“Can you deliver?” Mabry asked. “You said before, you and Trouble didn’t part on the best of terms—not friendly, I think you said.”
“Things change,” Cerise said, with more confidence than she felt. She could deliver Trouble. Trouble wasn’t stupid; better to make a deal with Mabry than face Treasury. The question was, could they deliver newTrouble? She put the thought aside, said, “I can deliver, Mabry. Are you interested?”
“Maybe.” There was a little pause, and then she heard Mabry sigh. “All right, yes, I’m interested. You say you can give me your Trouble, and newTrouble through her—precisely what does this entail?”
“You’ll have to get Treasury off her—our—backs,” Cerise answered, and did her best to keep the elation out of her voice. “How—that’s your business, you’d know best. But do that and we’ll give you everything we’ve got.”
There was another, longer silence, and at last Mabry said, “All right, I can do that. You’re in Seahaven, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“It’s going to take time to get there,” Mabry said. “And to get some necessary paperwork taken care of. Can you keep Trouble out of Treasury’s hands for another, say, twelve hours?”
“I can try,” Cerise said.
“I can’t get there any faster,” Mabry said, and for the first time Cerise heard annoyance in his voice. “You’ll have to do it.”
“I’ll try,” Cerise said again. “That’s the best I can promise, too.”
“All right,” Mabry said. “I will meet you in Seahaven—I will be at, what’s it called, Eastman House? The hotel that isn’t The Willows—”
“Eastman House,” Cerise said.
“Eastman House,” Mabry repeated. “I’ll be there from ten a.m. on.”
“We’ll be there at ten,” Cerise said.
“I’ll expect you,” Mabry said. “And, Cerise—thanks. I want this new Trouble very badly.”
“So does John Starling,” Cerise said, in spite of herself.
“But I really don’t like to lose,” Mabry answered. “I’ll see you in Seahaven, Cerise.” He broke the connection before she could think of a reply.
Cerise sat for a long moment, staring at the screen, while the program ran through its complicated disconnect routing. She would need the runabout, and all her hardware; Trouble was almost certainly without her equipment, or she would have made contact on the net. Money, too, and false ID, both of which she had, the money in a thin stack of bearer cards, the ID—several sets—tucked into protected memory. The machine beeped at her, signaling that the program had finished its run, and she bent over the keyboard to type the nonsense password that gave access to her most sensitive storage. The machine beeped again, flashed a warning, and she made a face and reached to disconnect it from the hotel systems. Not that I expect anyone to be watching, she thought, but it’s better to be safe. She had set the program to force that choice—it was too easy to get careless otherwise—and a moment later, as the system acknowledged that it was isolated again, she typed the password a second time. This time, the space windowed, displaying a preliminary menu. She selected the IDs she wanted, and hit the series of commands that would dump the first to a standard datadisk. She waited until she was sure the transfer had begun, ID, work cards, health certificates, all the rest of the information that one accumulated over the years, and went into the bedroom to get dressed again.
The machine beeped at her before she had finished, and she went back out into the main room to give it another disk, buttoning her shirt as she went. It was a night for practical clothes, not display; she had chosen jeans and a plain shirt and a man-styled jacket, nothing to mark her either as a cracker or as law, just another of Seahaven’s residents out for the evening. She inspected herself in the mirror, one eye still on the whirring transfer drive, and nodded to herself: she would pass.
The machine beeped again, and she fed it the final disk, then went back into the bedroom to collect her money. All things considered, it was likely to be an expensive evening—Trouble always had been an expensive date. Cerise smiled to herself, remembering an evening that had begun with dinner and ended in the emergency room, with nearly five hundred citiscrip scattered to the winds in between. That had been the first time she’d fully appreciated that Trouble had earned her name off the nets as well as on…. The machine beeped a final time, and she returned to the media console, collected the last disk and began breaking the system down into components that she could carry in a single inconspicuous bag. She left some of the heavier pieces—the diskwriter and the printer/recorder, as well as the secondary memory box—slung the bag easily over her shoulder, and reached for the handset to call for her runabout to be brought up to the door.
Troube leaned back in her chair, staring into the dregs of her drink, and wondered if she could avoid ordering another. It was a virgin drink, sweet and sickly, getting you high with sugar rather than alcohol, but she’d had more than enough of it. She glanced at the clock, displayed in a box that hung above the garden like a stadium scoreboard, slung from a network of poles and wires. Still twenty minutes before she could leave to meet Cerise. She looked away, avoiding the waiter’s eye, and saw a movement in the doorway, a shift of the light as though someone very big had entered. She turned her head to see more clearly, and saw Aimoto threading his way between the tables, broad face drawn into a faint, fastidious frown. Maybe it’s not for me, she thought, without hope, but was not surprised when Aimoto stopped beside her table, leaning down slightly to be sure he saw her face.
Trouble gestured politely to the empty chair, was equally unsurprised when he shook his head.
“Not a social call, I’m afraid,” he said. “Mr. Tinati sent me.”
“Of course,” Trouble said.
“He’s had word that Treasury will be taking a look-see down the Parcade real soon now,” Aimoto went on, “and he would prefer that you not be found here.”
“That’s good of him,” Trouble said, and allowed the irony to color her voice. Tinati wouldn’t care about her, whether or not Treasury found her; but any arrests here, on the Parcade, would polarize the net, and the last thing Tinati wanted was upheaval in the shadows that gave him most of his livelihood. The last time the shadows had been divided over an issue—and that had been years ago, back when the brainworm was first made reliable, and crackers on the wire had started to take jobs away from the old school—the fallout had brought down half a dozen crooked securities dealers and a Mob-run credit card ring, all shopped to the cops by crackers out to hurt on-line enemies.
“Mr. Tinati would appreciate your cooperation,” Aimoto said, and lifted a hand to signal the waiter.
There wasn’t much point in fighting, Trouble thought, at least not now. She said, “We’re even, then. I appreciate the warning.”
The waiter came bustling over, slip in hand, and Aimoto said, “She’ll be leaving now.”
The waiter’s eyes went wide, but he controlled himself instantly, reached for the touchpad slung at his waist. “That’s five even.”
Trouble reached into her pocket, pulled out a folder of citiscrip, but Aimoto frowned and waved it away.
“Mr. Tinati insists,” he said, and handed the waiter a royal blue foil. “That’s all set.”
“Thanks,” the waiter said, eyes widening even further—the foil was worth more than twice the bill—and backed away.
Aimoto was still waiting with outward patience, and Trouble pushed herself slowly to her feet.
“I’ll see you out,” Aimoto said.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I insist.”
Which meant, Trouble thought, that Tinati insisted. “Suit yourself,” she said, and started for the exit. Aimoto followed easily through the maze of tables.
“I have a last errand to run,” she said, and Aimoto shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and Trouble made a face.
“Fine.”
She stepped ou
t onto the sand-streaked pavement, Aimoto still at her elbow. The Ferris wheel sent neon shadows chasing along the length of the street, clashing with the bright lights in the shopfronts. She walked through the patches of light and shadow, Aimoto matching her step for step, and was aware of the faces watching discreetly from the doorways. It was a conspicuous expulsion, the sheriff walking the gunslinger right out of town, and she didn’t quite know if she was amused or infuriated by it. In its own way it was a compliment, an acknowledgment of her importance; and besides, she was grateful for the warning.
She stopped at the head of the Parcade, where the seawall loomed ahead and the main street ran left back into Seahaven, and right toward the lesser towns and the dead beaches of the Plantation. Aimoto stopped half a pace behind her, hands in the pockets of his jacket, standing wide-legged in the exact center of the road. Trouble looked back at him, the night air cold on her face and bared forearms, said, “Tell Tinati I’ll remember this.” She kept her voice absolutely neutral, let the meaning lie ambiguous, and Aimoto inclined his head politely.
“I’ll tell him.”
Trouble nodded back, and turned left, walking down into the shadows that lay between the mouth of the Parcade and the bars and food shops still open along the avenue. Out of sight of the Parcade, she let herself shiver—the land breeze was still up, but the air was autumn cold—and rolled her sleeves down. It was still early to go to Joe’s—or to the empty storefront that had been Joe’s years before—but she started toward it anyway, keeping close under the shadow of the darkened stores.
The streets were nearly empty here, between the Parcade and the busy part of the avenue, no other pedestrians in sight and only a few parked cars. A black runabout swept past, lights blazing, and she had to make an effort to keep from looking after it, to see if it would turn down the Parcade. She hesitated as she approached the avenue, torn between risking the occasional mugger or druggie in the dark side streets and taking the chance of being recognized in the bright lights of the avenue. Treasury was more of a danger: better to chance the muggers, she decided, and turned down the first side street, working her way toward the beachfront stores. The streetlights were dimmed here, to save on the town’s electricity, and she walked carefully, making sure she had room to run. Not that it would make much difference, not in Seahaven where guns were cheap and the natives made a game of evading the federal restrictions, but it made her feel better. Still, she was glad to reach the knot of stores and food shops that still survived on the beachfront.
The stores were closed by now, of course, heavy grilles drawn over the display screens and doorways, but the food shops were still fairly active. Most of the customers here were fishermen or midshift workers—cleaners and waiters, mostly, on their way home from The Willows or Eastman House—gathered in knots along white-topped counters. Trouble glanced casually at them as she passed, was aware of the hard stares that watched her. The vest—the jeans too, with the man-style shirt, but mostly the vest—marked her as a cracker, part of the crowd from the Parcade, and they were wary of her presence. Not hostile, not yet—it would take more than just walking past to make them willing to risk the net’s anger, especially when most of them would be living on the edge, their credit too vulnerable already—but she kept her pace steady, did not even think of stopping.
She passed under the last of the brighter streetlights, moved out into the shadows where the lights were dimmed and the storefronts were covered with sheets of plywood instead of the grilles and barriers of a healthy business. Joe’s—Cowboy Joe’s, it had been, and then Geisha Jo’s before it was just Joe’s—had been five or six storefronts down, toward the barricaded pier that led out to the ruins of the Pavilion Bandstand. She slowed her steps, glancing cautiously into the dark doorways, saw only a single hunched shape, possibly male, drunk or drugged in the corner of the boarded-over door to a store that, she vaguely remembered, had once sold jewelry. Joe’s had been two doors further down, and she looked over her shoulder, checking for surveillance or ordinary lurkers, before she stopped outside the graffiti-covered shell of the building.
The door itself had been removed, and the sheet of plywood that covered the entrance was reinforced by three heavier boards nailed haphazardly across the doorway. The entrance was slightly recessed, like most of the shopfronts along the beachfront, and she stepped back into its shadows, planting her back against the crumbling stone, one shoulder against the rough wood of the barricading boards. Sand from the beach grated underfoot, and she shifted her feet until she found safer footing on the worn concrete. In the distance she could hear the whine of a siren, moving toward the Parcade, and she wished again that she’d had a chance to talk to one of the dealers on the Parcade. Not that a gun would do her much good, not against Treasury; it was good only against the hopeless druggies, if then, and she shook the thought away. In the distance she heard a runabout’s engine, faintly at first, and then more strongly, coming closer along the beachfront. She froze for an instant—too soon for it to be Cerise, and too high-powered; more likely to be a cop, either local or from the hotel—and then began frantically to strip out of the vest. She wadded it behind her, heedless of the expensive fabrics and Konstenten’s complex work, let herself slide down the wall until she was huddled in the corner, knees up, head down on her folded arms. She slowed her breathing as the car came closer, heard the engine whine as the driver shifted into a lower gear, and then the distant crackle of a two-way radio turned low. Only the hopeless came here, and she could fake it, the sodden slump, mercifully oblivious; there were always a few homeless sleeping in doorways, even in Seahaven.
The runabout was coming closer now, engine loud and stressed, and the light of a searchlight played across the doorway, brilliant even to closed eyes. Trouble held her pose with an effort that made her shoulders tremble against the concrete, the light flaring red behind her eyelids, kept her forehead pressed against her knees and arms. The light played across her, across to the other corner of the doorway, then fixed again on her for a moment longer before it swept away. She made herself keep breathing, slow and snoring, and was not too surprised when the light suddenly flared again. She stayed still, and at last the light swung away. A moment later, the engine noise strengthened, and the runabout pulled away. She stayed as she was, counting slowly to a hundred, and then to a hundred again, before she dared lift her head.
The street was empty, only the sound of the waves beyond the seawall and the faint counterpoint of music drifting down from the few still-open shops to disturb the sudden quiet. Then, in the distance, she heard a runabout’s engine, lighter-toned than the first, and coming from Seahaven proper. She cocked her head to one side, trying to judge the sound, but couldn’t be sure. She stayed where she was, lowered her head to her arms, torn between fear and the irrational conviction that, this time, it had to be Cerise, and heard the runabout pull steadily closer, heard the chunk of gears as the driver slowed still further. She braced herself for the flare of a searchlight, heard the runabout slide to a stop opposite the doorway. Trouble lifted her head warily, to see a dark-blue runabout and a single figure at the controls, a vague shape behind the thick glass. Then the driver reached forward, touched controls, and a light came on over the driver’s station, throwing a dim blue light across Cerise’s face. Trouble drew a deep sigh of relief, and scrambled to her feet, dragging the vest from behind her back. She shrugged it on as she moved out of the alcove, and Cerise leaned across the seat to unlock the passenger door. Trouble ducked into the runabout, grateful for its warmth, and pulled the door closed behind her. Cerise flicked off the overhead light, and eased the runabout back into motion, saying, “You do know how to liven up an evening.”
10
“I try,” Trouble answered, and let herself relax against the seat cushions.
Cerise slanted a glance in her direction, her face little more than a pale blur in the dark, but Trouble could hear the amusement in her voice, translated it to one of her quirky smiles. “You
succeed, believe me.”
“Thanks.” Trouble slumped further down in her seat.
Cerise glanced over her shoulder, checking for other cars, and swung south onto Ashworth Avenue. Trouble sat up again, startled, and Cerise said, “Treasury’s got a cop watching the bridge. I didn’t want to chance it. I’ve made us a deal, Trouble, but we’re going to have to stay out of the way until tomorrow morning.”
“What sort of deal?” Trouble asked. “And what makes you think Treasury won’t be watching on the way out of town?”
Cerise grinned again, the expression vivid in the flash of neon from one of the still-open bars. “They’re relying on the checkpoint a little too heavily. Their man put a note on the transponder, saying there was only one person in the car. I jimmied it, so it says two people. Since they really don’t expect you to get legitimate help—”
“Since when were you legitimate?”
“Since I quit you,” Cerise answered. “But since Treasury doesn’t expect you to get help, I doubt they’ll be checking corporate cars too closely. They should be concentrating on the Parcade and the hostels.”
“You hope,” Trouble murmured, and saw the smaller woman shrug.
“It seemed a reasonable risk.”
Trouble nodded, watching the neon circle of the Ferris wheel looming ahead. If Treasury was willing to risk trouble on the Parcade, risk the net rallying against them and behind her, then surely their security would be tighter, here at the edge of town—but Treasury had always been blind to the nuances of possibility on the nets, despite recruiting these days from among the netwalkers. And besides, she thought, with a fleeting, wry grin, there wasn’t that much reason to think that the nets would rally to her. She was still a little outré, a little outside the rules; it was even odds what would happen in the fallout from a real raid. And if Treasury played it even halfway cool, there were a lot of people who would be glad of the excuse not to act.
Trouble and her Friends Page 27