‘What I’ve got, Ms Ertekin, is your third shooter for Joaquin Ortiz.’
She nearly stopped again, in clear space. ‘Is he alive?’
‘Very much so. There’s a hole in his shoulder, but otherwise he’ll be just fine. Got into a fight in a bar over in Brooklyn, pulled a piece, and it turns out the place is full of off-duty cops.’ Williamson chuckled. ‘You believe that luck?’
‘Not a local boy then?’
‘No, he’s from the Republic, someplace out west. Dirk Shindel. Right of residence in the Union, he’s got a grandparent up in Maine somewhere, but no official citizenship. We can’t put him at the scene with genetic trace, but he’s copped to it anyway.’
‘How’d you manage that?’
‘We’re sweating him pretty hard,’ Williamson said casually. ‘Got one of the homicide psych teams on it. Thing is, our boy Dirk was all fucked up on hormone jolts and street syn when the Brooklyn thing went down. You know what a cocktail like that’ll do. He’s babbling like a snake handler.’
Along her nerves, Sevgi felt the subtle thrum of her own decidedly non-street syn dosage. She summoned a dutiful chuckle. ‘Yeah, seen that before. So what’s he said about Ortiz?’
‘Said a whole lot of stuff, I can file it over to you if you want. Boils down to he was hired out of Houston by some front guy he’s never met, friend of the other two in the crew. Quite a lot of money, which I guess for a hit on a guy like Ortiz you’d expect, but it doesn’t explain why the low-grade hires. Shindel says he’s whacked guys before, in the Republic, but the psych team think he’s lying. At best, they reckon he was maybe a driver or a back-up man.’
‘What about the others?’
‘Yeah, Leroy Atkins. That’s the guy your, uh, enhanced friend put down with the machine pistol. Turns out he’s got some record in the Republic, but strictly spray and run stuff. Cop I talked to in the Houston PD said he thought Atkins might have upped his game in the last couple of years, gone out of state for the work. Nothing they can touch him for, it’s just street rumour and implied Yarashanko links from some West Coast n-djinn Houston rent time on. Same with the other guy, uh, Fabiano, Angel Fabiano. Houston resident, some gang affiliations down there. Been doing time since he was a kid, but they never got him for worse than possession of abortifacients with intent to sell, and some aggravated assault. But Houston reckon he might have upgraded as well, he’s a known associate of Atkins.’
‘Okay.’ Disloyalty for Norton snaked in her, deep enough to force a grimace onto her face. She asked anyway. ‘Did Shindel have anything to say about Marsalis?’
‘Marsalis? The thirteen guy?’ Pause, while Williamson presumably scrolled through the report. ‘No. Nothing here outside of we would have brought the whole thing off too, that fucking nigger twist hadn’t been there. No offence.’
‘No offence?’
‘Yeah.’ Williamson’s tone shifted into sour amusement. ‘One of the psych team’s the same colour as me. This is one sensitive Jesuslander we’re dealing with here.’
Sevgi grunted. ‘Probably the syn talking. He tell you how they ended up outside my front door?’
‘Yeah, he was pissed about that too. Told us they’d been watching Ortiz for weeks, mapping his moves. Seems he always went by this coffee house he liked on West 97th, they were going to track him across there on the skates and light him up outside. The skates, that’s an old Houston sicario standby, apparently. Good for city-centre hits where you’ve got high-volume, slow-moving traffic. Anyway, the way Shindel paints it, Ortiz breaks his routine and heads up town suddenly, they go after him but it nearly kills them to keep up. By the time they get to hundred and eighteenth, they’re panting like dogs, they just want to get this thing finished.’
‘Very pro.’ She could hear the lightness in her own tone. The vindication of Norton blew through her like a cool breeze. She even found a smile for some face-painted idiot who collided with her coming round a support column and then backed off all apologies and smiles.
‘Right,’ Williamson agreed. ‘Not quite Houston’s finest, it seems.’
‘No.’
‘Yeah.’ The New York detective hesitated again. ‘So like I said, I talked to Kasabian. He told me you’d want to know. Was going to hang onto this until you were back in town, but then I caught you on that newsflash out of the Rim this morning. So I figure the Rim, that’s where Ortiz is from originally, maybe this ties in to whatever you’re dealing with out there.’
The press conference, hastily called in a deck-level government garden amidships, her dry lack-of-progress report buffered by wooden professions of co-ordinated effort from RimSec and the Cat’s security services, a brief, sonorous pronouncement from a local political aide – it all seemed to be sliding into the past at alarming speed as well. She made a fleeting match with the feeling she’d had on the highway out of Cuzco, the sense of time slipping through her fingers. Marsalis at her side like a dark rock she could maybe cling to. She grimaced. Shouldered the image aside, like another drowsy shopper getting in her way.
‘Well, listen, detective, I appreciate you taking the trouble to hand me this. See if I can’t return the favour some day.’
‘No need. Like I said, saw the newsflash. Lot of talk about agency co-operation in America these days, a lot of talk. I figure maybe it’s time there actually started to be some too.’
‘I hear that. Can you wire the Shindel file across to RimSec at Alcatraz? I’ll pick it up there later.’
‘Will do. Hope it helps.’
The New York patch clicked out, took Williamson’s accent and the winter city with it. Left her with the star-static almost-hush of satellite time, and then nothing at all.
‘Nothing. That’s what I’m telling you.’
Carl shook his head irritably. ‘Matthew, I told you this guy just doesn’t feel right. Are you sure?’
‘I am better than sure, Carl. I am mathematically accurate. Tom Norton’s associational set is as close to perfectly behaved citizenship as it’s possible for a human to get. The worst blemish I can find is a data-implication that his brother may have helped him get his job at COLIN. But you’re talking about a good word in the right ear, not outright nepotism. And it’s years in the past, no sense of a continuing influence.’
‘You certain about that?’
‘Yes, I am certain. In fact, the data suggests that he and his brother don’t get on all that well. Same-sex sibling relationships are often combative, and in this case the Nortons seem to have resolved theirs by living at opposite ends of the continent.’
Carl stared at the hotel window, where evening was already starting to shut down the sky. His reflection stared back, hemmed him in. He put a crooked elbow to the glass and leaned on it with his forearm over his head, fingers stroking through his hair. It was something Marisol used to–
‘And the New York hit? The fact he was the only person who knew where I was sleeping?’
‘Is coincidence,’ said Matthew crisply.
He met his reflection’s eyes in the glass. ‘Well, it doesn’t feel much like it from where I’m standing.’
‘Coincidence never does. It’s not in the nature of human genetic wiring to accept it. And as a thirteen, you have your own increased predisposition towards paranoia to contend with as well.’
Carl grimaced. ‘Has it ever occurred to you Matt, that—’
‘Matthew.’
‘Yeah, Matthew. Sorry. Has it ever occurred to you that for a thirteen, for someone who doesn’t connect well with group dynamics, paranoia might be quite a useful trait to have?’