'That's ole KS.' sure I know him.'
Jay felt a sudden surge of excitement. Aha! Gotcha!
'KS.?'
'Yeah, stands for 'Killer Spook.' Ain't seen him in a while. He never
give me a real name, so I just called him
KS.'
'How is it that you know him?'
'Oh, he's been coming around for--must be five, six years now. We
first did a little business back in, what?
ought-four or ought-five. Sold him some fourth-gen spook
eyes--starlight scope image intensifiers. Army Ranger surplus, off an
old SIPEsuit. He's bought a few things since then, some of it in
person, some of it over the wire. What are you looking for him for?
He's not into computer stuff.'
'I am not at liberty to say,' Jay said.
'It concerns an ongoing investigation.'
Fiscus shrugged.
'Why 'Killer Spook'?'
Fiscus showed the tooth-gap again.
'I asked around, some people I know. Rumor was, this guy made a living
doing odd jobs for various folks, including a few guvamint ones. Black
bag ops, wet work stuff you don't want to show up on the books, you
know what I mean?'
This was getting better by the minute. Colorful ole Vince here was
giving him all kinds of information. This exterior investigation stuff
was a walk in the park--why did the field ops make it sound so tough?
Must be worried about job security.
'What kind of weapons you guys carrying now?' Fiscus asked.
'I heard that issue was some kinda pansy stun-gun.'
'Kick-tasers,' Jay said. That was true. Jay did have a compressed-gas
electric dart gun. His was in a drawer somewhere at home. Or maybe at
the office--he hadn't seen it in a while. Since he wasn't a field
agent, he didn't have to qualify with the weapon, and he had only fired
the thing once, a long time ago. He did all his shooting in VR.
'Now about this KS. guy,' Jay said.
'Where might I find him?'
'Well, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you why you need him again,'
Fiscus said.
'Like I said, I can't tell you that.'
'You wanna bet?' Fiscus raised his whiskey-soaked voice a couple of
notches.
'Vie, Rudy! C'mere!'
Two fairly young men in green-on-green camouflage shirts and pants
tucked into gleaming combat boots seemed to materialize from nowhere
behind Jay. The pair of then), were huge, five, maybe six hundred
pounds combined.
Jay had seen enough vids to know he was maybe in a little trouble here.
He was alone, unarmed, and it looked as if he was about to make the
unwilling acquaintance of Vie and Rudy. Maybe it was time to see if
