by Sean M Locke
I pursed my lips and looked into the glass of brandy. My reflection thought that spilling everything might work out. I questioned my reflection’s judgment. My reflection reminded me in exquisite, graphic detail of what had happened to people who tried lying to Hendrik. I admitted that my reflection made some good points, and that a compromise was in order. I’d spill enough to make myself look like a heel, but not enough to drag Maria into it. Hopefully.
“I was at the club last night with Kasper and everyone. Cornelius Lewis and Jurgen Penders stopped by, and Kasper gave them something. Some package, looked important. What with everything yesterday morning, I thought I’d go check on them as they left. In case the cops tried to pinch them.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you.” Hendrik’s voice was flat, dangerous.
“Yeah, well.” I took another sip of the brandy and tried to remember what Jurgen told me last night. Anything Jurgen knew, Hendrik would know. “I didn’t get out back till after the cops had already laid out Jurgen and ran off with Lewis. I took Lewis’ flyer to see if I could track them down. Figured I’d get him back if I could.”
Hendrik leaned forward, steepling his fingers in front of his face. His elbow casually nudged the butt of the pistol, pointing its barrels in my direction. “Is that right?”
I swallowed. “Yes, Boss. Anyway, I got lucky, I guess, and tracked them down to the Penders safe house. When I got inside, this cop had Lewis sewn up. Plain clothes, you know; not a uniform. Reckon Lewis ran from the copper and wound up at the safe house. I was going to have a chat with the man and get Lewis out, but then Milan and Jeanne and Bart came in with their score from the Rademakers. The shooting started, and I don’t remember too much after that. You know.”
Hendrik nodded. He would know about my little problem with guns going off. I knew I was starting to sound desperate, and maybe I hoped he would go easy on me on account of the guns. I should have known better, of course.
“And the noble?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.
“Boss?”
He exhaled through his nose, and then gestured to Milan. “Get up. Stand there.” He pointed to the spot next to me.
Milan did, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that it hurt him to do it. He stood next to me, maybe an arm’s reach away. Like he didn’t want to get too close to me. In case whatever I had was catching.
“Milan, tell me again what you saw when you got to the safe house.”
Milan wiped his brow with a handkerchief before speaking. “We got there with the score and one of the Rademaker lads. A present for Kasper, you know? You know how he likes to —”
“Get on with it.”
He paused. “Yes . . . yes, sir. Anyway, what I saw was this guy in a cheap suit, might have been a detective or a regulator. And this noble bird, all done up for a night out, but a little roughed up too. The cop had his gun out, and the girl was putting hers away, and Kaeri was standing between them. The girl had her hand on Kaeri’s shoulder, real chummy-like.”
I shot him a nasty look and wished for the whole world that he’d shut up. “You don’t know what you saw.”
Hendrik held up a hand, signaling quiet. Out of long habit, I obeyed. “Why don’t you tell me about this noble.” I opened my mouth to say something—who knows what—but Hendrik held up his hand again. “And before you invent anything too clever, you ought to tell me the truth. I want you to know that Kasper and his crew found the mess in the back lot.”
He reached under his desk and placed a little black lace hat on his desk. It was a mess, dusty and stomped on, but I recognized it all the same. “They found this and other bits of feminine folderol in the back alley. Maybe it belongs to the girl, and maybe it doesn’t. So think real careful about what you want to tell me.”
My lips felt dry, and I would have killed to take another sip of brandy, but there wasn’t any sense in showing my nerves. Hendrik straightened and looked down at his desk, presumably to give me time to come up with something good. I might have been able to do that, but then he started fiddling with his pistol. He broke open the revolver, rotated the cylinder, and took out one of the shells.
I must have stopped saying whatever I was saying.
Hendrik gestured with the cartridge and said, “Don’t mind me, Kaeri. What were yousaying?”
He set the cartridge on the table in front of him, and it stood like a little brass soldier. I could hear the little clockwork ticks as he turned the cylinder again and fished out another cartridge.
“The noble girl . . .” I swallowed past a thick throat, and tried again. “She’s after something of hers that was stolen. She seemed to think Lewis had it. So she got mixed up with him and that cop at the safe house.”
“Mmhmm.” Hendrik set a second and a third cartridge upright on the desk before him. “She’s a friend? I don’t think I ever heard of you hanging around with nobles before.”
“She’s just an acquaintance. A business opportunity I was scoping out.” My gut burned to say it that way, and I hated it. “No sense telling you or Ludo unless it was going to amount to something. Anyway, she and the cop were waving guns at each other, and I’d just managed to talk them down when Milan and the crew busted in.”
“And that’s when it all went to hell, is that right?” Hendrik stood the fourth and fifth shell next to the others, spun the cylinder so that it turned like a roulette wheel, and snapped it shut with a flick of his wrist. “And then poor Bart got cashiered, Jeanne got pinched, and Milan ran off, leaving a quarter million in cash and ten kilos of aker in the cops’ hands. That’s a bad bit of luck.”
Hendrik moved faster than I thought a big man like him could. He pointed the massive revolver at Milan and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber, and it might have been the loudest sound in the world.
Milan made a whimpering noise, and I couldn’t bear to look at him. I squeezed the glass in my hand, and thought very hard about not spilling anything on Hendrik’s expensive rugs. Only when I looked down at it did I realize the good hand-woven pile wasn’t under my feet. Hendrik had replaced it with some cheap machine-made thing. It didn’t fit in this office at all, and I knew why it was here.
Hendrik pulled the hammer back, and I saw the cylinder rotate. Was there a live shell under the hammer now? He let his wrist go limp, and the heavy barrel touched his desk.
“I think you’re telling me the truth, Kaeri. But is there anything else you want to say? Something you might be leaving out?”
I tried to say something, but it didn’t come out, so I worked a little spit into my mouth and tried again. “What would you like to know?”
“A couple of things. But first I want to know about Lewis. I think I know the answer to this, but I want to hear you say it. What could Lewis possibly have that the cops and a mysterious noble girl both want?”
Sweat prickled on my brow, and I dug the fingernails of my free hand into my palm to keep myself from wiping it away. It was dumb to count on Josef and Henriette not telling anyone about their sister, but I had to hope their vanity went that far. I was damned if I’d drag Maria into it worse than I already had.
“Dunno what she wanted, exactly. She was cagey about what she wanted from Lewis, and so I was cagey about telling her I’d help. But the detective fellow went through Lewis’ satchel. It had this little tin pie plate thing, something the detective said was part of a weapon.” My throat got itchy in that way it did when I started lying too much. “Anyway, you saw of that business at the warehouse yesterday morning. Kasper, the violin case, all those dead Rademakers. You’ve seen the weapon he has.”
“Yeah,” he said, his eyes getting small and needle-sharp. “Supposed to be our ace in the hole. He played it early. For a laugh. To impress that . . .”
Hendrik pursed his lips and looked to his right, his eyes still narrow. He studied the whorls and serpents of the Equatorial Storm Band on his dressing screen hard enough to burn holes in it.
He exhaled
sharply through his nose and looked back to me. Then he pointed the gun at my chest, real casual-like. “Kaeri, I gotta apologize. It’s probably not your fault, but you shouldn’t know about that weapon.”
He pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked home, and I squeezed my eyes shut. The grandmother clock bonged half past one, and a bullet did not go tearing through my flesh. My knees went watery. I had to piss something terrible.
I opened my eyes, and Hendrik had some kind of look on his face, but I didn’t know what it meant.
“No one’s supposed to know about that weapon, especially not the cops.”
I stared into the barrel of his gun and thought I could fall in there and fall forever. “People know. Not everyone, but enough. And that detective, and whoever he’s told. It’s enough for people to ask questions, if certain people close to you turned up dead now.” I chanced a sip of brandy.
“Rumors and questions could be a real problem, if the weapon was still out of commission. But now we have the weapon, a new magazine, and our engineer. Rumors and questions are more like an inconvenience.” A knowing smile turned up a corner of his mouth. He was looking at me, but I could swear he was talking for someone else’s benefit.
Hendrik pulled the hammer back again, and the cylinder turned, and he pointed it at Milan. Milan stiffened. We both knew what the odds looked like now.
“I don’t exactly believe you, Kaeri. I think this noble girl is more than you’re saying. Maybe she’s a girlfriend, and you don’t want to tell me about it. I can understand that, but I will tell you that it doesn’t mean a thing to me. Sleep with whoever you want. Everyone needs their diversions. What I will not tolerate,” he said, and looked at Milan, “is incompetence.”
I winced, Milan whimpered, and the hammer fell again. On an empty chamber.
Milan and I let go of a breath together, and the smell of piss reached my nose. I fought the impulse to look at Milan; he wouldn’t want me looking at him now anyway.
Hendrik slapped a meaty palm on the ironwood desk and barked a laugh. “I’d hate to play cards with you two! You have terrible poker faces, but your luck is incredible.”
He picked up a slim sheaf of papers, bound with staples all along the left side, and tossed it to me. It landed with a dull thump at my feet. I bent to pick it up, moving slowly. It was my turn to have the gun pointed at me, and it was even money whether I’d eat a bullet or not.
“Read it.”
It wasn’t like any type-written letter or memo like I’d seen before. It was more like a scientific log some egghead might keep, with dates and times on the left, and block text on the right.
18 DOL 43 / 17:28 . . . [PNEUMATIC CONNECTION ESTABLISHED. LOCATION: SOLARIUM] 18 DOL 43 / 17:28 . . . [SPEECH TRANSCRIPT START] there we are mum all cozy now arent we. gorgeous day today. dont know if you can see it but the western arm of the spray is just there and yill see the sunset just dandy. reckon carry will visit soon. cheese a terrible flirt you no. see you two morrow mum. 18 DOL 43 / 17:30 . . . [SPEECH TIMEOUT] [TRANSCRIPT END] [BEGIN SELF-DIAGNOSTIC ROUTINE] 18 DOL 43 / 17:34 . . . [ONE DOSE ATOMIZED EUCALYPT] 18 DOL 43 / 17:36 . . . [SELF-DIAGNOSTIC ROUTINE INTERRUPT] [SPEECH TRANSCRIPT START] donatella I’m here. how are you feeling today. today is um doldra the eighteenth and its about half past five. hendrik and kasper are both doing well enough i think, but isle get into that in a minute. are the nurses and mechanics treating you right. they better be. if there not you should let me know.
The text went on like this for quite awhile.
“This is . . . this is certainly something.” I felt something claw my guts down into the floor, and my lips were suddenly dry. For some reason, the papers shook in my hand, and I gripped them tighter.
“You know, Kaeri, back in the old days, I would have to have someone sit in the room with you to listen to all the things you tell Mother when you visit. And I would have to have someone watching them, make sure you didn’t get to them somehow. I’d have to worry that I was getting the straight dirt, that you weren’t running a man-in-the-middle game with me.”
I nodded dumbly. He was right, of course. If I had noticed some eavesdropper, I probably would try to turn him and use him to send garbage messages to Hendrik.
“But ain’t technology grand? All that science keeps Mother alive, if you can call it living. Machines help her breathe, and little tin trumpets blow out mists of medicine and play music to comfort her.” He laid a finger alongside his nose and winked at me. “But did you know? Some of those little trumpets also listen.”
Blood drained from my face, and my skin prickled all over. I looked down at the damning papers in my hand, but my eyes slid out of focus when I looked at the words. My hand grew hot, and I wanted to drop the papers like I’d drop a hissing viper.
“You keep her alive. You keep her alive so you can eavesdrop on her visitors?”
“Now you’re catching on, smart girl. Of course, the listening machine has its own problems. It’s a headache translating what it says sometimes. It can only type what it hears, after all. But I’m pretty smart too. I can get the gist of what it tells me.”
“And you think I’m going to betray you.”
He gestured at the papers with the barrel of his gun. “You said as much to Mother.”
“But like you said, I’m a smart girl.” I didn’t feel very smart. I tried to think fast, but my brain was swimming through molasses. “It’s not like she was going to wake up right then and save me from doing something stupid. Why would I say anything like that to her unless I wanted someone else to hear it?”
Hendrik’s heavy brows drew together. “You’re saying you were trying to send me a message.”
“I said as much, toward the end,” I said, the lie coming a little smoother now. I gestured with the sheaf of paper. “Not in so many words, but I did say you wouldn’t believe me if I told you directly. But I thought maybe you’d believe me if I told her.”
Hendrik mm-hmmed and tapped his lips with the barrel of his gun, like someone might do with a pencil when they’re working the books. My skin still prickled like I was wearing a coat full of sea urchins. He might decide to blow my brains out anyway, which would solve some problems, but I was very sure I didn’t want to die.
I hadn’t thrown enough heat off of Maria yet. If I got put out of the way, Hendrik would go after her next. He would figure out that she was the “other Cantabile girl” that his damned machine recorded. He’d discover her in Rademaker’s hands and decide that she was in bed with them. That she wanted the weapon for herself. Josef would tell lies that backed up Hendrik’s notion, and then Maria would die.
If I cashed out in this office, maybe Maria would find out and get broken up about it. I liked to think she would, anyway. But she wouldn’t live long enough to shed any tears over me. And if Maria bought it, nothing would stop that damned carbine from getting loose and getting copied and reproduced all over town. I had to walk out of here with my skin whole. I had to get that weapon out of play, and get both it and Maria back to her father, or even into Wolf’s hands for safekeeping. After that, maybe I’d work out a way to keep breathing tomorrow or a week from now. But I needed time to work those angles.
Hendrik shook his head. “No. No, I’m sorry. I know Kasper is a loose cannon, and he’s got a real hard-on for hurting Rademaker. But he wouldn’t go this far. It’s too much.”
“With all respect, he would. He doesn’t have the foresight to —”
“He is my son.” His face was red, now, and his aim was steady.
“Meneer. These streets will run red with blood if things keep going this way. I know you want out of the Lower, but are you gonna burn it down on your way out? Do you really think that the violence won’t follow you to the Middle Terrace?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I can fix this. I can make that thing disappear, and I can leave us smelling pretty at the end of it. Take anything you want from me.” I spread my arms and somehow didn
’t spill my drink or drop the transcript. “Cashier me if you want, sir, but do it tomorrow. Give me time.”
“I think your time’s up.” He pulled the trigger.
I felt my heart thump once in my chest. And then I felt it again.
I wasn’t dead. I opened my eyes.
Hendrik’s face was red. A vein throbbed in his forehead.
My eyes stung as I stared at him. I couldn’t see the gun anymore; it was just a smear of gray somewhere under his face. I couldn’t see much of anything but that meaty mug of his. Like I was staring down a dim tunnel and the only thing I could see at the end of it was Hendrik, diamond bright and clear. My teeth hurt from clenching so tight.
“Or maybe I’m wrong.”
I let go of a breath, the same one I thought would be my last. Then I washed down the sick taste in my mouth with a swallow of brandy.
Hendrik set the gun down and peered hard at me. “Maybe you do want what’s best for the family. But why did you come back here, really? Why did you come back, if it could have meant catching a bullet?”
“Old habits die hard, I guess. But I’ll tell you something else: I’ve just been back from a visit with the Rademaker raadsman. Vedette Sforza didn’t just have me over for an espresso. She wanted me to come back here. She said she was hoping to meet Henriette.”
“What in the hell for?”
“She knows about Kasper’s attachment to her. Who doesn’t? I think she means to pick a fight with him, and the rest of us.”
Hendrik nodded and took his first sip of brandy. Any other day, I might have thought we were having a friendly little drink together. He took another pull, and a healthier color returned to his face.
He muttered something I only half caught. It sounded something like, “Maybe he’ll show some ambition.”
He finished his glass and looked at me again. “All right. I’ll leave the details to you. I shouldn’t need to say this, but I will. Don’t cross me. Don’t screw this up. Or you’ll wish you wound up like this guy.”