Like a Boss (18 page)

“I’m sure we all can.” I hustled inside to the toilet, thankful it was also unlocked.

When I returned to the sidewalk, Onanefe sat at a table with Lepa. They stirred tiny cups of espresso. “You want one?” he asked.

“It would be on the house,” said Lepa, clinking her spoon on her saucer. “Your friend told me about your building. My condolences.”

“Thank you, but I’ve had enough caffeine for the day.” I thought ahead to Six O’Clock, about drinking my rum and going right to sleep. Then I remembered my flat, my bed, and that bottle of Old Windswept were all gone. Prickles of icy panic ran over the back of my skull, and The Fear stirred. I cleared my throat to cover me shaking my head, trying to rattle The Fear back to sleep. I had backups. I had plans. If I could manage to make Six O’Clock work in the middle of a Force Eleven storm (take
that
, Hurricane Bessie), I could make it work now. “My friend happen to tell you why we’re here?”

She nodded. “If the guy who attacked you hung around here, I’m happy to help you find him. I don’t need that kind of reputation. You got a picture?”

“You okay with a local connection?”

Her mouth made a thin, orange line. “Looks like I’ll have to be.”

I blinked up the footage from my buffer and sent it direct to Lepa’s pai. She blinked, then sneered. “
This
guy. He made a giant order last month, enough pita and knedle for a hundred people, deliverable today. Me and my husband have been working our tails off, and then he shows up this morning and gives us some song and dance about not having cash, and, what with the Public down –
tsch
.”

“Did he say what this was for?”

Lepa shook her head. “He only said it was for a social function. I wasn’t going to let him have anything, but then he yells and these two giants come in the door.”

“Giants?” I said. “Like, goon giant?”

She touched the tip of her nose. “Just like that. If he hadn’t surrounded himself with those goons, I’d have given him a bash.”

“I think I can take care of that for you,” I said. “He leave an address?”

Lepa tapped her temple. “I always keep receipts up here. He’s around the corner off Lutyen–”

I didn’t wait to hear the rest of it. I just saw red. I got up, excused myself, and marched up the street to Saarien’s church. Onanefe kept pace, making sure not to get in my way. “I hope you’re not going to go in there swinging.”

I cracked my knuckles. “Don’t worry. I’ll be good and calm before I tear that white-suited sonuvabitch a new one.”

“What if he isn’t
there
?” said Onanefe.

“Then we’ll see how fast word gets to him,” I said. “If the Public’s down, he’s got to have some way to communicate with his followers.”

“I really wish you’d have let me bring my crew.”

“What, you don’t think I can handle this?”

He ruffled his mustache. “I just don’t like goons, you know?”

“Join the club.”

The alley off Lutyen was packed. Tired teenagers slumped in the shrinking shadows, and kids painted the walls with smiley faces and STRIKE. Some people drank tea from battered caneplas cups, their eyes unfocused and bloodshot. It was a majority Freeborn crowd, and everyone handing out instruction sheets and directing groups in and out of the Temple were also Freeborn. One kid who looked no older than twelve juggled three different clipboards. “BUDVAR!” she yelled, and one of the teenagers heaved herself out of a crouch, took a sheet of paper from Clipboard Girl, and ran off into the street. A woman in her thirties hovered nearby, adding or taking away paper from the clipboards.

I nudged my way to the door, Onanefe sticking close to me. Ahead of us stood a group of exhausted women holding babies and bundles of clothes. In front of me was an old lady with a monstrous stack of cloth diapers. “May I help you with that?” I asked, not waiting for an answer. I swept the diapers out of the old lady’s hands, and she turned. Her ink, an IF/THEN logic gate, crinkled above a sweet and confused smile. I kept my head down as Clipboard Girl directed us inside. “And don’t mess up the stacks!” she yelled.

The Temple was a beehive. I could hear nothing but the buzz of people talking about food runs, people talking about repairing PV cells, people talking about the best way to keep the Brapati Causeway blocked to motor traffic. The tables that had been covered with food and clothes were now empty except for a man sitting on one, cradling a baby. Everyone had sagging eyes and downturned mouths. The last strike, those looks hadn’t appeared until the second month. I remembered spending every waking hour making sure people had their needs met and their gripes heard. Maybe Saarien hadn’t planned this very well, and the whole thing would collapse on its own. Maybe the best thing to do would be to go back to the distillery and ride it out.

Someone
shhsh
ed, and the screen in the corner flicked on. There was Saarien, his eye a little swollen but still smiling. “Friends,” he said, holding up his hands. “This has been a glorious first week. Our labor action has already unified the planet into a harmonious accord–”

I stopped listening to the words and paid attention to the sound. I could hear Saarien’s voice echo in the room. At first I thought it was the screen’s high volume bouncing around but then I heard it: a faint version of Saarien from inside the room that spoke before the screen. He was broadcasting from here. I scooted through the crowd as Saarien’s voice rose and fell. The people clapped and hooted, and I lost the trail. I looked at the screen: behind Saarien was a wall covered in STRIKE graffiti. He squinted into the camera. A shadow flickered across his face.

“He’s outside,” I hissed to Onanefe, and pushed back to the door.

Saarien stood at the end of the alley, the wall making a perfect backdrop. The two goons I’d met before, Gwendolyn and Kazys, held the crowd back but for a few kids gathered at Saarien’s sides. I squeezed my way to the front row and glared hard. Saarien’s eyes flickered over to me, and he paused in his speech. I couldn’t tell what flashed across his face. Fear? Relief? Anger? He finished his remarks with the bit about lifting fists, and I could hear a roar ripple out of the alley onto Lutyen and beyond.

Saarien walked right up to me. “If you’re going to hit me again, please don’t hit me in the face.”

“I’m not going to hit you again. Though I hope you don’t give me a reason to.”

He nodded. “I heard what happened. I’m so glad you’re all right.”

“I’ll bet.” The goons formed a cordon around us, pushing him way too close to me. “I don’t have time to waste, Rutey. Who is this guy?” I touched his temple, and he opened a connection to my photo.

He blanched. “Oh, no. Are you sure?”

“You want me to send you footage of him stabbing me? Who is he?”

“Octavian Noon. One of the more fervent members of the congregation.” He rubbed the back of his head, and his hair pooched up to the sky. “Some of these kids, they get caught up in talk about The Struggle, and next thing you know they’re grabbing weapons and going out into the streets–”

“Did you send him for me, Rutey?”

Saarien shook like I’d slapped him. “What? No! No, Padma, I would
never
do anything like that! This whole strike is supposed to be non-violent!”

The look of panic on Saarien’s face wasn’t that of a guilty man. It reminded me of the dozens of people I’d met over the years who had built up angry anti-Big Three movements, only to have them all fall apart before their moments of glory had arrived. Saarien wasn’t afraid he’d been caught red-handed; he was upset that one of his overzealous followers had struck without his say-so.

But I didn’t have to let him know that.

I shook my head. “You know I can go to Soni Baghram and have you chucked back in the clink, right?”

“But I’m out. I was
released
.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re immune from going back on
new
charges, like conspiracy to commit murder. Soni
hates
conspiracy, and this looks like a textbook example. We got a firebrand preacher, we got a lunatic follower, and we got video footage of said follower using said preacher’s words right after I get a knife sunk into my shoulder. Just one note from me, and you’re done. All this is done. Soni would cross a picket line for me. You think she’d stay behind it for you?”

Saarien held up his hands. “No, of course not. Please, Padma, don’t, we’re working so hard for
everyone
, even you. I should have kept Octavian on a short leash, should have kept him from taking things so far. You understand that, right? Getting caught up in the heat of the movement?”

“I never felt the need to shank someone from the Big Three.”

“No, but you probably wanted to crack a few skulls, right?” Flop sweat rolled down Saarien’s temples. He leaned in close. “Please, Padma, it is getting tense out here. I’m hearing about people coming close to fighting, trying to settle old scores. If word gets out that someone made an attempt on your life, it could set off riots.”

“Over little old me?”

“Over a symbol of the Union’s triumph over the Big Three.” He swallowed and made a face like he’d just eaten bitter medicine. “People are itching for an excuse to start swinging. It’s harder to hold this coalition together than I thought, and if people hear that a Freeborn man tried to stab a beloved Union member, that would be enough.”

I smiled. “
Beloved
? I need to update my theme song.”

Saarien clasped his hands together. “Please let me handle this. Can you trust me to keep everything under control?”

I let my upper lip curl into a sneer. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask.”

“I know, I know.” His hands shook as he pressed them tighter. “Our city, our
world
, it needs this to work.
I
need this to work. Don’t make it for nothing. Please.”

I thought back to that horrible day two years ago when Saarien had me tied to a chair, ready to dump a can of cane diesel on me and light me up. He had shot Wash in the gut. He had worn this look of triumph, like he’d won every World Cup in history. I looked at this ruined creature begging and snorted. “You’re going to have to work a whole lot harder than that to earn my trust, Saarien. Anyone from your group so much as looks at me funny, and I’m going straight to Soni, and you’re going straight back to Maersk.” I looked up at the goons. “Could I please get by? Gwendolyn? Kazys?”

Gwendolyn stared down at me, her mouth a hard, thin line. She rolled one of her shoulders, and I heard bones grinding together.

“I’m sorry for everything I said about people in your profession,” I said. “That was wrong. I think you’re absolutely right to go on strike. The Union has been terrible to former security services personnel.”

Gwendolyn and Kazys exchanged glances. “Talk is cheap,” said Gwendolyn.

“But I’m sure your rates aren’t,” I said. “Class Two Mechanist, right?”

She snorted. “You’re really going to try and buy us off?”

“No, but I will help hook you up with that better gig if you want.” I nodded to Kazys. “You, too.”

“It’s all right,” said Saarien. “Friends, let’s let Padma go on her way. Please.”

The two former goons took a few steps back. The air felt cooler and freer and
man
were those two big. I nodded my thanks and walked out of the alley, doing my best to keep my steps straight. My head spun as all the blood rushed to the rest of my body.

Onanefe stood by the Temple door, fiddling with the ruins of his mustache. His eyes didn’t leave Gwendolyn and Kazys, even when I staggered by and grabbed his elbow. He didn’t turn his head until we got to the mouth of the alley. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, just feels like I’ve done a three-g drop down the cable.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Just imagine all the blood in your body getting squished in place so your brain doesn’t get any. Also, where the hell were you? What about sticking by me?”

“I don’t get involved with goons,” he said. “I’ve had clients who employ them, and they’re nasty business. Like having sentient bulldozers.”

“They’re not that bad, once you get to know ’em.”

“I’m perfectly happy not doing that, thanks.”

I grinned. “Do you mean to tell me that the big bad cane cutter is afraid of a little goon?”

“No, just the big ones, which is all of them.” He took one more glance back down the alley at Gwendolyn and Kazys and shuddered. “You learn anything?”

I told him about Saarien’s guilty looks and his babbling. “He seemed more worried about how the whole thing looked than how it was going.”

“That doesn’t sound like an evil mastermind,” said Onanefe.

“No,” I said. “I have the feeling Saarien’s gotten in way over his head.”

“Then what’s your plan?”

My stomach grumbled, and I blinked up the time: one in the afternoon. Lunch wasn’t a bad idea; getting to the nearest of my backup Six O’Clock rooms was better.

“We need to go to Bakaara Market,” I said.

Onanefe blanched. “That’s five klicks away!”

“Six. We’ll probably have to take side alleys.”

Onanefe pointed at the vendors winding their way through the crowd. “Whatever you need, I’m sure we can find it here.”

I doubt it
, I wanted to say. I kept a crate of Old Windswept and candles in the back of a stall in the northeast corner of Bakaara Market. The woman who owned the stall, Hawa Said, was a sweet grandmother who led a knitting circle of little old ladies called the Needle Nanas; they made baby clothes. Hawa had once been a Ward Chair and had never lost her taste for the action, so she also led the Nanas to every Union committee meeting to raise hell. Rumors floated around the neighborhood that the Nanas also ran a protection racket in Bakaara, which wouldn’t surprise me considering how much Hawa charged me every month.

I just shook my head and walked up Lutyen. “Bakaara. And I should remind you that
you
insisted on sticking with me. You can’t hack a little walk?”

He snorted. “Six klicks is nothing. When I was starting out, it was a ten-K walk to our work sites, and that was with my tools.”

“Was it uphill both ways? With a headwind?”