The Clarity of Cold Steel

THIS IS BAD. Word must’ve spilled about Draegar and his boys and their unfortunate boating accident. But who spilled? Parth? Brooklyn? Shit, if it’s Brooklyn, I’ll skin the bastard alive myself. Fool me once… Or maybe it’s Catia. She always seems less than pleased to see my mug, and it’s a good mug, better than good, in fact.

Cops did a fair thorough job of searching me, I’ll leave it at that, so my lock-picking tools and other sundry items have taken a powder. Therefore, I spend the night in lockdown, blessedly alone, sleeping like a baby on a ferron-crete slab that’s done wonders for the natural curvature of my spine.

Come morning, a pair of brute guards process me again and march me stutter-shuffling in leg irons down a hall and into a room half the size of my coffin on Dhule Street.

Constable Ruben’s sitting at a table, rubbing his stubbled chin. Looks like he hasn’t slept a wink in three days. A woman’s seated next to him, all prim and proper, wearing an aerodynamic suit that can only be described as burgundy and severe. Her dark hair’s pulled back near tight enough to split the skin off the front of her skull. Lips pursed, enthralled, she’s flipping through a dossier while Constable Ruben’s sipping a steaming cup of something. He raises an eyebrow at me, holds out a callused hand. “Have a seat.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” I nod and scuttle forward, chains clinking round my wrists and ankles, and take a seat. On Constable Ruben’s word, the two guards nod and grunt and leave. There’s an auto-stenographer set up on the table, a metal box about two by three by two, with a pair of ansibles poking out of the top like the horns of some exotic antelope. It blinks and buzzes and whirrs. Delightfully.

Constable Ruben sits. Sips. Purses his lips. “You don’t look so good, lad.”

“Oh, I’m tip top,” I lie.

The woman holds up a finger, the universal sign for just a second which will inevitably turn into a minute. As luck would have it, my schedule’s clear. The finger falls finally, and the woman peers up. Nods. Adjusts the ansibles on the auto-stenographer so one’s pointed at me and one at her. She clears her throat. “Avinash Shakteel interview, session one. Detective Lillian Vortex and Constable Amos Ruben present.” She fixes her attention on me. “You are Avinash Shakteel?” she questions over her glasses with piercing blue eyes.

I nod. “Sure.” The auto-stenographer whirs softly, the sound of a pen scribbling across paper emanating from its blinking depths. It’s a sight better than my auto-sten. “And you’re Lillian Vortex.”

“Detective Vortex, yes. I’d say it’s a pleasure to make you acquaintance, but…” She takes up a pen, holds it to her lower lip. “We can make this very simple, Mister Shakteel. You can confess, get it off your chest, and we can move on. Trust me, you’ll sleep better at night.”

“I confess,” I stretch my cuffed arms out in front of me, “I slept like a baby last night. Thinking of installing a ferron-crete slab at my coffin.”

“So be it, Mister Shakteel.” She lowers her pen. “You’ve quite the dossier.”

“It’s genetic.”

“Trouble does seem to have the habit of following you, isn’t that so? Or perhaps it is that you are in fact the source of the trouble, Mister Shakteel.”

“Just call me Avinash.”

Detective Vortex purses her lips, darkens, reiterates. “Isn’t that so, Mister Shakteel?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” I put my hands together in prayer. “I’m like an angel.”

“Lucifer perhaps.” She presses one finger into the dossier. “It says here you were implicated in the Strake scandal. Hmmm,” she turns a page, “four years ago.”

“I never listen to dossiers.”

“It claims no evidence was forthcoming but that the investigating officers believed you likely had a hand in the disappearance of one,” Detective Vortex tosses a series of crime scene photos in front of me, the last one of a dead girl who got that way in my presence, “Emma Strake.” Dead eyes frozen in sepia looking lost. “Daughter of the aforementioned Lord Ashford Strake.”

“I was hired to find her.” I look away from the photo, away from those betrayed eyes staring, threatening to crack me into a million shards of sorrow. “And I did.”

“And Lord Strake was found murdered a month later.” She steeples her fingers and presses them to her lower lip, a keen interrogation maneuver. I can’t wait for her to whisk her glasses off her face and rear back defiantly. “He’d been decapitated, the mechwork in his head pulled out, sold on the open market. We were able to recover some of it.” She flourishes a hand as if in explanation. “Pawn shops, you see?”

“We’re all pawns.” At the time, I believe I had referred to that as plan B, but I don’t tell her that. “And I was questioned by the cops about that. When I got out of my coma.” I nod at the dossier. “I’m sure it’s all in there.”

“Sordid business does seem to follow you.”

“Are you insinuating that I decapitated Strake while in a coma?”

“Or perhaps you invite it? I honestly don’t know. But it just seems that people involved with you have a bad habit of turning up dead.” She flips another photo, as glossy and clean as its subject matter is not. “Case two.” The photo’s of a charred skeleton. “Any idea who this is?”

“Hmm?” I lean in. “He does look familiar.”

“It’s Emile Urunta. A big union organizer for the textile mills in Malabar. He hired you for protection work and ended up a smoking corpse. Word is you pulled a Benedict on him.”

“They do say that smoking is bad for your health.”

“And now you’ve taken up murdering officers of the law?” She fixes me a steel glare that I admit makes me adjust in my seat a smidge. Then she whisks her glasses off her head and sits back, appraising me at arm’s length. I enjoy the maneuver.

Playing my dumbfounded card, I scoot forward as best I can, glare at Constable Ruben. “What the hell’s this all about, Rube?”

Constable Ruben doesn’t bite, he just sits there with cool eyes of stone, watching over his steaming cup.

“I’m talking about Constable Owen Draegar,” Detective Vortex says. “Word on the street is you deep-sixed him along with five uniformed cops.”

“Is word on the street admissible in court now?” I ponder aloud.

“That’s right. You used to be a cop in Sepoy. Why were you fired?”

“They found out my parents weren’t siblings.”

Constable Ruben nearly chokes.

“We have witnesses say you were seen boarding the Nostromo prior to it sinking.” Detective Vortex thumbs a page over in the dossier but never takes her eyes off of mine. Not for an instant. “Ahem.” The photograph is a grainy shot of a hulk shattered across the sea floor. “Prior to an explosion on or near the bow, beneath the waterline, which sank her.”

“Jewish lightning?”

“I think you lured Constable Draegar and his men onboard then touched off a bomb.” She slides the photograph in front of me. “What do you say to that, Mister Shakteel?”

“I’d say whoever did it deserves a medal.” I glance over. “What do you think, Rube?”

Constable Ruben deigns not to answer.

“You didn’t like Constable Draegar?”

“Oh, I don’t know, between the head butts and the cattle prod, I was starting to feel a connection.”

“You’re referring to the incident at the prostitute’s residence. One Sally Hazard.” Detective Vortex jots something down. She glances at her comrade. “Constable Ruben says you and Draegar had a rather violent confrontation in her coffin that night. What was that confrontation about, Mister Shakteel?”

“He didn’t like my prices.”

“You’ve a smart jibe for everything, don’t you?”

“Why not ask your partner?” I nod towards Constable Ruben.

“I did,” she says, “and now I’m asking you.”

Constable Ruben sips from his cup, winces a tad like it’s too hot.

“Okay, okay. The reason why Constable Draegar beat the shit out of me is because Constable Draegar is an asshole.” I hold up a hand. “Excuse me, was an asshole.”

Detective Vortex flips to yet another picture. “From my side of things, Constable Draegar was a pillar of the community.”

“Sounds like he sank like one,” I admit.

“You think you’re a real hard case, don’t you Mister Shakteel?” She turns the picture toward me and pushes it across the table. “Recognize them?”

It’s a picture of a family. A husband and wife and five kids. They’re all dirty. They’re all skinny. They’re all smiling. “No.”

“They were all onboard the Nostromo when it went down.” She holds up a sheet, adjusts her glasses. “The Johnsons. Ted and Anita. Five children. Good family. All drowned. Or burned. Or dead of smoke inhalation. The coroner couldn’t decide which came first. But it came. She was certain about that.”

Sweat starts to bead on my neck. I’d cased the hulk, but it’s still a kick in the gut hearing something like that. The Nostromo was empty. I know it. So she’s lying. She has to be. Trying to force my hand, or a reaction, to catch me in a lie or slip. Cop tricks and gimmicks. Misinformation. As old as the good cop/bad cop routine.

Or maybe I dropped the ball and murdered an entire family.