Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven

by Michael Jan Friedman

  “Business to conduct,” I said, finishing the statement for her. “If I were you, I’d reschedule.”

  She didn’t say she would do that. In fact, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t. But at least I had tried.

  “Thanks,” was what she finally said instead.

  “You’re welcome,” I told her.

  By the time I finished making my calls—a matter of just a few minutes—the turmoil on the streets had already begun. People of all kinds were running in twos and threes in the direction of the Arena, demanding to know what had happened to Coyotl.

  As if someone was waiting there to fill them in on the details. A maintenance worker, maybe, because I was sure everyone else had left as soon as they heard the news.

  Trying to ignore the stiffness in my back, I made my way to the rail platform—which was in the opposite direction—as quickly as I could. I got up there just in time to grab a carriage departing for the vicinity of the Interrogation Center. Before its doors closed, I looked back toward the Arena.

  I thought I was prepared for what I’d see. I wasn’t.

  Eagles fans were already starting to choke the streets around the Arena, converging on the crown-shaped building in numbers I found hard to believe. There had to be thousands of them, their faces twisted with anger and frustration.

  It was a frightening scene even though I was watching it from the relative safety of the carriage. And it seemed to me it would get worse before it got better.

  Back at the Interrogation Center, some of my fellow Investigators had invaded Necalli’s office and were clustered around his Mirror screen. I didn’t join them. I activated the screen at my desk instead.

  Apparently, a journalist was risking his life to talk with the mob. He was stocky but well-groomed, even in the midst of the jostling mob. Talk about dedication.

  “Who did it?” one of the fans demanded hoarsely of the camera, his face ruddy with anger. “Who killed him?”

  A second guy shoved himself in front of the first. “Show me who it was! I’ll break his neck with my own two hands!”

  That brought forth a roar of approval from the crowd. The camera shook for a moment, then steadied again.

  “Why won’t they tell us who did it?” a woman moaned as she loomed forward, her eyes swollen with grief. “All we want is justice!”

  I ground my teeth in frustration. Easier asked than done.

  “We need an arrest, Colhua,” said Necalli, peering over my shoulder.

  “You have somebody in mind?” I asked, my eyes stuck on the screen.

  “I’m not the Investigator on the case,” he reminded me.

  At that moment, there was a flurry of activity and the journalist was swallowed by the mob. It happened right before our eyes. The guy made a sound—a little squeal of surprise as he realized he was going under—and then he was gone, trampled.

  The camera stayed on him just long enough to show us there was no hope for him. Then it jumped and swung around, and the picture went to black.

  It took us a few seconds to absorb the horror of what had happened. Then Necalli said, “No pressure, though.”

  Like the other Eagles executives, Ichtaca left his office when he heard about Coyotl. I found him at his apartment in District Fourteen, a cup of octli in his hand.

  “Come on in,” he said.

  I did that.

  “That was something,” he said of the fans’ riot, “wasn’t it?”

  “You’re under arrest,” I informed him, “for the murder of Chicahua Coyotl.”

  He made a face. “You really think I killed him?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. All that matters is what the judge thinks when he takes a look at your case tomorrow morning.”

  He laughed. “This is insane. I came back to coaching because of Coyotl. Why would I want to get rid of him?”

  “Because of what happened to your daughter.”

  His eyes went hard. “Coyotl didn’t kill her. And I didn’t kill him.”

  “That’s your story,” I said. “I’ll be presenting the judge with a different one.”

  Ichtaca’s eyes got small. “I get it. This is your way of getting back at me for what happened to you. For what happened to your knee.”

  “Believe what you want,” I said. “Hold your hands out.” I reached into my pouch and took out my handcuffs.

  “I didn’t tell Acama to hit you there,” said Ichtaca. He gestured and spilled some of his octli. “All I asked him to do was give you a shot.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Ichtaca looked at the handcuffs, the creases around his eyes growing deeper. “You’re joking, right? How am I going to coach tomorrow?”

  “I guess the Eagles are going to have to call on your worthy assistant.”

  He shook his head. A lot of guys did the same thing when the cuffs came out. “This stinks, Colhua. This stinks to the gods’ heaven.”

  “Lots of things stink. You’ve lived long enough to know that.”

  No doubt, he wanted to say more. But he didn’t. He just held his hands out and let me put the handcuffs on him.

  Then I escorted him downstairs to the auto-carriage Necalli had arranged for us.

  After I took Ichtaca in, I went home. I didn’t take the auto-carriage. I went by rail.

  Tonatiuh was descending in the west. In the god’s ruddy light, I thought about Ichtaca and what I had just done.

  Necalli had his arrest. I had seen to that. But Ichtaca had told me the truth. He wasn’t responsible for what had happened to Coyotl.

  If he were, why would he have asked for me to conduct the Investigation? I knew the ball court and its customs. And I had just taken down High Priest Itzcoatl, so I had to be a halfway decent Investigator.

  It only made sense for Ichtaca to have requested me if he genuinely wanted to find Coyotl.

  So someone else had committed the murder. Someone who was walking the streets of Aztlan unexposed and unpunished. But not for long, I promised myself. Not for long.

  I was making myself a dinner of cold water snake and watching the continuing riots on the Mirror when Necalli called. He didn’t sound happy.

  “Bad news,” he said. “The coach? We’ve got to let him go.”

  For a moment, I thought he was joking. Then I heard him curse under his breath, something he wouldn’t have done if he were trying to be funny. “For the gods’ sakes, why?”

  “I just got a buzz from Iztli Street. They’re telling me to let him walk.”

  Itztli Street was Police Central, the High Chief’s office. “Zayanya?”

  “That’s right.”

  But even the chief of police couldn’t dismiss suspects out of hand. It wasn’t in his power. The order had to have come from someone even higher.

  “Did they say why?” I asked.

  “They said he’s innocent.”

  “How do they know that?”

  A bitter laugh. “They didn’t say.”

  Fortunately for me, Eztli Zayanya, Azlan’s First Chief of Investigations, was right on time the next morning. As a result, I was able to intercept him on Itztli Street as nasty-looking rain clouds piled up in the southern sky.

  I had only met Zayanya in person once. I remembered him being a small man with dark, piercing eyes. As it turned out, he was even smaller than I recalled.

  “First Chief,” I said, “I think you owe me an explanation.”

  He smiled a cold smile as he walked past me toward his office. “You’re out of line, Colhua. Go to work before you get wet.”

  My strides being longer than his, it wasn’t difficult for me to catch up. “What kind of Investigator would I be if I accepted whatever people told me?”

  Zayanya scowled, still looking straight ahead. “The kind who gets to remain an Investigator.”

  “You put me on this case. You want me to just walk away from it?”

  “I put you on,” he said, leaning toward me and lowering his voice, “because Ichtaca requested i
t. He’s not requesting it any longer.”

  I lowered my voice as well. “So now we’re letting suspects tell us when it’s all right to investigate?”

  Zayanya darted a look at me. It was the kind of look designed to send his enemies fleeing for cover. “You know better, Colhua.”

  “Do I?”

  “This is still your Investigation.”

  “You could have fooled me. I arrested someone on suspicion of murder and you let him walk away. Sounds like you want me to walk away too.”

  “So you think he’s guilty.”

  “That’s not the point,” I said. “The point is that there’s something going on here, something high up, and I need to know what it is.”

  “I’m getting tired of this,” said Zayanya as the clouds rose to claim more of the sky.

  “Then get tired. I’m not going to leave you alone until I know everything you know.”

  Another dark, pointed glance. “You can go to prison too, Colhua. You know that, right?”

  “Is that what you want to do?” I asked. “Send me to prison for doing my job?”

  Zayanya stopped and turned to face me, anger etched into his face. Thunder droned in the distance, still too far away to worry about. He swore beneath his breath. “No, I don’t.”

  Especially because I was the guy who had exposed the High Priest as a serial killer during the last Fire Renewal. He didn’t mention that, but we both knew it was a subtext to our conversation. I was living a charmed life with the citizens of Aztlan.

  At least for the time being.

  Of course, if Zayanya was one of the Knife Eyes—and he might have been—I was giving him a golden opportunity to put me down. And with me down, the force would no longer have to investigate the Knife Eye conspiracy.

  But I couldn’t accept what Necalli had told me and do nothing. Regardless of what I thought of Ichtaca, an arrest was an arrest.

  “Look,” said Zayanya, “someone came to see me after you brought in Ichtaca. Someone important. He said that Ichtaca had been with him most of the day Coyotl went missing and much of the day before that too.”

  “So Ichtaca didn’t kill Coyotl himself,” I suggested. “He just gave the order.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Thunder again, this time a little louder—and closer. I didn’t add to the noise by insisting that Ichtaca was guilty.

  “All right, then,” said Zayanya. “And now this guy—this important guy—is saying with a certainty that Ichtaca wasn’t involved. I’ve got no choice but to believe him.”

  I understood. Even the city’s First Chief of Investigators had to dance to someone’s pipe music.

  “This source of yours,” I said, “if he’s so sure that Ichtaca’s not the murderer . . . does he know who is?”

  Zayanya looked like he’d eaten something that went bad the day before. After all, he’d been an Investigator himself once. “He wouldn’t say. But I got the impression that he had his suspicions.”

  I mulled over what the First Chief had told me. “I don’t have the option of going after this guy—this important guy—do I?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But I’m still on the case?”

  The wind came up suddenly, and I felt a couple of drops. The storm was starting to move quickly now.

  “Correct again,” said Zayanya. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  I had to give that some thought.

  The riots went on all that day.

  Not all in one place, of course. They sprang up here and there across Aztlan, starting out small and turning into conflagrations with frightening speed. They roared with voices full of bitterness and pain, and it took an army of police from every district in the city to put them out.

  Even the rain, which was heavy at times, didn’t seem to have any effect on them.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised if Necalli called me to help out, but he didn’t. After all, he needed another arrest—this time, that of the real murderer.

  That night, I returned to the Thirsty Monkey.

  This time I wasn’t alone. I brought some of my colleagues with me.

  Mind you, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of surrounding myself with my fellow Investigators, there or anywhere else. I still didn’t know if the Knife Eyes were aware that I’d blown their cover. If they were, I’d be a marked man—and what better place to see my mouth shut for good than in a dimly lit bar in the Merchant City?

  After all, arrests didn’t always go as planned. Investigators got hurt, sometimes even killed.

  But I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t do what I had to do alone. I needed to strike quickly, before anyone knew I was doing so, and get what I needed despite some formidable resistance. That meant numbers.

  So I hit the place with ten of my office mates, Takun, Quetzalli, and Izel among them. It was prime time there—about seven in the evening—so the place was full of patrons. They were only too happy to abandon their octli and slink away without being arrested.

  That left the people who worked there, a handful of hard-eyed street types who didn’t look eager to cooperate. Which was a problem, because Malinche wasn’t among them.

  And yet she was supposed to be. Takun and Quetzalli, who had been watching the Thirsty Monkey for a couple of hours, had seen Malinche—or someone who fit her description—report to work a little while earlier.

  “Malinche,” I said to her co-workers. “Where is she?”

  None of them answered. They just glared at me.

  Then one guy separated himself from the pack and walked up to Takun until they were nose to nose. The guy was as big as Takun, maybe even a little bigger. Somewhere along the line, he’d been attacked by something with big teeth and a bad temper because his cheek and part of his eyelid had been torn away.

  “You know where you are?” the guy demanded in a deep, throaty voice.

  Takun didn’t even bother using his hand stick, which was in his right fist. He just pulled back and punched the guy with his other hand.

  Maybe it was because the guy wasn’t expecting it. Maybe it was because Takun got so much power into the blow. Whatever the reason, the guy crumpled in a fair-sized heap on the floor.

  Takun eyed the rest of the bar staff. “Anybody else have an objection to our being here?”

  No one did, apparently.

  “Now where’s Malinche?” Takun asked, a little more forcefully than I had.

  The assembled miscreants exchanged looks, but that was it. They still weren’t going to give anything up.

  Takun glanced at me. “I say we take them in and run a check on every one of them. I’ll bet you we find something we can all laugh about—especially after we’ve made them guests of the city prison house.”

  No doubt, he thought his threat would loosen their tongues. Sad to say, it didn’t.

  Just then, I realized someone was behind me. I could almost feel another blade slicing into my back, as if I were back in District Two among the ruins of that pyramid. I whirled, hoping I hadn’t reacted too slowly— And saw Izel standing there in the shadows.

  He was holding his hand stick chest-high. It was the height at which police officers were trained to hold their weapons, whether they intended to use them or not.

  My heart pounded at my ribs like a drum at a baby-naming ceremony. I did my best to make it slow down.

  “No one back there,” Izel reported.

  As calmly as I could, I said, “Right.”

  I searched his face for a hint of treachery, but he didn’t seem to be searching back. Idiot, I thought. It’s Izel. He couldn’t scare a mouse—but he scared you.

  Was I trying too hard to find a threat among my colleagues? I didn’t think so. Just maybe to find one in Izel.

  Suddenly Takun changed the topic, interrupting my thoughts: “Where’s Quetzalli?”

  I looked around. It was a good question.

  I’d been so concerned about my own welfare, I’d let a fellow
Investigator’s escape my notice. Stupid, I thought. Stupid and irresponsible.

  Then a curtain hanging from one of the walls slid aside, revealing a side door—and Malinche lurched into the room, looking as if she had been pushed from behind.

  “Is this who you were looking for?” Quetzalli asked, her compact form appearing in the doorway behind Malinche.

  “That’s the one,” I said.

  Malinche looked surprised—which was exactly what I’d had in mind. “What in the name of the gods . . . ?”

  “You and I need to talk,” I said.

  • • •

  When I arrived at the Arena, the place was swarming with fans. However, they weren’t there to grieve for Coyotl like the mob outside the building, which the police had finally gotten under control. They were there to see the Eagles.

  There wouldn’t be an empty seat in the house that night, Coyotl or no Coyotl. But then, Yautepec was the Eagles’ biggest rival. When they came to visit, the Arena was always sold out.

  Despite everything, fans were probably hoping that Aztlan would rise to the occasion. I understood that hope. I had been a fan once myself. But I had also played the game, so I knew how unlikely it was that Aztlan would persevere.

  Especially since I was about to make matters worse.

  The security people at the South Gate had seen me more than once lately, so they knew who I was. I was able to enter the Arena without even showing my bracelet. Once inside, I went up to the players’ locker room. Again, the guards let me pass.

  Inside the room, I found Pactonal standing by his locker, pulling down on the front of his green and gold Eagles jersey. He must have heard my footfalls because he turned to look back over his shoulder.

  “Colhua!” he said, grinning at me. “Come to cheer us on?”

  His lip was cut, swollen. I wonder if that had come from a blow on the ball court or somewhere else.

  “I wish I could,” I said. “Unfortunately, the odds against Aztlan just got a lot longer. You’re under arrest.”

  Pactonal looked at me for a moment, then laughed. “Don’t joke like that. If you want to arrest someone, arrest one of those lightning bolts who play for Yautepec.”