Ultrahuman 01 - Ugly (32 page)

Penny got to her feet and shook his offered hand. ‘Thanks for the chance to let people know about that calendar. It’s for a good cause and I know Svetilo was a little cautious about sales given the short time before Christmas.’

‘You got Ever to do it, didn’t you?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I think I’ll buy a copy,’ the ex-musician said, grinning broadly.

23
^rd
November.

‘Nice bikini,’ Bobby commented as Cygnus strutted across to the hot tub in his house. ‘One of the ones from the shoot?’

‘Uh-huh.’ She slipped into the pool and the fabric went see-through as soon as the water touched it.

‘They photographed you like that?’

‘I was dry. Most of the time.’

‘Not that I’m complaining.’

Cygnus shifted across the pool, sliding up against him. Bubbles tickled her skin. ‘I’d noticed you weren’t. I missed this.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Svetilo didn’t entertain you?’

‘She entertained, but she didn’t… She made me realise there’s more to this than good sex.’

‘And I provide this “something more,” gatinha?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice soft, her lips hovering in front of his. ‘Yes, you do.’

~~~

‘Nice dress,’ Lena commented as Andrea strutted over to the couch. The mobster’s daughter had decided that the sex could wait a little; she wanted company as much as an orgasm.

‘Thanks, I thought so,’ Andrea replied. In truth she had never paid so much for holes in her entire life. The stretchy fabric mini-dress came with holes and slits all over the place. Designer cost money, even when the principal design element had been using as little cloth as possible to cover a body.

Lena might not have wanted sex immediately, but her hand slid over Andrea’s thigh as soon as she sat down. ‘The guards downstairs didn’t bother you tonight?’

‘Nope. They seemed kind of… relaxed, actually.’

‘Poppa’s called off the dogs for a while. Seems Cygnus and Twilight are after the opposition he says he doesn’t have.’

‘That’s got to have him pleased.’ Andrea slipped an arm around Lena’s shoulders, leaned over and kissed the side of her neck.

Lena shivered. ‘He is. I’m just pleased he’s letting you come over more often.’

Andrea flicked the tip of her tongue over Lena’s earlobe. ‘So am I,’ she purred.

‘S-stop that. We’re watching TV and having a drink b-before we do that, remember?’

There was another flick of the tongue. ‘Does that mean I can’t tease you while we watch? You’ve been stroking my thigh all this time.’

‘Nuh-huh,’ Lena replied, grinning. ‘I tease you, you get wound up so much you steam, you don’t get to touch me.’

‘That’s mean,’ Andrea said, grinning, ‘but I like it.’

~~~

‘I could get used to this,’ Cygnus said. She was lying in Bobby’s arms on a mat beside the hot tub and the sex had been everything she had thought was missing with Dom.

‘I’d have thought you
were
used to it by now,’ Bobby replied.

‘It’s a turn of phrase. Like, “I wish this evening would never end.” Which I could also live with.’

‘But the evening always comes to an end,’ Bobby replied. ‘Everything ends in time, gatinha. We must make the best of what we have while we can.’ His fingers trailed down her stomach and she gasped as his touch made her muscles tremble.

‘How… how d-did you intend to m-make the most of now?’ she stammered.

His fingers moved lower, began a slow rotation. ‘I should have thought, my gatinha, that that much was obvious.’

~~~

‘I think I could get used to this,’ Andrea said. Her dress was now under her armpits and her arms were wrapped around Lena as they lay on the couch in front of the largely forgotten TV.

‘We’ve been doing this long enough I’d have that you’d already be used to it,’ Lena replied. Her voice sounded a little drowsy. Andrea began to circle her right nipple with a finger.

‘I mean you being more assertive. You usually let me take the lead. You often want me to take
command
.’

‘Poppa says I should learn to put my foot down. Of course, he won’t let me admit I’m a lesbian, but… That’s really distracting, y’know?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I think he… um… I think he’s worried that if Uncle Jonny takes over… uh… he’ll make trouble for me.’

‘I thought David Junior was going to take over the business?’

‘David’s being really stubborn about not. I don’t blame him.’ Lena was sounding less drowsy, but she was starting to pant instead.

‘Your father’ll be running things for years.’

‘I hope so… oh… I really hope…’ She trailed off into a moan and Andrea got down to the business of keeping her client happy. She wanted her exhausted tonight; Twilight had plans.

24
^th
November.

Lena was asleep, very soundly asleep in fact, when Andrea slipped out of bed and padded into the bathroom. Her bag was waiting for her there, and she slipped a penlight from it before concentrating and sliding through the shadows to the other end of the building where David Senior had his office.

The room was dark. She had waited for silence to descend upon the apartment before making her move. Turning on the light, she walked over to his desk and began to search.

In truth, she was not expecting to find too much. She was expecting locked drawers and everything put away, which was why she had never tried this before. With tools, she might have been able to circumvent the locks, but while any girl might carry a small torch in her bag, lock picks would have raised suspicions.

The desk was big, solid, and old. She thought it might have been oak and she was not entirely surprised to find a .357 Magnum revolver in a holster mounted under it. She slipped it free and found a well-maintained, but old, Smith and Wesson Model 19 Combat. The four-inch barrel reduced muzzle velocity and increased recoil, but Tonaldo was probably not worried about that in the confined space of his office.

What surprised her more was that the drawers were not locked and the first thing she found was a ledger of some sort. Opening it she discovered that it was more like a schedule book, giving dates and places, but nothing about what the meetings actually meant. The meaning was clear enough, though; some of the entries were scored through in red, and most of those were drug shipments Twilight had stopped arriving.

According to the ledger, the family was making hay while the sun shone. There were more shipments planned in the next couple of weeks than was normal. She frowned; was Ghostfire worth letting them get this much merchandise into the city?

Turning out the light, she ported back to the bathroom. She would talk to Cygnus about it on Monday. Maybe they should try to stop at least one or two. That might make Tonaldo think twice about keeping up the catch-up shipments.

25
^th
November.

Alfred Leighton was looking far less happy than he usually did, and while he was inwardly moderately jovial he usually looked fairly dour anyway. June looked up as he walked out of his office, one arm in his coat.

‘June, I need Thorpe’s notes on DeWitt Imports. The man’s come down with a cold so I’m going to have to cover for him.’

‘Penny transcribed them, sir,’ June replied, smiling. ‘I can have them printed in a minute.’ She turned to her computer and tapped through to their document management system.

Leighton sighed. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without her. No one else can understand his scribbles.’

June grinned. ‘And there are those funny little doodles he does…’

‘Doodles?’

‘Yeah. Penny thinks he does them when he’s got nothing to note down. She doesn’t transcribe them, obviously, but…’ June blinked, stopping in mid-sentence as it hit her. The doodles. ‘The notes are coming out on the printer now, sir,’ she said, her fingers continuing to move over the keyboard.

‘I correct my former statement,’ Leighton said as he pulled the papers from the tray. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without Penny, and I don’t know what
I’d
do without you.’

‘Have a good meeting, sir,’ June said, not looking up as he walked out. She was sure she had found something, and now all she needed to do was find out if it was useful.

~~~

Twilight dropped to the balcony outside Penny and June’s apartment as silently as she could. She had got a message from Cygnus over UltraNet that they needed to meet, and it had to be there. It was an odd request, but it had been marked urgent, so here she was.

She tapped twice on the glass and the window opened. Penny ushered her in. Not Cygnus, but Penny, complete with spectacles. She held the curtain aside to let Twilight through, saying nothing until the window was closed again.

‘Glad you could make it,’ Penny said. ‘You know June, right?’

‘We’ve met,’ Twilight replied, nodding to the slightly nervous-looking brunette sitting bolt-upright on the couch.

‘Well, June’s cracked the case.’

Twilight raised an eyebrow; not an easy thing to spot under the hood, but June could tell she was doing it.

‘I don’t know about…’ June began. ‘I mean, I found… It’s just a list of properties really…’

Twilight unclasped her sword harness and curled up on the floor in front of June. ‘You know, considering you spent a week wearing a smile and some dental floss while some guy snapped your picture, I’d have figured you for more confident.’

‘I don’t do this detective stuff. I could be wrong…’

‘It sounds good to me,’ Penny said, sitting down beside June, ‘but I thought you should hear it and see what you think. You’re more… detectivey than I am.’

‘Okay,’ Twilight said. Then she paused. ‘You haven’t told June who I am, have you?’

‘Of course not,’ Penny replied. ‘She knows you’re my… emergency contact, but your identity, and anything else I know about you, that’s for you to tell.’

Twilight nodded and pulled off her mask. ‘If I ever did need to come tell her you were broken in a gutter somewhere, I’m not going to do it dressed like this. I’m Andrea, pleased to meet you. Now what’s this secret you’ve uncovered?’

‘Okay,’ June said, ‘you know that Cygnus originally came to you with the information about DeWitt Imports? The company we work for took over their account auditing.’ Twilight gave a nod. ‘Well, the partner whose notes she found mention of them in, he leaves these doodles scribbled in the margins sometimes. There have been a couple of weird eagles and then there was this one we couldn’t work out, but it looked like a ghost with fire shooting out of it.’

Andrea looked at Penny. ‘And you didn’t spot that?’

‘I saw the doodle weeks ago, and I didn’t hear the name “Ghostfire” until a while later.’

‘My boss reminded me about the notes today,’ June explained, ‘and I remembered the doodles, and then I made the connection.’

‘You said something about a list of properties?’ Twilight asked.

June picked up a sheet of paper. ‘I checked the account Thorpe was working on when he made those doodles, and it’s mostly about management of various different properties around the city. I know you’ve had no luck with the petty criminals you’ve been taking down. I figure, if this
is
something to do with Ghostfire…’

‘I suspect it’s a safe bet,’ Andrea stated.

June gave her a timid, slightly proud smile. ‘If it is, then maybe these places are bases of operation.’

Andrea took the sheet and her gaze flicked down it. ‘There’s an outlier, a warehouse at the Solomon Airfield. That place gets used for various private flights, mostly by the rich types out of North Beach.’ She looked up at Penny. ‘We could fly down there tonight and scout the place. If it turns up anything we can try the other addresses.’

‘Okay,’ Penny said, climbing to her feet, ‘I’m up for that.’

~~~

Solomon Airfield was named for Solomon Island Road which provided the land-side access to it. At close to midnight there was not much going on from land or air, aside from the two women who flew in low over the perimeter fence to land beside a well-maintained building which was supposed to be one of Ghostfire’s bases.

‘We really want to get in without them noticing,’ Cygnus said as she set her partner down. ‘I mean, if this is just a legitimate business…’

Twilight reached to her belt and produced a small, rolled-up pouch. ‘I have that covered. Sometimes porting in isn’t possible.’ Crouching beside the nearest door, she unrolled the pouch and set to work with a set of lock picks.

‘So you learned burglary techniques?’

‘I’m a woman of many talents. I’m an ace at indexing comic collections too. Now shut up, this isn’t as easy as they make out in the movies.’

Cygnus paced, supposedly keeping watch, while Twilight worked on the lock, grumbling every so often. Then there was a click and the black-clad heroine said, ‘Two minutes, not exactly my personal best, but not bad.’

‘Alarms?’

‘Nothing I can see.’

‘Well… let me go first. I can see in the dark.’

‘Uh-huh, and if there’s an automated machine-gun turret, you’re bulletproof.’

Cygnus opened the door and poked her head through. ‘Thanks for that.’

There was no hail of bullets. There was not much of anything. Part of the large, open space had been partitioned off into a couple of offices, there were a few crates, and there was a light aircraft. Penny had little clue about planes, but this one seemed to have big fuel tanks set into the wings.

‘I think it’s clear. You want to check out the offices? I’ll take a look around that plane?’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Twilight agreed, taking out her penlight and starting toward the offices.

The plane looked like it was some sort of conversion of a fairly large, twin-prop light aircraft. Cygnus found a plate which said it was made by a company called Beechcraft, which she had never heard of. It looked like someone had stripped out seats to make room for cargo, and installed the underslung fuel tanks after the thing had been shipped. How far could something like that fly? Central America certainly. They had taken a lot of cocaine off the dealers in Friendship.