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Part 2
Page 1
Three short raps. Then a long one. And two short.
"Ah, Shujuan," the voice of Jin said, gloved hand
coming forward and sliding the crusted window aside. "Come to trade in
your discs again?"
"There's a thumb print on the Ang Lee one," the
blonde told him, reaching up and sliding the slim cases through to him
between the bars. "It wouldn't play."
Jin was the neighborhood peddler. He did not, however,
make a point of being a peddler of any one commodity. Drug sales would
come and go, but black market sweets and liquors were in a constant state
of demand. In the past few years he'd taken to bootlegging as well, and
this he seemed to excel at to the point of personal pride. His specialty
was minidisc, though he was also the one that would frequently feed Guonan's
mp9 habit.
Discs ran the gamut of native, with a healthy mix
of Korean and Japanese, and a ridiculously mismatched assortment of British
and American. There was the occasional cartoon, your staple assortment
of action, but mostly it ended up being pornography. And kung-fu.
Xiaolong did occasional free runs for him, on the
condition of getting discs on a rental basis. They abused it, and he abused
them in return by having no concept of things like proper business hours.
The things he asked for could be anything, ranging from simple aspirin
and food deliveries to, on one occasion, five rolls of duct tape and a
bag of cement mix. They never asked. And Jin stayed friendly and got stock
catering to their tastes now and then.
"A pity, a pity," Jin sang, just a silhouette framed
by the shack lights. "Would you care to come in and pick out a replacement?
Free of charge as always. I have some new American in, some very
attractive boys in these, you go for the tall and dark type, don't you,
sweetheart?"
"No."
"Ah, such a tough one. I'll nail you yet. But come
in, come in, the wind's pitching too much of a fit for you to be out dressed
like that," the man said, disappearing for a moment while the ancient doorknob
rattled, and then moving as the door pulled back to admit her. Well, barely.
It was opened just enough to allow her if she were to sidle in sideways,
squeezed between the door and the frame with a bit of a struggle to advance.
Shujuan circumvented this. She pushed hard against
the door with her shoulder until it budged farther back, enough to let
her slip in unopposed while Jin, as usual, gibbered and tried to mask it
with more smooth words, that she pointedly ignored. Instead she set to
willing her eyes to adjust to the low-lit interior of the shack.
Jin was not much more impressive face to face than
he was behind the door. He was only an inch or two taller than Jianmin,
bony and scruffy and with untrimmed claws that had more the effect of being
unkempt than anything frightening, for how they poked through the ends
of his gloves.
He was not by any means the only youkai in Shujuan's
neighborhood, but he was still one of few. There were virtually none of
them outside the slums. There were hardly any in Beijing, or in China,
to start with.
"I need a bill changed too," she told him, as he
shuffled over to his work desk to leave her to examine the, for lack of
a better term, shelves. He'd gotten some new stuff in, by the looks of
it, but not a lot that did her group any good.
"Ah, now this is unusual, coming from you," Jin
said, holding the 100 note up to the light when she had come over with
her selections. She pointedly ignored whatever sort of illegal substance
that was on his work desk as she leaned against it and crossed her arms
impatiently. "Hate to say it, my dear, but whoever it was to give this
has cheated you."
"It's not fake," she said flatly.
"It's rather too smooth."
"That's your reasoning? It's smooth?"
"Bills this crisp do not often make it to hands
like ours."
"Just run it under the lamp if you're so worried."
In the end, he did. When he finally had to concede
that, yes, what he was dealing with was authentic, he shuffled furtively
over to his money tin and counted her out some smaller bills.
She recounted, found him short. He supplemented
and she found him short again. After exact change had been achieved, she
spotted four forgeries.
"Keen one, miss, very keen," was all he said, going
back to his tin.
When Shujuan was finally satisfied with the authenticity
of the bills, she pushed the minidiscs forward for scanning, while stuffing
the balled-up roll of notes into her backpack. In the midst of this it
was Jin that noted her cell had started ringing.
She didn't recognize the number. Which meant one
thing.
"I didn't say yes yet," she said into the receiver
upon picking up.
There was the briefest pause. "I'm aware," Kougaiji
admitted. "But we've run into a bit of an emergency."
"Find another runner, then."
"Get to the market cross-streets in ten minutes,"
he told her instead, voice terse and persistent. "There will be man there
in white with a package. Its destination is the largest room of the third
floor of an office high-rise four kilometers due north-west. You can't
miss it. Your time is forty minutes."
"I'm not--" She bit her lip. "Is that apart or all
together?"
"Together."
"That's cutting close!"
"That's the challenge to it, isn't it?"
"Ah," Jin said as the line went dead, handing the
discs back to her. She had to check to be sure they were the right ones.
And then glanced to verify her money was where she left it, having looked
away a second. But it was all where it should have been. "Troublesome client?"
"He's starting to be," Shujuan muttered, starting
out the door.
"Have those back by next week, if you please," the
peddler called after her. "New releases, very hot! Please consider others!"
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