Hangdawg, Tuesday Afternoon
by Brian Sellnow
part 1
It was Tuesday afternoon, and I didn't have anything better to do, so I walked down to Hangdawg's to see what was happening in town. It's a bar and grill, the kind of a generic place where you can get a beer and a sandwich and not get noticed. But it's also a meeting place for a certain type of people, the ones who loiter on the edge of society and the law: low-level hackers and private detectives, guys who were willing to do shady stuff for a buck.
Most of them thought they were destined for the big time, just needed a chance to get on the scoreboard. They never would, not hanging out here. No guns or drugs — Hangdawg didn't tolerate that — but if you talked to the right people, they could maybe put you in touch with someone else. Low-level, like I said.
Ameer was sitting at a table, tapping on his computer. He was low-level, like everyone else, but he knew it and accepted it. He got a cut of everything he was involved in, and he was always involved in something. Never got his own hands dirty, of course; he just bought and sold information. He dressed like an old man, and to look at him you wouldn't know how much money he had or how old he really was. He was one of those guys who hit middle age early and stayed there.
I slid into the booth and looked at him from across the table. “Buy you lunch,” I told him.
He smiled. Doris, the waitress, came over and took our orders. Ameer got the same thing he always ordered: grilled cheese sandwich and a whiskey. I wondered if he ever ate anything else.
He shut the laptop down and looked at me. “So, Drake, what have you been up to?”
If I were up to something, I wouldn't have told him. Not for free, anyway. But I didn't have anything on the calendar right now. “Just hanging, Ameer. You got any ideas?”
He pursed his lips, then smiled again. He had something for me, and the price for hearing about it was the lunch I had just bought.
Before I got to this stage of my life, I had done some time in the military, learned about electronics and explosives and special operations. I got a couple of cybernetic enhancements, like my eyes, but nothing crazy like a neural jack. When I'd had enough of being a soldier, I got out and opened a store.
I despise the big corporations, with all of their lawyers and rules; now I make my own rules. The store sells surveillance and security systems, cameras, and crap like that. But the real money comes from private clients. My deluxe security package comes with a guarantee that you won't get from a regular company. Some small gang had tried messing with one of my clients a while back. I figured out who they were, called some friends, and we put them out of business, permanently. I don't screw around with cops and judges.
Sometimes Ameer has a job for me, things that need to be taken care of discretely. Remember I said that if you talked to the right people, they could maybe get you in touch with someone who could get what you need? I'm one of those someones. My clients never know who took care of business, just that it got taken care of.
“It's decent,” Ameer said. “Hasn't hit the streets yet, but it will in a couple of days. You can get a head start. I get twenty percent.”
“Ten, you thief. More if it's worth it.”
He shrugged. “Payout is ten grand.” Ten percent of ten grand was plenty for just telling me something everyone would know in a couple of days.
“All right, what is it?”
“A missing dog.” He smiled again, bigger, and his artificially white teeth looked weird against his dark complexion and premature wrinkles.
“Ten grand for a dog?” I kept my voice down and tried to look bored, but ten thousand is rather above the going rates for a dog nowadays. “What's so special about this dog?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. But it belongs to the daughter of a corporate exec, and he treats her like a princess. She's frantic, and he's promised to do anything to get it back.”
I sat back and thought about it while I sipped on my beer. Ten grand was too much, even for a corporate exec who adored his precious daughter. “I don't think he's expecting anyone to find that dog.”
“My conclusion as well,” said Ameer. “But a resourceful person might discover something that ordinary men would overlook. Are you interested?”
Well, I was. And I didn't have anything better to do at the moment.
“I'll poke around, maybe. Let you know if anything turns up.”
“Ten percent,” said Ameer as I got up from the table.
* * *
My first stop was the Cowboy. Dmitri was crazy, a Russian programmer who had come to America to work on a ranch. After his first winter in Montana, he changed his mind and went back to computers. But he was still obsessed with old Western movies, wore a ten-gallon hat and had pictures of horses on the walls of his crappy apartment.
Dmitri was an ace hacker, clumsy when it came to hiding his tracks, and he'd pissed off the wrong people early in his career. I saved his ass and got him to quit using cowboy handles online. I also installed a security system around his place and got him a huge dog that doesn't like strangers. In return, he gets me whatever I want from cyberspace, no questions asked. I'm probably the only friend he has in the real world.
I picked up some groceries for him on the way, and a bag of dog food, because Dmitri forgets about stuff like that. His place was as dingy and cluttered as ever, the dog occupying the entire couch and watching me carefully.
“A lost dog?”
Dmitri looked at me like I was the crazy one in the room.
I gave him all the information I had, and he got a faraway look on his face. “Give me couple of hours,” he said, and that was pretty much the end of the conversation. Dmitri wasn't big on social graces. He was already jacked in by the time I got to the door and let myself out.
It was slightly less than an hour when he popped up on my screen, back in my condo. Which was rude, even by the rules of hacker etiquette; but as I said, no social skills. He did have a ton of data, though: names and pictures and backgrounds of everyone who lived and worked in the exec's house, and some of his business associates as well.
The exec, Mr. Edwin Fischer, looked exactly like I expected: forty-something years old, physically fit and wearing an expensive suit. The daughter was a frowning marionette, wearing the latest styles and dripping with jewelry. Extensive cosmetic surgery, which made her look like a badly AI-constructed image instead of a pretty girl. And the dog was an ordinary, ugly little mop of fur, beady eyes peering at the camera and teeth poking out. The kind of yappy overgrown rat you want to kick as soon as it comes close enough.
I didn't really want anything to do with these people, but they would never meet me. I'd find out about the dog, maybe get it back, and Ameer could handle the rest. At least, that was the plan.
The Cowboy had given me plenty to work with. I could try it from the top down: go straight to Mister Business Suit, put my cards on the table and tell him I could find his dog. But, like I said, I don't like corporations, and I don't like the suits who work for them. And this whole thing looked kinked. So I decided to start from the other end, go bottom-up. There were a few candidates in that pool, but one of them stood out. I told Cowboy to see what else he could find on her.
* * *
Her name was Celeste, she worked as a maid, didn't get paid much. She was young, average looks, and shared an apartment with two other girls. She liked clubs and boys, changed up both of them every couple of months like clockwork. She was currently between boyfriends and had been going to the same club for a few weeks, so she was ready for something new.
It might seem that I was planning to take advantage of her, and maybe that's true in a way. But there wasn't going to be any romance, and she wasn't looking for Prince Charming anyway. She'd get a night or two of fun with me, I'd get the information I wanted and call it an even trade.
The club was technogoth, but she wasn't dressed for it. She sat at a table with a couple of other people, looking bored and not fitting in with the sparse crowd. I sat at a table near theirs and had the cocktail waiter take her a drink. When it arrived, he pointed me out, and the three of them looked in my direction. I nodded back, then waited patiently.
It took half an hour, listening to the crappy loud music and watching the patrons go through their mating rituals, then she finally sauntered over and took a seat. “Thanks for the drink.”
“My pleasure. I'm Drake.”
“Celeste.”
“A pretty name for a pretty girl.”
She liked that, and we went through the usual banal banter you do at clubs. Yeah, she came here a lot, was getting tired of it though, it was my first time here and it was okay but I knew better places to hang out. The music made conversation difficult, and this place didn't have sound dampeners at the tables, so when I suggested going somewhere else, she agreed.
Copyright © 2025 by Brian Sellnow
