| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | New Year's Eve |
| Date: | Thu, 1 Jan 1998 23:28:19 +0000 |
>>>>>[Juli, since IAD, Homicide, Organised Crime, the world and his dog
all seem to have taken notarised copies of this tape, I figured you
deserved to see what I saw last night.
I'll be in Tarislar today and tomorrow. With what happened, I think the
Department's assistance is even more crucial tomorrow to prevent a
bloodbath.
+++++begin video
Marlowe's headware camera, driving a car rather better than his usual
Chrysler-Nissan, as he turns off a Bellevue street: not through the
gates of one of the walled residences there, but into the service road
that seperates two of them, now serving as an improvised car park. A row
of vehicles glitter in the headlights, not one of them with a sticker
price of less than six figures, and the detective adds his Chevrolet
Cobra to the end of the assembly.
"My, my, look what's crawling out from under the rocks tonight."
Julianne Hart regards the expensive motors with distaste as she gets out
- Marlowe enjoying a flash of her thighs as her skirt rides up - and
closes the door, the security system chirping once. She's dressed like a
1920s flapper in a bias-cut and beaded dress of white silk, though her
figure's a little less boyish than those fashions were intended for: the
result is most pleasing to the eye. As far as the reflections show,
Marlowe's dressed as himself: a down-at-heel private investigator, and
he makes it convincing. A good pairing for a masked ball.
"Why park everyone outside?" Hart enquires.
"Car bombs, that kind of problem. Guess Heihachi's still not as
confident as he wishes he was."
The gravel service road has been weeded and raked, though it's still a
relief to both to have the sidewalk under their feet instead: at the
gate, two tuxedo-clad men check their invitation (not only by eye, but
examining an electronic watermark), in a courteous and polite manner.
From the gate to a small lodge, and there to the house, has been erected
a covered walkway, and the pair set out along it: Marlowe's eyes roving
the grounds, counting at least six armed men and women trying to be
inconspicuous amidst the manicured plants. Their smart clothing bulges
over armour and spare ammunition, and instead of the usual discreetly
holstered weapons they carry assault rifles and autoshotguns.
"They _are_ tense." Hart murmurs. "Someone sneezes, that lot could level
the house in the crossfire."
At the security lodge, another smilingly polite young man politely
requests that all weapons be left here for safekeeping: Marlowe hands
over his Max-Power, Hart apparently came unarmed. The scanner arch has
been nicely worked into the walkway frames, and they walk through it
without apparent problems, both donning their masks as they approach the
door: Marlowe's the deliberately crude bandanna over the face, Hart a
domino mask in a silk that matches her dress.
"What time do they lock in?"
Hart replies "Ten. Half an hour away. After that, nobody goes in or out
until dawn. And I'll bet the last few people in - like us - get some
serious checking -"
As they approach the house's door, the young woman there - also in a
tuxedo - says "Mr Kryzdanovich, there's a telephone call, can you take
it at the lodge?" Marlowe winks at Hart as he turns and walks back,
collecting a handset from one of the guards.
"Andy."
"Mr Kryzdanovich, have you ever considered the benefits available to you
- you personally - from investment in consolidated mutual funds?
Thousands of our customers enjoy tax-free growth of-"
Marlowe breaks the call, hands the telephone back to the guard. "Eyes
and a smartcam link, some headware stash, a datajack. You only had to
ask. Or check my permits. Oh, yeah, and a folding baton in my pocket, I
freaking hate being without it. I go rampaging around with it, I'm sure
you can stop me."
"But, Kryzdanovich-san, to intrude thus into your life would have been
impolite, and less amusing." The guard smiles. "We appreciate your co-
operation. Thank you. Please, keep the baton if it comforts you, though
you will not need it."
Returning, the detective and the policewoman pass through the hallway,
hearing the sounds of music and of revelry: (guided by velvet ropes hung
from gilded stands) past discreetly closed doors to a room lit with a
sapphire light from windows let into its sides, in which the thick
carpet, the brocade wallpaper, the furniture, were all based around the
same hue.
The effect was quite startling, as the light flickers and plays across
the room and its occupants in shades of blue. It appears that this is
only one of the suites, the next one partly visible achieving the same
effect in a rich imperial purple: there must be more rooms, but the
suite winds and twists such that you can barely see more than two rooms
at once.
Within were the other guests of the party, and what a party it appeared
to be.
The guests and Heihachi's hired help intermingle, and it was hard to
tell them apart; save only that you'd guess the most alluring of the
partygoers were there to serve the pleasures of their oyabun's friends.
Marlowe can't help staring at one woman, dancing alone by the window:
she seems dressed only in a few yards of fine satin, covering her
everywhere yet concealing nowhere, and the patterns of light and shadow
as she dances hold his attention -
"Ouch." He rubs his ribs, sore from a sharp elbow.
"I let you drool over my figure, that means you don't dribble anywhere
else." Hart seems more amused than offended. "I should have known the
real reason you wanted to come here was to enjoy the meat market."
"Give me a break, I don't usually move in these circles with the cream
of society-"
"The only thing this crowd have in common with cream, is that they both
float to the top." Hart picks two Kir Royales off a passing waiter's
tray, hands one to the detective. "You getting the guests?"
"Got enough tape to run past dawn, as long as I download every so
often." Marlowe sips the drink, picks several canapes off a tray, tries
one cautiously. "Good food, anyway."
"And a real orchestra, somewhere." Hart nods. "Real music, so you can't
find the recording..."
"And you can't clean out all the ambient noise. I'm sure Heihachi's a
master at making sure only he extracts useful information from these
events." Marlowe circles a man dressed as Henry the Eighth, who has a
giggling woman under each arm, as Henry staggers towards a door. "Let's
circulate before it gets wildly out of hand."
"Think it will?" Hart looks past Marlowe. "You're right, let's get this
done with now." She shudders slightly: Marlowe reluctantly follows her
gaze, glances away again almost at once from the sight of a pudgy man in
a wolf suit, being fellated by Little Red Riding Hood, who is - at most
- thirteen.
"Recognise anyone?" They move into the purple suite, which is larger and
does indeed contain the orchestra. Most of the occupants are dancing,
following the steps of a Strauss waltz, and Marlowe pulls Hart into his
arms. "Watch your feet, Cincinnatti PD issued me two left ones."
"I'll cope, Andy." The waltz is a good way to see who else is here, at
least logging costumes for after the unmasking. "You never did tell me
the whole story about how you left CPDI."
"I was a homicide detective. Followed a blind alley, got too involved,
chased a hunch when I shouldn't have."
"And they threw you out when you got too close to the truth?"
"Turns out I was never even chasing the truth. My intuition was dead
wrong. Got a friend killed, nearly put an innocent man - well, innocent
of what I thought he'd done - in jail. I was lucky they decided to help
me out. Now I'm more careful following my hunches." The Strauss waltz
fades into something jazzier, Shostakovich maybe?
"Was that the last waltz?" Hart asks - a little closer to Marlowe than a
purely professional relationship requires.
"No, there's still a few minuets."
"ANDY! That is the worst joke I've heard from you in hours."
After the third dance, the pair leave - Marlowe fending off a Highway
Patrolman who "wants a turn with the filly" - and make a circuit of the
party suite, slow enough not to be obvious - a drink and some
conversation in each room.
There are seven main rooms in all, and the decor is the same, each room
sidelit from tinted windows in the wall, each room decorated in a single
colour (apart from the partygoers within), each colour different. The
revellers are in a wild array of costumes: most themed, as cowboys or
bishops or doctors or cavemen: others simply dressed to impress, or to
excite, or perhaps to startle.
Tuxedo-clad waiters circulate with trays of champagne cocktails, or
bustling to answer requests, carrying messages, or refilling the trays
of canapes and hors d'oeurvres that grace various tables. Several people
quite obviously have simsense chips slotted, and at a gathering like
this it's a fair bet that none of them are peak-limited: and Marlowe
watches a handsome woman, dressed as a Bengali princess, smooth the
dermal patch a waiter discreetly passed her to the inside of her arm,
smiling beautifically.
Marlowe, despite Hart's good-natured jibes, can't avoid staring at some
of the womenfolk, like a painfully beautiful Elven girl whose cropped
black hair and mask of jet sets off her alabaster skin: she's wearing a
floor-length sable cloak, and as she moves it's tantalisingly possible -
no, here _probable_ - that the coat, her mask and her jewelry are the
total of her rainment.
Another woman wears a scold's bridle, and her hands are bound behind her
back: dressed as a peasant woman, her shift is torn down the front and
up the side, tanned flesh being revealed and concealed in inviting
flashes as she moves. Even as Marlowe watches, she is borne away
struggling by an Egyptian pharaoh, who herds the almost-helpless woman
into one of the side rooms.
"What a goddamn zoo." Marlowe sighs. "It's not even turning me on."
"You didn't work this scene much, did you, Andy?" Hart replies sombrely,
as a teenaged boy - the Man in the Iron Mask, except Dumas' character
probably wore more than a silk loincloth and had far fewer body
piercings - strolls by, managing a lascivious leer at the policewoman
even through the roughly forged mask. "What the hell do you do when
you're this rich? You buy what other people can't have. Why do all this
shit? Because you can and the hoi polloi can't. You convince yourself
that you deserve more pleasure than other people, and you go looking for
it."
She says this as they reach the seventh, chamber, though, the furthest
west: the exception to the decoration of the others, and at the moment
it stands empty.
"What the..." Marlowe stares into the chamber: smallest of the seven,
furnished and hung in darkest sable, walls hung with black velvet
tapestries, floored with a silk rug the hue of a raven's wing. The two
casements here, unlike the other rooms, do not match the decor: they're
a deep crimson, and the powerful lights behind cast a shimmering
radiance that seems to drench Hart's white silks in blood.
The only furniture in this room is a great clock of ebony against the
far wall, its pendulum swinging to and fro with a dull, heavy clack that
the distant orchestra can't defeat, and weirdly out of rhythm to that
music. Marlowe walks towards it, wonderingly, as the minute hand clicks
onwards: there is an instant's stillness, before from the brazen lungs
of the clock comes a chime which was clear and loud and deep and
exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that by the
second stroke, the music has fallen silent, and the buzz of party
chatter has stopped abruptly.
Ten times the clock strikes, and there is a long moment of silence
marked only by the heavy beat of the clock, before the orchestra picks
up the tune again and the babble of the party resumes.
Marlowe gasps slightly - as if he'd forgotten to breathe for a few
moments.
"You okay, Andy?"
"Yeah. That's _creepy_" the detective replies. "Got to be magical to be
that weird."
Hart is about to speak, before one of the waiters interrupts discreetly.
"Madame? Sir? Your host begs a few moments in the white suite."
The guests are packed closely in the white room, as Heihachi stands
before them: a burly Japanese man in his fifties, distinctive even when
masked. Hart jerks her head around angrily, and says sofly to the
football player behind her "Move your hand, or your proctologist will
have to extract it", as the last few guests arrive and the oyabun
speaks.
"Ladies and gentlemen! I trust you find this celebration to your taste!
It's my great pleasure to have you here, to enjoy your company, to greet
the New Year with such an august gathering!" He smiles beneficently.
"Now, the partying may begin in earnest! Any who wish to leave, must do
so now, for in moments the house will be sealed off until dawn. Nobody
will enter, and none shall leave, until we greet the first sunrise of
2059 together!"
Cheers from the crowd, and Heihachi waits a moment: then gives a signal
to one of his staff, who turns and leaves.
"Then we are committed! Let the revelry commence!"
The crowd breaks up, drifting back to the other rooms. Hart looks at
Marlowe. "Do we really want to wander around for the next two hours?"
she asks.
Marlowe shakes his head. "Not here. What do you suggest?"
"Let's find a room. In the black suite, that looked empty, we should be
left alone there. Just get out of this place for a while."
They make their way into the sable room: as Hart had predicted, nobody
else had chosen to disport themselves there, and they pick the most
distant of the small cubicles: relieved to find a less sanguine
illumination inside, in the small room with a soft floor and hard bed,
as they latch the door.
"To the point, at least." Hart points to the small cabinet beside the
bed: the top drawer holds an assortment of the finest prophylactics.
"Guesses as to the others?" She looks, though Marlowe doesn't. "Jesus, I
wouldn't let anyone stick _that_ in me... handcuffs... a riding crop...
silk scarves, nice, think he'd mind if I stole one?"
"Go ahead." Marlowe sits on the bed, stretches. "In other words, most of
the basics for your sexually adventurous partygoer?"
"Yeah. Sad, isn't it? Wonder where the camera is, and if they're
monitoring us." Hart tries one of the scarves against her arm, nods,
tucks it into her sleeve.
"Probably a couple. I'd guess just recording, they'll skim it for
anything interesting in the morning. Too many rooms to be worth
watching. Maybe just keep an eye on any of the more extreme fleshtoys,
in case someone plays too rough with them?"
"Right." Julianne kicks off her shoes, eases her mask off. "You know the
worst thing? Normally, you're in a confined private space with me, I
need a hot-air gun and a putty knife to scrape you off me. Now, you're
not even touching me. This place really is getting to you, isn't it?"
"My last case at CPD? She - the victim - would have been a regular at a
party like this. Screwing who she wanted, chipping what she wanted,
slapping or snorting whatever drugs she thought would make her feel
better. Daddy's money and influence make sure nothing bad happens to
her." Marlowe shrugs. "She was fifteen. And one day something bad did
happen, and you think, those last few minutes were probably the only
time she dealt with reality in her whole life. And she dealt with it so
badly it killed her."
"It happens. Surprised it got to a ten-year homicide detective."
"I was used to the usual run of things. Half the cases in Cincinnati you
solve on the spot, you get there and the killer's still standing over
the body, smoking gun in one hand and a half-empty whiskey bottle in the
other, saying "Honey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it..."
"Or else it's some kid in gang colours lying on the sidewalk, and people
around wounded because the shooters just hosed the street. Sometimes
it's a woman with her skirt up and her panties down and her throat
crushed, the killer got spotted stuffing her in a dumpster, and you put
the semen sample into Thaumaturgy and make an arrest before she's cold."
Marlowe lights a cigarette. "It burns you, but you adapt, and you know
you're making a difference, catching the scumbags. This... this is
playing with all of that. It's making fun of it. It's saying rape and
pain and death are sexy and cool and fun, and I hate the fuckers for
that because I worked for years cleaning up the aftermath of that shit."
Hart reaches out and pulls Kryzdanovich against her, stroking his hair,
telling him to be quiet, and he is.
+++++cutoff
+++++reactivate
Marlowe starts upright. "What happened?" The timestamp in the recording
shows 11:47:32 and counting.
"You fell asleep." Hart smiles. "It seemed as good a way as any to pass
the time. Some of the help asked if we were okay, I told them you were
just sleeping off some zappers. I woke you for the unmasking." She pulls
her white silk domino mask back on, and cranes her head back: using the
mirror on the ceiling to reapply her lipstick.
The detective pulls the bandanna back over his face. "Right. No
problems?"
"None so far. I was right, the black room is too weird for most people.
The clock sounds quite soothing in here, though."
"Glad you like it. It still gives me the creeps." Marlowe stands. "Look
okay?"
"As bad as ever." Hart slips her shoes on, stands, tugs her skirt back
down. "Let's go see who's who."
The black room is, as promised, empty; though the remaining six suites
are crowded: the revellers present to greet the New Year, the excuse for
this night's amusement Marlowe acquires food, and Hart procures drinks,
and they find themselves in the blue room as the least obnoxiously busy:
though even from here, the tolling of the clock spreads a silence in its
wake, and it's the third stroke of midnight before the cheer of
"Unmask!" has really taken hold.
Nine, ten, eleven of the weirdly toned chimes, each answered by a shout
of "Unmask!" and on the twelfth stroke, the death of one year and the
birth of the next, almost in unison all present pull away the covers of
their faces.
The room is oddly still for a moment, even though the orchestra is
enthusiastically playing "Auld Lang Syne": perhaps as the revellers put
faces to bodies, remembering unwise words or unwelcomed advances.
Heihachi moves among the guests, though, a nucleus of bonhomie and good
cheer, coming into the blue room -
His bubble of merriment seems to burst in an instant, and his eyes bulge
in surprise and shock. Marlowe turns instinctively to look: by the
closed doors of the blue room, sealed until dawn by Heihachi's own
order, there stood a slender Elven woman, clad in a long coat of black
leather, face painted in a black-and-white harlequin mask. The coat, the
motorcycle leathers it's worn over, the jut of a sword-hilt over her
shoulder, and the CAR-15 half-visible in the coat's concealing folds,
all trademarks of Heihachi's recently deceased enemy Easy: as the
apparition gracefully stepped forward, even the same spurs glittered at
the heels of its boots.
"Who dares?" Heihachi says, in a voice that might have tried to be a
bellow but emerges as a rasp. "Who dares to insult us all with this
mockery? Seize her and unmask her!"
The music dies at the sound of Heihachi's anger, and his raised voice
silences many of the guests: they show fear, amusement, repulsion or
puzzlement as they see the stranger. There is suddenly a distant
concussion, more heard than felt.
"Fuck." Marlowe and Hart say in unison, both moving to the side of the
room and pressing into an alcove. Another of the faint thumps, slightly
louder, and a distant pattering noise as of gravel dropped on hard
earth. The sound seems to arrest the three waiters who had moved
purposefully towards the intruder, and Easy's doppelganger walks past
them with a calm, poised step - a dancer's walk - towards the door of
the violet room.
The partygoers shrink back: afraid, cowed, or merely making way, it
matters little. Those who know whom the apparition represents, show
disgust at such ill manners, and a little fear at the accuracy of the
simulation: many may just assume this to be a part of their
entertainment.
Marlowe looks at Hart, who nods: they move after the leather-clad Elf,
the only ones so far to do so, leaving Heihachi standing with a look of
stunned surprise as one of his aides whispers rapidly to him - another
explosion jars the assembly slightly.
Passing from the purple chamber, through the purple to the green -
through the green to the orange - through this again to the white - the
apparition walks. Only one effort is made to stop her, a "waiter"
lunging forward from the crowd with a compact submachinegun raised:
almost without breaking stride, the Elf kicks out, her heel barely
caressing his neck and the man staggering back, dying the wall-hangings
and carpet with the wide crimson spray from his severed carotid artery.
The partygoers scream and cower: Hart scoops up the dropped MP-5TX as
she passes it, staying half a room behind the intruder in its wake of
alarm, following the bloody bootprint it leaves for a few paces in the
thick white carpet.
A bellow of rage and a cry of "Cowards!" from behind, as the figure
reaches the edge of the black room. Heihachi rushes past Marlowe,
holding a Guardian automatic, and as he rounds the corner into the black
room almost cannons into the leather-clad figure: Marlowe only hears the
ringing rasp of steel and a gasp of pain, before Heihachi falls back
into view, cut from shoulder to sternum, his blood soaking the violet
rug.
That, at least, broke the spell as several of the "waiters" - weapons
drawn, all pretence of servility gone - rush to their master's aid.
Marlowe flattens himself into a corner and Hart retreats rapidly, as the
first two men to follow Heihachi die at once, and Easy steps into view
of the violet room: her harlequin makeup flecked with blood, _Kurosio_
dripping in her hand, and a cold smile on her painted face. By now
people are screaming and running: to escape or to cover
The third of the staff hesitates an instant, then brings his SMG up: the
CAR-15's thunder is deafening in the confined space, the short burst
flinging the man back with blood staining his white shirt. Easy lets the
carbine drop on its sling a moment; tosses two objects at the door to
the fifth, white room; and wipes and sheaths her katana in one smooth
moment as the flash and concussion grenades explode.
Marlowe snatches up Heihachi's dropped pistol as he bolts across the
corridor to join Hart, though Easy seems uninterested in the party-goers
that huddle and cower and scrabble for safety: she fires two short
bursts into the windows, extinguishing both lamps, and suddenly the only
light is the white leaking from the fifth suite, and the dreadful blood-
red glare from the seventh.
In that poor glow the two men rushing into the room are backlit
perfectly, and they are tossed and torn and thrown in the stroboscopic
light of the cutdown rifle's muzzle flash. The Elf advances, lit for a
moment in the corner leading to the white room, firing again: pausing to
change magazines, then moving on. Gunfire and screams can be heard,
before the weak white light, too, dies. Marlowe's vision cuts to
thermal, the room resolving into a smeary blur and its occupants into
faceless blobs.
Someone - with Hart's voice - calls "Andy?" and he grabs her, then
smashes the warm glass out of the window where the light had been a
moment before. The thunder of automatic weapons is moving into the
distance, other weapons briefly answering the CAR-15, as Marlowe leads
his companion into the alcove: which turns out to be a narrow corridor,
following the twists of the suites, and in the light of Sergeant Hart's
pencil flashlight a locked access door can be seen.
"Pick it?" Hart asks, examining it.
"Sure." Marlowe raises the Guardian, fires several shots into each
hinge, kicks the door several times: it sags back and he and Hart wrench
it far enough out of the frame that they can squeeze through.
Outside, the house seems normal, expensive, and empty: the gunfire
inside the suite muffled, outside louder.
"Elapsed time?" Hart asks, bringing out her telephone.
"Under a minute."
"Holy Christ, that fast?" The policewoman shakes her head, as she
autodials.
Marlowe covers the corridor as Hart can be heard calling in a rapid
status report: she's recommending some serious medical rescue, before
she snaps it shut. "Okay. We get out if we can. FRT will be coming in
hot in nine minutes, we do _not_ want to be in their line of fire when
they hit, and I'm not dropping this - " she hefts the MP-5TX - "until
we're safe."
The detective leads off, heading for the back of the house. "Okay, if
you say so. Any idea how Easy's getting out?"
"None." They reach a solid-looking door: Hart tries the handle, shakes
her head, and Marlowe goes to work on the lock. Outside, the gunfire
seems to have eased off: indoors, the soundproof party suite holds its
own secrets.
The door pops open, revealing a glazed-in conservatory filled with
exotic plants: the pair dart inside and find cover, trying to avoid
being framed in the light from the open door.
Marlowe barely has time to register the other door, at the far end of
the long, narrow room, before it crashes open and a tuxedo-clad woman
falls through, firing her Ingram behind her: she scrambles to the
exterior door, which opens to her cardkey. Bullets smack into it and the
glass around it, and the woman empties her SMG back over her shoulder as
she scrambles through the door, chased by a fusillade of pistol fire as
she closes it: an instant later Easy crashes against the door, a smoking
Beretta in each hand, slides locked back. The door shudders, but doesn't
give way.
There is a long moment of silence: Easy regards the pair huddled by the
bags of compost, shakes her head as Hart raises her submachinegun and
her badge. The policewoman settles the laser dot on the Elven woman, but
looks uncertain. Outside, the woman scrambles to her feet, back pressed
against the same door as Easy.
Easy tucks one pistol under her arm, pulls the magazine out, and shoves
another into the grip. "Beverly May, what a surprise. You've done well
for yourself."
The woman outside replies, "Talent shines through, Elizabeth. I'm out of
a job now, thanks to you." She drops the clip out of the Ingram,
struggles with the buttons for her jacket.
"Too bad." Easy switches guns, reloading the other 92F automatic with an
extended magazine. "You picked a bad job. Walk away and we'll settle it
later."
"No can do." May has reached the spare ammunition hidden in the small of
her back, reloads the Ingram, jerks back the cocking handle. "I've
got... responsibilities."
"Too bad. So have I." Easy snaps the slides of both pistols forward,
chambering the first rounds: she and May spin almost in unison, firing
at each other through the thick laminated glass. Hart covers her ears,
forgetting to shoot Easy, as hot brass and shards of glass fly. The two
duellists crab sideways to keep each other in view, the starred and
cracked glazing too opaque to see through, before May breaks off:
running at a sharp angle that keeps her behind the ruined glass and out
of Easy's line of fire.
"Smart bitch." Easy says, in a tone of respect rather than hate; then as
Hart raises the MP-5TX again she kicks out: the policewoman cries in
pain, clutching her bleeding hand as the submachinegun clatters amidst
the orchids. "No, you can't arrest me today, Officer. Goodbye." The Elf
slams a roundhouse kick into the ruined glass, then another: then hurls
herself at it, the laminated glass tearing and letting her fall through.
And she, too is gone into the darkness. A few desultory shots follow
her.
"Let me see." Marlowe examines the scrape on Hart's hand: a shallow but
messy cut left by Easy's spurred boot. "Not bad. You don't have much
luck with your hands, do you, Juli?"
The policewoman snorts, flexes her fingers, finds the MP-5TX again.
"Yeah, right. Let's get the hell out before FRT arrive."
They make their way out through the torn glass, into the manicured
garden: the floodlights shot out or turned off now. Moans and screams
can be heard, bodies in smart dinner jackets lying in awkward attitudes
or being tended by less-hurt colleagues. Hart and Marlowe are left
unmolested as they run to a breach in the wall, feet wide and amidst a
spray of rubble: someone skilled blew that gap, and the litter of brass
just outside shows where at least two people used it as a firing
position to shoot into Heihachi's home.
Hart pauses to grab two cases, looks a moment, then follows Marlowe
along the service road: she runs awkwardly in her heels in the gravel,
but uses that to cover their rear.
They reach the angle of the Bellevue street, sodium-lit and already
attracting curious gawpers drawn from their own New Year's parties.
Police cruisers block off both ends of the street, lights pulsing, and
Hart waves her badge: at their acknowledging wave, she and the detective
hurry past the high walls towards them.
+++++end trideo
So, what now?]<<<<<
-- Marlowe <23:25:42/01-01-59>
*****PRIVATE: Marlowe
>>>>>[What now? I don't know.
Half the precinct is cheering Easy on for taking out a Yak clan that had
thumbed their noses at us for years. The others are screaming for her
blood for multiple homicide. That "Children of Frypp" thing threw
everyone for a loop. The Captain's still on leave.
Right now nobody's willing or able to make a decision. After tomorrow,
we'll see. If it's bloody, though, Easy's gonna get blamed, no matter
what.]<<<<<
-- Sergeant Julianne Hart <23:29:42/01-01-59>
Homicide Division
Lone Star (Seattle)
