Flight of Shadows: A Novel

by Brouwer, Sigmund

  “I have money for you,” Razor said. “From the person who wanted to ask about Swain.”

  “No.” The old woman tightened her lips. “If I spend it, those around me will wonder where it came from and if I have any more. I don’t need that kind of danger. I don’t want money. But if what I told you harms this surgeon in any way, I’ll take my satisfaction there.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Billy said, “Do you believe what they said?”

  On foot, they were well past the city wall, halfway through the shantytown buffer that led to the collection of soovie parks at the outer rings of DC. Orchestrated by wind that stayed as an aftermath of a rainstorm too brief to conquer the dust that rose and fell in small funnels, small pieces of litter danced with the same rhythm.

  “Have to believe. Phoenix will be safe as long as we report to them from the soovie park. He gave me a phone that only calls to one number. We see or hear anything about people getting together to fight Influentials, wer’e supposed to call.”

  “Influentials or government people don’t kill little girls,” Billy said. “They’ll find a place for her.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” Theo said. “I just pretended to believe his threat. So we could get out of there.”

  “Still want to go west?”

  “Yeah,” Theo said, indignant. “As soon as Caitlyn meets us.”

  “Could be an easy job, helping the government, protection and all.”

  “You don’t mean it.”

  “No,” Billy said. “Just making sure you still want what I want.”

  “Freedom for Caitlyn.”

  “That’s something else,” Billy said. “The government finding us. Don’t you find it strange? Think of all the places we could have gone from Lynchburg. All the hundreds and hundreds of shantytowns and soovie parks.”

  “Almost like they tracked us,” Theo said. “Remember the Factory in Appalachia? How they put chips in each person?”

  “I remember you dug it out of your arm. With a knife. But when the government talked to us in Lynchburg, those guys didn’t do anything to you or me.”

  “I’d have fought them,” Theo said. “Couple quick kicks in the tender parts, and down they go.”

  Billy smiled. “You did wrestle the one guy.” Billy’s smiled faded, to be replaced by a look of concentration. “Theo, remember? The one guy started shaking you for no reason. You fought back. Your glasses fell off.”

  “He was sorry he messed with me. Apologized like crazy. The other guy made sure…”

  Billy nodded. “Made sure to check out your glasses, like he was sorry he might have broken something.”

  “… and could have easily tagged my glasses with a tracking device.”

  Billy continued to nod. “You’d never notice because when you take your glasses off, you see like a bat. And I’d never have a reason to check your glasses because they’re on your face.”

  Theo had already taken off his glasses. He held them out for Billy to take.

  It took Billy only a couple of seconds to find the tracking device.

  “Theo,” Billy said. “They know exactly where we are. Right now.”

  “Sneaks,” Theo said. “Now I sure wish I would have kicked them in the—”

  “No,” Billy said. As always, he spoke slowly, allowing time to be thorough as he thought. “This is good. Really good.”

  From a chair in the corner of the penthouse of the Pavilion, holding coffee he’d poured univited from a nearby carafe, Pierce watched Holly and Everett interact. It was as if Everett considered her about as interesting as an old piece of furniture.

  Maybe that was Everett’s style. Boredom.

  Maybe he simply never had any interest in a hot-looking woman in her late twenties to early thirties. Wearing a dark shirt and dark skirt.

  Either way, Holly wasn’t cracking him with her questions. Pierce wasn’t going to step in either. That would make it look like the boss was tired of the underling doing a bad job. Short term, in this room, he doubted that would get results with Everett. Long term, it would hurt the team. Pierce did have confidence in Holly and wanted her to know it.

  Besides, she hadn’t yet asked Everett about the knife wound.

  “Just to clarify,” Holly said. “You have no knowledge about the girl in the photograph.”

  From the Enforcer video and the video shot from the hidden camera in Melvin’s wheelchair, they’d been able to come up with several good choices for a closeup of Caitlyn’s face.

  “I’ll have to take your word for it that she worked here.”

  Holly had already confirmed this with the head of staff at the Pavilion.

  “How about your health?”

  Everett showed no reaction to the sudden change in questioning tactics. “You’re in the medical field too?”

  “Knife wound,” she said. “In the belly. Let’s talk.”

  “Sure.” Utterly nothing changed on his face. “If you start making sense.”

  “In general,” Holly said. “I imagine something like that would hurt.”

  “What?”

  “A knife wound in the belly.”

  “I imagine it would.”

  Holly glanced at Pierce. “I’m done. Anything for you?”

  “Nope,” Pierce said. As he stood, he knocked his coffee over. Shrugged at the sight of it ebbing into expensive carpet. Didn’t get much petty pleasure from it, as Everett’s face remained bored. “Lunch sounds good.”

  Holly stood.

  Everett remained seated. In keeping with his style, he didn’t bother to wave or acknowledge their good-byes.

  In the elevator, Holly said to Pierce, “That went well.”

  “Not really. That coffee was the best I’ve had in months. He’ll snap his fingers. Carpet will be scrubbed clean in the time it takes me to get another cup.”

  “My sarcasm was directed toward the lack of information we possess. Not at your pitiful attempt to be the alpha dog by knocking coffee on his floor.”

  “What do you expect?”

  “That’s exactly what I’d expect from you.”

  “From Everett. He’s a lawyered-up Influential.”

  “Maybe you should have been asking the questions.”

  “Wouldn’t have been near as pleasant for all involved, me showing the amount of leg that you felt necessary to put on display.”

  “Accident, skirt riding up like that when I sat.”

  “My conclusion too,” Pierce said. “And note my skill with sarcasm.”

  “Really,” she said, irritated. “It was an accident. I don’t need to show leg to make a good impression. I don’t stoop to that.”

  “My apologies. By the way, nothing I could have done would have had a different outcome in there. And I liked the way you ended, not pressing him further on the knife wound thing. You got it across that we know about it. Maybe it will make him nervous.”

  “Probably not,” she said. “But it was all I had.”

  “Not quite all you had. Accident or not, your legs did make a good impression.”

  Against agency policy, this kind of talk. But Pierce had a good defense. She’d started it.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  When he finds out you didn’t call,” Razor said with a shrug to the guard at the checkpoint into Dr. Hugh Swain’s neighborhood, “it’ll be your job to lose.”

  Late as it was in the afternoon, it had been no problem getting back inside through the gate at the outer wall. Because of the number of Industrials streaming out of the city, security there, except for a weapons search by body scan, was usually minimal, based on the reliance on tighter screening into individual neighborhoods.

  Razor had fully expected this resistance at the checkpoint.

  “Stand here,” the guard at the neighborhood gate said. “Try to run, and I’ll Taser you. And if Dr. Swain doesn’t want to see you, I’m calling in Enforcers. You can explain to them why you’ve got no authorization for this neighborhood.”
>
  He was a small man, trying to look larger in his uniform. By the tightened features in his face, he was obviously pleased to have a reason for his tough-guy look combined with holding a Taser in two hands in the ready position. The pleasure diminished as he gingerly removed one hand from the Taser and reached for the keypad with his free hand. It diminished more as he struggled to lock eye contact with Razor while he felt for the keypad entries.

  “Keypad it yourself,” the guard finally said, resuming his two-handed grip on the Taser. “95863. And face the camera directly.”

  Razor memorized the number as he punched the keypad buttons, using the knuckle of his forefinger to avoid leaving a fingerprint. No doubt there was a surveillance camera recording this, but that didn’t matter to him. Although, by necessity for banking purposes, he was in the facial-recognition database, he was confident it wouldn’t set off any alerts here. This surveillance system was set up to look for faces with criminal records. His didn’t have one. Nor did his facial profile have any other kind of alert on it. And his facial tattoo pattern would scan him as an Industrial.

  Within seconds, a voice responded. But the chest-high videoscreen in front of Razor remained dark. The videophone was set on one-way. Images from the gate reached Swain, but no image was returned.

  “What is it?” the voice snapped. “I’m not expecting visitors.”

  Razor was here to learn as much as possible about Swain. Even this short statement—tone and content—told him something.

  “Apologies for disturbing you, Dr. Swain,” the guard said, “but this Industrial says it’s so important, you’ll want to see him. I’ve got him at Taser point, and I’ll disable him if you say so.”

  “I’m not expecting visitors.” The voice had an even, low timbre. Entitled authority.

  “I’m sorry, sir. You’re expecting the daughter of a old friend,” Razor said. He kept his head down. With tattoos webbed across his face, his role here was that of an Industrial. While Razor wasn’t afraid of Swain, any Industrial would be. Projecting a degree of confidence would ring false.

  “I’m not expecting visitors.”

  “Name of Jordan Brown,” Razor said, head still down. “His daughter, Caitlyn, sent me to ask you something.”

  Silence. It was so long that Razor wondered if he’d gambled incorrectly. If Swain refused and called for Enforcers, Razor would be looking at a far different and far less favorable outcome.

  “Give him directions to the rear entrance of my house,” Swain finally told the guard from the anonymity of the speaker.

  “No escort?” the guard said.

  “You stay there. And don’t sign him in.”

  Razor knew all too well that Influentials indulged in tastes that remained unofficial and unrecorded. A nonescort wasn’t that unusual. But if Swain wanted to keep this unrecorded, Razor was fully aware of the situation; because there wouldn’t be a record, Razor would be at his complete mercy. As Razor also knew far too well, Industrials who entered Influentials’ homes without a record sometimes didn’t make it back outside the gates alive.

  FORTY-NINE

  Caitlyn’s guards—or protectors—had agreed to Caitlyn’s request for her to sit outside the shanty in the late afternoon sun. Sky had nearly cleared again, and wind was dying. It signaled the imminent return of heat. Which might make a night in the shanty more comfortable.

  It didn’t take her long to realize that the grouping of shanties in this area was deliberate, housing a close-knit family unit with a small common center area.

  Nor did it take her long to realize that the few children playing on the dusty ground in the tiny open area inside this circle of shanties were forbidden to leave the common area. These children were Industrials, marked by facial tattoos, showing that their parents had been given permission by the government to have the children.

  Influentials had learned from how the Muslims had toppled Europe a generation earlier, not through war but through population growth. Originally, Europeans had welcomed immigration as cheap labor, expecting the predominantly Muslim immigrants to integrate. Instead, Muslims had remained in cloistered communities, raising families, on average, of eight children. Within seventy years, the Muslim population numbers had so dominated the Europeans’ that Muslims were able to easily outvote any opposition, and in effect, the countries had become theirs, including the imposition of sharia laws that reduced rights for women.

  Here, in the shantytowns, Influentials weren’t going to let that mistake be repeated. Industrials, the descendants of illegal immigrants who had once flooded America from Mexico and south to take the jobs citizens didn’t want, were limited to two children. Both would be registered and tattooed with a distinctive bar code pattern needed for access through all checkpoints. Any other children would be Illegals, allowed to mingle with Industrials in the shantytowns and soovies but barred from the city core and any official employment, forced to live with all the perils that came with it.

  Caitlyn watched one girl in particular, maybe three years old. She didn’t join in the vigorous games, and all the other children seemed solicitous of her well-being.

  Caitlyn walked up to one of the men and asked.

  He shrugged, but it wasn’t a shrug of indifference.

  “She’s sick. Something inside eating at her. We don’t know. She cries a lot at night. When she falls, she cuts easy. Takes weeks for the wound to heal. We’re careful with her.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s life,” he said. “You take it as it is.”

  “Timothy Raymond Zornenbach?” Melvin said. Then cackled. “Good luck, man. The old dude is sick, like twisted sick. Talks to nobody. Has a dozen different places to live. Makes it so no one ever sees him.”

  “He’s got a son,” Holly said. “Legally adopted. Named Timothy Ray. Have you met the kid?”

  “The son is news to Melvin,” Melvin said.

  Again, Pierce had let Holly take this one. They were in a crowded coffee shop just down the street from the Pavilion. Melvin called it his office, refused to speak unless Jimmy was allowed to stay beside him. The big man was mute, cradling a bandaged hand in his good one. Pierce glanced at the big man’s ears, looking for where Caitlyn had bit him after dropping from the ceiling.

  Melvin’s background was similar to men like him in other quadrants. A nonvoter, he had citizenship papers that allowed him residence inside the city walls, and as a person with vocational education, he fell into the invisible gray area between Influentials at the top and the uneducated Industrials and Illegals at the bottom. Unofficially, he knew what he was. An Invisible. Officially, he was registered as a custodial technician, employed, in theory, at various buildings to monitor and fix the heating and cooling systems. Officially, that’s what provided his income.

  Unofficially, however, his income depended on how well he controlled the Illegals who found gaps in the system. Like rats, Illegals were impossible to eradicate, in part because Influentials wanted some of what the Illegals could provide—drugs, prostitutes. As a result, unofficially, Enforcers allowed men like Melvin a degree of power based on their abilities to keep the seamier parts concealed from official notice.

  “No son,” Holly said in response to Melvin’s comment. Pierce observed that Melvin, unlike Everett, showed intense interest in Holly’s appearance. Almost to the point of lasciviousness. And Pierce noticed that Holly seemed impervious to Melvin’s wandering eyes.

  “No son,” Melvin said. “But the dude loves sewer kids. Buys them. Makes them pretty. Gets rid of them after a few years.”

  Melvin cackled. “Guess it means he’s had lots of sons.”

  “Buys them from you?” Holly said.

  Melvin slammed his right hand on the arm of his wheelchair. “Not a chance. Melvin don’t traffic in that. Never.”

  “Who’s the old man go to to get the kids?” Holly asked.

  “Told you. Direct to the sewer. Spreads the cash, so I hear.”

 
; “How about Melvin finds the old man for us?”

  Melvin smiled. “Cash delivery.” And he named a price.

  “Not a chance,” Holly said. Smiling. Mimicking Melvin’s cadence of speech. “Holly don’t traffic in that. Never.”

  “Then don’t expect help from Melvin,” Melvin said.

  “No problem,” Holly said. “Did I forget to mention this?”

  She leaned forward and tapped the front handle of Melvin’s wheelchair. “Later, when Melvin gets a chance, Melvin should take a close look here.”

  “Why?” Melvin was grinning. He’d copped a look at Holly’s cleavage as she leaned forward. Obviously wanted the grin to let her know it too.

  “Melvin will find a hidden camera there.”

  His grin ended abruptly.

  Holly’s smile was sweet, like little-girl innocence. “Melvin’s going to help us, or Melvin’s going to have to deal with what happens when Melvin’s private life hits the streets.”

  Jimmy looked at the floor.

  Holly continued smiling. “What does Melvin think about that?”

  Pierce hid his admiration. He sure liked her style.

  FIFTY

  Two miles away, beyond the outer city wall, were the shacks with tin roofs, crowded in rows between open sewers. Here, in contrast, the houses were three stories tall, with large landscaped yards as buffers between each residence. During the day, Industrials would labor to maintain the landscaping and clean the interiors of the homes. Now, with dusk approaching, the yards were empty, with a whispered breeze bringing hinted scents of tree blossoms and flower beds.

  The brick walk to the rear entrance of the house took Razor beneath a canopy of lush oak trees with squirrels scampering up the bark. Razor climbed the steps, pushed a button, and announced himself. The door buzzed as it unlocked.

  He pushed it open, entering a tiny square room with hooks on the wall and several sets of ragged clothing. As he stepped inside, the door locked behind him. He gave it an experimental tug, but it wouldn’t open. The interior door was locked too.