David Duffy - In for a Ruble

She reached for the bottle.

“Pick one at random,” I said to Foos.

Foos pointed and clicked. We got Irina/Salomé doing a solo masturbation act, at the direction of frankyfun, who’d paid $699 for the privilege. It took a short minute to figure out how it worked. Irina was on the bed in one of the rooms I’d seen that morning. She stared out at the camera, clothed in a vintage velvet dress with lace collar, made up to look like an even younger girl, pigtails and all. She shed velvet to reveal underwear that was decidedly twenty-first century, then she removed that piece by piece and went into her self-pleasuring act. She received direction from franky via e-mail, which someone was reading at the computer on the desk and relaying to her. One of her fellow players, no doubt. Andras? Boyfriend as virtual pimp? That was more depressing than I wanted to contemplate.

“I’ve had enough,” Foos said.

“So have I,” Victoria echoed.

“One more thing,” I said. “What’s the date on the scene we just watched?”

“Last May,” Foos said.

“See any sign of a scar on Irina’s neck?”

“Nope.”

“Neither do I. Pick a more current one.”

He found another private audition, ordered up by frankyfun just two weeks ago. She used a lot of pancake, but the rough skin was difficult to hide. The scar was there.

“Enough,” I said.

“What’s that about?” Victoria asked.

“I don’t know. Noticed it on the drive from Gibbet. I’m going to check it out.”

“How’re you going to do that?”

“Spy sources.”

That got me a look, but she didn’t press it. “How many clients you think these kids have?” she asked.

A quick survey indicated almost three hundred, with an average monthly tab of two grand.

“They’ve been pulling down north of seven mil a year, minus ConnectPay’s cut.”

“This can’t be about money,” Victoria said. “These are rich kids, right? They have money. They have futures.”

“Another question we still don’t have an answer for. Go back to that frankyfun e-mail,” I said to Foos.

He scrolled through the full exchange—four messages, franky arranging a tryst with Salomé at the Black Horse.

“I’m betting that’s not Salomé. It’s Andras using her account.”

“Can’t check that, if he logged on with her user name.”

“No need to. Only way it fits. The junkies said he was shouting, ‘Where is he?’ and she said, ‘This was your plan.’”

“Junkies?” Victoria asked.

“Witnesses,” I said. “They weren’t stoned. I caught them just before their morning fix.”

“Great!”

“The guy in the playhouse this morning? He try to hide his tracks?”

“Uh-uh,” Foos said.

“He knew Nosferatu was going to blow the joint.”

“What?!” Victoria shouted.

I told her about the playhouse and the explosives.

“Jesus Christ! You’re a one-man wrecking crew. You didn’t call the… Shit, never mind, why am I asking?”

“I removed the gas. Put it in my car. Nobody got hurt.”

“Oh great. You could have been… What makes you think…?”

“Once a Fed…,” Foos said. I guess he couldn’t resist.

Victoria got ready to belt him. He grinned. They hadn’t bonded as much as I thought.

“Do either of you realize how many laws… Of course you do. And you’re happy about it.”

She stood, knocking her chair over backward.

“Nobody’s any worse off than they were before,” I said. “We haven’t changed the dynamics here one bit. The kids were in danger, they’re still in danger—all of their own making. Coryell’s dead. He was already dead—also his fault. You know more than you did four nights ago, when you were ready to trade anything for help. I’m out a night’s sleep, but I picked up some free gas in the deal. And—even though we can’t take credit for it—it appears one of the truly nasty players on the Internet has been knocked offline. This is where I need your help.”

“That’s not the point, and you know it.” She stomped her feet and walked around the office. Foos watched, stifling a chuckle. She stopped in front of me. “What help?”

“I need the FBI or somebody trustworthy—not the local cops—to go to Crestview tonight and retrieve the WildeTime servers, before Konychev or Batkin or someone else gets them. Even though those kids are already all over the Internet, let’s not make it worse by having all that content fall into the wrong hands. They may be useful to you too.”

She took another walk around the office and came back and looked me straight in the eyes. Annoyance, concern, fear, and love were duking it out in hers.

“This is what it’s going to be like, isn’t it?”

“Welcome to the inside.”

“I should’ve stayed in Marathon—maybe even that reform school. I’ll make the call. Then let’s go home.”

Foos winked.

“That kid has to be a suspect in his uncle’s murder.”

“I don’t think he did it.”

“What you think isn’t relevant. What you know—about him, about the uncle—that’s material.”

“It’s all there for the cops to find, if they look.”

“That’s not the point either. And one thing isn’t there, and that’s the kid, thanks to you.”

“He won’t do you any good dead.”

We sat across from each other at my kitchen counter, eating a late meal of bread and cheese and vodka and wine. I’d washed off most of Coryell’s corpse’s stench, to her approval, but I was resisting her admonishments to tell my tale to the police, which had her increasingly pissed off.

We’d checked Ibansk.com before leaving the office. As expected, Ivanov was already on the Lishin story.

I provided a rough translation.

“I take it back. He’s worse than you are,” Victoria said.

Terminal troubles at the Baltic Enterprise Commission, Ivanov can report, of both the technical and personal persuasion.

The service is offline again, as dead as one of its founding partners, Alexander Lishin, found yesterday, his decomposing corpse adding its own peculiar pollution to the Moscova.

Not much is known about Lishin’s demise—yet. The body was clearly dumped, and the cause of death is a well-protected secret—for the moment. Ivanov has learned that the stiff has been stiff for several weeks.

As for the BEC, it appears the glitch a few days ago was only a harbinger of things to come. A mysterious cyber-attack has blown through the vaunted defenses and torched everything it could reach—which is to say, everything. Restoration, if even possible, is expected to take months.

Retribution, however, is another matter. But against whom? And who’s calling the shots? Lishin sleeps with the fishes. Efim Konychev remains in hiding, except to venture out for sustenance, in New York. Taras Batkin has played no active management role in recent years. He’s employing his considerable talents feathering his nest—and those of his Cheka colleagues—also in New York. Maybe Ivanov should plan a trip to that trans-Atlantic Ibanskian playground.

One more question (well, two) occupies Ivanov above all others. Who has it in for the BEC—and why?

“I’ve got the same question, shug. Why’d he do it? Andras.”

“The girl put him up to it.”

“Typical. Blame the woman. Why?”

“Don’t know. But after eight hours with them, I can tell you she’s running the show.”

“Merle Haggard said the same thing about Bonnie and Clyde. History’s on your side for once. What’s her motivation?”

“That I don’t know. I wonder whether it has to do with the death of her father, but the timing doesn’t line up. She and Andras started in on the BEC back last year—months before Lishin got run through.”