Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small

by Russell Zimmerman

  Ghouls were half-predator, half-scavenger. Some tried to keep it under control. Some only ate waste corpses, just a little nibble every now and then, bodies stolen from the morgue or just left to lay in an alley or a gutter somewhere. Some kept their head, turned themselves into a sort of urban recycling platform, ate leftovers from street docs’ clinics, made a living eating up mob or shadowrunner evidence, made themselves useful to the criminal underground that society often pushed ’em into.

  Some didn’t. Maybe most.

  Some fell in with a darker, bloodier crowd. Some worked for black-market organ farms, killing whoever they could, eating what they wanted, selling the rest. Some went crazy. Pants-on-the-head crazy. Some got less and less human, less and less metahuman, and started to just see the world as nothing but predators and prey. Some loved their new appearance, augmented it to get a rise out of folks, used it to shock and frighten people, got off on scaring their meat before killing and butchering it. Some stopped even being as human as that, stopped even trying. Some went underground, feral, living like rats in the dark.

  Some fell in with vampires. Sometimes the Infected seemed to draw one another together, seemed to pull out the worst in each other. Sometimes a monster like Nimbus drew more monsters to her, recruited them, made them nastier than just the HMHVV could by itself. Once they got a taste for it, most of ’em didn’t stop doing that sort of thing, building up that sort of cult, that sort of pack.

  Vampires live until you kill ’em; age is just a number. She’d had time to build herself a new harem, years and years to scrounge up more killers and butchers, to find a few ghouls willing to spread the disease to others, to find new ghouls to recruit for her.

  To find Nimbus, I had to find the sort of animal pack she’d surround herself with. To find Nimbus, I had to find some ghouls. To find ghouls, I needed…

  Fuck it, I didn’t know. I needed to stop and grab a bite to eat. The rain’d let up, so I hit a food truck, grabbing some noodles and chatting with the owner as I ate. Then I chatted with a leggy dame prepping to work the night shift on a nearby corner. Then a few of her friends. Then—very politely—their pimp, who made it clear he didn’t much appreciate me distracting his girls and keeping their attention from paying clients. Then the girls again, screeching at me about hurting ‘their man,’ and one of ’em pulling a knife as I stepped away from his unconscious form in the gutter, rubbing my knuckles.

  Ah, home sweet home.

  I tried again, maybe a half-dozen other places. I went to the speakeasies I knew, the soy-shops, even hit up the Crime Mall food court for a bit. I grabbed grub here and there, but mostly kept an eye out for folks I knew. Rubbing elbows with the down-and-out kept me sharp, and I got a dozen sob stories in three languages, filing their complaints away for another day, making mental—and headware—notes about anyone they said was missing, promised them I’d do what I could, when I could.

  I wasn’t taking on new cases, not officially, but it never hurt to keep my cyberears close to the ground, listening to what the neighborhood had to say. If I could run an errand for someone, a straightforward gig to deliver a message or lend a helping hand, I did it. I had nowhere to be, no particular plan anyway, so putting some kilometers on my feet was as good an idea as any. I collected favors that way, rumors, neighborhood capital. The world expected you to turn your back on your neighbor, so I helped out. The world told me Puyallup was a hellhole, so I tried to make it ease off a little. The world said it was a dog-eat-dog sort of joint, so I surprised people by being decent when I could.

  All that good karma wasn’t paying off in a hurry, though. I was stuffed to the gills with cheap streetmeat and cheaper soy, but no closer to finding a nest of ghouls or their vampire queen, despite being down fifty nuyen in food bills, thirty in booze, and twenty in tips. It felt good, I felt good, but I wasn’t making the progress I needed.

  Time for a new direction. The streets weren’t cutting it for me. They’d helped me get centered again, get focused, recover from the jaunt into my own head…but they weren’t helping the case.

  I headed back toward the apartment. A glance at the third floor showed me my windows boarded over—well, it beat nothin’—but I wasn’t heading upstairs. I climbed into my Ford and hit the road, heading west toward Fort Lewis.

  CHAPTER 25

  If it wasn’t on the far end of Puyallup from the district hall and courthouse, I swear I’d just about live at the Spirit Focus. It was the best jazz joint in town—in the whole Seattle Sprawl, hell, in the world, if you asked me—and I was a regular, even though it was about as far from my home as you could get while still staying in town. Smoke and music filled the air in equal measure, and it was never just a half-assed simshow. No, you got live performances in the SF, and nothing but the best; old hands with a lifetime of gigs behind ’em, up and comers with a knack for improvisation, and everything in between. The commute was the only thing I didn’t love about the place.

  Well, almost the only thing.

  The Spirit Focus was protected. Not by me, not just by the rich downtowners who came to visit and brought their own exec-protect details, and not by Knight Errant or Lone Star, no. It was the Yakuza that had the contract, the Yakuza that kept the SF and the nearby blocks clean and orderly. I knew where some of their money went, I knew where some of their money came from. I knew having the xenophobic Yakuza playing cop in a district that was over half metahuman was dangerous and arrogant. But damnit, I knew I couldn’t change that.

  I was here for work, but hell if I wasn’t going to soak in the place a little anyway. I bellied up to the bar—Big and Little Frankie, a dwarf and a fomori, were there, as always—and waved and nodded at Frankie the fomori.

  “Hoi, Jimmy. The usual? Neat?”

  “Nah. Feelin’ sour tonight. Make it a Manhattan, no, a Rob Roy, perfect. Lowball, on the rocks.” I stuck up two fingers, and, along with my habits, he went ahead and knew to make it a double. “Shaken, yeah?”

  “You got it, boss.” The amiable giant got to work, his big hands deft despite their size, and I scanned the place through the smoke in the air, using the mirror behind the bar.

  Just like at Pornutopia, I knew who I was looking for. This time, though, I didn’t see ’em.

  Frankie brought me my drink, and I took a swig.

  “Hey, Frankie, the Oyabun ’round tonight?” I tried to ask casually, but it was tough to be casual when asking for a local syndicate boss.

  One big eyebrow quirked, and Little Frankie stiffened up. Down the bar, Big Frankie, the dwarf, pretended not to hear. The two were vets, served together in the Desert Wars. They liked me, but I wanted to keep it that way.

  “You ain’t lookin’ for trouble, are you Jimmy?”

  I threw back the rest of the drink, shook my head.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, Little.”

  “Haven’t seen him. He doesn’t come in all the time, lately. Busy with whatever it is those guys are busy with, you dig?”

  “I hear ya.”

  The drink did the job, slowing things down for me, taking the edge off. Jazz made my Sideways gene treatment anxious. Maybe that’s why I liked it here. My chemical cocktail made my brain constantly try to find predictability, patterns, repetition; jazz, the very best of it, live, thumbed its nose at all that.

  “Listen, if he comes by, you tell him Kincaid wants to talk, yeah? Nothing bad. Nothing bloody. You got my word on that. I just wanna ask him a question.”

  Frankie’s big brow furrowed, he leaned in close almost like it was possible for someone of his sonorous metaspecies to really whisper.

  “You don’t ask guys like him questions, Jimmy. You ask ’em favors.”

  I sighed.

  “I know, Little Frankie. I know.”

  I was going to ask after Ms. Brevik, the owner—speaking of favors, she owed me a few—when something about Big Frankie and his neatly-trimmed beard reminded me of who I should be talking to.

  Pinkerton.

 
; I was off my stool, tugging my hat on in no time. I fished in my pockets and came up with a couple crumpled bills, slapped the scrip down and slid it Frankie’s way.

  “I’ll see ya ’round, big guy.”

  I had a new plan. A better one than just asking the Yakuza for help and hoping it’d end up okay.

  I prodded at my Ford’s GridGuide and stabbed in Pine Street and Western, up in Seattle proper. The autonav took the Americar out while I scrolled through my Transys for his number. It was early enough the place was surely still open, and if he wasn’t there, I didn’t know where else to find him, but I’d call on the way to make sure.

  “Pinkerton? It’s Kincaid. Listen, I’m headed your way. Got a minute to compare notes on a case?”

  CHAPTER 26

  The Pink Door was a little nothing-fancy bar. Not a proper Puyallup district dive, but a Downtown place. Rustic by their standards, ritzy by mine, it had two things going for it in my book. One was the co-owned bakery next door, which filled it with smells good enough to take my Sideways’ mind off visual cues, hearty meat pies that made a great lunch on the go, and chocolate éclairs I just might kill someone for.

  The other good thing about the joint was Dexter Pinkerton, private eye. Pink had the best damn street name in Seattle. He had nothing to do with the Pink Door officially, mind you, but as a shorthand for his actual name, the nick just stuck. He always wore something pink, just to top it off—nice pink shirt to contrast with his dark skin, maybe just a tie, maybe a whole suit—and keep up the brand recognition. He didn’t go way back with the owner, didn’t own half the joint, didn’t get paid to work the door, hadn’t ever even done a case for ’em that I knew of. He just liked gyoza more than most folks, and after going solo, had recognized that a little advertising went a long way. He’d been Lone Star for a long time, a Puyallup kid done good, working his way up the ranks. When they lost the Seattle contract to Knight Errant, he’d decided to go the self-employed route. The Pink Door was where he did business, sucking down booze and dumplings between cases.

  He hopped off his stool when I came in, and gave me a handshake that threatened to break something. Pinkerton was a dwarf, and not a scrawny one. He was a hair under 1.4 meters, a pinch under a hundred kilograms, and all of it was muscle, guts, and good humor. Back in the day, he’d gotten a little static back at Lone Star for his metatype and being black, but he and I had hit it off, and gotten along ever since.

  “Rusty Nail and a chocolate éclair, still?”

  It’d been years, so hell if I was gonna turn it down.

  “Yeah. And whatever’s on your tab for the day, if you can help me out.”

  Pink raised an eyebrow—a hungry dwarf could work up quite a tab, hanging in a joint like this all day long—but nodded. Once the bottle jockey’d come and gone, I started in.

  “You remember two years back?” I knew the answer.

  “Wish I didn’t,” he grimaced, pushing his half-full plate away.

  “Are the Disassemblers still around?” I knew the answer again.

  “Wish they weren’t, but yeah. We didn’t hit ’em hard enough.”

  They were a gang, maybe one of Seattle’s nastiest, that mostly ran around Pinkerton’s neck of the woods. I’d stumbled across ’em because two of Enzo’s boys—the ones the Gianellis were mad at me for killing—were part of a kidnapping ring, sidelining, sending stray folks from Puyallup up into the Disassembler pipeline. The Disassemblers used ’em for parts. They were organleggers, and none too picky about it. They also had a skull motif. Every asshole in the city seemed to, when they wanted to look tough, but their look and Nimbus’ look—her white-painted skull, right over her face—lined up better than most.

  Pink and I’d worked together on the Disassemblers those couple of years ago, our cases tangled together as we were both tackling a missing person gig, and instead of stomping on each other’s toes, we’d combined our firepower. At the end of the night’s work there’d been almost a dozen less Disassemblers worrying the neighborhood, we’d freed his client, and Knight Errant had assured their clients—the district management of downtown—that they’d redouble their efforts against the body-snatchers.

  “I’m looking for ghouls,” I told him, not in the mood to beat around the bush. “Looking for a vampire, really, but last time I followed a trail of bread crumbs and Krieger-strain, and found her by accident. This time, I’m after her on purpose. She’s got the same look they do, and she works for Tamanous.”

  “And the Disassemblers work with Tamanous.”

  I nodded. “And the Disassemblers work with Tamanous.”

  “And the Disassemblers are in my neighborhood.”

  “And the Disassemblers are in your neighborhood.” I nodded again. “You know this part of town. I don’t.”

  He gave me a long look, thinking about two years ago and what we’d found, what we’d put a stop to, where this line of questioning might take us again. I didn’t blame him. When my nightmares weren’t running the usual syndicated reruns, I saw the Disassemblers’ base, too. The cleavers. The chopping blocks. The pens. The teeth marks on the bones.

  “You’re a tough guy to like, Jimmy,” Pink sucked on his teeth, ran his fingers through his short beard. “But I owe you one.”

  “You owe me two,” I said, pushing my luck, but telling the truth. One for how the fight had gone down and how Ari’d patched him up at the end of it, one for how I’d refused to take a cut of his pay because it’d been his case, not mine, we’d seen to a happy ending.

  He raised an eyebrow again. “You calling in both?”

  “I kinda have to right now, Pink. I’m in deep.”

  “Fine. I’ll help you find who I can help you find, and I’ll help however I can after that. You got my word on it.”

  We ordered coffees, to go. I wolfed down a second pastry on the way out, figured riding the sugar high wouldn’t hurt anything. Ari wasn’t here to pester me about eating healthy. If I could find an up-side to her being gone, it was that.

  CHAPTER 27

  “You fuckin’ kiddin’ me, Pink?”

  I glared through the windshield at a basement bar’s blinking neon sign, THE CHOPPING BLOCK in big, bold letters, and a red arrow pointing down.

  “Hey, you wanted the Disassemblers, this is where I know some of ’em hang out.”

  “Really? Even with this sounding like such a nice place, you’re worried the criminal element may’ve moved in?”

  “I detect a fair bit of sarcasm, Jimmy,” he cracked back as we climbed out of my Ford. Both of us checked our hips for our pieces, and I checked my opposite for my wand. Old habits die hard.

  “Oh, no. Me? Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m sure this fine establishment’s just where a bunch of lumberjack enthusiasts spend their off hours. It’ll be great, Pink. No way we’ll run into trouble here.”

  We descended half a staircase, away from the harsh glare of the neon light and its AR overlay, and into the darkness. No one worked the door, probably because that would imply they were selective about who got inside. It was a dump. Neither of us might scream ‘cop’ any more, but we weren’t this dive’s usual clientele, either. We were south of Sea-Tac, not exactly in the heart of upper class Downtown any more. It felt—it was—closer to home to me, but not in any of the good ways.

  There were a few beat-up pool tables nursing stains best left vague, with a half-dozen folks in leather and bad attitudes playing. They had ink aplenty, and my headware got to work scanning through Knight Errant and Lone Star catalogs of known gang insignia. The opposite wall had a dingy bar with a dingier old woman behind it, along with a joyboy and a woman of negotiable virtue lounging at opposite ends, glaring at each other for stolen customers in a way that left me wondering how old the feud was. A rickety old Sony entertainment console, scarred and flickering, was the only other occupant.

  We picked a spot in the center of the bar—didn’t want either prostitute to think we were playing favorites—and the sour-faced old woman
put down her dirty rag to come glare at us for interrupting her nothing-at-all.

  “Couple of beers,” I said, holding up two fingers.

  “Couple of queers, you mean,” said one of the jacket-wrapped crew somewhere behind us. I looked for reflections, but the mirror behind the bar was, for once, altogether too filthy to make out much but rough shapes.

  Pink and I exchanged glances in our peripheral vision.

  The old lady’s face got a little more sour as she gave us our drinks—bottles I’d seen her open, thank Odin, hell if I was gonna push my luck by drinking out of a glass in a joint like this—like she was expecting to have to clean up after us, teeth and bloodstains and who-knows-what.

  In fairness, she was kind of right—just not in the way she thought.

  I lifted my beer, eyes still on the blurry reflections, and Pink clinked it with his. Both of us sat quietly, minding our own business, nursing our lukewarm SoyBuds. My TacWhisper didn’t pick up the sounds of anyone playing pool any more.

  “So this elf and this dwarf walk into a bar,” a rough voice said from over by the tables, I saw a vague shape forming from the dirty mirror, someone wearing black and carrying a pool cue. He wasn’t alone. None of ’em had put their sticks down.

  “I don’t remember how the middle of that joke goes.” I didn’t turn around, didn’t raise my voice, “But I’m pretty sure the punchline is ‘fuck off and leave us alone.’”

  Two of the greasy silhouettes turned to exchange looks with one another, incredulous. A sidelong glance showed me that the hookers were gone, and the old lady didn’t even try to hide it as she just limped off to the stockroom and shut the door.