Move-Easy has never asked me to help kill someone before. He has experts for that kind of thing. I'm a criminal nerd – I'm good with chemicals, biology, forensics. Normally, it's my job to check if stolen merchandise is genuine, or lecture knucklehead thugs on how not to leave traces of themselves at a crime scene. Sometimes I even create fake evidence to leave at the aforementioned crime scenes to help put Move-Easy's competitors in prison. But violence just isn't my bag.
I'm summoned to Easy's audience chamber, and find two other kids my age waiting for me. I know both of them. FX and Manikin; they're brother and sister. Like me, they have unusual skill sets for kids their age. FX is the younger one-younger than me – he's a hacker, a wizard with tech. Manikin is a chameleon, combining the skills of an actor, con-artist, and thief. I don't think I've ever seen what she really looks like – there's something different about her every time she shows up.
My boss, Move-Easy, could do with taking some tips from her.
You don't talk about Move-Easy's orange skin in his presence – not unless you fancy being scarred for life. Years of living underground, hiding from the law's surveillance, made him horribly pale, so he started using a sunbed. Now he's horribly orange – all the more disturbing with his gargoyle's face. The last guy to suggest he lay off the UV got beaten to a pulp with one of those scented Yankee Candles. It was the nearest thing to hand.
"Ah Scope, there you are my Little Brain," Easy greets me, puffing on a pungent cigar that sends clouds of smoke curling toward the ceiling. "Come on in, luv. Now, I've gathered this clever bunch of young vermin together to take advantage of a rare opportunity that has arisen, all of a sudden like."
He holds the cigar in his left hand. The right is fondling the gold medallion that sits in the forest of grey hair visible on his orange chest. He's wearing an expensive suit that he makes look cheap. There are three buttons open on the pale pink shirt to show off the gold. He waves me over to him, and I sit down beside him, where he likes me to be. My skin tightens at being so close to him. My fear of him never really goes away.
I'm what's known as a rat-runner, though I'm not as hard boiled as a lot of the others. Like Manikin and FX, I'm under sixteen, which means I'm not subject to the same insane levels of surveillance as adults in London. Most rat-runners are just couriers or petty thieves, underage foot soldiers – they're chosen for having quick wits and even faster feet, but are otherwise unexceptional. Some of us, however, are more specialized.
"I have a job that requires some ... delicacy," Move-Easy declares in his East London accent. He runs his hand through his slicked-back, dyed-black hair. "A task that demands your unique skills, and a certain degree of mobility. I want you to find someone, an' we 'aven't much to go on. An' this investigation, such as it is, shall start wiv you, FX."
FX is doing his best not to squirm nervously under Easy's gaze. He hates coming here. He's in his usual combats with a black t-shirt printed with a poster from some film called War Games. His curly dark hair is a bit too long to be gelled up the way he's done it, making his freckly cherub face look even younger. He seems naked without his ever-present console to hook him into the digital world. The doormen take that off him as a precaution whenever he comes into Easy's place.
He may not look like much, but FX once hacked into the Prime Minister's personal computer to win a bet. He left a virus that played a video clip of Barney the dinosaur singing the "Clean Up" song every time the PM tried to open his emails.
"You reckon you could track someone down through their MyFace page?" Easy asks FX.
"Yeah, I think so," the boy answers tightly. "MyFace has decent security, but hardly any of the users get the privacy settings right – and that's assuming they want to. Half of 'em think the world needs to know which hand they wipe their arse with. If I can get onto this person's page, there's bound to be something that'll give away where they live."
"This lad's birthday is comin' up too," Easy tells us. "So if he's got any friends at all, there'll be traffic online about it. More likely to catch him out in public too."
"Who are we looking for?" Manikin asks.
Today, her hair is red and curly – though I'm pretty sure it's really straight, and as black as her brother's. Her makeup gives her skin a paler tint than normal to go with the red hair, and I'm not sure those freckles are even real. She's wearing a burgundy suede jacket over a white t-shirt with a pair of skinny jeans. Manikin always dresses with style, unless she's playing a character who doesn't. She only steals designer labels. Easy's eyes linger on her longer than necessary before answering.
"His name's Jonathan Grodin," he says. "He's older than you – nearly nineteen. I want to find him, 'cos I want to find his dad. His old man's name is Charlie Grodin – people used to call him 'the Duke.' He was an accountant who grassed up my brother and got 'im banged up. Twenty years in that hell-pit, Shoreshank. I want to find the Duke and thank 'im personally ... by cuttin' off his arms an' legs, nice an' slow, before I finish wiv his 'ead."
The walls of Move-Easy's audience chamber are like something out of the 1970s. The walls are decorated with geometric patterns in orange, brown, maroon, and white, and we're sitting on couches in the sunken center of the room. On the nearest wall is a large wide-screen television displaying a webpage.
On the screen, there's a pair of bare arses mooning us. The arses belong to two teenage guys who've had too much to drink at some party, and thought it would be a great laugh to drop their pants in front of somebody holding a camera.
Naturally, that photo got posted on somebody's MyFace page, which means that the picture will probably be available for the rest of their lives and beyond. Nice one, lads. Good luck at your next job interview.
There is one backside that Easy is particularly interested in. A spiky, reptilian tail curls down around the left buttock from a tattoo that is partially visible on the guy's lower back. It's a black line drawing of a dragon.
"When the Duke shopped my brother, the ol' bill put him into a witness protection program," Easy explained. "We've bin lookin' for him ever since, but wiv no luck. The boy, Jonathan, is his only family, but he and the dad didn't get on. Young Jonathan didn't go into witness protection wiv his dad, so we thought we might bring him in, work on 'im a bit ... y'know, put pressure on the Duke to come out of hidin'. I mean, he may have a beef wiv his son, but he's not about to let me pull the boy apart, is he? But Jonny just took off on a round-the-world trip and dropped off the map in India for a year, so we couldn't find him."
FX is staring down at the floor. Manikin is digging at the knee of her jeans with one fingernail, trying not to look at the photo on the screen. They know what's coming next.
"I am reliably informed," Easy tells us, pointing at the screen, "that the arse with the dragon tattoo is that of the young Jonathan Grodin. He apparently designed it himself a few years back, so it's unique to 'im. But we know the photo's recent, 'cos the t-shirt he's wearin' is from a concert tour that only started two months ago and we reckon he's in the UK or Ireland, 'cos that's a British three-pin plug on the wall in the background. We ain't got much else. This photo was found by accident, really, and most of what's on the MyFace page isn't open to the public – or us. We can't find any photos of the boy's face, and this isn't his page. It belongs to some girl. So that's all we've got to go on. FX, my boys've already emailed you a link to the page."
He leans back and spreads his arms over the back of the couch, his left lying across behind my shoulders, the cigar's smoke wafting into my face. I'm taking in the expressions on the faces of Manikin and FX. They're like me; they only ever got into this business because they were trapped into it. They've had their share of rough stuff, but they've always steered clear of hurting people when they could. They're as freaked out by this as I am, and trying not to show it. They may be freelancers, but you don't say no to Move-Easy.
"It's not much to go on," Manikin says hesitantly. "And you've got good hackers here, good players. Why us?"
"I've got great confidence in your abilities, luv," Easy assures her. "Gotta strike while the iron's hot, an' all that. And not all of this can be done online; it might be necessary to move around a bit to chase up leads, maybe hang out with some of the innocent young civvies out there – hence the need for rat-runners. Now if you're done questionin' my judgement, 'ow about you do what you're bloody told? I'm sending Scope here off wiv you, to bolster your investigative powers, seein' as she's such a little Sherlock. You look after 'er, and she'll keep an eye on you."
He gives me a glance like a father who's letting his child get on a bus on their own for the first time. He doesn't send me out on jobs much. He juts his chin toward the door, indicating it's time for us to leave.
"You've got to the end of the week to find the boy," he tells us as we file out. "Uncle Easy expects great things from you, children. Don't disappoint me."
The thing is, I'm already trying to figure out how we can screw this job up and get away with it.