“Don't fight it,” Hoshi said.
Ian had a hold of my pinky now. “I told you to stop moving your hand.” The pain had already electrified my brain before the sound of the snap could reach my ears.
I lost all control, screaming like mad as I thrashed and yanked, trying unsuccessfully to wrench my hand free until, two snaps later, things mercifully went black.
SIX
I woke up feeling something crawling on my face. I swatted the gecko away with my left. I held up my shaking right, fingers pointing every which way like some fork gone horribly wrong. Pain ricocheted up into my wrist with every sway of my quaking hand.
I couldn't see straight. I couldn't think.
It was all I could do to muster up a simple course of action.
First step: I hit the newsstand and bought up enough minibottles to make a maxibottle.
Second step: I paid a thousand pesos to a teenager with a boat-take me to the city morgue and bring me to Abdul Salaam.
Third step: I knocked back minibottle after minibottle until I couldn't feel a damn thing, not my fingers, not the stomach pain, not a damn thing.
I moved through the hospital corridors. With this hand, I looked more like a patient than a visitor. Abdul did a fine job wrapping it, not bad for a coroner. He'd splinted my four fingers into a karate chop and left my unbroken thumb free. Ian must've gotten bored when I passed out, stopping after the index finger.
Who did that punk think he was? Bracing me. Me! In my mind, I kept replaying the scene with different endings: sometimes spinning out from under his grasp and snatching his lase-pistol; or other times I'd just tackle him and bash his head into the decking until he went limp; or better yet, I'd pull a lase-blade out of my belt and watch the look on his face as it sizzled into his chest. Then, just when I'd really start getting into my fantasized victories, the shame of being nothing but a drunken old has-been would bring my broken-fingered reality front and center, which would just end up making me all the angrier.
Rage seeped into my gait, my footsteps becoming footstomps as I turned onto the long-term-care ward. I saw the nurses wheeling their carts, the patients shuffling in their open-assed gowns and thought that if just one of them so much as looked at me…
Let it go. You got your money. That was all that mattered for now. I didn't need any more trouble with Ian. Niki had to be my top priority.
From Abdul's office, I'd called Maggie as soon as I'd sobered enough to speak without slurring and told her that the girl fessed up. I told her that the girl was getting dicked by her father, and she decided to de-dickify him. End of story. Maggie sounded short of 100 percent convinced, but her whole premise that the girl was innocent was flimsy from the get-go. I persuaded her to get off Ian's case, despite the fact that, in reality, I knew Ian was involved. How, I didn't know, but I had four broken fingers telling me so.
Maggie had wanted to get together and buy me a drink, but I'd declined. If she found out about Ian's little finger-snapping fiesta, she'd go all out investigating him. Then how long would it be before Ian and his posse showed up at my door ready to break the rest of my bones in order to find out what I'd told her? It was better this way, safer for both of us.
I'd chatted with Maggie a while longer, letting her vent about police politics, with me listening, wishing I was still a cop. Right before I hung up, I recited my account number despite the protestations of the knot in my stomach. I needed that money. Maybe when this was over, and Niki was fully rebuilt, Maggie and I could partner up again and find out what Ian was up to. Together, we could bust that asshole.
Not since I was a kid had I had to worry about money. As the chief's right hand, I'd pocketed a shitload. If it was illegal, we took our cut: opium-den dinero, hooker fuck-bucks, bookie vig, chop-shop swag, gene-smuggler scratch… My palms were so greased I couldn't have held onto sandpaper.
Niki and I lived high, spending recklessly to no consequence. There was always more coming in than going out. But when I was forced to resign by the bastards who murdered the chief, the trend lines went from black to red. Not being a cop anymore, I had to start earning my dough or give up the life. I found good work hiding in closets, peering through windows, exposing scandals when I could and creating scandals when there were none to expose. It wasn't glamorous, but the scandal rags paid well. It was a long way down from running KOP, but it kept me in the game. Barely.
Then came Niki's “accident.” I spent most everything I had on the offworld tech it took to reconstruct her, and I still had a fresh-grown spine to pay for. The money I got from Maggie would get me over the top on the next spine payment, but I still had four more to make. Offworld medical didn't come cheap, and they didn't accept local currency. For every hospital bill, I had to exchange bagfuls of pesos, getting mere handfuls of offworld dollars in return. Still, I knew that if I could pull down another half dozen nice paydays, I'd be able to cover. Last resort, I could sell the house to make the final.
The docs said Niki's new spine was coming along on schedule. I was commissioning the work on the Orbital- there was no tech like that on Lagarto. I could connect up at any time and look at it in its tank, a glass cylinder filled with brown gel, Niki Mozambe written on the lid. It didn't look like much yet, just the worm in a tequila bottle, but it'd be having a major growth spurt soon.
I entered Niki's room. The lights were off. A wall of monitors gave the room an electronic radiance. I didn't turn on the lights. I knew Niki liked it dark, no matter what time of day.
“What happened… to your h-hand?” Niki said between pumps of the respirator.
I bent over and kissed her on the lips, getting a lukewarm response. “Remember I told you I was going to do a job for Maggie. It got a little ugly, but it's done now. And it paid well. You'll be up and about in no time.”
“Save your… money.”
“We're not going to go through this again, are we?”
The way she was jutting her jaw told me we were. “I don't w-want this,” she said.
“Yes you do. You're just out of sorts right now, trapped in this room all the time.”
“It's more th-than that, J-Juno.”
I took a deep breath. Today, her paused speech annoyed me even more than normal. “I know it's hard, Niki. But it'll be over as soon as we get your new spine in. You'll feel better when you can walk again.”
“Why don't you f-fucking get it, Juno? You can fix my body… all you want, but I'll still be b-broken.”
“Stop talking like that,” I said, fidgeting in my seat. “This hospital is just getting to you, that's all.” I stood and flicked the lights on. “What do you expect being in the dark all the time?”
She rolled her eyes, those same fiery eyes that drew me in so many years ago with their flaming mystery. She stared at me, her eyes burning into me, making me feel small. I wondered just when it was that those eyes turned on me. They used to warm my soul, but now they seared and scalded instead. I looked away from her to get out of the heat, thinking five more minutes, then I could go, my daily duty fulfilled.
Another minute of the respirator's incessant hissing and wheezing passed before she spoke again. “It's not this… room that makes… me feel trapped… And it's not… this limp useless b-body, either… It's being… trapped inside of me… that I c-can't stand.”
The photos were coming out grainy-all the better. Gave them that undercover feel. I clothespinned the first one, no easy task single-handed, but I managed. I was used to doing most things with my left.
I kept working, moving prints from tray to tray, holding my right hand clear to keep the wrappings dry. It was such a tedious process, developing pictures from actual film. Hard to believe this was once the way it worked. Lucky for me, there were still a few hobbyists out there who liked to do things the hard way, the predigital way. If I hadn't been able to find film, I never would've successfully built a camera low-tech enough to be undetectable by an offworlder.
I hung what looked like the best of the batch, the devil poking and choking that whore. That had to rate some good coin. Even if the offworlder was nobody important, it would score strong on shock value.
I felt a headache coming on-always happened when I spent too much time in the red light. Knowing it would be a while before I could turn the other lights on, I decided it was time for a little break. I took a hit off my flask and
