TROUBLESHOOTER
by Andrea Speed
Four

By the time she reached her apartment, her knee had started to hurt.

Well, hurt wasn’t really the term - get stiff was more accurate. The old injury in that knee decided to flare up at the worst times, although it did occur to her that maybe if she didn’t use it to break people’s faces so much, it wouldn’t flare up at all.

Her apartment was in a building that used to be an old hotel, converted on the outside to look like just another anonymous, crumbling brick apartment block, while on the inside it still looked like a hotel circa 1950. The halls were long and narrow, red carpeted, the doors oak painted white, the ghosts of old room numbers still visible where the whitewash wasn’t that thick. It was quaint, and for some reason it amused her.

Her apartment was at the end of the hall on the sixth floor, and while a three and a half room flat would be considered small in anyone’s estimation, it was really all she needed.

She took a quick shower, just staying in long enough to wash off the blood, then got dressed in an old t-shirt and silk boxer shorts, not ready to go back out into the world just yet. She had some work to do.

She went to her “kitchenette”, not a room but a small, tiled adjunct of her living room, and got a bottle of iced tea, as well as a pack of blue ice from her freezer. On her way out she stopped to give the calico cat (ha) dozing on her windowsill a quick pet. Its fur was warmed by the sun, and it purred contentedly, showing her its mostly white stomach for a little scratch. People that knew her were always shocked to learn she had a pet - and she suspected she should be offended by that - but weren’t surprised when they learned her cat’s name was Satan. Well, ever since she read there were some odd Evangelicals who thought calicos - not black cats - were a sign of the devil, it just seemed obvious.

Her flat was sparsely furnished. It had a little more stuff - and character - than her office, but only because she couldn’t stand looking at the pale pastel striped wallpaper. Everything but a few specialty items - her computer, her stereo, her bamboo sword and flak jacket - were thrift store items. Not only because she didn’t have the money for new, but also because she’d be the first to admit she wasn’t stylish or trendy or really much of anything. She was always sure she made a bad woman, as culture dictated it anyways.

She stretched out on her worn, tawny velvet sofa as her computer booted up, and rested the blue ice pack on her knee. It was just a little red right now, but she didn’t think it would bruise. The old scar under her kneecap was a vivid slash of purple, dead skin on top of living flesh. She had no idea why it was purple, or why it had remained raised, never fading away like her other scars. Perhaps it was trying to be a metaphor.

She picked up her remote off the heavy rectangular coffee table and turned on her stereo, letting the smooth sonic wash of The Meeting Places fill in the silence. It was stuffy in here - the sun was especially brutal to the sixth floor denizens - but she had no desire to get up and turn on her rickety air conditioner. She could live with stuffy for now. Sunlight, gauzy and oddly yellow tinged, poured in through the windows, and spilled over her ugly mustard colored carpet like a stain.

Along with her remotes and a World Press Review magazine, her flat screen computer monitor rested on the coffee table. The keyboard and the mouse were both infrared, the hard drive stack taking up space on the floor beside the table. There wasn’t really room in here for a desk, and besides, it wasn’t like she had lots of company. Or any company, for that matter. She liked keeping her space private.

As soon as she was logged on, she sent an IM to Sajeet - or, as he was known to his many usenet groups, cypherpunk101 - even though he lived on the first floor of her building. As far as she could tell, Saj never actually answered his phone, and rarely his door, unless he was expecting take out. Otherwise, he was always on line. He lived his life through an internet filter.

He was a “cyber-commuter”, working for a local telecommunications company, a technogeek whose idea of heaven was a cursor he could move in his sleep by utilizing rapid eye movements. The living room of his apartment was taken up by a “homemade” server, and two different computers, cabled together. Although he lived most of his life through his computers, he used to go out occasionally. About three months ago, things changed, and he had rarely been out of his apartment since.

Mrs. Fernandez, the building’s resident gossip, told her that she heard Sajeet had been mugged one night, returning from the convenience store on the next block. He wasn’t physically hurt, and only lost ten dollars and a six pack, but since then he’d never left the building. He only ventured out occasionally to go to the communal laundry room on the first floor. He’d stopped talking to her when she called him “agoraphobic” : he objected to that strenuously, as he apparently equated that with mental illness and insanity. She could still hear him shouting, “I am not crazy!“ Talk about overreaction. He didn’t like having it pointed out; it was okay, just as long as his problem remained nameless.

She almost wanted to ask him what was wrong with mental illness anyways. She was diagnosed depressive and borderline schizoid, yet she was still accepted into the program. They actually saw her borderline schizoid diagnosis as a boon to the unique training process she under went.

Since he lived his life exclusively on-line now, she knew he always had his IM programs going, but since he was usually chatting to about a half dozen people, she knew she’d be lucky if he even noticed her within the hour. So she added to her bland message - which had simply been ‘Sajeet’ - ‘What do you know about Osiris?’ As long as she didn’t divulge she was working on a case involving one of its supposed employees, she wasn’t violating the privacy clause of the case.

It was while she was waiting for his response, and surfing the web, scanning all the information she could dig up on Ward and Girani through public sites, when her internet phone software alerted her of an incoming call. She only used the phone program for overseas calls, as it was cheaper overall than selecting some goddamn long distance landline program (and by filtering it through a computer, she could change her voice if necessary), but no one ever called her at that number.

Except one person.

She had no desire to talk to Aftermath, now or ever, but sometimes ‘Math had genuine information of worth. Most of the time it was shit, but the little she had gotten was enough to make her acknowledge the call. She also started the “trace” program Sajeet had custom made for her in happier times, although she knew it probably wouldn’t work; Aftermath seemed to have some kind of counter program.

“Do you know long how long I’ve been waiting for you to get on line?” Aftermath said. ‘Math was using a filter that made their voice sound like Barry White speaking into a vo-coder, with just a touch of space alien.

“Are you that lonely?”

There was a brief noise of static that she took for a scoff. “People like us, we don’t get lonely.”

“Don’t compare us.” She opened her bottle of iced tea and drank it quickly, thirsty enough that she downed it in three gulps. It didn’t taste anything like tea, in reality - it was too sweet, and artificially flavored with a substance that could charitably called fruit like. It bothered her that she actually liked it, even though she knew it was crap.

“Why not? Deny it all you wish, but we’re cut from the same cloth, sprung from the same bloody ground -”

“Flushed down the same toilet?”

“You’ve been in America too long. You’re becoming crude.”

“I was crude before, remember?” On screen, her messenger program jumped to the forefront, as Sajeet replied: ‘Egyptian god or software company?’ “So where are you, ‘Math? Still in the Czech Republic?”

“What makes you think I was ever there, Zero?”

She scowled at the screen as she typed to Sajeet: ‘Company. Were they working on a big interface project?’ But she knew, even as she typed it, that that had been only the first of Ward’s lies. Life may have been cheap to some, and doubly so to Girani, but to kill for an experimental program? No fucking way. That was neither his business or his style. “I told you not to call me that, Six.”

Aftermath - Six - chuckled. It sounded like a synthesized steam train starting up: chuff-chuff-chuff. “Still hiding behind a pseudonym, Zero? After all this time? You worked for MI-6, dear. You should put that on your business cards. It would impress the hell out of the peons. If they know what it is in the States.”

Sajeet, being the techno-geek that he was, usually had reliable - if mysterious - contacts everywhere a computer could reach. So she easily believed it when his new message popped up on screen. ‘No. Court’s lock down after their last code theft has them out of that business. Why?’

Perhaps Six took her silence for brooding, because Six added, with a phony, dramatic gasp, “Oh, that’s right - they won’t acknowledge you, will they? Not after what you did …”

“And they still want your ass, Six. I intend to give it to them too.”

“Aw, and you think kissing their rosy red rumps will get you back in, do you?”

“No, I just want you to shut the fuck up.” She typed to Sajeet: ‘Some asshole trying to impress me, I suppose. Can you get into the Osiris employee files and upload all the locals in the W’s to me?’ That was a tall order, and one that could break whatever fragile truce they had going here. She could do it without him, but Sajeet was very good - he probably dreamed in code. He never left a footprint, no matter where he roamed.

Another bit of vo-coder fuzz through her admittedly sub-par computer speakers. Six scoffing once more. “I’ve outgrown MI-5. They have no hope of catching up to me now. But you? You always had promise, Zero -”

“Is that why you’ve chosen me to bug the shit out of?” Finally, Sajeet responded: ‘Is this for a case?’

‘You know I can’t say, Saj’, she typed.

Hardly a pause. “I’ll pretend that’s not a yes. 1 sec.’

“Bug? You wound me. I know where you are. I could sell you out any time. Do I?”

“You don’t know where I am. All you have is some numbers I can easily dump. And to sell me out would be to sell you out. You can’t send me down the river without drowning yourself. Must be a real pisser, huh?” Her knee was beyond numb; it was corpse cold. She took off the ice pack and tossed it at the end of the couch, figuring she’d put it away later.

The silence coming from Six was thick, and she could just imagine the hate bleeding down the phone lines and fiber optics, trying to reach through the speakers and throttle her. It made her smile. Tomahawk kicked in on the stereo, the raging noise an intriguing counterpoint to Six’s deliberate silence.

Her primary e-mail started to receive dozens of files, all from Sajeet, and all employee files from Osiris. There weren’t that many Wa - names on the list, so she quickly messaged him to stop. ‘Remember, MWSDI5M. And I have no idea who you are.’

‘Got it.’ She typed in return. MWSDI5M was Sajeet speak, meaning ‘message will self destruct in five minutes’ - it was a needless reminder for her to delete and “clean” the files as soon as she was done with them. None of this was perfectly legal. ‘I have a cell phone I need info pulled off of. Can I bring it down?’

Sajeet lived down on the fourth floor. He didn’t have much in the way of company either, or friends who weren’t online, who existed only as a distance presence. She was one of the most tangible ones he had, and it made her feel kind of bad for him, as she wasn’t really a very good friend - to him or to anyone. She couldn’t be. It was the nature of her beast.

“One of these days, Zero, we’ll end this,” Six growled, an angry android invading her computer.

“I’m waiting.” Ward’s file was such an interesting bit of reading, she almost lost her train of thought. What the fuck..?

Sajeet’s message window popped up, surprising her. There was just too much shit happening at once. ‘Sure. Can I keep the phone once you’re done with it?’

Probably to cannibalize for parts, or rework for another purpose. If he wasn’t American, and currently agoraphobic, he’d have made a great tech operative. Which was why she was probably friends with him. It was a natural instinct now to surround herself with a team that could help her the most.

And it was terribly refreshing that he was one of those men who, rather than deal with a messy, emotional scene, would simply prefer to pretend nothing had ever happened in the first place. She would never have to apologize, as long as she didn’t call him the “A” word again.

‘All yours’ she typed, and said aloud, “What does it take for you to go away, Six?”

“You’re dead, Zero. You know that, don’t you?”

“We’re all dead, Six. The only difference is, some of us know it.” She closed down the IM program, and was going to close her browser, but Ward’s employee file seemed to taunt her. “Ineffectually taunt me another time, Aftermath - I’m busy.” With that, she shut down her phone program, the closest thing to slamming down the receiver.

Everything about the Ward file was correct: address, age, contact info. He was a good employee, anonymous, not stellar but not awful. The sole discrepancy was in his employee photo.

Now, he certainly could have put on weight, dyed his hair, gotten color contacts; there was a thousand easy ways to alter your appearance. But you could not alter the shape of your face easily or realistically, not without the help of a surgeon or a special effects crew. The Ward in her office had a round, pudgy face; the one in the photo had a narrow face, high cheekbones making him look almost vulpine. They were not the same man - not even close.

So who the hell had hired her? And why were they pretending to be Andrew Ward.

She had the sinking feeling that this had just turned out to be the longest day of her life.

TROUBLESHOOTER
by Andrea Speed
Three

“Bryce had a partner? I had no idea,” she responded coolly, not bothering to turn around. She slipped her hand inside her coat, and listened hard, trying to judge his proximity to her by sound alone. It was difficult, especially considering the couple next door, who sounded like they were filming a porno movie.

There was a noise behind her, a small “snick”, and she figured he had pulled out his knife. Guns were noisy, but they were also relatively easy to trace via ballistics now - you had to have lots of money, or be extremely smart (or lucky) to use a gun in a murder that was anything but a drive by nowadays. But knives were low tech and ubiquitous, difficult to trace with such exactitude … and preferred by professionals, unless they were snipers. Anyone could use a gun, but not everyone could use a knife with proficiency. Bryce had not been stabbed multiple times; he had been cut once, and all the blood was in the bathroom, running mostly down the drain. If he wasn’t a professional killer, he was at the very least a skilled amateur.

There was a flaw with knives, though, one that she intended to exploit. It could only be used in close quarters.

“D’ya think lyin’s actually gonna help you?” He snarled. His voice had a touch of the Midwest to it, in direct opposition to his tough guy talk. He was moving towards her slowly, taking his time. Perhaps he was suspicious of her refusal to turn around and face him.

“Who do you work for?” She wondered, hand closing around the cool metal cylinder hidden inside her jacket. Some people carried guns - herself included - but there were times when quiet and finesse were called for.

“You ain’t the one askin’ questions here, darlin‘. Now let’s see those hands of yours.”

She waited until he had taken step closer, and then said, trying her best to sound cowed, “Okay, sure, no problem.”

She had done it more times than was probably necessary in any lifetime. She spun quickly, thumbing the stud on the thick handle of the automatic baton half way through her turn, so it was completely out by the time she hit him in the side of the face with it. The tip grazed his eye, making him instinctively move his head back, even while his hand moved forward with the knife (he was a lefty). She quickly cracked the baton across his thumb, making him lose his grip on the knife, and gave him a solid kick square in the balls.

Alex had always wondered why she liked to wear clunky, steel toed boots. She wished he was here to see why.

He didn’t scream - he couldn’t. The best he managed was a high pitched squeak as the breath escaped from him in a rush, and she was so pissed off she bet she ruptured at least one of his testicles. As he doubled over, face flushed, she grabbed his head and rammed her knee right into the bridge of his nose, shattering it. She felt the cartilage snap, felt the warmth of his blood as it gushed down her leg, and then cracked him across the temple with the butt end of her baton. He hit the floor like a two hundred pound sack of shit, which was undoubtedly what he was.

Just for good measure - and Bryce - she kicked him in the face, cracking something in his jaw, sending a tooth flying out of his mouth like a bullet. Had to love these steel toed boots. “You ain’t dealing with a rent boy anymore, fuckface,” she spat, retracting and pocketing the baton and pulling out a knife of her own. This was automatic as well, the blade snapping out at the press of a button, a blade like a box cutter. It was made for slashing, not stabbing, but was sharp enough to slice an artery like it was no more than sealing tape.

She dropped to her knees on the floor, right beside him, and dug her elbow into the back of his neck, leaning across his shoulder so she could put all her weight down on it if necessary. Then she put the blade of her small knife right behind his ear, pressing the edge hard enough so he could feel it. “You’re groaning, asshole, so I know you’re conscious. Now you’re going to talk, or we’re going to re-enact a scene from Reservoir Dogs.”

It was vital that once you had an opponent off his feet, you kept him down, especially if he was bigger and stronger than you. But with ruptured testicles, she had a feeling he wouldn’t be getting up right quick anyways. His dominant (left) arm was pinned beneath her, for added leverage. “Fug oo,” he said into the carpet. The fact that he had a broken nose and was getting his face mashed into the rug combined to make him sound like he had the worst cold of winter. A painful one too. “Ill oo bidge.”

It took a second or two for her to interpret that. You had to love some people - even drowning in their own blood, they refused to acknowledge they had lost. She knew from experience she was exactly like that, but she didn’t find it all that endearing in other people. “You’re threatening me? That’s hilarious.” She pressed the blade down until it sliced into his ear, sending a thin trickle of blood down the line of his jaw. “You’re running out of time, dog boy.”

He made a noise like a muffled squeal as the blade cut through cartilage, but she was careful to stop, leaving the blade wedged in the wound, with just enough pressure so he knew it was there. “You have a lot of parts I can cut off before you even get close to dying,” she hissed. “Ears, nose, eyes, dick. Fingers are overrated, don’t you think?”

“Fug oo.” But he didn’t say it like he meant it.

“Where’s the briefcase, jackoff?”

“On hav id. Ee din ave id.”

‘Don’t have it. He didn’t have it.’ “Bullshit.” She put enough pressure on the knife to cut a millimeter more into his ear.

He made a noise like a wounded donkey and tried to struggle, but she pressed down on his neck, keeping him stuck to the floor. “M ellin th’ ooth! Ee ribbed ub uff!”

‘I’m telling the truth. He ripped us off.’ “Who’s we?”

He fell strangely quiet. If he was playing unconscious, she wasn’t buying it - she’d used that gambit herself. But maybe he just didn’t know what to say … or just couldn’t say it. Torture now was better than death later on. “It’s Girani, isn’t it? He hired you, didn’t he?”

“Fug oo.”

Oh yeah, that was as good as a yes. “Did you torture Bryce? He showed up without the briefcase, and you tried to get the info out of him, but finally you got bored? Does that sum it up?”

He made an inarticulate noise that was probably a curse, but she didn’t even try and interpret it. She was too busy trying to pull the threads together in her mind. Something still wasn’t right here. “If he was meeting you here to sell the case, he’d have brought it with him. He wasn’t meeting you, was he? He thought he was meeting someone else, but you guys got in the way. Is that a corpse they’ll be fishing out of the river soon? But Bryce wasn’t as dumb as you thought, because he came to the meeting without the case …” Okay, so he was low level grifter, a boy toy getting bored, but he was not a complete idiot. He probably stored the briefcase somewhere safe, and soon as he had the cash, he would take them to the location. Was Bryce strong enough to withhold the information at the cost of his life? From what little she knew about him, she wouldn’t think so, but people could often surprise you.

What had the prick said when he finally came out of the closet? (Oh, the joke possibilities there.) “You his partner?” Bryce must have said his “partner” had the case. A real person, or one he made up, in hopes of scamming his way out of this? Shit, he was a con artist - each was equally probable. “He gave you a name, didn’t he? Give me the name, shithead, or you’re gettin’ the full Van Gogh.” She pressed down a little more, to help him make up his mind.

“Airy!”

“You can enunciate better than that.”

Now she knew he cursed her, but then he spat out, with relative clarity, “Perry!”

“Perry? That’s it? Just one name?”

He huffed a hard sigh through his mouth, as if forcing himself to talk clearly had exhausted him. Or just used up his available oxygen, since he could no longer breathe out of his ruined nose. “Ee ept refeedin’ id oar an’ oar.”

‘He kept repeating it over and over.’ Did she believe that? Busted ball man could certainly be lying, but right now she had no proof one way or the other. She’d just have to accept it for now, and come back after him if she discovered he’d fed her a shovelful of shit. “I think some good boy gets to keep most of his ear,” she told him, retracting the knife. She them hit him savagely with the blunt, butt end of the blade, right behind the ear. It was a sensitive spot, and most people you hit there hard enough went right out. She told herself she was simply playing it safe by hitting him there three times in rapid succession. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she was so angry she wanted to eviscerate him with an X-Acto knife and scatter his guts into the parking lot for the dogs and crows to have; she told herself it had absolutely nothing to do with that. You had to have genuine emotions before they could carry you away.

He was out cold and not faking it - she might have fractured his skull. But she’d have bet once of her periodic paychecks that his skull was so thick you could use it for a bowling ball. She pocketed her knife, and started carefully searching his jacket.

He didn’t have any i.d. on him, which proved he wasn’t a complete novice. He did have a nice blackjack, though; how quaint. You hardly ever saw those anymore, except in the occasional “specialty” weapons shop, which happened to be where she got her baton. Perhaps he’d have been better off buying one of those.

She found three things she took, figuring they might be of some use: a crumpled business card used as a gum wrapper, a cell phone, and a mostly empty book of matches from a place called ‘Honey’s’. The name gave it away as a strip club, if the silhouette of the well endowed woman didn’t. She didn’t even know places had customized matchbooks anymore, not in the States.

Sajeet could pull the numbers off the phone - it was probably her best bet for getting answers. He was still talking to her, right? Shit.

She shoved them in the front pocket of her jeans and left the room, careful to make sure she hadn’t left fingerprints anywhere. Once outside, where the heat seemed to be radiating off the cement like she was trapped in a convection oven, she remembered she had the guy’s blood on her right pant leg. It looked like a reddish black smear on her knee, rivulets running down towards her boots, random spots spattered on her thigh. She was probably going to have to go home and change before she followed up on any more leads; she even smelled like blood. Shit shit shit - she hated laundry.

Z stopped in the manager’s grotty office, where he was still reclined in his chair behind the desk, watching white trash families get into well choreographed brawls on a talk show stage. She tossed the room key in his lap, making him start. “Was he there?” He asked, trying to pretend he didn’t almost piss himself.

“Yeah, somebody killed him.” He stared at her, goggle eyed, clearly not certain if she was joking or not. But Bryce’s killing would hardly be the first one here. No tell motels like this attracted violence like a landfill attracted rats. “But his murderer’s still there, if you wanna call the cops. I don’t think he’ll be getting very far.”

The man’s jaw went slack, his eyes still far too wide. “You’re serious?”

She pulled out a folded fifty dollar bill and tossed it on the messy check-in desk. “I was never here.” She left before he could ask any further question. The answers were waiting for him in the room, if he was brave enough to go in. She didn’t think he was.

Nor did she think Dog Boy would squeal to the cops. First of all, most thugs like him were reluctant to admit they got the shit beaten out of them by a “girl”, even in this day and age, and if he was an agent of Girani, he probably wouldn’t live until the arraignment. He didn’t get where he was by having his people rat him out.

She wasn’t sure she was getting any closer to the briefcase. But at least she knew the nature of the competition.

Maybe now it was time to pull out the big artillery.

TROUBLESHOOTER
by Andrea Speed
Two

Since he’d forgotten to bring a photo of Bryce, she’d asked him to e-mail her one ASAP. He did, just shortly after she’d run scans of his fingerprints (she pulled three good ones and a partial) into her database. Ward sent a head shot, which figured. Bryce looked just like the inoffensively handsome lead of every other sitcom on a major network: he had swept back light brown hair, as firmly in place as a helmet, evenly spaced Delft blue eyes set apart by the best bobbed nose money could buy, and an eighty thousand watt smile that could probably be seen from low earth orbit. She was nearly blinded by the bright white glow coming off his perfect, immaculately bleached teeth. You couldn’t have built a better “handsome but goofy best friend of the lead” if you tried. And she suspected someone had.

As soon as she had a print out of his photo, she headed downtown to a bar called Wayside’s Inn, a seedy little dive in the end of town where cops never ventured after dark. In fact, no one smart or unarmed never went there after ten, even if they lived there - it was just common sense. At least it was still afternoon.

Not that the place looked any better in sunlight. It was made for night, when it could seem atmospheric and creepy. In the day, it simply looked corroded, the facades crumbling and cracking under the dual assault of neglect and time. The apartments looked swaybacked, the liquor store and the Kwik Mart on the corners like squatty toads cursing the landscape like a plague. Even the light here took on a urine colored cast - probably due to pollution, but she would have been willing to believe despair was leeching from the area and tainting everything downwind of it.

Wayside’s Inn was at the end of the block, wedged between a parking lot that had seen better eons, and an abandoned lot where you could still see the charred foundation of an old pizza joint between the thick clutches of sickly weeds.

Going into the bar was like entering a black hole: little sunlight ever managed to punch through the grimy window, gray with the accumulated soot of decades of cigarette smoke, and the dark wood that made up the interior seemed to absorb what little illumination seeped in. The smell was eau de kegger, the ambiance was décor to commit suicide in.

Sitting at the far end of the bar was just the woman she was looking for. She was nothing special, an anonymous barfly in a glitter spangled pink t-shirt and a Dodgers baseball jacket, with several gaudy rings gleaming on her nicotine stained fingers. As soon as she looked up from her Long Island iced tea, she gestured with her tired brown eyes towards a table in the back, near the noisome hallway leading to the bathrooms. Z headed there, trailing casually after her.

Her name was Veya, and while she appeared to be a middle aged booze hound, she was, in fact, the biggest and best information broker in the area. If she didn’t know about the person you were trying to find, she could point you to a person who could give you what you needed. Z had no idea how she collected all this information, unless hanging around in bars from sun up to sundown paid off in ways unimaginable.

Z pulled out one of the hard wooden chairs and straddled it, wondering how quickly her butt would go numb, and slid the print out of Bryce’s photo across the cigarette scarred table, a fifty dollar bill paper clipped to the left upper corner. “Who is this guy?” She asked.

Veya deftly pocketed the folded bill while studying the pristine head shot. “My guess is an actor,” she replied, in her gravelly voice, betraying years of alcohol and cigarettes.

“That’s self-evident. His name is Bryce Shaw, and apparently he’s been known to hang out at Blue Sky. Is he in with Girani?”

Girani was pretty much a scum-of-all-trades, and did a lot of his networking out of the tragically hip club called Blue Sky, which he had a minor financial stake in. That’s what made her initially suspicious about Bryce. Veya shook her head, her mane of frizzy brown curls only moving slightly - that was some hairspray she used. She was well known for her hair helmet. “Nah, he’s too clean; Girani would eat him alive.” She looked up from Bryce’s photo and turned it over, as if not wanting to talk bad about him over a simulacrum of himself. “He’s small meat, total amateur. Does victimless sweetheart grifts.”

Veya had a language all her own. “In English.”

“Non-pro gigolo. He looked for older sugar daddies who were more than happy to keep his head above water - so to speak. Eventually traded up for wealthier guys, but there were no hard feelings. Or at least no charges filed.”

“Totally soft? Nothing harder edged?”

She shook her head, took a crumpled cigarette pack out of her coat pocket. Technically all indoor smoking was banned, but she doubted any health inspector was crazy enough to venture into Wayside’s. As she shook out a cigarette, she said, “I’ve never heard anything. Total small fry.”

“You said he used them to keep his head above water. He was in debt?” Veya simply nodded again as she clamped the cig between her lips and dug out a red plastic lighter. “Drugs, gambling?”

That earned a shrug. She had to wait for her to inhale and exhale her first burst of nicotine before Veya said, “If so, never made the rounds.”

“Think he’d move to blackmail?”

Veya frowned at her, accentuating her crow’s feet, her painted on eyebrows coming together over the bridge of her nose. “Fuck no, honey. Why? He’s gotta good gig goin’ without it.”

She didn’t really know how Veya made her money; it was possible selling information and turning reluctant informant to cops was it. She did know that Veya knew her criminal brethren quite well - they were what passed for family. “So it’s your opinion that he wouldn’t bug out on a boyfriend and steal something valuable from him for blackmail purposes?”

“Blackmail, no. Spite, sure. Haven’t we all done shit to piss off our ex on the way out the door?” Veya tapped the ash of her cigarette on the floor, and said, “I gotta know, honey, ’cause my sources know nothing about you. What’s the Z stand for?”

Although mildly surprised by the question, she didn’t show it. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, how many Z names are there? Zelda? Zaire? Zany? Maybe you Brits got something else -”

“I’m Australian,” she corrected, not adding that she lived and worked in Britain for so many years it was irrelevant. Veya really didn’t need to know any of this.

Veya gave her a half shrug and a lift of the eyebrows that seemed to say ‘What the fuck’s the difference’. “Whatever. I mean, I can understand about bein’ embarrassed by havin’ a stupid name - I’m Veya, for Christ’s sake - but I won’t sell it, honey. I don’t think people’d pay me for it anyways.”

“Back to Bryce - “

“Zandy? Zuzu? Zanzibar?” She guessed.

Z pointedly ignored that. “Do you know where he might be hiding out? Has he been seen today, to your knowledge?”

She shook her head once more, hardly dislodging a hair. “Not that I’ve heard. There have been rumors he was preparing to split town.”

“Why?”

Another frustrating shrug. “My guess? New sugar daddy or creditors.”

She’d probably gotten all out of Veya that fifty bucks would buy her. She had a couple of leads to check out, though, and that made all the time wasted in this alcohol soaked pit worth it. “Thanks for the info, Veya,” she said, standing up and picking up Bryce’s photo. Her butt was so numb you could probably stick a fork in it and she’d never know.

“Any time. It’s what I’m here for.” She paused suddenly, cigarette half way to her lips, and Z had a sinking feeling what she was going to say. “Umm, hey, about Alex -”

“No change,” she replied sharply, turning towards the door. She didn’t really like to discuss Alex, especially while working.

She had almost reached the exit when Veya asked loudly, “Is it Zora?”

Z glanced over her shoulder and frown at her. “No. Trust me, my name is nothing.”

“Everybody’s name is somethin’, hon. Sometimes it’s all we have.”

She shook her head and simply walked out into the light, not even bothering to try and figure that one out.

***

Considering where his workplace had been before he was laid off, and where people could rent motel rooms by the hour, she followed a hunch that paid off.

The manager at the cheapo Calico Cat Motel recognized Bryce’s head shot when she showed it to him. Apparently he wasn’t sure how long he’d need the room, but he paid for three hours - in cash, which was common around here - and “checked in” alone. The manager was a little upset, as his three hours were up, but he hadn’t returned the key. He was just going to go roust him supposedly, but Z doubted that - she bet he was waiting for the talk show he was waiting to get over. He said as far as he knew Bryce had no visitors, but she knew she couldn’t trust that assessment - after all, his eyes had been glued to the set.

The Calico Cat was just two miles away from the relatively “shabby chic” Mexican restaurant Bryce used to wait tables at, and her guess had been if he was leaving town - and planning to do something about that briefcase - he might meet with someone in a place with no witnesses, where no one seemed to see anything. After her talk with Veya, she found herself mulling the evidence. Andrew had money, presumably quite a bit, but it seemed to be no object to recover what was in the briefcase. And since Bryce spent his life hopping from one rich guy to the next, where was his next “sugar daddy”, especially one who could compete at Andrew’s financial level? She had nothing left but suspicions, but she had a good record of her hunches panning out.

So here was her entire supposition: Bryce was in bigger financial trouble than he ever let on, and he was sick of Andrew, but he hadn’t landed his next big fish. What he did have, though, was what he may have seen as his ticket out - his big score. If it was worth so much to Andrew, how much would what was inside the briefcase be worth on the open market? Bryce didn’t just take it because he was angry; he took it to make a deal, and get out of town. The only question was who had offered to buy it, why, and what the hell was in that damn briefcase anyways? Maybe, if he was still around, she could simply ask.

The manager was under the erroneous impression she was a detective, and that it was legal to simply hand a detective someone’s room key (he was no fool - he had several copies). Not that she was about to correct him - after all, she doubted Bryce was going to bring the cops into this.

It probably would have been polite to knock on the door, so she didn’t. But trying the doorknob, she realized it was unlocked . and if that wasn’t a bad sign, what was?

She was tense and on alert as she opened the door of the tiny room, and was hit by a hot, meaty smell that was too damn familiar.

The stuffy, dark room reeked of industrial, rose scented cleaners that didn’t hide the smell of sex and mildew, none of which was recent. The meaty metallic smell dominated, but the room was empty, save for the small bed with an ugly green blanket, a threadbare orange and brown carpet, a portable t.v. bolted to a table that was also bolted to the floor.

The signs of a struggle were small.

The coverlet had a wrinkled imprint on the far side, spreading out to the rough center of the bed. She couldn’t see the nightstand beside the bed - with the lamp still incongruously bolted to its surface - until she reached the center of the room. It was lying horizontal on the floor, blocked from general view, the plastic coated shade slightly askew. The closet door was half way open, but canted inward slightly, knocked off its track. The bathroom door was ajar, and the smell became stronger the closer she got to it.

Using her bent knuckles so she didn’t leave any telltale marks for the forensics team, she shoved open the door, and discovered what had become of Bryce Shaw.

He was sitting in the shower stall, legs splayed, one foot over the lip of the door track. His head was canted at a painful angle, nearly resting on his left shoulder, and his eyes stared at a nothing point to her immediate right, his blue eyes unfocused and cloudy. His shirt looked dark, but the shadow had run in a thick trail between his legs - his blood had turned his shirt black, and left a trail on its way to the drain. The cut just underneath his larynx looked almost bloodless now, a wide, toothless maw that suddenly materialized in his neck. The flesh under his right eye looked puffy and discolored, although he had apparently died before it could blossom into a full blown bruise. The smell of blood, shit, and fear was almost nauseating. Perhaps it was finally a good thing that she was used to it.

She was about to leave, tell the motel manager to call the police, when she heard the smallest noise behind her, the scuff of a shoe on the carpet. She should have checked the closet - every kid could tell you the monster was always hiding in the closet.

“You his partner?” A deep male voice said. He sounded big. “Maybe you’ll be more accommodating than he was.”