A sex worker hadn’t been murdered in New Arcadia since before the Old Rig blew.
It came with the decriminalization, and the bodyguards, and the communication between workers. If a client was bad, everybody knew. There was a rating system. Creepiness was a metric. So was violence. So was respect for boundaries. You could take a poorly rated client, if you wanted. But you knew what you were getting into. Had Calliope? Had she read a bunch of reviews, and decided to make the date anyway? And who could be that dangerous? Hwa let the question roll around in her skull as the elevator descended to the cheaper levels. Faces tumbled up. Angel. Benny. Shit, even Moliter, a little bit. And, of course, sometimes the riggers took things to keep them awake, and some of them were on off-label mods, the kinds of things Wade was taking, and Christ, anything could happen there.
Hwa pushed herself into her apartment. It was only the one room, the kitchen things against one wall and her bed against another. What little she owned was still in boxes and piles. Only Tae-kyung’s trophies had any pride of place. Now she wasn’t sure she could really afford any of it.
“Prefect, show me Calliope Davis.”
“Access denied,” Prefect said, crisply.
Well, that was quick. Lynch had wasted no time cutting her out of their systems. Not that she could blame them. Him. Síofra. Probably his call to make. For a moment she thought about contacting him. No. Bad idea.
“Get me Belle du Jour,” she said.
The client-facing side of the terminal came up. Here, too, her log-in was no good any longer. Still, she could call up Calliope’s profile. There she was, in full makeup, sporting her tattoos, promising her specialties. She wasn’t Hwa’s best student, not by a long shot, but that didn’t mean she was bad. Just unmotivated.
Eileen’s call came just as Hwa was about to check the news.
“I heard what happened,” Eileen said, and Hwa didn’t know if she meant Calliope or the fight with Andrea. “It’s a sin,” she said thickly. “Just a sin.”
“Have you looked at the news?”
“Aye, and I wish to God I hadn’t.” Eileen blew her nose. “Some fucking botflies took the footage. Pieces of her. Just floating out there. Just … shreds.”
Maybe it was an accident. Maybe, somehow, in a city with a suicide barrier on every causeway, Calliope had fallen down into the water and gotten herself chopped up by a propeller. It had happened—usually if someone went down below the causeways themselves. The trolls—the people under the bridges—they died that way. But why would she go down there?
“And, of course, they’re saying it’s a suicide,” Eileen said, as though having read Hwa’s mind. “The NAPS, I mean. They said they put it through the Matchmaker and that’s what it said, and so that’s how they’re investigating it.”
Hwa found the footage. They had identified her by her tattoo. That was what had drawn the botfly’s eye. A Greek cross, floating on the waves. From a distance it looked like some sort of flag. Or maybe a jersey. But it was Calliope’s skin. The skin of her breasts, ragged at the edges, the cross still clear despite the bloating and damage.
“Christ,” Hwa said. “Eileen, give me your log-in. Your BDJ log-in.”
There was a long pause. Too long. “Hwa, I shouldn’t do that…”
And then Hwa knew that she knew. That what Andrea had said was real. That Hwa had an appointment to look after Calliope, and it hadn’t been filled when Hwa took the job with Lynch. Her lips felt hot. Her eyes burned.
“Change the log-in in an hour,” Hwa said, forcing some iron into her voice. “One hour. Just give me one hour. I just need to see where she was.”
“The police are looking into it—”
“The police aren’t me.”
8
Exit Wound
“What’s your mum at?” Eileen whispered.
Hwa looked back over her shoulder at Sunny. Her mother was circulating through the narthex of St. Brigid’s, making small talk and dabbing carefully at her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief.
“Networking,” Hwa said, and turned to face the altar.
It was a closed casket. Obviously. Hwa wasn’t even sure why they’d bothered with a full casket, when the bits and pieces that were left of Calliope would’ve left extra space in a child-size model.
“Did you find anything?” Eileen asked. “I mean, with the…”
“No,” Hwa said. “Everything’s clean. Normal.”
Which was the problem. She’d downloaded all of Calliope’s calendars, reviews, metrics, notes, and forum posts. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. No complaints about past clients. No bad reviews from them, either. She showed up on time, always checked in, followed protocol, and filed complete reports after every encounter. A model member of the organization, really. There was nothing to indicate that she’d either had a problem with someone, or had a personal problem that would drive her to throw herself into the dark, frigid waters of the North Atlantic.
She needed more information. The hot list. Surveillance data. Prefect’s data.
“What about the appointment?”
Hwa shook her head. “He cancelled, last week. Emergency firmware upgrade on a spinal implant. Even if he could kill someone with a slipped disc, he was at the hospital during the time slot. That’s why he cancelled. He left a nice note and everything. Even sent a gift card, to say sorry for bailing. Cops cleared him straightaway.”
“So she never told Andrea he cancelled?”
“I guess not.” Hwa sank down further in the pew. “Maybe she didn’t want her knowing she was going off-book.”
“And without a bodyguard, too,” Eileen said. “Why would she do something like that?”
Hwa watched as mourners streamed into the sanctuary. A host of sparkling flies hovered near the lectern. Occasionally, one would buzz past the arrangements of lilies and wreaths to scan a card. Calliope’s people, whoever they were, were prepared to drop some bandwidth on a remote live stream.
“Maybe it was short notice,” Hwa said. “Maybe she just couldn’t find somebody in enough time.”
Eileen fidgeted a little. She kept scrolling through the funeral programme, up and down, back and forth. It took her a moment to speak. She touched the valve in Hwa’s arm gently. “You won’t do something like that again, will you?”
“Something like what?”
Eileen’s right hand landed on her left. Hwa turned to look at her. Eileen’s eyes were wet. Her lips trembled. “Something really fucking stupid,” Eileen said. “Like go up against a psycho with a shotgun all by yourself.”
Hwa’s mouth worked. She didn’t know what to say. Eileen pointed up at the casket. “That could be you, Hwa. You could be dead, right now, and it’s like you don’t even care.”
I don’t, she wanted to say. Because she didn’t. In the grand scheme, the loss of Go Jung-hwa from the world wouldn’t be too remarkable or noteworthy. It wasn’t like she provided some special service to the world. She was hired muscle. That was all. If she died, she could be replaced.
“It’s not that big a deal,” Hwa said. “And anyway, I quit.”
Eileen looked absurdly hopeful. She wiped her eyes. “You did?”
“Yeah. They were assholes.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” Eileen threw her arms around Hwa. She hugged tight. A twang of pain resounded up Hwa’s right arm; she yelped and some of the other mourners turned in their pews to give her a ssh! face.
“Sorry!” Eileen slackened her grip somewhat. She pulled back a little and held Hwa’s hands. “That’s great news! Are you going to come back to work with us?”
Hwa glanced around the sanctuary. Mistress Séverine was sitting in the second row back, with Rusty and Nail on either side of her. “Yeah, I’ll probably try to, after the funeral.” She winced. “Japrisot really wanted me to stay in school, though. She’ll be pissed.”
“Hwa, you got shot,” Eileen said. “I think she’ll understand if you tell her you bit off more than you could chew.”
Hwa caught herself frowning. She sat up a little straighter in the pew. She smoothed the sleeve over the valve in her wounded arm. “More than I could chew?”
“Of course! They had completely unreasonable expectations of you!”
Hearing someone else make the same excuses for her that she’d made to Joel made them sound even worse, and made her sound even weaker. The real problem was the fact that they’d lied to her, that Daniel Fucking Síofra, her boss, had lied to her, that they were all manipulative bastards who couldn’t even keep track of their own goddamn bullets.
“Well, I could do the job. If I wanted to. But I don’t want to.”
“Damn right you don’t.” Eileen crossed her legs primly. “You’re much safer with us.”
Hwa nodded at the coffin. “Tell that to Calliope.”
Music rose. So did the congregation. Father Herlihy proceeded up the aisle swinging a censer and singing “Shall We Gather at the River?” off-key. As they watched, he circled Calliope’s coffin, swinging and singing under the occasional twinkle of botflies whose lights strobed across the fragrant smoke. He turned to face the congregation, and he met Hwa’s gaze and quickly looked away. Like her, Father Herlihy was one of the last few unaugmented people on the rig, and that meant he saw her true face. He had always looked away from it, ever since she was little, when Sunny forced her to go to his Sunday school. Sunny only let Hwa stop going after her First Communion, once the chance to tease her about how stupid she looked in her dumb white dress had passed. That was the only explanation Hwa could think of for her mother’s insistence on Sunday school. It wasn’t like their family believed.
The song ended, and the congregation sat. The pews creaked like real wood. You could get anything fabbed, these days.
“Calliope’s was a beautiful soul,” Father Herlihy said. “And her relationship with this parish—and the Church itself—was a long and fruitful one. Her parents, who can only attend via telepresence—gave up everything to bring her to Canada from Greece. They escaped the Golden Dawn with a single hard drive. It had a few documents, but mostly it was just photos. Photos and video, from many generations of her family. Every birthday, every wedding, every baptism. I saw them, when she married Andrea. She brought them to their marriage workshop, after they were engaged.”
Beside her, Eileen bent over and appeared to stare at her shoes. It took Hwa a minute to realize she was crying. Hwa patted her carefully on the shoulder. Looking at her hand making its awkward motions made her feel like the coach of a losing team.
“I’m sorry,” Eileen whispered. “I know you don’t like this kind of thing.…”
“Huh?” Hwa let her arm rest around Eileen’s shoulders. “It’s okay. You can cry. Just because I don’t cry doesn’t mean you can’t.”
Eileen looked up and wiped her eyes. “You can cry, too, Hwa. It’s okay. I won’t tell.”
Hwa shook her head. “No, I mean I can’t. I literally can’t. Not out of this eye. So you have to go twice as hard for both of us.”
Eileen smiled and sat up. She leaned on Hwa. “You’re so tough.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“Not anymore,” Eileen said. She dug her head deeper into Hwa’s shoulder. Hwa watched Calliope’s friends queue up for Communion. They were all tattooed. Just like Calliope. Dragons. Crosses. Roses. Mecha. Kaiju. Skulls. Butterflies. Ripples of blue and black and red and pink across the flesh.
Oh, Jesus. How could she have forgotten?
* * *
Síofra lived on 5-15, nineteen floors down from the place where Joel and Zachariah lived. Hwa’s sinuses flared up as the elevator climbed. The pain threatened to spike into a real headache.
The doors to 5-15 peeled back. Hwa stepped through. The hallway came awake as she stepped silently onto thick blue moss. On either side were more doors, each spaced a fair distance apart. Wreaths grew from their damp, thick surfaces. The walls were all indoor ivy and night-blooming jasmine. At any other time, it might have been pleasant. Pretty. Now it just smelled like failure.
How was she going to explain this? I was wrong. I want my job back. Please give it to me, so that I can figure out who really killed my former student. I know she didn’t kill herself, because she was getting a tattoo. She had plans. Permanent ones. And now she’s dead.
The door opened before she could knock.
“You know, the homeowner’s association has a bylaw against loitering.” Síofra leaned against the door.
“There’s no such thing as a homeowner in this town,” Hwa told him. “Everyone rents.”
He shrugged. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?”
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” When he didn’t answer, she peered around him into the unit. She glimpsed a gleaming kitchen lit like a jewelry store, and the curve of a huge window surmounting a long inset fireplace. Something bubbled in the stove. It smelled of sesame. Her empty stomach clenched like a child’s grasping fist.
“Hungry?”
“What is it?”
“There is fainting imam in the oven and peanut soup on the stove.”
Hwa squinted at the kitchen. “Fainting…?”
“Imam. It’s roasted eggplant, stuffed with tomatoes, dressed with yogurt, mint, and pine nuts.” He entered the kitchen. “Are you coming in, or do I need to show you a dessert menu?”
Hwa hastened inside. She shut the door behind her and removed her shoes. She placed them with all the other shoes and slippers on a rack, under a large mirror in an ornate frame. “Where are your boots?”
“Over there.” He pointed.
“Those aren’t winter boots. You need something waterproof, with thicker tread, and better lining, and they should go up to here.” She pointed at the place where a doctor would test the reflexes in her knee. “Do you not understand how winter works, in Newfoundland?”
“Winter’s the one with all the flowers, isn’t it? The trees all bud and baby animals run around?”
Hwa threw up her arms. One of them, anyway. The one that didn’t hurt. Then she let it drop. “I’m just saying, you need to get fitted and put in your order soon, before the stock runs out. Otherwise you’ll have soggy socks from November to March.”
He rolled mint leaves into little cigars and then began slicing them into ribbons. The smell rose in the air, brightening the ambient scents of roasting garlic and cumin. “Did you really come here to criticize my choice of footwear?”
Hwa sighed. “No.”
He fetched down a very small glass bottle of jewel-red syrup from a cabinet over the worktop. It looked almost like perfume. “Do you want to talk about why you really came, or should we continue avoiding the issue?”
Hwa crossed over to the bar. Laid her hands on it, flat. It was the colour of good caramel, and very cold. Hwa saw little golden flecks of mica embedded in its surface. “I want my job back.”
Síofra uncorked the bottle and beaded a drop of the syrup inside on the tip of his middle finger. He sucked it off and nodded to himself. “Fine.”
“Because I know that I…” Hwa frowned. “What? Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Don’t I have to sign something? Or interview again? Or, you know, grovel? Beg forgiveness?”
Síofra turned and picked up a wooden spoon from a rest on the worktop. It had a large, perfectly round hole in the paddle, and it looked very old. He stirred the soup slowly in lazy figure eights. He frowned at the spoon for a moment, changed his grip, and began stirring in the other direction. “Forgiveness for what?”
“I quit. I gave up. I abandoned my post.”
“No, you didn’t. You took a bullet for Joel, and you lost a lot of blood, and you said something you didn’t mean. Now you’re feeling better, and we’re having a conversation about it.” He returned the wooden spoon its rest and turned around. “And as part of that conversation, I should ask for your forgiveness.”
Hwa blinked. “Excuse me?”
&n
bsp; “The exercise was meant to test your response to an armed threat, and the school’s response to an emergency scenario. You and Joel were never supposed to be in any real danger. But you were. And you were hurt. And I’m sorry.” He stared out the window at the city for a moment. “Your job was to protect Joel, and mine was to protect you. I’m the one who failed you, Hwa. Not the other way around.”
Hwa looked away. She hadn’t been expecting an apology. Much less a genuine one. “G’wan, b’y,” she muttered, letting her accent slip.
“I heard about your friend. You have my condolences.”
“Thanks.” She bounced on her toes. This was awkward. Unbelievably awkward. She’d come ready for a fight and now the fight had nowhere to go. It pooled inside her like acid in her joints, corrosive and irritating. “Can I help you? I can chop, or wash, or—”
“You can rest. Over there.”
He pointed at a long leather sectional with a full view of the window. Hwa had never seen so much of the material in one place. Síofra snapped his fingers twice, and the fireplace lit up. Warily, Hwa unbuttoned the jacket of her suit and laid it across the back of the sectional. She sat down and watched out the window. Clouds hung pink over the towers, lit by the dying sun. Its light cast the other towers in dark relief. She couldn’t quite see Tower Two from here; from this vantage point it looked like it was hiding behind Tower Four like an older, simpler sibling hiding behind a much smarter one.
She knew the rationale behind sticking the schools in the farm tower—all those bees, all those plants, all that science, ready and waiting—but the farm levels had far better security than the schools did. Patented seeds. Scary pesticides. Enough fertilizer to take out half the tower. For that reason alone, sniffers were posted at each major entry point: transit, causeway, the elevator court. They’d added more, after the Old Rig blew. How had anyone smuggled in live ammunition?
“Red or white?”
“Sorry?”
Company Town Page 11