House of the Sun

9

But before I paid my respects to bruddah Te Purewa-ne Mark Harrop-at Cheeseburger in Paradise, there were a couple of other things I needed to take care of. Like, hooking up with any and all resources that might prove useful even if they weren't in the islands.

That morning, when I'd gotten ready to cruise out to the meet in Scott's limo, I'd debated whether or not to bother bringing my pocket 'puter. Hell, I'd reasoned if I needed communications or data retrieval or whatever, the rig in the back of the Rolls would put my personal 'puter to shame. Out of habit, though-and a sense of cussedness, perhaps-I'd brought the scratched little unit along in my pocket.

Thank the Spirits for habit and cussedness. At a little village called Kaaawa, I pulled over and used a public phone booth outside a ramshackle grocery/ice-cream/tourist foo foo store. First order of biz-after polarizing the transpex so no one could see in-was to disable the vid pickup, which I did in the most efficient way by smacking it a good one with the butt of the Browning I'd inherited. Second was to haul out my trusty 'puter, jack it into the phone's data port, and trigger the sophisticated-and hideously illegal-smoke and mirrors program that my old chummer Quincy (how long since I'd seen that slag?) had once blown into the little unit's EPROM chips. Phone and 'puter clicked and hummed for a few seconds while Quincy's code seduced the LTG system. Finally, with a beep that was the electronic equivalent of, 'Take me, stud, but be gentle," the phone succumbed to the 'puter's entreaties and I had the run of a very small corner of the PA/HI RTG.

First things first. Convincing the innocent, trusting phone system that I was an authorized Hawai'i Telecommunications Corporation senior manager, I set myself up a private and secured mailbox in HTC's automated datamail system. (This was only a temporary setup, unfortunately; I didn't have the time or the resources to make it permanent. At some time, a month or two down the road, some watchdog program would start barking when it noticed that nobody was paying for the datamail box even though it was still active. HTC would immediately close it down, but by that point it shouldn't matter to me. In a month or two, I'd either be dead or off the islands.) This datamail box was the electronic equivalent of a "blind maildrop" in espionage fieldcraft. People could leave messages for me there, and I could retrieve them at my leisure, but there was no way, theoretically, that any interested party, like Jacques Barnard, could track down my actual location even if he compromised the mailbox.

Step two: Get in touch with the people that I wanted to leave me messages. The first of those was simple. One of the ever-wiz little utilities on my Quincy-modified 'puter let me send off a text-only message through a series of cold relays to a certain telecom in deepest, darkest Renton. The message contained no names, nothing that could compromise either sender or recipient. The header addressed the message to the president of Demolition Man Building Services Inc. The body text of the message was the digital address of my new datamail box cyclically encoded (again thanks be to Quincy, forever and ever amen). The way I figured it, only one man still alive would recognize the reference and know who was trying to reach him. When he got back into the sprawl. Argent would pick up the message and hopefully contact me through my blind drop.

The second person was harder, but again Quincy's code-bashing helped me out. Within minutes I'd whipped up a simplistic little gofer of a smartframe and fired it off through the Matrix to the Cheyenne LTG. Once there, the gofer would search for any references to one Sharon Young and deliver her a message.

The content of that message was more problematic than the one to Argent. Young and I didn't have much in the way of background; we certainly didn't have any codes in common as I did with Argent. My message had to meet two criteria. First, it had to identify me without using names. Second, it had to communicate my blind-drop address in code. And third, it had to contain the key to that code in such a way that only Sharon Young would recognize it as such and be able to decrypt the address.

It had taken a fair bit of skull-sweat, but I'd finally come up with something that should serve. "Exposure has become direct," the message began, echoing the conversation between Young and me at The Buffalo Jump. "Discussion necessary on extraordinary disbursements. Confirming terms of payment: deadline forty-eight hours, twenty percent on twelve, ten on eighteen." And beneath that was the encrypted bit-string mat was my blind-drop address.

Subtle. Too subtle? The terms of payment I'd quoted in the note were totally out to fragging lunch with regard to what we'd actually agreed, and I hoped Young would notice that and recognize the significance. Take the numbers I'd quoted: 48, 20, 12, 10, 18. That was the key to decrypt the address, of course: 48201-21018. Smart, neh? We'd see soon enough. I checked that everything was kosher, then used the 'puter to tell the phone system to forget everything that had happened over the last ten minutes. I unjacked my 'puter, climbed back into the cramped cockpit of the bubble-topped Buddy, and turned the little three-wheeler back toward Honolulu.

It was getting on to evening by the time I made it back to the Ewa area of Honolulu. Blame it on my being too distracted to read highway signs accurately. When you've got a megacorp and the yakuza gunning for you, it's easy to mistake Kapaa for Kapua and get totally fragging lost. The sun was sinking down toward the ocean, one of those spectacular views tourists pay the big cred to see, and all I could think was "Hurry the frag up!" I'd feel much better with the cloak of night around me, I figured.

I ditched the three-wheeler a couple of blocks from the Cheeseburger in Paradise, using every shred of tradecraft I could muster to spot anyone who was affording me an abnormal degree of interest. I didn't seem to have any shadows, but it's a tenet of the street mat you'll never spot anyone who's successfully shadowing you, right? As I approached the door of the tavern, I saw a reflection of myself in a store window. My flowered shirt was torn down one side, my pants were stained in places with something I hoped was mud (and not residue from Tokudaiji's blasted skull), and I still had hibiscus twigs in my fragging hair. I had looked better, I had to admit. I did what damage control I could under the circumstances-damn near squat, to be honest-and then I jandered into Cheeseburger in Paradise.

The crowd looked pretty much the same as when Scott had bought me a couple of beers-the same hard-bitten locals, the same street-rats not quite watching the strip show. The same ork with the same chipped tusks was behind the bar, and he gave me a solid dose of what Scott had called "stink-eye" as I walked in. Yet again, I was the only haole there, and you can bet your okole that I felt it. I was out of my element and out of my depth, and the patrons at Cheeseburger in Paradise weren't going to let me forget it.

What I most wanted to do at that moment was to turn round and slink back out into the predusk where nobody was trying to glare holes in me. I couldn't do that, of course, so I jandered on in like I fragging owned the place. 1 kept thinking about the heavy Browning crammed down my waistband-not that it was an easy piece of hardware to forget-for the benefit of those patrons who liked to play "spot the heat." The booth Scott and I had taken the day before was vacant, so I slid into it, settling my back firmly and reassuringly against the wall. Now that I felt about as safe as I could under the circumstances, I looked around for friend Te Purewa.

No, he wasn't there. (Frag, of course not. The old Montgomery luck was continuing to run true to form, I thought disgustedly.) I thought I recognized one or two of the slags he'd come in with yesterday, but I could well have been mistaken. One leather-clad Hawai'ian ork with a lousy attitude looks very much like another to the untrained eye.

A waitress came up to me-not the same one as yesterday, but they could well have been sisters-with a "Well, what?" expression on her face.

I sighed. "Give me a dog," I told her. And I settled down to wait.

Thank the Spirits I didn't have to wait that long, not much more than an hour and a half. I swallowed about a liter and a half of Black Dog beer and sweated out what felt like twice that much of cold, rank fear-sweat. A couple of tables full of hard-hooped locals were giving me the speculative eye. I knew they'd picked up on my heat when I'd come in, but they were getting to the point where it was even odds they'd try the haole just to see if he knew how to use the hardware he was packing.

When Te Purewa swaggered in at about nineteen hundred hours, I was glad enough to see him that I'd have gladly stuck out my tongue at him-or any other portion of my anatomy, for that matter-if it would make him look on me more kindly. He saw me the moment he came in the door, and his scowl raised the stink-eye quotient by a significant factor. I glanced over to the hard-eyed waitress-I'd already explained to her what I wanted her to do and slipped her a big enough tip that she might actually remember-and gave her the nod.

I couldn't hear exactly how she phrased things-probably something like, "See that wild-assed haole in the corner? Says he wants to buy you a drink. If you happen to drop your credstick, kick it home before you bend over to pick it up, huh?"-but it didn't really matter. Te Purewa-Mark Harrop-shot me a fulminating glance from under his night black brows, but I saw there was a new element in his glare-curiosity.

He didn't come over immediately-that wouldn't have been chill, of course, and chill is all. He stretched it out for a good fifteen minutes before he jandered on over to glare at me from closer range. I glanced meaningfully at the chair across from me, but he didn't take it. The silence stretched, then he grunted, "Maletina say you wanna talk."

"Kia ora, Te Purewa," I responded. "What are you drinking?"

He hesitated, then he shrugged his burly shoulders. "Vodka."

I nodded at the waitress, Maletina, who'd been hanging close, probably to catch the fun if the big pseudo-Maori decided to beat the drek out of the haole. She gave me anther dose of stink-eye, but she did cruise off in the general direction of the bar.

"We got off on the wrong foot yesterday," I said levelly as we waited for the drink to arrive. "I had no intention of insulting you." I gave him my best disarming smile. "Us dumb-hooped tourists don't know any better, neh?"

"Dumb-hooped tourists get heads broke in," he rumbled. But despite his hard-assed act I saw he actually wanted to smile. For the first time in a long while, I allowed myself to feel a little hope.

Maletina showed up about then with the quasi-Maori's drink. It looked like a triple, easy ice. Maletina was obviously playing "soak the haole," but I wasn't about to complain. I raised my glass of dog and struggled to remember Scott's toast "Okolemaluna," I said at last.

Te Purewa hoisted his own glass. "Li' dat." He polished off about half the vodka in one pull, then puffed out his cheeks with a satisfied pah sound. His hard glare had softened a little.

"You've known Scott for a while, have you?" I asked after a reasonable interval.

The Maori wannabe shrugged. "Some time, yah," he agreed. He smiled. "Get drunk, raise pilikia-raise trouble- and li' dat. Aikane-friend." His eyes suddenly narrowed suspiciously. "Where Scott at, ule, huh? Where?"

There wasn't any really smooth way of breaking the news-not that would get me the overall result I wanted, at least. "Dead," I told him flatly. "Some guy called Tokudaiji had him killed."

He was half out of his chair, his hand reaching for a bulge under his leather coat. I rapped the barrel of my Browning on the underside of the table-I'd pulled the heat from my waistband while he was busy with his vodka-and when I knew I'd got his attention I thumbed the safety off. The way his eyes widened at the metallic snick, I knew he recognized the sound. Slowly, he moved his hand away from his heat, and he settled back into his chair. His eyes didn't leave my face though, and I could feel the rage he was fighting back.

"Haole, you dead," he whispered. "You pau, all over, no moh, yah? Not now, maybe. Sometime, you pau."

It was hard to pretend that much hatred didn't faze me, but I managed to shrug unconcernedly. "You're right about that, Te Purewa," I said evenly. "I was with Scott when he was geeked. You think Tokudaiji's not going to have me aced too, to finish the job? Of course I'm fragging dead, brah. But you think I'm scared of you when I've got yakuza samurai on my hoop?"

That got through to him as I'd hoped it would. "Yak?" He blinked. "That Tokudaiji? He da kine… he oyabun. Nui big yak."

"You've got that right," I confirmed.

"Yak kill Scott? Tokudaiji kill my aikane?"

"That's what happened," I paused. "I don't know any of the background, Te Purewa. I came to Hawai'i to deliver a message-Scott knew who I was supposed to deliver it to, I didn't. I never heard of Ekei Tokudaiji before today. I need to know more. What can you tell me about him?"

It had worked, I saw. The multiple shocks-Scott's death, the identity of his "killer" (the way I was telling the story, at least), then the straightforward admission that I needed his help-had done their job. Te Purewa didn't know quite how to take me. Eventually, he might decide the haole had to die. But for the moment, I'd broken down his resistance.

The almost-Maori blinked again. Then, "Lots of Japanese in the islands," he began. I noticed that the intensity of his accent and his pidgin dialect were a lot less, as though in the effort of remembering he'd forgotten to be quite so Polynesian. "You know about the yakuza, yah? Traditionally, they always been the 'defenders of the people.' When some lord causes too much pilikia, the people can go to the yaks, say 'help us out with this ule,' and the yaks do it. Even today. No lords no moh, but corps and cops and politicians and li' dat, yah?

"So yaks, they got nui respect from the Japanese, the common folk, like, yah?" he went on. 'Tell 'em no worry, no huhu when they get riled up. Settle 'em down, like.

"Happen wi' Na Kama'aina, happen wid ALOHA…"

I raised a hand, asking for a time-out. "Hold the phone. What happened with Na Kama'aina and ALOHA?"

Te Purewa snorted. "Corps out, haoles out, yah? All that kanike, li' dat." He hesitated and frowned again. "Scott didn't tell you 'bout that? Scotty, he got big hard-on for ALOHA kanike."

My turn to blink. He did, did he? But now wasn't the time. "Yeah, he told me some of it," I said reassuringly, "but he didn't give me much in the way of details. Dumb-hooped haole, remember?"

He chuckled, and I knew I'd set his suspicions to rest again… for the moment. "ALOHA, they try to stir up big pilikia," Te Purewa continued, "big trouble, everybody huhu, yah? Some yaks say, 'So what? Not my problem, Jack.'"

I thought I was starting to understand-some of it, at least. "But not Tokudaiji?"

"You got dat, hoa," he agreed vehemendy. 'Tokudaiji say ALOHA stuff all kanike, make no sense, yah? Hawai'i need corps. Hawai'i need haoles-some, maybe." He snorted again. "Hawai'i need money, bruddah, I know dat for true. No corps, where we get money, huh? Where we get food? Can't eat scenery."

I nodded slowly. "So ALOHA and Na Kama'aina tried to get the people up in arms against the corps, is that right? And Tokudaiji calmed them down again?"

"Calmed Japs down," Te Purewa corrected. "Japs only people really listened to him." The Maori wannabe paused, and his face set. I thought 1 knew what he was going to ask next.

I was right "What Scotty do to" get whacked, huh?" he asked me quietly. "Step on oyabun's toes? Spout ALOHA crap? Get oyabun all pupule-all pissed off, yah?"

What the frag, I'd have to tell him sometime. "You could say that," I agreed.

"What Scotty do to oyabun, huh?"

"He killed him," I said.

I'd been here before, and I hated it.

Well, not here precisely, but enough places just like it that the surroundings were depressingly familiar. After a while, one single-room rundown squat is just like another-they all kind of blend together in the memory. Granted, there were differences-cockroaches replaced rats in this one, and it was air-conditioning I craved instead of central heating. Other than that, though, little enough difference.

I lay on the mistreated mattress, shifting around to find a position where as few springs as possible dug into my flesh. I stared at the ceiling.

What the frag had I gotten myself into here? (That question was depressingly familiar, too.) I thought I'd gotten a handle on it; I thought I'd gotten at least part of the story chipped. Suddenly, it didn't look like I knew squat about what was really going down. I sighed.

At least I had a resource now; I had a sometime ally. Te Purewa, of course. I couldn't depend on him too far. At some point he might notice some of the inconsistencies in the story I'd told him and come on by with some of his overgrown friends to ask me hard questions. Better not to push my luck.

For the moment, though, he'd come through in spades. I needed a doss-he'd gotten me a doss, a squat in a trashed-out rooming house on the fringe of downtown Ewa. I needed wheels-he'd gotten me wheels, a fifteen-year-old 250cc Suzuki Custom motorbike. I needed cold iron-he'd gotten me cold iron, a Colt Manhunter that he swore up and down wasn't registered and wasn't in anyone's ballistic database. And I needed sleep. I was on my own for that one.

But I couldn't sleep, of course. I was still stoked up from the hit and its aftermath, and my mind was racing like a high-speed flywheel. I kept going over things again and again, trying to slide the puzzle pieces around into their proper places, so everything would make sense. Fat fragging chance.

It had all looked so simple, for a couple of hours there. Corporate hit against Tokudaiji-orchestrated by Barnard- using me as camouflage and Scott as the hitter-both expendable, of course, and to be expended via belly-bomb. About as straightforward as anything ever is, these days, neh?

But there had to be more to it than that. For one thing, Tokudaiji the oyabun seemed to be a major corp supporter… if I could trust Te Purewa on that point. When ALOHA and the other hotheads tried to stir up the population against the megacorps, it was Tokudaiji who worked to calm them down again. Surely then, it would be in Barnard's best interest-in Yamatetsu's best interest, and in the best interest of all megacorps making big cred out of Hawai'i-to keep Tokudaiji breathing. With him gone…

Well, Te Purewa's reading on the situation-and I had to agree with him-was that there'd be some major backlash. The hit would be seen as a megacorp operation. Rumors to that effect had already been buzzing down the streets while I was still sipping dog with the quasi-Maori. How would the general populace-particularly, the numerous (and quite influential) Japanese populace-read that? The evil, wicked, mean, and nasty megacorps had just whacked an important "defender of the people." Suddenly, ALOHA and Na Kama'aina would find it a frag of a lot easier to stir up the populace against the corps, right? I could easily imagine retaliation against corporate facilities and personnel.

So why-why, and again why-would Barnard arrange to off the oyabun! Unless he was trying to stir up the locals against the corps.

How did that hang together? Pretty well, actually.

Cack the oyabun. Provoke the locals. Lose some megacorp resources. Then-more in sorrow than in anger, of course-move in corporate security personnel, private armies to "pacify" the islands. While they're at it, remove the government that had proven itself incapable of protecting megacorporate interests within its jurisdiction. Frag, drek like this had gone down before successfully. Ask any historian.

Was that it, then? Was I involved in a plot-another plot, for frag's sake-to oust the sovereign government of the fragging Hawai'ian islands and put a plutocrat on the throne? Sanford B. Dole in the nineteenth century, Jacques Barnard in the twenty-first…?

All the facts fit-or I could make them fit-but I had to admit it was all circumstantial evidence at best. Frag it, like I do all too often, I was getting my exercise by jumping to conclusions. The "corp coup" theory answered some questions, but it left a couple of puzzling queries unanswered. Those queries continued to nag at me as the rusty bedsprings creaked under my back. Specifically, I couldn't stop thinking about the wide discrepancy between how Te Purewa had described his friend's political outlook and the way Scott had presented himself to me. When we'd seen the protesters outside Government House, he'd expressed no sympathy, no solidarity with them. Why, when according to Te Purewa he was a staunch Na Kama'aina/ALOHA supporter?

Could Barnard and Yamatetsu be in bed with ALOHA in some way?

I rolled over on the bed, and something prodded me in the hip. Not another bedspring, something else…

And with a bellow of "You're a fragging idiot!" I jolted bolt upright in bed and dug in my pocket. There it was, where I'd stuffed it unconsciously when the first Room-sweeper shot had pummeled my ear.

The message chip that Barnard had given me to pass to Tokudaiji.