Silenced Page 14

  Tell me something I didn’t already know.

  "Zenith usage? Why do I have the feeling you're not telling me everything," I said as the wauto dipped closer to the ground. I was nearing Nathan's house.

  "Please, Cyb, be careful. I don't want to see you hurt," he said, his eyes pleading.

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me! I want an explanation, Trey!”

  He gave me one of his sorry grins, and said, "I've got go. Love you."

  He was gone as quickly and as unexpectedly as he had appeared.

  I sat stunned, both by Trey’s revelation about Amanda and by his knowledge that I was in fact in Memphis, and working the Christensen case. If he knew and he was deep underground, then surely others knew too.

  Like Schumuckler.

  I shrugged off the thought and tried to focus more on the case at hand. Amanda.

  The wauto gently touched the ground in front of a one level house on a street with duel personalities. Nathan Martindale resided in a world of trailer parks, prefab homes and broken dreams. The house sagged in the middle, and the edges were caked with muddy dirt. The yard lay littered with broken bottles, busted bags, and other objects of undetermined origins.

  I crossed the threshold through the rickety gate and suddenly felt depressed too. The air swayed with sadness as if the home itself was unhappy. Surely hope breathed its last breath inside this home.

  The doors opened as soon as I stepped onto the decrepit, paint-peeling porch.

  "Who you?" demanded a hulk of a man. His mop of tangled curls hid most of his forehead, but his dirt-brown eyes sliced through the knots directly to me. "You the reg?"

  "No, sir," I said gently, trying not to inhale the odor of filth and sweat seeping out from him. "I'm here to see Nathan."

  His unshaven face grinned, exposing yellowish teeth in his sagging mouth. "Everybody been wantin' to see Nathan…How much-"

  The roar of an aerocycle drowned out the rest of his offer. I turned around to see a crimson aerocycle float into the driveway. At the helm, sat a tall, thin boy without a helmet. Brownish curls stuck out in all angles, as he awkwardly got off. His arm was in a cast.

  As soon as he eyes met mine, his features construed into fury.

  "Get away from here!" he shouted. He pointed at the man in the doorway with the finger from his cast. "Shut up!"

  "Nathan, my name is-"

  "I don't care!" he said as he marched up to me. "I already know who you are, Miss Lewis."

  His nose was inches from mine. His breath reeked of alcohol and perhaps some dope, but I couldn't be sure. I shouldn’t say he was a boy. Nathan Martindale was pushing mid-twenties.

  The older man sauntered back into the house.

  The sludge of a man must have been his dad, for Nathan looked exactly like a younger, slimmer version. Cleaner too. Nathan wore black slacks and a sweater that had to cost more than the house was worth.

  "Leave me alone. I got nuthin to say."

  "Do you want to help Amanda?" I said, keeping my voice low, but firm.

  His eyes rolled upward as if asking the heavens for help. "I can't help her. She's dead. Don’t you read the news files? That ship, fine little ship it was, has set out down the Mississippi."

  "Someone killed her," I said icily.

  Wimpy boyfriends didn't impress me much. Besides, Amanda was a very good girlfriend to him if the silver watch and nice clothes were any indication. Not to mention the aerocycle he rode. It was a newer, more expensive model than Jane's and Jane spared no expense when it came to her aerocycle.

  He plopped down on the porch steps, the crunch of fallen leaves protesting the placement of his rear-end. "What do you want?"

  "Tell me about Amanda. I’ve been hired to find out who killed her, and I need to know her. Hobbies, favorite hang-outs, you know, stuff only her boyfriend would know."

  With a strangled sigh he closed his eyes. His face crumbled and without speaking a word more, fat tears spilled out and slipped down his face.

  “Ain’t your friend found out enough? Lookit!” he held up his arm as exhibit A. “I outta file violation charges.”

  “I’m asking for a little more. She’s dead, Nathan. You can help with this.”

  I waited while he cried in quiet sips.

  Without asking, I sat down next to him on the porch. Across the street were historic houses and numerous Victorian-style structures. The trailer parks resided on the eastern side of the street, while the historic homes lined the west. Most of the Victorian houses were in need of repair, but still retaining their grand shapes and extended porches. Some seemed to be lived in, while others definitely were abandoned.

  “I dunno what you want from me,” he said, his voice leaden. “I already told your partner, the one who broke my arm. She didn’t believe me, and twisted it until it fractured.”

  “I’m sorry about that. She can be a little impatient, and she’s very upset about Amanda’s death. Just like you.”

  He nodded. “Gettin’ this off tomorrow. Advanced healing through injections of calcium and other crap the doctors come up with. All healed up.”

  "Can you tell me where you met her?" I asked, trying to prompt some answers. The day drifted on towards night.

  He sighed, but a dreamy expression spread across his face. "I met her at this club called the Joker’s Pun. I know the name's stupid, but Amanda liked to dance there."

  I nodded with a smile. “Seen it myself the other night. Why did Amanda go there? Was she stripping?”

  “Nah,” Nathan said, his head shaking. “She wasn’t in it for that. She liked slumming it. Getting away from it all, you know? Being anonymous, like not the mayor’s daughter, but who she wanted to be. You know?”

  It was my turn to nod in agreement. I had the same thought myself.

  "She-she wasn't alone, but with this older man. He was way older than you," Nathan continued. "I asked her why she was hanging out in with her dad, and she said he wasn't her dad."

  An older man? Where had I heard that before?

  Note to self, check on the older man in Amanda's life.

  "She gave me telemonitor i.p. address and I called," he said. "I didn't know the mayor was her mother."

  Nathan wasn't Amanda's age, but older. I guessed he was about twenty-three.

  "So, you were initially attracted to her even though she was with another man?" I smiled at him, working him to put him at ease. He seemed tense, shifting, and while sitting still appeared to be moving. I’d guess he was some sort of addict, because he had to work at sitting still.

  He smiled back and I saw, perhaps the handsome, well, wholesomeness that drew Amanda to him. The slightly slip of devilish too.

  "I dunno, I- I had to have her, you know?" he said with an immense sadness. "Now she's gone."

  His sadness and loss seemed to cover me like a wet blanket.

  "What are you gonna do?" he asked. "Whatever you do, don’t ask her mother about me. That woman hates me.”

  He laughed, but it wasn't one filled with mirth.

  It was hollow and empty.

  "I'm going to try to find out who killed her," I said as I stood up. It grew darker and I wanted to get back to Henry's. "Tell me, was Amanda a Zenith user?"

  He scratched his head and laughed that dead, empty laugh again. His face closed and I saw a small glimpse of Nathan when angry. The super cool boyish act he’d given me since I met him was an act. He was behaving the way he thought I expected him to act. That didn’t mean though that the information he’d given me on Amanda wasn’t true.

  "No. Who told you that? People who didn't like us being together used to say that, you know? That she was only with me ‘cause I got her Zenith."

  "Did you peddle Zenith?" I asked him, knowing he did whether he admitted or not.

  He stood up too and his eyes held mine. "Yeah, before I got with her. But once we got together, I gave it up. Sex with her was better than Zenith ever was."

  With that said, he stalked up the stairs
and entered his house.

  I guess I got all I came here for.

  But should I believe him?

  "That's total shit!" Jane bellowed from her position by the window. Smoking like a chimney, the smoke floated out the open windows into the night slower than she was contributing to its haziness.

  I wouldn’t put up with her smoking in the rental room or in my wauto, so she was smoking at this restaurant that came complete with filters imbedded in the sections around smoking tables, were her only refuge. Lung cancer not being an illness I wanted to openly court, I told her cut back on the amount she smoked or do it some place else.

  O'Shea's Bar rested on a deserted, lonely strip of road that ran parallel to Beale Street and only a few blocks over from Regulator Headquarters. After the incident at Henry's Restaurant, we decided we'd try something a little seedier, since the upscale place had robotic waiters and lousy food.

  Seated on the patio designated for smoking, Jane consumed bottle after bottle of Peck, while I drank a cup of strong coffee. Our waitress, Katherine, an older woman in her forties, with good legs and heavy mascara, seemed hungry for a smile and a bath. But she kept my coffee filled and Jane watered up.

  Heaven knows we could use the break.

  When we first arrived, the place hardly contained any people, except for the bartender, a third-generation O'Shea and a few regular customers from the look of it. Right around ten minutes after nine, the old crowd shuffled in and started singing Old Irish songs and drinking heavily. Fifteen guys, hanging and slobbering all over each other kept to the bar.

  With tomorrow being Saint Patrick’s Day, they must have been practicing for the big Irish celebration. Indeed the decorated bar had blinking green lights as if sectioning off a spot for an alien concourse and landing. Plastic four-leaf shamrocks dangled from the ceilings as if an indoor shower of clovers. An electronic sigh flashed “green beer for Irish cheer, ten silver pieces.” The tables had been covered with green and white patch tablecloths, plastic too like the shamrocks.

  "Shhh! The window's open," I hissed at her. "That's what I heard from a reliable source."

  "No, no," she said firmly, her head shaking. "Mandy didn't do drugs."

  "How well did you know her?" I asked, thinking of how addicts kept their addiction a secret until the addiction took over. Then it wasn’t a secret for anyone.

  She looked up at me really fast and sighed. "I saw her about four times a year. But we wrote a lot to each other. Daily emails, you know, telemonitor calls, instant messages, you name it we used it to keep in touch."

  It was nearly ten o'clock at night. I had shared the autopsy report with Jane because she demanded to see it. The one condition was that she try to act more like a private inspector and less like a female reincarnation of Batman.

  She agreed.

  We'd been at O'Shea's since 8:45 or so. I had the soup du jour while Jane had a hamburger, a rare treat since beef was ludicrously priced. Finding unmutated cows and threading out the mutations was a costly business and not one many farmers could afford to do.

  "It's possible," I said careful and soft, which I found to be a pain. I wanted my old Jane back. The one who knew me and one I didn't have to handle with kid gloves, "she might have hidden her drug use from family."

  Jane closed her eyes and opened them again. "Yeah. It's possible. I know it is."

  "Tomorrow, follow the boyfriend. I want to know his friends, his habits, everything. Let's start with him since we got nothing else. Besides, what's the saying? Once a Zenith dealer, always a Zenith dealer?" I said. "I'm going to talk to your aunt about her daughter."

  With a deep drag of her cigarette, she nodded. "I'll head out tonight."

  "Don't get caught. He knows you, remember," I said with a wag of my finger. "Stealth."

  She laughed, which was good to hear.

  “Don’t harm him, Jane.”

  She shrugged with one shoulder.

  "How many have you had?" I asked, counting two bottles on the table.

  "Four," she said with a grin. "I can handle it, you know. I'm an ex-Marine." She took out two capsules called E417, which was supposed to sober you up after taking them. With a quick toss, she had downed both pills with the remainder of her beer.

  I smiled. Tough and stubborn was my Jane.

  "I'm going now," she said, her speech slightly slurred. "I want to find him before he disappears into the nightlife."

  After grabbing her bomber and slapping down a few coins, she left through the patio door.

  I signaled for Katherine who wore green ribbons in her hair, and a shirt that read, “Kiss me, I’m Irish.” She filled my empty cup. Seated and relaxed, my own thoughts turned to the mayor. It was high time she told the truth about her girl. How could I get the media ready mayor to release the not-so-good things about her daughter to me? I needed a plan of attack.

  With Jane back on board and recovering from her spell of revenge, I felt good about finding Amanda's killer(s).

  I was on my third cup of java when the door to O'Shea's opened and in walked Captain Hanson. Seated back on the patio, I could make out his turquoise sweater as he took up residence at the bar and greeted O'Shea. The others at the bar waved and nodded to him. He must be a regular as several of the “boys” referred to him by name.

  Katherine strutted over to my table. "Need anythang else?"

  "Can you tell me who the handsome man is that just came in?" I asked politely.

  She grinned, showing her crooked teeth. "Oh, yeah, that's Tom Hanson."

  "He's really well dressed. Is he married?" I asked innocently, as I glanced up to the bar.

  Katherine chuckled. "I don't think so, miss, but I think he got somebody. I tried all ready…Handsome though, ain’t he?"

  I nodded, acting disappointed. No wife, but he must have someone like a girlfriend.

  "You know," Katherine said, her tray resting on her hip, speaking low as if we were suddenly best friends. "He usedta come in here with a grin, you know, happy. But lately, he been drinkin' more an' stuff. Sometimes, cries a little to O’Shea…"

  "Maybe the girlfriend broke up with him," I said, sipping my coffee. Again faking innocence while snooping on the captain. Sometimes I was just damn nosy.

  She shook her head. "I asked him, thinkin' the same, but he said she died."

  Died.

  "Recently?" I asked, a little enthusiastically.

  Katherine nodded. "I think last week."

  I paid her with a big tip and got up from the table. She smiled again, forcing me to shudder. When she didn't smile, her face was pleasant to look at. The teeth, crowded on top of each other and decaying right before my eyes, disturbed the symmetry of her face.

  "Hey, maybe we can go out together sometime," she said. "I work most week days, you know, but I’m free on Saturdays."

  I said, "Sure." Thinking to myself, never, never, never.

  Katherine sauntered off toward the bar's direction. I exited through the side patio door, not wanting Captain Hanson to see me. No doubt, he'd figure it out once Katherine described me to him, but I needed time to find out the identity of his light 'o love.

  I climbed into my wauto and cranked the heat up to seven. Chilly, the night's air, calm and crisp, dropped steadily toward freezing temperatures. Without a coat, I hunched over and forced myself to think about some tropical island with nice, hot weather, and studly men.

  Drowning his sorrows in a mug of beer wasn't exactly how I thought Captain Hanson spent his nights. Sipping wine and eating extremely rare steaks at the Chop House came to mind, but instead he's at a dumpy little bar. Strange.

  Yeah, I know I ate there too. But a man of Hanson’s caliber shouldn’t be seen in dives like O’Sheas. There’s more to the good captain than meets the eye. My curiosity was peaked and that meant I’d dig around in Hanson’s life until I found out what he was hiding. Might not pertain to Amanda’s murder, but then it might. I wouldn’t know until all the bees had flown out of the hive.
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  Placing the wauto on autopilot, I pulled out my handheld and scribbled furiously the stuff I heard from Katherine. It would all have to be checked out, because Katherine might have overheard Captain Hanson's drunken ramblings. Hearsay and nothing more, the prosecutor would argue and win. All the dots needed to be lined up correctly, for it one thing was off or tarnished, the entire picture could crumble.

  With a sigh of relief, I zipped into the air. I had somewhere to start with Hanson.

  We were back in business.

  In less than twenty minutes from the time I left O'Shea's, I reached Henry's doors.

  The flight back wasn't pleasant; it was glorious! Clear, nearly empty lanes stretched out in front of me as I cruised. The traffic signals changed to green as I approached. Normally, I caught all the red ones.

  The Fates were with me.

  By the time I had parked, climbed the steps to the second floor and entered the rental room, it was after ten-thirty. The room shroud in shadows came to life with the flick of the lights. I didn’t expect to see Jane, because she was out hunting Nathan, but the lights revealed...

  "Good evening, Mr. Schmuckler," I said, dropping my satchel on the floor next to my travel bag. The good mood I was in slipped away. He was seated crossed leg on my bed.

  Fickle Fates.

  "Good evening to you, Miss Lewis," he said, as he stood up, seemingly undeterred that his presence in my room didn’t surprise me—at least on the surface. Tonight he wore a pinstriped suit of burgundy and gray, his hat a matching accessory. There’s something obscene about a man who’s color-coordinated, probably right down to his boxers. He removed a mauve handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "Quite humid in here, don't you think?"

  "What do you want?"

  Asking him how he had got in or how he had found me would have been completely pointless. The man I saw stalking me must have been a T.A. agent, keeping tabs for Schmuckler, if not Schmuckler himself. My temper flared at the obscene, heavy handed gall of the Territory Alliance, but I didn’t let any of that come out of my mouth.

  "I am requesting you to tell me the location of Trey Ohornon," he said plainly. He opened his jacket casually to reveal a midnight black gun. "I am asking politely."