by Lee
Still, CoPL was offering cash rewards to anyone who could reverse a Writ, and depending on the skill of the Writman dispatched, the purses were allegedly very high indeed. Luckily for most of us out there, we’re quite hardy and inordinately skilled at what we do, so the chances of a target turning the tables on us is slim to none. If we’re really good at what we do, the deliveree doesn’t even know they’ve been delivered until they’re having their soul weighed against a feather.
Admittedly, my understanding of the steps to go from just really disliking someone to getting paper written are more than shaky, so I raised an eyebrow back at the Chief and waited for him to fill me in on which way the wind was blowing.
“As you know,” Rigible began, the tone in his voice explaining succinctly what he thought of the younger generation’s inability to learn anything truly important, “Zongo is a very powerful tobacco company. Possibly one of the strongest companies overall, with ties to many other businesses, both here and abroad. You do know this, yes?” Rigible smiled. “Good. So. We have ShizHaus and Wacky Tongue brand cigarettes and cigarillos, both small-time peanuts by comparison. At least here, in the city, and elsewhere in America. In their own countries, they share success similar to Zongo, with the exception that they are not truly international in scope. Since they cannot hope to break into the market all across America at once, they target the largest city in the world next to Tokyoland, which is us.”
“Okay,” I said this slowly, but I was warming, however unhappily, to Rigible’s brainstorming, “but why choose Daddy Tooms and his daughter to bring the smokes in? Why not contact Blitzem and Bangem and do a full media onslaught?”
Rigible held up a finger the size of my entire hand. “I have thought on this, and I think I have the answer for you; test markets. Zongo is made here. Everyone who is anyone and even those who aren’t anyone smokes some kind of Zongo tobacco. If either ShizHaus or Wacky Tongue could build up a significantly representative portion of the population in a test market without attracting Zongo reps who live for nothing more than to force people back to their products, I imagine their next step would have been going to B&B. It is not difficult to acquire clandestine permission for such activities, if you contact the right people and fill out the right forms; the only reason that Zongo hasn’t gone to the courts yet is due to the fact that unsealing those documents, if they exist, takes awhile. If the two companies involved do have Clandestine Operation forms, then Zongo is in dire, dire trouble.”
I already knew that. All the Zongo rep would have had to do was call up his or her contacts in Washington and ask ‘Are companies A and B up to some secret crap in our backyard, or can I Writ these fools into next week?’. If the answer is yes, said rep curses a blue streak and then tries to devise a way to legally prevent A and B, in this case ShizHaus and Wacky Tongue, from trying to carve a niche into a hitherto rock-solid Zongo monopoly. The best (and legal) method of countering such a devious maneuver is an all-out media blitz and tons of free cigarettes for non-Zongo customers.
Obviously, if the answer is ‘no’, then it’s all guns loaded and paper delivered. There would be no media furor, and Rigible and I would be talking more about the Kung Fu Wrestling Finals, which was, in my view, was far more important and less likely to cause me any problems.
If the CO forms do exist, then the Zongo rep would be fired and most likely delivered by the end of the week. Zongo’s penance would be made in the form of financial reparations to ShizHaus and Wacky Tongue. Everyone goes home a winner. Except me, of course.
I still couldn’t see how this was going to affect me in any way, and I told Rigible exactly that. I was pretty firm on this; I hadn’t drafted the Writ, nor had I been asked to acquire any Intel (I can guarantee if I had, I’d have known about Daddy Tooms’ connections), so my hands were as clean as clean.
“James, you are a very smart man, possibly one of the smartest I know, but you are sometimes very foolish.” Rigible ticked off a finger. “One, the Writ called for silent deliverance, not decapitation through a sawed-off shotgun. Two, it called for you not being seen by anyone once the job was done, and you have a husband and wife team who can, chewed up face and massive drug intake notwithstanding, describe you very easily to our sketch artists. Three, you had sex with Delores Tooms and there was no rider in the contract saying you could. Given those three things, the Zongo legal teams could accuse you of failing to abide by the terms of the contract, force you into default, and let the whole damned thing fall in your lap as incompetence in the field. If you’d executed the Writ as directed, no one would be the wiser and by the time Wacky Tongue and ShizHaus learned the truth, too much time would have passed.”
“Not possible.” I countered evenly. “One, the wording in the Writ suggested silent deliverance but was not necessarily limited to. Two, there was a time limit on the Writ; Zongo was unwilling to pay travel rates to follow the Tooms’ to Lichtenstein for their next pick up of ShizHaus cigarettes, and the only angle workable in that situation was to get the daughter completely drunk off her ass and sleep with her. Daddy Tooms was a no-go situation from the start. The man had a psychic bee in his bonnet about strangers. And as for Chewed Face and his Druggy Wife, I could have given them my name and address without worrying about anything.”
“I hope for your sake this is how it goes, James, though I think otherwise. The Champions of Proper Law are looking into the case.” Rigible sighed heavily. “It could be a benchmark moment for them, my friend, and if they can push all the blame to you and cast a very bad light on the notion of Writs and deliverance, they will do so. Ironically, the end result would be the issuance of a Writ on yourself, because as you say, you are covered with Anonymity Inc, and they are, for the time being, unaffected by CoPL initiatives.”
“Can they do that?” I demanded. My blood pressure was skyrocketing and I was having a rough time breathing. Writs for Writmen are always Open Ended. In less than a day, I could be hunted by a ravaging horde of maniacal assassins out to prove who’s the best of the best (do not forget that no matter my current, dismal state of affairs, I had been one kill away from being global Writmaster, and there would be no greater addition to a resume than killing that guy). “Legally?”
“Do not forget, James, that legal is a tricky definition these days. Legal in the altruistic sense of the word? No. Legal in the ‘all the paperwork is done and the right people paid off’ sense? Absolutely. With the right timing, the right political climate and the right blackmail, the Courts Supreme could be convinced to let your cheese hang in the wind for any Tom, Dick and Harry to deliver.”
“Well,” I’d decided not to worry, “that isn’t likely to happen. Writ Off might not like me much at the moment, but they protect their assets. I’ve been in worse trouble before and come out. Not okay, but I made it to the other side.”
By the way Rigible’s eyes glinted, I could tell the giant had more to say on the matter, but he merely grunted. There was just no way I could allow myself to imagine any other outcome of the inquest than being found innocent; suffering another mega-blow to my nearly non-existent career as a Writman would destroy me, utterly. It was the only job I’d ever been good at.
Rigible accepted my ignorance-is-bliss approach with another grunt and thankfully changed topics; there is none as deaf as those who won’t listen to reason. “So, Miggy’s new comeback album.”
I nodded. “I hope for her sake this one sticks. She won’t get another one.”
“We arrested her drummer three weeks ago for urinating on people in Crowning Square Market. He’d ingested a mixture of horse tranquilizers, difficult to obtain medicinal LSD, extract of puffer fish and enough cocaine to put a small Columbian village into coma. It took him a week to remember his name. The arresting officers put him in front of his drums in his cell and he finished the album from here before he could tie his own shoes again. There is some doubt as to whether or not he will be wearing anything except Velcro shoes ever again.”
Go
od news, good news. As a native, we took Miggy, her exploits, band mates and music more than a little seriously. There are other groups out there with just as much popularity, but Miggy was the hometown girl made it big. All the other wannabes out there had her to thank for her Drug Consumption Act. Without her, they’d all be churning out commercialized music you could sell Toyotas with and not seriously good tunes that people actually paid money for instead of illegally downloading, as happened in Canada all the time. If Charles Charleson was tripping like that, we could all look forward to a seriously excellent album. Not that I cared about the Mellonballers. Because I don’t. Not at all.
“Good. That’s great. I can’t imagine anyone’d paper her for the Multiple Comeback Failure Clause, but it happened to the Beastie Boys and Sting, so who’s to say?”
“I think that we can rest easy, James. Miggy’s been around a lot in the last ten years. She knows a large number of influential people.”
“More to the point,” I countered with an impish grin, “she’s been with a lot of influential people, and knows which ones like to be whipped with a riding cane and which ones like to be the girl.”
Rigible closed his eyes and did his best not to laugh; Senators Houghcom and Dusomme had very nearly lost their positions when their … their choice of positions with our media darling broke the covers of Very Biased in a very lurid ten page full-color expose proving once and for all that to go along you’ve got to get along. Preferably with fish net stockings and a vintage riding crop from the 16th century purportedly belonging to Sir Walter Grimms, notorious knight-errant.
Rigible handed me an all-access visitor’s badge, cautioned me not to steal anything that wasn’t nailed down and to avoid the Weapon’s Division unless invited in by Constable Wilson because they were testing the fabled Brown Gun and an accidental entrance could very well lead to an unintended evacuation, and bid me farewell.
I bid RH D. Rigible farewell. He flicked a Brobdingnagian hand in my direction and went about the business of protecting millions and millions of people.
Happily, Reginald was nowhere to be seen and none of the other civilian staff that assisted the force in the persecution of their jobs were interested in me enough to even look in my direction. I took the elevator down to Amily’s floor, concentrating on my breathing and trying to force-learn a halfway decent lie about what I needed the money for. If worst came to worst, I could always deflect and start moaning about Miggy’s up-and-coming newfound fame and how I’d really screwed up by not taking her out again after high-school.
Still troubled by Rigible’s cautions but forcefully optimistic about my chances, I went to visit my sister Amily.
Ever since her masterful handling of a spontaneous Outraged Citizen mob three and a half years ago, Amily’s been in charge of Citywide Tactical Control; at the time of the chaotic event, she’d been a bluecoat, on the ground and in the middle of it all. By the end of the event, sparked by the sudden announcement that General Ainsworth Vryksson (the most hated military man on the planet for his callous use of poor grammar and wanton disregard for servicemen) was going to go free on all counts, Amily had found herself in a helicopter with a sniper rifle shooting insane Outraged Citizens. Not necessarily the most people-oriented approach to mob rule, but when the count of OC’s roaming the streets looting, pillaging and turning over foreign cars hit forty thousand in less than fifteen minutes, rugby rules apply. Sadly, I’d been out of state in California doing a few quickie deliverances and missed all the fun.
I was very, very proud of my sister, least of all because she took her job dead seriously; every year there are more than a dozen events that generate ‘citizens on the street’ counts of anywhere from ten thousand to a million men, women and children. Of those occasions, which range from birthday parties of well-known local authorities all the way up to massive sporting events (like the Kung Fu Wrestling tournament), more than three but usually less than six results in some kind of insanity. You can’t get that many people together in one spot without expecting a little bit of animosity.
With Amily at the head of CTC, though, the death count and destruction of public property were at the lowest they’d been in more than twenty years. It was because sis used her brain as well as awe-inspiring displays of superior firepower and a total willingness to shoot major inciters dead in their tracks. After Miggy’s last concert, where it’d become totally obvious that she was phoning the entire affair in, Amily’d needed to call in an airstrike, but that was out of the norm; Migs typically attracted a rougher than normal crowd anyway, so no fallout.
Amily worked alone most of the time, surrounded by powerful computers running massively parallel processors to determine the most probable outcomes of any given event. She’d done most of the programming on her own, with a little help from you know who, which meant that virtually all the ‘work’ of containing and controlling the uncontainable and uncontrollable was handled weeks in advance. When she needed assistance or when the programs ran into variables that defied the consuming logic of the software, Amily called in some of the oldest of the old school cops to get a handle on a tricky situation. They helped out because she was friendly and smart, and sadly, if I understood the graffiti in the bathroom stalls, very, very hot.
This didn’t make me feel good, because we are, with the exception of a few dozen pounds in my case and makeup and different bits in her case, identical. Hearing your carbon copy female twin sister is a smokin’ babe makes you feel marginally uncomfortable. Seeing a guy openly undress her with his eyes? The number of times I’d been required to beat the living hell out of guys in high school … well … it was quite a few, and not to protect my sister’s chastity, but my own frame of mind.
I let myself into Amily’s office and noticed the change immediately; HQ is always full of noise. Most people don’t for a moment realize that everything you plug in makes noise, even if it’s not being used. We habituate so much of the sound that fills our lives that even when completely asleep you subliminally notice the power’s gone out. You don’t wake up because all of a sudden your Tivo isn’t recording shows, but because it’s gone too quiet and you automatically think something bad is going to happen. An old racial memory from when we lived in the caves eating bugs, no doubt.
Not me. I love the bone dead quiet that fills Amily’s office space. She needs it to concentrate on her models because determining split-second actions that can have dire repercussions needs lots of concentration. If I could, I’d operate in total silence while delivering Writs, but that’s not feasible. People usually scream a lot before you deliver them.
Amily looked over her shoulder to see who’d dared to enter her sanctum sanctorum, took a long gander at my shoes, grunted, rolled her eyes and went back to work. Since she hadn’t kicked me out immediately, that meant I could stay, which was nice, because otherwise I’d wasted more than an hour being told by a giant that I was probably going to be dead soon, and that is depressing as hell.
On-screen, Ames was working on how to handle the fallout from the Kung Fu Wrestling tournament due a month down the road. It was a tricky situation, especially in a city like ours. In terms of rabid fanaticism, the population was divided roughly in half for Mikhail Brovloski and Tony Denardo. Either way you sliced the cake, lots and lots of drunken idiots dressed in Basher Brovloski or Dead-Eye Denardo costumes were going to be roaming the streets after the match, either in celebration of a win or in rage at a loss. Worst case scenario put both groups of loons on the streets at the same time, attacking one another with everything from crowbars to Spinning Death Jumps.
And that was assuming the venue was emptied before the arena itself was consumed in a fiery apocalypse; knowing Ames, she’d tackled the easiest first. My guess was something involving sleepytime gas and a couple random headshots to lull the ravening crowds into an attitude closely resembling utter docility. Until everyone got outside.
Street-wise was a very different story. Morita National Venue was near enough t
o smack-dab in the middle of the ‘newest’ downtown core to make large-scale solutions dangerous and politically difficult to use without incurring the wrath of powerful people; a lot of new money, a lot of it, had gone into constructing fancy skyscrapers, interesting to look at museums and other, ridiculously expensive pet projects like the Transylvanian castle that actually came from somewhere in Scotland, the Wandering Japanese Garden and the Living Statuary.
Those last three items had to be of particular concern for Amily because they were, as I said, pet projects belonging to, in order, the President of the United States of America, Commandant Hiro Jones of the SkyKing Task Force and Dame Westering Wordsworth Hamson-Smythe, the last living noble; coincidentally or not, each of those fanciful dreams-made-concrete were pretty much set at dead runs away from Morita National Venue, or, in the case of the garden, most of the time (one time they’d found it twenty miles off the beaten track, trying to ram its way through a wall).
Now, the castle could be considered a difficult target most of the time, but I’m sad to say that these days, some idiots look forward to the ‘possible’ riot after a big show and prepare by making explosives in their basements. Castle Killem wouldn’t last ten seconds under the onslaught of a bored and riled up pack of crazed sports fans hopped up on energy drinks. The same could be said of the Garden and the Statuary, though in the former’s case it was mobile and would hopefully not be in the area and if Dame Smythe could be convinced to let her people go…
“Not going to happen.” Amily pointed at her enormous screen with a pointer, following my train of thought as I watched imaginary people tear the downtown core to pieces over and over again. “Statistical tracking has the Garden’s path, which has been programmed to be no more than fifteen city blocks from point of origin, to be more or less right outside Killem by roughly half an hour after the games end. I’ve already tried to convince that pompous ass to do an override, but he refuses, claiming that it’ll detract from the overall theme he’s trying to promote.”