Men of the Mean Streets

by Greg Herren

  *

  The address Aptel Movasa had sent over was in the River Heights section of the City, and quite upscale. The Lanscro Vidis Air-Skimmer Showroom was a sixtieth-floor penthouse, all the better for off-the-roof test-drives, Blue assumed. It was quietly posh, with the fountain and gardens he’d come to expect with well-to-do Albergrivian business offices. A dozen of the luxurious Black Hawk and Silver Hawk models were strewn about the lawns and flower beds: ranging from the sportier four-seaters to the deluxe seven-door, fifteen-window limos with separated brougham-style driver pods, only available in muted colors. Blue’s eye, however, was immediately drawn to a tiny, quietly glowing, low-cut, cobalt blue two-seater, identified as a Thunder Hawk.

  “The upholstery matches your eyes,” he heard behind him and turned to the voice belonging to a middle aged Albergrivian gentleman who was taller, stouter, and better looking than any off-worlder he’d ever seen.

  “Zha-Kas Lascro Vidis?” Blue asked.

  “None of that is needed. It’s Mr. Vidis to you. What do you think? Stunning, isn’t it? Brand new. We have the first three Thunder Hawks off the robo-assembly line in the entire City.” He continued on with specifications, speeds, handling and maneuverability reports. “Mr…?”

  Of course the Vidis dealership would have the first three of the model. This was probably the highest-end and most successful air-skimmer dealer in town.

  “Andresson.”

  “Mr. Andresson. Well, should we wrap it up for you, Mr. Andresson?”

  “Let me think about it. Meanwhile, I have come on a slightly less mercantile matter.”

  “Ah.”

  He immediately turned Blue away, heading him toward a two-story-high glassed-in office area.

  “Zha-Kas Aptel Movasa believes you might be able to help me in locating…someone.”

  “Aha. You see, my dear.” He turned to a woman in her late thirties, less slender than most of her race, with bright eyes and the typical straight black hair. She was dressed well, if very quietly. “I was telling my wife, Mr. Andresson, the minute we noticed you arrive, that you would be someone special. You know Movasa?”

  Blue reached to take her hand but she bowed slightly and moved backward out of reach. He noticed she wore dark laced gloves. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Blue said.

  She immediately and wordlessly withdrew as the two men sat on facing if not matching love seats, but she seemed to Blue to hover, and even listen in on their conversation. For all he knew she might even be recording it.

  Blue explained his purpose and said that Movasa had somehow or other gotten word that Zha Martila might have worked in some capacity for Vidis.

  The Albergrivian denied it, politely enough, and turned to just behind Blue to ask his wife if she remembered any such named worker either here or at their other showroom. Evidently not. She then said something and Vidis told Blue she had another appointment.

  Blue then explained why he needed to find Zha Martila for his client. Vidis sympathized and assured him he would put out the word among those who worked for and with him for this fellow off-worlder.

  They drank more of the purple tea, iced this time, with little pale yellow flowers crushed over the surface for a slightly spicy flavor. It was a pleasant, if inutile half hour, and Blue left relaxed but frustrated. Of course Movasa had promised, but then perhaps that promise was less substance than off-world formality.

  Even so, as he stood in the lift dropping through the open courtyard of the center of the building, Blue felt odd, as though something were not quite right.

  He’d come to realize in this short period since his renewal that his intuition was actually quite useful. It had worked with the meeting with Bruno last night; it had worked with Movasa, and now he explored it a bit more.

  The problem wasn’t Vidis, who seemed about as straightforward an Albergrivian as any he’d encountered—one reason, Blue guessed, for his success in the City. The problem was Mrs. Vidis. She looked slightly off; she acted oddly, and those black laced gloves… Definitely something wrong.

  He’d begun going to the exercise club in his office building, so he was both confident and ready for most anything when he stepped out of the lift and into what he only now saw with one step out was not the glittering lobby he’d entered from before, but instead a lower floor, possibly a basement.

  One glance at the lift’s inner panel showed him he was two floors below the street. Not where he had signaled: so someone had brought him here.

  Blue immediately flattened himself to a side wall, and thus missed the thrown kris that embedded itself into the lift’s back wall, as the doors closed. He dropped down and tumbled to the other side of the little corridor while a second kris embedded in the wall he’d just been at, and he rolled forward in a zigzag pattern hearing two blades more whizz by him.

  He was inside a shallow doorway when he saw a figure in his peripheral vision and dropped down to miss the fifth and he thought last blade, then he exploded out and into the corridor, where he used his martial arts knowledge to jump atop the figure, wrapping his legs around its midsection, pummeling it with the sides of his hands as the figure fell down sideways and tried to escape.

  It was Mrs. Vidis, as he’d suspected, And as she lay upon the corridor floor, he held down first one hand, then the other, and tore off the lace gloves.

  Each thumb was deformed, thinner than normal, and artificially padded: often the sign of a recent, voluntary, Heal-All experience.

  She turned to him, her eyes blazing with fury. “How could you possibly know?”

  Blue wrapped her hands in a silk handkerchief and knotted it twice, then stood up and pulled her to her feet.

  “Know what, Zha Martila?” Blue asked. “That you were my murderer? Or that you had undergone a gender transformation in a Heal-All?”

  “Either,” she said, softly. “Both?”

  “Surely you’ve already learned what an advantage it is being both genders? Take you, for example, ruthless as a man to hide your secret, and yet in the end with inefficient upper body strength to throw me off just now. Your trade-off worked against you, Zha. And mine worked for me.”

  “Stop calling me Zha!” she pouted, not prettily at all, then said, “So now what? You turn me in?”

  “Not necessarily. After all, I’m coming to like this body. Like your own new body, it feels a lot more natural to me than the other one ever did. I take it Zha Vidis knows nothing of this?”

  “Nothing at all. He only knew that I needed an operation before we could marry. I paid for it myself.”

  “I have recorded this entire encounter, Martila. This is what I’ll need, to keep your secret.” Blue outlined it: 1) a death notice for Dusk Martila. 2) a signed confession for the murder of Blue Andresson, the First, and 3) “appropriate compensation.”

  “The confession is so that I won’t ever try this solution again?” she asked. “Yes. Yes. Of course, yes to all three of terms.”

  *

  He’d heard about and once, too (in another life, he believed), had even seen videos of the Bruno’s family’s in-City estate. It covered the rooftops of three buildings, in a giant L, those connected by various hundred-story-high transparent, enclosed galleries.

  He’d driven into a large lift and had been lifted to a valet at a parking area, one floor beneath the penthouse itself opening to a large open to the sky garden. A young usher checked his face against the list, seemed impressed, and handed him off to an usherette, all of them clad in the bronze and teal family colors. She brought him to a raised deck opening onto several four-story-high, half-open rooms: scene of Bruno’s birthday party. People he assumed were family members were streaming across the galleries from other buildings onto the deck. Blue immediately spotted the two attorneys from last week, both of whom smiled, and one of whom even raised a glass in a toast.

  As he stepped onto the top step of the deck and stood looking over the hundred or more guests, he heard a voice speak out, “Blue Andres
son. Fiancé to Bruno Thomasson.” All heads turned to him, and a stylishly slender young woman with dark hair, closely encased in a platinum-threaded gown, sprang to take Blue’s hand, saying, “I’m Claudia, Bruno’s younger sister.”

  When the meetings and greetings died down, Bruno appeared, casually dressed, unlike the others, in an iridium-threaded open-necked blouson and slate gray slacks. He was barefoot and bareheaded and he cut through the crowd to kiss first his sister and then Blue. Applause greeted him and even greater applause greeted these gestures.

  An hour later, Blue had met most of the immediate family as well as a score of nephews and cousins and great aunts. He felt enveloped by all but perhaps Bruno’s mother, the family matriarch and current CEO of most of its holdings. She’d been polite but cool, and Blue thought he could live with that.

  They had come to the toasts and well-wishings and the gifts, when they were all startled to see a Thunder-Hawk air skimmer approach and settle upon the roof, just beyond the deck. Its large, multicolored ribbons signified that it, too, was a gift.

  Partygoers dropped down to look it over, and it was wonderful to see.

  Blue heard the matriarch, Marcella Thomasdotter, saying to someone, “It’s not from me! I wish I’d thought of it as a gift for him.”

  Bruno pulled Blue along and over to the skimmer, where someone had found a tiny gift card. He immediately turned and threw his arms around Blue, kissing him again and again. The applause rose and died down.

  Sometime later on, Blue was just coming back to the party after a visit to freshen up when an usher intercepted him and led him to one edge of a large chamber where Marcella was seated. She swanned out a hand, which he took and kissed and then sat down across from her.

  “I didn’t like you the first time I met you,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I can’t remember that meeting, although I’ve tried,” he honestly told her.

  “His adjustment is a wonderful proof of his continued commitment,” Marcella said.

  Bruno, she meant.

  “Yes, it is. And I’m grateful.”

  That somewhat mollified her.

  “And the bauble?” she waved in the direction of the air-skimmer. “I hope it didn’t set you back too much? That would be imprudent.”

  “No. Not at all. It turned out that someone owed me,” he said with a casual shrug. “It was merely a piece of business.”

  “He looks good in it,” she said; Bruno was in the driver’s seat and waving to them indoors.

  “Diamonds always shine brighter for their setting,” Blue said. “That was one thing I learned—the first time around.”

  “Live and learn. Then live again and learn even more,” Marcella quipped. She stood, and when he did, too, she took his arm and began to lead him out to the party. “Of course you’ll both live here in one of the residences when you’re in-City. But we really must find something unique for you in the countryside. Do you like the beach?”

  “Does Bruno?”

  “I think we’re going to get along, just fine, Blue. Just fine.”

  The Cocktail Hour

  John Morgan Wilson

  The phone rang a few minutes past three. Morning, not afternoon. You know the sound: that unexpected shrillness in the still of the night that jolts you awake and drives fear like a drill bit into your nerves. That is, if you’re asleep at three a.m. like ordinary people, which I wasn’t.

  For a guy like me, pushing fifty, with too many bad choices behind him, sleep was just another ghost to chase. I was sprawled on a lumpy mattress in a weekly rental, skimming a second-rate thriller the last tenant had left behind, wishing I had a book in my hands that didn’t remind me of a few hundred I’d already read. Even awake, I was jangled by that insistent phone, worrying who might be at the other end. When you’ve got more enemies than decent shirts, a phone call in the lonely hours can do that to you.

  When I finally picked up and the caller spoke my name, his voice was unmistakable.

  “Jack?”

  It triggered a rush of old feelings I’d long ago discarded, or tried to.

  “Hello? Jack, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “It’s Randy, Randy Devlin. Remember?”

  “Sure, I remember.”

  “So, how are you, Jack?”

  He’d be in his mid-thirties now but sounded just like he did seven years ago, the last time I saw him: engaging, upbeat, brimming with youthful enthusiasm. Just my opposite, which is probably what drew us together, before it drove us apart. I’d often asked myself what he’d seen in a hard-bitten loser like me, a washed-up jock who’d acquired nothing of distinction in his life but an unfinished novel and a broken nose from one too many brawls. Hearing from him now made me wonder even more.

  I carried the phone to the lone window in my little room and looked down on a Hollywood side street not fit for regular people until the sun comes up, and maybe not even then.

  “How did you find me, Randy?”

  “You always holed up in that cheap hotel when you were down on your luck.”

  “I’m a creature of habit, I guess.”

  “A few bad habits, as I recall.”

  He laughed as he said it. Chiding but playful, just like before.

  “I’ve lost one or two,” I said.

  “Which would those be?”

  “I gave up booze and anything else addictive, like hot young men.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I haven’t put my fist into anyone’s face in a while, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “That’s an improvement.”

  “You were a big help.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You had me arrested, remember?”

  “You deserved it.”

  “No argument there.”

  “You sound different, Jack. Sadder but wiser, maybe?”

  “Look, I’m not proud of what I did. Using someone for a punching bag and blaming it on booze is spineless at best. A year in County helped me understand that. Later, the Twelve Steps. Anyway, it’s all in the past. Like a lot of things.”

  “So, how long has it been, Jack?”

  “Since we were together?”

  “Since you had your last drink.”

  “After I got out, it got worse. You were gone. It was just me and the bottle. The cocktail hour kept getting earlier, until it arrived around breakfast time.”

  “Sounds like it got pretty bad.”

  “Bad enough that I finally quit, five years ago this Friday.”

  “I guess I did you a favor, then, splitting like I did.”

  I heard spite in his voice, buried deep; I couldn’t blame him.

  “So what’s on your mind, Randy, calling me after all these years?”

  “I can’t hear you, Jack. I think I’ve lost you. Can you hear me?”

  I told him I could but he said I still wasn’t coming through. He gave me a number with an unfamiliar area code, asked me to call him back. I thought about it for a hard minute, then made the call. He picked up on the first ring.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d get back to me.”

  “I did. So why don’t you tell me what this is all about.”

  “I was thinking about you, that’s all. Wondering how you’ve been.”

  “At three in the morning?”

  “I haven’t been sleeping well. I needed someone to talk to.”

  “You’ve got no one better for that than me?”

  I couldn’t imagine Randy single. He’d never liked being alone, and attracting men had never been a problem for him. Not for a guy with his looks, dark and slender, Caravaggio face, and more charm than a puppy dog.

  “I’m in a relationship, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Who is it this time?”

  “His name’s Arthur Cavendish. We’ve been together two years. An older guy.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “A lot older, Jack. He’s in his late sevent
ies, retired businessman. Has some health issues. He’s getting frail.”

  “That can’t be much fun.”

  “For him or for me?”

  “You tell me, Randy.”

  “I love him, Jack, I really do. He’s been good to me. We live on a ranch, up on the Central Coast. We’ve got ocean views, and mountains behind us.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Arthur bought me a horse, a beautiful mare. You know how I love to ride.”

  “I’m getting hard just thinking about it.”

  “Very funny.”

  “So old Arthur can’t get it up. It’s three a.m. and you’re wishing you had a stallion to mount who can take you to the finish line.”

  “That’s not why I’m calling, Jack.”

  His voice quavered, and it got to me. Despite his age I could still hear some boy in him, searching for that elusive father figure, never quite finding the right one. The way it had been with us on our three-year roller-coaster ride.

  “I’m listening, kid.”

  “I’m lonely. I don’t have any friends up here. Arthur has his own circle, gay couples his age, been together forever. He tries, but—”

  He broke off. I thought I heard him choke back tears. When he spoke again, there was a plaintive quality to his voice that tore into me a little more.

  “I need someone to talk to, Jack. Someone who understands me, who knows me the way you do.”

  Down in the street, a lanky dude in sharp clothes stepped from the shadows and sold a taste to a white guy in a fancy car. As it pulled away, the dealer retreated, back into the crevices. The street was quiet again, empty. Sometimes, I felt destined to die on a dead-end street like this one. A chill ran through me, as if the desolation below had crept up the walls and seeped into my soul.

  “What are you suggesting, Randy?”

  “If you could just visit, it would mean a lot. Maybe you could find work up here. Arthur could help. He knows people down in town.”