Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (28 page)

I enter, not even having called first to announce myself. Jerome is sitting at his desk, scanning financial data on the holo. His expression turns sour when he sees me.

“You know, I 
do
 have other things to do. You might have made an appointment.”

He quickly minimizes the display so I can’t see what he was working on.

“Sorry,” I say without sincerity, “there wasn’t time.”

“For a call?” he asks, incredulous. I seem to have made him suspicious already and I realize that coming unannounced was a miscalculation. I want him lulled and confident until I hit him with the information about Porsche.

“I apologize,” I say with more feeling this time “I just got off a call with one of my operatives as I was driving over.”

It seems to mollify him.

“Well, now that you’re here, let’s try to make it fast.”

At that moment my kaikki chirps.

“Sorry,” I say again. I’ve never apologized so much to someone and meant it so little. I pick up the line. “Burroughs.”

“Gat? It’s Dave.”

I turn away from Jerome and drop my voice a little.

“What’s up Dave?”

“You tell me.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, I’m standing in a pretty fucken’ luxurious condo belonging to a woman named Porsche Prince. Daughter of Max Prince they tell me.”

Alarm bells go off in my head in a deafening din, but I try to ignore them.

“And?”

“And Ms. Prince is officially deceased.”

I try not to miss a beat, but I probably do.

“So why are you calling me?”

“The thing is, I was surprised to find your kaikki ID, the private one, among the, oh, five, ten thousand IDs in her unit. You know her, I guess?”

“Yeah, I know her. Knew her,” I correct myself.

“The kaikki’s log also shows that you were one of the people she called most recently.”

“That’s probably true.” I say in a non-committal way.

“
Okaaay
, progress. Now here’s the thing. You’re automatically a suspect so I shouldn’t even talk to you, but fuck that, all right? I need information and I thought you might be able to enlighten me.”

“If I can, I will, you know that.”

“I know we were in the Forces together, but I also know that if you killed this little quiff you won’t tell me shit. Still, I thought I’d try, just in case you might be innocent.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dave. What do you want?”

“Somebody came up here, apparently without Ms. Prince trying to stop him, and then he cut her up like a fucking Christmas turkey. You know, blood everyfuckingwhere. Right now, where I’m standing, I got blood above my head on the ceiling.” I hear his voice strain a little as he looks straight up. “That’s 
got
 to be arterial.”

He’s trying to rattle me and he’s not doing a bad job of it. As much as I disliked and distrusted Porsche Prince, I don’t like the images he’s putting into my head.

“Did you have a 
question
?”

“Sure,” he replies lightly. “First let me tell you there was no robbery even though there’s valuable stuff all over the place. There was no rape even though—judging by the very immodest holos this girl kept of herself—on a scale of one to ten she was, I dunno, a fucking sixty or something. There was nothing but a murder. That makes is something personal, I figure, but even then you’d think whoever did it would try to at least make it 
look
 like a robbery, right? Nuh uh. Not a thing amigo.”

“Mysterious.”

“It gets more fucken’ mysterious, my man. There is one patch of blood that’s different from the rest. So this is my question: why would someone chop up Ms. Prince and then dip her hand—her detached hand, by the way—in her own blood and use it to make a handprint on the wall? Any ideas?”

Oh shit. 
The Suerte never give something without taking something, Gat, not ever
, Machiko’s voice repeats in my head. Suarez’s favour to me didn’t cost me anything because he did it for the Ghosts, but by helping me he also helped Max and apparently that debt was not put on the Ghost’s tab.

“I’ve got an idea, yeah.”

“You want to share?”

“Sure, but not at this moment, ok? I’ll come down to L.A.P.D headquarters later and submit to questioning voluntarily. No lawyer, no right to silence bullshit, nothing. In exchange, you give me a few hours, ok? It might even get you more answers.”

There is a long pause on the other end of the line.

“Gatineau if you weren’t Forces I’d tell you to fuck yourself and I’m damn close anyway. Okay. Three hours. I want your ass downtown and you 
run
 your mouth.”

“Three hours. You got it.”

I hang up and face Jerome again. Porsche’s murder shakes me up, but it doesn’t change the facts. It’s obvious that the 
Suerte
 decided she was a more appetizing prospect than her grandfather, and beyond that they felt they were owed a debt by Max Prince. But Jerome is still my main suspect in the original attack. The only thing that’s changed is that now I have some 
real
 ammunition to shake his calm façade.

“Are you quite finished?” he asks acidly.

“Yes, thanks. Porsche Prince has been murdered. Diced might be a more accurate description.”

Jerome sinks into his seat, the expression on his face unreadable. Then he smiles. Then he laughs. It sounds perfectly genuine.

“Well 
that’s
 the best news I’ve had all week.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh don’t get all high an mighty with me about the value of human life and all that shit, Burroughs. You were in Tijuana, you know 
exactly
 how much a human life is worth. The point is that Porsche was a pain in the ass, and an expensive one too. Her absence will make life much simpler for the whole estate.”

His reaction is so far from what I expected that I’m not sure what to say.

“You had a relationship with her.”

His face reddens at that, but he forces himself to be calm.

“I fucked her if that’s what you mean, along with half of Los Angeles. Do you intend to relay that information to Mr. Prince?”

The possibility that I might tell his boss is the only thing that seems to worry him about the situation. He’s certainly not breaking down in grief.

“Only if it’s relevant to the investigation,” I say, leaving the affair hanging over his head. It might be useful as leverage at some point.

He takes it badly, but controls himself. He isn’t used to be toyed with and he doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t want to find out what kind of tantrum Max might throw if I spill his little secret.

I’m not in the best mood myself. I suddenly realize that I have no theories left. Suarez is almost certainly no longer a suspect, and Jerome has just cleared himself pretty convincingly. The idea that he tried to kill Max for Porsche’s sake has been made ridiculous by what just happened. The only suspect I have left is Porsche, who’s been sucked into the land of 
muerte
, and I had doubts about her to begin with.

There’s a moment of silence between Jerome and I, then my kaikki trills again. I answer it.

“Gat, it’s TJ, you better get over here right away.”

“What’s up?”

“We have a breach.”

“
What?
”

I see a look of consternation cross Jerome’s face at the tone of my voice.

“Same thing as before. Cameras caught a guy coming over the wall, then he just disappeared.”

“What about our own cameras?”

“We won’t know until they reach the house. They aren’t set up at the perimeter.”

“Prender and Carmen with you?”

“Yeah boss. But Gat... ”

“In daytime too—they’ve got balls. Everyone armed?”

“Yup. Gat I have to tell you... ”

“What for fuck’s sake?”

“It’s not just one this time.”

“How many?”

“I’d guess about twenty, but it’s easy to lose track. You can only see them for a second and then they 
disappear
 man.”

Calisse
, as my grandmother used to say.

“I’m on my way. Where’s Max?”

Jerome’s expression grows even more tense.

“In sim in the lounge.”

“Get him out. Get him over to security. Do it yourself.”

“You got it.”

“What’s going on?” Jerome demands as I end the call.

“It’s another attack. Same as before.”

I don’t see any point in telling him right now that it’s a small army this time.

“You can’t stop it?”

“I’m trying to, now shut up and get going. We’re going to the main house.”

That’s easier said than done, however. No sooner have I taken the wheel of the little cart, with Jerome in the passenger seat, than the Dogs erupt. You’d think they’d be less eerie in daylight, but they aren’t. They’re huge and loud and dangerous and they’re a lot scarier in real life than in a simulation. The only thing that prevents us from being killed instantly is that the Dogs are busy attacking each other, just as they did before. It doesn’t mean they won’t attack us as well though.

Near the lake one of them has grabbed a groundkeeper, taking his waist in its maw. It shakes him back and forth like a rabbit as he screams, blood flying in bright red arcs in the sunshine. For a moment the man manages to get his feet on the ground, but his own blood has made it slippery and he loses purchase immediately. Not that it matters—there’s nothing he can do against a dog. It tosses him high in the air, and as he rises against the blue of the sky, arms waving, I can see his waist is nearly severed. The dog leaps after him, reaching him again as he begins to plummet back to earth, and cuts him in two with a swipe of its paw. The two halves of the man fall—plop, plop—onto the grass. The dog disappears in midair, reduced once again to billions of nanobots floating on the breeze, ready to reconfigure on a moment’s notice and attack anyone or anything: another staff member, a fellow Dog, or us.

I race the cart as fast as it will go, but I don’t bother drawing my gun. It wouldn’t make a dent in one of these things, so right now evasive maneuvering is my only weapon. Everywhere around us the Dogs are appearing, grappling with each other, and disappearing again. I weave around them as best I can, trying to avoid running into one while escaping another.

Suddenly a Dog rears up directly in our path and I pull hard to the right. The thing bounds toward us and is only stopped when another appears in front of it and grabs its head in those vice-like jaws. They snarl and howl at each other for an ear-splitting moment, then—poof—they’re gone again. I correct course and aim us back toward the house, trying desperately to keep control of the little cart.

We’re within fifty metres of the house when a dog appears out of thin air in a crouch in front of us and launches itself. I have no time to react. Its path takes it straight at Jerome and in a moment his head is neatly sheared from his body. I veer left, trying to shake the dog loose from the cart, and it falls to one side, then disappears again. Jerome’s body remains where it is. His neck becomes a geyser as what’s left of him bobs in the seat beside me. For the second time in as many days I’m showered with someone else’s blood.

Perversely, it’s in this moment—blood-soaked, effectively unarmed, and damned close to panic—that everything falls into place in my mind. The paradoxes of the case that have been gnawing away at me suddenly resolve themselves into a pattern in which each piece fits. Now all I have to do is live long enough to do something about it. I hope with everything in me that my theory’s right, because if it is then the Dogs won’t kill me. Until I get to the house, though, I have no way of being sure.

In another minute I’m at the back door. I jump out of the cart, only to find that the sliding glass doors have been locked automatically by the security system. A dog appears on my right. I pull my gun, shoot out the door, and dive through, hoping like hell that the beasts are programmed not to enter the house. When I glance back again, the dog is gone.

I race through the kitchen toward security. I’m almost there when I pause and take a card from my pocket, entering the ID on it hurriedly, hoping against hope that I'll actually get an answer. Right now it's the only thing that can make this come out right. The kaikki at the other end chirps once, twice, three times. Then it’s picked up.

“Suarez,” comes the answer. On the other end is the dark angel of Mexico, Porsche’s killer, the self-proclaimed prophet of eternal life—and my only possible ally.

My conversation with Suarez lasts less than a minute. The moment it’s over I enter the security office. Immediately there are three guns aimed at me.

“
Arms down, fucking down
.”

The guns lower. Carmen, TJ, and Prender look relieved that I’m not the assassin, or that they haven’t shot their boss, or both. Then TJ sees the blood.

“Gat, your hurt!”

“Not my blood.” I’m getting used to telling people that.

Max Prince approaches me, white as a ghost. I can smell the alcohol on his breath, but he seems to have been scared into sobriety.

“Can you stop them?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“You 
hope
 so? Well I fucking hope so too. Those fuckers are trying to execute me.”

I don’t bother answering. Alan is standing, gazing at a holo of the scene outside. I ignore everyone else.

“Alan, make it stop.”

He turns to me.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

I smack my gun across his face, snapping his head to one side, even though I know he can’t feel pain except as to perceive it as a further bit of data to assimilate.

“Don’t fuck with me Alan. I know what’s going on.”

“I don’t,” he says, wiping a trickle of blood from the lip of the shell he’s inhabiting.

Suddenly I hear a burst of gunfire that sounds like it’s coming from inside the house.

“Gat,” Carmen says, flashing through data on her holo “we have three inside already. They’re moving in this direction and executing staff along the way.”

Apparently our closed circuit camera system is working despite the failure of the house’s systems. Now that I know what’s going on, I’m not surprised.