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they know that what Joe Cit wants more than anything is what he thinks he might not get.” He giggled again, so pleased with himself Strader could smell it on his breath. “They’re not selling these tickets, Paulie. The only way you get into this thing is to come to the Herc on the day and queue. They ain’t letting anybody camp out, either. On the day or nothin’.”
    Strader blinked, amazed at the stupidity of that—or maybe it was genius. He couldn’t tell. “Jovus. There’ll be a riot.”
    “Sure there will. That’s probably what they want.” Mooney drained his glass, setting it down with a flourish. “They run out of tickets, they start turning folks away, the trouble starts, the Jays roll out—suddenly the Herc’s on all the vid-channels, with cits rioting ’cause they can’t get in.” He laughed, unscrewing his hip flask and taking a swig from that to chase the rest. “Because they can’t get into the Herc! You imagine telling someone that a week ago? It’ll be the best damn commercial that place ever had.”
    Strader rubbed his chin, brushing his fingertips against the stubble. “How big is the score?”
    “Thousand creds a ticket. You do the math.”
    One hundred million creds. Strader frowned, brow furrowed, looking for the catch. There had to be a catch. “They can’t all be paying cash—”
    “Cash or nothing, Paulie. No change given, either.” Mooney shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe it either. “Makes sense. Credit swipe takes three, four times as long to process as a cash payment, especially with exact change. Multiply that by a hundred thousand cits, you got no time for the game. And Joe Cit don’t care. He’s a simple sorta animal—make something a little harder for him, he’ll just want it more. Hell, you know what I’d do if I didn’t have this damn bag strapped to my leg?” He wet his lips, looking into the distance. “I’d find an alley on the way—between the Herc and some super-rich block like Pete Andre or Clive Dunn. I’d just stand there with a blackjack and wait. Half the dumbos scurrying by would have crisp thousand-cred bills in their pockets—it’d be like bears fishing for salmon.”
    “Salmon?” Strader had a vague memory of the word.
    “Something my Dad used to talk about. The point is, even accounting for the creeps who bring their change jar along—” Strader nodded at that. Coins, unless they were rare or somehow worth more than face value, were no good as part of a score. Even the new lightweight plastic ones were too much weight for too little value. “Even if we only grab the hundreds and above, that’s seventy, eighty mil. Easy.” Mooney looked him dead in the eye. “And we can do it with a crew of five.”
    Strader frowned. “You said three.”
    “I said I needed three. I’m in, and I got another guy in—the guy who brought it to me—that’s five.” He chuckled again, as if remembering something funny. “Well, technically there’s gonna be six, but one of us ain’t coming back, if you know what I mean...”
    Strader narrowed his eyes. “We’re not stiffing anyone out of their share—not on a score this big. It’s just asking for trouble down the line. People have long memories in this game.”
    Mooney lifted his hands in a little placatory gesture. “That ain’t what I meant. And...” He sighed, as if he’d run through this in his head a hundred times and still not thought of a way to put it. “That ain’t the part you’re going to have a problem with. See... you remember I said there was another guy in already? Besides me? The guy who brought me this thing?” He took a deep breath.
    “Well... that guy’s a Judge.”

 
     
    Five
     
     
    S TRADER WALKED THROUGH the block park in a dour mood, lost in thought.
    Above him, the mechanical sky sputtered and fritzed. The beautiful, calming blue overhead, marked with just a wisp of cirrus, was provided by a dome of curved vidscreens, set flush with one