Market Forces (19 page)

“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” Dixon’s eagerness was almost pitiful. “Jazz, make some tea, will you. Or would you like coffee?”

Bryant glanced around. “Christopher?”

“Uhh, yeah.” Chris fumbled the question. “Coffee. White, no sugar.”

“And black for me,” said Mike. “One sugar, please. Thank you.”

The woman disappeared up the hall while Dixon let them pass and closed the door behind them. In his excitement, he forgot the chain. They went left into a small living room dominated by a huge Audi entertainment deck set against one wall. The system didn’t look any older than the securicam in the door.

“Ah, that corner, I think,” said Mike, nodding at Chris. “I’ll sit here and Griff, do you mind if I call you Griff, if you could sit here.”

Dixon lowered himself onto the edge of the armchair. There was something painfully vulnerable in the expression on his face as he looked at Bryant.

“You’ll need to get dressed,” said Mike gently.

“Huh?”

“The T-shirt?”

“Oh. Oh, no, it’s. Filthy.” He compressed the already crumpled piece of clothing in his hands. “Been working on my bike. I’ll go up and get another one.”

“Well.” Bryant lifted a forestalling hand. “Perhaps in a moment. But we really need to get these questions sorted out. Uhm. You have a child, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Dixon grinned happily. “Joe. He’s three.”

“And he’s”—Mike gestured at the ceiling—”upstairs asleep, I suppose.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Good, good. All right, now the official questions.” Bryant reached into his jacket. “Where are we, ah. Yes.”

The Nemex.

Even for Chris, the transition was an almost electrical jolt. Mike transformed in a single motion from beaming, chocolate-voiced media host to a man with a leveled gun.

For Dixon, it was clearly beyond the realms of comprehension.

“What’s—” He shook his head, grin still licking around his lips. “What’s, what’re you doing?”

“Chris.” Mike didn’t look around. “Close the door.”

Dixon still hadn’t gotten it. “Is this part of—”

“Show us the T-shirt.”

“Wha—”

“Show me the motherfucking T-shirt, you piece of shit!”

“Mike?”

“Just relax, Chris. Everything’s under control. When Jazz comes back, you just keep her out of the way. We’re not here for her.”

Dixon stirred. “Listen—”

“No
you
listen.” Bryant took a step forward and drew a fresh downward bead on Dixon’s face. “Throw the T-shirt on the floor. Now.”

“No.”

“I’m not going to ask you again. Show me the fucking T-shirt.”

“No.” It was like talking to a cornered child.

Bryant moved faster than Chris had ever seen another human being move. From standing, he was suddenly at Dixon’s chair. The Nemex whipped out sideways and Dixon was reeling back, clutching at his head with both hands. The T-shirt fell to the threadbare carpet, and Bryant scooped it up left-handed. Blood splintered bright through Dixon’s fingers.

“You’re not on TV, Griff.” Mike’s tone had gone back to conversational. He crouched to Dixon’s level. “There’s no need to be shy.”

He shook out the T-shirt and laid it on the floor faceup. It was clean and freshly ironed, black lettering on soft white cotton.

WHITE ARYAN RESISTANCE
.

The words were printed horizontally, one under the other, the first letter of each limned in red in case someone didn’t get the message.

The door swung open and Jazz backed into the room, still crouching from the contortion necessary to depress the handle without putting down the tray in her hands.

“I brought some—”

Turning, she saw Griff cringing and bleeding in the chair, saw the gun in Mike Bryant’s hand. She dropped the tray and shrieked. The coffee leapt sideways, broad swipes of liquid on its way to the floor. Cheap crockery scattered and broke amid something else. Cookies, Chris saw. She’d brought cookies.

“Be quiet,” snapped Bryant. “You’re going to wake up Joe.”

Naming the child seemed to do something to Griff Dixon. He dropped his hands from his face. The gouge the forward sight of the Nemex had opened in his scalp showed clearly through his razored hair, and blood was running down his face into one eye.

“You fucking listen to me. Whoever you are, I know people. You touch any of us, I’ll—”

“You’ll do
nothing,
Griff. You’ll sit there and fucking bleed, and you’ll listen to me, and you’ll do
nothing.
Jazz, will you
shut up.
Chris, for Christ’s sake make her sit down or something.”

Chris got hold of the woman and forced her onto the sofa. She was trembling and making a high keening sound that might have had the words
my baby
in it somewhere.

“I know people who—”

“You know
political
people, Griff.” The scary thing about Mike’s voice, Chris realized, was that it sounded so cheerful. As if he was enjoying himself. “Political scum. Look at this gun, Griff. Recognize it?”

It was only then that Chris saw the fear appear on Dixon’s face. For the first time since they’d entered the house, Griff Dixon was afraid.

“That’s right.” Bryant had seen it, too. He grinned. “Nemesis Ten. Now, you know the only people got access to these babies, don’t you, Griff. You’re well enough connected for that. This is a corporate gun. And where it comes from, politicians mean less than a bucket of runny shit.”

Jazz’s keening changed pitch.

“First question for you, Griff.” A tremor ran down Mike Bryant’s face. It was the single indication of the fury he was working through. “What possible reason does a member of the white master race have to stick his dick in a black woman?”

Dixon flinched as if struck. His wife’s keening broke abruptly into something between a sob and a howl.

“Didn’t you understand the question? Would you like to phone a friend? I asked you
what possible reason does a member of the white master race have to stick his dick in a black woman?
Especially, Griff, if that black woman is screaming and fighting and begging you not to do it?”

The room settled down to quiet and the sound of Dixon’s wife weeping. Bryant crouched again. He pressed his lips together hard. Pushed out a breath.

“All right, Griff. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m not going to hurt your wife or your son, because in the end it isn’t their fault you’re a piece of shit. But I’m going to shoot you in both kneecaps and the balls.”

Jazz erupted in shrieks. She tried to get up from the sofa and reach her husband. Chris held her back. Bryant got up.

“And then I’m going to blind you in one eye. There’s no way around any of this. I want you to understand that. You and your friends picked on the wrong black girl.”

Dixon came out of the chair, screaming. For a brief second he reached Mike with his fists. Then the hollow boom of the Nemex shook the room and Dixon was convulsed on the floor, blood soaking the crotch of his jeans. The new noise that came out of him didn’t sound human.

Mike Bryant got back to his feet, bleeding from the mouth. He got his breath back, then very carefully sighted on Dixon’s left knee and pulled the trigger. The white supremacist must have passed out because the noise stopped. Bryant wiped his mouth and lined up on the other leg. By now Jazz had given up fighting Chris and was holding on to him as if he could rescue her from drowning. Her tears burned on his neck. He covered her ears with his hands as Mike pulled the trigger for the third time.

In the cordite-reeking quiet, he watched as Bryant stowed the Nemex, took out a steel-cased pen, bent to Dixon’s head, peeled back the eyelid, and jabbed hard into the eye beneath. It all seemed to happen very slowly and without sound and somehow he found that his gaze had slipped away by the end and focused on the sleek lines of the entertainment deck.

“Chris.” Bryant was leaning over him.

“What? Yeah, yeah.”

It took both of them to unfasten Jazz’s grip on Chris. When they had finally tugged her away, Bryant crouched in front of her and gripped her lower jaw in one hand. In the other, he held up a folded wad of notes.

“All right, now listen to me. This money is for you. Here. Here, take it. Take it, for Christ’s sake.” Finally he had to open her hand and fold her fingers around the notes himself. “If you want him to live, you’d better get help for him soon. I don’t much care if he lives or dies, but if he lives you tell him. He, or anyone else around here touches another person with the surname Morris or Kidd, I’ll come back for the other eye, and I’ll kill your son.”

Her whole body jerked. Bryant took her hand and squeezed the money into it again.

“Now, you tell him that, and you make sure he understands I mean it. I don’t want to come back here, Jazz. I don’t want to do it. But I will if your fuckwit racist husband and his friends make me.”

I
N THE CAR
Bryant put his hands on the center of the steering wheel in front of him and pressed his body back into the padded seat. He emptied his lungs in a long, hard single breath. Then he just stared at the windshield. He seemed to be waiting for something. There were lights on in some of the houses, but either no one had heard the gunshots or no one had any interest in finding out what they signified.

“Did you mean it?” Chris asked.

“The eye?” Bryant nodded to himself. His voice was barely above a murmur. “Oh, yes. People like that, they’ve got to have something to lose. Otherwise, you’ve got no leverage on them.”

“No, his son. Did you mean it about his son?”

Mike looked across at him, outraged. “Jesus Christ, of course not. Fuck, Chris, what kind of man do you think I am?”

He was silent for a while. Very faintly, the sound of a siren came wailing to them out of the night. Bryant looked at his watch. He grunted.

“Fast. She must have called a pricey one.”

He started the engine. The BMW’s lights carved up the gloom in the poorly lit street.

“Let’s get out of here, huh? We’ve got a lot to do.”

I
T TOOK THEM
the rest of the night to find the other two men. Both were young, neither had a family, and it was Friday night in the zones. Troy Morris’s information gave starting points, but from there on in, it was hard work. Mike drove, Chris checked streets, house numbers, the names on dismal little neon signs. They worked their way through mistaken addresses, dimly lit pipe houses, underground clubs with promising names like Cross of Iron and Endangered Race, brothels, fast-food stands, and even a local paycop garrison near the river. Everywhere they went, Mike Bryant brandished the Nemex or thick wads of cash to almost interchangeable effect. The money worked more often than the gun. It unzipped the right lips, opened the right doors.

They found the first man at a hot dog stand, drunk and swaying. He didn’t know they were looking for him. No one had bothered to warn him. The white supremacists weren’t big on solidarity, and besides functioning phones weren’t all that common in the zones. The landlines got fucked up by technosmart vandal gangs, and cell phone cover was a bad joke, fatally compromised by rolling waves of government jamming aimed at satellite programming like Dex and Seth. Wheeled transport was all but nonexistent. People didn’t get about much, messages even less.

Bryant leaned on the stand, bought the man a burger, and watched him eat it. Then he told him why he was there. The man took off, trying to sprint. They went after him. Halfway down a side alley they found him vomiting up Mike’s burger and the rest of the night’s intake. Mike shot him four times in the groin and stomach with the Nemex, then bent to peer at the damage in the dim light. When he was sure the man was bleeding to death, they left him alone.

They had to drag the second supremacist out of a bed that wasn’t his own in a fifteenth-floor apartment that reeked of damp and rat poison. The woman next to him didn’t even wake up. When they got him into the living room he was mumbling, incoherent with ingested chemicals and sleep. They took an arm each and ran him headfirst against the balcony window until it smashed through. Outside, on the glass-strewn balcony, dawn was turning the night air slowly gray and there were birds singing in the trees below. Neither of them was sure if the man was dead or not. They stooped over the body, careful to avoid getting glass in their hands, picked him up, and threw him over the rail. The birdsong stopped abruptly with the impact on the concrete below.

In the kitchen, Mike left money for the broken window.

T
HE SUN CAUGHT
them leaving the zones somewhere south of London Bridge. The streets were already full of pedestrians on their way to work, and Mike had to hoot repeatedly to get them out of the road as they approached the checkpoint. Lines backed up hundreds long, snaking randomly away from the various turnstile entry points. There was even a line at the road barrier, three rusting buses that looked almost premillennial, one of them belching oily fumes from its exhaust. Beyond the checkpoint, glimpsed through the low rise of preferential south bank housing, gold light impacted and dripped on glass skyscraper panels across the river.

“Jesus, look at this,” said Bryant disgustedly. “Emissions monitoring, my fucking ass. Look at the shit coming out of that bus.”

“Yeah, and it’s packed. We’re going to be here for a while.”

It was true. Armed guards were ordering the passengers out of the first bus, lining them up. The first line had already assumed the position—right hand on the back of the head, passcard held up in the left. A single guard moved down the line, scrutinizing the cards one at a time and swiping them through his hip unit. Every second card needed repeated swipes.

“Don’t know why they bother.” Chris yawned with a force that made his jaw creak. “It’s not like there’s been anything resembling terrorism in London for the last couple of years.”

“Yeah, and you’re looking at the reason why. Don’t knock it, man.” Bryant drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Still, this is going to take forever. You want to get breakfast?”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Chris twisted about in his seat. A handful of frontages down the street they had just driven up, a grimed sign said
CAF
é. People flowed in and out with paper packets and garishly colored cans.

“In there?”

“Sure. Cheap and nasty, plenty of grease. Just what you need.”

“Speak for yourself.” Chris still felt slightly queasy when he thought about what Mike had done to Griff Dixon’s eye. “Think I’ll stick to coffee.”

“Suit yourself.” Bryant plugged the BMW into reverse and punted it back along the street. The engine whined high with unnecessary revs. Pedestrians scrambled to get out of the way. Level with the café, Bryant slewed into the curb and jolted to a halt at a rakish angle. He grinned.

“Man, I love the parking in this part of town.”

They climbed out to hostile stares. Bryant smiled bleakly and alarmed the car with the remote held high and visible. Someone behind Chris rasped something unintelligible and hawked up spit. Twitchy with the events of the night, Chris pivoted about. The phlegm glistened yellow and fresh near his feet. Not what he needed.

He scanned the bystanders’ faces. Mostly they shuffled and looked away, but one young black man stood his ground and stared back.

“You got something to say to me?” Chris asked him.

The man stayed silent but didn’t look away. His white companion laid a hand on his arm. Bryant came around the car, yawning and stretching.

“Problem?”

“No problem,” said the white one, pulling his friend away.

“Good, you’d better get cracking then.” Bryant jerked a thumb up the street. “That’s a hell of a line up there. You coming, Chris?”

He shoved back the door of the café and they worked their way past the line of people waiting at the take-out counter to the seating area at the back. There were no customers apart from a black-clad old man who sat alone, staring into a mug of tea.

“This’ll do.” Mike slid into a booth and beat a drum riff on the tabletop with the flat of both hands. “I’m starving.”

There was a menu scrawled in luminous purple marker across the quickwipe surface of the table. Chris glanced across it and looked away again, nervous of the standing line at his back. He knew the food. He’d eaten in places like this most of his teens, and occasionally, after a mechanic’s night out with Carla and the others from Mel’s AutoFix, he still did. Like prime-time satellite programming, it would be a loudly flavored blend of low-grade bulking agents seasoned with garishly advertised vitamin and mineral additives. The sausages would average about 30 percent meat, the bacon came swollen with injected water. He was glad he had no appetite.

A waitress appeared at the booth.

“Getya?”

“Coffee,” said Chris. “White. Glass of water.”

“I’ll have the big breakfast,” said Mike expansively. “You get eggs with that?”

“They’re Qweggs,” the waitress said sullenly.

“Right. Better give me, uh, six of those then. And plenty of toast. Coffee for me, too. Black.”

The waitress turned her back and strode off.

Mike watched her go. “Friendly here.”

Chris shrugged. “They know who we are.”

“Yeah, which means a massive tip if they can just secrete a little common courtesy. Pretty fucking shortsighted attitude, if you ask me.”

“Mike.” Chris leaned across the table. “What do you expect? The clothes you’re wearing cost more than that girl makes in a year. She probably lives in an apartment smaller than my office, damp walls, leaking drains, no security, and about two-thirds her weekly wage just to cover the rent.”

“Oh, and that’s
my
fucking fault?”

“It isn’t about—”

“Look, I’m not her fucking mother. I didn’t pop her out in the zones, just so I could claim breeding benefit. And if she doesn’t like it here, she can make her own sweet way out, just like anybody else.”

Chris looked at his friend with sudden dislike. “Yeah, right.”

“That’s right. Listen, Troy was born and bred in the zones, he made it out. James is off to the Scratcher in six weeks, he could end up making more money than both of us. So don’t tell me it can’t be done.”

“And what about Troy’s cousin? The one got raped two nights ago by Dixon and his pals. How come she hasn’t made it out?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Bryant’s anger collapsed as rapidly as it had sprouted. He slumped back in his seat. “Look, all I’m saying, Chris, is some of us have what it takes. Others don’t. I mean, this isn’t some cut-rate little African horrorshow of a nation. You don’t have to live in the zones because of your
tribe
or something. No one cares what color you are here, what religion or race. All you’ve got to do is make the money.”

“They seem to care what color you are in Dixon’s neighborhood.”

“Yeah, that’s fucking
politics,
Chris. Some maggots’ nest of little local government thugs looking for a way to build a power base. It’s got nothing to do with the way the real world works.”

“That’s not the impression I get from Nick Makin.”

“Makin?”

“Yeah, you heard him in that meeting. He’s a fucking racist, that’s why he can’t handle Echevarria.”

“Yeah, well.” Mike brooded. “Might have to do something about Makin.”

The coffee came. It wasn’t as bad as Chris had expected. Bryant drained his and asked for another cup.

“There going to be an investigation?” wondered Chris.

“Nah, shouldn’t think so.”

“They got you for those jackers at the Falkland.”

“Yeah, that’s a whole different story. Civil rights activists, off the back of grieving family members, my little Jason was a good boy, he only stole cars because social deprivation blah, blah, boo, hoo. That kind of crap. This thing with Dixon is different. There’s an agenda. Dixon’s political friends are on the antiglobalism wing. Britain for the British, immigrants out, fuck multiculturalism, and tear down the international corporate power conspiracy. Right now, the last thing they need is for that to come out into the open. They’ll sit on this.”

“But the zone police—”

“They’ll buy them off. They’ll get some paycop outfit to dig the slugs out of Dixon’s floor and the street under that other piece of shit we wasted, and they’ll make them as Nemex load.” Bryant grinned. “That should send a message.”

Chris frowned. “Isn’t that going to be a whole stack of political capital for them? The big bad corporations, off the leash. They’ll milk it till it bleeds.”

“Oh, yeah, on a local level, of course they will. They’ll turn Dixon into a fucking martyr, no doubt. If he lives, they can have him in a wheelchair at the local Young Nazi fund-raisers, and if he dies they can have his weeping widow do the same thing. But they aren’t about to take on Shorn in the public arena. They know what we’d do to them.”

“And Dixon?”

Mike grinned again. “Well, I’d say Dixon’s got his hands full for the next six months just learning to walk again. And if he ever does, well he’s got a family and another eye to worry about before he does anything stupid. Plus, you know what? Somehow, I don’t think the civil rights crowd are going to be there for him. Just not the right profile.”

Mike’s breakfast arrived on a tray, and the waitress set about laying it out. While she worked, Bryant grabbed a Qwegg off the plate with finger and thumb, and popped it into his mouth. He chewed vigorously.

“You going to work today?” he asked through the mouthful.

Chris thought about the house, cold with Carla’s absence or, even worse, with her unspeaking presence. He nodded.

“Good.” Mike swallowed the Qwegg, nodded thanks at the departing waitress, and picked up his knife and fork. “Listen, I want you to call Joaquin Lopez. Tell him to catch a flight down to the NAME and start sounding out the names on that list. Today if possible. We’ll pick up the expenses.”

Chris felt a small surge go through his guts, not unlike the feeling he’d had talking to Liz Linshaw the night before. He nursed his coffee and watched Mike eat for a while.

“You think we’re going to have to do it?” he asked finally.

“Do what?”

“Blow Echevarria out of the water.”

“Well.” Bryant chased another Qwegg around his plate and after some effort managed to puncture it with his fork. “Believe me, I’d love to. But in this case, you know how it goes. Regime change is our worst-case scenario. We’ll only go that way if we absolutely have to.”

He gestured at Chris with his fork.

“You just get Lopez on the case. Get the names to Makin, make sure there’s a clear strategy locked down for the uplincon next week.”

“You want me in on that?”

Bryant shook his head, chewing. He swallowed.

“Nah, you stay out of it. I want a clean break between current negotiations and whatever we need you to do. Echevarria doesn’t know about you, he doesn’t know about your contacts. There’s no line for him to follow. Better that way.”

“Right.”

Bryant grinned. “Don’t look so disappointed, man. I’m doing you a favor. I tell you, every time I have to shake hands with that piece of shit, I feel like I need to disinfect. Murderous old fuck.”

T
HEY GAVE IT
another half an hour to let the lines subside, then paid and left. Despite his grouching, Bryant left a tip almost as large as the cost of the whole meal. Outside, he yawned and stretched and pivoted about, face turned up to the sun. He seemed in no hurry to get in the car.

“We going to work?” asked Chris.

“Yeah, in a minute.” Mike yawned again. “Don’t feel much like it, tell you the truth. Day like this, I should be home playing with Ariana. Playing with Suki, come to that. Christ, you know we haven’t fucked in nearly two weeks.”

“Tell me about it.”

Bryant cocked his head. “Carla giving you grief about that?”

“Only all the time.” Chris considered the reflexive lie. “Well, recently not so much. We’re both tired, you know. Don’t see a lot of each other.”

“Yeah. Got to watch that shit. Come the end of quarter, you ought to take some time out. Maybe get out to the island for a week.”

“You see Hewitt signing off on that?”

“She’ll have to, Chris, the profile you’ve got on Cambodia. It’s turning into the year’s premium contract. Shorn owes us all some serious downtime before the end of this year. Hey, who knows, maybe me and Suki’ll get out there the same time as you guys. That’d be cool, huh?”

“Yeah. Cool.”

“Well, don’t sound so fucking enthusiastic about it.”

Chris laughed. “Sorry. I’m wasted.”

“Yeah, let’s kick this in gear.” Bryant disarmed the BMW’s alarm and cracked the driver’s-side door. “Sooner we get out of here, sooner we can get home and act like we have a life.”

They cleared the checkpoint without incident, threaded onto the approach road to the bridge, and accelerated up across the river. Sunlight turned the water to hammered bronze on either side of them. Chris fought down a wave of tiredness and promised himself a takeout from Louie Louie’s as soon as they hit the Shorn tower.

“Be good to get some real coffee,” he muttered.

“That coffee wasn’t bad.”

“Ah, come
on.
It was about as real as the eggs. I’m talking about something with a
pedigree
here. Not fucking Malsanto’s Miracle Beans. Something with a hit you can feel.”

“Fucking speedfreak.”

They both laughed, as if on cue. The BMW filled up with the sound as they left the river behind and cruised into the gold-mirrored canyons beyond. To Chris, groggy with no sleep and the events and chemicals of the night before, it felt good at a level deeper than he could find words to explain.