Nightside City

Chapter Two

AFTER I FINALLY GOT ZAR PlCKENS OUT OF MY OFFICE, I settled in to think about the kid's story. The com brought the music back up a little, but kept it mellow and meditative, and the images on the big holo stayed abstract.

In my line of work I always found it helped to cultivate a suspicious nature, so I leaned back and looked at whether I could be getting conned or set up or otherwise dumped on.

The whole thing looked like a glitch of some kind. Out there at the base of the western wall, if you stood on tiptoe, you could just about see the sun-assuming you were either wearing goggles or didn't mind burning your retinas. In a year nobody would live there without eyeshades and sunscreen, at the very least; more likely no one would live there at all.

A year, hell-ten weeks would probably do it. There were buildings where the top stories were already catching the sun, and the terminator was moving one hundred and thirty-eight centimeters a day. Everyone knew that.

So who'd buy property there?

Nobody. Ever since it began sinking in that sunrise really was coming, that the city founders a hundred and sixty years back really had been wrong about the planet already being tidelocked, real estate prices had been dropping all over Nightside City, and they'd gone down fastest and furthest in the West End. I guessed that you could buy a building lot-or a building-out there for less than a tourist would pay for a blowjob in the Trap, but you still wouldn't be able to collect enough in rents to make your money back before dawn, because rents were dropping, too, and there were plenty of other cheap places, farther east, like the one I lived in.

So nobody in his right mind would actually buy out there. Even if you got the property free, registering the transfer of title would cost enough to make it a bad investment; legal fees hadn't dropped any.

That left four possibilities, as I saw it.

First, someone wasn't in his right mind. You can never rule that one out completely. The really demented are scarce these days, but there are still a few out there. Maybe some poor aberrant had actually bought that future wasteland.

Second, someone had figured out how to get title to the property for nothing, not even transfer fees, and was trying to squeeze a little money out of it. That was free enterprise in action, but it was also pretty sure to be illegal. I might come out ahead if I could prove something.

Third, nobody had bought anything, but somebody was trying to run a scam of some kind on the squatters, maybe just to collect those rents, maybe to get something else out of them, and had enough pull somewhere to get away with it, or had somehow faked the call to the city. Maybe whoever placed the call for the squatters was getting a cut and had called somewhere else entirely. If that was the story, and I proved it, I could count on two hundred and five credits, but the only way I'd get more than that was if the Eastern Bunny dropped it in my lap, or if an opportunity arose for a little creative blackmail, mild enough that I could live with myself.

Fourth, Pickens-if that was his real name after all- was pulling a scam on me.

I couldn't rule any of those out. That fourth one was the one I liked least, of course, and it seemed pretty goddamn unlikely, but I couldn't rule it out. I couldn't figure any way that anyone could get anything worthwhile out of me, with this story or any other, but I couldn't rule it out. I know there are people out there smarter than I am, and that means there are people out there who could fool me if they wanted to. I couldn't figure out why they'd want to-but like I said, they're smarter than I am.

If it was a con, it was a good one. The story was bizarre enough to get my interest, and there weren't any of the telltale signs of a con-nothing too good to be true, no fat fee in prospect, no prepared explanation.

I decided that if it was a con, it was too damn slick for me, and I might as well fall into it, because it would be worth it to see what the story was. So I would assume it wasn't a con.

That left three choices, and they all hinged on whether or not someone had actually paid for those buildings.

I couldn't find out the whole truth sitting at my desk, but I could get the official story, anyway. I hit my keypad, punched up the Registry of Deeds and ran down the list of addresses.

Of course, any jerk could have done that, and somebody supposedly had, because Zar Pickens had said that someone who worked for the city said the new owner was for real. The name the squatters had gotten was West End Properties, but that didn't mean anything more to me than it had to them; I asked for the full transaction records on every address where a squatter had been hassled.

Just for interest, I also tagged the command to give last-called dates for each property file, while I was at it.

There were eleven properties involved where squatters had been asked for rent. They were scattered in an arc along Wall Street and in a couple of blocks on Western Avenue and Deng Boulevard.

All eleven really had been deeded over to new owners in the last six weeks-nominally to eleven different buyers, but that didn't mean anything.

No one had called up any of the files since the transfers had been made, except for Zar Pickens's own building; that had sold five weeks earlier, and someone had called up the transaction record about two weeks back. That would have been the squatters, checking up.

That transfer said West End Properties, all right.

Somebody really was buying property in the West End, or at least getting it transferred to new ownership. That eliminated another of my options: it wasn't just an attempt to muscle a few credits out of the squatters.

But what the hell was it? Was somebody actually paying real money for buildings and lots that were about to turn into baked goods?

I was pretty damn curious by now, and I suddenly thought of something else I was curious about. I punched in for all real estate transactions made in the previous six weeks, called for a graphic display on a city map, and cursed the idiot who had wired the system for pressure instead of voice. I almost plugged myself in, but then decided to hold off. I don't like running on wire.

The records showed fifty or sixty recent deeds. After I dropped out a few scattered foreclosures, gambling losses, and in-family transfers, I had about forty left.

They were all in the West End. They covered just about all of the West End, too.

I extended the time back another week-nothing but foreclosures and gambling losses. An eighth week, nothing. Whatever was going on had started just about six weeks back.

But what was going on?

If someone had figured a way to fake property transfers, why stick to the West End? Why not take a bit here and there, maybe catch someone who could actually pay a decent rent? As I said before, there was abandoned property as far in as my own neighborhood, not just in the West End. The impending dawn was not going to catch anyone by surprise, and people had been pulling out gradually for years-half the people I grew up with, the smart ones, were off-planet, and even some of the dumb ones were out in the mines instead of hanging around the city. So if somebody had a way of stealing land, why go for the worst? Why the West End and not Westside, or the Notch, or somewhere?

Maybe there really was something that made the West End valuable after all, even with the sun coming up. I hadn't figured that in my four options.

That seemed pretty damn unlikely. Anything valuable out there should have been stripped out long ago. Most of the utility lines had been.

Somebody was making those title transfers, though, ostensibly buying up property. The next step seemed obvious: figure out who it was.

I had the com tally up a list of buyers, eliminating duplicates, and I got fifteen names. West End Properties was one; Westwall Redevelopment, Nightside Estates-there were half a dozen like that. All were meaningless corporate labels. The rest looked like casino names; there was even the classic Bond James Bond, with a five-digit code number behind it.

Someday I'll have to look up where that stupid name came from, and why the high rollers keep using it. I suppose it's another weird old Earth legend, like the Eastern Bunny, who wasn't going to be bringing me anything. Someday I'll look that one up, too, and find out why there isn't a Western Bunny. And just what the hell a bunny is, anyway.

I put the fifteen buyer names in permanent hold, then put them aside for a moment and ran out the list of prices paid.

They were pitiful. The highest was for an entire city block, six residence towers and a small park, one of the big developments from the city's prime, a century back; that was ten megacredits. When I was still welcome in the casinos I saw that much go on a single spin of a roulette wheel. Somebody-assuming that all fifteen names were actually the same outfit-had bought about two percent of Nightside City for just under a hundred megacredits.

Of course, it was the two percent that would be first to fry, but still, I felt like crying when I saw how cheaply my hometown was going.

And the big question remained: Why was somebody buying?

Was somebody buying, really? I still hadn't checked on the authenticity of these deals. Just because I saw prices listed didn't mean that anyone had actually paid those prices.

I ran out a list of the sellers and glanced down it for familiar names. There were a few-mostly corporations that wouldn't want to talk to me. IRC had a lot of influence.

I ran an extension on that list, asking for the names of the corporate officers who actually signed or thumbed the deeds. I looked it over again.

It was too bad buyers didn't need to sign deeds in the City, because I thought I might have found some interesting names that way. I ran a check, just in case, but no, no corporate buyers had let any individual names go on record.

I went back to the sellers.

I didn't exactly have any close friends on that list, but I did find someone I was on speaking terms with, a banker, and I decided to give her a call. I'd met her two years earlier, when I traced a couple of kilocredits that had somehow wound up in the wrong account; she'd been the officer authorizing the retrieval. I'd spoken to her once or twice since, but not for months. Four weeks ago she'd signed a deed on behalf of the Epimethean Commerce Bank, which had sold a foreclosure on Deng to Westwall Redevelopment.

I called the bank, since it was business hours, and asked the reception software for Mariko Cheng-and got put on hold for about half a galactic year.

I hate that. The damn program ought to be able to spare enough memory to stay on the line and chat, but no, it put me on hold. They always do that. I just had to sit there and wait.

When I got tired of listening to the porno ads on the hold circuit and staring at the far wall of my office, wishing I could put something interesting on the big holoscreen without losing my call, I started puttering around with some of my data on the desk pull-outs, kicking around files on the six corporations and the nine casino names, and running searches to see if any of the fifteen had ever turned up anywhere other than on deeds to West End property.

The six corporations all had their incorporations properly filed, but the only officers named were software written specifically for the job-no humans, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to get anything out of business software. All six of them had filed five or six weeks earlier, but other than that none of the fifteen were on public record. I wondered what was on private record; naturally, I had ways of getting at stuff I wasn't supposed to, or I wouldn't have stayed in business very long, but I didn't want to use anything illegal when I was on an open channel and the bank might be listening. Besides, if I tried to break in anywhere, I might need all my lines for a pincer attack on somebody's security systems, and I had one tied up with my call and another holding my search data. I couldn't do any serious hacking without plugging myself in, and you can't talk on the phone and run on wire at the same time. I was beginning to consider exiting the call and trying a few ideas when a heavy-breathing pitch for the floor show at the New York cut off in mid-groan, and Cheng asked, "What do you want?"

"Nothing much," I said. "And nothing that'll hurt. I just wanted to check up on an outfit you did some business with, Westwall Redevelopment. I'm doing some background on them for a client." I tabbed the main screen control and watched her face appear.

"Oh?" she said, as the focus sharpened. Her expression was polite and blank.

"Oh," I answered her.

"So?"

"So I'd greatly appreciate it, Mis' Cheng, if you could tell me something about them-just anything. I understand that Epimethean Commerce sold them some property out on West Deng?"

"That's a matter of public record."

"Yes, mis', it certainly is, and that's how I came to call you. Your name was on the deed-or at least it was on the comfax of the deed. I was hoping you could tell me a little about Westwall, since you dealt with them." I started to say more, to elaborate on my story, but I stopped myself. One of my rules of business is to try not to say more than I have to. If I give myself half a chance, I'll keep talking forever, same as I'm doing now telling you all this. If I let my mouth run, sooner or later I'm either telling someone something they shouldn't know-or at least not from me or not for free-or I'm making my lies too complicated, so they'll trip me up later. The best way to lie is to simply not tell all of the truth, and that's exactly what I was doing here; I wasn't going to tell her that I was trying to get squatters out of paying rent, but I'd almost gone and made up some lie about it instead.

She hesitated, then said, "Listen, Hsing, I'm working; I don't have time to peddle gossip. If you want to talk to me on the bank's time, you'll have to make it the bank's business."

I watched her face, and I knew what she was telling me. She didn't want to talk about it over the com-at least, not unless I could convince her that it would be safe and worth her while.

That made it interesting. It meant she did have something to say about Westwall Redevelopment, but not something she wanted everyone on the nightside to hear and have on permanent record.

What she had to say I had no idea. It might have been nothing. It might have been anything. Maybe the transaction was a fraud.

Her reasons for wanting it private and off the record could have been anything from a jealous lover to crime in high places-or maybe she was coming up for a promotion and didn't want it on record that she talked to an outcast like me. It could have been anything.

But I wasn't exactly buried in useful information, so I decided that I definitely wanted to talk to her.

"Have it your way," I said. "I was just hoping for a favor, one human being to another; I don't think the bank's got an interest in this one. Maybe I'll see you around sometime."

"Maybe you will, if you're ever in the Trap." The desktop screen went blank as she cut the connection, then lit up with the data display I'd had on before, transferred back up from the pull-outs.

I looked at it without seeing it. If I was ever in the Trap? That meant she wasn't about to come out to the burbs; I'd have to meet her at her home or office. They weren't the same place-banks are old-fashioned about that in the Eta Cass system; they don't like their human employees working at home.

I typed in an order for all available data on the person last called, scanned through it as it came up, and froze it when I had her current addresses and work schedule. She hadn't tagged any of them for privacy, so I didn't have to do any prying.

She'd be working for another four hours, and her office was in the bank's central branch, at the corner of Third and Kai. If I happened to bump into her there we could go get a drink somewhere.

I could live with that.

Meanwhile, I had four hours-three, when you allow for travel time and the vagaries of fate. Maybe, if I prodded the right program, I could wrap up the whole business by then, from my desk.

I start punching buttons, as always cursing under my breath the idiot who had put in touch instead of voice.