by Dan Stout
As we walked, Jax polished the bone-crushing tusks and serrated grinding teeth that made his biting jaws so intimidating.
“You know what happened to the whales?” he asked as we passed a final set of doors and emerged into the parking garage.
I exhaled loudly, trying to let my breath carry my irritation away, just like the shrinks taught me. It didn’t work.
“They got hunted to death,” I said.
“They’re extinct.” He put away the hanky. “Because people wanted the manna in their bellies.”
He was delivering a speech, like he’d absorbed a bit too much of his professors’ lectures on the Great Shortage.
“Maybe there was a way to sustain manna,” he said. “Maybe it was synthesized from blubber at the pressures of great depths. Or maybe the whales ate some kind of deep-sea kelp and it was just a waste byproduct. No one knows, because no one bothered to ask. They were too busy—”
“Hunting whales,” I said.
“Hunting whales,” he said, slightly louder than I had. “And now?” He waved a hand and sighed. “No more whales.”
“No more whales and no more manna.” I rubbed my hands together. “Well, this has been fun.” I fished the car keys out of my pocket. “Do you have a list of other extinct animals to discuss, or should we take this up sometime when we’re not busy finding a killer?”
“It’s a metaphor,” he said. “Your confidential informants are like whales, and if you keep drawing on them—”
“They’ll get killed.”
The garage smelled of oil and spilled petroleum. It set my teeth on edge.
“I know the risks involved in being a confidential informant,” I said. “And so do the CIs. Sometimes they don’t make the best decisions. I think it may have something to do with being criminals more than being informants.” I spun the keys on my finger. “But, I could be wrong. Are we done, or do you have some more metaphones you’d like to discuss?”
Ajax walked toward the Hasam.
“Metaphors,” he said. “They’re called metaphors.”
“Whatever.” I opened the door, slid behind the wheel, and leaned over to the passenger side. But instead of popping the lock I cranked down the window.
“Listen, I’m gonna take care of a few things. Why don’t you see if you can get some traction on the Bell-Asandro case?”
There was silence as Jax glared into the car. It was worse than getting yelled at.
“What?” I said. “I got it covered. You don’t have to work the Bell-Asandros if you don’t want. Hang here and keep an eye on the Bunker.” I couldn’t quite look at him when I said it, but I sold it as best as I could. He didn’t seem to care.
“I’m not bailing on you,” he said.
“Jax . . .”
“Don’t get sentimental. You’re worried that I’m going to try to distance myself, and I’m telling you that’s not going to happen. Besides, I’m committing to follow the truth, not you.”
I glanced at the exit gate, and the unrelenting stream of traffic beyond, and felt an overwhelming need to get moving. Ajax was trying to help, but the longer I sat there yapping with him, the more I wanted to scream. But I managed to raise my volume only slightly when I replied.
“You saw how that went down back there. Can you think of any scenario where I’m not the fall guy if things go sideways?” I gave him a second to respond. When he said nothing, I continued. “You want to be standing beside me when that happens?”
Jax kept his hands folded over the passenger door.
“Just who is ‘they,’ Carter?” he asked. “Who exactly is out to get you? Because as far as I can see, you’re good at your job.”
“Says the guy who was assigned to babysit me.”
“Says the guy assigned to make sure you didn’t act like an asshole in public,” he corrected. “A task at which I didn’t precisely excel.”
I smiled and looked away. I’d worked for years on my own. I didn’t need a partner to hold my hand. Especially if I was drowning.
“I gotta go,” I said, and put the Hasam in gear.
* * *
I drove long, winding laps around my city, trying to clear my head. But I couldn’t get away from the details of the Haberdine case, from the Bell-Asandro family massacred in their own home. It felt like things were starting to connect, if only in an abstract way.
There was a parking spot along Evendale that I claimed, and then, with the radio turned up so I could hear my favorite DJ Handsome Hanford’s morning show, I got out to stretch my legs. I made it as far as the front fender. Taking a seat on the hood I drew a deep breath and wished for a flask of whiskey to magically appear in my hip pocket. But magic was rare and dying out with the last of the manna reserves. My wish wouldn’t be granted.
I rubbed my cheek and ran my fingers over acne scars that still pocked my flesh from when I was a teen, felt the whiskers that poked out from the tiny craters. After years of working alone, it had only taken a few days for me to grow accustomed to having someone to talk to about a case. I decided that I’d have to get over it. Much as Ajax may want me to be someone else, I knew I was damaged goods. I didn’t want to drag him into things any more than I needed to, and I damn sure wasn’t going to call him now.
Set back from the curb, a pay phone stood slightly askew, as if it had taken a knock from a drunk who couldn’t park right. I stared at it, at its torn-off phone book and graffiti-covered surfaces. Ajax wasn’t there to talk to, so I asked the phone itself.
“Who would pay for an attorney to pull Flanagan’s nuts out of the fire like that?”
The Ajax-phone was silent.
“Yeah,” I said. “It boils down to who had the most to gain by making us look bad. Or who had the most to lose by seeing Flanagan in jail.”
I waited for the phone to magically ring with an answer. No such luck.
“Alright, so the diplomats all wanted the negotiations to go through. . . . But someone obviously didn’t. Or they cared more about killing Haberdine than keeping the negotiations going.” I tapped my foot against the Hasam’s bumper, keeping time to the songs on the radio. “If they only cared about killing Haberdine, then there’s no reason to pull Flanagan. Especially if Flanagan didn’t do it. So why the Hells would you falsify witnesses in order to spring the man who’s in position to take the fall for you?”
The pay phone didn’t have any opinions, so I kept on thinking things through out loud.
“Option one.” I raised a finger. “Flanagan can turn evidence on the people who really did it. Option two . . . the goal wasn’t to kill Haberdine. It was to sabotage the negotiations.” I sat up straighter. “Option three . . . he was killed to prevent him from sabotaging the deal.”
I jumped off the hood of my car and dug in my pocket for a coin.
“It’s time we pushed past this whole everyone’s-on-the-same-side line we’ve been fed.” I nodded at the phone. “See? Who needs that college kid?”
I picked up the handset and dialed Gellica’s number. It was time I talked to her boss.
18
I ARRIVED AT A HOUSE in the Hills about an hour later. I was waved through the gate at the top of the driveway, and pulled up to an ornate multistory home ringed by carefully maintained exotic plants.
Gellica was there, standing by the side of a late-model sports car. It was an Aristarov Mark-VIII, sleek and low-slung. Designed for speed, with only a passing thought given to safety. She took off her sunglasses and gave me an easy salute.
“I didn’t expect you to be here,” I said.
“I had to pick up some files.” She tossed the shades through the open window of the car and fell into step beside me as we approached the house. “Plus it seemed like a good idea to walk you to the office. I had to vouch for you to get you on the schedule.”
The early afternoon weather wa
s relatively mist-free, and the property offered a dramatic view, even from the driveway. The day’s fleeting few hours of winter sunlight were already fading, and shadows lengthened over the city.
“I was surprised she could see me right away. I thought ambassadors were busy people.”
“They are,” she said. “My voucher counts for a lot around here.” She opened up the front doors, thick wooden things with decorative metal insets. The place looked like it had been designed to withstand a medieval-style siege. “Besides, you’re still our best bet to get this horrible situation resolved.”
“Am I?”
“I think so. Follow me.” She led me through a marble-floored entry area, then up a gracefully curving front stairway.
“As far as best bets go, you’re aware that the entire police force is working this case, not just me, right?”
“I’m well aware of that, Detective. I’ve talked to close to a dozen different detectives about the case and its status.”
“You have?” We walked down a hallway lined with oil paintings in thick, finely carved frames. The same aesthetic I’d seen in Gellica’s office. Looked like Paulus controlled everything, even down to the office decor level.
“It seems like a dozen, at least. Who’s the well-dressed one, Angar . . . Anna . . . ?”
“Angus.”
“Yes!” She stopped at a five-panel oak door and pushed it open, revealing a small sitting area with another door in the far wall. “He and his partner came around after you did. Sharp dresser, dull questions. Would you care for coffee or tea?”
“Coffee,” I said. And then, “What did he ask about?”
“Lowell and Cordray. He wanted to know if I suspected them of moving funds. He seems to think that someone is blackmailing the clients of some of the city’s most desirable candies.”
“That’s . . . interesting,” I said.
“Not half as interesting as who he thinks is doing it. He didn’t say it directly, but he implied it’s candies themselves who are blackmailing the johns and janes.”
I slipped my hands in my pockets and tried not to look nervous.
“Not,” she said, “that I wouldn’t think it a fair turn of events.”
“What did you say?”
“I said it would seem fair for candies to blackmail—”
“No,” I interrupted. “What did you say to Angus? About Lowell and Cordray.”
Her jaw dropped. “Honestly,” she said. “It’s like you detectives don’t even talk to each other.”
“It’s a complex case.”
“I guess so.” She shook her head, sending her hair rippling over her shoulders. “If Lowell and Cordray were being blackmailed, they make enough money to not need AFS funds. Even if they didn’t, I doubt they’d be stupid enough to compound their danger by embezzling funds. It wouldn’t make sense. Though I’m no cop.”
“You’ve mentioned that before,” I said. She handed me a coffee in a thin white porcelain cup. I took it and said, “Been nice of you not to say ‘I told you so.’”
“About what?”
“About Flanagan. The candies. All the stuff you said that was probably right.”
“Who says I won’t? I may simply be waiting for the right moment.” Gellica set her weight against the edge of the serving table.
“Didn’t you have files to pick up?”
“Yes. I’ll get them once I know that you’ve been to see the ambassador, and that you’ll behave yourself.”
“I will.” I kept a straight face when I said it. “Why are you so concerned about my behavior?”
“Is this where you give me the police psychoanalysis?”
I tasted the coffee. It was good, strong and unsweetened.
“I admit to some curiosity about what drives you,” I said.
Gellica almost laughed, arms clasped across her chest as she threw her head back to study the ceiling.
“What drives me? I think I mentioned my mother previously.”
“Maybe you did,” I said. “If you don’t want to talk about it we can say she never came up.”
“No, it’s okay. She was—is, I suppose—very controlling. I was always under a lot of pressure to succeed, but always at things that had no interest for me.”
“Like?”
“Like fashion and social climbing. Knowing who was having an affair with whom, and what members of the currently fashionable elite we were allowed to speak about it with. The better my grades got in economics and poli-sci, the more I excelled at sports, the less interesting I was to her. It was like I had all the wrong skills to be a real woman in her eyes. I never quite forgave her. Or trusted her.” She took a breath and exhaled with a smile. “I suppose some people have real problems, but those are my mommy issues. What about you, Carter?”
“Mom died young. My dad worked more often than he was home.” I set down my now empty cup. “They didn’t leave a whole lot behind for me to remember them. I was mostly raised by the parents of other rig kids. Riggers are rough around the edges, but they care for their own.”
She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Where’d your father drill?”
“The Ursus Major rig. About fourteen hours’ ride out across the ice plains.”
“Huh.” She frowned and dropped her eyes.
“Why?”
She looked up, and one corner of her mouth twisted into a smile. “I was wondering if he worked on one of my family’s rigs.”
I laughed, a deeply genuine belly laugh. “Yeah, the old man would be over the moon to see his son talking to an oil money diplomat in the heart of some mansion in the Hills.”
Gellica tapped the dimple in her chin. “You said they didn’t leave much to remember them. What did you mean?”
“I don’t really remember my mother. I mostly know her from stories my dad or her coworkers told me. She had a lot of friends on the force. A few of them checked in on me when I was young. Once I became a cop and got to know them as an adult, the stories got a lot less sanitized.” I stretched my legs. “Strange to realize that your parents were regular people, just like you.”
Her smile faded. I got the impression she couldn’t quite relate to that sentiment.
“You still close to your dad?” she asked.
I winced. “All those years of hazard work on the rigs and cheating death on a regular basis,” I said, “and my old man goes and has a heart attack while cooking breakfast. He always cooked up a big pan of bacon and eggs in grease.” I forced a smile. “Which might explain the heart attack, right?”
She smiled kindly but didn’t laugh.
“Anyway, he must have knocked the pan onto the stove during the . . .” I trailed off, let her fill in the details herself. “The fire took pretty much everything he owned. There were a few items, but I didn’t keep them. I thought I didn’t want reminders of my childhood.” I tapped my forehead, indicating that it was probably empty. “I was a stupid kid who didn’t value his own history. I regret it.”
“I understand wanting to leave memories behind,” she said. “And I think your folks would be proud of you.”
“Great,” I said. “At least I’ve got a couple ghosts in my corner.”
The far door opened, and an immaculately dressed man appeared. He inclined his head in my direction.
“Detective Carter?” he said. “The ambassador will see you now.”
I looked back to Gellica and gave her an exaggerated shrug.
“Guess I gotta go,” I said.
“Guess so.” She pushed off from the desk in one smooth motion. “Be seeing you,” she said.
I headed toward Paulus’s office.
“And Carter?”
Gellica’s voice turned me back around.
“Yeah?”
She smiled.
“I told you so.”
* * *
Paulus stood when I entered. She had the same fine-boned features and chestnut complexion as Gellica, but her eyes lacked the sincerity of her younger employee. Paulus’s smile was professional, a movement as polished as a stage magician fanning a deck of cards. She wore a silk blouse cinched at the waist with a silver buckle, set off by bracelets ornamented with turquoise and gold flake. Tattoos crawled from under the short sleeves of her blouse, black ink peppered with blue highlights, matching her hair.
“Pleasure to meet you.” She gestured to an armchair across from her desk. I sat down, and the leather cushions sighed. I could smell leather conditioner and wood polish. Someone spent an inordinate amount of time caring for the items in that room. The office was filled with leather and oak, a palette of scuffed brass and earth tones carefully chosen to give an impression of coziness. It was a place of coldly calculated warmth.
“I have a tight schedule, Detective, if you don’t mind making this brief.” Her smile never wavered. She cared about her time. I could use that.
Every lock has a different key. And knowing what throws people out of their comfort zones can open a lot of doors.
I leaned forward and opened my notepad, flipping through the pages until I heard the ambassador’s sigh of impatience. I was off to a good start.
“I’m sorry, Ambassador, I really am. I’m trying to pull myself out of the doghouse, so to speak, and I’ve got to cover all my bases. Real by-the-book stuff.” I held up my pencil and notepad and gave her a look of apologetic embarrassment.
“No apology needed. Let’s just get started.” Her tone was crisper now.
“It’s just that I need to have all the i’s crossed and t’s dotted. I’m sure you understand.”
“Yes. I understand. Now please continue.”
“Okay. . . .” I stared at my notepad. “Ah! Here we are: how well do you know the envoys named Lowell and Cordray?”
“Fairly well, but only professionally. Lowell has been here for five years, and Cordray three, but I knew of both of them before that. They do good work, though their personal habits are about to cause the end of their careers. I know what you’re asking, Detective, and the answer is no.” Her head angled back, letting her look down her nose even though she was significantly shorter than me. “No, I didn’t know that they were engaged in prostitution.”
