Alien Blues (33 page)

FIFTY-TWO

The cooling system in the office was flubbed. It was late Sunday afternoon, and the electrician had gone home. Mel, Halliday, and Myer were crammed into interrogation room one. Halliday had refused to let David conduct the interview.

“You'll lose it, David,” he had said. “Don't even ask.”

Halliday being right didn't make David any the less angry. He sat out in the hall, perched on a stepladder the electrician had left behind.

The precinct was boiling. The weather had turned hot and humid—the last punch of summer. The windows were open, but covered by Venetian blinds. Bars of sunlight baked the tile floor and the empty desks.

David ran a finger around the collar of his T-shirt. A waft of hot air from the open window blew across his face.

Roger had shed his coat and tie, as had Myer. Sweat ran down their flushed cheeks. Myer was laughing, Mel smiling.

They were getting it—everything they needed. And Myer would go to jail, but not for long. Not bad, for a guy who had committed murder and protected drug dealers.

Myer waved at David through the two-way glass.

David took a deep breath and looked away. Mel came out in the hallway, shutting the door behind him.

“I'm going to get some hot dogs, David. What you want?”

“I'll get them.”

“Naw. I want out for a while. What can I get you?”

“I don't want a hot dog. I want a taco.”

“Okay. I'll be going by Hoi's place anyway.”

“I don't want it from Hoi's place. I want one from that place on Mill.”

“Mill's all the way across town, David.” Mel pulled his shirt up and wiped the sweat off his face. The hairs on his stomach glistened with dampness.

“Tacos on Mill are better.”

Mel dropped the shirt and it hung in a wad over his belt. He scratched his neck.

“They're not so bad at Hoi's place.”

“
God
damn it, Mel. Will you quit?”

“Quit what?”

“Quit being so
nice
to me. Just stop it, okay? Quit pretending you don't know what I did.”

“What, David?” Mel frowned and leaned against the wall. “It's not just this business with Rose, is it?”

David applauded. “You're
good
at it, Mel.”

“Good at what?”

“Playing dumb.”

“Jesus Christ, this is just the kind of stupid ass conversation I have with women.”

“Don't you ever think, Mel, about why I laid in that tunnel and kept my mouth shut, while you and Rose and Haas walked right into Santana.”

“That's what's bugging you? You were
hurt
, David. Guy beat the crap out of you. You probably blacked out.”

“
No
. Not blacked out. I laid there and I heard you coming. I heard you and I didn't yell.”

“So that's it. Jesus. Okay, David. Why didn't you yell?”

“He had me pinned down.”

“Okay then. You couldn't.”

“But I could.” David rubbed his eyes. “I'd already had one hit. And he gave me a choice. Call out … or take the Diamond. And I was hurting and I wanted just to fade away; so I … took it.”

“That's it? That's your big sin?” Mel put a hand on David's shoulder. “Forget it, pal. You weren't thinking straight. You were out of it, David.”

“Don't you
do
that, Mel. Treat me like I'm some kind of junkie. I could have warned you.”

Mel tightened his grip on David's arm. “You know better than this, David. Now look it. I've seen you pick those junkies up in alleys, sit them up, try to feed them, go after the little pricks that beat them bloody. I've seen you give them money that they say they need for their kids, and I know you knew better. Think who you're talking to. I've
seen
you. All these years, you watch their nasty, desperate lives, and you never get so hard you see them anything less than human, even though every hit they take might be a bullet in your back.” Mel took a breath. “You're good at cutting other people slack. Cut some for yourself.”

David sat down on the ladder.

“Now I want to know something.” Mel scratched his thigh. “You taken any hits since Santana?”

David glared at him. “No.”

“Thought about it?”

“Maybe.”

“But you haven't?”

“I
said
not.”

“Good. I been wanting to ask you that.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Why didn't you bring this up earlier? Tell me what was wrong? All these years we been partners, we been friends, you couldn't bring this up? Would have saved your nose.” Mel turned away, then looked back over his shoulder. “Haas any better?”

David shook his head. “Still on critical hold, and getting worse. No neural response now, from the waist down.”

FIFTY-THREE

The weather had turned suddenly chilly, as if the sun had worn itself thin with the last wave of heat. David's eyes watered. The wind made his ears ache.

He took out a handkerchief. “Nothing more irritating than a runny nose on a stakeout.”

Mel cocked his head. “Lots of things more irritating. Take, oh, take diarrhea for instance, or just plain … you know Ridgway? I was in a car with Ridgway all night one time and—”

“Mel, would you shut up?”

“This reminds me of an incident,” String said. “We too are similar, in our jobs the stake up.”

“Stake
out
,” Mel said.

“Yes. There are times when an Elaki must …”

David focused on the pavement as it disappeared under the wheels of the shuttle.

Rose was leaving him.

He had gone home early yesterday to a silent house, and wandered from room to room, looking for his children. Their beds were made. The animals that usually lounged among the pillows were gone. The night-light was missing.

He heard Rose's soft tread in the hallway. It took him two tries to summon his voice.

“Where are they?”

“In Chicago, with Ruth.”

He turned back to the empty room. He had wanted to see them. He had
needed
to see them. “Won't they miss school?”

“Yes.”

“Are you … going somewhere?”

“Yes.”

He wanted to ask when she'd be back. He wanted to ask
if
she'd be back. Why had she gone to the press without talking to him first? Did she understand what she'd done to him? Did she know she had cost him Myer?

His mouth was dry, his throat tight. In the end it had been easier to say nothing at all.

Mel sent the car away. The parking lot was huge and empty. They caught a bright red shuttle to take them to the main buildings. The shuttle had open sides, and the wind whistled through. They were the only ones aboard, and Mel kept changing seats.

“Rose okay?” Mel asked.

“Fine,” David said.

Something snapped in the wind, catching David's attention. A large multicolored banner hung across red and blue turnstiles. CARNIVAL PLANET. Rose hated this place. They'd brought the kids two or three times before on what usually turned out to be the hottest day of the summer.

Santana would be here, so Myer had told them, completing an initial contact with the head of a West Coast organization. It was a first meet, head to head, the wheeler-dealers. Afterward, they would both send employees, but this was the initial exchange. Large samples of Black Diamond swapped for one million in earnest money. Santana was setting up.

Myer didn't know who the West Coast dealer was. Just that the exchange would be made in NEW HOLLAND.

“I do not understand the business with that one, the Myer.” String's left eye stalk was drooping more than usual. “I can tell you that the Myer is a bad cop. Guilty of much and deserving of cho.”

“We know that,” Mel said. “What we needed was evidence.”

“Knowledge of the officer is not enough?”

“Got to prove it to a whole
bunch
of people.”

“Does this prevent the mistake from being made?”

“No, but it spreads the blame around.”

“Ah.”

“You can't tell me, String, that you Elaki secret police—”

“Izicho, please.”

“That you Izicho please never make mistakes. Suppose you cho off the wrong guy? You telling me that never happens?”

“It happens rare. And then, of course, the Izicho officer is sanctioned.”

“Cho?” David asked.

“Cho.”

Mel looked at David. “Interesting system.”

David thought of Myer, laughing and joking his way through the interrogation, a cagey old cop who knew the business before any of them had been out of diapers. David had glared through the two-way, fists clenching and unclenching.

When it was over, Myer had gotten slowly to his feet, carefully draping the worn suit coat and the cheap tie over one arm.

Where? David wondered. Where had the money gone—the drug money that Myer had betrayed and killed for? Gambling? Women? Drug habit? Something to do with his kids?

Myer had stopped in the hall and looked at him.

“Hey, Silver.”

Myer's face was grooved with age and fatigue. His eyes were old. Knowing.

Never me, David thought. Never me.

“How's it happen, Myer? What goes wrong?”

Myer shrugged and spread his arms. “Who knows? There's so much, you know? Maybe it's just my feet hurt.”

David nodded, waiting for Myer to look away, to refuse to meet his gaze. It didn't happen.

“I used to be pretty good,” Myer said.

“So I heard.”

“Yeah. See you, Silver.”

Myer walked down the hallway, wedged between Mel and Halliday. A tired, bent cop, whose feet hurt.

David adjusted his earpiece.

“Silver, Burnett, and String, checking in.”

“Copy.” Halliday's voice was soft in his ear. “No sign yet of Santana. Take your positions,”

They avoided the empty turnstiles at the entrance, ducking through a door marked “Employees Only.”

“We go this way?”

“No. Over here,” David said.

The park was empty, except for the occasional employee in bright yellow overalls. Most of them were cops—the ready team. They would be called when things got hot. Santana wasn't going to duck out of this one.

The paved walkways were exquisitely clean. The fountains were already running. Fur-covered robots wandered around on all fours, offering rides to the air. Organ music blasted from speakers.

“Creepy,” Mel said. “Looks weird without people.”

“People would not subtract from the weirdness,” String said.

Mel grinned at him.

NEW HOLLAND was a boat ride beneath a glaring white dome. Canals snaked through fabricated darkness, touring interactive exhibits that told the tale of the mysterious island. Survivalists had built up a sandbar in the middle of the Caribbean and declared it a sovereign nation—New Holland. Then, after a typhoon in 2024, all the New Hollanders had disappeared. Theories about their demise were meat to tabloid journalists. Rumors had them murdered, taken away by submarine, living in a secret underwater city. Some of the missing islanders had been sighted by relatives, and from time to time, island currency would surface.

It was dark and cold under the dome. David and Mel and String waited inside the doorway, Mel and David letting their eyes adjust. Water lapped at the edges of the canal, and the air inside smelled dank and musty.

“We're in,” David said.

“You should be alone,” Halliday told him. “Sensors are in place and they haven't picked anything up. We do not, repeat,
not
have them on constant feed. We'll query at intervals, and upon your request. Copy?”

“Copy,” said Mel.

Power cables snaked across the aisles between the canals and the story exhibits.

“Stay out of the front passages,” Halliday warned them. “At least until people start coming through. Your presence will trigger the exhibits. Anybody coming in will know you're there.”

“Copy,” David said.

“How we going to get in position?” Mel said. “We want that little side inlet, and the only way there is past the exhibits.”

“A downward wiggle will be necessary,” String said.

“Crawl, Mel.”

Mel went first, with David squirming behind him, and String following. The floor was gritty and there were wet spots. David felt them soak into his shirt. He wished he'd gone first. Mel had stepped in pink bubble gum, and black mud was encrusted in the ridges on the bottom of his right shoe.

They elbowed their way along the floor of the passage until they passed the partition and could stand up. A boat bobbed gently in the small section of canal behind the canvas.

“This the one?” Mel asked.

“Got a motor on it,” David said. “None of the others do.”

“An interesting implement,” String said. “Is this necessary to make a human waterborne?”

“Waterborne at no more than fifteen miles an hour, going flat out. Maybe twenty with a wave behind it. And a stiff breeze.”

“It gives you maneuverability, Mel. You expect a speedboat in this bathtub?”

“This does not look to provide maneuverability.”

“Makes it easier to mow down the tourists, though. What you think, David? In the boat, or out?”

“If somebody spots us inside, we're going to look pretty weird just sitting. Three men in a tub.”

“With Gumby here, we're weird enough.”

“Outside then.”

“Out it is. Try and make it look like we're fixing something.” Mel took a pocketknife and made a hole in the canvas partition.

“
Welcome
,” a voice boomed. “To the island of New Holland.” Reggae music echoed across the water.

“Too early for customers,” Mel said. “Query, Halliday.”

String quivered and swayed from side to side. “Sometime I would very much like to come here from the front.”