There wasn’t a thimble small enough to hold her lack of interest in Pete’s history lessons, and she sorta wished that he’d just drink his goddamned rum rather than think up a lot of super-tedious stories that he used to explain why drinking rum was such an interesting goddamned pastime.
“Third floor,” he said now. All business. No lectures or cork pulling.
“It’s a jeweler, not a doctor. A. A. Finkle and Sons. Place should be secured. But not so’s we can’t break in. Now, Finkle’s sister who lives in Darwin . . .”
“Pete,” sighed Fifi, “why are you telling us this? You already told this on the boat. About a hundred times.”
He smiled. “Because you forget things, Fifi.”
“No,” she retorted. “I just choose not to remember them, unless they’re interesting. I’m not interested in Double-A Finkle’s sister, or what she told you. I just want to get the salvage, finish our commission, and fuck off back to Darwin.”
“That does sound a worthy plan, Pete,” said Jules, who was not nearly as rude as Fifi, except when she was very angry, and then she was a very rude and very scary lady indeed.
She wasn’t angry now. She just looked like she wanted to get on with it. Luck seemed to be with them this morning. A whole city to themselves, nobody bitten or tossed into a cooking pot, not even freebooters or scavenging shitheads to rassle with.
“All right,” sighed Pete. “But you know, the journey is the destination.”
“Shut the fuck up, Obi Wan,” said Fifi. “And let’s go get our loot.”
Another scan up and down the street revealed no sign of lurkers or stalkers. The birdsong, which had started up as they moored, was loud and continuous now. No mysterious breaks in the chorus heralding an untoward change in their circumstances. Jules put her slingshot away and tooled up with the Gurkha blades. As much as Fifi liked the idea of the cover provided by her friend’s skill with the ranged weapon, she felt much safer when she saw those bad boys glinting in the sun. They spent a lot of time at sea, and when it wasn’t terrifying, which was only rarely, it was mostly dull. Endless hours to fill as they made the long run between the top end of Australia and the ass end of New Zealand, via the bizarro theme park of modern Republican Hobart. Endless hours that they filled with weapons practice.
Kata, in Pete’s case, a series of basic forms adapted to the modified tonfa he carried—he didn’t see much point training with his big ol’ club.
And blade training for the women. As good as Jules was with a slingshot, thousands of hours of training on the unstable, heaving deck of a sailboat had made her even deadlier with a pair of choppers. The way those things whirled in a blur around Julesy reminded Fi’ of an old cartoon from primary school about atoms and the littler atoms that flew around them in a solid cloud. When Jules got going she was like the little atom inside a cloud of razor-edged steel.
They crossed the street quickly. First Pete, then Jules, then Fifi, all of them threading through the dead traffic, covering one another. The door to the building stood open, held in place by a house brick wrapped in fraying, faded cloth. A decade of dust and leaf litter had blown in and covered the old marble floor to a depth of inches in some places. The mulch squished rather than crackled under Fifi’s bootheels as she took point again, leading them deeper into the shadows. A café stood trashed and looted on the immediate left, the furniture all turned over and smashed to kindling. Old-fashioned mirrors, frosted with DRINK COCA-COLA had once added an illusion of depth to the dark, leather booths, but they were all cracked and shattered. One had been splashed with a thick dark liquid, dried to a brown smear. There was nothing to be had in there.
Sword and sai at the ready she glided forward to the end of the hallway, where an elevator door stood half open, the floor of the car at least three feet above the level of the corridor. A stairwell wrapped around the service core of the building and she took them up that.
The natural litter blown in through the front door gave way to the familiar chaos of a looted building on the first floor. Doors smashed open, furniture dragged out of waiting rooms, an abandoned hospital gurney, empty boxes she was sure would once have contained drugs. They climbed to the next floor, then waited while Pete backtracked and lay in wait for a tail.
Nothing.
The second floor was a repeat of the first. Doctors’ rooms, all of them plundered long ago. They repeated the procedure of sweeping past and waiting as Pete doubled back to ambush any stealthy pursuers. Again, nada.
Awesome sauce.
The third floor was different. The corridor was narrower, darker. The rich marble flooring gave way to worn wooden boards and a thin carpet runner. There were more offices on this level, tinier and meaner-looking. Fifi checked with Pete and he nodded, pointing with his chin to an office secured with steel grillwork halfway down. Fifi took a deep breath and stilled her pulse, settled her nerves, before stepping out of the stairwell.
It was good fieldcraft to pause before you leapt onto the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Excitement, greed, impatience—they were all calculated to bring you undone. You got carried away with the prospect of all those gold doubloons and next thing you knew some cannibal fucking leprechaun had caved your skull in and you woke up in his dinner bowl.
She stood, as still as an old tree in an ancient forest, letting her senses flow out into the world. Listening for the snap of a hard and dirty bare foot stepping on a twig, or a discarded syringe two floors below. Eyes scanning and scoping, not looking for any one particular detail but letting it all flow in over her, as alive to unusual absences as the presence of some giveaway tell. She sniffed the air, tasting it.
Nothing. No rank sour stink of unwashed humanity. Just dust and decay.
Neither of the others pressed her forward. They would wait until she was ready.
A full minute later Fifi stepped off.
* * *
It was all as Miss Finkle had said it would be. Her brother’s workshop, tucked in between a once infamous private detective and a less notable astrologer-by-appointment. The door to the detective agency stood open. There was only one room, no space for a receptionist. The shattered remains of a whiskey bottle littered the desk, which was also strewn with papers and something Pete hadn’t seen in a long time. A handgun. He pieced the story together. The private eye putting away one shot after another as everything fell apart around him. Draining the bottle. Putting the muzzle of the revolver to his forehead for that last, white-hot shot that would carry away the troubles of the world, forgetting . . .
Forgetting . . .
Forgetting the gun didn’t work anymore. Nothing worked anymore. The trigger clicking impotently. The hammer falling uselessly. And the drunken, bewildered man lashing out with the cold lump of steel, smashing the bottle, glass shards flying everywhere. He’d probably find a few dried, brown bloodspots in there if he bothered to look.
He didn’t.
“So, what now?” asked Jules as they pulled up in front of the frosted glass door stenciled with A. A. FINKLE—WATCHMAKER. The concertina security grill looked as old as the building, a relic of the 1930s, but that simply meant it had done the job of securing the Finkle family business for eight decades. There would be no breaking in by brute force. Not without raising an unholy racket that’d bring every hungry Biter on both sides of the harbor looking for them.
“Yeah, Obi Wan. Nice work. The journey is the destination but the fucking destination is locked up tighter than a gnat’s ass.”
Pete just grinned.
“Such a lack of faith in your celebrated captain would speak poorly of him, if he didn’t know what a feckless pair of bitches you are.”
He reached into his breast plate and fetched out a brass key on a long chain.
“If you’d listened to my improving instruction on the voyage down, instead of murdering the Spice Girls’ back catalog, you’d have lea
rned that Miss Finkle, sister of the dear departed Double-A, has provided us with a key to her brother’s place of business for the very reasonable consideration of ten percent off the back end of any salvage.”
“Fuck me!” said FiFi. “Ten percent? For a cut like that the old bitch should’ve dragged her wrinkled ass down here and helped us haul out.”
Pete smiled and shrugged as he fitted the key into the lock. It turned easily.
“Well, she is, as you say, a rather wrinkly old bitch. Perhaps you’ll get lucky and she’ll die before we return with her share.”
“Fifi,” sighed Jules. “You know we have to pay her. Good information always pays off. That’s how it works. It’s how we work. Otherwise we’re just picking over the scraps like the rest of the bottom-feeders.”
Fifi rolled her eyes. “I know it, but I don’t have to like it.”
“Come on,” said Pete as he pulled the grill aside. It squeaked in protest. “Lets see what Double-A has for us.”
A. A. Finkle had treasures indeed. The watchmaker had specialized in old, super premium timepieces. Most of his business had been in repairs and maintenance, but every year he took a handful of commissions from high-paying customers, crafting exquisite watches and clocks for the city’s elite. Increasingly, according to his sister, he’d been also taking work from Asia, mostly China and Hong Kong.
The safe was locked of course, but Pete had the combination from Miss Finkle committed to memory and written down in his notebook. His memory was fine. The dial turned, the tumblers fell, and the heavy steel door swung open.
“Holy shit,” said Fifi as Pete carefully removed fifteen finished pieces, each one stored in a small velvet-covered box with the owner’s name embroidered in gold stitching on the lid.
Nine of them were men’s watches—big, chunky chronometers that would need winding every day or two. Once upon a time that would have made them hopelessly old-fashioned. Nowadays it made them priceless. Two were slightly more modern in their design—newer models that relied on the kinetic energy of a swinging wrist to power their workings. Pete knew they’d be worth slightly less because the suspicion most people had these days, quite reasonably, of any technology that seemed to run off “invisible” sources of power. He might even keep one for himself, as a backup for his old windup Breitling Navitimer.
Jules and Fifi cooed over the remaining pieces, four bejeweled ladies’ watches of quite breathtaking beauty. Julianne held one up into the weak gray light that struggled through the dusty office window. It still sparkled like a newly revealed secret.
“Girard-Perregaux,” she whistled. “Sweet.”
“Into the bag,” said Pete, holding up a large black velvet sack.
Julianne gave the watch one last rueful look before replacing it carefully in its little box and passing it to Pete.
There were another twenty-two watches under repair, and he took them too, careful to keep each wrapped separately.
“We taking the cuckoo clock?” Fifi asked, admiring the giant polished walnut unit that stood in one corner.
“If you can carry it,” said Pete.
“Guess not then. So? We done?”
“No, we need to grab up all the tools as well. Pack them properly.”
“Seriously?” Fifi asked, holding up an instrument that looked like it belonged in a dentist’s surgery.
“Yep. They’re worth more than the watches, according to old Miss Finkle.”
“Then who the fuck could afford them?” asked Fifi. “Only a watchmaker could use them, and no way those guys are loaded.”
“I don’t even know how many of those guys are left,” Jules added. “Wouldn’t have been a high demand skill set when everyone was starving to death and killing one another. So what are you thinking, Pete?”
Pete Holder moved over to the window and took a moment to survey the street. Old and cautious habits made for old and cautious captains.
“I’m thinking you’re both very perceptive young ladies, easy on the eye too, and not at all stuck up, except for Lady Julianne on occasion, but you’re not thinking of the long game.”
He held up the black velvet bag, now stuffed and lumpy with priceless chronometers.
“When these things hit the market in Darwin or Christchurch or even fucking Portland someone in some royal household is going to want their very own Mickey Mouse watch too. Maybe they don’t have in-house watchmakers, although I’ll bet that mad fucker in Portland does. The tools are worth more than the watches because with the tools you can make more and repair what you have.”
“You got a price in mind?” asked Fifi, suddenly interested.
Pete grinned. “Oh these old things?” he said, picking up another inexplicable utensil. “Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who cannot.”
“What?” Fifi frowned.
“Favors,” said Jules, in a flat voice. “He’s going to trade them for royal favors.”
“You’ll make a fine pirate captain one day, Julesy,” said Pete.
They gathered up the rest of the watchmaker’s tools, finding a handy carryall that seemed purpose built to, well, carry them all. It went into Pete’s backpack, the watches into Jules’. Fifi would carry the treasure they’d actually been warranted to salvage from the city.
Another prudent check of the streets below, and they effected a careful exit from the office and workshop of one Double-A Finkle, watchmaker, deceased. Pete slid the security grill shut and locked it behind them. When he saw the looks both girls were giving him, he shrugged.
“I promised old Miss Finkle. And Cap’n Pete always keeps a promise.”
* * *
They removed themselves from the building with just as much watchfulness as they’d entered, moving no less easily with the small, but immeasurably valuable load they’d picked up. Back out on the street Jules swapped over her weapons again, sheathing the kukri daggers and taking up her military slingshot. She extended the arm brace, squeezed, and shook out her fingers a couple of times before loading three ball-bearings into the soft leather ammo cup. She checked her position against a mental map of the city and the actual map they’d just reviewed in the foyer of the building. They weren’t far from the second objective, just a couple of blocks this way and that, the sort of distance she would once have walked in high heels simply to get a better cup of coffee. But in a city of the hungry dead those extra minutes could make all the difference.
Fifi took point. Pete covered their six. And Lady Julianne Balwyn watched the high places, ever alert for the telltale movement that would warn of an attack from the higher floors of the haunted skyscrapers that towered over them. Their path took them down through the legal district, away from the overgrown wasteland of Hyde Park and into the shadowy canyon of Castlereagh Street. Apart from the low moan of the morning breeze passing between the high-rises and through thousands of broken windows and the soaring steel cable lacework of Centerpoint Tower, their footsteps were still the loudest noise she could hear.
She never got used to that. She had grown up in London, studied in New York, partied in São Paulo, Bangkok, and Sydney. Or at least she partied until her father had utterly dissipated the family fortune. Quite an achievement that, pissing away all the wealth extorted from the peasantry over the better part of the millennium, and all in less than half a lifetime.
Still, she knew cities. Old and new, alive and dead, they each had their own particular . . . feeling. And this one felt wrong to her. She grew more anxious about it the deeper they pushed into the old abandoned central business district. It wasn’t anything as simple as a sudden cessation of all background noise that would warn of predators moving through an area. It wasn’t the way that their boots, crunching on years of grit and litter and broken glass, were the loudest noise she could hear. It was the uncomfortable pressure of silence. The way the creeping stillness and quiet of a
great necropolis like this seemed to push down on your chest. As though the absence of life was a physical presence in and of itself.
She shuddered and shook it off, turning around to make light of it to Pete, and gasping in fright when she realized he wasn’t there anymore. Her heart lurched, but he had simply backtracked to cover their path again. He reappeared just as she was getting her panic reaction under control, stepping back onto Castlereagh Street from some alleyway he’d used as a shortcut. He waved to her with his heavy club, signaling “All Clear.”
“Hey Jules, check it out.”
She almost ran into Fifi, who had pulled up just short of the entrance to another alleyway and was speaking in a low whisper.
The blond woman hung her three-pronged sai through a loop on her belt and used her free hand to pass Julianne a compact mirror. Fifi slid away from the corner, making room for Jules to take her position. She sensed her companion signaling to Pete to quiet down and approach them with caution. Julianne used the mirror to peer around the corner without exposing too much of her own body. It took her a moment to find whatever Fifi had been looking at, but she swallowed hard and took a slow, deep breath when she saw a thin tendril of smoke and followed it down to its source, a small campfire, the ashes smoldering within a rough circle of broken bricks, which were in turn surrounded by upturned boxes and plastic crates. That was enough for Jules. She handed the mirror to Pete and took up a firing position from where she could cover them with her slingshot, next to a burned-out people-mover.
Holder did as she had just done, surveilling the alley without stepping into it, but he took a few moments longer.
Tales of Downfall and Rebirth Page 33