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The chubby courier scampered from the Quinzy Lodge on feet made clumsy with fear. Things were wrong with this job and he could feel in the pit of his stomach that he needed to get away from this gig fast. His panic made him stupid and hasty, so he turned toward the Sprawl and pinged for a car. When one arrived, he slid inside it and gave his destination to the driver, who snorted at it and started the meter.
As the car pulled away, the courier allowed himself to relax. Getting a ride would cost money, but speed was important and on mass transit he felt far too exposed. He took small solace in how difficult it would be for anyone to jump him in a random cab.
Roland watched the cab pull away from the lodge and keyed Lucia on his comm, “He’s on the move. Tracking signal is good. Looks like he’s on his way to The Sprawl. In pursuit. Tank, out.”
Roland did not like being called “Tank.” He felt it was a stupid and childish affectation, but the denizens of Dockside were simple folk, and when you were his size and had a last name like “Tankowicz,” people were going to call you Tank. At this point he had given up fighting it.
“Copy that.” Lucia’s voice was curt and professional. “Mindy has Manuel as we speak. I’ll be on comms.” Lucia was not thrilled to be stuck with the overwatch position, but the potential for a nasty firefight and the nature of the bounties meant it would be best for Roland to take point on this operation. Lucia was pure hell in a gunfight these days, but she was not bullet-proof and until they had a better understanding of the strategic landscape, caution was the order of the day.
The big cyborg let the car get a mile or two ahead of him before he moved. He started with a brisk jog, keeping off the main streets and using alleyways and side streets to keep abreast of the cab and even get ahead of it when a suitable shortcut presented itself. He had a general idea of the direction it was headed, and when he had the room, he extended his stride into a mile-chewing run. With enough space, Roland could run sixty miles per hour, though his weight and resulting inertia made steering and stopping at those speeds next to impossible. Even so, the cab never got away from him and with little effort he stayed abreast of it all the way to its destination.
The cab stopped at a four-story commercial building on the border of the Sprawl and Dockside. Roland recognized the address as a counting house for a local loan shark and money launderer named Sid. Sid had been a prostitute in Dockside for a while before her head for numbers and keen sense of financial timing had accelerated her into a more profitable career arc. Sid made good loans to bad people and bad loans to good people, but always seemed to turn a profit. Though young, she was a rising star in the shifting landscape of the New Boston underworld with a bright future. She had employed Roland a few times to smooth over issues with bigger rackets, and more than once to remind borrowers of their obligations. Roland had very little in the way of solid opinions on the woman, but he had to wonder what her involvement in these bounties was. He certainly did not owe her any money, he was sure of it. He liked this thread though, as it appeared the courier had led him one solid rung up the ladder. Sid was still technically considered small-time, but she was ambitious and that meant she probably had an angle. Roland would find the angle and exploit it, one way or the other. He had no reason to dislike Sid, so he hoped it would not have to be the other.
When the courier left a few minutes later, Roland walked up to the counting house door and knocked. A speaker next to the panel crackled to life and a voice said, “Who is it?”
Roland was never subtle, nor was he canny enough for extended banter, “You know damn well who it is. I’m here to see Sid. Open the door or don’t, but either way I’m coming in.”
Roland hated closed doors. He was very specifically designed to breach fortifications, and closed doors were his natural enemy. Smashing through a barrier meant to keep him out was just one of the simple joys of his existence. He was denied that joy, as the door slid open on well-oiled glides and he found himself staring at a man wearing light gray tactical armor and more guns than Roland considered to be strictly prudent.
Roland gave the man a humorless smile, “You sure you brought enough guns, buddy?”
The man, who was lean and muscular and wore a scraggly beard, ignored his question. “What do you want?”
“Told you already. Need to talk to Sid.”
“Sid ain’t here. Leave your message with me.”
Roland knew this was a lie. The courier would have never gone inside if Sid wasn’t home. He kept the fake smile on his face as he addressed the well-armed man before him, “You know who I am?”
“I’ve heard of you.”
“Good. I am going to be reasonable. I will wait right here while you go tell Sid that I need to speak with her. That I am going to speak with her. If you still insist that she is not home, then I will let myself in and speak with her anyway. You have ninety seconds. Go.”
The scruffy man with the arsenal of guns didn’t move. He scowled the scowl of a man who had killed many people and was not at all impressed with pushy giants. His voice was calm and tinged with vague menace, “I get that you think you are some big deal, buddy. But shit don’t work the same in The Sprawl as in Dockside.” He met Roland’s gaze without flinching, “If I say Sid ain’t here? Then she ain’t fucking here.”
“Seventy-eight seconds,” was Roland’s response.
A voice, high-pitched and throaty interrupted the standoff. It came from behind the man with the guns and sounded annoyed, “Oh for Christ’s sake, Paulie! Just let him in!”
‘Paulie,’ as Roland correctly surmised was the man’s name, called back over his shoulder without taking his eyes off of Roland or his hands off his guns. “You sure? I heard of this freak. Like as not he’s here to wreck the place.”
Roland had to admit the man’s caution was well-placed. His repertoire of investigatory techniques was distressingly thin and uncreative. When Roland wanted to know something, he usually found someone who had information and hurt that person until they gave it to him. Paulie seemed to have figured as much out on his own.
The voice sighed, “If Roland wants to wreck the place, he’s gonna wreck it either way. Might as well see what he wants, first.”
Paulie eyed Roland for one long moment, then spoke. “Listen, freak. You stay calm, you stay polite. You keep your fucking hands where they can be seen and you don’t pull no shit. Break my rules, I break you. Capisce?”
Roland returned the hard glare, “I like you, Paulie. You’re my kind of mook. If I have to kill you, it’ll probably ruin my mood. I’m here to talk, so I’m gonna talk. If I was here to fight, you’d be dead already.”
“Heard that one before. Last guy who tried it was bigger than you.”
“Will you two assholes shut the fuck up?” Sid stalked into the foyer. “You’re like teenagers with that tough-guy bullshit. Paulie, Roland’s The Fixer, he’s obviously here to fix something. We’ll be fine.” The woman turned to Roland, “Come on in. We can talk in my office. Paulie?”
“Ma’am?”
“You can take a break.”
Paulie stiffened at that, displeasure written all over his tight features.
“Seriously, Paulie. This is business. We’ll be fine.”
Paulie looked directly at Roland while he answered Sid, “I won’t be far away if you need me.”
“Perfect. Come on in, Roland. Follow me.”
Roland followed the dark-haired woman as she led him upstairs. He had done some collections work for Sid during her rise to prominence, but other than that he did not know her well and he found himself really looking at her for the first time. Sid was pretty, he realized, with a body that appeared to be made entirely of curves. She had a manner of walking that made her simple red nightgown slide across her hips as if there were things inside actively trying to escape it. Roland had always been uncomfortable around overtly sexual women. Decades living inside an armored cyborg chassis had taught him not to look at women sexually if it could be avoided. There was no point to it and it made for little more than a painful distraction. Women were supposed to be frightened of him, which Roland understood and felt was appropriate. Any woman not frightened of him was to be avoided, because it meant he wasn’t as scary as he thought he was supposed to be. His past had left him with deep scars when it came to interacting with ladies who enjoyed and employed their sexuality in ways he could not understand.
His relationship with Lucia had changed much of his thinking along those lines. For years, Roland had accepted that he was unlovable and therefore anyone who showed interest in him was broken or working an angle. But he was still a man, and knowing this did not prevent him from becoming a stammering fool when forced to deal with pretty women who batted eyelashes at him. Lucia had done a lot of work in correcting his thinking along those lines. Nowadays he realized how staggeringly dysfunctional his mindset had been, and his years of stupidity caused him no end of chagrin.
As he watched Sid’s shapely form move up the stairs in front of him, he could now understand what was happening with far more clarity. The sway of the hips was deliberately in excess of what was necessary for balance, and her already short nightwear was being permitted to ride higher than was probably comfortable. Sid was staying far enough ahead of him on the stairs to keep her posterior in prominent view and he noticed her pleasant small talk was pitched half an octave higher than her regular speaking voice as she climbed.
A few months ago, Sid’s carefully constructed display would have had him working very hard to not see any of it. He would have been gritting his teeth and squaring large numbers in his head to avoid the deeply conflicted feelings that would arise as result. Before Lucia, it would have taken all his concentration to ignore the fierce contest between his lust and his apprehension about anyone who did not hate him as much as he hated himself.
But that did not happen now. He was calm, focused. The view was nice, but not distracting. He saw it for what it was.
She’s scared, he realized. She thinks I’m here to hurt her and she wants me to be either distracted or attracted. It’s just a defense mechanism.
At the top of the stairs, she turned to the left and opened a door at the end of a short hallway. “Come on in,” she invited, “make yourself comfortable. Want a drink?”
Under normal circumstances, Roland would have said ‘no’ to the offer. But he found himself embarrassed by how afraid of him she was. It was so obvious now, how she was trying to put him at ease. To make him like her. To make him want her. He did not believe she was truly interested, and he did not get the impression she was trying to con him, either. She had turned the vamp up to eleven simply because he was terrifying. It made him feel ugly and ogre-ish, and he found he did not like this feeling at all. “I’ll take a beer, if you have one,” he tried to sound as polite and disarming as he could, which probably made it worse.
Sid hit an intercom button on her desk, “Stella? Can you bring us a beer and a merlot, please?”
“Yes, ma’am,” came a voice through the speaker.
“Thank you,” Sid cut the connection and turned to Roland, still standing in the middle of her office. “I’d offer you a seat, but ah...” she gestured to the two normal-sized chairs sitting in front of her plain wooden desk.
“Don’t sweat it,” he replied, “happens all the time. Please, sit.”
Sid did not sit at her desk, but rather swayed over to a divan near a window and reclined on it. Her nightgown, made of a light red shimmery material, crept up her legs and revealed an expanse of cafe au lait thigh as she adjusted herself to a comfortable resting position. Her neckline dived past her sternum in a wide V, and Roland could see how such an ensemble would probably reduce most men to gibbering baboons. His own urge to gibber was not so easy to ignore, as it was, and he was only one-tenth organic. Her fear was ruining the effect though. If Sid was just a beautiful woman being beautiful, his new enlightened state would have allowed him to appreciate and enjoy it. But Roland could see the artifice and the tactics of it. She wanted Roland to be attracted to her so he would not hurt her, and that pissed him off far more than he realized it would.
Am I really such a monster?
Roland wasn’t sure if he was angrier at himself for coming off that way, or just furious that the world had taught Sid the best way to avoid being hurt by a man was to offer him sex.
“Well, Roland,” Sid practically purred, “what can I do for you tonight?”
“Somebody is trying to kill me,” was his blunt answer. “That somebody just had a courier come here and report to you.”
Roland saw a flash of terror mar her sultry features for the merest fraction of a second. It was a microscopic tell, but he caught it. He hated her fear, but he needed it, too. He needed her to fear him enough to tell the truth. This was normal for him, but tonight it turned his stomach. They were interrupted by the merciful clang of the door chime, and a woman entered with a large mug of beer and a bottle of wine. She handed the beer to Roland who immediately took a long pull and then poured a glass of the wine for Sid. Once finished, she left the room silently. Sid had used the interruption to collect herself and sipped artfully on her beverage before responding, “I hope you don’t think I have anything to do with it. I use a lot of couriers, Roland. I’m a loan shark and money launderer after all.” A drop of wine fell from the glass and landed on the top of her left breast. It rode the curve of soft flesh and traced red streak down into her cleavage. “Oh my!” she giggled. "Pardon me.” She wiped at the red line with her finger and the soft mound jiggled and rolled at the pressure. New and improved, enlightened Roland had to admit it was a very impressive show. He did not bother trying to ignore it, but rather watched it with detached amusement.
“We followed him here directly from a meet-up with a bounty hunter,” Roland proceeded as if entirely unaffected by the display. Sid leaned over to place the wine glass on an end table, twisting in such a manner as to show even more chest and actually increasing the amount of visible thigh at the same time. This took no small portion of grace and athleticism, and Roland actually felt his eyebrows rise watching it. The ploy was wasted on him though, and Sid was noticing.
“Now, come on, Roland. I’ve never taken a bounty on anyone in my life. You know that. I actually use your services almost exclusively for such things. If only to get you to come around and see me from time to time.” Her smile was sweet as she said it, and she settled back into the divan with a serpentine slither.
Roland was tiring of this dance. Rather than turning him on, it was all conspiring to annoy him. It was a lot like dealing with Mindy, which always put him in a bad mood. As much as he understood why she was trying so hard to distract him, he was beginning to resent the insult to his intelligence.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s you. But I do think whoever is trying to kill me is using you to cover his tracks.”
“So that’s what brings you here. Would you like to use me too?” Her tone was sarcastic, but she made it very clear that this was, in fact, an invitation to ‘use’ her. “Why Roland, how forward of you!”
“I need to get to this guy before somebody gets seriously hurt, Sid.” He kept his voice even and businesslike. He hoped she would catch on and stop with the theatrics. He did not have the words to communicate his growing irritation without coming off as even more threatening, which would only make things worse.
With her charms failing, Sid doubled down and turned up the heat. “You know, Roland,” Sid cooed, “my services are yours for the asking.” She leaned forward again as she said it, stretching dreamily and reaching for her wine glass. Her hand passed it though, and she pressed forward without warning to step up from the couch and press her body against the seven-and-a-half-foot cyborg. The nightgown slipped off her shoulders to land in a red puddle at her feet and her hands went to his belt, “All my services...”
There was really nothing left for the imagination at this point, and Roland’s ironclad comportment nearly collapsed under the pressure. It was rage and not lust bubbling to the surface however, and he could not suppress a growl. He snapped, “Oh, cut the shit, Sid. I’m not biting.”
The woman’s face fell, and the veneer of the seductress collapsed into a mask of fear. “It’s not me, Roland. I only just found out, myself. Terry... the courier, that is, is my go-between and he’s been feeding me intel. I didn’t know, I swear!”
“What do you know?” It was all he could do to keep his voice from degenerating into a menacing growl. He simply did not have the right skill set for this interaction. He wanted to just turn and leave, to run from his acute discomfort, but he needed the information.
“It’s someone new, and it’s linked to The Brokerage. They’re really pissed at you, you know. They are trying to get the Lodge to go after you by tricking you into killing a lot of hunters. That’s all I know for now! I swear! You know I’d never cross you, right?”
Her terror tasted like ashes in his throat. In a moment of inspiration, Roland abandoned his usual intimidation-based tactics. He would not sleep well tonight if he terrorized Sid into helping after she had just hurled herself at him to save her own life. He did not want to be that monster anymore. Sid was a coin-changer and a loan shark, not some sinister player working an angle on him. She was just too scared to know how to handle the sudden pressure of being caught up in a huge crime war.
He forced himself to speak quietly. He dragged his voice out of the basement where it liked to live when he was irritated and focused on affecting a calm demeanor. “I figured as much, Sid. This shit isn’t your style. We are going to need more information though. Now, I won’t force you to do anything, because this isn’t your fight, and it’s all above your pay grade. But I need help.” Roland paused; this next part was foreign to him and the words needed to be forced past his lips, “I would be very grateful if you decided to help me.”
“Really?” Sid sounded incredulous. “You aren’t going to kill me or bust up my place?” That was how Roland usually handled this sort of thing, so the question was appropriate.
“I’m growing as a person,” he shrugged.
A slow smile split Sid’s face at this, and in an instant the seductress returned. She pressed her exposed flesh against him again and smiled with vulpine glee, “How grateful are we talking, Tank?”
“I said cut the shit, Sid.” This time the growl was unavoidable.
"Oh, all right then." Sid smiled and turned a slow circle, her naked body a study in Rubenesque sexuality. "A girl has to try, you know.”
Having used up all his newfound social charms, he returned to his usual gruffness. “Stop trying. My girlfriend would wear you like a snow boot, lady.”
“I like her already,” she admitted. Still nude, and undaunted by Roland’s gaze, she walked over to the desk and punched the intercom, “Stella? Tell Terry I need to see him tomorrow.” She looked back at Roland, “Give me a few days, I should have more for you by then.”
“Just get me something solid, Sid. And thanks.”
She placed her hands on her hips and thrust her ample chest out at him, “I’m pretty sure you’re solid enough for the both of us right now, Tank. But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Cut the shit, Sid,” Roland repeated.
And then he got out of there as fast as he could.