“I asked you a question. I didn’t ask for a critique. You going to flicker me to the next departure or not?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved it away. “Consider it fucking done. What you don’t appreciate, Kovacs, is that some people have got serious business to transact. You come up here and stir up local law enforcement with your mindless violence, they’re liable to get all enthusiastic and go busting people we need.”

“Need for what?”

“None of your fucking business.” The sempai impression skidded off and he was pure Millsport street again. “You just keep your fucking head down for the next five or six hours and try not to kill anyone else.”

“And then what?”

“And then we’ll call you.”

I shook my head. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Better than.” His voice climbed. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, Kovacs?”

I measured the distance, the time it would take me to get to him. The pain it would cost. I ladled out the words that would push him. “Who am I talking to? I’m talking to a whiff-wired chimpira, a fucking street punk up here from Millsport and off the leash from his sempai, and it’s getting old, Yukio. Give me your fucking phone—I want to talk to someone with authority.”

The rage detonated. Eyes flaring wide, hand reaching for whatever he had inside the suit jacket. Way too late.

I hit him.

Across the space between us, unfolding attacks from my uninjured side.

Sideways into throat and knee. He went down choking. I grabbed an arm, twisted it and laid the Tebbit knife across his palm, held so he could see.