The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy (47 page)

Chapter 19

March 12, 2029

9:15 p.m.

The confusion flashed across Nacho’s face like an unpleasant odor had wafted past his nose. “What you talking about,
blanco
? What TV stars? What’s that got to do with my war?” Bridge savored the confusion, savored the tiny victory of knocking the bulky gangster back on his mental heels.

“See, you are laboring under the misapprehension this is about some tiny, insignificant beef between you and Stonewall, or between two Mexicali gangs. It ain’t. It might have started out that way…”

“When you assassinated Pedro!” Stonewall shouted accusingly. Bridge raised a hand to calm his friend.

“But we’re past that now. This has gone way beyond the barrio, way beyond the subways and way beyond
Los Magos
and
El Diablos
. This brought in all the Families, and it involves everyone here. Bottle City Boys disappeared to keep from getting wiped out in their crèches, AsiaTown can’t do any business without the CLED getting involved and even the Panthers, who don’t fight anybody, can’t walk around without getting arrested or shot.” He pointed at the mayor. “You’ve made damn sure to escalate this thing from neighborhood beef to city-wide emergency. You even authorized these psychos,” he pointed down at the bodies of the Special Squad members. “I have no fucking idea what you were thinking there. Look at this fucker. Spider legs. Cybernetic spider legs. Who the fuck thinks that’s a good idea?”

The silent stranger finally spoke up. “Actually, that one’s on me.” He said it with such a calm, passive smile that Bridge’s hackles instantly rose.

“And who might you be?” Bridge spat back sarcastically.

Thames tried to speak up, but the stranger interrupted him. “Martel, head of Chronosoft Research & Development. Pleased to meet you.” That same unconcerned smile contrasted with the predatory glare of his eyes, eyes that assured Bridge this was not one to be fucked with lightly.

Bridge waved off the hand. “Yeah, I don’t do handshakes. You’re responsible for these loonies?”

Martel nodded. “In a manner of speaking. My department researches the tech, builds the prototypes and recruits officer candidates from the CLED ranks. Though obviously, we may need to re-evaluate our recruitment criteria. Did you take them down or was it your wizard?”

It was Bridge’s turn to be confused, a raised eyebrow the crack in his confident façade. “Bit of a team effort, actually. I think Officer Danton here broke that one’s ribs with some help from Stonewall here, but my wizard as you say, lit the spiderfucker on fire.”

“Interesting. Anyway, continue. You were on a roll.”

“As I was saying, the stakes have gotten a lot higher than some barrio beef. Our right honorable Mayor Soto here has every bit of authority from the Chronosoft LGL to take this as far as he must in order to maintain the peace. He also has every intention of evicting, displacing and whacking as many people connected to the Families as he can. Would you like to tell them why?” The expression Soto returned gave a clear indication that he wouldn’t. “See, every house that gets confiscated is on land, land that the mayor can buy himself through about a billion intermediaries. Those intermediaries will then need someone to redevelop that land, something another of the mayor’s businesses can do. In the end, your honor here uses the Chronosoft LGL’s money to pay himself twice, indirectly of course, and he gets to redevelop the city of Los Angeles in his image. Let’s not bullshit each other, Mr. Soto, Mr. Martel, Mr. Thames. That’s what this is about for all of you.”

“I can’t deny the logic of such a scheme,” Martel replied noncommittally.

“Good non-answer,” Bridge laughed. “It’s ok, doesn’t really matter. We all know Chronosoft didn’t buy up the LGL to have a city full of people that didn’t fit into the profit projections. People like Stonewall, the Families, the Bottle City Boys, they don’t quite mesh with that shiny happy middle class worker drone you want living in your company town. They don’t pay taxes, they don’t follow the rules, and they sure as hell don’t contribute to the bottom line.”

“You want to eradicate the brown, the black, the yellow and the red!” Chahine shouted. “You want the 21
^st
century race war so you can have your white castles!”

“I’m brown, you half-wit!” screamed Soto.

“He’s got a point. His skin is brown, though his soul is about as white as it gets.” Stonewall grinned at tÀoft LGhe mayor. “But we all know this got nothing to do with race. It’s about having and not having.”

Bridge interrupted the accusations. “So we’re at a bit of an impasse, then. The mayor and his corporate masters want shiny town, and are prepared to commit legal genocide to get it. The Families want a place of their own, without being corporate chattel. They want to deal their drugs, they want to sling hos and shoot each other up and be general pains-in-the-asses. But if this keeps up, we all know who’s going to win.” He glared at Nacho. “And it ain’t you, brother.”

Stonewall reinforced the point. “Your bench ain’t got the depth, Nacho. None of us do, not even if we combined all our forces.”

“So our choices are this. The Families can keep fighting amongst themselves, then fight the CLED until they get completely wiped out. The CLED can’t back down, because they are technically in the legal right to enforce the laws, no matter how brutally they choose to do so.
El Diablos
and
Los Magos
can call a truce, broker a peace and stop the madness but that won’t really matter now, will it, Mr. Mayor?” Soto tried to hold Bridge’s gaze, but his eyes fell to the floor. He coughed and shook his head. “CLED is going to hunt you down in every bore hole you can find, and they will end you.”

“But have any of you read the LGL Act, I mean actually read the bits and pieces of it that no one but fucking lawyers and assholes like me will read?” Aristotle raised his hand, as did Stonewall and Chahine. “Yeah, and you nerds. Of course you’ve read it.”

“The Act gives the LGL corporations a startling amount of leeway in how they run their domains. It’s actually quite ingenious. If I was a suspicious bastard, and I am, I’d think the corporations themselves wrote every single crack and loophole they could find into it. One of those loopholes is tucked away in a spot no one would think to look, an ingenious little phrase – ‘autonomous zone.’ It even sounds awesome, don’t it?”

“What are you driving at, Bridge?” Soto snapped. Martel’s eyebrow arched up, and his body shifted imperceptibly towards Bridge, as if straining to be closer to this new idea.

“LGL power is dependent on the corporation meeting certain targets, one of which is crime rate. The city has to be peaceful, since the whole point of the LGL was to calm the cities down after the riots. This gang war has significantly hurt your crime numbers haven’t they, Mr. Mayor? Yeah, thought so. An ‘autonomous zone’ is meant to fudge those numbers. It’s an accounting black hole. It allows Chronosoft to set up a certain sector of the city as a zone with no laws, and thus, no crime. I suppose they took the idea from the relaxation of drug laws in Amsterdam in the late 20
^th
. You, Mr. Mayor, can rope off an entire area of the city, up to three or four square miles, and suspend all laws in that area. Anyone wants to set up shop there can do so, they can sell anything they want, like drugs, or whores, they can shoot anybody they want, indulge in any perversity. But they get no police protection, and other than basic subsistence services like electricity, water, medical supplies and food shipments, the LGL gives them nothing. Citizens from outside are allowed to enter the zone to do whatever they wantÀs bas, but they’re on their own if they do.”

“You want me to create a free-for-all ghetto in the middle of LA?” Soto asked, with incredulous anger written across his mug.

“That’s exactly what I want. You’re standing in ground zero of Gangland. The entirety of the old Warehouse District would be the autonomous zone. All the Families would be required to restrict their activities to this area alone. They could continue this war as long as they want without any interference from CLED, and continue to do their gangster shit without fear of reprisal. It would be their home, completely autonomous from your government’s interference, a little reservation with its own rules, open to any who want to live there.”

Nacho began laughing. “Bridge, you are one
loco
motherfucker.”

“For once, I’d have to agree with the gangster,” Soto replied smoothly. “Why would I agree to that sort of thing?”

“Maybe you don’t want to see the bodies of thousands of gangsters on the daily news?” Soto’s face changed into a smirk. “Yeah, I know, you control the media outlets so the only people who would report on it would be the leakers, like this Sanderson Fielding guy. It would certainly help your crime numbers go down. No dice on that one? Yeah, didn’t think so either.”

Bridge rubbed his chin, continuing the pantomime as he built to the finish. “No, what you really need to see is the money. You need to see some profit out of this. And that’s what he’s here to provide.” Bridge pointed at Thames.

“Your honor, Bridge has come to me with quite a proposal. I’ve taken it to my superiors in the Chronosoft Entertainment division. They ran it up the flag pole, tossed some numbers around and it looks promising.”

“What does?”

“An international sensation, the kind of event television we haven’t seen this decade. I don’t know if you saw any of the viewership numbers on the riots, but let me tell you, the news divisions made the entire year’s worth of profits in just those few weeks by showing as much riot footage as they could. Real-life violence and misery, that is box office gold; platinum, even. An absolute hit. What if we could bring that kind of violent, over the top event to the world’s televisions every single week? Do you know what kind of ad revenue we’d get off that? What kind of download cut?
Gangland
will be the biggest hit this century! It will rewrite the rules of reality television!”

Bridge picked up the thread. “The Families will pledge to provide a certain amount of combat content once a week. Film crews will be stationed with the Families, recording their battles, charting losses, putting real personalities out there living and dying on the firing lines. They’ll be bigger media stars than athletes. You’ll all be television stars.”

“The revenue sharing package will be split four ways. Obviously, Chronosoft Entertainment gets a cut. The Families will get a cut as well. The citÀn" coy gets reimbursed the cost of food, ammo, electricity, water, meds and food. And the other exec producer gets a percentage.” Thames pointed at Bridge.

“You?” Soto spat.

Bridge smiled as large as life. “Me. My idea, after all, and my legwork to get all the players together. I don’t work for free, you know.”

“You son of a bitch,” Stonewall said in a whisper. He had spent the entire time looking down at the floor, listening intently, his anger growing with every word. “Bridge, you son of a bitch. You’re turning us into a fucking ultraviolence circus act.”

“Sorry, Stoney. A brother’s got to eat.”

“I’ll give you something to eat, you cocksucker!” Stonewall started to aim a swing at Bridge, only to be held back by the combined strength of Danton, Aristotle and Masa.

“Save it, Stonewall,” Masa hissed. “Sick as it may be, it makes a certain sense. We get to do what we’d be doing anyway, unfettered by the laws.”

“And how many of our people get to die for the GlobalNet’s sick pleasure?”

“Less.”

Stonewall pointed an angry finger at Bridge over the restraints. “We’re done,
puta
! Done, you hear me?”

“Yeah, I got you, brother,” Bridge replied with his jaw set. He avoided Aristotle’s accusing glare.

Chahine spoke up. “What about the Panthers? We don’t believe in violence.”

“Then you better get to believing,” Bridge replied. “You don’t have to participate, but you’re going to have to coordinate. Bottle City will be the eyes, controlling all the camera crews, which will be their street soldiers. In exchange, their crèches are off-limits as are the crews.”

“You still get to have your land scheme, Mr. Mayor. The city gets a cut of what is likely to be a huge GlobalNet hit. The Families get to survive. Chronosoft gets a peaceful city. What else could you want?”

The idea began seeping into Soto’s thoughts, and a look of slowly building disgust informed his mood. “It’s fucking barbaric. What kind of sick mind would think something up?”

“Is it any sicker than a mayor that starts a gang war for a development scheme?”

“What are you talking about?
El Diablos
started this war!”

“I know that’s what you’d like everyone to think, but let’s put the cards all out on the table here. There’s a reason
El Diablos
went after Pedro and stirred up all this shÀrepliit. They had no chance on their own, and their last leader knew that. Too bad he got whacked, right, Nacho? I’m sure it was your idea, but it wasn’t only your idea, was it? Your second made it possible, didn’t he? Chimuelo poked and prodded and when it seemed like you’d never take your shot, he came up with the one thing you thought you were lacking. Guns. He’s the one who brought The Greek to you, ain’t he? He’s the guy that was responsible for all that heavy-duty gear you’ve been sporting. Once you started getting heavily armed, you took your shot. Did you ever stop to think where Chimuelo got his connection? It wasn’t me. In fact, nobody I know had anything to do with this guy The Greek. They’d never heard of him. Now, I don’t claim to know everybody working LA, but somebody that can bring that kind of heavy-duty equipment to the party, that’s a guy I want to know. And that’s the kind of guy I’d hear something about from somebody.”