Tableau

by Michael Kanuckel

  “Okay,” Ezra said. “That what ya called for, Jim? Tell me to heel?”

  “No,” Jim said. “I called because you’re still on my active duty roster, far as I know, and there’s a case with your name on it. Just came in.”

  “So give,” Ezra said. And then he just listened and smoked.

  Six

  Hatis City didn’t have suburbs- built and dug into the sides of its high hill, something was either in the city or it wasn’t. The next closest thing to a town was Londell’s, a cancerous clump of convenience stores and fast food chains and state liquor/pawn shops about a mile west. No one lived there permanently. The concrete and neon swamp was named after the developer who bought up tracts of defunct farm land and built on it, that was all, and so that was what people in the city called it. Technically, Londell’s was considered within Hatis City’s incorporated lines, and there was a miserable little substation of Guards who had gotten on someone’s shit list and ended up posted there (and what a tour of hell that would be- there were no residents in the “town” of Londell’s, but it was like a five square mile Dream Street full of thieves, junkies, rapists, and Lace-cunnie girls working out of bathroom stalls), nestled between the squat business buildings and dumpsters, but no one thought of it as part of the city. Regardless, Ezra was hunched over the wheel of his prowler and on his way out there to answer his boss’s call.

  Ezra hated driving on the highway. Ithur engine cars weren’t built for cruising the open road. He had his prowler going fifty and it was complaining about that while the big-charge battery long haul transports almost shook him off the road when they passed by on the left. He drove in the shadow of the elevated magnatram tracks, trams bound for Urbana or Wuster in the west or bringing folks into the Green City. To either side there was nothing to see but the concrete walls and durasteel struts holding the tracks up, with now and then a glimpse of shopping centers and parking lots between them. After what felt like forever he got to his exit and drifted onto it, wincing as he came out into the sunshine again and clawing down his visor with one hand as he went. The exit descended, a slow, lazy curve that would dump a motorist in Londell’s and then rise back up to the highway again after collecting some creds from travelers too weary from driving or desperate for food to soldier on to someplace else.

  He didn’t have to drive far or search hard to find his destination. He could see two prowlers with their light racks pulsing green and blue in the shadows of a four story food court complex that almost scraped the tram tracks above; one prowler was parked in front of a flashy import, bottle green with tinted windows, the other parked just behind. Striders in heavy blue rain coats stood in a line on the sidewalk and in the street, dissuading curious onlookers who wanted a peek at the body inside the car. Ezra pulled up slowly, flashing his own lights and holding up his star so the Striders on the street side could get out of the way and let him nose in.

  “What the hell is this shit?” a voice said as Ezra climbed out of his prowler. He looked up and saw one of the Striders, the hood of his rainproof slicker pulled up, approaching him. “What, you solved all the crimes uptown, you gotta come down here to get some action?”

  Ezra grinned, stepping the rest of the way into the street and shutting his door. “Heard they needed a real High Guard down here to sort something out,” he said. “And since you won’t step up and take the exams, Montoya, the big man sent me down to give a help.”

  The Strider threw his hood back, revealing a sharp face framed by shaggy black hair and lively, intelligent brown eyes. He grinned; a silver tooth gleamed in his smile. “Shit,” Montoya said, dragging the word out into two slow syllables. “The day I need your help with anything is the day is the day I turn in my star and go back down south to pick oranges for my poppa. Good to see you, though.”

  “It is,” Ezra said. The two men shook hands, grinning. “Been a long while.” It had been a long while, too. Ezra was terrible at keeping in touch with people, but he could have made a little more effort at staying connected to the Strider who had once saved his life. Ezra had still been a Strider himself back then, working solo for the first time and on a routine stop (traffic violation, some kid on a hoverboard out in the street who almost got himself smeared into the gutter by a big transport), when some random Streeter not even involved in the incident decided on the spur of the moment that he felt like carving himself a slice of pig with his pocket knife. Montoya, off duty and on his way to a movie, just happened to be there to see the glint of the knife in the light of the heavy traffic rushing by and disarm the scumbag by catching the blade in his twisted up coat. “So, what have we got here?”

  “Little lost lamb, boss,” Montoya said. He walked Ezra through the line of Striders barricading the scene and up to the driver’s side door of the little import, pulling it open. Inside, sprawled back against the dark leather bucket seat, was the body of a woman. She could have been in her thirties or her sixties; it was hard to tell nowadays, when someone with the creds could look any way they pleased. She had been a good looking woman, with a small face and masses of curly red hair, soft lips and big round eyes and a splash of freckles across the bridge of her tiny nose. She was dressed simply and tastefully, in a ribbed white sweater with a modest neckline and a dark blue skirt with chalk-colored pinstripes. A gold and diamond tennis band dangled from the wrist of her right hand; a huge wedding band, gold with chips of gemstones orbiting the diamond in the main setting, was on the slim ring finger of her left. The woman looked as if she’d fallen asleep in her car, waiting for someone to come back out of the convenience store she had parked in front of- except that she was dead. Clearly dead.

  “No robbery,” Ezra said, mostly to himself. “That’s some expensive hardware to leave behind.”

  “And not just that,” Montoya said from behind Ezra’s shoulder as both of them leaned into the car. He pointed to the passenger seat. “The lady’s purse, High Guard Beckitt. Undisturbed, until we got our mitts on it. May I introduce Missus Beverly Jensen, of Hawethorne Heights.”

  Ezra grunted. “Long way from the hill,” he said.

  “Far as she’s ever going to get,” Montoya said. He straightened back up into the street, giving Ezra some space. He stood on the edge of the rushing traffic, in the shadows of the tram trestles overhead, and looked at the puddles steaming with the new heat of the afternoon. “Nowhere left to go…and she’s got forever to get there.”

  “But what the hell was she doing down here?” Ezra said.

  Montoya shot the High Guard an incredulous look. “You’re joking,” he said. “You got to be joking, right? What, did you have to jettison most of your common sense in order to make room for the stuff you needed to learn for your exams? Come on, man. She down here for the same thing any fine piece of alabaster trim like her come down here for.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ezra said. “Bored housewife on a fun-run. Pills, grass, gas- maybe a little strange ass at one of the finer motels moldering on the side of the highway. But somehow, she just doesn’t seem the type.”

  Montoya snorted. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “You right, Beckitt. Missus Jensen here, she came down from the lofty heights because all the conshops in the city were out of her favorite flavor of corn chips.”

  A commotion behind him stopped the retort on Ezra’s lips. A short, plump, indignant man was trying to break through the Strider’s cordon, arms flailing and a string of explosive language pouring out of him. The man was mostly bald, a few jet black strands of hair plastered across his shiny pate, with a thick black moustache covering his upper lip. He was dressed in a green and red striped polo shirt, khaki trousers, and a brilliant white apron that was tied around his flabby waist and flapping around his skinny legs.

  “That is enough of this!” the little man said. He kept saying it over and again, “That is enough of this!” The Striders, some chuckling, held him back and started doing the old schoolyard shuffle, gently pushing him from one set of hands to another while the man continu
ed to flail at them and harangue them.

  “Let him through,” Montoya said, chuckling himself. “Dammit, Jabjoth! I told you to stay put, we’d get to you.”

  Jabjoth tripped on the curbing, caught himself on the hood of the bottle green import that was now a crime scene, and straightened his apron and shirt with as much dignity as he could muster. “That was almost a whole hour ago!” the little man said. He moved up on Montoya with a quick stride, pointing a finger into the Strider’s chest. “Almost a whole hour and here you still are, all of you, and here this thing still is. This is costing me business! The customers, you are driving them all of them away from my business. It is enough!”

  “Someone is dead here, Jabjoth,” Montoya said. “Your clientele can wait for their scratch-off tickets and jerky and skin mags. You do understand that, right? That there’s a dead woman here? It’s important to me that you understand that.”

  “That is not my problem!” Jabjoth, apparently the proprietor of the convenience shop squatting on the sidewalk here in front of the bottle green import, said. “That is not my problem, she did not die off in my store! Take it the body away now! Take it away and go, so I can get back to my business!”

  Ezra, listening to the wild little man, was reminded of the attitude he’d encountered from the people at Hatis University: everything was just business, it’s a cold world, clean up this mess and get it out of here so we can get back to business. Suddenly, even though it was the middle of the day and he’d slept well enough the night before, only a couple of drinks before he hit the sack instead of two-thirds of a bottle, he felt tired. Better toughen up, he told himself. The voice in his head didn’t sound like his own, but he didn’t know for sure who it belonged to- maybe Wendt, that fat crooked bastard. Better toughen up, kid, if you’re gonna do this the rest of your life.

  “The stiff wagon will be here soon,” Montoya said, trying to soothe the merchant. “Now, this is High Guard Ezra Beckitt, from up in the city. He’s going to want to speak with you, Jabjoth.”

  Ezra blinked. “I am?” he said.

  “I already told to you everything!” Jabjoth said. “Montoya, I am knowing you for many years. Many years, since you first came down here to do your striding. And you are a good man. I know this. But be careful. My patience has an end.”

  “Let’s just step inside,” Montoya said. He put his hand on the little merchant’s shoulder and steered him back through the line of Striders, up onto the sidewalk. “We’ll just go into your shop, talk it over with High Guard Beckitt, and when he’s finished taking your statement the doctor will have come and taken the body away. Okay?”

  Jabjoth nodded his shiny bald head. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay, okay- what else can I be saying, you’ll have your way in this. You are the Law. But do not expect me to be feeding you, or to make you the free coffee! You come in and then you go. That is my final say on it.”

  Montoya laughed. He pulled open the heavily barred door of the convenience store and ushered the owner inside. “Jabjoth,” he said, “I wouldn’t eat any of the shit you’ve got in here if you paid me. Now come on.”

  As a Strider, Ezra must have been inside at least a hundred tiny conshops just like this one. The nationality of the owners might vary, but all of them were the same place. Half of the overhead lights running along the dirty ceiling were burned out or flickering, throwing greasy shadows across three aisles of off-brand canned goods and toiletries selling at outrageous markups (four and a half kwic for a can of pork and beans?). Up front by the door was the main event: a high counter littered with point-of-sale displays of energy shots, caffeine capsules, over the counter dick pills, and candy; the scratch-off instant cash tickets; nicotine gum, patches, and rechargeable synth-a-rettes; a rack of the cheapest, most despicable skinvids available legally, covered over in black shrink wrap so buying one was porno roulette- thirty kwic, three for seventy. Behind the grimy countertop you had your packs and cartons of cigarettes, cigars, and rows of cheap, diluted booze.

  “I am tired and I wish to go home,” Jabjoth said. Here, standing behind his cash register on the raised platform under his front counter, he was the lord and master. The tiny merchant held his head at an imperious angle, surveying the two Guards before him with an air of disdain. “My brother and I are running this place all ourselves, in sixteen hour shifts. I am sorry that this woman is dead, but she is of no concern to me. She died out there on the street, behind the wheel of her so-fine automobile. Take it her and the auto and go. Darken my doorstep no more and leave me alone in peace.”

  “If it’s time for you to go,” Ezra said, helping himself to a book of matches from a big glass fishbowl of them on the counter (Wondura-Mart- best in selection, best in price, every day!) and slipping them into his pants pocket, “where’s your brother?”

  Jabjoth licked his lips. His muddy red eyes flicked from Ezra to Montoya. The Strider only raised his eyebrows, an expression of curiosity on his face. The little merchant sweated profusely; his striped shirt was black with perspiration, sticking to his flabby chest and soft paunch.

  “What about it, Jabjoth? Montoya said. “You can’t just leave. Maybe we’re costing you some business right now…but not as much as closing up the shop would do. So where’s your brother? Maybe he doesn’t like to be around Guards, neh?” the Strider went on, putting a lot of emphasis on that little phrase so common to Jabjoth’s people from across the sea- it was to them what “Ya get?” was to folk from the In-Betweens. “Maybe Guards make him nervous because his paperwork isn’t exactly in order. Something like that? Maybe little bro got here in the belly of a cargo ship and he lives with you in the little apartment above this place, totally undocumented. Maybe he’s back in the stock room right now, just waiting for us to leave.”

  “That is not your business!” Jabjoth said- but not with any authority.

  “No, it’s not,” Ezra said. “Our business is that dead woman out there,” he went on, pointing through the bleary, barred shopfront window looking out onto the street. “So why don’t you just tell us what you know about that, and we won’t have to worry about anything else?”

  “I can only tell you what I know,” Jabjoth said. “I looked up from working at the counter because of bright headlights. Blue, very bright. It was this woman, this dead woman. She’d been going the other way, but turned in the street to pull here in front of my store. Do you see?”

  Ezra nodded. She’d been going the wrong way, this Missus Jensen from Hawethorne Heights. She didn’t know where she was going. Then, she saw what she was looking for and just turned around right in the street because that’s what rich women did- oh, here’s what I wanted, everyone else out of the way. He figured he knew the rest of this story now, but he let the merchant go on telling it anyway.

  “Almost, she was hit by another driver,” Jabjoth said. “There was the blaring of the horns, the shouting. She paid it no mind and parked right there where you see her. And then she is just sitting there. She does not come in. I can tell that she is very well to do. I know why she is here.”

  That makes two of us, Ezra thought. “Then what happened?” he asked.

  Jabjoth spread his hands. “I had the customers,” he said. “The beer, the scratch-off tickets, the cigarettes. I had a boy clearly much too young trying to buy the pornography. Always it is the same. I looked up again, she is still there. Just sitting there. Pretty as a rose she looks, but like a ghost behind those dark windows- like a drowned woman in dark water…and I suppose she was, neh? Yes. She was there in her so-fine car for maybe half of the hours. Then someone came up to the passenger side and is knocking on the window.”

  “Who?” Ezra asked.

  Jabjoth shook his head, making a sad tsk sound. “Always it is the blacks,” he said. “I am no racist,” he went on, eyes alight as he jabbed a blunt finger at Ezra as if the Guard had accused him of something. “I am no racist- but always, it is the blacks. This one, his pants are falling off of his backside and he has the
neon green and orange basketball shoes, and a ball cap on over the top of a hooded sweatshirt. I cannot see him. He knocks on the window of the car, the window rolls down. He puts something into the slim white hand of the lady, she passes to him one of those reloadable credstiks, and then poof! He is gone back into the shadows.”

  “But she still just sat there?” Ezra said. He shot Montoya an incredulous look. “Why didn’t she get the hell out of here after the drop?”

  Montoya shrugged. “Maybe she couldn’t wait,” the Strider said. “You gotta be desperate or stupid to do this shit in broad daylight, even down here in Londell’s. She must have needed it bad…whatever it was. Guess you’ll find that out later.”

  “Whatever it was,” Ezra said, “it was a bad cook who made it. Shame.”

  Montoya chuckled. “Shame,” he said. “Yeah, it’s always a shame when some pretty white woman dies from a drug overdose in her luxury car. Too bad it wasn’t just some little brown kid in the gutter instead of this angel.”

  “Hey,” Ezra said. “You know me better than that. It’s always a shame, Don. No matter what.”

  “Yeah,” Montoya said. “You’re right, Ez. Sorry. I just…I see so much of this shit, you know? And no one really seems to give a shit about it. Then this broad here, just another junkie but one with a posh address, she punches her ticket and the lords on high send us a High Guard First Class to collect her.”

  “Yeah,” Ezra said. “I get it. I do.” He sighed. “All right, Mister Jabjoth,” he said, turning back to the merchant. “It’s time for me to get this lady back uptown and have a look under the hood. Sorry for your trouble. We’ll be out of your hair as soon as the Commander of Forensic Investigations sends someone to collect her.”

  Jabjoth nodded…but now there was a sly gleam in his red, watery eyes. It was a look Ezra knew; the only thing a peddler like Jabjoth loved more than a good bargain was a good story, and apparently his wasn’t quite done. “So,” he said. “You are not wanting to hear about the other one, then?”