Hammered jc-1 Page 8

  He was also outside his jurisdiction, and had been told in no uncertain terms to drop the case. Mashaya, he thought, glancing up to check the deserted loading dock once more, then rescanning the scroll of data. Gonna get ’em for you, girl. Nothing moved. He set the HCD down on the dash, lighting a cigarette, letting the data creep continue. He blinked and yawned. A long night. And not a damned thing had happened.

  Mitch wasn’t really certain why he was spending his off-duty shift staking out a pharmaceutical warehouse, unless you started to wonder why maybe the Hammer had showed up on his streets, not New York. And wonder about the coincidental existence of Canadian Consolidated Pharmaceuticals’ West Hartford warehouse. Mashaya had found out some interesting things before she died; the most interesting was that Hartford wasn’t the only city to have experienced a run of deaths related to recalled combat drugs in the last six months. It was, however, the only such city in the USA. And the only one with a facility operated by the company that manufactured the drug.

  It was a break in the pattern. And breaks like that were where the answers tended to lie.

  Mitch had yet to get a warrant issued on a hunch, however. Even if he had been permitted to help investigate the case. He knew perfectly well that he was lucky not to still be on administrative leave following the murder of his fiancée. That he was pushing that luck, and it was going to run out on him. That Hartford PD itself had a hard-on for whoever did Mashaya, and that lots of perfectly good murder boys were all over the case like white on Mitch’s own skinny cracker ass. That nobody was going to show up at CCP today either, and he was going to have to report for roll call unslept and stubbled at eight AM.

  He closed his eyes just for a moment, head sagging. He jerked it upright and fought a jaw-cracking yawn, reaching for his coffee again. What is it? Something about the pills… contaminated pills… why only some?

  Why not all?

  How does only part of a batch get tainted?

  His thoughts chased their tails as he drained his coffee. And when he set the insulated mug aside, something was moving on the loading dock, walking up to that concealed side door.

  A tall, black-haired woman with military bearing and an unmistakable nose.

  “Now what is that, Mitchy-poo?” Oblivious to the tread marks spotting the dash, Mitch pulled his boots down and leaned forward. “Don’t you look familiar…”

  And not familiar at all.

  Maker, he thought for one wild moment, but it wasn’t Maker at all. Five eleven, maybe, hundred and fifty and most of it bone. Latina or Native American, well-preserved fiftyish. And then he noticed the rest of it: walking without a limp, manicured nails on long clean fingers, five-thousand-dollar boots with mirror-shining toes. No scars disfiguring that arrogant profile, either. Goddamn.

  He was halfway through reaching up to touch his ear clip on and report in when he remembered he wasn’t supposed to be there. Nevertheless, Mitch’s trained eye recorded every detail as she mounted the chipped concrete steps: black pantsuit, pinstriped charcoal, stylish jacket cinched at the waist with a matching belt and a pin glinting gold on the lapel. Razor-styled hair falling like a raven’s blue-black wing across a forehead he was willing to bet was enzyme-smoothed. Pale blue blouse with a winged collar, softening the tailored severity of the outfit and the planed severity of her face.

  A hunch, that was all. A hunch, and the wonder why such drugs might have wound up on the street in Hartford, and not someplace sensibly trackless like New York or Atlanta. And why a batch that, according to the lab guys, should have been discarded after preliminary testing had been tabletized, labeled, stamped, and packaged in field-regulation twists. It never should have made it into the piller. It was an inconsistency, a flaw in the pattern, and Mitch hated those.

  The fact that it wasn’t exactly Hammers didn’t bother Mitch so much. He could make that add up. He was sure the CA tested new combat enhancement drugs all the time.

  Mitch slouched lower in his bucket seat as the woman hesitated, one hand on the steel doorknob and the other fumbling in her jacket pocket for an ID badge. She stopped and turned, head coming up as she scanned the cracked parking lot and the cinder-block walls of the nearby buildings. Thistles and sumac forced their way through the far edge of the pavement, a slender sight screen, and she studied that with a professional eye. Mitch held his breath, looking at her boots, afraid the pressure of his gaze would be enough to bring her eyes around to him.

  For a long moment she stood poised, and he noticed that she had released the door handle and slid the hand not holding her badge inside the collar of her jacket. Damn. If that’s not Maker’s better-looking twin sister, I’m the Virgin Mary. What the hell is she doing at Consolidated? And what does Maker know that she’s not telling me?

  Think like a part of the scenery, Mitchy. Despite the intervening distance, he only let his breath hiss out in a long silent sigh when the dark-haired woman relaxed, her hand slipping back into view. Shaking her head, she keyed a code on the door pad and badged herself in.

  I knew I should have done this already. I’m running Maker’s damn fingerprints as soon as I get back to the station. I’d better pick up some doughnuts to bribe the guys down in I.D. They would know as well as anybody that he wasn’t supposed to be working this case. But they’d take pity on him nonetheless, because family was family, and a cop was a cop.

  Ninety seconds later, timed on his heads-up-display, Mitch slid as casually as he could manage out of his Dodge and walked around the back end of the delivery van, tugging his coat into place like a man who has stopped to take a piss against a tire. And I’m probably rumpled enough to pass for a late-homecoming drunk, too, he mused, meandering an unsteady path to the corner.

  The too-familiar business-suited stranger’s vehicle was easy to spot.

  Ontario plates.

  Well, I’ll be goddamned.

  1420 hours, Friday 8 September, 2062

  Hartford, Connecticut

  Albany Avenue

  Abandoned North End

  I slide the giant old BMW-Amazonas motorcycle gently around the square frame of the cleanest house on the street and into its trash-heaped backyard like a fish nosing into a reef. There are armed guards and a high wall around it, but Razorface lives in the neighborhood he grew up in. Sitting on the back porch, cleaning a gun, he waves to me as I pull in.

  I look around for Emery, who is usually in attendance, but Face’s lean and wary lieutenant is nowhere to be seen. Two adolescent boys play basketball in the cracked driveway, so I park my bike in the uncut grass by the weathered frame of a two-car garage and walk back up to the house.

  “Nice day,” I say to the boys. The taller one turns to stare, fascinated; I let my eyes slide off him and over to Face, who rises, smirking, and gives me a hand up the three wooden risers. Not that I need it, of course.

  He grins at me, steel teeth like the grille on a ’57 Chevy. It never ceases to amaze that somebody would do something like that to himself on purpose — but then, I’ve seen some piercings and other body modifications that make Face’s teeth look like a tattooed biceps. And they do make him… memorable.

  “Nice as a day ever gets around here.” He gestures up to the glazed-blue sky overhead. There’s something special about September skies in this part of the world. In Toronto, I remember a lot of rain in autumn.

  The porch railing creaks as I lean against it. Face settles down in his chair and returns his attention to the pistol disassembled on newspaper spread on his glass-topped table. Watching as he wets a square of gauze and threads it through the needle eye of a cleaning rod, I smell gun oil and the sharper scent of cleaner. He turns his head and shouts over his shoulder into the kitchen door. “Baby, get Maker a beer?”

  “Razorface,” I begin, and let my voice trail off as he looks up.

  “Going to tell me you have to drive?”

  His woman comes out of the house with two cans of beer. If you can dignify the stuff Face drinks with the name.
She juggles a plate of sandwiches in her other hand, setting it down on the porch rail before she hands a can to each of us. “Thanks, Alyse,” I say as I take it.

  “Don’t mention it. You here to try and steal my man again?” Her black eyes sparkle. She cocks her head to one side and rolls her shoulder back, hands challenging on her ample hips.

  I crack open the beer. “No one could ever compete with you, Leesie. Your cooking keeps him home.”

  Head bowed over his pistol, Face grunts toward the newspapers. Smiling, Alyse picks up the plate of sandwiches and holds it out to me. I take one — bloody roast beef and processed cheese on white bread Maman would have shuddered over. Holding the beer in my other hand, I take a bite.

  Alyse turns, and Razorface absently takes the plate from her. She bends her neck and half smiles, half frowns. Then she looks back up at me, alert and quick as a bird. “Maker, you do something about that cop friend of yours sniffing where he don’t belong, you hear me? I’d hate to see that boy get hurt.”

  Mouth full of roast beef sandwich, all I can do is nod. I swallow half-chewed food and mumble. “I’ll do what I can, ma’am. You can’t lead a horse to water, eh? Has Mitch been here?”

  Face looks up as she nods her head once. He’s got an odd expression on his face as he puts the tools down, wipes oil from his hands onto a rag, and picks up a sandwich. Sching. There’s nothing quite like watching Razorface eat roast beef on white bread with too much mayonnaise. Like a deli slicer.

  “Woman, why do I put up with your ass?” He says it around a mouthful of food.

  She straightens her neck and looks down at him, broad-shouldered Dominican goddess. “Because nobody else can handle you the way I can, baby.” She turns and saunters back into the house, and Face watches her until she’s out of sight behind the screen door. When she’s gone, he shakes his head in admiration and turns back to me.

  He takes a long swallow of beer before he speaks. “That pig… yeah, I seen him. Hell out of his jurisdiction. Don’t know what Hartford P.D. wants up here on the Ave. We take care of our own. Besides, your boy isn’t homicide, and he’s barely been a detective a year. What’s he doing on a case like this?”

  “I don’t know. How do you know what he’s assigned to?”

  The big man laughs, shaking his head from side to side. “I’m s’poda know these things.”

  It takes me a second to get the half-chewed meat and bread down. Mitch, what are you after? I chase the food with a swallow of beer. “Face, tell me the truth. You have anything to do with this business? Mashaya Duclose?”

  “You trust me to tell you the truth?” He turns the beer can slowly in his hand before he lifts and drains it. Never taking his eyes from mine, he crushes it casually and pitches it at a paper bag beside the kitchen door. He misses.

  “I trust you with my back. What the hell is with the dance-around today, eh?”

  A moment’s quiet assessment before he drops his gaze and scratches behind his right ear, gold hoops sparkling in the light. “Shit, Maker. S’weird, I dunno. Cops in my end of town, cops getting killed in my town. Looking for a dealer that I can’t find and they can’t find… just damned weird.”

  My eyebrow tries to crawl up into my hairline. The basketball thumps the asphalt driveway. “What was that again?”

  He starts reassembling the gun. “Just what I said. Me and the boys have been looking all week, and nothing. Nobody knows nothing. The guys that sold the shit, they from out of town, and the word is they went right back wherever the hell they come from. They were trying to move in, I could do something.”

  I’ve a pretty good idea what Face’s “something” might entail, but I nod anyway. “Any idea where they were from?”

  “I think from the City.”

  Only one city in this part of the world is the capital-C variety. “Ah.” I run my tongue across my teeth. Silence hangs between us for a moment, and I think about the odd standoffishness in his manner today. He won’t look up and meet my eyes, and it takes a little while to make sense of why. “Razorface, are you worried for me?”

  “You got somebody looking for you.”

  “I know.” I wince as I hear my own tone, but I can’t make myself soften it — a dog that can’t stop growling over a bone.

  “You got some kind of trouble?”

  I move away from the porch railing, walking the length of the rickety structure. I stand there for a moment, watching the basketball game. The older boy is pretty much slaughtering the younger one, and frustration shines behind the sweat dripping down the smaller kid’s face. I know the feeling. “I’ve always got some kind of trouble.”

  He laughs. “You living in the world, ain’tcha? Family trouble or other kind of trouble?”

  “I haven’t got any family, Face.” I turn back over my left shoulder to look at him. He’s black-and-white out of my bad eye, the reassembled automatic in his hand picked out in red by the targeting scope.

  Standing, he drops the pistol into a shoulder holster and shrugs it on. He used to shove it into his waistband until I told him a story about a guy I knew in the army who shot his balls off doing that. Standing there in the shade of the porch on a bright September day, I abruptly remember him as a skinny preadolescent, blood running down his soot-covered face from a glancing wound on his forehead. It’s so vivid an image I can almost smell the smoke.

  Those were bad years, in the thirties when things in the States were even worse than they are now. My first time in Hartford, I wore a baby-blue peacekeeper beret and thought I was invincible. South Africa didn’t happen until two years later.

  No, I really don’t have any idea why I came back here to retire. Must be the fond memories. I’m so wrapped up in them I miss the first part of his sentence when he speaks again.

  “… gonna tell me what’s going on with you so I can help, or you gonna keep playing your cards in your vest pocket?” He comes up and lays a baseball glove mitt on my shoulder.

  “I…” It’s an old habit, Face. What they don’t know can’t hurt me. I change the subject. “This cop. You never said if you knew anything.”

  “Course I don’t know nothing. I know something maybe you don’t, though. This Duclose. Mashaya. She was my baby’s momma’s little sister.”

  His baby’s momma. That could be any of twenty women. The implications come clear. “She’s from the neighborhood. A cop.”

  “South Arsenal neighborhood. Got her high school and everything. Family’s from Trinidad. Good kid, they said.”

  “So that’s why she was on this end of town. You think maybe what she got killed for wasn’t related to her job?” I notice I still have half a sandwich in my hand and take another bite. Leesie hates it when people don’t finish what she fixes.

  His hand slips off my shoulder. “Some people don’t be so happy when some bitch from the neighborhood grows up to be a pig, if that’s what you mean. They might do something about it. But I would’ve heard ’bout that. This wasn’t no local issue.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugs. “Mashaya, she had friends here. Nobody downtown cares if a few bangers OD.” He goes silent, and I know he’s thinking of Merc.

  “You’re saying she was working on her own time.”

  “It ain’t a crime unless white people or rich people die. She talked to a lot of people. Talked to me. Maybe got close to something.” His hands windmill slightly as he struggles to articulate his thoughts. “Somebody saw her get shot. Sniper bullet, one shot. Tore the back of her head clean off. White van came around the corner thirty seconds later and five guys cleaned up the scene and were gone before my boys even heard about the shooting. That’s fast.”

  I start to see the outline of the picture he is painting for me, in his awkward way. Face isn’t stupid. He’s keen as the razor blade he keeps in his pants pocket. I’ve seen the man in a ten-thousand-dollar sharkskin suit cut to fit like a second skin, and you don’t get to be what he is if you’re not smart enough to remember
the names and family histories of every petty criminal in the city.

  Oral communication, however, is not his strong point. I finish the end of my sandwich as an excuse to think. “That’s professional. You’ve got a feeling about this,” I say at last.

  “I got nothing but feelings, and they all making my knuckles itch. But I think we talk to the people Mashaya was talking to, we get close to the people she got close to…”

  “We get shot in the head with a high-powered rifle and our bodies turn up in the river. Good plan, Razorface.”

  He shrugged. “Actually, I was thinking of going on down to New York City. What do you say?”

  I wipe my hands on my pants, leaving behind a greasy mayonnaise stain.

  “I’ll drive.”

  Allen-Shipman Research Facility

  St. George Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  Evening, Friday 8 September, 2062

  The door to Gabe Castaign’s office stood open on the gray-carpeted hallway, and Elspeth paused there. She heard his voice, carefully cheerful, the enunciated tones telling her that he was speaking to a machine. “… hope you’re out having a hot date on a Friday night, or at least down at that dive you call a corner pub watching the game. My money’s on Chelsea. Call me. Bye!” She rapped the door sharply and stepped into the room just as he tapped the disconnect. The fuzzy image hanging in the air over his phone dissolved into transparency. How odd — whoever he was calling still has the factory message up. “Gabe?”

  He was already looking up to greet her knock. “Elspeth. Come in please.” He stood and came around the big desk, a mirror of her own, scooping a pile of manuals off the seat of the upholstered chair to his right. “What can I do for you?”

  She stepped onto soft carpeting identical to that in her own office, except in a masculine medium gray blue, complemented by periwinkle drapes. He’d hauled them to the side and turned off the projected babbling-brook landscape, revealing a less-than-enticing view of slanting sunlight across a well-stocked parking lot. A breeze ruffled the curtains; Elspeth smelled warm concrete. She hadn’t realized the windows would open. “I was hoping you were settled in and we could sit down and talk about the project.”