The Langley Case: A Nathan Roeder Mystery
Chapter 17

This is How it all began: Not with a Whimper, but with a Bang.

I didn’t expect it to devolve immediately into shooting. Max and I went in ready for it to become shooting, but there was a part of me that was hoping I could just knock a few punks out and get down with what I needed doing. I hoped that maybe we could walk all the way up to the front door, take out the bouncer, and just walk inside.

Hell, I hoped I wouldn’t even need the satchel. I hoped I’d be able to take it out with us. But I wasn’t counting on that third man.

I knew we were in trouble as soon as I saw the third man. The bouncer at the club was not an issue. Yeah, he had a gun, yeah he was big. But that was what we came expecting. Same with the other schmuck who worked for The Albino. Those were the two we were counting on, the two I thought we might be able to disable without killing.

But the Third man; we couldn’t even get close with him there.

He was wearing a suit. That in itself was unusual, at least in the Sprawl. People tend to dress more casually, or appropriate for their jobs. I don’t know, all I know is that the suit was out of place. But from the distance, I saw more than just a suit. The guy had a brief case, and he was wearing boots. Not loafers, not comfortable but expensive shoes, where each one costs more than I’m making for this whole gig; boots. Combat boots.

He was from Mergers and Acquisitions. What company, I had no idea. But the way he looked at us, the way he moved, I knew. I knew he wasn’t from around there. I didn’t need to see the wire jack in his head to understand that this was not a man you’d replace in the Sprawl.

He popped open the briefcase, giving me just enough time to push Max behind something before the guns game out, already firing. The shots hit hard and fast, breaking concrete away from the barrier I pushed Max behind, slamming into the metal of the car I had ducked behind. We were nowhere close to the club, barely in range for any of the weapons, but this guy seemed to have no trouble hitting almost exactly where we were.

“What the hell, Nathan?” Max had not been shot yet, which was good. But neither one of us had any idea how to get closer to the club.

“I don’t know.”

“Who is that guy?”

“Mergers and Acquisitions.”

“Fuck me.”

I moved to my left. A shot hit the car, right where I was moving towards. I hadn’t made any sound. How did he know where I was? Whatever was going on, I couldn’t let this stop me. I had to get in there to stop The Albino from doing whatever it was he was going to do to Felicia. I couldn’t just leave here there.

I moved back to the right, another shot, were I was moving towards again. There was something not right. It’s not that I was in love with Felicia. I barely gave her a second thought. Sure, she had some nice assets, things I wouldn’t mind exploring, given a bit of peace and quiet in which to do so. But it wasn’t about her. Not her body, anyway. It wasn’t about what she looked like, and it wasn’t about what little of her personality I’d seen. It wasn’t about how badly she wanted to make me see the world from a new angle, collapsing after the most mind blowing orgasm of my life, knowing that there was more to come as soon as I was strong enough. It wasn’t about that.

Really. I just had to get her out of there.

I extended my leg out to one side. Nothing happened. I started to move the rest of my body to follow, and the shot came again. Whoever that guy was, he was too good to be normal.

He was tracking my movements, somehow. “Max,” I said, “Don’t move.” Max didn’t respond, but I doubted he’d ignore my instructions. Anything that would stop him from getting shot at would probably be okay in his book. Still, he must have known we couldn’t wait forever. Every second Felicia was inside was more dangerous for her. We couldn’t leave her in there. It wasn’t about love; it wasn’t about lust. I’d made her a promise. That’s all.

About that time, I heard a flurry of gunshots. One of the people at the club had stood up and started firing. Like an idiot. Not wanting to let the opportunity go by, I raised up enough to sholt, then dropped immediately back down.

The guy, the bouncer who’d harassed me and stopped Max from going inside, took the shot heavily, and fell back. I guess I had a bullet with his name on it the whole time.

I was ready to congratulate myself, in hiding, and try to figure out what was going on with the M&A motherfucker, when I heard Max scream an expletive. I turned towards him in time to see him fall to the ground, clutching his stomach. “Max!” I don’t know why I yelled his name. It’s just something you do in those situations.

Max groaned for a while. I pulled him by the shoulders out from the line of fire. I couldn’t have him lay there in plain sight. He groaned when I moved him, but he helped me along, all the while moaning at the pain.

Finally, he clenched his teeth and opened his eyes. His hands were soaked in blood, like he was holding a dam together, only it wasn’t holding. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “This is all your fault.”

His head tilted back, and he closed his eyes. I thought for a second he was dead, and moved to go past him. I figured I could mourn him later.

His eyes shot back open. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” He said.

“What?”

“I’m shot, dying, and I blame you for everything. What do you do? You get up and walk away. Not an apology, not a moment of introspection, nothing. You’re such a bastard.”

“Max, really, I—”

He held up a bloody hand. “No, Nathan, it’s okay. I just put my life on the line for you, risked everything to help you get in the sack with some chick that you could have just paid for like a decent human being, and got shot. No need for you to feel guilty. Just go, leave me here to die. No need to think about how you could save my life if you took me to a doctor now. Don’t worry about it. Bastard.”

“You know, you sound just like my mother sometimes.” I moved a little to the left, rewarded with another shot. It was like he only shot when I moved. The Albino’s other schmuck wasn’t shooting at all anymore. Maybe he was taking care of the one I took out. Maybe he was biding his time. Maybe he wasn’t even armed.

“Nathan,” Max said, his voice sounding weaker. “Why do I bother with you?”

“Because I pay you, Max.”

He shook his head. “Can’t spend money when you’re dead.”

“So don’t die, Max,” I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. “Keep it together, just long enough for me to get Felicia.”

“That damned woman is going to be the death of us both. Especially me.”

“I’ll be right back, Max.”

“You’d better not forget me, you son of a bitch.”

I smiled at him. “There you go, sounding like my mother again.”

Max laid his head back, shaking it and muttering about how much he hated me. I couldn’t follow what he was saying. I knew enough to know he wasn’t in serious danger. I couldn’t just leave him there to die; and he would, if he didn’t get help. But he didn’t need it right away. His heart was still beating strong, and the blood was the wrong color for a serious wound. If it was darker, I’d be worried.

His skin was getting clammy, but mostly that was panic. He’d be better off when the adrenaline stopped pumping. Then he’d just pass out for a while. Hopefully, I’d be back with Felicia by then.

If I could figure out any way past that son of bitch from Mergers and Acquisitions.

What was he doing down here, anyway? M&A guys don’t come to the Sprawl unless they’re on their way somewhere else. This guy had been waiting for us, though. He was waiting, and he was planning on killing us.

Wait. No.

Max was out in the open for a couple seconds. He was shot in the stomach. Non-lethal, but requiring attention. None of the shots coming at me have gone anywhere but towards the head. Max was wounded to get me out in the open. Only my hands were out in the open. That wasn’t enough. But the idea had been to shoot Max to get me to stick my head out.

So that he could kill me.

He wasn’t planning on killing us both. He wasn’t waiting for us both. He wasn’t protecting The Albino.

He’d come to kill me. Specifically.

That was not good. Who the hell had I pissed off, and how did I do it? Was it something I could send flowers for, make up for it?

“Mr. Roeder.” The voice had the sound of someone used to giving and following orders. A soldier. “Maybe we can settle this without further bloodshed.”

I moved to the side, behind the wheel of the ruined car I’d been hiding behind. There were no further shots. “I know you can hear me, Mr. Roeder. Even behind the car.”

There was no way he could see me. Not from that angle. I gave him the finger. “That’s not appropriate,” he said, and another shot slammed into the hood of the car, close enough to make it vibrate in my ear.

“What do you want?” I asked, in a whisper.

“Mr. Roeder?” His voice was still a yell. He wasn’t moving any closer. “Are you ready to act more like an adult?”

I wasn’t sure if that meant he’d heard me or not. “Blow me,” I whispered.

“I’ll take your silence as compliance,” he said. So at least he wasn’t listening to me. Whatever it was, it wasn’t sound related.

I should have known that, though. Gunshots are not soft. I was doing the same work more than once. I had to figure things out. I had to know what the deal was. What was he doing that I wasn’t thinking of? How did he know where I was?

“What do you want?” I yelled. He didn’t shoot.

“The diary, Mr. Roeder,” he said. “I wouldn’t have needed you at all if you’d come back to The Albino a few hours later. As it was, I only needed to wait until this morning.”

How did he know he had to wait until this morning? Why not go to my home, wait for me there? How did he know I was coming back?

Felicia.

Had she betrayed me, or had he forced her to talk? If she betrayed me, I was walking into a trap. If he forced her to talk, I had to get her more than ever before.

I didn’t know if I could afford to walk into another trap. Then again, I’ve walked into so many so far; it might not be that much of a change for me.

“I don’t have the diary anymore,” I yelled. I bent down, looking at him from underneath the car. I couldn’t make out much. Maybe if I moved in a bit more.

“Are you moving to get it, Mr. Roeder?”

I crawled under the car a bit.

“Mr. Roeder? Where are you going?”

It occurred to me then that maybe he couldn’t see me. Not under a car. Not out of sight from above.

He was wired.

Connected.

He was looking at a satellite picture of the area, updated in real time. He always knew where I was because he was looking at me from above. He wasn’t hearing. He was seeing.

Sometimes, I really impress myself. Other times, I realize what an idiot I am. I can’t be sure how I felt at that time. I just knew it was time to track down on the M&A guy and figure out whether to kill him in one shot, or question him later on.

“I don’t have the diary,” I said again, but softly. “I gave it back.”

Then I fired; two quick shots fired by a third. My first shot tore into his right shoulder, my second into his left; he dropped both of his guns. That was just to disarm him. As he was knocked back by the blast, my third shot hit him in the gut. Pretty much where he hit Max, maybe a little bit lower. I wasn’t as careful to avoid it being a killing shot.

I crawled out from under the car and moved quickly towards where he had fallen. The third of The Albino’s guys stood up and started to take aim at me. I stopped running and leveled my gun at him. “You sure?” I asked.

He dropped his gun and put his hands up.

I moved to the Mergers and Acquisitions guy. He wasn’t coughing, didn’t even look like he was in pain. He just looked really pissed off. “Go ahead,” he said. “Retire me.”

“I’m not into that kind of thing,” I said.

“Bullshit. You killed that other prick.”

“He was shooting at me.”

“I was shooting at you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And you’ve stopped. Convenient, isn’t it?”

He shook his head. “You’re really going to leave me alive? How stupid are you, Roeder?”

I don’t like being insulted. But to be honest, I was getting used to it. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’m going to ask you a few questions. If I like the answers, I’ll get you medical attention. If I don’t, I’ll just leave you here, and we’ll see what the boys out in the Sprawl decide they want to do with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re Wired,” I said. “That ain’t cheap. But digging it out of your skull is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying one.”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t work.”

I smiled, leaned real close. “Yeah,” I said. “But they don’t know that.”

He tried to look cool, and did a pretty convincing job at it. But I knew what he was thinking at that point. Didn’t need to be a Reader to see if he was really panicking. I knew enough to know he was thinking about some rat infested Sprawl scum digging into his eye and through his brain to get at his Wire connection. I knew he was thinking about losing whatever chance he had at getting Downloaded because some idiot in the Sprawl thought they could move up in the world by smashing his head open with a rock.

“Who sent you?” I asked. It seemed like a good question to start with.

“What are you, new?” He asked.

Fair enough. “Why are they trying to kill me?”

“I don’t ask questions, Roeder. I just follow orders.”

That was a lie. His pupils dilated, and he looked too hard at me. He was trying to convince me. “How did you know about the book?”

“I was told you had a book.”

Another lie. He knew it was a diary. He’d said as much. “Not doing much to help your case, pal,” I said.

“Don’t need your help, Roeder.”

“Do your employers think it’s such a good idea to keep trying to kill me?”

“It will be when it works,” he said. “Until then, well—you know.”

“What?”

“They’ll keep trying.”

“If at first you don’t succeed,” I said. He nodded. “Well, there’s another saying like that: If you keep failing, quit; no use looking like an idiot.”

He laughed. “I’ll have to remember that.”

I shook my head. “I doubt that,” I said.