The Solid-State Shuffle (Sunken City Capers Book 1)

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  * * *

  We walk up to the roof, following a narrow wooden stairwell that doubles back on itself several times with a black iron railing that twists around the landings. The air is stale here, no movement to it.

  Two of the "random" men from the bar walk in front of us, while the third one walks behind me. The stairs creak and groan as the five of us tromp up.

  The fresh air on the roof is a relief from the stuffy confines of the stairwell, even if the outside air is warming up from the rising summer sun.

  Colvin's private hovercar is waiting for us, a sleek black Mercedes model that looks like it’s been modified and could withstand some punishment.

  We cross quickly over to the private landing pad and dip into the back cabin. Our escorts stay on the roof, and we zip up into the skylane alone with just a driver (I assume, I can't actually see who is in the front).

  I slip deeper into professional mode. Calm, controlled. Playing a part. I am Sapphire Sanders, a security consultant. All reactions, humors, mannerisms are filtered through that lens.

  "So, how can I help you specifically?" I ask.

  "It has to be someone close to me that's responsible," he says to himself, half-looking out the window at the city below.

  "Responsible for what?" I ask.

  He looks over at me and says, "Someone stole something very important to me." He then fishes in his inside suit jacket pocket and retrieves an old-fashion list on paper and hands it to me. Paranoid that one, probably didn't even write it himself.

  The first name on the list is underlined: Valle.

  Uh-oh.

  "What did they steal?" I manage to ask in a perfectly level tone that an interested security consultant would use.

  "A solid-state external drive of particular interest to me."

  Oh, fuck!

  CHAPTER SIX

  "WHADDA YA MEAN he didn't tell you what's on it?" Puo asks. "You didn't ask him?"

  "I asked," I snap back. I’m back at our Queen Anne home bringing Puo and Winn up to speed. "But he wouldn't tell me. He wouldn't even tell me where it was stolen from."

  "You didn't press it?" Puo asks.

  "No, Puo! I didn't press it. I was busy trying to stay in security-consultant-Sapphire-Sanders mode while keeping royally-screwed-Isa-Schmidt deep in a closet."

  Sapphire Sanders Puo mouths incredulously, but blessedly keeps his damn mouth shut about it.

  All three of us are sitting around a cheap, used dining room table in the ridiculously ornate dining room. Decorative wood paneling travels up three-quarters of the wall; a rich stenciled gold wallpaper covers the rest to the ceiling. Two crystal chandeliers hang down in the middle of the room, with matching wall sconces regularly spaced around the room.

  The table looks stupidly small for the room. The surface is scratched. The cheap veneer is peeling off on two of the corners. And Puo is royally pissing me off.

  What does he think? That I went all airhead with a gun pressed to my temple?

  Because that's exactly what happened—the gun part, not the airhead part. Stealing from a Boss equals a death sentence. No questions asked. It's expected—demanded. Doesn't matter what the conditions are, or reasons, or the misunderstandings, or whatever. Bang! Dead. Usually in a very public way.

  And we can't just put it back. No one here is foolish enough to even suggest it. Colvin privately enlisted us to track it down, told us about it. It's clear not many people know of it. If it magically reappears, we'll be suspect number one.

  All three of us are on the hard edges of our cheap wooden dining room chairs—at least they match the table.

  "How does he know it went missing?" Winn asks, without looking at me, focusing on the center of the table. He's also sitting in the chair farthest from me.

  Things are still weird between us. We can't seem to look at each other without frowning, without a tightness entering around our eyes.

  "Fine question," Puo jumps in. "They're not scheduled to go back there for another four weeks. And—"

  "Puo," I cut him off, and ignore Winn's question. Puo's arguing with me like I'm making this up. "He knows."

  "We just set up shop—" Puo whines.

  "I know," I say.

  "And now—"

  "I know."

  "It's just—"

  "Puo, I know. I don't want to move again either."

  We don't have the capital to even do it again at this point. If we split town, we'd have to do it fast and leave a lot behind. But stealing from a Boss? That's something they don't leave you alone about.

  I say, "We have to find a way out of this."

  Winn leans back in his chair, now staring out the window with quick furtive glances at me. "Does he suspect us?"

  I try to think through my interaction with Colvin at the bistro and in his hovercar and ignore Winn's attitude, but I decide I can't sit still and get up to pace. The wooden floorboards creak under my feet, and the crystals hanging from the wall sconces clink together lightly at my steps. "I don't believe so," I answer.

  Puo is still on the edge of his seat, small glistening patches of perspiration on his temples.

  I head him off before he can get more alarmed, "He came to us—me alone. He could've easily arranged for all three of us to meet him somewhere he could remove us. He also mentioned my father as a reference."

  Puo looks slightly mollified at mention of my father.

  I don't know what the protocol is for knocking off another Boss's child, but I can't imagine it's benign. It's almost certainly a case of it's better to plead ignorance and seek forgiveness later than ask permission first. So for Colvin to indicate that he had talked to my father about us provides some level of reassurance.

  "He could be playing us for the solid-state drive," Winn says, still staring out the window. "If he knocked us off in a rush, there's a chance he wouldn't be able to recover it."

  That would be downright devious, and in line with my impression of Colvin, but I shake my head no. "Again, he mentioned my father, and he did share that no one except him knows it was taken."

  The paper list sits in the center of the veneered wooden table, untouched. Three names are deliberately scratched onto it in black ink. Eusebio Valle, Christina Chavez and Rodrigo Ramírez. Chavez is the head of Colvin's security and Ramírez is an unknown. Two potential fall guys and one potential fall girl.

  Puo continues, "We don't know what's on that drive. We don't know how he knew it was taken—"

  The room feels stuffy, hot from the afternoon sun. I'd like to open the windows, but I don't want any remote possibility of our neighbors hearing us, which sparks a disturbing thought.

  "Puo," I cut off his litany, "where's the drive right now? Is it still in the EM vacuum?"

  Puo nods his head. "Yeah. You think it's phoning home, and it missed a call?"

  "I don't know," I say. "Maybe."

  "Great," Puo says.

  "A hundred feet of seawater is an effective EM shield," Winn observes. I can't tell if there's snark there or not, but I'm getting too wound up to care.

  To Winn I snark right back, "We manage to talk to Puo when we're underwater." To Puo I ask. "Can you check the drive?"

  Winn's mouth falls open at this obvious observation. "How do we talk like that?" he asks Puo.

  The worry that had been creasing Puo's face since we walked into the dining room disappears in excitement to explain. He loves talking shop, well really anything that makes him look smart.

  "Not right now!" I stomp over him. "Puo, can you check the drive or not?"

  The worry slides back into place on Puo's face. "Not without pulling it out of the EM vacuum. We're not set up for a dead room. If it does phone home, we'll be exposed."

  "Can we borrow a dead room?" I ask—break into one for a short period.

  Puo randomly shakes his head no as he's thinking through options.

  "Think out loud," I say.

  "I don't know of any off-grid dead rooms in the area," Puo says. "B
usinesses are likely to have too tight security to justify the risk, and asking around will bring unwanted attention right now."

  "What about universities?" Winn asks Puo, pointedly not looking at me. "My college had an electromagnetic anechoic chamber."

  That's the fancy, edge-u-ma-cated way of saying dead room.

  "Might work," Puo says. "I'll look into it."

  "No," I say. "Winn you look into it." I don't want to be alone with Winn right now. I can barely stand the sight of him without starting to get to frustrated about this morning and his existentialist crap.

  I step forward and pick up the paper list from the center of the table. We need to dump the drive and give Colvin some kind of plausible story. "Puo and I will start scouting. See if any of these people unknowingly know something that could help us get rid of the drive."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "SO WHAT'S with you and Winn?" Puo asks.

  It's early afternoon, and Puo and I are out digging into Rodrigo Ramírez, mostly because I don't feel like being in the house near Winn.

  I consider answering, but I'm not sure I want to yet. I'm not even entirely sure why Winn's existentialist crap is pissing me off so much.

  Instead of answering, I ask "What more can you tell me about Ramírez?" We're driving loops around West Union Marina on the northwest part of Center Island—the marina Ramírez owns, and the marina Valle also happens to keep his yacht at. I've been driving the loops in Pelican, our modified air delivery vehicle (which is like a fatter, boxier hovercar) for the past hour while Puo's been sitting in the passenger seat digging into Ramírez's digital background.

  "Don't want to talk about it, hunh?" Puo says. "I completely understand. Relationships are tricky business. Mysterious, mystical even—"

  "Have you ever even been in one?" I ask, stupidly taking his bait.

  "Ah, yes," he says, "very mysterious indeed. Take the horn-spotted cotton-tailed cat. It's a rural cat from the Pyrenees part of France used for hunting frogs and herding rabbits—"

  "What are you talking about—?" I start to ask.

  He waves me down. "During the bubonic plague, officials imported the cats to Paris to kill the rats—which they did with gusto. It was considered a resounding success. But they noticed after a few months that the cats would start herding cockroaches, and jumping like frogs to move around occasionally. The cats eventually grew out of those tendencies and adapted fully to the city. They went on to be renamed and are now known as the famed Parisian horn-tailed cat."

  "There's no way that's true."

  "Where do you think they get frog legs from, and why they're such a delicacy? But that's not really my point."

  "You have a point?"

  "Always." Puo mimes a smile. "Give the guy a break. He's only been one of us for five months it takes time—"

  "It's none of your business, Puo," I say, a warning note in my voice.

  Puo says softly, "That's not really true now anymore, now is it?" He holds my gaze for a brief second before looking back at the tablet in his lap. "But I'll drop it."

  We sit in silence as I think over Puo's words. Turd, is all I can think. It may be some of Puo's business now that Winn's the third member of our team. But ... big turd.

  "That was a terrible story," I finally say to Puo. "A real stinker." I pinch my nose shut, making sure to hold my pinky up in the air.

  "Whadda ya talking about?" Puo smiles. "That was downright inspired. I think I could've been a storyteller in another life."

  "It was awful! A big pile of steaming poo!" I say, corners of a grin ghosting on my face. "It didn't even feature a relationship by the way. And herding rabbits?"

  "There was a relationship," Puo defends himself. "It was the relationship between nature and man." He holds up his left hand dismissing me and tilts his chin up. "I wouldn't expect you to understand. Ye who prefers your narrative consumption to be in the moving picture shows, with more explosions and less story the better."

  "Damn right," I say. I like my entertainment to be just that, entertaining. Not crap I have to think about.

  I drop us out of the skyloop and head down to a parking garage. The marina is on the other side of the street.

  "So," Puo says, "business associates looking for an investment opportunity?" He's asking how we're going to play the marina for information. "Or deckhands looking for work? Or, or—" He sits up excitedly. "I'm royalty from a small island nation and you're my concubine." Puo wiggles his eyebrows. "Hunh, hunh?"

  "No," I say. But that does give me an idea.

  Puo deflates a little in his seat.

  "Diva," I say.

  "Ahh, man," Puo complains. "I hate diva. I get yelled at a lot with diva."

  "C'mon, Puo." I reach over and pat his shoulder. "Is it really that much more than you normally get yelled at?"

  * * *

  I'm not really dressed for diva, still in my blue jeans, blue tunic shirt and single pearl necklace. But diva is more about attitude than anything.

  Puo, my acting bodyguard, follows behind me as I stride through the two glass doors into the West Union Marina's lobby. The building is tacky in my mind, stucco walls that have a yellowish hue, and blue trim with a blue metal ceiling. It smells like saltwater and boat grease, with a lingering aftertaste of motor exhaust.

  A white college-aged girl who looks sweet and innocent sits behind a float screen at the lobby desk. She looks up from a tablet propped up on her desk to watch us come in.

  I tilt my head up and march straight at her. I'm wearing flats so I can't stomp my heels, but again it's about attitude. I focus solely on her and stare at her like I own this place and expect her, and everyone else, to do my bidding.

  "Can I help you?" she asks, a little uncertainty in her voice—good.

  Puo keeps close behind me, his hands clasped in front of him. If I'm underdressed, Puo is woefully underdressed in shorts and large fluffy shirt vaguely resembling a Hawaiian shirt. But he is wearing sunglasses and should be rotating his head around in quick motions as he surveys the lobby for threats. I can't turn around to check—he's my bodyguard, below my diva notice.

  "I am here to speak to Rodrigo," I announce.

  "Um, okay," the lobby girl says and brings up a schedule on the float screen. "Do you have an appointment?" she asks with a pleasant half-smile.

  I just stare at her. Appointment? She should damn well know who I am.

  Lobby girl looks away quickly, clearly uncomfortable with my staring imperiously at her. "Uh," she says and pauses to swallow. "His calendar is clear, so—"

  "What!" I exclaim, but I don't wait for her to answer. I twirl around to face Puo. "Get Ashley on the phone now and ask her what the hell happened. Stupid girl."

  Puo nods. "Yes, ma'am." He moves off and twists away a bit to pretend to be on his comm-link.

  I twirl back to the lobby desk.

  The lobby girl's brown eyes are round.

  "Where is Rodrigo?" I demand to know.

  "He's, uh ... " She stalls. She’s turning into a deer in the headlights. This could be good or bad. Either she's about to slide into autopilot mode which is easy to guide, or she's stalling to gather her wits—and we can't have that.

  "You just said his calendar is clear," I say.

  "Uh, yes ... "

  My eyes narrow on her.

  Puo is softly talking on the comm-link in the background.

  The lobby girl continues her awkward stammering, "... Yes, ma'am. But he's not meeting with anyone right—"

  "So, he's on the premises?"

  Red rises to her cheeks. She's starting to realize this isn't going well for her. "Yes ... ma'am." She gathers herself once again to try and put me off.

  That "ma'am" part is really foreign on her tongue. It makes me wonder if we have the right place. I'd expect the place where Valle keeps his yacht to be used to well-heeled clientele.

  Puo comes back over before the lobby girl can muster up the courage to reply back to me. "Ashley's father went mis
sing from his retirement community. She has been frantically trying to track him down—"

  "Ugh!" I say exasperated. "Not an excuse!"

  "No, ma'am," Puo agrees.

  "Was she stupid enough to ask about her job?" I ask.

  Puo nods once as his head continues to rove over the arena.

  I sneer and then sigh like an aggrieved diva. "Call her back and cut her loose. I can't keep dealing with this."

  "Yes, ma'am," Puo answers.

  The lobby girl's mouth is slack—she really is innocent.

  Now or never.

  I step around the lobby desk to head back into the offices where presumably Rodrigo is. Again, I focus only on the white office door in front of me with a glass window with the green shades drawn. Lobby girl is now beneath my notice.

  "You can't—!" she starts. But I hear Puo step between us.

  "Ma'am," Puo says, "do not approach her."

  "But—!"

  "Ma'am!" Puo says. "Do. Not. Approach."

  Puo's a six-foot, three-hundred-and-seventeen-pound Samoan man. When Puo starts yelling, people tend to listen.

  I hear the lobby girl scuffle over to the table and try to get ahold of Rodrigo.

  I ignore the noise, and I'm halfway to the office door when it suddenly opens from the inside.

  A South American male, Brazil unless I miss my mark, steps out. "I am Rodrigo Ramírez, how may I help you?" he asks calmly, but guardedly. He has short salt-and-pepper gray hair and wears quality business casual clothes that favor the color black.

  "I am—"

  "Sir!" the lobby girls cuts me off. "She just barged in—"

  I spin so fast on her, and look to flay her alive. She cut me off. No one cuts me off. "How dare you?" I hiss in a low voice. I turn back to Rodrigo and see that he was motioning the lobby girl down. "Your assistant has been nothing but rude and unhelpful ever since I came in. I—"

  Rodrigo cuts in smoothly, "Please. I am sorry for Jacquelyn, I will speak with her after I see to your needs." He steps back into his office inviting me in. "You were beginning to introduce yourself," he prompts me. Here is someone clearly used to dealing with the vagaries of the wealthy.