Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven

by Michael Jan Friedman

  “Thank you for meeting me,” I said as I sat down.

  She shrugged. “Would you care for some octli?”

  Her voice was smooth, cultured. The voice of a woman who had worked hard on her manners and not much else.

  I waved away the suggestion. “I’m on duty.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Something to eat, then? The water snake is excellent.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “but no.”

  She called over the manager. “One cup, please.”

  “Of course,” he said, and went to get it.

  The woman turned to me. “I received three calls about you yesterday. One from a pet shop owner and two from a hotel. You’re a persistent man, Investigator.”

  “It’s my job to be persistent.”

  “Has your persistence unearthed any information about Coyotl?” Her eyes gleamed in the candle light, betraying her emotions.

  I frowned. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but—”

  She held up a hand before I could finish, and said in a voice thick with emotion, “Don’t.” Then she sat there for several heartbeats, her lower lip trembling as she tried to compose herself.

  I was about to tell her to take her time, that there was no rush, when her octliarrived. She thanked the manager, took a sip of the stuff, shivered, and put it down on the table.

  Then she asked me, “How did it happen?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  The woman shook her head. “I wish I could tell you he didn’t deserve it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I must have sounded suspicious, because she asked, “Am I a suspect now?”

  “It’s not the type of remark you usually hear from an innocent party,” I had to admit.

  She laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “The public may have believed Coyotl was a kind and generous soul. Let me tell you, Investigator, nothing could have been farther from the truth. Coyotl was a little boy at heart, with all the selfishness and cruelty little boys are capable of.”

  No one else had given me that picture of him, I said.

  “Maybe they were afraid. After all, Coyotl was a powerful man, and it didn’t take a lot to make him lash out at you. Sometimes it was just the way you looked at him.”

  “How did you look at him?” I asked.

  “I think you already know that. But I didn’t kid myself into thinking he was a nice guy. He was a son of a she-dog. So if someone killed him, it doesn’t come as a shock to me. I would say it was only a matter of time.”

  “If you had to guess, who would you say it was?”

  She took another sip of her octli as she considered the question. “Really, it could have been anybody. His coach, his teammates, players on other teams, the millions of fans who lost beans because they underestimated him one day and wagered against him . . . gods know, he was always receiving threats from people like that. So as I say, anybody.”

  “His coach?”

  “Yes. A real lizard turd, apparently. He and Coyotl didn’t get along for anything.”

  Xochipilli had said otherwise. Interesting, I thought. “The night Coyotl went missing, his team had a game. But he wasn’t going to play, was he?”

  She put her cup down. “Why do you say that?”

  I told her about the rabbit dinner.

  She looked impressed. “Most people don’t know that.”

  “I was a ball court player myself once.”

  “Colhua,” she said. Her eyes lit up as realization dawned. “Of course. I should have recognized the name.”

  “Was he going to play?” I asked, dragging the conversation back on course.

  Her eyes were still lit as she replied. “No. He told me so that afternoon. But he didn’t say why. And unlike some, I’m not in the habit of betting on the games, so I didn’t press him to find out.”

  “Did he ever tell you someone was out to get him on the ball court?”

  She shook her head. “No one in particular. But he did say you guys hold grudges.”

  It was true. I hadn’t, but many others did.

  “Did he borrow beans from anybody?”

  “Coyotl?” She chuckled softly. “He had more beans than he knew what to do with. If anything, he lent them.”

  “To whom?”

  “He never mentioned names. But a lot of people. Other players sometimes. People in the Merchant City—more than a couple of them.”

  It opened up possibilities. But if the woman didn’t have names, I would have to get them elsewhere.

  “Was he seeing anyone else?” I asked.

  She looked as if she had run into a wall. “Besides me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Certainly not. Of course, he was a ball player. He had his share of temptations, as you know. But he knew he had to make some sacrifices if he wanted to continue seeing me.”

  “What about before he met you?”

  “We seldom discussed his previous liaisons.”

  I remembered the name Malinche had given me. “Did he ever mention someone named Tzique?”

  The woman gave it some thought. “I don’t think so. Sorry.”

  I asked some more questions. She answered them. But I could see that the longer we sat there, the less comfortable she was. Finally, she took out a chronometer and smiled apologetically.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  Back to your husband, I thought. “I understand. Thanks for your time.”

  “Of course.”

  “If anything occurs to you—”

  “You’ll be the first one I contact. And don’t worry about the bill. I’m a good customer.”

  I didn’t doubt it.

  As she got up from the table, I saw why Coyotl had spent so much time with her. Noblewomen tended to be soft and round. This one wasn’t. I could see the ebb and flow of an athletic body under her garments, moving like a slow, sensuous tide.

  As she went by she touched my shoulder. As if she were petting a dog, I thought.

  But she didn’t take her hand away. She let it linger there for a while, longer than I would have expected. I looked up at her, wondering if she had remembered something else she wanted to tell me.

  But she didn’t say anything. She just smiled. Finally her hand began to slide away, slowly, reluctantly, its contact with my shoulder ending in the faintest caress of fingertips.

  I turned to watch her go. I couldn’t help it.

  I guessed she had a thing for ball court players—former as well as current. It was flattering. I mean, she was a noblewoman.

  She didn’t leave me her buzzer code, though. I guess she was still too broken up over Coyotl.

  Sometimes I’m dumber than a stone.

  I had asked the noblewoman about Tzique, Coyotl’s ill-fated young lover, but I hadn’t asked Nagual. He had played with Coyotl, for the gods’ sakes, maybe even while Coyotl was going out with Tzique. It was possible Coyotl had mentioned something to him.

  And if Nagual hadn’t heard of Tzique, I could call Pactonal. He too might have heard of the girl.

  “Maxtla?” said Nagual, answering my buzz. He sounded a little stronger. “It’s good to hear from you.”

  I skipped the amenities and asked him about the name Tzique. “Sound familiar?”

  “It does, yes. But I never heard about her in connection with Coyotl. I mean, if it’s the same Tzique.”

  It had to be. I’d never heard of anyone else by that name.

  “The one I heard about,” said Nagual, “was Ichtaca’s daughter.”

  “Ichtaca has a daughter?”

  “He did—until she killed herself.”

  A tragedy, Malinche had said. “Why didn’t I know about that?”

  “It wasn’t common knowledge. She was a bastard—the result of an indiscretion with some fan, I think. The only reason I know about her—the daughter, I mean—is I went out with one of her girlfriends. For a little while, anyway. She told me the whole story.”

  “Di
d you ever meet her?”

  “Tzique?” said Nagual. “No. Apparently, she was forbidden to associate with ball court players. I could see Ichtaca laying down that law.” So could I. But if she had gone out with Coyotl, the law had been broken.

  “It couldn’t have been easy having him for a father,” said Nagual, “especially when he insisted on keeping her a secret. Must have done wonders for her self-esteem.”

  Most people would have simply have taken her in as part of their family. But then, Ichtaca wasn’t most people. He had a reputation to worry about.

  “Poor girl,” said Nagual.

  “Thanks,” I told him. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” That was three leads I owed him for.

  The next thing I did was go to see Ichtaca at his office in the Arena. The walls there were covered with pictures of his past triumphs, each one framed in copper.

  “Any news about Coyotl yet?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer his question. Instead I told him what I had learned about his daughter.

  His mouth twisted into a scowl. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Is it true?” I asked.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Just between us, right? You’re an Investigator, for all the gods’ sakes. You have to be discreet.”

  “I’m not going to plaster it all over the Mirror, if that’s what you mean.”

  Ichtaca had to be content with that. Whatever he had been hiding, he couldn’t hide it any longer.

  “All right,” he said. “It’s true. Her name was Tzique. Her mother was a clerk in Yautepec—a devotee of the ball court. I was playing my last cycle in the Sun League.”

  It wasn’t an uncommon story. A number of players had fathered children on wide-eyed fans.

  “I saw her two, maybe three times. She didn’t tell me I had gotten her pregnant until after she’d had the baby. I took care of them—both of them. Tzique’s mother told her I was a friend of the family, but by the time Tzique was fourteen cycles old she’d figured out who I really was.”

  “How did she get involved with Coyotl?”

  “She ran into him at a party. Like her mother she was a fan, so she was thrilled to meet the Great Coyotl. He didn’t know she was my daughter and she didn’t say anything to me, so I didn’t know they had begun seeing each other. Before long, she fell in love with him. I don’t have to tell you how big a mistake that was.” The memory creased his leathery old face. “She was beautiful, Colhua. I’m not just saying that because she was my blood. She was really and truly beautiful.”

  “So beautiful that you couldn’t stand it when she died. So you started hating Coyotl. Enough to kill him, maybe.”

  He looked at me. “Kill him? What are you talking about?”

  “Coyotl’s dead. We found him in an alley in District Four.”

  Ichtaca’s eyes widened. “Dead . . . ? And you think I had something to do with it?”

  “You hated him, didn’t you?”

  “So what? You think he was the first player I ever hated? Or the first player who ever hated me?”

  “He drove your daughter to suicide.”

  Ichtaca shook his head. “He didn’t do anything wrong. Or if it was wrong, it was no worse than what I’d done to Tzique’s mother.”

  “You stuck around.”

  “Maybe he would have too, if it had come to that. I don’t know.”

  “Don’t take any trips,” I told Ichtaca. “You’re officially a suspect in Coyotl’s murder.”

  He made a sound of disgust. “Don’t worry. You’ve seen the scores lately—I’m not going anywhere.”

  Necalli called me as I left the Arena. “They’re about to run the story,” he said.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Half an hour. Maybe less.”

  Lands of the Dead. I looked up and down the streets that radiated from the Arena. They looked so normal, so peaceful. But they wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  “Pictures?” I asked.

  “Not yet. We talked them into holding that stuff back for a while.”

  “Reasonable of them.”

  It was bad enough that people would hear Coyotl was dead. It would have been worse if they’d seen him lying on a slab.

  “They didn’t make that big a deal of it, really. They live here too, you know.”

  “Who’s going to say the words?”

  “They told me, but I forget. One of the older guys. They said he’s had experience giving out bad news, though I can’t recall news as bad as this in a long time.”

  A Mirror executive once told me that commentators are supposed to be as anonymous as possible—liked and trusted, yes, but ultimately nameless. Otherwise, they run the risk of overshadowing the news they convey.

  In this case, I didn’t think that would be a problem.

  “Are you going to need me?” I asked.

  “You mean for crowd control? I doubt it. I want you free to figure out who killed him.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  “Solve the case,” he said. “That’ll be thanks enough.” Then he broke the link.

  I didn’t live far from the Arena but I wasn’t sure I’d have time to get home before the announcement. So instead I went into the lobby of the hotel across the street and sat down at the bar.

  This isn’t going to be pretty, I told myself. Still, I was drawn to it the way iron is drawn to a lodestone. In other words, I couldn’t help it.

  When the bar keeper came over and asked me what I wanted, I ordered a cane water. He smiled a tight smile and said, “We’ve got fresh octli. Just cut the limes myself.” After all, cane water was a lot less profitable than octli.

  “Cane water,” I repeated. Then I pulled up my sleeve and showed him my bracelet.

  “Coming right up,” he said with a markedly more compliant attitude. After all, he didn’t want to offend an Investigator.

  A moment later, he delivered the drink. I paid him for it. Then I turned my attention to the Mirror screen.

  The show in progress was about the Emperor’s approval of a new rail system in Malinalco. I didn’t need to see the pictures of the existing system to know how badly a new one was needed. I had experienced the problem firsthand when I was a ball court player, spending several hours one night in a carriage that had gotten stuck between stations. And I was pretty sure the situation hadn’t improved any.

  I knew it was only a matter of time before the commentator appeared on the screen, his grave expression replacing the images of Malinalco’s dilapidated rails. Still, it came as a shock to me when I saw him.

  Like all commentators, the guy was handsome and well-groomed. He had a pleasant manner and a deep, soothing voice. Unfortunately, neither his manner nor his voice was going to make much of a difference to the citizens of Aztlan—not when they heard that their hero had turned up dead.

  “I apologize for the interruption,” he said, “but we have sad news to report. If you’re a fan of the Eagles, you’ll want to sit down. As you know, Chicahua Coyotl, the most famous ball court player in the Empire, has been absent from his team’s games for days. What you didn’t know was that Coyotl was the subject of a massive, missing-person search conducted by Aztlan police. Early this morning, that search ended in tragedy as Coyotl was found dead in District Four, the victim of multiple stab wounds.”

  I imagined every man, woman, and child in Aztlan gasping at once. Coyotl had been like a god to them, and they had just learned that their god was dead.

  “Police have yet to identify Coyotl’s assailant or assailants, or to determine a motive for the crime. However, they say that they have placed their most adept Investigator on the case.”

  I guess that’s me, I thought.

  “We will keep you up to date on details as we receive them,” said the commentator. “In the meantime, we and all Mexica mourn a great champion of the ball court.”

  The commentator continued to speak,
laying out Coyotl’s illustrious career, but his image yielded to footage of Coyotl’s play. It began with his first game, in Zempoala, in which he notched three goals and knocked the other team’s center out cold. Then it showed him in the Arena a few games later, weaving through Oxtlipa’s defense en route to five tallies—a single-game mark no one else in the league would ever match—though Coyotl himself did so on three subsequent occasions, one time against Yautepec in the final.

  It was stirring material—which was why I cringed as I watched it. Sure, the Mirror had an obligation to tell its viewers where Coyotl stood in the pantheon of ball court heroes. But the more it glorified the dead man, the more it fed the raw, ragged pain in the hearts of his fans.

  And before long, that pain would explode in white-hot fury.

  Chapter Eight

  The first thing I did when I left the hotel lobby was call Aunt Xoco.

  It was true that she lived a fair distance from the Arena. Still, there could be riots anywhere.

  At first there was no answer. Come on, I thought.

  Finally, I heard my aunt’s voice: “Maxtla?”

  “Aunt Xoco,” I said. “Thank the gods.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Coyotl’s been found dead. You need to stay off the streets.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “There are going to be some angry people around. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “I can take care of myself, Maxtla.”

  “Not this time,” I said, as firmly as I could.

  She sighed. “All right. But what about you?”

  “I’m an Investigator, Aunt Xoco.”

  “An Investigator who never comes for dinner. I thought you were going to call about coming over?”

  “After things settle down. I promise.”

  “If I had a bean for every time I heard that story . . ."

  I said goodbye—rather abruptly, I’m afraid. Then I buzzed Calli to tell her the same thing I had told Aunt Xoco.

  “Lands of the Dead,” she said. “Coyotl?”

  “It’s a good time to stay off the streets.”

  “I—I can’t,” she said. “I have—”