An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (8 page)

“You do know that owning an animal in the state of
Oregon
is a felony
?
And a capital offense at that
?”
Sonya asked the
se
question
s
of all her new
customers as a matter of policy
.

He hugged the dog tighter to himself as it squirmed in place.
“Yes, but I
’
ve bought the police in my precinct
.”

She nodded
.
Anyone who could own a Kao Brothers suit obviously held some clout
.
This one obviously swung his with abandon.
“A different solution than most of my clientele, but completely acceptable
.
Payment is due now
.
I take actual credit slips, plastic money, proteins, plants, medicines, charcoal, or chocolate
.”
Her customer looked up sharply at that last
.
She smiled brightly
.
“I have a weakness for chocolate, but finding a supply is difficult
.”
Cocoa
was another plant which no longer grew on
E
arth
.

“I can pay with any of those you wish in the future, but would prefer electronic credit.”

“No
.
I have no electronics in my home
.
No motors, no computers, no vidlinks, no technology I can do without.”

“Greenie?”

“I
’
m a member of the Greenpeace organization, but I don’t participate in any of their foolish extreme actions
.”

“I’m sorry
.
I didn’t mean
—”

“Don’t be sorry
.
I’m not
.
I just wish the world were a slightly different place
.
I was born in the wrong age
.
Two hundred years ago, there were no prohibitions to keeping animals and there were only a handful of creatures on the endangered species list
.”
Sonya paused
,
looking thoughtfully into space
.
Her customer remained politely silent
.
“Anyway, enough of that
.
So I won’t take electronic credit
.
Hell, I don’t even have an account.”

“Everyone has an electronic account
.
You have one programmed from birth.”

“You
’
re assuming my birth was recorded
.”

Enlightenment showed in his eyes
.
Sonya
had
all but informed him that she
belong
ed
to
th
at expendable
minority known as Nils
.
They had no existence
.
They were in no way protected
.

“As you were unprepared,
I’ll
examine your pet for free.”

“Thank you
.”
He stiffly handed the dog to her, both arms outstretched and both shaking nearly as badly as the tiny dog
.

Her hands didn’t hesitate
.
From under the examination table
,
she pulled up an antique, silenced Berretta, pointing it at
the man’s
head and pulling the trigger
.
For all its age, the gun delivered a quiet pop that efficiently
deposited
his brains in a red mess across the back wall
.
She
caught
the dog as the
corpse’s
arms stopped receiving commands
and flopped
down with the rest of the body into a heap on the floor
.

The tiny dog yipped at her, more in surprise than any outrage at the man’s death
.
Sonya knew
he
wasn’t the dog’s master
.
The man didn’t know how to handle an animal and this one certainly didn’t belong to him
.
She
tut-
tutted to herself for the growing red puddle and the mess
she’d need
to clean
up
sometime later
.

Shifting the dog to the crook of her left arm, she
opened h
er victim’s
jacket
with her right and searched for
some identification
.
The expired Private Enforcement license for one Auzel Small confirmed her suspicions
.
Someone wanted her out of the way
.
Knowing PEs, only the person who hired him would care
about
his disappearance
.
Her only concern involved the patron’s intent
for finding her
—either
her
clandestine work as a
vet
,
or
even more clandestine membership in
the Green Action Militia.

Sonya shrugged
.
It didn’t matter either way
,
except
for any
follow
-
on attempts
.
In the meantime she
’d
inherited another dog and, she thought as she looked down at the body, more food for her animals.

* * *
 

Their Rose Quarter
expedition
s
had
started as a lark between himself and Carmine
.
They hobnobbed with the lower class, getting a vicarious thrill at being so close to the edge
.
Over the last year
Tony’s outings
had become more and more frequent, with or without h
is companion
.
Tony fidgeted with a tiny scrap of infamous blue TriMet seat fabric that had come loose
.
He all but leapt from his seat as
the lift-bus
landed
.

The thickening of a rising fog, typical
of the lower deck
ghetto
of
Portland
’s Rose
Q
uarter
,
added a dingy feel to the air
.
In spite of this
,
Tony’s steps grew livelier as he walked out the TriMet doors
.
The slight wrinkle above his thick black eyebrows smoothed out
as he relaxed
.

Throngs of the poor, wretched
,
and homeless scurried by outside heavily armored doors
and the many open
,
gaping
holes
in the
abandoned lowest levels of the city
.
G
arishly signed tube hotels, with their two-point-five meter long plastic coffin
-
shaped sleeping quarters for those lucky few who could afford even their modest prices, provided an eerie
, if erratic
,
illumination.

A token girl, her State of
Oregon
prostitution tattoo prominently displayed over one shoulder, wriggled her barely clad and unnaturally firm breasts against Tony’s arm as he
wound
his way past her beat
.
Next to her
,
a man without a left leg hobbled on
the other
and a crutch bearing a filthy plastic sign claiming “Veteran
.
Praise God
.
Please help
.”
Tony didn’t even register either of them as individuals, but rather part of the
b
ackground one endured to attend the hottest clubs
.

The transition from
barrio
to city hot-spot came without a marked delineation
,
yet
the line
definitely
existed
.
No mugger passed a certain crack in the sidewalk, no bum caged a drink outside any club, no welf paraded her children past
that unseen barrier
.
Here an armored Metro cruiser glided slowly past, punctuating the
amount of
money circulating in this tiny section of street level
.
One block in either direction
,
and the anarchy of the-fittest-will-survive reigned
.

A glaring solido of a red rose slowly dying marked Tony’s favorite watering-hole only a few doors down
.
The doorman cum bouncer, with two massive
,
silver
-
colored prosthetic arms, nodded deferentially to Tony as he entered
.

“Hi
,
Jock
.
You get your arms readjusted?”

“Nope, still got that flutter in one
.
I almost broke a jug’s skull with it yesterday.”

“I know a good mechanic.”

“So do I,
Mr.
Tony,” the big man said with a grin
.
“Carmine’s waiting for you.”

“Thanks.”

Typical of
any night, the biomass of people in the Wilted Rose threatened to burst the building like an overripe plum
.
While not an olfactory bar, the bittersweet smell of lilies, probably two or three OU
E
higher than comfort level,
tweaked his nose
.
Ignoring it as irrelevant,
Tony wedged, bumped
,
and shoved his way to the bar amid
st
the vocal stylings of the Communist Bananas, twenty decibels above the level
that
would cause
harm to
most deaf rocks
.

“Bloody Mary,” he shouted at the bartender
.
He cast about to find his girl
.
For once his height came in handy
, for
he could look above most people
.
He spotted her behind a
pair
of nude girls interlocked in a
trib
so sexual as to
edge on
even the loose moral codes enforced by the Rose’s establishment
.
Carmine decorated a booth on the other side of the writhing
pair
with her long
,
silver hair contrasting
with
her loose, neon-green dress
.
She frantically waved and yelled to get his attention
.
“Make that two
.
And two scotch and sodas,” he screamed, correcting his order
.

Tony desired a partner to take his lead without much question
—
a difficult find in a world of
“
Do first before done to.
”
He
always
knew Carmine’s charms
amounted to
something
more ornament
al
and empath
ic
than intelligen
t
.

Holding four drinks high above his head, Tony
wound
his way
to the booth
, ignoring three blatant passes, one from an ambi
.
He managed to only stain his floral print shirt with a moderate splash from one
glass
or the other on his way through the crush
.
He parted the
booth
shield
—
a layer of charged air particles held in a matrix of electric white noise
—
with his elbow and moved in
.
He silently praised Carmine for keeping the sound shield up
.
It lowered the racket and press of the room to a minimum whisper
.
Carmine greeted him with a bright smile
of
blood-red teeth and compl
e
menting lipstick
.

“Weeble
,
but that band is loud tonight,” he said a bit too loudly, depositing the drinks on the table.