“Tell me, Mac, how busy is your crack investigative team at the moment?”
The fat cop reached for another Merit, then consulted a desk calendar.
“Well, Lenny’s wife is visiting her mom over the weekend, so he’s hosting the poker game on Friday. Don’s hair plugs got infected, so he’s out sick for a few days. And, of course, Wednesday is our bowling league night down at Lois Lanes.” Mac leaned back in his chair. “Looks like we’re booked. Why?”
“I’ve got something of a mystery on my hands, and I was hoping your guys could help out.”
Mac shrugged. “Let’s hear it. Try to make it exciting… I’m barely awake.”
“OK, in a nutshell, I was hired by someone calling herself Countess Renier. I went to her house, which turned out to be a mansion in Pacific Heights. 2429 Fillmore.”
Mac wobbled forward and made a note.
“The details of the case aren’t important, but I ended up in Brownsville, Texas, where someone played jai alai with my head and put me in the hospital for a couple days.
When I got back in town, I went to see my client, and her house was cleaned out. Turns out, it’s been up for sale and supposedly empty for months.”
Mac focused his eyes, now more alert. “A scam.”
I nodded.
“And you want me to have the boys look the place over.”
“If they can fit it into their hectic schedules.”
Mac leaned his head against the back of the chair and blew a smoke ring toward the dingy ceiling. He took his time finishing the cigarette, then sat forward, elbows on the desk.
“Tell you what, Murphy. Things are a little slow around here. We haven’t had a good murder case in months. Every day it’s the same old thing — some Mutant’s been beat up, a gang of Norms broke into some Mutant’s store, some old Mutant shot a Norm on the subway. Mutants, Norms, Mutants, Norms. I’ll tell ya, I’m so sick of this crusade crap I could puke. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned crime?”
I shook my head sympathetically.
“I’m with you, Mac. The world’s going to hell. But this case is a real mystery and doesn’t have a thing to do with Mutants or Norms.”
Mac doused his Merit.
“OK, Murphy. We’ll check this place out for ya. I just got an anonymous tip that someone broke in there. I’ll let you know if we turn anything up.”
UAKM — CHAPTER TEN
The city sparkled with Christmas lights, and the metropolitan air space was jammed with speeders, filled with shoppers returning from the extended-hours holiday frenzy. It was annoying. This was my least favorite time of the year. The weather was cold and clammy, and something about the yuletide season always brought out the grinch in me. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the fact that a simple Christian celebration had been grafted onto a set of pagan rituals and fertilized with steaming piles of commercialism, turning the whole event into a bastardized maelstrom of greed and questionable religious value. Or maybe it was because Santa never brought me a pony.
The bottle of bourbon tucked under my arm represented a third of my remaining liquid capital. I unlocked the door to my office and stepped into the darkness. The chilly, damp street air gave way to the warm, smoky smell of home. The green glowing numbers on my watch read 11:11 PM. It’d been one of the longest ten-hour stretches of my life, and I was exhausted… but I wasn’t going to sleep.
The white glow from the streetlights outside fell through my venetian blinds and washed across the floor, giving the room a ghostly look. I crossed to my desk, set the bottle down, and turned on the banker’s lamp. In less than a minute, I was shoeless, hatless, and coatless, with a loosened tie and the melancholy strains of Miles Davis echoing off peeling wallpaper.
A speeder flashed past my windows, headed in the direction of the new city. Five million lost souls, clustered together among piles of rubble and sleek, sterile construction. Things were different now. I wondered if things were different back home, too. Probably. Everything was going to hell.
I tore the plastic wrapper off the top of the Jack Daniel’s bottle and removed the cap. I’d made a quick stop at a liquor store on the way home and decided to buy the good stuff.
Seeing the Colonel buy the farm had made me feel even more mortal than usual. For all I knew, this might be my last night on Earth. I stuck a Lucky Strike in the corner of my mouth and poured myself half a glass of sedative. My two best friends. I picked up the tumbler and raised it in memory of my late mentor. Three shots of bourbon coursed down my throat: one for him, one for me, and one to fill the empty feeling in the pit of my gut. I took a deep drag and refilled the glass. There was a message on the vid-phone.
I pressed the playback button, then leaned back in my chair, eyes closed and feet crossed on top of my desk.
Alaynah’s face appeared on the screen. “Hello, Tex. I just wanted to call and say I had a great time today. It was lovely to see you. Give me a call. My number’s 671-3892. Bye.”
I opened my eyes and watched smoke curl around the gold and green light of the banker’s lamp. Miles stepped aside as John Coltrane’s plaintive sax played an aching eulogy. I reached over to the vid-phone and erased the message. Another sip of bourbon burned in my throat.
I turned my head and looked in the direction of a photograph hung on the wall. All I could see was the reflection on the frame, but I knew what it showed. It was me, the Colonel, and Xavier Jones… an old photo. I wondered why I’d held onto it all these years. Maybe as a reminder of more innocent times. Or maybe for the same reason I kept a picture of Sylvia on my desk — to never let me forget the biggest mistakes of my life.
I leaned forward to stub out my cigarette and thought back to the last time I’d seen the Colonel, trying to remember everything he’d said during his mysterious visit. Even through the fermented haze of that night, I knew there wasn’t much to remember. The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that he’d come by for a purpose. Did he know his life was in danger? Was he looking me up as insurance? So I’d follow up on him? If that was the case, why me? He’d said that he’d heard about me, that I’d done some good work. But there had to be other people he trusted, people he worked with.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he wasn’t sure who he could trust.
Then there were the things I’d heard the Colonel say to his killer. He’d mentioned CAPRICORN, which I knew a little about, and something called the Winter Chip.
Whatever this Winter Chip was, it seemed to be the thing the killer was looking for. The Colonel had always been hard for me to read, and I wasn’t sure if he’d been bluffing or telling the truth when he’d said he didn’t know about the Winter Chip. Regardless of what all this means, the Colonel had obviously gotten himself mixed up in something big and dangerous. He was the best PI I’d ever known, and it had gotten him murdered.
And I knew I was about to get involved.
I slid another Lucky Strike out of the pack and fired it up. After another sip of bourbon, I drew in deeply on my cigarette and reached for the items I’d taken out of my overcoat pocket and laid on the desk. I picked up the blue index card with the code. BXK+A261184. I was now almost certain that the Colonel had sent this to me. Was I supposed to know what the numbers and letters meant?
I spent the next several hours smoking one cigarette after another and attempting to solve the code. I looked through reference books, racked my brain, analyzed, and stared until my eyes started to loose focus. It was useless. I’d always believed I had a knack for codes and brainteasers, but I had to admit I was beaten at the moment.
I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for solving puzzles. I turned off the lamp on my desk and paced slowly around my office, stopping occasionally to refill my glass, pick up a smoke, or stare out the windows at the black-cold night and the crimson moon which stared back like a blood-shot eye.