by F P Adriani
“There’s a chance—a chance some money’s changed hands from there.”
Now I felt really mad. “I don’t believe that. This sounds like fucking bullshit. More likely it’s YOU crowd who are involved. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re sending me to do something because you want to make the money you think someone in the ICFC is making off this—”
“Pia, you can’t really believe that—that I’m that kind of person—”
“Why the fuck can’t she?” Tan suddenly snapped like the barking of a dog. “Look at what this place did to her life!” For an instant I felt wildly nervous because Tan had just effectively admitted that he knew what the UPG had done to my family. And before now, I’d figured James might not have known that Tan knew…. The bottom line: I wished Tan hadn’t opened his mouth on that score, no matter that he’d done it in my defense. And what was almost as disturbing: James had been right and Tan clearly wasn’t covert enough in his behavior or speech….
Before I could warn Tan away from pursuing that discussion even further, James pointed a casual forefinger at him as if they were discussing something run-of-the-mill and non-dangerous to Tan or anyone else. “That’s what I mean: just because the ICFC has a clean reputation doesn’t mean there aren’t bad elements.”
“The bad-element crap again,” I said, and it was my turn to dog-like snap my words.
“There’s corruption everywhere, Pia.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me that. It’s something I’ve dealt with plenty and keep finding myself in the goddamn middle of dealing with.”
“There’s something else too,” James said now. And when I just stared at him, waiting, he lowered his eyes toward the desktop and added in a slower voice, “I need you to give me your opinion on that Miscellaneous at 7.”
Had I heard him correctly? “Come again?”
“With your degree of experience, when you finally meet him, I need you to tell me what you think.”
“Are you saying you want me to babysit him?”
“Not necessarily. But if you find it necessary…well, whatever you find necessary….” He sat up straighter. “The thing is: very few possess your ability to sum-up people so accurately. I know you haven’t been perfect there….”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I said, my voice tight.
“Well, who’s been perfect? I don’t expect you to be. My point is that he was working with us for only a short while before someone transferred him over to there. And now he’s been there permanently for a long while, maybe too long a while. I had one person keeping an eye on him, but the person didn’t give me anything except that he’s established his presence.”
“What, exactly, has he been doing there?” I asked.
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
“But you think I’m going to get involved when I don’t possess all the facts on the nature of my involvement?”
“It’s not what you think: he passes information, in a similar way to how Tan once worked for us. …And still works for us?”
“Forget it, beyond this one time,” Tan said, eerily sounding like the way I had been sounding lately.
James slowly nodded at him. Then he reached into the lockbox again and pulled out another folder—no, two folders, two unsealed folders. “I nevertheless anticipated you might be by Pia’s side this time, so I’ve got two identities here—one Pia’s used before. And one for you—provided you can handle assuming it.”
I thought I saw Tan gritting his teeth behind his white-tight lips. Then he said, “Give me the goddamn folder.”
James did, sliding both folders across the desk, and then I reached forward, took my folder and opened it up: inside I found a new Space Passport and a description of a band-member in a traveling band from Earth. My stage name would be “Stacy Is Lacy.” I’d used it once during a drug-smuggling job. It had been one of my more enjoyable identities, if you could call being chased across the solar system by a bunch of mass-murderers “enjoyable.”
When I looked over at Tan’s face, he was both frowning and flushing as he eyed his folder. Then he said, “Why the hell can’t I use an identity from what I know—mining!”
“Colony 7 isn’t a mining colony,” I replied. “It’s an entertainment colony.”
“Shit,” Tan said. “I’ve never even played a musical instrument.”
“And I have?” I asked. Then I turned back to James. “Now for the most important reason I’m here: I need something from YOU. I’ve got names.” From one of my jacket’s zippered pockets, I pulled out a piece of paper; then I tossed it onto the desk.
As James read the paper, he frowned down at it. “What’s this?”
“One of the people behind getting the letters delivered to me.”
“Pia,” James said, in a slower voice this time, “I’m telling you right now that I probably can’t do anything with this. Keron’s right on the border between the UPG’s and the ICFC’s jurisdiction around there. Outside of some commerce, Keron doesn’t deal much with either. Keron’s just hostile.”
“You must be able to get something. You must have someone there.”
His eyes on mine, he let out a weird little noise—a sigh laced with frustration. “I’ll try—that’s all I can say. This bank transaction” —again he looked down at the paper I’d handed him— “I’m not sure about that either.”
“Come on, James. You can get me something there. It’s probably YOUR jurisdiction. The UPG. At least in part.”
His blue eyes floated back up to me. “I’m making no promises. I can, however, finally tell you I’ve got something else—on the Jericho-thing.”
I slid to the edge of my seat; my hard-pounding heart seemed to be pulling me forward. Had I made a mistake? Had Jericho Hydro been something important and had I stupidly not gone there when I should have?
I waited for James to speak, but he had fallen silent.
“Well?” I prompted, groaning in frustration and standing up. “What the hell have you got?”
He held up a pale palm in my direction. “It’s not that much, so don’t get too excited. But if you remember, my division wasn’t the first to tackle the slavery ring. We came later. And then there was a third division after you ended your job on it.” His eyes on me seemed to deepen in intensity. “They cleaned up some of the related messes it made, but it pretty much collapsed as an organized crime. All three of our divisions suspected we never found everyone involved, so we put it on temporarily-solved-but-still-watching status.
“After I got off the line with you two days ago, when I thought of it again, the Jericho name started seeming really familiar. Then I realized why: about two years ago another Miscellaneous made an undercover deal to purchase a large poundage of drugs from someone calling himself ‘Jericho’. Now this was after your job on Earth-Moon and the deal-making didn’t happen there. But I remembered this because I’d used that Miscellaneous before, and she later told the third division that Jericho never showed up to sell her the drugs. That division asked me if she could be trusted there. I told them yes.
“But, during the deal-making, they happened to be reassessing the overall ring-file. They contacted me then, wanted to know if I saw signs of anything starting up again there, and I didn’t see any.
“At the time I didn’t know that the Jericho name had come up before—during the initial ring investigation from Alex’s division. I hadn’t had access to that part of Alex’s file. But yesterday I contacted both divisions to do a search on the name—and Alex got back to me with this from the file.”
James handed me a piece of paper and I silently read what it said:
The following is from a brief recorded conversation about a meeting that unfortunately happened well before the recording had been recovered. No meeting-places were named during the conversation. The conversation was between one suspect and an unknown but possible collaborator. The possible collaborator said, “I thought Jericho could bring the snacks.” The suspect never ver
bally responded to the statement, but it was only an audio recording so there might have been some kind of visual exchange.
What the “snacks” meant was never determined; nor were the identities of either the collaborator or “Jericho.” The name could have been an alias for one person, or the title of more than one person acting as a group.
There was a slow, disappointed pounding in my chest, and a large silence in the room…until I said to James, “This is it? This is all you’ve got?”
“Yeah.”
I looked down at him. “What happened to the suspect?”
He shook his head fast. “I don’t know. Alex’s division didn’t reveal that.”
I half-sighed, half-groaned; then I reread the paper, with Tan’s head peering over my shoulder now…. Something suddenly occurred to me. “Wait.” My eyes shot to James again. “What about where this was recorded—where the two talkers met when they were spied on? Did Alex’s division ever find that out later?”
There was a pause. “I didn’t think to ask.”
“Could you please do that?”
Another pause, then a sigh. “Hang on,” James said as he punched some of the buttons on his long white desk-phone.
A woman’s voice came through the phone’s speaker. “Yes?”
“It’s James Gooding. Get me Alex on the Seventh Floor of Site Six, Main Building.” I had no idea where that was, partly because the UPG rotated its site names for security. But, Site Six was likely somewhere on Earth: James stayed on the line and didn’t ask for a communication to be set up in a Communications room. He did, however, take the phone off speaker. And he held the small receiver against his ear while the fingers of his other hand drummed a snappy tune against the brown metal desktop.
Tan breathed hard beside me; we were both still standing there, waiting….
“Yes, it’s me,” James finally said into the phone, and his fingers stopped moving. “About the info on ‘Jericho’ you sent me—I need more context…I know it’s been some years…Well, what can you give me right now?…Specifically, did you ever find the meeting location…? Well, is there a record of where the recording took place? Over a Communications line, in-person—what?” As he listened to whatever the other person was saying, his long fingers jotted down notes on a pad of paper. “You can’t give me anything on the suspect?…I know it’s sensitive….” His eyes shifted up to me; then they fell down to his desk, to his writing hand. “And later? You have anything else for then?…I see, yeah. All right. Thanks.” James clicked off the phone.
“Well,” I said fast, “what did he say?”
A brief pause from James. Then: “The suspect was found dead, shot, months before you did your Moon-job.”
“So then he was involved in the ring.”
“Alex is still calling him a suspect, so I’m assuming that…”
“…they got no confirmation. I get it. Same-old same-old. That’s your blanket-way of saying you either just have goddamn nothing, or you just don’t want to reveal anything you do have.” I moved closer to his desk. “I came all this goddamn way and I still don’t know shit here. For all I know, this ‘suspect’ led you to find the guy you hired me for. You never told me how he was identified as the ring-leader. And maybe he killed the suspect or the UPG killed the suspect—don’t think I’m stupid, James—or maybe someone unrelated killed him. Anyone could be responsible!”
“Calm down, Pia,” James said fast, sounding flustered. “Just calm down.”
“I don’t want to calm down.” I was breathing hard in his direction, feeling anger and hate and disappointment, all rolled into one rotten flood of acid eating at my stomach.
Then suddenly I said, “Shit!” and spun around.
Tan grabbed me by my arms, his worried eyes peering into my face. “You all right?”
“No.”
“We’re going,” Tan growled over my shoulder at James.
But then I thought of something and turned back around. “Did the Miscellaneous doing the drug deal ever see this Jericho?”
James frowned. “She claimed she never did. Someone else connected her with him, but they only spoke one time and over the on-Mars audio line.
“But, Pia, there’s something else now: Alex said the recorded meeting took place in a motel room at Moon Colony 5.”
My eyes shot to his. That was where I’d done the job, where I’d killed the one-night stand.
There was a tense silence between me and James. And Tan said in a frustrated voice, “What the hell does all this mean?”
I groaned. There were many motels on Earth-Moon; there was also limited mobility for humans on Earth-Moon, which meant there were only so many Moon-places people could go. So the motel-colony connection wasn’t much of a connection because plenty of things wound up happening in motels there.
However, too many Pia-things had begun coalescing. What I’d done on Earth-Moon was the last thing I wanted as the cause of my current situation, but now it suddenly seemed that with each passing moment, the threats against me and the ring-job were inching closer together….
James spoke again. “Pia, I just want to say: like I said, at first I wasn’t sure if the Jericho mention during the drug deal was related to the job you did—that’s why I contacted Alex and the third division, especially to see if they found out anything more ever. And they haven’t. Jericho just never turned up again.
“But do I think both Jerichos from the recording and the drug deal sound like the same person? I don’t know. Though it is a little suspicious; the ‘snacks’ could be drugs, for example. Alex told me that’s what they assumed early on, but they could never confirm anything, beyond who the suspect was.”
I turned around again, my back facing James again. “I don’t know who the fuck that person is or what he’s got to do with me. Like I said—I’ve still got nothing concrete. I’m still on my own putting the goddamn pieces together of whoever wants me dead.” I began marching toward the door.
And James called at my back, “Don’t forget to pick up your glasses—in the lobby ask for Anita. Let me know if you need more back-up—I’ll contact you tomorrow—your flight’s the next day at 8:10 AM—everything’s in the file’s memo!”
*
Anita was a small woman with midnight-black hair and rosy cheeks; she took me and Tan to a long room at the very back of the first floor, where we got fitted with the special glasses. Afterward, Tan and I took turns peeing in one of the bathrooms.
Then when we were back in the lobby again, I told Anita that Tan and I needed car service. “We’re basically stuck in the middle of nowhere with no transportation.”
Her roundish cheeks flushed even more and she said, “I’ll take care of that.”
A few minutes later Tan and I left the building through that same black front door and stepped onto that same gray slate walkway.
Then Tan said, “I wish I understood half of what went on in there, but I don’t even understand a tenth of it!”
“That’s a good thing. You don’t want to know. And I’m surprised James said so much in front of you.”
“You kind of left him no choice.”
“That’s the way things are gonna be between me and the UPG from now on. I’m tired of it being the other way around.”
We reached a large brown guard building; I saw the same guard from before standing inside the opening of that place now, and I felt the urge to give him my middle finger. But then he probably wouldn’t let us through the locked front gate.
I kept my finger to myself as he handed back our Passports; then he finally opened the gate, and then Tan and I passed through to the roadside.
It was even sunnier now, and there was no nearby cover from the day’s bright heat.
We walked down a ways to beneath a large tree. Tan craned his neck to stare up at the tree’s immense, lemony-green crown. “Can I have my camera back now? I never got any shots on the way here; I wanna get some on the way back.”
“Hold out
your arms.”
He did and I placed my case on them, using my body to block it from the road as I entered my code. I removed Tan’s little camera and added the nondescript bag Anita had given me for our files and glasses. I locked my case, then pulled the straps over my back as Tan slid the single black rubber strap of his camera over his head.
From behind me, I heard a car’s motor getting louder as it apparently came closer. And Tan said, “The cab’s here.”
“That was fast.” When the red cab pulled right up to us, I saw that same guy with the lopsided mustache.
Once I was in the backseat, I asked him, “Can you take us through a more scenic route? I don’t care if it costs extra.” I shook a thumb at Tan. “He’s never been to Earth before.”
The Crooked Mustache smiled at me in his rear-view mirror. “Will do,” he said. And he was as good as his word.
He took us along a route on the edge of this Domesticated section. As we moved beside the widely spaced poles that marked the area, we passed houses, and even more trees and brush and grass, and whenever the cab sped up, tangles of all the whatevers that preferred growing here flew by in a green stream.
At one point Tan asked the guy to slow down so he could snap some stills. Suddenly I spotted glistening water on the side, the grass moving more rapidly than normal nearby.
I asked the driver to totally stop the car, and then Tan and I got out.
We walked closer toward the moving vegetation, stopping short of the poles. “What is it?” Tan finally asked in a low voice.
“I think I saw birds…yeah. There!”
In a little barer patch of ground near a pond, quite a large number of birds had congregated. They were long and plump and their heads were green, and I could hear the faint noises they were making as the gentle wind caught the sounds.
“Ducks!” I said finally.
“Oooo, this is exciting!” said Tan, quickly working his camera onto the video setting. And now I watched the delight on his face with delight shifting over my own face.