Just as I figured, she'd paid one hell of a lot of money to Paulie Orchid. I couldn't find anything directed to Lee or Rigmus or anyone else at the Ipsy, but there was plenty that had gone to Orchid, and I set out to trace that.
That was easier than I had any right to expect. Orchid was an idiot. He had no security at all on any of his accounts, and he generally used his right name.
Once the money came in, it went nine ways. A little of each deposit got shunted off to a numbered account; I figured that was either expense money, or Orchid skimming a little before his friends got their fingers into the pot. The rest got divided into eight even shares.
One share went off-planet, as negotiable securities on every ship outbound for Prometheus. My guess was that that was Orchid's own cut, being tucked away safely out of sight.
Another share went to an account for Beauregard Rigmus, at Epimethean Commerce.
Another went to Mahendra Dhuc Lee.
The others went to five other people at the Ipsy, all human.
I noted all their names and numbers, and then I dropped that line for the time being and went at the Ipsy's financial records.
What I was after was simple enough. I wanted information on everything that the Ipsy, or anyone working there, had bought lately, or had delivered anywhere, with special attention paid to Doc Lee and the five others on my list.
I wanted to see if they were really assembling a monster fusion charge, or some huge tractor to pull the crater westward, or any other device that might have a shot at saving the city.
I'll save you all the details. It took me six hours, and you don't want to hear it all, so I'll just tell you what I found.
They weren't.
All the money from Sayuri Nakada was going straight into personal accounts, and then being sent on to more personal accounts on Prometheus, and it was staying there. No money from the Ipsy's regular accounts was going into fusion charges or any other sort of heavy equipment that might conceivably be used to stop a planet's rotation or move an entire city. In fact, no money from the Ipsy was going anywhere; except for my six little darlings, the Institute was effectively shut down and bankrupt. Its funding had dried up about two years back, when its best people had decided to beat the rush and emigrate.
My guess was right. The city was safe from any glitching rescue attempts. The whole thing was a fraud, a scam, a way to pry enough money out of Nakada for those eight people to get off Epimetheus and live comfortably on Prometheus.
Except, of course, the city was still going to fry on schedule. That was why these eight wanted off.
I unplugged myself and stared at the screen for a moment, at the list of the eight names. Then I leaned back, touching keys without thinking about it, and watched as the big holo across the room lit up with a scene of robot beasts in spikes and armor churning up an alien landscape and each other in some sort of competition.
I was at the bottom of the puzzle, I was pretty sure. I had it all. And I was disappointed.
It was all a cheap little swindle. Nightside City would not get a last-minute reprieve.
It wouldn't go out in a sudden blaze of glory, taking the entire planet with it, either. It would slowly cook away and wind up an empty ruin out on the dayside, just the way we'd all thought it would all along.
It was often that way, in my line of work. The big cases don't turn out as big as you think they will. Sordid little details don't lead to criminal masterminds, or big breaks in vast schemes-they just lead to more sordid little details.
These eight people, desperate to get off-planet without winding up broke, had put together a con and picked Sayuri Nakada as their mark. They had tried to kill me when I came looking at it, not because they were afraid I'd tell the cops, or ruin Nakada's profits, but because they didn't want me to uncover the fraud and tell Nakada she was being swindled.
And that was all there was to it.
Except that their little scheme had started affecting other people. The squatters were going to be evicted. The real estate market in the city was probably going to be all screwed up. Sayuri Nakada was probably running on family credit, and when the plot failed and the sun rose she might drag the entire Nakada family down with her-at least, I thought so for a minute or two, but then I changed my mind. The Nakadas wouldn't be stupid enough to let Sayuri get at that much money. They could lose a few hundred megabucks and never notice it.
All that was from the con, but the con wasn't all these people had done. They had tried to kill me. What's more, they had cost Mishima a good chunk of money, in the expenses he'd paid for me. I felt I owed him that money, so they hadn't just tried to kill me, they'd driven me a long way into debt.
I hate being in debt!
They owed me for this.
I still had a client, too, and that meant I still had work to do.
They owed me, and they were going to pay.
I wanted to start with Sayuri Nakada. She was the one with the money, after all, the one who was stupid enough to fall for the scheme. I wanted to start with her, but I didn't. After a little thought I decided to save her for later.
I was going to start with Paulie Orchid. Unless I was bending data, he was the one who had put it all together. The fact that he was the one doling out the money proved that. He'd needed some scientists to shill for him, so he'd found Doc Lee and his team at the Ipsy, all of them desperate for money; that wouldn't have been beyond even Orchid's talents. The idea of Rigmus or Lee organizing the plot just didn't fit; it had to be Orchid.
So he was the mastermind, and he was also the one who had tried to kill me. He was the most dangerous of the whole array. I'd underestimated him when I thought he was nothing but a bit of gritware; he was stupid in a lot of ways, but not in every way. He was too stupid to put any security on his bank accounts, but he'd been smart enough to play a pretty damn good con. He'd dropped out of sight for a long time before he'd come up with this scheme; maybe he'd had some modification done, and I don't just mean the wire job. You can buy just about any sort of add-on you want, for either brain or body, and he might have bought anything. I didn't know just what he was capable of, and I wanted to have surprise on my side when I went after him.
So Orchid came first.
I called Mishima at his office. He was cheerful, giving me the whole routine about being glad to hear from me.
I wasn't in the mood to chat. I cut through the banter and told him I wanted the muscle he'd offered me. I didn't tell him anything about con games, didn't give him any names; I just said I was going to pay Orchid a visit and needed some backup. Armed backup.
He dropped the friendship display. He nodded and agreed, and we broke the connection.
I called a cab, and half an hour later I met the muscle Mishima had sent me on the street at the entrance to Orchid's apartment tower-three of them, all big. Any one of them must have weighed over twice what I did, and they all wore slick armor, the transparent tight-bond monomolecular stuff. The woman had retractable claws. The bigger, darker man had fangs that gleamed as bright as the wires in his face. The smaller man was heavily cyborged, half his face rebuilt with chrome. Serious muscle. You don't go in for the surgical stuff for fun.
Maybe the cyborg had gone into it because he had to be rebuilt anyway, but the other two, they'd done it just for business.
They were all armed with light little pieces, street-legal in the city.
They were perfect.
Using a voice distorter and no image, I called up to Orchid's apartment, saying I was collecting contributions for a campaign to outlaw gambling on Epimetheus. Rigmus answered.
I gave him my story, and he told me to eat wire and die. I was polite; I asked if anyone else was around who might be more generous.