“I’m that private detective who called you earlier. If you’d talked to me then I wouldn’t have to be visiting you now.”
“I’ll call the forcers on you, dung-licker!”
“Go ahead, I just came from there. Talked to an old friend of yours named Moudry. Anyway, it’s in your best interest to cooperate, Gentile. We both want the same thing; to find your brother Brat.”
“And what do you want him for?”
Stake motioned with his gun. “Come on, sit down.”
Gentile hesitated. “How is it you look like my friend Javier now?”
“A little genetic trickery of mine. If it starts to slip, don’t get spooked.”
In the next room, Gentile complied and lowered himself into a chair. “You work for Adrian Tableau,” he said, “don’t you?”
“Hands on the armrests,” Stake ordered, afraid another weapon might be tucked in the cushions. “No, I don’t, but I am looking for his daughter Krimson. So you admit now that you know she’s involved with your brother.”
“I don’t know anything about that girl; I only met her a couple times.”
“Why are you so scared, Mr. Genitalia? Who are you hiding from?”
“Hey, like I told you on the phone, my wife and I just came home from visiting with her family in Miniosis. I get back here and my brother is gone. Not only that, but his whole gang is gone. I don’t know if another gang did something to them, or if it has to do with that girl’s father, or what. So I been watching my ass until I found out more. I didn’t want my wife to return to work but she thinks I’m overreacting. I don’t think she’s taking this seriously enough!”
“So Brat told you Krimson’s father is a dangerous man.”
“Yeah. He said her dad would highly disapprove of him going with her. You sure you don’t work for him?”
“No,” Stake assured him, “I wasn’t hired by him. I was hired by the father of a schoolmate of Krimson’s. I believe Krimson stole this girl’s kawaii-doll, and I’m trying to get it back.”
“What? That’s all you’re really looking for?”
“Yes. It’s an expensive doll. To tell you the truth, I don’t care about Tableau’s daughter, except that I feel she’s the one who stole this doll.”
“Yeah, she took it,” Gentile said, not looking ready to believe that the bio-engineered toy was Stake’s only concern.
Just like that – confirmed at last. “Did she tell you that herself, or was it your brother?”
“Brat told me. He called me when I was in Miniosis, because he was upset. She ran out on him or something and he said it was strange.”
“Ran out on him? Tell me what he said. About the doll...everything.”
“Then I have to show you his room to explain. Can I get up?”
“Okay. Slowly.”
Gentile rose from the chair, rubbing his twisted wrist with a bitter look of accusation thrown Stake’s way. Stake followed him with his gun held loosely, but ready, as the former gang member led him into a little hallway off the living room. He opened one of the hall’s doors, and the two men entered Brat Gentile’s bedroom.
The walls were lost in a dizzying kaleidoscope of graffiti, like dozens of Jackson Pollock paintings superimposed over each other, some in neon colors that glowed in the dark. Stake nearly winced. There were fake painted windows and bogus open doors that looked out on surreal savannahs or ocean depths, populated by fanciful animals. Here and there posters of music stars or favorite movies added another layer to the chaos, including a poster of a Kalian glebbi grazing on a plain. Stake remembered the live specimen he had seen in Adrian Tableau’s little menagerie.
“My brother loves animals,” Gentile said, watching Stake.
“And he loves Krimson Tableau, too, huh?”
“Let’s get it clear; it was her idea to take that doll. Brat had nothing to do with that. He told me so, and he had no reason to lie to me about it.”
“But did he say if her father put her up to it?”
“Why would he do that?”
“The father of the doll’s owner is a business rival of Tableau’s.”
“Huh. I don’t know anything about that. What I got from it is that Smirk just did it because she hates that girl. Brat said her father got Smirk a kawaii-doll of her own, but it wasn’t a very exclusive model so she didn’t like it – she wanted this other kid’s. I take it she’s pretty spoiled, this Smirk. Rich girl, you know? Brat said she’s a handful.”
“Did you see the doll yourself?”
“No, I was away by then. But when he called, Brat told me she had it with her when she came to see him the last time. That would be two weeks ago.” Gentile shook his head. “I really don’t know what the big deal is with those stupid dolls. I guess it makes ’em think they look sexy, like little girls.” He snorted. “Well, I suppose it does. I got to admit this Smirk is a hot little monster. I can see why Brat would put up with her dung. But I knew she’d be trouble, sooner or later.”
“What did he say happened the last time he saw her?”
“Okay, well, he said she came over here after school. Matter of fact she’d just taken the doll, and showed it off to him all proud and nasty about it. He said it was a weird thing, with like an octopus face and little devil wings. It moved, too. Like a baby on drugs, is how he said it. He said it was kind of alive.”
“But Brat told you she ran out on him?” Stake was running his keen eyes over the paint-slathered walls, the ratty furniture, the dirty clothes draped and heaped where Brat had left them before disappearing, himself. There was even a greasy pizza box still on a little coffee table, a number of empty bottles of Zub beer ranked beside it, as if Gentile had been afraid to tamper with a crime scene. Stake presumed that the rich girl had taken a perverse satisfaction in slumming with her less than affluent paramour.
“I’m getting to that. Like I said, Smirk came here after school to show him the doll, and then they went to bed for a while. Y’know? After that Brat dozed off. When he woke up, his girl was gone. He told me he thought it was funny that she didn’t wake him up to say goodbye, but at first he figured she just didn’t want to bother him. Then, he saw this.”
Gentile moved to a cabinet filled with a clutter of music and movie chips in their jewel boxes, magazines, other odds and ends. He shoved aside a stack of jewel boxes and dug out an object that he’d stashed behind them. He turned and offered the object to Stake. It was a young girl’s pocketbook.
“She wasn’t here, but this was hanging on the back of his computer chair. And her clothes were folded on the chair, too. Even left her shoes. I got all that stuff hidden away, too. Anyway, when he saw her clothes and all he knew something wasn’t right. So he got worried, and ended up calling me. He sure couldn’t call her father. Smirk told Brat herself that her father is one mean bastard. Connections with the Neptune Teeb family and everything.” Gentile squirmed a little. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’ve met the man. Wouldn’t surprise me if he had friends in the syndy.”
Stake had taken the pocketbook from Gentile and sat on the edge of the bed to open it on his knees. Makeup, a package of tissues, a little palm comp (Krimson didn’t care for the wrist comp variety, he supposed). And a black hand phone, with cute-eyed sheeted ghosts all over it: a Ouija phone.
Gentile went on, “I blocked the palm comp from being traced, in case her father figured on trying to home in on its whereabouts.” That could be done, even if the device were currently inactive. “I have her backpack, too, with some school dung in it. Books and such. There was room enough inside that maybe she brought a change of clothes with her. But even so, why leave her school uniform with Brat?”
“But the doll...”
“He said she didn’t have her own kawaii-doll when she came over. But yeah, that’s the only thing she took with her when she left, apparently – the kawaii-doll she stole from that other girl.”
“So last time Brat saw her, they were both in bed
.”
“Right. They were lying around naked, you know. Lovey-dovey, pillow talk. She picked up the doll and hugged it, all giggly, he said, trying to be cute. Brat couldn’t stand the touch of it, himself. Anyway, somewhere in there he fell asleep.”
Stake got up from the edge of the bed and turned to survey it again. The sheets were still in disarray, as they must have appeared to Brat on the day he had awakened from a deep, post-coital and maybe post-alcoholic slumber to find his young girlfriend no longer beside him.
Observing the hired detective, Gentile said, “Christ-o-mighty, man, now you’re starting to look like me a little bit. Or what it would look like if Javier and me had a love child.” He snorted again. “You doing that on purpose?”
“No,” Stake said. “Mind of its own.”
Gentile’s gaze shifted to sweep the room as Stake’s had, but with more melancholy. “I wish I’d come back from the in-laws’ place as soon as he called, but how was I to know what would happen? I figured the little she-beast was just playing games with the poor kid. He didn’t call me again, and when I came home he was gone. I thought he must be with his crew, but when he didn’t show up I went out looking for the Snarlers and I couldn’t find any of them, either. That’s when I got the chills, man, deep chills.”
“I have to say,” Stake agreed, flipping up the pillows to peek under them, “it’s very disturbing. I can see Tableau coming after your brother, but I don’t know what to make of the whole gang going missing.”
“I’m trying not to think so negative,” Gentile said. “Maybe the Snarlers have gone underground with Brat to protect him from Tableau. Maybe they’re all okay.”
“That does sound like a strong possibility,” Stake reassured him. But as for Krimson, he thought the odds were less in her favor. Seeing her Ouija phone had reminded him of Caren Bistro hearing the missing girl on hers.
He got down on hands and knees next and looked under Brat’s bed. A sock, a porn magazine, dust bunnies. On the far side of the bed, though, he noticed something more interesting. He rose, walked to the foot of the bed and started pulling it away from the wall. Gentile came over to help him. “What?” he said.
Stake pointed down to a square hole in the wall at floor level. A grille partially covered it. Only partially, because the grille had been pulled out of its frame at one corner and bent upwards. “That an air duct?”
“Yeah. And before you ask...no, I didn’t know it looked like that. But there’s no way Smirk could have fit through there, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Stake stared at the air vent. “That’s not exactly what I was thinking,” he said.
TWENTY: RUNNING TO STAND STILL
Floor Three. Then, the button for the basement again, before the door could open. Sometimes when they briefly stopped before ascending or descending yet again, they heard fists pounding on the outer security door. Thank God the things didn’t think to try the elevator keyboards on each floor. Thank God the elevator’s mechanism had not given out and trapped them somewhere between floors. Javier had visions of the Blank People shimmying up the cable from below. Or worse, dropping down the shaft from above onto the top of their carriage, and prying open the hatch above their heads.
The elevator had to keep moving and moving, like a shark that will die if it stops passing water through its gills.
Javier looked at Patryk, who leaned his tall body in the corner, playing around on Nhu’s wrist comp. He felt a fondness and a bittersweet pride. The last of the Folger Street Snarlers besides himself. Quietly strong, loyal and calm, with an unquestioning faith in his leader. But Javier felt no less fondness for the others, despite the flaws that might have led to their deaths. How could he have outlived them? He was twenty-five. Some of the others had been teenagers. He had passed through more fires in his life on the streets than they had, but had still come out the other side where they had not.
So far.
He took in the last of the Tin Town Terata. Barbie had fallen asleep, hunkered down near Patryk’s feet with her arms around her knees. Her two cognizant faces had closed their eyes, but the largest of the five faces flicked its eyes back and forth madly as if in a panic. REMs, Javier realized. For the sake of room inside the cramped elevator, Satin had folded up and collapsed the limbs of his mechanical body as best he could. He glowered at something only he could see, but occasionally roused from his distanced fury to glance around at his remaining comrades as Javier was doing.
And Mira. She had fallen asleep, too, curled on her side like a child at his feet. He wanted to kneel down close to her and touch her hair, her face, her shoulder, but was too self-conscious in the presence of the others. Why was he so attracted to her? Had this circumstance drawn the two of them together only because they needed each other? He had heard that the nearness of death brought out the instinct to fuck, to procreate, to continue the species. Could that impulse have found a more tender manifestation in the both of them? If he had met Mira on the street would he have done anything except maybe crack a joke behind her back to Mott or Hollis? He had had beautiful women of all races. Whole women. Mutants were to be scoffed at, shunned, or at best pitied. Maybe she had used her gift, he kidded himself. Got inside his brain and twisted it like a balloon animal into the shape of love.
Whatever the case, whatever the cause, that was what he felt when he lowered his eyes to her again. He felt love.
The elevator had reached the basement level. Javier was quick to poke the button for Floor Three. They began to rise up smoothly through the body of Steward Gardens again.
Javier noticed Satin’s eyes were on him. They had an angry look, but then they always did. He realized the mutant had been waiting to say something to him. Maybe waiting for quite a while.
“You like our little girl, huh?” he grumbled.
Ha, Javier thought. Maybe Satin had a touch of a gift, himself. “Yeah,” he said. “I like her.”
“Yeah, well, she likes you, too.” Satin turned his eyes away. “Can’t blame her. She needs a man with those extra touches – like arms and legs. Real arms and legs. Not much someone like me could do for her.”
Javier understood a lot then; not that he hadn’t suspected it before. “Hey. I seen you fight those Blank People. If it wasn’t for you, you most of all, none of you Terata would be alive right now. Mira wouldn’t be here right now.” The gang leader chuckled. “I know I wouldn’t want to go up against you, man.”
Satin returned his gaze to Javier. And smiled.
“Uhh,” Mira said.
Javier flicked his eyes back to her, saw that she was shivering violently. Her strong features were clenched in an expression like pain. No longer caring what the others thought, he crouched down beside her and gripped her shoulder, leaning his face in close to hers. “Mira! Mira, wake up!”
“Javier,” she murmured, as if talking in her sleep. But he could tell it wasn’t quite that. “Something in the basement. Somebody. Something.”
“What is it? What do you see?”
The purple veins at her temples stood out engorged and throbbing. Their branches were spread wider than he remembered them, touching the ends of her eyebrows and the tops of her cheekbones like cracks in the porcelain head of a doll. “Javier, there’s something in the basement now.” She spoke clearly but her eyes were still crunched shut. Awake but not. “It’s swallowed the brain. The encephalon. Merged with it. It’s sitting down there, getting bigger. Stronger.”
“What is it? What are you talking about?”
“Dai-oo-ika.” Then she gave a shudder, and seemed to change her mind. “Outsider. Dai-oo-ika. Outsider. The Spawn of Ugghiutu. Outsiders...the Outsiders...”
“Okay, that’s enough – wake up.” He shook her. “Wake up.”
She didn’t open her eyes, but her features relaxed somewhat and her trembling became more subdued. Javier stroked her hair and looked up at Satin, who said, “We got to get out of here. We can’t keep riding up and down in this thing forever
. We have to make a run for it.”
“We’ll die, like Nhu,” Patryk said.
“What else can we do?” Satin growled. “There’s nothing else left. The question is, do we go out the front door or through the basement?”
“The building is too full of them now,” Javier said. “We’d never even get to the front door alive. But we don’t know about the basement. Unless the Blanks are getting in from outside, there might only be a few left in there.”
“Nhu took her key card with her, didn’t she?”
“We don’t need it anymore,” Patryk said. “She overrode the basement lock-out and now we have access to general door functions.”
“Well, what about that thing Mira is talking about? What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Javier said. “But of the two choices, I guess we’re going to have to make a run for it that way.”
“There’s another idea,” Patryk said. “Nhu’s idea.”
“What was that?” asked Satin.
“Call the forcers in here. They’re the lesser of two evils. Let them fight the Blank People. We might even be able to escape more easily while they distract each other.”
Javier held Patryk’s gaze for several long seconds, and then said, “Let’s do it.”
“Okay. Her wrist comp is acting funny – I can’t get on the net – but there’s some hand phones in my backpack.” He slung it off his shoulder and fished around inside. He produced one of the little devices and passed it to Javier.
Javier took it, recognized it as Tabeth’s. He activated it, punched the emergency number for the police, and held the phone to his ear. Hissing, crackling static. He made some tuning adjustments, but to no avail. He tried to call other numbers programmed into Tabeth’s address book. He couldn’t get through on those, either. “Let me see another one,” he said.
Patryk traded him Hollis’s hand phone. Again Javier tapped out the number for the forcers and pressed the device to his ear.
Deadstock: A Punktown Novel Page 21