A Motive with a Universal Adapter 02

The story was about Ritz avenging the death of Hoshi Sato, the bartender and guitar player. I decided to edit out any mention of Joe Carmichael, Chatsubo, or Okami to avoid tipping our hand to Robertson and Militech. For now, I'd let them think they'd covered their tracks and gotten away with it.

A quick search of promotional releases turned up footage of Sato and his band 'Barabbas' that I cut together with Ritz's reminiscence. I also managed to piece together a confession from Rook. The smug bastard was so fucking proud of himself, he could hardly contain it, so I had plenty to work with. A bit of clever editing made it look like he'd been the one to lose the knife fight with Ritz in a climactic finale. Some archival footage of the aftermath of the Adam Selene assassination fleshed out the story of a disgraced bodyguard proving that she was still a force to be reckoned with.

It was a good piece, and it was true in every way that mattered.

So the story was in the can and all I could do was hope for a slow news day and wait for a network to make me an offer on it. In the meantime, Ritz still needed Lucidrine if she was going to be any good to anyone. Time to work the phones.

I found myself a quiet study carrel and dialed my neighbor, Barks.

The Peach Tree isn't a safe building because Arbor Property Management, Inc. pours out a lot of euro for security. No, it's safe because we have a civic-minded gang that calls themselves the Peach Tree Pattuglia and they're not above meting out a little vigilante justice on behalf of the residents of their turf.

They don't like to be associated with the mafia, but the Pattuglia still shake down the building's businesses for "donations". Most are happy to contribute. I slip them a few bucks myself from time to time when I'm flush, and I try to give them good press for their good deeds.

Like most gangs though, they also push drugs on the side.

"Hey, Abby! How you doin', girl?" Barks asked when he picked up after one ring. "Saw your story on K-Jon last week. You really think Arbor's gonna jack up the rent?"

"They've already done it to Apple, Palm, and Oak Tree," I told him. "They're just waiting for us to start bitching about the elevators so they have some leverage."

"That shit's messed up. Ain't there nothing we can do about it?"

"If you complain about the elevators, tell them you know it's a cheap, easy fix. Don't let them tell you it's expensive. It's just a settings change in the elevator software."

"Yeah, a'ight, I can do that. But you gotta get that story out on the big networks, girl. Net54's gotta play that shit prime time."

"Arbor buys too much advertising," I explained. "None of the big boys will run a story that might hurt their ad revenue. K-Jon was the only one who'd take it."

That could be a problem with an exposé on Militech too, but I had to get the story first. Then I'd figure out how to sell it.

"But listen, Barks," I cut him off to steer the conversation back, "I'm trying to lay my hands on a drug called 'Lucidrine.' Ever heard of it?"

"Aw girl, c'mon. You know I don't deal that hardcore combat narco shit."

"Yeah, but I thought maybe you'd know somebody who does."

"Hey, you wanna relax after a hard day? Expand your mind? Get freaky with an output? I'll hook you up. But shit that spikes adrenaline and makes you aggressive ain't good for nothin' but gettin' somebody killed. We don't need that shit in Peach Tree, Abby."

Barks was adamant. He wasn't willing to discuss it any further or to point me to anyone who would. Neither were any of my other contacts in the drug scene. My pharmacist checked a couple of pharmacopoeias and told me Lucidrine hadn't been manufactured for several years. Even if you had a prescription, you couldn't buy it.

So where was Joe Carmichael getting it?

To find a source who'd talk to me about combat drugs—and hopefully sell me some—I was going to have to hit the streets. It occurred to me that maybe other ex-soldiers like Ritz might be able to point me in the right direction. I looked up a couple of likely places, popped another stim tab and headed outdoors.

It was raining.

The forecast called for acid rain all week and every vid-screen in the city displayed a health advisory alert scrolling across the picture. Citizens were advised to remain indoors. We didn't. We never do.

An undulating ceiling of fiberglass umbrellas directed the rain down onto the sidewalk in constantly shifting rivulets as pedestrians bustled and jostled along, each huddled under their own bit of portable shelter. I'd made a conscious effort to choose a route that let me keep right and hug the buildings, avoiding some of the splash and spray from the passing cars in the street.

The map chip plugged into the back of my skull told me the cross street I was looking for should have been right here. Instead I was standing in front of a Parts-N-Programs franchise that occupied the ground floor of a building which was just wide enough to have filled a city street.

My map chip was three years old. It was clearly out of date. I let the foot traffic bumble past me and stood in front of the neon filled shop window trying to get my bearings. A grid of lines and labels filled my imagination and I realized I'd have to go around the block and see if Fisk Street still existed on the other side.

I was about to rejoin the river of humanity sluicing through the concrete canyon when I caught a distant sound over the percussive patter of carcinogenic rain. My heart rate spiked and my mind flashed back to last night.

Screamers in-bound.

Looking back down the street, I saw a trio of Arasaka assault AVs two blocks down and about twenty stories up.

One of the AVs opened fire on a building—I couldn't tell what building. The shards of falling glass were invisible in the rain, but pedestrians in the street below surged away in a panicked mob clearing space for the other two AVs to land. Their turbo fans kicked up spray, filling the street with mist. Umbrellas were snatched out of hands by the turbulence and tumbled into the sky.

I dropped my own umbrella, jacked in my camera, and slung it up to my shoulder, mentally pushing the zoom to maximum to try and identify the target. With a thought, I flipped the radio transceiver wired into my inner ear to the police band and linked to the camera's audio pick-up.

There was nothing but confused chatter as the police dispatcher tried to move patrols into the area.

Trying to get the action in frame, I knew my angle was all wrong so I shoved my way out into the gridlocked traffic. A driver screamed at me and pounded on her sunroof as I climbed on top of her chubby little city-car to try and get a clear view of the AVs on the ground.

There was too much chaos to see what was happening.

I panned back up to the AV in the sky. Someone inside the building was shooting back. More gunman on a skyway were trying to catch the AV in a crossfire. The pilot was evading, hovering up, then dropping down and firing short, methodical bursts carefully targeting the same three floors.

And there above them, another twenty stories up above the fray, I spotted the Net54 News AV. The camera pod on its nose swiveled to follow the action. Shit. They already had reporters on the scene.

When I let my camera drop, I glanced over at the giant vid-screen across the street. It was showing live footage of the assault. The breaking news scrolled across the chyron below the picture. "Fiduciary Investment Group, Inc. initiates hostile takeover of Mercator Global Finance - FIG stock up 3% - Live Coverage."

The image above switched from the overhead view to the business correspondent embedded with the team of armed FIG accountants unloading on the ground. They were following the Arasaka strike team into the lobby.

There were sirens in the distance. The dispatcher in my ear was ordering crowd control. Arasaka or FIG had looped in the media, but hadn't bothered to tip off the police. Not that the NCPD would do anything to stop the city's shareholders from engaging in a little healthy competition. That'd be bad for business.

So much for my hopes for a slow news day. This was going to be the lead story. If Mercator surrendered quickly and there wasn't a protracted siege, there could still be room for my story though. Fingers crossed.

I hopped down off the city-car and the driver, cozy and dry inside, flipped a finger at me. I wiped a wet lock of hair out my face and stuck my tongue out at her. Choob. When a discarded umbrella—not mine—tumbled past, I picked it up and headed into Parts-N-Programs in the thin hope that they might know what happened to my missing address.

A bored-looking clerk leaned on the counter between a display of Raven Microcybernetics accessories and a rack of Cyberdyne Systems chipware. Two dozen or so people had sought shelter from the chaos outside. Some had their faces pressed to the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the excitement without putting themselves in any danger. Most were gathered around the store's vid-screens watching Net54's coverage.

The clerk clearly didn't regard them as customers.

"S'cuse me!" I called, collapsing my new umbrella and pushing more wet hair out my face. "Do you know where Fisk Street is?"

His annoyed groan was almost audible as he slumped his shoulders. When he turned to look up at me, his expression brightened and his posture straightened up again. That was a nice little ego boost.

"There's a, um 'Fisk Alley'," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "Is that it?"

That made sense. The Night City corporate office probably renamed it when new construction turned the street into a dead end.

"Yeah, that's probably it. Thanks." I smiled at him. I towelled off my camera with a dry part of my sleeve and hoped he'd keep talking.

"You can go out the back," he offered to fill the silence. "The back door opens right onto it... There's nothing back there but trash cans though."

That could be a problem.

"I'm looking for the VFW Post," I told him with a frown.

"Oh, uh, yeah. There's a door back there with a sign over it. I think it says 'VFW'... or something like that, anyway. What, uh... what does 'VFW' stand for?"

"It's 'Veterans of Foreign Wars'—it's an old pre-collapse organization that's still around."

The young clerk eventually got around to asking for my phone number. After I gave it to him with a smile, he took me to the back room and let me out into the alley.

The tangy stench of rotting scop hit my nose as the door was closed and bolted behind me. It looked like a number of scop shops and restaurants backed up onto Fisk Alley. Loading docks, dumpsters, and refuse piles compressed the two-lane street and sidewalks down to a narrow, twisting aisle.

Towering buildings on three sides blotted out what thin sunlight managed to filter through the dark clouds. A single flickering streetlight halfway down and two stories up cast weird shadows over everything. The dripping patter of rain came from every direction.

I reached into my bag, pulled out the fake microphone boom loaded with a ten gauge shotgun shell, and snapped it onto my camera.

It was hard to keep the trepidation out of my stride as I walked down the alley, watching carefully for the sign the clerk had mentioned. I finally found it just two doors in from the cross street entrance. A faded awning sheltered a stonework facade with an engraved concrete plaque set into the wall. The boarded up windows and ornate wooden door had been tagged with graffiti.

I tired the door, but it was locked tight. Without much optimism, I knocked. When no one answered, I knocked again. So, much like Fisk Alley, and everyplace else I'd tried, this lead was a dead end.

Under the VFW's old awning, I took shelter from the rain and tried to decide what I should do next. I was just about to head back to the university when I was startled by a ring from my cell phone. I didn't recognize the number.

"This is Abby Rhoades," I answered.

"Ms. Rhoades, this is Muray Laska at ICS," a man's voice responded.

Not my first choice. ICS didn't have much of a news operation. They were mostly known for their "unscripted" reality programming—game shows, blood sports, and voyeuristic melodramas. They picked up a lot of dreck Net54 wouldn't touch. Still, their euro spilled as well as anyone else's.

"I watched your Agatha Dennheritz piece," he continued. "It runs a bit long. Nice enough camera work, I suppose. We could probably cut it up for B-roll... I'll give you five hundred for it."

There was apathy forced into his tone. His words drawled out just a little too slowly compared to the uptick in tension when he finally named his price.

"It's a feature, Mr. Laska. Thanks, but I'll wait for a better offer." Once I signed over the rights, ICS could use my story however they chose and keep all the money they made. I wasn't going to let them sucker me.

"Suit yourself," he said. "I have a lot more freelancer crap in the slush pile to weed out today."

"Yeah, but you know you won't find anything better, " I countered. "Net54 has an exclusive on the Mercator assault. You need to counter-program that with an assault of your own—preferably one without talking heads spouting dry financial data. My story has the violence your viewers expect, with a compelling storyline to keep their attention, and enough product placement that the advertising sells itself. If you can't make money off it as a feature, well... you're not very good at your job."

There was a long pause, and I worried that last barb might have been too much.

"I can go as high a thousand," he eventually offered.

"Goodbye, Mr. Laska--"

"Wait!"

"Yes, Mr. Laska?"

"...Come to my office, and we can discuss terms," he said grudgingly. "I'll send a car."

After I gave Laska a nearby cross street, I disconnected the call and I danced and squealed like a lunatic under that back alley awning. I knew it was a good story! I just knew it!

My jubilation was short-lived though. I was about to walk into a meeting with a big-time media executive and I looked like a drowned gutter rat.

When the ICS driver dropped me off at a building in a less fashionable block of Corporate Center, I slipped him twenty euros to wait twenty minutes before he called in his arrival.

From the directory in the lobby, I found an overpriced boutique where I bought a dry blouse and jacket, and a hair salon that took a nice tip to fit me in for a quick blow-out. The balance on my deb-chip was down to single digits, but I couldn't let Laska think I was desperate.

The girl at the salon told me ICS had their studios on the ninth, tenth, and eleventh floors and their offices were on forty-three and forty-four. An ICS receptionist pointed me toward Murray Laska's office. According to the sign on the door, his title was "Producer, Talent Analysis & Development."

Laska's secretary apologized for making me wait in the outer office. There was sadness in her eyes when she brought me a cup of coffee—real coffee—and I couldn't quite sort out the doleful smile she gave me when I thanked her. But I enjoyed the coffee too much to dwell on it.

If I played my cards right, I might parlay this freelance story into a full-time gig. I popped another stim tab when the secretary's back was turned.

Laska let me sit there for exactly thirty-five minutes to the second before he opened his door and invited me into his inner office. It was a classic power play and I wasn't going to let him intimidate me.

He was probably an old guy but he had a decent sculpt job to hide his age. His pleated slacks were cinched tightly enough at the waist to suggest that he'd recently had his gut sculpted away. The slack in his tailored shirt backed up the assumption, and the length and fullness of his shimmering tech hair looked more like an overreaction to a receding hairline than a fashion statement.

His jacket and shirt had been tailored without left sleeves to show off a cheaper model cyber-arm with a passé day-glo finish.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, Ms. Rhoades." He smiled too broadly as I stood. "May I call you 'Abby'?"

"Of course, Mr. Laska. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Oh, call me 'Murray,' please." As I stepped through the door he put his hand on the small of my back, just a little too low, and guided me towards the chairs in front of his desk. "Won't you have a seat?"

The window behind him looked north across Night City. Several blocks away I could see the gleaming Net54 tower, and beyond that, the bay.

"Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?" he offered, sitting down behind the desk and leaning forward casually. My chair was deep and low so that he looked down on me. Another power play.

"I'll take a fair offer for my story," I told him with a smile.

Laska's eyes narrowed. He tented his fingers, day-glo plastic against flesh, and sized me up for a moment.

"You obviously know this business, Abby," he conceded at last, leaning back. As he spoke, his eyes kept dropping to my chest. "You're right, we do want to run your story as a feature on tonight's news. We already have sponsorship deals with Dynalar and Maximum Mike's in the works. We'll give you five-thousand for the rights."

That's the kind of euro I was hoping for, and I was a little worried that it showed on my face, so I didn't bother to haggle with him.

"Sold." I leaned forward and reached a hand across the desk.

"Now hold on," Laska held up a hand and shifted his weight to the arm of his chair. "For that price, we want a couple of... considerations."

I didn't think it would be that easy. I mean, I hoped it would be, but I wasn't surprised that he hadn't put all of his cards on the table yet.

"Okay," I sighed. "Let's hear them."

"We want Agatha Dennheritz in-studio for an interview immediately after the broadcast."

That was going to be a problem. Ritz was in no shape to give an interview. I had omitted any mention of her Lucidrine dependency, and if she sat in a studio trembling with withdrawal, it would undermine the entire story.

"Ritz might not be available on such short notice," I explained.

"For the kind of money we're offering, that's your problem."

"How about four thousand for just the story?" I countered, even though my stomach clenched at the thought of leaving that much euro on the table.

"I'm sorry, Abby, but... no interview, no deal." He leaned back in his chair and spread his hands as if letting the opportunity just drift away in the wind.

Even with the elocution chip I gave her, Ritz wasn't likely to do well in an interview against an aggressive news anchor. My story portrayed her as calm, cool, and quietly competent. Even if we could control her tremors, she was still raw about Selene's death. She was likely to lash out.

"Let me conduct the interview," I offered after a moment of thought.

"You don't have the credibility with our audience," he said, shaking his head. "We want to attach one of our own faces."

"Who?"

"It hasn't been decided yet."

"Look Murray, Ritz doesn't have a very... cordial... relationship with the press, okay? Your Damon Killian was especially vicious with his 'bimbo-bodyguard' jokes after Selene was assassinated. She won't agree to an interview with one of your people, but she and I... we have a rapport."

"Tell her whatever you need to to get her into the studio. Once she's here, there'll be a 'change of plans'," he air quoted the end of his idea.

"You saw the footage I shot at the Black Queen's stronghold. Do you really want to double-cross Agatha Dennheritz in your own house?"

That gave him pause. Laska's expression shifted through a couple of emotions as he silently mulled over my offer. He settled on a brooding resignation.