Silenced Read online

  Tsk, tsk, you know how I hate intimidation tactics…

  "I don't know," I said icily, brandishing my own weapon. =From here, he couldn’t see if I had bent down to tie my shoes or grab my piece. He knew now.

  “I know you and the pug are acquainted already,” I said with a shrug. “You want to make it personal, and become more intimate with it?”

  He glared at me, the cheery demeanor melted off like snow on a wauto engine.

  "Trey and I are no longer a couple and haven't been for some time. I told you back in D.C. Should’ve saved yourself the trip."

  “Perhaps if I tell you why his whereabouts are important, you will tell me,” he said, his voice polite and soft as if he hadn’t heard me. His eyes continued to stare at me, rarely blinking.

  “I don’t care why you’re looking for him,” I said, holding my gun along my side, ready to draw. “I don’t know where he is. English isn’t your first language is it?”

  “He killed two T.A. agents while undercover. He’s gone rogue,” Schmuckler plowed on, continuing to ignore my cracks. He smiled, but it was a twisted, a wry smile. “The Raymen Cartel has a price on his head as well for other murders he committed while undercover. You’re a woman of good moral upbringing…”

  Trey. Kill two people for no reason. Nah, it didn’t wash. As for the good moral upbringing, he didn’t really know me, did he?

  “One more time, genius secret agent. Find…him…your …self!”

  No way was he going to shoot me in this rental room. Mayor Christensen and all of the Memphis regulators knew I was here, knew why I was here, and hated the Territories Alliance for no other reason, than the T.A. was always stepping on their toes and interfering in their cases.

  Schmuckler stood up and said, "Well, Miss Lewis, I’m afraid my superiors don't believe you…"

  "I don't give a shit who believes me!” My voice escalated like my temper. It sounded high and terrified. I hated that. "So, you can go back to them and tell them to kiss my ass. Find him yourself and leave me alone."

  He tipped his hat to me and placed it back on his head. Then he removed his gun from its holster and lifted the safety off. "That's too bad, Miss Lewis…"

  As Mr. Manners slowly raised his gun, I dipped to the floor, rolled toward my travel bag and pointed my own gun at him. “Don’t do this, Schmuckler. You can’t win this!”

  He pointed his gun at me. I could see it in his eyes; he knew I was faster.

  Before he could tug on the trigger, I shot him in the shoulder, the pug's blast forcing him to his knees. His gun flew across to Jane's bed as if ripped from his hand by an invisible giant. It slapped into the wall and fell with a thud to the carpeted floor.

  "Oh!" Schmuckler groaned and fell face forward to the carpet, writhed around in anguish a bit, muttering to himself before promptly passing out.

  I raced over to him, and using my foot, kicked him to see if he was faking it. Satisfied that he wasn’t, I got down on my knees, and rolled him onto his back. His face was pale and the burnt hole in his jacket ruined a perfectly good suit, though the color sucked. The wall behind him contained blood sprayed like water from a sprinkler. The hole was through and through. I could see the carpet through it, if I stared hard enough past the cartelized wound.

  The bastard was going to kill me.

  He really was…

  Shaking my head to dislodge the cobwebs, I went over to the telemonitor and contacted the regulators.

  Less than ten minutes later, the rental room quickly filled with people. Mr. Schmuckler, strapped to a metal stretcher and devoid of his hat, jacket and shirt, hovered as the floating alloy platform floated out of the room. I could see his flabby, white chest. Beside him the paramedics were busily taking notes and readings as it glided a few in feet ahead of them on out into the hallway.

  Captain Hanson, smelling strongly of cigarettes and beer, leaned against the bathroom door, his eyes unfocused and his face red, his own suit, rumpled and smelly. The violation scene team, three guys in turquoise coats and large metallic boxes, went around gathering evidence to support my claim of self-defense. They did locate and bag Schmuckler' s gun and some other stuff, so I wasn't too worried about it. I’d been in this situation before, but not with the Memphis Regulators, the D.C. ones.

  "So, he's a T.A. agent," Captain Hanson called over to me. It was a statement, not a question.

  The interrogation had begun.

  I sat on the floor, across from the bathroom, beneath the telemonitor. It was wall- mounted so there was space beneath it for me to sit. Despite this short distance, Captain Hanson’s voice sounded far away as if he was down the hall. Over the roaring sound of my blood, pumping fast and hot through my veins, his voice came across as being very small, timid against the tide of adrenaline.

  "That's what he said," I mumbled, my ears ringing and my body extremely tired.

  "Why would a T.A. agent try to kill you?" he asked, certain that I was hiding something. If he didn't believe me, I couldn’t tell. I couldn't tell if he did believe me either.

  "I don't know. He was here when I came in. Ambushed me. Took out his weapon and told me he was going to kill me.”

  Lying was a natural habit for me, but it wasn't the lying that made my throat feel like it had been scraped with a blunt knife. It was the fact that the entire T.A. would come at me with all their ammo. They could forbid me from being a private inspector; they could audit my office files, and much, much more. They didn't have to kill me to make my life a living hell.

  Was Trey worth it?

  "…Cybil…you all right?" Captain Hanson was saying. He'd come to stand in front of me and was now waving his hands in front of my face. "Hey! You all right?"

  I blinked rapidly. "Yeah, yeah…How much longer are your guys going to be?"

  Captain Hanson glanced around and said, "Another hour at least…Plus, we're going to have to seal it until your story can be collaborated. Did you know he was staying in a room down the hallway from you?"

  "No." It was already going on eleven. "If I knew, why would I continue to stay here?”

  He shrugged. “I have to ask.”

  “I'll going down to get another room."

  He nodded. "Just let me know which one it is."

  Before I got my satchel hoisted over my shoulder, Jane appeared in the doorway.

  "Cybil?" she called, her eyes roaming over the scene until they landed one me.

  "Here," I called standing up, trying not to look at the blood splatter still on the walls.

  She glanced at Captain Hanson as she walked by him and further into the room. With quick eyes she took in the blood and the scientists swarming our shared space. Already one of the guys came over to her and tried to get her to go into the hallway before she contaminated the scene.

  "What happened?"

  "Tell you on the way down to the front desk. We're going to need another room," I said, taking her arm and pulling her out with me. Captain Hanson raised his eyebrows, but did not ask who she was. He may have already known her from the funeral.

  Once we reached the front desk and out of Hanson’s earshot, I whispered, "Schmuckler tried to kill me tonight. He wouldn't take that I didn't know where Trey was…"

  "You killed a T.A. agent?" she balked, her eyes filled with fear. Jane wasn't easy to scare. But the T.A. was no laughing matter. Pulling a gun on them was one thing, actually firing it was another.

  "I didn't kill him. I shot him in the shoulder," I muttered. “Self defense.”

  "But still, the T.A. won't be happy about it," Jane said, her voice a little shaky. Her eyes flickered as she took in the lobby as if waiting for T.A. agents to leap out from behind the furniture and kidnap us. Or worse, kill us.

  "I know, so can you knock it off? Why can't they take no for an answer?" I grumbled as I stepped up to the desk.

  Jane shook her head. " I dunno, but I've got something you should hear."

  We quit talking when the robotic front desk clerk, which
looked strangely like the waiter at Henry’s restaurant, glided from the back and asked what we needed. He gave us room one-thirteen and we headed back up the stairs to reclaim our belongings—the ones we were allowed to take anyway.

  When we reached our new room, Captain Hanson had left and two of the three lab guys were still working the room. Jane and I gathered our travel bags and clothes. Before we could we go, I had to change out of my clothes, give them to the techs. Dressed entirely in sweats and a hoodie, I glared at the techs, who were lowering my silk thong into a plastic bag with raised eyebrows. I told the senior man, Eric, where they could find us and we headed back down the stairs.

  Our new room was on the first floor had more space. Wider and larger, the two beds were full sized, but the outer room held a sofa and a table with two chairs. It looked more like an apartment and less like someplace to lay my head.

  Though I didn’t want to start thinking of Memphis as home.

  Jane took the bed closest to the window, like before, and I took the one beside the bathroom. She didn't bother unpacking. She tossed her travel bag in the closet and her armful of dirty clothes on to her bed.

  "What the hell has Trey done that’s got T.A. agents looking for him? Ain’t he one of them?" she asked as she removed her boots. "And worth killing you for?"

  I recounted the story about the Raymen Cartel and Trey's firing without telling her he’d been in my apartment. I also left out the stuff Schmuckler said about us being lovers. She didn't seem to be listening because she stared out of the window, where nothing stirred and when I finished she didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

  Then she said, "He knows more than he told you. Something about the T.A. probably, which is why they want him dead."

  I believed that also, and nodded as I sunk onto the sofa in the outer room. It wouldn’t be the first time a governmental agency put out a hit on one of their agents for knowing more than what was good for them. I guess that would count as a job hazard. Wondered if he got paid extra for that?

  My head throbbed from too much coffee and the surge and fall of adrenaline. "Tell me what you found out about Nathan." Anything to take my mind off of Trey.

  Jane came into the outer room and sat down in one of dining chairs. She took out her cigarette pack and soon was smoking. The fogbog struggled to gulp down the toxic billowing from the end of her stick.

  "Well, I found out something," she began, than stopped.

  Her tone more than anything made me lift up my head and focus. "How bad is it?"

  My stomach twisted into a tight, lumpy knot.

  "I followed Nathan tonight, like you said. Totally worried about the nightlife thing, but I find out he works nights. Guess where he works?"

  A sickened look on her face didn’t do anything for inspiring hope in me that this was a good thing. Something stirred in the dusty corners of my mind, but I couldn't drag it out into the light. Too much coffee, the gun battle with Schmuckler and Trey's troubles clouded up my vision.

  "Okay, I give up. Where?"

  "He works at Regulator Headquarters," she said and took a deep drag on her cigarette. "He's a reg, Cybil. A goddamn regulator."

  "What?" I asked as if I hadn't heard. My body tingled as I sat up fully. “Impossible! He’s a Zenith dealer.”

  "Yeah. He's in the drug enforcement section," she grinned. It was cold and bitter. "I talked to one of his fellow regs, a guy named Johnson. Said that Nathan used to be a snitch for them, but about six months ago, he joined the team," she said, her lighter falling to the floor.

  "Academy?" I asked, following a hunch and knowing full well what Jane was going to tell me.

  She snorted and shook her head no. Her smile thawed from her own excitement, she said, "Checked. No one fits his description or name in the last six months. One of the guys at Regulator Headquarters is searching further back. I told them I was with the T.A. as a consultant, researching their files and looking for new recruits."

  "Pull his bank account," I said. "I want to know how and why he's working for Captain Hanson, as you might recall said he didn't know him. He hired everyone who worked for the Memphis reqs."

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Jane sang with a cough.

  I leaned back against the sofa. The outline of the puzzle came sharper into focus. This was huge, a super big clue. "Your aunt hook Nathan up with Hanson?"

  Jane stubbed out her cigarette in a ceramic cup that was normally used for coffee and said, "I don't think so. Aunt Belle despised Nathan. Said he was beneath Mandy's standards."

  She bent down to pick up her lighter. "Johnson also said, he swore it was rumor, Nathan used to be a small time Zenith dealer here in the quad. Nathan keeps denying it. He didn't know if Nathan actually used, but he said Nathan knew a lot about the trade. That's why he was such an important snitch."

  I lay down on the sofa and stared up at the beige ceiling, which became a canvas for my mental puzzle.

  "What's he doing in the drugs division?"

  Jane shrugged. "I think undercover."

  I laughed out loud, spooking Jane.

  "Have you lost it over there?" she asked as she lit up another cigarette.

  "No. Think of it, Jane. Nathan has the perfect cover."

  "What?"

  I sat up again and looked at her. "It's the perfect cover. Nathan told me that he used to be a Zenith user. He probably still is, but if his drug tests come back positive, he can always say he had to take Zenith because he's undercover. Had to fit in…be believable…"

  Jane laughed, the light bulb finally going off in her mind. “Yeah, yeah. Nice cover though for both.”

  "Listen, tomorrow, find Nathan and stick to him like a bad email virus," I said, after stifling a yawn. It was nearly midnight. "I'm going to talk to Captain Hanson in the morning about his latest rookie."

  I told her about Katherine's comments about Hanson after she had left O’Shea’s.

  "Freaky," she said and she stretched, uninterested in Hanson.

  We changed into our pjs. Jane changed in the room; I changed in the bathroom. When I emerged, Jane’s eyes once again gave my camisole and short shorts the once over. I crawled into bed. Across from me, Jane fell immediately to sleep and I lay awake only a few minutes longer.

  As I drifted to sleep, I had an aggravating itch that I was failing to recognize something. The zzzs came and it was lost in the clouds of slumber.

  Tuesday came too swiftly and when I finally rolled over, Jane’s empty bed lay deserted in rumpled sheets and scattered covers. I groaned and stretched. My body was achy from too much sleep. A new bed usually didn’t allow me a descent night’s rest, but I was too exhausted last night to notice. A bit disoriented, I rubbed my eyes and suddenly last night’s tango with Schmuckler came back to me. Images of a wounded Schmuckler swooped down on me as I thought back to the minor gun battle.

  Is it really a gun battle if only I fired? It was more like a draw.

  Something nagged at me, something I had lost during the hours of dreamless slumber, but I couldn’t capture it. I turned a sleepy eye to the clock that rested on the table between Jane’s bed and mine and I sprung out of the bed.

  One o’clock!

  Captain Hanson might be engaged in meetings at this hour. Why didn’t Jane wake me when she left at the crack of dawn? I could have ambushed the Captain before his day was underway. Before he devised a sober explanation for Katherine’s comments about a girlfriend.

  Swearing loudly, I dressed quickly and hurried from the rental room.

  My wauto lifted up to join the partially filled lanes. The lunch hour crowd from the courthouse building inched their way back to work, the hour drawing to a close. I entered the coordinates for Regulator Headquarters and raised my fist bitterly at an invisible Jane.

  With any luck, I’d still be able to see him and to question him about the girlfriend he said he’d lost and why a known Zenith dealer, and possible addict, was on his staff.

  Perhaps after I talked to h
im I’d drop by Mayor Christensen’s office and talk to her about Captain Hanson. I’m sure her comments about him would be nothing but coos of good things. The outer shape of the puzzle came together quite beautifully. Two lovers plotting together.

  Once the lunch traffic exited at the downtown lane, I coursed through the sky and zipped over to Regulator Headquarters. Again, I left my weapons in the vehicle. This was a friendly chat between two people who wanted justice for Amanda Christensen.

  Riiight.

  I winked at the two regulators guarding the entrance and exit to headquarters. One shot me a confused look while the other one grinned at me before catching himself. Once again Herman sat high up in the elevated seat watching all who came and went through the three hallways. No prostitutes today, but a gang of young boys, all wearing the color red. Tough chins jutted out and arrogant smirks littered their faces as they stood against the wall, to the left of Herman’s desk.

  “You again?” Herman asked gruffly as I approached. He still wore the same tired, bored expression and watchful eyes.

  At least he remembered me.

  And people thought I was forgettable. Yeah, right.

  “I need to see Captain Hanson,” I said, calmly, trying again to catch his attention. Hoping I wouldn’t have to sink to threats. The man’s eyes never rested. Like a swivel, they moved constantly.

  He didn’t argue, for which I was grateful, and twirled around to contact Hanson. I waited, feeling the warmth of the heated air blow gently against my face. The din of the people making their way through the conjunction of the corridors reduced Herman’s voice to a low mumble.

  “Hey, baby,” called one of the thugs posted up against the wall across from Herman, grabbing his crotch and gesturing in my direction. As if he’d ever get within five feet of me without getting a face full of pug.

  “Nice package you got, suga. Come on over and let me handle it!” called another, blowing me kisses and rotating his hips in a lovemaking gesture.

  I ignored them and turned back to Herman, who rotated around to me.