Nightside CIty (24 page)

All that was from the con, but the con wasn’t
all these people had done. They had tried to kill me. What’s more,
they had cost Mishima a good chunk of money, in the expenses he’d
paid for me. I felt I owed him that money, so they hadn’t just
tried to kill me, they’d driven me a long way into debt.

I
hate
being in debt!

They owed me for this.

I still had a client, too, and that meant I
still had work to do.

They owed me, and they were going to pay.

I wanted to start with Sayuri Nakada. She was
the one with the money, after all, the one who was stupid enough to
fall for the scheme. I wanted to start with her, but I didn’t.
After a little thought I decided to save her for later.

I was going to start with Paulie Orchid.
Unless I was bending data, he was the one who had put it all
together.

The fact that he was the one doling out the
money proved that. He’d needed some scientists to shill for him, so
he’d found Doc Lee and his team at the Ipsy, all of them desperate
for money; that wouldn’t have been beyond even Orchid’s talents.
The idea of Rigmus or Lee organizing the plot just didn’t fit; it
had to be Orchid.

So he was the mastermind, and he was also the
one who had tried to kill me. He was the most dangerous of the
whole array. I’d underestimated him when I thought he was nothing
but a bit of gritware; he was stupid in a lot of ways, but not in
every way. He was too stupid to put any security on his bank
accounts, but he’d been smart enough to play a pretty damn good
con. He’d dropped out of sight for a long time before he came up
with this scheme; maybe he’d had some modification done, and I
don’t just mean the wire job. You can buy just about any sort of
add-on you want, for either brain or body, and he might have bought
anything. I didn’t know just what he was capable of, and I wanted
to have surprise on my side when I went after him.

So Orchid came first.

I called Mishima at his office. He was
cheerful, gave me the whole routine about being glad to hear from
me.

I wasn’t in the mood to chat. I cut through
the banter and told him I wanted the muscle he’d offered me. I
didn’t tell him anything about con games, didn’t give him any
names; I just said I was going to pay Orchid a visit and needed
some back-up. Armed back-up.

He dropped the friendship display. He nodded
and agreed and we broke the connection.

I called a cab, and half an hour later I met
the muscle Mishima had sent me on the street at the entrance to
Orchid’s apartment tower—three of them, all big. Any one of them
must have weighed at least twice what I did, and they all wore
slick armor, the transparent tight-bond monomolecular stuff. The
woman had retractable claws. The bigger, darker man had fangs that
gleamed as bright as the wires in his face. The smaller man was
heavily cyborged, half his face rebuilt with chrome. Serious
muscle. You don’t go in for the surgical stuff for fun.

Maybe the cyborg had gone into it because he
had to be rebuilt anyway, but the other two, they did it just for
business.

They were all armed, with light little
pieces, street-legal in the City.

They were perfect.

I called up to Orchid’s apartment, with a
voice distorter and no image, saying I was collecting contributions
for a campaign to outlaw gambling on Epimetheus. Rigmus
answered.

I gave him my story and he told me to eat
wire and die. I was polite; I asked if anyone else was around who
might be more generous.

He offered to feed the wire up my ass
personally.

I asked if there was anyone else there I
could talk to, more generous or not, and said I’d been told Paulie
Orchid lived there. I made it sound like Orchid had been sold to me
as the savior of the downtrodden.

Yeah, Rigmus told me, Orchid was in, but he
was busy, and of course he wasn’t interested.

I just needed to know he was there. I shut up
and exited the call.

The four of us went up the tower together,
the muscle and me, and I stood back, with my gun in my hand, while
the cyborg took out the door security.

But the cyborg wasn’t the first one in. The
instant the door opened I was through and into the room.

It was a big apartment, and a good address,
but those two hadn’t done it justice. The place was all done in
maroon and red, with flat golden walls, no holos anywhere except a
cheap vidset hanging in one corner. The furniture was strictly
inert, no color shifts, legs holding everything up, and there
wasn’t much of it. What there was didn’t look new, either. I
figured Orchid and Rigmus had blown away all the juice they could
spare in getting the place, with nothing left to furnish it
decently.

Or maybe they figured it wasn’t worth the
trouble, since it was temporary. They were both bound for
Prometheus when their little scam had played out.

The best piece there was a big maroon sofa,
pushed back hard against one wall. Rigmus was sitting on it,
holding a jackbox.

I dove for him. He dropped the jackbox and
dodged, leaning awkwardly sideways, and I twisted around and took
him in the throat with the side of the hand holding the gun.

He grunted, and then grabbed for me. I think
he figured he’d just break me in half, small as I am.

I don’t break that easy.

I got him under the jaw and bent his head
back, rammed it against the wall. Hard.

He got an arm around my waist and tried to
pull me away, and I rammed his head back against the wall again,
then drove the butt of the HG-2 into his larynx. I felt something
give. His stomach growled, which seemed weirdly inappropriate, and
I wondered whether it had anything to do with my blow.

The cyborg was coming up behind me, but I
waved him back. This was personal. Rigmus had tried to kill me.

He was flailing about, not connecting. I put
a finger into his left eye and pressed down.

He was lucky my fingernails hadn’t really
grown back yet.

He tried to scream, but he couldn’t, because
of what I’d done to his throat and because I was stuffing a hand
into his mouth, choking him with my fist.

He didn’t even have the wits to try and bite
me, and I just pounded his head back against the wall until he
collapsed.

I’ll tell you, it was pretty damn satisfying
to finally be able to do something that simple and direct and to
have it
work
. I have some pretty serious moral reservations
about using any more violence than necessary—but I forget them
sometimes. I shouldn’t, but I do.

When he slumped I got off him and let him
fall. He landed sprawled across a corner of the couch, which
managed to reshape itself enough to keep him from falling to the
floor.

He lay there, less than half conscious, and
his stomach growled again. I almost laughed.

The female muscle took over with him, sitting
on him with a claw at his throat, while the cyborg opened the
bedroom doors.

The first bedroom was empty, just a white bed
floating in the center unmade and a wardrobe dispenser in one
corner, nothing else.

Orchid was in the second. This one was done
in red and gold, and any juice he’d saved on the rest of the place
he’d blown here. The walls were holos, running erotic vids on all
four sides, but I didn’t let the movement distract me. I knew holos
from real, and I knew Orchid when I saw him.

He was on the bed, with a woman and his pants
down, and a privacy field up so he hadn’t heard us coming. I ran in
and grabbed him before he saw us.

He was too surprised to resist. I shoved him
over onto the floor, and when he opened his mouth to protest I
stuck the muzzle of the HG-2 in it, and flicked the power
switch.

I felt the gun tick to life. Orchid saw the
pilot light glow red, then green.

The woman started to scream, but Mishima’s
muscle pulled her off, and one of them, the one with the fangs,
held her quiet in the corner while I negotiated with Mis’ Orchid.
He let her straighten her outfit, a mess of frills and drifting
colors that could have hidden almost anything, but he kept his gun
at her throat.

The cyborg took the apartment door for his
post, first watching out, then watching in, in quick, steady
alternation; good, solid work.

“Now, Mis’ Paul Orchid,” I said, “we have a
few things to get straight.”

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t, with the
gun where it was. His eyes widened a little, though, and I think it
was only then, when he heard my voice, that he recognized me. I
looked pretty different with just a thin fuzz on the top of my
head, instead of real hair, and with hardly any eyebrows.

Besides, he’d thought I was dead.

“First off,” I said, “I know why you tried to
kill me. I know all about the scam you’re running on Sayuri Nakada.
I know you wanted to keep me from telling her it was a con. But you
screwed up, grithead. It wasn’t any of my business; I don’t owe
Nakada anything. If you hadn’t tried to kill me, you fucking idiot,
I wouldn’t have cared, but you, you made it my business by dumping
me on the dayside. That makes it very personal.” I shifted the gun,
so he could hear the mechanism working as it compensated for my
movement. An HG-2 hasn’t got room for soundproofing, which was fine
with me; it added a bit to the effect.

He made a noise, but I wasn’t finished.

“Now, you may be recording this. You may
think you’ve got me on charges of trespassing, and assault, and
terroristic threatening. You may even be right. But, you stupid son
of a bitch,
I’ve
got
you
for kidnapping and attempted
murder even if I
don’t
give Nakada the code on your program.
Did you really think I was so dumb I didn’t have
any
security you didn’t bypass? I have full-spectrum authentic vid of
you and Bobo carting me out to the cab and sending me east over the
crater wall. I have witnesses. I won’t even mention that I have all
the evidence I need in my head and in the cab itself. And it’s all
on record in a dozen places where you can’t get at it.”

He made a sort of a squeak. I rammed the gun
against his teeth and said, “Now, if we’ve got it all very clear as
to what the basis for negotiation is—which is, that I’m in charge,
I know what’s going on, and I’ve got you a hell of a lot tighter
than you’ve got me—then I can let you up and we can talk business.
What do you say?”

He squeaked again, and tried to nod.

I had been kneeling on top of him, my face
centimeters from his; now I backed off and got up.

“One more thing,” I said, while he was
picking himself up and fastening his pants. “If we do wind up
pressing charges against each other, I want you to know that I
didn’t like the dayside at all, and I do hold grudges. I’m big on
revenge. If you go to trial and they convict—and by god they
should, with what I’ve got on record— then I’ve got my victim’s
privilege coming, and I have it all picked out. I had time to think
about it out there in the sun, plenty of time. I want your balls
cut off, permanently and without anesthetic. Drastic, I know, but
for kidnapping and attempted murder I think I could get it. You
just keep that in mind while we talk, okay?”

Actually, I didn’t really think I’d ask for
that, but it made one hell of a good threat for someone like
Orchid.

He nodded, rubbing his jaw.

He thought I had more to say, but I waited.
It was his turn.

“All right, Hsing, what do you want?” he said
at last.

“It’s about time, damn it, that you bothered
to ask me that before you started giving me trouble. It’s simple
enough. But I’m going to keep you in suspense until you answer a
question for me. Just who did you think hired me?”

He stared, then blinked. Those fancy eyes of
his looked stupid when they blinked. “Ah...” he said, “I thought
the New York...”

He let it trail off.

I’d been expecting something like that, but I
still couldn’t really believe it. The adrenalin I’d built up in
tackling Rigmus got to me, with no symbiote to cut it back, and I
lost control. I shoved the gun under his nose and screamed at him,
“You
stupid
, worthless piece of shit! You coprophagous
cretin! The New York wouldn’t touch me with a goddamn run of
scrubware; don’t you know anything? Are you too dumb to ask anyone
a simple question? I can’t get work in the Trap, I haven’t been
able to for years!”

He stammered something, but I wasn’t
listening. He was backed against the bed, his knees starting to
buckle as my gun forced him back.

“I wasn’t investigating you, or Nakada, or
the Ipsy—I was hired to find out why somebody was trying to collect
rent in the West End! I was hired by a bunch of
squatters
,
you poor fool! That’s all! You could swindle Nakada out of her
liver, and I wouldn’t have cared, if you hadn’t hassled the
squatters out there! You... you...”

I ran out of words, and felt my finger
tightening on the trigger, and I forced it to loosen, forced myself
to calm down. I stepped back and lowered the gun, and then I took a
deep breath.

He sat down on the bed. “So what do you
want?” he asked, his voice unsteady.

“It’s simple,” I told him. “I want you to
stop hassling me. I want you to stop hassling the squatters, even
if it means you have to pay Nakada’s rents out of your share of the
take from your scam. I want guarantees on both of those, recorded
with the city and with the cops—we can word it so we don’t have to
incriminate anybody. I want it understood that if you ever come
near me again I’m going to use this gun, without warning, and plead
self-defense with those kidnapping records to back me up. I want
all of that from both you and Rigmus, and if you can get it, from
Doc Lee and the others at the Ipsy. If you can’t get it from them,
tell me, and I’ll go talk it over with them. I know your scheme to
stop the city is phony, and you can tell them that I know, and I
can prove it. I don’t want them trying any stupid demonstrations
for Nakada—if you can’t string her any further just with words,
then take your money and exit, don’t try and push your luck, or
I’ll see that you regret it. And I want you to know that if you try
to kill me again, even if you succeed, you’re dead meat. I’m not
stupid enough to make a play like this without back-up, not when
you’ve taken one shot at me already. These three aren’t the only
friends I’ve got. You got all that?”