Outrun Story #28

“And just how do you think you managed to get yourself into this mess, Jimmy?” she says to me like I’ve not been tied to this chair for the last 12 hours thinking about every move I’ve made, everything that I’d done to try and cover my tracks. Fucking invisible, I’ve been invisible, no way they could have known. So, how the hell am I here now about to get my head blown off?

“Well,” I say and smile a terse smile. “I think I’d like to ask you the same question. I’ve been over everything and I can’t seem to see any hole, any leak, anything that I’d left out in the open ready for you guys to find me on.”

“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.” She paces beside me and shit, she looks good. Thigh-high red leather stiletto boots, the sort they only seem to wear in movies. Only now, there’s this Japanese Yakuza hit-woman, god damn assassin walking right next to me and with each step there’s a hard snap of the heal on the concrete floor. “You really thought you could hide from us?”

“Well, evidently I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have even tried in the first place.” Slap, hard and across the back of my head.

“You English are just as insolent as the Americans.”

“I absolutely refute that claim.” Slap, again across the back of my head.

“Jimmy Spoon, what exactly where you expecting to get from this little investigation of yours?”

“Listen lady, I’m a reporter for the biggest feed on the planet, you know how hard it is to get that credential in the first place? You don’t keep the stories coming in, you don’t get the by-lines, you don’t get the by-lines, you don’t get the credential, and without the credential you’re nothing, a nobody. Can’t blame a guy for trying now, can you?”

“How much do you know!” She’s in front of me faster than I can even process, one heal resting on my crotch, one handful of my hair.

“Your name is Henrietta,” I say and the heal goes down a little harder. “Fuck, wait, wait, I know a lot, you guys, Robot Lords of Tokyo right? I>C>E masters of the Sino-Nippon underground network, you own everything. I’ve been researching you for years now, I’m surprised I got this far!”

“So, now what? Jimmy? You think we’re just going to let you stroll right out of here? Publish your story? That easy?”

“Well, either way, the story’s coming out,” I say, and I’m not calling her bluff. She doesn’t know that and I’m fucking thankful I had everything I’d learnt so far encrypted and sent to a friend on the feed before I left for this final, last-ditch attempt to get the piece that brings it all together.

“No, no, no, Jimmy, you think somehow you’re smarter than us?” She says, and now I’m fucking worried. “You jokingly just called me Henrietta, don’t you think we know why that name came to mind first?”

“You know my confidant.”

“She’s already dead, Jimmy. We just needed to see if there was anyone else, and now we know there isn’t. So, sayonara, Jimmy. You really almost made it.”