“Skip the commentary. What were they looking for?”
“Some hired gun, I think. Named Hassan. I think they wanted to know if they could link the two of you.”
“An Afghan canine and an Indian tiger—do they know how silly that sounds?”
“The war’s been over for eighteen years. Things change. Just wanted you to know the Fed’s interested in you. I got to go. Still want the data on Nugoya?”
“Keep it.”
“Don’t let the Fed screw you.”
“I try to avoid it.”
Bobby’s face winked out and the news came back on.
Wonderful stuff to wake up to. Not only was he broke and one day closer to eviction, but now the FBI was curious about him.
The comm was talking about dead politicians. Nohar told it to shut up.
There were still two messages on his comm, waiting for his attention. One had been forwarded from his office—
Maybe it was a client.
Yeah, real likely, and maybe a morey would get elected president. Nohar told the comm, “Classify. Phone messages.”
“two messages. july twenty-ninth. message one, ten-oh-five a.m. unlisted number—”
The voice of the computer was a flat, neutral monotone. Nohar never understood the urge people had to make computers sound like anything but. He told the comm, “Play.”
Nohar didn’t like calls that didn’t ID themselves. People who called from unlisted locations generally had something to hide.
This caller definitely had something to hide, the screen came up a generic test pattern. This guy either didn’t have a video pickup, or had turned his camera off.
“I hope to reach you, Mr. Rajasthan.” The voice that came over the comm sounded like it was at the bottom of a well. It sounded bubbly. The words oozed. “I have need of the service of a private investigator. Please meet me at Lakeview Cemetery today at one-thirty p.m. This is not something I can discuss on a phone. I look for you by the grave of Eliza Wilkins.”
That was the end of the message.
“Damn. It was a client.”
“instructions unclear.” The comm thought Nohar was talking to it.
Nohar told it, “Comm off,” and the comm shut off obligingly.
It was a client, and a damn secretive one at that. Nohar didn’t trust the situation one bit. There was little he could do about it. Nohar was so low on cash that he would have to at least meet the guy—
Nohar suddenly realized that it was already fifteen after one.
• • •
It took him two minutes to dress and another five to call Lakeview and get a plot number for Wilkins. Nohar did it with the video off, because if they saw he was a moreau it would have taken five times as long.
The first thing to greet him as he walked out into the misting rain was the acrid smell of burning plastic. The smoke made his nose itch. He realized the smell was coming from a burning car up by the traffic barriers.
Across the street from his apartment was an abandoned bus. There was a fresh graffiti logo on it. “ZIPPERHEAD—Off The Pink.”
Another gang with it in for humans.
He walked up Mayfield, toward the cemetery, passing a knot of pink cops at the traffic barrier. Apparently this was the latest violence the news was going on about when he woke up. The fire was burning a prewar Japanese compact, an ancient Subaru. The car was wrapped around one of the concrete pylons. The way the thing had gone up—was still going; the cops were letting it burn itself out in the middle of the street—it had to have been wired with explosives. Inductors might explode, but they don’t burn very well.
The cops didn’t stop him—any other part of town and they probably would have on general principles.
The car wasn’t all. It had been a busy morning. A block past the cops, things got ugly. Upwind of the burning plastic, Nohar could smell the scent of someone, multiple someones, who had bought it nasty. He smelled blood, fear, and cordite. The victims smelled canine.
He rounded the old cemetery gate—sealed by a solid four meter concrete wall behind the flaking wrought iron—and headed down toward Coventry. When he turned the corner, he could see the medics loading body-bags—three vans’ worth of body-bags. Canine had been a good guess. Nohar caught sight of one of the victims before the black plastic was zipped over the face. The body was a vulpine female with a small caliber gunshot wound to the right eye. One of the hispanic medics saw him looking over. There was the fresh smell of fear from the pink.
Another day, Nohar would have ignored it. Today, however, he had just had a case blow up in his face, the Fed was taking an unhealthy interest in him, the record July heat and the misting rain were making his fur itch under his trench coat, and—if his luck held—he was going to be late and miss his potential client. Today he was in a particularly bad mood.
Nohar could not resist the urge to smile.
Some moreaus don’t have the facial equipment to produce a convincing smile, but Nohar’s evolved feline cheeks could pull his mouth into a quite perceptible arc. The same gesture also bared an impressive set of teeth. Predominant among which were two glistening-white canines, the size of a man’s thumb.
The poor guy didn’t deserve it. Nohar could tell he was nervous enough just being in Moreytown. He didn’t need to have a huge predatory morey looking at him like he was lunch.
Nohar didn’t hang around for the reaction. He was still running late. Two blocks further down, at the intersection of Mayfield and Coventry, was the only open gate on this side of Lakeview Cemetery—seemed appropriate that it was into the Jewish section.
When he reached the right monument, “Eliza Wilkins, 1966–2042, beloved wife of Harold,” it was thirty-two after. He was in time for the show. A funeral was progressing below him.
He was out of sight of most of them, and it was probably a good thing. They were planting someone of consequence, and from his vantage, it was pinks only. He thought he saw a morey in the crowd, but—damn his bad day-vision—it turned out to be a black pink with a heavy beard.
Not a morey in the lot, and the whitest bunch of pinks he had ever seen. Especially under the canopy. There, he figured on fifty people who got to use the folding chairs, at least another fifty standing back under cover, and a hundred or so milling about beyond some sort of private security line in back of the paying customers. Even with his poor eyesight he could make the types. The pinks who knew the corpse were obvious, they wore their money—he could see the glints of their shoes and jewelry whenever they moved—and they were, with few exceptions, white. The pinks who wanted to know the corpse were just as easily made, and they were closer to the normal mix of human coloring, a few blacks, orientals, hispanics. The black cops were totally out of it, with their cheap suits and their attention on everything but the service. The private security goons—they were white—were better dressed than the cops and were intent on keeping the flow of riffraff behind the tent. Then, the back with the crowd, were the vids. Cameras and mikes at the ready . . .
Some of the riffraff—mostly blacks and orientals—were carrying signs. Looked like a full-fledged protest was going on. The vids were paying as much, if not more, attention to the riffraff than to the service. Nohar wished he could make out more of the signs, but the best he could do was read the occasional word. Lots of isms, “Racism,” “Sexism,” “Speciesism.” The signs that weren’t isms seemed to mention capital-R Rights.
The Right to what, Nohar couldn’t read.
Nohar wondered who had died—irritating, because he thought he had heard something about this, and the job his anonymous client had in mind probably involved the stiff. Perhaps the guy left all his money to some morey squeeze and they needed to track her down.
Nohar heard a truck, and hoped it wasn’t security. The pinks might take offense at a morey walking around the human part of the cemetery. B
ut instead of security, Nohar saw an unmarked cargo van. A Dodge Electroline painted institution-green. It was windowless, boxy, cheap, and either remote-driven or programmed. It wasn’t the kind of vehicle Nohar expected to see in a cemetery. It pulled on to the shoulder and backed toward him. When it stopped, the rear doors opened with a pneumatic hiss.
The smell was overpowering. His sensitive nose was suddenly exposed to an open sewer. Nohar was enveloped by the odor of sweat, and bile, and ammonia. Even a pink would’ve been able to sense it.
He had no idea what this guy was supposed to look like, or who he was—but Nohar did not expect another frank. They were supposed to be rare. Despite that, what the opening door revealed couldn’t be anything but a frank.
And a failure at that.
Once Nohar’s eyes had adjusted to the nearly black interior of the cargo van, he could see it. The frank was vaguely humanoid and had a pasty white color to its rubbery skin. Its limbs seemed tubular and boneless, and its fingers were fused into a mittenlike hand. It wore a pink’s clothes, but its pale bulk was fighting them. Rolls of white flesh cascaded over its belt, its collar, even its shoes. Glassy eyes, a lump of a nose, and a lipless mouth were collected together on a pear-shaped head. Its face seemed incapable of showing any expression. It seemed that, if the clothes were removed, the frank would just slide down and form a puddle on the ground.
The frank also massed more than Nohar did though it was a meter shorter.
Whatever gene-tech had designed this monstrosity had screwed-up big-time. Until now, Nohar could never quite fathom the reason for the pinks’ horror at the franks. It seemed bizarre to him that humans, who took all the genetic tinkering with other species in stride, were so aghast when someone tinkered with their own. If this was a sample of what happened, Nohar could begin to understand. Maybe, thought Nohar, pink genes didn’t take kindly to fiddling.
The voice was the same as the one over the comm—deep, bubbly, and, somehow, slimy. “Are you the detective, Nohar Rajasthan?”
Briefly, Nohar wondered if he needed the money this badly—he did. “Yes.”
Nohar began to feel warmth coming from the back of the van. Nohar realized that the frank had the heat on in the van, all the way. Back where the frank was sitting it could be fifty degrees. An unpleasant sound emerged from the frank’s mass. It could have been a belch. “We have fifteen minutes before van goes to next stop, forgive. I need to smuggle myself out. Have to keep meeting secret.”
Nohar shrugged. “Then you better get on with it.”
At least the frank took Nohar’s appearance in stride. In most of the directories it didn’t mention that Nohar was the only moreau in the city with a private investigator’s license. For some people, his address wasn’t a big enough clue. Of course a pink detective would have a problem with this guy, even more so than with Nugoya. At least with Nugoya, a pink could pretend the guy had been human.
“What kind of job? Surveillance or missing persons?”
Nohar heard flesh shifting as the frank moved. “Do you know who is being buried down the hill?”
Chalk one up for obvious conclusions. The stiff was involved. “Rich, human, lots of friends.”
Another ugly sound emerged from the mass of white flesh. It might have been a laugh. “The dead man is a politician. His name is Daryl Johnson. He is the campaign manager for twelfth district congressman, Joseph Binder.”
Nohar was wondering about the frank’s weird accent when he realized that the frank had ducked his first question. “What’s the job?”
“I must know who killed Daryl Johnson.”
Nohar almost laughed, but he knew the frank was serious. “Outside my specialty.” So much for the money he needed. “I don’t mess with police investigations—”
“There is no police investigation.”
Nohar was getting irritated with the frank’s bubbling monotone. “I work with moreys. I don’t work with human problems. You got the wrong P.I.”
“Binder pressures the police, they close the case. I need to know if someone in my company is responsible for Johnson’s death . . .”
Nohar looked straight into the frank’s eyes. That usually unnerved people, but the frank was as expressionless as ever. “Did you hear what I said?” It took Nohar a while to realize that the reason he didn’t like the frank’s eyes was because they didn’t blink.
“Let me finish, Mr. Rajasthan. You are the only person I can contact for this job. For obvious reasons, I am unable to hire a human investigator—”
“No solidarity shit.”
“Practical matter. No qualified human is willing to talk to me. My company is Midwest Lapidary Imports. We’re privately owned. We import gemstones from South Africa. The board is formed of South African refugees—”
“All like you?”
The frank showed no offense at the question. “Yes, like me. We retain contacts in the mining industry—” Nohar got a picture of the South African gene-techs trying to create a modified human miner. Hell, maybe the frank’s appearance wasn’t a mistake. For all Nohar knew, this guy was perfectly adapted for work in a five-mile-deep hole. Nohar stopped musing and waited for the frank to get to the point. “To succeed, the owners of Midwest Lapidary Imports, MLI, need to remain hidden, unnoticed, private. The company will not survive if our existence is widely known.
“With Johnson’s death there is the possibility that one of our number is behind the murder . . .”
Nohar sighed. Learn something new every day. A bunch of franks were importing diamonds from South Africa, probably illegally. The pinks would just love that idea. The Supreme Court was still debating if the 29th amendment even covered the franks. No one knew yet if the franks were covered by the Bill of Rights, the limited morey amendment, or nothing at all. Before the pinks in this country had even locked down the legal status of engineered humans, here were a few, acting just like eager little capitalists. “You said Binder’s blocking the investigation. What are you worried about?”
“One kills once, one kills again. You have no idea what it would mean if one of our number is directly involved in a human’s death. The company is a worthy project, but someone may commit atrocities in its name. I cannot, nor can anyone else, abide our secrecy, our existence, if one of us kills to further our ends.”
“How is your organization involved?”
“The police call it a robbery-murder because there are over three million dollars in campaign funds missing from his house—”
“Sounds plausible.” Nohar realized that he was just leading the frank on. He had some natural curiosity, but there was no sane way he could touch this case.
The frank’s bulk groaned and rippled as he leaned toward Nohar. The heat and stench that floated off of the frank’s body almost made Nohar wince. “I am the accountant for MLI. The three million that is missing is never there. Campaign records the police use are wrong about this. The money comes from MLI, and should be there. But I handle the books and such a sum never leaves our accounts, or, if it does, it returns before the sum is debited.
“I do not go to the police. For now I must retain the secrecy. I can be wrong. I cannot damage the company until my suspicions are proved correct. I can’t work within MLI. I have no idea who of my colleagues are involved. And I am closely watched—”
Nohar stood up. “I don’t deal with anything involving murder. I have to walk from this one—find an out-of-towner.”
“I have a five thousand retainer, and I will pay five times your usual rate, another five thousand when you complete the job successfully.”
Nohar froze, his usual rate was five hundred a day. No, he told himself, it’s a bad job all over. You don’t get involved with killings. You don’t get involved with pinks. You don’t get involved with things bigger than you are. Against his will, he found himself saying, “Double the retainer.”
It was a ludicrous request. The frank would never go for it. He’d be able to walk away clean.
“Agreed.”
Damn it. “Plus expenses.”
“Of course.”
Nohar had trapped himself.
“Time closes in on us.” The frank handed him an envelope. Ten thousand. He’d been anticipated. “Start with Johnson, work back. Do not contact anyone at MLI. I’ll contact you every few days. Get any information about MLI through me. We have a few minutes. Any immediate questions?”
Nohar was still looking at the cash. “Why is a bunch of franks backing a reactionary right-winger like Binder?”
“Quid pro quo, Mr. Rajasthan. The corporate entity will see its interests served in the Senate. The fact that we’re of a background Binder despises is of little consequence. Binder doesn’t know who runs MLI. Anything else?”
“What’s your name?”
Nohar heard the engine start up again. As the door closed with its pneumatic hiss, Nohar heard the frank say, “You can call me John Smith.”
The ugly green van drove away, leaving a pair of divots in the grass. The ghost of the frank’s smell remained, emanating from the money Nohar still held in his hand.
Once he took the money, he did the job. No matter what.
No matter what, damn it.
Nohar put the money in one of the cavernous pockets of his trenchcoat. Now that he was on the job, he pulled out his camera, slipped in a ramcard, and started recording the funeral.
Chapter 3
The ATM was half a block from Nohar’s place. To his relief, it appeared to be working. At least the lights were on. He stopped in front of the armored door, and, under the blank stare of the disabled external camera, he pulled his card and slipped it into the slot. The mechanism gave an arthritic wheeze and he feared it was going to eat his card again. Fortunately, the keypad flashed green at him. He punched in his ID number while the servos on the lensless camera followed his every move.