New York Nights [Virex 01] Read Online Free Page A

bar. You can buy me another drink, Mr Halliday.’
     
    This time he ignored her hand and followed her through the trees. They arrived at another bar, identical to the first, where another crowd of dancers swayed to the same beat.
     
    ‘Two Caribas, Terri,’ Claws said. ‘My boyfriend’s paying.’
     
    Halliday laid out another forty, writing it off to expenses, and finished his first beer. He found a stool and watched the dancers. Clearly, his assumption about what soma-types were in vogue had been premature; the women who had staked out this territory had nothing in common with their Earth Mother sisters across the way. They were, to a woman, slim, even angular, and a few had even had their breasts excised, low-cut shirts revealing the white sickle scars of the fashionable mutilation.
     
    As he watched, a woman as tall and ebony as a Masai warrior disengaged herself from the dance and approached. Whereas Halliday had climbed onto the high stool, she lowered herself onto the neighbouring stool and crossed her long, trousered legs. She wore a double-breasted pin-stripe jacket and, as she leaned forward for a drink and the lapels of her suit buckled, Halliday saw that she’d opted for the radical mastectomy statement.
     
    ‘Hi, I’m Kia,’ she purred. ‘Kia Johansen.’
     
    ‘Halliday.’ He showed her his card. ‘I’m looking for Nigeria. Will Carrie Villeux be in later?’
     
    ‘She’s usually here by now, honey.’ She had the exaggerated camp femininity of a transsexual drag queen, and Halliday wondered if lesbians pretending to be men pretending to be women was the latest fashion in counter-cultural chic.
     
    Kia was shaven-skulled, and the contours of her bony cranium would have been a phrenologist’s delight. Only when he stared, taken aback, did he see the inlaid beading of a silver implant circumnavigating her skull. A lead worked its way into her tiny right ear. He wondered if she really was rigged with a neural implant, or if the device was just a clever cosmetic simulation.
     
    ‘We’re all very concerned about Nigeria,’ she said, laying fingers like cheroots on his forearm. ‘Do say you’ll be able to find her.’
     
    ‘You’re a good friend of hers?’
     
    ‘One of the best. I mean, we were lovers many moons ago, but that’s quite another story. Ain’t that right, Missy?’
     
    ‘Tell me about it, Kia,’ the girl smiled.
     
    Halliday said, ‘Did you notice anything amiss in her attitude before she disappeared? She wasn’t acting strangely at all?’
     
    Kia lifted her head to the swaying holo-branches overhead and shrilled a high laugh. ‘Man, it’d be odd if she wasn’t acting strangely.’ Kia shook her head. ‘No, she was just the same old dependable fun-loving Sissi as always.’
     
    Halliday took a long swallow of beer. ‘Is it like Carrie not to show when she’d arrange to come here?’
     
    Kia regarded him, frowning. ‘You know, hon, that is worrying. Long as I been coming here Friday nights, Carrie’s shown. You don’t think . . .?’
     
    ‘I don’t think anything, yet.’
     
    ‘But it’s after twelve now, honey. I’m getting worried.’ She considered, staring at him. ‘Look, I have a spare pass-card to Sissi’s apartment, in case of emergencies. We could always drop by.’
     
    Halliday sighed. ‘I’ll call her. She’s probably had an early night.’ He slipped his hand-com from his inside pocket, linked with the desk-com back at the office and downloaded Carrie Villeux’s code. Seconds later he was listening to the pulse of the ringing tone.
     
    He gave it two minutes, Kia watching him all the while with eyes as big as golf balls. He shook his head and pocketed the com. ‘No reply.’
     
    ‘I’m worried. We have to go over. What do you think, Missy?’
     
    Claws bit her tongue, considering. ‘If it were a friend of mine . . .’ She nodded. ‘Yeah, I’d go on round.’
     
    ‘That settles it. You can come if you want to,