• • •
Twenty four hours later, I got a text from Josefina asking me to meet her in West Hollywood. No indication why, just that she needed me urgently. An address was attached. I checked in with the branch office of the security firm I worked for, and clocked out for an extended lunch break.
Josefina’s apartment block was in what the supermetro called the Special District. Most of the Specials in Greater Los Angeles tended to congregate there—where everyone could be uniformly bizarre together. The sidewalk out front was replete with walking, talking cats, dogs, birds, wolves, rabbits, and other Specials who had had their human DNA artificially adapted to take on various other species’ characteristics.
Entering the block I passed a man whose fur was striped like a skunk’s, though thankfully he didn’t smell like one. If he cared that a Normal—the Specials’ word for everyone else in the world—was going into his apartment complex, he didn’t show it.
I took the elevator up to the tenth floor and found the door with number 1036, tapped the little button in the middle of the door, and waited while the tiny camera inside the button surveyed me.
The door handle clicked, and I was beckoned into Josefina’s home. Microscopic as it was. I’d seen student studios with more square footage. But it was clean, and smelled gently of ginger and orange peel.
“Señor,” she said respectfully. I took off my sun hat and nodded at her.
Josefina immediately pressed a thumb drive into my hand.
“It is all here,” she said quietly. I noticed that she had on a plain-patterned traditionally-cut dress, with holes in the back for her wings, and no shoes. Her ankles and feet were the same color as the rest of her. Bright green.
“What is this?” I said.
“I tried to give it to the police, but they didn’t want it. Nobody cares about Elvira.”
“I told you, I—”
“Por favor, Señor Soto,” Josefina said insistently. “There is no one else to do this. You must do it. Please. I don’t have much money, but I can pay you for your time. I can—”
I raised a hand and patted it down through the air, pleadingly.
“Just tell me what I’ll be looking at,” I said, “before you go giving me any money.”
“It’s Elvira’s schedule at the Aerie.”
“There are names? Everyone who ever used your sister?”
“Hired her,” Josefina corrected me. “Yes.”
“I’ll probably just need the names of the people she saw the night she died.”
“But she was off that night, and there is no record of anyone having rented the suite or hired Elvira.”
“Then what was she doing there at all?”
“I do not know,” Josefina said, eyes on the floor. Her wings had begun to tremble.
I slipped the thumb drive into a pocket and took her right hand in both of mine—the sensation of the tiny feathers on my bare palms was like mink pelt, but softer.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, flashing back to an almost identical scene in my supermetro days, when I’d had to both question and console a stricken mother whose son had died in a gang turf tumble.
“Of course it is,” Josefina said. “It was my idea for her to come to the Aerie. I recommended her to the Madam. She was nervous about going Special, and I talked her into it. Mother and father never forgave me when I went Special, and they doubly hated it when Elvira came to work with me. I have no idea how much the whole family will hate me now.”
“So why did you wind up at the Aerie in the first place?”
“It was my best option.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Señor Soto, you’re not from West L.A?”
“Not originally, no.”
“But you are Raza?”
“I grew up in the barrios of Oakland. Joined the Army at 17. When I got out of the Army, I moved south and went to the police academy.”
I remembered when I told my mother I’d joined supermetro’s PD. She’d cried. But then, she’d cried when I’d joined the military, and when my brothers ran away, too. At least with me she’d known where I was and what I was doing. But it had still upset her a great deal—always terrified I was going to get myself hurt, whether it was overseas, or here in California working Vice, or second-level Theft stuff, or the small army that ran herd on gangs.
I mumbled something to that effect.
“My mother was almost proud of being poor,” Josefina said. “Our family had been in East L.A. for almost five generations, all in the same crappy little house. Elvira and me, we hated it. We wanted something better. But the schools in East L.A., what good are they? For you, the Army was your avenue out. For Elvira and I, just two poor sisters with homely faces and no education …”
I nodded my understanding—so far.
“Anyway, I got a cleaning job. They sent me all over. One day I got sent up to Madam Arquette’s house in Beverly Hills. I’d never worked for a Special before, much less someone that rich. She’s like a peacock you know. Beautiful and grand and when I started asking questions, she told me how it works. If a girl will undergo Specialization and work in the Aerie, Madam will carry the cost. You pay it back over time, plus interest, and after that, you keep everything you earn, minus a house fee.”
“But if you wanted to go into business for yourself—” I started to say, but Josefina cut me off.
“Look at me, Señor,” Josefina stepped away a couple of paces and flared her wings wide, filling the tiny apartment, her hourglass silhouette accentuated through the thin fabric of the dress. “Men and women both will pay hundreds an hour to be with me. We have the richest clients in the entire city. People who want the Special experience. Crave it. A pro Normal girl in Long Beach, how much does she make, compared to that?”
Not much, I had to admit.
Josefina lowered and folded her wings.
“I didn’t want to be just any working girl,” she said. “I wanted to literally be a different person. Because some day, I want to have enough money to leave Los Angeles on my own two feet, and not look back, and not need anyone else’s help, and not have to take this … this part of me with me when I leave.”
“Reversal of the Specialization is twice as expensive as the initial procedure,” I said.
“I don’t care. Once I’ve earned enough to pay the Madam off, I’ll keep working until I can pay for the reversal, and get myself out of here to boot. When Elvira came to visit me and I told her about my plan, she’d wanted to come with me, but it would have been too expensive for both of us, so I told her she had to find a way to help with costs.”
Josefina stopped, her face in her hands, wings gently shaking as she sobbed.
I felt my cheeks growing red.
“Look,” I said, “I meant it before: Madam Arquette can’t rely on just four men to keep her establishment free of trouble.”
“But you’re here, when you know you don’t have to be,” Josefina said, her nose sniffling.
“I didn’t know your sister,” I said, “But I don’t like the idea of anyone killing a young woman and getting away with it either.”
She seemed to accept that explanation at face value, lame as it was.
“I can’t make any promises,” I said, reaching into my pocket and feeling the cool plastic of the thumb drive. “All I can tell you is that I’ll take a look.”
“Do what you can” Josefina said abruptly. “It’s better than nothing.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said, sticking out my hand, which she shook.
Then she leaned down quickly and pecked me on the cheek. How long had it been since a woman—any woman, Special or Normal—had done that to me? I felt my race redden all over again, then muttered a goodbye and ducked back out into the hallway.
• • •
The thumb drive turned out to contain all of Elvira’s business calendar—every appointment going back to when she’d gotten out of the hospital, post-Specialization. The he
ader on the calendar simply read FLAMINGO. Having met the Madam a few times I got the sense that she didn’t bring on anyone new unless it was done on the Madam’s terms, so Elvira was just filling the role assigned to her.
And while names were present, salient data beyond that was tough to come by. All financial transaction information had been stripped, as well as whether or not clients had been locals, celebrities, or even the rare tourist. If the schedule had ever contained details on what precisely Elvira had provided, in terms of customer care and needs—beyond what I already knew to be the case—that too was missing.
And Josefina had been right. Elvira was blacked out the day of her death. In fact, she was blacked out most of that week.
I mulled this over at my desk, back at the Aerie. If the Madam discovered I had this information—we guards were never, ever allowed access to the scheduling software, for confidentiality purposes—it would cost me a lot more than my job. I quickly dumped the calendar to text, then erased the calendar, keeping only names and time blocks in ASCII format on the same thumb drive Josefina had given me. She was off for the rest of the week, a considerable concession from the Madam, given the circumstances, so I went about my usual work, only occasionally poking my head into the womens’ private rooms to ask a discrete question or two.
So far as anyone knew, Elvira had had no quarrels with the other Specials. In fact, the lot of them seemed heartbroken over the girl’s death, and mournful in the extreme for her older sister. A community pot was being passed—I dropped in my share—and they were planning to have a silent moment in Elvira’s memory when Josefina came back to work. Otherwise, business at the Aerie continued as usual. Clients came and went, their communications hushed and monosyllabic at the palatial registration desk—often from behind hoods or sunglasses or anything else that might obscure their faces from prying eyes, the Special fetish still being a somewhat controversial fetish, even in a city which had long ago abandoned any pretense of sexual propriety.
As I watched the clientele come and go, from behind my own set of sunglasses, I realized that I didn’t have much of a clue about what went on when the clients and the Specials met behind the closed doors of the suites. Oh, sure, I had plenty of educated assumptions. The Aerie had two thirds female Specials and one third male Specials, and if ever they “talked shop” it was done strictly between them, away from the ears of a Normal like me.
In many ways, myself and the three other guards were like wallpaper or store window mannequins: unless our presence was called for, and it was seldom called for in any case, we kept our distance, and the Specials did the same, and the clients ghosted to and fro with as little noise as possible.
I examined the names I’d gotten from Josefina. I didn’t know any of them, though I couldn’t be sure any of them were actual names either. Fake names were as likely as anything, which was probably why the cops hadn’t wanted the list in the first place. What good was a list of bogus identities?
Josefina came back to work. We never acknowledged that I’d been to her home.
I kept looking at the list of names throughout the next week, until I noticed one name that was down for numerous appointments in predictable succession, then abruptly stopped showing up.
I texted Josefina about this, and asked her if she knew the name. Or if Elvira had ever talked about this particular person. I got a text re-inviting me to Josefina’s apartment, this time in the dinner hour.
• • •
“What her real name is, I am not sure,” Josefina said. She’d offered me a plate of grilled beef with peppers and onions, which I ate thankfully, not having had food since sipping a cup of bitter coffee at midmorning.
“Her?” I said, somewhat surprised.
“She was an anglo Normal, mid-forties.”
“Did Elvira ever talk about this person?”
“Yes, because this woman never actually wanted sex.”
“Is that unusual?”
“It happens. Some clients come in simply for the vicarious thrill of being around a Special. We’re fascinating for them.”
“This anglo Normal, she was one of these?”
“Yes. She would request Elvira in two-hour blocks. She adored real flamingos, apparently. She and Elvira would sit together on the bed of the suite, and the anglo … she would stroke Elvira’s body and wings affectionately, and just talk about her life. Her hectic middle management work. Her grown sons. Her ex-husband, who apparently divorced her in disgust when he discovered she had a thing for Specials, and had been surreptitiously using family funds to begin exploring the Special world on-line. That’s how she found out about the Aerie, apparently, and when Madam Arquette put up the listing for The Flamingo Suite, this woman was an instant customer.”
“So why’d she stop coming all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know,” Josefina said, nibbling uninterested at her own food.
“If this woman spent so much time talking to Elvira, did your sister ever talk back? I mean, about her own life?”
“I don’t know, but I wonder. Elvira was only twenty. About the same age as this woman’s own children. Elvira always needed to trust people.”
“Is it possible Elvira told this woman things she wouldn’t tell you?”
“What do you mean?” Josefina’s fork suddenly stopped moving.
“Not to question your relationship with your sister, it’s just been my experience that siblings, even close siblings, don’t always share everything with each other, whether they realize it or not. And as the saying goes, a man will tell things to a bartender he’d never tell his wife. This anglo Normal, she is a question mark for me. She might know something which could tell us more about why Elvira died.
“Speaking of which,” Josefina said, “the police tell me that an examination to determine exactly what killed Elvira, is still pending. Does it normally take this long?”
“When there are no obvious wounds,” I said, “things can get complicated. I called the coroner and made some polite inquiries. Elvira was a healthy young Special. Something was done to her, that much we can be certain of. What that something was, is another matter entirely. Try to be patient. Meanwhile, is there any way possible for you to find out who this anglo customer was? Does she come back to visit any of the other Specials, male or female? Or both?”
“I can try to find out tonight, when I am working.”
We chewed in mutual silence for several minutes.
“If your daughter told you she wanted to go Special,” Josefina said, “what would your reaction be?”
Now it was my fork which had suddenly stopped moving. My Angela was fifteen, and headstrong like Carlita. Last summer, Carlita had let Angela spend the summer with me, when it was my younger son Adam I’d wanted to have. I’d learned quickly it was because Angela was officially hell on wheels, and we’d scrapped it out for three months, before she’d finally gone home to Carlita in disgust—and with my blessing. I tried to imagine Angela showing up at my door in two more years, transformed into God knew what. Hi Papa! It’s me, your little girl!
I must have visibly shuddered, because Josefina put her fork down and wiped her mouth, then stood up quickly.
“You can see yourself to the door.”
“Wait, I’m sorry, I—”
“I’ll see what I can find out for you about the anglo. Goodnight, Señor.”
My plate unfinished, I clumsily stood up and made my way out.
• • •
I was making the mistake of giving a damn, that much was certain. A smarter man probably would have quit the Aerie and gone to find a different job. But Josefina had shamed me, and now I felt like I owed her … something. Not sure what? Some kind of resolution, perhaps. I couldn’t just walk away. That would have felt unmanly, and while I’d long ago given up certain pretensions to machismo, I was damned if I was going to let a woman almost half my age do what Josefina had done, whether she’d realized it when she asked the question or not. So I stewed my way
through three days of shifts, until I thought my off hours might coincide with Josefina’s—and once again went to her apartment block in West Hollywood.
There was no answer at first. I almost turned and went home.
But the door popped, and Josefina opened it hesitantly.
“Yes?”
“The coroner sent me a report about Elvira,” I said.
“And?”
“And I really think it would be best if I came in and we sat down.”
Josefina eyed me closely, measuring my intent, then opened the door the rest of the way, allowing me into her single-room domain. Things weren’t as clean as they’d been before. I wagered she’d not done any upkeep since the last time I’d visited. The same plate I’d eaten off of, still sat half-submerged in cold soapy water in the kitchen sink.
“Tell me,” Josefina said. It was practically a command.
“Near-instant anaphylactic shock,” I said. “As a result of being exposed to concentrated bee venom.”
“She was stung by a bee?”
“No. They found a small puncture wound on her neck, like what might be made by a microtubule. The plastic tip had broken off beneath the skin. Did you know she was allergic?”
“Yes, the whole family did. She was stung when we were kids, and had to be rushed to the emergency room. It almost killed her.”
“Who else besides the two of you might have known?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a few family friends from East L.A?”
I scratched my head, thinking.
“So now the police will investigate it as murder,” Josefina said.
“The file will be dropped down to homicide, homicide will see that it was a Special working the Boulevard, and the file will be quietly forgotten about.”
“How can they do this?” Josefina said, balling her fists, her wings spasming. “She was a human being for God’s sake!”
“Supermetro jurisdictions track hundreds of potential homicides every day,” I said. “More people die every year in the Greater Los Angeles area than died in the Army’s entire invasion of Pakistan. The police prioritize, based on how easily a case might be solved, and how high-profile the victim happens to be. I hate to say it, but Specials barely register. Many cops don’t even think of you as human anymore.”
Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen Page 11
