“Then don’t tell them. Your job is to gather information about a pair of kidnappings. Does it matter if you get the info second hand from me or straight from someone else? If it does you can go interview them yourself once you know what they know from me. Just consider me a concerned citizen helping out where I can.”
“Until you’ve fulfilled your obligation to Mrs. Savan,” he said with a touch of bitterness.
“Maybe. How much help will you have between now and then?”
“All right, valid point. Did you ever do this with Gene when he worked here?”
“Sure, but that was because a lot of the time Gene couldn’t trust any of his brother cops to watch his back. There were as many cops wanted him dead as there were criminals wishing for the same thing. You haven’t pissed off that many people yet.”
We made our way to Cassandra’s, a few blocks away. There wasn’t a Cassandra that was the namesake owner of the place like there was at Pete’s or Lacey’s. Bubkes Jones owned the joint, but he was rarely there. He lived in the Spire and rubbed elbows with that crowd. One more reminder that I was in the wrong racket.
Nan Jones was the manager. She was no relation to the owner, they just shared the same obscure last name. She was as scary a woman as you would likely ever see if the thought of getting your ass kicked by a woman frightened you.
She towered a good 1.85 meters tall and went a hundred kilos at least. Blonde-haired, green-eyed, and as dark-skinned as humans come. Most people remembered her if they ever saw her, and were probably scared if they did. Still, she was a nice lady unless you pissed her off, and if you pissed her off you’d find her appearance wasn’t deceiving.
Nan lived in the office most of the time, but if someone needed to see her when Cassandra’s was closed, you had to knock on the door in the alley behind the joint.
“I hope she doesn’t kill us for getting her up this time of day,” I said as I banged on the steel door. “Or if she does, she does it clean.”
“Is she an angry sort?” Blanc asked.
“Not really. If you get stupid and mess with her girls or something, then yeah. I don’t know how she feels about getting up this early though. She may tie us into a knot and kick us down the alley. Don’t even think of using that little needler of yours on her either.”
“You’re yanking my chain again.”
I was, a little. “If and when she answers the door you’ll see. I got five or six centimeters on her, but she outweighs me. If she rushes us run the opposite way I go, that way one of us might survive.”
Blanc glared at me, then shook his head and smiled.
I banged on the door again.
“I’m here, Johnson,” a slightly accented voice from inside yelled through the thick door. It was Nan. She probably saw us via security cam. She opened up after unlatching the multiple locks on the door.
“Who that with you, Rick?” she asked giving Blanc the once over.
Blanc was a little startled about her appearance, but he hid it well. She was used to it, if she even noticed at all.
“This is GCPD Detective Blanc, Nan. We need to ask you a few questions,” I said.
“This can’t wait till a decent hour? One of the girls get into a jam or something?”
“The girls who went to Lacey’s a couple nights ago. They might be in danger.”
“Danger? From who?” she asked narrowing her eyes.
“There was a kidnapping. Charles Savan, the guy who engaged the four ladies, got nabbed right in front of Lacey’s.”
One quick way to piss off Nan was to refer to her girls as anything but girls or ladies. She also preferred the term engaged, rather than ‘hired’, or ‘paid for’.
“You think my girls take part in that?”
“No, Nan. They didn’t know about it when it happened, but one of them lent Savan her phone. She might be in danger because of that, the other three could be also.”
She nodded and said, “Okay, I see. I can take care of them.”
“I’m sure you can, but we need to know who they are and which one of the ladies lent out her phone.”
“How am I supposed to know who lent out a phone? I ain’t a psychic.”
“One of your girls just got a new mobile number, right?”
“How you know that?” she said squinting her eyes. “You psychic?”
“Because she knows she might be on somebody’s radar. She might have overheard something. That’s why she changed it.”
“I don’t know, Rick,” she said glancing at Blanc. “You stand up guy, but you know how it is with cops.”
“Yeah, I know. Gene Dickerson speaks well of this one,” I said throwing a thumb gesture at the kid, “if that still carries any weight around here.”
She nodded slightly and pursed her lips. “It do with me.” She looked at Blanc for a few seconds. “You play straight with me, detective? No bullshit with my girls?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Blanc said. “All I need is to find out what the girls know, if anything, and that’s it.”
“You better not be shittin’ me, boy. If you are, cop or no, Dickerson or no, I fuck your shit up. We straight?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Detective Blanc, rebel. Breaking all the cop rules by apologizing and calling citizens sir and ma’am. I could see he’d be very popular with his fellow cops.
Nan smiled. “C’mon, I get you the names. And I ain’t gonna kick you down no alley.”
Blanc and I chuckled as we followed her into the building.
Nan jotted the names, comcodes, and addresses down on a couple sheets of paper and passed one to each of us. “Savannah is the one with the new phone number,” Nan said. “She come in yesterday on her day off and give it to me.”
I looked at the list and saw Nan had put the girls’ ‘show names’ and real names down on paper, except for Savannah. Her entry simply read, Savannah Pupil, Sarah ?, followed by her comcode and address, a place down in Midtown.
“You don’t know Savannah’s real last name?” I asked.
Nan shook her head. “It ain’t uncommon, and as long as they don’t cause no bother I don’t care. It be her business, yeah?”
“Fair enough,” I said with a nod. “Thanks, Nan.”
“I’m gonna keep those four in here tonight. No outcalls, just in case.”
“That’s a good idea. Thanks,” Blanc said.
We went out the back and started toward my office.
“That was a nice bit of work about the new phone, Rick. That never occurred to me.”
“It would have. I just got there first because I know the neighborhood and the way things work.”
“How do you want to handle the list?”
“I can talk to the girls if you want to chase York on the computer.”
“All right. Call me if you get anything.”
“What about the North Africans? Are they still in town?”
“I asked for someone to check on that when I called from Lacey’s. You want to meet somewhere for lunch, one o’clock or so?”
“Sure.”
I took an elevator down to Midtown. There are a couple of them that go up and down from foundation level to High Town. I once heard a guy on some vid say he thought they may be the world’s longest elevators. That might have meant something once, but the world doesn’t give a shit about garbage like that anymore. That stuff went away with superpowers, united nations, peace in our time, read my lips, hope and change, tomorrow today, antimatter is the solution, and bullshit like that.
The old systems were dead long before they realized the truth. All of the zombie democracies and totalitarian states had smudged themselves so far out of focus that it didn’t matter anymore, and it all came tumbling down. They stacked the blocks up once more and they fell down again.
There were still echoes of what was past and some people that heard those echoes wanted to reconstitute long dead nations, despite the fact that the nation they pined for ceased to exist long before they were born. That
didn’t stop them from trying though, and those crazies were willing to spend lives and treasure in the effort. Madness.
Madness also describes why people would live in the middle of a megablock. Surrounded by thousands of people in every direction, up, down, sideways, 360 degrees. That’s where Savannah Pupil, aka Sarah Question Mark lived.
I hit the call button on her apartment door a few times, but got no response. Knocked on the door a few times also. Still nothing. I punched the call button on a couple of the neighboring units hoping somebody might have seen her recently and struck out there as well.
I decided to see if the floor superintendent might know anything. I headed down the long hallway and turned left, and what did I see? None other than my old dear friend Henry Bartram, murderer and all-around scumbag with three uniformed cops. He was fatter than I remembered.
He didn’t see me. He was too busy being a complete ass to an elderly man. The old man had the temerity to ask for a copy of a police report so he could file an insurance claim, and it seemed Bartram wasn’t going to stand for it. I didn’t need the trouble intervening would bring, but I dearly wished internal affairs or someone would do us all a favor and put him away or pitch his ass off a high roof someday. Either one would have suited me. I decided to check with the super later in the day.
I was able to run down the other three ladies and question them. They didn’t provide anything we didn’t already know, except that the North Africans were uncouth, grabby, and liked to throw money around, and we could have guessed that. Not one of the three girls mentioned Savan borrowing a phone the night he got nabbed. That meant Miss Question Mark was the one with the phone, unless it came from somewhere else.
I called Blanc and told him I didn’t have a very productive morning. A lot of footwork and just tired feet to show for it. We decided to meet at the Skyline Diner for lunch.
Blanc had done better than I had. He was positive York was still in Gulf City, but laying low. He also dug up Savannah Pupil’s real name, Sarah J. Morris.
“Let me guess, the J stands for Jean,” I said.
Blanc stopped chewing and squinted at me. “How do you know that? Maybe Nan was right.”
“Lucky guess,” I replied.
It was actually a theory of mine. Any woman with the middle name of Jean will get into worlds more trouble than she would have if she had a different middle name, even if the trouble was not her own doing.
“She’s local, from a district in Old Houston,” Blanc said as he handed me a paper printout from the PD’s computer. A lot of info, and a photo of a pretty young blonde with an innocent-looking face. The photo was probably a few years old.
“Thanks,” I said. “Hopefully I can catch up to her at Cassandra’s later this afternoon. If not, this info might come in handy. If you dug this out of the system, what’s stopping someone else from finding it?”
“The only connection between Savannah Pupil and Sarah Morris is a field interview card on her when she was nineteen, five years ago,” Blanc said, sounding very proud of himself. “She gave both names to the cop filling out the card. I removed the card from the records, so the link is gone.”
“What about somebody tracing where you went while on the computer?” I asked.
“The logging system is broken,” he said shaking his head. “They tell me it has been for years. I guess the guys working High Town station don’t want anyone knowing what they do with the police computers.”
That didn’t surprise me a bit.
After lunch, Blanc went back to tracking York, and I went back to Sarah’s apartment. There was still no answer, so I went to see if the floor super might know if she was around, this time without Bartram and the asshole convention nearby.
“She must be a popular girl,” the super said when I asked if he knew where she was. “You’re the third guy to come asking me about her.”
“You know who the other two guys were?” I asked.
“The first guy was from some corporation, blue something. A little guy. Permanently angry. Had a bunch of suits with him.”
“BluCorp?”
“Yeah, that’s it. The other guy had a badge and said he was a cop, but I don’t think so.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He didn’t act like no cop I ever seen before. Kinda scary eyes.”
“What did this cop look like?”
It took a good five minutes to extract a description from the guy. White male. Late thirties to early forties in age. Short white or white-blond hair. Blue eyes. About 180 centimeters tall. In good physical condition. How difficult could it be to describe that?
“Either of these guys give you a name?” I asked.
“Yeah, the BluCorp guy gave me this, here,” he said handing me a business card.
Lawton Muckle, the card read. Head of security for BluCorp. I guess that made sense, BluCorp working the case. Question was, were they working with the cops or working a different angle?
“The other guy, the cop, he said his name was…,” he looked at a notepad he pulled partially from his shirt pocket, “Houston, Samuel Houston.”
I prevented myself from laughing. “This Houston fellow, he say where he worked?”
“Nah, he just flashed a badge and said he was a detective. I told him the same thing I told the BluCorp guy, I ain’t seen Savannah in over a week.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, who are you?”
I handed him one of my business cards.
“I should have guessed. Black suit, black tie, white shirt, equals shamus. Am I right?”
“It’s a rule. Brown and grey are also acceptable. Blue under certain circumstances and white if it’s hot enough.”
He laughed. I guess he thought I was joking.
“Hey,” the super said as I turned to leave, “you know what you ought to do?”
“What,” I replied flatly. I could guess what was coming.
“You should get a magnifying glass put on your card.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. It just seems like something a PI would do, that’s all.”
I suppose I was glaring at the guy. “If I did, would you be more impressed with the card?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You got a pen?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Pick up the pen and draw a magnifying glass on there. Take your time and do a good job, and then tell me the next time we see each other how you feel about it, okay?”
I left, headed back to the Red Light and my office. I was going to call Blanc and let him know about the BluCorp team nosing around and make sure Sam Houston was not actually a cop.
That all got interrupted when I got to Building 313. I came out of the stairwell and went down the hall to my office and there were three suits milling around outside my door. Expensive suits. I took them to be lawyers at first, but they were PIs from the Spire as it turned out.
They flashed their credentials, plas-encased, laserlammed photo IDs in leather pocket folders. Langtry Private Investigation Services, 73 Bogata, Cypress District, The Spire, Gulf City Metroplex. These were the clowns that pulled down a grand a day, plus expenses, every damn day. Their suits, shoes, and attitude said it all.
I unlocked my office door and led them inside. I offered them some bottled water as they took seats. When I handed them the bottles they looked at the labels with thinly-veiled disdain. I guess cold North American water didn’t refresh as well as European water on a hot Gulf City afternoon.
“What can I do for you?” I asked the guy sitting in the chair in front of my desk.
“Mr. Johnson, we have a proposition for you that we believe you will find hard to pass up,” the guy said with a phony smile. His voice told me he was selling something he didn’t believe in. A bullshit vendor, in other words. He thought he was hiding condescension behind friendly tones and I was too stupid to catch it.
“I am flattered, really,” I said, returning the
smile. “But I work solo. I couldn’t possibly take on a partner, let alone three.”
The guy blinked a few times. I made the assumption that my statement confused him. “Oh, no… no,” he said with a laugh. His associates on the sofa to his right laughed also. “We’re not looking for employment, Mr. Johnson. May I call you...,” he paused as he glanced at the web-board on his lap, “Richard?”
“Sure, Terrence,” I said, calling him by the name I saw on his ID. “We’re all PIs here. No need for formalities between peers, right... Terrence?” I said, still smiling.
“Uh, of course not, Richard. Back to the offer we have for you.”
“The proposition I will find hard to pass up,” I said with the smile still on my face, but I was tiring.
“Yes. Our agency has been tasked with assisting local law enforcement in the investigation concerning Mrs. Beverly Savan. You have heard of this, have you not?”
“I seem to recall hearing about that. Who hired you?”
“That’s not relevant right now. What we propose is for you to assist us in our investigation here in High Town District.”
“Oh, a partnership. Who will be paying my fee?”
“There will be no fee, Richard. You would assist us, and in return you get the prestige of having been associated with Langtry, a world-renowned agency as I am sure you know. We would also do what we can to steer some clients your way. Think of it as professional courtesy. We would of course return the favor if the opportunity presented itself.”
I’d had enough. I did wonder why they came to me. Did they know of Mrs. Savan’s visits here? It didn’t really matter right then.
“I think I must decline,” I said pleasantly. “I am on a case right now, Terrence. I might suggest you check with Pat Bland downstairs. A fellow PI, and a psychic to boot.”
Terrence stopped smiling, as did I. My cheeks were getting tired.
“Now look, Johnson. We know you are working with the police, if you call the idiots that wear badges over here police. We want your assistance.”
“How about you fill me in on who you work for, and what it is you seek here in High Town, then maybe we can come to an arrangement.”
“Why are you being so obtuse?” he asked with a scowl.
The Lowdown in High Town: An R.R. Johnson Novel Page 6