Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel (7 page)

And so here we were, fear burned in the memory—and schooling—of every American, every European since. Caution was king, even from those like Cherabino who policed the tiny Net that remained. Some things would never happen again. Could never happen again.

It was still a pain in the ass as far as paperwork went. Hard copy was slow, tedious, and had a regrettable tendency toward paper cuts. But even I wasn’t stupid enough to suggest a change. Biology, artificial organs, physics, anti-graviton generators for flying cars, drug-assisted telepathy—the world might be perfectly fine with those kinds of technologies. They didn’t talk to one another. They didn’t grow minds of their own. But computers? Data? Tech? A complete WorldNet with instant e-mail and a phone system connected to the computers? Not in my lifetime. People were just too afraid, with too good a reason. The population
might be rebounding, but memory didn’t leave that easy. So I filled out paperwork, hard copy, and didn’t complain.

I finished checking the last box. I said good-bye to the booking officer and the secretaries and found my way to the men’s room to wash the pencil lead off my hands.

In the elevator I ran into Paulsen. Papers and coffee flew everywhere—I managed to grab the cup as it half spilled on my shirt. The stale donut I’d grabbed was a lost cause, now covered in dirt. I sighed and bent over to pick up the papers from the floor. At least Paulsen helped.

“I was looking for you,” she said, once I’d regained my mental balance. “We have a hot one in the interview room.” She met my eyes. “Wait for me before you start, okay? Recording tech has the brief.”

She handed me the last paper and a napkin before getting off at the main floor. I hit the button to the basement, still mourning the lost donut. I’d wanted that donut, damn it.

The doors opened up on a badly lit hall with nine doors—four interview rooms with mirrored walls that let the cops observe while the suspects sat, plus the entrance to the holding cells farther on. All the doors had unnecessary bars on the windows for effect. But only the entrances to the actual interview rooms, the housing for suspects, had double lights above the doors to show when they were in use. The third room was full and interviewing, and the second had a suspect but no interviewer. I was betting that was me.

I opened the second cop’s door, nodded hello to the recording tech. The room was long and skinny, filled with boxy recording equipment with built-in self-diagnostics and absolutely no connection to any other
equipment. The recording ban in public places had gotten a—carefully controlled—reprieve in police interview rooms, but it was still bound up in a lot of laws and regulations I was glad not to keep track of. The interviews were
always
transcribed, printed in permanent ink, and filed within twenty-four hours. The army of secretaries upstairs wasn’t just for show.

I lit up a smoke; the recording tech turned on the air filter without comment. We’d wait however long it took Paulsen to arrive, hopefully a while. It’d give me some time to settle.

Through the glass, the suspect was pacing the room. At the moment, he was facing away from us, head down, looking like any other self-important lowlife. “What’s he accused of?” I gestured with the cigarette, the smoke making sinuous trails on its way to the filter.

“Actually, this one’s on spec.” Paulsen’s voice came from behind me.

I turned. “The multiples case?”

She frowned, the wrinkles on her face deepening. “Might be. Department received an anonymous note this morning telling us to talk to the guy. Likely another trafficker trying to improve his own business, but we’re going to check it out anyway.”

“Trafficker?” I said cautiously. “You mean drugs.”

“Yeah. You’re interviewing the beta for a ten-block radius in East Atlanta. For the local Darkness ring, apparently, not just drugs, though of course we can’t prove anything.”

I took a breath. “Anonymous note, huh? Does sound like a local squabble with amateur tactics. Any fingerprints?”

She snorted, as if to say, “Of course.” “The thing’s sitting in the lab waiting for the techs to get to it. Low priority, but might turn into something. I want you to
ask him about the multiples case either way. It’s his territory; he probably knows something we don’t.”

The tech’s boredom lightened suddenly, and I turned back to the glass to see what he was reacting to.

It was then I got my first good look at our suspect’s face, and my stomach sank. “Joey the Fish? That’s your beta? Seriously?”

“Do you know him?”

I ground out the cigarette. “He was muscle for Harry and Marge, maybe part-timer for some other groups. You’re serious, he’s second in charge?”

“For ten blocks, yeah.” Paulsen’s nose wrinkled, and she cranked up the air filter to try to clear the air.

“Peachy.”

Joey was my fault, and I knew it. When I went clean—and then when I came back on the wagon the second time—I’d helped take out all of the guys who’d ever supplied me with Satin. Vindictive? Not even a little. I’d helped take down all the big fish, the Harries and Juans and Marges; I’d sicced the cops on them in one industrial-strength drug raid after another, until the last guy who’d helped me sell out my soul was off the streets. So the little fish, like Joey, had really risen in the ranks. Unfortunately, he knew me and had access to plenty of info on me I’d rather the cops not remember. Now I was going to interview him, in front of Paulsen. This day just kept getting better and better.

“Is there anything else I need to know about this?” I gestured to the glass.

“Nothing I can tell you right now.” Department policy—written by Paulsen herself—was nobody prejudiced my interviews.

Would Joey recognize me? I did look a lot different now, bulked up from regular eating and lifting weights, had even shaved. I’d grown out my hair and lost the
half-dead look of desperation. Maybe he wouldn’t even question the clean-cut interrogator. It would be a big bet—for high stakes—but a fair one.

“Let me get my files,” I told Paulsen, and she nodded.

Assuming he didn’t bring up my past, I knew exactly how to deal with Joey. Me and the file clerk had gotten together a nice little collection of repro files, glossy photos of gory crimes solved while my grandparents were still in diapers. I retrieved the smaller set from the file room and started back; they were three files, not real thick, the glossies inside only medium-shocking and unlikely to fall out without my meaning them to.

Joey’s room was the worst of the four. It was done for atmosphere. Ancient, beat-up furniture you wouldn’t wish on your enemies, so dirty I couldn’t sit in there too long before I needed to steam myself clean.

The man himself looked like he hadn’t showered in at least a week, and even across the room I could smell rancid sweat and caked-in pollution. He was wearing the latest street fashion, an upscale fan-denim, faux-fur jacket combo, his hair greased from sweat, his face streaked dirty from the air outside. The look in his eyes carried your final impression, though, a look that mixed anger and a subtle intelligence that just wouldn’t let you dismiss him.

I slammed the door open with a
bang
against the inside wall. Dirt from the old ceiling fell in a flurry, but I ignored it, doing my best angry-badass walk to the table. I was a good enough telepath to project at low levels even to the “deaf” non-Able like Joey—I did it then, nothing illegal, nothing coercive, just the kind of menacing anger that raised the hairs on your spine.

The other officer in the room—my official observer
this round, though Joey wouldn’t know the difference—blinked twice, but then settled back complacently in his chair to the right. Bellury was an old cop, uniformed, had never really risen through the ranks but hadn’t wanted to either; he was past retirement but didn’t want to quit. We worked well together. He even sometimes gave me some pointers on the best way to legally threaten a suspect.

Joey looked a little disconcerted at the anger in the air. When I slammed the repro files on the table in front of him, he shifted back. I pulled the chair out, hard—it screeched. I reversed it and sat down, my hands crossed over the top. I leaned forward.

“You’ve been a very bad boy, Joey,” I said, with menace. I checked his mind—no recognition. He had no idea who I was. Good.

I opened the top file, the jumbled-up one with ink too light to be read upside down. “Manslaughter, arson, grand theft auto, assault and battery…” I went on for another few seconds, making it about halfway down the randomized list of crimes considered felonies in the state of Georgia. I stopped, abruptly, and gave him a look. It was the same look my father had given me over the vidphone when he’d found out about my poison—mingled horror, disappointment, and damning wrath.

Joey sat back in the chair, crossed his arms, tapped his foot. “Didn’t do it.” I didn’t need telepathy to tell he was lying, but it certainly didn’t hurt my act to get a confirmation. He was guilty of something on the list—being a beta, probably several somethings—and we both knew it. The trouble was, I had to get him to admit to guilt out loud.

“Didn’t do what?” I said. Maybe I’d get lucky; he’d think about something too hard.

He looked at me. “Nothing on that list. I’m a fucking model citizen.”

I pretended to study the paper in front of me. “Really? That’s not what the file says,” I responded. And if he hadn’t been caught red-handed on
something
, the cops just weren’t doing their jobs.

Silence reigned in the room. I could
feel
him thinking, the wheels turning. A careful assessment of risk and reward. Finally Joey asked, “What do you want?”

“I want you to start talking.” With nothing more than a note, I was fishing anyway. I wanted him to dwell on one of the flashes I’d seen in his head—let me see the violence a little closer, let me get him to admit to it. Or something. I was bored, and Paulsen was watching.

I felt a decision and Joey opened his mouth. I thought for a second I had him. But no.

“What am I supposed to talk about, exactly, then? I ain’t a mind reader.”

“No, that’s me, Joey,” I said, and his eyebrows drew together. “Level Eight telepath, in case you’re wondering. I’m required to tell you if you ask.”

“A teep? Silver spoon in your mouth fucking teep. What’re you doing at a police station?”

“I’m a consultant,” I returned evenly. “I’m consulting.”

After a pointless staring contest during which he imagined at least three ways to hurt me, I got bored and decided to switch tactics. Maybe he knew something about the multiples case. He was from the right territory.

“What I’m asking today has to do with the six dead bodies found on your block, not a mark on them. Word on the street is it’s your block, that you arranged the hits yourself.”

“The ones in the paper?” The side of his mouth crooked. “That’s what this is about?”

“Those are the ones. Why? You know anything about them I should know?”

“Sure, there’s a lot of things you should know.” He crossed his arms. “But I don’t have anything to say.”

I cranked up the low-level anger projection and smiled my best evil smile. “Oh, you have plenty to say. I’d hate to have to call in an outstanding mind-warrant to pull it out of you myself.”

Bellury next to me suppressed a snort. Yeah, I knew, the odds of me getting a warrant of any kind weren’t good—ex-felon, after all—and for a mind-warrant, it was just asking for trouble. As ridiculous as saying the pope was my homie. But the suspect didn’t know the difference.

Joey frowned. “You wouldn’t.”

I sat back, still smiling evilly. “I would.” Not that I was exactly eager to roll around in the particular pile of waste that was Joey’s mind; even across the table, his mental presence felt as sour as his smell. But I would if I had to.

He was looking at the table, at his hands, very intently. He was also thinking, hard, in scattered pieces I couldn’t follow without tipping him off to my probe.

Joey, sprawled out in the chair, put a hand on the table. His mental scales of risk and reward had settled on him talking. “Not a single mark on ’em, scared to death like dog-caged rats? Those’re the ones?” I nodded, and he continued. “You never found ’em all. ’Bout three? Four? A month since May. Nobody from around here, just turned up dead here.”

“Why haven’t we found the other dozen bodies? Seems unlikely we’d just suddenly start finding them. Tell me the truth, Joey.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I heard somebody made a deal with somebody else to hide the bodies, and, say, stopped later when up the line the boss gets angry.” Meaning him and his immediate superior Maloy—well, in the beginning anyway. But I had to get him to say it out loud for the recorders.

“Your boss?” I asked to confirm.

“Maybe we’re saying farther up,” Joey said. “Not sure who exactly. But the word came down. Nobody deals with the Frankies anymore. Frankies can hide their own fucking bodies.”

Who the hell were the Frankies? He wasn’t even picturing them, but he was sure as hell angry at them. An opportunity. Any time there was a falling-out, there was a weakness to exploit.

“So who do you figure hid the bodies, Joey?” I asked. “You dumped them in the alleys what, early morning?” Behind me I could feel Paulsen get very, very interested.

“Wasn’t me, and I don’t know nothing,” Joey said pointedly. “But maybe we’re saying bodies before that.”

“Before that?”

“Could be,” Joey said.

“Okay, where are the bodies hidden, then?” Was he just making this stuff up? Didn’t feel like it from his thoughts, but there was a lot he wasn’t thinking about on purpose.

He just looked at me.

Different angle. Pretend to know what’s going on even if I don’t. “Who are the Frankies, then? Germans?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why would you think that?”

I made myself stop tapping on the table—just in
case—just in case. “Tell me what the Frankies are. Who they are.”

He was suspicious of me now, but he had decided to talk and wasn’t going to go back on that quickly. “Frankies are guys from the north side, rich guys. Wouldn’t give their names. Boss-man says we gotta call them something.”