Preying for Keeps

by Mel Odom

  “She’s not shy, is she?” Kestrel said.

  “No.” Skater’s hand circled the Predator’s butt. “She’s not.” He kept watch on the pack of sleazers, ignoring the wet kisses the blond mouthed at him. Others wore neon body paint and looked like glimmering pools of perversion moving in the distance.

  “Hang on.” Kestrel warned. The big powerplant roared under the hood and he swerved the vehicle out into the street, cutting off a midnight blue Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit. A horn screeched loudly in their wake, and the blond tricker gave Skater the finger and a string of obscenities.

  Skater tried to relax. It was no use. The cab’s back seat was cramped and stank of urine. Smashed fast-food containers covered with days-old muddy footprints decorated the floorboard. A bulletproof and bombproof sheet of plastic separated him from Kestrel.

  The cab knifed expertly through the traffic. “You didn’t answer my question.” Kestrel said through the speaker.

  Skater grinned without humor. “I’m running.”

  “You got a funny way of showing it, chummer.” Kestrel indicated the sprawl all around them. “You show up smack dab in the middle of Seattle with a lot of muscleboys looking to frag your hoop. For the nuyen you’re paying me I’d have met you in Hell’s Kitchen.”

  “You heard?”

  “About the elf crate?” Kestrel nodded. “You didn’t know the yaks had bought into the action?”

  “No.”

  “Surprise.”

  “No drek.” Skater shifted slightly in the seat, tensing. Kestrel was a street fixer, buried so deep in the web of crime and clout that most people didn’t know about him—unless he wanted someone to.

  Kestrel was dark and thin with hooded eyes. An angular scar, turned gray-white with age, lay like a private’s chevron across the bridge of his hooked nose and leaked down onto both cheeks. His face was long, forgettable. He wore a baseball cap advertising the Seattle Timber Wolves combat bike team and a maroon tee shirt.

  “So what’s the plan?” Kestrel asked.

  “Run,” Skater said, “and don’t look back.”

  "Then why you still here, chummer?”

  Skater ignored the question. “What else have you heard about that elven freighter?”

  Kestrel shrugged. “Scan’s pretty tight on that. People are looking for you, omae, and spreading a lot of nuyen around while they’re at it.”

  “Like who?”

  “Word I get is they’re working for Masaru Doyukai.” Skater ran the name through his mind. “Never heard of him.”

  “New boy in town.” Kestrel replied. “Straight from the heart of Japan. Looking to make his way up quick. One of Shotozumi’s godsons or some drek like that.” The name of Hanzo Shotozumi was known to every runner on the street, and it was one feared by all. He was numero uno crime boss of Seattle, the man who’d forged the yakuza into the biggest, strongest, and deadliest crime organization in the sprawl. "You don't know for sure?”

  "No reason to. You want, I’ll look him up. After tonight’s action and the way he’s leaning so heavy on everybody, I’ll know him by morning anyway.”

  “I'll be long gone by then.”

  Kestrel nodded. “Good plan, kid. I always said you had a head on your shoulders. Nice to hear you’re thinking of keeping it there.”

  “Why would Shotozumi be interested in an elven freighter?” Skater asked.

  “No vendettas that I know of. Only thing I scan is that they were after some prize it carried.” Kestrel glanced into the mirror. “What were you doing there?”

  Skater met the man’s gaze but said nothing.

  Shaking his head, Kestrel reached for the pack on the dashboard and knocked a cigarette loose. He jammed it between his lips, gaze locked on the street ahead as he drove. “Kid, look ... Much as I hate to admit it, I owe you. The day those Disassemblers hit your mom’s place and killed her, they damn near killed me, too. If you hadn’t gotten there, maybe they would have. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then, when you went after those trogs and evened the score, who helped you when you almost bought it?”

  “You.” The fixer had also worked out financial arrangements with the street docs who’d put Skater back together, this time with the addition of some wiz cybernetic enhancements. Revenge hadn’t come easily, or without cost.

  “Damn straight.” Kestrel gave the accelerator a tap. “I’m not your nursemaid or even close to any kind of guardian angel, but I owe you. I’ll nose around a little, do some digging, maybe find something out. You can call one of my message drops time to time and I’ll let you know what kind of heat you’re facing here.”

  “Sure.” Skater said. “Problem is, I don’t know for sure what we were after. Some kind of bioresearch supposed to be worth millions.”

  “A fragging pig in the poke?”

  “I had an inside line.”

  “And the inside person? You trust him?”

  Her, Skater silently corrected. “I did.”

  “Happens.” Kestrel said. “You live life to figure out the people you can trust. If you’re lucky, you survive the ones you’re wrong about.”

  “You discover anything about this mess, you get a finder’s fee.”

  Kestrel nodded.

  “Where’s my credstick?” Skater asked. The fixer also ran some of the best money-laundering schemes in the business.

  “Under your new name down in the Cayman Islands. Some of it’s still on the way, but it’ll all be there by morning, long before you get there.” Kestrel placed a small leather pouch into the vault pass-through mounted in the seat. With a wicked hiss, the vault shunted back toward Skater and opened with an electric pop.

  Skater took out the ebony credstick and looked at it. Kestrel told him the SIN was in the name of Walter Dent.

  Skater hit the doorlock and opened it as the light turned green, stepping out onto the curb. “Thanks, Kestrel.” He kept moving, closing the door before the fixer could say anything else. He let the shadows take him, wishing they could drown the memories, too, because now those memories wouldn’t turn loose, suddenly sharper and more insistent than ever. He couldn’t quit the city without knowing why Larisa had betrayed him. It couldn’t be love he felt for her, he knew. It was the attraction of the moth for the flame. And maybe a way of evening the score between them. She’d left him without reason, leaving him to feel like he just didn’t make the grade. But he’d never sold someone out. He was better than that.

  5

  Skater got a once-over from one of the two bouncers working the main door to SybreSpace. He slotted his new credstick for the cover charge.

  “You have a nice time while you’re with us.” the bouncer ordered in a gravelly voice as he popped the Wilkerson razors back into hiding. “And be nice to the working girls.”

  SybreSpace was still one of the trendiest bars in the sprawl, with a long history as a notorious hangout for deckers and wannabes. Others came for the music, which changed abruptly from style to style, depending on which dancer held the main stage.

  Skater made his way to the bar, pushing through the packed bodies and haze of cigarette smoke that only partially blunted the scorching neon veins that made various Matrix-like designs pulse on the walls, ceiling, and floor.

  Shielding his eyes, Skater spotted a bartender he knew and headed for the decorated bar lit up with glaring neon cubes and polyhedrons that whirled and spun, then exploded in myriad colors, only to be replaced by others. After a brief wait, he reached the head of the line, book-ended between two frazzled waitresses yelling drink orders.

  “Can I get you something?” the bartender asked. He was slim and innocuous, but Skater knew for a fact that the guy’s left arm held a Fichetti light pistol cybergun.

  “A draw.” Skater said. He didn’t drink, a holdover from his upbringing on the Council lands, and from a personal belief that a shadowrunner had to stay sharp. Except for Shiva and Duran, who did indulge but never on the job, a
nd Trey, who relished the occasional glass of vintage port when he could get it, no one else on the team drank either.

  The bartender drew the soybeer into a thick glass, expertly moving the foaming head to the top in a smooth flood of amber.

  Skater slotted his credstick, adding a twenty percent tip. This wasn’t the Barrens, after all. “Something else.”

  The bartender went on filling orders for the waitresses, but he glanced back at Skater without missing a beat. His eyes narrowed only slightly, though the broad smile never faltered. “And that is?”

  “Is Aggie working tonight?”

  “Yes.” The bartender sat a trio of drinks on one of the waitress’s trays while she complained to the other one about the troll at a back table who was pinching her ass hard enough to leave bruises. “So are a half-dozen bouncers, omae.”

  “No problem.” Skater took his drink and headed back to the shadows that extended just beyond the multicolored lights spilling from the main dance stage onto the floor. The crowd was already lathered up, shouting and hooting their encouragement to the stripper working her way out of her G-string with teasing abandon. She used the mirrors behind her and the gray fog from the stage filters to prolong visual frustration.

  Memories came unbidden and started tumbling into Skater’s mind. He’d first seen Larisa in the bar while discussing a possible run with a guy Archangel knew. From the very first Larisa Hartsinger had captivated him with her beauty and her dancing, then with her personality. He pushed the memories away with effort and some repressed pain, focusing on the task at hand.

  Skater hugged the wall and stepped into the short hallway running to the back rooms. The overhead track lighting was intentionally dim so the dancers could come and go among the crowd without being seen.

  He stopped at the second door on the left and let his knuckles find a rhythm on the reinforced wooden surface. “Who is it?” a husky contralto demanded.

  Skater hesitated only for a minute. “Aggie, it’s Jack. I need to talk.”

  “Don’t waste your time, chummer. She ain’t here.”

  “I figured that. I need to know where she is.”

  There was a pause. “Why come to me?”

  “Got no one else to ask, and I need to find her.”

  “Slot it, Jack, people are looking for you. The kind of people where you end up dead and turned to lawn mulch before you can blink your eyes.” The old-fashioned peephole in the door darkened briefly.

  "Larisa may be part of it. I need to know.”

  The door opened and Aggie ushered him in. She was tall and slender, with an overall bodymod that threw every luscious curve into the danger zone. A turquoise negligee overlaid a foundation of black lace undergarments that were shadows under the gauzy material. Her dark hair was hacked off at shoulder length but remained full, accentuating the Amerindian cheekbones and jawline.

  Despite the pressing urgency, Skater found making small talk difficult. Before he’d taken up with Larisa, there’d been nights with Aggie. They’d had fun and the sex had been good, but never the magic that had fired him with Larisa.

  The dressing room was small and spartan. Besides the vanity and the stool before it, there was only a loveseat and a coat rack.

  Aggie smoothed her makeup on with practiced strokes, easily enhancing all her best features. “I don’t have time for a lot of jaw.” She made a moue of her lips and applied fiery red lipstick that held a neon glazed afterglow.

  “Larisa.” Skater prompted. The sounds coming from the main room had quieted.

  “If she wanted contact with you, she’d have called.”

  “Aggie, this is serious.”

  She ignored him, quickly slashing on a pair of very arched brows. “Have you tried calling her?”

  “I need to see her.”

  “Oh?” Aggie raised one of her new eyebrows. “You mean Larisa didn’t give you her new number?” She closed her make-up case and dropped it into the slim purse sitting on the vanity. “What a surprise.”

  “You know they’re looking for me.” Skater said. “Maybe for Larisa, too.”

  Aggie’s eyes trapped Skater’s in the vanity mirror. “You mean somebody other than you?”

  Skater let irritation sound in his voice. There’d been a little residual animosity between them after he’d started seeing Larisa, but no big drama. “I don’t have time for games.” he growled.

  Spinning to face him, face darkened by anger, Aggie snapped, “Don’t you? Everything’s a game to you, Jack. You play hard, and you’re one of the best, but it’s all a game. Including Larisa. Get the hint, chummer: she doesn’t want to see you. You didn’t lose. Exactly. She’s just not going to play anymore.” Her voice softened. “Can’t say I blame her. There’s no use in hanging onto something that’s not yours to have. She learned, just not soon enough.”

  “She set me up.” Skater said in a low voice.

  Aggie gave him a hard, doubtful look.

  “Tonight.” he went on, forcing her to hear. “A piece of action turned dirty and got one of my people killed.” It was as much as he’d ever admitted to someone outside his own circle that he was involved in any kind of shadow biz. With one exception. “Larisa fed me the scan, cut herself in for a piece. I agreed because it sounded doable. Somewhere in there, the yakuza got double-crossed, either by Larisa or someone she knows. I want to know the score.”

  “And you think Larisa sold you out?”

  Asked bare-faced and bluntly, Skater couldn’t answer right away. “I don’t know. I need to find out. If she didn’t, she could be in danger.”

  Aggie’s laugh was harsh and brittle. “You don’t believe in anybody, do you?”

  Skater didn’t reply.

  “Tell me,” the dancer said, “when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror, do you ever believe the guy you see standing there?”

  “Sometimes.” Skater replied honestly.

  “You don’t even know yourself. How the hell can you expect to know anyone else?”

  Skater was confused by the logic. “I need to see Larisa.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t need to see you.” Aggie turned and shook a long, gold-tipped black cigarette out of a pack and lit it. Smoke curled around her head. “She loved you, Jack. More than anything or anyone. I didn’t think she’d ever leave you, no matter what kind of life you lead or the way you walled yourself off from her. Whatever you did to hurt her, it must have been bad.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her.” Skater said. He’d asked himself for months what it could have been, replayed every conversation he could remember. None of it seemed enough to drive her away. “What did she tell you?”

  “Nothing. But we noticed you didn’t come around anymore and Larisa didn’t smile as much. A month later she couldn’t hide it any longer, and we figured you’d left because of the baby.”

  Skater felt like he’d been juiced with a double string from a Super Shock taser. “Baby?”

  “Yeah, a baby.” Aggie held out her hands to measure dimensions angrily. “You know, about this big, pink and round. Cries a lot.” Site stared hard at him.

  Skater flipped the possibility around inside his head, but it wouldn’t stick to anything, like the inside of his skull was gel-coated.

  “Spirits.” Aggie said softly. “You didn't know.”

  “No.” Skater felt battered and empty, all the anger he’d been holding onto to keep him moving suddenly blown out of him.

  “We all figured you’d found out she was pregnant and decided to make tracks.”

  “I wouldn’t have done that.”

  “You sure?”

  Skater made himself answer honestly, more for himself than Aggie. He needed truth now. “No.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought. Maybe that’s what Larisa thought, too." She stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray curled up inside a ceramic rock lizard. “You get to know them, guys are pretty much the same once you scratch that thin veneer. We tried to get her to see a str
eet doc about eliminating the problem. But she refused. She had a nice nest egg set aside, and she was picking up more from new customers after you stopped coming around.”

  “Like who?”

  “A connected guy named Synclair Tone.” Aggie’s voice and expression intimated scorn. “He’s a Mafia guy who came up out of the Barrens. Still got the gutter written all over him, if you know where to look. He’s cheap flash in a Vashon Island suit, but he’s got mucho dinero backing any play he makes. And he liked Larisa a lot.”

  The knowledge soured inside Skater. From Aggie's expression, he knew she’d intended it to. He forced himself to get around it. “Who’s Tone with?”

  She shrugged. “You know how these guys are, Jack. Keep the mystery intact and they figure a girl will throw herself at his feet.”

  Had Larisa? He told himself he didn’t want to know, but that was a lie. “Is it possible Tone’s tied in with the yaks somehow?” Skater knew the Seattle Mafia and the yakuza were virtually at war, but he also knew the yaks were deep as drek in all this. No matter how unlikely, this Tone slag just might be stupid enough to try playing both ends against the middle.

  “Not that I ever knew.”

  “Was Larisa?”

  “No. The yakuza have a positively medieval outlook on women. She knew that. She stayed away.”

  Skater struggled to make sense of everything, but it wasn’t happening. There was only one course of action he could pursue. “I need to see Larisa.”

  Someone knocked on the door. “Five minutes, Aggie.”

  “Coming.” she yelled back.

  “Don’t be late or you’ll get docked. Chloris got those suckers drooling and they ain’t gonna wait long.” Footsteps moved away from the door.

  “I need to see Larisa.” Skater repeated.