Warlord of New York City

by Leo Champion

  “How about you, Carl Garson – the younger? Junior? I’m sorry, I have no idea what to call two men with the same name.” She gave a slight giggle as she turned back to the men, placing that backside slightly against the writing table.

  “Most people call me CJ, Lady Under First,” said CJ.

  “So you run the tenement as a family enterprise?” she asked them with a smile. “CJ seemed to have quite an interest in its affairs. And considerable knowledge of them.”

  “We’re a team,” Reverend Garson told her. “As my eldest son he’ll be Reverend himself someday. So he’s actively involved with all of our major and operational decisions.”

  It crossed his mind that he was implying a working tenement in his own hands, not presently the case. Certainly once they got down to business – if this vapidly beautiful creature had much knowledge of tenement industrial processes, he’d nom a sombrero – he wasn’t going to be prefacing statements with “when I take my precinct back…” That sort of uncertainty might frighten her away; every boss in the city would jump at the an opportunity like this, and most bosses – by definition! – could claim secure control of their own blocks.

  “Thank you for clarifying that, Reverend Garson,” the Under First said softly. Behind her, the electric kettle on its stand began to come to a bubbling boil. “I’m sorry, would you gentlemen please excuse me for just a moment?”

  “Of course, Lady Under-Intendant,” said Reverend Garson. She smoothly turned around and disappeared into the bathroom, its door clicking shut behind her.

  Hopefully we can get down to business when she’s finished in there, he thought, and traded looks with his son. It was reasonable to think that upper Intendancy would be unfamiliar with realities on the streets, but why was this woman making contact with him herself in that case? She would have underlings for that…

  And human nature was, Carl Garson the Second thought, human nature. Looking past the triple circles, it was universal everywhere that women who looked like Laura Bourne made up for that by being intellectually short. She was highborn eye candy… but she was also, whether she had the brain cells to understand the fact or not, in a position to meaningfully add to his tenement’s bottom line and its prestige. So he had to indulge Under First Bourne’s clear stupidities and hope for a good working relationship with whatever mechanically-minded squares-wearing underlings did the real work in her organization…

  The bathroom door opened again. Under First Bourne stepped out, completely naked and smiling a broad grin from ear-to-ear.

  Reverend Garson had to blink to be sure of what he was seeing. The woman had stripped every thread of clothing from her body; his eyes fixated away from her breasts down past a flat stomach to the triangle of fuzz between her legs. Toned muscles moved under her skin as with a predator’s grace she stepped toward the writing desk and took the kettle of boiling water from its stand.

  It had taken Carl Garson the Second a moment to comprehend what he was seeing, but bare brazen sex freak! He’d heard of upper-class perversions like this and if the Under First had wanted to shock him, she had successfully done so.

  The broad smile didn’t leave her face as she looked him in the eye from six feet away and said the absolute last thing he could have imagined from circles-wearing arkscraper eye-candy:

  “You sent gliders to cluster-bomb a gathering of your own population,” she snarled through those perfect white teeth. “You sick fucks.”

  The Reverend gasped, hearing a sharp inhalation of breath from CJ as well, and then the naked woman exploded into violence. She flung the boiling water from the open kettle into CJ’s shocked face and leapt at the Reverend, grabbing his tie and yanking downwards. Taken by shock and surprise the Reverend’s head followed the brutal yank and the woman jackhammered a knee up into his face.

  Bone cracked and blood exploded, the Reverend’s world going black for a moment as he fell forwards. The woman moved past him to CJ, whose shirt and jacket front had been drenched with the boiling water. The man was nevertheless a fit and experienced swordsman and he was starting to react despite what must have been agonizing pain – but the woman didn’t give him the time.

  A mane of blonde hair flew behind her as she whirled on him with a roundhouse kick to the jaw that made bone crunch. CJ’s mouth opened in the start of a scream as he fell backwards, tripping against the coffee table. The woman’s fists then her elbow slammed into his face and CJ toppled backwards onto the carpet.

  The Reverend goggled through his pain as the woman leapt at the prone and struggling man, bringing her right heel brutally down onto his exposed throat and throwing her weight into that stomp. There was an explosive gush of blood from CJ’s mouth and his son began to kick and thrash wildly, desperately trying to breathe through his crushed throat.

  He’s – you just killed my heir went through the Reverend’s mind in shocked horror through the pain. The woman moved past him to the writing table, yanking the electric kettle’s stand loose from its socket. The white cord was about a yard long and she took it in both hands as she advanced on him.

  “Why – what?”

  “Thirty-three people died, you sick fuck,” the woman snarled as she moved behind him. Suddenly his feet were kicked out from under him and he fell forwards, the electrical cord looping over his head and around his throat. It tightened hard, biting into his neck despite his struggles as the woman’s weight held him down.

  He couldn’t breathe as his body fought desperately, his vision narrowing as the world darkened and became black.

  * * *

  Diana Angela was beaming as she rose from the body of the Reverend, letting go of the electrical cord. Her naked body was spattered with both men’s blood as she stood, surveying the room.

  The son had gargled his last, but he’d made a hell of a mess as he died – bright arterial blood was spattered everywhere and she felt a twinge of pity for the poor workers who’d have to replace the carpet. There was absolutely no doubt that both men were very dead; the Reverend had bucked like a wild bronco as she strained to keep the cord tight around his throat, and he’d voided his bowels messily as he died.

  Cluster-bomb your own people, huh? Sorry not sorry about your son, too.

  She licked her lips and ran a hand through her hair, tempted to take five minutes for herself. But past experience had taught her that that would only aggravate matters, and she did have to get moving.

  She headed back into the bathroom and ran a hot shower, soaping herself up with efficient motions and thoroughly scrubbing every last drop of blood from herself. A couple of minutes later she was vigorously towelling herself off, then dressing in the pink-and-white outfit whose pieces lay neatly folded on the bathroom table. She eased its heels on with a shade of reluctance because her heart was pounding, her loins were hot, her blood was running and right now she absolutely did not want to constrict herself in civilized contexts.

  Life could be full of things one didn’t want; she stilled herself for a moment, forcing herself to relax and her body to calm down and willing, without any real success, the hot hunger between her legs to quiet. She stood up and began buttoning the jacket as she headed out through the hotel room, careful where she stepped to avoid the two sprawled corpses and the mess of blood that had come from the younger man’s crushed throat. The smallest traces of that would show up very easily on the white shoes.

  The Independent Hotel did have a couple of nominal detectives in addition to its well-armed and heavy-handed perimeter security, but the place’s security-theatre culture ran far deeper than just the entrance checkpoints. If you weren’t actually caught red-handed – the security was quite attentive about breaking up fights in public areas – then you were probably safe.

  Archie had once told her that the hotel actively frustrated even third-party private investigations into killings on its premises, on the grounds that acknowledging the incidents at all would be bad for the place’s reputation. Easier to cover-up and deny; these tw
o bodies would be discreetly dumped in an alley outside with the hotel swearing six ways from Sunday that their misfortune had clearly not happened on their premises.

  A glance at a clock showed her that it was just short of quarter past seven, so she quickened her pace toward the nearest elevator banks. She’d already put tonight’s date back two hours; adding lateness on top of that would be offensive in ways that Jean-Noel didn’t really deserve. And… she was very aware of her still-racing pulse and the heat between her legs; the sooner she met this man for dinner, the sooner they could go back to his place and… yes, maybe tonight’s date would be more than a socially-necessary imposition after all!

  Chapter Nineteen

  There were really two types of people in the upper Intendancy, she thought as Jean-Noel gave the young three-hashed waiter their order in native-perfect French. The first type worked their twenty-one hours a week and not a jot more, preferring to focus on personal interests and hobbies. She happily and absolutely fell into that category, although she was ready and willing to put in extra hours when they served a purpose beyond simply make-work. That was rare.

  The second type of person aspired to stars, or at least another piece of shoulder-silver; they worked long hours and spent more of their own time on voluntary committees, work-related social media, and advisory boards for extra social credit. Jean-Noel D’Alleine was very much that type, and his virtuous drive had taken him from a regional French city to his coveted and prestigious assignment in the Boutros-Boutros Ghali Building of the United Nations South Cluster.

  He was a very handsome brown-haired white man in his late thirties, two wreaths on each shoulder of his baby-blue Chanel Valentine’s-edition suit. He’d inherited the first wreath but been awarded the second in a rare special promotion, although it would take another special dispensation process for his first child to inherit US-16 rather than -15. He was working on that, though, with a focus and an intensity Diana Angela could appreciate but would have respected more if the actions had been socially constructive.

  Not that she cared right now. Keeping up appearances required her social media profiles to indicate a personal life; you could actually get investigated for being antisocial past a certain level. She’d quietly had her tubes tied years ago – Uncle Hugo had had to make some calls for that to happen and her parents hadn’t been too pleased – and for obvious reasons she was never going to allow a man into her life closer than arm’s length. Jean-Noel’s career might have consisted of public virtue signalling coupled with the worst kind of private backstabbing, but he was a decent enough man otherwise, respectful of her space and too busy with his career – and its necessary extracurricular support activities – to push himself too far into her life as other men had tried to.

  “Wow,” she cooed as Jean-Noel finished his story about a power struggle between administrative subcommittees deep inside a UN department. Only about five percent of her brain had been following his story, but that was all she needed to make the right noises of encouragement at the right moments. “That Associate Senior sounds like such a rat. I’m glad you could get her reassigned.”

  “Zeroed,” Jean-Noel clarified with a smile. “That’s one rat who won’t be coming back.”

  You and your allies of the moment destroyed this woman’s career because…

  Jean-Noel hadn’t actually mentioned what the power struggle had actually been over – some abstraction of a representation of a conception of a possibility of influence on some kind of regulatory guidelining policy, it usually was. Vicious internal politics were a hallmark of every Intendancy organization, but in the UN – and especially for those who physically worked inside the UN clusters – they were a full-contact blood sport.

  I had a full-contact blood sport this evening, she thought with a smile. The boiling water had been a nice touch – CJ, the younger man, had been considerably bigger than her and his movements had implied a grace that in his context would mean martial arts training at best, augmentation at worst. If he’d had even a few seconds to get himself together he could easily have crash-tackled her in the confined environment – but she hadn’t given him that time!

  The boiling water had shocked him for long enough that she could put his father out of things for a little bit; then she’d turned back to CJ and… her loins tingled at the memory of that power stomp onto his larynx!

  “So how was Shenzhen?” he asked. It took her a moment to recall that that was where she’d officially been all weekend.

  Shenzhen is like every other modern arkscraper city on the planet, she thought, except that the Chinese haven’t abandoned so many of their population to the streets. Not that the Chinese cities didn’t have tenements, but they were filled with the descendants of Bangladeshi and Micronesian climate refugees.

  She shrugged. “I met some friends, we hung out. Hit the gym.” She did have friends in Shenzhen, and once in a while made a real visit to the place – and to the other cities she claimed in her cover stories – just to keep current on things. “Tell me more about that policy directive memorandum you were alluding to?”

  He doesn’t really think I find this bureaucratic minutae fascinating, she thought as he enthusiastically launched into another story of petty infighting in the bureaucracy of the world’s government. He can’t, right?

  She’d popped an antihol capsule before the date, so it was safe to sip from the wine glass in front of her. Jean-Noel’s virtues did include excellent taste in that kind of thing, and she was in fact mildly impressed that he had been able to get them a table here at L’Escalier, on the two hundred and nineteenth floor – just below the sealed levels – of the Horgan Building of the Lower East Side North cluster. A quick google of the place on her way here had shown glowing reviews from credible and prestigious sources, and Jean-Noel’s past judgment on this kind of thing had been first-rate.

  Places of this type were expensive in both money and social credit; they both had the money, but Jean-Noel’s United Nations assignments gave him a lot of bonus social credit and he was happy to spend it on these luxuries.

  The waiter arrived with their entrees; souffle for Jean-Noel and a plate of oysters for herself. A little clumsily – she wished she could have used her fingers, but that would probably get you thrown out of a place like this – she worked one out of its shell and raised it to her mouth.

  “These are for both of us,” she said, licking her lips a little as it went down. “Help yourself.”

  Thinking of this evening’s kills had revived the slowly burning fire between her legs, so she eased off her left heel and gently moved her foot into contact with one of Jean-Noel’s, gently running it along the length of his shoe. He didn’t withdraw it, although he didn’t show any sign of having felt anything. While her head nodded and made the right conversational noises, she eased off the other shoe, wiggling her toes and gently probing toward his ankle. Perhaps there was the possibility of a little fun right now after all!

  She savoured another oyster while her left foot caressed Jean-Noel’s ankle, probing for how she might prise his shoe off…

  Jean-Noel suddenly pulled both of his feet back, well back under his chair.

  “Not now,” he said in a low tone. “And not here – there are people watching!”

  There’s a tablecloth and this is a wall table, she thought. And a one-starred Speaker for the People was eating dinner with a four-wreathed brand-ambassador supermodel at one of the centre tables right now. Eyes in this place would be on them, if anyone.

  “Come on,” she smiled. “Nobody can even see under the table.”

  “You never know. And put them back on, please.”

  Diana Angela smiled and shook her head. “Not right now.”

  “Yes right now.” A trace of steel was beginning to enter Jean-Noel’s tone. “There could be dragonflies anywhere in a public place like this, Diana, and your comportment reflects on my career.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Dragonfly footage caught a couple pla
ying footsie under a table on Valentine’s Eve. Purge them both, urge three-star Speakers who have somehow decided this to be worth their attention.”

  “Is it really too much to ask that the heir to Senior First conduct herself appropriately in a public restaurant?” Jean-Noel hissed. Then – she had to give him credit for knowing her as well as she allowed anyone upstairs to – he changed tack. “I can tell you’re feeling frisky and I’m looking forwards to later as much as you are. Could you please indulge my UN-Cluster paranoia for me this evening?”

  She sighed; it was hard for her to shoot down appeals to her better nature. She reached down under her chair and worked the heels on, one at a time.

  “Thank you.”

  “You were telling me about the addendum pre-filing meeting order?” she prompted. She thought it had been something like that, anyway…

  “Oh yes!” said Jean-Noel. “So…”

  With a call to her implant, she checked the time; quarter to nine. She wanted to call up a book or a movie – she needed some distraction – but Jean-Noel would be able to tell, and would be horribly offended. So she speared another oyster, took a sip from her wine glass, nodded encouragingly at her date and tried to keep her sighs on the inside.

  * * *

  Jean-Noel lived on the two hundred and fourteenth floor of the Kofi Annan Building in the UN South Cluster, a prestigious neighbourhood reserved exclusively for US-15s or higher on permanent assignment to the United Nations. Even given those strict criteria, the rent was astronomical – Jean-Noel spent close to two million a year on this place, more than two thirds of his take-home salary.

  “It’s an investment, though. Having the right neighbours helps make the right social connections,” he’d explained to her.