The Clarity of Cold Steel

KASHMIRA’S EYEBALLS deep in a new penny dreadful, something about golems electrifying to life, when I manage to get back to my office. “Fella came in asking about you,” she says as I creep in. She glances up at the clock on the wall. “Few hours ago.”

“Get a name?” I open my office door and freeze.

“No,” she says.

“Strong work.”

“And your brother’s here.”

“Awesome.” I nod to Nikunj, sitting in my office, swiveling back and forth slightly in my chair, eyes on me. Serious eyes, the only eyes he has. A length of coiled rope lays across my desk. “Thanks.”

But Kashmira’s already back to ignoring me, embroiled in her pulp trash.

“Coppers are looking for you.” My brother adjusts the rope on the desk, selects one end.

“So I hear.”

“Know what for?”

“Not specifically, but I’ve a few guesses.”

“Not smart coming here.”

“Needed a few things.” I shrug, open my weapon cabinet, take out a new small sword. “Besides, we’re in Malabar. If I can’t spot a couple plainclothes flatfoots squatting on my turf, what good am I?”

Nikunj raises an eyebrow at the small sword. “What happened to the one I gave you?”

“It’s lodged through the heart of a Maori Chieftain and at the bottom of the ocean,” I lie. It’s through his right lung, but the heart is so much more poetic.

“That old story.” Nikunj rises from my chair. I ain’t offended. He’s physically incapable of sitting in a chair with his back to a door. “C’mon.” My office window’s open an instant later, him forcing it up with his shoulder, ramming it, paint chips falling like snow.

I close the door behind me, glance at the rope. “Planning on lynching me?”

He grunts the window open all the way, brushes some paint chips from his shoulder. “Cops got a minder on the front door of your building.” He takes the coil of rope and flings one end out into the night. “Homeless scrapper plating for beans. You see him?”

“That’s why I used the side.”

“They had one there, too.” He ties a double figure eight, wraps it round my coat stand, wedges it across the windowsill. “They’ll be busting down your door any minute.” Feet spread, rope slung across him, ready to rappel, he’s hanging out the window now. “You coming?”

I crack open my office door. “Hey Kash, the cops are coming.”

She grunts, takes a hit from her cigarette, waves a hand.

“Could you open the front door?”

She huffs, lowers her book and cigarette, eyeballing the door as though it’s eons away.

“If the cops bust it down, I’m docking you for the new one.”

She licks a finger, back in her book, turns a page.

“And I’ll be installing a marble one with a platinum knob.”

The glare she gives me could curdle beer, but she does get up, and she does saunter toward the door. She opens it a crack. She’s back in her chair before I’m out the window, drying my palms on my coat, praying to Garuda that I don’t pull a short-term bird job.

* * * *

We’re hunkered in a back booth in a hashish den in the Quartertoke Village along the east side of Malabar. Gujarat Street, the seedy end. A real quiet joint, a soft sitar twanging along to some old folksy backwater melody as waves break in rhythmic shushes along the docks outside. The atmosphere’s thick with low ropes of smoke and lit by an orange haze that somehow pulses to the beat of the music. The cops ain’t coming here; it’s a connected joint, and if they somehow do, we’ll know about it yesterday.

I keep my hat bent low.

“Got some noise on your Butcher.” Nikunj leans across the table, takes a mouthful of crispy pakora, downs it.

“You have my attention.”

He wipes his mouth. “About a week ago, Mac Heath bulletined a script of donor matches.” He reaches into his greatcoat, withdraws a stack of data-cards about an inch thick, each one riddled with punched holes, just like the ones in Chirag’s office, just like the one I bluffed down Mac Heath with.

“Data cards,” I say.

A foursome of classical dancers take the stage and offer bows to scattered applause.

He nods, “Donor cards,” slides one out of his stack, brandishes it. “Here.”

I take it, squint, try to make heads or tails out of it. It’s a mass of seemingly random hole punches, each hole barely the size of a pin. A hundred rows across. A hundred down. A thousand spots. About a billion combinations. A gridded list of blood types and gender and history and a thousand other traits and factors. The only thing I can suss out is a number etched into the top right-hand corner: thirty-three.

“Whose is it?” I squint at it, hold it upside down, shake it, hoping maybe some of the holes’ll rearrange themselves into something approaching legible.

“Your boy’s.” Nikunj nods. “Notched to donate one kidney.”

Synchronized, the four dancers strike poses along to the sitar’s song, arms out wide, their long legs smooth and muscular.

“You read it?” I ask.

“No, it’s what I was told.” He shakes his head. “Folks were real interested in this when it came out.”

I sit back, rub my jaw, turn the data-card over in my paw, “Funny, Mac Heath said she got some nibbles, but no bites. Said she was going to end up pulling a blind swipe. Move the kid’s giblets on her own.”

Nikunj shakes his head. “Don’t know about that.”

Bedecked in faux-gold, jangling and chiming with each step and stomp, the dancers’ hair is braided into long spinal black whips, cracking as they change directions.

“Who’d you talk to?” I ask.

“Went to Brumson’s.”

I nod. Brumson’s the bloke that did the brunt of my surgery after I accidentally fell on a knife. About ten times. Always pays to keep a local grafter on retainer in case one day the unthinkable happens and you’re forced to wrap your head around it.

“Some strange shit went down after these were broadcast.” He taps the stack of data-cards against the table, fixes them neat. “A squad of hard cases came nosing around Brumson’s. Serious gents. All jacked up with slick mech. Top of the line stuff. Brumson was spooked hard. A ghost sheet. Wouldn’t talk. Couldn’t grease him. Begged me to scram. On-his-knees begged.”

“Was it a masked man fronting the crew?”

Nikunj, midway through shoveling in a mouthful of krill korma, pauses. Nods. “Metal mask. Yeah.” Between chews. “Short bloke.” Swallows. “Spoke with a slight lisp. Apologies, I’m starving.”

I wave a hand. “Get a line on him?”

“Man’s damn near a ghost.”

I tap the data-card against the table. “Why’d they go to Brumson’s in the first place? He didn’t publish the bulletin.”

“They didn’t know that, though.” Nikunj shakes his head. “The organ trade’s technically illegal. And grafters are like misers with their clients. So they broadcast their bulletins all cloak and dagger. Makes connections difficult. Tougher to get bushwhacked and mitigates evidence trails.”

“In the unlikely case some copper develops a conscience? Starts doing his job?”

The dancers step to the music in circles, one foot nailed to the floor, the other stomping along augmenting the beat.

“I know plenty of coppers on the level.” Nikunj wipes his chin. “A lot of hoops to jump through, in any case.”

“So this crew was just reaching in the dark?” I ponder. “But, why not just go through the regular channels?”

“Maybe they did.”

“But it’s a slow process.” I nod.

“So maybe they had a powerful need to get the job done yesterday.”

“Right. Or maybe they wanted more than just a kidney.”

Nikunj says nothing; he just swallows.

“They braced Brumson and hit Mac Heath.” Thinking, thinking, thinking, I look up, hit by a brick. “Kali’s tits, you think they braced all the graft joints in town? Could they?” I start tallying graft joints on my fingers. “How many were in the crew?”

“Seven.”

“Seven that he saw,” I say. “There were six at Mac Heath’s.” How many’s this masked man running? “Look, I’ve been up and down the coast all day, and in every joint, there’s been this pregnant pause when I start asking about this cat. And no one talked. Mention an iron masked man and intestines slide out of assholes.”

“Nice,” he takes another bite, “I copped a similar buzz at Brumson’s.”

I considered. “So maybe our masked man does print an ad, does go through the regular channels, but he knows it’s going to take time. So he just starts prowling around, too, hairy-eyeballing all the graft joints to hedge his bets. Trying to shorten the timeline. And he makes it clear that if anyone blabs, all bets are off. Permanently.”

“The masked man’s patter was all concerning loose lips and sinking ships,” Nikunj confirms. With a glance over his shoulder, I take in the dancers. They’re focused hard, honed, a sheen of sweat on smooth brown skin as they bend slowly to the floor, arms immobile wide as they do so. “Made it crystal that any loose lips’d be nailed to the keels of the ships. And who’s a grafter going to go to if that happens?”

“Well, if the masked man’s having that conversation with him, the grafter knows his muscle’s already failed. And hard. Knows he’s got no recourse other than to roll over, show his belly and beg.”

“Some bad folks in that business.”

“Masked man knows he has to be badder. The arithmetic of intimidation.”

“Don’t think this bloke would have balked at much. Not with the hardware he and his mates were sporting.”

“So where does that leave us?” I ask. “We’ve still got nothing on Gortham’s trail but this masked man. And he’s a ghost, like you said.”

Nikunj straightens up, takes a mouthful of krill, crunching as he smirks that shit-eating grin of his that says he’s got something. He swallows, wipes his chin. “I said he was damn near a ghost, brother.”

“Well, out with it.”

“Now Brumson wouldn’t talk, like I said, but one of his razor-boys would and did.” He lets that sink in a bit.

“Kid know the risk he was taking?” I ask.

“He’s got balls.”

“But not brains. Bad combo.”

“For him, maybe, not us.”

“He fess why he was spilling?”

“Says he’s got a beef with the man in the iron mask.”

I shake my head. “Seems a bit out of a razor-boy’s league, no?”

We watch for a moment as the four dancers exit the stage to the swish of silk, jingle of bangles, the padding of soft naked feet.

“Actually, I misspoke.” Nikunj sits back, crosses his arms. “You want aspirations?” It takes something to impress my brother but clearly he is. “Kid says he’s got a beef with the man in the iron mask’s boss.”

“Okay…” A chill creeps from my gut and shivers up my spine, spreading out in ionic tendrils, tingling all the way to my fingertips. “So who’s his boss?”

“The Catholic-Bloody-Church.”