Well past the city limits the road began to elevate as the ground either side sank into swamp. Buildings began to be replaced by trees, and then the trunks got thinner and became erratic like reassembled bones. The color was always the same. From the small swamps of Cosaw and Lisaw to the colossal expanse of the Gargantua, everything was gray, but the shapes and breadths of the tree trunks were as variable between swamps as within them. Thick mud produced wide trunks that made barrels look like sticks, requiring a dense network of roots to keep them stable. Thin mud and rock grew a different sort with pencil trunks that stayed low and roots that sat so close to the surface they could pull the trees across the mud. Dwarf swamps they were sometimes called.
I turned off the main road onto a smaller one which almost immediately turned into Reed's. The building sat atop a platform so large it looked like a man made hill with the top shaved off, while the store spanned wider than the great beast coliseums of the Mad King. Most of it was warehouse for drone deliveries. The walk in shop was only a tiny section on the end for people who wanted staff consultation before they bought an item, usually at a slight mark-up.
Because I had no interest in talking to people unnecessarily, and no clothes stores stocked my size, this would be my first time in a physical shop since I left home.
Both suns still high in the sky, my slider stopped in the small customer caapark, and I went in. The shop was a miniaturized version of the evidence room where someone had exploded multi-colored paints over all the boxes. I didn't like it. How was anyone supposed to find anything?
A member of staff lurked near the doorway, but I deliberately walked in the opposite direction. I got half way down a lane of printers, trying to decipher some order to the shop, when I noticed that all the aisles were labeled by signs hanging from the ceiling. Not exactly a search bar, but it was something. I found the tablets pretty quickly after that and selected the cheapest one. Still nearly 1000 cosians, it was costing me more to keep my job than I would earn this month by doing it.
I took it to the counter, greeted by a smiling young lady wearing enough lipstick to remove all the crevices from her lips so they looked like plastic tubes. "Did you find everything you were looking for?"
"Yes thanks." I showed her my police ID as I handed her the fake ID on the chip. "I'm going to need you to register a different photo."
She smiled. "That's perfectly ok, sir. We can take one of you now."
I shook my head. "I've got the photo I want to use on my old tablet."
Her smile vanished as if I'd wiped it off with a slap. "We're not allowed to do that, sir."
"You can do it for a policeman," I said. This was one of many situations where my height worked against me.
She looked over my head, searching for a co-worker who could assume the responsibility. "It's against the law. I could lose my job."
"Do you know who I am?" I said, filling each word with the authority of a monster on the hill.
She shook her head, returning her focus to me.
"I'm the man who uncovered the plot to deceive the President, and not too long ago I was dining at his table. This is important work I'm doing here, and all I have to do is mention your name as an obstruction, and it won't matter whether you were refusing to break the law or calling the President's mother a belch of swamp gas. Are we clear?"
She nodded, her lips sealed as if they were stapled together. I transferred Pollo's photo to her from the network.
"And you're going to keep this to yourself, aren't you?" I said, nodding for her to copy my example.
She did. In a few moments the process was complete, she handed me back the ID card and tablet registered to the fake Pollo, and I pocketed the device. I turned to leave but then turned back, uncertain of whether she required further persuasion. I needed to be certain she would not report me. If she did, the whole ruse was over.
I glared at her with as much threat as I could muster. "If you tell anyone about this, your family will drown in the shallows of the Gargantua." Then I turned and exited the shop without waiting to see her response. Possibly, she would not sleep tonight, and tomorrow she would rise to a world where the monsters on the hill were not far off creatures, but phantoms that could surface at any moment and be gone the next.
The window of my slider lengthened my face so that it looked frightening in the darkness. I hid my vampire teeth as I opened the door, knowing I had crossed a line I could never uncross.
Sikes and Becky were waiting for me on the steps, chatting like new love. I got out of the slider as Becky pushed him gently, both of them breaking into laughter. My gut twisted with jealousy, but I didn't have time for that now. I gestured for them to get in. There was no way we were going to do this in the station.
Sikes' expression was that of someone being picked last for a game. "What's this about, sir? Becky is being pretty cryptic."
I nodded as the slider set off for Elvedeer. "Wally, I'm going to ask you another favor now, but I want you to know that I will not hold it against you in the slightest if you don't want to participate. If this interferes with your ethics in any way, you just say, and I'll take you back to the station. Secondly, if you feel you must tell your uncle what I am about to tell you, that is also not something I will hold against you either, though it will mean our partnership will come to an end."
Becky grinned at him, mingling threat with play. "Wally's not gonna do that."
"That is up to him," I said. "But I have chosen to trust you, Wally, and I hope I will not come to regret that decision." I left off how I would have preferred to use one of Becky's half-witted friends. "I need you to impersonate one of Clazran's servants, Ezius Pollo."
Sikes shrugged. "OK, why?"
There was nothing he could say to alleviate my suspicions, but his patent agreement and concomitant questions only inflamed them. If there were any other avenue, I would have walked away, but the only other course of action was none at all, and that would ruin me as certainly as anything Sikes could do.
"Because," I said, "your uncle has been monitoring all my calls since the removal of Figuel. He hates me. The only way he will side with me over Fache is if he thinks Clazran will overrule him if he doesn't. I need you to pretend to be Pollo in a network conversation with me, and agree that Hobb could never have killed Kenrey. Say you'll pass the message on to Clazran."
He got half way through a nod before saying, "And you think that will work?"
I didn't have a choice. "I've got a tablet registered to Pollo with his photo and ID. Anyone not looking to catch me out will never notice it's a fake. We've never spoken over tablet before, so Hayson's men won't know what he sounds like."
Sikes completed his nod. "You don't think we can fight this without trickery?"
I looked out the window at the buildings blurring into a grayish smudge. "I've made too many enemies. If this case is closed with charges against a man that my report states categorically is not the killer, then I'm finished. I doubt we are even talking basement. Hayson will have me murdered around my building so that I can't cause any more trouble."
"You should move out of there, Boss," Becky said.
I nodded. "The minute my expenses stop including things like buying new tablets."
Sikes ran his palm across the back of his neck. "And you won't consider agreeing with Fache?"
I shook my head.
"What about the press? My uncle won't touch you while they are still releasing stories declaring how wonderful you are every five minutes."
I shook my head. "They aren't. Liegon's protest saw to that. And even if they were, it might keep me alive for a time, but when it becomes clear that Clazran is backing Fache and the SP are charging Hobb as well, the press will turn on me like stone-wolves driven by starvation. The same people that told The Kaerosh I stood for truth and justice will say I am just a trouble maker who got lucky and that I only cared for my own elevation. When they find me hanging from my ceiling lamp, no one will even question that I took
my own life." I made no mention of Pressen and my current problems with the Press.
Sikes crossed and uncrossed his legs again. "I'm not comfortable lying to my uncle. He's done a lot to get me this job. I'm sorry, but I owe him too much."
Before I could speak, Becky punched him hard on the shoulder with none of the normal warmth of her signature attack. "Wally!" She glared at him, her eyes flaming hazel. "Hayson isn't your friend, and his life isn't in danger. He might have got you this job, but now you have to actually do it–"
"Doing this job doesn't involve lying to my uncle," Sikes interrupted.
"Doing this job involves exactly what the Boss asks you to do."
"He's your boss, not mine. I report to the Commissioner."
"That's enough," I said. "Becky, calm down. If Wally doesn't feel comfortable doing it–"
"Then he's a coward," Becky said, her anger filling me with self-worth. Her pretty cheeks and perfectly off-center nose dimpled with concern for me, caring to a degree I had not even seen from my parents.
I smiled at Sikes as best I could under the circumstances. "The cowardly thing to do here would be to capitulate and do what goes against his conscience. If he feels that way, the brave and honest thing to do is to refuse."
Sikes held my gaze for an instant and then looked away. "I'll do it. I can't let you die, we're partners, but I'm pretty sure my uncle will recognize my voice."
I nodded my gratitude. If it was an act, then so be it. I had no choice but to trust him. "Hayson won't be the one listening. He'll just get a report of the major interactions." I could use software to make him sound like Captain Cos or some other exaggerated cartoon, but proper voice altering software was illegal, and I had no idea where to get any. "Once we make the real call, it'll be too late, whatever frak ups are included will go straight to Hayson's stooges, so we should practice." I cleared my throat. "Hello, Mr. Pollo?"
"Yes?"
"It's Nidess. You have a moment?"
"Go on."
"We are having the same problem as before. Someone is intent on deceiving the President for his own gain."
"Not my uncle?" Sikes said. "I won't get him into trouble."
"He means Fache," said Becky.
I nodded. "No harm will come to your uncle, you have my word."
"And Fache?"
I took a moment to consider my response, but in truth I had no idea. "He may be fired, but I doubt it. No one need get hurt from this."
Sikes crossed his legs again, returning to being Pollo. "Why do you say that, Ni-dess?"
I couldn't help but cringe at the way he elongated my name like a cartoon villain, which he continued even after I told him to stop. Sikes was a terrible actor. He even struggled with the simple bits, such as when he knew the answers or whatever he said was inconsequential.
After several practices he seemed to improve to believability, but the real conversation went no better than the first. Nerves got to him or something, because tablet-to-tablet, Sikes sounded as if he'd been summoned before Clazran to explain why he'd been making threats against the government. Long pauses and umm filled as much of the conversation as dialog, and at one point after a particularly extended silence he almost called me sir.
"I'm sorry," Sikes said, after I hung up.
"It'll be fine," I lied. There was nothing else to say. Becky sat silently, looking at Sikes as if he was a creature from another dimension.
He tapped his tablet to call his slider. "I've let you down."
I tried to say he hadn't, but the words didn't come. No one, not even Becky's immature friends nor reticent father could have made a worse Ezius Pollo. When his slider arrived his handshake was limp and wet, and he left without word.
With almost comic timing, I received a message from Hayson saying Fache had submitted his report and mine was due by the end of the day.
Chapter 16
Becky's expression immediately turned to fury. "He did that on purpose. He ruined our shot."
I nodded, but I wasn't sure. If Sikes were truly an enemy, it would have made more sense to do an excellent Pollo impression and then run straight to Hayson leaving me no wiser about the plan's failure. His nerves seemed real, and people with terrible fevers had drier hands than Sikes' when he left.
"He's fracked us. What are we gonna do now?"
I had two choices. Either I submitted a report agreeing with Fache or I submitted my contradictory one. All my subterfuge had come to nothing, and there was no time for any more.
I got out of the slider and started walking. The dull stones crunched under my feet as I strode away from my building towards nowhere. Elvedeer didn't look so bad when facing away from the towers. There were a few bushes not too wildly overgrown, blue ones as well as green, and some heavy rooted trees dotted around the ancient entrance. The trunks were too big to survive in the swamps, but their strength was sufficient to punch holes in the tarmac, levering away the black clumps until the floor crumbled away. Occasionally, there was a patch of waterlogged bracken and grasses testifying that Cosaw and Lisaw were ever beneath the surface fighting the city for control of the ground.
I couldn't let Fache win, not after what he put me through. I'd sooner submit my report and take my chances with the press. Maybe with the wings of the Swamp God I could get Clazran to side with me.
It seemed inevitable that Hayson would be informed the call was a fake, but suddenly I realized there were still several conclusions he could make from that. He could think that I either didn't have Clazran's backing and I had made a disastrous attempt to make him believe I did, or that I deliberately screwed up the call to make him think I didn't have Clazran's backing when actually I did. With the right manipulation, I could get Hayson to believe that I was trying to trap him by making him reject my report only to have his decision overruled by Clazran.
He would be cautious after what happened to Figuel to avoid the same fate. If he contacted Reens or Camrey, they would state that they were unsure about closing the case, leaving him exposed. Lisbold's firing had left him the impression that I had a direct line to Clazran, so he would be ready to believe that I had orchestrated the whole fake Pollo just to get him ousted from his job and put someone in with a more pleasant disposition.
Using Hayson's nephew now worked to my advantage. All I needed was for him to know it was Sikes who was on the other end. I needed Sikes' frak-up to look as much like a trap as possible without showing Hayson the bars. There was a chance he would ask to listen to the conversation once told it was a fake, but he might dismiss it. There was even the possibility that he would never even be told about it, if someone thought it was so clearly staged. I couldn't risk it.
I called Sikes on the fake Pollo tablet so we could speak privately. "Wally?"
"Yes?" His voice sounded as dejected as when he left the slider.
"I've been thinking, you need to tell Hayson it was you pretending to be Pollo, that I trust you, but that you are loyal to him." I had to be careful how I worded things so that whether he was on my side or not he would say what I wanted. An act of nobility on his part could be the end of me.
"Never sir, I won't betray you like that."
"Listen to me, Wally. Your survival on this force is being threatened, and going down with me isn't going to do either of us any good. Promise me you'll tell him?"
There was silence on the other end before he said, "Can't you just submit a different report?"
"I am going to submit my report, and I'll fight it for as long as I can, but I need to know that I'm not bringing you and Becky down with me. I can't have that on my conscience. Promise me you will tell your uncle?"
Again there was silence. "I don't know, sir. I don't want to abandon you like that."
"And you won't," I said, "but you're exposed at the moment, and that will just make it harder for me to fight. You will be more use to me and your uncle if you clear your name of this."
Sikes exhaled through closed teeth. "If you really want me to then
I'll do it." I could hear the relief in his voice, but I still made him promise and then swear, for all it was worth.
"We'll speak soon," I said. "Don't worry about me."
I hung up. Barely had my finger touched the screen when Becky was in my ears. "What in Cythuria did you do that for?"
I turned to see her standing right behind me. Without waiting for me to respond, she was walking away.
"Where are you going?" I called after her.
She kept walking. "I didn't think you were the sort of man who just gave up."
I trailed after her, pushing my little legs to catch up with her angry strides. "Where are you going?"
"Away from you. Only idiots deliberately throw their lives away like that."
I grabbed her arm, but she wrenched it away. "We could go to Clazran, or find Pollo or anything."
"I have no intention of letting Fache win," I said, shaking my hand where my nail had collided with one of her metal buttons. "This is all part of the plan."
For a click she went as mute as Sikes pretending to be Pollo. "You know, Boss, I think I get you for about 30 minutes and then you say something like that. If this was the plan, then why didn't you tell me instead of lying?"
I now seemed to be in some new form of trouble. "That's not what I meant." The plan that had been so clear a minute before was mingling with a thousand other ideas until it began to fade. "I wasn't lying to you. I mean perhaps I did then, but I do have a plan. It isn't the same one, but I think it will work."
"Perhaps that's true, but you don't trust me, and what just happened is a perfect example of that." She stared at her feet, crunching gravel. "You're always telling me you don't have time to explain, or fobbing me off with some pointless task when I know you've gone off to do something more important by yourself. You've had me following that loser journalist for weeks now, and you won't even tell me why. The longer I stay with you, the harder I'm finding it to believe anything you say."
I said nothing. There were things I could not tell her for her own safety. I had signed an official secrets document prohibiting the mention of Kenrey's pedophilia, but even beyond that I had kept secrets. She was right; I didn't trust her. To some extent my whole relationship with her was a lie. For all I knew she was Kenrey's killer, and aside from everything else that I felt for her, I had never let that suspicion out of my mind.
The Iron Swamp Page 20
