Walking Shadow

by Clifford Royal Johns

  I watched some ads flash around the screen. They showed trips to the Seabase that included train tickets from Chicago, walls that duplicated exactly what was outside a building, which was standing somewhere considerably more interesting than your own, and full body orgasms from opto-magnetic stimulation, whatever that was.

  Finally, I did a quick search for Carla. Carla Shoen was listed as having been picked up and released as a witness to the murder of Judge Kimbanski. They didn’t report that she’d been wiped before they released her. She had her right to privacy for her forget, in fact the judicial system didn’t want her to discover her forget by reading about it in a news article. They didn’t mention me, because I wasn’t detained, just brought in for conversation and general bullying.

  Carla had also starred in a commercial for a latex glove dispenser where you just put your hand in a hole in the wall and, when you pull your hand back out, it has a perfectly fitting glove on it. “As used by hospitals worldwide, for your hygienic convenience.” Useful for an assassin too. The ad only showed her hand.

  On a whim, I looked up Sukey. All I’d known about him was that he hung around with Chen and Paulo sometimes and that he was an Elf. I found his community college graduation picture and some news items from his volleyball captaincy there. In July, his girlfriend was featured in an article about women who are kidnapped for sexual slavery and torture. She’d been dumped from a car in front of the hospital after which she was listed as critical for almost a week. They had a quote from Sukey about how he couldn’t comprehend a slaver’s mind. After that, he also disappeared from the on-line record. After some thought, I went back to the news reports of Chen and Paulo’s deaths. There wasn’t much additional information since they weren’t well known, but I was unable to find a follow-up saying that Chen’s body had been misidentified, and I knew by now it would have been cremated. Sukey’s name didn’t occur anywhere after the slavery article. Kumar had known the body found was not Chen’s, but he never released that information to the public. Also, Chen must not have had any relatives or friends who decided to yell loudly that the body was not Chen’s

  I did one final search. I looked for the origins of Up Your News. Since Chen’s name wasn’t associated with the company, I wondered whose name would be. I found the answer in the person of Denise Okipa—my sister-in-law’s name before she married Arno.

  Chapter 25

  Doorway wandered out of the police station at about three in the afternoon. He turned right and headed north. I quaffed the last of my chocolate tea and set off after him. I didn’t have any trouble keeping up. He seemed to be in deep thought and kept stepping aside to let people pass.

  I caught up to him just as he walked into a local pub. I entered right behind him. When he sat down at a table, I sat down beside him. I had planned to pull him into an alley, but he was quite a bit bigger than me, and my recent associations with alleys were not so good.

  He was surprised to find that someone had sat down in the other chair, and he looked at me wide-eyed for a moment. “Bug off,” he said. “I don’t have any money for you.”

  I pulled out a ten and said, “How about I buy you a beer Hero? We can talk a little about Detective Kumar and about Che Chen.”

  Hero stared at the ten, then at my face, then at the ten again. He squinted in concentration. “You’re that Benny guy. What do you want?”

  “Yes I am, and I’d like to buy you a beer.”

  “Why would you want to buy a policeman a beer?”

  “I’ve offered one to you before and you declined. You seemed to think we should talk at the police station rather than in my apartment. I figured I’d offer again.”

  “I don’t want any beer on your tab. I’ve got my own money.”

  “Of course you have. You get your hourly pay.” I pressed the talk button on the table and asked for an Indian beer. Hero did the same, but asked for a different brand.

  “What do you want?” he said again.

  “I want to know why the fact that Che Chen isn’t dead never made the news.”

  He stared at me. “Che Chen is dead. Personally, I think somebody killed his live-in, which made Chen kill himself, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was you.”

  “Unless he died in the last few days, Chen’s very much alive. Kumar knew that. The body they took out of Chen’s apartment was that of Sukey Mack. They look a bit alike, but I’ve talked to Chen a few times since his supposed death. Didn’t Kumar let you in on that? I went to the morgue and looked at the body. So did Kumar. He knew.”

  “Why would he lie about a thing like that?”

  A helper bot delivered our beers. I paid for both of them. Hero didn’t complain. He looked a bit miffed. “Beandogs!” he said. “We’d been after Chen for almost a year. The trail had just gotten warm. We figured out where he lived. Then we get the call saying there had been a big fight and then silence. The neighbor thought something bad had happened, and he was right. We thought the trail had gone dead cold then. We thought we’d lost Chen to suicide.”

  Hero considered his fingernails. “Chen’s still alive, huh? Maybe I should have bought you a beer. I thought you were his friend. Why are you telling me this?”

  I took a long drink and thought about that. “Because I thought you already knew, and I guess I would have told you anyway. I need your help to figure out who’s trying to kill me.”

  “Yeah, everybody’s got someone trying to kill them nowadays. What makes you different?”

  “They cut the palm lock off my door at two or three in the morning and came in with automatics. I hid under the bed until they went away, but they talked about killing me while they searched my place.”

  “You hid under the bed?” He peered at me over the edge of his glass.

  “Yes, I hid under the bed.”

  “And they didn’t look?” He set his glass down and leaned forward. I could tell he was preparing himself for a good laugh and just wanted to make sure it was really as funny as he’d thought it was.

  “No.”

  He laughed like an expert laughing at an amateur, the same sort of laugh you get when you watch a male dog with one hind leg try to lift that leg to pee. It was a silly giggling sort of laugh. He took a sip of beer, then laughed some more. “Do these people scare you?”

  I sighed. Their incompetence was diminishing his view of the seriousness of my situation, and if I wasn’t careful it would make me careless too. “Yes, Hero, they do scare me. Their guns scare me. Someone paid them to kill me. If they don’t succeed, the backer will find someone more capable. It doesn’t take an expert to kill someone. If someone wants me dead, sooner or later they will succeed. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Hero sat back, ran his hand through his hair and sighed, but he was still smiling. He was trying to decide about me. “You hid under the bed while two thugs searched your apartment, and they didn’t find you?”

  I laughed this time. I had to admit. The image was a good one.

  “Where is Chen now?”

  “I don’t know. Why have the police been after him for so long?”

  “Tax evasion.”

  “Look, I gave you something, can’t you give up a little in return?”

  “You didn’t give me much except the headache I thought I’d lost permanently a week ago, but OK. Kumar was looking for Che Chen. He said Chen was blackmailing public officials using newspaper surveillance techniques and equipment, then threatening to publish secrets or videos or something on his news channel, Up Your News.”

  “Did you personally ever see any proof, hear from any of the sources?”

  “No.”

  “What did Chen’s apartment look like after the murder, after it became a crime scene?”

  “Why should I tell you? It’s police business. Anyway, I’m still not so sure you didn’t kill them both.”

  “I didn’t kill either of them, Hero.”

  “Did you kill Kimbanski?”

  Guilt has tremendous gravi
tational pull for other guilt. The greater the guilt we feel, the more guilt we attract and place on top of it. It feeds on things that only might be your fault as though there was no question. I’d believed I killed the judge, but I actually had no proof except Chen’s word, which I no longer thought was worth all that much. I’d said only a few minutes before that anyone could kill, they didn’t have to be an expert. But I’d been paid to kill him. I was an expert. Did it seem likely that I would just bash in Kimbanski’s head in an alley? No. It didn’t seem likely at all.

  “You know, I don’t think I did.” I smiled and took another drink. “I thought I did until just now, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t believe I did.” Hero was looking at me as though I’d suddenly declared I was the Pope.

  “So, you don’t believe you killed him, but you haven’t entirely convinced yourself.”

  “No. What did Chen’s apartment look like the day of the murder-suicide?”

  “You asked me that already.”

  “You never answered.”

  “Yes, I did. I said I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  “Actually, you asked me why you should tell me. Well, I don’t think it was a murder-suicide either. I think it was a double murder.”

  “It’s not that easy. Chen, or this Sukey Mack guy, shot himself in the head. The prints were just right, the right position, the right pressure, everything. It’s not like you can just put a gun in someone’s hand and fool the police. We’re better than that.”

  The straight line left me gasping to comment on how “better than that” the police were, but I swallowed my retort. “What did the scene look like?”

  Hero heaved an exasperated sigh and drank the last of his beer. “Stuff was strewn around all over and things were broken against walls. There were a lot of empty derpal bottles. Both their noses were wet with the stuff. Paulo’s was bleeding. They’d been snorting all right. Paulo Mui was lying half on the couch with two shots through the chest. Sukey Mack was lying on the floor near the piano, the gun was near his hand, but he wasn’t holding it anymore.”

  “Who owned the gun?”

  “Unregistered.”

  If it had been Chen’s space gun, Hero would have mentioned it. “Were there only three shots fired from the gun?”

  “Look, you’ve got more than a fair exchange for your flimsy lead. So Chen’s alive. What am I supposed to do with that? You haven’t told me where he is. You’ve told me you don’t think you killed Kimbanski, not much of use there. And you’ve bought me a beer, which is sounding more like a bribe than a friendly gesture. You bring me something else, something with some bite, and maybe we can do business, otherwise, I’m not interested.”

  Hero sounded like he wanted to be a detective, but hadn’t made the cut for some reason. He certainly acted the part.

  “Did you know Kumar was dirty, that he was running a blackmail operation? That’s really why he had Carla Shoen wiped, because she might reveal too much.”

  Hero stood up. “Nobody wiped Carla Shoen. She was questioned and released. And Kumar doesn’t concern you, Benny. Drop that line of inquiry if you know what’s good for you. He’s dead.”

  And now I knew. Carla hadn’t been given a forget by the police. Rather it appeared that Kumar had either helped her find her past, or she had found it on her own.

  “Good-bye, Benny,” Hero said over his shoulder as he turned away. He walked out, but he had his head down. He was thinking hard. His headache had gotten much worse, and I was pleased to know that his headache’s new name was Benny.

  Chapter 26

  It was hard to think of Arno’s house as Denise’s house now, and as I walked up the driveway, I imagined that Arno still lived there, that we would continue to sit outside on summer nights and argue about politics and my lack of motivation, or that I would again be brought over for dinner and a girl on Sundays. That sort of thing didn’t actually happen very often, but the better times rose up to obscure the more traumatic aspects of my relationship with Arno. I still didn’t think of him as dead, even though it was I who had killed him.

  A homeless person would have been summarily arrested anywhere within five blocks of Arno’s, that is, Denise’s address. Not wanting to show myself without my disguise anywhere near Carbide’s apartment, I took along a bag into which I stuffed my disguise while in a restaurant bathroom.

  When I walked up to the door and pressed the button, I was struck by how much everything looked the same. The imposing and sophisticated aspect of the house and the pristine and carefully tended grounds were unchanged by Arno’s departure. Unconsciously, I’d expected the edges to have softened, the grass to be less perfectly flat, the hedges to show a missed sprout here and there, even though I knew he hired the work done.

  Denise opened the door only as far as the security wire allowed. She peered at me and sighed, then closed the door, released the safety and opened the door again. I expected a faltering smile or perhaps a weary dull look. Instead, she looked tense and wary. I’d always thought she reserved that demeanor for Arno.

  “I told you when you called, Benny, I don’t want you here. You killed my husband. You killed your own brother. Even if it was self-defense, you could have run away. You could have not come at all. You could have let it all drop. Instead, you had to see everything through to the end. To Arno’s death. I lied for you, Benny, but I won’t do it again.” She tried to close the door, but I stuck my arm in. It hurt, but I just kept up a steady solid pressure until she relented with a huff and released the door. She walked away from me toward the back of the house.

  I followed her back into the solarium. Denise was an attractive woman from any angle, and I couldn’t help but think she wouldn’t have any trouble finding a more companionable husband than Arno. OK, it was a sort of awful thing to think about so soon after Arno’s death, but Arno had been mean and condescending toward her.

  She sat down facing the other direction, looking out into the yard. The remains of the garage had been cleared away and all that was left was a blackened and cracked concrete pad. With the right light, it would look like a hole. The tree limbs around the garage were dying back and the grass was brown where it had been too near the heat.

  “I’m sorry I had to kill Arno. I even miss him, but there wasn’t anything I could do. He and Kumar would have killed me.”

  Denise didn’t respond. She wasn’t listening and the excuses were sounding hollow and pathetic, so I tried a different strategy. “Did you know he used to hire me to kill people?”

  She whipped her head around and glared nails at me. It hurt. I’d thought she hadn’t loved Arno. That he’d made her stay with him somehow. “Why are you telling me this?” she said. “You already killed him, why poison my memory of him as well? Just go away.” She looked out the window again and crossed her arms.

  “There’s something I need to know first. Did you start Up Your News before or after you met Arno?”

  “Good grief, Benny, what’s that got to do with anything? The children will be back from therapy soon. Therapy to help them deal with their father’s death. I want you gone.”

  “I need to know, Denise. Arno hired me to kill people. Some of them were people he wanted dead, but others don’t seem to have anything to do with him. He was subcontracting the jobs out to me, so he wouldn’t have to do the killing himself. I need to find out who was the source of the orders. I may have killed people, but someone paid me to do it, and I can’t let that person continue to operate that way.” I didn’t mention that I would be the next victim if I did. Nor did I mention that they would probably pay the woman I loved to do it.

  “What is it you want from me, Benny? Are you putting up a pretense of investigating Arno’s death, so I’ll think better of you, so you can show me who really killed him in some bizarre version of reality where you pulled the trigger, but someone else made you do it? Just look inward, Benny. Just look in the mirror. You’ll see the killer.”

  I sat quietly, think
ing about that. Denise didn’t believe I would bother to actually investigate anything. She didn’t think I would work that hard. OK, maybe she was right, which annoyed me. I had to admit that had my life not been threatened, I might have left well enough alone.

  Denise was crying quietly now, her face in her hands. She looked up. “Arno wasn’t a nice man, I know that. He had his tender moments though. He loved me, and he was such a good father. He never hit them, you know. Sometimes he would have a temper, sometimes he would get so stressed.”

  “When did you start Up Your News, Denise?”

  “Arno bought me Up Your News as a wedding present. I’d worked at some other agencies, and I knew the business, so he liked the idea of me having an agency of my own. It was a romantic idea. I don’t know where he found the money, but he bought it wholly in my name. I went to work there for a while, got it going again, but he decided that he didn’t like me working, and when I got pregnant with little Arno, I never went back. They don’t even have an office now. I couldn’t go back if I wanted to. Arno had me sign some things once in a while.”

  She seemed about to say more, but then she sobbed and quieted.

  “Can I see his office? I want to see if he has any records that might help.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Sure,” she said, “you can see his office, but you’re not going to like it.” She stood, and I followed her to the front of the house. Arno’s office had been stripped even more completely than my apartment.

  “They just removed the windows, frames and all, and took everything out that way. I was at the funeral home making arrangements for the body.” She cackled, hiccupped, then started crying again. “They didn’t even unlock the door. They just backed up a truck to the window and shoveled everything out.”