Kerry returned his registration to his wallet. "Safety first."

  It was a small moment, the Fed-Distro rivalry playing out in front of her. Easy to miss. It would change everything.

  But that was ahead of her. There and then, she strolled through the echoing lobby, shadowed by her entourage of Kerry and Corporal Ruiz, and leaned her elbows on the receptionist's desk.

  "Don't you ever take a break?"

  The same woman as always smiled back. "What can I say, I love my job. Are you enjoying your visit to Manhattan?"

  "Lovin' it to death," Lucy grinned. "I'm looking for information on a group called the Kono. You know of 'em?"

  "I've heard of them, yes."

  "Would you happen to have records of which of your citizens might be involved with them?"

  The woman drew back a fraction of an inch. "As any such records would be part of an ongoing investigation, they would be unavailable for public inspection."

  Lucy sucked her front teeth. "How about criminal records? Ain't those public?"

  "There would be a processing and copying fee for each file."

  "Put it on Distribution's tab." Kerry fished in his pocket and withdrew a few documents.

  The woman leaned over them. "And the records you'd like copied?"

  Lucy slid her the list of employees she'd copied the day before. "Have fun."

  "Excellent. We'll have these ready for you in five to eight business days."

  "Won't cut it. I need them today."

  The receptionist shook her head. "There must be fifty names on this list. I can expedite them, but you're still looking two, three days."

  Quick as a cobra, Lucy slipped her hand behind the woman's head, lanced her fingers into her bunned hair, and twisted her wrist. The receptionist's head yanked back. She shrieked.

  "Most of these people won't be in your system," Lucy said. "It doesn't take three fucking days to copy five or six pages."

  Corporal Ruiz moved sideways, crab-like, to aim his rifle at Lucy. "Let her go!"

  Before the soldier was done with his command, Kerry snapped a long-barrel revolver from his holster and drew down on him. "Lower your weapon, soldier."

  Instead, Ruiz recentered it on Kerry's chest. "You are threatening agents of the sovereign nation of Manhattan. Drop your weapon and get down on the ground."

  Kerry sighed and let his barrel lower a couple inches. "Let the poor woman go, Lucy."

  Lucy clenched her fingers, drawing tears from the receptionist, then withdrew her hand.

  Slowly, Kerry holstered his revolver. "I call a mulligan."

  Ruiz stared at him for a long second, then puffed his cheeks with nervous laughter. He took his hands off his machine gun, letting it rest from the sling around his neck.

  "Mulligan granted." The soldier glanced between Kerry and Lucy. "You won't get a second one."

  "I'm sorry for bugging out on you," Lucy said. "Due to some goddamn ridiculous circumstances, I don't got two or three days. If I don't have those records tonight, it could cost the lives of Manhattan citizens."

  The receptionist untied her bun, finger-combed her hair, and ignored Lucy in favor of Kerry. "Will you vouch for this?"

  "Consider it vouched," he said.

  Without turning, she pointed to the grandfather clock ticking away in the corner. "Our office closes at 5 PM. I will have your records ready at 4:45 PM. If you are late, you may pick them up tomorrow."

  "It's a date," Lucy said.

  Ruiz straightened. "I'll see you out."

  "Don't do that again," Kerry murmured to her once they were outside and crossing the street.

  Lucy's temper flared. "Right. Much more important to be polite than to save my fucking life."

  They biked back to the piers. To give herself longer to cool down, Lucy returned to the apartment courtyard to have a second look around, but the only thing that had changed was the firmness of the horse manure. When they returned to the piers, the barge had departed and so had nearly all the stevedores.

  "What the hell?" Lucy said. "How'm I supposed to run down your mole when I can't talk to your people?"

  Kerry sniffed. The day had never warmed and the chill wind had caused his nose to run. "Figure that out and Nerve will be right to spare you."

  She tried to work it out, but mostly wasted a couple hours stomping up and down the docks and seething. As the afternoon waned, they biked back to Cit
y Hall and she retrieved the requested records.

  She leafed through the files over a dinner of fish and potatoes. Not much to them. Lillian Wurtz had been busted for petty theft from a food stall. Victor Villareal had been hauled in for assault on the bouncer of a moonshine joint. Dude by name of Flynn Hortag liked to smack his wife. If the zero hour rolled around and she still didn't have her mole, Lucy might shank Flynn just to bring some justice to the world before Nerve's injustice was done upon her. Beyond that, the criminal files did not look promising.

  Night fell. Before locking her closet, Kerry let her know there would be another boat tomorrow. She wasn't particularly tired and she spent a couple hours rolling cigarettes and thinking on what questions she'd ask come morning.

  With dawn peeping through the sill of the door, Nerve arrived. He looked as well-rested and implacable as ever, but his presence belied his interest.

  "What do you have for me?"

  "Genius takes time," Lucy said.

  "You have 24 hours, genius."

  He closed the door. Kerry reopened it a few minutes later and gestured her into the light.

  "Good luck," he said.

  She wasn't in the mood to banter. She headed straight to the docks, where men and women gathered to await the incoming ship, chattering and eating bowls of mashed corn. Some eyed her. Word had gotten around. Or maybe they'd just noticed Kerry the enforcer dogging her every step, compared notes, and concluded she wasn't to be trusted. Whatever the case, it wasn't going to be Lucy's easiest day on Earth.

  She got Kerry to ID Victor Villareal and pull him from the crowd. He was in his early thirties and had a shiny scar under his left eye.

  "Let's talk about the assault," Lucy said.

  He wiped his nose. "Which one?"

  "I get to choose? The bouncer at the Trough. Last spring."

  "He was staring at me."

  "So you busted his arm?"

  "And two of his ribs." Victor shrugged. "He shouldn't have stared at me."

  Lucy gritted her teeth. "You're a real asset to the company, aren't you?"

  "I do my job. What now?"

  "We'll send your medal in the mail. Get back in line." She watched him join the others at the pier. Kerry stood behind her, quiet as ever. She scuffed at the green fabric lining the ground. "How do y'all feel about torture?"

  "The desperate refuge of someone who isn't smart enough to uncover the truth."

  She had him pull Flynn Hortag, but he was a wife-beater, plain and simple. Lillian Wurtz fed her a sob story about feeding her three children. Gene Goldschmidt was about sixty years old and insisted his assault charge had been self-defense.

  Lucy sent him on his way. Nothing but dead ends. Nothing remotely organized, gang-related, or connected to the Kono. As she diverted Mikaela Davids from the crowd, a barge hove up the river with a blast of its air horn.

  Lucy waited for the horn to fade, then held up Mikaela's rap sheet and tapped the handwritten account. "You like to take things that aren't yours, Mikaela?"

  The woman's face and body were tough-worn with work and weather, but her expression crumpled immediately. "They said that was purged."

  "Nerve likes his workers clean. Maybe you can explain it to me. Help me understand."

  "I needed money. I was living in a Fed place and the winter got so bad I couldn't afford the oil." She glanced toward the stevedores waiting on the incoming barge. "It wasn't my idea."

  "I'm sure Nerve will take that into account. Who put you up to it?"

  The men and women were strung down the dock and she glanced back to the same spot as before. "Don't make me say. She'll hurt me."

  Lucy smiled comfortingly and touched the woman's arm. "Who else was Zoe working with?"

  She lowered her voice, but couldn't quash her swelling panic. "Who said it was Zoe?"

  "You're not in any trouble. Not if you give me a name."

  "I don't know. I didn't want to know."

  The imp in her wanted to drag Michaela into the restaurant kitchen and see if a meat mallet to the head jogged her memory, but she had already broken the woman. Either that or Michaela was a sidewinder. But a snake that sneaky would take more time to pin than Lucy had to spare.

  She sent the woman back to the docks. The river flowed along, a gray to match the skies. "It was Zoe Goodwin."

  Kerry gazed at the workers swarming aboard the barge. "Bet your life on that?"

  "Real funny. She acted weird the first time we talked. Hid her hand from me. You know what they were stealing? Solar chargers for car batteries. You see a lot of cars around here? Who was she fencing to?"

  "Could be anyone."

  "We'll let Nerve be the judge of that." She tucked her thumbs in her pockets. Kerry was always quiet, but his new silence was that of a dam holding back cold torrents of truth. "What?"

  He said nothing. When Lucy was about to give up on him, he folded his arms. "I like you. You do your own thing. I'll be straight with you: this won't be enough to convince him."

  "Well shit, I think it's pretty good for three days. If I had another week, I could set up a sting."

  "Think of this as the game it is. If you can't prove you're the queen, then you're just another pawn."

  "There is nothing more annoying than a chess metaphor." She shifted her pack on her shoulders and looked him in the eye. "He wants more? I'll get him more."

  The barge pulled up and the stevedores tied it tight and piled aboard to haul away its goodies. Distro sure pulled a lot of cargo. Shipped enough back, too, though nobody but the bosses seemed to know where it was headed. But it gave her an idea. Wait for Kerry to turn his back, then slip into the water, swim under the boat, climb up the far side, and stow away to destinations unknown.

  But that would take her away from Tilly. And long ago, when the shit was still being slung fresh from the fan, she had promised to keep Tilly safe.

  A new idea stood up in her head. One that required Kerry's absence. She sat near the pier and bided her time jotting notes on the conversations she'd had with those with criminal records. She was scribbling gibberish by the time a man walked out of the converted restaurant and called Kerry's name.

  "Stay put," Kerry told her.

  Her heart thundered. He walked down to the restaurant and met the man who'd called him over. Lucy scanned the barge but couldn't find her mark. As she watched, Zoe trudged up from belowdecks bearing a cask, her face red with strain.

  "Hey Zoe," Lucy called.

  The round-faced woman glanced her way and continued down the plank to the dock.

  Lucy beckoned. "Set that thing down and have a rest."

  Zoe got down to the pier and set down the cask and pulled off her gloves. "What do you want?"

  She fiddled out a filtered cigarette and lit it. "I need to follow up on yesterday's conversation. Won't take but a minute."

  "I got work to do."

  "Your back will thank you for it." She exhaled and held out the cigarette. "Take it. I got more."

  Zoe examined it, the smoke twisting up from the cherry, then accepted. "If Kerry comes over here, you better let him know this is your idea."

  "Don't worry about it. How is your back, Zoe?"

  "Tight as a frog's asshole."

  Lucy nodded and took a deep breath through her nose, as if she were enjoying the brisk morning air. "I gather you aren't too happy with your work here."

  "Keeps food on the table and wood in the stove."

  "It would be a hell of a thing to run a place like this, wouldn't it? Stand around watching while people like you and me do all the heavy lifting." She chuckled.

  Zoe sucked on the cigarette and coughed and looked at it as if considering stamping it out. Way down the dock, Kerry continued his conversation.

  Zoe eyeballed her. "You sound like you're planning a takeover."

  "This is just a routine employee satisfaction survey." At the restaurant, Kerry took a step away from the man and nodded his head. Lucy raised a brow at Zoe. "You been
moonlighting?"

  "Moonlighting?"

  "Your old back can't take this work forever." Heavy footsteps approached from down the dock. "Was that your retirement plan? Sell Distro out to the up-and-comers?"

  The woman gave her a skeptical look, dropped the cigarette, and toed it out. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  She turned her back and picked up the cask, grunting. Kerry came to a stop behind Lucy. As Zoe walked the cask over to a wagon waiting by the front curb, Lucy smiled at the ground, then bugged her eyes.

  "Ho-lee shit," she said. "You see that?"

  Kerry cocked his head. She crouched and spread out her arms as if warding people away from the scene.

  "Kerry, you see me talking to Zoe Goodwin? She was having a smoke?"

  "I saw. She just left."

  Lucy sat back, withdrawing her body from its protective crouch. "What do you make of that?"

  Kerry leaned over the crushed butt. "Looks smoked."

  "Tall as you are, I know it's tough to see through the clouds, but use your damn eyes, man."

  He glanced at her, then edged closer. His face went blank. "Oh."

  "As in, 'Oh shit, we got our traitor.'"

  Kerry picked up the spent cigarette and examined the tiny gold crown stamped on the filter. He whistled up the dock. "Zoe! Zoe Goodwin!"

  Down the way, Zoe got an aggrieved look on her face like someone had spit in her soup. Then she saw it was Kerry and she clenched up like she had to use the bathroom.

  She set down the cask and walked up to Kerry. "Yes, sir?"

  He held up his hand in the okay sign, cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger. "You dropped something."

  She looked over her shoulder at the barge wallowing beside the dock. "We bringing in ethanol or something?"

  "Playing dumb again?" Lucy said. "You already know exactly what's on board, don't you? And so do the Kono."

  "With all due respect, what the fuck is going on here?"

  Lucy nodded at the little yellow stub in Kerry's hand. "Last time you met with them, you left your spoor, Zoe."

  Zoe worked her mouth, then turned on her, face going purple. "You gave that to me!"

  "Like hell!" She popped open her bag, jumbling the contents in Zoe's face. "You see any filters in there?"