Hearing no questions, Jay addresses Rhino again. "Then I think we'll go look for Nessa. We'll keep you apprised of our progress."
Looks like we're headed for Castoff.
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"Thanks, Rhino. Anyone else have questions?"
Jay nods. The Castoff sounds like the kind of place they need to check anyway. "We'll certainly look for Nessa, especially at the Castoff. What does she look like? And are there other outlets for repurposed, refurbished and found items on your turf where Fallen Angel's burglars might fence their purloined goods?"
Jay nods while the dwarf that he assumes is Rhino discusses the value of rep and their standing security measures under the triad siege. "Our client says the house was hit two nights ago. How long has Coalburn been silent? If you have an address, we'd be willing to check on her. We need to talk anyway." Tilnar: "...[Guardian] says, "An important bit of information, though -- the gang -- and everyone else associated with that safehouse thinks it belongs to the shadowrunner Fallen Star ...
Raptor's question hangs in the air, just a little longer than Jay deems pleasant, proper, or propitious. No doubt Raptor meant it conversationally enough, but the pause. It's possible the question was interpretted as too probing, or possibly too forward. Jay holds up the tossed credstick before secreting it in the inner pocket of his jacket. "Thank you. We endeavour to give satisfaction when engaged. We didn't get much from the rigger, primarily his personal arms, and the arm of his bodyguard. " Jay cocks his head. Not quite the right tone, especially in current dress, read the room.
Jay raises the tankard of amber liquid. "All of your good health." He drains a good third of it, then sighs regret for the impending breach of bonhomie, and the return to biz. "You're an important dwarf, and you've got to be busy after last night. I respect that, so I'll try to be fast and direct.
Jay corrals his drink. He's remembered to order a substantial whisky, not an inconsequential beer, trusting Siobhan to pick the brand. He's not a real whisky fan, and finds it easy to nurse the drink, although murmurs appreciatively after the first sip. He silently bides his time while the pleasantries are exchanged. IF the dwarf gives him an opening, he plans to broach the business at hand.
Jay adopts his business neutral face. "We need to complete our own biz urgently, it is true. However, this may represent either a summons, or networking opportunity. I am inclined to act in the interests of our client first." He smiles and half-chuckles. "So post move drinkies, it is."
"I can drive." Jay volunteers. He holds up his left hand, palm out, fingers and thumb spread.
Jay mods his approval.
"Best we get the stuff out of there quickly. If we can't get it all today, maybe we finish it with a van tomorow. "
"They owe us. Maybe we could parley that into a van pink. 0nyx, you've got the best rapport. You up to make the call. "
Jay marches up the steps and into the garret just in time to hear 0nyx's question. "Makes sense, and I'm in, but transport's an issue. Need wheels to move the gear. The Chromed Skulls owe us. Maybe we could barter some of that good will to borrow a truck?" While talking, he carries a paper bag through the apartment. He deposits it on the table, then draws a sixpack of Cheery Nearly Beery (You're always happy when you drink Cheery Nearly Beery and sober too!) and a couple cartons of take out Chinese. "Sorry. It was cheap."
One of Jay's burners pings. " ... Look, papa, I really don't want a fight. I've got to go. I've got to see this through. "[/b] He snaps the papa-phone closed. Why can't the old man just listen? Why do we always argue? This time his father might be right. He's never done anything like this with real shooting, and people d-- . Better not think about that. Jay rubs his eyes, swaps the papa-phone for the one that pinged. Maybe one of his contacts has found something. He checks Figment's message. This is good progress; better head back to the apartment and hook up with the others.
Continuing his walk back to his apartment, Jay slides a very old burner from his pocket. He flips it open and dials a seldom used number. He usually makes these transactions face to face. "Papa, it's Ernst. I might not be around for a few days. I'm trying to help out a friend in trouble...."
Walking home, Jay continues his list.
He decides on trying two more contacts, but also decides pressing the flesh isn't required for these inquiries. His first call is to Bob Wuhl, freelance reporter on the dark underbelly of SeaTac corp biz in general and shadow-running scene in particular. "Bob, it's Jay Gould. Wondering if you've heard anything about a heist that bagged some guns and statuary. Might have a lead on recent doings of interest to you that I can swap."
His last call is to a drug distributor, Tony Fargas. Tony's one of a very few that can get the mild vintage weed that Jay sells to friends, but Jay knows he's small potatoes to Tony, and that the distributor would like him to move into more potent product, at least into modern hybrids where higher demand would yield higher profits.
Jay gives Fen the number of one of his cell phones, thanks the fixer, and starts his walk home. He's feeling pretty good with the progress he's made so far and starts plotting his next steps, while keeping an eye on his surroundings. This isn't the Barrens, but it's not a Corp-controlled safe-zone either.
Jay calls Lip -- who asks him what kind of trouble he's in, and then suggests he can find someone who'd make a perfect forgery from images, if the price is right. "No trouble, Lip. Just a sticky job. I'll keep the forger in mind, but the client's a chummer who's stuck it out for me times past. Don't want to muddy that relationship."
Insults are Fen's way. Already expecting it, Jay considers returning fire, but the relationship isn't one of equals yet. So he let's it slide off his back with some self-deprecation. "Mr. Martin, that cuts. You know I was budded asexually." He smiles. " I do appreciate your consideration of our business relationship, but you needn't go empty-handed. I'll give you half of my cut on anything we recover based on your information."
Colt doesn't smile; he tries to maintain his biz face, but he is well-pleased with Laurie's offer. "Mr. Laurie, you have a deal. The piece we are looking for looks like a Colt Manhunter, but it's a custom-built weapon, internal smartlink, extended clip, heavy bore and custom sculpted grip." He holds up a credstick. " Is this an acceptable form of payment?"
Yields a 10 ?
[b]"That's all I'm asking, Mr. Laurie. I anticipate whoever took the weapon will try to market it, and you are well-connected.
My ettiquette/negotiation skills: Street Etiquette .... 5 House Ruling 6 points spent as specialization Corporate Etiquette . 3 House Ruling 6 points spent as specialization Negotiation . 6 Specialize Fast talk. 5/7(Fast talk)
Jay throws on his jacket and a ball cap. "I'm going to visit some old friends. Maybe they can tell me something about what we seek. Here's a set of spare keys." He strides out the apartment, hustles down the stairs, closes the door softly behind him, and onto the street. It's about an hour walk to his first stop, a shop called The Watch Doctor, set on the ground floor of a three story brick building fronting a boulevard featuring an overgrown center island. The scraggly grass and scrubby weeds may not be inviting, but the double aisles of trees would provide friendly shade, were the sun strong enough to generate it. The windows of the shop are papered in cardboard. The recesed glass door is similarly papered. A camera stares down into the little pocket of space. Jay pushes the buzzer beside the door and looks up at the camera. A voice somehow thin, but also gruff crackles through a speaker. "Jay Gould, that disguise won't fool anyone. What do you want?" "Just want to talk some biz, Mr. Laurie." The door buzzes open. Inside Jay can see that the cardboard in the windows is backed by chain link fence. There's a small space in front of a counter of empty glass cages. The man behind the counter is lean, unshaven, dressed in a white lab coat. He shuffles forward, leaning on a cane. "Out with it then. No shilly-shallying." Jay draws a breath. "A friend of mine has lost a gun. A very special gun, and is willing to pay for information leading to its recovery."
"I'm off to meet my guys then. Raptor, you want to come along?"
"Sounds like I've got a couple hours to make some rounds then."
"Securing the stash is important. We can keep it here short term. My rents due in a few weeks. But we've also got to start investigating. The vid's an obvious first step. And we've a lot of daylight left before we can see the skulls. We need to hit the streets too. I've got a couple contacts. I can work the custom gun and art angles with them. "
Jay leans over to look at Danny's goods. He sniffs a little and turns away.
"If Figment thinks it's safe. Okay. Call from here." Jay snags a small heap of noodles with his chop sticks, stuffs the bulk of them into his mouth and slurps their tails into his mouth.
"Give it a try". Danny nods to 0nyx, then looks mournfully at the congealed coffee remnants and bacon noodles. "I'm heading out to get supplies. Anybody want anything?" "I'm good."
We've got more issues. I think Angel's stash is burned. We should let her know or move it ourselves. Not sure where to though."
Danny wakes up shortly afterwards, having slept in his clothes, then gets up and walks to the kitchen. "Hey, man.", he says to Jay. "You mind if I make tea? "Don't think I've got any. There's some instant coffee in the cupboard over there." A search will reveal no tea, half a tin of instant coffee so old it's sintered into a single mass. Figment jolts up, "What am -- is that bacon? Like, real bacon, and not Smoked Soystrips? Or that weird hybrid one that's got a few flakes of ham to give it flavour?" He whistles, "Well, I'm feelin' right spoilt." "It's the secret ingredient in the Sunrise Soba Bowl. I've got a deal with one of the cooks." ”Yeah. A fixer might have an ear to the ground, but I don’t know that we want to bring in anyone like that at this point,” Raptor says in between slurping his noodles. "What have you got then? We got to ask around. Figment could get rumbled doing his thing. No offense, big guy, things happen sometimes. I know a couple guys. We could play it like we're buyers. What'dya think?"
Jay wakes up at the crack of noon. He pulls on some work pants, a long sleeve, synthetic t-shirt, and a work shirt. He steps over and around the other sleepers, on his way to the kitchen. He gently pinches the lower sleeve of his overcoat, and frowns. He pulls out the paper balls that he'd stuffed into the toes of his shoes last night and pushes his fingers into the toes. Another frown. Then he pours a glass of water from the faucet and downs that while he stares at the pile of things on the kitchen table. He shakes his head, then gathers his personal goods from the table top into his pockets. Then he does a quick review of the largely empty cupboards. He knows the refrigerator is empty, but he opens it to turn the temperature down. After winding his way through the sleepers to the front door, he pulls a short, heavy windbreaker, and some work boots from a small closet. His knife and derringer go into the outer jacket waist pockets. He descends the stairs to forage breakfast from the soba shop and returns laden with a large bag. Again winding through, over and around the sleepers, he deposits the bag on the kitchen counter. He unwraps the cord wrapped around a nail in the upper frame of the kitchen window, so that he can lower the shade about halfway to let in sunlight. Then he wraps the string back around the nail.
He looks at the bedroom door for a few minutes, then at the men in the living room. He pulls a paper package out of the bag, then drapes a towel over the bag as insulation. The paper package is unrolled to reveal a mass of thin strips of pink and white. The bacon is carefully seperated and dropped into a frying pan over low heat.
Danny takes off a substantial pair of boots off as he enters, then follows Jay up to the garret, putting down the drone with a sigh of relief. "Man, that was a long night" "It was at that. 0nyx, why don't you take the bedroom? I'm for the shower first. Sorry there's no food to speak of, but the noodle shop will be open soon."
"Tight friends are a resource sadly lacking here. The local populace mostly wishes to avoid any -- entanglements. They'll mind their own business, but they won't guard mine. Discretion is only wisdom." ”Yeah, it’s on them now,” Raptor says, uneasily taking a seat in a kitchen chair. "I sincerely hope they made it." Jay gathers some clothes and a hangar from the bedroom shelves. He unloads his overcoat. The weapons go on the kitchen table. The coat is carefully arranged on the hangar and strung on a long line that runs along the roof peak in the kitchen. His personal effects go into the pockets of a waist-long windbreaker. He disappears with that and the other clothes into the bathroom. He's in there a long time, even after the shower stops running. When he emerges he's clean shaven, his hair spiked up with gel, and he's dressed in light fatigues, a navy long-sleeve T-shirt, wool socks and the windbreaker. "Shower should be recuperating. I'm going to catch some sleep. Then I'll make some calls." Jay grabs a pillow and stretches out on his back on the rug.
A flight of nine granite slab stairs rises from the street to the front porch. The double door is steel, with a palm-sized window and three heavy built-in locks. It's obviously a retrofit, but the grimy stain glass transom window above survives from the original construction. Jay produces a faintly jingling set of keys and and unlocks them from top to bottom. Inside a narrow set of stair climbs and turns to the next floor. Beside the stairs a short hallway leads to the first floor apartment door. "Shoes off here, please. We don't want to wake Luis." Jay follows his own instruction, then leads the way to the second floor where the hallway wraps toward the front of the house and another flight up to the garret. One key opens the door at the top of the stairs. The apartment inside is huddled under the roof. It's only about half the width of the house and the only place one can stand full height is within a few feet of the roof ridgeline. The door opens into a bare living room . Next moving toward the rear of the house is the kitchen. An awkward bathroom is sandwiched between the two on the left hand side. The bedroom is all way the back. Furnishings are extremely sparse. A futon couch in the living room. A real wooden table with three chairs in the kitchen. Another futon on a low platform in the bedroom, a set of shelves with a few clothes and the fourth kitchen chair round out the bedroom. It's not gleaming, but is relatively dust-free.
Lev drives south, then turns east into Auburn through a warehouse district, row on file of looming steel-framed, sheetmetal-skinned parallelpipeds surrounded by chain link mail surmounted by red and white badges of warning and corporate fealty. A few blocks in a silver armored patrol car swings out of an alley and tails the van for a few blocks before peeling off, only to quickly replaced with a blue and white. "That's a horse of a different color," your coachman mutters. The white and blue hands off to a stereotypical basic black with mirrored windscreens the plays a searchlight over the back of the van. Another few blocks and the basic black fades away when the neighborhood transitions to residential. These are the homes of workers in the warehouses and factories of Auburn. Many tenements, in green-crete, some older in red brick, and sandwiched between them a few proudly ancient wood-framed multi-family Victorians. Lev stops in front of a Soba shop. Jay urges everyone to get out quickly and start moving east down the sidewalk. He stays behind to pay Lev with the credstick and ask him for a number. He watches the van pull away, then hurries to the front of the group. We walk a block and a half until we reach a weathered gray Victorian. "I've got the garret. It's small but at least it will be dry." Jay looks east toward the false dawn. "The noodle shop will be open in about an hour."
Jay frowns, then shrugs. "I've got a place on the edge of Auburn and Puyallup. It's small but the neighbors mostly mind their own business. Should be secure enough. We could swing by the bikes, then go there. "
Tilnar: Jay's 1 month, low lifestyle abode. I'm picturing something in a converted warehouse. Will work on a better description for you.
"Good idea. It might keep the local youth out of trouble too."
"Summon the conveyor and let's be off."
Jay follows.
Jay uses the shotgun as a prop to level himself to his feet. "Let's blow this pop stand."
Danny's got the deck, so Jay turns to the two bodies and goes through their pockets and gear. The scrip, bills and credstick go into a vest pocket. He strips off the bodyguard's gunbelt and fastens it around his waist under his own overcoat. The microtransceiver goes into his ear. He picks up the Defiance and looks it over appraisingly.
"Okay." Jay acquiesces instantly to Raptor's suggestion. "Now what?" He begins to root around the gear on the roof. "Can we recall the drones?"
"The triad's gonna tumble to the loss of their rigger cause their drones have gone braindead. Whatever we do it's got to be fast. "
"Maybe we could use the tank downstairs as a mule, or at least a shopping cart to carry stuff." Jat returns to his perusal of the loot.
" I fear your friend's services will consume any profit we might reap from this biz. But we have few options, especially if we wish to take our spoils." Jay eyes the rigger's expensive looking equipment and contemplates a long slog to wherever.
"We were after a rigger. That's a dead rigger. Surprised they didn't have a real guard or two on this guy. Might not be the right one. We could ring and see how the chrome domes are doing. I just want " Jay approaches the body and gear carefully. He looks around for anything he can recognize , especially live cameras or mics.
"Traps and tricks. Suppose his deck is rigged for mayhem too?" Jay remains near the roof's edge. He looks back down the fire escape. "Fight's over 0nyx. It's safe to come up."
Jay clambers over the parapet lining the roof and surveys the damage. "You guys made that look easy. Figment, does that console have a live feed?"
Jay misses his footing on a rung and swings into the brick of the building.
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