I gave him the general outline of our requirements, keeping it vague and terse. Pick was right: He’d know everything soon enough. The man was a lightning rod for information around these parts; it was part of his livelihood, because everyone knew he knew everything.

The fat man whistled. “That’s quite a team. Getting good people to work on commission’s gonna be hard.”

I nodded. “I’ve got a good rep. Remind people of that.”

Pick held up his stubby hands, his panting breath loud. “Hey, Avery, I’m not saying you don’t have a good rep. One of the better reps I know of. People will believe you’ll pay them-but they may not believe they’ll survive.”

I shrugged. “Not my problem. Who’s in town?”

Pick was a living, breathing directory. When people drifted into town, or got out of jail, or came out of retirement, Pick knew moments later, somehow.

He smiled at me. “Standard fee, of course?”

I fished out my newly fattened credit dongle, slightly dulled and battered over the years, but still functioning. “Of course.”

He took it and slid it through the equally aged and battered reader built into the desk. He began punching buttons on the reader. He handed the disc back to me and then collapsed back in his chair. “Let’s see… no one sitting out in the bar is right for this, but there’s always people available in the city. You want the full list, or you want me to edit it based on who I think you can actually get?”

I was pressed for time, with the King Worm breathing down my neck. “Edit it, Pick. I’m in a rush.”

He nodded. “For a Techie, then, I’d suggest Ty Kieth out of Belfast. He’s on the run and living under an assumed ID over on Charlton. Heard of him?”

I squinted at him. “London Museum job, couple of years ago. A few other things.”

Pick nodded. “He’s good, but hard to like. Does his job, but pisses people off. He needs work, I happen to know.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Transportation.” He sighed, rubbing one of his many chins. “That’s tougher. Things ain’t what they used to be, in that area. Fucking Joint Council’s spent the last five years mandating DNA locks on all vehicles. Jumping hovers just isn’t all that easy anymore… but, there’s an old team laying low up in Chelsea these days. Retired, but always liked a challenge. If you floated it as a challenge, you might have some luck. Ever hear of Milton Tanner?”

I shook my head.

Pick snorted. “Fucking kids. Before your time, I guess. Take my word for it, Milton and Tanner are your people.”

I shrugged. “Like I said, I’m in a rush. I’m prepared to accept your opinion.”

He ignored me. “Security’s always the problem, isn’t it? Fucking security experts are all fucking ex-SSF, all fucking assholes. Macho bullshit. They all think security’s the most important aspect of any job, and they always want to run every job, huh?”

I shook my head. “I’ll handle security myself. Whatever this guy Kieth can’t handle on the side, that is. Security’s all tech these days anyway.”

Pick rolled his buggy, porcine eyes. “Like I said, security’s all assholes. Shit, Cates, I thought you were world-class. You’re just a shitkicker after all, huh? Handle security yourself, you cheap bastard. That don’t impress me.”

Impress him. “I think I’ll manage, thanks. Give me three backups for each, too. I’ll take a hardcopy of current contact if you have it. Put the word out, too. I don’t think I need warm bodies, but just in case I’d like it to be known that we’re in business, okay?”

Pick nodded, sour, mouth kinking up in one corner as he swallowed bile. “Fucking hardcopy.”

I shrugged. “I got no memory.” I gestured at Gatz. “He’s barely got a brain.”

“Everything’s going to fucking hell,” Pick complained, gesturing at the hardcopy as it rattled out of the ancient printer. “Twenty years ago, we fucking knew how to fuck with things. These days…”

I pushed off from my perch and grabbed Gatz by his collar, pushing him toward the door. “Wasn’t the fucking System back then, was it? Everything was better, yeah yeah, I heard it all. We all went to school and had jobs and were fat on milk. Fuck that.”

The door opened for us as we approached. Behind me, Pick coughed loudly and then growled, “Fuck you!” And then we were back in the crowd at Pick’s, where every fucking lowlife in the place was already staring at us hungrily, wanting in, word already going around.

IX

IT’S THE HIGHEST LEVELS AND LEAVE IT AT THAT

Charlton Street was mostly residential, packed with sagging old brick buildings with no amenities, rooms rented by the night. Ty Kieth was in number 3224, up on the tenth floor, waiting out some overseas heat. We were expected, so we just stepped onto the escalator. I’d come armed, of course; not with anything insulting, just basic protection. And Gatz, of course. He slumped against the escalator railing next to me, dead weight borne aloft on metal tracks. On floor ten I had to grab at his collar and lift him off the fucking thing. Dragging him behind me, I found the right door and knocked, carefully. Pushing Gatz to the other side, I moved to my left and stayed out of the way, just in case Kieth was one of those touchy types who liked to answer the door with a shotgun blast.

To my surprise, the door opened without incident, and a short, bald, unshaven man stood smiling in the doorway; not a care in the world. His nose was abnormally long, and I wondered if he had trouble hitting things with it as he moved about. As he spoke, it wiggled hypnotically.

“Hello hello. You must be Avery Cates, Gunner Extraordinaire, come to interview me. Don’t be shocked, mate; I’ve got my eyes and ears in the air and watching at all times. If you were coming to kill me you would have brought more iron, and if you were bringing me some Piglet tracking device I’d have sussed it out of your magnetic field, trust me. Come on in, then. Let’s talk.” His voice was vaguely accented and precise; he enunciated every word and spoke very fast.

He disappeared into the room, leaving the door open. I glanced at Gatz but he just shrugged. We stepped into Ty Kieth’s hideaway.

It was a small room, but the entire far wall was covered by stacks of electronics. Monitors showed us six different camera angles, starting with Charlton Street and working their way up to right outside his door. Black boxes with no obvious purpose hummed, red and black wires running between them. One small corner of the room boasted a creaky cot with a bare, thin mattress. Otherwise the place was empty and humming with electric radiation, black noise that cut through me, mutating cells and raising the hairs on my arms. Fucking Techies, knew everything but they were all racing against the tumors in their heads from the black noise.

“Word is you’ve got a job for Ty, eh?” Kieth said cheerily, punching buttons and making gestures near his equipment as he studied a green-on-black screen, lines of code streaming by his amazing nose. “Ty’s hiding, of course, you know that, eh? But he’s poor. Poor old Ty, he needs money. So maybe we can work something out.”

I watched him for a moment. “You always do that?”

“Eh?” he said without looking up. “Do what, then?”

“Talk about yourself like that.”

He shrugged. “Guess so. Never think about it. Spend a lot of time alone.”

“Huh.” I considered being stuck with this guy for weeks, months. “What’re you hiding from?”

“Pigs,” he said simply. He turned his twitchy nose toward me. “You want to see all the Pigs on the street?”

I frowned. “Huh?”

He beckoned me to a small, ancient monitor you had to lean forward and put your face against, cupping your hands around your face to amplify the dim image. “Take a gander, Mr. Cates.”