Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven

by Michael Jan Friedman

  That was good news. But it begged a question: “Why didn’t this person say something before?”

  Quetzalli was as thorough as they came. It was hard to believe she had overlooked someone.

  “She was on vacation at the Western Markets. It wasn’t until she got home that someone told her we’d been around the building asking questions.”

  That explained it.

  “What did she see?”

  Necalli told me. “Of course, you’ll want to question the woman yourself.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Citlalmina Teluc was a short and round but not unattractive woman in her late forties. She wore a black and red dress that looked fresh from the Western Markets.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said across the smooth wooden table. We were one flight down from my office, in the nether regions of the Interrogation Center.

  “It’s no trouble,” she told me. “I’m happy to help.”

  Still, she looked around a little nervously. No doubt, it was the first time she had been in an interrogation cell. I had to set her at ease if I was going to get everything I needed.

  “Can I get you something to drink? Cane water?”

  “No.” She smiled. ”I’m fine.”

  “All right, then.” I leaned forward. “You told Investigator Quetzalli that you saw something suspicious in the basement of your building. What was it, exactly?”

  “I was down there doing laundry. Most people in the building send their clothes out to be laundered, but I like to do it myself. I wasn’t always wealthy, you see, and it’s quiet down there.”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “Anyway, I was sitting there looking at an article on the Mirror—I have a portable console—when a man came in with a bag of something slung over his shoulder.”

  “What kind of bag?” I asked.

  “A trash bag. White cloth. The big kind.”

  “What do you think was in the bag?”

  “At the time, I didn’t give it much thought. I like to mind my own business. But looking back, I can tell you the bag was full of something big and long. And though the man who was carrying it seemed pretty strong, he was having trouble with it. A lot of trouble. He was staggering, grunting, sweating . . . that sort of thing.”

  “So if you had to guess what he was carrying . . . ?”

  “Again, looking back . . . I would say it was a body.”

  “A dead body?”

  Teluc shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Where did the man take it?”

  “Out the delivery door. You know, the one in the back.”

  “And that was the last you saw of him?”

  “Yes. As I said, I didn’t think much of it at the time. But when my neighbor told me the police had been in the building asking questions—”

  “It came back to you.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I said. “If there’s anything else, I’ll give you a buzz.”

  It was a polite way of saying goodbye. I think Teluc knew that. But she didn’t seem eager to get up yet.

  “You know,” she said, “it’s scary to think someone was killed in your own pyramid. You hear about it happening in other places, but when it’s your own . . ." Her brow creased. “You don’t think he’ll come back, do you? The murderer, I mean.”

  “We haven’t established that anyone’s been killed,” I said, “though I understand that it may have looked that way. In any case, we’ve posted an officer on the premises.”

  She looked surprised. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “You’re not supposed to.”

  It took Teluc a moment to catch my meaning. “Of course. Silly of me. I guess I wouldn’t make a very good Investigator.”

  “Experience helps,” I said.

  “Will you be coming by as well?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. Unless, of course, there’s a new development in the case.” I couldn’t tell if she was asking for herself or for her daughter.

  “Too bad,” she said, “You see, I have a niece. Lovely girl . . ."

  Well, at least she’d answered that question. “Sorry, but I’m not allowed to socialize with witnesses or members of their families.”

  Teluc sighed. “Can’t say I didn’t try.”

  The basement of Coyotl’s building had three laundry machines, a couple of tables for folding clothes, and a cane water dispenser—but outside of that, the place was pretty stark. The walls were just walls, bare of the hanging sculptures, paintings, and feather arrangements that graced the lobby above.

  Of course, my building didn’t have even one machine. But then, I didn’t live in a luxury pyramid the way Coyotl did.

  I was standing there in the middle of the basement, trying to picture what Teluc had described to me, when I got a buzz from Calli.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said. Her voice was even more seductive than usual.

  “Likewise,” I replied, because I didn’t know when someone might decide to come down to the basement.

  “Meet me.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Noon. I’ll bring lunch.”

  It wasn’t the most convenient time for me. I said so.

  “Be there,” she insisted.

  “Where’s there?” I asked, thinking I could try to slip away for a moment if it was nearby.

  She told me.

  “That’s crazy,” I said, hoping she was kidding.

  “Maybe. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “This is not a good idea.”

  But before I could get the last of my words out, she ended the link. I tried calling her back but she wouldn’t answer.

  “Hands of the Gods,” I muttered.

  Calli didn’t know what she was getting herself into. She couldn’t, or she wouldn’t have even considered it. But if she was determined to go there, I couldn’t let her go alone.

  The closest rail station to the spot Calli had chosen was Itzpapalotl Street. I got there early—really early—so I could stand on the platform for a moment and look around.

  Some neighborhoods are dangerous because they have too many people in them. But the most dangerous ones are those that have too few. This one had too few.

  It was a three-block walk from the station to our rendezvous, but it seemed like ten times that distance. After all, I had to look around every few steps to make sure no one was following me.

  As for the spot itself . . . it wasn’t the kind where I’d met with anyone before. And I’m not just talking about women. I’m talking about anybody.

  Even my informants, some of whom were pretty rough around the edges, didn’t spend time in places like this. They were too concerned about running into people even rougher than they were.

  It wasn’t even a place, strictly speaking. It was more like the absence of a place—a jumble of mostly demolished walls, the shortest up to my knees and the longest maybe twice my height. I felt like I was in the mouth of some angry god who had neglected to take care of his teeth.

  Not that the site wasn’t intriguing in a morbid sort of way. Especially if you knew the story.

  Two and a half cycles earlier, a developer—not one of the more established ones, because even the most opportunistic of them wouldn’t have touched a project in that neighborhood—had torn down a pyramid there. He was supposed to have begun construction on a new one before the end of the cycle, but he never came through on his promise.

  He couldn’t. He was found drowned in the River of Stars, just upstream of the point where it entered Aztlan. It took weeks for us to find his killer—an employee the developer had fired for making a pass at the developer’s mate.

  In any case, the guy never finished his demolition work, much less the construction that was to follow.

  Which was why I found myself wandering among the remains of the pyramid that had once stood there. What was its name? I couldn’t re
call. Not that it mattered. When something was gone, it was gone.

  What was still very much in evidence was the neighborhood around it, which was even less savory than I remembered.

  The question was why Calli had asked to meet me here. What could she possibly have found appealing about that place? Its remoteness? Its feeling of danger?

  Then I smelled it . . . as dusky and rich as if I’d had a soft, thick morsel of it melting on my tongue.

  Chocolate.

  I looked around to find the source. A block away, half-obscured by a piece of old pyramid, there was a squared-off building with a faded picture of an ocelot on it. The ocelot was the symbol of the Ocelotl family, who held the exclusive contract for making chocolate in the Empire.

  They had a factory in District Seven—I had known that. But I hadn’t known there was one in District Two as well.

  The smell wafting on the breeze it was intoxicating. I closed my mouth and inhaled through my nostrils, losing myself in what seemed like it should be a forbidden aroma.

  But there were no laws against smelling chocolate.

  I had to hand it to Calli. I didn’t know how she had known about this place, but I was sure the wind didn’t always bring the scent of the factory that way. She had to have researched the necessary conditions, and then made sure the wind would be accommodating her before she called me.

  Now I knew why she had been so insistent on having me meet her there exactly at noon. But where was she? I took out my chronometer and noted the time.

  Two minutes late. I wouldn’t have found that observation quite so worrisome if I weren’t in the worst part of District Two, and if Calli hadn’t told me she was never late.

  Two more minutes went by. And two more. I invoked the gods beneath my breath and pulled my radio out of my pouch.

  At the same time, I heard something. A scraping sound—the kind a shoe might make in the dirt.

  As I turned, hoping it was Calli, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I got a vague impression of a mask, a knife—and not much more. But that was enough.

  I’d always had good reflexes. They’d been an asset in the ball court, keeping me one step ahead of the other team. I was even more grateful for them now.

  Instead of taking a knife in the gut, I slid sideways and let the blade cut empty air. Then I grabbed my assailant’s wrist with one hand and chopped down on it with the other.

  He cried out as his wrist bones cracked, forcing him to drop his knife. But he still had one good hand, which he used to sock me in the face.

  I reeled, but only for a second. As he came at me again, I kicked him in the belly. He doubled over, and I made use of the opening to deal him an uppercut.

  He staggered back a few steps and bounced off the hunk of wall behind him. Still, I got the impression he wasn’t done. I thought for sure he was going to put his head down and rush me.

  But he didn’t. He just crumpled to the ground.

  I was ready to congratulate myself—until I realized the guy might have attacked Calli before he attacked me. I had begun to call her name, my hand already dipping into my pouch for my hand stick, when I felt a stab of fire in my back.

  It told me that the guy I’d put down wasn’t alone.

  Fighting through the agony just inside my shoulder blade, I flung an elbow at what I judged would be my attacker’s head. It hit something hard enough to make him grunt in pain.

  I whirled, my hand stick in my fist. I was hoping to follow the elbow with a shot to the guy’s face.

  Usually, I restrained myself from using my hand stick that way. But the lizard turd had put a knife in my back—I wasn’t going to treat him like my Aunt Xoco.

  Unfortunately, the guy was faster than I was. He grabbed my wrist, preventing me from using my hand stick, and slugged me in the jaw with the hilt of his knife.

  I took a step back to regain my balance but my foot slipped on some debris and shot out from under me. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back empty-handed, and my adversary was on top of me. I grabbed his knife hand but he got a shot in with his other one.

  Then he pulled his fist back to hit me again—but I managed to roll out of the way this time. As a result, he hit the ground instead of me. It must have hurt because he stopped trying to pound me senseless and clutched his hand to his chest instead.

  I took advantage of the respite to belt him in the teeth. It sent him spinning off me, as I’d intended. But he still had a knife in his fist, and the pain in my back was getting worse by the second, and I was starting to get a little lightheaded from loss of blood.

  As far as I knew, the other guy’s knife was lying on the ground, and so was my hand stick. But I didn’t know where and I didn’t have time to look for them. It was all I could do to scramble to my feet and brace myself for my assailant’s next attack.

  He had just raised his knife when I heard the screaming. It echoed throughout the remnants of the pyramid, making it sound like there were many people screaming instead of just one.

  Instead of just Calli.

  The guy looked around. No doubt, he would have liked to make the screaming stop. But he couldn’t.

  Not that it mattered. There was no one around to hear it, no one who would come running over to lend me a hand. And the first guy who had attacked me—the one I had knocked out—was getting up.

  It was going to be two against one.

  Except the guy with the knife didn’t go after me as I figured he would. Instead, apparently more perturbed by the screaming than I thought he would be, he grabbed hold of the other guy and started dragging him away.

  I had a crazy thought about going after them. Then I came to my senses. The gods had smiled on me. The last thing I wanted to do was encourage them to reconsider their generosity.

  Only when the masked guys were gone did the screaming stop. A moment later, Calli swung around one of the wall fragments and came running into my arms.

  Which would have been just fine if I hadn’t been stabbed so recently in the back. Unable to help myself, I let out a curse.

  She let me go, her eyes widening. “What’s the matter?”

  I showed her my back.

  “Gods, Maxtla, you’re bleeding!”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I grunted.

  “Good, she said, trying her best to keep her composure. “Because if it were, you’d be dead.” Then she took her shawl off, folded it over, and pressed it against my wound.

  “By the way, nice job,” I rasped.

  “Job . . . ?”

  I jerked a thumb in the direction in which the masked guys had taken off. “You scared them away.”

  She pulled in a tremulous breath. “That can’t be.”

  It seemed unlikely, all right—if the masked guys were members of the Knife Eyes, as I’d sort of assumed at first. But what if they weren’t?

  Either way, I had to let my chief know what happened. “My radio,” I said.

  I didn’t have it on me any longer. And a quick scan of my surroundings didn’t produce any sign of it.

  “I’ve got mine,” said Calli. “Who should I call?”

  I gave her Necalli’s code. She tapped it in, then handed me the radio.

  A moment later, Necalli asked, “Who’s this?”

  “Me, “I said, “Colhua.”

  “Everything all right?”

  I guess I didn’t sound so good. “I need somebody to check out the rail line between Nanahuatl Street and Coatepec Street in District Two. A pair of guys wearing dark clothing. I got in a few good shots, so they’ll be a little beat up. And listen—they may have knives in their pouches.”

  “Hang on,” said Necalli.

  I could hear him giving orders. He got back on the link a few moments later.

  “You know,” he said, “if they decided to escape on foot, we’ll never catch them.”

  “I know,” I said.

  There wasn’t much of a police presence in that part of Aztlan. But then, pol
ice only showed up when the neighborhood clamored for them, and it had been a long time since anyone did any clamoring in District Two.

  “Need someone to come get you?” asked Necalli.

  I knew my two sparring partners might still be out there, and I didn’t want Calli to get hurt. But it would be more dangerous waiting there for help than trying to make our way back to the rail station.

  “We’ll be all right,” I said.

  But we would be careful as we approached the station. After all, we might find our pals waiting on the platform.

  “It’s your funeral rite,” said Necalli.

  “Stay with the link, though,” I told him. I was a fool, but I wasn’t that big a fool.

  I handed Calli back her phone and said, “Let’s go.”

  “You can walk?”

  I nodded. “Sure.” Not that I was looking forward to it.

  Calli started to pull my hand over her neck so I could lean on her, but she stopped when she saw the look on my face. “That would hurt,” she said, “wouldn’t it?”

  “It would,” I confirmed.

  Frowning, she wrapped her arms around one of mine instead, and we started to make our way through the ruins. “Gods,” she said, “I’m so sorry, Maxtla. I never should have brought you here.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Suddenly she stopped and, ever so gently, turned my face toward hers. Then she kissed me.

  I couldn’t argue with that either.

  Chapter Five

  As it turned out, Calli and I didn’t see our assailants again—either on the way to the rail station or after we got there. In fact, we didn’t see anybody until we got off at the medical center in District Eleven.

  While Calli and I were waiting for the physician, I had time to think. And the more I thought, the more certain I was that my assailants weren’t Knife Eyes.

  The way they had run away, their choice of weapon, their style of masks . . . none of it jibed. The question at that point was: Who else would want to go after me?

  The obvious answer: Coyotl’s abductors.

  Which meant they knew I was on the case. But my assignment hadn’t been made public knowledge. I started making a list in my head of who knew I was looking for Coyotl.