String City

by Graham Edwards

  The place felt empty.

  I took the brass compact out of my pocket, brushed my fingers over the controls. Did I want to reactivate the doppelganger? It would give me company for an hour. An hour and seven minutes, to be precise.

  Outside, the sun was climbing over the city. For a second, bright rays punched in through the window and filled the office with gold. Then the clouds sank down and the rain started up.

  I tried to pour coffee but the machine was jammed. I wrestled with the filter, yanked the spout. Nothing gave. I remembered the doppelganger saying he’d changed the beans. Seemed to me he’d spannered the works.

  Fighting caffeine withdrawal, I dug out the crisp new case folder I’d marked Tartarus Heist. In it were the scraps of evidence I’d collected from the casino. No paperwork—there hadn’t been time. I knew I should type a report. Instead I just shut the folder and scrawled CASE CLOSED on the cover.

  As an afterthought, I put a tick in the Solved box. Closed and solved aren’t even kissing cousins, but in this case both applied. I’d dug up the truth—well, as much truth as was there to be found.

  Pity there was nobody left to pay the bill.

  I tossed the folder in the filing tray. The piles of unsolved cases looked more daunting than ever. I wondered where to begin.

  Someone tapped on the glass.

  Glad of the distraction, I opened the door. Outside was a woman: young, scrawny, wet, shivering. The rain had molded her hair to her scalp.

  “Is the job still going?” she said. She pointed to a card stuck to the inside of the window. I hadn’t noticed it before. I peeled the card off the glass, turned it over. It read:

  HELP WANTED

  The handwriting was mine, but I hadn’t written it. I cursed the doppelganger, and thanked him, all in a single unspoken breath.

  “Could be,” I replied. “Why? You interested?”

  “Yes. Can I come in?” Her eyeliner was as black as the hair plastered to her head. The rain had smeared mascara down her face. She looked like she’d been weeping oil.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The girl scuttled in like a mouse, black eyes wide. I wanted to throw my coat round her, warm her up. But I don’t give that coat to just anyone.

  She shook her head and squared her narrow shoulders. “So, what’s it all about?”

  I wondered why she was asking such a big question. Then I got it. “You mean the job?”

  “Yeah. What d’you want me to do?”

  “Do? Honey, I haven’t hired you yet. Hell, I don’t even know you.”

  She was strolling round, the mouse-act over. Now she was a cat, into everything. She kicked a stack of folders, riffled the address book, stirred the trash. “No,” she said brightly. “But you will.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Is this coffee machine working?” She pulled the lever. Black tar hit the hotplate and sat there sizzling.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Now she was round the back of the machine, pulling wires, flushing valves. A brown bubble burst from the vent, floated up, popped on the ceiling. From inside the machine came a gurgle, then fresh coffee started running from the spout. She was already there with the jug. Soon the smell of java filled the office.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” I said.

  “I used to work in Starbucks.” She danced to the desk, perched on the corner. “Well?

  “Well what?”

  The girl smiled. White teeth shone like shots of sunlight through black mascara streaks. “Am I hired?”

  “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Zephyr,” she replied.

  “Cute name.”

  “My brother was called Hurricane.”

  “Let me guess—you’ve got a sister called Gale.”

  “Now who’s being cute?”

  “You think you can just walk in here and start calling the shots?”

  “You’re the one who opened the door.”

  I looked her up and down. “‘Zephyr’, huh? One gust of wind and you’d blow away.”

  “I’m tougher than I look.”

  Behind her, a stack of folders teetered and fell, spreading six months of filing across six square feet of grubby carpet. I felt my shoulders sink. How had it come to this?

  Zephyr picked up an armful of papers and held them out toward me.

  “Look,” she said, “you don’t have to tell me whether I got the job or not. Just tell me where these need to go.”

  I sighed. “Is that coffee hot?”

  “I guarantee it.”

  “Right. Pour us both a slug. You’re on a week’s trial. Let’s get to work.”

  Wharf and Web

  23

  AT FIRST I was wary about the whole assistant thing. You work ten years alone, all your spaces get personal. But Zephyr somehow fitted right in.

  By the end of her first day, she’d split the case folders into two piles: Solved and Unsolved. There were more in the first category than I’d realised. Discovering that gave me a boost. We bagged these up and piled them in the cellar, next to the tokamak. Zephyr spent the next few days working through the Unsolved folders, filing them alphabetically and cross-referring the dates. She spent an hour learning my handwriting then checked all the contact reports. She indexed evidence. She even worked out this neat color code to show how close to resolution a case was: a blue tag meant cold as a Jotun’s jockstrap; yellow meant we had a trail to follow; red meant the trail was hot and the truth was close enough to smell.

  I hauled up a spare filing cabinet from the cellar, set it next to the coffee machine. I already had a cabinet in the office, but I’d never considered using it to keep files in. The top drawer leads to a deep and distant dimension. It’s a dangerous place, criss-crossed with railroad tracks. I’ve ridden its Search Engine from time to time. Each time I do, I swear I’m never riding it again. The middle drawer holds my arsenal. As for what I keep in the bottom drawer—well, that’s a story best left for another day.

  While Zephyr was doing all this I was doing what I do best.

  Sleuthing.

  I started with the mob of angry clients who’d come beating on my door. My doppelganger had promised them I’d solve their cases; it was a promise I intended to keep.

  First off was the shaggy-legged satyr. He’d hired me on behalf of his daughter, who suspected her new husband was a philanderer. After an hour on the young goat’s tail I discovered he was rubbing his horns on one of the hamadryad hookers who’d taken root across the road from my office. Talk about under your nose. I took a roll of pictures to the daughter as proof and left the two of them to butt it out.

  I worked steadily through the rest of the cases, not once questioning my good fortune. Not only had the doppelganger written a recruitment ad on my behalf, but the first applicant for the job had proved to be some kind of administrative genius.

  It was only later I got to wondering if it was all too good to be true.

  I tracked down the stetson-wearing man’s missing son in a Hot Hub whorehouse and exposed the woman with the broken arm for the insurance scammer I’d always suspected she was. Neither client thanked me. The docker’s missing wife I found in a back alley, covered in bruises. I informed the poor dame her husband had accused her of adultery. She informed me how many times he’d raped her. I took her to a refuge and left them to call the cops.

  Between times I caught up on penny-ante jobs for Japheth, Japheth, Pegasus and Jones, a firm of disreputable uptown solicitors. I served writs, collected a little debt. I also gathered evidence for a civil liability case—that meant taking pictures of a broken flagstone in Nephilim Square. The flagstone was about four hundred yards across and stuck up sixty feet. No wonder folk were tripping over it.

  The rain stopped toward the end of the week, and fog rolled in off the river and smothered the city. By then, Zephyr had the paperwork as straight as a unicorn’s horn. Me, I’d knocked seventeen case folders off the Pen
ding pile. For the first time in months I felt like I was moving forward.

  The only member of that mob still unsatisfied was the sulky sylph. She dropped by late one afternoon to chase me up. She was calm, a complete contrast to how she’d been on the day of the Tartarus heist. Hers was a weird case; she claimed someone was messing with her internal weather.

  “When you’re made of air,” she said as she breezed through the office, “climate change is a big deal.”

  “I need a few more days,” I said. “Maybe a week. Have you seen a doctor?”

  “I don’t need a quack. I need whoever it is to stop tweaking my jetstream.” Inside the sylph’s aerated body, the skies looked clear. But you never knew when a storm might be brewing.

  “Leave it with us, ma’am,” I said. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “‘Us’?” said Zephyr after the sylph had left. “Does that mean my probation’s over?”

  I surveyed the office. It still looked decrepit, but it was tidier than it had been in years. Maybe since forever.

  “You do a good job, honey,” I said. “You can stay. We’re nearly out of coffee though.”

  She held up a tin of grounds. “Way ahead of you, boss.”

  While Zephyr was messing with the urn, the morning papers arrived.

  The front pages were running stories about the fog (thickest for six hundred years), the regular brownouts caused by the recent implosion of the power district due to a Titanic brawl, political scandal up on the Mountain, where the Thanes who supposedly ran String City hadn’t been seen for days, latest rumors about the end of the world... the usual mix. The Herald had an exclusive shot of Medusa’s latest hairstyle and the Standard led with an op-ed piece about how the explosion at and subsequent closure of the Tartarus Club had unbalanced the economy so much the whole city was about to tip sideways. The scary thing was it sounded plausible.

  Right below the Tartarus article was a two-liner reporting sightings of strange hooded figures throughout the city.

  I thought back to what I’d seen on the Titans’ surveillance camera. Or thought I’d seen. Then I remembered the character lurking at the back of the mob that had crowded my door. I scanned the rest of the papers and found four separate reports about hooded strangers. Somewhere at the base of my skull I was getting, if not a hunch, then certainly an itch.

  Zephyr parked a cup of coffee on the desk, breaking my concentration. I stopped myself shouting at her. It was hard, getting comfortable with company. She must have sensed it, because she backed away.

  “I thought you said this was working out...” She left a blank space at the end of the sentence for me to fill.

  I folded the papers, gave her a long, hard stare. “Where are you from, kid?”

  “I already told you: a long way from here.”

  “I’m a private investigator. You think I’m going to accept an answer like that?”

  “It’s the only answer you’re going to get.”

  “Now you’re just weaving.”

  “I can weave all day.”

  “I’ll just bet. At least tell me where you’re staying. You turn up every morning, tip out every night. Where d’you go?”

  “Why should I tell you? It’s not as if you’ve got a home to go to.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I’ve seen the bunk down in the cellar, tucked behind that noisy old boiler that looks like a rocketship.”

  “So I sleep at the office—so what?”

  “So I was right: you have no home.”

  I found some sports results in the paper that looked interesting. “Trust me, I’ve got a home.”

  “So why don’t you ever go back there?”

  “You see that clock on the wall? Says it’s time to change the subject.”

  “Suit yourself.” Pouting, Zephyr dropped on the couch. “Anyway, where I’m living is no secret. It’s just a hostel down the road. I tried it on the off-chance, happened to mention I was working for you and the man behind the counter set me up a tab. I couldn’t believe my luck.”

  “The big brownstone? Guy who runs it has a pet salamander?” When she nodded I said, “That’s Tony Marscapone’s place. Tony’s a good guy. I did him a favor once—showed him where his wives were buried.”

  “Where his... how exactly was that a favor?”

  “Tony was wanted by the cops. Multiple homicide. Tony had a house full of four wives and zero affection. He kept saying how, first chance he got, he was putting them all on a train to Oblivion.”

  “Oblivion? Where’s that?”

  “You think you’re from far away? Trust me, Oblivion’s further.”

  “Why did he hate his wives so much?”

  “They were banshees. It was an arranged marriage—actually Tony was duped; the poor sap just found himself in the wrong bar at the wrong time. He got drunk and entered a karaoke tournament, only he accidentally checked the box on the entry form that put himself up as the prize. These four banshee sisters won the tournament on sheer volume, moved into his house and just carried on shrieking.” I held up my hand. “It’s a long story—all you need to know is one day there was no more noise from the Marscapone place and the cops fingered Tony. When they found he’d bought four train tickets to Oblivion the day before, well, that clinched it.”

  “How is sending someone to Oblivion murder?”

  “The fact you ask the question proves you’ve never been to the place. Anyway, after he got the death sentence, Tony got his one phone call. He called me, told me he bought the train tickets but never used them, couldn’t go through with it. I believed him. He hired me to save his neck. Thirty minutes before they were due to wire him up I was digging holes in the back yard of Tony’s next-door neighbor, a noise abatement officer called Jenkins. Turned out Jenkins had been filing complaints about the banshee decibels for weeks. When the sisters ignored his court order he went postal and silenced them for good. Buried them in his own cabbage patch and went right back to work without breaking sweat. Lucky for Tony, Jenkins forgot one vital thing.”

  Zephyr’s black-rimmed eyes were wide. “What?”

  “Echoes. You wait long enough, sound always comes back. Especially the death cries of a banshee.”

  I broke off. Zephyr’s hands were trembling so hard the coffee was slopping on her blue-jeans. I took the cup before she scalded her legs. As soon as I’d set the cup down, she grabbed my hands. She was shaking like Pompeii.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I was coping with all this, but...”

  “Coping with what?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not like I haven’t seen my share of strange things. Before I came here, I had this... oh, never mind. It’s just that I thought this place was starting to make sense. But hearing you talk about... about banshees and Oblivion—I don’t know, it just... and last night I could hear this couple in the next room at the hostel—”

  “What did you hear?”

  “It sounded like they were eating each other.” A tremor ran through her. “This place, this city, it makes no sense but somehow—”

  “It hangs together?” She nodded, leaking tears, dumb. “You get used to it.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to tell me how you got here?”

  Before she could answer, the office door swung open. Fog billowed in, followed by a tall, slender woman snug in glistening mink. Purple lips tightened round a black cigarette holder, then parted to leak blue smoke into the room.

  “My name is Kisi Sunyana,” she said, “and I want to hire you.”

  24

  I TOOK THE dame’s mink coat, sat her in the client chair. Her eyes were hot like the end of her cigarette, like the ruby on her wedding ring. Her silk dress was yellow, split and wrapped to reveal stripes of black skin. She looked like a wasp.

  Zephyr scowled at me as I hung the mink on the stand.

  “I thought we weren’t interested in new clients,” she hissed. “Not until the backlog’s cleared
.”

  “Who said I was interested?” She scowled and returned to her filing.

  “Do you have anything to drink?” said the dame.

  “Coffee?” I took my seat behind the desk.

  “I was thinking of something stronger.” She crossed her ankles; the diamonds on her shoes flashed like sun on water. Her cheeks worked the cigarette like bellows.

  I took a bottle of bourbon from the drawer, poured us each a double. Zephyr made a show of riffling papers. I ignored her.

  When the dame’s silence didn’t stop, I said, “So, Mrs Sunyana, what’s all this about?”

  “Please, call me Kisi. I’m here because of my husband.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “What do men always do? He’s cheating on me.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure! Why else would I be here?”

  “You’d be surprised. There’s plenty of folk hire a detective hoping things aren’t what they fear. What they don’t realise is, most of the time they are.”

  “Believe me, I’m sure. The only reason I need you to prove it is so I can crucify him in the divorce court. Then everyone will see what a louse he is!”

  I sat back, the bourbon burning the back of my throat. “So you still love him.” I stared at her through the smoke.

  She draped her arm over the back of the chair. “Whether I love my husband or not is irrelevant.”

  “If you still love the guy, why throw him to the wolves? Yourself too, for that matter.”

  “Have you ever been married?”

  “Twice.”

  “Did you love your wives?”

  “More than they knew.”

  “Then you know what I mean.”

  I opened my mouth to snap something back, then changed my mind. On the couch, Zephyr was peering at us over the top of a case folder; when she realised I was watching she buried her head.

  “So,” I said, downing the rest of the bourbon, “what have you got?”

  Kisi Sunyana reached inside her bag, handed me an envelope. I skimmed through its contents. They looked like contact reports from another detective agency. I checked the letterhead: Scrutator Inc.