“Really?” said Quetzalli.
Izel shrugged. “Look for yourself. People are in denial. They think if they bet harder, the Eagles will play harder.”
“They can play as hard as they want,” said Takun. “Without Coyotl, they’re helpless.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Quetzalli, looking anything but amused.
Izel chuckled. “Talk about denial.”
“Watch your tongue,” she said.
“You know,” said Takun, “I’ve got some beans put away. I think I’ll take them to a betting parlor after work.”
“And do what with them?” Quetzalli demanded.
“Hey,” said Takun, “you’ve seen the odds they’re giving. This is an opportunity if ever there was one.”
“To bet against the Eagles?” Quetzalli asked. “Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Well,” said Izel, “the way they’re losing—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Quetzalli insisted. “They’re still the Eagles. They’re still Aztlan.”
Takun chuckled. “Suit yourself. I’ll call you from my place in District Fourteen to tell you about the view.”
“Turd,” muttered Quetzalli, returning her attention to her monitor. “No one ever got rich betting against the Eagles.”
Not true, strictly speaking. But it was something Aztlan fans liked to say. After all, we had won more championships than any two other teams combined.
Quetzalli glanced my way. “Work harder, Maxtla. I can’t tolerate much more of this crap.”
I said I would do that.
But it had been days since Coyotl disappeared. The chances of his playing for Aztlan again were fading like Tonatiuh over the Western Ocean.
Most pet stores in Aztlan smelled like dirty baby diapers. Not this one. More like a bath house, humid and well-perfumed. By that characteristic alone, I knew it catered mostly to nobles.
Also, most pet stores simply offered water salamanders, guinea pigs, parrots, turkeys, mice, and a few different kinds of fish. A handful of them carried dogs as well.
This one had three breeds of dog in its polished metal cages—the Hairless, the Chihuahua, and—all the way in the back of the shop, occupying a place of prominence—the ghost dog.
There were four cages full of them. They were big and white, with long snouts and short hair.
I walked over and stuck a knuckle through the mesh. The dogs climbed over each other to get a lick in.
The guy behind the counter was short and small-boned, with one of those fake smiles you see sometimes in shop people. I disliked him before he even opened his mouth.
“What can I do for you?” he asked in a voice too deep for someone of his frame. He glanced at my wrist. “Investigator?”
“I’m looking for someone who bought a ghost dog from you about eleven moons ago.” I gave him the date. “It would be a noblewoman.”
His smile faltered ever so slightly. “I wish I could help you, but we like to keep our transactions here a private matter—between us and our customers. I’m sure you understand.”
“I’m an Investigator,” I said.
“So I see.”
“I’d like to see your records regarding that date. The rest of them you can keep private.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but that’s not possible.”
“You understand that there are laws against impeding an Investigation? Laws that carry substantial penalties?”
“I’ll be protected,” he said. There wasn’t a hint of doubt in his voice.
“By whom?” I asked.
“By the person you’re looking for.”
I smiled back at him. “Listen, I’ll just come back with a writ of compliance. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to cooperate. Why not do it now . . .” I looked around the shop. “. . . before the health inspectors come back to find a violation they somehow overlooked?”
I had no pull with the health inspectors, but I didn’t think he would know that. Either way, he didn’t budge.
“Do whatever you feel is necessary,” he told me.
There wasn’t much else I could say except: “I’ll be in touch.”
As I headed for the door, the shopkeeper said, “Know the gods’ favor, Investigator.”
Contrary to his wishes, I didn’t feel favored.
Chapter Six
My next stop was at She Of The Jade Skirt.
It was inarguably the nicest hotel in town, with a gray marble lobby and lavender jade accents, and a carefully controlled cascade of water coating the wall opposite the service counter. One didn’t have to be an Investigator to figure out the clientele was wealthy. One look around was enough.
The woman behind the counter was probably wondering what I was doing there, since I wasn’t blinding her with the reflected brilliance of my jewelry—until I held up my hand so she could see the jewelry I was wearing. In other words, my Investigator’s bracelet.
“I’d like to see the manager,” I told her.
She nodded. “Of course.”
A few minutes later, I found myself sitting at a shiny black table in the hotel’s administration office. It was a nice piece, its legs inlaid with strips of turquoise and gold. Of course, the tables in the guest rooms were probably even nicer.
The manager, who sat across from me behind a Mirror monitor, had high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, and the skin of someone had who’d had the pox as a child. He offered me something to drink. I declined.
“How, then, may I help you?” he asked.
“I need to check your records,” I said.
“If I may inquire, for what purpose?”
“I can’t say. It’s an Investigation.”
The manager looked like he wanted to protest. After all, his salary depended on the number of beans the hotel took in, which in turn depended on his keeping his rooms occupied, and discretion was a plus in that regard.
But really, what could he say? Like every other residence in the city, short-term or long-term, the hotel was run by the Empire. And an Investigator had asked him for his cooperation.
“Very well,” he said. Then he called up a screen on his monitor, turned the monitor in my direction, and pushed it across the smooth surface of the table.
“Just select a time frame. The last week, the last moon, the last cycle . . . whatever you require.”
I selected the last cycle. Then I scanned for Coyotl’s name. I didn’t expect it to turn up, not even once. After all, he would have wanted his personal business to remain personal—even if he hadn’t been carrying on an affair with a noblewoman.
As it turned out, I was wrong. His name did show up. Nearly a hundred times, in fact.
Of course, there was no way to tell whom he had entertained on those dates.
I homed in on one of them and checked the room’s buzzer record. No one who stayed in this hotel bothered to carry a pouch buzzer, so whatever calls Coyotl had made would be noted.
There were three. I jotted down the codes.
I left the hotel, found a quiet street corner, and called each one in turn. The first code turned out to be Oxhoco’s. The second belonged to an executive at a sports manufacturing company, who was worried sick about Coyotl because he’d invested a hill of beans in balls bearing Coyotl’s likeness.
The third code was the most interesting. When I called it, a recording informed me that I had reached a high-priority line. In other words, it belonged to a noble. But I couldn’t determine which noble because that information was withheld from the public.
And the fact that I was an Investigator wasn’t going to help.
Funny—I felt like I was making progress, like I was on the right track. I had a witness to Coyotl’s abduction. I had found Malinche. And with a little luck I would find Coyotl’s noble girlfriend.
But really, I was no closer to finding Coyotl himself.
As I thought that, my radio buzzed. I removed it from my pouch and said, “Colhua.”
&nbs
p; “Investigator?”
It was a woman but I didn’t recognize the voice. “Who’s this?”
“The person you’ve been looking for. I understand you want to speak with me about Coyotl.”
It was her—the noblewoman. I didn’t bother asking how she had gotten my number. She was a noble, after all.
“That’s correct,” I said.
“There’s a place in District Fourteen called The Sleeping Jaguar. Are you familiar with it?”
“No, but I’ll find it.”
“I’m sure you will. I’ll be there at noon tomorrow, sitting at a table in the back. Be discreet.”
“As discreet as is humanly possible,” I assured her.
“See you then,” she said, and ended the connection.
I smiled and thanked the gods. Finally.
Back at the office, I told Necalli about my date with the noblewoman. He was impressed.
“Never dated a chocolate drinker myself,” he said. “The gods smile on you.”
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’m not looking forward to it.” But then, few commoners had dealt with a noble and come away happy.
En route to my desk, I heard Izel telling one of his stories. “You hear about this guy in Spain?” he asked Quetzalli, peering at his monitor. “Name’s de Borbon. Says he’s descended from Spanish royalty.”
“What’s he after?” Quetzalli asked.
“Just a hundred acres of prime coastland on Spain’s side of the Eastern Ocean. Claims it belonged to his family.”
“Good luck to him,” said Takun.
Of course, Spain hadn’t had a king in a couple of hundred cycles. None of the Euro countries had. Most of their royalty had been beheaded, or quartered, or put out to sea in a boat when the common people decided they’d been oppressed long enough.
But now that it was safe again to have some royal blood, the descendants of Europe’s kings were starting to pop up here and there, claiming legal rights to their ancestors’ castles and jewels and so on. I’d read that myself. But if Izel had his story right, this guy was bolder than most. He wasn’t just asking for a pile of stones or a few shiny trinkets. He was making a play for valuable land, and a lot of it.
“Actually,” said Izel, continuing to pore over his monitor, “he may get it. Seems he’s suing not as royalty, but as a private citizen trying to recover his family’s property.”
Takun grunted. “A loophole.”
“And,” said Izel, “he’s jumping into it with both feet.”
Quetzalli looked skeptical. “Where’s he getting the beans to launch his suit? These things are expensive propositions.”
“I’ve heard that too,” said Takun. “People gamble everything they own.”
“Unless this de Borbon is rich to begin with,” said Quetzalli.
Meztli, an Investigator who’d been transferred from Ixtapaluca the week before, sat back from his monitor. “You didn’t hear it from me, but someone’s backing him. Someone who wants de Borbon to get what he’s asking for.”
“And who’s that?” asked Takun. “You?”
Meztli smiled. Then he looked around, as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping on him, and said, in little more than a whisper, “The Emperor.”
“Get out of here,” said Quetzalli.
“Why would he do that?” asked Takun.
Meztli shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Takun made a face. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“Someone who works for the Emperor,” said Meztli.
“Of course,” said Quetzalli. “But you can’t say who.”
Meztli nodded. “That’s right.”
I began to understand why he’d been transferred from Ixtapaluca. Nobody liked a know-it-all, especially one who claimed to have secret connections.
“Idiot,” Takun said under his breath, and walked away.
Meztli frowned. “You think I didn’t hear that?”
I wondered who was less popular in the Investigations office at that moment—Meztli or me.
I had looked up The Sleeping Jaguar and was figuring out my rail stops when Nagual called.
I was glad to hear from him. He’d given me two of my best leads. And beyond that, we’d been friends. I was glad we’d gotten back in touch.
But I wasn’t glad he still had a cold. I said as much.
He didn’t respond to my remark. Instead he said, “I need to see you, Maxtla.”
There was a note in his voice that I hadn’t heard before. It sounded like fear—or worse. “Of course,” I said. “Where are you?”
He gave me the name of a pyramid. I recognized it.
“That’s in District Five,” I said.
“Yes,” said Nagual, “it is.”
I was surprised. District Five was one of the seediest in Aztlan. After all those dental cream ads, I’d expected him to be living in District Fourteen.
“When can you come?” he asked.
“Right now,” I told him.
In older pyramids, they used day-signs instead of numbers on apartment doors. But the sign on Nagual’s door was gone. I only knew it was his because the door to its left had a jaguar on it and the one to his right had a vulture.
I knocked. A few moments later, the door opened.
I hadn’t seen Nagual in person in nearly three cycles. He didn’t look anything like what I’d expected.
When we were playing together in the ball court, he was strong and quick, and he had a smile that made women love him. I doubted that women saw Nagual that way now. He had lost weight to the point that he looked hollowed out, more like a scarecrow than an athlete.
“Maxtla,” he said, mustering a smile.
I embraced him because I couldn’t do anything else. He felt like an old man in my arms. “What’s the matter?” I asked in as kindly a voice as I could manage.
“Come in,” he said.
I followed him into his apartment. It was orderly but sparsely furnished. I didn’t get it. The dental cream ads . . .
“Sit down,” he told me, and indicated a chair with threadbare upholstery. He sat opposite me on one that was even more threadbare. “I know,” he said. “You’re wondering why I look like crap. Why I live in a place like . . ." He looked around and blinked. “A place like this.”
By then, I had figured it out. “Octli.”
He nodded. “Octli.”
“But you had everything,” I said.
“Once,” said Nagual. He let his gaze fall to the floor. “But I lost it when I left the ball court.”
“You were still a celebrity.”
“It wasn’t the same. I’d heard the crowds in the Arena scream for me, Maxtla. I’d heard them pound their feet on the floor, making the place vibrate as if Tepeyollotl himself was shaking it. I’d felt all that in my blood—and it ate at me that I’d never feel it again.”
“So you started drinking.”
“It was the only thing I could do to dull the pain. Don’t you feel it sometimes?”
“Sometimes,” I had to admit.
But I was an Investigator. That responsibility had filled the void in my life left by the absence of the ball court.
“I felt it all the time,” said Nagual. “After a while, I couldn’t even leave my apartment without having a few drinks. I didn’t even have to buy them. Other people bought them for me.”
I knew that feeling too.
“People began to notice what I was doing to myself,” said Nagual, “especially the people who made decisions about endorsements. The beans started drying up. I tried not to let it show. I tried to keep up appearances, to be the same old Nagual, so the public wouldn’t stop caring about me. But it was expensive to do that. It took everything I had.”
“What about those dental cream advertisements?”
“I haven’t received a bean for them in almost two cycles.”
“Why not?”
“I was already in debt when I signed the contract, Maxtla. I n
eeded a hill of beans and I needed it right away. They gave me the sum I asked for, but it wasn’t as much as I’d have gotten if I’d been paid every time they ran the ad.”
“A buy-out,” I said.
“Exactly. I thought it would work out, that I’d sign another contract soon afterward. You know, to push luxury apartments in some new pyramid, or maybe those nice, big mirror screens. But none of that ever happened.”
I got it. Nagual had been a hero in the ball court—but once it got out that he was abusing octli, advertisers couldn’t afford to be associated with him. He was lucky to have gotten the dental cream job at all.
“The funny thing,” he said, “is that I’m off the octli. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you, but I stuck with it and I made myself stop. I haven’t had a drop in seven moons.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“But I can’t convince anybody I’m done with the stuff. No one wants to touch me.” He drew a deep breath, let it out. “I always knew my career in the tlachtli would come to an end some day. We all knew that. But advertisements? I thought I’d be doing them forever.”
“So you need some beans,” I said before the silence got too thick.
Nagual looked at me. “I wouldn’t ask if I had other options, Maxtla. You know that. But . . . but I haven’t eaten in two days.” His eyes filled with water. “Whoever thought this could happen? Whoever thought?”
I crossed the space between us and put my hands on his shoulders. He looked away but I could feel him shake with each wracking sob.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’d do the same for me.”
I had no doubt of it.
When I was a rookie, Nagual was the one who had steered me clear of temptations, the one who had saved my career more than once. Now it was my turn to save him—if I could.
“Lands of the Dead,” I said, “what kind of friend would I be if I left you here? You’re coming home with me.”
“Not a chance,” he said. “People will think I’m still a drunk. You’ll lose your job.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“No, you won’t,” Nagual insisted. “Just lend me the beans. I’ll be all right.”
What could I say? He still had a little pride. I couldn’t take it away from him.
Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven Page 7