The still-standing mugger’s mouth dropped open, and Indiana extended his free hand to Mackenzie without ever taking his eyes from the other man. She took it and stepped across the still spasming, gagging body on the landing.
“I’ll give you five minutes before I call the cops,” Indiana continued, although God knew he had no intention of doing anything of the sort. “I think you should both be gone by then, don’t you?”
He nodded to the other man, then followed Mackenzie down the remaining stairs without ever turning his back on the mugger until they reached the vestibule. Then he glanced at his sister and shook his head as he saw the compact automatic pistol sliding back into herpocket.
“Idiot,” she said, shaking her own head. “There were two of them, Indy! You did notice that, didn’t you? What did you think you were doing taking both of them on by yourself?!”
“It seemed like the thing to do at the time,” he told her mildly, collapsing the baton and opening the apartment building’s front door for her with his left hand.
“Only because you suddenly decided to go on a testosterone jag! I’m not exactly a little girl anymore, you know!”
“No, you’re not. And you’re a better shot than I am, too,” Indiana acknowledged. “On the other hand, it occurred to me that shooting someone full of holes in our own building might not be the best way to keep a low profile. The Cherubim PD hates filling out the paperwork on dead bodies, but they do investigate them, you know, even on our side of town. When firearms are involved, at least.”
Mackenzie had opened her mouth. Now she closed it again. After a moment, she even nodded in agreement.
“Point taken,” she said after a moment, because Indiana was right.
The Cherubim Police didn’t give a damn how many muggers managed to get themselves killed, and if the one Indiana had dropped was found dead on the landing from blunt force trauma, there probably wouldn’t be any investigation at all. Those cops who weren’t on the take were too overwhelmed trying to look out for law-abiding citizens to worry about what happened to the capital city’s predators, and the ones who were on the take had more profitable things to worry about. But they stood up and took notice when firearms were used, and any case involving them was automatically flagged to Tillman O’Sullivan’s Seraphim System Security Police. Not because the scags cared how many proles slaughtered each other, but because the possession of firearms by private citizens was illegal. That hadn’t always been the case, but one of President McCready’s first acts in office had been to amend the System Constitution to delete its guarantee of a citizen’s right to be armed.
After all, they couldn’t have all those weapons floating around contributing to the unacceptably high crime rate, now could they?
“I’m glad you agree,” Indiana said with a grin as the two of them stepped out onto the slushy sidewalk. More snow was drifting down, and the east wind felt raw and cutting. “Mind you, I’m a little concerned. It’s not like you to give up so easily, especially when I’m right.”
“Don’t push it, Indy,” she said severely, and he chuckled.
They walked down the sidewalk to the tram station in the middle of the next block. The public transit system looked as worn out as anything else in Cherubim, and the often-vandalized tram cars’ broken windows made gaping punctuation marks in the colorful, usually obscene graffiti that caparisoned their sides. Despite that, the trams were mechanically reliable and, unlike a great many other things in the Seraphim System, they actually ran on a reliable schedule. Primarily, Indiana and Mackenzie knew, because they were the only means of transportation available to most of the capital’s population, and the system’s transstellar masters wanted their serfs to get to work on time.
The tram was just pulling to a stop as they arrived, and Indiana followed Mackenzie aboard. They presented their Transit Authority passes for scanning, and managed to find seats that weren’t in a direct draft from one of the broken windows.
The tram moved off through the snow and slush, and the brother and sister gazed out at the crowds of poorly dressed, shivering, head-bent pedestrians. There was a lot of foot traffic in Cherubim, even this late and in weather like this. They passed an occasional ground car, but those were few and far between, and the parking spaces which had once been filled to capacity and beyond stood mostly empty. Downtown Cherubim had once been home to a bustling, thriving district composed of privately owned small businesses—restaurants, bookstores, art galleries, boutiques, jewelers, pawnshops, clothiers, and electronics stores. Their owners and operators hadn’t been wealthy, perhaps, but they’d made ends meet and they’d worked for themselves. Now every other storefront stood empty. Most of those which remained looked rundown, worn out, tattered around the edges. Yet here and there an oasis of well-lit, clean crystoplast display windows offered gleaming goods for sale.
Indiana’s eyes hardened as he saw those thriving windows, because there was a reason for their prosperity. They were the ones that belonged to the mayor’s friends, or even the president’s. The ones whose owners had connections, who didn’t have to pay protection to corrupt cops and city councilmembers, or to one of the transstellars’ local managers. Hell, two thirds of them didn’t even pay city taxes!
There’s always someone willing to play jackal, he thought bitterly. Always someone willing to “go along to get along.” They may not be the ones who decided to rape Seraphim in the first place, but they sure as hell don’t have any problem squabbling over the scraps and grabbing whatever they can get on the side! And not one of them would dream of raising a hand to do anything about McCready and her bottom feeders.
Mackenzie reached out and squeezed his knee with one hand. He looked at her, and some of the bitterness leached out of his eyes as she smiled sadly at him. She knew exactly what he was thinking, of course. Once upon a time Bruce Graham had been one of those shopkeepers…until his livelihood had been destroyed by others’ corruption. Indiana saw the understanding in that smile, and he smiled back at his sister, patted the hand on his knee, and then turned back to the window.
* * *
The tram deposited them two corners away from The Soup Spoon, a restaurant they both liked and which somehow managed to keep its doors open despite its owners’ lack of connections. Probably because the place looked like a dump, Indiana reflected as he and Mackenzie slogged through the last of the slush, stamped their feet clean, and stepped out of the damp, raw cold into the warm, delicious-smelling humidity. The restaurant windows were heavily misted with condensation, and Alecta, their favorite server, greeted them as soon as she saw them.
“Indy! Max! I’ve got your regular table open. Come on back!”
The Grahams smiled and followed her towards the back of the restaurant. The Soup Spoon had absolutely no ambience to recommend it to the better type of customer. The silverware, plates, and bowls were thoroughly mismatched, the tables and booths were worn, and the cheap holo posters on the walls couldn’t hide the fact that they were badly in need of paint and maintenance. Water stains in one corner of the ceiling indicated a leak management hadn’t been able to get fixed for almost three months, and the floor really needed to be recovered.
But what it lacked in polish and upkeep was more than compensated for by the sense of welcome. It was a warm, friendly place, one whose owners knew the vast majority of their customers by first name. A place where the food might come in mismatched bowls but the kitchen was spotless, every dish was just as delicious as it smelled, and the daily special was priced to let honest people wrap themselves around a warm, sustaining meal. Indiana and Mackenzie heard other regulars greeting them by name as they passed, and they smiled and nodded and waved back while they followed Alecta to the table in a rear corner.