Kawahara raised her eyebrows, as if this was nothing more than a slightly distasteful joke she’d just been told. “Where would you like me to start, Takeshi-san?”
“Mary Lou Hinchley. She fell from here, right?”
“Of course.”
“You had her slated for the snuff deck? Some sick fuck wanted to pull on the tiger sleeve and play kitty?”
“Well, well.” Kawahara tipped her head on one side as she made connections. “Who have you been talking to? Someone from the Wei Clinic, is it? Let me think. Miller was here for that little object lesson, but you torched him, so … Oh. You haven’t been headhunting again, Takeshi? You didn’t take Felipe Miller home in a hatbox, did you?”
I said nothing, just looked at her over the barrel of the shard gun, hearing again the weakened screaming through the door I’d listened at. Kawahara shrugged.
“It wasn’t the tiger, as it happens. But something of that sort, yes.”
“And she found out?”
“Somehow, yes.” Kawahara seemed to be relaxing, which under normal circumstances would have made me nervous. Under the betathanatine, it just made me more watchful. “A word in the wrong place, maybe something a technician said. You know, we usually put our snuff clients through a virtual version before we let them loose on the real thing. It helps to know how they’re going to react, and in some cases we even persuade them not to go through with it.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
Kawahara sighed. “How do I get through to you, Takeshi? We provide a service here. If it can be made legal, then so much the better.”
“That’s bullshit, Reileen. You sell them the virtual, and in a couple of months they come sniffing after the real thing. There’s a causal link, and you know it. Selling them something illegal gives you leverage, probably over some very influential people. Get many UN governors up here, do you? Protectorate generals, that kind of scum?”
“Head in the Clouds caters to an elite.”
“Like that white-haired fuck I greased upstairs? He was someone important, was he?”
“Carlton McCabe?” From somewhere, Kawahara produced an alarming smile. “You could say that, I suppose, yes. A person of influence.”
“Would you care to tell me which particular person of influence you’d promised they could rip the innards out of Mary Lou Hinchley?”
Kawahara tautened slightly. “No, I would not.”
“Suppose not. You’ll want that for a bargaining line later, won’t you? OK, skip it. So what happened? Hinchley was brought up here, accidentally found out what she was being fattened up for and tried to escape? Stole a grav harness, perhaps?”
“I doubt that. The equipment is kept under tight security. Perhaps she thought she could cling to the outside of one of the shuttles. She was not a very bright girl, apparently. The details are still unclear, but she must have fallen somehow.”
“Or jumped.”
Kawahara shook her head. “I don’t think she had the stomach for that. Mary Lou Hinchley was not a samurai spirit. Like most of common humanity, she would have clung to life until the last undignified moment. Hoping for some miracle. Begging for mercy.”
“How inelegant. Was she missed immediately?”
“Of course she was missed! She had a client waiting for her. We scoured the ship.”
“Embarrassing.”
“Yes.”
“But not as embarrassing as having her wash up on the shore a couple of days later, huh? The luck fairies were out of town that week.”
“It was unfortunate,” Kawahara conceded, as if we were discussing a bad hand of poker. “But not entirely unexpected. We were not anticipating a real problem.”
“You knew she was Catholic?”
“Of course. It was part of the requirements.”
“So when Ryker dug up that iffy conversion, you must have shat yourself. Hinchley’s testimony would have dragged you right into the open, along with fuck knows how many of your influential friends. Head in the Clouds, one of the Houses, indicted for snuff and you with it. What was the word you used on New Beijing that time? Intolerable risk. Something had to be done, Ryker had to be shut down. Stop me if I’m losing the thread here.”
“No, you’re quite correct.”
“So you framed him?”
Kawahara shrugged again. “An attempt was made to buy him off. He proved … unreceptive.”
“Unfortunate. So what did you do then?”
“You don’t know?”
“I want to hear you say it. I want details. I’m doing too much of the talking here. Try to keep your end of the conversation up, or I might think you’re being uncooperative.”