Alien Blues (12 page)

“Hey, Coltrane? Detective here to see you.”

David stood up. Coltrane was young for a lieutenant. He was big, probably six-two, a couple hundred pounds. He had a hefty muscular build that was just turning to fat. His hair was brownish blond, very thick. His eyes were brown and bloodshot and his face was heavy-featured and coarse. He wore a white knit shirt and blue jeans. Sandals, too, like Dyer. David wondered if sandals were part of the vice uniform. His eyes strayed to Myer's feet. Myer wore traditional black lace-ups, polished. Myer saw his look and grinned.

Coltrane looked wary. “So, Detective …”

“Silver.”

“Silver. Homicide?”

“I'm here about Dyer.”

The room seemed suddenly quieter. David looked around, but no one would meet his eyes. Coltrane pointed to his office.

“Come on in. Should have let me know you were coming.” He glanced at the detectives in the large workroom and winked. “Hate to keep homicide waiting.”

David didn't like Coltrane. Was it justified? Was it the sandals? Dyer had worn sandals. He'd liked Dyer.

“Sit down, Silver.”

David was tired of sitting. He wished he had the nerve to perch on the edge of Coltrane's desk. Mel would have. He sat on the edge of the chair and looked around the office. It was neat and dusty. He got the feeling Coltrane didn't spend a lot of time there. Which would be odd, for a lieutenant.

“Tell me about Dyer,” Coltrane said.

“No.” David folded his arms. “You tell me.”

Coltrane looked irritated and David didn't blame him. He was scoring an all-time low on professional courtesy.

“What was Dyer working on?” David asked.

Coltrane shrugged. “Couple of things. This and that.”

“Helpful,” David said. “I'd like to see his case files.”

Coltrane picked up the phone. “Myer, put together a list of Dyer's access codes. Silver will pick it up on his way out.”

“Why was Dyer interested in Machete Man?”

Coltrane looked puzzled. “Far as I know, he wasn't. Maybe he thought you guys needed help.” He grinned. “Not funny? Look, Dyer was working on some big dealers. Bringing in a new cocaine derivative called Black Diamond. You heard of it?”

He hadn't. “Vaguely.”

“Potent stuff. Not the usual dealers, either. Far as I know, though, Dyer didn't have squat.”

“When a vice cop gets hacked, he's got more than squat.”

Coltrane leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. His feet were large and hairy on the top. His toenails were yellowish and needed trimming.

“You have to understand about Dyer.” Coltrane bit the cuticle on his left thumb. “He was secretive, very closemouthed. Lots of vice guys work that way. They're out on the streets, they get paranoid. So long as they're getting results, I don't question it.”

“Why wouldn't Dyer call you for backup?”

Coltrane flushed, a red haze spreading from the roots of his hair down his neck.

“He worked maverick. He liked it that way.”

David sat back in his chair. The signs were there, he'd seen them before. Coltrane ran a crooked operation, and Dyer was straight. So Dyer worked as an outcast, trusted no one, and every case he handled would be a massive gnarl of workarounds that kept his own conscience clear, and took into account what could realistically be accomplished around bent cops. Coltrane was dirty. Vice was dirty. Dyer didn't trust Coltrane and neither did David.

“Who was Dyer's partner?”

“Ian Shavstik.”

“He in?”

“No. But don't waste your time. They were partners on paper only. Didn't even work the same cases. Truth is, Dyer was a stick ass, and he didn't like Ian. Ian's a little slow, but he's okay.”

David knew what okay meant. One of the guys.

He thought of Dyer climbing out of his smashed Datsun, looking up and down Possum Head Lane in the middle of the night. He was hurt, bleeding. A lonely man—a cop without backup. Dyer had no one to call, so he called David. Did it have anything to do with Machete Man? He had met Dyer at the Darnell scene. The cases tied together.

“Silver?”

“What? I'm sorry?”

“I said, you sure you don't want some coffee?”

“I'm sure.” David stood up. “Good-bye, Lieutenant Coltrane. Be seeing you.”

“Drop in anytime.”

He closed the door behind him. Myer stood up—a tall man, pear-shaped, heavy-jowled. He wore slacks, a white shirt, and a tie. Another vice outcast? Some of the most conservative-looking cops were dirty.

Myer handed him a stack of disks. “You'll need these. There's no access here outside the department. And here.” He handed David a yellow sheet of note paper. “Dyer's access code. Come on, the coffee down the hall is better than what we got here.”

David followed Myer down the hall and into the stairwell.

“Yeah, I know,” Myer said. “You don't want a cup of coffee. You sure you're a cop?”

“Some days, not very.”

Myer tapped the disks David held. “Those are nothing. Dyer kept his real stuff hidden.”

“At home?”

“Probably not. He used to, but not anymore. He had a girlfriend—pretty steady. She might know something. Name of Judith. Rawley. R-A-W-L-E-Y.”

David folded his arms. “What else do you know?”

Myer held up both hands. “Hey, I'm just a good ole boy, I don't know nothing. Except maybe that guys like Dyer always wind up in pieces somewhere, and I'm goddamn sick and tired of seeing it.” Myer's eyes were sad. “That's all you get, Silver. Get to work.”

Myer waved a hand and left. He walked slowly, with a slight limp, like a man whose shoes were too tight.

EIGHTEEN

The precinct room was crowded and noisy, The airconditioning was not working well and the temperature hovered around eighty-six degrees. Saigo City Utilities was threatening brownout.

David leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Dyer wrote a dull report, which, as Myer had warned him, contained nothing but surveillance notes. It was amazing how much Dyer could say without giving out information. It was interesting, though, that Dyer was doing a lot of surveillance work on Pitch Avenue and Lombard Street—both of them bordered Little Saigo.

David frowned. Something about Little Saigo had clicked in his mind, but he couldn't make the connection.

He picked up the phone and dialed. It rang once.

“Agent Weiler.”

“Dawn? This is David Silver.”

“You're psychic, David, I was just getting ready to call you.”

“Yeah? Business or pleasure?”

“Business.”

David felt mildly disappointed.

“Listen, I've got a bad case of the four o'clock munchies. You hungry?”

He hadn't had lunch. He was very hungry.

“I have an incredible craving for an egg salad sandwich.”

“Rose must be pregnant. Meet me at the Oriental taco stand on Rand. You can just walk over, can't you?”

“Yeah, but it's out of your way.”

“That's okay, I've got to pick something up in that area later. See you in a half hour.”

Mel came through the precinct doorway at top speed, String gliding behind him. The cops behind their desks ignored the Elaki, but suddenly there was an atmosphere. David wondered if Mel had eaten. If God was good, he could leave Mel and String looking over Dyer's case files, while he had tacos with Dawn.

“There's something funny going on,” Mel said. His hair was sweat-soaked and curling in the humidity.

“You find Puzzle Solver?”

“Yeah. He had an interesting lunch.”

“He had a most terrible lunch,” String muttered, gliding past them.

“At least he had lunch.” Was it his imagination, David wondered, or was the Elaki actually sagging around the middle?

Mel scratched his ear. “Guess
where
he had lunch.”

“The Ambassador?”

“Hey, David, you ever consider police work? Anyway, he's sitting—I mean standing—around the Ambassador eating with another Elaki hotshot, bellybrain they call Grammr. They finish and head back to the museum, and right when they get to the lobby this other Elaki, Grammr, falls down dead.”

“Something he ate?”

Mel stuck his hands in his pockets. “You heard this one before.”

David sat up. “No, I was kidding.
Was
he poisoned?”

“Yeah, but with prior knowledge. He was having that Japanese puffer fish.”

“People die from eating that every year.”

“Not Elaki,” String said.

“Yeah,” said Mel, “they love the stuff, but none of them ever died of it. Till recently. Evidently this guy's number two.
Both
after eating at the Ambassador. And that's not all.

“I had a talk with Bess Kellog, in statistical analysis. She knows a lot about Elaki. She says it would take concentrated quantities of the puffer fish to kill an Elaki—she researched it when the first one died.”

“You think he was murdered? An
Elaki
?”

Mel sat on the edge of his desk. “Yeah, I know. Impossible. Their social structure is completely self-policing. The group mentality. No crime. An Elaki breaks the moral code and he is sanctioned. So unless this Elaki was up to something, this had to be an accident.”

“Unless a human killed him.”

“Difficult. Especially this way. But possible, I guess. Or hell, maybe he
was
up to something that got him sanctioned.”

“How could we find out?”

“Bess says the whole thing's impossible. Elaki don't murder each other, sanctions don't happen so publicly, and Elaki don't die from eating puffer fish.”

David checked his watch. “Look, Mel, I'm meeting Dawn for tacos. You hungry?”

“You go ahead. What you working on?”

“Dyer's case files. No, no, look at them later.”

String edged closer. “Perhaps I could help?”

David shook his head. “These are critical.”

“I can make the report. Be most happy to assist.”

“I don't know. You sure you wouldn't rather come with us?”

“No, please. I stay here and do report.”

Mel frowned. “David …”

“It's okay, Mel. He's part of the team. Okay, String. There's an open terminal. Over there. We'll bring you back a taco.”

“You will? This is the authentic Earth taco?”

“Bring you two,” Mel said.

String quivered. “Home boy food!”

“Got any questions, even little ones,” Mel said, “you just go ask the captain. Don't knock or nothing. He don't stand on formality.”

David and Mel left him hunched over a terminal.

“I feel like hanging around just to watch him type,” Mel said. “Listen, you sure you want him looking through those disks? David?”

David frowned. “I was just thinking. You know those pictures we saw in Puzzle's office? The drug buys? I think they were all shot in and around Little Saigo.”

“What a shock. Since half the drug deals in this city go down over there.”

“True.”

“Look, David, you sure about letting String go over Dyer's stuff?”

“I'm sure I don't want him along when I talk to Dawn. Nothing in those reports, anyway, I've seen them. Besides, I'm not sure the computer will come up for String's voice patterns.”

Mel smiled. “Poor little sucker. Let's get him a beer to go with the tacos.”

Dawn was sitting in a white metal chair under a tattered umbrella with fading aqua stripes. A knot of bobbing Elaki clustered around the food stand, inquiring about spices in the tacos. The owner nodded enthusiastically, assuring them of the meat's blandness. Flies and bees congregated at the dark, smelly mouth of a trash can. David wished Dawn had picked a place farther from the garbage.

“But authentic?” came a loud Elaki voice.

“Oh, yes, sir, ma'am …” The owner stared at the Elaki's belly slits. “The genuine article.”

Dawn waved at David and tilted her head. “How come I had farther to go, and I got here first?”

David shrugged. “How many tacos, Dawn?”

“No, David, I'm buying.”

She went to the stand and ordered tacos and two beers and a lime tea. David stuck his hands in his pockets. Just as well she was buying, he'd left the house without money. Mel walked up behind Dawn.

“Come on now, kitten, I'll get the beer and tea.”

“Mel, I hate it when you call me kitten.”

“Then don't drink tea when you're having tacos.”

David sat down. He shooed a fly away from a sticky orange ring of grease. It was hot out, too hot for sidewalk dining.

He took a sip of the beer Mel handed him. Warm. He unwrapped a taco and took a large bite. Taco shell shattered and dropped pieces over the paper wrapper. The filling was bland and it left a sweet aftertaste. David chewed and wiped his mouth.

“
Jesus
,” Mel said. “They put cinnamon in these.”

Dawn grimaced. “The Elaki love cinnamon in everything.”

David realized that the Elaki at the next table were watching them. He leaned forward, voice low.

“Dawn, I've got a problem with Machete Man.”

She picked a shred of cheese off the top of her taco and nibbled it.

“Dawn, you eat like a mouse,” Mel said.

“Mel, you eat like a pig.”

“Don't leave me out,” David said. “What do I eat like?”

Dawn cocked her head. “Like a man who missed lunch.”

David felt excluded.

A small Elaki teetered back and forth on her fringe and watched them eat.

“What about Machete Man, David?”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I get the feeling that I've heard it all before. Read it in a book somewhere, saw it on TV, I don't know. And I'll tell you what else. The range of victims makes no sense. I think we have a copycat, Dawn. There's more here than a psycho on the loose.”