Tails You Lose (5 page)

Night Owl eased her Harley Electroglide into a space between two parked cars and cut the motorcycle's engine. Rain spattered on the bike's twin exhaust pipes, hissing into steam as it hit the hot metal. She pulled off her leather gauntlets and night-vision goggles, flicked wet hair out of her eyes, and then checked her face in the bike's mirror, making sure the thick blue and black lines of the Beijing Opera mask she'd painted on her face hadn't run in the rain. Then she climbed down from the bike, admiring the winking owl that she'd had custom painted on the gas tank. She heaved the metal monster up onto its kick stand and was just about to jander into the restaurant when a soggy blanket huddled in front of the building unfolded itself.

Instantly on alert, Night Owl whipped a hand back and under her leather jacket, reaching for the Ares Predator concealed against the small of her back. It was halfway out of its holster before she realized that the grotter under the blanket was just a teenage elf, looking for spare cred.

The elf was skinny, with pointed ears that stuck out of ragged holes in his black knitted hat. His plastic pants had been made of bubble wrap and duct tape, and the sleeves of his striped shirt looked as though they'd been chewed off at the elbow. He smelled of hydro-gro weed, days-old sweat and moldy blanket, but his eyes were still scanning. He'd savvied her weapon in the second she'd flashed for it.

"Hey, heavy lady, be chill. I was just going to give your chrome a polish." He held out a dirty rag and a squirt bottle that might once have held liquid polish.

Night Owl was about to tell him to frag off when she noticed the kid's left hand. It was obviously cybered, its synthetic skin peeling back to reveal the artificial metal joints, plastic tendons, and servos that lay underneath. The middle finger was frozen in an open position, as if the kid were giving the world a permanent "frag you." The hand looked too small for the arm; the flesh around the kid's wrist was puckered like a baggy shirt that had been tucked into a tight pair of jeans.

Night Owl stepped under the dripping awning the kid had been using for shelter. "How long've you had that hand, cobber?"

The kid glanced down at his hand as if he'd forgotten it was cybered. "Since I was ten."

"It's too small for you now. How come you weren't fitted with a larger hand?"

The elf shrugged. "Couldn't afford it."

Night Owl stood for a moment in silence, watching raindrops bounce off the roofs of parked cars. The going rate for a bottom-of-the-heap, alpha-grade cyberhand was forty thousand nuyen. The kid's parents had probably scrimped up everything they had to pay for it—and the fraggers who sold it to them never bothered to mention that the kid would outgrow it in a few years' time.

"Who made the hand?"

The kid turned the hand over to show her the logo on its inner wrist. A curling tsunami wave hovered over the letters "PCI." Framing the wave in a circle were the words "Pacific Cybernetics Industries—The Wave of the Future."

Night Owl's eyes narrowed. PCI had a history of dumping its outdated cyberware in third-world countries whose customers didn't have the nuyen to launch lawsuits after the drek glitched or broke down. Some of the obsolete 'ware also showed up in local chop shops, like the one this kid's parents must have taken him to.

Night Owl reached into a pocket and handed the kid a certified credstick. The kid's eyes widened when he thumbed the stick's balance and saw the one and two zeroes on the miniature screen.

"Keep an eye on the bike, kid," Night Owl told him. "I wouldn't want one of these parked cars to back into it."

The kid opened his mouth to thank her, but Night Owl didn't stick around to hear it. She turned and shoved open the door of the restaurant.

Wazubee's was always packed at this time of night. The restaurant was a favorite hangout for the artists, citizenship activists, performance poets and other chill-folk who inhabited the area around the Drive. Humans and metas of every description jammed the tables, spending their nuyen on realkaf with a water chaser and trying to talk over the rhyth-lmpulse that droned from the speakers overhead. The crowds and noise made Wazubee's the perfect place for a shadow meet—nobody gave a runner a second glance here.

Night Owl spotted her fixer in the back of the restaurant, sitting at a table under a gigantic chandelier made from welded cutlery. The votive candle on the table in front of him was no match for Hothead's trademark flame hair, which at the moment was blazing with a steady, propane-blue flicker. Filament-thin flames twisted out of pores in the insulated dermal plating that lined his scalp, flaring to a height of nearly five centimeters, then dampening down before flaring again. The tubes that fed propane to the system ran down the back of his neck and disappeared under his shirt collar; he wore a canteen-sized, refillable tank clipped to his belt. He'd gotten the idea from the work of 12 Midnight, a turn-of-the-century artist whose stainless-steel paintings always included propane flames. Hothead figured they looked chill and decided to turn himself into a work of art.

Night Owl worked her way to Hothead's table and slapped palms with him. He flashed her a brief smile, eyes crinkling around fire-red contact lenses. The color matched the jacket of his cellosuit, which made a crinkling noise as he shifted his weight. Despite the cheerful greeting, he seemed uneasy about Night Owl joining him. He kept glancing toward the door. She wondered if he'd been waiting for a meet with another runner.

"
Ni
hao
, Hothead," Night Owl said, sliding into the chair on the opposite side of the table. "Sorry about dripping on your table. It's pretty wet out there."

"Did you see the storm this afternoon?" Hothead asked.

Night Owl shook her head. "I was sleeping."

"Street buzz says there were storm crows in the clouds. A Shinto sun shaman once told me that they gather in flocks when an evil deity is about to appear."

Night Owl laughed. "As long as it's not me he's looking for, I don't care."

The sleeve of Hothead's suit crinkled as he drained the last of his 'kaf. He set down the cup and pushed back his chair as if he was about to go.

"Got any biz?" Night Owl asked.

Hothead's eyes narrowed. "After you screwed up that last job I brokered for you? I don't think so." Night Owl frowned. "What do you mean? The extraction went down without a glitch."

"Buzz has it that your Johnson didn't receive what he paid for."

Night Owl smiled. She'd never intended that he should. Her interest in the run had been personal, and she'd accomplished what had needed to be done. "Too bad. Sometimes things get damaged in transit."

"Damaged?" Hothead gave her a careful look. "You mean lost. Someone let something slip, and the item your Johnson paid so much cred for was snatched back by its original owners before it reached its destination."

Night Owl shrugged. "Whatever."

"The Johnson wants his nuyen back."

"I've spent it." She jerked a thumb in the direction of the door. "Check out my new wheels."

"You spent
all
of it?" Hothead shifted toward the edge of his seat, as if he was about to leave. "That's bad—but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me."

"Find me some more biz," Night Owl insisted. "Then I'll at least have the option of paying the Johnson his nuyen back."

Hothead gave her a skeptical look. They both knew runners didn't give refunds.

"I know someone who needs some extra muscle tomorrow, for a run that's going down at noon," Hothead said.

"Noon?" Night Owl laughed. "You know me, Hothead. I'm a reverse Cinderella. I come out at midnight and turn into a pumpkin at dawn."

Hothead shrugged. "The only other job I have right now needs someone who can pass as a Full Blood. You look too Euro—although with a hint of something Asian underneath. Are you part Chinese? Your accent is perfect."

"Japanese," Night Owl corrected him. "And a hundred other races. I'm a walking DNA cocktail. According to my father, I've got a little bit of everything in my genetic makeup—even Native. I probably could have claimed citizenship, if I'd wanted to."

The flames on Hothead's scalp rose a centimeter. He pulled his chair back up to the table. "Does your father have citizenship?" Behind his contact lenses, his eyes gleamed with curiosity. His commodity was information—the tidbit Night Owl had just supplied to him had captured his attention like a shiny silver coin tossed before a crow.

Night Owl leaned back in her chair. Hothead had just stepped over the line that separated fixer and runner, but she didn't care. She had his attention again. Deliberately, she tossed him another tidbit. She was feeling reckless tonight and was curious to see how smart the fixer really was. Would he be able to follow the datatrail and figure out who she was?

"My father's dead," she answered. "He suicided—hung himself with a monofilament. It took his head clean off when he jumped off the chair."

Hothead swallowed and tucked in his chin. "Why?"

"The corporation he worked for screwed him over. A project he was working on crashed and burned, and he was the one blamed for it."

Night Owl saw Hothead looking down at the table and realized that she was holding a spoon in her hands. She'd bent the stainless steel nearly double without even realizing it. Carefully, she laid it back down on the table, beside the tray that held Hothead's empty 'kaf cup and glass of water.

A waitress came up to the table and asked if they'd like to eat. Night Owl ordered a 'kaf and some fries and garlic mayo.

Hothead winked at the waitress and asked for a refill and a new spoon. "Don't make the 'kaf so strong next time," he joked. "It plays hell with my nerves." When the waitress left, his expression became serious. The flames on his scalp dimmed to a soft red glow, and his voice fell to a whisper.

"The Red Lotus are looking for you."

Night Owl glanced nervously around the restaurant. Red Lotus was one of Vancouver's most notorious street gangs, "younger brother" to a powerful triad based in the Republic of China. They dominated the city's heroin trade and were notorious for going overkill on anyone who crossed them. When the Red Lotus struck, bullets fell like hail and blood flowed like water.

"What do they want with me?"

"Well, since they can't get their boss's nuyen back, I guess they'll want your blood."

Night Owl leaned forward, at the same time sliding her left hand back along the arm of her chair, bringing it closer to her pistol. "They don't know what I look like," she said slowly. "Unless someone has given them a description of me."

Hothead carefully placed his hands, palms down, on the table. His eyes never left Night Owl's, even when her left hand started its slide under the back of her jacket.

"They don't need a description," he said. "They have a vidpic of you. They got it out of Wharf Rat's eye."

Night Owl blinked, then brought her hand back in front of her, resting it on the table again. "Frag—I didn't know his eye was cybered." She'd noticed that one eye was gold instead of the runner's natural brown, but she'd assumed it was a contact—like Hothead's dramatic red lenses.

She'd also just been told that Wharf Rat was dead. Night Owl was suddenly sorry that she'd suspected Hothead. He was a friend—he was sitting here talking to her, when she was probably the last person in the world he wanted to be seen with right now.

"Thanks, Hothead," she said. "I owe you one." Hothead smiled. "I know. Don't worry—I'll call the debt in someday."

The waitress returned with two trays of 'kaf and water, balancing Night Owl's fries on the inside of one forearm. As she set them down on the table, Hothead glanced again at the door.

Hothead drained his coffee in several quick swallows, then rose from the table. Without a word of farewell, he left Night Owl sitting with her fries and 'kaf and weaved his way between the crowded tables to the front of the restaurant. Night Owl watched him walk out into the night and tried to decide whether to finish her meal and go or hang tight in the restaurant. Either way, the gangers might find her.

She decided to let fate choose for her. Digging her lucky SkyTrain token out of her pocket, she flipped it into the air. Heads she'd stay; tails she'd turn and run. Just as she caught it in midflight and slapped it down on the back of her right hand, however, something made her look up. The street kid she'd talked to earlier was coming in through the door. He was nervous and looking for someone; her. As soon as he saw Night Owl, he ran to the table where she sat, almost colliding with a waitress along the way.

"Hey, lady, you'd better fly. There's some heavy people looking for you."

Night Owl pushed back her chair and looked at the coin on the back of her hand. Tails. She shoved it into a pocket as she stood up. "Where? How many?"

"Outside. Two men—Chinese, by the sound of 'em. They got out of a gray ragtop and crossed the street to your bike, and were scannin' it like they knew it. Then they looked up and down the street. They asked if I saw where the person riding the bike went, and I said I'd tell them for five nuyen. They liked that. I pointed them down the street, to the New Millennium

Arcade
. Stupid fraggers didn't even realize that you don't park a bike two blocks away from where you're going, especially in drekky weather like this."