automatic knife with a five-inch blade from his jeans. He put the
point against the bartender's throat, just under his chin.
In the real world. Jay had grabbed the home address of the guy playing
bartender and force-fed the generating computer a virus-laced cookie.
If he didn't pull the knife away, the guy's system was going to go
belly up in about ten seconds after he 'cut' him.
'Look at the picture or I give you a new smile.'
The bar patrons hadn't noticed the action, save for those closest to
Jay, and they quickly edged away. The dancer continued her
sleepwalking shuffle.
'Okay, don't get twitchy.' The bartender glanced down at the image.
Jay grinned. This visit to a mercenary chat room on VR was a lot more
interesting than running facial points of comparison against the image
files of the NCIC, NAPC, or the FBI, looking for a match--which he had
already done, and come up with zed-edwardro geroliver.
'Jeez,' somebody said from the doorway.
'Jay?'
The voice sounded familiar. Jay released the bartender and turned.
Tyrone Howard stood there, looking around the inside of the biker's
hangout.
'Tyrone? What are you doing here?'
There were a few people to whom Jay had given his forwarding code, so
that if they needed to contact him electronically, they could in
essence meet him on the net wherever he was. It wouldn't work in a
high-classification security area, but any hacker worth three bytes
could follow the line into anything as simple as this kind of public
access site if Jay allowed him past the fire wall. Tyrone Howard had
been very helpful during the mad Russian thing a few months back, and
Jay had added him to the list of people who could contact him in a
hurry.
Might have been a mistake, considering the overlay.
Apparently Tyrone had decided to let Jay's scenario be the default, and
it wasn't one you particularly wanted to have a thirteen-year-old boy
see you in. He might get the wrong idea.
'Yeah, I seen him,' the bartender said.
Jay turned back to the giant biker, breaking character:
'Really?'
'Yeah. He's been in once or twice.'
'Where can I find him?'
'I dunno. But the guy over by the pool table, the one in the Army
shirt, drinking boilermakers, he's had some dealings with him.'
Jay nodded.
Tyrone walked into the place toward Jay.
'Gimme a second here, Ty, I'll be right with you.'
'No hurry. Jay. I'll just... enjoy the ambience. Jeez, this is as
bad as Jimmy-Joe's strip joint.'
Great. All he needed was Tyrone telling his father about this
scenario.
Worry about that later. Jay. Let's go see the man who likes
