“If there’s violence, it won’t be me that starts it.”
“That’s not much of a guarantee. Haven’t you got any idea what you’re going to do?”
“I’m going to talk.”
“Just talk?” She looked at me disbelievingly. “That’s all?” I jammed my ill-fitting sunglasses back on my face. “Sometimes that’s all it takes.” I said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I met my first lawyer when I was fifteen. He was a harried-looking juvenile affray expert who defended me, not unhandily, in a minor organic damage suit involving a Newpest police officer. He bargained them down with a kind of myopic patience to Conditional Release and eleven minutes of virtual psychiatric counselling. In the hall outside the juvenile court, he looked into my probably infuriatingly smug face and nodded as if his worst fears about the meaning of his life were being confirmed. Then he turned on his heel and walked away. I forget his name.
My entry into the Newpest gang scene shortly afterwards precluded any more such legal encounters. The gangs were web-smart, wired up and already writing their own intrusion programmes or buying them from kids half their age in return for low-grade virtual porn ripped off the networks. They didn’t get caught easily, and in return for this favour the Newpest heat tended to leave them alone. Inter-gang violence was largely ritualised and excluded other players most of the time. On the odd occasion that it spilled over and affected civilians, there would be a rapid and brutal series of punitive raids that left a couple of lead gang heroes in the store and the rest of us with extensive bruising. Fortunately I never worked my way up the chain of command far enough to get put away, so the next time I saw the inside of a courtroom was the Innenin inquiry.
The lawyers I saw there had about as much in common with the man who had defended me at fifteen as automated machine rifle fire has with farting. They were cold, professionally polished and well on their way up a career ladder which would ensure that despite the uniforms they wore, they would never have to come within a thousand kilometres of a genuine firefight. The only problem they had, as they cruised sharkishly back and forth across the cool marble floor of the court, was in drawing the fine differences between war (mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own), justifiable loss (mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains) and criminal negligence (mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit). I sat in that courtroom for three weeks listening to them dress it like a variety of salads, and with every passing hour the distinctions, which at one point I’d been pretty clear on, grew increasingly vague. I suppose that proves how good they were.
After that, straightforward criminality came as something of a relief.
“Something bothering you?” Ortega glanced sideways at me as she brought the unmarked cruiser down on a shelving pebble beach below the split-level, glass-fronted offices of Prendergast Sanchez, attorneys-at-law.
“Just thinking.”
“Try cold showers and alcohol. Works for me.”
I nodded and held up the minuscule bead of metal I had been rolling between my finger and thumb. “Is this legal?”
Ortega reached up and killed the primaries. “More or less. No one’s going to complain.”
“Good. Now, I’m going to need verbal cover to start with. You do the talking, I’ll just shut up and listen. Take it from there.”
“Fine. Ryker was like that, anyway. Never used two words if one would do it. Most of the time with the scumbags, he’d just look at them.”
“Sort of Micky Nozawa-type, huh?”
“Who?”
“Never mind.” The rattle of upthrown pebbles on the hull died away as Ortega cut the engines to idle. I stretched in my seat and threw open my side of the hatch. Climbing out, I saw an over-burly figure coming down the meandering set of wooden steps from the split level. Looked like grafting. A blunt-looking gun was slung over his shoulder and he wore gloves. Probably not a lawyer.
“Go easy,” said Ortega, suddenly at my shoulder. “We have jurisdiction here. He isn’t going to start anything.”
She flashed her badge as the muscle jumped the last step to the beach and landed on flexed legs. You could see the disappointment on his face as he saw it.
“Bay City police. We’re here to see Rutherford.”
“You can’t park that here.”
“I already have,” Ortega told him evenly. “Are we going to keep Mr. Rutherford waiting?”
There was a prickly silence, but she’d gauged him correctly. Contenting himself with a grunt, the muscle gestured us up the staircase and followed at prudent shepherding distance. It took a while to get to the top, and I was pleased to see when we arrived that Ortega was considerably more out of breath than I was. We went across a modest sundeck made from the same wood as the stairs and through two sets of automatic plate glass doors into a reception area styled to look like someone’s lounge. There were rugs on the floor, knitted in the same patterns as my jacket, and Empathist prints on the walls. Five single armchairs provided parking.
“Can I help you?”
This was a lawyer, no question about it. A smoothly groomed blonde woman in a loose skirt and jacket tailored to fit the room, hands resting comfortably in her pockets.
“Bay City police. Where’s Rutherford?”
The woman flickered a glance sideways at our escort and having received the nod did not bother to demand identification.
“I’m afraid Keith is occupied at the moment. He’s in virtual with New York.”
“Well get him out of virtual then,” said Ortega with dangerous mildness. “And tell him the officer who arrested his client is here to see him. I’m sure he’ll be interested.”
“That may take some time, officer.”
“No, it won’t.”
The two women locked gazes for a moment, and then the lawyer looked away. She nodded to the muscle, who went back outside, still looking disappointed.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said glacially. “Please wait here.”
We waited, Ortega at the floor-to-ceiling window, staring down at the beach with her back to the room and myself prowling the artwork. Some of it was quite good. With the separately ingrained habits of working in monitored environments, neither of us said anything for the ten minutes it took to produce Rutherford from the inner sanctum.
“Lieutenant Ortega.” The modulated voice reminded me of Miller’s at the clinic, and when I looked up from a print over the fireplace, I saw much the same kind of sleeve. Maybe a little older, with slightly craggier patriarchal features designed to inspire instant respect in jurors and judges alike, but the same athletic frame and off-the-rack good looks. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit? Not more harassment, I hope.”
Ortega ignored the allegation. “Detective Sergeant Elias Ryker,” she said, nodding at me. “Your client just admitted to one count of abduction, and made a first degree organic damage threat under monitor. Care to see the footage?”
“Not particularly. Care to tell me why you’re here?”
Rutherford was good. He’d barely reacted; barely, but enough to catch it out of the corner of my eye. My mind went into overdrive.
Ortega leaned on the back of an armchair. “For a man defending a mandatory erasure case, you’re showing a real lack of imagination.”
Rutherford sighed theatrically. “You have called me away from an important link. I assume you do have something to say.”
“Do you know what third party retro-associative complicity is?” I asked the question without turning from the print, and when I did lookup, I had Rutherford’s complete attention.
“I do not,” he said stiffly.
“That’s a pity, because you and the other partners of Prendergast Sanchez are right in the firing line if Kadmin rolls over. But of course, if that happens —” I spread my hands and shrugged “—it’ll be open season. In fact, it may already be.”