Matheson identified himself, started the recording on his mobile, and said, “I’d like to speak to Temote or Chanan Vela. About Denenshe Leran. Are you Temote Vela?”
For a moment the man said nothing then he backed a step farther from the door, giving a jerky nod. “That I am,” he replied, his voice cracked and buzzing, his teeth locked tightly closed around his words. He crossed the room in a furtive, crabwise fashion, and made a fluttering motion with his hand, indicating Matheson should come in.
It was surprisingly cool and dry in the stone apartment and much more spacious than Matheson had expected. He paused a few steps inside, watching a small lizard slip along the wall as his eyes adjusted to the low light. The main chamber led to halls and grottoes that crawled into the rock as if the whole cliff were honeycombed with excavations old and new. He corrected his assumption. So, the cliff houses are an honor, not a curse. But why for a boatwright?
Once Matheson was inside, Vela closed the door and seemed to breathe easier. He pointed at an arrangement of two tall, reclining-board couches and a spindly table that sat in the shadows near the back of the room. “You’re please sit,” he said and walked with Matheson. Vela stepped aside at the last minute to fetch a tall glass to join another one that sat sweating condensation onto the table top beside a squat ceramic pitcher glazed brilliant red.
Matheson couldn’t remain standing—that would only make Vela more nervous. The couches were something to lean into more than sit upon, but Matheson did his best. Being tall himself, he knew the indignity of unfolding from the ground or a low chair and the odd couch was surprisingly comfortable. “I’m sorry about your nephew, Mr. Vela,” he started as Vela poured him a glass of cold tea and remained standing. Matheson could finally see the tattoos on his face clearly: not a trade society mark, but an abstract wave that swirled from ear to cheekbone and crested over his eyebrow.
Vela shuddered, shifted his gaze to the table top, and turned his own glass slowly. “Is . . . fair.”
Matheson frowned. “Fair?”
“Denny . . .” Vela shook his head. “We’re sorrow for the rest.”
But not for your nephew. “Did you know why he was at the Paz da Sorte? Did he usually go there?”
Vela shook his head again, and glanced at the door as if expecting someone. “I’m not would—’Twas not his kind.”
“Was he acquainted with a girl named Venn Robesh?”
Vela looked more distressed than ever, squeezing his hands tight together and bowing his head. “Venn . . . they’re know each other.” The words struggled out.
Matheson watched his distress with a slight tightness in his own chest. “Could he have gone to the Paz da Sorte to meet her?”
Vela repeated the same abrupt, jerky head motion as before.
“How did her know her? Were they a couple?”
Vela’s gaze flicked continually around the room, then toward the door.
“You’re expecting someone?”
Vela’s head-shaking stopped abruptly. “My wife—”
The door opened, throwing gray sunlight into the back of the room. A Dreihle woman came in with a basket propped on her hip, murmuring words Matheson didn’t know. She stopped and stared at him for a moment, taking in his uniform. Then she rushed across the room, letting her basket fall to the floor as Vela turned toward her. Delicate fabric and long, glittering beads spilled across the glassy stone surface as she threw herself into Vela’s arms.
She muttered in Dreihleen as she beat her closed fists against his chest. Matheson recognized “Denny” and a handful of terms that meant “dead,” “police,” “friends” . . .
Matheson stood, but Vela made a swiping gesture through the air with one hand as he reached for his hysterical wife.
Vela grabbed her shoulders and held her from him, not controlling, but begging. “We’re hush, Chanan! None’re crawl here. None yet. Hush!”
“Hush? Hush—what would you?” They exchanged a hard look between them, Chanan trembling in her husband’s hands.
Then she turned sharply, wrenching herself from his grip and flying at Matheson, pushing him toward the door. “Go, dehka! Get out! Get out!”
“Mrs. Vela,” he objected. He had to back up a few steps to avoid her flailing hands against his chest and shoulders. He looked to Temote and back to Chanan. “Mr. Vela, Mrs. Vela . . . I know this is difficult, but anything you can tell me about why Denny was at Paz, how he knew Venn or anyone else there—”
Chanan’s lips pulled back in a grimace and a chilling, choked howl started from behind her clenched teeth. Her shoulders and abdomen caved inward, as if the noise was slowly crushing her body. The sound went on and on without pause, rising hysterically as she sank to her knees. She reached for her head and clutched her gray-streaked hair in her fists, clawing it over her face, tearing it out in knotted hanks and reaching again. Vela lunged past Matheson and dropped to his knees as well. He hugged his wife tight.
Her collapse made no sense to Matheson and the sound tore across his nerves like electric feedback, but he started toward the Velas with his hands spread wide—as non-threatening as he could manage.
“Go,” Vela said without looking up. The word seemed to wrench from his throat as his wife struggled in his arms, venting her distress. “He’s bad son brings shame, misery. We’re have no black for him. For Venn, we will bleed.” He turned his head toward Matheson, glaring as if he held him responsible for his wife’s fit, for the deaths, for all of it. Then he swerved his hard stare aside, toward the doorway as if the sight of Matheson was too much to bear. “We’re not speak more to you. Go!”
He could not stand the piercing sound of Mrs. Vela’s pain any longer—even if there had been a chance of getting any more information. He might regret the decision, but Matheson nodded and murmured, “Perhaps later. I’m sorry for your loss.” Damn, what a stupid thing to say!
Vela made no reply as he bowed his head to his wife’s while she twisted and howled in his arms.
Matheson could still hear the strange, clogged shrieking when he reached the street, echoed by a tattered dog.
There were several dozen Dreihleen in the lane, but they all turned their gazes aside as Matheson looked at them. One young man with a badly scarred tattoo on his upper arm dashed toward the stone staircase that led to the Velas’ apartment. Matheson barely recognized the clan marking under the scar. He hadn’t noticed a similar tattoo on Vela or his wife, or a matching mark on the doorway, so why was the boy heading there?
He whirled and lunged to catch the young Dreihle’s arm. “GISA Ofiçe! Stop where you are!” he snapped as he caught the bone-thin wrist. He pulled out his ID and jerked the youth back around to see it.
Except for the tattoo, there was little to identify the teenager from hundreds of other young Dreihleen out of work in the ghetto—too thin, and his features not quite set in a face dark golden yellow under sun-streaked brown hair. The boy glared for an instant, then jerked his head aside and turned his gaze to the ground, trying to twist his arm out of Matheson’s grip. Matheson held on and the boy muttered something that was probably an insult.
Matheson leaned toward the boy. “Denny Leran,” he said. “How do you know him?”
The boy shook his head with the same sharp jerk Vela had used and breathed harshly through his nose.
“I only want to find out who killed your neighbors. If you tell me which clan he ran with, I have somewhere to start.”
“None.”
“Unlikely. Maybe . . .” Matheson racked his brain for the name that went with the nearly obliterated symbol on the boy’s arm, “Tzena, like you.”
The boy made a hacking sound in his throat. “Go jump, dehka.”
“The longer we’re seen talking together, the more likely it is that your clan will think you told me something.”
The boy wiggled and tried again to jerk away. “Unaff,” he muttered. “Belong to no one.” His voice wobbled at the edge of despair. “Leave go!” He shot a
look over his shoulder. “Please!”
“One thing, just one thing that connects Leran to Venn Robesh or what happened at the Paz da Sorte.” Matheson glanced the same way the boy had and put his badge away. “Or don’t you care?”
Halfennig and Jora rounded the corner. When they spotted Matheson and the boy, they started running toward them. It’s a short block . . .
Matheson shook the boy. “Speak up and I’ll let go.” Though he would let go anyhow—he didn’t want to put the kid in the line of anyone’s wrath if he could help it, and certainly not theirs.
The boy turned his head up, staring at Matheson, his eyes startled wide and black, face bloodless. “They’re no friends!” he gasped.
“They weren’t friends?”
The boy just jerked frantically against Matheson’s grip. “No friends!”
Matheson scowled as much in confusion as anything, but he let go of the boy’s arm and the kid wrenched away, bolting for the stairs up the cliff wall. He ran up the steps, leaning forward and paddling with his hands at the steep stairs ahead. He scrambled upward, past the Velas’ flat, and then, with a sudden turn, into a rough hole half his own height, and vanished.
The first shift SOs pounded past Matheson and up the stairs, but couldn’t catch up to the boy and wouldn’t fit through the hole he’d slipped into. They began searching along the carved gallery, looking for another entrance.
While they were occupied, Matheson turned and ran back toward the fish market. He was sure the boy knew his way through whatever labyrinth lay throughout the cliff face far better than Jora and Halfennig—even if they could find a way in that would accommodate men their size. And he doubted any of the residents would be helpful to the SOs.
So Venn and Denny had known each other, but the kid who claimed no clan affiliation had said they weren’t friends. But if they were ex-friends, they might be ex-lovers and that could turn a calmly planned robbery into a crime of passion. He hadn’t connected either of them to Dohan, yet. He’d try his luck a little longer in the Dreihleat, but he’d have to dodge the first shift SOs to do it.
Have to get out of sight before those two vent their frustration on me. He knew the area only at night, when the daylight businesses were closed, and the streets were filled with shadows and the people who preferred them. He’d be damned if he’d be chased out, but he still needed to go to ground until they passed.
The mist was thinning slowly as he turned up Rua dos Peixes and sprinted toward the park, then ducked into the first alley he knew cut back to a smaller street on the other side. Matheson didn’t doubt he could outrun either of the older SOs in the open, but the Dreihleat’s narrow streets didn’t qualify. Slinking would have to do.
Matheson slipped through the door of the coffee house and pushed it closed, turning to watch the street as he did. So far, he was in the clear. He walked into a shadow out of view of anyone coming up the road from the fish market, and turned to look toward the counter.
A Dreihle woman in loose-fitting work tunic and trousers with many pockets stood by the end of the counter, staring at him. She was thirty or even forty with a bright ocher complexion that was only slightly creased around her eyes. Her black hair had been pinned up in several thick, looping braids, leaving bare her long neck and narrow, hawkish face. Her eyes seemed to spark and glitter as she cast an assessing gaze over him. She’s not turning her head. Instead, she met his own disconcerted stare for a moment and it seemed to Matheson that he’d brushed a live wire.
He blinked a few times, trying to shake off the unsettling sensation, and she cocked an eyebrow, giving him an amused smile.
She turned toward the back of the room and said, “Minje.”
The man Matheson recalled from his earlier visit shouldered his way through a swinging door at the back of the counter, carrying one of the large samovars in front of him with a ceramic teapot balanced on top. The two murmured together as they settled the urn and teapot. The woman seemed to ask a question. The man raised his eyebrows and shrugged. The woman gave a crisp nod, then walked around the counter and through the door behind it.
“Right man,” the man said, turning to Matheson with his head down and glance sliding upward as the door flapped closed.
Matheson returned a nod as he walked to the counter. “I’m hoping you might help me.”
“Help? What help you’re want? This about Paz?” His voice was as accented and buzzy as ever, but Matheson was getting an ear for it by now.
“Yes.”
Matheson reached to hashmark the recording on his mobile, but the man put up his hand, shaking his head. “This for him?”
Matheson frowned. “Him?”
“Z’Inspector.”
“Yes.”
The man shook his head some more. “Not if anyone else will know I’m say’t.”
Matheson peered at the man, thinking. “Would you talk to me if I don’t record it? Confidentially?”
The man rubbed his bottom lip with the side of his index finger as he considered. “Is a thing you can do?”
“I can.” He needed the link between Robesh, Leran, and Dohan—there would be corroborating evidence elsewhere, if the first link was good. “I’m Matheson,” he offered. “What do I call you?”
The man paused, making up his mind. “Called Minje,” he said, touching a barely visible brown tattoo of a tiny, chirping bird on the crest of his left cheekbone.
It was all he was going to get. Matheson nodded. “All right. I’m looking—”
“Eat first.”
“What?”
“You’re stand here, asking, I’m troubled. You’re eating, is only breakfast chat, heh? And you’re still watch for th’morning walkers.”
“Jora and Halfennig.” The whisper-and-rumor net’s faster than message streams here. No wonder you never see a Dreihle with a mobile.
Minje nodded with a smile. “You’re go sit,” he said and turned to stick his head and shoulders past the swinging door.
The café’s furniture was a mix of everything from cushions on the floor to the tall, leaning couches, and broad rails fixed to the wall for resting cups on while standing. Matheson chose an ordinary chair and small table that allowed him a view of the street.
What’s the relationship between Leran and Robesh, exactly? The Velas were worried about friends . . . Denny’s friends? What their own friends will think of them for talking to me? And Minje the same? And still no connection to Dohan—
The fabric that had fallen from Mrs. Vela’s basket . . . and the beads bright and glittering, just like the trench diamonds on Venn Robesh’s dress. There wasn’t any record of Mrs. Vela’s employer, but maybe . . .
Matheson looked up as Minje set a small plate down in front of him. “Do you know who Chanan Vela works for?”
“She’s take sewing.” Minje’s voice seemed too loud in the empty coffee house.
“For whom?”
“Only one’s pay Dreihleen for’t—Dohan.” Minje nodded. “Him who’s die at Paz.”
“Dohan’s factory’s not on this side of the Dreihleat, so why would he go all the way to the Paz da Sorte?”
“Z’big man—Paz’s his kind.”
“A business man.”
Minje shook his head. “You’re not been here very long, heh?”
“A month.”
The other nodded and hummed. “Gil Dohan’s heaviest kind. He’s show his weight.”
Loni Tonitol had been muscular, but none of the murdered Dreihleen had been fat. “His economic weight,” Matheson guessed. “His power in the Dreihleat because he owned Dohan Sewing. Was he always . . . heavy?”
Minje tilted his head to the side and glanced at the woman who’d come back into the room to walk toward them. “He’s grow lately. Very proud’s Gil Dohan.”
“I’d like to know about that growth. And how he knew Venn Robesh and Denny Leran. I need to speak to his family, his managers—”
Minje’s scowl was adamant. “Won’t speak t
o you.”
“Why not?”
Minje cocked an eyebrow as if Matheson was being particularly dense. “Grief.”
“There has to be a way . . .” Matheson muttered, more to himself than Minje.
Minje tick-tocked his head and seemed about to say something, but the woman stopped beside him and gave him a stare and a sharp “go away” lift of the chin.
Minje hurried off and the woman put a shallow box tray down on the table. She hefted a large teapot out of it and poured olive-brown liquid into two handleless cups. Matheson watched her hands: working hands, long-fingered, but calloused, strong, and permanently stained around the cuticles. He gave himself a mental shake, and forced his gaze up.
He offered a smile and said, “I usually drink coffee in the morning.”
She gave him a sideways look. “We’re gossip, we’re drink tea,” she said. “And you’re not let that grow cold,” she added, pointing at his plate. Her voice was more musical than Minje’s, quieter, but still throaty and slow-moving. He found it more alluring than he should.
“I need information more than I need food.”
She made a faint dismissive noise and looked pointedly at the dome of pale dough on his plate. “You’re eat, I’m tell.”
He sighed and took a bite. The pastry was still warm, filled with flakes of sweet barbecued eel.
“You’re a police,” she said. “You’re chase this thing at Paz.” Sounds buzzed against her teeth: “Zis” and “ting.”
He swallowed hastily. “Yes, Mrs . . .”
“Only Aya.” She put the emphasis on the second syllable, as she studied him from under her lashes. “You’re ask about Dohan. Why you’re want to know?”
“I want to know how he connects Denny Leran to Venn Robesh.”
She waited until he’d taken another bite, then the near corner of her lips lifted in approval. “Sewing floor babbies.” The first word came out “zo-ing.”
Matheson gulped tea, burning his tongue a little, and asked, “What?”
She picked up her own cup and sipped before she answered. “Women’re bring their children when they’re work the sewing floor. They’re all together since.”
Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel Page 10
