Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (18 page)

“I paid. What did she say?” The question is quiet but firm and I make sure my body language doesn’t give a hint of retreat.

Flamingo considers her position for a moment and the rest of the Tics look to her for the signal as to how to react. Suddenly her posture softens and she even smiles slightly, as if at some private joke.

“She says ‘begin at the furthest point’.”

“Is that really what she said?” I ask, still without moving.

Now that she’s relaxed a little she answers without obvious malice.

“I never lie about spider.”

“Is what spider says true?” I ask her.

She just shrugs.

“No one knows, ever. True, not true… real, not real. No one knows.” As she says it a small spark of the loving gleam comes back into her eyes.

“Fine.”

I turn my back, which is a show of disdain for the Tic. It means I’m willing to be vulnerable in her presence, that I’m not afraid of her. I head back the way I came but the Tics don’t follow.

“Next time,” flamingo says.

I stop and turn to look at her. Even at a distance I can see she has that little smile back.

“Next time, food.” I consider reacting, then decide against it. The music suddenly roars back to life and accompanies me to the ladder, but the Tics remain where they are. I climb down, back into the world.

Having returned to the world of human beings, I go to the Mega’s second-level food court and order from a Greek stall. Sitting in a brightly colored plastic chair I bask in the sounds and smells of the mall, letting its familiarity drain away the memory of the Tics, the spider, the things caught in her web. Down here it’s hard to imagine that she’s even really up there. Everything is so 
normal
.

At the table to my right four young men with mixed African and Hispanic features are playing some game that involves hand signals, like janken or shoushiling but more elaborate. They hide their hands behind their backs, then pull them out simultaneously to reveal previously hidden gestures, and one guy keeps score on a holo tablet he’s projecting from a wrist unit. At times they pull their hands out and then break out into loud laughter at some turn of events in the game.

At the table in front of me two high-school girls are talking loudly about the date one of them had last night, the description occasionally rising into squeals of disbelief or degenerating into fits of giggling. It seems the girl with the date, who has short blonde hair and deep brown eyes, finally bagged some big game—a boy she’s been after forever but who’s ignored her until now. I hear enough to learn that he broke up with his girlfriend and that seems to have turned the tide in blondie’s favor. Her friend cups her own breasts and squeezes them together in a lurid gesture and they burst into another round of hormonal giggles.

I finish my souvlaki and turn from the life around me to the business at hand. My best guess at what the spider meant is that I should begin with the suspect who is furthest away physically. This literal interpretation could be completely wrong, of course, but that’s how it is with the spider. She’s like the Oracle at Delphi or a Zen master in a koan. She dispenses wisdom in confusing, indirect ways, and those of us who consult her have to try to interpret her messages as best we can. There’s no way to know if you’re right or wrong—you just have to hope.

My most distant suspect, of course, is Vicente Suarez and the rest of the 
Suerte
. The question is, how do I investigate him? It’s precisely because he claims to have the power of fate on his side that he’s a suspect in the first place. If his claim is false, then he’s not a viable suspect. If his claim is true then a covert investigation is doomed. His supernatural luck will feed me some misinformation, or get me killed, or simply put him beyond my reach. I think about it, sipping at an orange juice, but the more I think, the more it seems that there is really only one way to approach the problem and that’s directly.

What I need to do is sit down with Vicente Suarez and ask him: are you after Max Prince? Not only are all other plans likely to fail, but if he’s genuine then there’s no reason, really, that he shouldn’t tell me the truth. His famed 
suerte
 has kept him alive far beyond his natural lifespan. It’s protected him from the Mexican authorities and rival gangs. Why wouldn’t it protect him against me? If he tells me that the 
Suerte y Muerte
 tried to kill Max, what am I going to do, arrest him? Shoot him? Hell, I can’t even bring weapons with me to Mexico. Here my security license gives me certain privileges—there I’m just a tourist. And if I walk into a police station and repeat what he’s told me, why should he care? He’s killed, or his people have killed, hundreds or maybe thousands of Mexicans, many of them wealthy and influential. The police have been powerless to do anything about it, so why should they try to arrest him, maybe even risk their lives, for a washed up gringo like Max?

The thing is, if I’m going to talk to Suarez, I’m going to need help getting in to see him. It’s not like I can just look up his address the way I would with some citizen, go to Mexico City, and ring his doorbell. Trying to meet him without arranging it properly first is only likely to get me killed, if not by the 
Suerte
 then by one of the numerous other gangs in the city that prey on stupid foreigners who stray into the wrong neighborhoods. Fortunately, I know someone I think can help me. Unfortunately, she’s a member of one of L.A.’s most dangerous gangs. After the Tics, of course.

It’s too long ago for most people to remember now, but the collapse of the American Empire that happened during my stasis, the change that I woke up to, shook the world deeply at the time. Almost overnight power balances had shifted, borders had been erased or redrawn, and vacuums had appeared in leadership roles. It must have been a time of epidemic fear and, for those who were ruthless enough to exploit it, great opportunity.

One of the results of the collapse was an abrupt surge in the size and sophistication of street gangs. Sudden economic uncertainty made crime attractive. High levels of violence in the world’s cities, even in rural areas, made membership in a group a sensible option, for self-defense if nothing else. The temporary absence of any civil authority throughout the former Empire made forming a gang easier and made committing crimes less dangerous.

On top of that, the temporary dissolution of borders led to mass migration from the poorer areas of the world to the wealthier ones, but the new arrivals who hoped for a better life were unwelcome and often found the only solace and livelihood available to them was in the gangs. By the time national borders were re-imposed—although in some places they had been much altered—and a modicum of police-enforced order had returned, the nature of street gangs had been irreversibly altered. They had grown larger, but more importantly they had become better organized, better led, better armed, and more sure of themselves.

The gangs weren’t fighting with mere handguns any more. A multitude of civil wars prior to the collapse, and the plundering of military bases afterward, had put the best, newest weapons onto the black market and into their hands. Their ordnance often matched, and sometimes outdid, that of the police. Perhaps just as importantly, many of the gangs’ newest members had fought in those civil wars, and combat experience meant they not only had military ordnance, they knew how to use it strategically. Some of them had officer training and experience in leadership.

While the gangs continued to compete, they also communicated with one another, forming a web of interconnecting criminal organizations. In many ways they were like a mirror image of the nations of the world: sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing, but always connected. Just as the President of California could contact the Regent of New York City or the Prime Councilor of Mexico, one gang’s leader could always, if they chose, communicate with another’s. It was that line of communication that I needed to tap into.

For good or ill, working security in the private sector often means you make contact with unsavory clients. Wealthy lawyers and sim stars need security for their homes, but gangs also need it for their houses, bunkers, and warehouses. Sometimes they have an array of safe houses spread throughout the city. Other times everything is contained in one apartment block, owned and occupied solely by the gang’s members. You might not want to work for them, but to refuse a gang’s contract would be dangerously insulting. Besides, your ethics would put you out of business. There are only so many customers who can afford my rates, after all, and very few of them are good-hearted altruists, whether they’re technically criminals or not.

Working for a gang can be dangerous since it’s tempting for them to terminate your life along with your contract once the work is done, but there are usually ways to protect yourself if you’re careful. The main danger is that the gang must ask itself this question: why should you walk around with the secrets of their security system in your head? So you install what they want, but you leave a number of options as to how the system is to be configured and activated. Then you educate one of their members on how to select from those options, which you’ve set up in a user-friendly way. You walk away, they initialize the system according to their own preferences and codes, and after that you can’t get through their defenses any more than the next guy.

Beyond that precaution, there’s one rule: you never 
ever
 leave a back door when dealing with criminals. This is something that’s routinely done with less sophisticated clients. You program a loophole into the system which you can then exploit to burgle their home or office. If you don’t relish doing the dirty work yourself, you can sell the information to someone who will. Your clients will be outraged that the system failed, of course, but you patiently explain to them that the break-in happened because they didn’t opt for the upgrades you originally suggested and someone took advantage of the resulting weakness. You then install whatever high-end hardware they refused to buy the first time around, make a little more money, and this time leave no back door. After that their security works wonderfully and they respect you for having given good advice in the first place, even if they’d been too penny-wise to accept it. Sometimes this technique even leads to referrals, believe it or not.

Anyway, none of that is going to fly with the gangs. They may be sadistic thugs, but they’re not stupid, they’re not amateurs, and they 
are
 paranoid. Once you finish the installation and leave, another security firm is going to be hired to come in and vet the system for entry points, lack of parallel protections, and the like. If they find anything like that then there’s no point in even trying to run—you are as dead as God on Sunday. After the double checking is complete, the gangs scramble the configuration of the system a final time and everyone is locked out except members. Just the way it’s supposed to be.

I’ve worked for gangs a number of times, both installing and checking systems, and while I can’t claim to be on friendly terms with any of them there is one that owes me a favor. The Hungry Ghosts originated in Japan, but came to America during the period of collapse. Even at its height, the American Empire had never ingested Japan the way it did so many other nations. The Japanese were far too proud to put up with it and had the technological know-how for hard-core sabotage, so they didn’t have to allow it. Nonetheless, they didn’t want to alienate the Empire either, so someone dug up and repurposed some ancient terminology and a “co-prosperity sphere” was established, creating closer ties between the American Empire and the islands that had never really ceased being an empire of their own.

So, even without being absorbed into the American behemoth, ties between the U.S. and Japan became closer, tighter, and more binding. When the Empire fell, Japan entered a difficult period. In the last days, when it was becoming clear that the spreading chaos couldn’t be contained, there was an exodus of both legal and illegal immigrants from the Land of the Rising Sun. Amongst those who flew first class and entered through customs were government honchos, business leaders, and a scattering of highly-regarded writers and artists. Amongst those who bought, rented, or stole planes and boats and did an end-run around the official paperwork were some less savory folks.

Most criminals stayed behind. The ancient Yakuza network was too entrenched in Japanese culture for its members to consider leaving. The bosozoku—the speed tribe motorcycle gangs from whose members the Yakuza drew new recruits—remained as well. They lived in symbiosis with the Yakuza, so they weren’t going anywhere. Some of the younger, more modern gangs, however, were willing to consider relocation. A recent development in the Japanese underworld at the time was the all-girl gang. They dated and sometimes even married male gangsters, but they had moved far beyond the point of serving as mere appendages to the men. Several cells from two different girl gangs escaped to California, the Hisa-me and the Hungry Ghosts. It’s the Ghosts who can help me.

Once here, the Ghosts moved fast. There was an aggressive recruitment drive within the local Japanese community which, given the uncertain times, was very effective. Before long they were surpassing indigenous gangs in size and success. At first, other gangs made the mistake of underestimating them simply based on their sex. It was a mistake that no one got the chance to make twice.

Soon the Ghosts had enough business—drugs, prostitution, protection, and general mayhem—to be pulling down serious money. They bought a building on East Second Street in Little Tokyo and remodeled it the way they would have back home, combining old-world touches, like an abundance of fragrant wood, with urban features, like neon and modern art. Inside, shrines to their ancestors vied for space with pachinko machines and high-end holo systems. All that remained to finish their headquarters was a top-notch security system.

SafeT did the initial set-up, then Guarantee Guard did a vetting and pronounced the system secure. The only trouble was that SafeT and Guarantee Guard were both owned by AntiAccess LLP, though the Ghosts didn’t know that. As SafeT was busy installing the system, the Ghosts were already looking around for someone to check it. They retained Guarantee Guard, who promptly told SafeT they’d been hired. SafeT now knew they could leave a back door without any danger because their own corporate brother was going to be the one checking their work.