Next customer!
I'll, uh... I'll take the special. Extra tobiko.
You know, I hear the sake here on Mars is only good when it rains.
When you pick up your next order,
I need to know whether he still does his business from there.
- Ana said there wouldn't be trouble. - No trouble.
Just information.
I'll pick up a fresh supply in a few hours.
- How will I find you? - You don't.
Stay in the city, and I'll find you.
I'm Walking Sally.
I walk and talk and I'm every little girl's favorite toy.
And we can be friends.
For only 10,000 woolongs.
But you have to act fast, because I'm selling out everywhere.
Supplies are limited, so check with your local retailers.
Don't miss out on this extraordinary offer.
- Come and get me! - I swear, this doll, she's mocking me.
Come and get me! Come and get me! Come and get me!
- Come and get me! - I can't shut this damn thing off!
Come and get...
You know how many toy stores there are in Tharsis City?
- Mm-mm. - Seventy.
Seventy toy stores and this goddamn doll is sold out in every one of 'em.
Now I'm doomed to show up at Kimmie's birthday
without the one thing she wanted.
Screw it. Let's get the hell out of this city.
Hey, slow your roll, big guy. No reason to ditch out of Tharsis so fast.
I'm sure we could find it here on the black market.
Sure, and already found a hookup. Chad. Says he knows a guy who knows a guy.
He also said it's going to cost me more woos than retail.
Barely 45 Gs in the kitty.
It means we'll be choosing between food and fuel.
- You could sell your arm. - I could put my fist up your ass.
True. And it would feel really good, but would it solve anything?
Let's get off this rock.
Buddy, there's no reason to give up on Kimmie's happiness.
I mean, you need some dough for a doll. Let's just do what we do.
- I just want to get out of here. - Hang on.
Look here, first hit. Fifteen million.
"Wow, that is a lot of money, Spike."
I know, Jet. It is.
Look at this lowlife.
He's going to be thrilled to be your ticket to Kimmie's joy.
I don't know. Cops are already all over this one.
Yeah, because the victims are wealthy. ISSP lives to cater to the rich.
Doesn't that make you wanna
- grab him before they do? - Hmm.
- Come on, this is right up your alley. - It is a big chunk of dough.
It's right here in Tharsis.
You hate Tharsis.
I do. But you haven't seen your daughter in years,
which, I'm not going to lie to you, affords me the right to contradict myself.
What do you think?
I think this image is from a security camera.
Which means we need Woodcock.
I'm praying that's a person.
Well, well, well, look who comes a-calling after all these years.
Jet Black.
How are you, Woodcock?
Better now there's a tall glass of creamy chocolate milk standing in my eye-line.
This is my partner.
Pleasure. Seriously.
You got a name, junior?
Spike. Spike Spiegel.
Hmm.
You a good guy or a bad guy, Shpike Shpiegel?
Depends on who you ask.
I like you, kitty-cat.
You know, Jet and I go way back, and I mean way back.
Used to call him "The Black Dog." You wanna know why?
- Oh, yes. God yes, please tell... - Look. We're a little strapped for time.
Yeah, don't get your slacks in a swivel. I already know about this guy.
I've had clients crawling up my crack for days about him.
But it's like I told them.
If you're not from Earth, you've got nothing to worry about.
- What do you mean? - Victims were all Earthers.
We're talking straight off the escape pods.
Not sure how I can help though.
I already handed the security-cam footage over to the ISSP.
But I'm guessing you didn't hand them the raw footage.
Don't you just know me so well.
And suppose I give it to you, what do I get in return?
A big, fat thank you. And we'll cut you in on the bounty, yeah?
I was thinking less along the lines of cash,
more along the lines of... dinner.
Me. You. A bottle of Chianti.
Two bottles if we're feeling dangerous.
Sounds to me like blackmail.
Hmm, damn right it is because, Jet, you are Black and you are male.
- Seriously, favorite person ever. - Fine.
You do this for me and we can talk about dinner.
- How's that? - Mm.
That's a big fat RTC.
Reason to continue.
Transferring the footage to you now, sweetness.
See you on the Chianti side.
Oh, my God.
- Did you two... Okay. - Spike.
- Seriously though... - Spike, keep your eye on the ball.
Hey. I'm not Woodcock, pal.
Okay?
Wish we had the audio.
He said, uh, "I'm gonna make your little girl pay
for what you rich assholes did to me and my family."
- You read lips? - Yeah.
Three years of us working together and I'm just learning this now?
Didn't come up a lot.
Hmm.
Well, if you're right, this isn't just a robbery-homicide.
It's a kidnapping.
And explains why ISSP called in the cavalry.
Mm-hmm
Which means there's a reward on top of the bounty.
So how do you want to play it? I say we hit the last house.
See if Sticky Fingers left anything behind,
like the diamond thief we bagged down in Alba City.
Diamond thief was sloppy. This guy's a pro.
And he's cocky.
Yeah, look at him. He's staring at the camera like he wants to be seen.
Jesus. You're right.
Wow.
- Say it again. - What?
Say what you just said.
- What, that you're right? - Yes.
Whoa.
Was that...
I just needed to hear it one more time. You know, to ceremonialize it.
God!
- What am I right about again? - He wants to be seen.
Oh.
Which means the cops are looking for the wrong guy.
Right.
Huh.
You see that scar on his wrist?
Mm-hmm.
Pretend I don't know what that means.
It's a scar from a face-changer. A totally obsolete tech these days.
Now they're used for hookers in peeler bars.
You know, guy wants a blond, but the girl's a brunette...
Ah!
Knew I had it.
Yay.
I was buddies with the guy who figured that out, back in the day.
What was his name? Um, Doc Holiday.
Really? That was his name? His name was actually Doc Holiday?
No, it was Bill something. But he figured out some bank thieves
were using face-changers to give us the slip.
So Doc created a frequency scrambler.
Yeah, but why'd you call him Doc Holiday?
I didn't. Some guys on the force did.
- Why did they? - Hell if I know.
- Was he a doctor? - What? No!
There's gotta be a reason.
I don't know, maybe he liked vacations, Spike.
The point is, we use the scrambler to glitch the bounty.
Force him to go to whatever low-rent brothel
he got the thing from and get it fixed.
If you had started this conversation with "brothel,"
we would have saved ourselves a whole lot of time.
Which one?
There's only two low-rent brothels in Tharsis.
Betty's Boop,
and Betty's Bottom.
What's the difference?
One's on the Quimby side of the red-light district,
the other's on the Cypress side.
I'll take Cypress.
- Actually, take Quimby. - Why?
'Cause if this doll thing doesn't work out,
they've got a really nice gift shop.
You know what they don't have, smart guy?
A frequency scrambler that piggybacks on local signals.
Uh-huh.
Once I trigger, it should cover the entire city.
And send our guy running to whichever brothel he bought it from to fix his face.
Yeah, I got it.
God damn.
It's rough-trade central out here. You getting hit on your end?
Yep. Swimming in prosexuals.
All right. Here goes everything.
Oh, my. Your face.
You're that killer!
Shit!
Goddamn Betty!
He's in for a surprise.
All right. Good news.
Maybe Kimmie's birthday won't be a total disaster after all.
You'd settle for a partial disaster?
Well, Chalmers will be there.
With his smiley fucking face.
Did I ever tell you that about him? He's always smiling.
You first meet the guy and think he's had a stroke or something.
Then you realize he's just one happy asshole.
- You guys were pretty close, huh? - Yeah. Fought side by side.
Saved each other's life once or twice.
Homicide's a brotherhood.
At least, it's supposed to be.
You call that a brotherhood?
Your brother set you up. He robbed you of five years of your life.
Years you could have spent with your wife and your kid in your house.
Thanks for the reminder.
Yeah, I'm just saying.
You ever think about putting a bullet in a guy like that?
Hang on. I have to grab Sally.
- Benicio? - Yeah, that's right.
The black-market Santa.
The pimp of playthings. The man with the bag.
You got the doll?
- Oh. - I'm Walking Sally.
- I walk and talk... - Oh, great.
...and want you to be my very best friend.
Oh, man, I used to love me some rubber back.
It violates my parole though.
- How much? - 35K.
For a goddamn piece of molded plastic?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
Desperation and inflation go hand in hand, mi amigo.
Well, I'm glad you don't consider extortion a violation of your parole.
Hey, where's Betty?
The shit face-changer's broken.
In the office, Hakim.
She'll be down in a minute.
We can do this the easy way or the fun way.
Fun way it is.
I tried being reasonable.
But I don't like it.
Any sign of him?
Yeah.
- He's right in front of me. - Shit. I'm coming.
I got no beef with you, man.
I got 15 million reasons to have beef with you.
Oh. A fucking cowboy, huh?
You're just like them.
All you care about is money.
- Watch it. - Hey, watch it, man!
I'm Walking Sally.
I walk and talk and want you to be...
God damn it.
Oh. Come on.
Spike! Where are you?
I'm on the roof. Take your time.
Nice.
Excuse me.
Excuse me, ma'am. Oh, shit.
God damn it!
Spike!
I'm good.
Don't you move, you piece of shit!
God damn.
What the hell are you doing?
Waiting for you to pull me back up.
And when we're done,
pick up a box of those gold-dusted chocolates Julia likes,
and have Tui bring them to the penthouse.
Are we really shutting it down?
It's temporary.
It's millions of woos in product ready to go wide.
A lot of money has already changed hands.
It's... temporary!
Tell the buyers to be patient.
If they can't show me that respect, give me time to deliver.
They'll be the boldest corpses we've ever met.
What about them?
Put them up in a nice hotel. Make sure they're well fed,
and keep them on payroll until we're up and running again.
Really?
No, you brainless fleck of mediocrity,
we'll find new fugees when we bring the business back online.
And don't forget Julia's chocolate.
♪ I'm on M... ♪
You were the best I ever had up there.
That's a stretch.
Well, maybe not the best.
Sapphire Steve Stefanski was the best, but he played trombone...
Which gave him the most skilled lips.
Both on and off the stage?
I made no secret of it.
There's still room for you on the bill.
That was a different life.
You wanted to talk.
In private?
That collar's good on you. Is it new?
No. It's...
Drinking Kudo again?
Oh, I was feeling nostalgic.
And you came to talk.
I swear to Christ,
if he was any other man, I would carve out his eyes.
- I shouldn't have come. - This will only get worse.
We'll get through it.
- We always do. - You always have.
Until one day you don't.
So, what?
Run away?
- You know that's not a choice. - There's always a choice.
That's why you came.
I haven't survived on this sweet, spinning sphere by chance.
I did it by taking power.
You have the power.
You control your destiny.
Yeah, well, just one.
Uh-huh.
Sure, I can hold.
You know I can count on my one good hand
how many times I've seen Kimmie in the last seven years?
And after all the groveling I did with Alisa to get her to agree to me coming by,
I show up empty-handed?
Good news.
I think you can give Kimmie this one.
I don't think she's going to notice.
Yes. I-I'm here.
You do?
- She's got one. - Okay.
Fantastic. How late are you guys open?
Perfect. Hold it for me.
They got a doll.
- Only 10,000 woos. - All right.
Ah.
Let's see.
Got 9,000.
- How much you got? - I got seven.
Loan me a grand. I'll pay you back.
Not seven grand, seven woos.
That's all you've got?
- To your name? - Made a few bad business decisions.
And by a few, I mean you.
Screw it.
Let's cut our losses. Get the hell off of Tharsis.
Find a cheaper doll somewhere else.
Get out of Thars...
Whoa. Hey, hey, hey.
What's the hurry, man? We've still got a shot at finding Hakim.
We... We've got a shot at this bounty.
I mean, you think he came here just for a face-changer?
No, he's probably got a regular girl.
He's definitely got a regular girl.
I mean, I do. I mean, I would.
You don't go to Betty's Bottom and not get bottom.
Don't look at me.
Don't tell me to calm down, you fecking eejit cunts.
You did seven shades of shite in here!
I'll find you Greta, but you two wait out here or I'll stab the beef off you!
Those damages will cut deep into our payout.
What doesn't dig deep into our payout?
You never answered my question.
- What question? - About Chalmers.
Whether I'd put a bullet in him?
No.
That'd be too quick and painless for that asshole.
If I could get away with it, I'd pull Chalmers into a dark alley
and put my metal fist right through his smiley fucking face.
Make him go through the rest of his miserable life
with a face that matches his miserable sense of brotherhood.
But I'm not bitter.
I'll be right back.
Your friend, he's there.
I need a package.
There's silos across from the factory.
It'll be on top of number 13, but tell me.
Do you really want to sacrifice your life for an eel?
That's between me and the eel.
What can I get for seven woos?
Ah.
Thanks.
Ah. Next customer.
I'm already late for my midnight bukkake, and I still have two horny frat boys
waiting to be tied like baby calves at the rodeo.
Um, I'm sorry, ma'am, miss...
- Sir... - Mistress.
Please excuse my vanilla-bean friend here, he's not properly cultured.
Mistress, Betty tells us that Hakim is a regular of yours.
Oh, ja, I know Hakim. Cheap bastard.
He only pays for a lap dance.
I offer him the tie and tease, und the Alabama Anaconda.
Ah.
But he never pays extra. He is a cheap bastard.
More, Mistress!
Who doesn't go in for the Alabama Anaconda?
What a cheap bastard.
Okay, can you tell us where to find him?
Probably in a Tharsis high-rise.
Taking a dump on a solid gold shitter.
Well, he's loaded.
Hakim ain't rich. You must be talking about somebody else.
Really? Then how do you explain his new hund he bring by last week?
His hund?
His hund.
His hund! Hund! A hund!
A hound.
A dog?
Ja, that's what I said. A hund.
It's crazy, right? He must make a fortune at the atmo farm to buy a hund.
Yet he won't even pay for the pinky end
of a double-sided dildo. He's a cheap bastard.
Yes, you keep saying that.
Um...
- Thank you for your time. - Mm.
All right, thank you.
Uh-uh.
Are you a cheap bastard?
Not by choice, Mistress.
Spike.
- Hmm? - Let's go.
- Oh. - Hey.
Okay.
Oh.
Hey! Hey.
Aren't you glad we didn't give up on this? That dom was onto something, yeah?
No shit she's onto something. Check this out.
It's not a B&E-turned-murder. Hakim was kidnapping their dogs.
That's what these rich people have in common.
They all have dogs.
Psycho kills 12 people to steal their dogs. Well, that's...
That's a first.
- And a stupid play. I mean, dogs bark. - Yeah.
Where can you keep that many dogs without someone noticing?
The fine Mistress did say Hakim has a job at the atmo farms.
This is the only atmo farm on Tharsis that isn't active.
Yeah, but why steal dogs?
Those things are harder to move on the black market than diamonds.
Yeah, normally I'd give a shit about motive and all,
but right now, we're short on time.
- What? - Jet.
A dog.
Do you see that?
Can't remember the last time I saw a real dog.
I think he wants us to follow him.
Nice to meet you. Thank you. Hello!
Are you a good boy? Who's a good boy?
Ein, what are you doing down there? Hello. Good boy.
What the hell are you doing?
Put it down, Hakim.
There's two of us and one of you. You can't win.
What's with all the dogs, anyway?
Don't you know how hard those things are to sell?
Sell 'em?
- I was gonna kill 'em. - Why the hell would you do that?
That's just it. I couldn't do it.
It wasn't fair. They didn't do anything.
- No shit, they're just dogs. - Not to those rich assholes.
To them, they're like kids.
Yeah, yeah. Children are like dogs, dogs are like children.
Look, Hakim, I've got a toy store to get to.
My family worked for them.
And when the Earth Gate blew, they left us behind!
They put their dogs in escape pods instead of us.
And my parents...
They didn't make it.
For years I've dreamed of paying those entitled shitheels back.
Of taking away the things that they loved!
And I couldn't even do that right!
It's like you said, they're just dogs.
It's like... It's like being mad at water for being wet.
And they've got these adorable faces.
I mean, they're so adorable. They don't deserve to die.
You're right, they don't.
But I do.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. - Easy.
My life is not worth living!
Look, it's worth plenty. Fifteen million woolongs to be exact.
That's pretty good.
- Really? - Yeah.
That's good?
- Well, it's not our biggest haul ever... - Spike.
You're the biggest bounty that we've ever seen.
- Huge. Huge, Hakim. - Huge.
- Okay. - All right.
Okay, that's a good deal. And you guys...
You guys get some kale
and I go away for the piece of shit that I am.
Gotta do something about your self-esteem.
Yeah, I know.
Son of a bitch!
What the hell?
We had it under control!
Oh, it didn't look like that to me.
- Hakim here, well, he had a gun on you. - Bullshit!
Come on, this guy wasn't a threat to anybody. You know that.
You didn't want to pay out the bounty, did you?
Yeah. There's that too.
Better luck next time, cow-spittle.
- Hey, walrus 'stache! - Forget it, Spike.
That money was ours. That money was ours!
Let's go. Let's go.
I don't understand how you can be so calm, man.
- Let's go. - Hey.
They stole our bounty, which means you don't get your doll,
which was the whole point of this carnival of fuck-up-ery!
Spike, if you shut your face for 17 seconds,
you'll see we're gonna end up with something better than a doll.
Hi, bean. Sorry I missed the party.
Hi.
Look at you. I can't believe how big you've gotten.
Happy birthday. I got you a present.
Is it a Walking Sally doll?
No, sweetie. It's something better.
- Does he have a name? - Uh-huh.
"E-I-N."
Ein.
That's right, baby. His name is Ein.
I love him so much!
Jet.
Hey, Alisa.
Moshi moshi.
Hello, Vicious.
Fearless.
Look how cute he is.
Pretty great, right?
No, Jet. Not great.
Come back, Ein! Come here!
A dog?
You know what the taxes are to keep a dog. I can't afford that.
- I know, I'll... I'll chip in. - Jet.
I'm just trying to be a part of her life. I mean, she deserves...
She deserves to not fall in love with something she can't keep.
- So this is what a dead man sounds like. - That's right.
And I'm giving you a chance to keep it that way.
You're giving me a chance? How generous of you.
I had decided to put a bullet in your head
after you sent that assassin to kill me on Venus, but...
I had a change of heart.
You're Vicious.
It's who you are.
It's like being mad at water for being wet.
You were in my business and you had to be dealt with.
That's how business works. It's nothing personal.
Or is it?
Brother.
Well, I'll be damned. Jet. Didn't think you were going to make it.
Here I am.
Oh, hey, where, uh, where did you get that dog?
- What are you suggesting? - All right.
Stop.
Yeah.
- Alisa, hear me out. He's a... - No.
Jet, no.
Just go.
And take that dog back to wherever you found it.
Can I call him sometime?
Ein. I mean, he's yours, right?
Yeah, of course he is.
And of course you can.
Whenever you want. Okay, bean?
I'm giving you a chance to walk away.
- End this now. - Or what?
Or I end you.
You're one man.
I have the power of the Syndicate behind me.
I'm untouchable.
I see you got yourself a new set of wheels.
You're still hiding behind bulletproof glass?
- He's on the silo. - Who?
Fearless.
Fearless!