Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (21 page)

I heard accounts that the Totki were
accelerating their “investigations.”

I wasn’t sure if Hong was doing it
because he enjoyed it, he really thought he was going to randomly find Su
Dival’s killer, or the Totki Clan demanded it. In any case, I had to bring those
blue-toothed, yellow-skinned Totki back into the fold.

I notified Rendrae that I was going forward
with Judge Naeb and to meet at Courtroom Three Street. I also tipped off some
other media sources through my contacts, making sure it couldn’t be traced back
to me or my Kommilaire.

I was the last one to arrive at the
street.

“What’s going on, Hank?” one of the
reporters asked.

“My goodness, I was about to arrest
Judge Naeb for accessory to murder,” I said woodenly.

Rendrae rolled his eyes.

“Who was murdered?” another reporter asked
helpfully.

“Su Dival!” I responded with flourish.

Gasps.

A few gunshots rang out from Judge
Naeb’s office building and everyone crouched down.

“I had better go apprehend him,” I said.
“I will take one journalist with me to record the incident. Any volunteers?”

Every reporter except Rendrae raised
their hands and stood on their toes.

“Rendrae,” I said. “You’re cool under
pressure. Would you like to come?”

“No,” he answered sourly.

I looked around at the other reporters.

“Um. I think you should. It will help
the…” but I had nothing to add.

Rendrae reluctantly agreed and as I
pretended to be entering a dangerous zone, Rendrae merely plomped along behind
me, obviously irked at the charade.

In Judge Naeb’s office, MTB and Valia
waited with Judge Naeb bound and gagged in the corner. They had been firing their
guns now and then to keep it interesting. The story was being reported live on
the loudspeakers.

“Now what?” Valia asked.

“Judge Naeb commits suicide,” I said.

“What?” MTB asked.

“Well, I mean, we help him,” I
clarified.

“Boss, can I talk to you in the hall for
a second?” MTB asked.

“Uh, sure.”

“What are we doing?” he asked, once we
had reached the hall and closed the door.

“Taking care of the Totki situation. And
the Judge Naeb situation. And the disgruntled population situation,” I said,
not sure why he was bringing this up now.

“But why kill him?”

“Because if this went to a trial, he
would say I told him to run for office and he didn’t kill Su Dival.”

“But that would be true.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t help anything.”

“Boss, we’re not executioners.”

“Says who?”

“You! You told me that when I joined the
Kommilaire. It’s what I tell all the new recruits.”

“Oh. Well, things change.”

“You’re killing a judge,” he said.

“A sucky judge.”

“A sucky judge to placate a sucky clan,
Boss. And sucky or not, this is how the government works.”

“What government? When have we had a
government?” I asked, exasperated. “Do you think laws matter? Do you think
trials matter? When has a trial ever saved a life?”

“Lots of times. Just because we’re hard
on people who break the laws doesn’t make us kings.”

“I’m not a king. I don’t want to rule
anything.”

“Yeah, you always say that, but you’re
killing a judge. Who can judge you for that? Who gets you in trouble or ships
you to the Royal Wing? Is this not breaking the law?”

“Why are you suddenly sticking up for
the Totki and the worst judge on Belvaille?”

“Boss, I just feel like we’ve lost sight
of what we’re supposed to be doing.”

“Why didn’t you bring this up earlier?”

“Because I didn’t know you were going to
kill him!”

“But he’s a crook. He’s been taking
bribes for decades. He lets criminals free. He makes it legal to point guns at
me. And the Totki are going to start killing people soon. If we give them Naeb,
it’s done.”

“If you gave them 19-10 it would be
done, too.”

“I can’t arrest ghosts! What do you
want? Go upstairs and wait,” I yelled at him.

There was an empty apartment upstairs
for Valia and MTB to hide in.

When I went back into Judge Naeb’s
office, it was obvious everyone had heard the conversation in the hall.

Valia stared at her boots.

Rendrae gave me a disapproving look.

Judge Naeb looked pissed off.

“Valia, wait upstairs with MTB,” I said.

She left without a word.

Why did I suddenly feel like a jerk? I
was saving lives on the station. I knew I was. But what MTB had said stung me.

I went over to Naeb and removed his gag
as best I could without hurting him.

“Is there anything you want before we do
this?” I asked.

“Go to hell,” he spat.

“Seriously. These are your last words,
might as well make them count.”

“You don’t run the city and you never
did. You have no idea what goes on here. I just got greedy and thought you were
too stupid to catch me,” he roared.

“I guess,” I said, removing a pistol
from my thigh.

“You allege 19-10 was the one who killed
Su Dival?” he asked.

I think he was trying to buy time after
he saw the gun.

“What do you know about 19-10?”

“Enough. Probably more than you,” he
said.

“Who hired him?” I asked.

And, of all the weird things, Judge Naeb
laughed.

“I don’t know why he killed Su Dival,
but I know who hired him,” Judge Naeb taunted.

“Who?”

He licked his lips and smiled.

“Garm.”

“That’s a lie,” I said.

“19-10 was hired to kill you,” Judge
Naeb said.

I pointed the gun at Judge Naeb and
pulled back the hammer.

“And why would she hire him to do that?”

“Look at me! I’m tied up in my own
office waiting to die. Do you think those in power want you on Belvaille? They
know you can do this to any of them. You’re a cardboard cut-out that the lower
classes look up to, but that’s it.”

“When did you talk to Garm?” I demanded.

He chuckled.

“Now that you’re pissed, I can’t think
of a better way to end. Shoot me. I’m not so blind to see you don’t have an
alternative. I rather like that I can get the last laugh.”

I pressed the gun hard to his temple.

“When did you talk to Garm?” I repeated.

He said nothing.

I looked back at Rendrae, who seemed to
be soaking all this in like a sponge.

“Dammit,” I cursed, and pulled the
trigger.

Rendrae didn’t want to report on this
and was ready to renege on our deal.

I pointed out it was too late to grow a
conscience. If he wanted to rat me out, he would also have to detail his own
involvement and how he had agreed to fake Judge Naeb’s guilt.

People would be mad at me, but they would
skin Rendrae alive.

And everything would get even worse in
the city, just like I said.

Rendrae reported from the scene of the
crime. He stated Judge Naeb had committed suicide when confronted by me with
information that proved he was responsible for hiring Su Dival’s murderers.

I couldn’t say Judge Naeb had performed
the actual murder. That was too far-fetched. It was just a matter of finding
some gunmen to take the fall.

Rendrae signed off, and he didn’t say “Force
for Facts.” He never said it again. Another reporter immediately claimed the
title.

It was about a week later when we had an
unrelated shoot-out that resulted in the deaths of two thugs. I declared the
dead men Su Dival’s killers.

If they had alibis, they weren’t
talking.

MTB quit!

Well, not quit, but he asked to be
transferred to a different department. He wanted to work Deadsouth, one of the
toughest beats.

I didn’t refuse him.

There was a huge crowd at the Royal Wing
waiting for me to give my talk.

Valia stood beside me.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” I
started, “and decided you all should make your own laws.”

“We already have our own laws,” someone
said.

“Yeah, but they’re lousy. You have to
come up with new laws that if I show them to the citizens of Belvaille, they
will be impressed enough that you might
eventually
be let back in. You
have to be better than the subsistence living you’re doing. Even better than
Belvaille. Shame them into recognizing your improvements.”

“But like what?” a scrawny man asked.

“Give me a list and I’ll approve or deny
it. Think of stuff like, liberty. And equality. And friendship. Upbeat stuff.”

This mass of rapists and murderers were
nonplussed. They wanted me to give them rules. Lay it down for them so they
could follow it to the letter. They didn’t trust themselves and I could sense
they thought it was a trap. Like I was holding out something for them to take
and would snatch it away when they got close.

I wasn’t sure if it was a cop-out or I
was still hurting from what MTB had said. I didn’t want to come here as a god
and dictate who would live and how they would live.

I was just one person who was himself flawed,
deeply flawed.

I needed to start letting go. I couldn’t
hold all of Belvaille and the Royal Wing in my fists. My hands simply weren’t
that big and every day they were getting weaker.

“How do you know they will make good
laws?” Valia asked in the shuttle back to Belvaille.

I felt the familiar joy of zero gravity
and smiled despite myself.

“Because their freedom depends on it.
They are going to set the bar higher than anyone would have done for them. Just
out of paranoia.”

“What if they are faking compliance and
recovery, though?” she asked.

“What’s the difference? If someone lives
for ten years as a perfect person but in their head wants to do bad things, are
we going to find them guilty? Do their bad thoughts hurt us?”

“It just seems like you’re giving them
an awful lot of leeway,” Valia pouted.

“They haven’t even submitted their laws
yet. Give them a chance.”

As we angled slowly to Belvaille I heard
on the radio that there was a technical issue with the docking mechanisms and
we would have to wait.

That was fine, I liked feeling light.

The shuttle eventually began to dock and
we got banged around like a can kicked down the street. The shuttle’s lights
and sirens went haywire and the pilots were cursing and yelling at each other.

I realized: this was it.

They could kill me out here.

Garm could deactivate the port with a
flip of a switch, or have the loading arms rip this tiny shuttle in half.

I felt my heart going nuts.

Oh no, not now.

I vaguely heard Valia talking to me
urgently, but couldn’t understand her.

At least I couldn’t fall, because I was buckled
down in zero gravity.

My eyes went blurry and I couldn’t hear
the sirens. Everything just faded away to a pleasant hum of unimportance.

Then I saw the co-pilot turn around and
talk sweetly to us.

“—for some reason. We told them they
need to fix number eight, but you know how it is on Belvaille,” he said
smiling.

I tried to return the grin because I got
the idea that was an appropriate response.

He went back to his controls and the
shuttle docked as usual.

I turned languidly to Valia and saw she
was staring at me and looked quite alarmed.

“Where were you on the night of Goldor
the 14
^th
?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I heard groans and cries reverberate
through the city.

The trial on Courtroom Six Street was of
course being broadcast via loudspeaker. I had been sticking my foot in it ever
since I framed Judge Naeb a month ago.

“That was the night Su Dival was
murdered and you’re saying you ‘don’t know’ where you were at?” the prosecutor
mocked. He wore a feather headdress to stand out.