Slab City Blues - The Collected Stories: All Five Stories in One Volume

by Ryan, Anthony

  Choi closed her eyes and began to sing, soft, melodious, that old Bob Marley tune again. Satomi shifted a little in her arms, rested her head against Choi’s breast, her lips moved as she tried to sing along.

  “I’ll be right down,” I told Joe.

  *

  Nina Laredo was waiting outside, alone in the middle of the street. The nightly sweat-rain was starting to ease off and the holo-lights reflected off the slick paving like scattered jewels. There were a few hirelings lurking in the corners and no doubt a few more I couldn’t see.

  “Wait for the signal,” I instructed Joe. “Then lay down fire on the right flank. Concentrate on the rooftops.”

  “What’s the signal?”

  “It’ll be hard to miss.” I went outside.

  “Inspector,” Nina greeted me with the usual professional courtesy, keeping her H&K flechette carbine pointed at the ground. “I am instructed to permit you to vacate the vicinity peaceful-”

  I quick-drew the Sig and shot her in the stomach. After that things are pretty hazy.

  *

  The Heavenly Garden Shoot Out (or Massacre depending on who’s telling the story) has since become something of a Yang-Side legend, a story to scare infant crims at bedtime. All about how the big bad Demon gut-shot the most feared hired gun on the Slab, took a flechette burst in the face as she went down but that only seemed to piss him off. There are lurid and improbable tales of extraordinary marksmanship as he went on to pick off the snipers on the rooftops with single shots to the head then engage the survivors in hand-to-hand combat. The ending varies a little but most agree he had to be prevented from further abusing the corpse of Nina Laredo by a large fellow Demon who knocked him unconscious.

  Whether or not any of this is true I can’t tell you. I honestly don’t remember anything after I shot Nina.

  *

  I woke up in the hospital finding Sherry Mordecai gazing down with an expression I’d never seen on her face before. Pity.

  “Don’t do that,” I croaked, feeling like my oesophagus had been replaced with sand-paper. I blearily fumbled for the water jug next to the bed. Sherry gently pushed my hands away and poured a small amount into a cup, holding it to my lips.

  “Thanks,” I said, slumping back into the mattress. I met her gaze. “Choi?”

  She shook her head. “And the girl. Ricci says sodium thiopental, fast acting and mostly painless.”

  “Joe?”

  “He’s fine. Feeling guilty. Thinks he may have hit you too hard. I told him where you’re concerned there’s no such thing as too hard.”

  She took something from her pocket and placed it on the bedside table. Mr Mac’s smart. “He’s been calling. Thought I’d leave it up to you.”

  She went to the door then hesitated. “Oh, it seems Choi made a will. She’s left you the Heavenly Garden, and everything else. It’s a shit-load of money and I’m not sure how much of it Professional Standards will let you keep, but for the moment, you’re a rich man. Congratulations.” With that, she left.

  I stared at the Smart for a long time before picking it up and thumbing to the missed calls. He picked up immediately.

  “Alex, are you OK?” Genuine concern. No anger or frustration.

  “I killed Nina,” I said. “Blew her guts out.”

  “I know. Nina had a professional awareness of the risks inherent in her occupation. I’ll miss the contribution she made to my business. But employees are replaceable, friends are not.”

  “Try and get this, you fucking nutcase, I am not your friend!”

  “Of course you are, Alex. As I am your friend. Why else would I give you the opportunity to resolve this?”

  A cold realisation gripped my chest. “You knew, you already knew Choi had taken her.”

  “No, I suspected it and you confirmed it. Being aware of your connection I thought it only fair to at least give you a chance of saving her. Pity how it turned out. I always liked Choi…”

  A chance of saving her. “Her name was Matsuke Hiroka and she didn’t need saving,” I said. “She’d saved herself. Don’t call me again. If I see you I am going to kill you.” I switched off the smart and tossed it into the water jug.

  I suddenly became aware that there was an adhesive bandage on the right side of my face, a big one. The cause of Sherry’s pity? I struggled out of bed and wobble walked to the mirror over the sink. A handsome man I barely knew stared back from the mirror. He’d clearly been through some bad times, tired red-tinged eyes set in a pale unshaven mask that was, nevertheless, still unfeasibly attractive.

  I reached up and began to unpeel the bandage. Flechette wounds have a signature all their own, the way they score the flesh leaving straight line scars that might have been left by a scalpel. Nina’s final shot had carved deep channels in the skin from my jawline to the top of my ear which had been partly sheared away. The medics would have treated the scars with re-growth enzymes but the damage was too severe for a full repair. Without surgery or a complete facial reconstruction I’d be wearing this disfigurement for the rest of my life.

  “Now,” the handsome man grinned in the mirror, “that’s more like it.”

  END

  A Hymn to Gods Long Dead

  Chapter 1

  The Vampire came to the bar just after the Yang Seven lights dimmed to a deeper blue to signify the onset of evening. She was tall with the standard night black hair and alabaster skin, but her clothes were unusual; no lace or leather, just practical grey-green combats, a loosely fitting unbranded t-shirt and a stay-clean jacket of pale blue. No tats either, another surprise, as was her smile. It had none of the cunning or predatory calculation they spent hours perfecting in the mirror - and yes, they do show up in mirrors, gene-splicing has its limits. There was an openness to it, extended canines notwithstanding.

  She took a seat at the bar, the tone of her greeting as bright as her smile. “Hi!”

  I said, “I don’t stock plasma or blood subs.”

  There was the smallest twitch in her smile. “Water’s fine.”

  “Sparkling or still?”

  “Whatever’s cheapest.”

  I met her gaze as I poured the water, not liking what I saw: recognition. Please, not another killer-Demon groupie.

  I noted a mark on the porcelain of her wrist. A faded pattern too heavily lasered to make out, but the size and location said a lot. Family sigil tattoo on the wrist - second generation vampire thing. She’s probably older than I am.

  She sipped her water, eyes twinkling a little. She was happy to see me.

  “I don’t do autographs,” I said. “I’m not available for freelance employment and I’m on sabbatical from the Lorenzo City Police Department.”

  She put down her water glass. “I know. I’m sorry to come here, but there wasn’t anyone else…”

  The jukebox roared to life, Long Tall Sally raising the heads of the few sober patrons. The regulars barely noticed. It was a genuine Wurlitzer, payment for an old debt, and tended to exercise a certain autonomy over when it chose to entertain my customers. One of my first management decisions when taking over the Heavenly Garden was to reverse the former owner’s strict no music policy. Something I was beginning to regret.

  “That’s very loud,” the vampire said, wincing a little.

  I went over and kicked the Wurlitzer to silence, picking up Blue Nancy’s empty glass for an unasked for refill on the way back. “Lord’ll reward ye iffin I don’t, Inspector.”

  I held the glass to the Kentucky Red optic, it had become my best seller since Joe procured me a pallet-full from his friend at the docks.

  “As I said…” the Vampire began.

  “As I said, I’m on sabbatical.” I handed Blue Nancy her drink as she shambled to the bar. “It’s a polite way of saying they fired me but haven’t filed the paperwork.” I ran a cloth over where Nancy had spilt just a little before returning to her usual place by the long out-of-order pinball machine.

  “I run a bar,” I to
ld the vampire. “Demon days are over Cornelia or Althea or whatever your fucked in the head parents called you. Whatever it is, I can’t help you.”

  The smile hadn’t gone completely, but she wasn’t showing her teeth anymore. “Thomas DeMarco,” she said. “Ten months ago. You were the lead investigator.”

  DeMarco. I didn’t need to dig through too many memories, it had been a bad one… and unsolved.

  “You a relative?” I asked, thinking it unlikely.

  “No, just… an interested party.” She reached into her jacket, coming out with a cheap smart and placing it on the bar. I noticed her nails weren’t overly long, no black enamel varnish either. “All I ask is that you look at this.” She eased herself off the bar stool. “Contact details included if you want to talk some more.”

  She gave me a final look, oddly warm in its appraisal given what a prick I was being, tapped her unvarnished nails on the bar and left.

  The Wurlitzer blazed into life again as I contemplated the smart. “Fucking hell!” I realised I was reaching for the Sig in my belt with every intention of blowing the glass-chrome monster to pieces. Except the Sig wasn’t there, Sherry Mordecai had taken it after handing over my notice of suspension. I contented myself with wrenching the Wurlitzer’s power lead from the wall then picked up the smart with every intention of tossing it in the garbage.

  “Kindly girl,” Blue Nancy was saying, mostly to herself, gazing at the door. “Kindly girl calls to the warrior, smile like summer, his heart like flint.”

  “I told you before, Nance,” I said, without any real conviction. “Any more haiku and you’re barred.”

  My thumb pressed the smart’s command menu, calling up the contacts file: Dr Janet Vaughan, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Classical Studies, Lorenzo City University (Yang Faculty).

  “Janet?” I said. “What kind of vamp is called Janet?”

  *

  I pushed out the regulars a few minutes before closing time, told Marco to go home, he could clean up in the morning. I went upstairs in company with a bottle of Red and the vamp’s smart, checked my own for messages - one from Joe, three from Sherry - and settled onto the futon making the thousandth firm resolution to buy a couch tomorrow.

  Dr Janet’s files were neatly arranged in a web-matrix familiar to anyone who’d ever seen a crimint report; lines interlinking subject nodes with time stamps. Thomas DeMarco was highlighted in red. I opened the file finding a brief bio and a crime report of sorts, all open source stuff missing the more lurid details, but I had a vivid memory of those already.

  Thomas DeMarco, aged sixty-two, father of three daughters, self-styled King of Curry as owner and CEO of the Pipin’ Hot lamb curry franchise, third largest home delivery and restaurant chain this side of the Axis. A rich fellow by Yang-side standards, when he went missing it was naturally assumed he’d been kidnapped for ransom, a tradition of the small but vibrant Mexican criminal sub-culture in our fair city. Except no ransom demand was forthcoming. Six days and no calls, no notes, no body parts in the post. Which is not to say Mr DeMarco’s case was a dismemberment free zone. A worker in one of his slaughterhouses on Yang Thirty found an unlogged barrel of rendered animal fat in a quiet corner of the yard, inside was Thomas DeMarco, all six pieces of him, bobbing in the grease like an underdone stew.

  The family was rich and demanded the best from Chief Arnaud. He gave them me and Sherry, and we found nothing. Granted I’ll confess my mental state was nothing to boast about at the time, Consuela’s death was only three months gone and my apartment was beginning to resemble the cage of a gorilla with a serious fast-food problem. But I would like it on the record that I did my detectively best for poor dis-constituted Mr DeMarco.

  He’d last been seen paying a visit to a handsome young man in a nicer corner of Yang Thirty-Two. DeMarco had an active sex life and, not one to discriminate, maintained an expensive stable of young men and women scattered throughout the Yang levels. Mrs DeMarco was clearly an understanding wife, evidenced by the fact that many of these specialist employees were invited to the funeral and eager to help with enquiries. The young man who had last enjoyed DeMarco’s company was a square-jawed youth of muscular proportions whose evident grief didn’t prevent him slipping me his smart ID when Sherry’s back was turned. DeMarco’s visit had been routine, if apparently vigorous, the King of Curry spent a lot on rejuve treatments, and he left in company with two bodyguards at nearly midnight. The bodyguards were both ex-military, highly experienced and working under strict Duress Protocol. They boarded an empty Pipe carriage for the journey home. Ten minutes or so later the lights went out along with the security cams, and the carriage came to a sudden and jarring halt, throwing both guards off their feet. Sixty seconds later the lights came on and they were looking at the space where DeMarco had been. Both claimed to have neither heard, smelt or felt anything, a testimony which stood up to some hard grilling and a court-ordered dose of sodium pentathol.

  We ran intensive forensic scans over the Pipe carriage and found nothing. Same for the remains and the barrel they came in. Ricci’s autopsy found no trace of sedative or poison, though he advised that death had been caused by the first dismemberment, inflicted with a standard-grade automated power saw of the type used in the production line at the very slaughterhouse where the remains had been discovered. Tests of the plant confirmed it. DeMarco had been put through his own mincer.

  DeMarco, like most Yang-side businessmen, had his fair share of enemies, largely among his competitors who couldn’t disguise their delight at his demise. But none of them had the stones, or the contacts, to arrange a hit of such precision and brutality. All alibis checked out and whilst we found plenty of financial irregularities, enough in fact to land a few in the Slab City slammer, there were no mysterious payments to numbered Latvian accounts or unexplained withdrawals of folding green in mixed denominations.

  Sherry and I worked it for a month, coming up empty on every lead and getting only blank stares or desperate lies from informants. Eventually, word came down from the Chief to hand it over to Major Cases, where we knew it would languish in the desk of some time-server for a few years before being quietly filed away.

  I remembered I hadn’t liked handing it off. Something was very wrong about the whole thing, beyond the obvious gruesome torture and murder stuff, of course. It didn’t fit any template, too anonymous and savage for a professional job, too clean and efficient for a psycho / sociopath. It rankled but we were getting slammed with a series of gang killings on Yang Forty so I filed it under ‘to be continued if I ever get the time’, knowing I never would.

  I skimmed through Dr Janet’s amateur crime report, noting the phrase ‘three daughters’ had been highlighted. Did she have something on the daughters? We’d checked them out, all in their twenties, two were law-graduates with top level positions in the family business, ironically in charge of the slaughterhouse division. The third daughter was living comfortably on a trust fund on the other side of the Axis. They were all convincingly traumatised with equally convincing alibis.

  I checked out the other two subject nodes, picking the one with the oldest date stamp - September 28, 2240. The files consisted of another crime report and a 2D of a grinning young man, holding an antique looking guitar in one hand with his arm draped over a smiling girl. The background indicated some Downside desert-ville. The crime report told me his name was Dwayne Francis Rickard, musician (this was highlighted), age nineteen, denizen of Ribera, New Mexico Territory. From the press reports it seems Dwayne had been suffering from severe depression following the death by Bliss overdose of his girlfriend, presumably the girl in the 2D (‘girlfriend’ highlighted). When he went missing the local sheriff immediately suspected suicide, a reasonable theory he was forced to discount when Dwayne’s head washed up on the banks of the Pecos river (‘river’ again highlighted). His mutilated and headless body was found in a drainage ditch ten miles upstream.

  I wondered if this might be another unsolved case but
noticed a file marked ‘convictions’. The local sheriff, an efficient fellow, ran down three suspects in as many days, all young, female and well known Blissfuls. They claimed to know nothing of Dwayne’s demise but the forensic evidence was overwhelming, DNA found in their hair, under their fingernails, in their mouths, between their teeth. It seems poor old Dwayne had got the worst of the deadlier of the species. The girls had been convicted and executed within the month - New Mexico Territory was renowned for swift and merciless justice, none of that leaving them to stew on death-row for ten years stuff anymore.

  I re-read the report for any connection to DeMarco but could see nothing beyond the dismemberment of both victims. One was a disorganised murder by brain-addled junkies, the other an expert abduction and motiveless act of savagery.

  The third and final node held the least information and was also the most recent. Ygor Karnikhov, aged forty-two, Slab resident and employee of Exocore Mining. Found dead two days ago in the central asteroid processing plant on Yang One. The details, cribbed from a police announcement, were sketchy. Homicide was confirmed and the phrase “brutal and senseless killing” used along with “no suspects currently in custody.” The only highlight on this node was a snippet from Karnikhov’s bio: “keen volunteer for various charities”, and an image file. It was a poor quality 2D, probably taken on the move and well short of crime scene quality, but the contents were clear enough if you looked closely: a man chained by his arms and legs to what appeared to be a wall of rock, slumped and lifeless, with a large incision in his side and a chunk of his guts hanging out.

  I looked at it for a long time, feeling a faint murmur of the same sensation of wrongness that had plagued me during the DeMarco investigation. This doesn’t fit.

  My own smart was buzzing, dragging my attention away from the blurred image of Ygor Karnikhov’s corpse. The caller ID was blank and the message read: “You need to talk to the vampire.” I thumbed the reply icon but received an instant “ID non-existent” bleep, which was as good as a signature; no-one else could wipe a call so quickly.