Tableau

by Michael Kanuckel

  Ezra laughed. “You can really tell you read a lot of books,” he said. “So eloquent. You could write stories yourself, ya know it?”

  “Shut up,” Melody said companionably. “So anyway, mortal guy knocks her up. The goddess of death, feared by all, and now she’s a single momma. And she’s royally pissed. But then Wal Ah’rukar just sort of comes tumbling out, all fat and adorable and already talking and aware- he’s more god than man, she can see that in his golden eyes-, and her heart melts for him. She raises him as a god, he gets into all sorts of adventures…fights some giants that defied his mother, goes to find the Cup of Life so mother can destroy it before humans figure out how to use it to defy death. Basically he becomes like her enforcer, the shining blade in her iron fist. Until daddy shows up.”

  “Ah,” Ezra said. He helped himself to another cigarette as well, basking in the sun on the bench like a contented lizard. “The plot thickens.”

  Melody nodded; not really hearing him, getting involved in the story. “So, good old dad’s time on the mortal plane is up,” she said. “Got killed in some war or another. He was a great swordsman but he picked the wrong banner, got knifed in the guts by a turncloak who went to the other side for a chest of jewels or a virgin or something. And he’s not ready to die. The underworld of Ashigul isn’t like that golden hall where dudes just get to drink, fight, and fuck until the mighty horn blows at the end of the world- it’s cold, and mud, and frozen flames, and these bug-fish demon things made all of needles that burrow into your dick and then eat their way up over a thousand years that you never pass out to miss enduring.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Yeah,” Melody agreed. “So obviously, Wal Ah’rukar’s father is pretty invested in getting back to the surface. He has revenge as an argument, folks can try to plead with Shi’ri Ahraahlaal about how they have some great task unfinished on earth and need to go back. He also learns from a jealous demon about his son.”

  “And begs to him,” Ezra said. “‘Your mother never told me about you, I would have raised you for my own and made you a mighty hero, a god among men,’ all that good shit, right?”

  “Yep,” Melody said. “And it worked. Wal Ah’rukar let his father go- and sent with him the Cup of Life, which he never got around to destroying, so that mother dearest couldn’t bring him back to the underworld again.”

  Ezra whistled.

  “Yeah,” Melody agreed. “You got that right. And when mother finds out, she goes through the roof. She banishes Wal Ah’rukar to the world of mortal men…and she curses him as well. For the rest of time he will be a stranger to everyone, unloved, neither man nor god. He will be able to see, sometimes, when a person is going to die in a bad way- but he won’t be able to do anything about it. And so he roams the world, and sometimes he takes an interest in the people around him, develops feelings for them, and sometimes he can see how they will die but never be able to stop it. He finds them and he weeps for them. That’s why they call him the Weeping Man.”

  “Huh,” Ezra said.

  “So why the interest in this all of a sudden?” Melody asked. “I would’ve thought you’d be more into Keldic folklore, shit like that.”

  “Because,” Ezra said. He stood up and stretched, groaning at the stiffness in his back and wondering how the hell he would feel when he got old. He took a last drag from his Chesterfield and pitched it into the street. One of Melody’s “Karens” have him a dirty look; he stared back at her coolly until she found something else to look at. “Somebody saw the Weeping Man, walkin around down in Londell’s.”

  To that, Melody found nothing to say.

  Ezra chuckled. “See ya around, sunshine,” he said, and left her there.

  -

  Ezra hustled up the sidewalk, checking the time on his watch for about the thousandth time. He’d spent longer down on Britter Way than he’d planned. Turning up his own sidewalk, he could see the locksmith sitting on his front steps; big hands, dirty blue jeans, muddy boots half unlaced, a blue shirt unbuttoned down his chest, thin blonde hair. The locksmith sat there just like he lived there, having himself a smoke. A big black bag, presumably full of his tools, was planted between his boots. Three cigarette butts were smashed flat on Ezra’s little bit of sidewalk. It was one-thirty in the afternoon.

  “Just about gave up on ya,” the locksmith said, companionably enough. He had a hard drinker’s face: skin reddened by a lot more than the summer sun; a swollen tumor of a nose, where the skin looked like it would have the texture of a pickle if one touched it; purple veins exploded across his jowly cheeks. His hands looked tough, though- and the gut straining the fabric of his work shirt was hard as a rock.

  “Said between three and seven when ya called,” Ezra said. “Left work early to be here.”

  “Had a cancellation,” the locksmith said. “So I come on by. No problems. There’s worse ways to spend a summer afternoon than just sittin at my leisure, tell ya that. How about you, guy? Whaddya do?”

  Ezra flashed his Silver Star.

  The locksmith nodded, not overly impressed. “Good deal,” he said. “Never had no run-ins with the Guards, myself. Some folk might have a problem with ‘em, but I always say what my own dad said himself- people gotta problem with the Law got somethin crooked goin on themselves, ya get?”

  “True enough,” Ezra said. He came on up the walk and had a seat in the frayed old lawn chair he kept on his little porch, in the scrap of shade thrown down by the rain gutter. He leaned back and lit his own cigarette. For a while neither of them spoke. The afternoon world dozed by around them: somewhere, someone mowed his lawn; some squirrels had a chittery disagreement over a branch or a nut; some kids yelled and splashed in an inflatable pool somewhere down the street.

  “Had an uncle wanted to be a Guard,” the locksmith said after a while. “He was somethin else, my uncle. Grew up readin all those pulpy old kwic books, the ones where some lone gun is always goin up against underworld bosses and fallin for curvy femmes, all that stuff. But he couldn’t pass the tests. Couldn’t cut it in Wuster, at the school there. Came back heartbroken, everyone giving him a hard time about it. Killed himself.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Well, it was just one of those things,” the locksmith said. “He was a good man, my Uncle Carl. But he was somethin else, an no mistake. Sort of a goofball- the screwup type, ya get? My folks told him, they said he was in no shape to be a Guard. Big as a barn he was, and none too bright besides- but he had his dreams. It was a helluva shame, though. My aunt, she went a little off the tracks when she found him. Tried to make it look like he hadn’t offed himself by cutting him down from the rafter where he hung himself and tumbling his body down the stairs- make it look like an accident, ya get?”

  “Do ya say so?” Ezra said. Suddenly he was alert in a way he hadn’t been before.

  “Yeah,” the locksmith said. “Guess she must’ve figured it would be better for the family if they thought he fell downstairs an broke his neck, instead of a suicide. She wanted to protect him- protect his legacy, she said. Whatever that means. Got hit with a fine for tampering with the scene, or something. That’s as close as I’ve ever come to a run-in with the Law.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Ezra said.

  “Yeah, it was somethin else,” the locksmith said. He planted his hands on his knees and hauled himself up from the step. “Anyway, you’re all set up, my friend. Here’s your fob.” The locksmith took a small plastic fob from the breast pocket of his shirt and handed it over.

  “The hell’s this?” Ezra asked, turning the thing over in his hand. The black hunk of plastic had two slim silver buttons on it, and that was it.

  “Your key,” the locksmith said. “Cutting edge. You just push the button and the deadbolts lock. Push the other one to open it up. If you lose it, give me a call and I’ll get ya a replacement- no charge the first time.” The locksmith handed over a card, grimed at the edges with sweat: Gregg Larson, Locksmith and Gunsmithing, follow
ed by a phone number and a vidscreen address. “And don’t worry about someone breakin in if ya do lose it,” he went on, as Ezra tucked the card into his jacket pocket and locked and unlocked his door several times with his new gizmo. “It’s imprinted on you- I never touched the buttons, see, so they’ve only had your fingerprints on ‘em. Nothin safer or simpler, pal. Take her easy.”

  “Any way I can get her,” Ezra said automatically as Gregg Larson shambled away from him. He let himself into the house and sat down at the kitchen table. He sat there for quite a long while, just thinking.

  He had a lot to think about.

  Eleven

  The next morning, Leon Jensen was back in town. Maybe a little birdie had let him know that his wife was dead and the High Guard of Hatis City had some questions for him. Ezra took his prowler back out to the charmless, golf course-inspired sprawl that was Hawethorne Heights, got waved through the gate by the same security guard he’d seen the last time, and parked in the grass at the edge of Jensen’s lot just because he felt like it.

  There were four cars parked in the circular drive in front of the house; any one of them would cost more than his yearly salary. One of the vehicles, a huge iron beast the color of the grass on a putting green with a snarling metal grill and black windows, didn’t have an Ithur conversion kit- a gas engine, grandfathered in after the Green Deal. Somebody had some clout. Well no shit, Ezra thought, walking through the dewy grass. They’ve all got clout. Don’t matter- everyone looks the same in the eyes of Lady Justice. They might not see it that way, but they’ll figure it out soon enough.

  Ezra had made sure not to drink last night, as much as he wanted to with all the crazy ideas running through his head. He wanted to be sharp for this interview. The bitch of it was, without a few drinks in his system sleep had eluded him. He had tossed and turned in his bed for a couple of hours, looking at the clock and getting more pissed off every time he did as his window for sleep evaporated. When he did finally nod off he felt like he was still awake: he could hear the sounds of the house around him in the dark; he could feel his arm, propping up the pillows beneath his head, filling up with pins and needles. At one point he thought he heard someone trying the knob of his bedroom door and sat upright with a gun in his hand, covered in sweat, wild-eyed, his hair up in corkscrews. After that he had disjointed dreams: in one a man in a black cape leaped uptown buildings in a single bound; in another he was in a bed with the dead lace-cunnie girl they’d found beside Wendt when he got killed; in yet another, Wal Ah’rukar was looking in his bedroom window, his pale face streaked with tears. All in all, Ezra had got maybe somewhere around three hours of sleep, and he’d made a tall glass of Jameson’s on ice to go with his scrambled eggs and bacon when he wandered into the kitchen in the grey light before dawn.

  Suffice it to say, he was in a shitty mood.

  This time when Ezra rang the bell, the front door opened almost before the last resonating chime echoed back from deep in the house. He found himself face-to-face with an actual maid, complete with lacy black dress, white apron, and cap. He could see immediately why Leon Jensen had hired the girl. The maid looked the way Beverly Jensen must have fifty years ago: wild masses of wavy red hair that the mob cap could barely restrain; a pale, heart-shaped face with round, blue eyes and a sprinkle of light brown freckles across the bridge of her nose; a tiny waist and a hell of a lot of everything else. The maid stood at the door not saying anything and only looked at Ezra, her fine eyebrows raised and the faintest glimmer of mischief in those bright blue eyes. When Keldic eyes are smilin, Ezra thought. Boy oh boy. He took out his card and handed it over. The maid didn’t read the card but only took it from him, using just the tips of her tiny, white-gloved fingers to extract it from his and giving him a curtsy before turning to flounce back down the front hall. Ezra watched her go for a few steps and then followed her into the house. The front door swung shut after he stepped through and Ezra jumped about a foot into the air; a male servant that he hadn’t even noticed stood there, in a charcoal grey suit that came complete with tails and a waistcoat. A watch chain dangled from the front pocket of the waistcoat to the pocket of his pinstriped trousers.

  “Guess none of you were home when I rang yesterday,” Ezra said, shrugging his shoulders and straightening out his own suit; his threads looked downright shabby when compared to the butler’s immaculate, formal garments. The butler, somewhere beyond middle age but not old, with steel grey hair slicked back from a great expanse of forehead, said nothing. If there was any mischief in his slate-colored eyes, it wasn’t detectable by Ezra’s trained investigative eye. The butler bowed, really little more than a nod of the head and a slight bend from the waist, and ushered Ezra on ahead of him and into the house.

  The front hall gave way to a cathedral sized living room with a vaulted ceiling and huge picture windows that looked north practically all the way to the Gileon River. The room had all the intimacy of a hotel lobby. There were two sectional sofas, black leather, set at ninety degree angles from each other so they formed a square in the center of the room, bookended by big wood side tables. Between the sectionals, the very center of the living room floor was sunken and filled with four wall unit vidscreens on cherry wood stands, facing each direction of the compass; the one Ezra could see showed some sport he didn’t know- broad, short clubs batting around a silver sphere while players in bulky pads chased it around and knocked each other down. The floor was hardwood, real wood polished to a deep mellow shine, with here and there a rug of intricate design: roses and vines; a menagerie; dancing women in veils. Like the floor they sat on, the rugs were the genuine article- from either Munjab or Ishtan, maybe Ashigul. Beneath the picture windows there was a large chess table that looked as if the only time the pieces moved was when the maid picked them up in her delicate gloved hands to dust, with tall wingback chairs of blue leather to either side. One entire wall of this room where no one really lived, the east wall, was a fireplace big enough to roast a team of oxen in. The wall opposite the fireplace was taken up with a painting so astoundingly ugly that it had to be worth a small fortune. The walls themselves were white, sterile, and uninviting- much like the group of people facing Ezra now.

  The maid gave the butler Ezra’s card, scuttling past him and out of the room without a word or a wink. The butler, his long face impassive, read the card in his gloved hand and then tucked it away in a pocket of his waistcoat. “Master Ezra Beckitt, High Guard First Class, of the Hatis City Guard Department,” the butler said, and that was all.

  “Very good, Benson,” one of the living room occupants said from where he sat, ensconced by people who looked even whiter and richer than himself, if that were possible. “That will be all.” Benson turned on his heel, head high and back straight, and followed the maid from the room. The butler seemed to glide away, polished black shoes making no sound on the polished hardwood floor as he faded into the shadows of the hall.

  Ezra turned to face the room again. Every seat was taken, and he could all but smell the creds amassed here. The pale man with the longish blonde-silver hair and white suit could only be Leon Jensen; he wore a black satin band on the right sleeve of his suit jacket, a token of mourning. Next to Leon, a slightly younger model of his dead wife sat with her legs crossed and a drink in her hands- a sister, Ezra presumed. There was an assemblage of other people, some older and some younger, all with the bland, unaffected faces of people who had never known a hardship and had no expectations of that ever changing. There was a death in the family, sure- but that just meant a bigger slice of the pie for everyone else.

  A young man with carroty red hair, big but already running to fat, stood up from one of the leather sectionals. He stood rather aggressively. “First Class?” the young man said. “Looks more like no class to me. Where’d you get that suit? What, did ya steal it off the body of some guy who also didn’t have any style? Show a little respect for the dead.”

  Ezra only looked at the carrot top, waiting to see if he’
d sit back down. Carrot top wasn’t that bright.

  “That’s enough, Jagger,” Leon Jensen said. The man looked beyond tired. “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot, here.”

  “Too late for that,” Jagger said, open disgust plain on his pasty, freckled face. The platinum blonde sex doll sitting next to where Jagger stood giggled, encouraging him. “He comes in here in this wrinkled, off the rack, piece of shit suit, his dirty boots scuffing up the floor…what, can’t you afford any decent clothes? We pay you enough, don’t we? We pay your salary, right?”

  “If you pay taxes you do,” Ezra said.

  The redhead beside Leon laughed; a raucous caw that spoke of years spent talking loud, drinking big, and smoking like a chimney. Ice clinked against the side of the tall glass in her hand as she raised it up to Ezra. Point for you, the gesture said.

  Jagger’s face was now almost as red as his hair. It was curly and dense, that hair, like a big orange hedge; Ezra savored a pocket daydream of just smashing a hammer through that gingery fro and into the thick skull underneath, those petulant eyes widening with shock, blood running down the kid’s fat face, and then let it go- he was an agent of the Law, not some Guilder. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?” the kid said. He was posturing now: the flabby pecs, not quite man tits yet but close, trying to flex underneath the yellow polo shirt; his hands balled into soft little fists about as hard as pizza dough. His girlfriend looked on with upturned eyes and her glossy, plump lips parted, breathing so hard her breasts almost tumbled from the top of her microdress.

  “It means my salary don’t come out of the interest from your trust fund,” Ezra said. “Now how about you just sit yourself down and let me get on with my work?”

  “Why don’t you come over here an make me, tough guy?” Jagger said.

  Leon Jensen groaned. He put a weary hand over his face, slumping back against his section of the sofa. “Jagger, for God’s sake,” he said through his hand. “That’s enough. Beverly is dead. Can we just get through this with the tiniest modicum of decorum?”