Artemis (17 page)

The bait was set. Now to see if anyone came nibbling.

I walked into the Lassiter Casino. It had wide windows looking out over Arcade Square so I could observe from a safe distance. Plus, it had a reasonably priced buffet on the third floor right up against those windows.

I paid for the all-you-can-eat Gunk bar with Harpreet's Gizmo.

The trick with Gunk is to steer clear of stuff trying to taste like other stuff. Don't get the “Tandoori Chicken” flavorant. You'll just be disappointed. Get “Myrtle Goldstein's Formulation #3.” That's good shit. No idea what the ingredients are. It could be termite carcasses and Italian armpit hair for all I know. I don't care. It makes the Gunk palatable, and that's what matters.

I took my bowl to a window table and sat down. I nibbled Gunk and sipped water, never taking my eyes off the bench where I'd stowed the Gizmo. It got boring after a while, but I stuck with it. This was a stakeout.

Could Lefty track my Gizmo? If he could, it'd give me an idea of how powerful he was. It would mean he had connections all the way to the top.

“Mind if I join you?” said a familiar voice behind me.

I jerked my head around to look.

Rudy. Shit. “Uh…” I said eloquently.

“I'll take that as a yes.” He seated himself and rested a Gunk bowl on the table. “As you can imagine, I have a few questions.”

“How did you find me?!”

“I tracked your Gizmo.”

“Yeah, but it's way down there!” I pointed to the windows.

He looked out over the Arcade. “Yes, imagine my surprise when your Gizmo turned on in the middle of Arcade Square. That's pretty careless. Doesn't seem like you at all.”

He took a bite of Gunk. “So I figured you'd be watching from a safe distance. This is a nice, cheap buffet and a perfect vantage point. Wasn't hard to work out.”

“Well, aren't you Mr. Clever.” I stood. “I'll just be on my way—”

“Sit down.”

“No, I don't think I will.”

“Sit
down
, Jazz.” He shot me a look. “If you think I won't tackle you here and now, think again. Eat your Gunk and let's talk.”

I settled back into my seat. There was no way I could take Rudy in a fight. I tried once, back when I was seventeen and stupid as shit. It didn't go well. The guy had muscles of iron. Magnificent, stallion-like muscles of iron. Did he work out? He had to, right? I wondered what he looked like working out. Would he be sweaty? Of course he'd be sweaty. It'd be all dripping down those muscles in rivulets of—

“I know you didn't commit the murders,” he said.

I snapped back to reality. “Aww, I bet you say that to all the girls.”

He pointed to me with his spoon. “I know you blew up the Sanchez harvesters, though.”

“I didn't have anything to do with that.”

“Do you expect me to believe the sabotage, the murders, and you hiding out are all unrelated?” He scooped a bite of Gunk from his bowl and ate it with perfect table manners. “You're in the middle of all this, and I want to know what you know.”

“You know everything I know. You should work on the murders instead of the petty vendetta you've got against me.”

“I'm trying to save your life, Jazz.” He put his napkin on the table. “Do you have any idea who you antagonized with that sabotage?”

“
Alleged
sabotage,” I said.

“Do you know who
owns
Sanchez Aluminum?”

I shrugged. “Some Brazilian company.”

“They're owned by O Palácio, Brazil's largest and most powerful organized crime syndicate.”

I froze.

Shit, shit, shittity shit!

“I see,” I said. “Spiteful bunch, are they?”

“Yes. They're the old-fashioned, ‘kill you to make a point' kind of mafia.”

“Wait…no…that can't be right. I've never even heard of these guys.”

“It's possible—just possible—that I know more about organized crime in my city than you do.”

I put my forehead in my hands. “You've got to be shitting me. Why the
hell
does the Brazilian mob own a lunar aluminum company?! The aluminum industry's in the toilet!”

“They're not in it for the profits,” Rudy said. “They use Sanchez Aluminum to launder money. Artemisian slugs are an unregulated, largely untracked quasi-currency and the city has iffy identity verification at best. We're a perfect haven for money laundering.”

“Oh God…”

“You have one thing going for you: They don't have a strong presence here. This isn't an ‘operation' to O Palácio. It's just an avenue for creative accounting. But it would seem they do have at least one enforcer on-site.”

“But…” I started. “Wait…let me think this through…”

He rested his hands on the table and waited politely.

“Okay,” I said. “Something doesn't add up here. Did Trond know about O Palácio?”

Rudy sipped his water. “I'm sure he did. He was the kind of man who researched everything before making a move.”

“Then why did he knowingly fuck with a major crime syndicate to take over a failing industry?”

For the first time in my life, I saw confusion on Rudy's face.

“Stumped, eh?” I said.

I glanced out at the Arcade and froze.

There was Lefty. Right next to the bench where I'd hidden my Gizmo.

I guess Rudy saw the color disappear from my face. “What?” he asked. He followed my gaze out the windows.

I shot him a glare. “That guy with his arm in a sling is the killer! How'd he know where my Gizmo is?”

“I don't know—” Rudy began.

“You know what else organized crime does?” I said. “They bribe cops! How the
fuck
did that guy track my Gizmo, Rudy?!”

He held both hands out. “Don't do anything rash—”

I did something rash. I flipped the table and hauled ass. Rudy would have to fight off a slowly tipping table before he could give chase.

I'd worked out my escape route in advance, of course. I ran straight across the casino floor and through an “Employees Only” door in the back. They were supposed to keep it locked but they never did. It led to the main delivery corridors that connected all the Aldrin casinos. I knew those tunnels well—I'd made hundreds of deliveries there. Rudy would never catch me.

One thing, though…he wasn't chasing me.

I slid to a stop in the corridor and watched the door. I don't know why—I guess I wasn't thinking well. If Rudy had barged through I would have lost valuable running-like-hell time. But he didn't.

“Huh,” I said.

I channeled my inner “dumbass in a horror movie” and walked back to the door. I opened it a crack and peeked through. No sign of Rudy, but a crowd had gathered near the buffet.

I slinked back through the casino and joined the crowd. They had good reason to gawk.

The window near our table was shattered. A few jagged spikes of glass stuck out from the frame. We don't have safety glass here. Importing polyvinyl butyral is too expensive. So our windows are good old-fashioned neck-slicing deathtraps. Hey, if you want to play life safe, don't live on the moon.

An American tourist in front of me nibbled on a Gunk bar and craned his neck to see over the crowd. (Only Americans wear Hawaiian shirts on the moon.)

“What happened?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he said. “Some guy kicked the window out and jumped through. It's three stories to the ground. Think he's dead?”

“Lunar gravity,” I reminded him.

“But it's like thirty feet!”

“Lunar grav—never mind. Was the guy dressed in a Mountie uniform?”

“You mean bright-red clothes and a weird hat?”

“That's the
ceremonial
uniform,” I said. “I mean a duty uniform. Light shirt, dark pants with a yellow stripe?”

“Oh, Han Solo pants. Yeah, he had those on.”

“Okay, thanks.” Pfft. Han Solo's pants have a
red
stripe. And it's not even a stripe—it's a bunch of dashes. Some people have no education.

Rudy hadn't chased me. He'd gone after Lefty. The Arcade-level entrance was three floors down and across a huge lobby. It would have taken at least two minutes for Rudy to get there by conventional means. I guess he'd picked a faster route.

I peered into the Arcade along with the other onlookers. Both Rudy and Lefty seemed to be long gone. Too bad—I would have loved to see Rudy beating the shit out of that bastard and cuffing him.

But I guessed this meant Rudy wasn't part of a plot to kill me. And hey, now Lefty had Rudy to deal with. All in all, not a bad outcome.

Not that I was happy. I still didn't know how Lefty found my Gizmo.

My hidey-hole on Bean Down 27 was barely okay for sleeping and too damned small for anything else.

So I sat on the floor in the corridor. On the rare occasions when I heard someone coming, I skittered into my hutch like the cockroach I am. But mostly, I had the hall to myself.

First thing I wanted to know: Did Rudy catch Lefty? I scanned local news sites and the answer was no. Murders are extremely rare in Artemis. If Rudy'd caught the killer, it would be on every front page. Lefty was still out there.

Time for some research. My subject: Sanchez Aluminum. I tapped away on Harpreet's Gizmo to look up public info about the company.

They employed about eighty people. That may not sound like much but in a town of two thousand it's pretty significant. Their CEO and founder was Loretta Sanchez, from Manaus, Brazil. She had a doctorate in chemistry with a specialty in inorganic processes. She invented a system to cheaply implement the FFC Cambridge Process to deoxidize anorthite by minimizing loss in the calcium chloride salt bath via…I stopped caring around there. Point was, she was in charge, and (though the article didn't mention it) she was mobbed up all to hell.

Of course, the harvester sabotage was all over the news. In response, Sanchez had implemented tight security. Their offices in Armstrong Bubble no longer allowed visitors. They'd restricted smelting-facility access to core personnel only. They even had humans (not just computers) directly checking company IDs on the train to the smelter.

Most important, they weren't taking any chances with that last harvester. They'd contracted the EVA Guild to guard it, with EVA masters working in shifts to have two people physically with the harvester at all times.

There was a certain pride in knowing I caused an entire company to shit themselves. They'd tried to kill me. Repeatedly. And it wasn't just an O Palácio thing either. Someone in the Sanchez control room had ordered a harvester to smush me when I was out on the surface, remember? There was some
flawed
company culture going on over there.

Bastards.

The Gizmo buzzed in my hand—a notification from my email client.

I might have been on the run for my life, but I wasn't willing to go without email. I just had it running through a proxy so no one could tell which Gizmo I used to check in. The proxy server was on Earth somewhere (I think in the Netherlands?), so everything was slow as shit. It only updated once per hour. Better than nothing.

I had fifteen messages, fourteen of which were Dad desperately trying to get in touch with me. “Sorry, Dad,” I said to myself. “You don't want none of this, and I don't want none of it on you.”

The fifteenth email was from Jin Chu.

Ms. Bashara. Thank you for saving my life—your actions at the hotel kept me safe. At least, I assume the woman in my room was you—you're the only other (surviving) person involved in this plot-gone-wrong. Now that I'm aware of the threat, I have made arrangements for my safety and I am staying hidden. Can we meet? I would like to arrange for your safety as well. I owe you that. —Jin Chu

Interesting. I ran a few scenarios in my head and settled on a plan.

Ok. Meet me at my father's welding shop tomorrow at 8am. The address is CD6-3028. If you're not there by 8:05 I'm gone.

I set an alarm on my Gizmo for four a.m. and crawled into my rathole.

The thing that sucks about life-or-death situations is how boring they can be.

I waited in Dad's shop for three hours. I didn't have to show up at five a.m., but I'd be damned if I was going to let Jin Chu show up before I did.

I leaned a chair against the back wall of the shop, right next to the air shelter where I'd snuck my first cigarette. I remember I damn near puked from all the smoke that built up but hey, when you're a rebellious teen and you think you're making a statement, it's worth it. “Take that, Daddy!”

God, I was such a dipshit.

I checked the clock on the wall every ten seconds as eight a.m. approached. I fiddled with a handheld blowtorch to pass the time. Dad used it to shrink seals onto pipe fittings. It wasn't “welding,” but you had to do it in a fireproof room, so he offered it as one of his services.

I kept my finger by the ignition trigger. It wasn't a gun (there were no guns in Artemis) but it could hurt someone if they came too close. I wanted to be ready for anything.

The far door opened at 8:00 on the dot. Jin Chu stepped through gingerly. He hunched his shoulders and darted his gaze around like a frightened gazelle. He spotted me in the corner and waved awkwardly. “Uh…hi.”

“You're punctual,” I said. “Thanks.”

He stepped forward. “Sure, I—”

“Stay over there,” I said. “I'm not feeling super-trusting today.”

“Yeah okay, okay.” He took a breath and let it out unevenly. “Look, I'm really sorry. It wasn't supposed to go like this. I just thought I could make a few bucks, you know? Like a finder's fee?”

I tossed the blowtorch from one hand to the other. Just to make sure he saw it. “For what? What the hell is going on around here?”

“For telling Trond and O Palácio about ZAFO. In separate, confidential transactions, of course.”

“I see.” I scowled at the weaselly little shit. “And then you made
more
money by selling out Trond to O Palácio when their harvesters blew up?”

“Well, yeah. But it's not like that was going to stay secret. Once he took over the oxygen contract they woulda worked it out.”

“How did they find out I did the sabotage?”

He looked at his feet.

I groaned. “You are
such
an asshole!”

“It's not my fault! They offered me so much money!”

“How did you even know I did it?”

“Trond told me. He gets chatty when he's drunk.” He frowned. “He was a cool guy. I didn't think anyone would get hurt, I just—”

“You just thought you'd stir up a billionaire and a mob syndicate and nothing would happen? Fuck you.”

He fidgeted for a few seconds. “So…do you have the ZAFO sample? The case from my hotel room?”

“Yes. Not here, but it's safe.”

“Thank God.” He loosened up a bit. “Where is it?”

“First tell me what ZAFO is.”

He winced. “It's kind of secret.”

“We're past secrets now.”

He looked truly pained. “It's just…it cost a
lot
of money to make that sample. We had to launch a dedicated satellite with a centrifuge to grow it in low-Earth orbit. I'll be
super-duper
fired if I go home without it.”

“Fuck your job. People got
murdered
! Tell me why!”

He let out a heavy sigh. “I'm sorry. I'm just so sorry. I didn't want any of this to happen.”

“Apologize to Lene Landvik,” I said. “She's the crippled teenager who's now an orphan.”

Tears formed in his eyes. “No…I have to apologize to you too.”

The door opened again. Lefty stepped in. His right arm still hung in a sling. His left arm, however, held a knife that could gut me like a trout.

I shook all over. I wasn't sure if it was terror or rage. “You son of a bitch!”

“I'm so sorry,” Jin Chu sobbed. “They were gonna kill me. This was the only way I got to live.”

I clicked the trigger and the blowtorch flamed to life. I held it out at arm's length toward the approaching Lefty. “Which part of your face you want crème brûléed, asshole?”

“You make it hard, I make it hurt,” said Lefty. He had a thick accent. “This can be quick. Doesn't have to hurt.”

Jin Chu covered his face and cried. “And I'm going to get fired too!”

“Goddammit!” I yelled to him. “Will you stop whining about your problems during my murder?!”

I grabbed a pipe from the workbench. There was something weird about being on the moon fighting for your life with a stick and some fire.

Lefty knew if he lunged I could block with the pipe and give him a face full of blowtorch. What he didn't know was that I had a more complicated plan.

I swung the pipe with all my strength at a wall-mounted valve. The resounding metal-on-metal clank was followed by the scream of high-pressure air. The valve shot across the room and smacked into the far wall.

While Lefty paused to consider why the hell I'd done that, I leapt to the ceiling (not hard here—the average person can jump three meters straight up). At the top of my arc, I blasted a fire sensor with the blowtorch.

Red lights blinked and the fire alarm blared throughout the room. The door slammed shut behind Jin Chu. He jerked around in shock.

As soon as I hit the ground, I bounded into the air shelter and slammed the door behind me. Lefty was hot on my heels, but he didn't catch up in time. I spun the crank to seal myself in. Then I jammed the pipe into the crank spokes and held on to the other end.

Lefty tried to turn the crank from the other side, but he couldn't overcome my leverage advantage.

He glared at me through the air shelter's small round window. I flipped him off.

I could see Jin Chu clawing at the door, trying to get out. Of course it was no use. It was a fireproof room's door—solid metal and clamped shut with a mechanical interlock that could only be opened from the outside.

The foggy airflow from the broken valve slowed and petered out. Dad's wall valves connected to gas cylinders that he refilled every month.

Lefty stormed to the workbench and grabbed a long, steel rod. He came back to my shelter, breathing heavily. I got ready for a life-or-death game of circular tug-o-war.

He panted and wheezed as he stuck the rod into the handle. He pushed hard, but I was able to hold firm. By all rights, he should have won—he was bigger, stronger, and had better leverage. But I had one thing he didn't: oxygen.

The gas that had just filled the room? Neon. Dad had wall-mounted neon valves because he used it so much when welding aluminum.

The fire system had sealed the air vents, so the workshop was full of inert gas. You don't notice neon when you breathe it. It just feels like normal air. And the human body has no way to detect a
lack
of oxygen. You just plug along until you pass out.

Lefty fell to his hands and knees. He shook a bit, then collapsed to the floor.

Jin Chu lasted a little longer. He hadn't exerted himself as much. But he succumbed a few seconds later.

Let's meet so I can protect you
. Did he really think I'd fall for that?

I pulled out Harpreet's Gizmo and dialed Rudy's number. I didn't want to, but I had no choice. Either I could call him or the fire brigade volunteers would when they arrived. May as well get a jump on it.

Artemis didn't have a police station. Just Rudy's office in Armstrong Bubble. Its holding cell was nothing more than a repurposed air shelter. In fact, it was Dad who'd installed it. Air shelters don't have locks, of course. That would massively defeat the purpose. So Rudy's “cell” had a metal chain with a padlock around the crank. Crude, but effective.

The usual occupants of the cell were drunks or people who needed to cool off after a fistfight. But today it held Lefty.

The rest of the room wasn't much larger than the apartment I'd grown up in. If Rudy had been born a few thousand years earlier, he would have made a good Spartan.

Jin Chu and I sat handcuffed to metal chairs.

“This is some bullshit,” I said.

“You poor, innocent thing,” said Rudy without looking up from his computer.

Jin rattled his handcuffs. “Hey, I actually
am
innocent! I shouldn't be here.”

“Are you fucking kidding?!” I said. “You tried to kill me!”

“That's not true!” Jin pointed to Lefty's cell. “
He
tried to kill you. I just set up the meet. If I hadn't he would have killed me on the spot!”

“Chickenshit!”

“I value my life more than yours. Sue me. We wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't been so
blatantly obvious
with your sabotage!”

“Fuck you!”

Rudy pulled a squirt bottle from his desk and sprayed us both. “Hush,” he said.

Jin winced “Now, that's just unprofessional!”

“Quit bitching,” I said, shaking the water off my face.

“You may be used to taking shots in the face, but I'm not,” he said.

Okay, that was a good one. “Go fuck yourself,” I said.

The door opened and Administrator Ngugi stepped in. Because why the hell not?

Rudy glanced over. “Hmm. You.”

“Constable,” Ngugi said. She looked over to me. “Jasmine. How are you, dear?”

I showed her my handcuffs.

“Is that necessary, Constable?”

“Is it necessary for you to be here?” Rudy asked.

I could have sworn the temperature dropped ten degrees.

“You'll have to excuse the constable,” Ngugi said to me. “We don't see eye-to-eye on everything.”

“If you'd stop coddling criminals like Jazz, we'd get along better.”

She waved her hand as if shooing a bug. “Every city needs an underbelly. It's best to let the petty criminals do their thing and focus on bigger issues.”

I grinned. “You heard the lady. And I'm the pettiest of them all. So lemme go.”

Rudy shook his head. “The administrator's authority over me is questionable at best. I work directly for KSC. And you're going nowhere.”

Ngugi walked over to the air shelter and peeked through the window. “So this is our murderer?”

“Yes,” said Rudy. “And if you hadn't spent the last decade hampering my attempts to drive out organized crime, those murders wouldn't have happened.”

“We've been through this, Constable. Artemis wouldn't exist without syndicate money. Idealism doesn't put Gunk on people's plates.” She turned to face Rudy. “Did the suspect have anything to say?”

“He refuses to answer questions. He wouldn't even tell me his name—but according to his Gizmo, his name is Marcelo Alvarez and he's a ‘freelance accounting consultant.' ”

“I see. How sure are you that this is the man?”

Rudy turned his computer to face Ngugi. The screen showed medical lab results. “Doc Roussel dropped by earlier and got a blood sample from him. She says it matches the blood found at the crime scene. Also, the wound on his arm is consistent with the knife Irina Vetrov had in her hand.”

“The blood DNA matched?” Ngugi said.

“Roussel doesn't have a crime lab. She compared blood type and enzyme concentrations—they matched. If we want a DNA comparison we'll have to send samples to Earth. It'll take at least two weeks.”

“That won't be necessary,” Ngugi said. “We only need enough evidence to warrant a trial, not to convict him.”

“Hey!” Jin Chu interjected. “Excuse me! I demand to be released!”

Rudy squirted him with the bottle.

“Who is this man?” Ngugi asked.

“Jin Chu from Hong Kong,” Rudy said. “Couldn't find any record of where he works and he isn't forthcoming about it. He set a trap so Alvarez could kill Bashara, but claims he did it under duress. Alvarez was going to kill him if he didn't.”

“We can hardly blame him for that,” she said.

“Finally! Someone with common sense!” Jin said.

“Deport him to China,” said Ngugi.

“Wait, what?” Jin said. “You can't do that!”

“Of course I can,” she said. “You were complicit in a plot to murder someone. Coerced or not, you're not welcome here.”

He opened his mouth to protest again and Rudy pointed the squirt bottle at him. He thought better of it.

Ngugi sighed and shook her head. “This is troubling. Very troubling. You and I…we're not friends. But neither of us wants murder in our city.”

“On that, at least, we agree.”

“And this is new.” She clasped her hands behind her back. “We've had murders before, but it's always been a jealous lover, an angry spouse, or a drunken brawl. This was professional. I don't like it.”

“Was your gentle hand with petty crime worth it?” Rudy asked.

“That's not fair.” She shook off the gloom. “One thing at a time. There's a meatship launching today for the
Gordon
cycler. I want Mr. Jin on it. Deport to Hong Kong with no legal complaints. Hang on to Mr. Alvarez for now. We need to collate the evidence for the courts in…where's he going?”