A Gathering of Widowmakers (The Widowmaker #4) (11 page)

"I don't. But I've always believed in the art of misdirection."

Suddenly Kinoshita smiled. "Wouldn't it be funny if that's what it took to kill Cleopatra Rome?"

"Hilarious," said Nighthawk.

"What now?"

"Now we leave the District long enough to find a subspace radio and pay a visit to the police station."

"The police station?"

"To see if the reward money's been delivered. No sense leaving temptation in their path. It doesn't take much brainpower to figure out that no matter how frugally you live and how much you save, if you're a cop you're never going to get your hands on anything half the size of that reward unless you turn it over to a court as evidence—or steal my reward."

"And the radio?"

"I want to check in with the Giancola II hospital every couple of days to see how Newman's doing."

"I
knew
you felt a bond with him."

Nighthawk observed him the way he might study an exceptionally slow child. "I hope I can reason with Jeff, explain what he did wrong and why he's got to start using his brain. But if I can't, then I'm going to need all the help I can get—and in all immodesty, I can't think of any help I'd feel more comfortable counting on than another Jefferson Nighthawk."

He started walking toward the edge of the District. Kinoshita became aware that every person they passed was staring at them, but Nighthawk paid them no attention at all.

"Aren't you worried?" asked Kinoshita. "Any one of those men or women might take a shot at you."

"They won't."

"How can you be so sure?"

"The ones on the left side of the street are more likely to hit you, and they know they won't get a second shot."

"And the ones on the right side?"

"The sun's in their eyes." Nighthawk paused. "I'm not an egomaniac, but I
am
a realist—and I think it's fair to say that every last one of them knows that if you want to kill the Widowmaker, you'd better take him with your first shot."

"True," agreed Kinoshita. He looked at some of the faces. "But they'd sure
like
to kill you."

"What they'd like isn't my concern. I only care about what they're capable of."

Suddenly a lean, unshaven man stepped out into the street some twenty yards ahead of them. His fingers hovered above the weapon he had tucked into his belt.

"Think very carefully," said Nighthawk with no show of fear or tension. "I haven't come to New Barcelona for you. You can walk away right now."

"You're an old man," said the man. "Maybe you used to be something special, but that was a long time ago."

"I want you to consider three things," said Nighthawk. "First, there's no paper on me; you won't make a credit for killing me."

"I'll be the man who killed the Widowmaker," replied the man. "That's enough."

"Second, this old man killed Hairless Jack Bellamy last night."

The man's eyes widened. He obviously was one of the few residents of the District who hadn't heard the news. "I don't believe it!" he said at last.

"What you believe doesn't interest me," said Nighthawk. "Third, you're not the first or the hundredth fool who thought he could make a reputation by killing me, and I'm still here." Nighthawk came to a stop some six feet from the man and stared into his eyes. "Okay, I'm all through trying to save your life. Make a move, or slink off with your tail between your legs. It makes no difference to me. But make up your mind fast; I'm in a hurry, and I feel no obligation to let you go for your weapon first."

It was Nighthawk's total confidence, his complete lack of concern, that finally got through to the man. He swallowed hard, held his hands well out from his body in plain view, and backed away.

"You're blocking my way," said Nighthawk. "Get off the street."

The man glared at him and did as he was told.

"I'm sure you're thinking about taking a shot at me after I pass you," said Nighthawk. "I wouldn't like that." Suddenly his burner was in his hand, and an instant later, almost faster than the eye could follow, he'd turned, aimed, and melted the handle of the man's weapon. "I wouldn't touch that for a few minutes if I were you."

Without another glance at the man, he began walking again, and Kinoshita joined him.

"Don't tell me," said Nighthawk.

"Tell you what?"

"You were going to tell me there was paper on him and I should have killed him."

"I don't know about the paper—there probably is. But why
didn't
you kill him?"

"Killing him wouldn't make news five feet outside the District," answered Nighthawk. "And I'm not here to kill every man with paper on him. I'm here to attract Jeff's attention. This guy wouldn't even attract the local cops' notice."

In another five minutes they reached the edge of the District, crossed the street that was the dividing line, and headed to a subspace radio sending station. Nighthawk let the robot clerk read his retina and thumbprint. The clerk checked them against his identity file in the Master Computer on Deluros VIII, cleared his credit with the Cataluna branch of the Bank of Deluros, and finally connected him to the hospital on Giancola II.

"How's Jason Newman doing?" he asked when he'd gotten through to the head of Newman's surgical team.

"The man has remarkable recuperative powers" was the answer. "His cloned organs should be ready to transplant in about six or seven days. Then it's up to him, but I'd say that at the rate he's regaining his strength, he could be out of here in a month, maybe even a little less, as long as he takes it easy."

"He's not the type to take it easy," said Nighthawk.

"Yes, I know. We got the whole story from a Cassandra Hill, who arrived two days ago."

"Thank you," said Nighthawk. "I'll check in again in a few days." He broke the connection and turned to Kinoshita. "Why the hell did you tell Cassandra where he was? I thought he wanted you to wait."

"I didn't tell her anything," replied Kinoshita. "She's a remarkable woman. I don't know if I ever told you the full story of what happened back on Pericles IV, but she's the one who actually led the revolt against her father. Newman was really just around for the end of it."

"She sounds like an interesting woman," commented Nighthawk. "I'd like to meet her someday."

"I don't know if that would be a good idea," said Kinoshita.

"Why not?"

"If one Jefferson Nighthawk could fall in love with her, why not another?"

"You've got a point." Nighthawk walked out of the sending station. "Okay, let's see if the reward's been transferred here yet."

They walked another block to the police station, where they learned that all three rewards had been paid. The two smaller ones had been transferred to a holding account on Giancola II that the hospital could draw from to cover Newman's bills. The reward for Bellamy was in the police department's account, awaiting Nighthawk's instructions.

"We've deducted the price of shipping Bellamy's body to the Binder X bounty station," said the officer in charge.

"Didn't they believe you when you vouched for his identity?" asked Nighthawk.

"They took our word for the two others—they were atomized this morning—but for a multi-million credit reward, they want to run their own tests," answered the officer. "Still, they paid the money even before they checked it, so they're pretty satisfied with the data we forwarded to them." He paused, staring at Nighthawk, as if still trying to figure out how he'd managed to kill Hairless Jack Bellamy. "I assume you don't want your money in cash?"

"No," replied Nighthawk. He scribbled down a twelve-digit number and handed it to the officer. "Just transfer it to this account at the local branch of the Bank of Deluros and tell them to route it to Deluros VIII."

"You live in the Deluros system?" asked the officer, surprised. "I always figured you lived on the Inner Frontier."

Nighthawk shook his head. "I do."

"We could send it direct to your home world."

"My home world has a branch of the Bank of Deluros," said Nighthawk. "I can get my hands on the money whenever I want, once you've deposited it."

And,
thought Kinoshita,
this way no one knows where his home world is.

"Well," said the officer, "we haven't had bombs in the building or riots in the street yet. Who are you going to bring us next?"

"I was thinking of Cleopatra Rome."

"Cleopatra Rome!" exclaimed the officer. "You don't believe in making things easy for yourself, do you?"

"What can you tell me about her?"

"I can tell you this: she's going to make killing Bellamy seem like child's play."

13.

Nighthawk decided that as long as they were out of the District, they might as well eat at one of Cataluna's better restaurants before returning. The establishment, modestly named The Apex of the World, was atop one of the city's tallest buildings, and from their table by a window they could look down across the District.

"You wonder why they haven't simply dropped a bomb and wiped the whole place out," commented Kinoshita, gesturing toward the District as they sipped their drinks and waited for their meals to arrive.

"Because they're not fools," answered Nighthawk.

"I don't think I follow you."

"The District looks to be about a mile square, give or take a couple of blocks," said Nighthawk. "New Barcelona's probably got ten million square miles, maybe more. But that little piece of turf, distasteful as its residents may be, unquestionably generates more money than the rest of the planet—hell, the rest of the system—put together."

"They can't tax it, so what good does it do?" said Kinoshita. "It's strictly an underground economy."

"Doesn't matter. Every single thing they buy in the District, from food to weapons to clothing, has to be imported, and the tariff rate is usurious—or it would be under normal circumstances. And the few legitimate businesses that have set up shop in the district just pass the cost along."

"
Are
there any legitimate businesses?" asked Kinoshita.

"Of course there are," answered Nighthawk. "There are the gun shops, the hotels, the restaurants, the bars. Even the drug dens have to buy couches from the furniture dealers who supply them; the same applies to the hotels and the whorehouses. You're making the mistake of looking at the clientele; try looking at the business owners. They were probably starving in the part of the city we're in now, so they moved to the District. They face a lot more risk, but the rewards are commensurate to the risk. A sandwich at that alien restaurant we ate at costs more than a six-course meal on the roof here—and you wouldn't believe the price that weapon shop was charging for burners and screechers." He paused. "No, if you want to send New Barcelona spiraling into a permanent economic depression, bomb the District."

Their meal arrived at that point. Kinoshita had ordered a mutated shellfish in a cream sauce, while Nighthawk had a steak imported from Pollux IV.

"I hadn't realized how tired I was of soya products," remarked Kinoshita as he dug into his shellfish.

"I know, but your body is used to them. If anything's going to put you in the sick bay it's a rich meal like this when you haven't had one in months—especially with that alien lobster or whatever the hell it is."

"It'd be worth it," said Kinoshita, taking another bite.

"Did Jeff sample a lot of foods or stick to the safe stuff?" asked Nighthawk.

"I never paid much attention," said Kinoshita. "I do know that nothing ever made him sick. You had a hell of a constitution when you were a young man. Hell, you still do."

"It didn't stop me from coming down with
eplasia
."

"When did you first notice it?"

Nighthawk shrugged. "I don't know. When I was about in my mid-fifties, I suppose, though there might have been earlier signs of it. At first I thought it was just a rash of some kind, something I'd picked up on some alien world I'd visited. When it didn't go away I went to a doctor. He'd never seen
eplasia
, so he prescribed some ointment. I applied it religiously, and all that happened was that the rash got worse. After another year, and two more doctors who at least admitted they didn't know what the hell I had, I went into the Democracy to find a clinic that specialized in skin diseases." The muscles in his jaw tightened noticeably. "That was when they laid the death sentence on me."

"How long did they give you to live?"

"They didn't know. A year. Ten years. It didn't make any difference. They assured me that long before the end I'd kill myself—and once they learned who I was, they suggested that the day would come that I'd purposely lose a gunfight rather than keep on living."

"They didn't know Jefferson Nighthawk," said Kinoshita.

"It got pretty bad," continued Nighthawk. "There came a day when I'd look in the mirror, and there was more bone showing than flesh. My knuckles stuck up through the skin on my hands. I didn't have any hair, because there wasn't enough skin on my head to hold it in place. I gave anyone who saw me nightmares—not just kids, but grown men and women too. And there was a smell of rot and decay I couldn't get away from." He winced at the memory. "The smell was me."

"And still you didn't kill yourself."

"I was never afraid to die. You can't work in my business if you
are
afraid. But something inside me wouldn't let me just give up and kill myself—and purposely losing a fight would have been suicide. Maybe the onlookers and coroner wouldn't recognize it as such, but I would." He was silent for a long minute, and Kinoshita could tell he was reliving those final days with the disease, days when he had to force himself to look into the mirror or step outside where people could gape at him—or turn away from him in horror and disgust. "Then I heard about a very private, very expensive facility on Deluros VIII, at the center of the Oligarchy, where they were cryogenically freezing any man or woman with a terminal disease who could afford to stay frozen until a cure was discovered. The cost was better than a million credits a year, but I'd stockpiled twenty million credits, and I locked them in at eight percent interest."