Deadfall: A Post-Humans Story

by Bassett, Thurston

  “Things happen when I touch people.”

  “I bet…” He chuckled. “Sorry, that was too good to ignore.”

  Cynthia smiled and shook her head. “I mean people can die when I touch them. I don’t date, because I’m afraid of getting close to people.”

  Tony’s smile vanished and his voice was hushed. “You can’t be close to people?”

  Cynthia’s eye narrowed and she shrugged. “I can. I have. But that is the reason I started studying karate. As long as I am able to defend myself using martial arts I can avoid using…other means.”

  “I’m sorry, this is a bit personal,” he smiled again. “Tonight is for us to have a good time. And I’d like to put a smile on that pretty face of yours if I can.”

  “That sounds good to me.” She sighed. “I’m sick of bad news.”

  “You’ve had bad news?” Tony raised his eyebrow.

  “Nothing you need to worry yourself about.” She grinned.

  Nothing about the case, she told herself. “Let’s talk about you, Tony.”

  “Me?” He raised his eyebrows in shock, and then smiled mischievously. “Ask away.”

  “We met three years ago, when your father was living in the Toorak place, remember?”

  Tony squinted and a half smile crossed his lips as he remembered. “Yeah.” He raised his hands defensively, “I was a different guy back then!”

  Cynthia raised her brows. “A different guy?”

  “Yeah, I was a mess. I had a bit of a complex, I recon. Livin’ in Daddy’s shadow and always doin’ dumb stuff to get his attention.”

  Cynthia raised eyebrows looking intrigued.

  “Look, I was done for petty theft and a little racketeering, maybe some assault. I didn’t have a mum around and Dad was always so busy with the business, so I did stuff to try and make him proud, you know?”

  Cynthia shrugged. “I suppose. But racketeering?” She laughed. “How old were you?”

  Tony smiled and shook his head. “Seventeen or eighteen I guess. I needed to know who I was. Where I fit. Was I supposed to get a job flipping burgers to make my Dad proud? I tried a lot of things, but I only created trouble for Dad. I think I saw you just before he sent me on my voyage of discovery.”

  “Voyage of discovery?” Cynthia shook her head. “You mean exile in Las Vegas.”

  “Hmmm…I preferred it my way.” He shrugged. “I learned a lot of stuff while I was there. Some of Dad’s American mates put me through business courses and gave me experience in different areas. I was a barman for a few months and then I’d be a security guard, a used car salesman and even floor manager in a few clubs and casinos. It was really educational. They were hard men too. If I mucked around or tried to skip my shifts, they would freeze my bank accounts or just beat me.”

  “Wow, some teachers. I don’t remember that when I was at school.”

  “Well, I was a dickhead. Dad put me through a prestigious school here in Melbourne and I worked hard for his approval. It was when I finished that I found myself with no real place in the world.”

  “I know what that feels like.” Cynthia’s smile faded.

  She was always struggling to accept herself for what she was. But she didn’t feel like she deserved to be anything more than a monster.

  Tony noticed the tone of her mood beginning to waver. “Hey, let’s order some food, cause I am starving!”

  “Okay. Then I have to give you the most exciting date imaginable so you’ll want a second.” He grinned.

  Cynthia half smiled.

  Maybe she deserved to have a little fun for a change.

  Chapter 10

  The penthouse lights were off, but it was still brightly lit from the city lights below. The designer furniture cast tall and malevolent shadows on the walls.

  Kara Zang was a professional thief. She had not even attempted to get a regular job like everyone else. This was her talent and tonight she was being paid to take from Bronson Carlyle.

  She crawled across the ceiling, her soft hands and bare feet noiselessly carrying her towards the room that was specified.

  This was Carlyle’s bedroom.

  The notorious Melbourne criminal was conveniently occupied at a club in town, or at one of the expensive restaurants he frequented. Kara was going to have the apartment to herself tonight.

  The bedroom was the place where he kept all his keys and swipe cards for the different businesses and warehouses he owned.

  Kara had already placed two micro cams for her employer: one in the living room, and another in the office. The existing security cameras would not see her.

  Kara Zang was not a regular person. She had developed unusual abilities during her late teens. She had discovered that as long as she had bare hands and feet she could climb almost any surface, even crawl on her hands and feet upside down across a ceiling. Her other ability was the fact that she couldn’t be detected by video surveillance. She didn’t understand why, but it was the reason she was never caught. Anytime she was near a camera of any kind it would show interference and pixelation.

  She was a ghost. Undetectable.

  Kara climbed down the wall, far enough to open the bedroom door.

  It swung open without a sound.

  She climbed in through the top of the doorway and found herself in a room as big as the living room. There were several different cabinets of various collectables and draws of files. The majority of the room was dedicated to a king sized bed and a fully stocked bar. One end of the room also had a projector screen where Carlyle was able to watch films from his bed.

  Her employer had told her exactly where to find the keys: in a wooden chest of draws near a cabinet full of Second World War memorabilia.

  She drew nearer and could see the draw that was described; second from the top.

  She clambered down the wall so she was above the chest of draws, reached down and slide it out. The keys were in the top.

  This was by far one of the easiest jobs that she had ever been asked to do. Since she had been Australia she had not had a lot of work, but she had been grateful for the break. In her home of Hong Kong she had an infamous reputation amongst the criminal element and she was a prized employee of the rich and powerful. Her nickname was Shiver. She got the name from the occasion when her abilities first became apparent.

  Since then she had used her skills to be a thief. She had stolen from museums, factories offices and rich socialites. But a freelance thief with her talents becomes a sought after asset for the greedy after a while, and too many people knew who she was. She needed to expand to an international market. And after all, for a woman that could infiltrate practically any structure, the world was her oyster.

  The ring of keys was cold. It reminded her of the keys in a prison or dungeon in movies. She counted them while she hung there, her feet standing on the ceiling. Her body was streamlined and sleek. She wore only and black leotard with a belt and her black hair was cropped short so that it had no weight when she hung upside down.

  She clipped the keys to her belt using her dexterous and delicate fingers. The next part was easy: she would retrace her steps across the ceiling to the window she had entered.

  With only a slight jingle of the keys she slid through the narrow gap of the widow pane where Carlyle often had it open. The man lived in the penthouse on the top of a hotel that he owned. There was no way for any normal person to access his window. Below it was a fifteen story drop and above it was the roof, which only he had access to.

  Kara half smiled at the arrogant man’s idea of security. This was a piece of cake for her. She crawled like a spider down the windowpanes of the hotel rooms below Carlyle’s apartment till she reached the balcony of a certain room. It was in this room that she was asked to bring the keys when she had them.

  She dropped the few remaining feet onto the concrete of the balcony and found the sliding glass door was left open.

  There was a man lying on the bed with his arms behind his head watching te
levision. He started and sat up as she stepped inside.

  “Shit! At least knock.” The man composed himself and smiled. He was dressed casually in a white t-shirt and tracksuit pants and he hadn’t shaved for a day or two. “Damn, I had a joke lined up and everything.”

  “A joke?” She unclipped the ring of keys from her belt and tossed them to him.

  “Can I do it?”

  “What?” she raised her eyebrow.

  “Okay. Hey! I didn’t order Chinese!” He followed the racist joke with a laugh.

  Kara shook her head with her jaw clenched, which made the smile on the man’s face disappear.

  “Sorry. I’ll get to work Miss.” The man opened the wardrobe and took out the components for a key cutting machine. He plugged it in and the engine started to whir.

  Kara wandered back out onto the balcony to avoid small talk with the man.

  “You have one hour.” She called in.

  “I’ll go as fast as I can.” The man muttered as he began cutting a double of the first key.

  There was a beeping from inside, a ringtone. Kara could only just hear it over the grinding sounds of the key cutter.

  The man answered it and said a few words before calling out to her. “He wants to talk to you.”

  She stepped back into the room to answer the phone. The name on the screen was boss. She knew who that was. It was her employer calling the key cutter to check that everything was running smoothly.

  “Hello?” She took the phone out onto the balcony.

  “Hey pussy cat. How is it goin’?” The man’s voice made her smile.

  “We are on schedule. Your pet ape is a racist pig, but he seems to be doing the job efficiently.”

  There was a chuckle from the other end. “He’s there because he’s good at his job Kara, otherwise he wouldn’t be there.”

  Kara took a deep breath and leaned against the railing. “Will I see you tonight?”

  “Maybe. There is something I wanted to do tonight. A little bit of stock re- distribution” The male voice answered.

  “Can it not wait?” She took a breath. “I miss you.”

  “Oh, honey it’s only been two days.” The man on the other end sighed. “But I miss you as well.”

  A half smile crossed Kara’s lips before she said, “Good bye, Ace.”

  She finished the call and held onto the phone while she looked into the room to check that the key cutter.

  A small pile of replica keys lay on the floor at his side. He would be done within the hour, and then she would repeat her climb up to Bronson Carlyle’s apartment and slip the keys back into the draw where she found them.

  Chapter 11

  Cynthia woke with a start.

  “It’s time to get to work Cynthy.” Matt was standing at the end of her double bed dressed in his shirt and long jacket with his mobile phone in his hand. “Bronson’s having kittens. Our mystery killer struck again and there was a break in at one of his depots.”

  Cynthia rubbed her eyes and pulled the sheets around her as she sat up. “You could have knocked…”

  “Maybe, but I was way too eager to hear about your hot date. How did it go?”

  Cynthia smiled and shrugged. “Can I wake up first?”

  “Nope.” Matt slipped the phone in his pocket.

  She rolled her eyes. “It was fun, okay?”

  “Fun?” Matt grinned as he turned to leave. “Deadfall having fun?”

  Cynthia threw a pillow at his back. “Shut up! Make me breakfast and I might tell you how it went. Then you can write a book about it.”

  “I don’t write those kinds of books Cynthia.” He laughed. “Plus we are late. We’ll get it on the way.”

  Cynthia groaned as she sat back against the pillow.

  ***

  The depot was an inconspicuous looking truck shed in a suburb dominated by government housing. It was a rough neighbourhood and Bronson himself had only been here twice since getting the business going.

  The outside was dominated by over grown shrubs that were half dead and there were bags of rubbish that had been dumped by residents nearby.

  The shed was a reddish brown the same as the bricks of the surrounding homes.

  Matt parked the silver Honda in the cracked parking area out front.

  A scruffy looking man in a black tracksuit opened a small door at the side of the shed and stood watching them .

  Cynthia climbed out of the car, followed by Matt and they both walk briskly to the side door where the man waited.

  The man in the tracksuit held out his hand to shake with Matt.

  “Murry. How’s it goin’?”

  Matt looked at the extended hand and decided not to take it. Instead he removed his sunglasses and slid them in his jacket pocket.

  The man got the message and withdrew it. “I spose you are the guys Carlzy sent over?”

  Cynthia stepped forward and took off her sunglasses as well. “Yes. Mr Carlyle is concerned about what happened. You don’t need to know our names Murry, just show us the damage.”

  “Yep, no worries.” The man lowered his eyes and rubbed at his nose. “Just through ‘ere.”

  The man led them into the truck shed that doubled as a drug packaging depot. Carlyle would import cocaine from overseas and would have other narcotics manufactured locally, then they would be delivered to depots like this one for weighing and portioning before street sale or further distribution.

  “I just come in here at Ten and they was gone!” The man said as he did a little turn on the floor pointing to the empty shelves. “I come in and it’s like this.”

  “Have you canvased the area about who was seen around here last night?” Matt examined the shelves and the floor.

  “Have I what?”

  Cynthia approached the man who stood with his arms crossed. “Have you knocked on nearby houses asking if the saw anyone here last night?”

  “A car, probably a wagon.” Matt chimed in.

  The man stared blankly at the two of them.

  “Go! Call the other employees and get them door knocking now.”

  The man nodded and reached for his mobile phone and headed outside.

  “Anything else?” Cynthia said as she inspected the floor where Matt had been looking.

  Matt shook his head. “They were careful and clean. They must have known the product was here. Our friend Murry didn’t say anything about evidence of a break in either. He arrived at the depot and opened the security the same way he does every day.”

  Cynthia caught sight of something else. On one of the working tables there was an object barely concealed by a container of tools.

  A playing card.

  The Ace of Clubs.

  ***

  Cynthia stared at the two playing cards in her hands while Matt drove them to the location of the murder.

  The victim was found at a strip club in central Melbourne. A popular place for Mr Carlyle’s employees and Bronson himself.

  “Why the cards?” Cynthia looked from one to the other and turned them in her hands.

  “A message.” Matt said without looking.

  “It has to be doesn’t it? Why else would the same Ace of Clubs card be at my house and on the table at that robbed depot?”

  Matt shrugged. “It was obviously left by the same person, or group of people. What I don’t understand, is why they took a diary from your house and left a calling card and then robbed a depot full of narcotics and left the same one.”

  Cynthia shrugged.

  “What I mean is,” he sighed, “why did someone want us to make this connection?”

  Cynthia slipped the two cards into her breast pocket. “You’re right. Whoever it was didn’t want us to get confused. They wanted us to stay on track.”

  Matt nodded sternly.

  “Then I wonder how Jacky is connected?”

  Jacky Boy, as he was known in Carlyle’s organization, was close security, a bodyguard. Last night was his night off and he spent it at
one of Carlyle’s seedier haunts.

  “Right. We have to be fast. They can only keep the cops out for an hour, if that.”

  Matt parked in front of the building adjacent and they crossed the road to knock on the solid wood door of the strip club’s side entrance.

  There was silence for a moment, then a click as the door was locked.

  “Are you Mr Carlyle’s people?”

  It was one of the bar maids and she had the door open only a crack.

  “Yes. I’m Miss Abell and this is Mr Claire.” Cynthia gestured to her partner.

  “Ok. We have to be quick, so I can call the cops hysterically.” Her cheeky grin betrayed the fact that she was not fazed by the murder; she just wanted her moment with the police.

  The three of them hurried up the steep staircase to the main club rooms. As the young woman opened the door Cynthia was nearly knocked over by the thick pungent air. The club was gaudily decorated with dark carpet and raw wood furniture. Coloured spotlights lit the shadowy niches and podiums that surround the central bar.

  “Shit…” She struggled to take a deep breath.

  Matt laughed. “How do you people breath up here?”

  The young bar maid grinned and shook her head. “You get dizzy during your first few shifts, but after a while your body adapts to the smell.”

  “Can’t you have windows open or something? Air-con?”

  Cynthia was baffled by the thick atmosphere.

  “It’s a trend in the strip club business, the manager told me. You keep everything doused in a few different cheap perfumes.” She gestured to the stages and little podiums around the central bar.

  “Why? It’s awful!”

  “It’s manipulation. It’s how you make money with these sorts of places. Men come in and they breathe this air. At first they are overwhelmed by the cheap smell and it eases their minds because it reminds them of younger, carefree times. And then the lack of fresh oxygen and the alcohol puts them into a semi-dreamstate where they are caught up in their moment of pleasure and they forget about responsibility and priorities.”

  “You’ve studied up on this haven’t you?” Cynthia said sarcastically with raised eyebrows.