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Bleeding Heart Blues	By : bagoas Category: +. to F > Cowboy Bebop Views: 1383 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Session #27: Bleeding Heart Blues - Part 2

Session #27: Bleeding Heart Blues

Part Two
"Hey, Jay!" Rina stepped out into the back alley behind the Memphis Blues, expecting to find the six foot four bouncer waiting impatiently for her. "Jay?" Despite the fact that Jay hated waiting, he always did. Rina didn't think there was a person who worked for the Memphis Blues that wouldn't die for her or for Radney.

Rina's tone was more desperate and worried. Jay didn't have the personality to hide for a prank or to teach her a lesson. Something was wrong. "Jay?"

"...told you to pay the money. But you didn't. Somehow you managed to get out of the whole deal. Clever, real clever." Rina stopped at the voice. It sounded familiar but she didn't know why. "So instead, we insist you tell us your little Saturday night secret. Who's The Nymph?"

"Never in a million years." The voice was small, yet defiant. Radney Acren.

"Shame." The threatening voice had a note of pity in it. "Shame you have to be stubborn. You see, the Syndicate has a vested interest in this area and you're poaching."

"I was here first! My family helped terraform this hunk of ice -urk!" Rad's voice suddenly cut off.

Rina, worry overshadowed by a need to know what was going on, crouched behind a huge dumpster that probably hadn't been dumped in three years. Trash overflowed from it where people continued to toss their garbage in the dumpster's general direction. She peeked around a corner that wasn't blocked by too much crap to view the tableau set before her.

Radney was on his knees, execution style, while three men in black suits circled him. The one speaking seemed to be the one in charge, but they looked like triplets to Rina at such a distance. Dark sunglasses obscured their eyes and the dim light from the overhead street lamp shined dully on their shoes.

"There are no squatter's rights, Mr. Acren. You didn't pay, you won't cooperate with our operations, so," the man chuckled, "I'm afraid we're gonna have to mess ya up."

Rina silently groaned at the bad usage of a really bad gangster line from the 1930s. She wondered idly if the man knew he was being ironic or if he was chuckling because hjoyejoyed his work. Her attention was focused back to Radney when the sound of flesh hitting flesh floated to her ears. For several minutes she watched in horror as Radney was beaten severely. Yet still he didn't waiver in his convinction of not revealing Rina's identity. Nor would he pay the extortion money.

A hand clamped down on her shoulder and Rina turned in fright, her mouth opened to scream. A hand slammed over her mouth and Jay's face loomed over hers in the dim light. He shook his head to indicate she should be quiet. He nodded his head toward the front of the alley, where the club's entrance was. She never went that way, as it risked exposing herself to people who might follow her home. The Nymph was a secret kept by a very close few. "Go," he mouthed and she nodded frantically.

Before she could move though, a shot rang out. Both Rina and Jay turned back to Radney, who was now still on the ground, blood splattered all over the alley wall. Rina shrank in horror into Jay's chest. As the men conversed with each other about their next plan of action, Jay shoved Rina harshly toward the front of the alley, mouthing again "Go!" before he sprang from behind the dumpstattaattacking Rad's killers.

Rina ran as if the hounds of hell were on her trail. For all she knew, they were.

***

Spike had just cleared the street corner when he heard the shot. His mind had been sunk in the actions of just a half an hour ago but he was instantly alert at the sound of violence. Years as a Syndicate hitman and then a bounty hunter had honed him to perfection. Worried for the safety of The Nymph, Spike tore back down the street. He saw a small shadow racing for a cab some distance away but the vehicle was long gone by the time he reached it. Three men in very familiar suits met him at the alley entrance right next door to the Memphis Blues.

Syndicate.

"Hello, boys," Spike drawled. The three men turned on him, loaded guns pointing at his chest, their expressions grim. "Maybe you don't realize but there's no one to pay your salaries." He held his hands out in a gesture of surrender.

"Spike Spiegel," spat one of the suits. "I wondered when one of us would run into you." Grins spread across their faces.

Spike grinned back, completely self-assured. "Well, congratulations, you ran into me." He kicked out, his long legs rapidly smacking the handguns from the suits' hands. The motion was smooth and effortless. w whw what are you going to do?"

The suits went from smirking to grim-faced. "You shouldn't be here," one of the other suits complained. "We were told no hitmen."

Spike frowned. "Who told you?"

The suits frowned back. "The Van, of course." The lead suit casually slipped his hands in his jacket pockets. Spike waved a finger rebukingly at him like he would a child. The hand was removed from the pocket.

Spike began to laugh. He couldn't help it. On three other planets, the criminal underworld was in total disarray because the Van of the Syndicate had been completely wiped out by Spike's former friend and enemy, Vicious. When Spike had narrowly defeated Vicious, all organization completely collapsed. The dog eat dog world of the criminal underworld had gone a step deadlier. Organized crime was on a basic level now; no major superstructure existed anymore. These idiots didn't know a damned thing, they were so out of the loop.

Spike gasped for air. "First of all, you guys should check in with Mars every once in awhile. Second of all, I'll be your liaison." He grinned.

"And third?" asked the remaining suit suspiciously.

"There's no Syndicate anymore. Vicious killed the Van." Spike's grin grew larger. "And I killed Vicious." Two more kicks and a well-timed punch landed Spike a pile of Syndicate suits. "For the trouble you boys have put me through, I'm hoping you're h ath at least a couple thousand woolongs."

Assured that the three boneheads were unconscious, Spike ran down the alley. He found the back door exit where The Nymph had undoubtedly left. Further down the alleyway he found the reason why the suits were at the Memphis Blues. Two bodies lay side by side. One was a heavy guy, undoubtedly the bouncer Jay that was waiting for The Nymph. And the other was the Memphis s' os' owner, Radney Acren.

***

"There you are." Jet met his partner in the docking bay. "Did you help close the bar up or something?" The wily older man eyed the three suited men that Spike was hauling out of the Swordfish, Spike's fighter jet. "How'd you get those guys in there anyway?"

Spike turned to smirk at Jet. "Now I know what a sardine feels like."

"What are they doing here?" Jet motioned his cybernetic arm at the still unconscious men.

"I want to see if there's a bounty on former Syndicate operatives and why they shot the owner of the Memphis Blues." Spike cuffed the three of suits together and then to a heavy steel bar in the docking bay. "That should hold them for now. Check their pockets, will you? They might have skeleton keys or lock picks." The two bounty hunters thoroughly searched the Syndicate men.

Jet looked over the considerable cache of weapons and grunted. "Quite a haul here."

Spike looked grim. "Yeah, it is."

Jet walked back toward the main living area of the Bebop. "You say they killed the owner of the Memphis Blues? Why?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Spike collapsed on one of the purgatorial couches. The couches weren't comfortable but they were there.

"Well," Jet rubbed his chin. "We could check the bounty lists and local news agency. See if anything's up."

"Good idea." Spike nodded.

"Wheeeee!" Ed came spinning in, her VR goggles over her eyes, making her look like a long-legged, hyper bug. A small Welsh Corgi, Ein by name, followed in here, pe, pantiappiappily as usual. "Spikey-wikey came homey-womey I see-ee," singsonged Ed.

"Bully for me," grumbled Spike. He still hated kids but Ed wasn't too bad, once you realized she was insane. A genius on a computer, but completely insane.

"Oooo oooo," Ed jerked the goggles off her face and loomed over Spike, filling up his line of sight. "Somebody's in a bad mooooood!"

"Ed!" barked Jet in a slightly stern manner. "Check the news agencies about a er ier in Theseus. The owner of the Memphis Blues. Tell us when you have something, okay?"

"Okey-dokey artichokey!" Ed saluted Jet and beelined straight for her computer, singing her silly songs as she went. "Computer computer show me trues, is something wrong with the Memphis Blues?"

Spike peered over at Jet. "Are you sure we can't trade her and the dog off for a new refrigerator and some spare parts?"

"Spike," Jet growled in warning. Ein woofed in reproach at Spike.

"Ed's found something!" Ed piped up, completely oblivious to everything except what appeared on her computer screen. "Radney Acren, age 57, brown hair, blue eyes, found dead dead dead with a six shooter wound to the noggin next to an employee of the Memphis Blues, Jay LeWray, also dead dead dead." Ed's tone remained singsong despite the information she was reporting. All the adult members of the Bebop's crew sometimes wondered if Ed realized that she was reporting real life and not living in a game.

"I know that!" Spike said impatiently. "Now how about some suspects, motives or whatever."

"Right-O!" Ed didn't miss a beat. "Police are reporting an extortion deal gone bad, or maybe a drug deal gone bad. Either way," Ed said solemnly, "it was bad and Rad Radney is dead dead."

"Any mention of The Nymph in the report?" Jet gave Spike a startled look.

"Nope, other than the security system of the Memphis Blues reported The Nymph as the last employee to leave the club, which seems to be the usual routine," Ed reported dutifully.

"That's what she said was the norm too, but I swear I saw her running from that alley," Spike said grimly.

"You think she killed them?" asked Jet in an odd voice.

Spike didn't notice. "No, I know those three scum in our docking bay did it, but why and how The Nymph fits in, I have no idea. She didn't seem the Syndicate kind of girl."

"You'd know all about those," Jet muttered to himself.

"What?" Spike turned flashing brown eyes on his partner.

Jet held up his hands in surrender. "Nothing, nothing. Okay, so a club we just went to suddenly lost it's owner and a bouncer. The Syndicate, which should be defunct, or at the least, in complete chaos, is involved in their deaths. The whys are still unknown, but I willing to side with the local authorities on this one. It has to be extortion or some drug deal gone wrong."

Spike shook his head. "Not the Syndicates style. Those boys are completely out of the loop, Jet. They didn't know I'd left, but they knew my face. And they definitely didn't know the Van and Vicious were dead. So that's four years of not being in contact with the main organization. They could be running something on the side, but unless they're stupid, they wouldn't be doing that. If it was discovered..." Spike let the sentence trail off. Jet knew what would have happened if it had been discovered by the higher ups in the Syndicate that some peon was running a front without giving the organization a cut of the profit.

"Did they strike you as stupid?" asked Jet, puzzled now.

Spike shook his head again. "No, just uninformed."

The two men looked at each other with identical grim expressions. "Which means," Jet concluded, "that something else was going on around here, something that those three are being used for. Something big."

"If it was that big, then the Syndicate wouldn't have left them out of the loop." Both men turned around at the introduction of a new voice. Faye Valentine sauntered in and tossed her money card on the table between the two couches. "What's up? New bounty I hope?"

"Hi Faye Faye!" greeted Ed enthusiastically. Ein barked in welcome. Both men scowled at the tomboyish woman.

"Lose it all, did ya?" asked Jet sardonically.

"On that card I did." Faye motioned to the empty card on the table. She held another one up. "Hit the jackpot with this one." She grinned. "One more debt gone."

"Couple hundred left to go." Spike grinned nastily at her.

"I hate you, Spike," Faye told him without rancor.

"Yeah, yeah, promises promises." Spike waved a dismissive hand in her direction. He turned his attention back to Ed's computer screen. "So any bounty for the killers of Acren and LeWray?"

Ed typed a couple times and then shook her head. "Nope, nada, not one woolong, but they are asking for information regarding the crime." Ed paused and looked up questioningly. "Should Ed report that we have information regarding the crime?"

Spike looked at Jet, who only shrugged. Something was going on with Spike that Jet had yet to fathom. For now, the wily ex-ISSP officer decided to let the younger man control the game; he'd step in only if things got out of control.

At that moment Ed's computer beeped. Ed's face lit up. "New bounty!"

Spike, Jet and Faye leaned forward. "Yeah?" asked Spike. "Who?"

"The Nymph. Twenty million woolongs for any information regarding the whereabouts of The Nymph," Ed reported with something bordering on glee.

Spike frowned at her. The girl really needed a reality check.
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Bleeding Heart Blues