“Better things to do, huh?”
“Yes. Something like that.”
I stared out the window some more. The cab was flitting across the tops of slender multi-storey stacks and the traffic-crammed crevices between. I could feel an old fury building in me that had nothing to do with my current problems. Something that had accrued through the years in the Corps and the emotional rubble you got used to seeing, like silt on the surface of your soul. Virginia Vidaura, Jimmy de Soto, dying in my arms at Innenin, Sarah … A loser’s catalogue, any way you looked at it.
I locked it down.
The scar under my eye was itching, and there was the curl of the nicotine craving in my fingertips. I rubbed at the scar. Left the cigarettes in my pocket. At some indeterminate point this morning I’d determined to quit. A thought struck me at random.
“Prescott, you chose this sleeve for me, right?”
“Sorry?” She was scanning through a subretinal projection, and it took her a moment to refocus on me. “What did you say?”
“This sleeve. You chose it, right?”
She frowned. “No. As far as I know that selection was made by Mr. Bancroft. We just provided the shortlist according to specifications.”
“No, he told me his lawyers had handled it. Definitely.”
“Oh.” The frown cleared away, and she smiled faintly. “Mr. Bancroft has a great many lawyers. Probably he routed it through another office. Why?”
I grunted. “Nothing. Whoever owned this body before was a smoker, and I’m not. It’s a real pain in the balls.”
Prescott’s smile gained ground. “Are you going to give up?”
“If I can find the time. Bancroft’s deal is, I crack the case, I can be re-sleeved no expense spared, so it doesn’t really matter long term. I just hate waking up with a throatful of shit every morning.”
“Do you think you can?”
“Give up smoking?”
“No. Crack this case.”
I looked at her, deadpan. “I don’t really have any other option, counsellor. Have you read the terms of my employment?”
“Yes. I drew them up.” Prescott gave me back the deadpan look, but buried beneath it were traces of the discomfort that I needed to see to stop me reaching across the cab and smashing her nose bone up into her brain with one stiffened hand.
“Well, well,” I said, and went back to looking out of the window.
AND MY FIST UP YOUR WIFE’S CUNT WITH YOU WATCHING YOU FUCKING METH MOTHERFUCKER YOU CAN’T
I slipped off the headset and blinked. The text had carried some crude but effective virtual graphics and a subsonic that made my head buzz. Across the desk, Prescott looked at me with knowing sympathy.
“Is it all like this?” I asked.
“Well, it gets less coherent.” She gestured at the holograph display floating above the desktop, where representations of the files I was accessing tumbled in cool shades of blue and green. “This is what we call the R&R stack. Rabid and Rambling. Actually, these guys are mostly too far gone to be any real threat, but it’s not nice, knowing they’re out there.”
“Ortega bring any of them in?”
“It’s not her department. The Transmission Felony Division catches a few every now and then, when we squawk loudly enough about it, but dissemination technology being the way it is, it’s like trying to throw a net over smoke. And even when you do catch them, the worst they’ll get is a few months in storage. It’s a waste of time. We mostly just sit on this stuff until Bancroft says we can delete it.”
“And nothing new in the last six months?”
Prescott shrugged. “The religious lunatics, maybe. Some increased traffic from the Catholics on Resolution 653. Mr. Bancroft has an undeclared influence in the UN Court, which is more or less common knowledge. Oh, and some Martian archaeological sect has been screaming about that Songspire he keeps in his hall. Apparently last month was the anniversary of their founder’s martyrdom by leaky pressure suit. But none of these people have the wherewithal to crack the perimeter defences at Suntouch House.”
I tilted my chair back and stared up at the ceiling. A flight of grey birds angled overhead in a southward pointing chevron. Their voices were faintly audible, honking to each other. Prescott’s office was environment-formatted, all six internal surfaces projecting virtual images. Currently, her grey metal desk was incongruously positioned halfway down a sloping meadow on which the sun was beginning to decline, complete with a small herd of cattle in the distance and occasional birdsong. The image resolution was some of the best I’d seen.
“Prescott, what can you tell me about Leila Begin?”
The silence that ensued pulled my eyes back down to ground level. Oumou Prescott was staring off into a corner of the field.
“I suppose Kristin Ortega gave you that name,” she said slowly.
“Yeah.” I sat up. “She said it would give me some insight into Bancroft. In fact, she told me to run it by you to see if you rattled.”
Prescott swivelled to face me. “I don’t see how this can have any bearing on the case at hand.”
“Try me.”
“Very well.” There was a snap in her voice as she said it, and a defiant look on her face. “Leila Begin was a prostitute. Maybe still is. Fifty years ago, Bancroft was one of her clients. Through a number of indiscretions, this became known to Miriam Bancroft. The two women met at some function down in San Diego, apparently agreed to go to the bathroom together, and Miriam Bancroft beat the shit out of Leila Begin.”
I studied Prescott’s face across the table, puzzled. “And that’s it?”
“No, that’s not it, Kovacs,” she said tiredly. “Begin was six months pregnant at the time. She lost the child as a result of the beating. You physically can’t fit a spinal stack into a foetus, so that made it real death. Potential three- to five-decade sentence.”
“Was it Bancroft’s baby?”
Prescott shrugged. “Debatable. Begin refused to let them do a gene match on the foetus. Said it was irrelevant who the father was. She probably figured the uncertainty was more valuable from a press point of view than a definite no.”
“Or she was too distraught?”
“Come on, Kovacs.” Prescott jerked a hand irritably at me. “This is an Oakland whore we’re talking about.”
“Did Miriam Bancroft go into storage?”
“No, and that’s where Ortega gets to stick her knife in. Bancroft bought off everybody. The witnesses, the press, even Begin took a pay-off in the end. Settled out of court. Enough to get her a Lloyds cloning policy and take her out of the game. Last I heard, she was wearing out her second sleeve somewhere down in Brazil. But this is half a century ago, Kovacs.”
“Were you around?”
“No.” Prescott leaned across the desk. “And neither was Kristin Ortega, which makes it kind of sickening to hear her whining on about it. Oh, I had an earful of it too, when they pulled out of the investigation last month. She never even met Begin.”
“I think it might be a matter of principle,” I said gently. “Is Bancroft still going to prostitutes on a regular basis?”
“That is none of my concern.”
I stuck my finger through the holographic display and watched the coloured files distort around the intrusion. “You might have to make it your concern, counsellor. Sexual jealousy’s a pretty sturdy motive for murder, after all.”
“May I remind you that Miriam Bancroft tested negative on a polygraph when asked that question,” said Prescott sharply.
“I’m not talking about Mrs. Bancroft.” I stopped playing with the display and stared across the desk at the lawyer before me. “I’m talking about the other million available orifices out there and the even larger number of partners or blood relatives who might not relish seeing some Meth fucking them. That’s going to have to include some experts on covert penetration, no pun intended, and maybe the odd psychopath or two. In short, someone capable of getting into Bancroft’s house and torching him.”