“Who has sign off?” She asked.
“That’s the best part. I bundled. Lots of private savings and surplus. Corporate has little to say.”
“Little’s not nothing.”
“Such is the world,” Gavin said. “Such is the world you can change.”
That was a bit strong, but the sentiment was right. She loved the Milkman. Three minutes in and she was in love.
“What do you need from me?”
Gavin glanced at the empty wine glass, then up to her.
“An abortion. Then you’ll be clear to work.”
* * *
Emory Leveski sat at his kitchen table, in the dark. He wanted a glass of water. Warm. Body temperature. Nothing too cold. He just wasn’t sure he could handle a glass. He still shook. Maybe if he concentrated. Maybe if he used both hands, like a little kid. Yeah, that gave him another idea. Emory stood, went to the cupboard and took out a plastic sippy cup, with a lid and a stopper, hiding a tiny membrane. The cup had cartoony butterflies and frogs and bent green cattails on it. He got the lid off, water in and the lid back on without too much spillage. He sat back down to suck on the little spout.
The water felt so good in his mouth. He could feel cell walls cheering the rush of liquid, imagined them opening their gates and welcoming water like a hero returning from battle. Dry spots cracking and surrendering across his palate and down his throat. This is better, he thought. The sippy cup makes me drink more slowly. You had to work at it, suck… like that girl, wheezing in her last breath.
The tremors returned. He set the cup down and pressed his palms to the table. No matter what he tried thinking about — sex, long division, picturing the most perfect brook rolling over speckled, polished stone — his mind replayed the same scene. That girl, the jelly coat, the stab, the stab, the stab.
Crazy. He had to get control. Emory was a compact person. He understood that. That didn’t mean fragile. He could do better than this. What about those Lamaze techniques? Those classes weren’t that long ago. Breath in through the mouth, out through the nose? No.
“What are you doing?” Lillian’s voice, from his right. He turned and looked at her, arms folded across her chest. A T-shirt and long, flannel pajama-pants. She looked so cute in her short, new-mom hair.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“It’s creepy.” She turned on the kitchen light and strolled to the refrigerator. “How did things go?”
“I don’t honestly… I saw a girl get murdered.”
“What? You’re kidding me.”
“No,” Emory said. “Right where I was going. Right at my meeting spot. I was still in the car and…”
Lillian plunged into the chair next to him.
He said, “God, it was awful.”
“Did you… what did you do?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t. It was like… like when you’re running up a beach, in the water, you know? You can’t move half as fast as you want. It was like that. By the time I figured out what was happening, it was the past. I’m so freakin’ slow.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Lillian said. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know. I mean, nothing happened to me. Nothing physical.”
“Did you get a good look at the killer? Did you tell the ops? Did they give you any trouble?”
“None,” Emory said. “I didn’t stay.”
Lillian reached over and took his hands. She tried to press the shaking out of them. “It’s OK. I’m sure they’ll do what they do.”
“No, it’s not OK. I wanted to help, but then, I kept thinking… I wanted to stay and tell the ops everything, but, in the back of my head, I kept thinking, ‘Shit, Emory. You’re insubordinate yourself.’”
“You are not insubordinate. Not that kind.”
“Yeah, see what you just did? Not that kind.”
“What you do is not murder. It’s the antithesis.”
“To the company?”
Lillian gave his hands another squeeze. “There are policies and there are policies.”
“I agree,” Emory said. “But what if someone else understood that too? What if they decided to mix things up? No… together.”
“Calm down,” Lillian said. “I’ll make you some tea or something.”
“No. Listen. What if this wasn’t a wrong place, wrong time thing? What if this wasn’t a coincidence? What if somebody out there decided the best way to get the Milkman was framing him for a murder?”
Chapter Three
“This place got liquor approval?” McCallum said. “Seriously. The IG give it out like candy or did you all dispense with the charade altogether?”
“Hey.” Effchek put up her palm. “Don’t make it like that. One busted camera is negligence. Two busted cameras and a murder?”
McCallum pressed his lips together. Rosalie was right. She was always right, though he’d figured that out too late.
“Who’s next door?” McCallum shouted to the Ambyr Systems Security operative in uniform.
“A Kong place, sir.”
McCallum bowed his head. The only other cameras that might have collected footage of this girl’s murder belonged to a BCCA/Hong Kong Holdings business. As the girl didn’t work for them or fall on their doorstep, the company had no stake in the matter. They’d never release any feed. Another dead end. Each one raised the cost of the investigation.
“You want to come in?” Effchek poked a thumb at the entrance to the pub. “It’s a stupid kind of cold out.”
He thought about it. Going inside, with her, grabbing a beer, warming up. They could hunch over the oak, shoulder to shoulder. Talk about asshole insubordinates and asshole bosses and everything in between. She’d have to lean in to listen to him, put her lips against his ear to talk back. And all the while the clock would be ticking. His timesheet filling itself in.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve gotta check in at the egg. Make some calls.”
“You know where to find me.”
* * *
Sylvia stood outside the restaurant, by the valet’s stand. She told the kid to hold off getting her car for a moment. She needed to dash off a few messages.
To her friend Shirley, at Moshi Pictures, she sent, “Gavin Stoll. Who is he connected to? How can he raise a million dollars minimum?”
To her friend Han the film editor, “Gavin Stoll. My file says you worked with him. Need to play fuck or duck. Can’t say my trust-o-meter ticked too high.”
To her best friend ever Marshall St. Claire she recorded and sent, “Face-to-face soon. Private as possible.”
“Your car, Miss?” the boy asked.
Such a pretty face, she thought. They all have such pretty faces out here. He looked so official in his short jacket with the stripes on the sleeves. Which helped, as she would’ve put his age at about 15.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“17, miss.” His eyes darted right and back. His left nostril flared, but not his right one.
“Really. If I tell you I’m a big movie director and I need your file because I’ve got a part that’s perfect for you, your bio’s going to say 17?”
His upper lip rippled. “Eventually.”
Sylvia grinned. “I’ll tip you for the answer alone. How old are you really?”
“15.”
“You get your homework done?”
“I work on it between ups.”
“Ups?”
“People with cars to park or get.”
Another boy walked up behind them carrying a car chip. He dropped into on the valet stand. It landed next to 20 or so others. He couldn’t have been a year or two older than the other boy, or any cuter. Such a full chin.
“Are you transitioning into feature work, if you don’t mind my asking.”
The valet knew exactly who she was, Sylvia realized. He must have run her face and found her bio.
“You’re not interested in documentaries,” she said.
“Oh no, it’s just—”
He nodded. “Series work, too. We’re not picky.”
“That’s good. Keep your doors open. You can get my car now.”
Sylvia tapped her cuff.
* * *
Emory knew something was wrong before the night began. Part of him said to avoid the meeting. He didn’t think he’d see a girl get stabbed to death, but he sensed wrongness. A thing. He didn’t have any word for it. He certainly never claimed to feel vibes or premonitions. Emory was about systems. Processes working in order, as planned, to their utmost efficiency.
Paper amounted to none of those things. When he saw the note, pinned under the windshield wiper of his car, trapped like damsel from an old movie, his nerves lit up. Just a little. A tingle. Because it was so odd. In his 32 years, he’d never seen someone use paper that way.
Of course, he’d never known anyone like John Raston before. They met just before John retired. John knew everything. His actual job for the 50 most productive years of his life — testing artificial compounds for absorbency qualities — applied little pressure to oceans of knowledge John sucked up. How to wire lights, unclog a drain, finance a house, get rid of mice — quickly or humanely, your choice — John had answers for everything.
Until he ran out. His husband of 35 years died five months after he retired. He had no children. He had, he told Emory, run out of answers.
Emory had one. He told John his idea. His big, dangerous, important idea that would probably only work because someone like John existed for Emory to meet. John Raston felt as if he’d been born again.
In the year since Emory started The Milkman, John had never sent him a note on paper. The man loved secrecy, he preached caution every step they’d taken, but he sent electronic messages just like everyone else. Cryptic, yes, but text-based, cuff-to-cuff messages.
The short, hand-written note meant, by form alone, that there was trouble. The fact that John failed to respond to Emory’s last message made the night more sinister. Emory understood the risks his hobby entailed. The company could screw him to the wall for The Milkman. This murkiness, though, none of this fit.
Lillian slept. Elizabeth slept. Emory sent another message: John, how are you? How’s the Jeep coming?
Midnight messages were common for them. The company would not notice anything odd. John and Emory did not have a set code; codes could be broken. Instead, they relied on context. Any old noun could stand in for the ones that mattered. In this case, ‘Jeep’ represented testing milk John purchased around the area. He monitored dairies from the region surrounding the city of Niagara Falls, measuring contaminants, bacteria and radiation counts. Emory posted these on an anonymous board, along with results sent in by other volunteers. The fact that John really was in the middle of restoring an old military-grade general purpose vehicle made the obfuscation work. John knew Emory didn’t much care about the truck. He cared about the milk, so it all made sense—
—more sense than a handwritten note saying to meet him in the parking lot of an India Group bar, anyway.
Emory’s cuff made warm pulses. He touched his wall screen so he could read it in large format. He had a message from John, which gave him a wave of relief. This would all make sense very soon. John would give him answers like he always did, since he was a fresh out of school, dazed by the world, amazed at what they didn’t teach you in college. He tapped the note.
The screen filled with video of Niagara Falls. Not the city, the actual water fall, huge and horseshoe shaped. A mammoth fork stabbed down from the sky, poking it like the Falls were a piece of cake. He couldn’t concentrate. Emory couldn’t get past the fucking, God damned stupid ass video. What the Hell was that? The paper note, that was queer. This?
Emory slapped the screen off. He stood. He raked both hands through his hair. He had to work in the morning and would never get to sleep again. Ever, he figured.
A fork in Niagara Falls.
Chapter Four
McCallum panned the area, standing in place, turning a full 360-degrees. He didn’t see any more video installations. Cameras monitoring the streets were supposed to make this job easy. They watched everything, all the time. When they worked. Tonight, it was back to the old days. The time before McCallum was born, much less an op. He’d have to piece together whatever happened to that poor girl from a bunch of nothing. Fibers and fingerprints and fine ideas. All of which took time and money.
McCallum opened the back door of the egg and climbed in.
“Evening, Donny,” McCallum said to the field tech. “I’m open to good news.”
“I’d like to give you some.” Donny sat folded onto a stool. The kind of sitting only the very young and very thin can achieve. He pulled down his monocle.
“But?” McCallum asked.
“Give me a budget.”
McCallum knew what he meant. All the cursory evidence was as clear. Stab wounds were not subtle. Patrons going into the pub gave them a time of death within minutes. For Donny to give him anything else, McCallum needed to give Donny a line of credit.
He tapped his bracelet. “Peggy?”
“Go,” the woman’s voice sounded in his ear.
“Who’s in Econ tonight?”
“Clement.”
Wayne Clement. McCallum had worked with him before and found him fair and straightforward— the two highest compliments he could ever bestow on an economist.
“Send me over,” he said.
“Later.” Dead sound followed the dispatcher’s voice. McCallum knew his audio monitor was active, but not by any discernable noise.
“Hi ya.” McCallum recognized Clement’s voice.
“Good evening, Wayne.”
“You pull the Vasquez case?”
“Yes indeed,” McCallum answered. “Very young, very attractive. Long career ahead of her.”
“Selling me already. There must be trouble.”
“You run any numbers?”
“I’m modeling a lifetime earning potential now. She was in marketing, which is always tricky. Sometimes those people are cash cows. Other times, they suck the company’s teat.”
“She’s got ‘talent’ stamped on her forehead.”
“Her immediate supervisor thought so. Human Assets wasn’t so sure.”
McCallum straightened up. “They note anything?”
“Sorry,” Clement said. “Nothing so overt. An HA manager named Whelen requested she make a lateral move three times.”
“Maybe some old dog got his tail up.”
“Three different positions, it looks like, so no. No horny coot looking for a special assistant. Don’t know what it’s about.”
McCallum felt another clue fall away, like petals plucked from a daisy. He will solve this? He’ll solve it not. He will solve this? He’ll solve it not.
“Bottom-line me, Wayne.”
“I’m lookin … at … two-thirty.”
“What?”
“230,000 dollars.”
“She’s brand spanking—”
“That’s all we can really hope to recover.”
McCallum’s stomach turned a notch. He could get a second opinion. They were rarely any better. Just requesting another analysis would come off Geri Vasquez’s case budget. The meter started running when the call came in. The uniform op, himself, the egg and the tech. Wayne’s thirty minutes of attention, deciding how much a young girl’s life was worth, probably cost her a couple hundred bucks.
He finished up with the Economics Department, checked in with his duty captain and gave Donny his budget. They could afford some basic forensic tests. Accent on basic. McCallum hoped the killer proved sloppy.
The chill of the night multiplied. You could step outside and not feel it. Stand outside and it drew the energy out of you a little, then a little more, then as much as the icy claws could grab. He had to make his call now. He couldn’t stand out her
e any longer. And he didn’t feel right making it from any other place than the scene of the insubordination.
Like dropping a bomb, McCallum thought. Two middle-aged, middle-management parents, sleeping through the middle of the night, in their middleclass home. He had to wake them, speak the worst news they’d ever hear into their groggy heads and know all the time that it was all for nothing. No amount of jumping, dressing, crying and racing through the city would bring their little girl back to life. If there was one thing McCallum hated about security work (and there wasn’t, there were 24 things he hated about security work) but if he had to simmer and scrape and boil the others off, it would leave ‘reaction’. The killers and thieves always got to go first. He got to go second and the next move was always crap like this. Calling people at midnight.
He wanted to drive over to the Vasquez house. He didn’t know if delivering the news in person ever helped the loved ones. Probably not. Nothing could. It frequently helped him, though. The more you knew about the victim, the better your chance of finding their murderer. This home held no suspicious husband, sketchy boyfriend or roommate with a 30-gig file of prior policy breaks. What he could learn from mom and dad would be minimal. Not worth the cost. In the end, he didn’t think he could afford anything more than a call.
By midnight, McCallum knew he couldn’t procrastinate any longer. He rolled the cuff around his wrist, feeling the cold ceramic slide across the bone. He once chased a suspected rapist down a manhole, into the City of Buffalo sewers. Shit and freezing water, salty from the chemicals they put on the roads to keep ice from taking hold. No light. No sound after his splash settled down. The suspect had a 12-inch hunting knife, McCallum a flashlight. Right now, he wished he could do that again. That was better than this.
He pressed a thumb to his bracelet. “Call Richard Vasquez,” he said. Three rings. McCallum didn’t want him to answer, but they always did. Late night calls, the cuff would spell ‘ASS’ on the screen. They always opened a line, already scared.
The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel Page 2