I looked up, flushing, angry at myself. Staring at a fucking cigarette butt while tonight’s meal ticket strolled by, my ass saved by a dried-up burnout like Nad Fucking Muller. I made fists with both hands and resisted the sudden urge to punch Nad in the face.
I recognized my mark from the grainy files I’d seen: a short, heavyset guy in an ancient leather overcoat about a foot too long for him, worn like a half-rate royal robe, dragging along the street. He was flanked by two huge men who couldn’t bend their arms, muscles on muscles twitching. I kept my eyes on the mark, who bustled, walking fast. The Little Prince. His name was Rudjer something; it didn’t matter. He was low on the food chain and was trying to rise from the depths, and he was about to explode.
I studied the trio. Their eyes were straight ahead, faces set in the usual hardassed grimace-we all had it engraved on our faces-acting like the rest of the poor fucks on the street would just naturally get out of the way. Which they did, because even though the Little Prince was a nobody who didn’t realize his button had been pushed, he still had more juice than most of the people around him. He had some yen, some muscle, and that snazzy overcoat.
He glided past me, one of the monsters on his payroll lifting a skinny kid off the ground and tossing him aside to clear a path. I didn’t move. Nad started to twitch next to me, impatient, but I held up one hand without looking at him and he shut up. I’d quieted Nad down the hard way often enough; he was well-trained by now.
When they were past, I stepped out into the flow of bodies and matched their pace, keeping my hands in my pockets. My own coat wasn’t as regal as the Little Prince’s, but it was functional, and contained a number of useful items. It also had holes cut into the pockets so you could arrange your hands without being seen. Keeping my eyes on the three amigos, I felt around for the blade I’d secreted in an inner pocket and took it firmly in one hand. The Little Prince was small fry and barely paid enough to be worth it-a bad man, certainly, no better than me, but not exactly someone who’d enhance my reputation. Bullets were too expensive for shit like him.
I followed in their wake for a while, watching. I knew Nad had slipped into my gravity without having to look; Nad and I went back a long way, and he’d never liked being alone. It didn’t take long to establish that the Little Prince’s security wasn’t worth whatever he was paying them: Like a lot of amateurs, they were one-dimensional, and thought all their troubles would be coming at them from the front, with plenty of warning and a lot of fanfare. Not once did they look back.
Turning my head a little to get an idea of the environmental factors, I almost missed a step, because three Monks were keeping pace with me. I couldn’t be sure-the Tin Men all looked alike-but my immediate thought was that these were the same three who’d been preaching across the street from us. One was looking right at me, marching through the crowd like it didn’t need eyes. I stared back at it in surprise for a few steps, then tore my eyes away, checking my meal ticket. They were still pushing through the crowd like they owned the streets. From the show they were putting on-all grim determination and regal pomp-the Little Prince was probably out on his collections, squeezing water from stones and performing other miracles on a par with getting money out of my fellow citizens. This all worked to my advantage, because tough guys didn’t look over their shoulders to see who might be creeping up behind them, and tough guys didn’t need to take basic precautions. More shitheads died being tough every day, when a little good old-fashioned paranoia and cowardice went a long way. It wasn’t even cowardice. It was an aversion to death.
The Monks were still keeping pace, but were no longer looking at me. They just floated through the crowd. They were harmless, in my experience, but they creeped you out. Even people who made their living killing and maiming their fellow human beings shied away from those perfect rubber faces, that serene certainty. I didn’t doubt the Monks could defend themselves, but every Monk I’d ever run across had been unfailingly polite and nonconfrontational. They still made my skin crawl, and having three of them following me like fucking albatrosses made me nervous.
The crowd thinned a little as we moved north, makeshift stalls sprouting up on the sidewalks, in the streets, little shacks built from scrap wood offering whatever people could scrounge to sell, generally stuff no one thought was worth stealing in the first place. The goods got better as you moved uptown, until you finally reached a point where the Crushers started eyeing you distrustfully and the stores had decent security in place, mainly to keep people like me out. I tensed up a little, resolved to ignore the Monks. If the Little Prince was going to put the squeeze on someone that owed him yen, it was going to be here. Much further uptown and the Little Prince would be outclassed.
Sure enough, he stopped in front of a flimsy stall that was staffed by a man about my age and two young kids with the hollow look of poverty. The place was selling meat pies, the meat not much of a mystery considering the pile of dead rats the boys were engaged in skinning right there in the street. Business was slow, because rats were everywhere, and if I wanted one, I could catch five without working up a sweat.
The proprietor stepped forward, wringing his hands. I didn’t listen to what was said, I just watched: The Little Prince stuck out his chest and crossed his arms, listening to whatever plea the old man was shelling out with his chin thrust out, nodding importantly. The two goons just menaced the whole operation, making the boys flinch and knocking shit off the counter, being tough.
I moved fast. There was no talking. No speeches. I wasn’t here to make an impression. I scanned the street quickly for Crushers or-worse-System Pigs, and saw nothing, not even the three Monks. Then I stepped up behind the Little Prince, and before anyone could react I just pulled my blade from my pocket, grabbed him around the shoulders, and dragged the knife across his neck, the blade sinking in deep. Then I dropped the knife, stepped back, and drew my automatic. I didn’t point it at anyone in particular; that often got misinterpreted, and just encouraged gunplay. I was just discouraging intervention while I waited for the Little Prince to actually die. No one paid for grievous injury, after all. The two goons paused and stared, first down at the Little Prince where he lay gurgling, then at me, and finally at each other.
One muttered something under his breath and turned to the other, gesticulating forcefully and hissing something foreign-half the hired muscle in the damn city spoke gibberish.
The other swore-you didn’t need to speak the language to recognize swearing-gesturing at the Little Prince, then threw up his hands and glared at me. “Non mon problume, okay?”
They knew the score: With the Little Prince dead, no one was going to pay them, so there was no longer a job to do, and they certainly didn’t want to end up dead, too. Non mon fucking problume indeed. These were the bottom-of-the-barrel assholes; you couldn’t trust them-they had no goddamn pride, no ethics. To illustrate the point, his fellow made a show of wiping his hands, and the two of them lumbered off, arguing loudly. I looked at their former employer, and he stared up at me with wide, dead eyes. The family was already back at work, furiously making rat pies for the hungry people of New York City. You could count on the good people of New York to never remember a face.
The crowd swirled around me as I reholstered my gun, and then Nad was at my shoulder. “Good work,” he said.
It didn’t feel good. “Hell,” I said. “I need a drink.”
II
AN ENDLESS TRAIL OF SUNSETS
Pickering’s was a good place the System Pigs hadn’t noticed yet, below the radar of the entire System of Federated Nations. It was semilegit, with some ancient liquor license and a paper deed, somewhere, or so rumor had it. It was located on the first floor-the only floor left-of a burned-out hulk of a building that looked, from the outside, ready to collapse at any moment. Liberal bribes to the Crushers kept it open, at least for the time being. Pick himself was the oldest man I knew: fifty if he was a day, ancient and always pissed off, a fat, slouching blob of a man with white, yellowing hair and gnarled, painful-looking hands. I’d never seen Pick stand up.