The Lion’s Den supplied both . . . though halfway to ex-Vice officer Vernon Tuckwiller’s bar she wondered at the wisdom of going. The two and a half blocks felt like a trudge across the arctic. She staggered frozen through the two sets of doors.
The weather appeared to have cut the usual crowd of leos in half, letting her reach the bar with minor elbowing. Not that it diminished the noise level. Carrying on a meaningful conversation still required powerful lungs, lip reading, sign language, or texting. She welcomed the distraction from sullen thoughts. Even more, she welcomed the heat generated by human bodies packed in close proximity.
Behind the bar, Tuckwiller raised his brows. “What’ll you have?”
She never failed to marvel at his ability to make himself heard without visible effort. That voice and bulldozer build must have struck fear into the hearts of countless rags in his Vice Squad days, crashing into their illegal drug kitchens or gambling rooms.
“Something hot!” she shouted back. “And ten dd’s of tokens.”
“One Defroster coming up.”
He turned away, miraculously leaving the shelves of liquor and industrial-tough drinkware unscathed, and busied himself with pouring — a couple of jiggers coming from a container sitting on a hotplate — and presently set a transparent tankard of amber liquid in front of her along with a stack of vending tokens.
The tankard felt warm in her hand, but on taking an exploratory swallow, she found the drink — mildly sweet with coffee and cinnamon flavors — just tepid.
Then the top of her head blew off. At the same time, fire hit her stomach and sizzled through her arms and legs.
She gasped for air. “Holy shit! This needs a radiation hazard warning!”
Grinning, Tuckwiller held his cordless scanner toward her wrist. “But tell me you don’t feel the ice melting away.”
“My bones, too!”
His grin only widened.
With her scib and retinal pattern scanned and verified, Janna held the tankard high and shouldered her way toward the arcade games in the back. Passing leos bitching, telling war stories, or making acid comments on the presidential candidates. Others debated the suggested colonization moratorium. Opinion, as best she judged, ran against it — let those so sure they knew how to set up the perfect society do it on some other world. Of course the crowd included limpets, too . . . citizens infatuated with leos, a number wearing sweatshirts proclaiming their sentiments. Be safe tonight; sleep with a leo. Take me to TaSq. I welcome assaults with friendly weapons.
Cold had reduced the crowd enough that several tables — all Hardboard, cheap to replace, non-lethal when used for a bludgeon — had been moved to create a scrap of dance floor. Not that “dance” described what the space allowed. Just room for couples to cling tight — only clothing and the amount of light preventing more carnal activity — and sway to the Heylan’s Comet song she barely heard playing on the Muziki.
Beyond them two rows of virtual reality arcade games faced each other. Five stood idle, with her favorite, Road Rage, among them. Perfect!
Taking the precaution of sitting down at the machine first, she took several more swallows of the Defroster. Once her breath returned, she set the tankard in the drinks holder, pulled on the VR goggles, and fed tokens into the slot.
A town spread out before her . . . streets, houses, people working at everyday tasks. Never quite the same town. The features and target opportunities changed. And the defenses.
Choose your vehicle, a voice commanded, presenting her with a list that included everything from motorcycles to an armored personnel carrier.
From which she picked her usual — for its speed and agility — a blood-red Leland Leopard two-seater.
Stepping on the accelerator, she sailed into town and started her body count by running down a pair of joggers and a man walking his dog, followed by a woman with a baby stroller. A second child with the woman saved itself by dropping flat on the ground and an old woman on a motorized wheelchair escaped through a narrow space between two buildings, but Janna made up for the lost points by quick steering that netted her all the contestants in a bicycle race. Next she ploughed through a street fair, wiping out vendor booths, contestants in a dance contest, and the band playing for them.
Now the village came on alert. As an emergency siren wailed, a riot tank rolled out of the police station looking for her . . . machine gunner on top peering around him. She whipped the Leopard down an alley, however, then through a footpath underpass in a park. Let the tank try negotiating that. It netted her points for not only three more joggers but eluded a vigilante civilian with a shoulder rocket launcher long enough to circle and flatten him, too. Grinning, she spun the Leopard in a one-eighty turn to zero two leos chasing her on Electro-Harleys.
A schoolyard loomed before her.
As she ran the Leopard into it, teachers swept up children and dashed for the safety of a doorway.
Another teacher erupted from the building, leaping over children and fellow teachers to aim another shoulder rocket launcher at her.
“Shit!” Janna hauled desperately at her steering wheel.
Too late. The teacher fired. The car exploded in a giant ball of flame.
The scene dissolved in hollow laughter and swirling colors spelling: Rest in pieces.
Janna ripped off the goggles and slammed her fist down on the steering wheel.
With his unerring instinct for trouble, Tuckwiller bellowed, “You know the rules, leo! You break it, you pay for the damages before leaving!”
“You still lasted longer than I usually do,” a familiar male voice said behind her.
She stiffened, then relaxed and turned to look up, smiling. “Dale Talavera.”
He grinned. “After you called I kept thinking about you and wondered if you still hung out here off-duty.”
Standing, Janna wondered how she had forgotten what a nice set of shoulders he had, and laughing dark eyes she had to look up into. “Would you like to make a contest of it? My tokens.”
He shook his head. “I’ve played with you before. You have this habit of luring your opponent into a position where the defensive forces wipe him out while you escape. How about something less tempting to your killer instincts?” He pointed to the dancers.
Why not. She nodded, and after a last swallow of her drink, followed Talavera to the dance floor.
The space left no room for anything except melting together and swaying in place . . . but between the Defroster evaporating her brain and the music reverberating in her — some old Elric Corbin ballad rewritten into jivaqueme rhythm — that felt just fine.
This was what she really needed, Janna reflected, as his body heat soaked into her through her turtleneck and cargos. It chased the echo of the apartment and annoyance with Feds much better than a dozen Defrosters or high score at Road Rage. He felt lean and hard and smelled pleasantly of a subtle spicy cologne. His breath tickled her ear as he sang along with the music.
Presently his hands slipped down to cup her butt. “Remember flat dancing on the creeper in my sibs’ Annex shed?”
She laughed. “Oh, yeah. And the lesson learned . . . that the wheels need to be chocked for stability when you’re pounding like a drop hammer. We’re lucky we didn’t break our necks hitting that wall.” Sexual heat ignited in her at the memory. “What are you planning to do the rest of the night?”
“Sleep somewhere warm.” His hands tightened.
She dug her nails into his butt in return and pulled his hips hard against her. Hard indeed, she noted with satisfaction. “I still live this side of the Washburn campus.”
“I’m parked just half a block away.”
They grabbed their jackets and left without waiting for the song to end.
* * *
A roof and enclosed sides like those of a bus stop shelter protected the house’s entry from snow and wind, but not the cold. Between that and the heat from Talavera nibbling the back of her neck, Janna fumbled with her key fob, entering the code three times before realizing the lock was already disengaged. The upstairs couple had left it open again.
A complaint she shoved aside in the night-lighted hallway as urgency exploding in her with Talavera’s lips coming down on hers and his body pressing her against her apartment door. His own urgency palpable through both of their jackets. She thumbed the fob by instinct and they stumbled backward into the apartment.
Not bothering with lights, Janna tore off her jacket while he shed his and kicked the door shut. She began peeling him out of his unisuit in a rip of press close seams. Breaking the kiss, he pulled off her shoulder harness, turtleneck, and support tank in one single, amazing move, then found her mouth again and began unfastening her cargos.
Despite the driving hurry, hurry!, in her, she mumbled, “Wait! I’ve got to get my damn boots—”
And broke off with the hair lifting on her neck. Beyond the thunder of her heart and their panting, came other breathing. Someone else in the room! Behind her.
Janna dropped, diving off to her right, snatching at her discarded turtleneck to grope for the harness tangled in it. Her ears told her Talavera had gone the other direction through the kitchen archway, a greater dark in the darkness. Silently cursing, she finally found the harness and drew the Starke as she came up behind the end of the couch.
A shadow filled the easy chair beyond. She aimed for the middle. “Don’t move, choomba. I’m set on segs, so don’t even breathe unless you’re interested in a cardiac and lung transplant.”
“It’s just me, Bibi.”
Relief flooded her, followed by cold fury. “Turn on the light!” When he touched on the table lamp beside him, she glared at him along the Starke’s barrel. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Never mind asking how, with code readers standard equipment in their field kits.
“On second thought, I don’t care,” she snapped before he answered. “You have to the count of five to get the hell out.” She made a show of thumbing the selector to segs for real. “One.”
Mama frowned. “I have to talk to you.”
“I said sail! Two.”
“It’s important.”
“Three!”
In the kitchen doorway, Talavera pulled back up his unisuit and pressed the front closed. “Maybe you ought to listen to him.”
“Not tonight. Four!”
“I’ve just talked to Leonard Fontana on the Lanour station.”
Shock choked her. “What! Why?”
“He might well be a party to the smuggling, and the murder. It could explain his anxiety about locating Chenoweth’s corpse. Making sure the pickup went as scheduled. He needed to be interviewed.”
Setting down the Starke, she hauled her turtleneck back on, gritting her teeth. She refused to deal with this half naked. “When he’s someone who feels free to express his concerns in direct calls to our director? Calling him should have been discussed with Vradel first.”
Talavera eyed both of them. “Do you want me to leave?”
She answered without shifting her glare from Mama. “No. Stay, so I don’t kill him.”
Talavera ran a hand back through his hair, and sighed. “I’m thinking this is something I’m better off not witnessing.” He picked up his jacket. “Maybe we can get together another time.”
The door closed behind him.
Janna bared her teeth. “If I kill you, I’ll plead justifiable homicide. You spoiled what would have been a night of great sex.”
Mama shook his head. “Hit-and-run sex is empty.”
“So what you’ve got is almega?”
That hit. He winced . . . and for a moment she regretted the cheap shot.
Then her anger returned. “You seriously believe Fontana is behind the smuggling and murder?”
“He’s in charge of the station. He knows what goes on there . . . or ought to.”
He opened his slate and after a few taps and swipes, handed it to her.
She dropped on the couch, skimming through the bio on the screen. Leonard Michael Fontana, 50, born Waco, Texas. Parents both pilots, sending him to space camps and flight camps every summer along with an older brother and younger sister. He earned his own pilot’s license for light planes at fourteen and for small and mid-sized private jets at eighteen. Attended Baylor University for two years in Aerospace Studies, then transferred to the University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Yuma, studying hydroponics and xericulture.
“That’s growing plants with a reduced need for water,” Mama said.
She bared her teeth at him. “Thank you, I know that.”
He worked on the Lanour Farms in the summer and went to work full time for them on graduation in‘65. Married Dr. Mercedes Altamira in ‘66 (PhD in Nutrition) and became a foreman on the Farm’s hydroponics program. Twin daughters born ‘67. In ‘76, was offered the position of greenhouse manager on the Lanour-Tenning station. Went from that to assistant station director in ‘80 and director in ‘81.
Mama said, “He’s bound to have learned enough about construction there to arrange an accident.”
She handed back the slate. “It looks like he’s also invested a mega chunk of his life in the corporation and that station. Why would he rob it?”
“I thought a look at him might tell me.”
She sniffed. “And did he appreciate being called in the middle of the night?”
“He was still in his office. I think their day runs different from ours.” He plugged a data stick into the slate spindle and turned the screen toward her. “I recorded the conversation.”
Odds were the station had, too. Putting this call on record for the Feds or SCPD’s brass to see. Crap, crap, crap.
The screen remained briefly blank as the connection relayed through satellites to the Lanour station, then he fast-forwarded past the station’s communications gatekeeper, a Eurasian female, to the image of a trim jon with a look of experience and authority. But almost no lines on his face and a full head of dark hair untouched by grey. Eyes as amber as a wolf’s stared from the screen above a polite smile.
“Detective Maxwell? I’m Leonard Fontana. Am I to understand you’re with the Shawnee County PD, investigating the whereabouts of Paul Chenoweth’s body?” He spoke with a faint drawl.
Mama’s face did not appear in the recording, just his voice . . . crisply professional. “Yes, sir. I thought you’d want to know we’ve found Mr. Chenoweth’s body.”
The smile vanished. A hard gleam made his eyes look even more lupine. “I know. I spoke to Nafsinger’s not long ago. From here, Earth looks peaceful and beautiful. It’s difficult to believe there are people so wantonly destructive. Will it help find the gang members who did it if I ask the company to arrange a reward?”
“We now doubt any street gang was involved.” Briefly, Mama told him about the autopsy, and the conclusions drawn from it.
Fontana’s expression froze. “Smuggling? That’s impossible.”
“The station is a research facility. Some of that research must be valuable.”
“Listen to him, Bibi.”
Smiling again, Fontana’s drawl thickened. “Oh, I reckon corporations like Astrotec, Tellodyne and Wakabaishi have a yen now and then to see what we’re doing. I can’t see them desecrating corpses for industrial espionage, though. We’re not working with military projects here. There’s some medical research but mostly consumer goods.”
Janna frowned. Did he really expect them to believe that?
“Can you think of anything at all that someone might be interested in stealing from you?” Mama’s voice asked.
“I didn’t really expect him to answer,” Mama said, “but I wanted his reaction.”
Fontana shrugged. “Who can say? Nothing springs to mind. Sorry. Even if there were something, it couldn’t be smuggled out. Nothing exits this station, not packages nor personnel alive or dead, without being scanned, and believe me, Detective, in the hands of my security chief, that’s a thoroughness that makes Fort Knox look wide open.”
“You go to all that trouble when you have no valuable secrets?”
The grin faded, leaving the lupine gleam of his eyes more striking. “Better safe, isn’t that right?” He glanced at something or someone out of screen range, then focused back on the screen. “I need to go. Let me know when you catch the bastards who did that to Mr. Chenoweth, though.”
Mama turned the blanked screen back toward himself. “Well? What do you think?”
“He knows more than he’s saying. Of course in a call that’s on record on both ends and might be hacked, he wouldn’t admit to any possible leaks.”
“Especially with a stockholder meeting and proxy fight coming up.” Mama drummed his fingers on the slate spindle, expression going thoughtful. “Let’s see what that’s about.” Humming tunelessly, he tapped and swiped on the slate . . . frowned . . . stopped humming . . . tapped and swiped some more.
Janna closed her eyes. She thought sexual heat and the chill between the Lion’s Den and here had sobered her, but something of the Defroster must still linger. Lassitude crept through her. Rather than fight it, she sank back against the couch and closed her eyes.
“I’m impressed!”
Mama’s exclamation jolted her alert. She pushed upright, scrubbing her eyes with her palms. “Impressed by what?”
“Lanour-Tenning. Crispin Lanour founded it in ‘41 as a family-owned company, Lanour Farms. Growing Euphorbia plants in New Mexico and Arizona to exploit the esters in the sap for the manufacture of plastics and fuel. He was very successful because euphorbias grow well in arid areas, and using his dual degrees in biology and organic chemistry, he modified the plant sap to produce designer esters. In ‘48 the company bought up Tenning Plastics, which gave them—”
“Very interesting, I’m sure.” Janna yawned. “Can we fast-forward to the proxy fight?”
He frowned at her. “It is very interesting, and knowing the history helps understand what’s happening now. However . . .” He sighed. “. . . giving you the short version . . . the proxy vote, according to market analysts around the world, will decide whether Crispin remains president and CEO. Positions he’s held since the beginning.”
“Since ‘41? Now I’m impressed. How old is he?”
“Eighty-one.”
With decades yet to look forward to. “Is his position shaky?”
“That’s the big question. In ‘70, when they needed financing to build their space station, they made forty-nine percent of their stock a public offering. Fifty-one percent remains privately held by Lanour family members, and Crispin tied those shares up so they can’t be sold. But . . . he can’t control how those shareholders vote. Now his leadership is being challenged. A faction led by his daughter Cylla Lanour Pembroke opposes continuing construction on the space station, claiming it’s unneeded and the current size already makes it expensive to maintain. That faction also wants the research focused on products for which there is a clear market — the Thomas Edison, the-money’s-what’s-important, philosophy — rather than continue the present policy of developing products and making happy discoveries, then finding a market for them.” Mama paused. “Personally, considering where he’s brought the company to date, I’d trust him.”
“If he is ousted, it’ll materially affect the station.”
“Like the situation on Borkentek’s station last year.” His lips thinned and his voice sharpened. “To redirect the funds into, quote, more cost-effective projects, they discontinued development of several drugs, including, it’s said, one binding calcium to bones. Considering how many people work in low-gee these days, isn’t that something we need?”
Both the information and anger surprised her. “You actually keep track of things like that?”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s our world. It’s important to know what’s going on outside the SCPD.”
Well of course she knew that. She watched the news. When she had time.
She stifled another yawn. “But inside the SCPD tomorrow, we’re likely to be burned for that call to Fontana, so is there anything more tonight I need to know about?”
A flash in his eyes let her hope he might leave in annoyance. Instead, it gave way to a sly smile. “I drove out to Heartland and let myself into the Markakis shed to collect that cam in the van.”
What! “Why? Roos said SI didn’t find prints or trace in the van . . . which should include the cam.”
“Not in situ, but maybe going over it in the lab. So I took it there.”
“Again . . . why?”
“I kept thinking about the receivers risking discovery of the hearse by letting the van sit there all those hours.”
Okaaay. “If they already had the data stick, did that matter?”
“If they wanted to keep us from discovering the purpose of that incision on the shin . . . yes.”
Fair point. “Has the lab found anything?”
“They’ll get to it in the morning. Meanwhile, I’ve identified the cam as a Vigilant XT30 wireless with a broadcast range of three to four hundred yards.”
So? She started to ask, but instead prompted,: “And . . .?” because she heard it in his voice.
“It went on sale in December. According to racing news, Markakis placed second in a race at the Killarney International Raceway in Cape Town on December 8th.”
Making it unlikely he installed the cam. And why would he, with no reason to use the van all winter.
“You think smuggling receivers installed it.”
“Yes.”
Even so . . . “Is there any real chance of DNA on it belonging to one of the receivers and not just someone assembling or packaging the cam?”
He shrugged. “We’ll have to see. Meanwhile, that broadcast range means the receivers had to monitor from somewhere close.”
Somewhere warm, preferably. “The end apartments across the street are in range.” Assuming they had access to those . . . which a check for recent rentals should reveal.
Mama shook his head. “I’m thinking somewhere closer.”
Closer? Oh. “The day spa?”
He nodded. “We’ll check their surveillance. There can’t be that many jons using it during the week. Let’s ID those bastards’ faces before the Feds take the case. You’d like that . . . right?”
Yes must have shown on her face.
Mama pulled out his cell. “So let’s call Ms. Olinger and ask her to meet us at—”
“Not at this time of tonight!” Janna cut in. “This isn’t an emergency. I saw their hours on the door and they’ll be open at noon tomorrow.”
After a long pause in which she saw Mama considering acid commentary on By-the-Book Brill, and stick up her ass, he hauled on his jacket and stocking cap and stalked out.
From her doorway, Janna coded the front door behind him, then coded her own door and shot the top and bottom bolts. Physical barriers foiled even the best code readers.
She picked up her discarded clothing, and after holstering the Starke, secured it in the closet lock box along with the harness and her badge. As she started to hang up her jacket, voices rose upstairs.
One yelled, “Whore!” Something shattered in a loud crash.
“Bitch!”
Another crash followed, then another . . . followed by a scream of fury . . . or pain.
By which time Janna had dropped the jacket, unlocked the door, and bolted up the stairs.
She knew little about a pair of fems who moved in two years ago. Not even their names beyond the M. Lemmon and A. Pine label on their mailbox. She rarely even saw them, though Sid had gone up to a couple of their occasional loud Saturday-night parties . . . and come back advising her not to attend. Since he carried with him a faint whiff of Sonic mixed with Khiz, she agreed. Ignore them, as long as they went no farther into illegals than good old Sonic . . . which these days had become almost respectable.
Ignore screaming and possible physical assault, though . . . no. Dangerous as intervention in domestic disputes could be.
She pounded on their door. “Ms. Lemmon, Ms. Pine! Is there a problem?”
The apartment went silent.
She knocked again. “Is everyone all right?”
Someone moved close to the door. A husky voice snarled, “Mind your own business! We’re fine!”
Too bad she left her badge downstairs, or she would have held it toward the minicam above the door with the warning: “Make sure it doesn’t become my business.”
On the way back down the stairs, her cell beeped in a cargo pocket.
She grabbed for it. “Brill.”
The screen showed its default image. Quicksilver calling, she hoped.
Yes. “Country Grill, half an hour.”
Tonight? Crap. Not only another trip into the cold, but across town to the Oakland Mall. “I have to take an autocab. If I’m late, wait.”
“Don’t be too late. They’re not very patient.”
That caught her by surprise. Strung nerves in slighs she understood. Impatience? Something new.
* * *
The group waiting at the café also looked new for slighs. Expression troubled for the first time in her memory, Quicksilver met her at the door and led her under faux lantern light fixtures to a quartet at a red-checkered table in an isolated corner. To the casual observer they might be taken for typical gangers. Three males — one very good-looking — one female . . . none over twenty and the Hispanic-looking male and female maybe not eighteen. All whippy lean, with bone white hair swept up into wings like Lazaro Wu’s and black jackets — more expensive than slighs could afford — hanging on the back of their pseudo-wicker chairs. They gave her the same hard stare as the sligh in Celestial Bistro’s kitchen . . . and lounged in their chairs trying very hard for the ganger Your badge doesn’t impress me, leo posture. But in the staring contest, they broke contact first.
Still, it made her believe the Wraiths existed . . . even if limited to these four.
Quicksilver stepped between Janna and them. “No bovi.”
Since she had recorded them while approaching the table, she nodded and folded the visor away in a cargo pocket. Ignoring their role in the jacking did not mean keeping no record of them. Just in case . . . for the future.
“You’ve assured me you’re here only to talk, isn’t that correct?”
“Correct.”
Quicksilver moved aside and waved toward them. “Detective Brill, these are Viper, Titan, Havoc, and Fury.”
Not indicating which name belonged to which individual. The good-looking male had to be Viper, though. He matched the “total” cheekbones and “killer blue eyes” Beta Nafsinger waxed lyrical about in describing the jon who pulled her from the hearse. Mythology made Fury likely to be the female.
Disquiet rippled through Janna at slighs using names like these. What kind of death spiral were those jackass politicians creating? It never occurred to them that the more they pushed for mandatory identation, the harder the slighs would resist? Nor had it occurred to the slighs that a threatening manner only made the jackasses more determined?
“Now I will leave you with them.” Softly, Quicksilver added, “Remember your promise.” Then he left as though dematerializing . . . there one moment, gone the next.
The table had only four chairs. The Wraiths smirked as it forced her to bring a chair from another table to sit at the end.
“We’re just here because Quicksilver said you can be trusted,” Viper said.
Now it remained to decide who played “Pluto”. The male beside Viper with pale red eyebrows and lashes? Or the Hispanic male across from the red-head, whose features matched those of the female beside him so closely the two had to be siblings. Until they corrected her, she decided to call the red-head Titan, and the Hispanic male Havoc.
She smiled. “I appreciate you coming.”
Viper grunted.
She kept smiling. “Let’s order something hot to drink and warm up. Coffee? Tea?”
Fury’s eyes lighted. “Chocolate?”
“You owe us something to eat, too, for meeting you!” Viper said.
For that tone, she felt like feeding him a backhand. Instead she gave him a brief sample of what Wim called her “cold steel stare” before saying, “Food will warm us up even better, at that.”
Besides, the smells of coffee, toast, and frying had begun reminding her she last ate at noon. It must have been temper, then lust, that kept the Defroster from knocking her flat.
Viper pushed the call button on the wall.
Above it, a picture of a haystack and youth in overalls napping against it became a screen showing the head and shoulders of an apple-cheeked fem with a perky smile. “May I have your order please?”
“There will be five orders, one charge,” Janna said, and led off with her choices: hot chocolate and a country breakfast. “The rest of you have anything you want.”
They copied her order, except Viper, who substituted a steak for the breakfast’s bacon and sausage. Making a hefty debit from her account . . . but how often did they have the chance to indulge themselves? With luck, it would pay in information.
The haystack image returned. A waitron glided over . . . a four-foot pillar, red-checkered like the tabletop. A scanner extended from the column. “Please scan,” the waitron said in the same chipper voice that took their order. After reading Janna’s scib and retina, the scanner retracted. The waitron hummed for a moment, then said, “Thank you. Your order will be ready shortly.” and glided away.
Another waitron appeared minutes later, this one with a tray top holding mugs of chocolate topped with whipped cream and a big carafe for refills. Janna slid aside to let the column front fold forward and lower the tray to the table.
Once they removed the mugs and carafe, the tray retracted. Chirping: “Enjoy your order.” the waitron left.
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.”
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.”
Janna had to laugh, too. “We do. Now prithee, make us merry and point us toward the manager.”
The pointed teeth gleamed again. “Forthwith, mistress.” He spoke into a paw dangling over his shoulder. “SCPD detectives to see Mister Soliz.” Then bowing, he waved them past.
Into the blast of sound and wave of animal heat generated by a Saturday night crowd escaping the cold and weather with warm bodies, alcohol, and bar drugs.
The decor replicated a cavern: faux stone walls and floor, glowing “stalactites” providing such light as there was, and “stalagmites” supporting bar stools and tables. It appeared the drink orders arrived at the tables by coming up through those same stalagmites. Slim male and female wait staff in filmy garb — Ariels? — slipped through the crowd to collect empty glasses and bottles. Instead of a holo band, music boomed from hidden speakers. Beyond the bar, stairs led up to a second level, presumably the gaming rooms, since Janna saw no joyeurs in the crowd to indicate Prospero’s had a brothel license.
A female Ariel stepped in front of them and beckoned. They followed her through the crowd past a large alcove of arcade games and a length of wall whose “stone”, on closer examination, formed the doors of privacy booths. At the end of the row, another door opened on an elevator. The Ariel motioned them in with a smile and waved goodbye.
The closing door chopped off the noise so suddenly Janna felt as if she had gone deaf. “We should remember to bring ear plugs to these places.”
The control panel had a single light. Shrugging, Mama waved a hand past it and the car started up. “I guess with two floors, if it’s on one, it knows to go to the other.”
They had just time to shed their jackets when the door at the rear of the car opened on a tiled hallway and a stocky, thirty-something male in a tunic suit diagonally striped in black and silver.
Taking in Mama’s sweater, his brows rose. “Detectives Maxwell and Brill? I’m Rudi Soliz, the night manager.”
Mama’s lifted brows in return. “Your door doesn’t just scan for J-scibs?”
Soliz smiled. “We can choose to read adult ones as well. Although you were scanned in the elevator. Catering to mostly modest income patrons is no excuse for economy tech. How may I help you?”
“We hope your tech can,” Janna said. “We’re trying to identify two jons of interest in a homicide. How long do you save your door cam images?”
“A hundred twenty hours.”
Five days. So they no longer had Monday’s. “Then we need to see the door images for Thursday late afternoon and evening.”
“This way.” Soliz led them down the corridor to the security office.
Two females and two males in comfortable sweaters and cargos rather than uniforms sat in chairs with keyboard arms, monitoring the screen wall. Screens on the ends surveilled the parking area, front and rear entrances, and bar . . . though the latter’s dim lighting left the images useful mostly for detecting disturbances. The central screens and monitors’ chief attention, of course, focused on the gaming tables. Janna noted the usual blackjack, poker, roulette, craps, and slot machines. Plus rooms for mahjong, bridge, and a currently unoccupied table with — surprisingly — a digital chess board.
Mama pointed at it. “That’s unusual.”
Soliz shrugged. “A few of our corporate poobahs have a chess bob. They put a table in all their clubs. Players have the choice of a live opponent or the computer.”
“Does it see much play?”
“Not that I’ve noticed, except when one of the poobahs visits.”
Over her shoulder, a female monitor said, “Afternoons I’ve worked, I’ve seen players . . . older jons, usually, and a few fems. More when it’s freezing like this or hot out, but those put a cover on the table and play with an actual board and pieces.”
Soliz’s brows went up. “Interesting. Door surveillance Thursday evening, you said?”
“Yes, please,” Janna said.
“I need the virtual secondary.”
Without taking his eyes from the screens, a male monitor on the far end touched a control on his chair arm. A keyboard image projected from the abutting wall at standing height.
As Soliz’s hands played over it, a screen appeared on the wall. “Starting when?”
Lou had been waiting when Viper arrived. “Let’s run it from five o’clock, at double time.”
Soliz brought up the door cam. They watched the day door keeper — also costumed as Caliban, with a scowl befitting his role — admit the after-work influx of patrons. None of them in a jacket fitting Fury’s description. At six, the Caliban they met replaced the day Caliban . . . admitting patrons without the scowl and the same bow he gave them.
“There!” Mama said. “Back up and go forward real time.”
Soliz backscanned. At six thirty-three a jon wearing a navy blue jacket with red stripes over the shoulders passed Caliban. To Janna’s frustration, however, he looked down at his feet . . . giving them only a foreshortened view of his face.
“He’s avoiding the cam,” Mama said.
Janna agreed. “Maybe we’ll get a better view on the parking cams.”
Maybe spot the Borealis, too . . . though few vehicles came more generic-looking. Probably the reason Lou and Snowy drove it.
Checking the lot, they did see their blue-jacketed jon . . . but he walked through the lot from the direction of the street. With his head bent the entire time.
Janna grimaced. “It looks like we’re not going to see his face.”
He did not appear to have driven the Borealis to the club, either. Luckily they knew an intersection where they could find it.
“Trouble in sector D-3,” the female monitor on the near end said.
A quick check of the bar images confirmed two jons swinging at each other. The monitor obviously signaled the bar somehow because Ariels waded toward the fight. Not just pretty faces. They reached the combatants as one slammed the other into the wall, and at a touch on each, had the two sitting on the floor.
“Your wait staff are licensed for stingers?” Mama said.
Soliz nodded. “It’s a quick way to deal with difficult patrons. And if those are cranked enough to shake it off. . .”
Which could happen in the adrenalin-heat of an argument. The reason for refusing demands by be-kind-to-felons groups to use the low-charge Tasers. That and the fact stingers required touching the target to deliver their charge.
“. . .we have our Calibans.”
On the screens, Janna saw the doorkeeper make his way to the fight while a male Ariel replaced him at the door. So smoothly done only the nearest members of the crowd noticed.
“The Ariels say no one’s bleeding,” the monitor reported.
“Then have Caliban escort our combatants out and wait for autocabs.” Soliz pulled out a cell and sent off a text Janna knew went to Metrans requesting Safe-rides at this address.
A hand under one arm of each, Caliban lifted the jons to their feet and marched them to the door, followed by an Ariel with their jackets. When one of the jons lunged for the other instead of putting on his jacket, Caliban hoisted him overhead by the collar and belt and held him there . . . ignoring the jon’s thrashing while nodding goodbye to other patrons leaving more conventionally.
Janna had to laugh. “You make them pay their own fare?”
“Of course. We want them home safely but the club isn’t a charity.”
Safe-rides running on auto — not giving the rider the ignition code — prevented any destination other than home . . . such as another club or bar.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Janna said, “I don’t think so. Thank you for your time.”
Down at the door they waved at Caliban as they passed him . . . still holding the belligerent and cursing drunk over his head. “Farewell, master, mistress,” he called after them. “Farewell, farewell.”
Janna grinned. “I could come drinking here just because of him.”
Mama nodded absently. In his frankencab he turned on the heater and opened his slate. “Where did you say the smugglers picked up Viper?”
“Twenty-first and Maryland, somewhere close to seven.”
He entered his code to connect to Traffic. “I’ll start at quarter to.” He ran the intersection slowly, and found the Borealis as the frankencab began warming up. “Seven-oh-three. Tag LVD 802. There’s two in front, too muffled to really see their faces.” He handed her the slate.
More than muffled. Between a scarf and cap, only the driver’s eyes were visible . . . and very little more of the passenger.
She handed the slate back and pulled out her own to run the tags. Surprise, surprise. “It’s registered to Polo Markakis.”
Mama’s brows arched. “That isn’t what I’d expect him to drive.”
She ran a check for all vehicles registered to him. “It’s one of six. Maybe for weddings and funerals. Garage companions are a Nyati Duma, Mercedes Vulcan, a . . .” She whistled. “. . . Bugatti Veloce 70X. I guess his family does have money. I can’t believe he’s gone halfway around the world, though, and left that just sitting in his garage! There’s also a Kansu Sumo — when he hates being restricted to one lane, I guess — and a Denali mountain cycle.”
Mama swiped and tapped his screen. “LVD 802 tracks back to the Camden Addition . . . where we lose traffic monitoring. Castlerow country.”
“Vehicle registration lists his address as Revere Loop.” Janna brought up a city map. “That’s off Camden Road.” She frowned. “I wish he were in this country so we could bring him in for a chat.”
“Roos gave me his contact numbers. And it’s. . .” He tapped and swiped some more. “. . . eight o’clock or so in the Kalahari. Let’s call him.”
“But he’s racing.”
“Only during the day.” He found the numbers and showed them to her. “You call. I think he’ll respond better to a fem than me. Meanwhile, I’ll trace the Borealis forward from where they picked up Viper.”
Janna entered the cell number. After six rings it switched to v-mail. She thought fast, considering what message might encourage him to call back. “This is Detective Janna Brill with the Shawnee County PD in Topeka, Mr. Markakis. There’s a possibility one of your vehicles here has been stolen.”
As she started to disconnect, a face with a week’s beard and frantic dark eyes appeared on her screen. “What vehicle? Oh, my God! The Bugatti? Did someone blast through the garage wall?” Behind him lay what appeared to be a mess tent.
“Your neighbors have reported seeing your Borealis on the street in the area.”
Markakis blew out his breath in relief. “Then there’s a mistake. That can’t be my car.”
“Your tag is LVD 802.”
“Yes, but . . . if you were going to steal one of my cars, would you take the Borealis?”
“Why do you have one?”
“For when I need a car to loan friends or a servant for running errands.”
“So these friends and servants would have the ignition code.”
“Not the garage codes.” He frowned. “Look . . . I don’t have time for this now. I have to focus. My start time today is in half an hour.”
“I’ll make this fast. Could someone you’ve previously given the codes to be using it? A former servant?”
“No! The Grainger agency sends me staff for the house when I’m home and their personnel are bonded. Besides . . . I changed the house codes before leaving in December.”
“Your Heartland Annex shed code, too?”
He blinked, then frowned. “Yes. Why?”
“You surely left the new ones with someone in case of emergencies.”
He sighed impatiently. “Of course I did! My lawyer, Donna Fonseca. But she wouldn’t use them except in an emergency.”
“So she’s the only individual right now who has the codes and is authorized to use them.”
“Yes. Yes! Now, I’ve got to go! I won yesterday’s leg which puts me second overall just fifteen minutes behind Lo Chung. I might make that up today. We’ve got territory I think is more than his Zhanshu can handle.”
“Then I wish you good luck. But . . . would you give me the garage codes so my partner and I can check on your vehicles?”
“I don’t know you.”
She held her badge up to the screen and activated the surface laminate.
“Get a warrant and see my lawyer. Goodbye.”
Mama took her cell. “I have one quick question first. Do you think working with Dr. Fosse is a factor in how well you’re doing in the race?”
Janna stared at him.
Markakis glared and disconnected.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“While you were talking to him I found these.” He turned his slate toward her and paged through a number of pictures showing Markakis in restaurants, clubs, and a winner’s circle with a beautiful blonde. “I saw a picture of her, Dr. Ekaterina Fosse, with him the first time I looked him up. Just now I’ve found a news item dated Johannesburg three weeks ago showing her with him in a nightclub and a caption: Dieter Fricke celebrates his Kyalami 500 victory with Nyati teammate Polo Markakis. Which is interesting, because that was an A1 race and here Markakis is three weeks later in this Kalahari rally. They’re very different kinds of racing. Which also makes me wonder, if he’s that versatile and talented, why he has this personal racing team. As a hobby? His racing statistics are better when he’s driving for someone else than himself.”
“Mama!” Sheesh! “Why did you ask him about this Dr. Fosse?”
“There’s no images of her with him before the one in Johannesburg three weeks ago, but plenty since. The timing’s interesting, don’t you think? She’s a sport psychologist. They often use hypnosis to help clients build confidence and concentration.”
“So you’re wondering if she does, too, and got Markakis’s codes with it? Assuming he isn’t part of the smuggling.”
“What do you think? Once he got over panic about the Bugatti, he turned impatient. To me he sounded too focused on racing to lie effectively at the same time.”
Janna had to agree. “Yeah. Lou and Snowy arrived here two weeks ago. Whoever bought the data from the station had to know the delivery location long enough before then to arrange for agents.”
Mama drummed his fingers on his slate spindle. “I wonder whether the delivery plan started with Chenoweth or Markakis.”
Janna eyed him. “With Markakis? Surely with Chenoweth, as the only way to smuggle the data stick.”
“There are doubtless other possible ‘couriers’ on the station. But . . . the one chosen came down to Forbes . . . located in the home city of Markakis — currently driving for a racing team sponsored by Uwezo — who has not only a house that lets the buyer’s agents avoid the transaction trail created by staying in a hotel but a van as part of Markakis’s own racing team’s equipment.”
“You think the buyer is Uwezo.”
“How much coincidence can you believe in?” Mama handed her his slate and switched on the fans. “Track the Borealis from picking up Viper.”
She asked Traffic for record of the tag from seven Friday morning to seven Saturday morning, just to be thorough, and expanded the thumbnails one by one in sequence. “It passes through Twenty-ninth and Van Buren at seven twenty-two, then back through at eight ten.”
Mama said, “If we check Zinzer’s surveillance, I think we’ll find they sat in the car keeping warm, probably in front of the store so they had a good view of northbound vehicles, and spotted the hearse in time to hit the Walk button and stop traffic. Where did the car go from there? Somewhere near E-world?”
“Twenty-first and Swygart. Next recorded at that intersection at two fifty-four.” She frowned at the screen. “He spent over twelve hours parked unnoticed somewhere on that stretch of Swygart.”
“Maybe the apartment lot across the street.”
“From there he drove to Heartland, then . . .” She opened more thumbnails. “. . . to Camden, with two riders in the car. The tags don’t register anywhere after that.” Not even when she extended the search another twenty-four hours.
“Because they no longer needed it. They had what they came for, and the horses are long gone from the stable. But we shall see.”
Janna looked up from the slate at him . . . and stared at the neighborhood around the car. A castlerow . . . large houses sitting in grounds protected by high, spike-topped metal fences. Searching the Borealis’s route, she had paid no attention to Mama’s.
“Where—” she began, then spotted a street sign. To her dismay, Camden Road. Crap. “Damn it, Mama. No! We’re not going to Markakis’s place at this time of night.”
He turned up Revere Loop. “We’re almost there already.”
She fought down an itch to put a Thor in him and take over driving.
As they turned in at Markakis’s address, she saw with relief that a closed gate blocked the drive — a snow-free surface indicating solar pavers. Relief dying in a wave of frigid air as Mama ran down his window and pointed his code reader at the keypad post beside the drive.
“Mama!” She reached across him to grab his arm. “Don’t!”
Too late. The gate had already begun rolling aside.
Suddenly, fans screaming, the car shot backward out of the drive with whiplash speed of its racing drive, and up the street still in reverse . . . around the curve of the loop. From down at Markakis’s came the loud clang of a closing gate.
A clang making her stomach lurch. “You set off an alarm?”
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “The code initially looks elementary, so I just started entering. Except it ends in a number series I realized one nano too late — and most people wouldn’t at all — that’s a request for an additional sequence to disarm an alarm. Which I could have dug out if I’d taken the time to fully analyze the code in the first place.” He sighed. “Pride goeth, etcetera.”
The gate had begun opening, though, without that disarming sequence.
She sucked in a breath. “It’s a trap system.”
Offering a seemingly nominal barrier to entry, but preventing anyone who took advantage of that from leaving . . . holding them until law enforcement arrived.
Anger sparked in her. The gate would have locked behind them, leaving them to face questions by a Sherwood patrol unit responding to the alarm forwarded from the security company . . . and maybe more later from the opies. They still might end up at the Office of Professional Standards. “Did the gate have surveillance?” Maybe not a clear view of them in the frankencab, but certainly one of the uniquely identifiable vehicle.
“I didn’t see a cam, but that’s why we got the hell out . . . in case entering the code without the disarming sequence triggered a hidden one.” He took a breath. “If anything, we ought to be a blur, maybe farther obscured by the headlights’ glare.”
She crossed her fingers and hoped.
The car hovered, idling. Mama touched the temple of his glasses, throat moving in sub vocalization. Talking to Com.
“Why—” No need to finish the question. “Crap. You asked for a link to Sherwood traffic. You’re waiting for the watchcar. You still want in there.”
He edged the car forward enough to see around the curve. “There’s a Metrans stand on Camden if you want to leave.”
Conscience rather than the icy trudge to the cabs kept her in the car. Leaving amounted to abandoning Mama, her partner no matter how much she wanted to beat his head against the steering wheel.
“What do you want there?”
“A look at his security. Ah . . . there they come.”
A watchcar turned up the street and pulled in at Markakis’s gate. Running silent, but the glow of city lights off the cloud cover revealed its distinctive white-over-black and the light rail on top.
Mama sent the car floating forward until setting down on the street short of the drive, where he swung out and strolled toward the watchcar. “You, too, Bibi.”
The leos — both male— climbed out of their vehicle . . . bulky in their winter jackets. The small amount of face that showed between their visors and fleece collars settled into suspicious lines as they eyed the frankencab.
“Sir—” the driver began in the tone used for demanding to know identities and business here.
Mama held up his badge. “Morning. Detectives Maxwell and Brill, CAPR. What’s Patrol doing here?”
Of course . . . ask first. Offense made the best defense.
“We got a call from XC-cure that someone tried an unauthorized gate entry. Is that piece of junk what CAPR’s driving these days?”
Mama smiled. “It’s my personal vehicle and not what it seems. Check it out.”
The pair — name tags reading Boggs and Waddill — did so. While they walked around the car, touching the “peeling” paint and “cracks” in the airfoil skirt, Mama nudged Janna between him and them.
From behind her, he said, “Twister Sportster chassis, race-tuned drive.”
They turned back around, shaking their heads. “That’s brainbent,” Boggs, the driver, said. “The Twister chassis and race drive sound almega, but why do . . . that?” He pointed at the body.
“To watch the faces of someone who’s spent gold-card on a Lambo or Leland cat as I blast by them on the Interstate fast lane.”
The patrol team grinned.
Then Waddill came back to business. “We’re here because of a possible security breach. Why are you?”
“Part of a current case involves vehicles belonging to Polo Markakis, but he’s in Africa driving in the Kalahari Safari Rally. Brill reached him a few minutes ago. You tell them, Bibi.”
What was he doing back there?
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed the code reader in his hand again. Of course. Damn him.
Pulling her jacket higher up her neck screened him fractionally more. “Markakis says seeing his vehicles on the street has to be a mistake, because he hasn’t given anyone his codes or permission to use his vehicles.”
Mama said, “Can XC-cure tell if anyone got in?”
“No,” Boggs said. “The surveillance the breach set off has a blurred image of a vehicle leaving cam range but it’s possible someone on foot went through. We need to have someone open the gate for us.”
“I can do it,” Mama said.
What? Janna’s gut knotted.
“Markakis gave us the gate code to check the property.”
She turned to find him tapping in the code. He winked at her as the gate rolled aside.
Waddill said, “Someone needs to stay and watch for anyone trying to leave.”
Stay in the warm car. Which Janna doubted would be either Mama or her.
Correct. Mama headed for the gate. “I think it’s between you two.”
Boggs dug out a vending token. “Call it.”
“Heads.”
It came up tails. Boggs patted his partner’s shoulder.
Waddill gave him a middle finger salute and followed Janna and Mama. “Are you sure we’re not going to be locked in?”
“We won’t be.”
Some fifteen feet up the drive, Mama halted and waited for the gate to close. It did so almost soundlessly this time, instead of the clang she remembered from before. Then he walked back toward it. After a few steps, the gate rolled aside again.
“Okay,” Waddill said.
They waited for the gate to close once more, then resumed heading for the house. On the way, Waddill swung the beam of his flashlight to the right and left of the drive. The light found only an unbroken layer of snow.
Near the house, the drive split, swinging right to a five-door garage separated from the house by a long, transparent-walled breezeway, and circling left in front of the house — a wide, low structure that looked like a slab of glass.
“I’ll have a look around the garage,” Mama said.
Janna followed Waddill to the house, along a walk also cleared by solar pavers. Exterior lights blazed on at their approach, turning the glass copper-colored. By pressing her face to the glass, gloved hands around her eyes — if Markakis had adjustable-polarization he left it on transparent — Janna saw a slice and dice style interior. A single space at the moment but the furniture arranged to let wall panels pull out and divide the area into smaller sections. The furniture itself caught her eye. Not the leather couches and sling chairs but a sofa table of glass on top of a bronzed internal combustion car engine, another table from part of an airplane wing — perhaps an aileron — two end tables of stacked wheel rims. One wall looked like a maze of plumbing, except angles held shelves with trophies on them and photos hung between. It all looked tidy. Even the hard-framed slates for magazines strewn on the car-engine table looked artistically arranged. Ready to be recorded for a gossip channel segment on At Home With Race Car Driver Polo Markakis.
While she peered inside, Waddill had waded on around the house, hunched in his jacket. He came back laughing. “Yeah, we should.”
“Should what?” she asked . . . though that sounded like a remark addressed not to her but Boggs, via their linked bovis.
“Markakis has a mini-racer track out back. My partner says this summer we need to come by when he’s using it, claiming there’s a noise complaint from his neighbors. Maybe talk him into giving us a turn.”
“It’s almega fun.” She drove mini-racers several times during her racing idyl summer with Talavera. The first time she had driven a wheeled vehicle other than her Stratford electrocycle. “What about the house?”
“Nothing suspicious that I can see through the windows. Windows and doors secure. The only tracks in the snow are animals’ and mine. It looks like whoever tried the gate didn’t come on through.”
Mama came from the garage. “All secure over there . . . no indication anyone has been in. We’ll text Markakis and let him know.”
“Then I think we’re finished here.” Waddill stamped snow off his boots and headed back down the drive.
On the street they left before the watchcar, giving the Patrol team a goodbye salute.
Blessedly, the frankencab still retained some warmth. Janna pulled off her gloves and rubbed circulation back into her fingers while waiting for more heat from the vents. “I hope you didn’t try going into the garage.”
“I didn’t have enough time.”
“But you tried?” Son of a bitch.
He sighed. “Rack back. I only analyzed his security. It puts banks to shame. Markakis didn’t spare the digidough. There are no windows and the breezeway sides are armor-class polycarbonate. Every door, including the one from the breezeway into the garage, has four levels of coding. The first level’s is long as a VIN number and ends in the sequence asking for a disarm code. I’m assuming the other levels are similar.”
Wow. “So short of using a plasma torch or explosives, no one gets in without the codes.”
“Or a lock fob. I don’t see Markakis spending ten minutes entering code every time he wants in the garage.”
Janna frowned. “So despite what he claims, you think he gave his fob to someone?”
“Under hypnosis he could have given the fob to the good doctor for duping.”
“And we’re no closer to knowing what Lou and Snowy look like or their real names.”
Mama grunted. “Unless we get to the spa before the Feds take over.”
“Which we can’t do tonight. Right?” she said, and when Mama frowned, added: “Right, Mama?”
He sighed. “Right.”
“So please drop me off at home.”
They made the drive in a silence that worried her. Surely he could not be thinking of something brainbent like waking the spa’s manager. Then she remembered that he had walked out on a fight with his cohab.
“Are you going to be able to go home?”
He hesitated, then grimaced. “I don’t know. I heard something break as I left.”
Like her upstairs neighbors this evening.
He cleared his throat. “Would you mind if I dossed on your couch tonight?”
“There’s no need to use the couch. Take Sid’s bed.”