Tails You Lose (22 page)
"I can't tell you where Night Owl is, because I don't know," Kageyama answered. "My—friends and I—hired her via an intermediary, a fixer named Hothead. He can probably point you in the right direction." Alma struggled to keep her expression cool and professional as Kageyama described the fixer and told her how to contact him. She was finally getting somewhere—she was within one degree of separation from her target.
"Describe Night Owl for me."
"She could be your twin," Kageyama said. "Her aura is even like yours: a large number of dark shadows around the eyes, ears and neck that must come from implanted cyberware. Her body language is entirely different, however, and she doesn't have your grace. In fact, she's quite clumsy—sometimes she winds up with egg on her face."
He winked at Alma, but when she failed to return his smile he shrugged, as if she had failed to get a joke.
Everything Kageyama had just said confirmed Alma's guess: Night Owl must be the Superkid who had framed her for Gray Squirrel's extraction. The woman not only had the same aura but also the same amount and type of cyberware as the others in Batch Alpha. The move-by-wire system that was standard on all Superkids should have made her as graceful as a cat. If Night Owl was clumsy, she was either faking it or her move-by-wire had shorted out. Or she'd had it removed. Maybe the move-by-wires that the Superkids had been fitted with were faulty . . .
Alma forced her mind back to the here and now. "Can you tell me anything else about Night Owl?"
Kageyama spread his hands and shrugged. His cybernetic little fingers were working properly again, in sync with his real fingers. "All I can tell you is that her 'crimes' aren't motivated by greed, but by compassion. She—"
Alma had heard enough. "She's a killer," she gritted. She felt her cheeks blaze as a vision of Gray Squirrel's mutilated throat swam before her eyes.
Kageyama lowered his hands. His voice dropped to a whisper. "You'd know that better than I."
The rain had soaked into the shoulders of Alma's suit jacket, chilling her skin. She started to shiver before her move-by-wire system shut the involuntary motion down. She noticed that Kageyama was also soaked. Several buttons had been torn from his shirt during the fight with the blank-eyed man, and his chest was bare, save for a small circle of blue stone that hung on a gold chain around his neck. The pendant trembled against his nearly hairless chest as he shivered.
Kageyama noticed her staring at it and touched a finger to it. "Pretty, isn't it?"
Alma realized what it was: a
pi
, a good-luck token traditionally given to Chinese children. It was just one of the traditions that had jumped cultures; half of the people in Vancouver had one, regardless of their ethnic background. Obviously the custom had become just as popular in Japan.
"You promised to tell me who hired you to kidnap me," Kageyama reminded her. "Do you keep your promises?"
Alma couldn't see any reason not to. She now had the name of the woman she was looking for and the name and description of a man who could tell her where to find Night Owl. She'd made contact with two shadowrunners—Bluebeard and Buzz—who could attest to her authenticity when she went to speak with Hothead. She'd gone through the motions of a shadowrun.
There was no point in completing the extraction now. At midnight, when she still hadn't heard from Alma, the blond-haired Seoulpa member would assume that the extraction of Kageyama had failed and would look for someone else to do the job. As for Tiger Cat, Alma would have to stall him with a partial payment of the credit that PCI owed him. That should stop him from blowing the whistle on the fact that she wasn't really a shadowrunner. If all else failed, she could try to pick up the trail of the blank-eyed man who was looking for the rogue Superkid and track his movements in the hope that he would lead her to her target.
Alma had strayed far enough into the world of the shadowrunners in her attempt to find the woman who had framed her. She didn't want to cross the line by actually committing a crime. Kageyama was an innocent victim—just as Gray Squirrel had been. Alma owed him an explanation.
"Your extraction was ordered by a Seattle-based Seoulpa Ring: the Komun'go. They wanted to question you about something—what, I don't know, but it sounded as though they're looking for something." Kageyama feigned dismay. "How distressing: that makes three dragons who have tried to kidnap me or steal from me."
Alma had no idea what he was talking about. "Three dragons?"
He counted them off on his fingers. "Mang, the dragon whose associates hired you to kidnap me. Chiao, who hired you—"
He paused to correct himself. "Who hired Night Owl to steal the statue from my condoplex. I recognized him at once when he came to collect his prize, although why he went to such pains to acquire a simple jade statue remains a mystery. I'm surprised he didn't just send one of the Red Lotus to steal it instead."
Alma nodded, recognizing another piece of the puzzle: the Red Lotus—the gang members who were after Night Owl, according to the message that had been left on Alma's cellphone this morning.
Kageyama continued: "The third dragon, Li, also wishes to kidnap me, it seems. That was his Number One who attacked me in the clinic."
When Alma looked blankly at him, Kageyama added, in a low voice: "The 88s, a triad whose bloody reach extends all the way back to Dragon Eyes' master in Singapore."
"What do they all want?" Alma asked.
Kageyama shivered and pulled his wet shirt across his bare chest. "I honestly don't know. They must think there's something of great value in my condoplex, since it used to be owned by a great dragon. Perhaps they don't realize that I was the one who furnished it—Dunkelzahn died before he had the chance to move in any of his treasures. Yet Li, Chiao and Mang think there's something extremely valuable inside—something worth fighting over. Whatever it might be, each one is willing to risk the dissolution of a very powerful alliance to get it for himself."
Alma's mind whirled as she tried to slot all of the pieces together. Kageyama had three dragons after him, each with an associated gang, Triad or Seoulpa Ring. One of them—the dragon Mang, who controlled the Seoulpa Ring—might also, according to Bluebeard, have ties to the Eastern Tiger Corporation, a powerful player in the Pacific Prosperity Group. Alma wondered if the PPG was the "alliance" that Kageyama had just spoken of—if the other two dragons also controlled corporations in that group. If so, the combined firepower of the dragon's gang members, the nuyen controlled by their corporate subsidiaries and the dragons' own magical capabilities would produce a security nightmare she wouldn't wish upon anyone.
There was just one thing she didn't understand. "Why are you telling me all this?"
From above came the sound of rotors overhead as a helicopter descended; both Alma and Kageyama glanced up. It was a black and yellow sky cab, but it wasn't Buzz's machine. Alma glanced at the floor and belatedly realized that the concrete underfoot had a pressure-sensitive pad that automatically flagged a cab once the shelter was occupied.
Kageyama reached into a back trouser pocket and pulled out a small leather case. Then he bowed slightly and presented her with a rectangle of plastic: a personal calling card. The blue stone around his neck swung forward on its chain and settled back against his chest as he straightened.
"Ms. Lee—or whatever your real name might be—you seem to be a very capable woman," he said. "If it wasn't for you, Li or one of the other dragons would have me in his clutches. I have decided that it takes a thief to protect one from thieves. I would like to hire you to provide me with additional security."
He gave her such a knowing look that for a moment, Alma wondered if he knew who she really was. "Thank you," she stammered, tucking the card into a jacket pocket. "But I have . . . another engagement . . . at the moment."
Kageyama paused with his hand on the door. "An engagement that I suspect is in jeopardy, unless you can clear your name—is that right?"
Alma kept her emotions in check, despite his too-accurate guess. The helicopter touched down outside the shelter, its rotors throwing a spray of rain against the glass.
Kageyama inclined his head as he opened the door. "If you change your mind, let me know." Then he strode out into the rain and climbed into the cab.
8Night Owl rumbled down the street on her Electroglide, watching for the address she'd looked up on the telecom. The streets in this part of the downtown core were quiet this time of night. The antique shops, retro clothing and music stores, and thaumaturgical supply shops were closed and dark, and only a handful of people scurried along the blustery sidewalks, hunkered down under umbrellas to shelter from the incessant rain.
She spotted the address halfway down the block. The shop was a tiny one with a barred window that overlooked the street and a short flight of worn stone steps leading up to its front door. A battered electric sign hung above the doorway, its light flickering behind the name of the shop: National Coin & Stamp. The sign looked as though it had been there a century, as did the shop. Someone was moving around inside; Night Owl hoped it was the man she was looking for.
She turned her bike in the direction of Waterfront Station and parked it at the back of a Metermate lot, in the shadow of a Eurovan that had two hours plus on its meter. Using a handful of the parking tokens she'd boosted, she purchased six hours' worth of time. If the Red Lotus did spot her bike, she wanted them to think she'd be away from it for some time. With luck, they'd assume she had taken the Seabus over to the North Shore.
Night Owl hurried across the parking lot, turned right at a bronze statue of an angel carrying a soldier up to heaven, and pushed her way in through the front doors of Waterfront Station. The large, echoing building was busy day and night, a meeting point for the SkyTrain, Seabus and express trains. People streamed through it in all directions: down escalators to the subway and train tracks, along the elevated walkway that led to the Seabus dock, or up escalators to the sky-cab stops on the roof. Still more people clustered in knots at its soykaf stands for a quick jolt of caffeine or stood and watched the eleven o'clock news on the enormous Tribal Newsnet screen that filled one wall.
Night Owl slipped into a washroom and exchanged her wet jacket and jeans for a dry pair of pants and the expensive suede jacket Kageyama had given her. She blew her wind-tangled hair dry at a hand blower and combed it until it hung straight and neat. Then she squirted cream onto the Beijing Opera mask she'd painted her face with earlier and scrubbed away the diagonal slashes of black and red and blue makeup. When her face was clean, she stared at herself in the mirror, relaxing her posture and trying to keep the smirk off her face.
"Hello, 'Alma,' " she said. "Ready for your next run?"
Outside the washroom, she cached her wet clothes inside a storage locker and then pulled out the cellphone she'd boosted earlier from the apartment. She flicked past the message that had been left for her in the daytimer, asking her to name the time and place for a meet, and past her response: MEET WITH YOU? ONLY IN YOUR DREAMS, AL. Then she scrolled down through the list of telecom and cell numbers that had been stored in the cell's memory, past the entry EGON, HOME to the one that read
EGON, NATIONAL COIN & STAMP. Highlighting it, she thumbed the dial icon.
When an automated answering function cut in, she disconnected and then called the same number again. Once again, the answer was automated:
National
Coin
&
Stamp
is
now
closed;
please
call
back
again
.
Our
store
hours
are
—
"Frag off," she whispered back at it. "I know you're there. Pick up."
After five more tries, the cell's monitor screen illuminated. The bearded dwarf it projected gave her a harried glance before returning his attention to something out of vidcam range as he spoke. "The store is closed, and I'm in the middle of taking inventory. What's so important that it can't wait until tomorrow?"
The telecom that was capturing the dwarf's image was positioned at about waist height; it was probably sitting on a shop counter. His hands bobbed in and out of the field of view as he picked up and stacked plastic envelopes filled with brightly colored stamps.
Night Owl was holding the cell at arm's length. She tilted it so that the phone's vidcam would get a good shot of her face. "Egon?"
