by Sean Parsons
Cho finished his story and sat quietly for a moment, staring at his desk.
“I’m sorry, doctor,” Erin said.
Cho nodded. “Yes, thank you. But these things happen. In my view, his culture killed him. I refused to allow it to do the same to me. I moved to America and never looked back.”
“You seem to have made the right choice.”
“I have. Now, how can my brother help your case, detective?”
Erin leaned forward. “I need to find someone on the sublevels who’s very hard to get at. Maybe someone who lives down there and knows the lay of the land can help me find him.”
“And you want to ask my brother for help?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can’t stop you. If you think it will help you solve Susan’s murder, by all means. But I’m warning you, detective, my brother is not in his right mind. He will likely prove no help at all.”
He pulled out a piece of paper and scrawled an address on it. He handed it to Erin. Erin thanked him and stood up. He turned to go.
“Detective?” Cho said.
Erin turned back. “Yes?”
“Do try to be more careful this time, hmm? I’d rather not have to operate on you again.”
Erin smiled. “Will do, doc.”
He turned and left the office.
Erin was almost at the sublevel elevator when he heard a voice behind him.
“Mr. Bradley, I have to speak to you.”
He turned around and saw Director Grossman coming toward him.
“Not now, Director,” Erin said, “I have an investigation to conduct.”
“Listen here, detective,” Grossman said, pointing a finger at him, “You’ve been ignoring me for hours now. You’ve gotten yourself shot once already, are you going to keep disregarding my warnings?”
“Director, I don’t have a choice in this matter. It’s in the nature of my job to put my life on the line sometimes. I can’t do anything about that.”
“But dammit, you’re not risking just your own skin here, you’re risking mine as well. If you get yourself killed, I’ll be fired, no question.”
“That’s not my problem. Susan’s murder is.”
“It will be your problem if someone puts another bullet in you. See reason, detective. Let me give you an armed escort. Five men, tops.”
Erin shook his head. “You don’t understand, director. If I go down there with an armed escort, I’ll never come close to finding the people I need to speak to. They’ll go to ground so fast, it’ll make your head spin. What you really should be doing is shutting off all traffic between this station and Earth. Have you done that, director?”
Grossman seemed taken aback. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. This station is part of a multi-million dollar trade network. I can’t just remove it from that system. Plus, we need constant supplies, and disposal of certain waste materials. It would be impossible.”
Erin shrugged. “Well there you have it. You don’t get what you want, I don’t get what I want. We’re even.”
He started to walk away, when he felt the director’s hand on his good shoulder, gripping him roughly. He turned back around.
“Detective,” Grossman said, his face contorting with anger, “I don’t think you understand me. I’m not allowing you to go down to the sublevels anymore. Your access to that area is restricted. If you try to go down there I’ll call Rickard and have him arrest you.”
Erin stared blankly.
“Are you interfering with an official police investigation?” he said.
Grossman stared back. “I have a duty of care for every person who comes onto this station. Police officer or not.”
“Mr. Grossman,” Erin said, adopting his most official tone, “if you don’t release me and allow me full access to this station, including the sublevels, I’ll go directly to the police commissioner in New York and acquire a search warrant for these premises. And I’ll make a special note that you chose to interfere directly with my investigation, despite repeated assurances from myself that your legal responsibilities toward me have been waved by my own consent. You have a recording of such statements from myself, and cannot deny that there is a record of my waver. In such circumstances, further inhibiting my investigation will be seen as a direct implication of involvement on your part in the murder of Susan Grior, and will demand a separate inquest into your own actions on this station. Do I make myself clear?”
Grossman let go of Erin’s shoulder. “You want to play it that way, fine. I was only trying to keep you from getting killed. You could cause a lot of trouble for everyone here by doing so.”
“Everyone – or just you?”
Grossman glowered. He seemed like he was going to say something else, but he decided against it and stormed away.
Erin heaved a sigh and stepped onto the elevator. Why was Grossman making it so difficult to conduct this investigation?
8.
The sublevels were just as he had left them. Erin stepped off the elevator and found the same twisting maze of hallways, the same bizarre red glow from the emergency lighting. It was hellish, alright. He squinted at the piece of paper Cho had given him, trying to see the address in the low light. He made it out and started off into the maze.
It was difficult to navigate. Unknown to him before, there were small signs running along the top of the dim hall, giving the names of the various hallways. Cho’s directions were more like a set of scribbled coordinates. After twenty minutes of dogged walking Erin came to a door that had the right numbers on it. He knocked.
No response.
He pounded on it.
He thought he heard movement within, but the door was thick steel and muted most sounds. There was a viewing strip at eye level; one-way glass. He had the distinct impression that someone was now looking at him through it. A metal plate slid back, revealing a metal grate through which sound could pass.
“What you want?” a crooked voice said, with a strong accent.
“Is this the residence of Fu-Hsing Cho?” Erin said.
“Who wants to know?”
“My name’s Erin Bradley. I’m a detective.”
Erin flashed his badge in front of the viewing strip.
“What you want with me, officer? I don’t like police.”
“Can you please open the door, Mr. Cho? I need to ask you some questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“I can’t discuss it out here in the hall, sir. It’s important police business.”
“Oh, important police business. Well that makes so much difference.”
But Erin heard the bolt slide back, and the door opened with a hiss of air-compressed hinges. An old Chinese man stood there staring at Erin. He was bearded and had long white hair, ragged and thin. His fingernails were long and dirty.
“Mr. Cho?” Erin asked.
“Yes, yes,” the old man said, beckoning impatiently for Erin to enter.
Erin followed him into the room. It was small, dingy, and decorated with painted scrolls and tapestries. Some were bizarre and abstract, but most were recognisably Chinese. The floor was cluttered with so much garbage there was little room to stand. The entire apartment was just that room, and a small kitchen-laundry-shower cubicle attached to it.
Erin noticed the drug paraphernalia with strained indifference. He wasn’t here to arrest this old dope-head, he was here for information.
Cho bumbled around muttering to himself. He seemed to be looking for something. Finally he shifted a pile of dirty laundry out of the way and found a long wooden pipe. He stuffed it full of tobacco and started smoking. The room quickly filled with the smoke and Erin coughed.
Cho took a seat in the lotus position, and sat passively smoking his pipe. He looked at Erin through the streams of smoke coming from his lips. His eyes were dark and piercing. Despite his ragged appearance, Erin didn’t think he looked crazy.
Erin took a seat across from him, on the floor on a pile of dirty laundry
.
“Mr. Cho, I need your help with a case I’m investigating. I need information.”
Cho nodded. “Susan Grior, murdered – right?”
Erin stared back in disbelief. “Yes. How did you know?”
Cho shrugged. “I know many things.”
“Yes, well; Mr. Cho, I need to know where the man called Keel is. Can you tell me where I can find him?”
Cho gave a dry cackle. “You want Keel? Keel don’t want you. If he did, he would find you.”
“I imagine he doesn’t want to speak to me. I think he had a hand in Susan’s death.”
Cho puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “Yes. That is probably true. Keel’s crazy. You think I’m crazy, wait till you meet him. You don’t know crazy yet.”
“Who is this Keel?”
“He’s a drug pusher for Sledgehammer. Everybody knows this. Before that, on Earth, I don’t know. Maybe a cop.”
“He was a cop?”
Cho shrugged. “You’re a cop. You tell me.”
Erin stopped and looked around the room. It was dank and smelled bad. He turned back to Cho, who just watched him and calmly smoked his pipe.
“Where is he located on the sublevels?”
“I’ll give you his address,” Cho said. “But first I want to know something. Why have you come here, all this way from Earth, just for a murder case?”
“It’s my job. My boss sent me.”
“Did they ask for an Earth cop?”
“What?”
“Why did your boss ask you to come here?”
“I can’t really get into it. He decided he couldn’t trust anyone else with the investigation.”
“Strange. Almost like he knew what was going on up here.”
Erin’s eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Have you ever heard of the exalted sage, Chuang-Tzu?”
Erin was taken aback. “No, who was that?”
Cho breathed deeply on his pipe and blew out a thick plume of smoke. He wreathed his hands in it thoughtfully and began speaking like he was reading a story verbatim.
“Chuang-Tzu dreamed he was a butterfly, flying around and exalting in the summer air. He had no knowledge he was Chuang-Tzu. Then suddenly he woke up and was Chuang-Tzu again. But he could no longer tell, had he been Chuang-Tzu dreaming he was a butterfly, or was he a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang-Tzu?”
Cho stopped speaking and looked at Erin expectantly. He smiled and breathed on his pipe.
“What does that mean?” Erin said, flatly.
“It means, who you think you are might not be exactly correct, detective. What you think is real may not be. Who can say? The great Chuang-Tzu had an inkling of this. Are you a cop? Or are you just a butterfly? What do you dream of?”
Erin didn’t respond. He just looked at Cho. He had no idea if the man was crazy or not.
He was about to answer when they heard a knock on the door.
Cho looked over at it and raised an eyebrow. “You better take a look, before you open that door.”
Erin got up and went to the door. He peered through the viewing strip.
Staring right back at him was the man who shot him.
“Jesus,” Erin said.
“What is it?” Cho said, irritably.
“Someone who tried to kill me.”
The man banged on the door again, this time harder.
“Open up, old man,” he said through the grate. “In ten seconds I’m going to blast through the door.”
His voice was calm and even. He meant business.
Erin turned back to Cho. “I’ll protect you. He can’t hurt you while I’m here.”
“He’s not here for me,” Cho said, getting up. “He’s here for you. And he will kill you, quicker than you can kill him. Yes, I know him well. You have to escape.”
“Escape?”
Erin stared at him, listening to the pounding on the door, and the gunman casually counting down from ten.
“Yes. If you don’t want to die. You can’t kill this man, he’s too quick for you.”
Cho scrabbled through a stack of papers on the floor and came away with a small card. He handed it to Erin. On one side it said ‘Keel’, on the other was a sublevel address. The pounding on the door continued. The gunman was down to five.
Cho grabbed Erin by the arm and dragged him into the kitchenette. He threw open the oven door and forced Erin down to look into it. Erin was stunned to see a tunnel, through the back of the oven into the wall. Cho pushed him in, just as the gunman started firing.
Erin hastily crawled through the narrow space, to the sound of gunfire and Cho’s voice, calling after him.
“What are you doing here, detective? What is in your dreams?”
And then he laughed.
Erin crawled through the tunnel for a few metres. It was narrow and dark, and coated in grease. It might have actually been a ventilation shaft for the oven once upon a time, but it had been bored out for an escape hole. It joined a network of cold ducts. He was in the air-conditioning system. He crawled along, forced down on hands and knees by the height of the ducting. He had no idea what direction to go in, so he just crawled until he couldn’t hear the gunfire anymore. The duct rose and then levelled out.
Soon he saw a vent and lifted it up. It revealed the same red hallways of the sublevels. He dropped down, his feet banging on the metal plates of the floor. No one was in sight, in either direction.
Erin strongly wanted to go back and see if Cho was ok. He had a duty as a police officer to protect civilians. He didn’t like Cho’s chances with that gunman. But he held the card in his hand and knew he had limited time to get to Keel, before the gunman got Erin, or someone else who knew critical information. Cho had sacrificed himself to save Erin, and Erin had to make it worth it.
9.
Erin tracked down the address with difficulty. There were hundreds of small signs above the branching corridors. Sloping ramps led down to the lower sublevels, where more halls waited. The place was a maze. Keel’s address had two dozen instructions. Erin followed them diligently, and at length came to the heavy, reinforced steel door he assumed was Keel’s. He knocked.
He got the impression once more that someone was looking at him through the viewing strip. This time the response didn’t follow the usual lines.
“Well, well,” a rough voice said, “I’ve been expecting you.”
He heard the door lock buzz, indicating it was opened, and he reached for the handle. It turned and the door hissed open.
And standing before him was Keel.
He was young, no more than thirty. He had shoulder-length, ragged brown hair and wild, bloodshot blue eyes that roved everywhere when he talked. He’s a user, Erin thought. That fit the pattern. Drug pushers were often users who ran out of money and turned to dealing to fund their own habits. He looked dangerous, but only because he might be crazy.
“Hey mister police man,” Keel said, with a sneer.
Erin flashed his badge. “Are you the man they call Keel?”
“Yes I am. You want to speak to me? Well, you better get inside; word is anyone who talks to you gets killed. I don’t want to die today.”
Erin followed him inside. His room was nondescript and surprisingly tidy; only the numerous brown cardboard packages raised attention. Erin frowned at them.
“Don’t mind that,” Keel said. “That don’t concern you, officer.”
He went and took a seat on a lumpy couch, and sipped from a glass containing a brown liquid that might have been flat beer. He gestured for Erin to sit on a chair opposite him. Keel put his feet up and took his ease. He smiled at Erin, revealing brown teeth, full of holes.
“You want to know who murdered the black woman?”
Erin gritted his teeth. “Susan Grior. Yes.”
“Why should I tell you?”
“If you don’t, I’ll arrest you for possession and trafficking. Not to mention manslaughter.”
“Mans
laughter? Now that one don’t stick. What manslaughter?”
“There’s a man running around with an itchy trigger finger on his left hand, who seems to want my blood. You telling me you don’t know anything about that?”
Keel raised his hands defensively. “Hey, hey; I know about the guy, but I didn’t hire him. Trust me, he’s working for someone else. That’s not the way I play it.”
“What about Sledgehammer?”
Keel’s mood changed at the mention of that name. He got nervous and defensive. He also spoke more eloquently, like he wanted to be understood clearly. “This has nothing to do with him, believe me. You don’t want to bring his name into this. Forget you ever heard that name.”
“So he’s a lone gunman? Why would he want to kill a cop?”
Keel shrugged, more relaxed now. “You got me. How the hell should I know? Didn’t you have something else you wanted to talk about? A pretty little black woman, dead?”
Erin got mad. He raised his voice. “Why don’t you just cut the crap and tell me what you know about her murder?”
“Hey,” Keel said, raising his hands again. “No need to get mad. Why don’t you just chill the fuck out? I’ll tell you what I know. The Boss told me something big was about to go down, but he wouldn’t say what it was. He just said it’s going to change everything. He told me to focus on business, make sure everything was right on my end. We both found out about the director’s wife at the same time. We were sitting in the same room, having a meeting, when a runner came in with the news. But I saw the Boss’s face. He didn’t plan it. He almost cried, and that man never cries.”
He seemed to realise how much he was saying and shut up. “Forget I said that last part. Don’t you dare tell the Boss what I said.”
“That’s the only piece of evidence you’re giving me for your Boss’s innocence – that he cried?”
“Shut up,” Keel said, angrily, “I told you to forget that. But I’m telling you man, we weren’t involved in that shit. The director’s his brother. He wouldn’t do that to his own goddamn brother.”
“So who would?”
Keel shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of shit going down on this station that I don’t know the half of. Nobody does, except maybe the Boss. But he won’t tell you, so you might as well forget it.”
