by Mel Odom
“Are we going to go ask the Elders why they left out information about Magpie?” Is0bel asked. Her set jaw told me she was ready for a fight.
I wasn’t quite there yet, however. “Not yet. I want to poke around a bit more, see what we can find. The people here are surprisingly talkative.”
Chapter 30
Rumors, Speculation, and Outright Lies
“I got a guy over here you probably wanna talk to,” Duncan said over the comm.
I looked down the street and barely saw him in the shadows, in spite of the neon. He stood next to a burly troll in front of a weapons shop. Even for a troll, the guy was broad and beefy, a walking advertisement for his business.
“This is Breaker Hui,” Duncan said. “He was telling me about a new gang that’s moved into Whampoa Garden. Guys who set up shop without permission.”
The troll nodded. “The Red Spears. They run up in here sometimes, but don’t cause any trouble. Check out the parking garage south of here, they usually hole up in there. Step light, though. If they don’t know you and you cop an attitude, they’ll put you in the ground.” He smiled a little. “Funny thing: I heard there was a shootout with some Hong Kong police in the garage a month ago. I was away in Beijing at the time, so I didn’t see it directly. But everybody was talking about it when I got back.”
“Why is that unusual?” I asked.
“Because most times we don’t let the HKPF in here,” the troll said. “We shoot at ’em if they even try. Every time they come in here, it’s bad for us, because they’re always looking for a scapegoat. Why would the elders let them in?” He shrugged. “Nobody knows.”
I thanked him, slipped him a few nuyen for his trouble, and walked away.
“Okay,” Duncan said into my ear, “we got a disappearing Elder the other Elders didn’t tell us about, and a sanctioned raid by the HKPF after the Elders told us they didn’t allow them in here. I’m smelling something really rotten.”
“Me too. We’ve got two big questions we need answered now.” We were getting in deeper than I felt comfortable with, but I kept telling myself Duncan wasn’t going to leave until we found the old man. And I wasn’t going to leave Duncan on his own. I called Gobbet and Is0bel and told them we were heading back to the Whampoa.
Surprisingly, the Elders were still gathered around the shops in the mall. They saw us at once and grew quiet as we approached.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” Ng asked.
“I hope so,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell us about Elder Magpie disappearing? In fact, why didn’t you tell us about Elder Magpie at all?”
She kept her face blank. “Why would we have? Her departure from the Whampoans isn’t related to your investigation. It happened before the killings began. I’m certain she’s just off sulking somewhere. No doubt she’ll come waltzing back next month, all full of attitude that life dared to go on without asking her permission.”
“If she does,” Tang added, “we’ll welcome her back. Despite our problems with her behavior, her skills make her extremely valuable. I’ve taken over maintenance of our Matrix infrastructure in her absence, but I’m nowhere near her level. The best I can do is ensure nothing breaks down until she returns.”
“I’d like to take a look around her shop. Do you have the key?”
Ng hesitated. “Yes, but there’s a lot of sensitive equipment in there, including our community servers. We don’t let anyone who’s not one of the Elders in there. Why would you need to look around there?”
I decided to be tactful and maybe a little charming in my approach. “Listen, you wanted me to find a killer. If I’m going to do that, I have to explore every possibility. You know Is0bel, and you trust her, don’t you?”
“Very well. Take the key and look around. Just don’t break anything or shut the servers off.” Ng placed it in my hand.
I put it in my pocket, then asked them why they’d let the HKPF into Whampoa Garden. The way they reacted, you’d have thought I dropped a baby nuke among them, but they tried to cover.
“We generally don’t let the police in here, it’s true,” Tang said. “But we made an exception in this case. The police were very polite, and offered to look the other way over some of our deals with the Loha-Jowah Pirates.”
“They also made it clear that if we refused, they might not only take an interest in our deals with the pirates,” Ng said. “They would call in the Special Duties Unit and force their way in. We have repelled the Hong Kong Police Force before, when they’ve tried to push us around. We could probably drive off the Special Duties Unit as well, but the cost in blood would be too high. Since they weren’t hunting a Whampoan, we saw no reason to refuse their request.”
“Who were they here for?”
“They didn’t say,” Ip told me. “And we didn’t ask. The HKPF isn’t exactly forthcoming about their business, and we’ve found that the less we know about their interests, the safer Whampoa Garden is. When you take an interest in the police, they often return the favor.”
I wasn’t completely buying that. No way would they just let the HKPF in with a blank credstick. But I filed that puzzle away for the moment.
“As far as I know, they went into the parking garage, there was a gunfight, and the police never came out,” Tang said. “More showed up a few hours later, looking for their missing officers. We didn’t let those in, though. We just delivered what was left of the bodies to them.”
“Why didn’t you let them in? What was different that time?”
“We were willing to allow the group of four in,” Ng said, “because they asked politely. When the reinforcements arrived, there were over thirty of them. We couldn’t risk the rest of the police setting up camp in our streets. It would have been a circus, and disrupted our lives and business.”
I nodded, like I was happy with all the answers. But I knew I didn’t have all the answers I was looking for. I still didn’t know all the right questions I needed to ask. The Elders were old, and practiced at lying and covering their tracks.
I just hoped what we didn’t know didn’t get us killed. We left the mall and headed for Magpie’s shop.
Chapter 31
The Jackpoint
The shop’s name was pretty lame. There’s probably a Jackpoint shop everywhere, and nobody really remembers where it is. But maybe that’s by design, too. If a place isn’t memorable to the public, maybe the business it’s doing is more private. Hiding in plain sight.
Neon lit up the shop’s exterior, just like all the other business along the street, but it was dark inside. Not even the sec lights were on.
“We want to do this slow,” Duncan whispered as I took out the key I’d been given. “Could be whoever killed the Elders left a surprise inside for anyone who dug around too deeply.”
“I know.” I looked at Gobbet and Is0bel, making sure they understood as well. The fear in their eyes told me they were on track. I used the key, listened to the maglock open, and stepped through the door.
As we went through, the lights in the display cases lit up, probably an auto feature. The soft, glowing gray-blue lights illuminated most of the interior and the display cases on either side of the room.
“Spread out,” I said. “And be careful. No one needs to get slotted up while we’re here.”
“Auntie wouldn’t be happy,” Gobbet agreed. She gestured and the rats scampered out across the room. “If there are any foolies and sudden-kills in here, my friends should find them.”
I checked the first display, glancing over the assorted chips, peripherals, and add-on modules for cyberdecks, but I didn’t understand most of it. The haphazard way they lay in the display didn’t help. I figured a decker like Is0bel would know exactly what she was looking at.
Curious, not wanting to miss anything, I sorted through the collection hopefully.
“That’s interesting.” Is0bel was at my shoulder. I’d been so intent on what I was doing I hadn’t even noticed her come up. If I kept th
at up, it wouldn’t take long before I was dead.
“What is?” I asked.
“There’s a lot of storage memory, I/O handlers, and active memory in this bin. But I’m not seeing any MPCP hardware, response increase chips, or anything relating to the hot shit decking Magpie was supposed to be into. In fact, you couldn’t even build a full deck with this. Without the MPCP, it’d just be a glorified commlink.”
“What do you think that means?”
“Well, if I had to guess, I’d say somebody’s cleaned her out. MPCP, response increase, biofeedback filters, and all that. They’re easy to move, expensive, and highly illegal. All the rest of this crap is good, but it’s nothing you couldn’t pick up at any electronics shop.” Is0bel looked at me with a small smile. “You’ve got to know what you’re looking for, though. Only a good decker would know what they’re seeing.”
“Good thing you came along,” I told her.
She beamed.
“Could Magpie have taken them with her?”
She waved to the other displays, and to a pair of small cyberdecks inside a locked case. “I guess so, but if she did that, why would she leave the completed decks?” She shook her head. “No, I think this was theft. Take a look at the server.”
I walked over to the corner of the room. The front of the server’s case hung open. Everything inside was dark and inert. Nothing was powered up.
A clipboard hung on the side of the server, suspended by a piece of gray duct tape. Magpie definitely wasn’t into esthetics. The sheet was covered with notations including BugsBugsBugs! and Black Hammer.
“Those are probably names of attack programs,” Is0bel said. “She probably used this machine to mount her offensives in the Matrix.” She peered in and took a closer look with a small flashlight. “Somebody’s removed the drives, and it sure wasn’t Magpie. Here, look.”
I leaned down and peered in, following the line of her flashlight, which touched a solitary red light blinking at the back of the tower.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“The main drives were disconnected properly, but it looks like she modded the server to have a backup drive with its own battery-based power supply. If it was Magpie, she’d have taken that too.”
I pulled back as she shouldered me aside.
She reached inside the server, leaned in to the point her face was inside the housing, and cursed. “This is a Fuchi XB-1000, and it looks like the battery power ran out a while ago. The XB-1000s are constant-write drives. They’re dirt cheap and have a ton of capacity, but if they run out of power, they lose their data.” She pulled back. “We’re not gonna get anything off it.”
Leaving Is0bel with the devices, I walked to the back to the shop to join Gobbet at Magpie’s desk. Cigarette butts and half-finished cans of soy-kaf shared space with electronic scraps like a collage of decker life. A towering pile of empty instant noodle bowls sat next to the chaos. All of them offered advertising for Honest Wang’s Instant Old-Time Lamian. The logo featured a line of caterpillars dancing with canes while wearing top hats.
“Hey, awesome!” Gobbet said.
“What?” I asked, thinking she’d seen something I hadn’t.
“I didn’t think anybody but me liked Honest Wang’s noodles. Flavor like you’ve never tasted in a package of instant noodles, I promise.” Gobbet picked up one of the containers and showed it to me. “See? This one’s cheese curry broccoli! I dunno why it never caught on, honestly.”
Duncan stopped beside me and shook his head. “Gee, who could pass up the delicious taste of soycheese, curry, and freeze-dried vegetables?”
Gobbet evidently didn’t hear the sarcasm. “I know, right? People out there have no idea what kind of culinary delights they’re missing!”
I left her to her musings and went through the desk myself. Receipts, cigarette packs, optical chips, and cables filled the drawers to overflowing. A lot of food and cigarette ash had fallen down the cracks, too, making the contents more or less piles of garbage. Notes for two people, one named Mister-Fix It, the other going by the handle Van Graas were also there, but I couldn’t make out the symbology in the messages.
There was, however, a tin lockbox in a bottom drawer. I cleared away the detritus and exhumed it, just in case it had a tag-along foolie attached. Only a ragged hole remained where a lock had once been.
Still, I opened the box carefully and examined the keycard storage sleeves. All of them were empty. But there was a note inside:
Spare stockroom keys—the door is in the rear of Mrs. Yang’s restaurant. DO NOT LOSE THESE! Use only if I am not available to open the stockroom.
“A stockroom, huh?” Is0bel asked over my shoulder. “So who broke the lockbox to get the keys out?”
“Probably whoever cleaned out Magpie’s equipment,” Duncan said.
The decker shrugged. “I guess that’s possible, but why would they leave the lockbox here? They could just pack it up and take it back to the Whampoa. Leaving it is sloppy. And look at this.” She pointed to the broken lock. “Most of the elders could crack a maglock. This was somebody in a hurry.”
“You’re right,” I said. I replaced the lockbox in the desk and looked up at Duncan. “You searched the bathroom. Find anything?”
“Toothbrush, toilet paper, some hair pins, and a collection of cheap makeup. Magpie wasn’t exactly a fashion icon.” Duncan frowned. “There was a lot of crusted blood on the drain. I pried open the cover. Whoever did the bleeding didn’t have much left to give by the time it was over. I’m thinking that Magpie didn’t take a trip after all. With that amount of blood, I’m guessing someone killed her quietly, and then drained her body in the bath so it would be easier to re-locate.”
I thought about that, and the scenario immediately troubled me. “This doesn’t seem to match the killer’s other scenes, though.”
Duncan nodded. “I’m thinking there’s a lot more going on with these murders than we were initially told. First they don’t even mention Magpie to us, and now it looks like she’s been killed?” He grimaced and the soft light bounced off his glasses. “Something’s not right here. Let’s not mention this to the Elders. If they’re hiding anything, they may start cleaning up their tracks better.”
“I agree.” I took a final look around the shop. “Anybody know where Mrs. Yang’s restaurant is?”
Chapter 32
The Red Spear Gang
Mrs. Yang’s noodle shop was a mystery to Is0bel, which wasn’t surprising, considering that she didn’t know about Magpie. We swept the streets, searching for information, and ended up with something we hadn’t counted on getting.
A street tech dealer named Moe Jneibi—a name I remembered from the conversation with Zippy—told us that a gang called the Red Spears had moved into a parking garage at the south end of the sprawl. According to him, the Red Spears specialized in moving stolen tech.
“You ask me,” Duncan said, “we follow the criminals, see which way the nuyen’s flowing. Somebody hit Magpie’s store. Even if these guys didn’t do it, maybe they know who did.”
I didn’t like exposing us like that, but we’d already come close to overstaying our welcome in the neighborhood. Street talk was starting to center on us. It wouldn’t be long before we became the hunted instead of the hunters.
The parking garage had a simple pulldown door in back of two red and white striped sawhorses that blocked any vehicular approach. I hadn’t seen any vehicles, so I assumed motorized traffic no longer came into this part of the sprawl. Which meant the parking garage was empty space anyone could use for anything they wanted.
We made sure our weapons were ready, and I raised the door.
Sec lights created pools of light in the darkness, bringing the concrete world trapped inside the structure to bright light in places. A few abandoned vehicles littered various parking spots, and I realized the place was quiet—too quiet.
“Keep your eyes open,” I told the others. “The Red Spears probably alrea
dy know we’re here. The fact they haven’t attacked yet is a good thing. Even so, let’s keep it loose.”
I walked forward and to the right, noting that the passageway to the left was piled high with trash that provided an instant defensive barrier. With the concrete walls on both sides, it was a kill box.
I followed the yellow arrows painted on the floor to the back of the garage and spotted shadows standing in a loose formation there. They looked back at me, hands on weapons.
I lifted my hands, knowing Duncan had my back. “I just want to talk,” I said in a loud voice. “No gunplay.”
“That’s far enough, guy,” a woman’s voice told me. I tracked her and watched as she raised an AK-97 to her shoulder and took deliberate aim. “This lot’s our turf. If you’re lookin’ for a fix, you’re welcome to trade. If you’re not here for business, clear the hell out. You try and wander around, we’re gonna have to air you out.”
I halted. “I want to know about the HKPF guys that came through here a while back. I can drop some nuyen on you for the info.”
“Far as I know, some police showed up looking for somebody,” the woman said. “They came in here, all of ’em got killed.” She didn’t sound too broken up about it—her tone was that of someone who had just taken out the garbage. “Whoever they were after was long gone by the time we showed up. Used to be a lotta Whampoans living here. They’d all cleared out, muttering about ghosts and shit like that.”
“Have you heard anything about the murders of the Elders?”
She shrugged and I flinched a little as the rifle barrel moved around. Behind me, Duncan’s breath caught for just an instant, and I knew his finger had taken up trigger slack.
“Nothing much,” she said. “I tell you what, though. I’ve got a guy named Kang, and he was down in the storm drain system last week. Something was moving down there. Big, too. Man-sized. But it wasn’t speaking any language Kang understood. Kid beat feet back here as fast as he could.”