by Kyle Harris
“This is how you got your prosthetic legs?”
“You figured it out. Congrats. Yeah, I got my legs, I was able to walk again. I don’t know why my fucking aunt thought she had to get me Panthers. That put her in the hole by a couple hundred thousand dollars, and she had to work her ass off doing three different jobs. Didn’t last long like that, though.”
“What happened?”
Chaz positioned the cigarette so the smoke would drift toward her eyes. “She was murdered. Stabbed. I guess some fuck took her into an alley and tried to rob her, but she didn’t have much on her. I didn’t hear about it until a couple days after, when I was home alone with Puff Ball—my cat. It was just some random dude who’d found her and came to the address on her ID. For all I know, he was the one who fucking murdered her. He said he was sorry or something, I don’t remember.” She wiped her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” said Gina, putting her hand gently on Chaz’s shoulder. “What an awful way to grow up. You’ve been on your own since?”
“Yeah. It’s tough. It’s really, really tough. I don’t share that with many people.”
Gina moved closer. “I can see that our conversation has evoked unhappiness, and I must apologize for making you feel that way.” Her smile persisted. “It is only my intention to please.”
Chaz shrugged. “It’s been several years. Just a bad memory now.”
“I don’t normally do this. But we can make a better memory. Charlene, if you wish to extend my service, I’ll cut thirty percent off my next hour. Just for you.”
It felt dirty trading pathetic stories of her family members for a discount on sex. But they weren’t here, so why the fuck not? “Sure.”
Gina rolled over and started to kiss her.
“Just don’t forget that my anal beads are still inside your ass,” Chaz reminded her.
She spent the morning tidying up the apartment: condensing several piles of dirty clothing into a single pile, dumping trash into the hallway’s GENERAL WASTE chute, eradicating all traces of Gina’s fruity scent with odor-zapping air freshener, and feeding the wall terminal five bucks from her wrist so a little robot could appear out of a small door in the plastic baseboard and binge on its diet of dirt and lint.
Before it drove back into its hidey-hole, she grabbed a Post-it note, scribbled I HAVE YOUR NUDES—PAY ME OR ELSE I SPREAD THEM TO MY HORNY ROBOT FRIENDS, and stuck it to the robot’s dustbin. After it was gone, the clock said that forty-five minutes had passed, and she felt like she had worked hard enough for a shower and a cigarette.
Clean or dirty, the apartment wasn’t much. Open floor plan with a tiny bathroom behind its own door. But it was the largest space she’d ever been able to call her own. More importantly, it had four walls and a roof. Total privacy.
It was starting to get dark out, so she slipped on long johns before liberating Don Quillxote from his cage. With the apartment as cold as it was, he wouldn’t wander far from his heat lamp, but Chaz hoped any movement—be it roaming or trying out his so-far-untouched exercise wheel—would help the prickly little fatso slim down. She had cut back on his feed, but he still had a hundred grams to go until he was around average weight for hedgehogs his size.
She watched Donny investigate his chilly surroundings for a few seconds before retreating back inside his cozy fleece shelter. She spun the exercise wheel to tempt him, but he instead rolled into a ball like the noise and motion were that of a predator.
“You’re just too smart, Donny,” said Chaz. “You know that if you get in that wheel, you’ll just be running in place and not getting anywhere in life. Even a pea-brain like you can spot a bad metaphor, huh?”
The hedgehog coughed out a sigh.
“Thought so.”
After replacing the testosterone patch on her belly and popping the last tamoxifen pill in her medicine cabinet, Chaz decided to finalize the Patrick Letts file and ship it on out.
For a case like this, compiling the photographic and video evidence into a neat file was perfunctory. Letts was, what, the ninth or tenth husband she’d caught in a cheating scandal? The first time, she’d attempted beginning her final report with an apologetic foreword. But it felt shitty and inappropriate, like she’d disrespected the wife somehow by bringing to light what her husband was up to. And it felt too personal for a job that required being objective.
Still, she’d never seen one committing adultery with a niece—usually it was a hooker or secretary—and she supposed that was kind of its own achievement. A box to tick off. And that got her to thinking: What would she kill to stumble upon? Boinking an underage relative was rare, but was it thrilling? What about a husband seeking an outlet for his newfound raging gayness? Eh, maybe. Unless…he was cheating on her with a clone? Chaz pictured an elaborate scenario of some bored hubby who’d decided to spice up his sex life by secretly having a clone manufactured, and he was sneaking out every night to bang it. It played out in her head like a cheesy soap opera.
—Sorry, toots, but that spark just ain’t between us anymore.
—With a clone, Greg? With a clone! How could you? We were high school sweethearts! Am I just not good enough for you?
—The new Greg and I have a deep, emotional connection, Linda. We’re soulmates. And he likes getting fucked in the ass.
She had a good laugh trying to figure out if that counted as masturbation or incest.
Back to the niece-fucker.
Halfway through a can of Diet Tri-Cola, Chaz was satisfied with her report. In the half-page document, Nicola—Chaz’s client and Letts’s soon-to-be ex-wife—was informed of her husband’s whereabouts last night. Links to photographs and facial-rec credentials were provided, as well as time codes for every single piece of media. Then the most troubling evidence: a link to a one-minute video on a private server of Letts and his niece getting their hump on. No dressing it up, just the straight facts.
Chaz proofread the report twice. One final click, and a bunch of electrons were off to wreck someone’s marriage. All that was left was for Nicola to send over the second half of the payment, and the job would be done.
Now, about the other bit of business.
If shadows cast shadows, they’d be the color of Okocha’s skin.
Chaz hadn’t expected him to be here. Any other weekday morning, the Starry Palace was a comatose place, cigarette butts stuffed into all the table ashtrays, spots on the dark-blue carpet marking the previous night’s spills. There might be a lone dancer practicing the poles. Never any music louder than a murmur.
Okocha was sitting behind his desk in the room designated MANAGER’S OFFICE. He wore a dark-burgundy alligator-skin jacket with a gold tie that matched his gold incisors. True to every time she’d met him, a cigar was wedged in the corner of his mouth. Chaz had never seen him smoke, and she was about 80 percent sure it was always the same cigar, but she never asked. Her theory was partial mouth paralysis, and he concealed his lisp with the cigar. If so, it was pretty fucking ingenious, and she kind of liked it.
“Did you acquire it?” he asked.
Chaz laid the Galaxy Nebula ZX tasker on the big hunk of desk while giving a glance to Okocha’s muscle stationed close by.
He grabbed it while she dropped into a low-back faux leather chair the same shade of burgundy as his jacket. “And there were no complications?”
Chaz shook her head.
He leaned forward in a way that made her think he was about to let one rip. His eyes moved behind his shades. Then he said, “You are black and blue,” and he raised his hand and snapped his fingers. “Get her some medicine for the injury.”
One of his lieutenants—a musclehead named Todd—set off from the office and returned about thirty seconds later with a small tin of skin balm. According to the label, it treated blemishes and bruises while restoring natural color. Chaz slipped it into her pocket and nodded her appreciation. Her jaw hadn’t been bothering her since last night, but free was free.
“Was it Ziegler?” he ask
ed, touching a fingertip to his own jaw.
“Yeah,” she said. “I swiped his wallet, and he was pretty upset about it. He didn’t know I’d taken his tasker too.”
Okocha laughed so hard he had to recline and clutch his belly. Someone came and took the Nebula, and it was no longer any of her business. She felt her muscles relax. The chair underneath her was actually pretty comfortable.
“Three percent,” he said, rolling the fat cigar with his lips. “Money will go through in five days, fastest that can be done.”
She nodded. Rent was due in a week, and she’d already used up all her strikes against management. But Okocha was never a liar on the topic of compensation, so no worries.
Chaz waited to be waved out. Overhead, a ceiling fan with a missing blade shimmied, the plastic chains swaying and crashing in perpetual unrest. It seemed to be the only sound in the room.
She asked, “Did everything go as planned?”
Okocha nodded once. “They told me that Benicio”—brother and manager of the celebrity blackjack player—“screamed like a girl. If we had known he was a screamer, we wouldn’t have broken two ribs.” He smiled; his gold teeth gleamed. “But you can never tell who is a screamer, can you? Today, who is anybody, yes? The only way to know someone is to see how they react to pain, what they feel in that moment.” He brought his hands together until it looked like he was cupping an invisible ball. “Behind our shells, there is a nucleus of everything that we are, and pain is the only path to seeing it. It is the truest test of the subconscious.” Then the invisible ball was gone, and he motioned his hand as if shooing the topic away. “Anyway. I must discuss with you something brought to—”
Two pairs of feet came shambling into the office. Chaz recognized the Starry Palace’s chief bouncer who’d frisked her earlier, another one of Okocha’s muscle with a polished dome. The other, who maybe weighed half as much as his detainer and looked every bit a meth head, was bawling his eyes out. Baldy threw him into a closet and locked the door, and he and Okocha conversed in a whisper.
Chaz kept her eyes forward, but she heard enough words to know the gist: the meth head-looking dude’s name was Dante, and he was one of their street slingers. Apparently Dante had been negotiating with an unapproved supplier and pushing the wrong kind of dope without telling anyone his alterations to the business plan.
Baldy retrieved a pair of pliers and stepped into the closet, shutting the door behind him.
“Forgive the insolence on display,” said Okocha, tweaking his lapels while the office filled with muffled screaming. He tapped his temple. “A mind in your service is capable of very much, but sometimes it must be castigated. But there is a conundrum with the balance. If you don’t beat a dog enough, it will repeat mistakes. Beat it too much, and it will find a new master without learning what it has done wrong. It may even bite back.” He laid his hands on the desk. “You see the problem, yes? How hard do you beat a dog to make it change its ways?”
Chaz, sensing the rhetorical nature of the question, just nodded.
“Of course.” An upsurge of screams and what sounded like a plea for mercy. “I understand you are operating your own business, and it has been good to you. Isn’t that correct?”
She nodded again, quicker.
“Please. Your neck muscles must resent you for how often you use them. Tell me what you do.”
Chaz didn’t know how to say it other than to say it straight: “I’m a looker.”
“A looker?”
“Yeah.” Her heel was tapping—past due for a cigarette. “Like a private investigator, but with surveillance only. Like this last job: a wife hired me to snoop on her husband, so I tracked him into a hotel. Turns out he was cheating on her with his niece.”
Okocha’s golden grill widened. “And this news you must pass to the wife?”
“Yeah. I wrote a report and included photo and video evidence. Everything I found.”
“Sleeping with his own niece,” he mused, shifting against the armrest of his chair. “And if a competitor hired you to look after me? Would you accept?”
Thankfully he laughed before she could come up with a response.
“Anyway. You are good with computers, yes? Good with technology?”
Chaz shrugged. “I’m okay.”
“Please. You humble yourself. You have been helpful ever since you came to us. I bring this up because a contact of mine came to me with an unusual job, and I knew right away that I should refuse him.” He raised a dark finger at her. “But I did not, because he mentioned your name and said you might can do what he wants.”
“He said my name?” Odd. “What kind of job?”
Okocha’s gaze was stolen by the glittered ass of a naked stripper who sauntered by. He called out her name—Paige—and beckoned her to return, and the two shared a short, muffled exchange. Then she left, smiling at Chaz on the way out.
“I bring you this information with no details,” he continued. “Only the type of person they were seeking. You. They will meet you tomorrow, the Wehrlein building. Four o’clock.”
Chaz was too afraid to ask if she had a choice, so she nodded. She was familiar with the Wehrlein name—it was their infrastructure that was responsible for the city surveillance network. But they were a huge billion-dollar conglomerate. What the hell could they want with a looker like her?
“Then I will tell my contact the good news,” said Okocha, and he waved for her to leave.
Paige was waiting by the entrance double doors. When Chaz tried to pass, the bare-breasted stripper put one hand on Chaz’s shoulder, the other snug between her legs. “Let’s go somewhere private so I can lick your pussy,” she offered.
Chaz glared at her and said, “Don’t touch me.”
Paige withdrew her hands immediately, and Chaz walked out of the Starry Palace.
The Metro was packed. She found space and a greasy handhold near the back—standing room only. The windows superimposed destinations, arrival times, and clusters of video advertisements over an urban grime that even a night sky and intense neon couldn’t bury.
Two cigarettes later and lulled from the nicotine, she hopped off.
Elliot was lugging out the day’s garbage, two big black bags, when she came upon the back of the drugstore. He’d been hauling it out earlier each time, apparently trying to dodge their encounters. But he didn’t know about the CWS cameras.
“I can’t keep helping you,” he said, already looking ready to take offense before she’d said anything.
Chaz closed the big plastic lid on the alley’s communal trash chute with her foot and held it there. “I’m not stealing from you,” she said, “so why do you have a stick up your ass, huh?”
Elliot dropped the bags. “Look—”
“You know, you might be the only fucking drugstore in this shit city that hates business, like really hates money.” She felt like punching him, but his lard ass probably wouldn’t feel a goddamn thing. “How fucking fat are you, anyway? Do you even know, kid? Do they even make fucking scales that won’t break when you stand on them?” She reached for another cigarette.
Porkster had a look like he was about to cry. Wouldn’t be a bad idea. Tears were mass, right? Shedding some might be a good start for his weight-loss plan.
Chaz exhaled an imperfect ring of smoke, the tightness in her body easing off. She sighed. “Don’t listen to me, all right? When I’m angry, I say shit I don’t mean. I’m sorry.”
Elliot’s beady eyes looked up at her. They were glistening inside their fleshy caverns, but no liquid came out. “My dad always finds out. And he’ll blame me like he always does.”
“Sounds like a big problem that has nothing to do with me.”
“If you had a prescription—”
“Not a fucking chance,” said Chaz. “I’m not letting a doctor poke around my body or tell me what he thinks is wrong with me. I’m not letting him put me into some database. Because that’s what they do. They brand you, just like this fucking
thing on my wrist.” She showed him.
Elliot’s tiny, sparkling eyes expressed something, maybe confusion. But Chaz wasn’t going to explain herself any more than that. Maybe there was a doctor out there who could tell her a five-syllable word that encapsulated her unusual condition. Great. So what? She already knew what was wrong and just wanted the fucking meds.
Her plump dealer disappeared into the back of the drugstore, and Chaz removed her boot from the trash chute’s lid before dumping the two black bags of garbage into it herself.
She pulled out a wad of cash and sifted through the bills. It wasn’t worth risking an electronic transfer, even under a false name. Pharmas didn’t cut corners in fraud protection, and drugstores would squeal to them at the first sign of the data not adding up. She was lucky enough that Elliot was risking his job, and she kind of felt bad for going off on him. If she was found out, police would hunt her down quicker than if she’d murdered someone.
A moment later, her waddling savior returned with a small paper sack. Chaz handed him the cash—with a 20 percent tip—and the exchange was made. She checked the contents to make sure everything was as she wanted: two hundred tablets of 20mg tamoxifen. Satisfied, she rolled up the sack and stuffed it into an inner coat pocket.
“Why do you need it so badly?” he asked, when she had turned to leave. “Does someone you know have breast cancer? My dad knows a woman who has it, and she has to take those pills even though they were chopped off—her breasts, I mean.”
“It’s not breast cancer, dude,” she said, but not looking back at him.
“Then what?”
She could have run off and left him guessing; no one deserved an explanation. But the answer begged reminding, even if someone else was there to hear it.