Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  Mr. Sitwell nodded. “Cut the man’s hand free so he can point, Pontius.” Pontius freed a hand, and Mr. Sitwell pointed to the dollhouse the little girl was playing with.

  Rufus sauntered over and took the roof off the dollhouse. “Do you believe this? He wallpapered the house with the formulas. That’s priceless. Looks kind of like calligraphy, which, come to think of it, would look pretty good on my walls. Thanks for the decorating tip, Mr. Sitwell. You see the ways we enrich one another’s lives? Fate always has her hand in things, despite our clumsy attempts to mess everything up.”

  Rufus set fire to the doll house.

  And next he set fire to the child.

  Mr. Sitwell was too far gone to scream; all he could manage was a whimper and tears, helping to rush the blood down his face like one of those Brazilian mud slides coming off the steep hillsides of his puffed up cheeks.

  The little girl ran to daddy, screaming, burning alive, to give him one big goodbye hug. She set daddy afire, too, causing Rufus to chuckle. “Fate, there she goes again.”

  He donned his hat. “It’s been a pleasure knowing you, Mr. Sitwell. Sorry we had to meet under these trying circumstances. And I’m sorry about your daughter. But history has taught me to leave as few loose ends as possible—unless you just live to be haunted by your past.

  Rufus stared at the burning child, strangely at peace. “Personally, it’s the future and what it might turn into that haunts me. With a few exceptions, like this contraption you built here. Yes, indeed, can’t see any bad coming of that, but it appears I’m in a minority, and as usual, my vote doesn’t count.”

  Rufus left one of his orchids on Mr. Sitwell’s mantle, and departed the house before the spreading fire caused him to break a sweat.

  On Mr. Sitwell’s porch step, Rufus asked, “Where’s the next flower delivery, Pontius?”

  Pontius checked his notepad. “On Claremont Boulevard. Farrell Donnelley. Barely ten minutes from here.”

  Climbing into the Suburban’s front passenger seat, Rufus returned to his book. “Drive slowly over to Farrell Donnelley’s. Forestalling the future can wait until I finish this chapter. God, I love how this woman solves crimes: with class, elegance, and style. Don’t you miss those days, Pontius? I know I do. God, what an ugly brutish world this has become. Lost all sense of artistry, it has.”

  The dull Pontius didn’t respond. He never did, making Rufus’s point for him. Rufus made a sad face staring into the blank stone of Pontius’s face in the rear-view mirror, before returning to his book.

  ***

  “Farrell! Farrell Donnelley!” Rufus said, raising his voice to be heard through the wooden door. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  He held the orchid in his hand, a Phalaenopsis, with bright pink petals, one of his favorites. Orchids relied on their hosts, usually the trunk or branch of a tree, for nourishment. Rufus supposed there was something symbolic about that, considering his line of work.

  Farrell answered the door, looking sleepy-eyed. Rufus could tell he’d been up half the night working on his equations. Such passion. He felt like a poser by comparison. He enjoyed his work, but nothing like that. He knew he had a hand in shaping the future, maybe as much as this kid. Still, nothing quite fills the void of not spending your days doing exactly what you loved to do.

  Rufus handed the kid the flower, and he brightened. “I didn’t know I had a secret admirer,” Farrell said. Thinking, possibly, for a brief second, he’d been all wrong about the reason for the men in black at his door.

  “I assure you, you do,” Rufus said, “several in fact.” He stepped into the house, gently pushing the kid out of the way with his body.

  Pontius waved his hand in front of his face. “Phew, get a load of that.” Pontius lacked the delicate social graces Rufus hoped to some day instill in him. Case in point:

  Pontius lifted Farrell up and dangled him off the ground in one hand in the middle of the living room floor. Rufus gave him a disapproving look. “There you go, Pontius, robbing my life of any sense of artistry. I hope it keeps you up at nights, I swear to God.”

  “What did I do?” Farrell asked sheepishly.

  Pontius consulted his Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms. The paperback copy fit neatly in meaty hands big enough to swallow a cantaloupe. “You threw a spanner in the works.”

  “Huh?”

  “Means you caused a problem that slows or stops something that was going well,” Pontius translated proudly.

  “God help him if he hasn’t figured out that much for himself, Pontius,” Rufus said.

  “You mean my equations,” Farrell said.

  “There you go!” Rufus exclaimed.

  Pontius turned the page in the dictionary. “We need you to be a Vicar of Bray.” Pontius explained, “That means: a person who changes their beliefs and principles to stay popular with people above them.”

  “I’m guessing he figured that part out on his own, Pontius,” Rufus said.

  Farrell flapped his arms. “I’m happy to sell out. You don’t have to kill me. Not like I can afford to build the machine on my own.”

  Rufus explained the hard facts of life. “I’m afraid in this down economy, everyone has to find a way to drive greater efficiencies. And it’s just cheaper to kill you, Farrell.”

  “Please,” Farrell begged. Pontius laid him down on the floor, and this time picked him up by the neck. The next thing Rufus heard were gurgling sounds as Pontius strangled Farrell and snapped his neck.

  “Pontius, that’s no way to kill somebody. For Christ’s sake!”

  “Sorry, boss. You want me to get a book on how to kill people, too?”

  “Let’s not rush things. That’s the problem with the world today. Everyone’s in a big rush. To get where exactly?” He yanked a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket. “The whole nature of a rat race is it’s pointless for anyone but a rat. He wiped the perspiration from his brow. Frustration with the human condition always triggered a good sweat.

  Rufus set the orchid down on the mantle.

  Together, he and Pontius exited Farrell Donnelley’s home into the bright sun. Rufus donned his shades. “We really have to stop killing people before sundown, or I’m going to catch hell with cataracts later in life.”

  TWO

  Rufus dotingly tended his greenhouse orchids. They had a three month blooming cycle with proper care, one of the reasons he loved them so. Few things in life stayed pretty so long.

  They were also among the most beautiful flowers in the world, with stunning variety that played off one another, adding to their charm. It was possible to see life’s diversity as something grand inside his greenhouse, which wasn’t always so possible to do out in the real world where human dissimilarity led to things other than beauty.

  Rufus embraced order over chaos, but he needed to find a way to deal with chaos, too, without it flustering him. Inside his house of orchids, where he constantly added to the genetic diversity of his plant varieties, both elements were in balance. In the real world, this was never so.

  To encourage a second bloom, he clipped the stalks down with a razor-knife to just above where the blossoms spiked. It was recommended to sterilize the blade beforehand as orchids are very susceptible to viral infections, just like animals or humans. He had long learned to do so out of habit.

  Since it was fall, after the growing cycle was complete, he carefully removed the first orchid from its pot and removed all dead or mushy roots.

  The same way he trimmed the dross of humanity.

  THREE

  “You know we have a day job?” Mort said. “Which, if we keep trolling this district at night, we won’t be able to do. Not that we were destined for greatness or anything, even on a full night’s sleep.”

  He pulled down the armrest in the middle of the back seat, exposing the wet bar. “When did you put this in?” he asked, brightening.

  “When I had to contemplate driving around all night long with you grumbl
ing in the backseat,” Santini replied.

  “Consider me adequately mollified.” Mort poured himself a brandy, took a sip, and made a sour face. “Though I’m more of a bourbon man myself.”

  “I’ve always known you to be satisfied with what’s in front of you,” Santini said wearily.

  Mort eyed Gretchen in the front seat, fixing her hair. “Point taken.”

  Tired of babysitting, Santini peeled his eyes off Mort in the rearview mirror. He showed Gretchen how to play with the police band shortwave, and scan for crimes in progress.

  They were driving the edge of the Jack London waterfront warehouse district, about as far away from the water as they could get. That put them across from the Amtrak lines, where rents on loft spaces dropped from somewhere north of stratospheric. “Possible 211 in progress, Jefferson Square, corner of Seventh and Eighth,” spat a crackly voice over the radio.

  “What’s that?” Gretchen asked.

  “Robbery,” Santini said.

  “We should check it out,” Gretchen said. “Nothing worth stealing in this end of town.”

  “Makes you wonder what these sensitive ‘artistes’ did before Sister Gretchen here came along,” Mort said, his pissy mood fueled by the brandy. He eyed the uninspired view and took another drink to numb the effect of the assault on his soul. “Hey, easy on those bumps,” Mort groused, as the latest pothole sent the brandy splashing over his suit. Thor licked it up. “Leave it to you to drive a car big enough that a Bullmastiff can fight me for the brandy.”

  Santini parked the 1949 Mercury convertible in front of Jefferson Square park.

  A figure was crawling up the fire escape on a building facing the park. The three of them studied the burglar. Mort said, “Five dollars says he’s the pizza delivery guy, just wants to enjoy the breeze on the way up.”

  Santini killed the engine. “Where’s his box?”

  “They could have ordered bread sticks,” Mort argued.

  Cracking the door, Santini suggested, “If your brandy’s that important to you, why don’t you bring it along.”

  “I hate how easily you play me.” Mort grabbed the bottle, anyway.

  “You should probably stay here, Gretchen,” Santini said as sensitively as he could.

  Mort handed her his .44 magnum. “Here, I don’t want it chipping the glass on the brandy bottle. I think he inherited it from his great-great-grandmother, long line of dedicated alcoholics that they are.”

  She took the gun from him. “Don’t worry about shooting,” Mort said. “It’s big enough to discourage most shooters without firing. If you do shoot it, don’t worry about hitting anything. The sound’ll deafen him and the discharge will blind him, so where’s he gonna go? As a bonus, the recoil’ll knock you out so you feel less pain than I do with the brandy.”

  Santini grimaced. There was no more time to argue. They raced out of the car and into the building.

  Santini headed up the fire escape. Mort and Gretchen took the more conventional route. Santini was counting on reaching the thief before the others got there. He could hear the elevator inside the building firing up, figuring that was Mort, who didn’t fancy stairs. In his perennially pickled state, elevators made him especially woozy, but with his vision blurred, he rather fancied playing the elevator panel like a craps table at Reno, guessing what numbers to put his faith in.

  That left Gretchen to the stairwell. Flashing on the thief running down the stairs in response to noises coming from the fire escape and the elevator, and running headlong into Gretchen who probably didn’t know one end of that gun from the other, Santini quickened his pace.

  That was item one for tomorrow, teach her how to fire first and ask questions later. He’d rather fix a botched killing than pick up the pieces of his psyche after finding her dead somewhere. He figured he could learn to live with the guilt better than a broken heart.

  Granted, she’d just recently graduated the police academy. But he and Mort didn’t exactly specialize in police sanctioned weapons. Compensating for failing sight, and ever-better armed bad guys, had led to behaviors in general which weren’t particularly approved of back at the precinct. She had already been cleared for detective work owing entirely to her exceptional mind. That was her secret weapon he was banking on getting her and the rest of them through this and all future engagements.

  His hip arthritis had picked a rare moment not to act up. Nice of it. That, or the fear of Gretchen dying on his watch was pumping enough hormonal pain killers to the region to keep him numbed and mobile.

  By the time he stuck his head in the opened window the thief had darted through, Santini had substantially closed the gap between them.

  There was something dry and unemotional about the way the man was moving ahead of him. He had no doubt heard Santini, and didn’t seem the least rattled, which was certainly rattling Santini.

  The guy had to be a pro.

  Santini pulled out his .410, popularly known as “The Judge,” whose bullet made a .44 Magnum’s look like an afterthought. The Judge fired shot gun shells, any number of other suitably large cartridges more suited to rifles. Its most remarkable attribute was it could stop a Mack truck in one shot, and he didn’t need to aim. With his astigmatism getting worse with age, he couldn’t always count on an accurate assessment of his target. The boys at the office loved to chide him that he should learn to shoot one day.

  Of course, the corollary concern was hitting Mort and Gretchen along with the thief, and possibly any sensitive artistes living in the building, as well. Alas, solve one problem, five others sprout up to take its place. The story of his life. Like what the hell was he doing risking his girlfriend’s life on these night escapades just as a way of holding on to her?

  Santini swept the gun in front of him like a lighthouse beacon. His shins took a beating from bumping into everything in the dark. Gretchen had been after him to take more bilberry to address his poor night vision. Only he tended to forget. Maybe she should first cure his memory problem.

  He hit another piece of furniture, and stifled his curses, coming out in Italian, Greek and Hungarian. When he was just plain mad he only swore in Italian. Fighting mad, and his worldliness tended to flower.

  Catching some of the iridescence off the street lamp, Darkman shined blacker than this, the blackest of nights. He had his arm outstretched and his gun aimed at a spot on the floor from which a sound had come. He fired. From the sound of the report, Santini figured a .22—the preferred gun of assassins.

  Santini figured he could thank his lucky stars later, and fired The Judge.

  Darkman went down and the room went quiet.

  Santini found his way to the lights and flicked them on.

  There was Mort, sitting in an easy chair by the ocean of windows, sipping his brandy out of the bottle. He was using it to wash down one of his Tourette’s pills he preferred to sneak in the cover of darkness.

  “I remember when you preferred the passive aggressiveness of swearing out of turn to dousing with those pills.”

  “I remember when your hip arthritis held you back more,” Mort said.”

  “I suppose Gretchen exerts a certain medicinal effect.” Santini swept his eyes about the flat looking for her. “Where is she?”

  “Probably found another bleeding heart cause on the way up the stairs.”

  Santini pocketed The Judge, and bent over the body.

  The guy was only playing dead.

  He brought his legs up off the ground and got Santini’s head in a scissors lock. He had a tight-enough grip that Santini was seeing stars without looking out the window. They were quickly replaced by the blackness of space as if he’d beaten Einstein’s speed-of-light law in his rush to get to the edge of the universe.

  Seconds later, his vision returned.

  And Darkman was gone.

  And there was a suspicious hole in one of the windows facing the park.

  Mort said, “It could do with a good draft in here. The air is staler than a pa
ir of my socks at the end of the day.”

  “It would have been nice to know what he was doing here, Mort,” Santini complained.

  “You’re welcome,” Mort replied.

  “I think I have that part figured out,” came Gretchen’s voice from across the loft.

  “You want to send up a flare?” Mort said. “My echo-location isn’t what it used to be.”

  Santini imagined Gretchen’s smile from across the room. They were feeling awfully connected these days.

  She pushed a box out of the way and stuck her head out. She was on all fours, exposing the path for them. Santini and Mort followed her through the tunnel, formed by the stacked cardboard boxes, though not without Mort first lending his usual wry commentary. “I love playing fort. It’s why I became a cop. So I’d never have to stop.”

  When they came to the “cave” opening, they were able to stand again.

  Loft Boy had himself a computer station tucked away inside the fort built of boxes, which admittedly could put a stop even to The Judge, if not the jury and the executioner. Santini felt as if he’d passed through a monkey’s ass to land in the cockpit of a 747. “What’s astro boy here up to?” he asked.

  “Show him,” Gretchen said.

  The kid put his eye up to the scanner. It read his retinal pattern so he could gain access to the computer. Then the computer gave them a video-guided tour of another kind of scanner, a handheld one, sweeping an empty room. It revealed moving pictures of a murder that had happened in the apartment, only in strange colors, as if they were watching through an infrared camera.

  “That’s a psychic impression left in the loft of a murder that took place sixteen years ago,” Gretchen explained.