Part 10 (1/2)
”Small as you'd ever want,” he agreed, grinning with a mouthful of uneven teeth.
Rumor had it they'd started out perfectly straight, but that every time one was knocked out during a brawl he'd had it put back crooked just to make himself look meaner. ”Waiting to make a call, huh?”
”Yes,” I said, bowing to the inevitable. ”Can I get you a drink?”
”Oh, I think you can do better than one measly drink,” he said. ”How much cash you got on you?”
I stared at him, warning bells belatedly going off in the back of my mind.
Fulbright was still smiling, but I could now see the hard edge beneath the grin.
He was definitely not here just to cadge drinks. ”What are you talking about?”
I.
demanded quietly.
”I'm talking about a shakedown,” he said, lowering his voice to match mine.
”What'd you think? All for your own good, of course. So. You got ten grand on you? That's what it's gonna take, you know. At least ten grand.”
For a good three seconds I just stared at him, wondering what in h.e.l.l was going on. There he sat, alone, both hands on the table, his right casually holding afolded piece of paper, his left open and empty. His sleeves were too tight to be concealing a quick-throw gun or knife, and there was no way he could beat me to a standard draw with his jacket zipped and mine half-open. It was possible he had a backup somewhere in the room already targeting me; but even drawing a weapon in here would be begging for trouble, and starting a firefight would be even worse. And why pick on me in the first place? ”Maybe you don't know I'm not running independent anymore,” I said at last. ”I'm connected with a pretty big organization. They wouldn't think much of this.”
His smile went a bit more brittle. ”Yeah, well, whoever they are, I can guarantee they won't lift a finger to help you on this one,” he said. ”Believe it or not, Jordie, I'm your only friend in this room right now.” With a smooth motion, he flipped open the paper in his hand and swiveled it around to face me.
I glanced down. And found myself looking at my own Mercantile Authority file photo.
I looked up at Fulbright, startled. ”Go ahead,” he said encouragingly. ”Read it.”
I looked back down at the flyer. It was an urgent request for information about the current location of one Jordan McKell, pilot/captain of the Orion-cla.s.s freighter Icarus, registry and configuration unknown. It didn't say why McKell was being sought, but included two contact numbers, a local Dorscind's World phone number and a StarrComm vid connect-the latter, like Brother John's number, one of the anonymous types that gave no indication of which world it was connected to.
It also promised a reward to the one who fingered me. A straight five thousand commarks.
”I don't know what you've done now, Jordie,” Fulbright said softly, ”but you're in one h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble. Everyone in this place probably has one of these things by now-the guy was pa.s.sing them out like free fruit sticks. The only reason you're still walking around is that that's such a lousy picture.”
He grinned. ”That, plus no one figured you'd come to a sleazepit like this.
I'd guess that's what's tying up the StarrComm lines-everyone's calling their buddies to pa.s.s the word.”
”Probably,” I murmured. But someone thought I might come to a sleazepit like this; whoever was at the other end of that phone number, at the very least.
Someone was very intent here about covering all the bases, and from all indications he was covering them very well. And unlike the Lumpy Brothers, that same someone knew the name of the s.h.i.+p I was flying. ”Tell me, was this walking fruit-stick tray a bipedal alien with long arms and lumpy skin?”
Fulbright's forehead creased slightly. ”Naw, he was a human. Short and kind of wimpish-your basic accountant type.”
”Doesn't sound like he really belongs in a place like this,” I suggested. ”You sure it's not a scam of some sort?”
”At a hundred commarks a crack?” Fulbright scoffed. ”Who cares?”
I frowned. ”A hundred? The flyer says five thousand.”
”That's the finder's fee,” Fulbright said. ”The guy's been handing out a hundred with each flyer. Just to make sure it gets read, I guess.”I felt cold all over. Five thousand commarks to find me-that could be anything, from anywhere. But for the hunter to be pa.s.sing out additional thousands of commarks in cash just to generate interest meant something very big indeed was going on.
And the only thing that had saved me so far was that abominably poor photo in my Mercantile file. That, and the fact that the one person here who did recognize me was angling for a higher bounty. ”Okay,” I said to Fulbright. ”Ten thousand it is. But I don't have it on me. We'll have to go back to the s.h.i.+p.”
His eyes narrowed, and in the twitching of his eyebrows and lips I could practically read his line of reasoning: that if he was able to get a good look at the Icarus, he might be able to peddle the description for another few thousand from the unidentified accountant type. ”Okay,” he said, unzipping his jacket and stuffing the flyer into an inside pocket. He stood up, giving me a glimpse of a gray handgun holstered at the left side of his belt, and nodded toward the door. ”Sure. Let's go.”
We headed out of the taverno, crossed the lobby, and out the StarrComm- building door. Halfway across the lobby he surrept.i.tiously pulled his gun from its holster and stuffed it and his right hand into his side jacket pocket. Former drinking buddies or not, he obviously didn't trust me very far. ”Which landing cradle are you in?” he asked as I headed toward the nearest slideway, which happened to be headed north.
”You can read the number for yourself when we get there,” I grunted, looking surrept.i.tiously around for inspiration. This particular slideway didn't seem well populated, and it didn't take a genius to see why: instead of being taken to the main bulk of the docking squares, we were headed toward what appeared to be a maintenance area.
A fact which wasn't lost on Fulbright. ”I hope you're not trying to pull something on your old pal, Jordie,” he warned, stepping up close behind me and pressing the muzzle of his gun into my back. Even through the concealing jacket material I imagined it felt very cold. ”Because I wouldn't like that. I wouldn't like that at all.”
”You don't think I'd put a hot s.h.i.+p down in one of the regular cradles, do you?”
I countered, looking down at my feet. The slideway was mainly solid, but just ahead on our right was one of a number of holes where small patches of the material had worn off or torn away at the edge of the moving belt. This particular tear was roughly triangular, leaving a gap about ten centimeters long and five wide through which I could see the grillwork of the underlying support and drive system zipping past. Every half second or so a bright blue light winked past, probably a glow that helped mark the edge of the slideway at night.
”So where is it?” Fulbright demanded.
”Patience, James, patience,” I said, gazing down at the triangular tear and the grillwork underneath and doing a quick mental calculation. It would be tight, not to mention destructive, but it should work.
I half turned my head and gestured toward my jacket. ”My phone's vibing,” I told him. ”Okay if I answer it?”Out of the corner of my eye I caught his frown. ”Leave it,” he ordered.
”Not recommended,” I told him mildly. ”My partner will come looking for me if I.
don't answer. You don't want to mess with him. Certainly not for a measly five thousand commarks.”
Once again, I could almost watch the gears turning in his head. He'd never actually met Ixil-we'd always been careful to keep Ixil in a low-profile position when dealing with gangs and their antialien biases-but I'd planted enough hints with Fulbright that he had a pretty good idea of my partner's capabilities. I waited patiently, letting him work it out for himself, not in any particular hurry. We were starting to get into the maintenance and supply areas now, where the only people around were generally working inside the various buildings. Working, moreover, with the kind of heavy machinery that would effectively drown out the sounds of trouble, up to and including gunshots.
The deeper we got into this area, the better I liked it.
”All right,” he said suddenly, stepping close behind me and getting a grip on my jacket collar as he again jammed his gun warningly into my kidney. ”Take it out slow-two fingers, left hand.”
Carefully, I eased my jacket open and just as carefully pulled out my phone.
”Okay?” I asked, holding it up for his approval. Without waiting for an answer, I s.h.i.+fted my grip on the phone and brought it to my ear.
Or rather, tried to do so. Somewhere along the way my fingers suddenly fumbled and the phone squirted out of my hand to clatter onto the slideway in front of me.
”d.a.m.n!” I muttered, taking a long step forward.
If I'd given Fulbright half a second to think, he probably wouldn't have fallen for it. But I didn't; and he did. Just as it was perfectly natural for me to try to retrieve my phone, so, too, was it perfectly natural for him to courteously let go of my jacket to enable me to do so. I dropped to one knee and snagged the phone just as it was about to skitter off the edge of the slideway; and with a quick jerk I jammed the lower end through the hole in the belt and into the gridwork beneath.
For a split second the slideway faltered, just a brief instant before the sheer inertia of the system overcame the slender piece of plastic and metal and tore the phone to shreds. But it was enough. Caught completely flatfooted, Fulbright lost his balance and stumbled forward, his knees coming up short against my side, the impact sending him tumbling helplessly over my back to sprawl on the slideway.
I was on him in an instant, locking his right wrist in place with one hand and trying to get a clear shot at his neck or stomach with the other. He struggled furiously, mouthing curses that would have frosted gla.s.s, but he didn't have a chance and he knew it. He was lying on his free left arm, and with me keeping his right hand trapped in his pocket he couldn't even bring his gun to bear on me. Besides all of which, I was bigger than he was.