IGMS Issue 38 Read online

  Winn doesn't realize that he's already too deep in our world. The criminal underworld leaves a trace on a person. People who have fallen into crime hold themselves a certain way. They know where to look, linger a second too long on a cop. In Winn, this is an oxymoron. If I saw him for the first time, my thoughts would be that he's trusting, a rube, but from the trace, in trouble, panicked.

  In other words, easy prey. An ideal mark, a perfect patsy. Winn will spend the rest of his life wasting away in a cell or in the hands of someone like Pete, being used and manipulated.

  I can't leave Winn to this fate.

  "Puo, I'm going back for him."

  I stand in a storage closet full of restoration chemicals in the loft where the Island used to be. Owned and run by Ashley's Restorations. It wasn't even a half hour after we had turned control over to the twit that she had changed the name.

  The Feds released Winn an hour ago. I had picked up a disposable communicator, and sent a one-word message to him: Island, then tossed it in the trash. The Feds will have hacked his communicator at a minimum and are going to be watching him, but we need to get Winn now before Pete gets his hands on him.

  I've been waiting for twenty minutes, drifting in and out of alertness. Even after I had called the Boss, I still couldn't find rest, stuck in the same track of questions. Will he come? How angry will he be? What will I say? Will he believe me? And more importantly, will he have a visual cortex bug?

  The last question bothers me the most. There's little I can do if he does, other than coldcock him and run. We don't have the equipment to deal with it anymore, and even if we could take him somewhere to deal with it, the Feds would know where and who, as well as get an image of me.

  I hate waiting.

  Puo speaks through my earpiece. "He's here, and he's got a tail." Puo's high in the sky in the Pelican, running command.

  I ready my equipment and step flush to the side of the door.

  Several minutes later, Winn enters, turns on the light, and walks past me. I put the end of a short metal tube I found in the closet between his shoulder blades. "Shhh."

  He freezes.

  I start scanning with my other hand. Sure enough, the scan picks up a tracking and audio bug almost immediately on his citizen chip. Well, good tricks are good tricks for all sides. That's one bug. I keep scanning.

  Puo says, "More plain-clothed cops are showing up."

  Not a good sign.

  Winn starts to tense, he still doesn't know it's me. He's going to do something stupid. I lean forward and kiss the back of his neck, then nibble on his ear for good measure. He relaxes and I drop the metal tube.

  I initiate the visual cortex scan. The scan itself takes only a few seconds, but then the software needs time to chug through the data before giving the results. Puo explained why it takes so long to me once. Something about how the brain communicates with tiny electrical signals that can mask the signature of the bug.

  Seventy percent done. I take a deep breath. If this comes up negative, then all I have to do his remove his citizen chip and we can get out of here.

  Puo interrupts the silence. "They're forming a perimeter around the building. I also think they got an unmarked air vehicle up here."

  Great. I was hoping they'd be content to watch. The earlier text probably got them hot-to-trot.

  Eighty-five percent done.

  Puo says, "They're entering the building. You gotta get out of there."

  Shit. I need to get the audio chip out before we can bolt, but the scan isn't done.

  If the Feds get my image, at best my ability to work will evaporate, at worst I'll rot in a ten-by-ten concrete jail cell for twenty-three hours a day for the rest of my life. I'd be a maximum security risk -- an accomplished thief, con woman, and escape artist. There probably wouldn't even be a window. For twenty-three hours a day, for the next sixty years, I'd just sit there. I'd be insane in less than a year.

  Ninety-four percent done.

  Puo says, "They've got dogs."

  I step around front to face Winn and put my fingers to my lips to keep him quiet. I had made my choice when I decided to come here. Thankfully, he listens. He still trusts me. I expect to see anger. Instead I see fear, desperate need -- that I'm his last hope. Why does he still trust me after I nearly hung him out to dry? He's like a lost puppy that deserves better.

  I put the extraction device over his left hand to remove the citizen chip. Once the device indicates it's found the chip and got a lock on it, I rip the device off bringing blood and the chip with it. There isn't time to be gentle.

  Ninety-eight percent done.

  I set the chip in the center of the floor. I motion to Winn to add his communicator next to the chip. I open the door to the loft and wait. Attenuated dog barks travel up and out the stairwell from the first floor. Winn looks at me in alarm. His round blue eyes contrast against the straight line of his jaw. I wink back.

  A hundred percent. No cortex bug.

  I grab Winn's shirt and run for the corner of the loft with the small specialty elevator and climb in.

  The shaft is lined with regularly-spaced bars to make the descent easy. I added them when we got the loft, as a quick escape route. I still can't believe we had to burn this place. It was perfect.

  The cops are working their way up the building. As we descend we can hear cops talking to one another, giving orders. They still haven't searched the elevator. That'll probably change when the dogs get to the loft.

  We reach the basement and I check: no cops. We climb out, remove a sewer grate and drop down into the sewer, replacing the grate behind us. In a couple of blocks we'll get out and Puo will pick us up.

  We jog to the first turn, then slow to a brisk walk.

  "You can talk now," I say.

  "What happened?"

  "Pete rolled on us. He figured we wouldn't find out. It was a hedge, either he'd get paid reward money if they arrested us, or we'd be successful and we'd pay him. Either way, he gets paid. He never thought we'd be so stupid as to try what we did."

  "They think I'm a criminal. They wanted to arrest me."

  You are a criminal. What did you expect? But I don't say these thoughts out loud. I've lived this moment; I know those words won't be helpful. It's the moment when you realize that's it, there's no going back. Mine was when I was seven. I botched picking a tourist's pocket and had to run for my life.

  "I want out." His voice is small.

  There is no out. The only way out is to purchase it with more money than we've ever had, which means pulling more jobs. I don't have the heart to tell him, so I say, "Okay."

  He chews on his lip. "So, what now?"

  "First, we need to deal with Pete. He'll know soon, if not already, that we know he ratted. He'll move against us."

  Winn pales. "How'd Pete even know I was with you? All I ever told him was that I had another source of income."

  "I bartered for your debt. Pete didn't let you go easily. He had his very own personal doctor to patch up his thugs, your services were more valuable than the coin. The only way I could convince him was to add your debt to mine."

  "But I was still paying him. I used the money you paid me with. You took on double my debt?"

  "Yeah."

  He pauses, then says, "Thank you."

  I can't remember the last time someone has sincerely thanked me for anything. Ashley doesn't count, she has no idea what she agreed to. "Uh, you're welcome."

  "He would have never let me go, would he? Even after I worked it off?"

  "Not likely."

  "So how do we deal with Pete?"

  "We settle the score."

  Puo closes the tan ledger when Winn and I enter the cockpit of the Pelican. "Welcome back, Rookie." Puo smiles in greeting. The smile is genuine but distant. Not saying anything to the Feds for twenty-four hours does wonders for trust, but we're not completely there yet.

  Winn nods his greeting and sits down. I stand behind him.

  "Any
progress?" I ask Puo. Time to put on a show for Winn. Hopefully, this will get us to a hundred percent trust.

  "Five as far as I can tell. Two we can easily hit -- his restaurant The South Grill and a small local bank. That may be enough with a fire run."

  "Yeah," I say, "but with a fire run the mark is clued in."

  "But it works, or we get lucky and he tries to move it, bringing it out into the open." Puo hands me the ledger, which I slip into my bag.

  "Guys," Winn says, "what are you talking about?"

  Hook, line and sinker. Winn really would've made a good patsy.

  I answer, "Pete divides his wealth among multiple locations. It protects him against unforeseen loss, like theft. If he loses one stash, it's only a percentage of the total. We know of two locations but not the rest. A fire run is when you clue the mark in by going after the pieces you know about in a very set fashion, say every three days. In this case, the restaurant and the bank, after those are gone, the mark will assume we know the rest and will either check on them or have them moved. Either way, we're watching and will learn the location of the remaining pieces."

  "And that will get him off our backs?" Winn asks.

  "His men will turn on him," I say. "Half only work for him because they're indebted, the other half because he pays regularly. Take away his capital, his ability to pay, and we cut him off from his men." I sit down. "We'll hit the restaurant first."

  I hope this is the last time I have to lie to Winn.

  The following afternoon, I sit in Pete's office, waiting for the pompous ass to stop reading his Zen and the Art of Leadership book. I can't help but think of Winn, sitting in The South Grill restaurant at this very moment waiting for a cue that will never come.

  Pete thinks it's a power play to make people wait. I should have sent Puo and loaded him up with beans. I start laughing at the thought. That gets Pete's attention.

  "Something funny?"

  "Just something Puo does." Normally, I'd draw this out, savor the moment, but Winn's waiting. "We couldn't unload the sculpture. Someone tipped off the Feds."

  "That's not really my problem, now is it?"

  "It is, since you're the one that tipped them off."

  Pete leans back and subtly moves his hand along the chair's arm. To an untrained eye, it would look like he was getting comfortable. To the trained eye, he had just called for help. "That's quite an accusation. Can you prove it?"

  "Nope. Very hard to go to the Feds and ask who tipped them off. One might be able to trace the money, but you didn't get paid, did you, Petey?"

  The muscles twitch on one side of his face. Petey . . . I'll have to remember that.

  Two of his thugs come to stand behind the desk on either side of him. "So you come in here with accusations you can't prove and no money. Jerome, Boots --"

  "Hold on, I do have something of interest." I pull out the tan ledger and hand it to him.

  I've been schooled for over twenty years, in cons, games, swindles, flimflams, you name it. Composure is the single greatest factor that affects the outcome of any of them. But I can't help but smile at his shaking hands.

  He compares the ledger I handed him to the current one on his desk, then glances over at the safe. "How?" Pete starts, then collects himself. "I just checked hours ago. You haven't stolen anything."

  "Nope, not a thing. Why go through all that effort when the Boss offers a ten percent finder's fee on assets people hide from him?"

  It's the knockout punch. He blanches and drops the ledger. He skips over the first stage of grief and goes immediately to anger. "Jerome, Boots, kill her. Make her suffer. I don't care what you do."

  Jerome and Boots shift their stance to box Pete in.

  "Looks like Jerome and Boots have a new employer," I say. When the Boss learned of the situation, the first thing he did was forgive debts and offer three times what Pete paid to control his men. Much easier to have allies than a war.

  The elation of victory is short lived. Pete starts to tremble. Soon I start to see that same need in Pete's eyes that I saw in Winn's. There's a reason I went into thievery and not other criminal enterprises. The look on Pete's face is it. I can't stand it. It robs the triumph right out of the moment. I wouldn't have the heart to follow through. That's why I rob underwater graves -- doesn't hurt anyone.

  I get up and pause halfway to the door. Pete's whimper of "please" will haunt me for years.

  "How'd it go with Pete?" Puo asks.

  "He crumbled much faster than I thought." I'm back on the Pelican, heading toward The South Grill.

  Silence settles over the cockpit. Puo has no stomach for that stuff either.

  After several minutes of fighting traffic on the Air 20, he says, "You know, with the ten percent finder's fee, we could actually pay for one of us to go legit. Pete was one rich son-of-a-bitch."

  "I know." We both know we're not talking about ourselves and there's nothing left to say. The rest of the ride is in a comfortable silence.

  The South Grill is a dive, a total hole -- plain wooden booths, laminate table tops. There are even grease stains running all along the top of the walls. Winn is sitting in the only occupied booth, eating a stack of pancakes. I slide in next to him and Puo plops down on the other side of the table.

  He doesn't say anything at first, but sips his coffee. "There never were conch shells on the beach, were there?"

  Damn, the man learns quick. "No, there weren't."

  He nods. "What's the point of gathering them then?"

  Right to the heart of the matter. "Pete's been dealt with -- definitively. You were the one to suggest going to the Feds. We needed to make sure you were clean."

  He starts to object, but I interrupt him. "There was a chance Pete was playing you, even without your knowledge. We had to make sure."

  "Are you sure now?"

  "Yeah," I say. And we are. The restaurant's been monitored since about eight hours after we learned of Pete's betrayal. There's been no out of the ordinary activity telling us Pete had been tipped off.

  The waitress comes over and I order a bowl of oatmeal with no intention of eating it and a glass of water. Puo loads up on an omelet.

  "How'd you deal with Pete?" Winn asks.

  "We stole his ledger," I say, "to find out where he hid his cash."

  "Ahem," Puo says.

  "Oh, all right. Puo, in an astounding display of skill, cracked the safe in amazingly, stupefying, mystifying speed -- without which, we would have surely failed and been roasted alive. Satisfied?"

  Puo bows his head.

  "Anyway, turns out Pete's been lying to the Boss for years about what he made. It was easier to notify the Boss and let him do the dirty work. He'll give us a ten percent cut of what he recovers."

  "I didn't realize you knew the Boss."

  "He's her father," Puo says. He's calm about it, matter-of-fact about dropping one of my deepest secrets. I've sought for so long to distance myself from him. Puo remains silent and eyes me, inviting me to challenge him. I decline.

  Eventually Puo caves to the intervening silence and says, "C'mon Isa, if he's gonna be a fully vested member, he's gotta know."

  "Fully vested member?" Winn asks.

  "The rookie's graduatin'!" Puo grins and pretends to wipe away a tear. "I'm so proud."

  "You have two options," I say. "One, you stay on and help us rebuild. We could use the help."

  "Is that the only reason you want me to stay on?" Winn asks. His full, honest face regards me over his pancakes. I divert my eyes to stay focused.

  "Two, you go legit. Our take from the finder's fee is enough to cover the cost. You'll have to move overseas, but it's a chance at a normal life. So there it is, a way out. They don't come often." Never actually, this is the first time we've ever had the capital to try to do it.

  "What about you guys?"

  "What about us?" I ask. "We are what we are. It's a little hot here for us right now, so we're setting up shop in a new city." It's stressful, star
ting all over again.

  We fall into silence as the waitress brings our food. Puo dives right into his omelet, while I ignore the gray stuff in front of me that's supposed to pass for oatmeal. The clinking of Puo's fork is the only sound at the table for several minutes, punctuated occasionally as Winn pokes at his pancakes.

  Finally the silence is too much and I say, "Look, you don't have to decide now --"

  I never see Winn move. One second he's next to me pushing food around on his plate and the next we're locked in a full-on kiss.

  He breaks away and says, "I'm in. You're a real piece of work Isa Schimdt."

  "Wait till you meet Dad," Puo says.

  I'd tell Puo to shut up, but I can't. I'm not done with Winn. The maple syrup on his lips is delicious.

  Extinct Fauna of the High Malafan

  by Alter S. Reiss

  Artwork by Dean Spencer

  * * *

  It started with an eight-inch-long sickle-shaped tooth, badly damaged by treatment and time. This was three years after the Acts of Union, and I was leading a survey of the old border region, something that hadn't been possible during the Auslander wars. We had passed the word around that we were looking for fossils, but we hadn't gotten many; the old border is ghost-ridden, and there are other uses for fossils than paleontology.

  Still, there was a constant trickle of finds, some from people with a real interest in the field, and some from people who wanted to show that the old borders had the best of everything, even if it meant giving up a pound or two of fossilized bone.

  There were three of us conducting that survey: Renner Bock, a student at the University of Ralport; Dant Corder, a Necromancer of the Grey Orb School; and myself, Orn Hapt. At the time, I was director of the Acquisition Department of the Paleontology Wing of the Republican Museum at Halbston. The department in question was a desk, a telephone, and two old file cabinets, but it was an impressive enough title that it opened a few doors that otherwise would have remained shut.