CHAPTER 002

BLACK SPOT

In a world in which so much of what we eat and drink had been boiled down to an endless selection of indistinguishable gels, pastes, and nutritive powders, there was still no replacing a cold drink in a heavy glass. And O’Sullivan’s had those in spades.

I’d been a regular at Sully’s since my early days with the SDA. It wasn’t the nicest bar in the city, but it was within walking distance of the courthouse. Back then, I’d practically worn a path between the two with all the glasses the other agents and I raised to cases closed. Now it seemed like there was little to celebrate.

Nothing about Sully’s had changed, just as it hadn’t for the last hundred years, just as it wouldn’t for the next. A fire crackled from a glowing brick hearth at one end of a cozy seating area made up of mismatched armchairs and overstuffed sofas. Grinning groups of patrons long passed posed for faded group photos that cluttered the walls and ancient support timbers. An indiscriminate mix of sports memorabilia and vintage advertising material filled in what few gaps remained.

The pub’s most noteworthy fixture, however, was Morris O’Sullivan. The unflappable barkeep’s forefathers had poured the foundation for the building with hopes of establishing something worth passing down to their future generations. He more than made good on his end of the bargain, keeping the pub’s reputation pristine while producing seven more O’Sullivans to carry on his legacy after he retired.

Legacy. I thought about Tracy and Fiona bundled up in their matching snowsuits. I’d carried that picture in my wallet until it all but crumbled at my touch. I blinked hard against the whiskey fumes and whatever was welling up in the corners of my eyes.

“Freshen you up?”

Before I could nod, Morris had the bottle tilted over the glass. He knew me better than to bother asking if I needed any more ice.

“Thanks, Mo,” I said, managing to keep my voice from cracking. He always said it was easy to tell the regulars from the tourists by how they addressed him. Sully had been his father, his grandfather, and so on for as long he could remember. Against all our arguments, he claimed he wasn’t ready to accept that mantle quite yet.

“You doing all right?” His gruff accent did little to disguise the genuine care behind his words. “Looks like someone scraped you off the floor of the commuter shuttle.”

The last thing I needed was to be reminded of anyone or their parts being scraped off of a spaceship.

“Onions.” CAT, perched on the barstool next to me, stared at me eagerly. He looked both sublimely smug and impossibly dopey in a way that only a dog can.

I squinted back at him, wondering how he’d managed to come up with such a clever excuse.

“Onions bad.”

I finally realized he was commenting on the heaping plate of liver and onions that sat steaming in the adjacent service window.

“That’s right, CAT, no onions. They’re bad for you.”

Pleased with himself, CAT flopped over. I’ve never understood how he managed to squeeze himself into the high-backed chairs so comfortably but he made it work. What that said about how much time I spent in bars was neither here nor there. CAT’s wagging tail thumped a flat spot into the stool’s cheap upholstery.

“And I’m fine,” I said, returning my attention to Morris. “But thanks for asking.”

The barkeep nodded and returned to his post at the other end of the bar. He’d been in the industry long enough to know the difference between when to pry and when to let things alone. I appreciated his discretion. I could still feel his eyes flickering back toward me while he polished his glassware, in case I changed my mind.

“I’m not really fine,” I muttered under my breath to CAT. “I’m just not in the mood to talk about it.”

“Listen.”

“I know, you’re an excellent listener. Mostly because you can only interrupt one word at a time. But like I said, I’m not in the mood.”

I swirled my drink. The misshapen remnants of my former cubes chased one another in an increasingly erratic orbit before settling back down where they’d started. Through the glass, I saw CAT cock his head to one side.

“It’s just that she’s right, you know. That lawyer. My credibility’s shot. It’s hard enough to explain why I quit the way I did. When you toss in who my first big payday was, it’s next to impossible.”

Gabriella Denaro would not have been my first choice of client; in fact, she’d have been damn near the bottom of the list. Although the spoiled wife of an entrepreneur like Stellar Engines’ CEO Frankie Denaro would generally be considered an ideal customer, most of them didn’t moonlight as the brains behind a sprawling criminal enterprise. Stellar Engines itself was on the up-and-up. Despite the Denaros’ underworld connections being considered somewhat of an open secret, no amount of scrutiny had yet turned up even the slightest bit of wrongdoing.

Lady Denaro saw to that. Far from a piece of arm candy, she was an impossibly shrewd businesswoman. Frankie might be the one signing the contracts, but she was the one striking the deals both above and below the table. I’d caught glimpses of her in action after she hired me to help locate her missing boytoy. For obvious reasons, I’d avoided contact with Mr. Denaro as best I could, but I could only imagine I was on his radar by now. My first big break and I already found myself caught square in the middle of a squabble between one of the system’s premier power couples.

I caught CAT huffing another lungful of the bar’s entrees, this time what looked like a pair of shepherd’s pies.

“Onion?”

“Almost definitely, buddy.”

He huffed and slouched in his seat. I waited for Morris to finish running a patron’s tab so I could flag him down and order some scratchings, the traditional cousin of pork rinds the O’Sullivans had served since they opened. If I didn’t, I’d eventually catch Morris slipping them to CAT when he thought I wasn’t looking. The least I could do is pay for them.

“It’s not fair when you think about it though.” If I was buying, I was going to get my money’s worth. “Nothing Mrs. Denaro asked me to do was illegal, technically speaking.” And what I do of my own volition can hardly be held against her, I thought to myself. I didn’t expect CAT to argue the point, but after the day I’d had there was no sense in risking it.

Morris materialized in front of me holding a fresh glass brimming with amber liquid. It was a shade or two off of my go-to and seemed to glimmer when it caught the light. Somehow I could sense it was expensive.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Black Spot 21 year. Care to hear about its pedigree?”

I was no more interested in hearing the whiskey’s lineage than he was in telling me about it. He placed a cork coaster on the bar in front of me and set the glass down like a live grenade. Shit. I must have looked worse than I thought if Morris was handing out freebies.

“Mo, you didn’t have to—”

“Kid, I like you and all, but if you think I’m giving this away you’re worse off than I thought. Suit in the back booth sends his regards.”

Morris gestured over my shoulder, then disappeared before I could take issue with him calling me kid. I’d just celebrated my 40th, inasmuch as one can celebrate a birthday alone, which put me at most a couple years behind him. Affecting the role of a grizzled old-timer might be good for business, but I worried that it had started to go to his head. By the time I remembered about ordering the scratchings, I heard CAT munching away at a basket of them that had evaded my detection.

I didn’t make a habit of accepting drinks from strangers, even when I trusted the person pouring them. I peered across the dimly lit room but could not make out the figure cloaked by shadows in the booth’s far corner. Was the drink a peace offering from Ms. Neal? An apology from one of the feckless prosecutors for hanging me out to dry? Neither seemed particularly likely, but I wasn’t looking for an excuse to turn it down.

The figure in the booth shifted, most likely in response to my blatant staring. A tall, broad-shouldered man in window-paned herringbone slid into view. I recognized him as Vance Wilder, the hard-charging corporatist whose aggressive legal wrangling had roped me into court earlier that day. Great. He’d bought my attention for the price of a drink, albeit an irresponsibly expensive one, and now I was expected to sit here and listen to him rip me a new asshole for tanking his trial. I calculated the distance to the side door but he was already on his way to the bar, clutching his sweating glass wrapped in a paper napkin.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked, traces of a posh Transatlantic accent clinging to the question. Unable to come up with a plausible reason that it might be unavailable, I shook my head and motioned for him to sit. He slid onto the empty stool next to me.

“Thanks for the drink,” I said, being careful to avoid any sense of obligation.

“I find that they are excellent lubricants for easing the pains of introduction.” Now I couldn’t figure out whether he wanted to fuck me up or just fuck me. He didn’t give me long to debate the issue. “Vance Wilder,” he said, extending a hand. I was surprised he did not mention his role with Madison. If he assumed his reputation preceded him, he was absolutely correct.

“Max Miller,” I replied, accepting his grasp. “But something tells me you already know that.”

Wilder smirked and drained his dregs. He slid the empty glass to the edge of the bar and caught Morris’s attention.

“Whenever you’ve got a moment, Sully.”

Morris nodded dutifully and reached for a bottle stowed on a shelf above his head. Up until that point I’d thought everything at that height was purely decorative.

“And you’re correct, Mr. Miller. I am familiar with you and your work.”

I’d never been great at apologies. I took a long sip of the Black Spot wondering if today was the day that would change. As soon as the liquid hit the back of my throat, all my worries disappeared, shoved aside to make room for notes of toasted malt and citrus followed by a creamy vanilla finish. Whatever he’d paid for my drink hadn’t been nearly enough.

“About the trial, Mr. Wilder.”

“It’s Vance, please,” he insisted. “That old chestnut about my father being the mister and all. But I agree, the trial’s a terribly dreadful business.”

I didn’t recall claiming that it was but I had no inclination to argue. If Wilder wanted to handle both sides of our conversation that was fine. It left me more time to drink.

“I hate seeing Mr. Pallana being put through the ringer over what, a few dollars’ worth of materials?”

Remembering the specific value of the stolen goods that was quoted in court, I nearly choked on my Black Spot. Wilder and I were an exponent or two apart in our estimation of the word ‘few.’

“I’d have much preferred it if he’d just given up his co-conspirator. That’s the only reason we pressed the matter, after all.” Wilder grimaced in a spot-on impression of someone greatly aggrieved by the difficult decisions he was forced to make. He’d be a natural for politics somewhere down the line. “I presume you are aware that Madison isn’t the only company recently impacted by such…irregularities.”

Of course I was. A rash of unfortunate events plaguing tech industry leaders had dominated the news as of late. While at first they’d been chalked up to a run of sour luck, and then to confirmation bias, it was becoming increasingly clear that a pattern was emerging.

“And you think it’s all part of some bigger plan?” I hazarded.

“I’d love to be proven wrong,” he hedged. “But it seems the incidents are only escalating. In just the last couple weeks there was a burglary at Stellar Engines and one of their former engineers was found murdered.”

“I thought the engineer was a random hit by scrappers. She was found without any of her cyberware, which has probably made its way onto the salvage market by now. And I’d heard about the break-in, but wasn’t aware that anything had been reported missing.”

“My apologies,” he said with all the subtlety of a boxer flicking weak jabs to gauge the distance to my chin. “I forgot that your close relationship with the Denaro Clan would grant you access to first-hand knowledge of the matter.”

And there was the hook.

“My association with the Denaros has been greatly exaggerated,” I told him pointedly. “If you’re looking for info on them, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

“Quite the contrary, Mr. Miller. You’re exactly who I am looking for. You see, last week I received a pair of tickets to travel on the relaunch of the Lunar Express this Friday.”

Mention of the luxury space elevator piqued my interest. Unlike most people who had more money than they could possibly spend, Frankie Denaro wasn’t given to conspicuous consumption. When he’d purchased the decommissioned Express it was generally assumed that he planned on donating it to a museum. His philanthropy, especially in matters of historical and educational importance, were as well-known as his criminal associations and his hot temper. Eventually word got out that he was restoring it to its former grandeur, sparing no expense in his effort to revive the symbol of 22nd century excess.

“I didn’t realize it was ready to go,” I admitted. Like I said, my ties to the Denaros were strictly professional, and that contract had been fulfilled.

“Neither did I. In fact, I have no idea where the tickets came from.”

That was puzzling. The Express was a privately-owned craft. It wasn’t like you could pop on over to a travel agent to book passage.

“And you think I can help you figure out who bought the tickets?” Normally clients were a bit more straightforward with their requests when they hired my services. I assume Wilder was not accustomed to interfacing directly with his own employees.

“I know who sent the tickets. It’s Frankie. Ever since our falling out, he’s gone out of his way to rub my nose in his success.”

My glass was running low and CAT was licking at the waxed paper that lined the empty scratchings basket. I needed Wilder to get to the point.

“Mister…Vance, I’m not sure I know what I can do to help you. If you suspect Mr. Denaro of sending you unsolicited materials, I suggest you take it up with him or his lawyer.”

He downed his drink, shook his head, and flashed two fingers at Morris.

“That’s exactly what he wants me to do. No, I am going on that trip. And I want you to come with me.”

At least I could end the conversation here. After losing my family I’d sworn off interplanetary travel for good. I hoped Wilder would let me keep the whiskey.

“I’m a detective, Vance, not a bodyguard. You’ve got a full security staff to choose from I’m sure.”

“I’ve met my security staff. Why do you think I’m here? I need someone who can identify whether I’m in danger before anything happens, not half a dozen lunks putting bullets into someone after my body’s cold.”

“You think Denaro would invite you on the Lunar Express to hurt you?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

The gears in my head, slippery with Black Spot, began to churn, processing Wilder’s implication.

“If it really was Denaro behind the…all of it, why would he rob his own factory and kill a former employee?”

“You worked for those lowlifes,” Wilder said bluntly. “You tell me.”

He had a point. Their tactics tended toward the unconventional, to put it politely. Fortunately, I had one trick left up my sleeve. “Unfortunately, I do all my business on Earth now. No spacefaring. Non-negotiable.”

“Everything’s negotiable, Mr. Miller.” He flipped his coaster over to its dry side and reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, producing a gorgeous titanium fountain pen. In a world of omnipresent technology, I was still a sucker for the craftsmanship of genuine things. “Normally this is the point where I’d write down a figure and slide it over to you, your eyes would go agog, and we’d shake hands.”

Instead, he pushed the blank coaster toward me and handed me the pen. “Name your price.”