It had taken a fair bit of skull-sweat, but I'd finally come up with something that should serve. "Exposure has become direct," the message began, echoing the conversation between Young and me at The Buffalo Jump. "Discussion necessary on extraordinary disbursements. Confirming terms of payment: deadline forty-eight hours, twenty percent on twelve, ten on eighteen." And beneath that was the encrypted bit-string mat was my blind-drop address.

Subtle. Too subtle? The terms of payment I'd quoted in the note were totally out to fragging lunch with regard to what we'd actually agreed, and I hoped Young would notice that and recognize the significance. Take the numbers I'd quoted: 48, 20, 12, 10, 18. That was the key to decrypt the address, of course: 48201-21018. Smart, neh? We'd see soon enough. I checked that everything was kosher, then used the 'puter to tell the phone system to forget everything that had happened over the last ten minutes. I unjacked my 'puter, climbed back into the cramped cockpit of the bubble-topped Buddy, and turned the little three-wheeler back toward Honolulu.

It was getting on to evening by the time I made it back to the Ewa area of Honolulu. Blame it on my being too distracted to read highway signs accurately. When you've got a megacorp and the yakuza gunning for you, it's easy to mistake Kapaa for Kapua and get totally fragging lost. The sun was sinking down toward the ocean, one of those spectacular views tourists pay the big cred to see, and all I could think was "Hurry the frag up!" I'd feel much better with the cloak of night around me, I figured.

I ditched the three-wheeler a couple of blocks from the Cheeseburger in Paradise, using every shred of tradecraft I could muster to spot anyone who was affording me an abnormal degree of interest. I didn't seem to have any shadows, but it's a tenet of the street mat you'll never spot anyone who's successfully shadowing you, right? As I approached the door of the tavern, I saw a reflection of myself in a store window. My flowered shirt was torn down one side, my pants were stained in places with something I hoped was mud (and not residue from Tokudaiji's blasted skull), and I still had hibiscus twigs in my fragging hair. I had looked better, I had to admit. I did what damage control I could under the circumstances-damn near squat, to be honest-and then I jandered into Cheeseburger in Paradise.

The crowd looked pretty much the same as when Scott had bought me a couple of beers-the same hard-bitten locals, the same street-rats not quite watching the strip show. The same ork with the same chipped tusks was behind the bar, and he gave me a solid dose of what Scott had called "stink-eye" as I walked in. Yet again, I was the only haole there, and you can bet your okole that I felt it. I was out of my element and out of my depth, and the patrons at Cheeseburger in Paradise weren't going to let me forget it.

What I most wanted to do at that moment was to turn round and slink back out into the predusk where nobody was trying to glare holes in me. I couldn't do that, of course, so I jandered on in like I fragging owned the place. 1 kept thinking about the heavy Browning crammed down my waistband-not that it was an easy piece of hardware to forget-for the benefit of those patrons who liked to play "spot the heat." The booth Scott and I had taken the day before was vacant, so I slid into it, settling my back firmly and reassuringly against the wall. Now that I felt about as safe as I could under the circumstances, I looked around for friend Te Purewa.

No, he wasn't there. (Frag, of course not. The old Montgomery luck was continuing to run true to form, I thought disgustedly.) I thought I recognized one or two of the slags he'd come in with yesterday, but I could well have been mistaken. One leather-clad Hawai'ian ork with a lousy attitude looks very much like another to the untrained eye.

A waitress came up to me-not the same one as yesterday, but they could well have been sisters-with a "Well, what?" expression on her face.

I sighed. "Give me a dog," I told her. And I settled down to wait.

Thank the Spirits I didn't have to wait that long, not much more than an hour and a half. I swallowed about a liter and a half of Black Dog beer and sweated out what felt like twice that much of cold, rank fear-sweat. A couple of tables full of hard-hooped locals were giving me the speculative eye. I knew they'd picked up on my heat when I'd come in, but they were getting to the point where it was even odds they'd try the haole just to see if he knew how to use the hardware he was packing.

When Te Purewa swaggered in at about nineteen hundred hours, I was glad enough to see him that I'd have gladly stuck out my tongue at him-or any other portion of my anatomy, for that matter-if it would make him look on me more kindly. He saw me the moment he came in the door, and his scowl raised the stink-eye quotient by a significant factor. I glanced over to the hard-eyed waitress-I'd already explained to her what I wanted her to do and slipped her a big enough tip that she might actually remember-and gave her the nod.

I couldn't hear exactly how she phrased things-probably something like, "See that wild-assed haole in the corner? Says he wants to buy you a drink. If you happen to drop your credstick, kick it home before you bend over to pick it up, huh?"-but it didn't really matter. Te Purewa-Mark Harrop-shot me a fulminating glance from under his night black brows, but I saw there was a new element in his glare-curiosity.

He didn't come over immediately-that wouldn't have been chill, of course, and chill is all. He stretched it out for a good fifteen minutes before he jandered on over to glare at me from closer range. I glanced meaningfully at the chair across from me, but he didn't take it. The silence stretched, then he grunted, "Maletina say you wanna talk."

"Kia ora, Te Purewa," I responded. "What are you drinking?"

He hesitated, then he shrugged his burly shoulders. "Vodka."

I nodded at the waitress, Maletina, who'd been hanging close, probably to catch the fun if the big pseudo-Maori decided to beat the drek out of the haole. She gave me anther dose of stink-eye, but she did cruise off in the general direction of the bar.

"We got off on the wrong foot yesterday," I said levelly as we waited for the drink to arrive. "I had no intention of insulting you." I gave him my best disarming smile. "Us dumb-hooped tourists don't know any better, neh?"

"Dumb-hooped tourists get heads broke in," he rumbled. But despite his hard-assed act I saw he actually wanted to smile. For the first time in a long while, I allowed myself to feel a little hope.

Maletina showed up about then with the quasi-Maori's drink. It looked like a triple, easy ice. Maletina was obviously playing "soak the haole," but I wasn't about to complain. I raised my glass of dog and struggled to remember Scott's toast "Okolemaluna," I said at last.

Te Purewa hoisted his own glass. "Li' dat." He polished off about half the vodka in one pull, then puffed out his cheeks with a satisfied pah sound. His hard glare had softened a little.

"You've known Scott for a while, have you?" I asked after a reasonable interval.

The Maori wannabe shrugged. "Some time, yah," he agreed. He smiled. "Get drunk, raise pilikia-raise trouble- and li' dat. Aikane-friend." His eyes suddenly narrowed suspiciously. "Where Scott at, ule, huh? Where?"

There wasn't any really smooth way of breaking the news-not that would get me the overall result I wanted, at least. "Dead," I told him flatly. "Some guy called Tokudaiji had him killed."

He was half out of his chair, his hand reaching for a bulge under his leather coat. I rapped the barrel of my Browning on the underside of the table-I'd pulled the heat from my waistband while he was busy with his vodka-and when I knew I'd got his attention I thumbed the safety off. The way his eyes widened at the metallic snick, I knew he recognized the sound. Slowly, he moved his hand away from his heat, and he settled back into his chair. His eyes didn't leave my face though, and I could feel the rage he was fighting back.