“You read my mind.”
She kept staring at nothing for a few more seconds, then suddenly pulled her head and looked at Bannickburn again.
“I’ve got it,” she said. “Cayman.”
“We’re going to the Caymans? Sounds lovely. Perhaps, though, it should wait until the job’s done.”
“Ha ha. Hold on, I’ll set up the meeting.”
She jacked in without offering any further explanation, which was par for the course.
There was a time, Bannickburn believed, when wealthy people asked to meet you in places containing wealth, and poor people asked to meet you in places wracked by poverty. Then people took it into their heads It) conceal their personal riches (or lack thereof), and rich people started slumming in rat holes while poor people would blow a month’s worth of earnings just to lunch with you in a trendy restaurant.
Then, of course, people started catching wise to this pattern, so it changed again, and everyone went back to their customary haunts. Then they changed again. And again. Now, when you met someone, you couldn’t tell a l'raggin' thing about them based on the surroundings. Bannickburn found that a distressing development.
They were in a library in Bellevue—one that had a number of battered decks and scratched trideo screens for public use, and a few actual books. Bannickburn had followed Jackie into a glass-enclosed meeting room, where a large man in an olive green jacket sat waiting. It was a pretty good room, Bannickburn had to admit. Probably rent-free, providing privacy for conversation but keeping everyone visible in case the meeting went sour. The problem, of course, was that someone in the library could have Finnigan connections, and would remember seeing these faces together in a meeting. That was why Kross, who had been loaned to Bannickburn by Bailey, sat in a van a few blocks away, watching images transmitted from a camera lodged just above Jackie’s left ear. She was careful to make frequent long, slow pans across the room. If Kross saw trouble, they’d be on the move quickly. Bannickburn had made sure, though, that Jackie wasn’t wired for sound. If Kross wanted to know what they were saying, he’d have to read lips, and Bannickburn wasn’t planning on moving his mouth much as he spoke.
The metal chairs, pads on the legs worn away long ago, scraped across the linoleum floor. The big man, who Bannickburn assumed was Cayman, winced.
“I hate that sound,” he said. “Someday I’ll remember that before I book this room.” He nodded at Jackie. “How’re things, angel?”
“Good, thanks,” she said, taking a seat, without so much as offering a hand to Cayman. Bannickburn followed suit. “You?”
“About the same, which is a fraggin’ shame since things were supposed to be way better by now. How’s the troll?”
Bannickburn happened to be looking at Jackie the moment the question was asked, and he was glad he was; otherwise he would have missed the most remarkable expression that briefly flared on her face, then disappeared. Her eyebrows pushed together and fell into a “V”, her lips pulled back far enough to bare her fangs (if she had possessed any), her nostrils flared. Then she was her normal, calm self again. No one could have failed to catch the warning that look conveyed.
“Ah. Right,” Cayman said. “Never mind, then. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like you to meet my friend Bannickburn. He’s got a proposal for you.”
Cayman shifted his glance to Bannickburn, and his face hardened. All the changes were subtle—his thick jaw became slightly firmer, his gray eyebrows lowered, his chin ducked down a little. The affable man who had greeted Jackie when they walked in now looked like a mugger about to demand that Bannickburn hand over all his cash.
“Hello,” he said, and the word dropped out of his mouth like a cinder block.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Bannickburn said in his friendliest voice. He’d seen a million hostile glares in his lifetime, and saw no reason to start letting them affect him now. “I hear you’re competent.”
That didn’t make the glare friendlier. “Okay.”
“I’d like to offer you a relatively small amount of money to piss off a powerful and irritable member of the Finnigan family.”
Cayman looked back at Jackie, but his expression remained hard. “I’m here because I trust you, Jackie, even I hough I can’t remember why. But we’re two minutes in here, and your man’s squandering your capital pretty quick.”
“Relax,” Jackie said. “We’ve got two words for you I hat will change your whole perspective. Robert, hit him with the two words.”
Bannickburn obliged. “Murson Kader.”
It didn’t seem possible, but Cayman managed to look even angrier. He stood up. He muttered a few things that might not even have been words. He took three steps to his right, executed a quick turn that showed he probably had military service somewhere in his past, then walked back to his chair, but stayed on his feet. He stood quietly for a few more beats, then abruptly slammed his palm on the room’s brown plastic table. Bannickburn expected the blow to snap the table in two, and it made enough noise that people outside the room jumped, then looked angrily at Cayman. A librarian sternly raised his index finger to his lips.
“Dammit,” Cayman said. “Dammit dammit dammit.” Bannickburn let the name sink into Cayman’s brain for another few moments.
“It was supposed to be on my terms,” Cayman finally said, after crossing the small room a few more times. “I was going to go after him when I was ready.”
“That day didn’t seem to be getting any closer,” Jackie said gently, but Bannickburn saw the words still stung Cayman.
“I was going to do it,” he said stubbornly. “It’s tough to find the time, though, you know?”
“I know,” Jackie said. “For you and Hamlet both.” Bannickburn grinned while Cayman scowled.
“All right. I’m interested,” Cayman said. “But you’ve gotta tell me a little something about your boy here.” He was being baited, Bannickburn knew. He decided this wasn’t the time to rise to it. He deferred again to Jackie.
“You’re not just interested,” she said. “You’re in. We’re getting Kader, and you’re helping.” She outlined the mission to Cayman while he continued to scowl.
“You’re only embarrassing Kader,” Cayman complained once the briefing was done. “I’d rather have him dead.”
“Of course you would. But this is what you have in front of you right now. You know you want to do it, but you don’t want to appear too eager by agreeing to it immediately. That’s fine, you can delay for a while if it makes you feel better. But you’re in.”
Cayman’s scowl deepened, then vanished. Suddenly, he was smiling.
“Ah, girl, you’re a treasure. You’re younger than most of my clothes and weigh less than my right arm, but you still think you can bully just about anyone ’cause you know so much. An absolute treasure.”
While Cayman was becoming more relaxed, a new worry struck Bannickburn. “Hold on. Before we get any agreement on the table here, I need to be sure you’re not going to go freelance on us. If you decide it would be fun to kill Kader in the middle of the run, you’ll bring down the entire Finnigan family on us. You want to be in, you’ve got to stick to the plan.”
Cayman, to Bannickburn’s surprise, didn’t scowl. Instead, he nodded briefly, as if acknowledging that the point had to be made.
“I’m a professional,” he said.
That wasn’t good enough for Bannickburn—those were just three words anyone could say. But this was why he had Jackie’s help.
“His record back up his words?” he asked her. It was a crude power play—annoying Cayman by talking about him as if he wasn’t there—but it would do what it had to, showing Cayman the dynamics of the team he was joining.
“Yeah,” Jackie said. “From everything I’ve heard, Cayman’s got a list of grudges several kilometers long, but he’s never let that interfere with a mission.”
“Does he ever settle a grudge on his own time?”
“Of course.”
“You want to do it that way, I’ll need some money up front. To convince me to play along.”
“I’ll pay you at the start of each day. If I decide to part ways with you, you get to keep that day’s money. You make it to the end, you get a five-hundred-nuyen bonus. Fair?”
Cayman snorted. “I make it to the end, I get the bonus of seeing Kader looking like an ass. That’s way more incentive than your money. But yeah, it’s fair.”
“Okay.” Bannickburn took out a black credstick. “You’re hired. Today’s task is finding the rest of the team.”
“What else to you need?”
“Rigger, especially one who can handle small drones, and a face.”
“And a mage,” Jackie added. “For some supplies, mostly.”
Bannickburn glowered. “Yeah. What she said.”
But Cayman was stuck on an earlier word Bannickburn had said. “Face?” he asked, looking oddly apprehensive. “What kind of a face?”
“Naive, trusting. Kind of guy who’d look like a good mark.”
The familiar scowl returned to Cayman’s face. “Damn,” he said.
Once, near the docks of Tacoma, Bannickburn had seen a fight break out between five scruffy individuals. He’d been accompanying an old friend of his, a hulking man named Claymore, on some unspecified errand. The five people stood around a large wooden crate, more than fifty cubic meters in size, and battled. One guy took a knife to the throat and lay on the docks, gurgling, for a long time before he fell silent. Another fell into the water and thrashed clumsily around until one of her opponents figured out that she was now an easy target and shot her. The other three were still fighting when Claymore said it was time to leave.
“Wonder what was in the crate,” Bannickburn had said.
Claymore had snorted. “Crate was empty. In a lot of parts of the Barrens, that would make a pretty good house. That’s why they were fighting over it.”
Bannickburn was in one of those places right now, not too far from Paradise Lake, standing in front of a crate very similar to the one that had been the object of the battle, and he found himself missing Claymore. If he’d lived, he could’ve taught Bannickburn almost as much about the city as Jackie.
Cayman walked up to the front of the crate and knocked on the crooked door that had been clumsily carved into it.
“Prime!” he bellowed. “Prime! Get out here!”
The door swung open, but no one was standing on the other side. Cayman’s pounding had unlatched it.
“Drek, Prime, nice security!” Cayman yelled. “Anyone who wants could walk in here and shoot you without a thought!”
A man, a good twenty or so years younger than Bannickburn, stumbled into the doorway, blinking rapidly in the bright sunlight. He wore a green bathrobe that had probably once been quite nice but was now worn and tattered. The man tied it shut, attempting an air of wounded dignity.
“Nobody wants to shoot me,” he mumbled.
“That’s your problem,” Cayman said. “If you were any good at your job, people would be lining up to take shots at you.”
“Okay,” the man said, easily shrugging off Cayman’s insult. “Thanks for dropping by to remind me I’m incompetent. Anything else I can do for you?”
"Yeah. Get dressed. Your robe stinks. Then the elf here would like to talk to you.”
“Okay,” the man said again, then wearily pulled his door shut and went inside.
Cayman turned to Bannickburn. “That’s X-Prime,” he said. “He’s a complete moron, but he’s got the face you want.”
“A complete moron?” Bannickburn said. “Don’t know that that’ll help us.”
Cayman looked around, then motioned Bannickburn closer. “Okay, look, between you and me, he’s not a complete moron. He’s got a few years of running under It is belt, and there are some things he does pretty well. Hut I can’t let him know I think that. You understand?” “No,” Bannickburn said.
“I’ve known him since he was completely green, fresh from being a corp drone. He really was next to worthless then, and that’s the relationship we have. I know everything, he knows nothing. That’s our dynamic, and I’m not changing it.”
This all made very little sense to Bannickburn, but he didn’t feel like interfering. “Okay.”
They stood silently for another minute or two, until X-Prime pushed the door open again. His eyes were focused, his brown hair was combed, and he wore a black T-shirt over rust-colored pants. Now that the runner’s face was a little more composed, Bannickburn could understand why Cayman had brought him here—X-Prime looked like he’d just wandered in from the potato fields. Wide eyes, light freckles across the nose, and a small mouth that always looked on the verge of quivering made Bannickburn stifle an urge to con him right on the spot.
“What is it?” X-Prime said, in a voice much harder and wearier than his face.
“You’re on the job again. The elf’s hiring you. I’ll tell you more about it on the way.”
“On the way where?”
“To find Spindle.”
“She’s in, too?”
“I hope so, yeah.”
X-Prime looked at the horizon, then glanced at his watch, then back at the horizon. Then he shrugged. “Okay.”
He closed the door to his crate and threw a padlock over the latch. Cayman raised an eyebrow at the lock.
“You know all that lock will do is hold the door nicely in place while someone kicks it in.”
X-Prime shrugged. “It’s a visual deterrent.”
Cayman rolled his eyes. “Fine. Let’s go.” He walked away, with Bannickburn and X-Prime lagging behind.
The situation was making Bannickburn wary. X-Prime seemed like a dog that had been kicked too much but followed his master anyway, and the pathetic lock on his crate didn’t make him look like the wealthiest or smartest resident of the Barrens. Based on his first impression, Bannickburn wasn’t sure how the hick had survived a week in Redmond.
But he had. By Cayman’s account, he’d actually survived a few years. Clearly, there was more to him than the first impression.
He let Cayman draw a little further ahead, then spoke low to X-Prime. He didn’t know how much time he’d have, so he was blunt.
“Look. You’re here at the moment because Cayman recommended you, but I’m not hiring just anyone he leads me to. Neither of you has given me much reason to trust your abilities.” Most runners would have taken instant offense at this remark, but X-Prime’s hangdog expression remained unchanged. “And if I’m going to actually hire you, I need a reason.”
X-Prime’s face still didn’t change—except for the eyes. Something danced back there, some sign of life and intelligence.
“Break into my house,” he said.
“What?”
“Break into my house. You saw the lock. You saw the walls. Piece of cake, right? Go break into it. Then we can talk more.”
Bannickburn pondered for a minute. Then he made a call.
“Hello. Have you missed me in the past hour? No? Pity. Look, I know I said I’d leave you alone for the afternoon, but it turns out I lied. I need you to do me a favor. I need you to break into a crate.”
“What would you use for this?”
“ Renraku Arachnoid.”
“Why?”
“Climbs walls better than other drones.”
“Climbs walls? Doesn’t that make it more visible?” “Depends on which walls you climb. Lotta times, casinos have good comers or stupid decorative pillars, where you can hide without exposing the drone. Nice to have l hat option. Plus, they look neat, and they’re only a few centimeters long.”
“And you have one? Or could get your hands on one?”
The slender elf
stood at the opposite end of a rickety card table from him and said nothing. She bounced on one heel, and the table legs creaked. Her name was Spindle, and she’d appeared quite agitated the moment Cayman introduced her to Bannickburn, a mass of nervous energy and facial tics. The more Bannickburn asked her about the potential job, though, the calmer she became—the tics settled down, her narrow, triangular face smoothed. She was still bouncing a lot, though. And at the moment, she looked irritated, taking offense at Bannickburn’s effrontery in assuming she might not be able to get the machine she wanted to use.
“Okay, sorry,” Bannickburn said. “I’ll assume you can get your hands on it. How do you get into a place like Gates?”
“Sewers. Another good reason to use the Arachnoid— waterproof and maneuvers well in pipes.”
“They sweep the casino floor regularly.”
“I can always throw on more electronic counter measures than they’d be expecting. But the easiest thing to do is not be seen—the way I understand the job, you don’t need me watching all the time. The less I transmit, the worse chance they have of noticing my drone.”
She knew her game. And her heel wasn’t even tapping anymore. He felt more confident about her than he did about X-Prime and even Cayman. The two of them had spent most of his interview with Spindle making fun of each other in a corner of the room.
“Okay. I think we’re on track here. You want in, ! you’re in.”
A tic made a brief reappearance on Spindle’s drawn face, forcing her right eye closed. She controlled it as quickly as she could.
“I’m in,” she said. “It’s not . . . it’s not good for me to go too long between jobs.”
“How long has it been since the last one?” Bannickburn asked.
Spindle looked at the floor a moment before looking back up. “Two days,” she admitted. “The edginess is coming in quicker and quicker. Gotta keep on the job.”
“I understand,” he said, and smiled. He liked this one. Maybe he should just keep her and dump the other two.
On his hip, his phone vibrated. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked into a corner and answered it.
Shadowrun 44 - Drops of Corruption Page 9