Screwball sat out on the decking in front of the hotel, drinking incredibly shitty vodka out of a cardboard bottle and feeling increasingly morbid. He’d had these awesome plans when he bought passage to this shithole. This old guy was hiring an army, they told him. You could make some serious money, they told him. So he’d spent all his money on a gun and passage, and look where he’d landed. His gun got taken by that prick at the dock – who worked for Feeney, so what the hell was that about? – and the first guy he met turned out to be a fucking curse.
He tried to kick Ditz in the chair next to him, but his legs were too far away. He tried again, but missed by a mile.
“Wha?” Ditz wasn’t asleep, just stoned. Guy spent more time stoned than anyone Screwball had ever met. “Whassup?”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh. Cool, cool.” Ditz yawned and stretched. “Hey, is that Raj? What’s he up to?”
Screwball sat bolt upright in his chair and looked down at the galleria. Yeah, there was Raj talking to some dipshit in a fez, all smiling and laughing. He couldn’t hear their conversation, but it looked like Raj was trying to schmooze the guy, acting like the dude was hilarious or something. “Talking up some tourist.” He realized something and his eyes went wide. He grabbed Ditz’s arm. “Ditz! Ditz, look at that. It’s just him and that kid. He doesn’t have any backup.”
“So?”
“So let’s go take him. I owe that motherfucker.”
“Woah. Hang on.”
Screwball got himself out of the chair and crept to the railing, then backed away. “Yeah,” he hissed. “Come on. Son of a bitch has it coming.”
“Wait, man. That’s Angelica’s brother, man. She’ll shit a brick.”
“So? Aren’t we at war with those assholes?”
“Yeah, but it’s not, like, war-war.”
“We’re not gonna kill him,” Screwball said, already creeping toward the stairs. “Just rough him up a bit. Save him from owing me a beer, right?”
Ditz gave him an expression like a dog trying to do calculus.
“You owe me, Ditz. Come on.”
They crept inexpertly down the steps across the galleria from Raj and the kid in the fez, then weaved through the tables to hide by the scrappy-looking potted trees, close enough to hear.
“…really appreciate your help,” Fez was saying. He looked like a teenager wearing fancy expensive clothes. “I’m really glad we ran into you when we got here, and your Welcoming Committee.”
Screwball swore again, under his breath. If Feeney found out Angelica had landed a rich moron after running him and Ditz off port duty, he’d be livid.
“No problem, kid,” Raj was saying. He had an easy grin, and almost looked trustworthy. “I’m always up for a bit of adventure, and this comet thing sounds cool. You ready?”
Raj and the kid turned toward the west spur, which went toward the port. Keeping low, and trying to keep Ditz low, Screwball slunk along the line of potted trees in the middle of the big room and on. His quarry seemed to have no idea they were being followed – overconfident, Screwball thought. Just because they kept the fighting out of the galleria itself didn’t make it safe for jerks to just hang out in.
They went into the west spur, through the big steel doors that Screwball had never seen closed, past the shuttered storefronts where the loan shark and the pawn shop used to be and straight through the intersection toward the port instead of clockwise for the casino. Screwball grinned and relished getting his revenge at the site of his earlier humiliation. Ditz stayed quiet, even seemed to sober up a little, and obsessively checked behind them as they walked, but nobody followed. He hung back a bit as they got closer to the port, in case there was a hostile welcoming committee, but the metal corridors were empty.
Screwball hesitated when Raj and the kid actually went into the port, talking all the while without a care in the world, but he screwed up his courage and went to follow.
Ditz clapped a hand on his shoulder, and he about jumped out of his skin. “Woah, man. Hold up. That’s neutral territory, we’re not supposed to go in there.”
“Why not? Preston works for the old man, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah… but he doesn’t, like, work-work for Feeney. A lot of the station staff are on the take. Kind of a quid… thing. They do stuff for him, he does stuff for them. Lot of money laundering. He’s got a stick up his ass about the port, though. We go in there and fight, there’ll be trouble.”
Screwball ground his teeth and stared at the big double-wide port hatch, and the red “open” button next to it. He pictured himself getting his ass chewed by Feeney or his granddaughter for fucking up their relationship with Preston. “All right, are there other exits?”
Ditz scratched his head. “Yeah, there’s a back entrance for maintenance.”
“Would Raj use it?”
“Probably not…”
“All right,” Screwball said, and relaxed a little. “We’ll hang out here, and jump him when he comes out. I know this isn’t neutral ground, because you let him punch me in the face here.”
Ditz visibly struggled with that, but kept his mouth shut. Screwball thought about texting some of the other guys for backup, or just to keep an eye out and make sure there wasn’t company coming, but he didn’t trust any of those assholes. He got the little baton he’d printed out of his pocket and practiced whipping it out. It made a nice sinister snik! noise, and it’d sound real satisfying against Raj’s ugly face.
“Woah, woah, hang on,” Ditz said, waving his hands at the baton. “Seriously, man, this is Raj del Rio here. He gets hurt, Angelica will fucking flip.”
“So what, he can just beat me up and nothing happens?”
“Well, kinda–”
“Can he beat you up? The whole damn crew? Can he walk into the hotel lobby and nobody’s allowed to touch him? I didn’t hear anything about him being untouchable. Did Feeney say he’s untouchable, and he can just jump me and I can’t do shit about it?”
Ditz’s face drooped. He looked tired and miserable. “No, man, it’s just, man, this’ll escalate shit. I just want it to all go back to normal.”
“What, Angelica and Feeney best friends again? You want Nuke back, is that it?”
Ditz’s hangdog look just deepened, and he stared down at his shoes. “No, man, but shit, Nuke was a friend of mine. I know he’s gone and he’s got to be gone, but he just made a mistake, that’s all.”
“Some mistake, Jesus.”
“Look, you weren’t here. You don’t know.”
Screwball felt bad for him, so he didn’t push. He didn’t know much about Nuke, but from what he had heard, the guy was a vicious psycho. “OK, sorry. Look, I’m putting the baton away. We’ll beat up Raj a little but not too bad, and–”
The door slid open as Screwball was fumbling to collapse the cheaply-printed baton. He dropped it and planted his feet to fight, then relaxed when he saw that rangy jerk Preston standing there.
“What are you two morons doing here?”
“We’re the welcoming committee,” Screwball said, and grinned evilly.
Preston gave him a contemptuous look. “There’s no ship due in. Push off.”
“We’re waiting for someone who just went in.”
Ditz craned his neck to peer into the port behind Preston, but Screwball couldn’t see.
“Who?”
Screwball pursed his lips and started to say something cagey, but Ditz said, “Raj.”
Preston snorted. “Knock yourselves out, then. It’ll be three weeks.”
Screwball stared at him, and the dockmaster met his stare with obvious contempt. “Huh? What’ll be three weeks?”
“Until his ship gets back,” Preston said, “Assuming nothing ‘happens’ to it.”
“He got on a ship?” Ditz asked.
“Jesus Christ, you’re even dumber than I tell people. Yes. He got on a space ship. The space ship is leaving. The space ship will be back in three fucking weeks. Now get the fuck out of here, I gotta take a piss.”
They stepped aside and let him past, not being able to figure out anything different to say or do.
“He just left?” Ditz said. He seemed even more depressed about Raj leaving than when Screwball had been proposing to ambush and beat him up. Screwball himself, suddenly relieved from the not-too-remote possibility that he’d have been beat up again himself, stood tall and grinned.
“Ain’t that something,” he said.
“Yeah,” Ditz said unhappily.
“You know what that is? That’s intel. The old man’ll love it.”
Ditz’s “Yeah” sounded like a funeral bell.