He heaved against my grip, whooped after breath. I pressed down with the blade, and saw the panic in his eyes.
‘It isn’t a good way to die, Yukio. Phone.’
He pawed at his jacket and the phone tipped out, skittered on the evercrete. I leaned close enough to be sure it wasn’t a weapon, then toed it back towards his free hand. He fumbled it up, breath still coming in hoarse jags through his rapidly bruising throat.
‘Good. Now punch up someone who can help, then give it to me.’
He thumbed the display a couple of times and offered the phone to me, face pleading the way Plex’s had a couple of minutes earlier. I fixed him with my eyes for a long moment, trading on the notorious immobility of cheap synth features, then let go of his locked-out arm, took the phone and stepped back out of reach. He rolled over away from me, still clutching his throat. I put the phone to my ear.
‘Who is this?’ asked an urbane male voice in Japanese.
‘My name is Kovacs.’ I followed the language shift automatically. ‘Your chimpira Yukio and I are having a conflict of interest that I thought you might like to resolve.’
A frigid silence.
‘That’s some time tonight I’d like you to resolve it,’ I said gently.
There was a hiss of indrawn breath at the other end of the line. ‘Kovacs-san, you are making a mistake.’
‘Really?’
‘It would be unwise to involve us in your affairs.’
‘I’m not the one doing the involving. Currently I’m standing in a warehouse looking at an empty space where some equipment of mine used to be. I have it on pretty good authority the reason it’s gone is that you took it.’
More silence. Conversations with the yakuza are invariably punctuated with long pauses, during which you’re supposed to reflect and listen carefully to what’s not being said.
I wasn’t in the mood for it. My wound ached.
‘I’m told you’ll be finished in about six hours. I can live with that. But I want your word that at the end of that time the equipment will be back here and in working order, ready for me to use. I want your word.’
‘Hirayasu Yukio is the person to—’
‘Yukio is a chimp. Let us deal honestly with each other in this. Yukio’s only job here is to make sure I don’t slaughter our mutual service provider. Which, incidentally, is something he’s not doing well. I was already short on patience when I arrived, and I don’t expect to replenish my stock any time soon. I’m not interested in Yukio. I want your word.’
‘And if I do not give it?’
‘Then a couple of your front offices are going to end up looking like the inside of the citadel tonight. You can have my word on that.’
Quiet. Then: ‘We do not negotiate with terrorists.’
‘Oh please. What are you, making speeches? I thought I was dealing at executive level. Am I going to have to do some damage here?’
Another kind of silence. The voice on the other end of the line seemed to have thought of something else.
‘Is Hirayasu Yukio harmed?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice.’ I looked down coldly at the yakuza. He’d mastered breathing again and was beginning to sit up. Beads of sweat gleamed at the borders of his tattoo. ‘But all that can change. It’s in your hands.’
‘Very well.’ Barely a handful of seconds before the response. By yakuza standards, it was unseemly haste. ‘My name is Tanaseda. You have my word, Kovacs-san, that the equipment you require will be in place and available to you at the time you specify. In addition, you will be paid for your trouble.’
‘Thank you. That—’
‘I have not finished. You further have my word that if you commit any acts of violence against my personnel, I shall issue a global writ for your capture and subsequent execution. I am talking about a very unpleasant real death. Is that understood?’
‘It seems fair. But I think you’d better tell the chimp to behave himself. He seems to have delusions of competence.’
‘Let me speak to him.’
Yukio Hirayasu was sitting by now, hunched over on the evercrete, wheezing breathily. I hissed at him and tossed him the phone. He caught it awkwardly, one-handed, still massaging his throat with the other.
‘Your sempai wants a word.’
He glared up at me out of tear-smeared, hating eyes, but he put the phone to his ear. Compressed Japanese syllables trickled out of it, like someone riffing on a ruptured gas cylinder. He stiffened and his head lowered. His answers ran bitten off and monosyllabic. The word yes featured a lot. One thing you’ve got to hand to the yakuza – they do discipline in the ranks like no one else.
The one-sided conversation ended and Yukio held the phone out to me, not meeting my eye. I took it.
‘This matter is resolved,’ said Tanaseda in my ear. ‘Please arrange to be elsewhere for the remainder of the night. You may return six hours from now when the equipment and your compensation will both be waiting for you. We will not speak again. This. Confusion. Has been most regrettable.’
He didn’t sound that upset.
‘You recommend a good place for breakfast?’ I asked.
Silence. A polite static backdrop. I weighed the phone in my palm for a moment, then tossed it back to Yukio.
‘So.’ I looked from the yakuza to Plex and back. ‘Either of you recommend a good place for breakfast?’
CHAPTER TWO
Before Leonid Mecsek unleashed his beneficence on the struggling economies of the Saffron Archipelago, Tekitomura scraped a seasonal living out of big game bottleback charters for rich sportsmen across from Millsport or the Ohrid Isles, and the harvest of webjellies for their internal oils. Bioluminescence made these latter easiest to catch at night, but the sweeper crews that did it tended not to stay out for more than a couple of hours at a time. Longer and the webjellies’ gossamer fine stinging aerials got plastered so thick over clothing and onboard surfaces that you could lose serious productivity to toxin inhalation and skin burns. All night long, the sweepers came in so that crew and decks could be hosed clean with cheap biosolvent. Behind the Angier lamp-glare of the hosing station, a short parade of bars and eating houses stayed open until dawn.
Plex, spilling apologies like a leaky bucket, walked me down through the warehouse district to the wharf and into an un-windowed place called Tokyo Crow. It wasn’t very different from a low-end Millsport skipper’s bar – mural sketches of Ebisu and Elmo on the stained walls, interspersed with the standard votive plaques inscribed in Kanji or Amanglic Roman: calm seas, please, and full nets. Monitors up behind the mirrorwood bar, giving out local weather coverage, orbital behaviour patterns and global breaking news. The inevitable holoporn on a broad projection base at the end of the room. Sweeper crewmembers lined the bar and knotted around the tables, faces blurred weary. It was a thin crowd, mostly male, mostly unhappy.
‘I’ll get these,’ said Plex hurriedly, as we entered.
‘Too fucking right, you will.’
He gave me a sheepish look. ‘Um. Yeah. What do you want, then?’
‘Whatever passes for whisky around here. Cask strength. Something I’ll be able to taste through the flavour circuits in this fucking sleeve.’
He sloped off to the bar and I found a corner table out of habit. Views to the door and across the clientele. I lowered myself into a seat, wincing at the movement in my blaster-raked ribs.
What a fucking mess.
Not really. I touched the stacks through the fabric of my coat pocket. I got what I came for.