by S. C. Jensen
The old bugger fired up an electric defence device and pointed it at me as if they had been the ones to kick my behind out the door. A scratchy voice, about as ancient as the owner, rasped. “And stay out, you bum!”
“I’m out, I’m out.” I lifted my hands in the air and tried to lean forward to hide the pistol I’d dropped in the piss puddle. I wasn’t sure how good the crusty landlord’s vision was but if the charge was powerful enough, getting zapped by an electroshock weapon could do irreparable damage to my upgrade, and my favourite technician was currently on possession-by-demonic-software leave. I’d rather have a hole in my chest.
Then my eyes fell on the thing that had tripped me up on the stairs. “Dickie?”
“Take your buddy with you.” The geriatric menace shook the zapper at me, and the nose ring waggled. “No loitering.”
The back of Dickie’s pinstripe suit was collecting rain in a pool that suggested he’d been down for a while. I looked up at the disgruntled senior citizen in the doorway. My voice came out in a high-pitched squeak. “Did you electrocute him?”
“Just a little.” Wrinkles collected around his tiny brown eyes, like the delicate pleats of a finely made scarf. “Want me to slap him around for ya? Get the brain juice flowing again?”
“I’ll do it,” I muttered, and dragged myself off the ground. “Just don’t shoot me, too, or you’ll have to pay your goon extra to dispose of us.”
A blue arc of electricity jumped between the contact prongs on the landlord’s zapper. “I do my own dirty work.”
I stumbled up the stairs and rolled Dickie over on his back. He slid sideways and thumped down the steps toward me with his head bouncing off each one like biorubber ball. He groaned.
The landlord cackled. “Don’t crack my steps!”
Dickie’s eyelids fluttered, exposing a line of white eyeball. I slapped him gently with the back of my flesh hand until his irises rolled down and he focused on me with one eye.
“Heya, Bubs,” he said. “What’s the smoke? My brain feels like jelly.”
“Can you stand?” I grabbed him by the front of his suit and hoisted him to his feet with my upgrade.
He wobbled. “My legs feel like jelly too. What hit me?”
“You don’t want to know,” I said.
I helped Dickie down the stairs as his legs spasmed and twitched with each step. I got him propped up on the banister long enough to fish my pistol out of the puddle. I stuffed it into its holster and then wrapped my arm around Dickie to help him down the street. He sniffed and looked down at his pants, his face reddening. “I think I might have had an accident.”
“You have no idea how relieved I am to hear that,” I said. “Because whoever’s whiz it is, I’m covered in it. I’d rather pretend it’s yours than think it belongs to the hump-happy hunchback I just had a run in with.”
Dickie looked up at me with the unfocused bafflement of a newborn, and I had a feeling he’d already forgotten what we were talking about.
I turned to the zapper-wielding mummy and waved goodbye. “So long, and thanks for all the piss.”
The landlord’s eyes narrowed, and they held up the gun like they were going to take a long-range potshot just for fun. There should have been a rule against wearing such cheerful headgear while wielding deadly weapons. It really sent mixed messages. I felt the rainbow-headed, gold-ringed menace’s eyes burning a hole in my shoulder blades until I hustled Dickie around the corner and out of the line of fire.
When we were safely out of range, I wedged him in between an overflowing dumpster and a vending machine.
“Stay,” I said. The front of the machine had been smashed open, and the contents looted, but it seemed to work okay as prop.
“I feel like someone laced my mojito,” Dickie said, slurring the words together like a string of lumpy clay beads.
“I thought detectives were supposed to drink whisky,” I said and straightened out his homburg.
“I’m no defective . . . def . . . detective.” He stumbled over the words and leaned away from the vending machine and pressed his forehead against the shoulder of my upgrade. He said, “I’m a defective detective. Not even a good lookout. What did the old turd lay into me with? I didn’t see it coming.”
“I’m going to get us a hack,” I said, and pushed him back into the vending machine.
I brought up the holoscreen on my tattler and bought the cheapest ScanAnon pass I could find—only good for two hours, but enough to nearly drain my holocred account—and called for a cab. A yellow taxi ring a few blocks down the grid lit up, marking our nearest pick-up point, and I dragged Dickie down the street, praying to whatever prosthetic gods had their cybernetic eyeballs on the city that our ride would arrive before the pass ran out. If Libra had half a brain—and I’d heard they had a few thousand—they’d be monitoring public transit users. Even a second’s flash from my tattler would allow them to home in on me and destroy our element of surprise. If we still had any after Patti and Johanna hijacked the bangtail, and Rae hijacked Patti, and Gore had gotten himself topped or ’napped and I’d cleverly hauled that tracking device all the way to Sal’s.
We needed any secrecy we could get at this point.
Getting hack cabs in the Grit was a challenge at the best of times, even with a pre-paid ScanAnon ticket. But the alternative was calling up Cosmo Régale himself and having him send a private boiler for us. Cosmo’s penchant for pink was even more electric than mine, and I didn’t want to risk alerting every keen eye in the neighbourhood of the fact that we were here by waving a hot-pink beacon around.
Fortunately it didn’t take long for a pod to pull into the pick-up lane and sweep us off the street. It took even less time for the pod to deposit us directly in front of the massive crystalline palace in the centre of the Grit District that Cosmo called home. The gates wouldn’t open for the hack, so I stumbled out and manually pressed the call button.
The speaker crackled.
“Whaddya want?” The voice screeched like electrical interference, but I knew it wasn’t.
“Mama Adesina?” My heart plummeted into my boots. I’d forgotten she was staying with Cosmo. “What are you doing answering the gate?”
“Who is this?” the old woman said, and the speakers popped.
“It’s Betty Marlowe,” I said, and the sinking feeling in my chest became a pit. “Bubbles.”
“That useless drunk copper my daughter insists on hanging around with?” I could hear the wrinkly frown in her voice. I should have told her I was a feedreeler from one of her favourite fashion programs. She said, “I told you to stop coming around here.”
“Yes, it’s me.” I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the gate. Mama Adesina had a memory like a gold pan. She forgot everything except the little nuggets you wish you could pay her to forget. “I don’t drink anymore, Mrs. Adesina.”
“Rae is too good for you,” the old woman said. “She’s going places. You’re just going to hold her back. Get out of here, now.”
“I need to see Cosmo, Mrs. Adesina.”
“You trying to ruin his life too?” The words cut through me like a hot blade.
“No ma’am,” I said. “I need his help.”
“Of course you do,” Mama Adesina’s voice screeched at me out of the intercom. “People like you always need help. It’s always take, take, take, isn’t it? When are you going to give something back to society, you degenerate?”
I gritted my teeth, wishing I could remind her the only reason that she wasn’t rotting away in her own apartment wondering why Rae was five days late for dinner was that I’d had her brought here. Instead, I ended the call.
I stepped back from the speaker and took a deep breath, trying to believe what Hammett had told me. It wasn’t my fault that Rae was trapped on an asteroid, possessed by a demonic computer program. It was Libra
’s fault. It was Nathanial Price’s fault. I was trying to help Rae. I wasn’t hurting her. But my breath dragged through my throat like it was made of rusty nails, and the coil of panic around my chest tightened.
Tears stung my eyes. It wasn’t my fault. But that wasn’t going to make it any easier to explain to Mama Adesina that I’d left her daughter in outer space. That Rae was hurt in a way I didn’t know how to fix.
Mama Adesina was right. I had always taken more than I’d given back.
This time I’d taken her daughter.
And I might not be able to bring her home.
I took another deep breath.
No.
I was trying to help Rae, and I wasn’t going to let this cranky old windbag stop me.
“Dickie,” I said. “I need your help.”
I reached into the boiler, grabbed Dickie by the lapels, and pulled him onto his feet.
“Sure thing, Bubs,” he said, tugging his hat down to shield himself from the rain. “Anything you say.”
He seemed to have his legs under him again, and his eyes focused on me when I snapped my fingers at him, so I sent the boiler on its way. I propped him up against the gate just in case. He nodded as I coached him on what I needed him to do.
Then he buzzed the gate.
“Whaddaya want?” Mama Adesina’s voice screeched out of the speaker again. I had a feeling that Cosmo didn’t have any trouble with solicitors since putting the crone on security detail.
Had she already forgotten the previous conversation? I hoped so.
“May I speak with Cosmo Régale,” Dickie said, mostly not slurring anymore. I waved my hands at him. He added, “Please?”
“I didn’t order any pizza,” she said. “You scammers think you can pull one over on me just because I’m an old lady? I know your type. It’s always take, take, take with you, isn’t it?”
She was a one-track playlist. Not exactly what I’d hoped for, but at least she had it in for everybody and not just me.
“Old lady?” Dickie grinned and winked at me. “You don’t sound a day over forty-five.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, young man,” Mama said, but there was a purr in her voice that hadn’t been there before. Way to go, Dickie. I gave him a pink prosthetic thumbs up. Mama cleared her throat coyly. “Who did you say was calling?”
“This is Richard Roh,” Dickie said, his words smoothing over as he got into the role. “With Glamour Man magazine.”
“Well now,” Mama said. “I never could say no to a glamorous man.”
“We’re absolutely dying to do a feature on Cosmo Régale’s latest lineup.” Dickie lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Are you his agent? I’d love to discuss it with you over this bottle of—”
“Dickie?” Cosmo’s voice cut in over the speaker. “Is that you trying to seduce my houseguest?”
I shoved Dickie out of the way. “Cosmo. It’s me. Let us in right now. It’s an emergency.”
“Pinky?” Cosmo’s voice brightened, then shuddered. “Can’t be as bad as last time you visited. That whole naked mole rat . . . thing . . . was really not your best look. Have you been using the products I gave you?”
I gripped the bars of the gate and shook them until they rattled. “Every day. Three times a day. Please. Let. Us. In.”
The gate clicked and swung open. Dickie and I stepped through, and it closed immediately behind us. We’d barely had a chance to get pointed in the right direction when one of Cosmo’s hot-pink, off-grid vehicles rolled up with its knobby tires roaring against the pavement and screeched to a halt before us. The tinted window rolled down to reveal Cosmo behind the wheel, gold-rimmed visilens glasses with pink-tinted screens perched on the bridge of his glistening black nose. Gold dust shimmered like stars in his coal black hair and sprinkled the perfect ridges of his knife-sharp cheekbones.
“I had to see for myself.” He peered over the top of the glasses and made a disappointed sound in the back of his throat. “But I have been deceived. I should make you walk up to the house.”
“Cosmo, please,” I said. “We need your help.”
“Oh, you need my help, girl.” He pushed his glasses back up and turned away as if I was something painful to look at. “You don’t know the half of it. Get in.”
I threw my bag into the back seat and pushed Dickie in before me. After I crawled inside and slammed the door against the rain, I said, “Is Sal here? Oki?”
Cosmo peeled away from the gate, kicking up twin rooster tails of rainwater behind the car. He swerved up the circular drive and parked in front of the glittering staircase that led up to the huge crystal palace. Two pink-uniformed guards rushed down the stairs to meet him. One opened the door for him, and one held a transparent umbrella over his head. Cosmo lit up the stairs with his golden, high-heeled boots splashing on each step. He snapped his fingers for us to follow.
Dickie and I trudged up the stairs behind him, without an umbrella to share between us, and arrived in the foyer oozing rainwater like a couple of drowned rats.
Cosmo spun to survey the damage we were doing to his interior decorating, standing upon the pearlescent-white stone floor like the dark jewel at the centre of an ancient diadem. “What am I going to do with you?”
Behind him, a fountain pumped jets of crystal-clear water into the air, and it wasn’t the artificial kind. The tinkling of water droplets sounded a lot like the pinging of holocreds disappearing from a bank account. My mouth went dry.
“Tom’s been kidnapped,” I said, trying not to think about the fountain. “Dickie said you’ve agreed to help us break into Libra and get him back.”
“And you should count your lucky stars that he thought of me, right?” Cosmo said. He pressed his fists into his hipbones and leaned back as if to take in the enormity of the fashion faux pas we represented. “You can’t conduct intercorporate espionage dressed like that.”
Cosmo wore a magenta pantsuit, cropped at the knee to allow for thigh-high gold boots with so many holes in them they appeared to be made of lace. The suit was cut with lean lines that hugged his body but left more to the imagination that his usual attire. He did have a small black handheld comm affixed to the thin black belt around his waist. Still, I wasn’t convinced he was the authority on stealth-wear.
“Is anyone else here?” I asked, looking around the gleaming white room.
Veins of gold glittered across every surface. Twin, spiralling staircases—also gold—swept the outer edges of the room and kissed at the point of a heart-shaped balcony beneath a domed ceiling covered in shards of iridescent mirrored glass. Rainbows danced across the room, but none of Cosmo’s usual entourage appeared to be present. I spun around to check for the stone-faced, peacock-tail waving doormen who had greeted—or, rather, failed to greet—me last time I was here. “Where are your feather shakers?”
“I’ve had to shuffle some responsibilities around since your last visit.” Cosmo huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Mrs. Adesina is proving to be a bit of a handful.”
“Is that why you have her answering your security comm?” I resisted the urge to grin. “To keep her busy?”
Cosmo reached across his body and gripped the black comm device as if to reassure himself that it was still there. “That was an oversight—”
The elaborate double doors to my left, covered in intricate carvings depicting men and women riding unicorns through outer space, burst open. As if summoned by our conversation, Mama Adesina strode into the room in an age-defying evening gown covered in enough golden rhinestones to blind a leprechaun. Her skinny, wrinkled ankles trembled slightly above ballet-pointe stilettos—also gold—and her hair had been pulled up into an elegantly egg-shaped quaff on the top over her head, covered in a glittering hairnet—unsurprisingly, in gold.
“I’m sensing a colour theme,” Dickie said, his eyes darting from
Mama Adesina to Cosmo’s boots to the golden staircase. “And I’m feeling a little underdressed.”
“Trust me,” Cosmo said. “Safer to stay off her radar. She’s a pincher.”
He made a crab claw motion at Dickie and winced dramatically.
Mama Adesina carried a bedazzled walkie-talkie at the ready. I wasn’t certain if she expected to answer it or to have to whip it at someone’s head. I positioned myself behind Dickie, just in case. Two harried-looking men in what appeared to be hospital scrubs, but which were made from a fine, iridescent mesh, trailed after Mama with determined expressions on their faces.
“Mrs. Adesina,” said one of them. “We are late for our appointment in the salon.”
She ignored him. She ignored us. She waltzed right between Dickie and me and Cosmo without so much as acknowledging us as obstacles in her path. Cosmo took a step back to avoid collision and stared at her with his eyes as wide as a Grit District pro skirt on the glow-up. He made a furtive gesture behind Mama’s back and hurried up the staircase to his right. Dickie glanced over his shoulder at me, and I shrugged. We both followed, tiptoeing instinctively, as if Mama Adesina were a bejewelled lioness on the prowl, ready to devour us with her glitter-encrusted teeth.
Which probably wasn’t that far from the truth, knowing Rae’s mother.
An altercation between Mama Adesina and her two burly, rainbow-slathered minders broke out when we were halfway up the stairs. One of the nurses had dared to put a hand on the old woman’s shoulder to steer her back toward the unicorn door.
“Not now, Carlos,” she said, and slapped his hand away. “I’m working.”
Carlos looked pleadingly up at Cosmo, but Cosmo wasn’t looking. He hightailed it up the stairs with his wrists bent delicately out at his sides like fronds on an exotic fern. He hurried along the balcony and didn’t stop or look back.
The walkie crackled.
Mama Adesina gripped it in both hands, held it out in front of her face, and shrieked at the device so loudly that the thin, brown skin beneath her chin trembled. “Whaddaya want?”