"Can you tell me what happened?"
"Let's just say she didn't pass in her sleep, sweetheart."
The ambulance gives one strangled whoop and pulls out onto the road, taking Mrs Luditsky with it. I grip the ring in my pocket, hard enough to embed the imprint of the sapphires into my palm. Sloth nuzzles into my neck, hiding his face. I wish I could reassure him.
"Ugly business," the Maltese tuts, sympathetically. "Like it's any of yours."
I'm suddenly furious. "You with the cops?"
"God, no!" He laughs. "Unfortunately for this one," he says, nodding at the Marabou, "there's no real money in ambulance chasing."
"We're sorry for your loss," the Marabou says.
"Don't be," I say. "I only met her the one time."
"What was it that you were doing for the old lady anyway? If I may ask? Secretarial? Grocery runs? Nursing?"
"I was finding something for her."
"Did you get it?"
"Always do."
"But sweetie, what a marvellous coincidence! Oh, I don't mean marvellous, like oh, how marvellous your employer just died. That's ghastly, don't get me wrong. But the thing is, you see-"
"We're also looking for something," the Marabou cuts in.
"Precisely. Thank you," the Maltese says. "And, if that's, you know, your talent? I'm guessing that's your talent? Then maybe you could help."
"What sort of something?"
"Well, I say something, but really, I mean someone."
"Sorry. Not interested."
"But you haven't even heard the details."
"I don't need to. I don't do missing persons."
"It's worth a lot to us." The bird on Marabou's back flexes its wings, showing off the white flèchettes marking the dark feathers. I note that they're clipped, and that its legs are mangled, twisted stubs. No wonder she has to carry it. "More than any of your other jobs would have paid."
"Come on, sweetie. Your client just turfed it. Forgive me being so frank. What else are you going to do?"
"I don't know who you are-"
"An oversight. I'm sorry. Here." The Marabou removes a starched business card from her breast pocket and proffers it between scissored fingers. Her fingernails are immaculately manicured. The card is blind embossed, white on white in a stark sans-serif font:
Marabou amp; Maltese Procurements
"And procurements means what exactly?"
"Whatever you want it to, Ms December," the Marabou says.
Sloth grumbles in the back of his throat, as if I need to be told how dodgy this just turned. I reach out for their lost things, hoping to get anything on them, because they obviously have something on me.
The Maltese is blank. Some rare people are. They're either pathologically meticulous or they don't care about anything. But it still creeps me out. The last person I encountered with no lost things at all was the cleaning lady at Elysium. She threw herself down an open elevator shaft.
My impressions of the Marabou's lost things are weirdly vivid. It must be the adrenaline sharpening my focus – all that hormone soup in your brain messes with mashavi big time. I've never been able to see things this clearly. It's strange, like someone switched my vaselineslathered soft-focus perspective for a high-definition paparazzi zoom-lens.
I can make out the things tethered to her in crisp detaiclass="underline" a pair of tan leather driving gloves, soft and weathered by time. One of them is missing a button that would fasten it at the wrist. A tatty book, pages missing, the remainder swollen with damp, the cover half ripped off. I can make out sepia branches, a scrap of title, The Tree That-. And a gun. Dark and stubby, with retro curves, like a bad prop from a '70s sci-fi show. The image is so precise I can make out the lettering on the side: Vektor.
Oblivious to me discreetly riffling through their lost things, the Maltese presses me, grinning. His painted Dog grins too, pink tongue lolling happily between its sharp little teeth. "We really need your help on this one. I'd even say we can't do it without you. And it pays very, very well."
"How can I say this? I don't like people knowing my business."
"You advertise," the Marabou says, amused.
"And I don't like your attitude."
"Oh don't mind Amira, she comes off mean, but she's just shy, really," the Maltese says.
"And I don't like small dogs. So thanks, but you know, as far as I'm concerned, you should go fuck the carcass of a goat."
The Maltese squinches up his face. "Oh, that's disgusting. I'll have to remember that one," he says.
"Hang onto that," the Marabou indicates the card. "You might change your mind."
"I won't."
But I do.
2.
From: Livingstone Mission House [mailto: eloria@livingstone.drc]
Sent: 21 March 2011 08:11 AM
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Subject: A message in a bottle.
To whom it may concern,
My name is Eloria Bangana. I live in the DRC or Democratic Republic of Congo. I am 13 years old. When they killed my family I had a choice. I could be a prostitute or pretend to be a boy and work in the coltan mines.
Lucky, I am very small for my age. Most people think I am 9 or 10. So, I choose the mines, because I can crawl into tight spaces with my little bucket for sifting and my spade, although mostly I use my fingers. Sometimes my fingers get cracked and bleed from scratching in the dirt.
They say coltan makes cell phones. I do not know how you make cell phones from mud. Also computers and video games. All your technology runs on mud. Isn't that funny?
My cousin Felipe says he has played a video game in Kinshasa, he said you just press buttons to fight, buttons to walk or kick or punch. He said it was boring.
Felipe likes soccer more. I used to play soccer with him, but it wasn't really soccer. It's a game called 3 tin, because we only have tins to kick. The rules are similar. Maybe one day I can teach you. We don't play 3 tin anymore, because the rebels say there isn't time. We are here to work, not play. They shot my cousin Felipe in the back when he tried to run away. He died. It was very sad. We were very scared.
I get seven cents American for every kilogram of coltan. The rebels weigh it on the scales but they cheat. The lady at the mission station, Sister Mercia, says coltan is worth 100 times what they pay. She says they use us like slaves.
Sometimes it is hard to understand her because she is from America. She is helping me translate this because I speak French and my English is not so good. She is very helpful and very nice. She shows me how to use the computer. And she fixes my clothes and sometimes she gives me oranges.
Maybe you are wondering why I am emailing to you? Sister Mercia says we need to wake up the world about what is happening here. She says to tell you, don't worry, we are not asking for money. We are asking for help.
The orphanage where Sister Mercia works and I live now that the Vainglory Ministries rescued me, we have a problem. The rebels have cut off our phones and all our communication. We have one cell phone that we hide from them and it has WAP so we can send email, if you go stand at the top of the hill when the rebels aren't watching.
It is like a message in a bottle. We send it floating into the ocean and hope that someone finds it.
But this is not our real problem. The man who runs the orphanage, Father Quixote, has been kidnapped by the rebels and they want us to pay $200,000 for him to come back safe to us.