TWO

Brooklyn punched the next preset on the van radio and caught the back half of a Zeppelin tune on New Jersey’s WKXW. FM radio was getting weird, and it didn’t help that there wasn’t much new to play. Established artists only, the cash cows. Broadcasters padded the thin air with blocks of the old stuff and increasingly paranoid talk shows. AM was where the action was – lots of live recordings from local clubs and basement studios. Pirate shit, mostly, now that the Feds had more important things to worry about. Too bad the rental van’s radio wouldn’t switch over. Too bad the cassette deck was busted.

A right turn at the Nity Nite Motel – where particolored block lettering promised color TV’s, adult movies, and water beds – and past the strip club. Park beside the next warehouse on the left. On the side of the warehouse were the words “GIVE US BACK THE POWER YOUR KILLING US!”, an appeal not addressed to anyone local.

The rental van squeaked to a stop. Piles of pallets and dented trash bins warred with blanket squats for indifference, half-shadowed and half-jaundiced by the shitty lighting. Brooklyn twisted the key back in millimeter increments and killed the engine. It ticked, cooling after the long drive from LaGuardia. If Demarco was right, this might be the last delivery, the final exchange of relics from the archeological dig on Venus for cash. It figures that peace, or whatever the hell this is, would hit me right in the wallet.

The key went into his pocket, the van door locked behind him. The air was warm and thick but cleaner than it had any right to be. The regulations and tech the First had deployed against the human stain were doing their jobs.

Maybe a little too well. Where the hell is everyone? He straightened the collar of his jacket. “Whack?”

The only sounds were from traffic and whatever bassy pop was playing at the strip club next door. Brooklyn’s head got swimmy for a couple of seconds while his eyes, ears, and nose tuned up, the shit he’d been laced with in the service reacting to stress chemicals. It was a new trick. He’d been stronger and faster since the beginning; the super senses had only shown up after a bender a couple of months before.

Seeing and hearing better than the average bear didn’t make Whack-Whack appear, but the parking spot looked a hell of a lot worse. Smelled worse, too. Heinz-level varieties of piss and rot. Brooklyn rapped at the side door where Whack usually met him. It swung open on its own.

Shit. He’d been making drop offs at the warehouse for more than seven years, and that had never happened. The security camera whined overhead, its autofocus doing its best to keep up.

“Whack?” He pushed the door open more. The lighting was better inside, but there were still plenty of ambush-friendly shadows. “Tony? It’s Donato.” Brooklyn’s ma, Lola, had been Lolita Villalobos before she married Arnaud “Al” Lamontagne in ’49. It hadn’t been too hard to pass as “Donato Diaz” in the New Jersey underworld. “Hello?”

Whack-Whack was a wiry little guy, skinny as a shadow, but Big Tony would have been hard to miss in the grayscale Brooklyn’s enhanced vision turned the scene into. Darlin’, you got to let me know… He hummed some more of the song as he slid through the door, his back against the wall. There was a greasy, burnt smell – copper, and a hint of ozone. Somebody’s lunch left too long in the microwave, maybe. Up the stairs.

The light was still on in the office, but that room was empty as well. No sign of a struggle or quick exit. Worse, no envelope of cash for the Venus-to-New Jersey delivery. “Whack?” The coffeepot on the folding table was cool to the touch.

An angry vibration sent Brooklyn’s heart rate through the roof. He fumbled the burner phone out of his pocket. He’d picked it up at a convenience store outside the city and texted the number to Float and… “Whack?”

“It’s Henry.”

The quiet, twitchy one who never offered to help unload the fucking rocks. “The hell is everyone?”

“We got a problem.”

“Only problem is if you don’t have my money,” Brooklyn said.

“Got your money,” Henry said. “Meet me at the titty bar next door. Ten minutes.”

Brooklyn grumped at the ice in his highboy glass. He’d left the van, walked right past the strip club, and caught a cab downtown. Henry had been pissy about the change of venue, but Brooklyn wasn’t about to meet him someplace he hadn’t picked himself. The paperwork on the rental van led to a fake ID and a hacked cashcart.

The bar bustled around him. Humanity in all its colors and flavors getting high off sexual tension, ego, desperation, and any number of complicated chemical chains. He sipped at his Old Fashioned. Henry was at the door. Brooklyn waved him over.

“You know Sinatra played this place once?” Henry was a nervous-looking guy in a pair of knock-off Oakleys and a Yankees cap. He pulled a mirror out of his breast pocket and laid it on the bar. “You mind?”

“Your town, man,” Brooklyn said. “Know what you can get away with better than me.”

“Radical.” Henry powdered the mirror with a small vial and used a razor blade to sculpt three lines on its surface. “Guess they don’t say that anymore. Now it’s ‘phat’ or ‘skillet’ or something.” He rolled a fifty-dollar bill into a straw. “Want some?”

Brooklyn shook his head. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“I won’t.” He snorted one of the lines. “Where are the rocks?”

“Left ’em at the warehouse. Where’s my delivery fee?”

Henry made a ‘wait’ gesture with his left hand and used his right to hold the fifty. He snorted another line. “Too uptight, dude. Gotta take a chill pill.” He cleaned the mirror with his finger and rubbed the powder into his gums. “Look at these assholes. All the shit goin’ on, and they make like it’s another excuse to party. You got kids?”

Brooklyn shook his head.

“I got two. Teenagers. Live with their mother.” He slid the mirror back in his pocket. “They really talk like that, you know. ‘Phat’ and all that shit. All a sudden, like they learned it in school.”

“Your tax dollars at work,” Brooklyn said. “Let’s get this over with, man. Places to be, people to see.”

“Donato Diaz, Donny D.” He dabbed at his nose. “Not your real name, right? We got a problem, see. And this,” he patted his coat, “is the last money you and me are gonna see for a while.”

Brooklyn tensed. “What’d you hear?”

“Didn’t hear a fucking thing. Saw it.” Henry rapped his knuckles on the bar and ordered a double Jack straight. “Everyone in the crew is dead.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Burned down where they stood. Tony, Whack, all of them. Little piles-a ash.”

“Ash.” The Old-Fashioned glass was empty when he put it back down, lonely ice cubes kissing in the bottom. “Could be Designed, or Jellies. Could be people using alien tech. How’d they miss you?”

“I was a few minutes late. Dropping the kids off at their mother’s. Got there after it was over.” Henry downed the Jack in one go and ordered another. His voice was cracking on the edges, and he cleared his throat. “Could be the rocks.”

“Why now? We been doin’ this for years.” The rocks were curiosities, barely that, from De Milo, the human city deep beneath the surface of Venus. Even the geologists there were barely interested in them, noting only that the crystals inside them seemed artificial. “What else was Big Tony into?”

“The usual redistribution of wealth.” He sniffed. “Moved some drugs, coffee when it started getting scarce. Loaned money.” He flattened his hands on the bar. “Those type-a guys use bullets, though.”

“Tellin’ you the rocks are trash.”

Henry eyed him. “Lot of money for trash, man.”

“What the buyer wanted.” Brooklyn’s pals in De Milo had been careful not to send anything too interesting to the mystery man who’d offered to trade his extra First Tech for alien artifacts back in the ’80s. Pottery, mosaic tiles, couple of hand tools… The rocks had really piqued the collector’s interest, and Brooklyn kept supplying them even when the original deal expired. Big Tony had been happy to keep playing middleman. “Speakin’ of which, you owe me.”

“Finish your drink.” Henry looked right and left. “We’ll go ’round back the building, finish this out there.”

“Don’t see why we gotta do it on the sly, man,” Brooklyn said. “Just watched you do coke at the bar. Let’s just do it here.”

Henry’s face was red either from anger, booze, or cocaine. “We do it my way, or you won’t see a fucking penny.”

Brooklyn raised his hands in mock surrender. “Your town, your rules. Lead the way.”

They paid, and Brooklyn followed the crook to the back of the joint and through a door that led to the alley outside. It was deserted, trash strewn, and filled with dumpsters. Great place for a murder. His head did the swimmy thing again, and an extra big pump of adrenaline turned him hot and jittery. For once, he and his weird body were in agreement: Henry wasn’t going to play nice.

“They find you, you’ll give me up?” Brooklyn said.

“I’ll sing Donny D so loud you’ll hear me in space,” Henry said. “But they ain’t gonna find me. Plans on plans, amigo.”

“You’re leavin’ town.”

“Me an’ my nest egg, which could be a little bigger, so…” Light glinted off the butterfly knife that flicked into Henry’s hand. He swept it toward Brooklyn’s throat, catching his chest instead when Brooklyn slapped the blade down.

Henry pulled the knife back in, holding it at waist level, ready to lick it out again, cut little pieces off at any opportunity.

Brooklyn took a long step back and made a pistol shape with his right hand, dropped his thumb like a hammer. ZEEK! Blue light flashed from his watch, running along the back of his hand to the end of his pointer finger. The zap hit Henry in the neck, and he collapsed like a felled tree, top and bottom teeth coming together with a crack.

“Fuck!” Brooklyn flailed at the watch’s catch until he got it unfastened and let the thing drop to the ground. It burst into flames, and he didn’t bother to stamp them out. It was never meant to be anything but a one-shot holdout.

He lifted his shirt to get a look at the knife wound in the rum light of the alley. It was long but not too deep, neck and neck with the burns on his hand and wrist for the evening’s Gold Medal of Pain. Brooklyn fought back the adrenaline shudders and squatted to check Henry’s pulse. The neural disruptor in the watch was Jelly Tech and sometimes had unexpected effects. The crook was breathing smooth and slow, and he’d pissed himself. Brooklyn grimaced and went through his pockets. He found an envelope of cash, along with the rest of the cocaine.

The coke made the pain a distant thing. A nearby dumpster was plenty big enough to hide an unconscious thug in, so Brooklyn grabbed him by collar and belt and hoisted him up. Gotta find another way to pad that college fund, asshole. The burner phone, minus its battery, followed.

Goodbye, Donato Diaz. He zipped his jacket up over the ruined shirt.

Time for Plan C.

There were a lot of bars in Jersey. Brooklyn found another one and switched to Jack & Cokes while he called Float on the house phone.

“This is not a good time,” the jelly said.

“Sorry to interrupt.” Brooklyn’s snort attracted the attention of the bartender who’d been none too happy to let him use the phone to begin with. If Float was running true to form, she was at the Aquarium, the biggest Jelly sex club in New York, not that he blamed her. No doubt it got cramped and lonely quick in the exosuit’s tiny living space. He dropped to a whisper. “Somebody killed all Big Tony’s guys.”

“Who?”

“Hen– One who survived thinks it’s got something to do with the delivery.” His mouth firmed. “I got the cash.”

“Did you kill him?”

“All he knows me as is Donato. Got fresh about the money, an’ I zapped him. Sleepin’ it off in the garbage.”

“You should have killed him.” The phone line hummed. “If you aren’t off Earth in seven hours, Emigration will come for you.”

“I’ll keep ’em happy and leave early.” The line hummed. “You ask anyone about the thing?”

“I gathered passing fish,” Float said, “to no avail. Could your new problem have anything to with it?”

“Can’t imagine Demarco’s the only one with the skinny.” Brooklyn slid another twenty across the bar and signaled for the backpack he’d asked the guy to stash for him. “I’m in the wind. Call you from the space station once I figure out the next step.”