There was a time when such a detail would never have gotten past his scenario research, even if he’d been in a hurry. Oh, well. Things changed.
While it was still important to look good, getting the job done counted for more.
Tuesday, January 11th, 10:15 a.m.
Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia Jay had switched from his tropical linens into an Abercrombie and Fitch khaki outfit, shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, complete with stout walking shoes and a pinned-up Australian bush hat.
His next stop was a small library in Blacktown, just north and west of Sydney. It was the middle of summer, and warm, and the library was not air-conditioned, even though he’d picked a contemporary time to run his scenario.
Not a bad transition for a couple minutes’ work.
“Can I help you, sir?” the librarian asked.
Jay loved Australian accents. He used them for secondary characters all the time.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m looking for this periodical.” He put a slip of paper onto the woman’s desk. She put on her reading glasses and looked at it.
” “Oh, right. In the magazine section, go past the record kiosk, on your left, about halfway down the rack.” “Thank you, ma’am.” “You’re American, right?” “Yes, ma’am.” “Nice to make your acquaintance then.” Jay smiled, tipped his hat, then headed for the magazine racks. This was perhaps a little more time-consuming than a non-VR search, but if he couldn’t have fun, why bother?
Tuesday, January 11th, 10:30 a.m.
Rangoon, Burma Jay found a mention of Frihedsakse in a back line info net connected to a major shipping company.
Not much, just an unconfirmed rumor, connected to the sinking of an oil tanker.
Well. Great avalanches from little snowballs sometimes grew.
He gathered the information in and moved on.
Tuesday, January 11th, 10:40 a.m.
Johannesburg, South Africa In a police station in Boksburg, a man arrested for stealing a car had been searched. There had been nothing in the arrestee’s wallet save a business card, upon the back of which was the handwritten word Frihedsakse. Next to the word was an old-style internet-provider ID number. The IP probably wasn’t active, but that didn’t matter. If it had ever been active, there were ways to trace it.
A quick check of the dates on the information showed that it had been in the police system for five months. A pix of the card had a day and time stamp on it as verification of the item’s log into the evidence locker at the central storage vault in Johannesburg.
Jay collected the card. He grinned. These terrorists didn’t know who they were messing with. He was Jay Gridley, the man who had run the mad Russian programmer to ground.
These balrogs didn’t have a prayer.
Tuesday, January 11th, 10:50 a.m.
Kobe, Japan At a beef ranch in Kobe, somebody had broken in and stolen, of all things, a case of beer, which was to be fed to the cattle.
Investigating policemen had no clues, save one: Scrawled on the wall next to ten cases of beer that had been left behind was the word Frihedsakse in kanji.
Jay made note of that.
So it went, a tiny bit here, an even smaller bit there. This was sometimes the way of computer sieve work. You strained slowly, but very fine. If you did it right, you might come up with a bunch of pieces so small that none of them would mean anything but, puzzled together, you might have some thing. Jay was gathering his ducks. When he had enough of them, he would put them into a row. And when he had enough ducks in a neat row, he would get some answers. And then?
Well, we’ll just see, won’t we his I got your fried sex right here, pal.
Tuesday, January 11th, 11:15 a.m.
Miami Beach, Florida Platt strolled along one of the touristy streets near the canal, enjoying the seventy-degree weather. Around him, people walked, dressed in all the bright colors of the rainbow, plus a bunch of colors not found anywhere naturally.
Old, young, white, black, domestic, foreign, Miami Beach was always cookin”, there was always action. It might be snowin’ like a sonofabitch up north, in Washington or New York City, and still be practically summer down here in the land of sin.
Life was sure grand when you could just pick up and go to where you could walk around in a T-shirt and shorts in the middle of the winter.
Platt ambled along, not going anywhere in particular, just strolling, soaking up a few minutes of the warm sunshine before he had to go back into his room and plug into the net.
He watched a black girl in a tank top and short shorts stride by, and smiled at her big and tight backside after she passed. Fine-lookin’ woman.
A tall man in a purple crushed-velvet jumpsuit passed on in-line skates, laughing.
He was throwing quarters every which way, and had a passel of children chasing him, scooping up the change.
Platt passed two window-shopping old ladies, all in lime green and hot pink, baggy Bermuda shorts and halters, both of them burned leathery and the color of dark toast, but with silicone implants that were the only things not sagging on them. The old broads must be in their seventies or eighties, and their faces were pulled so tight by plastic surgery that their fake boobs probably bobbed up and down when they smiled.
If there were some kind of big disaster that destroyed a lot of civilization’s records, then maybe a thousand years from now, when some scientist got to digging up old coffins or shit, he might scratch his head and wonder when he opened them: Why were there so many caskets with these two little plastic sacks of Dow Jell in there with all the bones?
Fake boobs didn’t do it for Platt.
Didn’t matter how big they were if they weren’t real. Hell, if he wanted to handle stuff like that, he’d just go on down to the hardware store and buy himself a couple of lubes of bathtub caulk. Go on home, squirt a couple of big blobs into bowls and let them dry, squeeze that. Sheeit.
Platt grinned again. He was just stalling, so he wouldn’t have to go back to work. He sighed. Might as well get to it.
He didn’t have any illusions about how good he was on the net. He was better than some, but not as sharp as the real experts. In VR, some of the Net Force players would dance circles around him in a head-to-head match. Thing was, tricky and pretty sharp beat real sharp every time.
And the Net Force pukes were fooling themselves, so that helped a bunch.
Back after he’d first left home and gone on the road for a while, Platt had met an old grifter name of James Treemore Vaughn.
Jimmy Tee, they called him. He was probably pushing seventy, had white hair, and looked just like your kindly old gram ps. Kinda guy you’d trust with your wife, your kid, your money. Only Jimmy Tee was a con man, working the small cons by the time Platt had met him, though in his prime he had done a lot of second- and third-man parts in big stings.
Earned big, spent big, didn’t have a pot to piss in. But he knew more about people than a trainload full of psychiatrists, hookers, and bartenders put together. He could rope a mark, sting him, and send him on his way thinking Jimmy Tee had done him a big favor.
They’d sat in a bar in Kansas City once. Big Bill Barlow’s place. Jimmy Tee having a weakness for good blended whisky, and the old man had taught Platt a major lesson.
” “Thing is, boyo, if you work it right, a mark will do most of the work for you. Yeah, you can set him up, hammer him good with the pitch, pull a fast close, and take off with the score, but if the mark knows he’s been had, sooner or later he’ll scream. A good con gets you the money.
A great con gets you the money–and the mark doesn’t know he’s been had.” Platt was fascinated.
“Yeah?” He waved at the bartender, who came over to fill up Jimmy Tee’s glass.
“Oh, yeah. See, there’s a lot of people out there who are faster, smarter, stronger, and meaner than you.
You face off with them, you get the crap kicked out you.
A big guy comes at you, you don’t try to block him balls against balls, you just redirect him a hair. Nudge him in a direction, and get out of his way. The trick is to make him think that’s the way he wanted to go in the first place. You can do that, you can write your own ticket.” In the warm sunshine, Platt smiled again. Old Jimmy Tee had been dead and gone what?