Not Gonna Waitby J A Howe |
Part 1 and Part 2 appear in this issue. |
| conclusion |
He pushed her closer to the exit.
“What in hell for?”
“Distraction. Sparky says Cho’s located nearby, and we need a distraction so no one sees us.”
Something was skewed here. Girl out of sorts now. When the cach had he been jawing with cutie pie there that she’d missed it?
Something definitely wrong with this picture, yo.
“Come on!” he yelled, pulling her in a swerve all of a sudden, a completely different direction from where they’d been going. People were crowded around still, and some turned to stare but most were occupied still in whatever the hell they talked about here.
A blue fireball had appeared in one corner of the room, and so far had been missed by both alarms and people.
Liz gave a cry but he pinched her arm. “No. GO.”
He shoved her out the door.
Down into a hallway.
Girl landed with a bang.
“Ow!” she bounced twice before grabbing something to right herself.
Just as panic started inside.
“What the ffwc you doing this for, yo? We were looking for a body, not some crazy spy cach bomb thing!”
“Duck!” he yanked her down to the floor as the building exploded around them. Chunks blew out everywhere, fireballs flying around.
Ffwcing Armageddon, she thought. All those orchids and cach gone.
She coughed. No beepers yet.
Crawling out into better air, behind the rubble, she skinned a knee but didn’t complain.
Girl would be lucky to get out of this one alive, after all, the way this dog went on about things. Can’t do nothing simple anymore, yo. Ffwcin crazy.
She turned back to look at the burning building, now surrounded still by a few fireballs and a lot of smoke that was making formations in the air. Kind of pretty, really, if you didn’t consider it was like this destruction crap, she thought.
“Hey!” she cried as he yanked her down again. She fell with a bit more push than normal. “What the...”
“You want to find Cho or not?”
“Oh, so that’s your — ow! — plan now?” she asked sarcastically as he pulled her down again.
“In a crouch, like me. They’ll be looking for the people who set off the bomb.”
Beepers around now.
“Yeah, and that wouldn’t be me,” she said. “What the ffwc was all that about Sparky? I didn’t hear you talking to him about anything more than some intro cach.”
Shook his head.
“You’re too clever for me, almost. I talked to him earlier.”
“And then you asked where he was? That doesn’t make no sense, anyhow you check it,” she said.
“Via port,” he said and showed her his wrist. “While you were checking the man out.”
“I wasn’t...”
He grinned.
“Now, can we find Cho or not? He’s in there.” He pointed out a greenhouse not far away. “Listed as an exotic orchid.”
She followed David around a corner, gritting her teeth. Odds were, more than one major boss would be stored there if Cho was doin’ it.
Didn’t matter, she said to herself. Ffwcer could rot for all the girl cared; she just wanted to get this done with. Really, she could have just called Cho’s guys now, but she wanted to be sure it was him there first. She was beginning to get a sneaky suspicion though, that David had known the locale all the time.
Casually, Liz cracked her head back as they both rose, activating a small dot on her beeper while her hands were in back of her. “Well, then, let’s get on with it.”
Somewhere over in Colony Twelve, her homies would be getting the alert and figuring on what to do. If they didn’t hear again from her in two hours, they’d come looking. Had the spy seen? Probably.
Girl didn’t really care.
Something was wacked here.
She followed David around another corner. Back closer to the building, there were still people milling about, and a few useless cops.
The couple in black, moving calmly and quietly along a wall now in the shadows, wasn’t noticed. He had his gun out, she saw.
Liz knew exactly where all her knives were.
Girl wasn’t going to get caught by surprise by any more things. Check it, she was getting sick of that.
As they came closer though, a certain scent came to her that she reckognized.
“Hey...”
“Get back down!” he hissed, yanking her. But for once Liz was too quick for him. She leapt free and swam off in the air. She knew he couldn’t fire that gun without blowing his cover. A smug smile covered his face as she gauged and put herself down right at the door.
It was open and the place was deserted. Someone had gotten here before them, then. Liz bounced in uncertainly, watching, but there was nothing here other than the smell of slowly rotting dead bodies. She walked around a ficus plant and found Cho.
Strangled.
Liz cursed...
...and turned to find a reporter standing there with David, a huge grin on the Welshman’s face.
“Wha — I...”
“How did you know where the criminal would be, Miss Hopkins?”
She blinked. “How did you know my name?”
“I told him, of course — partner,” said David, calm as a computer.
“Listen, Mister...”
He took her arm. “Never seen death before,” he whispered confidentially to the reporter, who nodded. “She’s a little distraught.”
“Never seen a... why you...”
Click. There went the shutters.
Girl didn’t know what to do.
“Smile for the camera, dear, this is being broadcast all over the Moon.”
She stared at him.
The reporter looked at David. “And what part did you play in all this fantastic coup, Detective...?”
“Hobbs. Me? None. Of course, we’ve been after Cho for ages, she and I, but she had a hunch, and — well.” He shrugged.
“But I...”
He hissed in her ear. “Smile, baby. Everybody loves a hero.”
Girl could have fallen over, as the reporters pressed in, wanting to know how she’d done it. Over and over, David told the ‘story’ for her.
She just stood there, in shock.
Till she saw Lourdes, Bill Quincy, and Michael gathered by the door. Looking like innocent bystanders, and hell there were enough of those that her homies blended fine. Liz pulled on an ear to let them know she saw them. The signal was passed.
Now what, she thought, as David jabbered on. Cho’s double was out there somewhere and he’d be mad as hell that “she” had killed his source. She’d have to kill him now.
She smiled brightly at the reporters. “...so now that Mister Cho is gone, our informants have told us he has a double,” she said. It caused a murmur to spread, just her idea. “My partner here, Mister HOBBS, was supposed to find him. Now that we’ve dealt with the boss, it shouldn’t be hard for him to do.”
She knew Cho’s double would see that one and mark the guy with her. It put her in the clear; now he’d fear her and be after Twllt Din here, instead of her.
“What are you doing?” hissed David.
“Saving your twll, man,” she hissed back. Smiled at the reporters again. “’Course justice won’t be served till that goes down, but it’ll be done,” she said with a confident nod.
The nod and the last phrase sent her troops off again.
They found her an hour later, in a bathroom where she’d gone to “throw up; the sight of the corpse got too much for me.”
“Okay, plan?” said Michael.
“Juicy found Cho’s double yet?”
“Yeah. Says he’s headed troops this way. Ffwc’s spitting blood.”
“Can’t say I blame him, yo. Let’s hear it for hackers.” The advantage to having wrist beepers digitalized went both ways: sure, you could reach anyone in seconds, but you could also be hacked and found yourself, easy-like. “Who’s he got left with him?”
“Small group.”
“We ain’t leavin’ you, if that’s what you had in mind,” said Lourdes fiercely. Liz knew all the hoes in her ’hood, but Lourdes was the most thinkerly. Her kid James wasn’t bad either; cute lil’ thing. The heroin addict had a point, Liz guessed.
“She wasn’t asking you to leave, yo. You guys get to be cops,” said Bill Quincy, her number one homeboy. He grinned. “We gotta get the Hero outta here ’fore he’s whacked, check it?”
“He?’” Lourdes asked.
“Yeah,” Liz said. “You an’ Michael are gonna be his escort, all excited ’cause you’re takin’ a hero off back to the station — safe place. ’Cause you got a call ’bout Cho’s crew heading here.”
“An’ you?”
“Haven’t finished, Lourdes. Once you get hold of him, take him off to Cho’s an’ let ’em have him.” Her eyes narrowed. “Nobody plays me an’ gets away with it.”
They nodded solemnly.
“I’ll be taking care o’ Cho’s double while you’re on that,” she finished. “Me an’ BQ here, yo.” She sighed. “’Cause otherwise I’ll either end up as their National Ffwcin Hero, or I’ll be dead.”
“We don’t want that,” said David from the doorway. “Clever plan. Too bad you can’t pull it off now.”
Liz bumped into Lourdes who nodded and shot a bullet into his leg from behind her boss. David’s face went white. Lourdes and Michael went and grabbed him, to haul away.
“C’mon, Cho’s waiting,” she said to Bill Quincy and started climbing out the window: she turned as Bill jumped to the ground outside. “His troops are waitin’ on you,” she told David coldly.
She hit the ground lightly outside and turned to find a gun in her face. Looked up right at Huang Cho. “Surprise. I wanted to do away with you myself,” he said.
“How nice,” she said, trying to keep her heart rate down. “But it wasn’t me who killed — well, you. Some asshole agent played me.”
He laughed quietly. “Do you think that matters to me? You must die, that is all. We have decided that it must be so.”
“The Royal ‘We’ doesn’t suit you, Cho, or whatever you are,” she said, batting the gun away and standing slowly. They’d already shot Bill.
“Eye for an eye,” said Cho, seeing the direction of her glance.
“Y’know, I always thought that was like a stupid expression.” She kicked the Chinaman in the nuts. He floated off a few paces, enough for her to dig out a knife.
As he fired, she ducked and turned. The knife got him, right in the chest, and he went flying.
She closed her eyes.
Ffwc, thank God it was over, yo. The girl could go home and sleep, and all.
“Miss Hopkins?”
Liz opened her eyes and found another camera in her face. Smiling people, among them David and the remainder of her gang.
And, of all things, Father Richard.
“Well done, well done,” said the chief of police coming forward. “Yes, it’s wonderful to see citizens taking a part in keeping the Moon clean.”
But her eyes were fixed on David and Father Richard off in the crowd.
I’ll get you two for this, if it’s the last ffwcin thing I do, she thought. Her crew was looking uneasy over there.
“Smile,” said the police chief as he gave her a medal of valor.
Public service, don’t you know?
Copyright © 2007 by J A Howe
