Lone Wolf (5 page)
So that’s how come I’m jandering into the place just before the hour when the junior suits start drifting out of the skyrakers to deplete their expense accounts over lunch. I don’t belong in the CB; every head that turns to look at me, every lip that twists in scorn, every voice that hesitates momentarily, tells me that. I’m obviously from the wrong side of the tracks, and that makes me dangerous and suspect. I don’t wear Zoe, Mortimer of London, Gucci, or Bally, sateen or synthsilk. My fashion tends more to Skulz, Doc Marten, synthleather, and kevlar. Of course, nobody’s going to point that out to me. The current political climate considers dress codes “elitist” (except on actual megacorp turf, of course, where anything goes and you might as well protest the law of gravity). As long as I’m not packing ordnance, illegal armor, or restricted cyberware—at least nothing the tech drek in the doorway can pick up—nobody can tell me I don’t belong. That won’t stop every slot in the place from trying to communicate that concept without saying it outright, however. Any other gangers in the area might wonder why I’m even bothering, except that I’ve carefully built up a rep for hanging in suit bars and restaurants just for the pleasure of slotting people off.
I jander in, give the slag behind the big espresso machine the old stare-down, and sashay toward the back of the place. I see my contact at once. She’s at the bar, sitting on one of those retro-nuevo chairs that must have been designed by a frustrated proctologist. She used to be a chummer (and more than that for one weekend at the Mayflower Plaza Hotel that I’d like never to forget, thank you) when we were both back in Milwaukee, going through the local Lone Star Academy together, and then again while I was learning the streets and how to work them. Ever since we both got transferred out west, I know she’s carved out a niche for herself in the data management side of the Organized Crime division of the Star. Her name’s Catherine Ashburton, likes to be called Cat, and she’s drop-dead gorgeous, always was, always will be. Petite’s the word, I guess: stands not much more than a meter and a half, weighs about fifty and most of that’s in her rockets. Straight, short, copper-colored hair, the kind of color that makes you think she’d look hot in emerald green. But instead she always wears cranberry or certain shades of pink, and looks like she just stepped out of a fashion-trid title sequence. Today her eyes are a deep violet.
Cat’s dressed exactly like a member of one of the schools of brightly colored secretaries that flit around the skyrakers at lunch and after work, trying to avoid-attract the barracuda managers. An ice-maiden, unapproachable, unless your monthly pay’s eight-K nuyen or up. Then she’ll be all titters and smiles and unspoken invitations. Me, on the other hand, the only way I could get eight-K nuyen in a month would be to sell my folks into slavery, then hit big in the lottery. She sees me strolling her way and freezes up.
So I of course swing myself onto the stool right next to her and give her the once-over, copper top to stiletto heels. “Double espresso,” I snap to the counterman without taking my eyes off the sweetmeat next to me. Cat plays it perfectly. Everything about her shows her internal turmoil—terrified of the street monster beside her, yet equally scared that moving or reacting at all might provoke me. For an instant I catch her violet eyes, and I see the flash of cool amusement. She’s enjoying this, getting out of the office and into the field. And, who knows? Maybe deep down she doesn’t mind seeing me again.
My espresso arrives. The barista running the machine is working at top speed, getting my order out fast so I’ll leave. I knock back the little cup of bitter coffee and push the empty toward the counterman. “Another,” I tell him.
I give Cat another top-to-tail scan and a feral street grin
while I’m getting ready for the exchange. These meets have
two purposes. First, I hand over my report of what’s gone down with the Cutters since the last one, and second, I pick up new instructions from my superior officers. Instructions? Actually, they’re usually limited to something like, “Keep your head down and keep reporting.” Maybe it’s surprising in this age of high tech and high expectations that a physical meet’s the way to go, but it makes sense if you think about it.
First off, as I said. I’m a nullhead, a non-decker. (If I had the tech, training, and inclination to punch deck, everything would be different.) That limits what I can do in the Matrix. Just because some of the Cutters soldiers think I’m a techno-wonk, that doesn’t mean I’m actually any good at it. It’s just that I look fragging brilliant next to their computer-illiteracy. About all I’m good for is logging onto UOL and posting argumentative messages, however. The Cutters do have their own deckers, of course—a couple working for Musen the accountant, one or two in Fahd’s biz development empire, and another one or two working directly for Blake. I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect a couple of them sometimes monitor what I do when I’m online. No surprise. Blake would be a fool not to keep watch on a communication channel like that.
So, filing reports and receiving orders over the net isn’t smart. Physical meets sound dangerous—and sometimes they are—but not if you do them right. First point: whoever’s on the other end of the meet—Cat today—I don’t talk to them about what’s going down. They’re not my conduit, just my postman.
On the way over to the CB, I “dictated” my report inside my head, dumping it onto a datachip slotted into one of my jacks. Before I went into the kissaten, I pulled the chip and stashed it in a small carrier cylinder not much bigger than a toothpick, and I’ve got it palmed now. My orders are on a similar chip stashed somewhere on Cat’s person. All we’ve got to do is make the switch.
Isn’t this dangerous? Well, yeah, but some risks you’ve just got to take. Also, I’ve done some things to cover myself. First off, the chip holding my report and the one with
my orders are disguised as “jolts,” those illegal simsense
-analogs that you can slot like a datasoft but that give you a thirty-minute high before erasing themselves. Somebody would have to know just what they were looking for to recognize that my chips contain anything other than simsense files. Then they’d have to break the security encoding and sidestep a wiz little virus that erases all data at the slightest provocation. When I get my orders, I slot the chip and download the data directly into my headware, erasing the chip at the same time. No, not just erase: overwrite with ones, then overwrite with zeroes, then with ones again. The big-domes in the Star’s technical research division assure me that nothing can pull traces of data off the chip after that. (I suppose somebody could read the data right out of my headware memory using SQUIDs, but that’s a real high-tech process and how likely is it that I’d sit still for it? Null.)
So that’s my cover, and it’s a fragging good one. Sure, I’m the one came up with it, but that’s still the objective opinion of one of the Star’s best undercover assets. If the Cutters ever catch me at one of these meets, my cover is that I’m feeding the monkey on my back—a secret jolt habit. Why don’t I buy my chips through the Cutters’ own distribution network? Because I don’t want the higher-ups to know I’ve got a weakness, chummer. You scan that, don’t you? It’s a good rationalization, based on one of the great principles of (meta)human psychology. Don’t try to convince people you're innocent. It’s much easier to make them believe you’re guilty of a lesser offense. (It also gives the soldiers doing the pinch a little extra incentive to let me be. They know something I don’t want made public, and you’re just not (meta)human if you don’t relish having leverage against someone.)
My second espresso arrives, and I knock that one back too. This time I toss the empty to the barista. He catches it, but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. I lean close to Cat, drape an arm round her shoulder, and grab a quick feel of her rockets. She stiffens up and shakes herself free, but by that time the chip carrier with my report is down her cleavage. She’s a better actor than I expected. The face she turns to me is white and tight-lipped with fury. But the glint of amusement is still in those impossibly violet eyes, and a little more than amusement maybe. Who knows, maybe she remembers that weekend at the Mayflower too? Stranger things have happened.
Now I stroke her thigh, and she grabs my hand in a surprisingly tight grip, forcing it away from her. I feel something tiny and hard pushed into my hand, and I quickly palm it. Exchange made, and the show we’re putting on is guaranteed to have everyone looking away uncomfortably.
“Fragging ice-maiden, aren’t you, slitch?” I snarl. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“I’d rather jam with a devil rat,” she hisses back. Nice line.
“Could be arranged,” I tell her, which draws from her the faintest hint of a wink. Interesting. I’d like to pursue the matter, but now’s not the time, here’s not the place. Which is too fragging bad. I swing off the chair and jander away. I see the counterman trying to get up the juice to tell me I owe him money, so I shoot back over my shoulder, “It’s on her tab,” and I’m out onto the street. A Lone Star bike cop cruises by slowly, giving me the once-over. I grin at him, pull back the sides of my jacket to show I’m not carrying heat. He scowls and rides on.
Surprise, surprise, it’s not raining, and there’s even a patch of blue sky about the size of my thumbnail. All in all, this day’s not shaping up so bad.
By the time I’ve got my bike out of hock from the Washington Athletic Club parkade and ridden to my doss on Northeast Sixtieth Street in Ravenna—a convenient few blocks from the Cutters’ safe house—I've slotted the chip Cat passed me, downloaded the contents, and scanned them. Didn’t take me long. Predictably, my orders are: “Keep your head down and keep reporting.” (Am I psychic or what?) There’s nothing specific the Star wants me to watch for, and if they know about anything strange coming up, they don’t see fit to warn me. I mentally trigger the utility that tripleoverwrites and wipes the chip, and I eject it from my jack. I don’t even bother to use the chip carrier, just let it fall out onto the road as I ride.
In contrast, my report—the one that got to nestle between Cat’s cushions, lucky fragging chip—should give whoever’s authorized to read it something to think about. First there’s a rundown on the Sioux assault rifle scam. (Paco came through with the background on that, and was slotted off that it wasn’t anything deep and dark I could use against Ranger. It turns out the war boss had loaned money and assets to Musen to swing the deal. Why didn’t the biz honcho have his own assets to invest? Well, there hangs a tale, priyatei, but one that doesn’t matter much to me or my superiors.) Then there’s an update on the decision to approach the Ancients for restitution. If the Star has an agent as high up in the Ancients as I am in the Cutters, they can manipulate this situation in whatever nasty direction their little hearts desire.
And then there’s a warning about raids on the Eighty-Eights,
and ditto if the Star’s got a deep-cover agent there.
Then comes the fun stuff, basically a two-megapulse rant about bureaucracies and communication breakdowns and how they can frag up the best policies and strategies. All “for the good of the force,” of course, but mainly driven by my own crankiness at almost getting geeked by my “brothers in arms” in the FRT squads. Eminently understandable, I figure.
And that about covers the level of communication I have with my superiors. Sometimes I feel kind of like a fire-and-forget weapon. The Star went to a frag of a lot of trouble setting up my background when they transferred me from Milwaukee. (Oh, sure, I’d done undercover work before— lots of undercover work—and I’m fragging good at it, but I’d never done anything this long-term and deep. Frag, joining the ruling cadre of a major first-tier gang. It still loosens my bowels to think about it.)
I still don’t know how they built my story so deep and so impenetrable. All I know is that the first couple of months I was scared drekless that some underpaid, overworked, under-motivated, hung-over Lone Star clerk had missed something vital that would end up getting me scragged—I couldn’t help remembering that the Star’s computer system had once sent me three statements for overdue parking tickets in Milwaukee ... in the sum of 0.00. But it’s been almost eighteen months now and, if anything, my cover only seems more bulletproof, but I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat waiting for the Mexican frag-up.
After all that effort—the Star’s and mine—I’m in place and making my reports, but my superiors sometimes don’t seem to pay much attention. I think it’s only twice that I’ve actually been told to pay attention to something specific, and that just doesn’t seem like the most efficient use of me as a resource. Of course, during the two times I’m talking about, the drek was fragging near running down my legs while I was trying to ferret out what the Star wanted. From a theoretical standpoint, they should give me more guidance. But, from a personal point of view, I’m much happier this way, and much more likely to live to collect my pension.
To hell with that drek anyway. Chewing it through now’s probably just a way of distracting myself from the fact that the blue sky I saw over downtown has turned out to be as dependable as a politician’s promise and that the hard rain’s started up again. By the time I reach Ravenna and find a good place for my bike, I’m soaked to the fragging skin. My apartment’s in a building called the Wenonah, a low-rise that’s about twice as old as I am. It used to be painted, I think, but the solvent they call rain in Seattle has seen to that. The building’s just bare concrete now, stained and pitted and streaked with pigeon-drek. (Query: With so many other species going out forever, how the frag do those flying rats people call pigeons manage to hang on? End of digression.) I jander up the stairs to the front door, push it open.