by Adam Rakunas
And then I saw the rusting hulk of Partridge Hutong, not a hundred meters away. If I couldn’t get out of range, I could get buried under interference. I looked at Jilly and said, “You just keep driving.” I stepped onto the pourform apron of the causeway.
“Padma, as your attorney–”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, because I jumped into the water. It tasted salty and stale, but that didn’t stop me from swimming as hard as I could for Partridge Island. I got halfway there before Soni pinged me: “Padma, you need to stop now, or I’m going to have to crank it up.”
I just kept swimming, my shoulders burning as I freestyled away. I was almost to shore when the sound of heavy machinery and howling cats cut through my brain. I curled up, the pain in my head too much to concentrate on swimming. I opened my mouth to scream, but got a lungful of water instead. I clawed and thrashed, but couldn’t find anything to grab on to.
And then someone grabbed me by the waistband and hauled me up and out. I hacked and coughed and fought off the fire in my lungs and the pounding in my head, and rolled onto my stomach and pointed at the mountain of ISO-20K-compliant cargo canisters stacked six high. I got a look at a pair of scuffed WalWa company shoes as I was dragged into the mass of cans. The noise cut off, and I groaned to Banks, “What the hell kept you?”
“I’m not a swimmer,” he said, sitting next to me. “What happened to you?”
“Policeman on my back,” I said, sitting up then leaning against one of the cans. “They’ll be here soon, so we’ll have to get ourselves lost.”
“That’ll be tough to do when you’ve got a tracker behind your eye.”
“Networks don’t work here,” I said, knocking on the can; it rang back, deep and hollow. “Too much metal, and no line of sight. Used to drive me crazy when I lived here.”
“When was that?”
“When I first Breached,” I said, getting to my feet. “I moved here that first week, and I got out as soon as I’d saved up enough cash.”
“Seems charming enough,” said Banks as we walked along the wall of metal.
“It was too hot, too noisy, and it smelled like chicken soup and rust,” I said, the pain in my skull fading. “The only thing that made it bearable was my upstairs neighbor, Mrs Powazek. She was an old LiaoCon food scientist, made the best garlic pickles in the world, with just a hint of chili flakes. I still dream about them. Plus, the smell during bottling time covered up the stink of my downstairs neighbor.”
“Is he still here?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I don’t think Bloombeck’s ever going to get out.”
“That guy who lead us into the sewers? You lived above him?” said Banks. “You deserve a medal.”
“It got even worse when he started monkeying around with distilling,” I said. “I don’t know if he using bad molasses or if his gear was dirty, but it always came out wrong. He even started monkeying around with this sad patch of cane–”
And something clicked. I had heard this before. Where? I stopped and rewound my pai’s buffer, to Bloombeck’s first scam pitch two days ago. He had licked his lips and rattled about his neighbor who had a cane patch on Sag Pond. “Sag Pond,” I said.
“Did you live there, too?” said Banks.
“Bloombeck’s neighbor had a patch out at Sag Pond,” I said. “And that’s where Marolo said the black stripe started. And Sag Pond is downwind from Thronehill, and something was blowing on the Sag Pond patch from the WalWa burn room. And what else did we find in the burn room?”
“A body.”
“The last time I saw Jimney, well, before I saw him again, his paper coverall was covered in muck. I thought it was just dirt, but it wasn’t. It was black stripe.”
“On a suit?”
“The paper was made of cane bagasse,” I said. “All the paper on this place is. Jimney’s suit was covered in black stripe, and he sent it up the chimney every week when he burned it.”
“His suit?”
“Best thing he could do with it,” I said. “The man didn’t really believe in hygiene.” I bit my lower lip, trying to cram all this together. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Burning the suit would have burnt the black stripe, too. Besides, the timing’s not right. Marolo said they got nailed with the black stripe months ago, so Jimney couldn’t have spread it.”
“But he’d been exposed to it,” said Banks. “How? What do Sag Pond and Jimney have in common?”
I looked up at the hutong wall and heard the faint wail of police sirens in the background. Soni would be coming here for me, and then I would lose grip on all of these threads. “Goddammit, if I only hadn’t listened to Bloombeck, I wouldn’t be in this... Holy crap. He’s the link. Come on!”
“Where?”
“To Bloombeck’s. That fat fuck has some explaining to do.”
Chapter 21
Most of Brushhead was newish construction: squat buildings made from stolen pourform set over the bones of dying ships that had been dropped down the lifter as counterweights. There was a sensible grid of streets, the sole nod to order in a city that brought new and terrifying definitions to “chaos.” There was none of the uniform sterility of Thronehill, despite the work of the two architects and six urban planners who’d lived here and tried like hell to get people to think about easements and unity of style and the like. People would smile and nod, then point to the hutongs and say, “They tried that once in Partridge. Didn’t take.”
Partridge Hutong was the water treatment plant’s original dormitory. A hundred years ago, WalWa shipped the whole plant to Santee in flatpacks, all stuffed into standard ISO-20K cargo cans. The accountants figured it was cheaper to drop the cans down the well and repurpose them into homes. They stacked three cans on top of each other, bolt rickety stairs to one side, cut holes for ventilation and doors, then repeated the process until, presto, instant housing block. The whole thing looked and felt like living inside a maze for rats.
Banks and I ran around to the eastern wall, where the hutong’s back door looked out over the canal. The gate screen to the hutong was made of woven steel, a beautiful piece that sang when wind passed through it. It was only offkey during hurricane season, so we’d know things were back to normal when it trilled perfect fifths again. Someone usually sat outside the gate, not so much as guardian as initial screener. They wouldn’t stop you from getting in, but your name and business would be whispered throughout the alleys in a matter of minutes if you didn’t answer right.
An oba-san I didn’t recognize rocked back and forth in an old chair made from tuk-tuk grills as she knitted away. She gave me a quick glance as we paused in front of her. I had no idea how dirty and frazzled I looked, but it couldn’t have been worse than the man we were here to see. “Name’s Mehta,” I said. “I’m here to murder Vytai Bloombeck.”
She nodded. “Give him a few kicks for me,” she said, and in we went.
The cans were filled with midmorning sounds: cartoons, breakfast dishes, fighting, fucking, the lot. The hutong breathed, a little slice of Santee jammed into a few square blocks. For a moment, I missed how alive the place was, but then someone flung a bucket of shit out their third-story window, and I remembered why I’d left in the first place.
A few other people stumbled around, either working off a drunk or on their way to one. We fit in with the rest of the foot traffic, though I could feel a few hidden stares follow our backs. As loathsome as Bloombeck was, even he had to have had a few people who owed him enough to warn him about us.
My old stack was on the north leg of its courtyard square. Back on Dead Earth, they would have called this the water side, which was appropriate because everything had leaked. Rust streaked down the side of the stack and showed the outlines of Mrs Powazek’s window boxes, where she’d grown Persian cucumbers and dill. The remaining ones that weren’t broken were empty, and water dripped onto the red earth below. The staircase that led to my old door and Mrs P’s was missing rungs, and the locks were shut a
nd rusted red.
“When I lived upstairs from Bloombeck,” I said, approaching the stack, “the inside of his can had been divided up into five tiny compartments, each occupied by a man with a drug and/or skin problem. Don’t touch anything once we’re inside.”
A puddle had gathered in front of the bottom can’s door. It was already ajar, which made kicking it open that much easier.
I was prepared to see Bloombeck’s squalor again, but I wasn’t ready for the sight of a spotless studio flat. The partitions were gone, as were any signs that someone as filthy as Vytai Bloombeck had ever lived there.
I did a slow three-sixty. The walls were painted a warm wheat yellow, and the furniture looked like it had all come fresh from a catalog. “You sure I can’t touch anything?” said Banks. “That chair looks great.”
“This must be the wrong place,” I said. “Bloombeck lived in a rathole.”
“Looks like the rats upgraded,” he said, walking to a chair that looked like a pile of leather balanced on chopsticks. It sighed and wobbled under his weight. “I think the dean of my law school had a chair like this. It feels expensive.”
“Don’t get comfy,” I said. “If this is someone else’s flat–”
Banks leaned over to a glass and coral steel end table and picked up a fistful of confetti. He shifted a few of the flakes around, and said, “This is another order about the Rose,” He took a whiff, then gagged. “Smells like it’s been in a sewer, too.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, walking the flat and examining a shelf full of glass figurines of frolicking kittens. “Every day, Bloombeck’s coming to me with a sob story about how he’s broke, he needs a favor, he doesn’t have his dues, he can’t donate blood for another six weeks...where does he get money to buy–” I picked up a kitten wearing a chef’s hat and working a mixing bowl “–to buy knick-knacks!”
“When was the last time you saw him in a hovel?”
“Ten months ago,” I said. “I came back for Mrs Powazek’s funeral, and Bloombeck was behind on dues, so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone. Mrs P had left me one of her last jars of pickles in her will, but I broke the thing over Bloomie’s head–”
“All right,” he said, holding up a hand. “Did you lend him anything during that past ten months?”
“Christ, no,” I said. “He owed me. Hell, I even sent him a bill for the pickles. How could he afford this?”
“You sure Bloombeck didn’t just save up?”
I looked around the flat with all of its expensive furnishings. In a tiny corner kitchen, there were glass bottles of Chino Cove Sea Soap. I had given Soni a tiny bottle when she’d been promoted a few years ago, and it had cost me a week’s wages. “No way. How could he save when he was up to his eyeballs in debt?”
“How do you know he was in debt?”
“Because every time he came around asking for something, I checked his Public profile,” I said, sitting down on a couch that crunched and smelled like cocoa hulls. “That’s just due diligence. I always do that, especially with someone like Bloombeck. Hell, I have a special search just for him. He was way overleveraged, and people weren’t taking him up on any of his offers.”
“But you did,” said Banks.
I snorted and turned the kitten over in my hands. “And, boy, what a good idea that turned out to be.”
“But you took him up on your offer,” said Banks, leaning towards me.
I shrugged. “Yes, Banks, it was a moment of weakness, and I’m sorry. Is that what you want me to say?”
“No, no, Padma... you took him up when he told you about the Rose coming into orbit.”
“And I admit it was a mistake.”
“But that means you checked him, didn’t you? Due diligence?”
I leaned back and blinked up a record of meeting him at Big Lily’s, regretting that that bit of footage was still intact. Sure enough, right after he made the proposition, I’d checked his balance. “He was in the black,” I said. “He had paid of all his debts. I was so used to getting the alert that I didn’t pay attention when it didn’t go off.”
Banks nodded. “That’s a thread. Now, we figure out where all this came from, and we’ve got more threads.”
I looked at the bottom of the figurine. There were the glassblower’s chop and the words PROUDLY MADE IN SOU’S REACH. “Oh, I think I know where this will all lead.”
I tossed it to Banks, who caught it and frowned when he saw the chop. “Saarien’s paid him?”
“I’m not sure for what, but... ah!” My pai sent a million stabs into my eyeball.
“What?” said Banks. “You OK?”
“Yeah,” I said, blinking. “Just my pai acting up–”
The door opened, and a man carrying two wicker baskets backed into the flat. He turned and started, dropping one basket on the floor. Oranges tumbled out, and he pointed a finger at us. It took me a second to realize that the nattily dressed and completely scrubbed man in a guayabera and linen slacks was Vytai Bloombeck.
His face went white, and he dropped the other basket. “Padma!” he said. “I’m so glad to see you!”
“Glad enough to explain all this?” I said, waving at the flat.
His smile flickered, and he started worrying his hands. “It’s just a little redecorating. I thought the place could use it.”
“What did your roommates think?” I said. “You know, the ones with cirrhosis and the facial tumors?”
“Y’know, they moved on, passed on.” He half-shrugged, like he wasn’t even buying his own bullshit.
“Mm-hm.” I tapped the back of a leather chair. “How’d you manage to pay for all this?”
“Donations,” he said, a little too quickly. “I got, um, got some donated furniture.”
“And paint,” said Banks.
“Yeah,” said Bloombeck, nodding and smiling. “A little paint goes a long way, and...” He looked at his hands, then backed toward the door.
“I think we need to talk, Bloomie,” I said. “There’s a lot you haven’t been telling me.”
“Hey, I’m always straight with you, Padma,” he said. “Wasn’t I straight with you about that stuff in Thronehill?”
“Straight-ish,” I said. “What happened to you back there? We went crawling back in the slime, and you’re walking around in your Sunday best instead of waiting for us at the Hall.”
“I waited, I waited,” said Bloombeck. “I got out of the sewer, tried to find you, then the sun came up and I had to get home. I’m sorry about that, but I had all of that evidence for you–”
“And where is it?” I asked. “Or that cargo bike?”
“What cargo bike?”
“The one you rented in my name, Bloomie,” I said, kicking the receipt out of my head and into his. Yay for peer-to-peer connections.
He flinched, then swallowed hard. “Hey, I’m sorry about that, but you know my credit’s no good anywhere–”
“Except that it is,” I said. “You’ve been in the red for as long as I’ve known you, and suddenly all your debts are paid off. How’d you do it, Bloomie?”
He laughed and shrugged and fiddled with the hem of his guayabera. “I got cousins, you know, they helped me out, plus I got this thing going on with the cane–”
“You needed me to co-sign for that new cane patch thing so you could worm your way into my credit,” I said, stepping toward him, trying not to make too obvious of a fist. “You bullshitted me, Bloomie, and, what’s worse, you did it when I was desperate. That’s two strikes. You want to go for a third?”
“I want to help you out, Padma, you and the Union. Solidarity, right?”
I kicked over an end table, and it broke with a satisfying smash. “In the past thirty-six hours I have been mobbed, foamed, shot at, arrested, and all of that is because you cornered me in a moment of weakness,” I said, hovering above him. “If you give me that Solidarity bit one more time, I will beat you so hard you’ll be shitting bruises for a month. Who’s been
paying you off, you filthy sack of crap?”
He gurgled and gagged, and his mouth flopped open, like a he was about to puke. I took a quick step back, but he kicked the door shut as he lifted the hem of his guayabera and pulled a gun out of his waistband. “I am not filthy,” he said, and shot me before I could remind him he was.
It felt like someone had punched me in the right shoulder, not enough to knock me over, but enough to hurt like hell. “You unbelievable prick,” I said, clamping a hand over the wound. “You fucking shot me.”
“It was just a beanbag round,” said Bloombeck.
I looked at my shoulder: there was no blood, no mess, just a fast-growing bruise underneath my shirt. “Jesus Christ, Bloomie, can’t you do anything right? If you’re going to break the Ban, you shouldn’t have pussed out with nonlethal rounds.”
“Shut up!” yelled Bloombeck, walking over and putting the gun into my stomach. The barrel was hot and stung through my shirt. “I’ll shoot you up close, and we’ll find out just how nonlethal these are if you don’t shut up. You think you can do that? Just for once, could you please shut up?”
I sat back on the cocoa-shell couch, never taking my eyes off him.
Bloombeck winced as I shifted the seat beneath me. “You had to sit there? Contaminate the thing? I paid good money for that couch.”
“Why are you worried about contamination?” I said. “You afraid I picked up something in your buddy’s plant?”
Bloombeck narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right,” I said. “What’s Saarien cooking up, Bloomie?”
“I got nothing to say to you,” he said.
I cleared my throat and said, “I apologize for calling you filthy, Vytai. That outfit looks excellent on you, and I commend you on your style.”
Bloombeck cocked his head, but didn’t take the gun off me. “Serious?”
I nodded. “Absolutely. Where’d you get that guayabera? Silber’s?”
“No, Grimstad’s. Next to the library on Laplace Street.”
“Grimstad does good work,” I said.