Nightside CIty (3 page)

So nobody in his right mind would actually
buy out there. Even if you got the property free, registering the
transfer of title would cost enough to make it a bad investment;
legal fees hadn’t dropped any.

That left four possibilities, as I saw
it.

First, someone wasn’t in his right mind. You
can never rule that one out completely. The really demented are
scarce these days, but there are still a few out there. Maybe some
poor aberrant had actually bought that future wasteland.

Second, someone had figured out how to get
title to the property for nothing, not even transfer fees, and was
trying to squeeze a little money out of it. That was free
enterprise in action, but it was also pretty sure to be illegal. I
might come out ahead if I could prove something.

Third, nobody had bought anything, but
somebody was trying to run a scam of some kind on the squatters,
maybe just to collect those rents, maybe to get something else out
of them, and had enough pull somewhere to get away with it, or had
somehow faked the call to the city. Maybe whoever placed the call
for the squatters was getting a cut, and had called somewhere else
entirely. If that was the story and I proved it, I could count on
two hundred and five credits, but the only way I’d get more than
that was if the Eastern Bunny dropped it in my lap, or if an
opportunity arose for a little creative blackmail, mild enough that
I could live with myself.

Fourth, Pickens—if that was his real name
after all—was pulling a scam on me.

I couldn’t rule any of those out. That fourth
one was the one I liked least, of course, and it seemed pretty
goddamn unlikely, but I couldn’t rule it out. I couldn’t figure any
way that anyone could get anything worthwhile out of me, with this
story or any other, but I couldn’t rule it out. I know there are
people out there smarter than I am, and that means there are people
out there who could fool me if they wanted to. I couldn’t figure
out why they’d want to—but like I said, they’re smarter than I
am.

If it was a con, it was a good one. The story
was bizarre enough to get my interest, and there weren’t any of the
telltale signs of a con—nothing too good to be true, no fat fee in
prospect, no prepared explanation.

I decided that if it was a con it was too
damn slick for me, and I might as well fall into it, because it
would be worth it to see what the story was. So I would assume it
wasn’t a con.

That left three choices, and they all hinged
on whether or not someone had actually paid for those
buildings.

I couldn’t find out the whole truth sitting
at my desk, but I could get the official story, anyway. I hit my
keypad, punched up the Registry of Deeds and ran down the list of
addresses.

Of course, any jerk could have done that, and
somebody supposedly had, because Zar Pickens had said that someone
who worked for the city said the new owner was for real. The name
the squatters had gotten was West End Properties, but that didn’t
mean anything more to me than it had to them; I asked for the full
transaction records on every address where a squatter had been
hassled.

Just for interest, I also tagged the command
to give last-called dates for each property file, while I was at
it.

There were eleven properties involved where
squatters had been asked for rent. They were scattered in an arc
along Wall Street and in a couple of blocks on Western Ave and Deng
Boulevard.

All eleven really had been deeded over to new
owners in the last six weeks—nominally to eleven different buyers,
but that didn’t mean anything.

No one had called up any of the files since
the transfers were made, except for Zar Pickens’ own building; that
had sold five weeks ago, and someone had called up the transaction
record about two weeks back. That would have been the squatters,
checking up.

That transfer said West End Properties, all
right.

Somebody was really buying property in the
West End, or at least getting it transferred to new ownership. That
eliminated another of my options; it wasn’t just an attempt to
muscle a few credits out of the squatters.

But what the hell
was
it? Was somebody
actually paying real money for buildings and lots that were about
to turn into baked goods?

I was pretty damn curious by now, and I
suddenly thought of something else I was curious about. I punched
in for all real estate transactions made in the last six weeks, and
called for a graphic display on a city map, and cursed the idiot
who wired the system for pressure instead of voice. I almost
plugged myself in, but then decided to hold off. I don’t like
running on wire.

The records showed fifty or sixty recent
deeds. After I dropped out a few scattered foreclosures, gambling
losses, and in-family transfers I had about forty left.

They were all in the West End. They covered
just about all
of
the West End, too.

I extended the time back another week;
nothing but foreclosures and gambling losses. An eighth week,
nothing. Whatever was going on had started just about six weeks
back.

But what was going on?

If someone had figured a way to fake property
transfers, why stick to the West End? Why not take a bite here and
there, maybe catch someone who could actually pay a decent rent? As
I said before, there was abandoned property as far in as my own
neighborhood, not just in the West End. The impending dawn was not
going to catch anyone by surprise, and people had been pulling out
gradually for years— half the people I grew up with, the smart
ones, were off-planet, and even some of the dumb ones were out in
the mines instead of hanging around the city. So if somebody had a
way of stealing land, why go for the worst? Why the West End and
not Westside, or the Notch, or somewhere?

Maybe there really was something that made
the West End valuable after all, even with the sun coming up? I
hadn’t figured that in my four options.

That seemed pretty damn unlikely. Anything
valuable out there should have been stripped out long ago. Most of
the utility lines had been.

Somebody was making these title transfers,
though, ostensibly buying up property. The next step seemed
obvious— figure out who it was.

I had the com tally up a list of buyers,
eliminating duplicates, and I got fifteen names. West End
Properties was one; Westwall Redevelopment, Nightside Estates, half
a dozen in all were meaningless corporate labels. The rest looked
like casino names; there was even the classic Bond James Bond, with
a five-digit code number behind it.

Someday I’ll have to look up where that
stupid name came from, and why the high rollers keep using it. I
suppose it’s another weird old Earth legend, like the Eastern Bunny
who wasn’t going to be bringing me anything. Some day I’ll look
that one up, too, and find out why there isn’t a Western Bunny. And
just what the hell a bunny is, anyway.

I put the fifteen buyer names in permanent
hold, then put them aside for a moment and ran out the list of
prices paid.

They were pitiful. The highest was for an
entire city block, six residence towers and a small park, one of
the big developments from the city’s prime, a century back; that
was ten megacredits. When I was still welcome in the casinos I saw
that much go on a single spin of a roulette wheel.
Somebody—assuming that all fifteen names were actually the same
outfit—had bought about two percent of Nightside City for just
under a hundred megacredits.

Of course, it was the two percent that would
be first to fry, but still, I felt like crying when I saw how
cheaply my home town was going.

And the big question remained: Why was
somebody buying?

Was
somebody buying, really? I still
hadn’t checked on the authenticity of these deals. Just because I
saw prices listed didn’t mean that anyone had actually paid those
prices.

I ran out a list of the sellers and glanced
down it for familiar names. There were a few—mostly corporations
that wouldn’t want to talk to me. IRC had a lot of influence.

I ran an extension on that list, asking for
the names of the corporate officers who actually signed or thumbed
the deeds. I looked it over again.

It was too bad buyers didn’t need to sign
deeds in the City, because I thought I might have found some
interesting names that way. I ran a check, just in case, but no, no
corporate buyers had let any individual names go on record.

I went back to the sellers.

I didn’t exactly have any close friends on
that list, but I did find someone I was on speaking terms with, a
banker, and I decided to give her a call. I’d met her two years
earlier, when I traced a couple of kilocredits that had somehow
wound up in the wrong account; she’d been the officer authorizing
the retrieval. I’d spoken to her once or twice since, but not for
months. Four weeks ago she’d signed a deed on behalf of the
Epimethean Commerce Bank, which had sold a foreclosure on Deng to
Westwall Redevelopment.

I called the bank, since it was business
hours, and asked the reception software for Mariko Cheng, and got
put on hold for about half a galactic year.

I hate that. The damn program ought to be
able to spare enough memory to stay on the line and chat, but no,
it put me on hold. They always do that. I had to just sit there and
wait.

When I got tired of listening to the porno
ads on the hold circuit and staring at the far wall of my office
wishing I could put something interesting on the big holoscreen
without losing my call, I started puttering around with some of my
data on the desk pull-outs, kicking around files on the six
corporations and the nine casino names, and running searches to see
if any of the fifteen had ever turned up anywhere other than on
deeds to West End property.

The six corporations all had their
incorporations properly filed, but the only officers named were
software written specifically for the job—no humans, and I knew
that I wouldn’t be able to get anything out of business software.
All six of them had filed five or six weeks ago, but other than
that none of the fifteen were on public record. I wondered what was
on private record; naturally, I had ways of getting at stuff I
wasn’t supposed to, or I wouldn’t have stayed in business very
long, but I didn’t want to use anything illegal when I was on an
open channel and the bank might be listening. Besides, if I tried
to break in anywhere I might need all my lines for a pincer attack
on somebody’s security systems, and I had one tied up with my call
and another holding my search data. I couldn’t do any serious
hacking without plugging myself in, and you can’t talk on the phone
and run on wire at the same time. I was beginning to consider
exiting the call and trying a few ideas when a heavy-breathing
pitch for the floor show at the New York cut off in mid-groan and
Cheng asked, “What do
you
want?”

“Nothing much,” I said, “And nothing that’ll
hurt. I just wanted to check up on an outfit you did some business
with, Westwall Redevelopment. I’m doing some background on them for
a client.” I tabbed the main screen control and watched her face
appear.

“Oh?” she said, as the focus sharpened. Her
expression was polite and blank.

“Oh,” I answered her.

“So?”

“So I’d greatly appreciate it, Mis’ Cheng, if
you could tell me something about them—just anything. I understand
that Epimethean Commerce sold them some property out on West
Deng?”

“That’s a matter of public record.”

“Yes, mis’, it certainly is, and that’s how I
came to call you. Your name was on the deed—or at least it was on
the comfax of the deed. I was hoping you could tell me a little
about Westwall, since you dealt with them.” I started to say more,
to elaborate on my story, but I stopped myself. One of my rules of
business is to try not to say more than I have to. If I give myself
half a chance, I’ll keep talking forever, same as I’m doing now
telling you all this. If I let my mouth run, sooner or later I’m
either telling someone something they shouldn’t know—or at least
not from me or not for free—or I’m making my lies too complicated,
so they’ll trip me up later. The best way to lie is to simply not
tell all of the truth, and that’s exactly what I was doing here; I
wasn’t going to tell her that I was trying to get squatters out of
paying rent, but I’d almost gone and made up some lie about it
instead.

She hesitated, then said, “Listen, Hsing, I’m
working; I don’t have time to peddle gossip. If you want to talk to
me on the bank’s time, you’ll have to make it the bank’s
business.”

I watched her face, and I knew what she was
telling me. She didn’t want to talk about it over the com—at least,
not unless I could convince her that it would be safe and worth her
while.

That made it interesting. It meant she
did
have something to say about Westwall Redevelopment, but
not something she wanted everyone on the nightside to hear and have
on permanent record.

What she had to say I had no idea. It might
be nothing. It might be anything. Maybe the transaction
was
a fraud.

Her reasons for wanting it private and off
the record could be anything from a jealous lover to crime in high
places—or maybe she was coming up for a promotion and didn’t want
it on record that she talked to an outcast like me. It could be
anything.

But I wasn’t exactly buried in useful
information, so I decided that I definitely wanted to talk to
her.

“Have it your way,” I said. “I was just
hoping for a favor, one human being to another; I don’t think the
bank’s got an interest in this one. Maybe I’ll see you around
sometime.”

“Maybe you will, if you’re ever in the Trap.”
The desktop screen went blank as she cut the connection, then lit
up with the data display I’d had on before, transferred back up
from the pull-outs.