by M J Gauntlet
“Whoa, pretty lady. If you keep on like that, then all you will get from the upcoming meal is indigestion,” Zax said. At the words ‘pretty lady’, she stopped her tirade and smiled.
“Thank you for the complement. I’m sorry you had to settle for me instead of the ‘other’ pretty lady you were waiting for,” she said, with an infectious giggle, that got him to laugh out loud.
“You know that is the first time, since we met, that I’ve seen you really laugh. It looks good on you,” Lauria acknowledged, in a semi-serious tone, as she broke off a small piece of bread from a basket filled with heavenly, scented rolls. She dipped her knife in a yellow-white substance and spread it on the bread fragment.
“Beetle butter,” she said, as she took a bite, “you should try it.”
Zax did, and like everything else he had tried so far, it tasted wonderful. During the middle of the conversation the waiter returned to their table, his arms full of hot dishes straight from the back kitchen. Performing a juggling act better than any Zax had seen on the Tri-D, the waiter deposited the steaming dishes on the table in front of them. They smelled delicious!
Upon silent agreement, they both suspended all conversations and began to eat. To his surprise, Zax found that he could not readily identify what it was he was eating! He had assumed that Deep Platt Ocean salmon, the name of some aquatic fish, but he was surprised to discover that his dish had legs and no scales or eyes. But whatever it was, it tasted delightful. Neither one of them spoke until the last morsel was consumed.
As he chased a fugitive piece of Platt salmon around his plate, Zax asked, “So, tell me, do you eat here often?”
Lauria gave a chuckle, through a partially filled mouth and waived negatively with her bread filled hand. “Hell no, I only eat here when I can con a rich date to take me here,” Lauria replied, with a puckish grin. Seeing the mild startled look on his face, she gave her now crest fallen dinner companion, a short laugh. “I was only kidding, Zax. It just so happens that Omar, the owner, is a good friend of mine. Like you and me, he completed his tattoo a few years ago and became eligible for the Land Acquisition Grant. He received a very lucky draw and was given title to this very location.
“The co-op that controlled the land around this site, made him a very generous offer to allow them to develop the site as they wished and in turn they offered him a large stipend. He declined their offer and decided to develop it himself, despite the planetary taxes it would incur, since it was smackdab in the middle of the city. The Firsters who ran the co-op played hardball in the beginning and tried every trick in the book to get him to relent. They slowed down his zoning applications, tried to apply bogus code violations, and even tried to block his loan applications, but he persevered and eventually was able to build this restaurant. I try to eat here as often as my budget will allow, to support his hard work. Not that he needs it mind you, as you can see…” she said, waving at the filled tables, “…this has become one of the best bistros in Plex. Now, some of his best customers are the very same Firsters who tried to block his efforts.”
Zax was only half listening, because he found himself wondering if it would be considered gauche if he were to sop up the gravy with a piece of bread from the basket. He finally decided ‘what the hell’ and did it anyway.
“So how did you like it?” Lauria asked, and then chuckled at his full-mouthed attempt to put into words his culinary experience with a comical pantomime of both his arms and face.
“Ah, that good, was it? I’m glad I didn’t order you the Barefoot beef bourguignon, it would have probably put you into a comma!” she laughed. She waited until his mouth was empty of food before she asked her next question.
“So, tell me Zax, what are your plans now?”
Clearing his throat, he looked into Lauria’s green eyes and shrugged. “Frankly, I am not sure what I’m going to do next. I know that what I have just inherited may not seem like a lot of units to some, but I have a few things that I must mull over and…” Lauria held up her hand, interrupting him with a soft giggle.
“No silly, I mean what are your immediate plans. Like where are you staying? Are you going all the way back to that hotel in Centennial?”
“Oh… well, I don’t actually want to go back to the Weston, so I guess I could find a simple robohostel to stay at.” Seeing the look of disgust on Lauria’s face, he nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I know, those places are pretty basic, but I don’t really know my way around Plex that well. What do you suggest?”
Lauria was just about to reply, when Zax’s wristcom buzzed. He frowned and angled his com so that he could read the message.
Zax, its Jinn. I’m at the front desk at the hotel and two policemen just came in and asked me if I might know where to find you. One of them was named Fuller, and he said that if I see you, to tell you to contact him immediately. The other man was kinda scary, he seemed to look right through me. I don’t know what’s going on, but it sounded serious. Zax, you seem like a nice guy, but there seems to be a storm around you that I can’t afford to be involved with. I wish you the best of luck, but it might be best if we don’t see each other again. ---Jinn
Zax’s frown turned into a scowl. Lauria seeing the sudden change in his attitude, gave him a look of concern.
“Oh, oh, I’ve seen that look before. I bet you are about to cut our luncheon date short, am I right? And just as it was getting interesting,” she said, with a small frown. “Bad news?”
“I don’t know if it is bad or not, but I’m afraid you are right. It looks like I have date with the police back in Centennial,” Zax said, with a sigh. Lora’s eyes widened.
Looking concerned, she offered, “I hope it’s nothing serious. Is there anything I can do? Do you need an attorney or anything?”
“No, no I’m sure it is nothing like that,” he said mollifyingly. “They probably want to ask me a few more questions concerning my father’s death. Sorry about the interrupted meal, give me a sun check for later, ok? I’ll make it up to you.”
“Well I hope that’s all it is, as for the sun check, you got it. But next time, I’m gonna pick a place where there is no comm signal,” she said, with a small pout.
Zax signaled the waiter for the check, by pressing the screen inlayed into the table. Instead of the waiter, Omar came quickly to the table.
“Going so soon?” he began, “and here I was thinking that you had room for dessert. We make it special, right here in the kitchen.”
“No, sorry, I’m sure that it would have been as delicious, as was the rest of the meal, but unfortunately something just came up,” Zax said.
“That’s the problem with people today, rush, rush, rush, without a moment to take for themselves. You will get much angina, running around like that after such a full lunch, it’s no good for the heart,” Omar lamented.
“Yes, you are probably right, but there is no getting around it this time,” Zax replied.
Rising, he took an eunit disc and placed it in the slot in the tablet that Omar had presented. He touched his thumb to the screen, then added a generous tip on top of the bill (something he had seen done on Tri-D). The owner’s eyes widened a little at the generosity.
“Thank you, sir, most generous,” he gushed, then he bowed once and left.
“Wow!” Lauria exclaimed, “I’ve never seen Omar act like that before. What did you do, pay his mortgage?” Zax only smiled and walked her to the door.
“I hope we can meet again, Lauria. I had a great time and a lunch I won’t be forgetting soon.”
“Me too, Zax. Next time, I will take you to a place that has an even better menu…my kitchen. I’m not so bad a cook myself, you know. In fact, I’m headed there right now; it is nearby, in walking distance. The nice thing about being an employee of an Imperial bank, is the long two-hour lunch breaks,” she grinning, and then continued in a more somber tone, “I hope everything works out with the police.”
Pausing a second to stare at Zax, she seemed to come to
a decision. Reaching into pouch at her hip, she withdrew a thin blank data card and laid it flat onto the surface of her palmcom. She then tapped the exposed upper portion of its screen for a few seconds. Removing the card, she slid it across the table to Zax.
“Here. This is the number to my com unit and directions to my apartment. You can either plug it into your own com unit, or use any public com system and a directional map will be generated that will guide you to the building. I am inviting you for dinner at my apartment. If you can, be there by 6:30 s.s., but if you are held up please let me know. We can talk about you finding a room over dinner; the robohostels stink, and this being the capital, normal hotel rates are sky high. I know of a few places that are decent and won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Checking her wrist chrono, she let out a low whistle. “Look I gotta go or I will be late getting back to work. If you get back from Centennial early, why don’t you take some time and look around Plex for an hour or so. There is always something unique happening here,” she finished saying as she walked away, but in mid-step she stopped and rushed back to his side. Hesitating for a moment, she suddenly kissed him quickly on the lips and sauntered away.
Zax, felt his lips burning as he watched her walk away and marveled at how she could move like that in a business suit. Shaking his head, he decided to splurge a bit and hailed one of the many auto-cabs floating by. One pulled up, he touched his unit disc into the exterior indentation and the canopy immediately opened. Sitting down, he spoke his destination into the microphone pickup and the cab swiftly rose and entered a southbound lane.
An unremarkable man, sitting at a table a few meters from the bistro, watched the scene between his target and the bank assistant playing out on the walkway, and began to wonder. The bugs he had hidden in Zax’s clothing and floater, enabled him to locate the target rather quickly. He was able to follow him back to the hotel, and later the next day as he traveled to the bank. He was sitting across from him in the same train car, but Zax had taken no notice of him.
Earlier, he had stood at one of the bank’s eunit exchange kiosks, pretending to check the exchange rate, and watched as Zax and the young bank assistant boarded one of the gravdiscs and headed up to the vaults. He then made a show of checking his watch, then sitting down in one of the chairs as if he were waiting for a late appointment. Dressed as he was, no one took a second look at him.
About an hour or so later, his target exited the vault, rode a gravdisc back to the main floor and walked over to the assistant’s desk. After a short conversation, his target retrieved his rucksack and the bugged floater, then walked out the main doors.
Feigning frustration over a missed meeting, the obviously flustered businessman rose to leave, but then slowly sat back down, as if to give his missed appointee an extra few minutes to make the rendezvous. Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen the deposit clerk carefully raise from her desk, check her wrist chrono and unobtrusively follow the target out the front of the bank.
He had been observing the two for the better part of an hour talking almost non-stop and thought that it might be easier to find out what Zax was doing at the bank by questioning the young clerk, but it was a risk. A news headline flashed, then crawled across the flimsy he was holding, and his eyes narrowed. It looked like the decision was being made for him. Paying the tab, he gave up following the young woman and once again tailed the young man, leaving the fax flimsy behind him on the table. The headline read:
Gang Warfare Breaks out in South Centennial.
In the wee hours before first sunrise, the bodies of four gang members were discovered in a vacant lot. In a somewhat unusual move, the Police were on the scene with both sweepers and DNA sniffers to aid in the investigation. There is speculation that this is in response to a second body found at the Ketchner building across the street from the gangland massacre. But police are denying any connection between the two events.
CHAPTER TEN
Arriving at the precinct, Zax exited the cab and absently removed the receipt tab from its slot. Walking through the main doors, he noticed that the same female desk sergeant (Gladis, he believed her name was) was on duty as the night when Lt. Fuller had brought him in. Looking up from the desk’s embedded screen, she took a cursory glance at him as he walked up, then did a double take.
“Hey! Lieutenant Fuller has been to the spaceport and looking all over Last Town for you fella. You just stay right there, don’t move!” she exclaimed. Grabbing the pin microphone attached to her desk, she spoke rapidly into it.
“Lieutenant Fuller please report to the main desk, the party you have been searching for just walked in voluntarily,” her voice echoed out over the wall speakers.
There was a pregnant moment of silence, then there was an explosion of people, emerging from various doors along the hallway. In front of the crowd was Lt. Fuller, hastily putting on his police jacket and looking a little nonplussed. Following on his heels, were two other individuals. Zax could see a wide range of emotions on faces approaching him: Fuller’s face showed some bewilderment and some relief, the tall thin man following him (a police captain by the bars on his epaulets) was obviously annoyed and a touch angry, but the face on the third individual was the most disturbing of all, for it showed no emotion at all. It was as though someone had poured a flesh colored mask over a head but had forgot to put in the little details that made it look human. Fuller was the first one to reach him and he began speaking in the flat sing-song tone cops had used for centuries:
“Zaxxion Grayson I wish to inform you that you have the right to silence, and the right to have legal representation, that anything you say, can and will be used against you in the Imperial court of law. Do you understand these directives?”
“Why yes I do,” Zax said, slightly puzzled. “What’s this all about? Have you any further news about my father’s murder?”
“Follow me please,” Fuller said, in an officious voice, but Zax could see real concern for him behind the cop’s eyes.
Zax followed Fuller, who led him into the first interrogation room down the hall. Thinking back to what Fuller had said previously, he realized that this room was fully bugged and probably vid-imaged as well. Everything said and done in this room, was going to be part of the official record. He was going to have to be very careful about what he chose to say in here. Zax was guided to a chair at the end of a long table, that faced a blank wall festooned with several imagers and scanners. While the room was lighted, it gave the impression that all the light was concentrated at the end of the table where Zax was sitting.
The two other men filed into the room behind lieutenant Fuller. One took the chair on the left of the lieutenant, the other one seemed to fade back into the shadows of the room. The man next to Fuller wore a Centennial metropolitan police badge and a shirt identification bar, which read: ‘Captain Ombulo’. Ombulo’s skin was so dark, it almost glowed next to the whiteness of his uniform shirt. While Zax couldn’t make out other man’s face in the dim corner of the room, he was also dark, but not in the normal definition of the word. He felt dark. A dark pall surrounded him, as though he absorbed any light that happened to fall on him. Looking at him, was as though he was a gloomier patch of darkness standing in the dim corner. This must have been the man that Jinn had called ‘kinda scary’. The ‘shadow man’ was wearing what looked like well-tailored suit of off world design and a high collared shirt. There were no insignia or identifying badges on him. He had the multicultural look of someone from the Empire’s core worlds.
“Do you hereby waive the rights that were explained to you earlier?” Fuller finished saying, jerking Zax’s attention back to what was happening in the room.
“Yeah, sure. Now, would someone please tell me what’s going on?” inquired Zax, frowning.
“We will ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” Captain Ombulo chimed in. The ‘shadow man’ said nothing, just stared at Zax intently.
“Sure, ask away,” Zax replied, just as curtly.
&n
bsp; “Messer Zaxxion Grayson, can you please account for your whereabouts between the last time you were here in this station, up to the present?” Fuller asked politely, obviously irritated at the captain’s attitude.
“Well, sure… I think so,” Zax said hesitantly, and then paused to think, “Let me see…well, first, I went and got a room at the Weston hotel just a few streets down from here. The next day, I went to an appointment to see a lawyer in the South Centennial. After I met with her, let me see…ah yes, I went back to my hotel room, slept till second sun rise and then left earlier today to go to the bank in Plex. After that, I received a text from an acquaintance that the police were looking for me. I figured that it has something to do with my father’s death, so I came straight here. That’s about all, I think.”
“So, can you tell us the exact time you arrived at the lawyer’s office? A… Ms… let me see…” Fuller said, pausing to consult a holo display for a second, “…Alicia Wilkerson Esq. I believe is her name.”
“Well, I had a 13:30 first sunset appointment. It was the first time I had met her, so I thought that it would be best if I got there right on time,” Zax replied.
“After meeting her, how long did you spend in conference?” Ombulo interjected.
“Oh, about an hour or so, I don’t recall the exact length of the meeting.”
“Either when you arrived, or later when you left the Ketchner Building, did you notice anyone out on the streets or possibly watching you or the building?” Fuller asked.
Now that was an odd thing to ask. Zax mulled over the question momentarily then answered, “No, there was no one around. To tell the truth once I left her office, I hurried through that neighborhood as quickly as I could. It was a rather twitchy area.”
