Walking Shadow: A Sci Fi Noir Novel

by Clifford Royal Johns

  There were perhaps twenty people staring at her. I stared too, not at first realizing it was her and then in dumbfounded astonishment. The distraction almost worked on me, but I stirred and walked out into the main area, sidling to the left to avoid the guard’s view, then I too stopped and watched. No one made a move to rob her or even talk to her. She just posed there, a jewel, an almost heartrending apparition standing among the destitute and the dirty. And no one took offence.

  Our eyes locked for a second, hers expressing gratitude and the enjoyment of playing a part well, mine expressing thanks and maybe a bit of wow. Few people were up at three-thirty, but the ones who were would have a story to tell. I doubted anyone would believe it except as a fairy tale.

  I slipped out the north entrance and hung out on the block so I could make sure she got home, but I didn’t see her come out. I went back in a half hour later and everything was quiet. I had no idea where she went.

  Back at Carbide’s apartment I stripped off my supposed disguise and sat back on the couch, figuring that Carbide would wake up soon when he went to work. I fell asleep.

  About two in the afternoon I woke up to a nut-like basmati rice smell. Carbide was in the kitchen whistling something from The Barber of Seville. When he saw me sit up and rub my head, he said, “Feeling chipper?” He was grinning happy.

  “No,” I said with a groan. I stood and wobbled over to the kitchen stool. “You are considerably too happy. What happened?”

  “Well, you’re still alive.” He grinned even wider to let me know that that had nothing to do with his wide grin. “And we moved the last one today, so I’m taking the rest of the week off.” It was Friday.

  His chipper attitude was getting me down, so I went in the bathroom and wiped off my stubble, took a shower and toweled myself dry with extra vigor.

  Feeling a bit more alive, I tried to face Carbide’s joy again. “What are you cooking?” I said walking back into the kitchen.

  “Shahjahani biryani, it’s a favorite.”

  Carbide didn’t seem to have any troubles. He worked hard and felt useful and productive. He was paid well enough to eat chicken once in a while. What more could he want.

  “Got enough for two?”

  “Well, yes. Enough for me and a lady friend.”

  Carbide was a bit older than me, perhaps a little over forty. I hadn’t thought about him being hooked up with someone.

  “So, do I need to find somewhere else to sleep tonight?”

  He stopped chopping cilantro. “No, actually she knows you. I made enough for all three of us. You’re welcome to stay. I was just being slap.”

  My hair prickled. “Who did you tell that I was here?”

  “Oh! I didn’t even think. I mean—I’m sorry.”

  “What did she look like?” I grabbed my bum’s coat and put it on.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “What did she look like, Carbide? Did she have short black hair, sort of curled around her face? Was she a short blonde, athletic?”

  “No. She’s tall with black hair all in a twirl. She was wearing this dress. . . .”

  “A blue dress, slinky and expensive looking?”

  “Yes. That’s her. She’s a looker.”

  I sat back down. So that was where Hattie went after the diversion. “How did you meet?”

  He chopped and talked at the same time. “I was going to move Mr. Hollner this morning, and when I went down Under The River, there she was, just standing there like an angel. She looked lost. I mean, she sure didn’t belong Under The River. I asked her if she was OK. She asked me if I would be so kind as to escort her to the ball. Can you imagine that? She asked me to escort her to the ball. She wasn’t drinking either. She just asked that.”

  He opened a cabinet and pulled out a bag of pistachios. “Anyway, I told her I’d love to be her escort. It was maybe quarter to four and I was a bit early for work anyway, so I walked her by all these staring people and out the south entrance, and all the while she’s got her arm through mine and she’s leaning on me a little. I felt grubby, you know, because I was dressed for the job and all. I told her I cleaned up OK and, when she got in her cab, I asked her to come to dinner. She should be here soon.”

  “How did my name come up?”

  “Oh, well. She said she didn’t usually dress so nice, that it was only a one-time thing. She had a benefactor. I said that he must be rich and that she must like him a lot. I wanted to know if she was already taken, you know? Anyway, she saw through that right away, and she said she would be glad to come to dinner if it was in the next day or so because after that she would be unavailable. I wish I knew what that meant, unavailable. She might be married and not letting on. I’d hate to be thinking this way about another man’s wife.”

  Carbide had stopped working and just stared at the counter. His happiness seemed to be leaking out.

  “She’s not with anyone.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” I said. “She lives by herself.” Hattie on vacation, wowing the natives and having a good time with my money. She was thinking she would have to go back to her concrete bed at some point, and she didn’t want to get too used to vacation. The longer she was away, the harder it would be to go back. She was spending the money fast.

  “We sort of eased into talking about you. We danced around the issue until we realized we were talking about the same person. Then she said you were her benefactor, and I said you were staying with me. Did I give you away?”

  “Yes, but in this case it doesn’t matter. Hattie knows a lot about what I’m doing. She was my distraction.”

  “Hattie? I never asked her what her name was. It’s hard to think about someone without knowing her name.” He was all smiles again.

  “Her name’s actually Myra, but she seems to prefer Hattie.”

  “Where did you get the money to be her benefactor?”

  The door buzzer buzzed and we both jumped a little. The door video screen showed Hattie and no one else. I let her in. She was wearing gray slacks and a light blue shirt. Light blue was definitely her color. Her face was smudgy from makeup she’d used to cover too much time outdoors without benefit of sunblock or moisturizer, but she was a fine looking woman and she seemed to know it. Cleaned up, she looked to be in her late thirties. “Hello, Benny-Benjamin.” She smiled at me, pleased with herself. “Did I do OK?”

  “Yes, Hattie, you did fine. You should have been in pictures.”

  She looked startled for a second. “I was. Did you know, or were you guessing?”

  “I thought you were a fashion designer.”

  “Oh.” She said moving into the room and nodding to Carbide who had briefly looked up from his intense food preparation. The nuts were dust now under his chopping knife.

  She wasn’t going to explain. She wanted to be the mysterious type. She was doing a good job.

  “What made you pick Carbide out of the group to be your escort?”

  “He looked like he could handle any problems if someone decided I looked too rich. I didn’t want to go out the same way as you and draw attention to you. Anyway, I like his face, he looks honest.” She gave him a beneficent smile.

  Carbide said dinner was ready in a voice that didn’t sound like him. I decided to put off asking them both for one more favor.

  Chapter 34

  We had a delightful dinner, during which I listened and watched while Carbide and Hattie shifted in and out of roles, playacting, flirting, and having a great time. They didn’t seem to notice me at all, yet I had a feeling that without me they would have sat there staring at each other, not knowing what to say. They needed an audience.

  After dinner, I asked Hattie if she could play another part for me.

  “I’m wondering how you ever got along without me,” she said, happy to be asked.

  “It’s been difficult,” I admitted. “I need you to buy a gargoyle for me from Ray’s. I need you to buy it first thing in the morning, and
, Carbide, I need you to bring it here, preferably without anyone following you or knowing that you brought it back to your own apartment.”

  Hattie looked eager, but Carbide sat back in his chair. “Why do you want the gargoyle? Are you putting Hattie in danger by asking her to buy it?”

  Looking at Hattie I said, “Yes, it is dangerous, I suppose. I’d do it myself, but if I dressed like a bum, they would be suspicious of the money, and if I went as myself, my cover would be lost. It’s best if they don’t know I’m still in Chicago and alive. But if you go looking for something unusual to decorate your front porch for Halloween, Ray’s likely to think of the gargoyle himself and try to push it on you. Buy it, then tell him you’ll have someone come by and pick it up.”

  Carbide perked up. “That would be me.”

  “Yes. Since you do that kind of work all the time, no one will be surprised.”

  “And how on earth am I going to transport a man-sized gargoyle with ears the size of basketball hoops out from Under The River and walk it all the way here without anyone noticing?”

  “Throw a sheet over it?”

  Carbide crossed his arms. “I can get a truck, but I want to know why you need the gargoyle.”

  “You’re better off not knowing.”

  “I want to know.” He glanced at Hattie, but she didn’t lend him any support.

  I pulled two fifties out of my pocket and put one in front of each of them.

  Carbide brushed his onto the floor and leaned forward. “I’m not asking to be bought, Benny. Where are you getting all this money, anyway? I want to know what Hattie is risking her life for. We don’t want your money, we want to know why.”

  As if to reject his statement, Hattie grabbed her fifty and stuffed it in her shirt. Carbide turned toward her, wide-eyed. She shrugged with an apologetic smile.

  “OK, fine,” he said, crossing his arms again. He wasn’t happy about it. He was trying to protect Hattie, but if she didn’t want to be protected, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  Staying up for twenty-four hours had worn me out, and the sleep I’d gotten during the day just made me more tired. After Hattie left for the Cuban—she was living high while she could—I laid down on the couch to think about my plan and promptly fell asleep. Once Hattie had left the apartment, the train was in motion, and I couldn’t stop it.

  Saturday morning I woke up at nine, a much more rational hour than had been the rule of late. Ray’s would open for business around nine. I showered and worried. So many things could go wrong. If JB discovered the theft, he might have searched the room next door. Hattie might ask for the gargoyle specifically and tip her hand. Worse, he might let her buy the thing, then follow it to its destination, leading the mysterious JB from Hattie to Carbide and me. The gargoyle might fall apart in transit. The records could break out right there in front of everyone. I wanted to be there, floating in the background, watching, ready to help if the need arose. Instead, I had to stay put and worry. I didn’t know the details of their plan. They were doing it together, Hattie for the money and the chance to play a part, Carbide for the chance to be with Hattie and the chance to be a part.

  I paced for twenty minutes, thinking one minute that I should go down there anyway, then deciding the next minute that I would be exactly the wrong person to help if there was trouble. Any plausible deniability they had would vanish if I showed up.

  A little after ten, I heard noise outside the door. I flung it open before I considered that it could be someone other than Carbide with the gargoyle. It was Carbide, but he didn’t have the papier-mâché beast. Hattie was with him, though.

  “What happened?”

  Carbide offered Hattie a chair. She sat down and said, “Sorry, Benjamin. I got there at a few minutes before nine. I waited for them to pull the tarps off the tables, you know, to open up properly. Just as I was going to ask about the Halloween decoration, this guy came out from the Warren hopping mad. He grabbed Ray and drug him back past the guard yelling about locks and walls and security. He was quite vulgar about it.”

  “Did he say anything about the gargoyle? Did you hear that word?”

  “No.”

  “And then you left?”

  “No, I hung around to see if anything else happened. I went over to the place two stands down and asked them about Halloween decorations, so if I do get to go back my story will have some extra support.”

  “You did exactly the right thing, though I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d left immediately. I imagine there were people who did.”

  “Yes. A lot of topsiders took off when the ruckus started. I waited a few more minutes, then left and went back to the diner where Carbide and I had breakfast.”

  I must have looked startled. I couldn’t imagine when they’d had a chance to set up a meeting for breakfast. Carbide used Hattie’s shrugging apologetic smile on me.

  I had to think. To think, I needed to walk. “I’m going out for a while,” I said. I put on my disguise, which I was less and less impressed with. They asked if they could help, which pleased me for some reason I couldn’t quite grasp.

  I said no thanks, and left, heading out onto the street in the direction of Under The River and having no idea what I would do when I arrived.

  Chapter 35

  While I’d been in Ray’s storage room waiting for the designated time to leave, I’d had a few hours to read over some of Arno’s records. The ones I saw, while useful if I wanted to take over the Up Your News operations, weren’t effective blackmail material against anyone other than the marks Arno had already been blackmailing. I’d stored them in the gargoyle to keep JB from using them, but I didn’t really have a use myself.

  Yet, I knew there had to be more. The number of secret compartments in his office made me think there might have been at least one I’d missed. Some of the disks or memsticks might have had something else on them, but they were labeled and, if the labels were accurate, they weren’t useful either. Perhaps the PAL had some things hidden on it, but I doubted that, since it would be an obvious place, and it would need backups and repairs—too much of a data leak. The information in the gargoyle, however, wouldn’t be available to me for at least a few days, even if JB didn’t think to look in Ray’s room for the missing records.

  The missing records were leverage only as long as JB didn’t find out I’d actually left them in the storage room where he could easily retrieve them. I wanted him to think I’d brought them out.

  One thing I did learn from Arno’s records was that Sukey was more than just a regular Elf for the Gnomes. He was also a surveillance expert and Arno had used him several times. Specifically, he’d used him to take a look into Kimbanski’s private life. Sukey must have found something that hit home, something dirty in a way that affected Sukey to his core, because he’d killed the judge. Sukey went to Arno for help and Arno paid Paulo to give him a forget. Arno had notes about it in his ledger book. He was quite happy and added the comment that he should be able to get my fee back since it was someone else who’d committed the murder.

  Sukey must have gone to Paulo and had the forget, then somehow found out later. I figured he got buzzed on derpal with Paulo, trying to get Paulo to tell him what he’d forgotten. Arno’s notes didn’t specify what the personal discovery was that Sukey had made about Kimbanski, but I already knew from the news articles that Sukey’s girlfriend had been taken by the slave traders and then dumped out on the street after they’d used her for a while.

  I started thinking about what I could do with the information Arno had accumulated. Not for blackmail, but for the police. I almost walked into a stoplight pole. The police weren’t my friends. I had respect for some of them, but the idea of working with them to uncover the slave underworld, or gov workers on the take, or whatever, struck me as wrong—and yet right. It was a messed up thought.

  I went down the stairs and into the gloom of Under The River. Ray’s was against the west wall not far from the north entrance. I str
olled by at speed, going somewhere else. The store was closed. The tarps were back on the tables and strapped down. There were two guards at the north Warren entrance and they were examining with careful eyes anyone who came close.

  It was then I saw Carla. Luckily, she didn’t see me. She strode into the Warren entrance like she lived there. She didn’t nod to the guard, she didn’t show any deference to entering a maximum security area at all. I almost shouted out her name. I almost ran after her. I suspect that at that moment, I almost died.

  I had been harboring a hope for a while that maybe Carla was being used as a bargaining chip, as a hostage of sorts to keep me from doing something consequential. That wasn’t an inherently better scenario than her working for JB or the River Pirates, both possibilities had a downside. At least now, I knew. After some thought, I decided that knowing was worse than not knowing.

  I noticed the guards at that entrance staring at me, so I shuffled off.

  I went to Carni’s booth and hung around until he noticed me. He came over after a while.

  “What did you do, Benny?”

  Carni was rubbing his palm with his thumb. That was his tell. He always did that when he was nervous. He’d make a lousy poker player. “What makes you think I did something? I was just wondering what happened to Ray’s. It’s closed.”

  “Yeah, it’s closed all right. They killed him, Benny. They tied his hands behind his back and took him out to the river then tossed him in headfirst. I don’t want to see you for a while, OK?”

  “Who called that one, Carni?”

  “JB that’s who. Don’t fool with that bastard. He’s a killer from way back.” Carni blanched white when he realized how I might take that.

  I thanked him for filling me in and left. Back up on the street I felt sick. The picture of Ray, head down in the silted river, hands tied behind his back, feet flailing in the air while he sucked in mud gave me stomach cramps. I had to stop and sit down.

  JB was larger than life for me because I didn’t know him. All I knew were his actions. It was like playing chess with a machine, the game loses all its psychological components. You can’t detect the chinks in your opponent’s defense because you don’t know the man who designed it. Not knowing him didn’t mitigate my hatred, though. OK, some of it was guilt displaced. Ray’s hideous death was my fault. There was no way around that. Ray wasn’t a nice guy and the things he sold got people killed or worse, hooked, but I already felt guilty enough. Ray just added to the weight on my chest, and I vented that guilt as anger toward JB.