"Expecting what?" Skater asked. Duran stood behind him. Their voices were low and muffled by the stacks of crates and packages filling the small warehouse off Clay Street where Tallow did business. By day, the warehouse handled soy and artificial foods shipped in from the United Canadian and American States. By night. Tallow moonlighted as an organlegger for Nightingale's Body Parts when product was needed and wouldn't be too closely questioned as to the source. As long as it was good.
"You needing to dispose of a woman's body." Tallow slipped on a pair of transparent gloves with elastic snaps. "Shine that light over here."
Skater moved the flash beam over to Shiva's upper body.
"Wait." Tallow took a step closer and cupped Shiva's face in his hand. The street doc was years from practicing legally, but still ran parts and pieces through the shadows. He was short and broad, but had long white fingers on hands that looked like pale spiders crawling across Shiva's corpse. "This isn't the dancer from SybreSpace."
"No," Skater said. "It's not."
"I figured you two was quits when I started seeing her with other guys. Though I gotta tell you they seemed even less her style than you were."
Skater kept his face impassive, but he felt a twist of pain to think of Larisa with anyone else. It had been five months since he'd seen her, though only days since they'd talked.
Duran shifted uneasily beside Skater. "This guy know you?"
Skater shrugged. "Sometimes we hang at the same spots." That was how he'd first met Tallow, though he'd never used the man before, nor would he again.
Tallow turned to him and smiled. His gloves were already coated with Shiva's blood. "Don't have to worry about me," the street doc said. "Without guys like you, I'd be out combing the alleys looking for skells the Halloweeners or some other street gang might have iced and left for ratmeat." He patted Shiva's dead cheek. "At least this way, I get some healthy merch to deal. And well within the ischemic time of tissue survival for resale. Wouldn't do much good trying to sell dead organs. Bring her over here."
Skater and Duran grabbed the sides of the sleeping bag and followed the street doc into a barren office in the back. A nameplate announced that the office belonged to D. Madden Congealed blood matted the material of the sleeping bag. They put the corpse on a desk Tailow cleared off. Talking to himself, the street doc opened a concealed vault hidden in the wall and removed a tray of medical instruments, all gleaming and sharp. The room had no windows, so when he switched on the high-intensity lamp over the desk after screwing in another bulb, the light died before leaving the room.
Tallow pushed Shiva's arms toward Skater. "Hold her.
I've got to cut her out of these clothes." A scalpel gleamed in his hand as it whisked through the clothing. In seconds, the corpse was naked.
Skater tried not to react. His grandfather had always insisted a new life awaited after the physical one was spent. He hoped it was so, and he hoped Shiva wasn't looking in on him as he helped cut up what remained of her.
Tallow switched on the laser saw and opened up the corpse's chest, then used a chest spreader that looked like a praying mantis to pull it apart. He talked [o himself as he listed the organs that appeared to be in good shape. There wasn't much blood, and Skater was glad of it. By morning, what had once been Shiva would be scattered over the city as black-market organs and bone.
"So how'd Romeo happen to lose his fair Juliet?" Tallow lifted the undamaged heart from the chest cavity. He plopped it into a freon-chilled chamber that had come from the vault as well.
Face hard, tight with the effort to bottle up all the emotions of the moment as well as from memories of the past. Skater said, "She was afraid I'd end up on your table some night."
Duran leaned in, intimidating with his size and black synthleather. "More chopping," he said, "and less fragging yap."
'I don't know exactly what I snatched, but it was well-guarded," Archangel told them, seated in the rented room deep in the Ork Underground a couple of hours later. "I downloaded everything I could, but I still don't know what I got."
Skater stood behind Wheeler Iron-Nerve and beside Elvis, scanning the monitor as Archangel scrolled through the files. Figures and symbols raced across the screen, moving vertically and horizontally in random colors.
"It's coded." Skater said.
Archangel nodded. "If I had more time, maybe I'd be able to break it."
"The one thing we don't have is time," Duran muttered. He stood in one comer, dark and brooding, arms folded across his broad chest. "The yaks are combing the streets looking for the team that hit the Sapphire Seahawk tonight."
A cruel smile twisted Elvis's lips in the shadows of his tusks. "You mean they're giving us all the credit?" The room was small, nearly filled to bursting by the 225-kilogram troll himself. Wooden casks of cheap wine and beer were stacked against the back wall. The Bloody Rosebud of Phelia, named after the ork warrior-woman who died defending her charges at a children's hospital during the Night of Rage, didn't have many customers at one a.m. of a Wednesday morning. A few cheap fuel-oil lanterns with the bar's logo primed on them filled a few handmade wooden shelves on the wall. Cullen Trey sat in a straight-backed chair, paging through a dusty book that had been painstakingly reassembled.
Duran nodded without mirth and ran a hand through his ork's thick mane. "That's exactly what I'm saying."
"What are we going to do with the load?" Archangel asked. "We don't have a buyer, and we're not even sure of what we've got to sell." As always, she looked like she was under zero-sweat.
"Can you copy it?" Skater asked.
"I copied it from the freighter's system, didn't I?"
"Then make four more copies," Skater said. "Give them to everyone else in the room. Not me."
"Why everyone else and not you?" Elvis demanded.
"Because," Wheeler said, "if he already had a buyer, he could cut us out of the loop in a heartbeat. Jack's trying to play square with us. This way he has nothing to sell without us.”
"Maybe," Duran said, maintaining his icy expression. "And maybe copies of those files are a way to target the rest of the team."
Wheeler's face grew dark, but before he could respond. Skater told Archangel. "Give me a copy, too." He faced Duran. "You can trust me or not."
Archangel passed the duplicate chips out among them.
"What would you think?" the ork demanded. "You come to us out of the blue with this scam a few weeks ago. You're not sure exactly what we're after, but the buzz is it's worth a few million nuyen to the runners who can nick it and find a buyer. We've been doing well enough. We got plenty of Mr. Johnsons with biz for us. We didn't need this."
"No," Trey said agreeably. "But you didn't bat an eye when Jack laid it out, did you?"
"Stay out of this," Duran snarled.
"I would"-the combat mage smiled affably-"except that I'm already neck deep in it, chummer. Same chopping block as you. Your own greed pushed you into this, not Jack."
Skater let the silence fill the room, stilling his impulse to say something in his own defense.
"So what's the plan?" Wheeler asked him. "We separate and lay low till we find out how deep this goes. Then we try turn it around for ourselves. If we can." "No matter what happens," Trey said, pushing himself up out of his chair and adjusting his cape, "no one can say these past three years haven't been a good run." He held out his hand to Skater. "If I don't see you again, chummer, it's been a slice." His smile seemed genuine.