sources.”
“Bullshit,” Cerise said sweetly.
Trouble elaborated, “He’s not stupid, newTrouble. He will have come here—the work he’s doing, he’d have to have done.”
“Assuming he’s in this Seahaven,” Blake said. “What’s this to you, Cerise? Where does Multiplane fit in?”
“My bosses want Trouble almost as much as Treasury does, and they aren’t much more particular about which one they get,” Cerise answered, with a thin smile. “I, however, want to see the right Trouble blamed for this shit.”
“Personal interest?” Nova murmured, with a lifted eyebrow.
“Get the wrong Trouble, and it’s not going to stop,” Cerise said. “And surely both sides of the law agree it has to stop.”
“Touche,” Nova said.
“Well?” Trouble asked, still looking at Blake.
Blake looked down at the test table, running her fingers over the concealed controls. “Give me a few days,” she said.
Nova said, “I hate to say it, Moll, but she’s right. Trouble, I mean. This punk’s got to go.”
Blake glared at her partner, got herself under control instantly. “I need to check things out,” she said to Trouble. “You understand.”
“Fair enough,” Trouble answered, and pushed herself back up out of the heavy chair. “Let me know.”
“What are you going to do when you find him?” Nova asked.
Trouble looked back over her shoulder, met Cerise’s eyes for an instant, saw her eyebrows lift slightly, and then her gaze slid past to Nova, still sitting with her leg cocked up, ankle on her knee. A carved bead hung from a braided leather anklet, catching the light from the window. “Shop him,” Trouble said, simply, and Nova nodded.
She went on down the stairs, Cerise following silently, and the door opened again into the shop. The young woman was still sitting behind the counter, but this time a pair of young men in patched denim jackets stood together over a recording deck, muttering to each other about its merits. They looked up as the door opened, startled and unwillingly impressed, and Trouble walked out past them, Cerise falling into step at her side.
“Where to now?” she asked, when they had stepped out onto the boardwalk.
Trouble shrugged, looked down the arcade toward the palace. “We’ll stop in a couple more places,” she said, “and then we’ll hit the palace.”
Cerise nodded, a faint, not entirely happy smile playing on her lips, and turned toward the next storefront.
Most of the storeowners remembered them, though not all fondly. Trouble repeated her message four times more, twice to men she had once known well, once to a thin woman who’d done them a favor, back in the old days, and was visibly unsure if she regretted it, once more to a man who had known Cerise, and sweated for it. She looked at Cerise as they left the store, and Cerise smiled.
“So what was that all about?” Trouble asked.
Cerise’s smile widened, became almost impish. “He owed me money, and he doesn’t know if I remember.”
Trouble grinned. “You going to call it in?”
“I haven’t decided.” Cerise stiffened abruptly, not a movement but a sudden focusing of attention. Trouble shifted, looking with her toward the palace, and saw a man in black leather walking toward them, a red skull vivid on his shoulder.
“I see Tinati’s deigned to notice us,” she said aloud.
Cerise jammed her hands into the pockets of her jacket, one fist distending the pocket as though she held something there. “That’s Aimoto. He’s sort of chief thug.”
“Great.” Trouble kept walking, controlling her steps with an effort, turning her approach into a saunter that was as provocative as open aggression. As the stranger approached, she could see that he was Asian, or at least part Asian: a big man, broad-shouldered, big-bellied under the heavy jacket, with golden skin and a flat nose and eyes that looked very small.
“He is not,” Cerise said mildly, “even half as stupid as he looks.”
The big man was within earshot now, and Trouble wondered if he’d heard. If he had, he gave no immediate sign of it, nodding placidly to Cerise. “It’s good to see you again, Ms. Cerise. Mr. Tinati was wondering, are you here on Multiplane’s business, or is it—personal?”
“A little of both,” Cerise answered, still with her hands in her jacket pockets.
Aimoto nodded again, looked at Trouble. “Trouble, I believe?”
Trouble nodded.
“Mr. Tinati would like to talk to you—to both of you.”
“Fine,” Cerise said, and Trouble nodded again.
“We were wanting to talk to him.”
She wasn’t sure, but thought a smile flickered across Aimoto’s broad face. He said nothing, however, but turned back toward the palace, gesturing for them to go with him. Trouble kept step at his shoulder, not wanting to fall ahead or behind, and wished again that she had some weapon, any weapon. Tinati, and his bosses, were people that even the net did not cross; she preferred to deal with them only at a distance.
They passed through the shadow of the Ferris wheel and climbed the four steps that led up to the palace’s main door, plywood painted to mimic pink marble ringing hollow under their boots. Inside, the palace was relatively dark, despite the strip-lights along the halls, the walls painted pink or green or covered with bright, surreal murals. Most of the little doors that led off the hall were closed, each one badged with cryptic symbols or a name printed in letters so small that one would have to be practically touching the door to read them. Cerise glanced curiously from side to side, obviously recognizing at least some of the symbols. Trouble, who had been out of the shadows long enough to lose track of who was who, ignored them, and tried to pretend she didn’t care.
Aimoto took them up the back stairs, the ones that led directly to Tinati’s main office. Trouble spotted at least two gun alcoves on the way up, and knew there was more security she couldn’t see, hidden in the walls and ceiling and wired into the building’s electrical system. At the top of the stair, Aimoto paused and said, apparently to thin air, “I’ve brought them, boss.”
A voice answered almost instantly, “Come on in.”
Aimoto pushed open the heavy door, gesturing for them to enter. Trouble stepped past him, Cerise still at her side, and caught a quick glimpse of the armor sandwiched in the door itself as she came into the room. Aimoto followed them in, set his back against the door, and waited. Trouble did not look back, knew better than to look back, but the skin between her shoulder blades tingled painfully, and she knew from the deliberately bored expression on Cerise’s face that the other woman was just as aware of the big man’s presence between them and the only visible exit.
Tinati was sitting at a standard executive desk, beautifully polished red-toned wood supporting a black- glass display top. A few papers were scattered across the surface, but the viewspace and the work areas were conspicuously clear. Tinati was a slim man, not very tall, not quite dwarfed by his high-backed chair, and well dressed, looked like an Ivy League lawyer on the make.
“It’s good to see you again, Tinati,” Cerise said, breaking the silence.
Tinati looked at her without expression, steepling long and rather beautiful hands above the desk’s viewspace. “And you, Cerise. Tell me, is this official, Multiplane’s business, or is it personal?”
“A little of both,” Cerise said again.
“I’d like to be a little clearer on that one,” Tinati said.
Trouble said, “Why? It’s not the clearest situation.”
Tinati’s eyes flickered toward her, but he looked back at Cerise. “Multiplane’s involvement—complicates— my position.”
Cerise took a deep breath. “Multiplane wants Trouble— there have been intrusions, as I’m sure you’ve heard. I want to make sure we get the right one.”
