Impulse Control

"On the way, sergeant." A moment later officer Brandt appeared in the doorway, looking every bit the prim and proper brown-haired law-enforcer she'd seen portrayed in a thousand old films. It was intentional; Asher Brandt had seen most of those same films. Dawson sat down in one of the two chairs Sokoth permitted to linger in his office for visiting dignitaries.

"Shut that damn door." Maximilian Sokoth never sounded happy, and indeed as a Lone Star sergeant it was his job not to be happy, but today he sounded particularly ill-tempered. As soon as the office was closed off to outside listeners and devices alike, he launched into a diatribe that had clearly been building over the last two or three days.

"You've been consulting for this district for almost eight years, Dawson. You were instrumental in shutting down that metahuman child trafficking ring in the San Fran harbor. You shined a light on the weapons smuggling by the Blindfish go-gang. You even flushed out the confederate mole in my department, for which you're always going to have my gratitude."

"Normally I am content--hear me, Dawson, downright content--to sit back and let you do the detective work. You're the one with the license, you're the one who knows the streets and the people and the gangs. You're the one folk will talk to when all they'll give someone like me or Brandt is a wide berth. I do not doubt that you are a straight shooter who believes whole-heartedly that you are making the world a better place one answered question at a time."

"I have worked here for Lone Star since the end of the occupation and I have never, ever had as much pressure on me from above to make a case go away than I do on this one. Do you know what the market value of orichalcum is right now?" Sokoth didn't give her a chance to guess before beating his fist on to the desk in exasperation.

"Fifty-one thousand eight-hundred and eleven nuyen, Dawson! For a gram! A single gram! Brandt took a closer look at the books and he tells me that a full fifth of the alchemical inventory at Applied Reactions was being written off in what they labeled as 'industrial spoilage.' Whoever robbed that place made off with forty-four pounds of liquid orichalcum in a cup!"

That was over a billion nuyen. Pickers hadn't been kidding about being a cheap date.

"Someone got rich," Sokoth muttered on, "And someone else is pissed. One of the two of them wants very badly for all of this to fall down a hole and never come out again. Maybe both of them. You can't keep me in the dark on this one, Dawson. Tell me how you know it was Pickers who robbed the lab."

Dawson considered for a moment what to say. "I have a witness who took a still of him. I recognized him immediately."

Sokoth straightened up in his seat. "A witness? Who?"

"Not important," Dawson said, too quickly. The ork's face soured immediately.

"A witness is the definition of important as far as the California Free State is concerned, Dawson! As far as the Corporate Court is concerned!"

"She's SINless," Dawson told him evenly, "A go-ganger who isn't even native to San Fran. As far as the system is concerned she doesn't exist. You think they'd accept her testimony when there's a billion nuyen canister unaccounted for?"

"Fine," Sokoth said, "So your witness fingered Pickers. Did he confess?"

"Yes," she said. "When I told him I had evidence he was there, he came clean."

"Then why the fuck isn't he in custody right now, Dawson? And don't you dare tell me it's because you and he used to be friends. I remember just fine that night in Pacific Heights--you were standing right in front of me as him and his Humanis cronies drove by spitting bullets at me and Brandt like we were targets in a matrix game and they were going for the high score."

"I didn't bring him in," Dawson explained, "Because he didn't plan the robbery, he didn't kill that accountant and he didn't keep the orichalcum. He told me where he met his Johnson and that's what I need the warrant for."

"Didn't plan the robbery!" Sokoth repeated dismissively. "That fucking thug has a half dozen warrants for his arrest that should have seen him brought in and put behind bars even before this mess with the lab. So I ask you again Dawson, why isn't he in here?"

"Because!" Dawson said, raising her voice for the word despite her most valiant effort to control it. After a moment to exhale, she continued at a measured pace.

"Because if I had, that would have been the end of it. Someone with a lot of money would have told the regional manager to stick the whole thing on Pickers, who would never give up his gang but would have described his employer every bit as vaguely for you as he did for me. The description of who you were looking for would have gotten around on every Lone Star communication band and all the Johnson would have to do is take off his mask."

"Like this," she continued, "I can still pick up the trail. He doesn't know we're onto him yet and if I can visit this club I can find him, or at least find someone who can point me to him. I know for a fact that if I'd brought Pickers in, this case would have been closed the next day. It's happened before, sergeant. And I recall quite clearly that you were just as disgusted by it as I was."

"I'm disgusted by this whole thing, Dawson," Sokoth spat, sitting back in his chair. "I wonder sometimes why I even accepted the transfer to San Francisco. I'm forty-one and I feel eighty-one."

"You should have been made lieutenant three years ago," Dawson commented. "After the tempo bust in Lincoln Park. So why are you still in this office and not the one upstairs?"

"Because," Sokoth said, imitating Dawson's tone from a moment before, "Someone in the office upstairs doesn't get to close the door and have private conversations with trusted consultants."

"Then we understand each other perfectly," she said matter-of-factly. "Any other day of the week I'd have brought Jason Pickers in here by his legs, whether or not he was shooting at me beforehand. But you won't get forty-four pounds of orichalcum to come out of his pockets by holding him upside down no matter how much you shake him."

"I don't need anything to fall out to make me want to do that," Sokoth said bitterly.

"Did you get my warrant?"

Sokoth lifted his chin at Brandt, who left his silent vigil in front of the door to the hallway and brought a commpad to Sokoth's desk. It had something pulled up on the readout and Dawson recognized the Lone Star logo immediately. Sokoth pointed at the pad with one finger and spoke.

"This bar you want to look at, do you know who owns it? Someone on the city council, Dawson. You get 12 hours from when I press this button to search the place and ask your questions, then we have to tell him one of his establishments is under investigation."

"And the person I'm looking for never goes there again," Dawson predicted.

"They aren't leaks when they're put there on purpose," Sokoth sneered. "They just call it the grapevine. Do you know who you're looking for?"

"I have a description. Someone in an Aztechnology-brand mask, and a general shape and size. Hires for jobs fairly often. I know where to look and I've found suspects on less than that."

"So you have. Dawson, that lab was owned by Aztechnology. Why would they rob their own holdings and only steal what's off the books?"

"I think the robbery was a cover-up for the murder," Dawson told him.

"That accountant was worth more than a billion nuyen?" Sokoth marveled. "What the hell was he into?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out," she admitted. "Whoever did this organized similar jobs in Bakersfield and in Sacramento. We won't know why unless we catch him."

"And when we do," Sokoth said grimly, "We're going to nail him to the wall and let him hang until forty-four pounds of orichalcum falls out of him."

The ork pressed his thumb to the commpad and validated the warrant. Dawson stood up and let Sokoth know what her plan was. "As soon as the sun goes down I'll pay a visit to the Troll Atoll. It's been several days at this point without any pursuit so the Johnson probably thinks he's in the clear."

Brandt opened the door for her. Sokoth leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his short black hair. "Dawson, don't update me again until you have a suspect in custody or at least the body of someone I can reasonably blame this mess on."

"Trying to maintain plausible deniability?" she asked him.

"Trying to maintain my fucking sanity," he corrected. "If I get one more angry vidcall from someone in France asking why we haven't found the burglars yet I'm going to give this office to Brandt."

Asher pressed his lips together into a thin line that communicated the same sentiment Sokoth had earlier while imitating Dawson: getting promoted is the fastest way you can be deprived of your ability to get things done.

"Then I'll contact you when I know more," she told him. The ork waved his hand as if to banish her, and Dawson put her hands in her coat pockets as she began making her way out.

Coming up beside her as she walked Brandt asked under his breath, "Detective, what's your gut tell you? Is this going to end in a shootout?"

"Not if I can help it," Dawson said back to him. "I think I'll have to point my gun at someone, but corporate types usually go quietly, they think they can wriggle their way out of a jail cell before anything sticks."

"Usually they can," Brandt admitted, "But usually there's not a billion nuyen worth of magical product at stake."

That was true, usually there wasn't. "My gut tells me, officer," Dawson said as they reached the precinct door, "When next I call for backup, bring the entire department."

= = =

Dawson spent the hours before sundown driving a slow, steady circuit around the Troll Atoll. It was the sole surviving building of a block in the particularly devastated vicinity of Bernal Heights. During the occupation years Bernal Heights had been the site of the Protectorate's main logistics and material coordination center and as a result the second most popular target for Knight Errant assault teams and sabotage tactics by the Mothers of Metahumans, second only to Saito's personal palace on Sunset Boulevard. There was a good chance that any of the buildings within sight of the club's door had been reduced to rubble or a bombed-out shell by a rocket Dawson had fired herself. She couldn't really be sure; after a while the rockets and the buildings all started to look the same.

The scars of urban warfare did have the benefit of making the Troll Atoll look pristine compared to its immediate neighbors and people were lined up around the block to get in even before the sun had set. In a lot across and down the street Dawson parked the Firebird among nearly a dozen rusted skeletons of torched and smashed vehicles from previous decades and watched the long line of people while listening to music.

"You see me now a veteran, of a thousand psychic wars! I've been living on the edge so long, where the winds of limbo roar!"

Subtly nodding her head to the rhythm, Dawson exmained at the gallery of misfits, punks and ravers eager to get in to the club. A lot of them looked like Alenia and her friends. Some of them even looked like Dawson herself when she was in her 20s. Well-paid and eager for an escape from the mounting memories.

"And I'm lean enough to look at, and far too old to see... All the scars on the inside!"

Was she going to have to shoot some of them tonight?

"I'm not sure that there's anything left of me!"

Slowly the light of day was dying and new lights were coming alive among the stretched-out crowd. Implants with LEDs, commpads and glowsticks, visors drawing power from datajacks or cyberdecks. The visual signals of a nocturnal culture that was for some transhumanism, and for others merely shortcuts to self-destruction.

"Don't let these shakes go on... It's time we had a break from it! It's time we had some leave!"

As the club filled and the line thinned, Dawson checked the Accelerator and loaded another cylinder into the inside pocket of her coat. She hadn't seen anyone in an Aztechnology mask, but the Johnson would probably get in through a rear door rather than the front. It would have been convenient to find him on the street but she hadn't really been expecting to get that lucky.

"We've been living in the flames... We've been eatin' up our brains... Oh please, don't let these shakes go on!"

Just after dark Dawson lifted the driver's side gull wing door and stepped out of the car. She took a moment to straighten her coat, music still spilling out of the car while she did so.

"You ask me why I'm weary, why I can't speak to you - You blame me for my silence, say it's time I changed and grew..."

Badge in her right coat pocket, handcuffs in the left. Commpad in the right pant pocket, balisong in the left along with a handful of silver dollars. Gun on her hip, hat on her head.

"But the war's still going on, dear, and there's no end that I know... And I can't say if we're ever..."

She was as ready as she was going to get.

"I can't say if we're ever gonna be free!"

She walked away from the car into the utter blackness of the street, no lights except those of the slowly dimming Firebird behind her the Troll Atoll a hundred and forty feet away. The tops of the "T" in the first word of the club's glowing neon sign had horns jutting out of them, letting any doubting visitors know exactly what they were in for.

The line had long since vanished into the double doors and the glass vibrated in the frame with the energy of the music being played within, which out here was only a fast-paced thudding. A burly troll with horns curved back against his skull and small round black sunglasses obscuring his eyes stood outside the door with his hands clasped in front of his waist. When Dawson stepped calmly into the neon light the troll flinched, taken completely by surprise; the black trenchcoat did more than just slim down Dawson's otherwise intimidating physique.

After a moment he recovered and remembered to do his job as a greeter, and a bouncer. "There's a cover charge tonight, ma'am," he offered in a gruff but serviceably courteous tone. Without missing a beat, Dawson produced from her left pocket a single chip and flipped it towards the troll which he caught it in one hand and looked at quizzically. When his gaze came back up, she was holding her Lone Star issued badge in the other hand.

"I'm here looking for a suspect," she stated. "I can show you the warrant but I'd rather you take my word for it."

To his credit, the bouncer's expression turned resolute rather than angry, like she'd expected. "Are you going to shoot them?"

Dawson inclined her head slightly as she spoke. "I'm not going to shoot anyone if I can help it, but it's not always up to me."

"And I don't imagine you'll let us empty the club," he guessed.

"Can't catch a fish if the tank is drained," she confirmed.

The troll made a show of contemplating things but only for a moment. Once it was past he pressed the signal pack on his hip and the double doors clicked open.

"I'm going to have to report this to the owner," the bouncer said at a low volume.

Dawson made for the door. "If I don't have my suspect in custody within an hour, it'll be because he's already left. In either case you can tell anyone anything you have to."

The interior of the Troll Atoll was, despite its asserted gimmick, pretty much identical to all the places she and her friends had wasted their youth in. Blacklights were the only illumination, painting the club-goers in streaks of glowing green, blobs of artless white and the occasional violet face mask. A bar was on the left, a stage on the right and in the center a mass of people dancing to the throbbing beat booming from the speakers in the ceiling. Beyond that mass on the far side of the building were the VIP rooms, arranged down a long hallway that continued beyond numerous curtains.

That would be where the Johnson was holding court, in rooms designed for the performers to entertain the biggest spenders. The illusion of privacy that etiquette insisted on for this activity also made it perfect for furtive business dealings--shadowruns and worse.

As she started across the dance floor, Dawson took note of the strippers on the stage. Two trolls, one man and one woman, were engaged in what appeared to be a sexualized version of a courtship ritual. Each was wielding a plastic sword in the shape of a cock; when one managed to stab the other, the 'wounded' was compelled to remove an article of clothing. The act was well-rehearsed and they were both getting nude at the same rate, to the delight of the drunken onlookers.

The pile of shifting bodies swallowed Dawson as eagerly as she remembered it doing the first time she'd come to a place like this, flush with ill-gotten gains and keen to forget what she'd done to get them. The first time, and the hundredth time. Perhaps this was the thousandth time. Men and women brushed against her, drawn as if magnetized to the broad solidity of her body, a rock in this tempest of tempo and tension most erotic. A girl with a half-shaved head strikingly similar to Alenia's washed up against Dawson's chest like a survivor from a shipwreck that had soaked the sea in drugs she was trying for the first time and looked up at her with an expression of are you my mommy?

Dawson had to suppress a shudder, grabbing the girl gently by the shoulders and standing her upright so she could walk by. Playing the stern authority figure for the hungry go-gangers of the Ancients had brought back an old appetite that if not now kept in check could leave many more people hanging on to her hips, desperate for discipline and structure. She'd never get anything done then.

Dancers craved her; they craved her because of her smell, or her height, or her muscle they could feel beneath her coat as they clung to her. They craved her because she was a woman, or because she was a human, or because she was simply close to them at the moment and to crave was to live. With their eyes and their hands and their mouths they begged her to stay. To lord over them. Be their mountain on which to climb and dive from. It was a familiar temptation, familiar in a way that was both sickening and thrilling at once. Shameful, and yet she knew that in the moments of it such was the most fulfilling experience a person could contemplate. To be one in a mass of drugged bodies, grinding and roiling and sharing breath and spit and maybe more if the lights were low enough. Immersed in this, it was easy to forget everything that had come before and everything which would come next.

It was like wading through the past and when she made it to the other end Dawson felt anything but clean. The music was still too loud, the lights too low and the suspect too at large for her to be anything approaching comfortable.

But the VIP hall was in front of her; pushing through the veils revealed an almost pitch-black corridor with numerous rooms on either side, thin lines of light visible beneath heavy curtains. Only a narrow blacklight on the ceiling allowed one to make out even the vaguest of silhouettes in the hallway itself, suggesting that here identity was something to be discarded in favor of indulgence. So long as the price was right. The dance floor was for being seen; in here was for hiding from gods and laws alike.

But no one would be hiding from Dawson tonight.

Technically it was within her legal ability to check every room systematically, but such a thing would quickly attract attention she didn't yet wish to have on her and possibly lead to the suspect catching wind that someone was searching the club. Judging that subtlety would get her farther than persistence, Dawon found an empty room and shut off the light inside, then stood in its doorway with her hat pulled down to conceal herself as much as possible against the wan light of the corridor. Then she watched people come and go.