by Rhys Ford
“Just be careful, and don’t get shot.” He gave my waistband another tug, his gaze firm on my face. “Besides, you definitely have to come back, because I might love you, but I am not going to taste your cat’s food for him. There’s only so much you can ask a man to do, and that’s too far, even for me.”
SAN DIEGO’S tiered structure was a common one, folds and pockets of neighborhoods tucked into crevices opened up by the Merge. San Francisco did it the best, using the long stretches beneath old districts as a mirror to what one could find aboveground. But New York suffered from the expansion, its skyscrapers unable to withstand the shifting ground. Tokyo didn’t even blink, and Singapore celebrated the increased space, quickly filling in the vacant areas with housing and gardens, thankful for any extra square inch they got. San Diego ended up as it always did, creating a mishmash of neighborhoods where a bit of extra income meant a larger footprint to live in, and the closer to the ocean someplace was, the more expensive it was to live.
Kenny was nowhere near the coastline.
Instead he was buried as deep into the understreets as he could go without actually ending up in the series of catacombs and caverns leading in stringers out to the California desert far outside of San Diego proper. I had a decent mapping system of those caves and corridors, but the last thing I wanted was to chase Kenny Dempsey through what would be another circle of Hell Dante thought up in his spare time.
“How well do you know this guy?” Cari slouched against the passenger-side window, working at a gris-gris bag she’d promised Alexa. “I mean, he’s your uncle. Kind of.”
We weren’t that far into the understreets, close enough to one of the level’s entrances that there was still sunlight flashing on the buildings behind us, but in a few minutes, we’d be over a ridge and dropping down into the murky almost-twilight beyond. There wasn’t ever a direct route to where you needed to go below. The streets were in a grid pattern, but only enough to frustrate when a building sprouted up in the middle of a thoroughfare and traffic was forced to go around to get to the other side.
It was midafternoon, but traffic was already skimming at a high pace. All around us bright blue tik-tiks dipped down to nab fares, then skipped back up the line to do battle with the trolleys overhead. A few rogue tik-tiks dove into the fray, their harried drivers skimming into the crowds of office workers disembarking from the escalators connecting the undercity to the bustling metropolis overhead. Spotting a black bubble of an illegal tik-tik careening down to slide into a space behind a licensed blue cab, I swerved to the left, gladly avoiding the ensuing snarl. Like clockwork, the blue-cab driver was out of his vehicle, abandoning his place in line and stomping over to the black skipper behind him. Horns bellowed, and a stream of profanity ladled hard with anger erupted. Then it was in our rearview mirror, swallowed up by more traffic and a few right turns.
“I don’t really know him. He’s an asshole. More than Dempsey ever was. I actually never knew anyone who liked him.” I shrugged, recalling very little about the man who Dempsey called the most miserable bastard he’d ever known. Considering how many miserable bastards Dempsey had in his life, I took that as a fair warning. “He was always hitting Dempsey up for money for one thing or another. Worked hard not to work, that’s what Dempsey would say. There was always this scheme that would hit it big, pay out millions, and Dempsey would tell him to fuck off.”
“Well yeah, Dempsey had a retirement plan.” She snorted, poking me in the ribs and of course finding one of the still-tender spots. “I’m sitting right next to it.”
“I never begrudged the old man one cent.” I slowed down for a stoplight, rubbing at the spot she’d stabbed at. “Even after… all of this… all of these secrets… he did right by me. Hell, even righter than I thought. He had something on whoever hired him to get me back then. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me—that he was given something or he found something that held their hand—because now he’s gone, it’s all creeping back out. Kenny’s got that something, and we need to get our hands on it.”
“And him,” she murmured, putting the gris-gris aside and picking up her tablet. “Took a look at your uncle’s contract. It’s like he went out of his way to cheat every single hard-core criminal in New Vegas he could find. I mean, they’re pissed off. There’s a bonus if he comes in with broken fingers and a hint that you’ll get a free townhouse if he’s turned over to the Post without his jewels. Like, a strong hint. Place looks nice. It’s got a pool.”
“Not one for swimming,” I reminded her. “Elfin don’t seem to like the water that much, but then again, considering what they brought over with them and dumped into the oceans, it’s hard to love splashing around in places where even dragons are afraid to go. I’ve seen some of those fish they’ve pulled in up in Alaska—teeth the size of Great Danes and eyeballs bigger than this Scout.”
The gloaming hit over the next rise, and any true sunlight was lost to us. Around us, the streets turned milky and blue, punctuated by splashes of neon and strips of white spots running along the high-pitched overhangs built to hold the upper city in place. Buildings shifted, getting lower and turning residential. Many were painted a vibrant white at some point, a bit of effort put in to push back the shadows, but grime and soot eventually crept in, turning the landscape a nearly uniform gray.
There were still spots of color, flashing signs, and rolling screens advertising everything from supermarkets to face masks with a bit of litigation thrown in for good measure. The tik-tiks were plentiful here, cramming in and out to drop off passengers, then making their way back to the front lines, eager for fares. On the ground, buses took up most of the lanes, hissing and spitting steam as they settled down at each stop. Marquees rolled around the segmented transports, announcing route numbers and destinations in a spidery crawl below their tint-darkened windows. Graffiti added a bit of flavor to the walls, but the storefronts on the busy street seemed to be losing their battle with the taggers, some of their glass fronts nearly covered with indecipherable scrawls. A few clusters of townhomes made some attempt at gentrification but, like the stores, were victims of the eternal twilight and visual noise that came with the understreets.
No one wanted to live in perpetual darkness, and as soon as they could, many fled for the outer rings of the undercity, with a few exceptions of those too poor to gain any foothold against their circumstances and the roaches passing for human in the tangled streets beyond the light.
I was counting on those roaches to help me ferret Kenny out, and I knew exactly what rock I needed to turn over first to begin my hunt.
“Got your badge?” I asked, glancing over at Cari. “You’re going to need it.”
“Hell, somewhere.” She frowned, reaching for a backpack by her feet. “Why?”
“Because running down a bounty’s different than hunting monsters. Law says we’ve got to be badged up clear as day,” I told her, winding the Scout around to avoid a slow-moving transport truck. “Open carry’s allowed, but badges have to be in sight. Besides, where we’re going, a bit of metal goes a long way in either shaking people out of the trees or telling you who you’ve got to shake harder.”
“Where exactly are you taking me, Gracen?” Cari came up from her digging, triumphantly holding up her Stalker badge, its plastic wrap still taped down around its curve. “I thought you knew where this guy was?”
“Not so much, but I’ve got a good lead on who’s got eyes on him. Which is a damned good place to start.” I wrestled the Scout into a holding zone, flipping on the SoCalGov permit light band attached to its windshield.
People on the street edged away from the old battle tank, eyeing its flashing LEO warning. The spot was perfect, not more than a few feet away from the alley I’d been looking for, and judging by the streams of people flowing in and out of the tight opening between the buildings, our showing up would disrupt a bit of business and everyone we would speak to would want us out of their hair as soon as they could.
&n
bsp; “Slap the gold on, and make sure you’ve got your weapon tied down. We’re going into the Market to see a woman about some curry,” I said, stepping out of the Scout and fixing my badge to my belt. “And maybe shake her down for illegal possession at the same time, but mostly I just want some curry.”
Fourteen
THERE ARE always places in a city where anything could be had for the right price. In Los Angeles, Santee Alley was where you stopped for anything from elote to prom dresses, and St. John’s Park in San Francisco had things in its stalls guaranteed to boggle the mind, but in San Diego, the Market on Adams was where someone could find narwhal ivory carved into a snow leopard scene and pick up a few street tacos while debating what kind of Sig Sauer would fit neatly under a leather jacket.
For the most part, law enforcement left the place alone. For one, it was pretty much a sprawl of courtyards and alleys connecting around and through slender old buildings stacked on top of each other where people lived packed in like sardines for a few dollars a week. Navigating the Market was tricky and the stalls shifted over time, sometimes opening up a path one day and becoming impassable the next. The big players remained entrenched in their customary spots, but the fly-by-night sellers, with temporary goods liberated off the backs of trucks or suddenly found in empty lots, slid and slipped into the cracks between the old-timers, making it hard to find someone twice. The buildings crammed up tight against the Market’s kiosks gave the whole place a prison feel, and the rows of uniform thin windows gave anyone a clear shot down into the crowds.
While everything could be found, it also meant nothing was off-limits, and there’d been more than a few reports of bodies being dragged out of the Market and dumped into the street, naked and bloodied from a knife wound or gunshot. There was no honor among thieves or gentlemen’s agreement down here. If you went into the Market looking for trouble, it would find you soon enough. And if you were simply there to buy whatever cheap produce or groceries you could find among the stalls, you did so as quickly as possible, clutching your bags tightly to you and your wallet even tighter.
If we got eyed on the street, it was only a preview of the shunning we got once we ducked into the alley. Badges blazing, we were pariahs, lepers wearing gold plague masks on our waists, and in some ways, the space around us was a sense of false security. Or at least for Cari.
“Kind of nice,” she murmured, looking around. “This place is insane, and we’ve got room to move. I should wear my badge more often.”
“Yeah, just remember, now there’s space for someone to pick us off with a quick shot from one of those windows,” I said, nodding to the row of arrow slits running along the buildings tightly packed around the Market. “Better chance of a clean hit, so keep your head down, and the sooner we get into the stalls, the better.”
To call the Market chaos was to say there were a lot of stars in the sky in the middle of a deep desert. There’s a certain point when the visual noise simply takes over everything around it and nothing can puncture through the sea of colors and textures your brain struggles to take in.
I liked grabbing things from the Market when I had time, so I was familiar with the legacy stalls, but the pop-ups were always interesting, offering everything from cheaply made ammo to ostrich eggs. We were closer to the food stalls, where whiffs of fish-scented ice carried through the densely packed crowd, then disappeared under the weight of piles of fresh mushrooms and truffles nearly spilling over stacked baskets at a corner stall. I was tempted to grab a bag of peeled lychee, but the last thing I wanted was sticky fingers in case I had to draw a weapon, but Cari wasn’t going to go by the kiosk without stopping.
“Starfruit, Kai. They have sliced starfruit with tamarind powder.” She dug into her pockets, looking for change. “Do you want me to grab some lychee for you?”
“On the way out. If we’re still alive.” I scanned the walls above us, looking for movement. I’d activated the patches on my leather jacket, lighting up my badge sigils on my shoulders, and Cari’s jacket sleeves proclaimed she was SoCalGov law enforcement, the tiny lights a soft glow under the blaze from the bands of lights strung overhead. “Don’t grab too much. Where we’re going might not have bathrooms, and you know what happens when you eat too much lychee.”
“Worth it.” She held her hand out to me. “Give me some money. I’m short.”
“In more ways than one,” I grumbled, digging into my pockets. Coming up with a handful of credits, I handed them over to her. “Grab napkins. Lots of them. And some wipes too.”
She strolled next to me, happily stabbing pieces of chili-tamarind-mottled starfruit out of a cup with a tiny skewer the fruteria man gave her. The bag of lychee was stashed somewhere in one of the thousand pockets her jacket had sewn into its lining. If there was one thing I could count on with Cari, it’s that she was stocked up with everything she needed to toss out a spell or two should we need one. A good hibiki came prepared, her mother used to lecture her, and prepared sometimes meant having everything from packets of salt to single shots of tequila squirreled away in your jacket.
It also made for passing the time on stakeouts a lot easier, because most of the time, a good dose of tequila, some li hing mui, and salt made getting through a long cold night a piece of cake.
“Here. This way.” I nudged her to the right, toward the inner part of the maze. “We’re looking for Spicy Kat.”
“Hey! Gracen! Come here!” The Cantonese man calling out to me from a corner stall waved one hand up over the crowd, jumping to catch my attention. He’d moved his stall closer to the food kiosks, mainly to take advantage of the thicker crowds, and I’d known that. Known it coming in, but it was still a shock to see his slender hand waving a paper-wrapped rectangular package high over his head. “Last one! You come get it!”
“Looks like that guy wants to talk to you,” Cari murmured, nudging the small of my back. “That does not look like anyone named Spicy Kat.”
“No, it’s not. Just… hold up,” I answered. “Be right back.”
“You just told me to watch my back,” she reminded me, keeping in step behind me. “You think I’m going to let you wander off? Keep walking, Gracen. I’m right here on your ass.”
I got up close to the booth, careful not to jostle the glass bowls and spirals stacked on risers on a table running across the front of the space. The more expensive merchandise was behind Henry, with a bit of contraband tucked away in various spots beneath the tables. But that was an open secret. Most of the stalls in the Market did a shadow-market business of one kind or another, and Henry was the man you came to when you wanted something exotic to inhale or smoke.
Much like the packet of thick, cheap, disgusting, hand-rolled, Philadelphia-made cigars Henry was holding in his hands.
I was glad for the table, leaning against it for a bit of support. I shouldn’t have lost my words, but they were gone, my attention focused on that stupid paper-wrapped box Henry waved about as if he were surrendering to an invading army. My knees were shaky, nearly cut out from under me, but I took the box when he held it out to me, my fingers slightly numb from the unexpected shock of Dempsey’s loss hitting me once again out of the blue.
Just like him. Take your eyes off him when he was trying to teach you something and he’d smack you like you had a squadron of mosquitos on the side of your head. That’s what it felt like to hold the pungent box of cigars and know Dempsey would never have another one again.
“This is the last one I can get for you. Maybe it’s time for him to quit. The company is folding. Family sold it to some guy in Jersey, and I don’t think he’s going to continue doing this cheap crap. There’s tobacco farms down on the coast that’s supposed to be as good as Cuban, so they’re putting all their money into that.” Henry nodded at Cari, as if I always had a sloe-eyed hibiki-Stalker shadowing me. “This stuff’s bad for him. It’ll kill him. Bad for anyone. Even you. Hold on, I’ll throw in some kreteks for you. Good faith so you come back and get yours from
me. If he wants to change, I can find him something, but maybe better for him to quit.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him. Last package,” I replied, finally holding my wrist out for Henry to scan my link. “I’ll come back to you for my kreteks. Thanks for doing this for him. I appreciate it.”
Cari said nothing to me and fell in beside me as I turned away. We were shoulder to shoulder for a few strides. Then she tossed the rest of her fruit into a bin, shoving her hands in her pockets once she wiped them off on her jeans. The silence lasted another few steps. Then she cleared her throat.
“You didn’t tell him Dempsey died,” she said, pulling in close against me.
“He’d blame himself. Been telling the old man he had to stop smoking those things for years.” The weight of the cigars dragged down my pocket a hell of a lot more than any of my weapons, and for a brief moment, I debated tossing them into the next bin we saw, but something held my hand back. I carried a lot of Dempsey on me—his ashes, his cigars, and probably more than a little bit of his attitude. I couldn’t keep shedding parts of him hoping I’d feel better about him being gone. “Better to let Henry think he did Dempsey one last favor with these. Maybe I’ll give them to Jonas. He liked to puff on one every once in a while.”
“Only if you want Najiri and Angus to kill you,” Cari snorted, pulling a face at me. “Those damned things stink.”
I was going to leave Dempsey behind. At least for now. I couldn’t carry the weight of him and hunt down his brother at the same time. Once I pinned Kenny down, I’d deal with everything else—providing no one killed me first.
“Come on. Sooner we find that asshole, the sooner we can go home.” I wove through the crowd, half of my attention on any movement above us.