Dames for Hire

by S. C. Jensen

  Miss Martinez swayed her way over to a long, smoked-glass side table with the flared legs of her otherwise painted on trousers gently swishing behind her like the tail of an exotic bird. She removed the top from a crystal decanter and poured a deep-red liquid into a glass like cascading fractals. “Drink?”

  “I can’t—” I swallowed the thickness in my throat and tried again. “I don’t drink,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  “You must be terribly dehydrated.” She peered coquettishly over her shoulder at me from beneath heavily made-up eyelashes.

  My cheeks burned, and I felt a cold prickle along the back of my neck. My heart beat faster. I couldn’t decide if I was embarrassed or excited. Martinez wasn’t my type, but my desire to be like her licked sensuously down my spine and settled somewhere between my thighs. I said, “I could stand some water.”

  She bent forward, displaying her muscular buttocks and hamstrings, and reached inside a hidden compartment beneath the table. When she turned back to me, she held her own glass in one hand and a slender blue bottle of chilled lunar water that probably cost more than my HCPD salary. She gestured to a low chaise lounge wrapped in a fabric like woven cream and placed our drinks on a little glass tray next to it. She perched her shapely rear upon the raised section of the lounge and patted the lower section beside her.

  I sat. The weight of my prosthetic hung heavily from my left shoulder. Next to Martinez, I felt clunky. Not just less feminine, but less human than the divine specimen next to me. I reached for the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a long drink of liquid cush. It lacked the tang of the filtered rainwater from HoloCity’s water-treatment facility, which was expensive enough. Compared to the unfiltered poison most residences in the Grit were used to, it wasn’t even in the same chemical family. The more expensive it was, the less it tasted of anything but money.

  Scarlett Martinez turned toward me with her glass cradled in her hand and said, “On behalf of whom?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You came here on behalf of someone, you said. And we both know it wasn’t Vector.”

  “Right,” I said and took a deep breath. “I’ve been sent here by Wallace Flint.”

  A chill entered the room at Flint’s name, and Martinez stiffened. “Flint,” she said.

  “I have a deal to propose.”

  “A deal from Flint?” Her dark eyes slid over my face and across the long black jacket Dickie had lent me. It didn’t linger anywhere. There wasn’t much to look at. “Why should I listen to anything that man has to say?”

  “How much would it cost for you to remove your hooks from young Angelica Bell?”

  “Hooks?” She sneered at me. It was a lot less pretty than her smile. The eyes above were like shards of obsidian, ready to slice. “What makes you say hooks?”

  “Come on, Scarlett.” I placed the bottle of water back on the tray and leaned toward her a little. “You don’t care for the girl, do you? Vector’s looking to settle a score and you’re the shill.”

  She turned away from me. “Flint would think something like that.”

  “What’ll it cost? He’s a tight one, but I think we can settle this without anyone’s reputation getting hurt.”

  “Reputation?” She whirled and pierced me with those polished stone irises. “Flint doesn’t give a gutter-rat’s ass for anyone’s reputation but his own. He’s not looking to pay me off.”

  “He’s no cookie.” I rolled my metal shoulder and felt the fingers spasm. “But that doesn’t make Angelica fair play.”

  “Angelica is a hard pinch,” Martinez said. “She drinks and gambles too much. She owes Mick more than a hundred K stacks. But I don’t blame her for it.”

  “Well, Vector seems to,” I said. “And he’s keen to have his accounts settled. Is that why he hired Mook?”

  She laughed softly. “Hired whom?”

  “Bobby Mook,” I said. “A mousey little runt on the outskirts of the Grit, did some bookkeeping. Maybe a little blackmailing. He got his card punched this morning. Didn’t even have time to finish his breakfast.”

  She wore a look of studied indifference. She let her eyes slide back up to my face and licked her lips again. I didn’t know how she kept the lipstick on. “What does it have to do with me?”

  “I thought maybe you could tell me.”

  “You think Mick would do a thing like that?” She laughed again. “I suppose that’s what you told the uniforms when they turned up.”

  “They didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t call it in.”

  She appraised me coolly and said, “That’s an interesting little tidbit, isn’t it?”

  “I’m getting a K stack as a retainer,” I said. “It’s yours if you lay off the Bell girl.”

  “Are you really?” She seemed amused by the thought. “Have you learned to bleed the stone?”

  “I don’t want this to get ugly.”

  “It’s already ugly,” she said. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Marlowe,” I said. “Bubbles Marlowe.”

  “Of course. Now, did Flint tell you what he did to my mother, Marlowe? Ten years of research stolen, and her position with Libra. And that’s just the intellectual theft. The rest ...” She took a long drink from her glass and licked her lips delicately. “She couldn’t live with what he left of her. And yes, when I met Angelica, I had all those things in my mind. I have a brother, you know. I’d love to put him through school on Flint’s dime. I thought of it.”

  “Let’s come together on a price,” I said. “And leave the girl out of it.”

  “Or what?” She sipped her drink and turned to me with her lips glistening and her dark eyes ablaze. The sickly sweetness of the liquid wafted toward me in the thick air and awoke a different kind of thirst. “You’ll tell the cops what you think you know about Mick’s bookie? What makes you think the girl wants to be out of it? Maybe we’re in love.”

  I snorted. “Come on, Scarlett. I know what you’re doing.”

  “Do you? Wallace Flint destroyed my family, and if I have to tear up his to get what’s mine, so be it. I happen to be very fond of Angelica, as a matter of fact. And she’s not so hot on her daddy, so—”

  “Stepfather,” I said. “He was very clear about that.”

  The scent of her drink was making my skin crawl. I reached into a pocket and the woman’s eyes went wide. She flinched, but I held out a hand with a stick of gum in it. I unwrapped it, tucked the wrapper back into my pocket and put the stick in my mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Flint’s not all that torn up about it from what I saw.”

  “You don’t think—” She stopped herself and smiled again, slow and luxurious. She shrugged. “No, I suppose not. He wouldn’t tell you.”

  I didn’t feel like playing her game, and I said so. She laughed, making a sound like water running through the gutter. “Well, I’m not doing your job for you, ‘Detective.’ You can take your offer and choke on it. Angelica is mine, and I hope it destroys the old bastard.”

  “Would you say that if she was here?”

  The smile crept even wider across the burgundy painted lips and there was something else in her eyes now. A clicking noise behind me made my heart stop. I turned slowly to stare into the single dead-eye of a small black pistol. Angelica Bell said, “He is an old bastard. And I’ll marry whomever I please.”

  Angelica was no angel. As tall as me and twice as broad with hard muscle showing through her thin grey shirt. Subdermal implants made spiralling patterns over her skin that rippled with shadow in the low light. Her black hair was cut as if with rusty scissors and tossed carelessly to one side, revealing a shaved skull underneath with more implants there. She had a handsome face with strong features, hardened by the steel in her eyes, and twisted by something I couldn’t read and didn’t want to.

  “Time to drift,” she whispered. “You can tell Flint I don’t need any help from him anymore. I’m a big girl now.”

  “Yes, you are,” I said to the pistol. I p
ut my hands up and stood slowly. I took a step sideways, away from the chaise lounge, to give myself a bit of room. “Put the gun down, Angelica, please.”

  “It’s please, now, is it?” She sneered. “Did my daddy say please?”

  I lunged for the gun and crushed her hand against it with my metal fist. Angelica shouted.

  “Ruin her, baby,” Scarlett said from behind me.

  I felt a cool breeze as the air in the room shifted and then a noise like shattering glass. It took me a moment to realize the sound had come from the explosion of pain at the back of my head. Angelica laughed and brought her left fist up into the side of my jaw. Then she howled as my upgrade spasmed and her fingers snapped in my hand. The room spun around me and I put both my hands out to steady myself, letting go of her broken fingers. The gun fell to the floor with no sound at all.

  I spun downward, slowly, like a piece of trash caught in the wind, and when I fell onto the plush carpet, I was staring at the gun again. I groaned and rolled over and the mirrored glass lights of the ceiling danced for me. Then Angelica’s fist drove the message home and didn’t leave any room for miscommunication. Unconsciousness opened its fetid, black mouth and I let it swallow me.

  Chapter Six

  When I came to, the lights had been switched off and the apartment was silent. I peeled myself up off the ground and put a hand to my jaw where the angel had clobbered me. It wasn’t too bad. I probably wouldn’t need surgery, and I always did like my right side a little lumpy.

  I stumbled over to the wall and turned the lights on. I was alone. My ears felt like they were full of water. I worried that maybe Angelica had busted something inside my brain. But I shook my head and didn’t feel any loose screws bouncing around. I realized it was just the room—with its plush carpet, velvet walls, and smoky air—that made me feel like I was being held under water.

  The sitting room was empty but for the melted spheroid furniture in the same off-white colour as the chaise lounge I had taken a nap under. Warm light glittered off the smoked-glass fixtures in the ceiling, the tables strewn around the room. No outside light came in. I peeked into the tiny kitchenette. Refrigerator empty except for a couple of takeout containers. A pair of wooden chopsticks rested in the sink. Counters clean enough to eat off of, which was a pretty good indication that never happened. No table. I pictured Angelica and her high-cush fiancée eating noodles over the sink. It didn’t rate.

  On the opposite side of the apartment was the bedroom. Angelica must have been hiding in there, waiting for the right moment to ruin me, as the Martinez dame had so eloquently put it. I poked around the drawers, under the bed, in the tiny but elegant bathroom. Nothing of interest. Eventually I decided to take my aching head back down to the parking garage to see if Dickie had made out any better than I had. I turned the lights off again, opened the door into the corridor, and let it lock behind me.

  A bigger lump than the one on my jaw stood outside the door.

  “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” I said.

  Mungo grunted and led me toward the elevator again. I shrugged and followed. Some service in this place. We reversed course through the compound. Inside the little, white box again. I hardly noticed the smell this time, distracted as I was by the pain in my head.

  “What’s the smoke, Bubbles?” Dickie’s panicked voice greeted me as the lift door opened, and I stumbled into the garage. “What took you so long?”

  “You sound like my SmartPet,” I muttered. “Do we still have a ride or are we doing the walk of shame?”

  Hawkins stepped out from behind Dickie with a tight smile on his face. “It’s good to see you again, Marlowe. I take it your visit was a success?”

  He didn’t look all that happy to see me.

  “I delivered my message, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “And then Angelica Bell delivered me from my wits. You failed to mention that Miss Martinez had a visitor.”

  He sneered. “You failed to ask.”

  “My mistake.” I rubbed my jaw. “It’s been swell, gentlemen. Literally.”

  Dickie looked a little pale around his nose and mouth, and beads of sweat poured down the side of his face. “I think we should go now, Bubbles.”

  Mungo cracked his knuckles casually and leaned against the front of the boiler car like he meant to stay there.

  “Sure,” I said. “Which way to the exit?”

  Hawkins glared at me with his visilenses propped up on his head. He opened the doors on the boiler with a sour look on his face and pushed Dickie inside by the scruff of his neck. He turned to me and said, “You’re not walking this time, but if that little cheat shows up here again, he’s getting parted out. Don’t come back.”

  “Invitation only,” I promised.

  I slipped into the car after Dickie. The doors slammed and everything went black. The car lurched back onto the maglev track. We sat in the darkness and silence with only Dickie’s fear-sweat stink to keep us company.

  When the track spit us back out into the street, I was surprised to see the sun was still up behind the thick fog of overcast clouds. Dickie keyed in the coordinates to my flat, leaned back in the seat, and rubbed his face. “On second thought, that was a terrible idea.”

  “You won, didn’t you?” I said. “And I didn’t start any fights.”

  “By the skin of my teeth,” he said. “Didn’t put me in Hawkins’ good books, either. He’s probably going to put a hit on me just to save face. And your face is pretty messed up for someone who didn’t get in a fight.”

  “I said I didn’t start it,” I said. “Angelica finished it before I even knew I was in the ring. At least she had the decency not to call it in, or we would be limping home.”

  “I changed my mind.” Dickie sighed. “I’m not really cut out of the sleuthing business. You can keep the jacket. It looks better on you.”

  “You’re giving up on me already?”

  “Not on you,” he said. “I can hunt up contracts and write your promo material. Bubbles Marlowe, Cyborg Detective—”

  “Forget the cyborg thing, Dick. I can’t even figure out how to use this thing. If I survive this job, we’ll talk about future work. Something less punchy. Rescuing SmartPets from storm drains, maybe.”

  Dickie looked sideways at me. “Have you ever been in a HoloCity storm drain?”

  Long streaks of neon light slid past the tinted windows of the car like someone had dragged their fingers through an oil painting. “No. Have you?”

  “I heard there’re alligators.”

  “That’s just something your mother told you to keep you from getting your dress shoes soggy.”

  “I wouldn’t go down there.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, you think of something. Low-key jobs the brass doesn’t care about. No more of these gamblers and hustlers and HoloCity highbinders. They play a little rough.”

  DICKIE DROPPED ME OUT front of my apartment, but he didn’t come up. After nearly losing his boiler to Hawkins, he wasn’t in a hurry to leave it unattended in my neighbourhood. Probably the first good idea he’d had all day. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, but I guessed it was after noon when I pushed open the broken door into my flat and tossed my new, black trench coat and fedora on top of the fuzzy pink monstrosity on the chair. The curtains were drawn against the dreary mid-day grey outside, and the apartment swam in shadows I couldn’t be bothered to dispel. Mittens didn’t make an appearance. Typical cat. I should have saved myself some money and got a real one if the SmartPet was just going to ignore me anyway.

  I flicked on a dim light in the kitchen and opened the fridge. No takeout containers for me. Just three cans of NRG soda and a can of pseudo-sausage product that I didn’t remember opening. I grabbed a soda and held the can on my jaw until it stopped throbbing. In the corner of the kitchen, next to the recycling chute, the broom cupboard hung open a crack. An ancient sweeper bot peeked out, knocked from its charging cradle. The sweeper irritated Mittens with its refusal to acce
pt updates, and I’d found it easier to leave it in the cupboard rather than provoke the ire of the rampaging SmartPet. I vaguely wondered when the last time my floor had been cleaned. I cracked the tab on the can and took a swig. The air in the apartment smelled different from when I’d left. I didn’t think it was the mystery meat in the refrigerator. It was an animal kind of smell, low and musky.

  I kicked the fridge closed and turned back to the living room. A shadowed figure stood in the far corner, beyond the reach of the dim glow from the kitchen light. It moved slightly. Something glinted in the darkness. There was a click. An icy kiss brushed the back of my neck and a harsh voice whispered, “Touch the ceiling, baby.”

  The shadow didn’t move. It just waited. Waited while I lifted my hands up, while I spun the can so it wouldn’t drip on my head, and reached. The voice said, “Good girl.”

  The cold, hard finger of the gun barrel trembled against my skin, and I felt the man step closer. Felt his heart beating in the space between us. He might have had a gun in his hand but he carried all his excitement in his front pocket. Hot, musky breath wafted over my shoulder. I kept my eyes on the shadow.

  “I didn’t realize I had company,” I said. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  “You don’t look like you’re in any position to help anyone,” the shadow said in a feminine voice, like liquid smoke.

  “Pardon me,” I said. “Only one gentleman in the house.”

  “Oh, Dex is rarely gentle,” the woman said. She leaned forward just enough so I could see the tip of her nose illuminated in the yellow glow from the kitchen, and below that a set of slightly crooked teeth between thin, red lips.