by Jeff Edwards
Tiny windows of nudity drifted slowly across her body like clouds being chased by the wind. I tried not to stare as one of the transparent patches flowed diagonally across her rib cage and up around the curve of her breast, revealing the cinnamon-toast brown of her nipple.
Cinched tight around her waist was a broad black belt with leaves of ivy embroidered in metallic green thread. Her shoes were those impossibly high stiletto pumps that street kids call fuck-me shoes.
She was beautiful; as beautiful as surgical boutiques and DNA-modifying viral cultures could make her.
Beautiful. Perfect. Artificial.
“Wow,” John said softly. He tipped his drink slightly in the woman’s direction and then took a sip.
A second later, the woman stood beside our table. She looked at John. “Are you David Stalin?”
John hooked a thumb in my direction. “There’s your man...”
The woman turned toward me and held out one of my old business cards. “I called your office,” she said, “but the number is out of service. I tried the address on your card, but it looks like they’ve turned that whole building into a pump shop for commercial steroids. If you’ll tell me where you’ve moved your office, I’ll be glad to drop by during business hours.”
Her perfume was delicate, but overtly sensual. It must have been packed with pheromones, because it was down-loading sexual imperatives to my reproductive system on a frequency that I barely managed to ignore.
“I didn’t move my office,” I said. “I closed it.”
I took another sip of scotch, and paused while it ran down my throat. “I’m out of the business.”
John watched me, nodding his head slightly as if encouraging me to somehow take advantage of the situation.
The woman’s shoulders slumped a little. She stared down at the table top. “I need your help Mr. Stalin.”
“I’m sorry, Ms...”
She glanced up. “Winter,” she said. “Sonja Winter.”
“I’m sorry Ms. Winter, but I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
Her eyes were glassy, as though a tear might find its way down those long lashes any second. “I need your help,” she said again. “I’ve run out of options. You’re the last hope I’ve got.”
As I stared into her eyes, I realized that her eye shadow and lipstick were not makeup. They were tattooed on.
I cleared my throat softly. “I’m not anybody’s last hope. There are a thousand private detectives out there that are as good as, or better than I ever was. All you have to do to find one is walk to the nearest public terminal and access the business directory.”
The entire situation was right out of an old Mike Hammer vid, but even the bizarrely cliché quality of our conversation didn’t stop me from feeling like a totally heartless bastard as the first tear rolled down her cheek.
“If you’ll let me tell you…” Her voice trailed off. “If you’ll please just... reconsider…”
“Cut her some slack,” John said. “It might do both of you some good.”
“There’s nothing to reconsider,” I said. “I’m out of the business, and I’m not going back.”
The woman closed her eyes for a long second. The first tear was joined by a second, then a third.
She swallowed heavily. “It’s my brother,” she said. “He’s been... he was murdered.”
“Then you’ve definitely got the wrong guy for the job,” I said. “You need to call the police.”
She opened her eyes and brushed her fingers across her cheeks, wiping away tears. “The police know all about it,” she said. “They’re not interested in finding the killer.”
Out of reflex, I nearly asked the only logical question. I caught myself just in time, and shut my mouth. She was a smart one. She was dangling the bait right in front of my lips. A murder had been committed, and the cops had decided not to investigate. The very idea suggested either ineptitude the part of the police, or some kind of cover-up. What detective (or even ex-detective) could resist finding out which?
I took a swallow of scotch. If I asked that first question, I’d have to follow it up with another one, and then ten more after that. Before I knew it, I’d be up to my neck in this woman’s problems. I wanted no part of that.
John nudged me under the table.
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He was nodding nearly imperceptibly, urging me to go for it.
I turned my eyes back to the woman. “I don’t know anything about your brother,” I said, “but I’m sure the cops have their reasons. I’m not going to second-guess them.”
The white skin of her cheeks took on the slightest hint of pink. She swallowed, and then nodded slowly. “I’m sorry I troubled you, Mr. Stalin. Thank you for your time.”
I nodded.
She started to turn away and then turned back. “Your new career, do you mind if I ask what it is?”
Her voice was quiet, her carriage dignified. Somewhere behind eye shadow tattoos and fuck-me shoes was a woman with character.
“I’m a sculptor,” I said. “Metals.”
A feeble smile tugged at the corners of her lips. She dropped the old business card on the table and walked away.
When the door closed behind her, John reached across the table and pressed his fingertips against the inside of my wrist. His lips moved, as though he was counting under his breath.
I stared at him. “What are you doing?”
“Checking for a pulse,” he said. “After you let a gorgeous thing like that walk out the door, I was afraid you might be dead.”
I tugged my arm away.
John raised his eyebrows. “You sure weren’t like this in the old days.” He grinned. “How about that gun-ship pilot you hooked up with in Porto Alegre? The Nordic blonde with legs up to her neck?”
“I remember,” I said.
I picked up the business card and turned it over. The front was iridescent silver with our old logo in blue 3-D capitals.
CARTER AND STALIN
PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS
M. CARTER D. STALIN
The holographic lettering seemed to float two or three centimeters above the card. Across the back was a data strip containing the office’s address and phone number.
I’d never liked those cards. They were too flashy and too expensive. I’d voted for black printing on white cardboard. Maggie had loved them, though. She’d liked the final batch best of all, the ones where her last name had been Stalin, instead of Carter.
John reached out for the card. I handed it to him.
He whistled softly through his teeth. “I still can’t believe you didn’t go for that,” he said. He read the card and then tapped the edge of it on the top of the table three or four times. “I’ll bet you haven’t seen one of these in a long time.”
“A long time,” I echoed. I downed the last of the Cutty in a single gulp and called for another.
John put his hand on my forearm. “Take it easy, Sarge. We’ve got all night, buddy.”
When my new drink came, I closed my eyes, leaned back into the red tucked leather upholstery, and let the voice of Billie Holiday carry me away.
CHAPTER 2
“David, wake up.”
I opened one eye and fought to drag the green digits of the clock into focus. The clock won the first round, its readout remained blurry and danced in dizzying circles.
“David, wake up. There is someone at the door.”
I opened the other eye and rubbed them both. “Okay, House,” I grunted. “I’m awake. What’s up?”
“There is a visitor at the front door, identity unknown.”
I sat up and stretched, my lower back making unpleasant popping noises. “House, give me half lighting and a picture of our guest, uh... one-way visual, far wall, life-size, no audio.”
The room lights slowly faded up to half brightness and the wall across from my bed sizzled to life.
I was starting to wake up. The image on the wall screen wasn’t n
early as hard to focus on as the clock had been. It was the woman from the bar: Sonja something... Sonja... Winter. Yeah, that sounded right.
The insides of my teeth felt fuzzy. “House, let me have two-way audio, please.”
A soft chime told me that House had enabled the connection.
I cleared my throat. “Good morning, Ms. Winter. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She looked directly at the camera pickup. “I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”
I squinted at the clock again; it was a little after noon. I climbed out of bed and stumbled toward the bathroom. “Sure, just a minute. House, audio off.”
Again the chime.
“House, run a hot shower and start some coffee. Scan the lady for weapons and then let her in. Oh, and keep an eye on her.”
“Of course, David.”
The sound of the shower starting told me that House was on top of things.
Fifteen minutes later, I was clean and reasonably awake.
After a stop in the kitchen to grab two cups of coffee, I went in search of my guest. I could have asked House where she was; he knew to within a millimeter. I preferred to find her myself. It gave me a little extra time to think.
I knew what my uninvited visitor wanted, and I wasn’t prepared to give it to her. I was going to have to disappoint this woman for the second time in as many days.
I found her in the loft, examining one of my sculptures, a hammered-iron casting of a pair of woman’s arms reaching up through a plate of blackened steel. The iron fingers were curled and grasping, as though the unseen woman in the sculpture were trying to claw her way up out of some dark pit. I called the piece The Quest for Air.
Ms. Winter was dressed more conservatively than she had been the night before: brown slacks and a cream pullover sweater. Gone were the porn queen shoes and pheromone perfume. Only her eye shadow and lipstick tattoos spoiled the girl-next-door image.
She turned around and caught me staring at her.
I handed her a cup of coffee. “I hope you like cream and sugar.”
She took a tiny sip. “This is perfect. Thank you.”
Her eyes swept the room, taking in the polished oak decking and vaulted ceilings. “This place is huge.”
I nodded. “It used to be the local LA-Trans office. We bought it for a song when they pulled the MagLev trains out of the Zone.”
Her eyes turned back to the sculpture. “I like this. It’s, I don’t know... dark. It sort of... broods. Is it one of your pieces?”
“Yeah. An old one. I never have decided if I like it.”
She reached out to touch it, glancing at me sideways to see if I objected. She gave a little gasp of surprise when her fingers passed through it. “Oh! It’s a hologram. But it looks so real.”
“The projector is built into the pedestal,” I said. “I keep the lighting soft in here, to make it hard to see the scan lines.”
She looked around the room at the other dozen-odd pieces. “Are the rest of them holograms too?”
I pointed. “That one’s a holo. So is that one, and those two over there. Most of the rest are real. When I sell one, I shoot a holo of it before I let the original go. Silly I guess, but they almost feel like my children. I hate to let them go entirely.”
She nodded. We stood without talking for a few moments. It became a stalemate, each of us waiting for the other to break the silence.
I gave in first. “How did you get Rico to give you my address?”
She raised one eyebrow.
“Come on, Ms. Winter, the business card you handed me is four years old, and there’s nothing in the data strip to link me to this address. In my book, anyone good enough to follow a trail that cold doesn’t need to hire a detective. You got the card and my address from Rico, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “He said you were the best.”
“Rico exaggerates,” I said. “He’s a great guy and a damned good bartender. But that doesn’t exactly make him an expert on the private spook business. I’m tired; I’m out of the game, and I’m not going back. Rico knows all of that.”
“I’ve tried other detectives,” she said. “They think I’m crazy. Rico said you would at least give me a chance to explain. He also said something about you needing to get back on the horse.”
She tilted her head slightly to one side. “What do you suppose he meant by that? I’ve never even seen a horse. They’ve been extinct since before I was born.”
I rubbed the stubble on my chin, and realized that I had forgotten to shave. “It’s an old cliché. It means that Rico thinks it’s time for me to come out of retirement.”
I shook my head. “Rico is starting to sound like John. Both of them seem to think they know what’s good for me.”
She watched me without speaking.
A good detective or attorney knows how to use silence as a tool. Most people can’t bear more than a few seconds of silence at a time. When conversation lags, they feel obligated to say something, anything to fill the void. If you let them babble long enough, they will eventually slip up and say something they don’t want you to know. Ms. Winter would have made a good interrogator. She remained silent long enough to put the ball back into my court.
Once again, I found myself breaking the stalemate. “All right, I’ll listen to whatever you have to day. But don’t get your hopes up. I have no intention of changing my mind.”
The woman followed me into the den. I climbed into my favorite chair, an overstuffed brown wingback from another age. She chose the couch. I lit a cigarette and wiggled into a comfortable slouch; it was my house and she was an uninvited guest. I had no reason to be on my best behavior.
A plume of smoke left my lips, blossomed and then darted toward the ceiling as House reconfigured the ventilation system to draw my smoke away from our guest. The bastard. His manners always had been better than mine.
Ms. Winter sat stiffly erect, as if she were afraid that I would read something sexual into casual body language.
I settled back and took a healthy swallow of rapidly cooling coffee. This time it was her turn to break the silence. I wasn’t going to coax her. She had come here to tell me something. Now she would either tell it, or she wouldn’t.
She inhaled sharply, steeling herself to say something she didn’t want to say. The breath held for a second, then two, then three. “My brother was Michael Winter... the Michael Winter.”
The words came out in a rush, as if they were a bad taste in her mouth and she wanted to spit them out.
“Obviously you expect me to know who the Michael Winter is, or was... I believe you told me last night that he’d been murdered. I have to confess ignorance. I don’t have a clue who you are talking about.”
The look on her face was pure surprise. “Don’t you watch the vid? Scan the news sites?”
I shook my head. “I stopped paying attention to that stuff a few years ago. The stories don’t really change, just the faces and names. What is, or was, this brother of yours? A vid star?”
Her voice was a tense near-whisper. “A serial killer.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a clever response. I was still working on it when she handed me something. It was a data chip, the flat fingernail-sized kind, like they use in holo-cameras.
“Here,” she said. “Play this. Then I’ll explain.”
I stood up and walked across the den to the little Queen Anne table that held my holo-deck. The table was one of Maggie’s many ‘discoveries.’ She’d rescued it from a dusty curio shop in West Hollywood. It was supposedly a genuine antique, but we’d never gotten around to having it authenticated.
The holo-deck was a fat lozenge of matte black plastic; its streamlined profile played sharp counterpoint to the inlaid ivory and dark wood of Maggie’s table.
I hadn’t used the deck in so long that I wasn’t even sure if it would work. I plugged in the data chip, punched the power button, and walked back to my chair. The air above the unit snowed video s
tatic until I found the remote and punched the play button.
A seedy hotel room coalesced out of the snow. The walls were painted hot pink and the paint was peeling badly. One entire wall and—from the looks of it—most of the ceiling, were covered with cheap plastic mirrors. Bolted to the wall just inside the door was a blood-scanner, the kind that used to be standard fixtures in hotel rooms before over-the-counter AIDS III tests hit the market.
The camera had one of those circuits that superimposed the time and date of the recording over the image. It appeared in the lower right hand corner of the picture in electric blue alphanumerics. The very first time code read11:42 p.m./14APR2063.
The scene wobbled, as though something had jarred the camera, and then someone walked directly in front of the lens. The image was blurry for a second as the camera’s microprocessor compensated for the change in depth of field. When it focused, a man was sitting on the bed. The image was poorly framed, the man well to the left of center, as though he had miscalculated the camera’s field of view.
He was young, perhaps twenty-five. His face was familiar. I knew I’d never seen it before, but I had seen another like it: Sonja Winter. Their features shared that too-perfect quality that people like to describe as ‘aristocratic.’ I revised my opinion of Sonja; maybe her beauty hadn’t come from surgical boutiques after all.
The image made it hard to judge scale, but he seemed to be about medium height, well built. His clothes looked European: khaki slacks, too-white shirt, dark blue yachting jacket, black leather shoes, and a matching shoestring belt with silver buckle.
He turned toward the camera, his eyes a familiar shade of blue-green. “I am Michael Winter,” he said. “This video chip is my last will and testament. It is my legacy.”
He brushed at a stray lock of hair. It was a coppery shade, lighter than his sister’s.
“You probably don’t know me. It doesn’t matter.” He smiled, his teeth white and even. “I’m certain that you know my work.”
He leaned forward, the image of his face growing larger in the hologram. His features contorted, leered, as if some malevolent creature hiding behind his eyes had decided to reveal itself.
