by Lee Killough
Though blistering hot, the chocolate practically evaporated from the quartet’s mugs, leaving Fury and Havoc with cream mustaches that made them look even younger.
Janna sipped hers with more caution. The four helped themselves to refills they drank more slowly, eyeing her. When she said nothing, they exchanged puzzled glances. Viper frowned.
She let him, emptying the last of the chocolate in the carafe into her mug.
Silence unnerved most people . . . to the point they felt compelled to fill it by saying something. Anything. Her most successful interrogations often started that way. One word leading to another . . . sometimes to a confession. In this case, she hoped it produced information from individuals disinclined to answer questions.
Who would give in first?
Viper. He scowled at her. “This is bullshit! You wanted to talk. So talk or we’re leaving.”
A bluff. He made no move to push away from the table. With food on the way, she doubted he had any intention of walking out.
Honey him, though, instead of calling the bluff. “Do any of you know how to drive?”
The blank expressions answered her question.
Then Viper stuck out his chin. “I do. Why?”
Ah . . . there spoke ego. According to Nafsinger, the second jacker took the wheel. Which she did not see Viper permitting if he could drive. That posed the question of who the driver had been. Someone else the receivers hired? Or one of the receivers themselves . . . making sure the jacking went as planned?
“Just curious. Here comes the food. Good. I’m starved.”
No danger of anyone leaving now.
With platters filling the tabletop and side-dishes for the toast, butter pats, pitchers of syrup, and a new carafe of chocolate, they attacked the food like ravening wolves.
Only when the platters neared empty and Janna had worked her way down to toast, did anyone speak again. She said, “I’d rather listen than talk, actually.”
Around a bite of steak, Viper said, “Who do you think will talk?”
“You.” Despite no one sitting at the tables near them, she lowered her voice. “Telling me who hired you to jack that hearse.”
The others looked at Viper.
He swallowed the bite. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She spread apricot preserves on her toast. “Two jons trying to look like Orions by wearing decals with Orion colors. You’ve been witnessed threatening Pluto for laying black and blue on you. Did you decided blaming a jacking on them was good revenge?”
Viper’s lip curled. “I am gonna squash the bastard . . . when I’m good and ready. That fem came to me, and she bought the drinks.”
Which he no doubt felt almega macho proud about.
“The description the driver gave of one jacker fits you perfectly.”
He stiffened a moment, then shrugged. “She’s wrong. Wasn’t me.”
Janna almost regretted her promise to Quicksilver, longing to corner Viper with, “How do you know the driver was female?” Instead, hardening her voice but keeping it low not to attract attention from other customers, she said, “Bullshit. You were there! If I took you in, the driver would ID you. But I won’t. As I told Quicksilver, I don’t care about your part in the jacking. I want whoever hired you.” She gave that several moments to sink in. She hoped. “They’re smugglers.”
Titan frowned. “They’re shuttle pilots.”
“A lie.”
Viper sneered. “So they’re smugglers. That’s nothing to us.”
Damn, she longed to backhand this little rag. He alone could zero sympathy for slighs.
“It ought to be. You’re here alive. That corpse in the hearse didn’t just happen to be there. It was the reason for the jacking. Contraband was smuggled from a space station in it. This is what your ‘pilots’ did to retrieve the contraband.”
She pulled out her slate, opened it and typed in her code to access Data. Hoping Kolb had uploaded the autopsy images. Hallelujah . . . he had. From them she chose a full frontal view of the body stripped naked on the table and passed the slate to Viper.
“Instead of paying you — which I assume they did — they could have treated you the same and left you in a snowbank . . . sure no one would miss a sligh.”
Only as the slate left her hands did she consider the possible effect on the full stomach of a civilian.
To her relief, Viper’s breakfast remained in place . . . though he swallowed hard, and — to her immense satisfaction — went almost as white as his hair. “They didn’t know I’m a sligh,” he said faintly.
What? “Why not?” When despite their ganger pose, it was obvious to her.
Without looking at the screen, Titan slid the slate back to her. “Viper has credit at some clubs for food and drinks. It looks like he’s running a tab.”
Credit. Oh.
One guess how he earned it. Using his good looks for enticing fems into buying drinks and bar drugs in return for his attention. Attention that might also include being a “lucky mascot”, if the club had gaming, or encouraging the purchase of time in a privacy booth. Time only, clubs without brothel licenses always swore . . . which let them characterize all activity in the booth as a private arrangement independent of the establishment. But he must alternate between clubs to prevent being ID’d as a shill.
So the drink and flirt with Pluto’s fem might have been business? Viper’s grudge should be with the Zanzibar for not protecting him.
She sent the screen scrolling back into the spindle. “Tell me about the jons. We know there were at least two.”
“Just two,” Titan said. “One White and one Afam.”
“Jamaican, he said, when I asked him about his accent,” Fury said.
“The White jon sounded Brit,” Havoc said.
Being foreign could explain not recognizing slighs. “Where did you meet them?”
The others looked at Viper.
He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “They came up to us Monday night in Prospero’s and offered to buy us drinks.” Color had begun seeping back into his face, but his voice remained shaky.
“You were all there?”
“Of course.”
Of course. Even if the Hispanic pair happened to be under eighteen, without scibs they never tripped the door scanners screening for the J-scibs of minors.
“Had you seen them before?”
“Yeah. Around the clubs for a couple of weeks.”
A couple of weeks. So however long ago the smuggling plans began, at that point the buyers knew to expect delivery in Topeka. At Forbes, too? “They bought drinks. Then what?”
“They said they were Lou Hamlin and Emon Snow, but everyone called Emon Snowy, because he was almost ebony black, and were shuttle pilots for Almundo. They flew Earth hops.”
Arcs up out of the atmosphere and down again across the globe. Janna had done one with her father to an aerospace tech expo in China when she was fourteen. Even in memory, the view of Earth at the flight apex remained dazzling.
“They told us how they and other pilots weren’t getting the high-paying hops they used to because this other pilot honeyed this fem in Almundo’s IT so she hacked the flight assignments to put him on the best ones. They had a plan to scare him from dark as Snowy to white as Lou, and after hearing I had a crank with the Orions — who they’d seen laughing at the idea of any threat from me — thought maybe we’d like to earn some dd’s and ourselves at the same time.”
“Of course that interested you.”
Viper’s chin jutted. “Yeah it fucking did!”
“Since you don’t have a bank account, how did you arrange to be paid?”
Viper smirked. “I said it would be more anonymous to give us a credit voucher for the five hundred I talked them into. And they agreed.”
The credit voucher was clever. And five hundred? That explained the jackets. “What was their plan?”
Titan grinned. “An almega frisk. They’d paid a flash joyeur
to play castlerow fem and cozy with this pilot in a club and make him think that when he got back from a hop Friday she was taking him to Rio for a weekend orgy. Only instead of meeting him with a limo, it was going be a hearse a friend of theirs at Nafsinger’s was loaning them. They’d throw this pilot in a coffin and drive to a crematorium, where the coffin would go right to the door of the oven, where they’d threaten to put him in unless he confessed to having the flight schedule hacked. They’d record the confession and threaten to play it for the corp poobahs if he tried stealing flights again.”
So by that Monday the receivers did know about Nafsinger’s picking up at body at Forbes. “You’d wear Orion colors and when this friend described the jackers, they’d be blamed.”
Viper nodded.
“After jacking the hearse, then what?”
“We’d turn it over to Lou and Snowy in a parking lot a few blocks away.”
“But Lou ended up driving. Why?”
Viper flushed. “Because none of us can drive.”
As Janna suspected.
“I thought we’d be out then . . . but after they talked in some language we didn’t understand, they decided to keep me, because Snowy couldn’t pass as an Orion. They didn’t even cut the voucher’s dd’s,” he said with satisfaction. “It had the whole five hundred when Lou gave it to me Friday.”
“So despite the weather Lou went ahead with this ‘frisk’. Then the driver turned out to be a fem who wasn’t expecting to surrender the hearse, and she had a body onboard you didn’t expect. It didn’t make you wonder?”
Viper licked his lips. “Lou said there’d been a mix-up and not to worry about it. The fem wasn’t hurt and when he dropped me off he said they’d leave the hearse where it would be found.”
They had done that. “What did Lou look like?”
Viper shrugged. “Average. Shorter than me but weighed more. Brown hair. I didn’t notice his eyes.”
“Was there anything distinctive about his face?”
“No.”
Not much help in picking him out of Prospero’s door cam images. “And Snowy?”
Fury said, “He was almost as tall and thin as you. He had mustache that went clear around his mouth into a goatee and his hair was flat and shiny . . . like he greased it.”
Good. Easy to ID. “What time did they come in?”
The four exchanged glances and shrugged. “We’d been there a while.”
Middle of the evening maybe? But what if Prospero’s no longer had Monday’s door cam images? “Is that the only time you saw them before Friday morning?”
“Lou had me meet him Thursday.”
“What time was that?”
“He was waiting when I got there around seven. He brought the star decals and told me what time he’d pick me up in the morning and I told him where.”
“You said ‘he’. Snowy wasn’t there?”
“No.”
Damn. “What kind of jacket did he have?”
Viper shrugged. “He wasn’t wearing one in the club.”
“Was it on his chair?”
“Probably. I didn’t notice.”
Crap!
Fury said, “They were carrying jackets when they came over Monday. His was navy blue with those reflective red stripes over the shoulders.”
Likely Thursday, too, then. Thank God even sligh fems were fashion-conscious.
“When and where did he pick you up Friday?”
Viper scowled. “What does that matter?”
“Of course you chose a place away from where you’re dossing, which I don’t give a damn about, either, so just answer the question.”
His tone went sullen. “I picked Twenty-first and Maryland and he said be there at seven.”
Giving her an intersection to check on Traffic. “Thank you. What was he driving?”
“Snowy was driving. It was a grey ‘91 Borealis sedan.”
At least Viper noticed that.
Janna pushed to her feet and gathered up her jacket. “Thank you for meeting me.” Making it sincere. Digging into a cargo pocket she found the vending tokens left over from the Lion’s Den and set them on the table. “A word of warning. Smuggling means the Feds will be investigating. They won’t hear about you from me, but you need to be wraiths or they might find you anyway.”
Viper snorted as she walked away. Sighing, Janna pulled on her jacket. Litewit . . . thinking with his gonads and ego. She had warned him. Beyond that, on his own head be it.
Before heading back into the cold, she called Mama.
“Leave a message.”
His v-mail always surprised her . . . to the point instead of something flamboyant. “Mama, I’ve met the Wraiths and have a lead on our receivers. I’m headed for Prospero’s.”
She almost reached the Metrans stand a block away when her cell beeped. Mama, she found after fumbling it out of her pocket.
“I’ll meet you there.”
In the background, a female voice rose angrily. “Don’t you walk out—”
Then both her voice and Mama’s became muffled, until he disconnected.
Definitely domestic strife. At least they were only cohabbing. Less complicated to end than canceling a marriage contract.
* * *
At the Metrans stand she scanned her scib and retina at the kiosk in return for an ignition code card it extruded, and had just identified which of the three autocabs the code was for, when her phone beeped again.
This time her father’s face, lean as hers, grinned from the screen. “Hi, Beanpole.”
The grin and old nickname warmed her. Grinning back, she climbed into the cab, where she could talk in relative comfort.
His expression changed to surprise. “You’re not warm at home?”
“I’m working.” She skipped asking why he called at this hour. It could have been two in the morning. James Brill lived oblivious to clocks except for reporting to work in Kyzer’s Wichita factory. “Where are you? That isn’t your apartment I see behind you.”
“It’s Cat Truby’s. Remember I told you about the instructor of that jewelry-making class I started taking?”
“Six months ago. You haven’t mentioned her since.”
“Really?” The smile came back, this time sheepish. “Well . . . I didn’t want— That is, considering . . . before. . .”
The marriage to her mother which, after years of daily storms, ended with Janna coming home from school at age eight to find a ripped hard copy of the marriage contract on the floor and the house stripped of all her mother and younger brother Aiden’s belongings.
“. . . I wanted to see how things went.”
“Fine, I’m guessing.”
His face went incandescent. “We’re going to cohab. Meet Cat.”
He turned the phone, tipping it up and down to show her a tall, slim fem with a sleek cap of jet black hair and warm brown eyes.
Cat sighed in what sounded like fond exasperation. “That’s your idea of a subtle introduction? Hello, Janna.” She waved.
Janna smiled back, even as a hole opened in her. Cat looked pleasant and her father so euphoric Janna could only be happy for him — but it made her miss Sid all the more. More brother to her than Aiden . . . whose e-mails from Mars read like reports on hydroponics.
Her father came back on the screen. “What about you? Do you have any love life or—”
“I’ve got to go, Dad. Let me call you tomorrow.”
Mama’s vehicle had pulled in beside her autocab.
A vehicle that looked like one Metrans junked: black and yellow surface laminate sun-faded and peeling, a ghost of the Metrans logo visible on the doors under a spray of yellow paint, seeming cracks in the airfoil skirt. Nothing real, however, but the Sundowner body. Faux painted, the body bodged on a Twister Sportster chassis, the drive race-tuned . . . with a police dash and racing seats inside.
She pushed Cancel on the autocab’s dash and transferred over to the frankencab. “You got my location from Com.�
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Not a complaint tonight since the heater felt blessedly on full blast.
“Since the department requires a GPS in our scibs, we might as well make use of it.”
“How many speed monitors did you trip on the way here?”
He smirked. “None. Police dash, remember?”’
“Using Code Red?”
His expression went righteous. “Installing the lights and siren would be excessive.”
As though the idea of excess ever stopped him before. She bet he had Code Green, though.
The frankencab lifted off its parking rollers. “Prospero’s, you said.”
“You walked out on a fight with Lia.”
“Tell me about the meet with the Wraiths.”
Not a subject up for discussion, in other words. Fine. She filled him in on the Wraiths and Lou and Snowy. Even doing so succinctly, with all the lights turning green ahead of them she barely finished before they pulled into Prospero’s parking area.
The number of vehicles in the lot hardly matched the volume of voices and music from the club, but a bus stop in front and a Metrans stand down the block meant few of the patrons had to drive here.
The door had the usual behemoth attendant to block entry or hasten an exit . . . this one costumed with a bushy unibrow, shoulder-length hair striped black and orange, and a body suit that looked cobbled of animal skins with feet and tails still attached. Making him — who was the monster in The Tempest production Mama dragged her to this fall? — Caliban.
A play she ended up enjoying. They had made Prospero female.
Janna showed the behemoth her badge, wondering if he talked, or only grunted. “Detectives Brill and Maxwell, SCPD. We need the night manager.”
Caliban answered in a rich baritone. “‘Thou makest me merry; I am full of pleasure.’”
Mama laughed. “Do you know all Caliban’s lines?”
He grinned, showing pointed teeth. “You recognize the quote. Almega. I just picked out a few I thought apropos. The merry quote, for one . . . usually with heavy sarcasm. Others are: ‘Lo, how he mocks me.’ and, ‘What a pied ninny’s this!’ I like that one. For flash fems there’s: ‘Hast thou not dropp’d from Heaven.’ And of course, the ever apt: ‘Farewell, master. Farewell, farewell.’ Not that many besides you know enough to appreciate my effort.”