Sideways In Crime

by Sideways In Crime v2 lit

  “The man you speak of is, regrettably, gone, sir,” said Cromwell, his hands on his hips and tone, like his pose, in a defiant mode.

  “Then send your fastest horsemen, General. He has only a few hours’ head start.”

  “He was bound to Dover,” said Cromwell. “He may be on board a vessel and at sea before we can overtake him.”

  “A ship does not leave Dover every day, sir,” said Fairfax, sounding equally defiant. “If he is gone by the time you reach the shore, send another boat after him. He cannot slip away so easily. When he is in your custody, my lord, bring him here that we may question him as to the identity of his cohorts. Send your riders, sir, or I will dispatch my own men, and they will be the ones to interrogate him.”

  Cromwell paused for several seconds in the middle of the small room. He looked at Fairfax with an anger few present could understand.

  “When we served together, Sir Thomas--” he started to say.

  “When we last served together,” said Fairfax, “I was your superior, as I am yet, sir. Now please do as you have been commanded.”

  The lord general reluctantly left the room. He would not return until that afternoon. In the long meantime, Mr. Colbert and several of the chamberlain’s retainers remained in the unadorned chamber with Sir Thomas. While they waited for news from Dover, Sir Thomas delved into the stacks of documents that each day needed his attention. Servants brought some cheese and bread at noon, and everyone had a bite to eat and a glass of the rather foxy wine from the New York colony in America.

  “This is what Mohammed has forced us to drink after his followers conquered Gaul,” said Fairfax and grimaced as he took a long swallow of the tart nectar. “Our soldiers and working men have the good sense to drink porter.”

  “May I leave you, sir?” Colbert asked him, and would ask him such on several occasions that day.

  “You may, young man, but then you would miss the great moment when this affair is resolved,” said Fairfax, not looking up from his work. “I would like to have you here then, sir.”

  When Cromwell returned at half past four that afternoon, he and several of his men were splattered with mud from the trail to the coast.

  “The one called Abdul Erickson is dead by his own hand,” announced the lord general. “We spied him immediately beyond Gravesend. Seeing the seven of us and knowing his sins, he pulled out a pistol and fired the same into his skull. We took this from his body.”

  The general tossed a leather bag of gold coins on Fairfax’s table.

  “He did not have time to make a full confession?” asked the lord chamberlain.

  “He did not,” said the lord general.

  “Then I need you to find one, sir,” said Fairfax. “Suitably, this suicide’s last missive to the world will be composed in his Norse tongue and will state that he alone was responsible for the emissary’s death. His motive arose from a dispute over money. No, wait, they argued over a woman. There needs to be a woman in the story. Most importantly, the king in London and the sultan in Rum must know this murder was committed by a Muslim member of the emissary’s household, and thus this horrible crime cannot be a cause for war.”

  Cromwell was aghast at the suggestion.

  “What of this Habsburg man?!” he demanded.

  “He is innocent, as you and your helpful Mr. Colbert are well aware, sir,” said Sir Thomas. “Oh, and I need this Erickson’s letter today. I must make a report to the king tonight, you understand. Please see to it that I have a note to show him.”

  The enraged general turned on his heels and stormed from the room. Mr. Colbert would have followed after him, but Sir Thomas made another “ahem” into his fist when Colbert moved toward the door, signaling the young man he should stay a while longer.

  “There is nothing to be done in regards to Sir Oliver Cromwell, lord general of the king’s army, defender of the Holy Catholic Church,” said Fairfax, ever busy with his paperwork. “He must be endured till God calls either him or me to our reward. You, sir, are another man entirely. You can be dealt with.”

  Unlike Cromwell, Mr. Colbert did not lose his temper. He smiled at Fairfax as gamely as he would have had the story ended with his triumph.

  “When did you know, sir?” he asked the chamberlain.

  “Everything was too convenient,” said Fairfax. “The cockleshell Erickson found, the rare weapon, you, the innkeeper and his story, and you knowing of Mr. Habsburg; they all directed me to the same conclusion. I do not know why you despise this Charles Habsburg and would want to put the murder weapon inside his quarters--”

  “He is a parasite,” said Colbert. “He and the others in the Mews live on the king’s charity. Why waste treasure upon them when money is needed to buy arms, to train soldiers, to--”

  “To fight a war,” suggested Fairfax.

  “Yes, why not? We in Christendom beat the Turks when they sent their giant fleet against this island in Queen Bess’s time. We can do the same again.”

  Colbert was referring to the victory of 1588, when Drake and the other sea dogs had defeated the so-called Armata that Sultan Suleiman the Lesser had sent to invade Britain.

  “Why tempt fate?” said Fairfax. “I have every reason to hope we could fight off another Turkish invasion. We have, after many centuries of trial and error, developed fighting ships superior to theirs. The Turks remain, however, far more numerous than we, and there is ever the danger they would wear us down in any prolonged conflict.”

  “Then you are one of those resigned to letting Britain drop like ripened fruit into the hands of the sultan? A struggle might be lost, so why risk it?”

  “I am one who hears the grass grow, sir,” said Fairfax, at last setting aside his work and looking up. “I have listeners positioned around the world, young man, and they tell me the sultan’s empire has grown too large and its divisions are too many. Persia is on the move against the Ottomans. The newly liberated Marathas of Hindustan are on the move against the Persians and the Afghans. The Arabs in North Africa have already rebelled twice in the last two decades.”

  “And been put down twice,” inserted Colbert.

  “They will rebel again, sir, and again, and will do so until the Turks are gone from their lands. The Red Men of North Cabotland already, after a mere 200 years of the Ottomans’ presence, favor us over them. You see, the Turks rule a thousand varied peoples, and each wants to cast off the Ottoman rule. You were able to find compatriots among the Norsemen in the emissary’s household only because the shaggy men of the north also hate their Turkish masters and are willing to join forces with unbelievers for a few coins and the chance to kill an important Turk.”

  “Yet when the time comes that they expel the Ottomans from their lands, will not these thousand separate peoples remain followers of Mohammed?” asked Colbert.

  “What makes them different from us gives us a solidarity which will not grow old before God visits another flood upon us,” said Fairfax with an unforced smile. “The inhabitants of these islands may settle in lands upon the other side of the globe, but for safety’s sake these wayward Englishmen will remain married to the Crown, lest they fall victim to the scimitar of the fearful alien constantly so close at hand. The lands the Turks presently rule will, on the other hand, never be completely free of each other. Their shared religion guarantees the weak nations and the strong will be forever involved in the affairs of each other, and they will grow weak while they squabble as our small country grows constantly stronger while it stands apart.”

  He handed a sealed paper to Colbert.

  “You will present this to the captain of the H.M.S. Falcon, sir,” explained the lord chamberlain. “The ship sails from Plymouth for Virginia in two weeks. I am certain you will find work to occupy you there. Perhaps you will be allowed to make war upon the Red Natives, if fighting is what you desire. I do not know, sir, if you or this Erickson person shot the emissary, or if you were on the scene at all. I do know you and Cromwell were part of the conspiracy.
I cannot send the lord general away, but you I can. Do hurry your journey, Mr. Colbert. Your continued presence in the city might be inconvenient to Sir Oliver and irksome to me. Good day, sir.”

  One of the chamberlain’s servants showed Mr. Colbert the way out of the Parliament building.

  Worlds of Possibilities:--Pat Cadigan

  X-Files star Gillian Anderson once pronounced Pat Cadigan “the queen of science fiction,” and no less than William Gibson proclaimed her as a “major talent.” She has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award more than once, as well as the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award, and been nominated for the Hugo and the Philip K. Dick. Often identified with the cyberpunk genre, she has written horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction. When I met her a few years ago in London and asked how she was, she replied, “I’m fabulous. But then I’m always fabulous.” She wasn’t lying.

  ...for all your mystic needs.

  If she had been just a little more paranoid, Detective Ruby Tsung thought as she climbed out of her ancient Geo, she would have read the antique gold letters on the display window as a taunt. And why not? This morning she had woken up feeling as if something about the size and shape of a hockey puck had congealed just under her breastbone and was slowly twisting her insides into a misshapen mass. Or mess.

  The return of the Dread; she had known it would happen eventually but that didn’t make it any easier. This time there had been no warning, no gradual onset, and so no chance to talk to her partner Rafe Pasco about why the near-overwhelming sense of impending doom that he had told her was actually a kind of allergy had come back. She had intended to call him but even as she was reaching for the phone, Ostertag had rung with orders to proceed directly to this address on the other side of the downtown business district. Do not pass the squad room; do not collect 200 calories of doughnut.

  She had arrived to find half the block cordoned off and a small army of uniformed police trying to look purposeful and on the case and not at all like they were milling around drinking coffee and gossiping. That would be down to Ostertag’s presence. The lieutenant only showed when there was something majorly unfortunate. Usually this involved someone high up in city or state government and an underage person. They didn’t get many of those calls, however, and none of them in Ruby’s experience had ever been found at a store that sold tarot cards, crystals, and incense. Maybe this was a massage parlor in disguise? She frowned at the window again. Worlds of Possibilities; there were stranger ones--worlds and possibilities both.

  “Hey, Rube,” said the uniform on the front door, smiling and in spite of the Dread, she managed to smile back at him. Dave Maqsood had been one of her classmates at the academy, umpty years ago.

  “So what’s it like in there?” she asked, clipping her badge to the breast pocket of her jacket.

  “Very spiritual and mystic.” He leaned toward the open doorway and took a deep breath in through his nose. “The manager lit a lot of incense while he was waiting for us to show. Sandalwood and something else. I don’t know what it is but I think it’s in my wife’s favorite cologne. It’s nice. Almost covers the db stink. Almost.”

  She poked her head in and looked around. There were even more uniforms inside, some taking photos. “Jesus, who died--the mayor? Or does he just own the place?”

  “He might as well own everything in a ten-block radius. Or didn’t you notice how much this area’s been pimped out lately? Redevelopment. The old warehouses are loft condos, they turned the old handbag factory into an art gallery, and there’s two designer coffee joints on this block alone, one at each end. Serious money’s getting poured in here and nothing fucks that up like murder, you know?”

  Ruby nodded. “Yeah, there goes the neighborhood.” She peered in through the doorway again. None of the glass cabinets or display tables seemed to be disturbed even slightly. “So where is this dead body?”

  “Two dbs,” Maqsood corrected her, “and they’re in one of the treatment rooms in the back.” He pointed; at the far end of the room to her left, she saw a doorway with a multicolored beaded curtain currently tied up out of the way. Just above it was a sign that said Treatment Rooms in flowery script.

  “Treatment Rooms?” Ruby made a pained face. “What kind of treatments are we talking about?”

  “Don’t ask me, I don’t even work here.” Maqsood chuckled. “Your partner’s back there with Lieutenant Ostertag. DiCenzo and Semente are talking to the employees who found the bodies and now that you’re here, the party can really begin.”

  “You didn’t get a chance to talk to anyone, did you?” Ruby asked as the Dread pressed harder on her stomach.

  Maqsood shook his head. “Sorry, Rube. Rivard and Goldie were the responding officers. Jean and I came in on the second wave by request.”

  “Anything you can tell me?” she said without much hope.

  “Whoever’s in there has made Ostertag very unhappy.” He leaned in a bit closer. “I heard the word ‘mob.’“

  Ruby blinked at him. “Really.”

  “If you heard it, too, it wasn’t from me. Necessarily.” He spread his hands. “Sorry, Rube, that’s the best I can do.”

  “I hear you,” she said and started to go in.

  “No, I feel you.”

  “Pardon?” She paused, looking at him in surprise.

  “That’s what they say now. Not ‘I hear you’ but ‘I feel you.’“

  “Great. That’s all I need is everybody feeling me. Jesus wept.”

  Maqsood’s laughter followed her as she went inside.

  She spotted Tommy DiCenzo and his partner Lou Semente talking with three very distraught people. DiCenzo excused himself from the group and came over to her.

  “You look like hell,” he said with a grim half-smile.

  She winced. “Why, you silver-tongued devil, always with the flattery.”

  “Sorry. You coming down with something or was the traffic that bad?”

  “The traffic’s always bad in this part of town. It’s because the highway’s all screwy. I swear to God, the exit and entrance ramps make a square knot.” She nodded toward the people with Semente. “They find the bodies?”

  “Yeah. The older guy’s the manager, Clement Odell. The taller woman with the black hair’s named Joan Klein, the short one’s a Candy Lovelace and as you can probably see, she’s pretty freaked out.” Candy Lovelace was huddled between the manager and the other woman with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her head bowed and her shoulders up around her ears. Ruby could see she was crying. “I called an ambulance,” DiCenzo added. “Maybe it’ll get here before she melts down altogether.”

  Ruby nodded absently. “And what’s the story with these treatment rooms?”

  DiCenzo shrugged. “Manager says they just used them for private appointments with psychics. I didn’t see any massage tables or baby oil or anything.”

  “Okay, whatever.” She frowned. “Do they still say ‘whatever’ or is it something else now like ‘I feel it?’“

  DiCenzo gave her a sideways look. “Who are ‘they’ and what are ‘they’ feeling?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  She made her way across the store, nodding at the various uniformed officers. Just outside the doorway leading to the rooms in the back, she paused for a look at a long glass display case filled with a large collection of semi-precious gemstones in a multitude of colors, shapes, and sizes. Ruby knew nothing about any sort of gems but she was fairly sure that unless these were all fakes made out of plastic, there was a small fortune laid out glittering under those tiny bright lights in the case. But again, as far as she could tell, nothing had been disturbed. The stones were grouped by color, dark alternating with light, in a way that made her think of one of those pictures made up of thousands of smaller pictures--you could only see the larger picture at a distance.

  And why would she think that, she wondered, frowning. Then the Dread throbbed inside her, a reminder that everything was wrong and would continue to be wro
ng until further notice.

  The so-called treatment rooms had been dressing rooms in a previous lifetime; Ruby could tell by the doors. They had been repainted a rich, midnight blue and decorated here and there with tiny gold suns and crescent moons and comets but they still had panels with adjustable shutters. Cheaper than getting rid of them but they must have been a bitch to paint, Ruby thought.

  However many rooms there had been originally, the area had been remodeled so that there were now only three. Two smaller ones on her left faced a larger one across a narrow passageway; at the far end was a door marked Employees Only.

  Abruptly, her partner Rafe Pasco poked his head out of the larger room on her right, his honey-colored dreadlocks swinging with the motion. “Door number three for the win.”

  “And today’s prize is?” She followed him into the room.

  “My ulcer,” said Ostertag. He was crouched at the foot of two bodies, a man and a woman, laid out side by side. Both had been shot several times in the chest, leaving their faces untouched.

  “I didn’t know you had an ulcer,” Ruby said, unconsciously pressing one hand to her own midsection where the feeling of impending doom had gone up another few notches.

  “I don’t. Yet,” the lieutenant said. “It’s the one I’m going to have by lunchtime. Between the mayor and the city council and the press, it’ll be a doozy, too.”

  “Does anyone still say ‘doozy?’“ she said before she could think better of it.

  Ostertag was apparently too deep in his study of the bodies to hear her. The woman was blonde, medium build, in her late twenties or early thirties, wearing a long, gauzy white garment that made the manner of her death all the more vivid. It wasn’t really a dress, Ruby thought; it looked more like it was supposed to be a ceremonial robe. Perhaps the sort of thing the well-dressed psychic wore on the job these days.