city blues 01 - dome city blues (36 page)

He looked up at me, the first glimmer of hope in his eyes.

I sat on the bed and changed my socks.  The left one was soaked with blood from stepping on Ryan’s chest.  I rolled up the bloody sock so that the wet part was at the center, and wound the other sock around that to make a neat, dry packet.  I stuck the little bundle in my pocket.

I pulled on my shoes and stood up.  “If I ever catch you in my shadow, I’ll kill you.  No hesitation.  Understand?”

Ryan nodded.

“Good.  Now, close your eyes and turn your face to the wall.  If you so much as flinch before I’m out of here, I’ll empty this clip into your head.”

Ryan clenched his eyes shut and turned his face away.

I flicked the fire selector on the machine pistol back to
Auto
.  Despite Ryan’s assurances, his backup might be inside the hotel, maybe just on the other side of my door.

I punched the bypass button on the electronic lock, snatched the door open, and leapt across the hall, clear of the doorway, the machine pistol at the ready.  The hall was empty in both directions.

The stairs were about 20 meters down the hall to the right of my room.  I covered the distance quickly and quietly until I stood with my back to the wall just short of the open doorway to the stairwell.

I wheeled around the corner and swung the machine pistol to cover the stairs.  Nobody home.

I cat-footed down two flights and repeated my jack-in-the-box entry.  The lobby was empty.

A split second after I rounded the corner, the longshoreman night manager stepped into his office and closed the door.

I walked around the end of the counter and rapped on the door with the barrel of the machine pistol.

“I didn’t tell them nothing.”  His voice was muffled by the cheap wooden door.

“Then what are you hiding from?”

“I’m calling the cops.”

“What are you going to tell them?  That you sent someone up to my room to murder me in my sleep, and I had the nerve to get pissed-off about it?”

“I didn’t send nobody nowhere.”

“But you told them where to find me, didn’t you?”

“Go away,” he said.  “I don’t want no trouble.”

“Open the door.  I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Go away.  I got a gun in here.”

“Open the door or I’m going to start shooting through the wall.”  I knocked on the sheetrock with the end of the silencer.  “Sounds pretty thin,” I said.  “Think it’ll stop bullets?”

Actually, it probably
would
stop the machine pistol’s ceramic flechettes, but he didn’t have to know that.

“The door ain’t locked,” he said.

“I didn’t ask you if it was locked.  I told you to open it.”

The door opened a couple of centimeters.

“Open it the rest of the way, then back up slowly.”

He did as he was told, backing away from the open door with his hands held out to show that they were empty.  There was no sign of the gun he had mentioned.

I glanced around the room before stepping inside.

Longshoreman blinked several times rapidly.  “What do you want?”

“Two things,” I said.  “First, is there a back way out of here?”

He jerked his chin toward a metal door on the other side of the desk.  “What else?”

I dropped the key chip on the desk top.  “I want my key deposit back.  I’m checking out.”

CHAPTER 24

I hopscotched across the darkened parking lot, using parked cars and shadows for cover.  I didn’t see any sign of Bobby Dean, if there was such a person.  I had no doubt that Ryan had backup, but I didn’t trust his version of the details.  For all I knew, there were six of them, and none was named Bobby Dean.

On the far side of the parking lot, I stopped in the shadow of a coffee shop.  A purple neon sign on the front of the building spelled out
Knick Knack Kerouac
in misshapen lettering designed to resemble graffiti.  Cute.

I stood for a second, scanning the area for Ryan’s buddies, and considered my next move.  I could keep walking.  I didn’t really need to talk to this Bobby Dean.  On the other hand, I wanted to see that trid.  Besides, Bobby had come to pay me a visit in the night; it seemed only polite to return the favor.

I walked a block North on La Brea, turned left on Waring, walked another block, and turned left again on Detroit.  I watched the shadows carefully, paranoia riding my shoulders like a pet demon.

The stretch of Melrose leading back toward the Velvet Clam was reasonably well lit.  I stuck to the middle of the street to avoid being silhouetted by the streetlights.

Bobby was crouched in the shadow of a dilapidated brown Chrysler, eyes glued to the front door of the Velvet Clam.

Surprise.  Bobby was Bobbie.

I swept the area with my eyes, looking for more of Ryan’s friends.  Nobody.  Just Bobbie.

I crept up behind her, machine pistol ready if she turned around.

Sneaking up on her didn’t exactly require ninja-like stealth.  The idiot had brought her jam-box to an ambush.

I set the travel bag down quietly.

A machine pistol identical to Ryan’s lay on the sidewalk beside her.

She was so wrapped up in watching the hotel and listening to her music that she didn’t even notice when I picked up her weapon.  I flicked on the safety and stuck it in my waistband.

A gentle tug on the trigger of Ryan’s machine pistol kicked on the laser sight.  I pointed the green dot at the fender directly in front of Bobbie’s face.

She spun around, scrabbling frantically for her gun.  She stopped when she realized that the green dot was dancing on the bridge of her nose.  She sat down on the sidewalk and pulled the earphones out of her ears.

I could hear the music now, distant sounding and tinny.  I didn’t recognize the song, but the band was called
Albino Safari
, a white supremacist slash-rock group popular with skin heads and other Nazi wannabe’s.

“Are you Bobbie?”

The woman nodded quickly.

“Move away from the car,” I said, “into the light.”  I drew a path for her on the cement with the laser.

She started to get up.

“No.  Don’t stand up.  Just slide over.”

Bobbie planted her hands on the sidewalk and crabbed sideways in sort of a scoot-shuffle.

“There.  That’s good.”

She settled to the sidewalk.

I got a better look at her in the light.  She was a little older than Ryan, but not much.

Her left eye was artificial, a chromed steel sphere with a glowing red LED for a pupil.  The left side of her head was shaved, her scalp tattooed with black zebra stripes.  The tattoo flowed out of sight down the left side of her neck and re-emerged from the left sleeve of her black tee shirt.  It probably covered the entire left side of her body.  The hair on the right side of her head was a stiff ruff, cut and teased to resemble the mane of a zebra, and dyed to compliment her tattoo.

She wore tight red jeans and a wide black leather belt with silver swastika-shaped ornaments.  The laces of her ultra-white Korean running shoes were threaded through a pair of steel military dog tags.

“How many of you are there?”

She spit her chewing gum on the sidewalk.  “Just me and Razor.”

She was probably lying.

“Where’s Razor?” she asked.  “Did you kill him?”

I planted the green targeting dot on the center of her forehead.  “What do you think?”

“Shit.”

“You’ve got a trid,” I said.  “I want it.”

She reached around her back.

“Careful...”

Her hand came back around slowly.  In it was a trid.

I took it carefully from her outstretched fingers.  It was me all right.  There was a printed message on the back, just like Ryan had said.  I didn’t have time to look at it closely; one of Ryan’s thugs might come to Bobbie’s rescue any second.  I stuck the trid in the pocket of my windbreaker.

“Turn around.  Lace your fingers behind your head.”  I gestured with the machine pistol.

Bobbie did as she was told.

“Listen to me carefully.  I’m going to walk away.  If you so much as sneeze before I’m out of sight, I’m going to cut you to ribbons.  You got that?”

She nodded.

“If I ever see you again, you’re dog food.  You understand?”

Another nod.

I picked up my travel bag and backed away.  When I got about ten meters, I turned around and started jogging toward a line of parked cars that represented the closest cover.

A half-second before I reached the nearest car, something shiny whistled past my right ear.

I spun around, dropped to one knee, and squeezed off three rounds.

Bobbie was standing, her right arm poised to loose another swastika-throwing star.

One of the flechettes caught her in the right leg, mid thigh.  Another punched a hole through her left leg, just above the knee.  The impact drove her back against the side of the Chrysler.

Unlike Ryan, she didn’t scream when she went down.  Instead, she gave a strange squeak followed by a guttural keening.

I walked away quickly, using the cars for cover as much as possible.

Shiruken.  Goddamned throwing stars.  I should have checked her belt.

I took a right at the first corner and began sprinting immediately, constantly watching the shadows. I turned left at the next corner and continued sprinting, trying to distance myself from the Velvet Clam as rapidly as possible.

When I had three or four blocks behind me, I ducked into an alley, and waited in the darkness, hoping to ambush any pursuers.

After several minutes, I began to hope that I’d escaped.  The tension gradually drained from my shoulders as my muscles started to relax.

I pressed the illumination button on my watch and stole a glance at the numerals: 2:17.  Jesus.  The day was less than three hours old, and I’d already shot two people.

I felt the shakes coming on.  I tried to squelch them, will them away, but the tremors hit me hard enough to make my teeth chatter.  My knees went wobbly.  I made a vain effort to ignore the churning in my stomach.  A surge of naked fear washed over me and left me sagging against the wall of a building.

A psychologist would probably call it a defense mechanism; I call it my
war face
.  When the heat is on, I project this aura of invulnerability, the fearless persona that John had dubbed Sergeant Steel.  It’s a mask that I hide behind; a cold hard edge that protects me from my own weaknesses.  But when the pressure is off, my war face deserts me, and leaves me wallowing in my own fear and self pity.

I hid there in the darkened alley until the tremors finally played themselves out.  I pushed myself away from the wall and straightened up.  I rolled my shoulders and drew a breath to steady myself.

I put both machine pistols in my travel bag and zipped it shut.  The Blackhart hung ready in my shoulder holster if I needed it.

I moved to the edge of the alley and looked both ways.  All clear.  I stepped into the street and started walking.

I found an all-night convenience store on Willoughby Avenue.  A blonde woman with an advanced case of middle aged frumpery sold me a printout of the latest news feed, a plastic bulb of coffee, and a pack of Marlboros to replace the ones that Ryan had shot to pieces.

I stood under a streetlight in the parking lot and read the news.  The headlines centered around a major bombing in San Diego.  Six simultaneous explosions had partially collapsed one of the big domes downtown.  The death toll was in the hundreds and escalating rapidly as rescue crews uncovered more bodies.  A radical Luddite Cult was taking credit for the catastrophe, calling it
“A return to God’s Plan.”

The number two story outlined the crash of a JAL orbital passenger shuttle at Narita International.

Rieger’s murder wasn’t mentioned at all.

I shoved the printout into my travel bag and twisted the button-shaped top off of the coffee.  The plastic bulb only took a few seconds to heat the coffee to a decent drinking temperature.  I took a sip.  The coffee was surprisingly good.

There was a public terminal in the parking lot.  I used it to call a cab.