Expanse 05 - Nemesis Games

  “Who’s your walker?” Amos said.

  The boy yanked back away from his hand. “Don’t touch for free, man.”

  “No troubles. I’m not a grabber. Just who’s walking you? He around?”

  “Don’t know what you mean.” The boy started looking around for an escape route.

  “Yeah, okay. Get lost.” Amos watched the boy run off and felt something pressing at his stomach like the onset of a cramp. He couldn’t help out every street kid he came across. There were too many of them, and he had other work to do. Frustrating, that. Maybe the kid would find his pimp and tell him about the big scary guy who grabbed his face. Then the pimp would come looking for him, to teach him a lesson about not fucking with the merchandise.

  The thought put a smile back on Amos’ face and made the knot in his stomach go away.

  Lydia’s house was thirty-seven blocks from the train station in a low-income neighborhood, but not in a government housing block. Someone was paying actual money for the place, which was interesting. Amos didn’t think Lydia could have cleaned up her records enough to qualify for job training. Maybe the husband was a citizen with the skills and clean background to get a straight job. That was interesting too. What kind of guy living an honest citizen’s life marries an aging gangster like Lydia?

  Amos walked at a leisurely pace, still sort of hoping the pimp would track him down and make an appearance. An hour and a half later his hand terminal told him he’d reached his destination. The house didn’t look like much. Just a small one-level that from the street was an almost exact copy of every other small single-story house in the neighborhood. A tiny garden filled the narrow space between the house and the sidewalk. It looked lovingly tended, though Amos couldn’t remember Lydia ever owning a plant.

  He walked up the narrow path through the garden to the front door and rang the bell. A small, elderly man with a fringe of white hair opened a moment later. “Can I help you, son?”

  Amos smiled, and something in his expression made the man take a nervous half step back. “Hi, I’m an old friend of Lydia Maalouf. I just found out she’d passed, and I was hoping to pay my respects.” He worked his face for a minute, trying to find a version of his smile that didn’t scare little old men.

  The old man – Charles, the obituary had said – shrugged after a minute and gestured for Amos to come into the house. On the inside it was recognizably Lydia’s space. The plush furnishings and brightly colored wall hangings and curtains reminded Amos of the apartment she’d had back in Baltimore. Pictures lined the shelves and tabletops. Snapshots of the life she’d had after Amos left. Two dogs in a field of grass, grinning and lolling their tongues at the camera. Charles, more hair on his head, but still silvery white, digging in the garden. Lydia and Charles together in a restaurant, candles on the table, smiling over their wineglasses.

  It looked like a good life, and Amos felt something in his belly relax when he saw them. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was probably a good thing.

  “You got a name?” Charles said. “Want some tea? Was making some when you rang.”

  “Sure, I’d take some tea,” Amos said, ignoring the first question. He stayed in the cozy living room while Charles banged around in the kitchen.

  “It’s been a couple months since the funeral,” Charles said. “Were you up the well?”

  “Yeah, working in the Belt most recently. Sorry it took a while to make it back down.”

  Charles came back out of the kitchen and handed him a steaming mug. From the flavor, it was green tea, unsweetened.

  “Timothy, right?” Charles said, as if he were asking about the weather. Amos felt his jaw clench. Adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream.

  “Not for a long time now,” he replied.

  “She talked about your mom, some,” Charles said. He seemed relaxed. Like he knew whatever was going to happen was inevitable.

  “My mom?”

  “Lydia took care of you after your mom died, right?”

  “Yeah,” Amos said. “She did.”

  “So,” Charles said, then took another sip of his tea. “How does this go?”

  “Either I ask if I can take some of those roses out front to lay on her grave…”

  “Or?”

  “Or I just take them because no one lives here anymore.”

  “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “I need to know how it happened.”

  Charles looked down, took a deep breath, and nodded. “She had what they called an ascending aortic aneurysm. Went to sleep one night, never woke up. I called the EMTs the next day but they said she’d been dead for hours by then.”

  Amos nodded. “Were you good to her, Charles?”

  “I loved her, boy,” he replied, a hint of steel in his voice. “You can do what you want here, I can’t stop you. But I won’t have you questioning that. I loved her from the moment we met to our last kiss goodnight. I still do.”

  The old man’s voice didn’t quaver a bit, but his eyes were watery and his hands trembled.

  “Can I sit?” Amos asked.

  “Suit yourself. Let me know if you want more tea. Pot’s full.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m sorry about rousting you like that. But when I heard, I worried —”

  “I know who Lydia was before we met,” Charles said, sitting down on a small couch facing him. “We were always honest with each other. But no one ever bothered us here. She just had a leaky artery and it gave out one night while she was sleeping. Nothing else.”

  Amos rubbed his scalp for a moment, waiting to see if he believed the old guy. Seemed like he did.

  “Thanks. And, again, I’m sorry if I came on strong,” Amos said. “So, can I take a few of those roses?”

  “Sure,” Charles said with a sigh. “Ain’t my garden much longer anyway. Take what you want.”

  “You moving?”

  “Well, the guy who was doling Lydia stopped when she died. We had a little set aside, but not much. I’ll be going on basic pretty soon, so that means the government block.”

  “Who was floating her?” Amos asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Kid named Erich. Runs a crew in Lydia’s old hometown. Somebody you used to know, I guess.”

  “Used to,” Amos agreed. “Does he know about you? That Lydia was married?”

  “Sure. He kept in touch. Checked up on us.”

  “And he cut you off after she died.”

  It wasn’t a question, and Charles didn’t answer, just sipped at his tea.

  “So,” Amos said, standing up, “got a thing I need to go do. Don’t start moving out yet. One way or another, I’ll make sure you’ve got the money to keep this place.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Sort of do.”

  “For her,” Charles said.

  “For her.”

  The high-speed to Baltimore took less time than the walk to the station had. The city itself hadn’t changed at all in the two decades Amos had been away. The same cluster of commercial high-rises, the same sprawl of basic and minimal-income housing stretching out until it hit the orderly blocks of middle-class houses on the outskirts. The same rotting seaweed smell of the drowned eastern shore, with the decaying shells of old buildings sticking out of the murky water like the ribs of some long-dead sea monster.

  As much as the realization bothered him, Amos had to admit it looked like home.

  He took an automated electric cab from the train station to his old neighborhood. Even at the street level, the city looked the same, more or less. The streetlights had been swapped out for a different, boxy design. Some of the streets had changed from pedestrian-exclusive to mixed use. The thugs and dealers and sex workers were different faces now, but they were all on pretty much the same corners and stoops their predecessors had worked. New weeds growing in all the city’s cracks, but they were the same cracks.

  He had the cab let him out at a corner coffee stand that was licensed to accept basic
ration cards. It was in the exact same location as the last place he’d ever eaten in Baltimore before he left. The cart and the franchise brand were different, but the assortment of rolls and muffins looked identical.

  “Tall cup and a corn muffin,” he said to the girl working the cart. She looked so surprised when his terminal transferred actual money instead of basic ration credits that she almost dropped his food. By the time his Ceres New Yuan routed through the network and into UN dollars, with every exchange and transfer tacking on fees, he wound up paying triple for his snack.

  The muffin tasted like it had been recycled from old, previously eaten corn muffins. And the coffee could have passed for a petroleum product, but he leaned against a wall beside the stand and took his time finishing both. He tossed what was left into recycling and thanked the girl. She didn’t reply. His space money and foreign clothes left her staring at him like some sort of alien creature. Which, he supposed, he sort of was.

  He had no idea where to start looking for Erich. But he didn’t have to walk far before a teenage girl with machine-quality braids and expensive cotton pants drifted out of a shadowy doorway.

  “Hey,” he said. “You got a minute?”

  “For you, Mongo?”

  “Name’s not Mongo,” Amos said with a smile. He could see fear in her eyes, but it was well hidden. She was used to dangerous strangers, but part of that was she knew they were dangerous.

  “Should be, brute like you.”

  “You’re local. Help a guy out.”

  “You need herbage? Dust? I got neuros, that’s your thing. Make you fly outta this shithole.”

  “Don’t need your stuff to fly, little bird. Just a question.”

  She laughed and gave him her middle finger. He wasn’t a customer, so he wasn’t anything. She was already turning back to her dim doorway. Amos grabbed her upper arm, firmly but gently. There was a spark of real fear in her eyes.

  “Gonna ask, little bird. You answer. Then I let you fly.”

  “Fuck you, Mongo.” She spat at him and tried to pull her arm out of his grip.

  “Stop that. Just gonna hurt yourself. All I want to know is, who runs your crew? Looking to talk to a guy called Erich. Messed-up arm? If your crew ain’t with him, just point me at someone who is, sabe?”

  “Sabe?” She stopped struggling. “Speak English, asshole.”

  “Erich. Looking for Erich. Just point me and I’m gone.”

  “Or maybe I bleed you out,” a new voice said. Someone big came out of the same doorway his little bird used. A mountain of a man with scars around his eyes and his right hand inside the pocket of his baggy sweatshirt. “Let her go.”

  “Sure,” Amos said, and turned little bird loose. She bolted for the steps up to her doorway. The walking mountain gave him a nasty grin. Taking Amos’ compliance for fear.

  “Now get gone.”

  “Naw,” Amos said, smiling back. “Need to find Erich. Big boss now from what I hear. He running your crew? Or can you point me at a crew working for him?”

  “I fucking told you to —” Whatever else the mountain was about to say turned into a gurgle after Amos punched him in the throat. While the mountain was trying to remember how to breathe, Amos yanked up the bruiser’s sweatshirt and plucked out the pistol he had tucked in his belt. He stomped on the back of the mountain’s leg to drop him to his knees. He didn’t point the pistol at him, just held it casually in his right hand.

  “So, this is how it goes,” Amos said in a voice low enough the mountain would hear him but no one else would. Embarrassment was the number one reason people fought. Reduce how embarrassed the mountain was, reduce the likelihood he’d continue fighting. “I need to find Erich, and either you’re my friend on that, or you’re not. Do you want to be my friend?”

  The mountain nodded, but he wasn’t talking yet.

  “See, I like making new friends,” Amos said and patted the thug on his beefy shoulder. “Can you help your new pal find his other friend, Erich?”

  The mountain nodded again and managed to rasp out, “Come with me.”

  “Thanks!” Amos said, and let him up.

  The mountain shot a look at the dim doorway, probably signaling little bird to call ahead to someone – hopefully Erich’s crew – with a warning. That was all right. He wanted Erich to feel safe when they met. If he had a lot of guys with guns with him, he’d be more likely to relax and listen to reason.

  The mountain led him through his old neighborhood and down toward the docks and the crumbling stone monolith of the failed arcology project there. He was limping a little, like his knee was bothering him. A couple of guys with baggy coats that only sort of hid the heavy weapons underneath nodded at them as they went in, and then fell in step behind them.

  “An escort and everything,” Amos said to one of them.

  “Don’t do nothing stupid,” came the reply.

  “Fairly sure I’m a few decades late on that one, but I take your point.”

  “Gun,” the other guard said, holding out his hand. Amos dropped the pistol he’d liberated from the mountain into it without a word.

  From the outside, the old arcology structure was falling apart. But once inside, the look changed dramatically. Someone had replaced the water-damaged flooring with new tile. The walls were painted and clean. The rotting wood doors off the main corridor had been replaced with composites and glass that could take the damp air. It looked like nothing so much as a high-end corporate office building.

  Whatever Erich was up to, he was doing well for himself.

  They stopped at an elevator, and the mountain said, “He’s up on the top floor. I’m gonna bail, okay?” His voice still rasped, but it sounded a lot better.

  “Thanks a lot for the help,” Amos said without sarcasm. “Take care of that throat. Ice it up when you get back and try not to talk too much. If it’s still bugging you in three days, steroid spray’ll do it.”

  “Thanks,” the mountain croaked and left.

  The elevator dinged and opened, and one of his two remaining guards pointed inside. “After you.”

  “Gracias,” Amos said and leaned against the back wall of the car. The guards followed, one of them sliding a metal card into the elevator controls and hitting the top button.

  On the way up, Amos entertained himself by figuring out how he’d get the gun away from the guard closest to him and kill the other. He had a pretty workable strategy in mind when the elevator dinged again and the doors slid open.

  “This way,” one guard said, and pointed down a hallway.

  “The club level,” Amos replied. “Fancy.”

  The top floor had been redesigned with plush furnishings and a maroon velvet carpet. At the end of the hall the guards opened a door that looked like wood but seemed heavy enough that it was probably steel core. Still fancy, but not at the cost of security.

  After the luxury of the hallway, the office on the other side of the door was almost utilitarian. A metal desk dominated by screens for a variety of network decks and terminals, a wall screen with an ocean view pretending to be a window, and a big rubber ball instead of an office chair.

  Erich always had been twitchy sitting still too long.

  “Timmy,” Erich said, standing behind the desk like it was a barricade. The two guards moved off to flank the door.

  “People call me Amos now.”

  Erich laughed. “Guess I knew that, right?”

  “Guess you did,” Amos said. Erich looked good. Healthy in a way he’d never looked as a kid. He even had a middle-aged man’s spare tire around the gut. He still had the small, shriveled left arm. And from the way he was standing, he looked like he’d still walk with a limp. But now, surrounded by his success and his well-fed chubbiness, they looked like trophies of a past life instead of disabilities in the current one.

  “So,” Erich said, “kind of wondering what you’re doing in town.”

  “He beat up Troy,” one of the guards said. “And Laci says he man
handled her some too.”

  “Did he kill anyone?” Erich asked. When neither guard answered, he said, “Then he’s still being polite.”

  “That’s right,” Amos agreed with an amiable nod. “Not here to mess up your shit, just here to chat.”

  “So,” Erich said, sitting back down on his rubber ball chair, “let’s chat.”

  Chapter Eleven: Alex

  Three days after he’d seen Talissa – for what he had to think now was the last time – and gone afterward to eat with Bobbie Draper, Alex knew it was time to go home. He’d had dinners with family and a couple old friends; he’d seen the ways his old hometown had changed and the ways it hadn’t. And he’d determined once again that sometimes a broken thing couldn’t be fixed. That was the closest he was going to get to having it be okay.

  But before he left, there was one more person he was going to disappoint.

  The express tube to Londres Nova hummed to itself, the advertisements above the seats promising to make the lives of the riders better in a hundred different ways: technical certifications, improved undergarments, tooth whitening. The facial-recognition software didn’t seem to know what to make of him. None of the ads spoke to him. The closest was a thin lawyer in an olive-green suit offering to help people find passages to the new systems beyond the Ring. Start a new life in the off-world colonies! We can help!

  Across from him, a boy of about seventeen was staring quietly into space, his eyes half-open at the edge of boredom and sleep. When Alex had been about the boy’s age, he’d been deciding whether to go into the Navy or apply for upper university. He’d been dating Kerry Trautwine even though Mr. Trautwine was a religious zealot who hated him for not belonging to the right sect. He’d spent his nights playing battle simulations with Amal Shah and Korol Nadkarni.

  This boy across from him was traveling the same corridors that Alex had, eating at some of the same restaurants, thinking about sex in likely more or less the same terms, but he also lived in a different universe. Alex tried to imagine what it would have been like to include travel to an alien planet in among his options at seventeen. Would he have still enlisted? Would he have met Talissa?