A Gathering of Widowmakers (The Widowmaker #4) (6 page)

The older man stared at Kinoshita for a long moment, until the smaller man looked away and ordered a cup of coffee to hide his uneasiness. Nighthawk remained silent, lost in thought, for a long time. Finally, when Kinoshita was sure he had fallen asleep, he spoke.

"There's no sense chasing him all across the Frontier. I have no way of knowing who he's going to go after and in what order, so I'm always going to be a step behind him. And even if I guess right and get to a planet first, what am I going to do— sit around and let some killer murder more victims to make sure Jeff shows up?"

"Then what
are
you going to do?"

"If I'm not going to search the galaxy looking for him, the alternative is to bring him to me."

Kinoshita looked puzzled. "How?"

"I'll send him a message."

"How can he respond if you don't know where to send it?" asked Kinoshita.

"He'll respond to this one," said Nighthawk with absolute certainty.

7.

Night had fallen on New Barcelona. Five small moons made their way across the cloudless sky at varying speeds, and their light caused the stately minarets and towers of Cataluna, the largest city on the planet, to cast eerie shadows that seemed to be constantly moving. The streets were narrow and twisting, lit only by the ever-changing moonlight.

Cataluna was a beautiful city, but like many other beautiful things its beauty was only skin deep. And hiding beneath the beauty like a cancer was the District.

The District had begun life, centuries earlier, as the city's red light district, zoned and mandated by the government so as to keep the less salubrious aspects of life on the Inner Frontier from spreading to the more respectable areas. It wasn't long before the authorities stopped patrolling the District, and shortly thereafter they simply refused to set foot in it. Word got out, of course, and soon the brothels were the least of the enterprises to be found there. Black marketeers for the entire star cluster set up shop openly. Stolen goods from a thousand worlds were stored and fenced in the shops and cellars of the District. Human and alien drug dens abounded. Anyone on the run from the law could find safe haven in the District. There was nothing you couldn't buy there at competitive prices, from a sexual partner (regardless of gender or even species) to an alphanella seed to a murder.

"Are you sure we have to do this?" asked Kinoshita nervously as they approached the outskirts of the District.

"I'm sure I have to," replied Nighthawk calmly. "You do what you want."

"But why will he come here?"

"Because it's been two centuries since a policeman or a bounty hunter entered the District. It's off limits. When he hears what's happening, he'll come. If he's got a wish list of ten men in the Cluster, half of them are here at any given time."

"If you know it, he knows it too," said Kinoshita. "And yet he's never been here."

"We have different agendas," said Nighthawk. "And he would have come here sooner or later."

"What makes you think so?"

"Because I was preparing to come here more than a century ago when I contracted the
eplasia
."

"But he's not you," noted Kinoshita. "Not like Newman is."

"He's the best at what he does," answered Nighthawk. "And that's what the bounty hunter who shows his face here has to be."

"Then what makes you think you'll be alive five minutes after we enter the District?" demanded Kinoshita. "Don't forget—he's forty years younger than you."

"Yeah, but I'm forty years smarter." He stopped to light a smokeless Altairian cigar. "It's like sports. A phenom comes up with all the physical gifts imaginable, so he uses them and excels. After a few years he loses half a step, or he gets slowed by some injuries—but along the way he's studied the game and started using his brain and his experience, and even though his skills have started eroding, he's actually better at his job."

"So you're saying you're better than Jeff?" said Kinoshita dubiously.

Nighthawk shrugged. "Who knows?" Suddenly he smiled. "But it's a damned good analogy, isn't it?"

"How can you joke?" snapped Kinoshita. "You're walking into the most dangerous piece of real estate within five thousand light years, and if I know you, you're going to seek out the men whose deaths will make the most news."

"Have you got a better way to send him word that we're here? When he hears that a Widowmaker is collecting bounties, he'll have to come."

"It's suicidal!" snapped Kinoshita. "You're an old man, for God's sake!"

"Keep your voice down," said Nighthawk. "No sense getting us shot at before we even arrive."

"You fucking Widowmakers are all alike!" muttered Kinoshita. "You're the worst of them. At least they have some excuse—they get it from you."

"If you're worried, go back to the ship and wait for me. You'll be perfectly safe there."

"You go to hell."

"Make up your mind," said Nighthawk. "Do you serve the Widowmaker or just bitch about him?"

"I serve him," said Kinoshita, lowering his voice. "But there are days I wish I'd never met him."

"Then why do you serve us?"

"You know," said Kinoshita, "that's the first time you've ever asked me about myself."

"It stopped you from yelling."

Kinoshita ignored the remark. "When I was a young man, I was a police officer on Deluros VIII, and my given name was Jerome Hayakawa. My first two partners were killed in the line of duty, and I took their names—Ito and Kinoshita. It's a damned silly name for anyone of my ancestry; it would be like calling yourself Jones Smith. But I did it so I'd never forget them. I quit the force when the courts insisted on giving lenient sentences to men who should have been put to death for their crimes. I decided to move to the Outer Frontier and become a bounty hunter, so that when I caught up with a killer the courts would never give him a chance to kill again."

"So how did you get in the clone-training business?" asked Nighthawk.

"I was recovering back on Deluros from some minor wounds and I had some time to kill, so I took the job of training your first clone." He paused and sighed. "I knew five minutes into it that I was lucky to still be alive, that his abilities were so far beyond mine—or anyone else's I'd ever seen—that for the first time in my life I became aware of my own mortality. I knew that he would be far better at my chosen mission than I could ever be, and so I made up my mind to serve the Widowmaker, as my Samurai ancestors served their feudal lords."

"Interesting," was Nighthawk's only comment.

"But that doesn't mean I have to like it when the Widowmaker behaves like an asshole—either the newest one or the original."

"Do you feel better now?" asked Nighthawk.

Kinoshita sighed. "Yeah, actually I do." He paused. "As long as I've known you and your clones, I've never known how or why you became the Widowmaker in the first place. They were
created
to be the Widowmaker; you
chose
to be. Someday I'd like you to tell me about it."

"Someday," said Nighthawk. He stopped at a street corner. "This is it. We cross the street, we're in the District."

"Then what?"

"Then we find a room."

"I beg your pardon?"

"A room," repeated Nighthawk. "Unless you plan to sleep in the street."

Kinoshita frowned. "I wasn't planning to spend the night here at all. I figured you'd do what you came to do and then we'll get the hell out of here before everyone starts shooting at us."

"You haven't been paying attention, have you?" said Nighthawk. "There's no sense drawing Jeff to New Barcelona if I'm not here to meet him."

"So you're going to kill some butcher or other and then stick around?" demanded Kinoshita.

"Just killing one won't make enough news."

"
Oh, shit
!" muttered Kinoshita. "What are you letting us in for?"

"Shut up," said Nighthawk.

"You're a goddamned lunatic!"

"I said shut up," repeated Nightawk, and as had happened in the past, Kinoshita realized that Jefferson Nighthawk had disappeared completely, to be replaced by the Widowmaker. "I didn't ask for this. You're the one who got me out here. If you don't like the way I operate, then stay the hell away from me. But there will be no more arguing and no more bitching. Do I make myself clear?"

Kinoshita stared at him, searching futilely for a sign of the Jefferson Nighthawk he had accompanied from the spaceport. Finally he nodded his agreement.

They crossed the street. It didn't feel any different at first. That changed a block into it, when they had to step around a dead man who lay bleeding on the pavement. There were no sidewalks, no slidewalks, just narrow streets filled with foreboding.

Three blocks into the District Nighthawk stopped and stood perfectly still.

"What's the—?" began Kinoshita.

"Quiet." Then: "We're being followed."

"What are we going to do about it?" asked Kinoshita nervously.

"Nothing. At least I know where they are."

"They?"

"There are two of them. They're just checking to see if we're slumming. You don't have to be a criminal to enter the District. You can come looking for drugs or women or men or half a dozen other things—and if that's the case, it means you've got money in your pockets."

"Pardon a foolish question, but how do they know we're not here to spend our money?"

"They don't."

"Then why shouldn't they shoot us down?"

"Bad for business," answered Nighthawk. "Shoot enough civilians and no one will come here to spend their money any more."

"Why should they care?"

"Because if they drive business away, what the people who depend on that business will do to them will make a death sentence in a court of law seem infinitely preferable," said Nighthawk. He began walking again, more slowly this time, looking into the windows he passed, while Kinoshita fell into step and spent most of his time trying to spot the men who were trailing them.

Suddenly the street turned in on itself, a cross between a figure eight and a moebius strip. Buildings met above them, creating narrow passageways on the street level. They could hear music from half a dozen dives, some of it so atonal and discordant that Kinoshita knew it must be coming from taverns that catered to aliens.

"All right," announced Nighthawk a moment later. "We've come far enough. We should be pretty near the center."

"All the buildings are dark, and the closest music's a block away," noted Kinoshita.

"Use your nose."

"My nose?" repeated Kinoshita. He inhaled deeply, and frowned. "I smell something . . . strange."

"Someone's smoking mexalite." Nighthawk pointed to a grate at the edge of the street, very near where he was standing. "Three sticks of that stuff will fry your brain for a week." Slight smile. "That makes this as good a place to start as any."

Start?
thought Kinoshita.
Are you planning to kill your way from here to the edge of the Distract?

"It's got to be in the cellar of this building," said Nighthawk, walking to a door. Kinoshita half-expected a tiny panel to slide back and a voice to demand all kinds of identification, but Nighthawk simply stepped forward and the door dilated to let him pass through.

Of course,
thought Kinoshita.
Why do they care who you are? After two centuries, the one thing they know you're not is a lawman or a bounty hunter.

Kinoshita followed Nighthawk into a dimly-lit foyer, then to an airlift. They stepped onto a cushion of air and gently descended some fifteen feet below ground level, emerging in a large room illuminated only with indirect red and blue lighting. There were tables scattered around the room. A tripodal Hesporite was playing an instrument that was shaped to accommodate him and was made of an alien alloy, but it emitted a sound that was pure alto sax, smooth and sultry. There were some twenty men and women seated at the tables, and an equal number of aliens, composed of half a dozen different races. A few were drinking, a couple were simply concentrating on the Hesporite's music, most were smoking long thin glowing sticks of mexalite. Kinoshita didn't know what effect it had on aliens—a Canphorite seemed totally unaffected, and a pair of Lodinites looked mildly tipsy—but there was no question that it was sending the human contingent off to secret places that only they could see.

There was no host, no headwaiter, no indication that anyone knew or cared that they had just entered the place. Nigththawk looked around for a moment, then walked off toward an empty table in the far corner of the room.

"Hard to breathe in here with all the smoke," remarked Kinoshita softly. "Can it affect us?"

"It might give you lung cancer," said Nighthawk. "It won't disconnect your neural circuits. I don't know what causes the effect, but I know you can only get it direct from the mexalite. Second-hand smoke will leave you stone cold sober."

"Where are they getting it?"

"I'm sure someone will be along to tell us."

And within a minute a slim human woman, provocatively but not scantily clad, approached them and sat down at their table.

"Hello," she said. "My name is Minx."

"Hello," replied Nighthawk. "Mine isn't."

"Is there anything I can get for you?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Mister, you name it and we've got it," she said with a smile.

"Let's start with a name."

"I told you. My name is—"

"Not you. This place."

"Horatio's."

"Is Horatio around?"

"He's been dead almost seventy years." She paused. "Now what can I get you?"

"Nothing at the moment. I've got some business with some men in the District. I need a place to meet them. This'll do as well as any."

"You can't stay here if you're not buying something," insisted Minx.

"Fair enough," said Nighthawk, pulling out a couple of banknotes. "Here's two hundred credits."

"What do you want for it?"

"An hour's worth of silence."

She smiled again. "This will only buy you half an hour."