* * *
Mark
The night sky was cloudy, which helped as I made my way through the Park at nearly ten at night. Not the safest thing to do, but I wasn't worried. The Park was a lot better than in the old days, when it had been the realm of street gangs and the Confederation after dark. Now at least, the Confederation was out of it, and the street gangs were too busy seeing if they could get some more profitable turf for their activities. The junkie problem was still bad though.
Thankfully, I wasn't going too deep into the park, just over to the World War I Memorial, near the southwest entrance to the Park. I had my mask on, but the hood pulled up, and had skipped my tactical vest in favor of a belly holster for the one Glock that I was carrying.
My contact was late. The bells of the big clock started to toll, and I was still waiting. I was just about to move off when I saw the approaching shadow, and my contact arrived.
I didn't even know his name, just his handle. We had first met through a website that catered to so-called hacktivists, and eventually coming to know one another. On the website, he went by the screen name Captain Zappy. Who knew where he got that one from.
"Captain."
"Snowman," he said. "Nice to see you in person again."
"It's been a long time. Nice beard."
Zappy stroked his beard, which was a good eight inches long and pretty well kept. Last time him and I had been face to face, he'd been clean shaven. "Nice eye mask. Although I'd have gone with more of a domino mask than the whole Kato thing. That thing has to be hot as fuck in summer."
"We're coming into winter though. It'll help then. I've got something for you."
"Oh? Anything interesting?"
I reached into the pocket of my pants and pulled out a flash stick. "You still got connections in the media, right?"
"Some," Zappy replied. "But with so much of the media being corporate nowadays, it's not as easy as it was to get on the air. Online's the way to go nowadays if you want to take someone down. Who you got dirt on?"
"Bishop Gerald Traylor," I replied. "Video and audio. Plus documents."
"Oh? Anything juicy?" Zappy said.
"You could put some of it on Pornland," I replied. "In multiple sections."
Zappy grinned. He was a self professed militant atheist, and loved the idea of taking down a supposed man of God. I didn’t necessarily agree with his religious views, but Gerald needed to go down. ”Nice. Anything else?"
"Take a look. The documents aren't exactly as juicy as the audio or video, but you can connect the dots. I turned a lot of it over to Bennie Fernandez at the DOJ already, he said he'd forward it on to the IRS. But I think you can get me the results I want faster."
"I gotcha," Zappy said. "Can I ask, why do you want this done, Snowman?"
I shook my head. "November fifth is coming up soon enough. I figure you guys can make hay to really kick that off."
Zappy grinned. As a member of the online hacker community Anonymous, among others, he knew exactly what I was talking about. He loved breaking big scandals on or around Guy Fawkes Day. "Well then, let's see if we can make it come a little early this year. All right, I'll get this posted tonight. Question though. Why not you?"
"Don't have the media connections you do," I replied. "You know a lot of my style is more direct than that."
"Damn right it is," Zappy said. He pocketed the flash stick and turned around. "Hang loose, Snowman."
"You too."
Traylor's trap now slowly closing around him, I turned to the next objective I had for the night, namely making sure Filmore Heights was still staying calm. Police response to the area was dropping off, and I wanted to make sure that with the patrols lessening the neighborhood wasn't going to see more gang violence.
I stopped by one of my strike bases, where I kept full kits of my tactical gear in standby. The vest wasn't quite as comfortable as the one I kept at home, it was a little less broken in, a little less perfectly tailored, but it would do the job for the night. As a precaution, I took the one with body armor panels incorporated into the webbing. While not as protective as a full on vest, it did cover my vital areas while still allowing me maximum flexibility and mobility, essential to my methods. I have another two levels of body armor available, just in case, but I wouldn't need it that night.
Like before, I made sure to leave my bike in hidden areas. My first stop was Gangster Disciple territory, where I saw that despite the damage to the donut shop, Tweak Petersen was back in attendance, a brand new plate glass window already installed with lettering on it and everything. Gang money got work done quickly, after all. On the other hand, the GDs were working at least a little less out in the open than before, and I only saw maybe four or five people say anything to him as he sat at his table, nodding his head to music and occasionally messing around with a handheld game system.