The Brummie Con (Sunken City Capers Book 4)

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  The customs officer waves me forward with a smile as the Greek grandmother shuffles through. The officer has short-cropped thin brown hair and a paunchy face, but his smile of greeting is pleasant all the same—quite a feat after doing this for at least the past hour and a half I’ve been in line.

  “Afternoon.” He bobs his head and holds out his hand for my customs form, which I hand him while returning his greeting.

  “Kristy Peters?” he asks looking at me.

  “That’s right,” I say—it’s my fake name attached to my new CitID.

  “What is the purpose of your visit?” he asks as he slides my form into the scanner.

  “Vacation,” I say. There’s a bank of cameras and sensors sitting on his desk staring at me.

  His eyes flick to the protected float screen and then back again at me to ask, “Are you traveling alone?”

  “No,” I say. “Well, I mean yes.”

  He looks more sharply at me.

  “I’m alone now,” I say with an apologetic smile and fidget with my hands, “but I’m staying with a friend.”

  “For how long?”

  “One month.” That should be enough time to track that bastard Ham down and drag the information we need out of him.

  He motions for me to put my citizen chip directly under one of the sensors on his desk.

  I don’t hesitate.

  “Ever been to England?” he asks while shifting his gaze between the protected float screen and myself.

  “Nope.” Good thing we have new CitIDs. I’m a brand new visitor.

  “Where’d you meet your friend?”

  “College.”

  “What’d you ...” he asks slowly as he focuses on the float screen more, “study?” His face falls into suspicion.

  Uh-oh. This CitID better have never been to England. “Everything all right?” I ask—I let some of my genuine worry at the anomaly pass as the normal worry a tired traveler would have.

  “Yeah,” he says, “system is just slow. That’s all I need today, hunh?”

  “It does seem to be really backed up,” I say, looking back at the crowd. “The woman behind me was quite agitated about it.” I resist the urge to ally more suspicion on her.

  The guard looks past me at the business woman and says, “Fast Track traveler. Yeah, they’ve all been cheesed off about the changes since that business a couple weeks ago.” He looks back at me and asks before I can make a comment, “What’d you study?”

  “Library sciences. My friend would not shut up about the Birmingham library and how I had to come see it.”

  “It is quite something isn’t it?”

  Quite something—if you like gold-plated rat’s nests. “I’m particularly interested in the Charles Parker Archive.”

  “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Joyce Reynolds.”

  “Where you stayin’?”

  I rattle off the answer given on the customs form, and then add with a questioning note which trains I was told to take to get there.

  The guard nods once and looks back at his screen. “Still working,” he mutters. He glances backward toward where I assume his supervisor is, before turning back to me. “What are your travel plans?”

  Shit. He’s keeping me here. I should’ve been through by now. Puo and Winn made it through no problems.

  I answer to some of the known touristy sites, some offbeat ones, and some libraries of interest.

  “What’s your occupation?” he asks with much more interest than the previous questions.

  “Librarian,” I answer easily. Now here comes the cognitive engagement technique where he asks rapid, disparate questions to try and trip me up. It’s the precursor to pulling me aside for more detailed questioning.

  I’m gonna flay that Citizen Maker, and she’s going to damn well knock off some of my debt for this.

  “How long you been doing that?” he asks.

  “Uh.” I think for second, making sure to look up to the left as I do the math. “Five years.”

  “Enjoy it?”

  “Eh,” I answer. “I like parts of it, the solitude, other parts, not so much.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dealing with complaints. Mostly from self-righteous prigs complaining about homeless people trying to get off the street for a few hours.”

  The glow of the protected float screen flickers and his gaze takes it in quickly.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six,” I answer. Always best to keep fake identities as close to reality as possible.

  “Gemini?”

  “Nope, Aries.”

  “And what’s been your favorite birthday present so far?”

  That one actually trips me up. Pulling up a list of past birthday presents comes up blank. I didn’t have that kind of childhood. Hell, for a long time I didn’t even know when my birthday was, all I remembered was celebrating it sometime prior to Easter before that woman who called herself my mother disappeared. My father had to be the one to definitively tell me when it was.

  “You all right?” he asks.

  “Yeah, sorry,” I say. “I, uh, didn’t have a great childhood.” I take a steadying breath. “But this is the best present I ever got.” I hold out my digi-scrambler necklace with the single oblong natural blue pearl Winn had given me (deactivated of course).

  “Pretty,” he observes. He gives me another look over. “Anything to declare?”

  “Nope.”

  “System finally found you.” He gestures toward the protected float screen. “Welcome to England.” He smiles at me and waves me through.

  I smile back and move on, giving a mental sigh of relief. You mean, welcome back.

  ***

  An hour and a half after clearing customs, I walk barefoot out of my bedroom in the flat we’ve rented feeling a thousand times better after a luxurious hot shower and changing into a clean pair of camo cargo pants and an egg-shell V-neck sweater. I love the feel of clean clothes after traveling.

  I head down the hall toward the kitchen where Puo and Winn are waiting with lunch. The wooden floorboards shift under my weight, and my feet are still throbbing with heat from the shower such that I don’t even mind the coldness of the floorboards.

  The three-bedroom flat is at the top northwest corner of a five-story converted late-nineteenth-century newspaper building. I’m having a hard time pinning down which architectural style it is. It looks like Queen Anne Revival with warm, well-laid brick walls and oriel windows, and the building itself sports a tower on the northeast corner. But there’s detailed cast-iron- and steelwork around the high arched roof that’s throwing me off. Overall it’s a pleasing, steampunkish look.

  I walk into the kitchen and quirk a questioning eyebrow at Puo to see if he’s heard anything about my father.

  Puo shakes his head, sitting in the breakfast nook area at the kitchen table painted white in front of one of his laptops.

  “Nice job on the flat,” I say to distract myself.

  Still nothing on my father. The transport over was filled with way too many quiet moments, filled with mental images of what he must be enduring. It’s like a car stalled on the train tracks—you can see the train coming but are powerless to stop it. I had thought, maybe, that after our close encounter, the Cleaners would try and leverage him to flush me out. But no. Still nothing.

  Puo tips his imaginary hat, two-stepping with me around the elephant in the room. “I thought you’d like it.”

  The flat is one large open space, divided by rugs, furniture, and the large white-quartz-capped island in the kitchen. There are a lot of brown and red earth tones. But it’s broken up nicely by splashes of color: lime-green pillows on a dark gray squarish modern couch, the two matching modern armchairs are bright red, and there’s a bright-blue vase in the center of the kitchen table.

  Winn’s up stirring a steaming pot of tomato soup on the zero-edge stove that’s flush to the white quartz countertops, and looking none the
worse for wear. He’s got a wicked bruise all along his left upper body from where he hit the side of the bridge when shooting the gap, but other than moving about gingerly, he’s fine—thank God for large miracles. White, fragrant cheese oozes out the sides of three sandwiches made with artisan bread on a griddle on the other part of the stove—yum.

  Puo picks up Christina’s squeegee and starts fiddling with it.

  “Anything?” I ask.

  Puo shakes his head. “If there’s anything on here about a master plan to overthrow all the Bosses, I can’t find it.”

  “Did you try comparing to the other squeegees we have?” I ask.

  “Of course. But it’s like comparing a child’s painting to a master’s. They’re both on canvas and use paint, but are vastly different. There doesn’t seem to be anything out of place with Christina’s.”

  There’s got to be something about that squeegee. It’s the only thing that makes sense out of the Cleaners desperately trying to remove us and then initiating their plan when they couldn’t.

  “And you rewatched the video of them questioning Winn?”

  Winn stiffens while stirring the tomato soup, but doesn’t turn around.

  Puo nods and holds up three fingers. “Nothing that illuminates what’s going on beyond what we already know.”

  I watched it twice on the way over here and agree, but I had hoped Puo spotted something I missed.

  “Focus on finding Ham,” I say. That piggish bastard has got to know something about this. “Do we have any leads?”

  Puo gives me an exasperated look and says, “No.”

  “What?” I ask about the look.

  “We only just got here,” he explains. “I haven’t even had time to get set up properly.”

  “Well,” I say, “the faster we find him, the faster we can make him squeal, figure out what’s going on, and get the hell outta here.” I need to know exactly what those warnings were about a month and a half ago when he randomly ran into me here in Birmingham. If that run-in was even random—ugh, too many questions.

  Winn retrieves three bowls and plates from the white glass-plated cabinets and serves our food. “So what’s the plan?” he asks as he sits down at the table with Puo and I.

  “Find Ham,” I say and shrug. I stir my tomato soup, hot wisps of steam rising up from where the spoon passes.

  “Right,” Winn says, “and how do we go about doing that?”

  Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. “Not sure.” Ham isn’t going to want to be found. And he’s a Cleaner, he knows how to hide digitally. “We’ll have to focus on clues in meat space.”

  Puo nods. “I’ll still comb the digital realm.”

  Duh. “See if you can pick up any second-order effects.” I dip the edge of my toasted cheese sandwich in the tomato soup.

  “Like what?” Puo asks.

  “Like an uptick in his favorite food from a grocery store over the past two months or something like that.”

  Puo just stares at me, still annoyed from his failure with the squeegee.

  “What?”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  “What—?”

  “What’s his favorite food?” Puo asks. “And—”

  “I don’t know. Can’t you dig something up? And I said ‘or something like that.’ ” We only worked with Ham for less than a few hours that didn’t include a meal or small talk, and when we were casing him, food wasn’t a primary concern.

  Puo plows on ignoring me, “—and, even if we did know, you think one person is enough to spike the data in a noticeable way?”

  “I don’t know,” I snark at him. “That’s the point of checking.” I take a bite out of the sandwich. The tomato soup softens the bread but there’s still enough crunch from the crust to contrast well with the gooey Havarti cheese. Mmm.

  Puo raises his hand up to his face and pinches his nose, pinky up in the air. “Stinker. Got any other ideas?”

  I stick my tongue full of food out at him.

  “Make quiet inquiries in the underground?” Winn asks.

  “No,” Puo and I both answer through mouths full of food.

  The local Cleaners’ Den is the most logical place to start. Ham will be hiding from them, but finding people is Cleaners’ bread-and-butter work—easy, good pay, low risk. I swallow first and explain. “We can’t take the risk. We don’t know the extent of the Cleaners’ reach—they’re considerably more organized than we previously thought to coordinate a national strike. Either they’re organized over here—”

  Puo finally swallows and says, “In which case they already know about us.”

  “—or,” I continue, “Our poking around leads them to asking questions—”

  Puo cuts in again. “—which brings the Cleaners here.”

  “Puo!” I snap at him for continuing to cut me off.

  “What?” he asks innocently his frustration from before melting away into a smirk.

  “You know what—” I start.

  Winn smoothly talks over me, “Okay. So no asking around the underground. How about canvas the neighborhood around the bar?” Winn suggests.

  “He’ll have moved on.” I take another bite of my toasted cheese sandwich, and let Puo’s slight slide by. “But it’s as good as anything we’ve got,” I say through chewing.

  “Winn should go alone,” Puo says. “Ham never saw Winn and Winn’s never been here before.”

  “Fine,” I say, not an unreasonable point. “But don’t ask around for Ham,” I say to Winn. “Just look around, maybe maneuver the conversation when you talk to people that you miss some American company and see if anything shakes loose. Meet back here for dinner.”

  “Got it,” Winn says.

  “And you,” I say, looking at Puo, “comb the digital realm and look for the second-order effects.”

  “And what food should I—”

  “Peanut butter,” I say. “It’s an American thing that’s not really over here.” The toasted cheese sandwiches reminds me strongly of the Yellow Coffee House back home—they make a damn good toasted peanut-butter sandwich.

  “Roger that,” Puo says, and then, as if he can’t help himself he adds, “But it’s not going to work.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I HATE IT when Puo is right.

  Nothing in the digital realm. No second-order effects.

  It’s two days later and we’ve got nothing. No clue. No thread to pull on. Nothing. And my tired feet ache as I walk up the stairs to our flat (no cameras in the stairwell like there are in the lifts).

  I invested in a warm, comfortable pair of calf-high black winter boots, but walking on your feet for almost four hours is still walking on your damn feet. I spent the afternoon in the Hockley district of town, stopping into bars, chatting up locals. Nothing. No sign or clue of Ham.

  I breeze into the flat, letting the wonderfully stuffy hot air embrace me, making my cheeks burn. Puo ambles out of his bedroom and down the hall to come greet me as I unwrap my gray cashmere scarf and shed my down-filled violet winter jacket—I had to leave my army-green hip-length one behind, since the Cleaners had seen me in it.

  Puo shakes his head no at our now daily ritual of me silently asking about any news on my father. I was so sure after our encounter with the Cleaners back in Atlanta they would’ve used him as leverage to flush me out again.

  “So,” Puo says cheerily changing the subject, “How’d it go?” He’s mocking my search efforts—he knows damn well I got nothing.

  “Shut up,” I say and flop down on the gray modernist couch nearest me. “Get me something hot.”

  “Yes, ma’am—” He bows halfway. “—right away, ma’am.” He comes and sits down in one of the matching red armchairs catty-corner to me empty-handed. His untied hipster tennis shoes squat below him on the bone-colored shag rug from the night before where he dropped them.

  “Where’s my hot beverage?”

  Puo scratches his eye with his middle finger, while using the other
hand to flick me off explicitly.

  “Nice,” I observe dryly while rubbing my temples. “Where’s Winn?” Winn was out sniffing around in the Chinese Quarter.

  “Not back yet.”

  Damn. I’m hungry. Winn’s become our personal chef on top of Puo’s personal doctor. “Did you have any luck?” I ask Puo about his digital efforts.

  “Nope.”

  Great. Just great. I close my eyes and lean back into the couch. I hate the cold. And it gets so freaking dark up here so early. It’s miserable. Why do people live here?

  “Missing persons report?” Puo suggests for the third time in two days.

  I don’t answer at first. On the plus side, the authorities do the dirty work for us. All we have to do is either let them come to us with information or shadow them. On the negative side, they find Ham first, meaning we have to go through them to get to Ham.

  “I see you’re warming up to it,” Puo says.

  I shake my head no. “It’s still too complicated. We don’t know what name Ham is here under—”

  Puo’s pocket tablet buzzes.

  I peek an eye open.

  “It’s Winn,” Puo explains, “he’s coming upstairs. And for Ham’s name, let’s admit we don’t know, but that he was the last person we saw with our missing friend. Then he’s a suspect, and we’re not suspicious for not knowing everything.”

  I make a farting sound. But not bad, except for the obvious holes that would need to be plugged—like who is this friend?

  Winn steps into the flat with a blast of cold air from the hallway.

  “Close the door!” I yell at him as he’s already closing the door.

  Winn looks at Puo. “Hangry?”

  Puo nods. “Very.”

  Grrr. I’m cold and stymied—that’s why I’m pissed. Nothing to with my hunger. I’m not a child.

  “I’ll get started on dinner,” Winn says.

  “Wait,” I snap, not bothering to set the record straight. “Did you learn anything?”