Noir Fatale Read online

  Probably should have closed the back door when I left instead of posting it on the darknet, I guess. But he’d really, really pissed me off.

  Anyway, they let me in, and as the sights and sounds surrounded me, I tried to look like I had at least a clue about what I was doing. It wasn’t what I’d expected. Or, rather, it was exactly what I’d expected, just not who I’d expected. Lunete had told me there’d be some big spenders at the Lisbon, but I’d thought she was talking about roof-tier Dolists. About the ones who run the protection rackets or jack the prices for basic maintenance on the contracts their Dolist manager buddies throw their way. But these weren’t “my” class of people after all. Not all of them, anyway.

  An actual, honest-to-God piano sat at one end of the single huge room, the ripple of its notes coming clearly through the background mutter of conversation as the very dark-skinned pianist stroked the keyboard. I stood there listening, looking around, under the haze of smoke—most of it old-fashioned tobacco, but salted with euphor and dream weed—that was too heavy for the ducts to dissipate properly. Or maybe the Lisbon’s owner just liked the atmosphere and he’d dialed down the fans. The lighting was awful, but it was the kind of awful somebody takes pains to arrange. The kind that leaves lots of darkness for those who want to be discreet. Not that too many people in the Lisbon seemed all that concerned about discretion, judging by the live sex show on the stage and the well-dressed people calling encouragement and tossing credit slips.

  “Welcome to the Lisbon, cutie,” someone said and I looked away from the stage and its…improbably energetic occupants. The waiter was older than me—seems like all the world’s older than me—and as Mom had said, back in the days when she still laughed sometimes, he looked like he’d been ridden hard and put up wet. But at least he was smiling.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “First time here?”

  “Yeah,” I acknowledged.

  “Well, you’re gonna have to buy at least one drink or tab, and Paschal—he’s the guy on the door—expects ten percent off the top.” I blushed at the devastating accuracy with which he’d assessed my reason for being there, and he shook his head. “Way it works, cutie,” he said almost gently. “And at least it’s only ten percent. Down-corridor at Jamie’s, the house takes twenty percent.”

  “Yeah, I’d heard that,” I lied. “Reason I thought I’d try my luck here tonight.”

  “Well, good hunting,” he said. “Was I you, though, I’d stay away from table ten. People there’d really like someone your age. Too much.”

  He gave me a long, steady look, and I managed not to swallow nervously before I nodded. Then he nodded back and disappeared into the crowd, and I headed for the long, polished, old-fashioned bar. It looked like it was made out of real wood. I wasn’t sure it actually was, but it did have a real live barkeep behind it.

  I would’ve preferred an AI dispenser, for a lot of reasons.

  “What’ll it be?” he asked over the piano, his eyes resting knowingly on my breasts, as I slipped onto one of the barstools. That was one of the reasons I’d have preferred an AI. Then again, I’ve always preferred computers to people. Probably because no matter how “brilliant” the system may be, I know it’s not really self-aware. Not really judging me.

  Not really looking for what it can squeeze out of me before it throws me away.

  “Something sweet,” I replied. “What do you suggest?”

  And that was another of the reasons I’d have preferred an AI. It wouldn’t have cared about the fact that I didn’t have a clue what went into most mixed drinks.

  “How much kick you want?”

  “Not too much.” I gave him my best attempt at a knowing smile. “Want to keep my head clear for later.”

  “Oh, I think that’s a really good idea, chickie.” His smile was a leer. “But, in that case, I’d recommend the piña colada.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, and he got busy with his bottles and mixers and things. It didn’t take him long.

  “That’ll be a cred and a half,” he told me, sliding it across the bar, and I bit my lip in dismay. That was a lot of money for a single not-that-big glass with some kind of paper or plastic umbrella sticking out of the top. It was for me, anyway.

  “Sure,” I said and swiped my uni-link over his terminal. I didn’t tip him. I hoped that wouldn’t piss him off, because I couldn’t afford any trouble. But I couldn’t afford the tip, either. Not yet. Maybe I could toss him a little something when I left, assuming I had anything to toss anyone.

  To my surprise, he didn’t even seem to notice, and I picked up the drink. I removed the stupid umbrella, took a sip, and got another surprise; it was actually good. Maybe a little too sweet, but it reminded me some of the coconut cake Dad used to bake. A mixed blessing. The memory might warm me, but I didn’t need to be thinking about him or Mom or what they’d think about my plans. Not tonight.

  I turned on the stool, sipping the drink—very small sips; I wasn’t much of a drinker so I didn’t know how much “kick” it really had and I needed it to last as long as I could manage before I had to cough up for another one—and surveyed the big, crowded room again. There were a lot of singles, men and women, and not a few of them were looking in my direction. The lighting might be bad, but there was enough of it to show off my long purple hair. Wasn’t a dye job, that hair. Great-Grandmother—or maybe it was Great-Great-Grandmother—Faustine had been designed in a lab somewhere, and her genotype had kicked up hard in my case. The hair wasn’t the only thing they’d modified when they built her, either.

  It was the most visible, though, because it was long and sleek and the same deep, vibrant shade of purple as my eyes. It fell in a thick, silky cascade from the white ribbon I’d used to confine it, and I’d programmed my skimpy little dress to flow back and forth between pristine white and canary yellow by way of antique ivory to contrast with it. Nothing flashy; just enough to draw the eye.

  The rest of me’s not as striking as the hair and eyes, but it’s good enough to get by with. If it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been here tonight.

  “Hi there, honey,” a man said, sliding onto the stool beside mine. “You look lonely.”

  He was probably at least twice my age—hard to tell with prolong, of course—and one of the people I hadn’t expected to see here tonight, judging by the cut of his expensive tunic and the elegance of his grooming. He dressed like a Legislaturalist, not a Dolist—not even a really well-heeled Dolist—although I couldn’t imagine what Legislaturalists were doing at the Lisbon.

  “Maybe that’s because I am lonely,” I replied, trying very hard to hide my nervousness and sound like I’d done this before.

  “Well,” he leaned towards me slightly, laying one hand on my thigh just below the dress’s hemline, “maybe we could do a little something about that later tonight. Wouldn’t do for a sweet thing like you to go home lonely, now would it?”

  “No, I think that would be a terrible idea,” I told him.

  “I’m working right now,” he said, and my heart sank a bit as he twitched his head in the direction of one of the tables.

  It sat like an occupied island in a small sea of empty tables and the number “10” floated in the air above it. The dozen-plus people sitting around it were as expensively dressed as he was—maybe even more so; I wasn’t all that good at estimating costs for the sorts of things the “better sort” enjoyed in Nouveau Paris—and most of them seemed intently focused on the activities on the stage. Two of them didn’t, though. A pair of men with their heads close together, obviously deep in some sort of discussion.

  “Friends of yours?” I asked lightly.

  “I wish!” He shook his head. “No, employers. Gotta make sure nothing…unpleasant happens.”

  He twitched his tunic open for just an instant with the hand that wasn’t busy sliding steadily higher as it stroked the inside of my thigh. Just open enough for me to see the butt of the pulser holstered under his left arm. I wonde
red if he’d done that to impress me with how important and dangerous he was or because he thought it might turn me on.

  “Probably be another couple of hours,” he said. “Then I’m off duty for the rest of the night.” He smiled knowingly, and his fingers slipped still higher. “You wait and come home with me, and you won’t be sorry.”

  “Really?” I tilted my head and I gave him my best sultry smile.

  I’d practiced it in front of the mirror before I gave Cesar his meds—what there were of them—and tucked him into bed and slipped out of our miserable little closet of an “apartment.” One whole room and an attached bathroom, and—as Manager Marteau had pointedly told me—lucky to have that after our BLS was garnished every month to pay off Mom and Dad’s fines.

  At the rate we were going, we’d be done by the time I was fifty.

  “Really.” He winked and leaned closer and I felt his lips on mine. At least he didn’t have bad breath, although that was about the only good thing I could say about it. Then he drew back and gave my thigh another squeeze.

  “Break’s over. Gotta get back to work,” he told me. “Call me Hercule. And don’t you go away! I’ll be back.”

  “And I’ll be here,” I promised him with another of those smiles.

  He chuckled, then snapped his fingers arrogantly, and the barkeep looked up instantly.

  “Anything else my friend here wants, put it on my tab,” he said.

  “Whatever you say,” the barkeep promised, and my new “friend” climbed off the stool, gave me another of those kisses, and headed back across the floor. An equally well-dressed woman standing to one side of the door watched him come, then nodded brusquely to him as he took her place by the door and she headed for the arch that led to the lavatories.

  Now that I’d followed “Call-Me-Hercule”’s progress across the room, I realized he and the woman weren’t alone. There were at least three more people—obviously bodyguards—scattered strategically around the bar, and there were four more standing none too discreetly two or three meters back from table ten itself, surrounding it in a hollow square. Despite the fact that I’d just made my first commitment as a prostitute—or perhaps because I wanted to think about anything besides the fact that I had—I felt my eyebrows rise as the level of security sank in.

  It wasn’t a surprise that any Legislaturalist would have some security. Given how universally beloved the Legislaturalists in general were, bodyguards made an awful lot of sense. But nine of them was pushing the upper limits. Usually, you wouldn’t see more than three or four, at most, outside the ranks of the senatorial families. And what in the world would someone like that be doing at the Lisbon?

  I sipped my piña colada, grateful that at least I wouldn’t have to pay for any more pricey drinks, and gazed at table ten, wondering if Call-Me-Hercule was one of the people my friendly waiter had tried to warn me about. With my luck he was. But maybe he wasn’t. The waiter hadn’t sounded like he was talking about the hired help. And there was something about—

  My nostrils flared as the two men who’d been leaning into their discussion straightened and I saw them in profile at last. Carmouche. That was Senator Carmouche on the right. He’d been all over the HD and public boards for the last couple of months, ever since he’d stepped down as Secretary of Security to become Secretary of War instead. What was he—?

  “Child, what are you doing here?” a voice asked beside me, and I twitched in surprise, then looked at the speaker.

  It was a woman with a very pale complexion. Her hair was almost as long as mine, but it was blacker than a near-raven’s wing, and her eyes were dark in the lighting. There was a large mole on her right cheek, big enough I wondered why she’d never had it removed, but she had what was probably the most beautiful bone structure I’d ever seen. She was also petite, at least five or six centimeters shorter than me despite her high-heeled shoes, with the graceful, slender carriage to match that bone structure.

  Just looking at her made me feel too tall, gawky, and plain.

  Not to mention young, unsophisticated, and out of my depth.

  “Excuse me?” I replied brilliantly to her question.

  “I asked what you’re doing here.” She shook her head. “This isn’t the sort of place you ought to be.”

  There was no condemnation in her tone, only compassion, but I felt a sudden surge of anger. Who was she to judge whether or not this was where I “ought” to be? And I didn’t need her compassion. I didn’t need anybody’s compassion. I’d made it on my own for five miserable years in the teeth of everything the fucking system could throw at me, and if she didn’t think I could go on doing that, then the hell with her!

  “I’m working,” I said shortly, taking in her black, elegantly cut, revealing gown. It was vented hip-high on either side, with a high, round neck but a plunging keyhole bodice that showed a lot of cleavage. Its fabric was programmed with a moving pinprick pattern that gleamed against its black background, flowing like a constellation of stars, and it must have cost at least a hundred times what my dress had.

  “Like you,” I added in a pointed tone.

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head with an odd little smile. “You’re not working at all like I am, child. And you shouldn’t be ‘working’ here at all. It’s not where someone like you should be.”

  “And how do you know what ‘someone like me’ should or shouldn’t be doing?” I demanded.

  “Sheath the claws,” she told me, and I suppressed a sudden, totally inappropriate giggle at just how apropos that was. “I’m not criticizing. But you remind me of someone. Someone I lost a long time ago.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Just someone who was…important to me.” The woman’s expression changed, and for just an instant, the kind of sorrow that wrenches the heart right out of someone looked out of her eyes at me. Her hand rose to touch the only item of jewelry she wore—a silver unicorn on a beautiful chain around her neck—and she shook her head. “Just someone I cared about.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. That sudden spike of anger had died under the weight of her unspoken grief.

  “It happens.” She shrugged. “It happens way too often, in fact. But that doesn’t change the fact that you shouldn’t be here. You’ve never done this before, have you?”

  She ran the hand which had caressed the unicorn down the fabric of her gown as she spoke, and I knew exactly what she meant.

  “Why do you say that?” I challenged.

  “Oh, quite a few reasons.” She smiled again, crookedly this time. “Like the fact that you didn’t show the doorman your license, which means you’re not legal. And you’re young—God, what? You all the way up to twenty by now?” She shook her head. “And then there’s you and Hercule. I’ll admit he’s probably the best of a bad lot, but that’s not saying a lot in this case. You’re likely to get hurt, going home with someone like him.”

  “He didn’t seem too bad,” I argued, wondering whether I was trying to convince her of that or myself. “A little…touchy-feely, but after all—”

  I shrugged uncomfortably, and she nodded.

  “You’re in public right now,” she pointed out, “and his boss is trying to keep a low profile. But, from what I’ve heard, his tastes are…esoteric, shall we say?” I realized she was watching me more closely than it seemed as she dropped “esoteric” on me, as if testing my own vocabulary. “And he likes his bedmates young and inexperienced. I think it’s their ‘innocence’ that attracts him, and not in a good way, if you know what I mean.”

  “You seem to know an awful lot about him for someone so much older than me,” I said just a bit snippily.

  “Oh, I do know quite a bit about him.” There was very little amusement in her smile. “Goes with the job.”

  “I see.” I cocked my head at her. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I don’t really know,” she admitted. “Oh, you do remind me of someone. That would probab
ly have been enough. But you’re young, and you’re in trouble.” My eyes widened, and she snorted softly. “Child, you have no idea how many people I’ve seen in trouble! It’s in the way you move. That’s probably part of what attracted Hercule, too, now that I think about it.” Her gaze went unfocused as she contemplated something only she could see, then she nodded. “Yes, he’d like that. Like stalking the wounded fawn. Like knowing you’re only doing this because you’re desperate. That’d give him even more control, wouldn’t it?”

  My blood turned to ice. If she really did know anything about Hercule, and if what she knew was as accurate as what she’d just effortlessly deduced about me, then…

  That distant gaze refocused on me, and she gave herself a little shake.

  “Let’s just say I don’t like seeing people in trouble, and that I like watching someone else take advantage of their trouble even less. So take my advice, child. Get off that stool and walk out of here.” She reached into the stylish little purse hanging from her right wrist and extracted a small data chip. “Take this. It’s the contact information for the CRP outreach office down on Seventy-Five. Whatever your trouble is, they can help.”

  I took the chip with fingers that trembled slightly. The CRP—the Citizens’ Rights Party—was tolerated (barely) by Internal Security and the rest of Nouveau Paris’s police forces. Everyone knew it was really the political mouthpiece of the Citizens’ Rights Union, and the CRU was the next best thing to a terrorist organization. In fact, if the People’s Republic had been the sort of place which could possibly have produced terrorists, that’s what it would have been called by the newsies. As it was, its members were merely “thugs” or “hooligans,” which the Citizens’ Rights Party dutifully denounced at regular intervals. Despite which, anyone associated with the CRP automatically went into InSec’s files. As the daughter of a pair of known recidivists, they’d love to have my name on their list!

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But InSec doesn’t worry much about the CRP’s outreach.” She snorted again. “They’d have to put a quarter of the people in Morocco Tower on their lists if they did that! Your manager’s worse than most, I’m afraid,” she added, twitching her head unobtrusively in the direction of table ten.