“A hundred thousand thumbs,” he said.
“Are you kidding? Is that like a thumb per proton?”
“What’s a proton?”
“It’s a… I don’t know. Something Delovoa told me once.”
“Delovoa?” he asked, looking around anxiously.
“You Kommilaire don’t have maps?” one of his men asked.
“We have maps, just not gang maps. Like maps of sewers and the latticework and trains and power grid. But I want to make a map of the whole city for gangs.”
“How about, I give you this, if you give me your whole map when you’re done?” Dimi-Vim said.
“How is that a fair trade? You only have maybe three percent of the map filled and it’s just you.”
“So?” he puffed.
I was about to explain the basics of comparable trading when I thought about it: maybe it was a good idea if all the gangs had the map. If they knew where the boundaries were. If those boundaries were formalized. I wouldn’t have to show them all the details, just territories. We had never had that on Belvaille. It had just been via understanding—that often became misunderstood.
They were blabbering at me some more, but I was suddenly thinking about this grand scheme. I could give gang licenses per block. I could sanction gang wars and buyouts. If I had a map I could do all this. It would be like the Boards, except bloodier.
“Hey, give me that,” I said.
“What? No. White banner. White banner,” he argued.
“I got an idea. It will help you out, I swear. I’ll give you the full copy when I’m done, like you said.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Why would I lie?” I asked.
“No one knows why you do anything, Hank,” he sulked.
It wasn’t as easy as I thought to make a consolidated map.
No one wanted to tell me what they were doing until I told them what I was doing. And even then they didn’t want to tell me.
Then there were people who simply didn’t fit into normal boundaries.
Such as the guys who had been bribing Judge Naeb: Wiessstauch and his compatriots. They didn’t have any territory per se. They sold political influence.
And there were all kinds of deals and half-deals and partnerships. Someone would own a dock operation but another guy would own half the dock workers and another guy would own the other half and another guy would own the equipment and some lady would own the shipping containers.
If I color-coded just one block it looked like someone knifed a rainbow in the stomach and its guts spilled out on the page. It was so complicated you couldn’t make sense of it.
And that was just one block!
I wasn’t sure if I was being naïve or idealistic. I mean, it was a strange concept to apply to a bunch of killers and crooks.
On one hand Belvaille was all chaos and freedom. But the most basic concept of all these criminals was a gang. That’s organization. If you went up the chain far enough things got organized. They had to, or nothing would get done.
But our station was fragile. One guy, Zadeck, had been stepped on by a Therezian and it turned into a station-wide gang war. If I had formal treaties and heirs to territories, that wouldn’t happen. But how was I going to bring it about?
It was time for some soup.
CHAPTER 53
There was a dusty, dirty, dilapidated soup restaurant far to the northeast. It was in a wealthy area of the city, but the little soup shop was far from attractive.
Whoever owned it apparently hated selling soup, because it was only open a few hours a day and those hours changed regularly. I couldn’t tell you how many times I had walked there, only to find it closed. Finally, I stopped going.
The soup wasn’t even that good. There was one cook, one waiter, and they seemed to dislike people almost as much as soup.
But the restaurant was owned by a man named Tamshius qua-Froyeled.
Tamshius had been the most powerful gang boss for perhaps a century. No other gang leader had held influence for as long as he did. He had been a lieutenant from the very founding of the city. He was established by the time I moved to the station and I was here shortly after Belvaille opened.
Now, Tamshius was long since retired and aged beyond reckoning.
He was about half the size he had been in his youth and hunched over as if his silk robe weighed a thousand pounds.
I had sent my Stair Boys to camp out here for a week to find a time when the restaurant was open. It was now three in the morning.
“We close soon,” the waiter said, as I entered.
I looked to the Kommilaire who was waiting for me.
“They just opened thirty minutes ago when I radioed you, Boss,” he said.
“Close soon,” the waiter repeated defiantly.
Tamshius was in the corner, sleeping. His robe matched the frayed wallpaper and he was so thin and insubstantial you had to know he was there to see him.
I approached the old man.
“Tamshius. Tamshius?” I said.
He blinked his large eyes, sleepily. His eyes were probably his largest organs at this point. Everything else had shriveled to near-nothingness.
Tamshius was one reason I was scared of retirement. He had been a significant player for so long. I always thought of him as a force to be reckoned with. Then he retired, half-heartedly served soup, and wasted away. I was probably the only person who knew Tamshius still existed.
“Hank,” he said, cracking a feeble smile.
“I need your advice,” I implored.
“Would you like some soup?”
“I—yeah, sure.”
I don’t know how, but the waiter suddenly appeared and literally threw a bowl of soup at me from maybe five feet away. It landed on the table beside me, half of its contents sloshing onto the tabletop. The waiter left, his customer service completed.
I took the bowl and it was barely enough to wet my tongue.
“Have a seat,” Tamshius said, but I knew his rickety booths couldn’t support me.
“I’m fine. Tamshius, I have a situation—” I started.
“Or a solution,” he said, holding up a bony finger.
“Right,” I began uneasily. “Or a solution.”
“What may I help you with, my friend?”
“The gangs,” I began. “There’s too many. I want to organize them on a map. To show who is doing what and where their territory is. Who has what deals. A line of succession. Make everything formal and keep people from fighting—so easily.”
“You’re talking about the Athletic Club,” he said. The Belvaille Athletic Club was one of the precursors of the Athletic Gentleman’s Club. It had been where all the gang bosses congregated.
“Well, I want something more official. Like you could look at a map and see. Kind of a chart.”
“That’s what the Athletic Club was. Do you know why everyone joined that club?”
“Because it was exclusive. And plush.”
“Because if we didn’t, we would have gone out of business. That’s where the deals were made. Alliances brokered. Buying and selling done.”
“Yeah, but all the bosses that exist now couldn’t fit in a hundred Athletic Clubs. There’s too many. And you can’t keep them all straight. Before, there were maybe five counterfeiters. Now there’s, I don’t know, seventy-five people who ship canned meat. I need to keep track of all of them.”
“I understand what you need. I’m saying make a giant Athletic Club. Organize it by block and by industry. Every crime. Every business. Every street. However many you need to encompass them all. Then all of those groups together will be your map.”