Tableau

by Michael Kanuckel

  “A what?” Danni said.

  Ezra looked up. This was the first time the girl had spoken since he got here. Danni Holdyne’s voice was a little deeper than he would have expected- throaty when he would have thought bubbly, a bit smoky and rough around the edges.

  “A convenience store,” Ezra said. “She parked her car there, long enough for the owner to take notice. The owner saw a young man approach the car, the window rolled down for a moment, an exchange was made, and then the man was gone. Beverly stayed. The conshop owner saw her out there, just sitting in the car.”

  “An exchange,” Pembroke said. “I think that all of us, except perhaps for Miss Danni, who is innocent about much of the coarser stuff of life, know what you’re implying. And Mister Beckitt, I’ll have you know that it’s inappropriate here, in front of the woman’s family.”

  Ezra shrugged. “I’m only reporting what I have to go on,” he said. “Can’t help it if you don’t like it.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Danni asked, looking around the room in bewilderment. She did look every bit the young and vulnerable neophyte. Ezra wasn’t sure if she was serious, or shamming as much as he’d been with his absent-minded Guard routine.

  “Drugs, dear,” Faye said. The older woman leaned over to pat her niece on the knee, spilling a bit of her drink in the process. The maid would be in her later to scrub this floor to a high sheen, no doubt. “He’s talking about Beverly’s little trip into the slums for drugs.”

  “Beverly Jensen was an outstanding woman,” Pembroke said. His face was flushed; the bristles of his mustache quivered indignantly. “Vivacious and tenacious, she was a pillar of this community who’s philanthropic gestures have touched the lives of thousands. She did not do drugs,” he went on, eyes flashing at Faye. “Nor did she keep a ‘crib’ uptown, like some high-priced lace-cunnie girl. She simply preferred a more intimate setting for herself than this house, when she found herself alone. Often she would also meet with representatives from the charitable organizations she supported there. It was her life’s work, using some small part of the fortune she and her husband amassed to do some good in the world.”

  Faye laughed some more, and drank some more. Jagger and Danni, the younger members of the brood, seemed placated by the lawyer’s words. Ezra thought of the locksmith, talking about his uncle who couldn’t make it with the Guards and killed himself- how the wife had been desperate to hide the fact of his suicide…to protect his good name.

  “Look,” Ezra said. “I’m not here to cast dispersions on the deceased. I’m simply doing my job. And, I’m sure she was a hell of a woman- but there’s only one reason a woman of Beverly Jensen’s standing would be down in Londell’s…and there’s only one reason she would meet someone on the street there.”

  “Only one reason you can think of,” Pembroke said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I mean no offense,” the lawyer said; which almost certainly meant that he did. “But your job is to deal with the darker aspects of the world. You’re a High Guard First Class, and you deal in homicide- but this was no homicide. There was no drug deal. There were no drugs in Beverly Jensen’s system!”

  Ezra sat straight up in his chair. “Now just how the hell do you know that?”

  Pembroke shrugged. “I am the family’s agent in the courts,” he said. “I’ve seen the autopsy report. There were no drugs. And, seeing as how there were no drugs in her system, it stands to reason that there was no drug deal. Your scenario doesn’t work, Mister Beckitt. So. Allow me, if you will, to present you with an alternative situation.”

  “Go ahead,” Ezra said. “I’m all ears.”

  “And eyes,” Pembroke said. “I’ve no doubt on that score. So, in this scenario, Beverly drives down to Londell’s and parks in front of this conshop. You have a witness to verify that, and the car and her body were discovered there, so it’s indisputable. This witness saw a young man, the young man you refer to as a drug dealer- and I’m sure I know what color this young man was, and how you jumped to that conclusion-, come up to the car. Still nothing to object. Here’s where our paths must diverge, though. Obviously, based on the physical evidence, no drug deal took place.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Ezra said, ignoring the overt implication that he was a racist.

  “It leaves us with a caring, charitable woman,” Pembroke said. “Trying to do her best to help an unfortunate soul. There are many such unfortunate folk in Hatis City, Mister Beckitt,” the lawyer went on. He could have been standing in front of a jury box as he spoke. “I believe you and your ilk refer to them as ‘Streeters.’ Many of these have come here without the proper documentation, and so cannot apply for aid from the state. Some others are too proud to accept ‘charity.’ You say that Beverly went down into that den of inequity to obtain drugs. I say that she arranged to meet someone, someone who could not get help through legitimate channels, and she handed him a disposable credstik- credits the man could use, no questions asked, for food or medicine or whatever the needs of he and his family might be.”

  “Was this something Missus Jensen was known to do?” Ezra said.

  “Quite often,” Pembroke said. “She was a lady of great means and a kind heart, and she did not hoard either.”

  Ezra jotted financial records in his notebook, never knowing that in the near future the case would be closed and he’d have nothing to investigate. “You paint a vivid picture,” he said. “I have to say, that alternative is much more attractive than my scenario. And you’re right- I deal in ugliness. I see the dark aspects of mankind, and my instincts take me to the shadows. But Mister Pembroke-”

  “Lee.”

  “Mister Pembroke,” Ezra went on, “what do you propose happened next?”

  “Beverly was going to be seventy-four years old in November,” Pembroke said quietly. “She was a robust person, and led a vigorous life. I’m afraid that her age caught up with her as she sat in front of that conshop and, not long after her last charitable act on this world, her heart simply gave out.”

  Ezra shook his head. “You said yourself that you saw the autopsy report,” he said, then paused to light another cigarette. Faye wobbled across the room with her drink held out in front of her body as if it was a tray loaded down with precious breakables, made a gimme gesture at Ezra with her free hand, and then leaned on his shoulder to smoke the Chesterfield he lit for her; her hand felt like a cloth sack full of chicken bones. “There’s no evidence of a cardiac event.”

  “Just as there was no evidence of drugs,” Pembroke said, pouncing on the opening Ezra had left him with a smug satisfaction. “And yet, that is the avenue you’ve chosen to go down. It’s a losing horse, Mister Beckitt. Now, let me ask you. Of the two proposed solutions, which one makes more sense? That a fabulously wealthy woman, one who had the means to get any narcotics she might want hand delivered to her door if she so chose, would drive herself into the sluburbs to pick some up herself- or that a true lady, who had made helping her fellow man her life’s work, went down into the pits of this city to give aid and succor to an unfortunate man and then succumbed, at last, to the ravages of advanced age? I ask you. Honestly.”

  To this, Ezra found no reply.

  Pembroke nodded as if the High Guard had answered him. “I am told that the new Commander of Forensic Investigations is quite young,” he said. “Just out of university at Wuster, in fact. The way I heard it, there was a pretty mad scramble to fill the vacancy left by his predecessor... and while I’m sure that the boy is brilliant, experience breeds another sort of wisdom- one that he is obviously lacking, when he has been unable to determine the cause of death in not just this one instance, but two.”

  “Now hold on-”

  “That is why,” Pembroke said, overriding Ezra, “as the family’s agent in matters of Law, I have petitioned for a formal inquest into this matter. I have also sent for a medical examiner of more experience, to fly in at my own expense. I am confident that upon his examina
tion we will be satisfied as to the cause of poor Beverly’s death- a hemorrhage or a stroke, perhaps a cardiac infraction. And we will leave it at that. I will pursue no legal recourse against you or your department, High Guard Beckitt- tempting as it is, as you sit here in the deceased’s home and sully the air, both with your horrid carcinogens and your baseless slanders. We are only interested in getting at the heart truth in this tragic matter. That is all.”

  Ezra looked around the room at the bunch of privileged, smirking faces in front of him and smiled. “How gracious of you,” he said, “to not prosecute me for doing my job. Now I have a few more questions, regarding-”

  “You misunderstood me, Mister Beckitt,” Pembroke said. There was a flat shine in his eyes, and the face below that walrus mustache was grim and set. “When I said ‘That is all,’ I meant it to bid you a good day. There will be no more questions.”

  Twelve

  Ezra wasn’t answering his phone. He had no desire to speak with Jim Gorton, not until he had to, and right now he didn’t have to. The commissioner had even resorted to sending messages on the palmscreen, and he knew damn well that Ezra wasn’t going to respond to those. He already knew what Jim had to say, or he could come pretty damn close: what does it matter if we put “heart attack” on the death certificate, she had to have died of something, no drugs in her system, family is friends with a lot of powerful people and spreads a lot of money around in all the right places, and blah-blah-blah. Ezra didn’t want to hear it.

  What Ezra wanted to do was call Robin Drake. Robbie would understand. Even if she didn’t understand, he just really wanted to hear her voice. Even all the way out there on the west coast, working private security for her old beach bunny chum, if he called her she would sound like she was sitting right next to him. That would be nice- but it would be a mistake to call her. Robbie wasn’t going to answer for him any more than he was going to answer for Jim, and for the same reason- they didn’t have anything left to talk about. Everything that needed to be said got said that last night, that last supper, when she’d laid it all out on the line, that quicksilver line like the shimmering mirage you see just over the horizon as you drive down the highway in the heat of a summer day, looking at him with those big green eyes, green like river moss, no greener than that, and when he should have jumped he hesitated and then it was all done.

  “To hesitate is death,” Ezra said to his empty living room. Who had said that? Nobody- it was just a line from one of those old black and white lone swordsman movies he used to be in love with. Everybody in tattered robes and topknots, lots of still, long shots of warriors’ narrowed eyes and twitching hands. One split second of action so fast he had to pause the movie to see it as the hero drew his blade across his body and sliced his opponent almost in two, that burst of dark as chocolate syrup (probably because it was) blood. A few discordant notes plucked from some stringed lap instrument that sounded almost like a banjo as birds took wing in a darkening sky and a serving girl screamed as the villain collapsed.

  Ezra also wasn’t drinking. He could be drinking, he’d already decided that he was taking the next day off to sit home and lick his wounds, but he wasn’t. He was just sitting. Pretty soon he’d be sitting in the dark. He was tired; tired of things not adding up, things not making any sense. He thought of Loveless. Loveless, who had smiled that big tombstone smile and insisted that he couldn’t be guilty of homicide because he’d never killed anything human. That was nuts- but it still made sense. The numbers still added up to something. Loveless wouldn’t pay the ultimate price for his crimes, he wouldn’t suffer the way his victims (twelve so far, but more might pop up even as the man had his day in court) had suffered; but he would be shut up away from the world, unable to hurt anyone else. Ezra could call that a win and be content with it. But this, this woman dead of nothing, and the Peters kid…those didn’t add up, nothing made sense. The case on the kid was closed nonetheless, and Beverly Jensen’s death would soon follow. Another black line in the ledger, another solved case on the books. Ezra thought it stunk. He was also starting to think hell, there’s no reason I shouldn’t pour myself a tall drink full of ice, which was when the phone rang again.

  Ezra picked the phone up in the spreading shadows of his living room, sure in the split second before he looked at the screen that it would be Robin. It was Robbie calling, she was sorry about just leaving without so much as a goodbye after that last supper, she was wrong, she wanted to come home. Home. But it wasn’t Robin Drake on the phone. It wasn’t Jim, either. Ezra accepted the call with a bemused grin.

  “The good doctor,” Ezra said.

  “Ezra,” Leonard Forest said.

  “What can I do ya for? How’s life?”

  “Well, I only have a very little bit of experience with it, what with being so young and all,” Leonard said. “But the last couple days have been real shitty.”

  Ezra nodded to himself. “I take it you’ve had a discussion with Mister Pembroke,” he said.

  “Oh yes. Mister Pembroke, and the Commissioner as well. They brought in some fossil from Northeshire, started practicing medicine back when we still used ultrasound to try and find cancer clusters like a guy trying to explore a cave with a candle. He’s a forensics investigations expert, Mister Pembroke says, with a whole trunk full of honors. He’ll determine the cause of Beverly Jensen’s death, since I seem incapable of doing so- and be out in time for nine holes of golf at the Green Hill Country Club.”

  “That what the man said?” Ezra asked. Mister Pembroke had himself a pair of big brass balls, of that there could be no doubt. In the background of the call he could hear a bunch of different, too-loud conversations and some sort of sports game. The clack of billiard balls as someone made the break. It sounded to him like the good doctor was out at a bar.

  “That’s what he said.”

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  There was a pause as Leonard took a long drink of something. Ezra had only known the kid for a short while, but he had the feeling that when the good doctor cut loose and had a drink it was probably something that glowed red or green and had vapor wisping over the top of the glass, with a little paper umbrella sticking out of it. He was just a kid, after all- and a scholar from Wuster’s high society to boot. “I was hoping,” Leonard said, “to persuade you to join me for a libation or two. Chew it over.”

  “Where?”

  -

  Some historians said that Wallace’s Inn at Jacob’s Court was as old as Hatis City itself and that kings, queens, and knights so bold once supped here. Ezra was skeptical, because these same historians claimed that a Wallace had always run the place as well, and that certainly wasn’t the case now; the current proprietor was a smart, tough young lady named Miriam Collins (Miri to her friends, Miz Collins to her subordinates and people holding tabs at the bar)- but who knew…maybe she was a Wallace, somewhere along the line. In Hatis City roots went deep, and family trees had a whole hell of a lot of branches.

  However old the tavern was, it certainly hadn’t changed much while the Green City went through almost constant bouts of upheaval all around it. Ezra could recall hearing about one huge skirmish when he was a kid out in the sticks: an event that came to be known simply as “the excavation.” The expanse of rolling green lawn next to Jacob’s Court had been a prime piece of real estate, and several developers had wanted it. The problem was, Wallace’s Inn was built into that big green lawn, with nothing visible to those walking along in the park there but the exhaust fans from the kitchens (fenced in and covered over with some tasteful hedges, of course), the front windows, and the front door. Also, the Society for the Preservation of d’Haventh’s Culture was trying to get the location a Historical Site designation; they maintained, as a lot of folk did, that the last king of d’Haventh had been a frequent guest at Wallace’s- therefore, nothing about the tavern should be touched, any more than one would disturb the remains of Linkloft, the rotting heap of wood that had once been the hall of said
king.

  Just as Ezra got shown again today, money talks and everyone listens. The Society’s petition was voted down by the city council (eight jowl-faced dinosaurs with their turkey necks hanging over the collars of their dress shirts and splotchy complexions who probably took their payoff in young girls and weapons grade narcotics rather than money, but it all amounts to the same thing), the green lawn over Wallace’s Inn went to the highest bidder, and the digging began. There were protests, some of them bloody enough to make the network news, and Ezra was glad now that he’d been just a kid then and not a Guard, having to tase and apprehend simple people who wanted nothing more than to keep one small piece of the old Hatis City as it was. In the end it was done; that gentle slope of green lawn, part of the side of the hill where the oldest parts of the upper city had stood since d’Haventh started writing down its own history, was scooped up and scraped off and carried away in dump trucks. A lot more than the ancient bones of Wallace’s got uncovered during the excavation: tunnels were found, leading hither and yon around uptown, and stone-lined wells and carved stair cases; all of it destroyed so that more retail stores, fast food chains, and public parking lots could be built there. Wallace’s itself had to be almost completely redesigned once exposed; the structure buried under all of that dirt had been built to live inside the earth like a hibernating bear, not for show. What emerged was the Wallace’s Inn at Jacob’s Court that Ezra had always known- glossy and slick as anything, with that siding that looked like stone walls, green shingles on the sloped roof, huge stained glass windows (not genuine) all around and lit up from all the neon and bright lights inside, and the one nod to the old tavern- the round green front door with the gold knob right in the center of the wooden boards.

  The bar had a high-end clientele, as one would expect from an uptown location adjacent to the city’s center and the old castle, and it was definitely not Ezra’s kind of place. He preferred a quieter, dimmer watering hole- a dive bar, if such a thing could really be said to exist in this part of the city. But the kid had named the place and Ezra had agreed to come, so he got off of the uptown tram and found himself pulling open that round green door.