Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

  He stared at me long enough without saying anything that I shrugged one shoulder and stepped back. Either he’d follow me in or the door would close. He followed me in.

  “Drink?” I asked, walking to the small bar I kept against the wall.

  “Bourbon,” he replied, his voice clipped.

  I poured the drink and turned to hand it to him. His eyes flicked down to the V at the front of my robe, and then back up to my eyes as he took the drink.

  “Mr. Martel,” I said as he sipped, “I’m an accountant. My primary employer is a company known as McHenry-Key Industries. Do you know them?”

  Martel shook his head in the negative.

  I smiled a small smile. “I’m not surprised. On the surface, they’re an import/export business. Some planetary, but mostly spacegoing commerce with the orbital, Mars, and lunar colonies. In reality, they’re a business front for the profiteering operations of a man named Maxwell Rothesky II.” I watched his face as I said it. Sure enough, his eyes widened and the glass came down from his lips. Outside, the mag rail whistled as it sped by on its track.

  “You work for Junior Rothesky? The Boss of Baltimore?”

  “Not officially,” I said, “but yes. I started right out of college. I came to Mr. Rothesky’s attention when I identified an irregularity in the books that led to proof of a subordinate’s embezzling. Mr. Rothesky dislikes disloyalty in his employees.” As I spoke, I refreshed my own drink, then walked back to sit on the sofa. I leaned back against the armrest, enjoying the slide of satin on my skin.

  “So why is he having his thugs follow you?” Martel asked, moving to sit on the opposite end of the sofa. “Were you disloyal?”

  “No,” I said softly. “But I think Eddie might have been.”

  “What did Rothesky have on your brother?”

  I pressed my lips together. “Tech,” I said lowly after a few minutes.

  Martel’s eyebrows went up. “Tech?” he asked.

  I took a drink and nodded. “How much do you remember about the night you were shot in Bavaria?”

  Martel’s expression slammed shut like an airlock door. “What?”

  I held up a hand. “Please,” I said softly. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I just…What do you remember?”

  “Nothing,” he said, forcing the word through gritted teeth. “My entire squad dead but Eddie and me, and I don’t remember a goddamn thing.”

  I reached out my free hand to touch his arm where it lay on the back of my couch. He jerked away, but his eyes thawed just a bit.

  “Mr. Martel, that night your squad surprised a detail of enemy soldiers in the middle of the forest. Did you never wonder what they were doing there?”

  He just stared at me. It didn’t last long. I couldn’t draw it out.

  “Eddie told me,” I said, my voice going quiet, as Eddie’s had always done. “He told me about the surprise, how your forward men died in the initial blast. How you were hit, but ordered the squad to return fire. How when it was over, there were only the two of you left. You passed out. He dragged you into a nearby cave, just in case anyone else should happen by…only it wasn’t a cave. It was the entrance to an abandoned twentieth-century salt mine. And the enemy had been using it to store stolen tech they’d looted from the industrial centers of Europe.”

  I took a drink and a moment to beg Eddie’s forgiveness for the story I was about to tell, for I’d once sworn on my very soul that I’d keep this secret forever.

  “Mr. Martel, you weren’t the only thing rescued that night. Eddie brought some of the tech back.”

  “Some of the tech? What does that mean? What tech?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head sadly as the lights from a passing autoflyer slanted through the blinds and flashed across my face. “I don’t know what, exactly, he got out. He never told me specifics. But he did tell me it was priceless. Notes, maybe? Diagrams, blueprints? Your guess is as good as mine. It couldn’t have been large, given the circumstances.”

  Martel snorted softly. His mouth twisted upward at one corner.

  I let my own smile deepen in acknowledgement of his understanding. “In any case, very near the end of the war, I got a letter from Eddie. It was vague, but I understood it. He was asking me to put him in touch with my boss—with Mr. Rothesky. He had something that he needed to get into the country without a lot of questions. When he came home, he told me the full story…or as much of a full story as he would say.”

  “So Eddie finds this stolen tech, steals some of it, and Junior helps him fence it?” Martel asked, sipping at his drink.

  I shook my head. “Not fence. Import. Smuggle, I guess. I don’t think Eddie told Mr. Rothesky’s people what he was bringing in through the orbital colonies, he just paid the asking price.”

  “Where’d he get the money for that?”

  I gave him a level look.

  “Ah,” he said, raising his glass to me. “Little sister to the rescue. Junior pays his employees well, does he? The loyal ones, anyway.”

  “Well enough,” I said, in my best “not your business” tone.

  He let out a short bark of laughter and took a drink. Irritation flashed through me, then faded, leaving the familiar exhaustion and grief that blanketed everything these days. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back again.

  “I don’t know how, but Rothesky must have found out what Eddie had. Or he found out something anyway. Eddie sent me a message. He said he didn’t want to come to me because he didn’t want to turn Junior’s suspicions my way. Mr. Rothesky has trusted me for a very long time. If he thought I was being disloyal now…”

  I stopped, opened my eyes and rolled my head to the side so that I could meet Martel’s gaze. He looked as raw as I felt. I quit fighting and let my grief, exhaustion, and loneliness tangle up inside me until I felt I could barely breathe.

  “I’m so tired,” I whispered, apropos of nothing. Another drone drove by. Headlights swept across the line of my body. I watched him watch. His wounded desire pulled at my own. The false promise of comfort hung in the air.

  I lifted a hand to the sash of my bathrobe and tugged. The silk slithered open, leaving my skin pale in the dimness. Martel took another drink before putting it down and moving toward me.

  His lips tasted like bourbon.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  “What did Eddie’s message say?”

  Martel’s voice was partially muffled from passing through the bathroom door. I knotted my bathrobe sash once more before waving a hand over the biometric lock and walking back out into my bedroom.

  He lay in my bed, his chest bare, the bedsheet bunched around his waist. One muscled arm curled up behind his head, while he smoked an honest-to-goodness cigarette with the other one. I gave him a lazy smile and crawled up onto the foot of the bed. I held out a hand and he handed me the cig. It wasn’t as harsh as I thought it would be. The smoke filled my mouth and warmed down into my lungs. I felt light and loose, better than I had in weeks.

  “Where did you find these?” I asked, coughing just a little. “They’re illegal to sell.”

  “I roll my own,” Martel said. “You can still buy pipe tobacco and rolling papers from religious specialty shops.”

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll give you cancer?”

  “We all gotta die sometime. You said Eddie sent you a message.” He reached out and took the cig back as he changed the subject, then leaned forward to catch a strand of my ultrasonically cleaned hair with the fingers of his free hand. “What did it say?”

  “He said he was in trouble,” I said, exhaling and letting the smoke twist upward between us. “And he was sorry he’d made trouble for me, too. He told me to find you. Said you’d help me.”

  “Help you do what?”

  “Something about seeing the beauty in the world,” I shrugged. “Typical Eddie. Part of me thinks he knew, even then, that Mr. Rothesky wasn’t going to let him go. If Mr. Rothesky knew about the tech, he’d likely have taken it in
exchange for Eddie’s life…but you know how Eddie was.”

  “Wouldn’t be bullied,” Martel said, snorting softly. “He’d have died first. So what, he stashes it?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. He said you’d help me. I think…I think he meant for us to find the tech after he was gone. After it was safe.”

  “It’s never gonna be safe,” Martel pointed out. “Not if Junior Rothesky’s after you for it.”

  “Mr. Martel—”

  “Really? ‘Mr. Martel’?” Amusement threaded through his voice as he dragged on the cigarette once more and handed it to me. “Call me Ray, sweetheart.”

  “Ray,” I said, smiling and accepting the cig. “I can take Rothesky down anytime I want to. I have his books. His real ones.”

  Martel’s eyes widened, and he nearly choked on his smoke.

  “You mean—”

  “I mean that I can take my books and waltz right in to the FBI’s organized crimes division and hand them enough evidence to ensure a power vacuum in the Baltimore criminal underworld for the next decade. Not to mention all of the orbital and colonial shares they’d be able to seize by forfeit. The U.S. Government’s been looking for a way to put the space corporations like McHenry-Key in their place ever since the war. They just haven’t had the excuse they needed. I can give them that excuse. I haven’t done so before now because…what’s in it for me? Rothesky pays well, as you’ve pointed out, and I’m a loyal employee. But loyalty goes both ways. Rothesky killed my only brother.” And I could have saved him, if only I’d known in time. I took another drag and tried not to drown in my own bitterness.

  Martel leaned back against the headboard again, and sat rubbing his fingertips together as he mulled this over.

  “So you want to go, find this tech, then do your dance for the FBI? Then what? You’re crazy if you think Rothesky can’t reach out and touch you, even if he’s in custody.”

  I smiled again, and this time it was sad.

  “I think that’s why Eddie sent me to you. You can help me disappear. I’ve got plenty of money. Hell, we can disappear together.” My smile grew and I put the cig between my lips and crawled over the bed toward him.

  “Think of it,” I said. “We could run away together to some little podunk colonial town in the middle of nowhere on Mars. Change our names, start over. We could leave it all behind, Ray. Rothesky, the war, everything. We could just be Joe and Betty Grumble, or something like that.”

  I laid my head on his bare chest. A chuckle rumbled under my cheek, and he stroked my hair as I curled into him and lifted the cig over his body to put it on the bedside table. When my hand came back, I rested it over the scar tissue on his shoulder. He stiffened slightly. I needed him to relax.

  “Well,” I murmured. “Why not? Why couldn’t we?” I pressed my lips to his neck, his chest, and heard his answering sigh of pleasure.

  “Joe and Betty Grumble, huh?”

  “Yeah, I always liked the name Betty. Very retro small-town America.” I lifted up a smile at him, but my smile faded at the intensity in his eyes. One big hand came up to cup the side of my face.

  “You want to be Betty Grumble?” he asked softly.

  It had been a very long time since I believed in love. Other than between Eddie and me, love had always been something that existed for other people. But right there, something flashed in Martel’s gaze. Something deep and dangerous. Something that knifed through me and set my nerves tingling.

  “Sure thing, Joe,” I whispered, before he hauled me in for a rough, almost desperate kiss.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  “There’s something I want to show you,” Martel said later. Much later, in fact. He was sitting at my tiny kitchen table while I poured him a cup of coffee. Real, honest-to-goodness coffee was a luxury since the war, but I had the money, so I indulged. He sniffed deeply and grinned at me in appreciation.

  The tension of the night before had evaporated into a dreamy kind of giddy delight. We were Joe and Betty at the breakfast table: pouring coffee, eating eggs. Plotting the takedown of a major crime boss. Typical Saturday morning.

  “What’s that?” I asked as I slid into the chair next to him, my own coffee mug cradled between my hands.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said Eddie told you. He said I’d help you, but he didn’t say how, right?”

  I nodded, blew the steam off the top and took a sip.

  “Eddie sent me something a little while ago. I know I said I hadn’t thought of him in years, but that was a lie. About a month ago, I get this package from him, with a little note. The note says, ‘Thanks for saving my ass all those times. Here’s a little something to help you find the beauty you need in your life.’”

  I went very still.

  “Is that exactly what it said?” I asked, putting my coffee down before my trembling hands could spill it.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because Eddie’s message to me also referenced ‘the beauty I need in my life.’ That’s what he said you’d help me find. I think that phrase means something. I think it’s his code for the tech. What was in the package?”

  “A painting. Looked like a local scene, but all abstract and stuff, with crazy colors. Eddie signed it at the bottom. It was nice.”

  I reached out and took hold of his hand, gripping his fingers.

  “Ray. A local scene? I think…we gotta see that painting!”

  “You got it, Betty,” Martel squeezed my hand back and gave me a smile.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  We left my apartment about an hour later to the sounds of birds singing. The air was young and cool, and the sunlight filtered through the leafy green of the trees that still lined King Street. The Alexandria Farmer’s Market was in full swing, and I smiled at a mother looking through the produce with a baby on her hip.

  We hopped a hover cab to take us up to the mag rail station so we could catch the express into DC. The hover cab stopped at the corner of King and St. Asaph, and I turned to say something bright to Martel.

  I never got the chance. He grabbed my hand and pulled me after him as he stepped out of the hover cab and started walking quickly up St. Asaph.

  “Ray? Ray?” I asked, struggling to keep up with his long-legged stride.

  “Hush,” he said, his voice flat and clipped. He ducked into the doorway, pushing me ahead of him into the heavy sweetness of a boutique candy shop.

  “Welcome to Sweet Life!” an automated greeter sang out. Neither Martel nor I paid any attention.

  “Ray! What—?”

  “We’re being followed,” he said, moving so as to block me from view through the store’s big picture windows. “Rothesky’s boys I spotted tailing you home yesterday. They’re not keeping as much distance today.”

  “He must be getting suspicious.” For just a moment, I allowed fear to register on my face as I looked up at Martel.

  He smiled briefly and touched my cheek. “It’ll be okay. We’ll lose them. They’re expecting us to take the express into DC. We’ll walk down to the river and take a watertaxi instead.”

  I took a deep breath, steeled my nerve, and forced a smile and a nod.

  “Keep your head down and follow close behind me. I doubt they know what I look like. I know neither of them made me coming to your place yesterday, and I’m pretty sure I spotted them before they got a look at my face today.”

  “Loitering is not permitted in the Sweet Life,” the automated greeter said. “You must select a product or vacate the premises.”

  “We were just leaving,” Martel said and pulled me after him into the street. My hand felt hot in his massive grip.

  We got about twenty steps down the sidewalk before a blast sizzled by over our heads. Muffled screams echoed off the bricks around us as we ducked and began to run. Martel pulled an energy pistol from his coat pocket and ran into an alley. He pushed me down and joined me behind a pair of ancient-looking heavy plastic recycling bins. A stray cat yowled her displeasure as we disturb
ed her and a pair of orange kittens, but that was the only sound…

  …Except for the footsteps echoing louder and louder on the sidewalk nearby. I held my breath, both for the stench of the bins and out of nerves. Martel’s body tensed beside me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my own little energy pistol. Martel glanced at it, then nodded in approval. I gave him a tight smile.

  The footsteps rounded the corner and slowed to a stop. Martel looked through the opening between the bins and held up two fingers, then pointed at me and to the left. I nodded to show my understanding: two men. I was to take the one on the left.

  “Hey, Miz LaFleur,” one of the men called out in a voice like gravel in a metal drum. “We just want to talk to you. No need to be afraid.” I heard a deep chuckle, quickly stifled. My eyes cut to Martel. He held up three fingers, then slowly lowered one, another…

  On the count of three, we both stood up, knocking one of the bins over with the suddenness of our movement. My man on the left startled backwards, then went to raise his gun. He was too late. I squeezed three times, and two bolts seared through his torso high on his chest. The third hit somewhere in the vicinity of his right cheekbone and boiled his eye in its socket. He dropped without another sound.

  I hadn’t noticed Martel’s gun going off with the sizzle of my own weapon ringing in my ears, but as he stepped up to the fallen body of the other thug, I can only assume that he shot, too. He took a moment to rifle through their pockets, removing cash, their jewelry, watches, and phones. Either he was trying to make it look like a robbery, or he was gathering identifying data. Could go either way.

  I felt numb, as if the blast from my gun had stripped away any feeling or stimulus from the world around me. I blinked twice as I realized that Martel had me by the arms, shaking me none too gently and calling my name.

  “Joe,” I asked, my voice sounding high and lost, like that of a little girl.

  “Yeah, sweetheart,” Martel said gently, taking the pistol from my nerveless hand and putting it into his pocket. He wrapped his fingers through mine and kissed me on the head. “You did good. Real good. Come on now. We’re going to get you out of here.”