Escalante by Andrew Vaillencourt

Author:Andrew Vaillencourt [Vaillencourt, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andrew Vaillencourt
Published: 2017-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

7

Walter Bixby’s morning calls were getting out of control. He had feared it would come to this. He despaired of it the moment he had spoken with Tankowicz.

Every night this week some group of opportunistic street punks had run afoul of the big vet and gotten their asses kicked. Part of him had held out a secret hope that nothing would come of the big man’s arrival, but he was far too cynical to have given it too much credence. Still, hope was an insidious thing and he found himself disappointed that this particular problem had not been avoided.

Further compounding his woes, the last two nights, the groups had been from Rodney’s crew. The South East residential quarter was hotly contested territory, filled as it was with good blue-collar folk making decent money. No one had established supremacy there as the gang wars were stretching everyone thin just holding onto their regular territories. It looked like The Dwarf was making a play in earnest, which struck Bixby as counter-productive. Rodney had been warned that Roland was supposed to be left alone, and yet he was deliberately poking at the bear.

He’s testing Roland. Scouting him.

Far be it from Rodney McDowell to let an opportunity go unexploited; the creepy little man was trying to see if the new guy was a potential ally or enemy. He was using the contest for that quarter to test his limitations and motivations. The problem, Bixby theorized, was that Rodney was treating Roland like a potential score, not like a military objective.

If Roland decides that Rodney is a viable target, he is going to service that target just like in a war. Bixby knew the type well. Roland may be a top-secret special-forces cyborg, but he was a soldier as well. The Dwarf probably thought he was baiting a fish before reeling it in. What he was really doing was hunting whales in a dinghy. Bixby could not have that. His informants were talking about pressure from Uptown rackets over in the Guts that was causing friction with Gateways. Nobody was taking that rumor seriously and that terrified Walter. Gateways was not going to let this “Combine” control the docks no matter what happened, and a real shooting war was going to come to Dockside if that did not get dealt with. But instead of dealing with that he was relegated to playing whack-a-mole with street hoods who didn’t know enough to stay away from the meanest dog in the yard.

Walter pondered the crappy turn his week had taken while he sat at his desk and drank burned coffee from a plastic cup. His hands shook because he opted not to put bourbon in it, and every part of his brain was encouraging him to add just a splash, if only to improve the taste.

Get thee behind me, Satan! Bixby tried to make a joke of it in his head, but the pull of the demon liquor was strong and he nearly crumpled under its insidious crooning.

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