Ortega was on him as the last syllable left his mouth. The table blinked out of existence and she kicked him backwards off the chair with one booted foot. As he rolled back to his feet, the same boot caught him in the mouth and floored him again. I ran my tongue round the almost healed gashes inside my own mouth, and felt a distinct lack of sympathy.
Ortega dragged Kadmin up by the hair, the cigarette in her hand replaced by a vicious-looking blackjack courtesy of the same system magic that had eliminated the table.
“I hear you right?” she hissed. “You making threats, rackhead?”
Kadmin bared his teeth in a bloodstained grin.
“Police brutal—”
“That’s right, motherfucker.” Ortega hit him across the cheek with the blackjack. The skin split. “Police brutality in a monitored police virtuality. Sandy Kim and WorldWeb One would have a field day, wouldn’t they? But you know what? I reckon your lawyers aren’t going to want to run this particular tape.”
“Leave him alone, Ortega.”
She seemed to remember herself then, and stepped back.
Her face twitched and she drew a deep breath. The table blinked back and Kadmin was suddenly sitting upright again, mouth undamaged.
“You too,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, sure.” There was contempt in Ortega’s voice, at least half of it directed at herself I guessed. She made a second effort to bring her breathing back under control, rearranged her clothing unnecessarily. “Like I said, going to be a cold day in hell by the time you get the chance. Maybe I’ll wait for you.”
“Whoever sent you worth this much, Kadmin?” I wondered softly. “You going down silent out of contractual loyalty, or are you just scared shitless?”
For answer, the composite man folded his arms across his chest and stared through me.
“You through, Kovacs?” asked Ortega.
I tried to meet Kadmin’s distant gaze. “Kadmin, the man I work for has a lot of influence. This could be your last chance to cut a deal.”
Nothing. He didn’t even blink.
I shrugged. “I’m through.”
“Good,” said Ortega grimly. “Because sitting downwind of this piece of shit is beginning to eat away at my usually tolerant nature.” She waggled her fingers in front of his eyes. “Be seeing you, fuckhead.”
At that, Kadmin’s eyes turned up to meet hers, and a small, peculiarly unpleasant smile twisted his lips.
We left.
Back on the fourth floor, the walls of Ortega’s office had reverted to a dazzling high noon over beaches of white sand. I screwed up my eyes against the glare while Ortega trawled through a desk drawer and came up with her own and a spare pair of sunglasses.
“So what did you learn from that?”
I fitted the lenses uncomfortably over the bridge of my nose. They were too small. “Not much, except that little gem about not having orders to wipe me. Someone wanted to talk to me. I’d pretty much guessed that anyway, else he could have just blown my stack out all over the lobby of the Hendrix. Still, means someone wanted to cut a deal of their own, outside of Bancroft.”
“Or someone wanted to interrogate the guts out of you.”
I shook my head. “About what? I’d only just arrived. Doesn’t make any sense.”
“The Corps? Unfinished business?” Ortega made little flicking motions with her hand as if she were dealing me the suggestions. “Maybe a grudge match?”
“No. We went through this one when we were yelling at each other the other night. There are people who’d like to see me wiped, but none of them live on Earth, and none of them swing the kind of influence to go interstellar. And there’s nothing I know about the Corps that isn’t in a low-wall datastack somewhere. And anyway, it’s just too much of a fucking coincidence. No, this is about Bancroft. Someone wanted in on the program.”
“Whoever had him killed?”
I tipped my head down to look at her directly over the sun lenses. “You believe me, then.”
“Not entirely.”
“Oh, come on.”
But Ortega wasn’t listening. “What I want to know,” she brooded, “is why he rewrote his codes at the end. You know, we’ve sweated him nearly a dozen times since we downloaded him Sunday night. That’s the first time he’s come close to even admitting he was there.”
“Even to his lawyers?”
“We don’t know what he says to them. They’re big-time sharks, out of Ulan Bator and New York. That kind of money carries a scrambler into all privy virtual interviews. We get nothing on tape but static.”
I raised a mental eyebrow. On Harlan’s World, all virtual custody was monitored as a matter of course. Scramblers were not permitted, no matter how much money you were worth.
“Speaking of lawyers, are Kadmin’s here in Bay City?”
“Physically, you mean? Yeah, they’ve got a deal with a Marin County practice. One of their partners is renting a sleeve here for the duration.” Ortega’s lip curled. “Physical meetings are considered a touch of class these days. Only the cheap firms do business down the wires.”
“What’s this suit’s name?”
There was a brief pause while she hung onto the name. “Kadmin’s a spinning item right now. I’m not sure we go this far.”
“Ortega, we go all the way. That was the deal. Otherwise I’m back to risking Elias’s fine features with some more maximal push investigation.”
She was silent for a while.
“Rutherford,” she said finally. “You want to talk to Rutherford?”
“Right now, I want to talk to anyone. Maybe I didn’t make things clear earlier. I’m working cold here. Bancroft waited a month and a half before he brought me in. Kadmin’s all I’ve got.”
“Keith Rutherford’s a handful of engine grease. You won’t get any more out of him than you did Kadmin downstairs. And anyway, how the fuck am I supposed to introduce you, Kovacs? Hi, Keith, this is the ex-Envoy loose cannon your client tried to wipe on Sunday. He’d like to ask you a few questions. He’ll close up faster than an unpaid hooker’s hole.”
She had a point. I thought about it for a moment, staring out to sea.
“All right,” I said slowly. “All I need is a couple of minutes’ conversation. How about you tell him I’m Elias Ryker, your partner from Organic Damage? I practically am, after all.”
Ortega took off her lenses and stared at me.
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“No. I’m trying to be practical. Rutherford’s sleeving in from Ulan Bator, right?”
“New York,” she said tightly.
“New York. Right. So he probably doesn’t know anything about you or Ryker.”
“Probably not.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is, Kovacs, that I don’t like it.”
There was more silence. I dropped my gaze into my lap and let out a sigh that was only partially manufactured. Then I took off my own sunglasses and looked up at her. It was all there on plain display. The naked fear of sleeving and all that it entailed; paranoid essentialism with its back to the wall.
“Ortega,” I said gently. “I’m not him. I’m not trying to be hi—”
“You couldn’t even come close,” she snapped.
“All we’re talking about is a couple of hours’ make-believe.”
“Is that all?”
She said it in a voice like iron, and she put her sunglasses back on with such brusque efficiency that I didn’t need to see the tears welling up in the eyes behind the mirror lenses.
“All right,” she said finally, clearing her throat. ”I’ll get you in. I don’t see the point, but I’ll do it. Then what?”
“That’s a little difficult to say. I’ll have to improvise.”
“Like you did at the Wei Clinic?”
I shrugged noncommittally. “Envoy techniques are largely reactive. I can’t react to something until it happens.”
“I don’t want another bloodbath, Kovacs. It looks bad on the city stats.”