An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (55 page)

* * *
 

“
Jesus, Mary
,
and Joseph
!
You carried that thing all the way from
Seattle
?”
Augustine remonstrated
as she stared
at the decap
itated head lolling
around
inside
Tony’s
brightly colored bowling
bag
.
As a devout Catholic
,
she added the murder to the growing pile of sins to confess
.

Assuming the GAM actually were close to completing their lifelong quest, she might have to finally fulfill her promise to Mary and return to the confessional for the first time since she took up
the
terrorist mantle
.
It scared her in a distant way
.
But
,
like anything, first things first
.

“
What if a Metro
or
TriMet
pig
decided you looked suspicious
?
”

“Two normal guys on their way for a bit of bowling after a hard day in the factory?
” Tony said
.
“
No Metro would
’
ve bothered to stir off their lazy ass.”

“
Even a random sweep.
”

“They didn’t.”

“Obviously
.
You
’
re still here.”

Having done the net raid to get the information, Augustine knew the woman looked
somewhat attractive
before
Tony
’s ragged job of
decapitation
.

“
Tough
-
neck
ed bitch
.
Just like when she was alive
.
It took six blows with a cleaver and another
few
more
with the butcher knife.
”

Augustine shrugged
.
Murder was murder no matter how grisly
.
Sh
e only needed the brain intact
.
T
he brutal treatment
by
her friend
bothered
her
not at all
.

“So what can you get from her
?
”
Tony asked.

“About sixty years, if I remember my criminal code correctly
.
Of course
,
decapitation might be considered special circumstances
,
in which case we
’
re probably looking at life.”

“Augustine, I’m not joking around here
.
What kind of neural reconstruction can you give me
?
”

“She
...i
t’s
been dead less than an hour?”

“’Bout seventy minutes,” he said after consulting his chronograph.

“Remember that neural reconstructions aren’t terribly detailed even when done at death
,” she cautioned as she
draped
a
fine
gossamer net
,
whose every junction
glowed brightly, over the top of the head
.
“
Over an hour
?
I wouldn’t go looking for the magic bullet here
, especially as this isn’t the Metro Crime Analysis Unit.
”

“Some chance is better than none.”

“
OK
.
By the way, Tony, we need to talk about something else.”

“Can it wait
?
Every minute those neural pathways degrade.”

“
OK
, but as soon as I’m done.”

Tuan and
Gr
e
gori
both sat stiffly on her sofa
,
taking care not to reclin
e
against the homemade afghans that covered the back. As she worked,
Tony paced around
her net cradle
.
At one point
Augustine
wondered if
he’d
wear a track in her Berber
or accidentally smash into her
antique Crate and Barrel coffee table
.

While three of her
mental
tracks sorted the milky and broken images into something usable, one track watch
ed
as
Tony
examined
the
solidos
of her family
—
five children
and
eighteen grandchildren at last count
,
although Millie was pregnant with twins
.

Tony frowned at the family reunion solido they took at Mickey’s Grove
.
He waved his hands over the
prayer
candle
s lit
in front of each picture
as if he couldn’t believe they were real
.

“
The last of the images drained out of the skull
.
Here
’
s what I have
.”
Tony raced back into the stark world of
direct wired
electronics
.
“I know you don’t care about the techno
-
babble
,
but I did manage to arrange the neural memories into a visual image similar to a
solido
and do a probability fill on those parts that can be deduced from previous or past frames.”
Augustine typed in the air with her eyes rolled back in her head
.
“I have to warn you that this is still pretty crude
.”

The images of the dead woman’s memory blossomed into the room around them, magnified significantly
.
They skipped and shook like a bad memory string
.

“I’ve downloaded everything I could get
.
As usual
,
the storage required for such a download in all sensory dimensions is bloody huge
.
I’ve taken the standard measures of ignoring smell, taste and touch and have focused in on parts you might find relevant, from
the
first meeting
of you two
to present
.”

Tony rubbed his nose like it itched
.
“You can fast forward through most of that until mid-October
,
when they betrayed me
.”

With her right hand
,
Augustine
turned a pseudo
-
control in the empty air
.
The former life
he sometimes shared with Carmine
flew by at a phenomenal rate
.

“She kept another lover,” Tony said
.
He reacted less than a computer memory bank to a random datum
.
Augustine recognized the Wilted Rose
.

“Slow down
.”
She once again manipulated her pseudo
-
controls with her right hand, and the images
slowed to only double speed
.
With her
left
she synched and engaged the audio
.

“Her apartment
.”
Tony said as the speed became really watchable
.

Through the images t
hey heard a knock at the door and Carmine went to open it
.
Tony gaped as a short whipcord man in
lemon yellow
tights
stood in
her doorway
.

“Carmine Peligran?” the voice squealed
.
Augustine again dialed down the speed as
Carmine’s
vision nodded in the affirmative
.
“Did you know your boyfriend has an animal in contravention to the law? And he practiced medicine without a license
?”

The picture faded to black but the
audio
continued
.
“Come in, please,” she said
.
They heard the door closing
but th
e visual faded
into a
blurry and milky
paste
.
It cleared enough to discern
the
slight
bodyguard leaned back into
a big black
armchair
.

“We want you to spurn Tony Sammis and
we’re
willing to sszzzrk to do so
.
I’m sure
you’ll
find solace with your other partner and a wad of credit slips.”

“Why?”

“I’m not exactly at liberty to say, although
I’ll
tell you truthfully I do not know.”

“
OK
.
I know what you are and who in general you represent
.”
She held up a hand to ward off the protestation
.
“I don’t know specifically, but you’ve given me enough to guess
.
You don’t ssss about Tony’s pet or that he saved one old frump, now do you?
.. you? ..you? .. you? .. you
?”

Augustine frantically attempted to compensate but t
he bodyguard
’
s response got covered completely
.
“Then what are you after?”

“My instructions are that we wish to drive Tony completely out of his ssssurroundings and into the world of unlicensed and unrecorded individuals.”

“You want ssssssssssskr a Nil
.
I grok it
.”
While only seeing it out of her eyes,
they could tell
she leaned back on her divan like some Egyptian princess
.
The point of view showed that she rolled her eyes up in her head for a few moments
.
“I want one hundred eighty thousand a year plus level two medical, three years
’
minimum
.”

Augustine actually looked at Tony
,
but he didn’t flinch as he watched his former lover pull a Judas on him
.

“Miss
,
we’re
looking at a
one
-
time payment of say sssjjjjkrr
…
his simple act
.”
The video became less blurred and the clarity returned with a vengeance
.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t quite explain
.
You will find me useful in a number of ways
.
First, given the right funding
I’ll
torpedo Tony in several ways
.
I know the right people to pull his credit, auction his house
,
and snub him at all of his hangouts, some of which you may miss
.
I might even be able to get him arrested.”

“No, thank you,
m
iss
.
We
don’t
wish him arrested, although based on my instructions, all of those other items could have value
.
Would you be able to reject him so effectively and completely?”

“For one eighty, I sure would
.
Sure, he was hand
y
.
But what is any one man
?
I can get those by the truckloads.”

“Remarkable attitude.”

“Then do we have a deal?”
s
he asked
,
thrusting out her hand to seal the deal.

“As I said, Miss Peligran, I don’t have the authorization for such an extravagant change in plans
.
However
,
your forthright
attitude and embellishment to the request
might have some future value to my employer
.
I will pass them on.”

“But not with your endorsement.”