Preying for keeps

28

Skater was almost asleep in the padded luxury of the Lear-Cessna Platinum I jet when the portacom rang. Shifting the set forward, he powered it up and said hello.

"I've got the skinny on Synclair Tone," Kestrel said, returning Skater's call.

Archangel was the only one of the team still awake. She sat hunched over her deck, tied in through the luxury jet's onboard computers and the satlink. Not only had Saeder-Krupp supplied the jet, they'd even installed an Elvis-sized seat. The troll lay on his back, arms thrown out to his sides, snoring fitfully. Lofwyr had also sent a med-team to meet them when they'd boarded the jet, and the troll's shoulder had been bandaged where the dog bit him.

"Let me hear it."

"Joker's connected to the Mafia just as you suspected. He's working out of a stable of hitters managed by Tomasino Carbone."

"I'm not familiar with the name."

"No reason you should be. Carbone handles wetwork, matching the right job with the right guy. He stays in the background, no PR, no profile whatsoever. Lone Star's been trying to nail him for years."

"Tone is working for Carbone?" Skater asked.

"On the surface. See, there's a wrinkle."

"What?"

"Carbone has a rep for handling only top-notch hitters. Star-quality. Experts in mage work, physical adepts, street razors hardwired to hell. The people he services, sometimes they want their targets to simply disappear, or commit suicide, with no repercussions for them. Tone doesn't fit the profile. He's a fragging street animal. Finesse for him would be making sure the whole clip hit his target, not just making sure only one bullet was needed."

"Then what's Carbone doing with Tone?"

"I asked that very question," Kestrel said. "No definite word came back. But I was told that it was a favor."

"To Tone?" Skater asked.

"No way. To someone else higher up in the food chain."

"Can you find out who?"

"Kid, you've lived on the backstreets where I've gotta go to get this buzz. These wiseguys don't talk."

"What about a contact to Carbone? I'll ask him myself."

'"Are you glitched?"

Larisa's ruined face slipped into Skater's mind, bringing with it a memory of the empty crib. "No."

"There's a bounty on your head, kid, or don't you remember?"

"I need this slag, Kestrel. No matter how I have to do it." Tone was all that remained of the ties back to Larisa.

The fixer sighed. "Okay, I'll check into it. In the meantime, I've heard that Tone has gotten himself a piece of an after-hours casino on the west side, down in the dock area. He's leaning on them for protection money."

"Carbone's doing?"

"Slot, no. Carbone wouldn't touch this place. It's called Stinky-Fingered Al's. Joker who owns it used to be a proctologist before he got busted from the doc biz for improprieties unbecoming a member of the profession. Makes you wonder about the improprieties that are becoming. The trade is strictly low-level gamblers and hustlers, mostly longshoremen and blue collar. There's about eight killings a year there, and maybe two attempted robberies."

"Tone has cut himself in on the gate?"

"Yepper. And Stinky-Fingered Al is none too happy about it, but he can't do a fragging thing about it. No matter what else is going on, Stinky-Finger isn't going to try to slot Tone over as long as Carbone is backing him."

"Has Tone done any wetwork for Carbone yet?"

"No way to tell that, chummer."

"Could be interesting to ask."

"Could be interesting to see if you're still standing when the question clears your lips."

"Do what you can," Skater said. "I'll be in touch." He punched the telecom off. then pushed himself out of the seat, wondering who might have leaned on Carbone for Tone. There wasn't a lot in the guy's resume to make someone go to bat for him. Meaning he'd done something, or was going to do something, for someone who could.

The sprawl turned on the cut of the deal, and there was always another one in the works.

"Stinky-Fingered Al's?" Duran said.

"You listened in."

"Kind of hard not to. No offense."

"None taken."

The ork shifted. "I know the place. Want company when you go? It's not really a joint where you want to go stag."

Skater looked at him. "I'd like that."

Duran nodded, men closed his eyes and relaxed again. "Just say when."

In addition to the trip out of the Tir and support, Lofwyr had also provided a suite of apartments near the Aztechnology complex that had its own private elevator so they could come and go pretty much as they pleased. Four vehicles were also at their disposal in the underground parking area. Skater had no doubt that whatever the dragon's real scheme, the stakes were high. He wondered if he'd ever know what was going on, then hoped he wouldn't. Too much knowledge could be deadly.

The team arrived back in Seattle in the early afternoon. For the first day and a half, Skater had them all keep a low profile. They ordered take-out and charged it to the corporate account, and slept in shifts. Archangel set her own schedule, exhausting herself in the work of surreptitiously buying up the stocks through straw accounts as well as trying to find out who the other major players were. By the evening of the first day, she'd cut the list from six to four. On the morning of the second day after a round of heavy trading, she cut that list to three. But she still wasn't able to put names to the buyers.

Skater woke after each sleep, whether it was for his whole shift or a nap he'd managed, dripping wet from a cold sweat and in the throes of another nightmare about Larisa, and sometimes about the baby. After growing up on the Council lands, he'd never much liked being cooped up inside. Knowing the nightmares were just waiting for him to close his eyes didn't make it any easier.

When he stood trembling with the aftershocks of some nightmare and gazed out the bullet and bomb-proof windows during the day or night, he could almost hear the streets calling out to him. It was where he needed to be, the battleground he was most familiar with.

That afternoon, while Archangel was searching down names of players, Skater arranged an untraceable telecom call to four of the major trid media groups and talked with their investigative reporters regarding NuGene's inability to make good on the stocks they were issuing.

The story broke across the networks that afternoon and again that night. NuGene spokesmen, including Tavis Silver-staff, were unavailable for comment.

At the end of the eleven o'clock news round-up, however, the society reporter for KOMA showed footage of Ariadne Silverstaff's new daughter.

Mother and infant were going home the following day, after staying in the hospital for routine observation. The delivery was easy, Ariadne Silverstaff was quoted as saying. The footage was short and to the point, taken in the private room where the two had stayed since birth. There were also a few seconds with Dr. Liam Reed, who said the pair were in the pink of health.

The segment ended with a close-up of mother and child.

"Is something wrong?" Archangel asked as she happened to come into the room.

Skater had stopped dead in the middle of the living room, galvanized by the sight of the round-faced baby ogling the people around her "No," he said. But he was lying, because something was suddenly very wrong. What he'd seen in the face of that newborn infant was Larisa.

During the trading the next morning, ReGEN stock rained down like confetti on the trading floors. The going price dropped by thirty-five percent at open, then continued falling another twenty-two percent before the close of the day. None of the new stock issued had moved at all, But Archangel and the three other buyers kept adding to their hoards, buying up from the people who were afraid of losing all their investment.

At four o'clock, Skater found a message in one of his drops from a woman who claimed to be Larisa Hansinger's mother. She wanted to meet, to give him something Larisa had left for him.

The apartment was in the Tukwila neighborhood in the south downtown section of Seattle. It was a third-floor walkup at the back where plastitwine ran stitches back and forth between the adjacent buildings, and clothing was hung on them. Human and meta kids played together in the grass and weeds that sprang up through the cracked plascrete that had once been a courtyard. Graffiti, both the old spray-paint kind and the new neon tubing that was the latest in use, scarred the pitted walls, violence and degradation and pride all wrapped up in bright colors.

Skater walked easily, dressed in street clothes and boots, the Predator tucked under his Kevlar jacket at the back. His heart was pounding in his chest when he reached the door of 305, but it wasn't from the exertion of the climb. The doorbell had been broken, and only two wires stuck out. He rapped his knuckles on the scratched surface of the door.

Archangel had checked the address out for him, finding that it was listed to Kalika Chilson, who was cross-referenced on both Larisa's birth and death certificates. Skater didn't think the message was a trap, but Elvis and Duran had ridden along as rearguard, maintaining a position in a van only a few blocks away.

The door opened hesitantly. "Yeah?" a harsh female's voice demanded.

"I'm Skater."

"You alone?"

"Yes."

The woman opened the door and stuck her face out suspiciously. She was short, thin, and frail, looking like a bleached mop that had been up-ended, given arms and legs, and shoved into a worn set of black synthleathers. She had on a white tee shirt that had gone sickly gray under the jacket, and the sagging breasts advertised that she wasn't wearing underclothes. Her ears and features were elven.

She didn’t invite Skater in, taking time to fire up a cigarette butt that sent her into a tit of coughing. She squinted up at him when it passed. "Larisa said there'd probably be some money in it for me."

"Depends on what you have," Skater said. "A telecom message chip she said you'd want."

"Did she say what it was about?"

"No." A black circle ringed under her left eye, a bruise already past its prime.

"Then why should I be so ready to pay you?" Skater asked.

"You come, didn't you?"

Skater didn't have a reply for that. "How much?"

She shrugged, trying to play it off and let him make the offer. She obviously didn't know what the message chip was worth. "Got my eye blacked over it." she said. "Two guys come to my squat yesterday. Wanted to know if I'd been in touch with Larisa before she died. I lied. Told them no. They hit me, wanting to make sure I was telling the truth. But I've been hit before. I can take a pretty good beating if I have to. Anyway, them showing up here like that made me start thinking Larisa wasn't lying when she said there'd be some profit in me calling you. At first, I was afraid it would only bring trouble. Since that had already got here, I figured I'd give you a call this morning."

Looking at the woman and listening to her. Skater wondered how Larisa could have even been in the same gene pool, much less the woman's daughter.

Evidently she thought he was still looking at her eye. "Larisa's father could throw a good punch when he wanted to." Kalika Chilson lit another cigarette from the stub of the first, then hacked her way through another coughing fit This time it ended with a gob of phlegm sailing over the side of the railing and splatting near a trio of troll boys who immediately started yelling profanities at the woman.

"Who were the men who came here?" Skater asked.

"Gutterkin," she answered. "One of them had on a fancy suit and a new face, but the mark of the street was still there. Fragging pieces of drek is what they were."

"The name Synclair Tone mean anything to you?"

"One was called Tone. The other one was Bobby. It was Tone who done the hitting. He liked it; you could see it in his eyes."

"What's on the chip?" Skater asked.

The thin shoulders rose and fell. "Don't know. It's password protected." She smiled at him, showing gapped teeth. "I'll admit, I ain't no saint." She licked her lips. "Think you want to spend five thousand nuyen to find out what's on it?"

Skater dug his hand into his pocket and took out one of the credsticks he had there. A brief glance showed him it was one with five thousand nuyen keyed on it. Lofwyr's coffers ran deep. "It's open-coded. Put your passcode and SIN in and you're wiz."

She took the credstick hesitantly. "I don't suppose I could ask for more?"

"No."

Her gaze was belligerent. "And if I did?"

"I'd book," Skater replied. "Maybe you could find the two guys who showed up here before. Maybe I'd even call them and tell them you lied. It doesn't sound like you'd get more than I'm offering."

Without another word, Kalika Chilson reached into an inner pocket of her jacket and retrieved the message chip. "Don't suppose you'd want to see the things she left here."

"She hasn't been here recently?"

"No."

Skater shook his head. "I don't think so." He inserted the chip into the portacom he'd brought and powered up. Larisa formed on the display immediately.

"Jack," the message said, "if you get this, I guess it

Skater shut it off. Whatever Larisa had left for him was private. He meant for it to stay that way. "I thought you said it was password protected."

"It is," the woman insisted. "You let it play a little longer, she'll tell you that."

Skater nodded and said thanks. He held the portacom as he went down the steps, wondering if the message held all the secrets. Some, he felt certain, he'd already guessed.