The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  I guess when you sit on the other side of the cash register, things become different. Or . . . maybe not so different. They noticed me now . . . acted like I was to be respected since I was a small business owner in the community paying their salaries. They noticed me now . . . I’d just had my shop shot up by what everyone agreed was gang violence the likes of which even a shithole like Fresno had never seen before.

  “I’m going to read back your statement now and you can correct any . . . misremembered or badly worded facts,” the head cop explained to me with a shake of his notebook. Translation: you’re full of crap but you can still put some smell-odorizer on if you come clean now instead of later. If you come clean later, I’m going to be pissed and make your life hell.

  I nodded, content to be silent as I could be. No glare here. Just that don’t give a shit attitude I manage so well.

  The whole affair went on outside of my shop. We had flashing cop cars barricading the area, print journalists flocking for a story before deadline, concerned citizens taking in the train wreck, and TV reporters standing beside satellite vans, the dishes reaching up three stories towards the heavens.

  There was also the grande truck, which had started on fire about a minute after T-Bone electrocuted the thing . . . now being overseen by the Fresno Fire Department to make sure it didn’t start up a second time.

  Noisy, lots of noise, lots of movement. The moment felt more pressing than when I’d had machineguns pointed at me.

  Of T-Bone, there was no sign at all.

  Then there’s me . . . looking like I’d just been through a war, scratched up by glass, smelling of gunpowder residue, and just generally pissed off I didn’t get enough time to cut Suit’s head off. Leaning beside my broken window, I knew I looked guilty as all fuck. Not like I could tell them the truth either, is it?

  Hey, officer, I’m a mancer and those were werecoyotes, we have a peace treaty but I guess it went boom. From what I understand, some higher ups in the federal government know about the one in a million world . . . but local cops? Not so much. Most mancers don’t even have to deal with this shit . . .

  I’d gotten interview requests from all four local channels . . . what was next? CNN? Anderson Cooper dropping down from a helicopter and still having perfect hair?

  My local cop frowned at his notebook, starting from the top, “You were in your . . . antique store.”

  “Yes. King Henry’s Hidden Treasures.” Yeah, that’s hard to say with a straight face.

  “Then you noticed a truck pull up into the parking lot. You were closing down your cash register and noticed them through your front window. A number of men exited the truck and pointed firearms at your shop. You ducked and they fired.”

  I nodded again. “Correct.”

  “They then reloaded and fired again . . . twice.”

  Since he stopped I assume he wanted another answer. “Yes.”

  “When they heard the police sirens they fled on foot, leaving their vehicle behind.”

  “From what I could tell from my position on the floor, yes.”

  The cop wasn’t buying it. He pointed at my blown-out window with his pen. “How do you account for the slugs on the inside of your window sill that my forensics team . . . claim appear to have been stopped by some type of armor?”

  A SEM-DEW, you want to buy one? I’m figuring on selling them at fifty-thousand . . . too much for your salary? Yeah, I know, man. Too much for my salary too. Oh well, Department of Homeland Security probably bought you guys a tank back during their glory days, right? Tank’s going to have to be good enough. No SEM-DEW for you.

  “I have no clue.”

  “The window also appears to have been blown out towards the assailants, can you explain that?”

  Haven’t come up with a name for it yet, but that’s pretty impressive, ain’t it? We’ll settle on twenty-five-thousand, same as the SDRs. Still too high? What a bummer. Probably won’t sell them much, tell you the truth. Pain to get them charged up, probably just give one to Ceinwyn as a gift and call it a successful experiment. Move on to another anima-type now . . . spectro? Hydro? Pyro’s already in testing . . .

  “Not from where I was on the ground.”

  “And the truck?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “What happened with the truck?”

  I gave a stupid frown. Same one I used to give at the Asylum when I got in trouble. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, officer.”

  “Their truck caught on fire, they abandoned it.” He pointed at the charred wreck. All the news cameras were zoomed in on it. Good tape, I guess. “Another witness reported seeing a bolt of lightning strike it.”

  Sadly, I don’t have an artifact that can do that yet . . . but one day? Who knows . . . just might manage it. Wouldn’t that be something to have when troublemakers make a play at me? Zap, zap, fucktards. “I was on the ground, so I can only speculate as to what the . . . lightning bolt . . . was about.”

  The cop wasn’t enjoying himself. “And what is your speculation?”

  “I would guess that they shot my electric bike and it exploded on them.” Did I forget to mention that? My poor under-driven bike? Riddled with bullets. As if the shop insurance wasn’t going to be bad enough, now I had to deal with car insurance guys and tell them my motorcycle had been machinegunned to death. Bet that little Gecko fucker never sees it coming.

  “I don’t think that’s likely.”

  I gave him another shrug. “Then I got nothing . . . maybe magic?”

  The cop really wasn’t enjoying himself. “Are you lying to me, Mr. Price?” he growled my way.

  “Not at all officer . . . how else would it have happened?

  [CLICK]

  The Coyotes weren’t out of sight before I slapped T-Bone out of his post-fight euphoria with a heavy chop against his shoulder. “Don’t just stand there! Get in your car and pull around back.”

  “What?” he asked, coming around slow, still watching as the seven forms disappeared from view. Guess if they were dwarves their names would have been Charry, Broiley, and Glassy Assy.

  I knew the feeling T-Bone had. It’s great. It’s a shit-ton of chemicals pumped straight out of your glands that makes the rest of you feel like a champ. Your body almost buzzes. Your heart goes insane on you. You can’t concentrate on anything for long since everything seems so clear. It’s not just great . . . it’s the best feeling in the whole world.

  But we didn’t have time for no high-fiving, butt-slapping, or head-butting.

  “There are cops coming,” I pointed out with a wave at all the thrashed merchandize surrounding us. Those machineguns had done worse to my store than the earthquake I’d caused a few months back. In fact . . . they’d kind of ruined the entire store.

  “So what?” T-Bone asked, turning all those chemicals towards being indignant for once in his life. “You’re going to make a giant-black-man comment, aren’t you? I consult with the Fresno PD and the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department on computer security, I have clearance badges. I’m fine!”

  I waited for the rant to end. Okay, maybe I was going to make a giant-black-man comment. Instead I went after his business sensibility, “You realize I have three SDRs in the back and about two-hundred-thousand in anima vials I don’t want to get confiscated as evidence; don’t you, Mr. Twenty-Five Percent?”

  “Shit-boogers!” he yelled, glancing all around with an ear for the sirens. “Shit!”

  “Right . . .”

  “Shit-boogers!” again. Don’t knock him. It’s a step up over ‘what the bitch’. “Around the back?” T-Bone asked before rushing out my front door, which was just as thrashed as the rest.

  “Don’t get shot,” I called after him, before running off towards the back of my shop.

  Those bastards, they killed my teapots . . .

  . . . Did I really just think that?

  No one would ever call me fast. Quick, yeah, with my hands especially. But not fast. I fille
d out too blocky for it and I never exercised for speed. Stamina, that’s my thing. Outlast them into the ground.

  We had some fast people in my class at the Asylum, especially the corpusmancers. You ever want to see something amazing, have Welf’s man Jason run you the forty-yard dash. He could have played in any professional sports league if the Learning Council hadn’t outlawed it.

  Me? I ain’t ever come close to Jason. Never came close to any corpusmancer. Earth . . . it don’t move well. Which is too bad . . . I could have used some fast.

  Those sirens grew, block by block. I figured the reported gunshots and bullet-holes would slow them down for some backup, but pretty soon the whole area would be swarming in red and blue flashes. I had to get my Artificer stuff out . . .

  I burst into my shop, not even pausing to study the trio of bullet gouges in my backdoor. Stay calm . . . don’t panic, fucktard, I told myself.

  Container was first. Got myself some packaging boxes. Dropped the as yet unnamed fan and the SEM-DEW inside. Next I went to a drawer, pulled out the SDRs in their ring boxes and threw them inside too. Next drawer was a pair of cold cuffs lined in pink fur . . . don’t ask . . . please, don’t ask . . . then a drawer with some projects that weren’t going as well as my prototypes but I didn’t want the cops to see, and finally my design journals with all the diagrams and the anima conversion formulas of everything I’ve ever made.

  I heard T-Bone’s car pull up to the back, not a roar but a hum.

  “Should cut down on the grande whatever-the-fucks, Price,” I muttered as I hurried across the room with another box, throwing in anima vials like they’re on sale for half off. Floro from Pocket. Aero from Ceinwyn. Fauna from Jesus. Cryo from Raj. Electro from T-Bone. A lone scio-vial from Miles Hun Pak and another lone spectro-vial from Curt Chambers.

  And ten geo-anima vials that weren’t exactly the same as normal geo-anima but worked just fine.

  Crap . . . Shaky Stick!

  “No . . . leave it,” I thought aloud. It was in a padded safe, hidden in the floor. Cops would probably walk right on over it. “And if they don’t . . . might not see it anyway, will they?”

  T-Bone pounded on my backdoor. There was a muffled, “Hurry up. Let me in!”

  Grabbing the two boxes, one under each arm, I jogged out of the shop and into my office. The other way, I could hear the first set of sirens enter the shopping center. A spare bit of geo-anima I’d saved up unlocked the backdoor for me. We’ll call it a three-minute-pool, just enough to lever the industrial size bolt.

  T-Bone popped open the door in my face. “What’s taking . . . oh . . . okay.”

  The two boxes hit him in his chest. “Get out of here . . . don’t speed, act normal.”

  “I play Grand Theft Auto . . .”

  “Yet you drive a Nissan Leaf.”

  “At least it doesn’t have bullet—“

  “You want to go to jail or you going to leave already?”

  “Fine, fine . . .”

  I heard car doors slamming shut and more sirens. The sirens seemed further away, which means backup coming. For that much damage and brass I might see SWAT. “Go, I’ll stall them.”

  Shutting the backdoor behind me, I jogged back into my shop before I paused. Fresno cops. Right. Thing is, Fresno is a shithole, but . . . you know how in some cities you hear about how officers arrived and fired fifty shots and no one was wounded but the suspect, blah blah blah? With Fresno cops you are a lot more likely to read about how they fired two shots and the suspect was killed on the scene.

  Way smoother bastards than Suit and his boys.

  Thoughts of all those news stories filling my head, I paused, planning ahead instead of going my usual route of bashing into something and then tricking my way around it. Let them come to me, I figured. Plus, I took off my mancer coat. Nothing bulky to hide a gun with. Right, that’s better.

  I stood there in my shop, leaning against my table . . . just waiting for the cops to get me.

  [CLICK]

  “Tell me about the shop.”

  Lead cop was gone. I’d upgraded to a full out detective and won myself a car ride downtown to the Fresno Police Headquarters.

  Owing it’s me, my upgrade ended up female and one of them ready to tear me a new asshole. Let me tell you something . . . those TV shows with the hot women cops? Fucking lies. Detective Ribera was built like a block . . . not even a pear . . . just shoulders and no ass and muscles in places I’ve never even read about in magazines.

  She also had no-bullshit eyes.

  On account of her being a not-so-pretty-princess and having those eyes, I decided they’d pitted me against one of the best detectives the Fresno PD has. Yeah, yeah, I’m being misogynistic or sexist or something. Lies. This ain’t me. This is human society. Good looking people advance easier than ugly looking people. Probably advance further than they should too, most the time.

  Call it King Henry’s Rule of Fugly.

  Still don’t believe me?

  See any ugly women running for president lately?

  Didn’t think so . . . I assure you that the first woman president is going to be a serious MILF.

  But Detective Ribera? Not so MILFY.

  “Before or after?” I asked. They’d been nice enough to give me a cup of coffee, so I sipped it. I wasn’t cuffed. Wasn’t under arrest. Just a talk. In the interrogation room. With the camera going. We’re not processing you; we just need to hold the items on you for your safety. Nothing to worry about, they said. When someone says those words . . . that’s when a smart human being actually starts worrying.

  “Let’s go with before.”

  The interrogation room or whatever you call it smelled like leaking ass. Guess they didn’t get many clean upstanding citizens like myself in the place.

  “I sold antiques,” I said with a straight face, but being that it’s my face it didn’t look very truthful.

  “Sold?”

  “Yeah. Sold.”

  “As in, won’t any longer?”

  “Yeah. Being that my stock just got shot up . . . seems like the time for a change. You happen to know if Apple stores are franchised? Could do with a younger demographic I think.”

  “Lots of elderly buying your antiques?”

  “Only ones mostly.” I took another sip of my coffee. It was stale coffee but at least it’s something to do. As far as caffeine goes . . . it’s a better habit than smoking. “Old likes old, I guess. Likes to remember all those years they got stacked up. Buy them a piece of their past all rolled up into a fucking teapot.”

  Detective Ribera didn’t have time for philosophy. “King Henry Price, yes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The full name?”

  “King by itself just sounds stupid, don’t it?”

  “King with something else sounds pretty stupid too.”

  “Zing . . .”

  “You have no record.”

  “Not even a little bit?” I asked, kind of surprised and insulted that some cop didn’t put a warning in a file somewhere back in Visalia.

  “Nothing.” Detective Ribera seemed to think this was interesting.

  “Guessing that’s the way it is for most people.”

  “There’s nothing and then there’s nothing. You disappeared off the system for seven years.”

  “I didn’t disappear, I was in school.”

  She dropped it, went back further. “You were born in Visalia.”

  “It’s only been a few hours since this all began,” I pointed out. “Must got some serious Google-fu in you.”

  She didn’t smile, Detective Ribera didn’t have it in her to smile, but her face muscles twitched as she reached into her pocket and pulled out my ID card. Not the driver’s license. The mancer ID card.

  . . . That isn’t good.

  “Has your birthdate and your birthplace on it, your height . . . are you kidding by the way?”

  “Tippy-toes don’t count?”

  “Not for my boy.” />
  “Got yourself family?”

  “Adopted . . . he’s four.”

  “How about that?”

  She waited on me then. Wanted me to crack or slip or something or other that wouldn’t be good for me. I could give her a crack alright. Crack the see-through window behind her head. Crack the table. Crack the cuffs she’d set on the table but not made me wear. Want to play it tough? I’ll show you tough. I wanted nothing but to let loose and unleash the Mancy on someone.

  Coyote Nation shot my place up. Tried to kill me . . . or at least maim me. And I got the shit-bucket. I got the cops. Be lucky, assholes; praise that queen-bitch Fate . . . Detective Ribera is the only person in this world keeping me from finding you and smashing your faces in, especially you, Suit.

  “What’s the Institution of Elements?” Ribera finally asked when the silence told her I wasn’t slipping.

  “It’s a boarding school. Some turn of the last century meets Buddha stuff.”

  “Religious?”

  “Not organized . . . not like that, just . . . original education ideas.”

  She tapped my ID with a finger, just above my photo. “What’s this bit? Mancy type?”

  Trust me . . . I looked as pissed off as always in the photo. Why? The very situation I now found myself in. Why the Asylum think it’s a smart idea to make photo IDs about a secret magic school? Bunch of genius all around, Learning Council, bunch of genius all around.

  “Think of it as an astrological sign,” was the explanation I went with.

  “Geomancer?”

  “Love me some dirt.”

  “Ultra?”

  “Really love me some dirt.”

  Some more silence.