Montezuma Strip (15 page)

“I believe you,” Cardenas told him. “I’ll see to it that you’re not bothered anymore.” He started to rise.

The young man was too surprised to be thankful. “That’s it? You just ask me a few questions and you’re sure?”

Cardenas turned.
“Sí.”

His host’s eyes widened slightly. “You’re an Intuit, aren’t you?” Cardenas said nothing and the man nodded to himself. “Yeah,
no wonder you’re sure. You read my mind.”

The sergeant sighed. “An Intuit cannot read minds. We arrive at our decisions based on careful consideration of linguistic
peculiarities, semantic fluctuations, subtle movements of eyes and limbs. Experience gives you a feel for when people are
telling the truth and when they’re lying or trying to hide something. That’s all. Because of an incident of violence I suffered
sightlessness for many years, until the biosurges learned how to transplant optic nerves and could give me new eyes. During
that time my condition forced me to sharpen my skills.” He smiled again.

“So you see, I know a lot about modifying operations.” He reached the door.

“How’re you going to find the people who did this? The federate I talked to said you were looking for a bunch of ninlocos.
There are a thousand ninloco gangs in the Strip, plus solos. At least a hundred of them claim members in the Yumarado district.”

“I know,” said Cardenas simply. “You learn by asking questions. That’s what I came here to do, and I’ve just started.” The
door closed quietly behind him.

The arena stank of death and chicken shit, human perspiration and dried blood. On opposite sides of the pit miniature grandstands
had been cobbled together out of discarded plastic and extruded carbon composites. The pit itself was carpeted with sawdust.
In corners and beneath the stands dried blood mixed with the scrap pulp and shreddings to form irregular brown clods. Lightstrips
glued to the low, flat ceiling dimly
illuminated the arena while a couple of mobile cold spots suspended from the roof were aimed at the pit.

From the men and women in the grandstands arose an enthusiastic babble in a multiplicity of languages, but the predominant
means of communication was spanglish, the patois of the Strip. Lithe, mean-faced men circulated among them, taking down bets
on battered vorecs, offering false encouragement to the bettors. They could afford to be accommodating. No matter which individuals
won, the House always got its percentage.

Higher up off to one side several comfortable chairs rested on a suspension platform. Those seated behind the single Lexan
railing could look down both on the pit and the crowd. El Banquero spread but in his chair, his attention concentrated on
the steady stream of information that filled his earplug. Occasionally he whispered into the jeweled vorec trapped between
his thick fingers like a metal cigar. On one gleamed a fine gold ring dominated by a single ruby the size of his thumbnail.
It was, naturally, bloodred.

Behind him stood a beautifully tanned anglo not quite as big as the average family vehicle. In the weak light he wore dark
glasses with infrared boosters. His eyes roved restlessly, professionally, over the milling crowd. A woman not more than twenty
who looked not less than forty sat sideways in Banquero’s lap. His free hand probed mechanically between her thighs, up under
the short neofabric skirt. She looked unutterably bored.

Cheers reverberated throughout the arena as the spots were turned on, bathing the pit in their harsh, inescapable glare. Two
men emerged from opposite doorways behind the grandstands. One was lean, old, hard; a permanent denizen of the Strip from
whom all sympathy and compassion had long since been wrung out as thoroughly as the moisture from a wet rag. The other handler
was younger, with a bald forehead that gleamed fleshily beneath the lights. Shouts, suggestions, and ribald comments from
the crowd buffeted them as they took up positions opposite one another.

They spoke soothingly and continuously to the roosters they carried as they set them down gently on the sawdust floor. The
birds were petted, caressed, reassured. Each wore a small blindfold over its eyes and on each leg and wingtip a razor-sharp
spur fashioned from discarded surgical scalpels.

As the noise of the crowd rose to fever pitch the men removed the birds’ blindfolds. The two fighting cocks saw one another
even as their handlers tossed them into the center of the pit. Banquero leaned forward slightly.

Slowly, methodically, the birds began to circle one another, heads thrust forward, neck feathers erected and bristling as
they tried to stare each other down. One bird, resplendent in iridescent black and green plumage, was slightly larger than
its opponent, whose feathers were tinted a more familiar but no less spectacular yellow and brown. The crowd howled, bellowed,
gesticulated obscenely. Vorecs were waved, bets doubled and tripled.

The two handlers squatted on their haunches, each holding a small controller box as they gazed at the clock that hung on the
far wall. At the agreed-upon time the controllers were activated. A shudder seemed to pass through each bird. They straightened
abruptly, assuming unnaturally erect postures without sacrificing any of their natal alertness.

The yellow-brown bird suddenly leaped, twisting its body to the left and kicking out with its right leg. The opposing handler’s
fingers moved on his control sticks and his own bird ducked, blocking upward with a wing to effectively turn the blow aside.
The crowd roared.

The green-black rooster threw a right jab, then a left as its opponent backpedaled. Spurs flashed, but both blows missed.
The two roosters, their movements regulated by the karateka chips embedded in their necks and the controllers of their handlers,
continued to throw kicks and punches and blocks as efficiently as any highly trained humans facing each other across a dojo
mat.

The yellow-brown was smaller but slightly quicker. A jumping-spinning back kick finally caught the larger bird a bit
slow to react and an ankle spur sliced through its chest, sending feathers and fluid flying. The crowd roared: first blood.
Stunned, the green-black retreated, defending itself as its handler tried to assess the extent of the damage.

The green-black was very close to him when it suddenly whirled, jumped, and kicked out smartly with both legs.

A different sort of scream rose from the crowd as the handler fell backward, clutching at his ruined eyes. An instant later
the other handler, trying to run to his opponent’s aid, was brought down by his own bird, which struck with both a leg and
wingtip at the man’s ankle, severing the Achilles’ tendon and sending him screeching into the sawdust.

The noise volume in the arena previously was nothing compared to the panicky tumult that now shook the walls as the crowd
surged wildly toward the single exit. They jammed up against the narrow portal, men and women alike finding themselves crushed
against the walls or trampled underfoot by fellow frenzied aficionados, those in back moaning or shrieking as they tried to
protect themselves from the fluttering, fast-moving cocks who utilized the hysteria as a stage, slicing randomly at flailing
hands, arms, and exposed backs.

High up, a frowning, disturbed Banquero rose and started for his office, wondering at the cause of the chaos. The woman who
had been attending to him clung to his arm, seeking protection. Banquero grunted once and his hulking shadow ripped the girl
free, tossing her over the rail with casual indifference. She stopped screaming when she hit the ground, bounced once, and
lay still.

Banquero had his hand on the office door when something snicked across the back of his wrist, causing him to jerk it back.
The four-centimeter-long gash oozed blood as he grabbed at it. Cursing, he gazed in furious bemusement at the yellow and brown
rooster that perched on the railing, staring back at him.

His bodyguard drew a large-caliber gun from a shirt holster and was aiming it at the bird when a fluttering mass of feathers
landed on his head. Spurs dug in. Howling, he reached up
with both hands to dislodge the green-black. Avoiding the powerful, clutching fingers the fighting cock struck out as it dropped,
kicking hard enough for the surgical steel on its ankles to shatter the dark lenses and drive fragments of sharp carbonite
into the hulk’s eyes. He screamed and stumbled backward. The railing was insufficient to support his great weight and he fell,
still clawing at his face, to land not far from the motionless whore who by dint of his callousness had preceded him floorward.

Banquero reached for the door again and again the yellow-brown struck at his hand, this time gouging deep enough to lay open
the tendons on the back of the man’s wrist. Hissing with pain and fury he fumbled inside his shirt for the tiny but lethal
pistol that reposed there.

Having finished with the bodyguard, the green-black flew straight at Banquero and began kicking. The arena master screamed
like a woman, dropping to his knees while flailing feebly at the attacking bird. The other rooster left its perch to join
in, the two birds digging and clawing and scratching until there was simply nothing left of Banquero’s face, nothing at all.
Then they fluttered over the broken railing, trailing blood from their feet and wingtips.

They landed on the narrow shoulders of a young woman clad in a gray jumpsuit. As the rest of the crowd fought to escape the
arena, she hurried toward a hole that had been cut in the base of the far wall. Exhausted but otherwise unhurt, the two rumpled
birds obediently hopped off her shoulders to precede her through the gap.

As Cardenas questioned selected representatives of the various ninloco gangs that drifted in and out of the Yumarado district
he found himself watering a ripe field of negatives. No one knew anything. Nil, nix,
nada;
nothing. The interests of the gang members he talked to were wholly orthodox,
which was to say they were obsessed with sex, drugs, and music to the exclusion of everything else. Causes moral or otherwise
concerned them not at all. What interest they did express in magimals extended only to those that could be stolen and resold.

There was some talk of rare species being smuggled northward for sale from the CenAm states and the Yucatán, but to the best
of the gangs’ knowledge this was traditional animal smuggling, nothing to do with magifying.

He spent a week questioning, interviewing, following tips, learning nothing. The heat was horrible and he tried to confine
as much of his traveling as possible to late night.

The first morning of his second week in Yumarado found a message waiting on his desk when he came to work. Though elegantly
phrased it was more in the nature of a command than a request. Something about the signature at the bottom seemed vaguely
familiar. He ran it through research and was not surprised when a response was rapidly forthcoming.

His Yumaradoan colleagues were suitably impressed by the summons, which did not extend to the suppression of various risqué
comments. Apparently his summoner had something of a reputation.

“I won’t have any problems,” he told his colleagues. “I’m an old man.”

“That’s all right,” a local sergeant guffawed. “From what I hear she’s kind of yesterday’s wine herself.”

They went so far as to give him a new cruiser to drive. After all, when he returned to Nogales they would have to remain,
perhaps to deal with her again, and they wanted him to make a good impression on the department’s behalf. So he convoyed in
comfort.

He’d been in the governor’s mansion in Phoenix once, for an official function. Compared to the house he now found himself
approaching, that official residence was little more than a shack. His destination occupied several acres on a bend in the
river; the real river, the old Colorado, not the nearby arrow-straight ship canal. The banks of the private peninsula
on which the house was sited had been reinforced with flexible cladding to protect it from the rare possibility of flood or,
more likely, dam failure on the upper river.

It was contemporary Southwest in design; two stories, artificial red tile roof, inward-slanting walls of faux copper engraved
with murals executed by an artist of obvious talent and probable fame. Lush tropical landscaping surrounded the house and
covered the grounds, signifying the presence of someone sufficiently wealthy to afford enough expensive desalinated water
to maintain the luxuriant trees and shrubs.

He paused at an outer gate, flimsy in appearance but adequately electrified to fry any vehicle that might try to crash through,
along with its occupants. The towering wall of ingrown mutated jumping cactus that enclosed the grounds was as green as it
was deadly, a bioengineered barrier more effective than any that could be fashioned of concrete or metal. In effect, the house
was guarded by a million toxic, attire-piercing needles.

Passing beyond this topiary terror Cardenas found himself greeted at the entrance to the house by an elderly Hispanic of superb
bearing and posture. The man looked like a refugee from an old movie, the sort of somber countenance off which Cantinflas
used to bounce hilarious bon mots. Overhead misting units lowered the outside temperature from the unbearable to the merely
hellacious. He was glad to be inside.

The servant led him across an entryway tiled in black pyrite. One entire wall dripped water over hammered leaves of gold and
copper, into a pool filled with glittering cichlids. The man left him in a room that boasted more floor space than Cardenas’s
entire abode. A floor-to-ceiling arc of polarized glass looked out over the rush-lined sweep of ancient river. As he entered,
both of the room’s occupants rose to greet him.

Cardenas figured the man for his late twenties. He was tall, athletic, his features perfectly handsome according to current
styles, so much so that they verged dangerously on the effeminate. But his handshake was firm and his tone at once
reverberant and accommodating. Smile and kind words notwithstanding, there was in his voice an undertone of something Cardenas
found disconcerting. No one but another Intuit would have picked up on it.