Twelve #2
“Yeah, he used to show up every two or three weeks. Didn’t stay long, but he was one of the reliable ones. I thought he started buying elsewhere, or maybe he went clean, you never know.”
“What were you selling to him?”
“Ten grams of bliss and a dozen amp tabs, every time.”
Isako reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out the empty injection pen labeled Sudexatrine 02 . She holds it up to Vincent. “How about this stuff? Did he buy this from you, too?”
Vincent leans forward and squints at the slim white cylinder in confusion. “Nah, I don’t know what that is. Looks like prescription stuff. He didn’t get it from me.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure. Like you said, I’ve got no reason to lie to you.
” He looks past Isako. There are a few people hovering nearby, wisely not interrupting the woman with the longknife, but clearly waiting for her to leave so they can have their turn.
She’s taking too long, having a whole conversation instead of doing business.
It spooks them. They don’t know what’s going on, and no wageman with a drug habit feels secure to begin with.
A few of them back away and seem as if they’re about to leave.
Vincent’s voice edges into anger. “Look, lady, I swear to the Mother Below—I have no idea where Martim is.”
“He’s dead.”
Vincent’s shoulders jerk. The knob of his throat bobs in a hard swallow.
“I found out yesterday,” Isako says. “He was a friend of mine, and I want to know what happened to him. Did he seem any different the last time he came here?”
“I mean, he was always kind of intense, you know? I know he was a trac for that bigwig director in SoCon GasPro; that’s why he came all the way out here. Didn’t want to be recognized.”
“Could he have overdosed on the shit you were selling him? Was he also dealing?” Both possibilities are unpleasant to contemplate.
“Not likely, but who the fuck knows? Come to think of it, the last time I saw him, he was wound up more than usual. Just got what he came for, paid his bits, and left in a hurry. Didn’t stick around to chitchat at all.”
Isako drops the empty injection pen back into her pocket. “How long was he using?”
That’s not really important, is it? But she wants to know. It bothers her.
Vincent throws up his hands, his narrow face flushed.
“How the fuck should I know? He started coming to me maybe a couple of years ago. He might’ve been buying from other people before that.
He already had a bad sleepstim habit to start with.
I don’t interrogate customers about their health, especially not tracs.
” The freelancer crosses his arms and looks away, waiting for Isako to take the hint and leave.
She doesn’t. She can tell he’s holding back.
An uncomfortable moment passes. “So he’s really dead? You think someone killed him?”
“Maybe.”
Vincent returns his gaze to her reluctantly. “I think they did.”
“What makes you say that?”
The drug dealer hesitates, looks as though he’s debating with himself. “More than a year ago, he wanted me to quietly ask around among the badgeless. Said he’d pay me a lot for any information I could get about where to find the Field 93 survivors.”
“There were no Field 93 survivors.”
“That’s what they want you to think,” Vincent says. “Some of the rebels made it out before the airshield dropped. He was trying to track them down.”
A chill goes through her. “Did he?”
“I don’t know. I told him what I heard, that a couple of them booked it to a mining hab up north, and another two fell in with that commune near the rail yards, but I never heard anything after that.
” The freelancer hunches forward, arms on the table.
“Your pal was deep in the shit, cleaning up the Field 93 mess for his client. I think he had people following him.”
“How do you know?”
“Just a feeling I had, last couple times I saw him. Like maybe we were being watched.” Vincent glances around nervously, as if to prove his point. “With what he was involved in, no wonder he ended up termed.”
Isako’s surprised by her sudden anger. “Anyone could say the same thing about you.”
“At least I don’t put on airs about what I am,” Vincent replies.
“Tracs like you and him get off on doing dirty work for the jarbrains and make yourselves out to be respectable for it. Call me badgeless detritus, call me a parasite all you like, but all I’m doing is staying alive and giving people what they want.
They’re happy to see me, at least. When was the last time a stranger was happy to see you ? ”
Quite a while, Isako is forced to admit to herself.
She comes to the conclusion that for all his jittery bluster and indignation, Vince is telling the truth. He believes Martim was murdered, but he hasn’t seen or spoken to him lately and doesn’t have anything to substantiate his suspicions. She’s learned what she can from him.
Or maybe not. She’s been focused on Martim as a way to get close to Director Uchi, but he’s not the only route into SoCon GasPro.
She lets a pause hang over the booth while Vincent squirms and sweats.
“You must have other customers like Martim,” she muses aloud to him.
“Wagemen or contractors, maybe even subdirectors, coming here from other divisions so they won’t be recognized. ”
Vincent’s eyes widen.
“I want to know who you deal with in SoCon GasPro.” Isako always carries some offscrip with her; you never know when you’ll be dealing with the shadow economy and find yourself in need of untraceable street currency.
She counts out thirty bits and pushes them across the table in Vincent’s direction.
“That should cover your drink tab and any money you lost tonight from me taking up your time.” She lets him glimpse the rest of her cash.
“I could make it worth your while to go somewhere else and have a longer conversation.”
“I’m not going to rat out my customers,” Vincent declares, though his voice rises a little too fast and high at the end. “Anyone finds out I gave you their names, I’m one dead freel.”
“They’d never know,” Isako promises. “I never reveal my sources.”
Atiers have an unparalleled, Agency-masterminded reputation for always keeping their word and meeting their obligations. The Code only applies to clients, of course. She doesn’t owe any consideration to a badgeless informer, but he doesn’t need to know that. Right now, she wants his cooperation.
If Vincent provides her with the identity of a reasonably important individual in SoCon GasPro, she can track them down and blackmail them with evidence of their drug use.
That would be grounds for a wageman to be disciplined, dismissed, even terminated.
Considering Sandbar Uchi’s notoriously strict management practices, his employees can’t count on leniency.
Coercing one of Uchi’s subordinates into cooperating with her assignment would give her an operative on the inside.
She needs that, now that Martim’s gone.
Vincent eyes the cloth satchel of money that Isako slips back out of sight, and runs his tongue over dry lips. “I need another drink first,” he decides. He quickly palms the offbits she paid him and stands. “Do you want anything? You’re paying, after all.”
Isako shakes her head. Vincent heads to the bar.
She watches him as he places his order. There are still plenty of people in the lounge, but the crowd has started to thin a little.
Couples peel away, swaying down the stairs.
Isako’s reminded of how late it is. She’s definitely the oldest person left in the club.
It would be a point of pride, if she were enjoying herself.
A loud crash and a man’s angry shout behind her.
Isako bolts out of the booth to her feet, hand on her triggersheath, spinning around to find the threat—only to see that someone at the light pong game has shoved one of the other players.
Drinks have spilled and a glass shattered on the glowing table.
Punches are close to being thrown, but friends of the offended party have stepped in and all that seems to be happening now is a drunken and profanity-laden but inconsequential verbal confrontation.
Isako jerks her head back around to the bar. Vincent is gone.