Code Noir (7 page)

Yet I didn’t know Dis. Hopefully I never would. Hard-core crazies, hard-core heavies. Even for Parrish Plessis - Warlord.

Actually I was working on another word for my current job. And the first scud that called me ‘war-babe’ would see thick end of my garrotting wire.

‘What are you offering me?’

‘I’m offering to let my men come in here and distribute Lark and Speed. You get a percentage. ‘

Lark and Speed. Basics. Not much appeal for designer-shit in The Tert.

I wasn’t big on chemical entertainment myself. With a body as infested as mine there was no room for extras. Left to me, I’d shoot the Lark dealers soon as I’d buried all the Sensil teks. But I’m not stupid - that was a crusade I couldn’t win. Or wanted to. Just a personal preference.

One thing I did know, though. Tedder’s men weren’t selling on my turf. The slimy little anorexic wasn’t getting a fingernail in here.

‘What arrangement did you have with Jamon?’

He hesitated over the truth.

‘Jamon got twenty per cent.’

‘He distributed, right?’

Tedder nodded.

‘You’re a liar, Road. I’ve seen Jamon’s notes.’ I had, but they’d made no real sense. Tedder didn’t have to know that.

I saw Teece stiffen at my provocation, wondering what the hell I was up to while he had a shok-rod inserted in either ear.

Tedder quivered, sucking deeply. ‘Twenty per cent or nothing - a very generous offer. You can continue to collect your protection money from the bars and not worry your head about the rest.’

‘Forty per cent and I distribute. I don’t want to see your dealers within cooee.’

Tedder paled, twitching. He inhaled deeply once more. ‘Scramble the boyfriend,’ he said.

My world narrowed to the space between Teece, the Plastique boys and me.

I couldn’t get there in time, but if I could just get them to shift their rods a fraction . . .

‘OK,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Ease off the hardware and I’ll do it your way.’

Tedder smiled thinly at me. He nodded at his boys to dismount. ‘Watch her.’

My
smile was for Teece. Bright and jaunty. I hope he got my meaning.

The skewbalds released their triggers in unison, retracting their rods a fraction from his ears.

I shot them both instantly.

Teece dropped like a stone to the floor with them. I didn’t look at him, whipping the Lugers straight on Tedder.

He was quick. He had Ibis as a shield, an ugly little meat cleaver jammed against his throat. The blood had already begun to trickle. ‘You’ll regret that, bitch.’

‘Bitch is fine, Road. But don’t call me “girlie”. And don’t ever think you can play me,’ I snarled in reply. Blood thundered in my ears. The creep had pushed me to risk Teece’s life and now he had Ibis trussed like roast about to carve.

Yet I couldn’t let him win. Everything that had gone before would be wasted.

In some distant, removed, part of my brain, I wondered how long it would be like this for me. Dealing for power.
Is that what warlords do?

I stared into Ibis’s eyes. He quivered. This time for real.

‘Don’t harm him, Road,’ I warned. ‘I’ll . . .’

I didn’t need to finish my threat. The hand that held the knife at Ibis’s throat suddenly spasmed and fell away. The cleaver clattered to the floor, Tedder alongside it.

I pounced on it.

Tedder writhed in pain. I stamped my boot across his hand and shoved both Lugers in his face.

A scrabbling noise over my shoulder and Roo crawled out from a panel underneath the bar. I heard the slight whine of his limbs. One of his digits, peeled open like starfish, had shot a dart into the back of Tedder’s neck.

‘You!’ I accused.

His hair gleamed blond, tousled and freshly washed. Green eyes observed me calmly. ‘Didn’t I do the right thing?’

Relief and anger coagulated in my breast, making it hard to breath. ‘Watch he doesn’t move.’

Roo took up sentry duty and I ran quickly to where Teece had fallen, reefing off the bodies of the Plastique boys.

He erupted from under them, a wild animal, flailing. ‘Jeesus!
Jeesus!
Frig the Wombat, Parrish. What the hell were you thinking of?’ he demanded with a roar. Blood smeared his face. ‘I could catch something from these jerks.’

He felt himself all over while I held my breath. A burn on his cheekbone, muscle spasms down one side of his face and singed hair.

‘I’m alive,’ he pronounced finally, wiping saliva from his lips. He danced a couple of steps. Then he swung at me. The punch caught me square in the jaw and took me down.

‘Don’t you ever do that again,’ he whispered hoarsely and stormed out.

 

The punters teemed back into Hein’s after Larry decreed the holocaust over. Seems I was good for business after all.

Larry’s bouncers saw Road and his remaining skewbalds safely on to the Transway back to Plastique. It didn’t pay, I thought, to damage Tedder any more, although I was tempted. The ferals went along to make sure the job got done. Seems they’d look after my interests whether I liked it or not.

I’m not sure what Larry did with the bodies, but by the time I’d cut Ibis down, given Roo an earful about sneaking around, and rubbed my already bruising jaw in self pity, they were gone.

My jaw throbbed but not as much as my heart. I’d killed two people. If I hadn’t, Teece would have died.

Ibis glared at me from where he sat at a booth gulping his brimming beaker of scotch. His eyes were shot.

I sat opposite him with three measures of tequila lined up. As I swallowed the first I banged the glass against my jaw and winced.

‘I-it serves you right, you know.’ His teeth still chattered slightly. ‘P-playing with h-his life, P-Parrish.’

Tears welled, catching me by surprise. I blinked them away before Ibis could see.

‘I claimed salvage rights here, Ibis. If I don’t protect them now, every no-brain in The Tert will come for me.
Me and everyone who’s linked to me
,’ I said harshly.

He took another sizeable swallow.

I went on: ‘I took a risk that paid off. I’d probably take it again.’ My tone softened. ‘You can get out now. Get out and don’t come back. I wouldn’t blame you.’

‘I’m thinking about it.’ He glowered and waved at Larry for another drink.

 

Some time later, close on dark, Ibis and I staggered back to my new home. Roo trailed behind and I didn’t mind. The visions that I’d staved off after my set-to with Road Tedder hovered like an unwanted salesman.

I hoped no one else wanted a piece of me tonight - I didn’t know if I’d be good for any more conflabs with Jamon’s unhappy ex-business associates.

We made it home without incident. Along with the new couch, a proper bed had found its way there. I swore tomorrow I’d chase Minoj up on his promise to fix my security and tipped Ibis into the bed. I ordered Roo to the couch and I took the rest of the tequila bottle into the den.

Merry 3# yawned as if she’d been waiting up for me.

I made a list of things I wanted to make the place more liveable and told her to send it to Larry Hein. Nothing special. Some mats, a table and chairs. The kitchenette didn’t interest me much - what would I do with it? Instead I sent Larry another message telling him to negotiate a line of credit with some of the palatable food vendors. The rest I would shop for myself.

Myself?
I laughed at the thought of doing something so simple. So normal.

I sat with my feet up on the PC and listened to Merry 3# gab my messages back to me.

Several from small-time sharks who’d heard I was the new capitan. Two from Gigi the Cashier who’d no doubt seen the transfers from Jamon’s account. And one call from Stenhouse.

Stenhouse bootlegged the Sensil tekware from the supercity corps and sold it to the movers in The Tert. He also fixed it when it broke.

Another from The Cure. The Cure was the cute name for a bunch of shady medics who inserted the Sensil routes in between punters’ vertebrae.

A while back one of them, who practised under the name of Doc Del Morte, got ambitious and started biomek butchery on stolen kids as a sideline. When word got out about his failure rate, and how he was getting his test subjects, the Cabal ran him out of The Tert.

Even they had limits as to what they would tolerate. Del Morte left behind him forty or more kids - Pets - in varying stages of bio-robotic decay. No one else knew how to maintain them. Their specs had disappeared along with their architect. They were all dying from their condition - some more quickly than others. Roo was one of them.

From my understanding, The Cure and Stenhouse’s crowd splashed each other’s boots and scratched each other’s balls.

A headache started behind my nose and climbed up into my forehead. Frustration. I didn’t have time for all this. And yet I had no trace on the missing
karadji
. Perhaps Larry wasn’t the one. Perhaps . . .

I put my head in my hands and spoke sternly to myself. Larry
was
the one. If he couldn’t find a lead, there wasn’t one. Meantime I had to keep busy.

‘Problems?’ The voice started me out of my chair. The blistered face and singed blond hair had me falling back into it. ‘Jees, you look terrible. I’m so sorry, Teece.’

He ignored my apology, staring at Merry 3# who’d flashed back, dancing to some tune in her empty head.

‘Maybe she’s the one I’m in love with. Someone who I think is you,’ he said hoarsely.

‘Then you’d better go home to your bikes, Teece. Things are gonna get worse here,’ I said levelly. ‘If I can’t take it, they’ll get me. And I’m not ready to go anywhere yet.’

I waited for him to answer.

‘I’ll stay around, Parrish. But you hung me out today because of your own ambitions. That’s hard to forget.’

It wasn’t forgiveness.

‘I promised you nothing, Teece. Except maybe a rough ride.’

A smile ghosted his lips. ‘On that you could never let me down.’

He went into the living room, booted Roo off the couch on to the floor, lay down and closed his eyes.

I got the hint. No sex for Parrish and stale adrenalin aftermath plagued me, escalating the chances of a vision. The visions lingered so close to my conscious state now I feared they were becoming part of my reality.

Dread kept me from rest. So did my need to flick all this tedious housekeeping and get on with finding the missing
karadji
.

‘I’m going for a run,’ I said and copped the beginnings of a snore in return.

 

Torley’s at three a.m. teemed with the backwash of chemical attitudes and tragic karma. Sensil parlours. Cockdog fights. Street sex of the sordid kind. Sights that once had amused or fascinated me suddenly made me heavy with responsibility. I wore my new job like hi-cut concrete boots.

But night also had a masking beauty. Even in The Tert.

I jogged past the neon replica of a chained dog on Hein’s roof, along the gen-powered glittery emerald and ruby halo of The Stretch and in amongst the eerie, metallic garden silhouettes of Shadoville. An uninterrupted twenty klick loop if you knew when to duck and weave.

An alien inner voice dogged my footsteps.

Not long, human. Not long
. . .

It had wired itself into my thought processes. Sometimes it was a heavy presence, gorging on every fix of brutality. At others, when I starved it of rage, it subsided into a hard knot of discontent.

The discontent, the denial of what it wanted, was what I sought - whatever the cost. I recognised its presence in the same way that I knew a silent guard of ferals ghosted me now. Tomorrow I would elude them. But how could I elude the Eskaalim?

Would the Cabal honour their deal and give me what I needed to fight it? Did they really know where the stolen research was?

A little before dawn I got home. Merry 3#, in niteclub undress, flashed up an incoming from Larry. He looked tired and unusually grim. Mascara smudged.

‘News? ‘

He shrugged. ‘When my snitches started asking questions, one had his throat torn out and the other had his insides messed with. Looked like they were telling futures with it. Some heavy mojo.’

Bile rose up my throat. Not much upset Larry. But this had.

‘Your boys . . . was it anyone I know?’

He gave me a look. ‘Does it make a difference?’

Shame stung me. Because it did . . . and it shouldn’t. ‘You get a name?’

He shook his head. ‘I got something, though. A woman’s been asking about all the local shamans - where to find them. We think the same person’s put up money to snatch you.’ He gave me a rare, brief smile. ‘I guess they don’t know you so well.’

I nodded, thinking of Riko’s half-arsed kidnap attempt. And then the Bounty. Somehow their acts were connected with the missing
karadji
.

‘An outsider, then?’

‘Definitely. ‘

I pressed my temples tight. ‘Thanks, Larry. Consider yourself Plessis Ventures’ newest executive.’

He didn’t seem to get the joke. ‘No thanks. You aren’t gonna be around long enough for the first board meeting. ’

I took his cheerful advice into the den and thought about what I’d just learned. Whoever had kidnapped the
karadji
also had their sights set on me. Playing cut and paste with entrails wasn’t common, even for The Tert. If anyone could tell who that might be, it was the Muenos. Besides, I couldn’t sit around any longer. The King Tide pulled.

I keyed the lock on the ’puter, told the lips-and-torso to shut up shop and went to bed, crashing, exhausted, alongside Ibis while the Angel wandered my dreams . . .

 

Humming huddled sentience. Us thought. Us thought. Time spread wide, never long. Fanning the tail of the comet. Riding the diamond dust wave
. . .
hungry for food
. . .