Weapons of choice

Big Itchy's office was neatly stacked with the raw material of his operation: crates of stolen booze, cigarettes, and food. The girls never came here. They hardly ever got out of the flophouses. Slim Jim knew there was a safe buried in the floor beneath Itchy's desk, and it was a sign of the trust he'd earned that the knowledge hadn't cost him his life. Big Itchy kept every dollar he earned in that safe. He didn't trust the banks. They were full of Jews.

"Aloha, Jimmy," the 240-pound criminal rumbled from the chair that sat astride his fortune. "You're alive. That's good. The war over yet?"

"No, the war's got a way to run yet."

"Fat times then."

"Getting fatter by the day."

Slim Jim undid the top button of his shirt. There were six men in the room watching him-Itchy, Tui, and four silent toughs. Big Itchy was unusual for his times, being an equal opportunity employer. As the bastard son of a white plantation owner and a lei girl, he had no truck with discrimination. As long as a man could throw a punch or shoot a gun, and keep his mouth shut, he had a future with Big Itchy Enterprises. The men who stood, without speaking, as Slim Jim stripped off his shirt, were a mix of Kanaks, one local Japanese, and two white men. As Davidson's shirt came off they all saw the bandages he had strapped around his torso.

"Somebody's husband catch you?" asked Tui.

Slim Jim just smiled. The wrapping bulged under his left armpit. He gritted his teeth and ripped off the plaster. A flexipad came away, stuck to it.

"That's a lot of effort for a cigar box, Jimmy," said Big Itchy. "What's it made of, gold or something?"

"Nope," said the sailor as he removed the last of the bandages. "Worth its weight in gold, though. Watch this."

He was familiar enough with the device to power up and load an mpeg of Casablanca in just a few seconds. Handing the device to a quizzical Big Itchy, he put his shirt back on as the film's soundtrack filled the room. It was surprisingly loud and rich. A few of the men jumped slightly, and all quickly gathered around Big Itchy.

"Damn! I heard of this," one of the white men said. "It's a Bogart movie, supposed to be great."

"Yeah, but we won't see it here for ten fucking years," said the Japanese.

The screen was relatively small, but the picture was crisp, drawing a few childlike noises of appreciation from the huddled gangsters.

"You got any Edward G. Robinson?" asked one. "I love his stuff. You dirty rats."

The hoodlum did his best Robinson, with a tommy gun, cutting down a room full of rivals.

"So it's true," said Tui. "They came back in time."

"Sideways, they tell me," said Slim Jim.

"I don't understand," said Tui.

"I don't think anyone does," Slim Jim said. "And what the fuck does it matter anyway? They're here. They brought a shitload of dough with them, and all of this stuff, too. Stuff you can't even imagine, that people are going to pay a fortune for. And information, too. Goddamn, the things these guys know." Slim Jim smiled, breaking into a laugh when it all got too much. "The possibilities Itchy. Just think of them."

Reluctantly, the corpulent gangster dragged his eyes away from the screen. The others, except for Tui, kept watching.

"What do you mean?"

"That machine there, they call it a flexipad. It's not just a little movie screen. It's a telephone, although it doesn't work so well now they don't have their satellite cover-"

He was careful to say the word properly.

"— and it's like an automatic bookkeeper. You could do your taxes for the whole year in a two minutes." He grinned, eliciting a chuckle from both men. "Their doctors, they've got flexipads they just wave over your body and they can tell all sorts of shit about you, whether you're sick or not. They've got these games on them, I'd have to show you them, you just wouldn't believe me otherwise. But most of all, they got information."

"Again with the information, Jimmy. What the fuck are you talking about? You think I want to know how to build a death ray? My old shotgun works just fine for now."

"No," said Davidson, "that's not what I mean at all. Although, that stuff you can get, too, and I'm thinking that maybe some of the syndicate boys would like to know. But no, I'm talking about the real inside dope, Itchy. Like, would you want to know every winner of the Kentucky Derby for the next fifty years?"

Everyone stopped still. A few stopped breathing.