Severance by Chris Bucholz Page B

aerial work at
Charlotte Redelso’s apartment. Stein listened, wincing and inhaling sharply
when Bruce got to the stupid parts. She had known about Bruce’s insane climbing
apparatus, and even seen it in use once, but the thought of the contraption
still terrified her.
    “Hang on just a second,” Stein said when the story had
concluded. “To dig up information on what could potentially be in a room that
is quite easy to break into, you performed a ridiculously daring stunt to raid
the apartment of someone tangentially related to what you’re actually
interested in?”
    “At first, I was just going to ask her. But then I saw all
the nice stuff she had and revised my plans.”
    Stein shook her head. “And did you find anything
interesting?”
    Bruce tapped something on his terminal. “Dear Charlotte has
been keeping copies of personnel correspondence on a dummy. Love letters
mostly, shockingly tame ones I’m sorry to report. But alongside those I found
several pieces of communication from one Mr. Maurice Melson.”
    “Which said?”
    “It looks like this Melson had been pressuring Charlotte to
sell that studio for several years. The first messages I saw refer to earlier
correspondence. By the time Charlotte began recording their talks offline it
looked like Melson was getting creative.”
    “How so?”
    “She’s an artist. Melson evidently had contacts in the mayor’s
office. He promised he could get some of her work placed visibly in public
areas — even in the Bridge, apparently.”
    “If she agreed to sell the studio to him?” Seeing Bruce nod,
she frowned. “So, a guy with a dead man’s name has access to some big–shit
mandarins, and uses that leverage to buy a shitty little apartment, and then
hide something in it.”
    “That appears to be what happened, yes. I couldn’t find
anything else about the guy on there — no pictures or anything like that.”
    The two occasional thieves sat alone with their thoughts.
    “So, what next?” Bruce asked. “Can I go set off some more
booby–traps now?”
    “Have you ever asked my permission to do that before?”
    Bruce’s jaw jutted out, eyes to the ceiling, making a big
show of thinking about that. “Good point. I retract my request, and will
proceed as per normal, i.e. recklessly. I’ll let you know what I find later
tonight.”
    Stein stared at her friend. “Are you kidding? Weren’t you up
all night hanging from lampposts? You stopped sleeping again?”
    Bruce grinned. “Gabelman’s not the only one who knew how to
party.”
    Stein sagged in her chair. No one seemed to take the kid’s
death seriously, but Bruce’s ability to brush it off grated at her for some
reason. The multiple layers of irony he wore at all times was a familiar act,
and usually a welcome one. He’d been that way ever since she first met him in
school, and she’d learned from his example. Kids were jerks, and the walls he had
helped her raise had proven very useful. Though she was never as good at it as
he was, and sometimes wondered if that was a good thing. Maybe his walls were
just a bit too thick.
    Seeming to sense the shift in mood —
see, he was more
sensitive than he let on, dammit!
— Bruce clammed up and resumed work on
his lunch. Eventually he asked between bites, “This Curts thing with the
conflicting jobs. What were they again?”
    Stein blinked a couple of times, shifting gears. “One hot,
one cold, right next door to each other,” she replied. “The cold one Ron
apparently fixed. Air balancing thing. The hot one was a non–issue. Ron said it
was a mistaken call.” Out of curiosity, Stein tapped on her terminal, pulling
up a schematic of that part of the ship. Numbers appeared on the map, indicating
the current temperature and humidity in various areas. “Looks fine now,” she
said, tapping on the two rooms as she shoved the terminal over to Bruce.
    Bruce looked at it. “All snug as a bug,” he agreed. He
dragged his finger around the screen.