“I like Walmart,” Brock said. “Can we get some snacks when we’re done? I’m hungry.”
“Now, now,” I said. “I told you to eat before we left.”
“I did,” Brock said. “I ate a pot pie and a lubester.”
Lubesters. So disgusting. Ground insect biomass pressed into a mold, then spray-painted with an instantly hardening chitin. I’d rather eat the ass end of a camel, and those have been extinct for centuries. They grow the insects in the middle of the station—suckers get real big in lower-G, I’m told. I try not to think about the fact that the bugs’ main food source is human waste. The mayor is all big on her self-sustaining by ’70 campaign. Godsdamn Green Party. New Hoboken is a space station, not farmland; food’s always going to be imported, no matter how many times bugs become food, which becomes poop, which becomes food for bugs, and so on.
Still, the ground-up bugs are edible. Good protein. A budget-conscious heavyweight like Brock’s gotta eat, I guess. Two hundred and forty-five pounds requires a lot of intake just to keep going, and the way that guy trains, I’m not surprised he eats lubesters. As long as he keeps away from the beff and the beggs, I’m good.
So much shit in Walmart. Who buys this? Two-for-one exo suits? Yeah, like I’m going hull-crawling in a bargain exo suit on sale in a bin next to ten-packs of freeze-dried mice on one side and 40-ounce bottles of Dharma beer on the other.
Brock stopped at an end-cap and picked up a thirty-roll toilet paper bundle. He smiled his missing-incisor smile and held it up so I could see it, as if I couldn’t see a godsdamn cubic meter of ass-wipe just fine.
“Rabbi, it’s only ninety-nine bucks,” Brock said. “That’s a bargain! We should get a cart.”
“Brock, you giant pile of retard, we’re here on business. This ain’t the time for coupon scanning. Put it down.”
Brock’s smile faded. “But, Rabbi, I was here yesterday and they had a sale on canned figs.”
“How many cans did you eat?”
“Three,” he said. “Then another for breakfast, before I had the lubester. It’s not agreeing with me is all I’m saying.”
It wasn’t that Brock had a sensitive digestive system, per se, it was more that he couldn’t stop eating food that gave him the Hoboken Hot-Step.
“Brock, we’re not here to shop. Come on, we’re running late. We were supposed to get the President before he came in. Can we hurry it up?”
He set the oh-so-cheap mountain of toilet paper back on the shelf. He sighed. He looked sad. Brock can do that. He can also knock you the fuck out. That’s why I bring him.
Me? I can also knock you the fuck out, but it takes me longer, and, honestly, I’d just rather not. Trouble is, I weigh all of a buck fifty. People take one look at me—if they haven’t seen me in the octagon, that is—and think they don’t have to listen to what I say. When I bring Brock “Big Ugly” Sockman along, people do listen. They listen real close.
My name is Joseph Manischewitz. Back in my fighting days, they called me “The Rabid Rabbi.” That’s kind of funny, seeing as I don’t even follow the religion. I wouldn’t know kosher from gopher. But I have the Jew gene, got it from my mom. The fact that she passed away when I was a teenager and I’ve never seen the inside of a synagogue doesn’t seem to matter.
After my mother died, my dad and grampa moved us to New Hoboken for the same reason as most: dad to work in the nobium refinery, grampa to retire. You don’t exactly move to the orbit of Venus for the culture, know what I mean? Things on Earth were so shitty, it wasn’t worth sticking around for the final swan song. Everyone over the age of 65 who could afford to leave already had.
We emigrated when I was fifteen. When I arrived, I got the mandatory gene testing required for New Hoboken citizenship. Whaddaya know: I was Jewish. Surprised the hell out of my dad. That whole race-or-religion thing sort of got worked out in 2095 when they discovered the “Jew gene,” something in the mitochondrial DNA that’s only passed down from mother to child.
We weren’t Jewish by faith, we weren’t part of the culture, but your ancestry percentages go on your official record. The kids in my class found out, and, presto, I was “Rabbi” from then on.
I could give a squirt of piss one way or another, but the Jews on this station help each other out more often than not. That means they help me. They just assume I’m part of their club, so they want to do things for me. That suits me just fine.
That support certainly helped my fighting career. I fought all over the solar system. I started out 5-and-0 as a pro. I didn’t fight anyone of note in those first five matches, but that didn’t matter to “my people”—once word got out that Joseph “The Rabid Rabbi” Manischewitz was an up-and-coming lightweight, my career was covered on every Jew blog, Jew paper, Jew site and Jew news show in the solar system. They loved me. By my sixth fight, I was walking to the octagon while sold-out crowds cheered Mazel tov! Mazel tov! Mazel tov!
When I got bigger fights against better opponents, I started to lose. Know what? The Jews didn’t care. I mean, they didn’t give a rat’s ass that I only won nine of my next thirty fights. They still packed the house every time I put on the gloves. For my last fight, sixteen thousand people packed into Jupiter Gardens. Wish I would have won that one. Would have been nice to go out at least five-hundred. As it was, I walked away from the fight game with a record of 16-17-2.
I got knocked out in that last fight, by the way. At least I made it into the second round. Still, when they woke me up, I got a standing ovation. They screamed mazel tov when I left, just like they did when I entered.
Going into that last match, I’d lost three in a row. It was time to hang up the gloves and try something else. The refinery? Not in this lifetime, pal. Move somewhere else, maybe the stations around Jupiter? I kinda liked New Hoboken. And even if I did move, what did I know how to do besides punch people in the face? If I was going to freelance with that rather limited skillset, might as well do it at home where more people knew my rep.
Brock and I kept walking. His eyes lingered on bargains, but his feet kept moving. Our mark did his fruit shopping every morning at nine. It was already a quarter past.
Brock sighed. “Do we really have to beat up the President? I like him.”
“Yeah, so do I,” I said. “Maybe he’ll have the money and we won’t have to do anything.”
I hoped that was the case. Who wanted to punch the President?
We passed aisle four. A holo on the end-cap had a lady in a blue vest telling us we could save fifty percent on a super-sized pack of diapers. I could tell Brock wanted to buy some, which is kind of awesome considering he doesn’t have any kids.
We hit the produce area in aisle five and saw him: The President.
John Kahn, two-time president of the powerful New Hoboken Association of Retired Persons. He wasn’t the president of NHARA anymore; he’d lost the last election to Ellen DeGeneres Jr., thanks in part to DeGeneres being backed by the mining union and in part to John’s “pizza porn” scandal. The things some people are into, I swear.
He wasn’t the president anymore, hadn’t been for four years, but everyone still called him by that name. Word was he was running again, and his chances looked decent. The election was a couple of days away, I guess—I don’t follow the godsdamn political maneuverings of the New Hoboken retirement community, so sue me.
John Kahn was well known and highly predictable: he shopped in the same stores at the same times every day. That meant he was easy to find.
Too bad for him.
Old and bald with deep laugh lines around the eyes, the President stared at the grapes like they were some kind of complicated math problem. He didn’t notice us walk up to him.
“Mister President,” I said. “Chad LaTilton sends his greetings.”
John looked up quickly as we’d just slipped a knife between his ribs.
Brock and I have done this before. I stand in front of the mark, Brock stands right behind me. I’m five seven; he’s six three and wears boots with big heels that make him stand six five or so. Something about his whole head looking over the top of mine is extra intimidating.
John looked at me, then above me to Brock, then at me again.
“Hi, Rabbi,” he said. “Uh, any chance this is just a little schmooze?”
A schmooze. Hebrew for a chat.
“Sure, Mister President,” I said. “I’m all kinds of chatty. Watch me be all chatty right now. Say, Mister President, how’s the produce today?”
He shrugged. “Not a good batch of grapes. They don’t have any imports this week. These are local, from the farm pods. You know how that is. I think those surveillance squirrels aren’t doing their job and the shit-bugs are getting in.” He pointed to a cluster of grapes. “I’m pretty sure this bunch is fucking plastic.”
Sure enough, they did look like plastic, a dull shine of green set amidst the other, obviously biological grapes. Who the fuck puts plastic grapes in the produce section?
“A shame,” I said. “No quality control these days. There, I was social. If you don’t mind, I’ll skip asking you about the weather. The social custom I’m interested in now, Mister President, is the exchange of goods and services, notably, a certain amount of money you borrowed from Mister LaTilton. You owe that money back, Mister President, plus interest.”
He licked his old-man lips. “I have the money,” he said. “I need it for my … my re-election campaign. It’s just a little tied up right now. It’s not liquid.”
A big hand connected to a big arm reached over my shoulder and pointed at John.
“You’re gonna be liquid,” Brock said. “Mister LaTilton wants his money.”
I was torn: Brock had spoken out of turn, but damn, that was a pretty good line. For him, anyway.
I tapped my friend’s tree-trunk of an arm. “Brock, I got this.”
The big, pointing finger retreated.
John’s eyes turned back to me. “Rabbi, let me talk to Mister LaTilton. I can give him something worth way more than just money. Way more.”
I shook my head. “No more talking. You give me the money, and if you like I’ll take you and the money to see Mister LaTilton. What you two discuss ain’t my business. What is my business is getting Mister LaTilton’s money back. So, take me to it, right now, or Brock here is going to see that you eat your grapes through a straw.”
The President’s eyes narrowed. “Wouldn’t the skins get stuck in the straw? I mean, even if they were pureed?”
“Yeah,” Brock said. “I tried to make a grape protein shake once. The skin was like little boogers in there. It was gross.”
Later, I’d have to have a chat with Brock about speaking out of turn. “Fine,” I said, “then grape juice through a straw.”
“I already drink grape juice through a straw,” the President said.
Behind me, Brock grunted in agreement. “I like grape juice. You can get that on sale, usually.”
These guys were pissing me off. Eating grapes through a straw was a good line. What did these two morons know about clever?
“Both of you, shut the fuck up,” I said. “Mister President, allow me to rephrase. Give me the money, now, or Brock here has to hit you in the mouth repeatedly until your teeth fall out.”
John reached up and slid his fingers into his mouth. He wiggled, then pulled out dentures and held them up.
“But I already doan have any teef.”
You know what? Forget Brock. I was going to punch this smart-ass old fucker myself.
He put the dentures back in his mouth. “Listen, Rabbi, I can get you the money, okay? Just come with me, and I’ll take you right to it.”
Now we were talking. “Where?”
“Con Carney’s,” he said.
I found that hard to believe. “You keep your money at a dive bar on Deck Seventeen?”
“Not in the bar, Rabbi. I have to talk to someone there, okay?”
I nodded. I hoped he wasn’t blowing sunshine up my ass. I really didn’t want to hit an old dude. Excuse me, have Brock hit an old dude.
“Sure thing, Mister President,” I said. “Let’s go.”
And then the grapes moved. The plastic ones. They bounced up like they’d been sitting on top of a spring. Brock and I reacted automatically, side-stepping away from the motion and turning to face it, our fists instantly in front of our faces to ward off whatever might come. When you’ve spent your adult life in the octagon, your body just does these things without needing your thought or permission.
President John Kahn had not spent his adult life in the octagon.
He saw the plastic grapes bounce up. He didn’t flinch away, he just looked at them. Maybe he saw the metal filament shoot out of the bunch, maybe not. The silvery ribbon hit him right between the eyes. It punched through the bridge of his nose. I know that because I’ve heard a crunch just like that more times than I can count; every pro fighter has heard it.
John’s eyes went wide, but only for a second before his head exploded.
I was fast enough to move away from bouncing grapes. I wasn’t fast enough to dodge flying brains. Bloody crap splattered all over my face and chest. John’s now-headless body collapsed.
His whole head wasn’t gone, really, just everything from the lower jaw up. On that jaw, his bottom dentures were still there, clinging to the bloody gums. The top half was somewhere else, along with his skull, tongue, brains and eyes. Blood oozed out of the half-head and pooled on the white tile floor.
A lady screamed. Maybe she was new in town—a dead body is nothing new in New Hoboken.
I looked at Brock. He was also covered in gore. His face was, anyway; his body remained clean, because mine had blocked most of the blood and bone.
“That’s gross,” he said. “I’m not shopping here anymore. And I sure as fuck ain’t buying their produce.”
Right. Like he was going to pay more somewhere else? The price guarantee is a double-edged sword, my friends.
I looked back to the body and the spreading blood. A lady walked up. She wore the blue vest of a Walmart employee.
She looked at the body, then at me. “You guys do this?”
I shook my head. When I did, something fell off my hair and splatted lightly onto the tile. It was the President’s tongue. So that’s where it went.
“Wasn’t us,” I said. “We were just talking. Surveillance cameras will clear us.”
She tapped her Walmart badge twice. The badge had “Marge” printed on it.
“We need a bio beam-up on aisle five,” she said, her voice amplified by the store’s sound system. “Repeat, we need a bio beam-up on aisle five. And a mop. And some hoses.”
I wiped at my face, then flung the mess to the floor. “Brock, come on, we gotta go.”
We had to get out of there. We weren’t going to be arrested or anything, as the security cameras would show we hadn’t touched the President, but New Hoboken’s finest would want to talk to us, and we didn’t have time for that nonsense. They’d find us eventually, and that was fine.
For now, however, we had someplace we needed to be. Fast.
Who had killed the President? I had no idea, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t really give a shit. Does that sound callous? Sure, but I had more important things to worry about than some old dead dude—I had to go tell Chad LaTilton that I hadn’t recovered his money.
New Hoboken isn’t the greatest place in the solar system. Sure, I know that. While it has many good points, the bad points are really bad. Deck Seventeen? That’s the baddest of the bad points. If the cops go down there at all, they go in fours and usually in riot gear. Translation: cops don’t go there much at all. So, of course, that’s where Chad LaTilton stays.
“I don’t like Deck Seventeen,” Brock said. “It scares me.”
“You’re a big pussy,” I said. “If I was your size, nothing would scare me.”
“Yeah? How about hookers with razors in their mouths?”
I stopped walking. “Hookers with razors in their mouths?”
Brock nodded.
“And this actually happened to you?”
He nodded again. “Know that old line about how the worst blow job you ever had was still pretty good?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that line is bullshit.”
“How the hell did you wind up with your dick in the mouth of a hooker who was also inclined to keep razors in said mouth?”
He shrugged. “She had a squirrel costume on. You know how it is.”
“I do not,” I said. “I most certainly do not know how it is, Brock. A squirrel costume?”
“I like squirrels.”
“Apparently. Apparently you like them more than most. So … what happened? You still have the little heavyweight down there?”
“I still have it,” he said. “She wanted money so I gave it to her.”
“How much money?”
Brock shook his head like I was the stupid one. “All of it, Rabbi. Did you miss the part where I said she had a razor in her mouth? Maybe you would have tried to Jew her down?”
“That’s racist.”
“So’s a razor against your dick.”
I sighed. “No, Brock, a razor against your dick is not racist. Racism implies a prejudicial assertion based solely on stereotypes and not on fact. A razor against your dick is fact, not a belief or a doctrine.”
He thought about it and nodded. “Yeah, well, that’s a lot of words. Another fact is I don’t like Deck Seventeen. It scares me.”
Brock Sockman wasn’t afraid of much. This particular phobia, however, I could understand.
We walked down Deck Seventeen’s main drag, a long tram-road with wide sidedecks on the left and the right. The place was a dump, even by New Hoboken standards. The road was wide enough for the tram that rotated through every hour, at least when it wasn’t broken down, mind you, which was more often than not. The tram stops every two hundred feet. People get on, people get off, and that’s fine, but the tram is also the main cargo-hauling system down here. If one of the shops has to load or unload, you’ll sit for ten minutes more. Most of the time, it’s just faster to walk. When the tram comes through, you move to the sidedecks. When it passed, you move back into the road.
Shops lined either side. Many of them were open for business, selling groceries, liquor and beer, used clothing, the same stuff you find in any ghetto anywhere in the solar system. Many of the storefronts were sealed up, most of those with yellow police tape. Some of the doors had burn marks, which is a pretty big indicator of how bad things could get down here—on a space station, fire is not your friend.
Brock and I got a lot of looks. Most are smiles and expressions of surprise. New Hoboken loves the fight game. I was only a couple of years retired, so people still knew my face. Brock was still fighting. He was much more recognizable because he’s had some big-ticket fights. Three times he’s taken on the number one contender to earn a shot at the title. He lost all three times in spectacular fashion. I’m pretty sure Brock’s chances are done—he’ll never get another shot at the strap—but when he fights, he fights hard. He puts on a good show and people love him for it.
Still, he’s a pro heavyweight. That means every palooka in a place like Deck Seventeen sizes him up, wonders if they coulda been a contender. Sometimes they step up. When they do, it doesn’t last long. Brock “Big Ugly” Sockman might have taken a few too many punches, he might get his ass kicked by the solar system’s elite fighters, but the solar system only has about twenty elite heavyweights—as for the other seventeen billion citizens, Big Ugly can whoop any of them in a fair fight.
Of course, a fair fight on Deck Seventeen is harder to find than a virgin. At least a virgin you can’t buy, anyway, but who can afford virgins these days? The refinery business ain’t what it used to be, and times are tough all over.
We headed toward a shop with a bunch of working girls hanging out in front. LaTilton’s place. One of the girls was wearing a bunny costume, not like in those old Playboy holos, either. I mean she looked like an actual rabbit—fully furred and with the big teeth.
“Brock, leave her be.”
Brock looked at her, then he looked at me like there was something wrong with me.
“Rabbi, she’s dressed like a rabbit. That’s sick. I’m not a perv.”
Sockman. There’s no one like him anywhere in the universe. Were I religious, I’d thank gods for that. “Come on, Big Ugly … have to report in.”
We walked through the girls. They were nice enough if you were into addicts and venereal disease. I like my cock attached to my body as opposed to falling off of it, so these girls weren’t my type. The girls LaTilton kept inside, though? A different story.
Past the girls there was the door, and inside that, a plain office with a plain table. Two big fuckers were sitting at the table. They weren’t the pair who usually worked this time of day, but I recognized them—Bobby and Ronnie. Ronnie wore an orange three-piece suit, while Bobby’s duds were light blue. LaTilton likes his colors. They were playing cards. On the table in front of each of them were piles of money and a nail gun the size of my head.
It’s impossible to get an actual firearm onto New Hoboken Station. Get caught with one, get executed. Pretty simple and damn effective. Most of the nasty work here gets done with knives, shivs and industrial tools. Nail guns are in that gray area between construction equipment and illegal weaponry.
Both of the toughs looked up. They acknowledged me, but only because I was the guy LaTilton talked to. They nodded more respectfully at Brock, who nodded back. Both of the guys were bigger than Brock, which was saying something (if these guys had been raised here and reared on that bug-meal crap, then that bug-meal was godsdamn nutritious, I’ll tell you that). Bobby and Ronnie both had taken their shot at the title, so to speak, and both had found out there’s a big difference between beating up some deadbeat and taking a swing at a professional fighter. I don’t know what it is with the big guys—it’s like they always have to find out who has the largest metaphorical cock. If there was a deck reserved for men who weighed more than 225 pounds, the walls would drip with territorial pissing.
“Ronnie,” I said to the guy in the orange suit. “Bobby,” I said to the guy in the blue. “Where are Ricky and Mike?”
“They had to cool it,” Ronnie said. “They gotta watch out for a bit. They did some work for Mister LaTilton. Something about a girl, I dunno. He’s waiting for you inside.”
Ronnie tilted his head toward the back of the room, toward a rusted iron door. LaTilton was waiting for us? I wondered if news had spread, spread as fast as the President’s brains had when the grapes of wrath had done their thing.
Brock and I walked to the iron door. It was rusted. You have to do that shit on purpose you know. The rust, I mean. They solved the rust problem like fifty years ago. Everywhere but Deck Eighteen, of course, but rust is the least of concerns to the lost souls down there. LaTilton likes the look of rust, maybe.
There were openings and nozzles on either side of the door, above it, and even a few recessed into the floor. All kinds of stuff in those: cameras, mostly, but also tasers, spike-shooters, a water hose and even a flamethrower. A fucking flamethrower. This is the entry point to LaTilton’s kingdom, and he wants you to know you pass through the gates only by his invite.
There was a buzzing sound, then the clank of hidden metal bars sliding back. The door opened. Inside waited another world. A noisy one full of thumping music. None of the ghetto dinginess here. Chad LaTilton liked to club.
The man himself was in the middle of a lighted dance floor. Colors flashed from the sides, from above and below. He shook his moneymaker, twisted and turned. I don’t know how he didn’t sweat in a pink three-piece suit like that, especially with the matching fedora, but he was all smiles and sexy-eyes for the five girls dancing with him. And those girls …
For a price you could have any of them. A big price. Those girls were the reason that Brock Sockman had to do muscle jobs like this. He made big bucks for his fights, and he spent those bucks on working girls. The hottest hookers in New Hoboken were on that floor, dancing along with Chad LaTilton.
And at the back edge of the glowing dance floor, I saw the thing of rumors, the thing that made Chad LaTilton so feared. There was a body on the floor. I’m no doctor, but judging by the knife handle sticking out of his chest, I felt safe in assuming the guy was dead. There was a fuzzy little dog standing on the guy, its little front paws close to the knife, his rear paws balancing on the corpse’s face. No, not standing—the dog was squatting.
“It’s true,” Brock said. “Pockets really does that.”
I nodded. There had always been a rumor that Chad LaTilton had trained his Pomeranians to shit on the forehead of his dead enemies. It was so ridiculous, such an outlandish gangster legend, that I assumed it was just a myth.
It wasn’t.
I walked onto the dance floor, now dreading the meeting even more.
He saw us coming. LaTilton stopped doing the robot and shifted to a slow, side-to-side sway.
“Rabbi, Big Ugly,” he said. “You have the funds I sent you to procure?”
“There was a problem, Mister LaTilton,” I said. “The President—”
“You’re not dancing,” LaTilton said. “Something wrong with my music? You don’t like club?”
Damn, did I hate coming here. “No, Mister LaTilton. This place is awesome.”
I started dancing, if you can call it that. I tried my best to emulate LaTilton’s sway. I felt the floor shaking beneath me from Brock’s big feet—Sockman liked to boogie.
LaTilton smiled. “There you go, my man. Dancing will set you free. Go on with your story.”
“There was a small problem,” I said. “Someone killed John Kahn.”
LaTilton nodded, adjusted his fedora. “So I heard. I don’t care about that. What I care about is the money I sent you to get for me.”
I stopped dancing for a moment, then started up as soon as I realized I wasn’t obeying LaTilton’s weird protocol. “I just told you the President is dead. How can I get money from a dead man? The job is done.”
LaTilton did three spins, eyes locking on me each time they came around. He stopped and stared, his hands near his hips, fingers snapping to the beat. “I sent you to get my money, Rabbi. You don’t have my money, ergo, the job is not done.” He put his hands on his hips and shook them side to side. A girl fell in on either side of him, grinding against him and matching his movements.
“You took a job, Rabbi,” LaTilton said. “If you had done that job and got to the President sooner, the President would not be dead, and I would have my money. Therefore, this is your fault. You either finish the job I hired you to do, or someone is going to come collect the money from you.”
I stopped dancing. LaTilton did not. Judging from the vibrations rattling the floor, neither did Brock Sockman.
LaTilton grabbed a girl and pulled her close. They stepped together, their feet matching one-two-three forward, then one-two-three back.
He tilted his head toward the corpse, the corpse with the little pile of Pomeranian poop on his forehead. “Rabbi, you see Schecky Goldberg back there? He disappointed me. If you don’t bring me that money, I’ll be disappointed in you.”
The job had been so simple—get the President’s money, collect ten percent as a recovery fee. Now the wrath of grapes meant Brock and I were on the hook for money. A lot of money.
I grabbed Brock’s arm and tried to pull him off the floor. “Come on.”
Brock planted his feet. “But this is the breakdown,” he said. “I love this part. It’s got a nice beat, and you can dance to it.”
I dragged harder, pulling him off balance a little. “Brock, move.”
He sighed his heavy sigh and followed me out of the club. We walked out of the club and back into the shop. The big iron door slammed shut behind us.
“Aw, Rabbi. Why don’t you want to dance a little? You’re too stuffy.”
“Why don’t I want to dance?” I wanted to hit someone. I had enough self-control to not let that someone be Big Ugly. “I don’t want to dance, Brock, because Chad LaTilton just decided that we’re responsible for the President’s debt.”
Brock stopped walking. He stared at me, trying to see if he was kidding. I wasn’t.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s kind of ironic.”
“What is?”
“That we were talking about razor blades and dicks earlier. Cause this feels about the same as that did.”
He was right. Brock Sockman, poet. At least when it came to getting blow jobs from whores in squirrel costumes.
“Come on,” I said. “We have to figure out what’s up—and fast.”
“How we gonna do that?”
“We have to find out who killed the President. Maybe they wanted his money. We find the killer, maybe we find the money.”
“Who’s going to know who killed the President?”
Poor Brock. I knew where this would end up. “We have to talk to Con Carney.”
His whole body seemed to sag. “Con Carney? Are you sure we gotta talk to her?”
I shrugged. “It’s that or razor blades.”
He sagged a little bit more, then sighed his heaviest sigh of the day. “Okay.”
We walked toward the meat-packing district.
The tram was broken again. Three passenger cars and one flatbed sat idle in the middle of the track. Some people were hanging around, waiting for it to be fixed. Fat people, mostly—the station is only two miles in circumference, so no matter where you’re going, the walk is never more than a mile away. Know who won’t walk a mile or less? Yeah, fat people.
Carney Powers’s place was only a quarter mile away. We opted to use our perfectly good feet rather than wait for a tram repair crew to show up.
Brock was still having trouble comprehending our dilemma. He had this concept that the world was fair. That got him into trouble more often than not.
“But we didn’t kill the President,” Brock said. “Why do we owe LaTilton again? I still don’t get this.”
Brock is an interesting guy. Sometimes, he’s pretty smart. Most of the time, though, he couldn’t win a debate with my balls, and by balls aren’t exactly known for their debate skills.
“We were supposed to get the President’s money, Brock. We didn’t get it. If we had gotten to the President sooner, maybe he wouldn’t be dead and maybe LaTilton would have his money. Now do you get it?”
He stopped walking and stared at me. “You’re saying that if I hadn’t spent that time looking at the toilet paper, we might not owe LaTilton?”
That wasn’t what I was saying at all. But Brock looked crushed, like somehow this was his fault, so I went with it.
I shrugged. “I wasn’t going to say that, buddy.”
His big hands curled into big fists. He snarled a little. Brock loved everyone. He only snarled when he was mad at himself.
“But it was such a bargain, Rabbi! I couldn’t help it!”
“I know, Sockman, I know. Come on, we have to figure out who wanted the President dead, or we’re screwed.”
We started walking again. Brock was really upset. I felt a little guilty for perpetuating that, but not too much—a motivated Big Ugly was far better than a distracted Big Ugly.
The meat-packing district is, frankly, kind of fucking gross. For some reason they don’t have a lot of industrial facilities over in the Hereford Orbital, which is the closest station to New Hoboken. There are skinned corpses all over the place, hanging on hooks and racks, and you can hear the thwack of meat cleavers every minute of every day. This is the food for the richest residents of New Hoboken. They don’t truck with lubesters in this district, I assure you. I got to eat an unlimited amount of steak once after one of my wins. I got meat drunk as all get-out.
There’s a lot of working people in the MPD, but like everywhere else on the lower decks, there’s a lot of people who do nothing but sit on their ass all day. They either sit on the sidedecks, in storefronts or in bars. Plenty of bars down here to house them—the drinking industry is one business that never seems to lose money.
We closed in on Carney’s place. We were only about a hundred feet away from her shop when I saw a man approaching. It didn’t take much to see he was trouble—big dude, not an ounce of body fat on him, wearing a leather vest and no shirt to make sure everyone saw his cut, tattooed body. Two-fifty if he was a pound. He had his eyes on Brock.
“I feel awful,” Brock said to me. “Rabbi, I didn’t mean to get you into this mess.”
The guy crossed the road and started yelling our way. “Hey, you Sockman? You’re that heavyweight motherfucker bad-ass, right?”
Brock didn’t seem to hear the man. He kept walking. “It’s just that I really like two-ply, Rabbi. My butthole gets all chafed, you know? Mom always said be nice to everyone, including yourself. I just wanted to be nice to my butthole.”
“Brock, this ain’t the time to talk about being civil to your poop-shoot, okay?”
The tough guy literally started circling us, his chest all puffed out, his muscles flexed as if that would intimidate us.
“You ain’t shit, Sockman,” the man said. “I saw that fight against J.R. Young. He made you his bitch, man!”
Brock still didn’t hear the man. He shook his head. “I can’t help it if I have a sensitive pooper, Rabbi. I like figs. Sometimes I eat too many, and I get the runs. Makes my pooper burn real bad.”
Brock was oblivious. I was going to have to do something about this myself. I watched the tough guy, mapped out a quick strategy: nut-shot, elbow to the temple, if that sent him down, then a knee to the face, if it stayed standing, then lock up his wrist and cut to the chase with a flying arm bar. If the guy had buddies, I wouldn’t go to the ground, but he was a dummy who’d stepped up without backup.
“You’re a little bitch, Sockman!” the thug said. “You can’t even win in the ring, and there ain’t no ring in these streets. Woooo!”
Brock shook his head. “No one wants a burning butthole, Rabbi. It feels like I’m shitting fire, you know? Shitting razors made of fire.”
“Uh, Brock? Maybe you should pay attention here?”
The tough guy then stepped in front of us, blocking our path. He put his fists up, the very picture of a muscled fighter stepping up for the first blow.
“Woooo!” the man said.
Brock didn’t even look up. His right fist shot out, slid between the tough’s fists and smashed him in the nose. It wasn’t that much of a jab—not by a pro fighter’s standards, anyway, but the thug’s head rocked back, trailing an arc of blood. He fell like a sack of shit.
Brock didn’t even break stride. He stepped over the thug and kept walking.
“Stupid figs,” he said. “Why do I have to like figs so much, Rabbi?”
I stepped over the fallen thug. Guy looked like he had a smashed tomato for a nose. “I don’t know, Brock,” I said. “We all have our vices, I guess.”
We reached Carney’s bar. There was a woman on the sidewalk just outside the door, vomiting something green and viscous. A man stood next to her, the look in his eye showing that as soon as she was finished hurling, he was taking her somewhere to fuck her. Ah, the blossom of romance ever blooms in New Hoboken.
We walked in. It was mid-afternoon. People should have been at work, but the bar was about a quarter full. This was prime time for the professional drinkers, the New Hobos who had written off accomplishing something in life other than abusing their tattered livers. Fortunately, a new liver only cost about a week’s wages nowadays, so there was little to stop these alkies from further mastering their zen-like dedication to getting fucked up.
Three people sat at the bar. At the far end, a guy was asleep right on top of it. Most places, you’d get thrown out for that. Carney had put a pillow under his head and a puke bucket next to it. She was all about customer service like that.
Behind the bar, resplendent in a sequined bikini top that hadn’t fit her all that well some thirty pounds ago, stood the owner of this fine establishment. She saw us and smiled that smile, the one that made everyone instantly like her, instantly trust her.
“Rabbi! Get over here and give momma a hug, and bring that big, sexy fella with you!”
I heard Brock sigh.
I leaned over the bar to give her that hug. Carney Powers was big enough that I damn near vanished into her sequined tits. She was six feet tall, maybe a bit more. Her excess weight wasn’t from muscle—Carney Powers wasn’t shy about ordering a third dessert, if you know what I mean. I like my women about my size, but there was something about Carney: she was warm, soft and damn if she didn’t always smell good. You never knew what color her hair was going to be. That time, it was pink streaked through with locks of yellow-striped black.
She squeezed me hard enough that I considered tapping out, then put her big hands on my shoulders and held me at arm’s length. “The Rabid Rabbi, in my bar once again. Been too long, Joe.”
I nodded. “It has, Carney.”
It’s an understatement to say Carney Powers is a woman of great appetites. She can out-drink most men, out-eat anyone and out-fuck the offensive line of the New Hoboken Horseboys. Fortunately for me, Carney usually only lusted after guys who were bigger than she was. That let me off the hook.
Brock, on the other hand? No so much.
She let go of me and held her arms out to Brock. “Don’t just stand there, Big Sexy. Come give momma some sugar.”
Swear to gods, Brock whined a little. Ever hear a six-foot-three, 245-pound man whine? It’s not a pretty sound.
“Brock,” I said. “Give Carney a hug already.”
Brock stepped up and leaned over the bar, into Carney’s arms. She damn near lifted him off his feet. He let out a whuff as she squeezed him. Her lipsticked lips nuzzled into his ear.
“Hmmm,” she said. “You been working out, Brock? You feel good.”
Brock tried to lean away. She squeezed him harder, her hand running up and down his back. She grabbed his ass at just about the same time the tip of her tongue flicked his ear. “And firm,” she said. “Good boy.”
Brock pulled away. Swear to gods, he took a step behind me like I could protect him or something.
“Carney,” I said, “we need some information.”
Her smiled widened. “What a surprise. And what makes you think I know anything?”
I took a seat at the bar and leaned in so I wouldn’t have to talk loud. Brock did the same. Carney leaned down as well, pink hair falling down almost to the bar top.
“It’s about the President,” I said. “He said you had something of his?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Kahn said that?”
I shrugged. The President hadn’t said as much specifically, but I wasn’t going to tell Carney that.
Carney winked at me. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. Where is Mister President, anyway? He usually comes here after he does his fruit shopping.”
“Dead,” I said. “Killed by a bunch of grapes.”
“Grapes? He was killed by grapes?”
Brock nodded. “Plastic ones. Blew up his head.”
For the first time, Carney’s smile faded. “The President is dead? For real?”
Brock and I nodded.
Carney shrugged. “That’s a shame. Everyone loved the President.”
“Not everyone, apparently,” I said. “Someone didn’t like him very much at all. He was bringing us here, Carney. He said he had money here. He owed LaTilton a big sum.”
At the mention of that name, Carney stood up. “LaTilton? The President owed money to LaTilton?”
I nodded. “And now we need to collect. So, help us out. What do you know?”
She chewed her lower lip for a second, then pulled out three shot glasses and set them on the bar. “First, a drink.” She poured bourbon, vodka and some cranberry juice, then added a purple sugar cube, a lemon twist and a cherry. It sounds like that would take forever, but her hands moved crazy-fast. She’d always had fast hands. Fast and warm. Not that I’d know from personal experience, mind you—that was just the word that got around. Honest.
She held up her shot glass. “To the President.”
I picked up mine. “To the President.”
Brock picked up his and held it close to his face. “What the hell is this?”
Carney smiled. “That’s a purple-cherry ass-pucker, Big Sexy. Drink up.”
The name didn’t seem to sit well with Brock. Carney threw hers back, then chewed on the cherry and sugar cube in her mouth. I did the same. I’m more of a beer guy, but that woman can mix some tasty concoctions. Brock sighed and threw his drink back. He grimaced as he crunched the sugar cube.
I set the shot glass on the bar. “So, Carney, can you help us?”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It made her lipstick smear a little to the right. “Sure, I can, Rabbi. I can see to it that you hear what you need to hear. But you want something, so do I. How about you tend bar for me while I take Brock in the back room to talk things over?”
Brock whined again. Poor guy.
“Just tell us now,” he said. “No need to go in the back.”
“Oh, there’s a need,” Carney said.
Brock looked very, very sad. He turned to me, as if to say can you help me?
I shrugged. “If we don’t get that info, Big Ugly, Mister LaTilton will not be appreciative of our inability to comply with his demands.”
Brock hung his head. He stood up. He put his hand on my shoulder.
“If I don’t make it back,” he said, “tell my mom I did my best.”
I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but I nodded all the same.
I hopped over the bar to Carney’s side.
She gestured to the bottles behind the bar. “You know how to make a sea breeze?”
I looked around the bar. “Doesn’t seem like the place where a lot of people order a sea breeze, to be honest.”
“Smart ass,” she said. “This is important. Do you know how to make one?”
“Sure,” I said. “A sea breeze is Jack and Coke.”
She frowned. “How about a Cosmo?”
I nodded. “Jack and Coke in a martini glass.”
“And I suppose I’m crazy to ask if you know how to make a martini?”
“That’s easy. Jack and Coke in a martini glass, with an olive on a little red plastic sword.”
Carney rolled her eyes. “Good thing you know how to fight, Rabbi. Come on, Brock, let’s go.”
Brock walked to the end of the bar. There was a door down there that led into a back room. Con Carney’s back room, a place of myth and legend. Not that I know personally, mind you. Honest.
She stopped at the end of the bar and leaned down to talk to the guy lying on top of it. She gently shook his shoulder. Maybe she was checking to see if he was alive. If he was dead, that wasn’t my problem, not unless a Jack and Coke could bring the deceased back to life.
Carney took Brock’s hand and led him into the back room. Funny how throughout history, some things never change. If Brock wanted to take advantage of Carney, you’d have seventeen cops and a rep from the New Hoboken Association of Female Rights down here faster than a Budweiser made you belch. The NHAFR ladies didn’t fuck around. But a woman taking advantage of a man? Hallmark doesn’t even make a sympathy card for something like that.
Carney got Brock; I got to play bartender. At least it was fun for me. First thing’s first, serve the man behind the bar a nice Bud Light. Ahhh, the taste of tradition.
I hoped Carney actually had info and wasn’t just using this to get laid, or at least to do whatever she was going to do with Brock. Or to Brock, actually. Not that I’d know personally. Honest.
One of the three bar patrons stumbled out the door. The other two asked for refills, the first on a boilermaker, the second on a Tom Collins. I gave them both a Jack and Coke. Neither of them said a thing after the first sip, furthering my hypothesis that all mixed drinks are just variations on whisky and carbonated sugar-water. I’m a scientist like that.
“Hey … mistah …”
I looked at the two bar patrons. They were still staring into their boilermaker and their Tom Collins, respectively. They didn’t look like they’d said anything.
“Hey … mistah … down here.”
I turned to look at the end of the bar. The guy lying there had his head up, and he was looking at me.
His gray stubble face pulled back into a smile of mostly missing teeth. The ones that remained were a delightful shade of chartreuse. “Carney said you wanted to know something about the President?”
Ah, poor Brock. I can see to it that you hear what you need to hear, Carney had said. She’d never mentioned exactly who would give me that information.
I walked down to the end of the bar. Halfway there, I smelled the guy’s breath. Drugs of some kind, for sure. Who does that to their body? I mean, people make fun of fighters because we choose to get the shit kicked out of us, get broken noses and split lips, suffer impaired vision for the rest of our lives, even get brain damage, sure, but drugs?
I stopped in front of the guy. “What do you know?”
He smiled wider. “Mistah, I sure am thirsty. How about a sea breeze?”
That figured. I poured him a Jack and Coke. I grabbed a red plastic sword out of a glass full of them, stuck an olive on it, put that in his drink and handed him the glass.
He stared at it. “That’s not a sea breeze.”
“It’s what you’re drinking, asshole.”
He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, so it is.” He knocked it back in one pull. “Mmmm, delicious.”
I took the glass from him, accidentally touching his fingers as I did. His skin felt oily, clammy, repulsive. Why don’t people like this just eat a bullet and get it done faster?
“The President,” I said. “What do you know?”
The green-toothed smile returned. His eyes narrowed in delight. I knew that look—he thought he had the power and was going to get something he wanted. Something more than just a sea breeze.
“Hey, mistah,” he said. “I saw that your friend went in the back with Carney. Maybe if you go in the back with me, I tell you what you want to hear. I wanna show you somethin’.”
I nodded. “Maybe.” I reached over and grabbed all of the little red plastic swords out of the glass. There had to be fifty of them. “And maybe I’ll have you show me that something, then see how many of these I can stab into it.” I held out the handful of red plastic swords. He stared at them, his eyes widening.
I reached over and grabbed a little paper umbrella. “And when I’m out of swords, I’ll put this on the top.”
He shook his head. “Geez, mistah, never mind. And I thought I was a little kinky.”
I forced myself to lean in despite the stink from his mouth and his body.
“Listen, asshole, what’s your name?”
“Meth Cow.”
“Your name is Meth Cow?”
He nodded. “That’s what they call me.”
“What’s your real name?”
He thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I used to work in a circus. In a barn, mostly. I know there were firemen. And this dog. This fine, heroic dog. He bit me in the ass. I had to get a shot. I don’t remember much before that. People called me Meth Cow, on account of how I dealt meth in the barn. You know, where cows stay?”
“I’ll do my best to put the pieces together, sure.”
“Anyway, Meth Cow is the only name I know, mistah.”
“Well listen, Meth Cow, here’s my situation. I have a powerful man who is quite upset with me. He wants to know where the President’s money is. If I don’t find out for him, he’s going to kill me, then have a tiny dog drop a deuce on my forehead. That’s not a metaphor, by the way. If this man decides he’s coming after me, I’ll come after you first. Since I’ll know I’m about to die and have my corpse desecrated, I’ll be fussy. When I’m fussy, I want to hurt people. Ask me if I think there’s an afterlife.”
“Uh, do you think there’s an afterlife?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think there’s an afterlife. That means I don’t think there’s some punishment waiting for me if I kill you in a very slow, horrible way. Since your unwillingness to give me information will directly lead to my death, you will, in effect, cause my death. It’s A plus B equals C, you understand?”
“Is that the Pythagorean theorem?”
“Sure,” I said, even though I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Hey, mistah, no offense, but I’ve had my ass kicked by guys who are a lot bigger than you, know what I mean?”
I nodded. “Have you heard of The Rabid Rabbi?”
“Sure,” he said. “I go to synagogue every week. Ain’t a Jew on this station hasn’t heard of the Rabbi.”
“That’s me.”
He sat up. “No shit?”
“No shit. Since you know about The Rabid Rabbi, which is me, you probably know that said Rabbi of the rabid persuasion is a submission-hold specialist. In case you don’t follow the fight game, that means I know how to use my bare hands to break things like elbows, knees, ankles. It’s about leverage, you see, not strength. I also do fingers and toes, but only when I’m extra fussy. If I’m feeling really motivated, I could break all of your major joints right here in Con Carney’s, right this very moment. It would take a good hour to get through all of your joints, though. I don’t like to rush things.”
For emphasis, I started picking up little red plastic swords. As I talked, I broke off the handles, then dropped the pieces on the bar in front of the man.
“You wouldn’t even be able to crawl out of here, Mister Cow. You’d just lie there. Screaming, mostly, but maybe also asking for a sea breeze or two. To dull the pain, perhaps. That’s what could happen if I just get regular fussy. Since my life may end with a New Hoboken steamer on my forehead, I’m feeling double-plus extra fussy. So how about you tell me what you know and we knock my fussiness meter back a notch or three?”
He smiled again, this time in that way that bullshitters do when they think you’ll believe what they say, even though they have no idea that they are really bad at bullshit.
“Hey, mistah, no need for all the hostility. Why didn’t you just tell me who you were? From one Jew to another, I’m happy to help you out.”
There, that was better. Now that we’d established the ground rules, I gave him another sea breeze. This time with two olives. I’m generous like that.
He leaned in like we were buddies. Holy dog shit on a corpse’s forehead, did this man smell.
“The President comes in here every day,” Meth Cow said. “A month ago, he started meeting with the Magician.”
The Magician? Oh. Shit.
“Just so I’m not confusing the parties involved,” I said, “this wouldn’t be the Magician who also kills people for a living?”
Meth Cow nodded. “One and the same.”
Part of me hoped there was still a mistake. No, all of me hoped it.
I patted the top of my head. “Blond, spiky hair up here? Always conning people at bars with card tricks and such?”
“That’s the guy,” Meth Cow said. “Two weeks ago, the President brought the Magician a briefcase.”
Two weeks ago was when John Kahn had borrowed the money from Chad LaTilton. The pieces fell into place. The grapes, LaTilton’s loan to the President, the Magician, the high-stake game of the Association of Retired Persons, it all lined up.
The bum’s eyes drifted to the red plastic swords remaining in my hand. “You know, Rabbi, I’ve never actually tried having something stuck in my balls. Maybe if you do some meth with me, we could give it a shot?”
At that moment, I wondered if maybe I was the deviant. Maybe I was the only guy on New Hoboken who liked regular old missionary sex with a regular girl: no squirrel suits, no pizza porn, no back of the barn, no swords in the nut sack and no whatever Carney was doing to my buddy Brock.
At that moment, Brock ran out of the back room and into the bar proper. He was pulling up his jeans and zipping them at the same time. He almost fell flat on his face. There was a look of panic in his eyes.
“Rabbi! Okay, she wouldn’t give me the info, even though she … I …”
“She and I what, Brock?”
He rubbed his backside. “Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Carney came out of the back room. She wasn’t wearing the sequined bikini top anymore. Her tits were well proportioned to the rest of her oversized body, which meant they were godsdamn impressive. She was all smiles. She looked at Brock the way a cat looks at a mouse.
“Sockman,” she said, “you come back any old time.” Brock ran behind me. “I did my part! Now tell Rabbi what he wants to know!”
I pointed at Meth Cow. “I already know, Brock. That guy gave me some good info.”
Brock looked at me, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Then he looked at Meth Cow, then at Carney. “But … she has the info.”
Carney shrugged. “I said I could make sure you get the info. I don’t know shit.”
Brock looked at all of us again, repeating the cycle, his eyes getting even wider. “Then all we had to do was talk to that guy? I didn’t have to go in that room with you and … I didn’t have to …” He rubbed his backside.
The poor guy. “Doesn’t matter, Big Ugly. I know where we need to go.”
Brock glared at Carney. “You tricked me.”
She laughed. “Go ahead and tell momma you didn’t like it. You came here and got what you wanted. So did I. Everyone wins.”
“Everyone except my behind,” Brock said, his eyes never leaving Carney. “Rabbi, she wasn’t nice to my—”
“Hoo-kay, Sockman, let’s not tell tales out of school.” I didn’t want to hear any more. “We have to go.”
“Go where?”
“Deck Eighteen.”
His head snapped around so fast I thought he might hurt himself. “Deck Eighteen? Why would we go down there?”
“We have to talk to the Magician.”
Brock stared. Then he patted the top of his head. “That Magician?”
I nodded.
He looked at Carney again, as if maybe he’d rather stay here with her after all.
“Brock,” I said, “we don’t have a choice. The Magician is our only chance to get the President’s money. If we don’t get it, you know what’s going to happen to us.”
The big man sighed, then nodded. “I just don’t understand today’s theme.”
Today’s theme? “What are you talking about?”
“The number two theme,” he said. “Everything today seems to involve either number two or the part it comes out of.”
We rode the elevator down. Deck Eighteen is a lot bigger than the other decks. It’s more like Decks Eighteen through Twenty-Two, just without floors or ceilings in-between. Crazy shit goes down on Deck Eighteen, or “Day-Teen” as the locals call it. It’s just one deck above the refinery level. It was once a maintenance deck, so crews could move about above the refinery equipment and drop down to just the spots that needed repair. As such, it doesn’t have the best ventilation, noise baffling or general safety features built into Decks Seventeen through One. Deck Eighteen wasn’t even meant for habitation.
Fifteen years ago, just about the time I got here, I think, a big tax bill funded construction of maintenance pods that cling below the refinery deck. Safer for the maintenance crews and more mobile, they made a big difference in equipment up-time and wound up making New Hoboken more profitable. As Carney Powers would say, everybody won.
Since Deck Eighteen wasn’t needed for maintenance, and it wasn’t up to code for habitation, it was left vacant. It didn’t stay vacant for long. The New Hoboken’s rejects—the people who couldn’t afford a place to live, the people who couldn’t find an above-board job, the junkies and the vagrants and the bums and hookers who made the Deck Seventeen working girls look like movie stars—they slowly drifted down to Day-Teen and stayed there. Know how on planets, gravity makes all the silt and detritus sink to the bottom of the ocean? Yeah, that’s Deck Eighteen.
The cops didn’t like to go to Deck Seventeen. As for Deck Eighteen? They just pretended it didn’t exist at all.
Deck Eighteen, that wretched hive of scum and villainy, happened to be the abode of a man they call the Magician. No one knew his real name. Some thought he couldn’t possibly have a real name because he’d conjured himself out of thin air. People who believe that magic is real are fucking retards; there’s a lot of retards on New Ho.
“Maybe we should just bail,” Brock said. “We could take the next shuttle out. Maybe head for Uranus.”
“Isn’t that Carney’s job?”
“Know what, Rabbi? Sometimes you’re kind of a dick.”
That was true. When I get stressed, I start ripping on people. “Sorry, Big Ugly. Look, if we leave, what do we do then? What do we do for money?”
He shrugged. “Well, I can get fights. You can be my manager.”
“Which is a great idea, except we’re running from Chad LaTilton. Your name up in lights might make it easy for him to know where we are.”
Brock thought for a second, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“We have to talk to the Magician,” I said. “We can either see him now or run and maybe see him later. That’s a kind of seeing him later that neither of us wants.”
Brock actually shuddered. He shuddered.
“Yeah,” he said, “I don’t want a sorcerer coming after me.”
“He’s not a sorcerer. He’s a magician.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A sorcerer is a mythological construct created by primitive cultures to explain inexplicable phenomenon. A magician is a guy who fucks with your head.”
Brock shuddered again. “Well, I’ve had just about enough of being fucked today, thank you very much.”
The elevator hit bottom. Maybe that actually was a metaphor.
“You ready, Brock?”
He shook his head. “No. But let’s go. I just hope this guy doesn’t turn me into a frog.”
The doors opened into a dungeon of metal, steam, rust and the stink of humanity. What lights there were didn’t illuminate things all that well. Most of the people down here had spent their lives getting the shit kicked out of them, so when they saw a guy Brock’s size, they slid into shadows and got the hell out of our way. In those shadows, we saw movement. People were watching us. We saw some people standing, some people lying prone, and sometimes both. There were stories that some kind of cannibals lived down here. I’d thought that just a rumor, but I’d also thought Pomeranians shitting on foreheads was a rumor; I really didn’t want to find out the truth about the cannibals.
We walked quickly down a central road that hadn’t seen a tram in a decade and a half. Day-Teen didn’t have the stalls and shop fronts like the other decks did. Here, there was old machinery, some of it half-rusted out and reaching thirty feet above. Deep shadows ran between those abandoned machines. Hopefully, we could stick to the main road.
“How far?” Brock asked.
“It’s supposed to only be about two hundred feet to the left from the main shaft.”
“What’s it look like?”
“We’ll know it,” I said. “I’m told you can’t miss the place.”
Two hundred feet later, I understood what that meant. There was a godsdamn circus tent made of red-and-white striped velvet spotted with black mold, frayed yellow ropes and limp purple banners hanging from painted poles. Some of the ropes were tied to old machines, making the place look like the hybrid offspring of an old-Earth Gypsy colony and a decommissioned warbot.
“Wow,” Brock said. “This sure looks like where a sorcerer would do sorcefication, Rabbi.”
I walked to the front flap and gently pushed it aside.
For some reason, I’d expected guards, the same kind of heavies that protected the entrance to Chad LaTilton’s dance club. But there was no one. Inside we saw stuff lining the tent’s edges—cages, shackles, blocks of wood maybe made to hold people in place, a big circle with the outline of a body and knives sticking out of it, all kinds of shit like that. The place smelled like the bottom of a wet shoe, if that shoe were made out of cake.
In the middle of this tent sat a throne that seemed to be made out of knives. A man sat in that throne. The metal chair should have cut him to pieces, but it didn’t seem to bother him in the least. Fake candles flickered all around him.
He was waiting for us.
“Rabid Rabbi,” he said. “And Big Ugly Sockman.”
I nodded. “Magician.”
“Huh,” Brock said to the man. “I thought you’d be … bigger.”
The Magician smiled. “Funny, I’ve never heard that before.”
Truth be told, I also thought the guy would be bigger. Hell, I was bigger than he was, and that saying something. He had short blond hair, done up in spikes. Skinny, in combat boots, jeans and a T-shirt—the Magician didn’t look like anything special. His looks, however, weren’t part of what made his reputation.
The Magician wasn’t the only hit man on New Ho. Not even close. There were a lot of bad motherfuckers among the half-million people on the station. And, there was enough criminal infighting to keep those hit men gainfully employed. This guy, however, he was a cut above the rest. In a station that had no guns, you had to get up close and personal to take someone out. That, or know how to deliver poison, how to rig a lethal-but-low-yield bomb or how to arrange an elevator accident or decompression event.
Supposedly, the Magician knew how to do all of these things.
And this was the man I had to deal with? At times like that, I wished real hard that I’d been just a little bit better as a fighter. A couple of big-ticket wins, some money in the bank, and I would have never wound up here.
Yet here I was.
“Magician, we need to talk,” I said. “The President hired you to kill Ellen DeGeneres Jr., didn’t he?”
The Magician paused before answering. “I can neither confirm nor deny that information, Senator.”
Brock looked at me. “You’re a senator?”
“Figure of speech,” I said to him. Then, to the Magician, I said, “We came for the President’s money.”
The Magician laughed. “Did you, now? Let’s say that I, hypothetically, accepted payment to do this dastardly deed. Someone in that line of work, I imagine, would be bound by reputation to fulfill the terms of any agreement.”
“You can’t fulfill it anymore,” I said. “The President is dead.”
He nodded. “You think I wouldn’t have heard about that already? Come on, Rabbi, use your head.”
He already knew? “Well, then, you know that Ellen DeGeneres Jr. moved faster than you did. She had the President whacked before you could whack her. Kahn wanted her dead so he could win the election as president of the NHARP.”
I heard Brock sigh, and this time it wasn’t a sigh of despondence. For the first time that day, he was getting pissed.
“Just give us the fucking money, you little shit,” he said. “You have three seconds, then I’m coming over there and twisting your little head off your little neck. One—”
The Magician flicked his arm forward. There was a clank as a metal spike appeared between Brock’s feet. The spike pointed back at an angle to the Magician’s knife-chair. I saw that the chair now lacked symmetry—there was one extra decorative spike on the left than there was on the right.
Brock looked at the spike between his feet.
“Sockman,” I said, “maybe this wasn’t the right time to practice your intimidating look.”
He nodded. “Maybe not. That’s kind of impressive, Rabbi. But I’m actually kind of disappointed.”
“In?”
“I thought sorcerers used those clouds of smoke and shit.”
The Magician was tossing another spike back and forth from his left hand to his right. “I’m sorry, Big Ugly, did I interrupt your count? I believe you were on two.”
Brock looked up. “Was I? I was never good at math, Mister Magician. I don’t recall ever being able to count higher than one.”
The Magician nodded. “A man’s got to know his limitations. So, Rabbi, what’s to stop me from just keeping the money?”
The answer was, nothing. But I had to try and appeal to whatever morals remained inside of a man who murdered people for money.
“You took those funds as payment for a service rendered,” I said. “That service was to help John Kahn get re-elected as president. Last I checked, they don’t elect dead men. At least on New Ho. I hear dead people can still vote in Chicago back on Earth.”
“Voter fraud,” the Magician said. “Such a crime.”
“Anyway, no matter whom you might kill—hypothetically, of course—you can’t fulfill the service for which you were hired. So, it seems logical to refund the money.”
“Refund it to you? It’s not your money.”
Now I finally got to play my ace in the hole. “You’re right, it’s not ours. It’s Chad LaTilton’s.”
For the first time, I saw the Magician’s confidence waver. Maybe he ruled down here in a den of deviants and misfits, but Chad LaTilton ran the other seventeen decks. That wasn’t a battle the Magician wanted.
He started spinning the spike in one hand like a drummer spins a drumstick. The twirling, flashing metal dancing between his fingers was damn near hypnotic. “And how would LaTilton find out I have the money?”
“Because Brock and I would tell him.”
The Magician smiled. “And if you and Brock died right here in this tent—hypothetically, of course—then who would tell him?”
I had ducked thousands of punches in my day. Could I duck a spike? I felt sweat pooling in my armpits and dripping down my balls. Brock and I could turn and run, but one of us, at least, would be hit before we made it back to the tent entrance. We could rush the guy, but he was sitting on a fucking chair made of knives—somehow, I didn’t think we’d get to him fast enough.
It’s times like this I really hate New Hoboken’s gun-control laws.
“You’ll know, Magician,” I said. “That’s for starters. And we didn’t just get this information out of thin air. Whether Brock and I live or not, word will get back to LaTilton. Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to take the money back to him along with your best wishes?”
The spike stopped spinning. The Magician’s smile faded. I wondered if he had that same look on his face right before he killed someone.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s good for business that Mister LaTilton knows of my respect. Rabbi, I trust you’ll make sure he knows my feelings on this issue?”
I nodded.
“Good,” the Magician said. “And now, Brock Sockman, I have something for you.”
I heard Brock swallow. “I still haven’t counted past one, if that’s what you mean.”
The Magician smiled. “I appreciate your selective memory, but that’s not it. I want you to remember something. Just because your friends don’t believe in magic, that doesn’t mean magic isn’t real.”
The Magician’s hand whipped down and a flashing cloud of smoke engulfed his throne. The flash made me blink, only for a second, but that was long enough; the smoke started to dissipate—the Magician was gone. The throne was empty, save for a briefcase balancing on the points of a dozen knives.
Brock squinted at the chair. “He turned himself into a briefcase?”
I sighed as I walked to the chair of knifes. “Brock, sometimes you’re a fucking idiot.”
It had been a long afternoon, but as I opened the briefcase to see the stacks of money inside, I finally entertained a hope that my life might end without a tiny pile of poo on my forehead.
Whatever drugs Chad LaTilton and his whores used, it had to be good stuff. Did that guy ever stop dancing?
“Rabbi!” he screamed as we walked through the iron door. “Is that a briefcase I see in your hand? My man! Get your white ass over here!”
Brock and I complied. Brock was already bobbing his head and dipping his right shoulder to the beat. At least Schecky’s body was gone.
We walked onto the dance floor. I offered the briefcase. “Here you go, Mister LaTilton.”
“Set that shit down, boy,” he said. He was doing some kind of dance that moved his feet in little back-and-forth steps, his loose fists held up near rolling shoulders. “I’ll count it later. I assume it’s all there?”
“All but my ten percent,” I said. “And there’s no interest. We retrieved the principal amount. Unless you expect me to hack into the President’s bank account for the rest, that’s all there is.”
LaTilton looked up to the ceiling, thinking, his fists and feet never slowing. “That shit is still your fault, Rabbi. You didn’t bring back the interest, so that means you owe me.”
Great. Just what every kid wants—to be in the pocket of Chad LaTilton. That shuttle to Uranus was sounding better every minute.
“How can I make it up to you, Mister LaTilton? How can we square things?”
He smiled. “You just have to do another job for me, Rabbi. And this time, maybe you’ll be more punctual about it.”
I looked at Brock, who wasn’t even listening. He was doing the same shoulder-rolling dance. Big Ugly loved to boogie.
What choice did I have? In case you’re keeping score at home, the choices were a) no choice, b) no choice, c) no choice and d) all of the above.
I closed my eyes. Nothing I could do now but hope I could pull off the next job. “Yes, sir, Mister LaTilton. What’s the gig?”
“I need you to talk to someone for me, Rabbi. Bring her around to my way of thinking, so to speak. I need you to have a nice conversation with Ellen DeGeneres Jr. But for now, I think you should dance.”
I had to talk to Ellen DeGeneres Jr.? The current president of the NHARP? The woman who had people killed with plastic grapes? Well … fuck.
LaTilton stopped moving. He looked angry. He pointed at me.
“Dance, motherfucker! Dance, I said!”
I danced. I had a feeling I would be dancing to LaTilton’s tune for a long, long time.