by Steve Rzasa
“Agent Loya with DEXA should be able to arrange that. My supervisors must give express permission.”
Peachy. I checked the Facebook message.
{Meet at Mosier Gulch at 9 tonight. You and your collector friend. We can deal.}
Now we’re talking. I looked at Nil. “You don’t got a date tonight, do you?”
“A date?” He frowned.
“Mating, Nil.”
“That is hardly appropriate—”
“Forget it. Never mind.” Sheesh. Okay, I changed my mind about never setting foot on his planet. When I get my million bucks, I’m gonna apply for a transit visa to the qwaddo homeworld and go teach some humor classes. “We’ve got a meet with Shackleford tonight.”
I showed him the message. He squinted at the screen. “That is late in the evening.”
“Yeah, it is. It’ll be dark.”
“Then surely this individual knows that.”
“No doubt. He doesn’t want anyone to see this meet. That tells me he’s scared.” I rubbed my chin. Could be the guy was just paranoid about getting pinched by the cops. Or the FBI. “Okay, it’s not ideal. But I’ve met in weirder places.”
“You have?”
“Sure.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “Boston Common after midnight. Children’s museum when about a bazillion class trips showed up at once. Oh, and there was the shark tunnel at the Camden aquarium in New Jersey. My favorite.”
“Indeed.”
“This could be it, Nil. This guy could have an in with Fisk.”
“How can you be certain the artwork to which this Shackleford has access is the Sozh Uqasod?”
There was no way I was gonna tell him it was a hunch. A very wild hunch. Might as well tell him I’d been reading tea leaves. “Look, you got to trust me on this. Even if I’m wrong and this guy has some other glow-painting the Jinn are famous for, it’s still worth going. He could know somebody who’s heard from Fisk. Or somebody who knows somebody who Fisk has contacted. That sculpture’s not getting any less stolen, and if I were Fisk, I’d be itching to get rid of it.”
“Having the Sozh Uqasod implanted in one’s body does not cause dermal discomfort,” he said.
“Wait, what?”
He bared his teeth in that creepy qwaddo smile. “You said itching. Do you not smell it? Dermal discomfort?”
His attempt at a joke. I snorted. Dude was starting to grow on me.
We didn’t say much to each other on the drive up to Mosier Gulch. Not at first. I’d claim I was busy watching traffic, but hey, there were zero cars out that late.
Rutherford texted me back. [Typ code to call Nil. 2736544-787687
-878-8998-0-980-4.]
Wow. Speed dial, you think?
I drummed on the steering wheel. We were rolling up Fort Street, past an IGA and a drugstore. The police station was next up on the left, one massive, fancy building for a small town like this.
“Foss?”
Great. Now he wants to talk. Like there isn’t enough ramming around in my brain. “Yeah?”
“Your scent is troubled. It is the female again.”
“Maybe you should stop sniffing me and mind your own beeswax.”
“Beeswax?”
“Business. Meaning, stop prying into my personal affairs, if you need bigger words. My mother always used to say ‘beeswax’ instead.”
Nil nodded. Not sure if he really understood but he nodded anyway. “Your time with the female—”
I really did not want to do this now. “Will you cut it out? She’s got a name, Nil. Ally Bannister.”
“I am sorry. Your time with Miss Bannister seems to have upset you. The scent of frustration is all around.” His nostrils twitched.
My teeth ground together. “We had—some things to say. They were things we should have said to each other a long time ago.”
“You were close to her.”
“Engaged to be married, Nil. It doesn’t get any closer.” I tried to focus on the neon signs of the campgrounds, the stars peeking through the lights of the grocery store we passed on the left, anything but this conversation.
I have a son.
That was what I was trying to avoid. But it wouldn’t go away. I tried ignoring a splinter in the palm of my hand once. Spent fifteen minutes trying to dig the thing out. No dice. So I let it sit. It got infected and inflamed and who knows what else. Finally ripped the sucker out with the end of my Swiss Army knife. Guess what? There’s still a tiny scar. It was like that.
I have a son.
“Stop it.” The words hissed out between my teeth.
“We need to have this discussion if we are to continue our mission with your focus intact,” Nil said. “I will not stop on your command.”
His tone was slow and precise. It sounded threatening. That and his eyes were narrowed to slits.
“I wasn’t talking to you. But now I am. You don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll keep it together.”
I have a son.
Shut up!
We drove by the church, the one Ally told me she frequented. It was just like she said, brown wood with a sloped roof meant to mimic the mountains, I guess. I watched it slide by. Looked in need of paint. The lawn was overgrown. Decline in membership maybe?
Services, 9:00 a.m., Sunday.
“Do you know that place?” Nil looked back at the church.
“No. Ally does.”
“She worships your God there?”
If I gripped the steering wheel any tighter I’d dislocate my fingers. “Yeah. Probably.”
Nil nodded. He was quiet for a moment. “I would like to visit one someday.”
“You—what? You’ve got to be kidding me. What about your Qas?”
Nil gave me one of those inscrutable looks of his. “You smell nothing beyond the end of your nose, do you, Foss.”
“I don’t know what that means, so why don’t you just shut it and quit talking about my faith. Worry about your own and whether your god cares one atom about you out here on this backwater rock I call home.” My heart pounded. The headache seized me again.
“I will follow the will of Qas to whatever ends He desires,” Nil said. “Just as I have followed Him this far.”
“What?”
“I meditated on His will many nights before accepting this assignment. He wanted me to come back to Earth. I did not know why, at first, but now I smell the intent.”
“God wants you here.”
Nil nodded.
There was another church building on the right as the road rose on a hill out of town. At least it had been a church some time ago. There was a steeple still, but there was also a faded spot on the wall where a cross had once hung. Any driver could see it illuminated by the floodlights that lit up a bright red and white sign for “Big Horn Business Center.” There was still a Baptist church in there, but also a couple of offices and a hair salon, plus a daycare.
Another one bit the dust.
“Well He’s in the minority, or He’s an idiot,” I snapped. I blasted the radio.
Nil cringed. Serves him right.
There was nobody out on the road up here where it twisted up into the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. Eyes glittered from the side of the road. Deer. They froze, staring at us as we drove by. At least they didn’t run out into the middle of the road. Saw a glitter in the rearview mirror. Yep, the Big Ring, right on time in the night sky. A flash and then another. Traffic was busy up there, much more so than down here. I wondered what Nil thought of riding spaceships through those things. It occurred to me that Santoro would know. So would Fisk.
What did it feel like to leap across trillions of miles in an instant?
I shook my head. Focus, Caz. Don’t get maudlin. You’ve got a deal to close.
Soon enough the signpost for Mosier Gulch picnic area and trailhead appeared on our left. The entrance road was dirt and dropped down steeply into the gulch. It turned us around to the left and continued through tightly packed pines. Our headligh
ts lit up the picnic tables and a bathroom. Empty.
“Foss. Down there.” Nil pointed beyond the bathrooms with both of his right hands.
I’d seen the red light flash too. Taillights from something, lit up by our headlights. “Got it.”
I parked and shut the engine down. Outside the Bimmer it was brisk. The temperature must have dropped off into the sixties, and a steady wind rustled the trees all around. Dead silent, too, except for that.
Nil sniffed the air all about. “Someone is here.”
“I guessed that.” I pointed at him. “You listen up: follow my lead, got it? Let me make the deal. No unnecessary chatter. He’s got to be on edge as it is, meeting like this.”
“I will do my best not to interfere.”
Sarcasm? Probably. We followed a narrow trail around the tables and the restroom. Our shoes crunched on gravel and dirt. Louder than the wind even. There’d be no sneaking up on Shackleford now. Which I didn’t want to do anyway.
Sometimes these guys brought guns.
A blast of light flooded everything. Made me good and blind. I threw my arms up and blinked rapidly to adjust. Nil had it worse. His eyes were clamped shut, arms flailing everywhere, nose twitching overtime.
“Foss? Over here.”
That voice. What? I squinted. “You wanna turn the high beams down?”
“No. Get over here where I can see you.”
I grabbed Nil’s arm—his upper left one, I think—and tugged. He must have been miserable because he didn’t complain, just followed me. We stood at the edge of the headlight glare.
“Right there. Stop.”
Yeah, that voice was definitely familiar, but it sounded muffled. Like the guy had on a scarf. Which he might have, for all I knew. He was a silhouette by the side of the vehicle. The pickup truck was red, I think.
“This is not a Shackleford.” Nil sounded angry or worried. Or both. “It is our friend from the bar.”
Jordan Santoro stepped out into the light. He wore a brown leather jacket, zipped up, and dark blue jeans. He had on a black ball cap speckled with paint pulled low over his eyes. Something black and fuzzy fell from his hand to the ground. A ski mask? Must’ve had it balled up in an attempt to disguise his voice.
“Are you kidding me?” I stepped closer. “Come on, Santoro, if you’d wanted to meet me you could’ve just said so. What’s with the alias?”
Yeah, I recognize the irony there.
Santoro shook his head. “You said your man there wants art. I know where to get it.”
My man? Oh, Nil. “Yeah, he’s into human culture. Paintings, artifacts, you name it. You said something about Sioux headdresses.”
Nil squinted at me but didn’t say anything. Whatever.
“It’s not that. It’s way more exotic.” Santoro scuffed dirt into a little cloud that puffed up and glittered in the headlight beams. “Offworld.”
Guy was nervous. His words had a tremor. Same edge to his behavior as last night at the bar before the hitting.
Nil’s nostrils flared. Testing the air, I guessed. Any scent of the Sozh? He’d tell me if there was.
“So let’s talk.” I held my hand up above my eyes. Man, those brights were—well, bright. Santoro didn’t take the hint to turn ’em off.
Santoro dug into his back pocket. My heart was already pounding, but man, did it jump just then. I kept my arms folded, trying to look natural, right? Can’t help it if I get tense this close to a deal.
Whatever he pulled out was dark, and I couldn’t make it out. I really wished I carried a gun. Nil shifted his stance and reached for something on his belt. Wait, was he packing?
It was only Santoro’s smartphone. A nice Google model. The screen lit up, throwing a weird blue glow on his face. It made him ghostly, haunted, more so than the guy I shared a drink with twenty-four hours ago. “Here.”
He passed me the phone. Took me a second to adjust to the glow. The Sozh Uqasod spun slowly on the screen.
Sweet.
A video clip. I thumbed Pause and replayed it. Yeah, definitely our sculpture.
Nil moved closer. His breath came deeper, raspy. “A most sacred sight.”
“Yeah. Bet it smells good too,” I muttered. “So what is that thing?”
Santoro took back the phone. I managed to not let my hand shake. “Some big-deal Jinn sculpture. Your Ghiqasu friend there seems to recognize it.”
“It is known to many of the Consociation.” Nil glanced at me.
“I’ll take your word for it. So Santoro, you figure this thing’s worth a bundle.”
“Probably. Not sure of the exact worth.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Trick is, I gotta find someone to buy it if I want to make any money off it, right?”
“Uh-huh. Makes it harder if it’s something that’s supposed to not be for sale.” I indicated Nil. “Bet we know some folks who would be interested in taking it off your hands.”
“Indeed. There are many among my people who value the scent of this sculpture, such as I do.”
Santoro shot us a wary look. “You’ve smelled it? Then you guys have seen it up close.”
Shoot. He would know about that stuff. He was in the Army offworld and said he’d served with Ghiqasu forces on some rock who knows where. “Sure have. When it was on display down at U-dub.” I grinned. “But I don’t really care how you got it, right? Neither does Nil. We know how to be discreet. So do lots of buyers we know. Especially the offworld ones, who like to pay for this kind of stuff with precious metals.”
“You’ve gotta understand. We—I went to a lot of trouble to get this.”
Yes. First slipup. We. “Where’s your partner?”
“That’s—that’s not—”
“Whatever, man. It’s cool. Like I said, I couldn’t care less where the thing came from. It’s all about the sale.” Had to step carefully around this one. Fisk was the one we wanted. The one with the Sozh tucked away in his body. At worst Santoro was his accomplice and the brains behind the tech used in the theft. Yeah, he was still culpable but was not the one in possession of a stolen alien sculpture built from the remains of their revered leaders.
Santoro laughed, a nerve-rattling sound. “They never paid us full. You know that? The ones who hired us never got us our money. They keep jerking our chains with their promises.”
“What did they promise you?” Nil asked.
I blinked. He was further away than I remembered. Must have taken a few steps from me while I was chatting up Santoro. Doubt he noticed Nil was standing three feet closer, and more off to the right of the truck’s high beams. His eyes glittered in the shadows. Creepy.
“They . . . well, it doesn’t matter none to you guys.”
“Tell us. Perhaps we can prepare an offering with a more pleasing aroma.”
Santoro rubbed at his forehead, eyes pinched shut like he could massage something out of his brain. “They said they could make the memories go away. Just the ones we wanted—I mean, that we didn’t want.”
“Memories? They can wipe your mind?” Like Total Recall?
Crazy.
“No, just bits we don’t want.”
I didn’t know anyone could do that. Nil grunted, a sound I equated with surprise, but there was no telling whether he agreed with Santoro or thought it was baloney. Santoro believed it though. “So what memories are we talking about?”
Santoro examined the top of his boots and kicked a rock. I took advantage of his inattention to sidestep away from Nil. Made like I wanted to lean up against a tree. Which I did. At the same time Nil shuffled nearer to Santoro. We were spread out more, with Santoro at the apex of our triangle. Didn’t need him rabbiting.
A sound echoed behind us. All three of us faced the highway. Sounded like a pickup, a big diesel. The engine reverberated off the mountains, banging its way west. My body tensed, waiting to see where the glow of headlights way up on the highway went. They kept on without pausing by the entrance to Mosier Gulch.
Santoro�
�s breath huffed in little clouds in front of the lights. “Hey, Santoro. Jordan.” I snapped my fingers to get his attention. He jerked but didn’t pull anything else from his pockets. You know, like a gun. “What memories are you talking about?”
“Oh, right. They said they’d wipe memories of the job once we made the exchange. Keep stalling on that too.” Sweat glistened. Not good. Guy was getting nervous. Made him unpredictable. But it also kept his trap flapping. I wasn’t complaining. “But more than that. They promised as part of the payment to wipe all the memories of our service offworld.
Man. No wonder they’d—whoever they were—roped these boys into the theft.
Santoro shuddered. “Everything we did, everything we saw. Things no human should ever have to experience. It could all go away. Maybe I could finally sleep again.”
“Sounds like a good payment to me,” I murmured.
“But they have not given further instruction.” Nil sniffed the air again. The skin under his eyes creased. Something bugged him. But he couldn’t tell me. Not in front of Santoro.
“No. Nothing but ‘Hold.’ Yeah, okay.” Santoro snorted. “Got enough of that in the Third Cav, right? Hurry up and wait. So we know how to follow orders.”
“Forget those guys, Santoro. They welched on the deal, sounds like. We can do you better. Get you whatever you and your partner want and take that sculpture off your hands. There’s no telling the ceiling on the price people—or aliens—will pay for it.” I shrugged. “Might even be able to help on that memory thing. Right, Nil? Your race has to have some tech that can do stuff like that.”
Nil nodded slowly and deliberately. He met my gaze. “I have heard of such treatments. But I had not realized the technology had been advanced on Earth. By humans, that is.”
Santoro opened his mouth, like he was gonna blab, then clamped it shut again.
Close. Okay. No problem. If we don’t get it out of him, DEXA will. I felt the bulge of my phone in my pocket. Time to check back in with Rutherford. He’d eat this one up. Might even be happy enough to text properly.
“You guys can do something for us? Like with the memories?” Santoro’s scowl faded. Like a boy on Christmas morning who just realized there’s one more present under the tree and it’s got his name on it, and everything else he’s opened was socks and sweaters.
