The melodramatic line, spoken by a voice that managed to sound both threatening and sultry, dropped into one of those inexplicable conversational lulls that happen in all crowded places. And the market was crowded, make no mistake about it.
No way to calculate it for sure, but Sandrine Billar thought the streets might be as crowded as they usually were during Festival, even though Festival was still months away.
Several days of unremitting rain had put the city of Brendansport in a collective bad mood, and when the sun finally reappeared it seemed that everyone needed to get outside. As soon as the mid-day Heat broke, many of them gravitated toward the maze of jumbled buildings and outdoor stalls that made up the market district just south of the commercial port. Sandrine clung to her counter space at one crowded noodle bar and kept amused attention on her two companions.
"Did you hear that?" Jacson Ellerbe asked, nudging the blond giant at his side just as the man shoveled a chopstick load of spicy noodles toward his mouth. The noodles, suddenly airborne, headed for shoulders and shoes, bearing their load of bright orange sauce.
"Look out now," Jeddah Varone warned, brushing a wet, spidery clump from the front of his shirt. He turned to Sandrine and, with a crooked grin, plucked a single sticky noodle from her shoulder. Jac had turned his back to the noodle bar and was craning his neck, peering through the crowd.
"Did you hear it?" he repeated.
"Hear what?" Jeddah plunged the chopsticks back into the paper bowl.
"Somebody said, 'You know what it is and I know where it is; that's why I'm here.' "
"So?"
Jac gave up on scanning the turbulent river of people and sank back down onto a rickety stool facing the narrow bar. He turned a disgusted look toward Jeddah, who ignored him cheerfully. Bright sunlight streamed through a rip in the eatery's awning, bathing Jeddah's broad shoulders in a pale white glow.
"And you call yourself an old vid fan," Jac said, dripping sarcasm.
"Yeah," Jeddah mumbled around a mouthful of noodles.
"But you don't recognize that line."
"So tell me."
Jac had scored a point on this one and he knew it. Drawing himself straight on the stool and looking slightly up at Jeddah, he announced, "That is Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. One of the all-time great ancient vids."
"You got me," Jeddah agreed, anchoring his chopsticks in the noodles for a moment and slapping Jac on the shoulder. "But try this. Who played Spade in the original?"
"That's easy. Harry Boggan."
"Wrong," Jeddah said with a broad grin. "Not Harry. Herber ... No, wait, Humphrey. Humphrey Boggan."
Jac glared at the sandy-haired giant for a moment, then shrugged. "OK, OK, we're even." He dropped an elbow on the narrow counter, barely missing a shallow bowl of plum sauce, and drummed a subdued rhythm on the plastic. "But do you know who that sounded like? Which version, I mean?"
Jeddah shrugged. "Didn't really hear it."
"I did," Sandrine said. Jac leaned forward to look at her around Jeddah's bulk.
"So who'd it sound like?"
"I give up."
"Petr Limieux," Jac said triumphantly.
"Who's Petr Limieux?" Jeddah asked idly.
"He's a dancer," Jac said. "He's maybe the gravity dancer of the last decade. And an actor." He paused, briefly thoughtful. "Not such a great actor, though."
He went back to staring into the crowd. "I wonder if it could have been him?" He glanced around at Sandrine. "Not that many people could make Sam Spade sound, um, erotic."
She snorted soundlessly. "I wouldn't think so."
"Yeah." Jac grinned suddenly under his precise mustache, the expression transforming his newsnet pretty boy looks into something quite a bit more normal. "It was pretty dreadful. Sixth remake, I think. Still, Petr Limieux couldn't possibly be here."
"It's not such a bad place," Jeddah said, sliding the now-empty bowl across the counter into a disposal and picking up a second one. Sandrine stood, shrugging a half-filled net shopping bag onto one shoulder.
"Want us to find him for you?" Sandrine asked. Jeddah stood, looming over his partner, still working on the second bowl of noodles. "If he's here?"
"We already have a job, Sandy," Jeddah said.
"We can do more than one, you know," she said with a touch of sarcasm.
Jac shoved away from the noodle bar and the three plunged into the crowd.
"You have a job?" Jac asked, speaking loudly over the noise. "A new one?"
Sandrine nodded. "An investigation."
"What about?"
"Not sure yet. We've got an appointment later today. Maybe it'll be something good."
"I hope so." Jac sounded sincere. Sandrine was surprised at how much that meant to her. She kept her face carefully casual.
"It ought to pay well, at least," she said. "The appointment is at one of the big estates in the West End. Serious credit out that way."
Jeddah led them off into one of the side mazes of the market, a less crowded area.
"I need to get to Burroughs before he closes shop," Sandrine said. "You guys have fun." She tugged at Jeddah's sleeve and he turned to face her. "Don't forget. We have an appointment at sundown. Be back at the office well before that."
"Sure thing, Sandy," he said, and turned happily back to his vid search. She took two steps toward the red building that housed most of the clothing shops in the market, then turned back.
"Hey, Jac," she called. He leaned around Jeddah to look at her. "It was Humphrey Bogart. Not Boggan. Bogart." Without waiting for his reaction, she wheeled and slipped into the crowd. With a smile.
The Danjezian estate sprawled cat-like across an obscene amount of ground in the West End of Brendan's Spaceport.Seen through the close-spaced bars of an ornate double gate, the sand-colored shot-foam house at the end of the manicured path seemed huge, vast arches leaping across windows bigger than S&J Security's entire office. The setting sun threw weak light across a wide pale green lawn, more grass than Sandrine had seen in one place on this side of the river. And somewhere near, out of sight but wonderfully apparent to her other senses, the Silver Sea shushed and sighed. A sea bird's single cry punctuated the sunset stillness. Sandrine stared at the scene wordlessly, and Jeddah, at her side, was mercifully quiet for a change.
An echoing, filtered voice interrupted the moment with an imperious demand: "State your name and business."
Jeddah started at the sudden sound and scanned the area, looking for the speaker. Sandrine, who had expected something like this, took a deep breath and answered in her steadiest, most competent tone. "Sandrine Billar and Jeddah Varone, S&J Security. We have an appointment with the Danjezian First Wife."
While they waited for a reply, she knocked a patch of road dust off her tunic and turned to check Jed one last time. As always, he looked wonderfully imposing. She'd suggested he wear his best blue outfit for the first interview, to play up his friendly eyes and because the slightly fitted tailoring of the shirt made the suit look vaguely like a uniform. The notion of a uniformed gentle giant seemed to reassure potential customers. Sandrine had brought out one of her best outfits as well, soft russet tunic with brass buttons from throat to hem, mahogany leggings and a wide mahogany beret that framed her small face inside its setting of tight curls. She pulled a pair of gold-framed spectacles from her waist pouch and settled them into place.
"Remember your questions?" she asked Jed, who was looking up at the top of the wide gate, far above even his head.
"This gate is three meters for sure," he said. "Maybe three and a half. And the wall's the same. Doubt they have too many security problems."
"Wall's no problem with even simple tools," she reminded him. "Wonder if the house backs up to the sea? Bet they have dogs. And do you remember your questions?"
"Yes, boss," he said with a wry smile. "I remember the questions. Trust me, OK?"
She grinned, nervous. Of course he did. He hadn't disappointed her yet. But she always worried, and had finally decided that was going to be one of her roles in this partnership she'd do the worrying for both of them.
A muffled rattle drew her attention to the pathway inside the gate. Carefully spaced ground lights were beginning to come on throughout the landscape and the lights blazing from the house's many windows were more obvious as darkness settled in. Sandrine had guessed, judging from the sheer sprawl of the house, that it must be one story, but now a second tier of scattered lights began showing above the central portion of the house. The rattle drew nearer and a bikeshaw drawn by two bicycles burst from a side path that had been concealed behind a low hedge midway across the expanse of lawn. A pair of small, red-haired persons of indeterminate gender with matching bowl-shaped haircuts and baggy green bodysuits brought the carriage to a halt just inside the gate, which clicked and swung open just enough to allow the two investigators through.
Sandrine climbed into the carriage and felt it sag as Jed stepped in behind her. She felt briefly sorry for the two bicyclists, having to deal with Jed's bulk, but they'd probably pulled worse. As soon as they were settled, the bicyclists swung the bikeshaw around and headed up the wide path toward the house.
Inside the gate, the smell of sea air seemed stronger. Sandrine breathed deep, reminded of her home in a small fishing village outside Waycross. She'd never hated her home; in fact, she was quite fond of it, even of the sometimes backbreaking labor involved in pulling a living from the sea. But it couldn't offer enough challenge for her questing mind. She'd whizzed through the standard school in record time, devoured all the ROM chips in Waycross' small library, and spent hours on the comm, downloading anything she could afford from the available free databases. It wasn't enough. By the time she reached her mid-teens, she knew she would have to leave Waycross. She knew she wanted more than she could get in the small town, and Brendan's Spaceport, across the river, was the next step in her plan to get off Sagitta IV entirely.
The bikeshaw slowed to a smooth halt and Sandrine realized they had pulled up to a side entrance. Jed stepped out. As Sandrine's foot touched the ground, the door opened and bright golden light spilled onto the small porch. A servant in voluminous green robes ducked her head in an abbreviated bow and gestured them into the house. Sandrine tried to avoid gawking at the richly papered and heavily decorated halls and rooms the servant led them through, and she nudged Jed when she noticed him, at her side, staring wide-eyed at their opulent surroundings.
The servant finally stopped, still without saying a word, in front of a tall door inset with elaborately embroidered fabric panels. Sandrine glanced at Jed, who took a deep breath and gave her a nod, then tapped at the door.
"Come," said a rich female voice from behind the door. The servant swung the door open and Jeddah stepped through. Sandrine followed a half-step behind.
Considering the apparently boundless richness of the house they'd seen so far, the room they entered was small and almost bare. After a moment, Sandrine realized that first impression was false: The room was far from bare. But the smooth, simple furnishings and uncluttered decorations spoke of an elegant restraint not evident in the rest of the house.
Two people awaited them, a small woman in a simple soft peach-colored robe and a girl in a tunic splashed with wide, ragged stripes of crimson and orange over a pair of bright red leggings. The woman stood from her place at a tidy desk when they entered the room. She looked up and down at Jed, taking his measure, then turned dark, intelligent eyes on Sandrine.
"Jeddah Varone of S&J Security," Jed said politely, sketching a bow to the woman. "And my partner, Sandrine Billar." Sandrine followed suit.
"I am First Wife of the House of Danjezian," the woman said. "I'm pleased that you could meet with me on such short notice."
"It's our pleasure to serve," Jed said. Sandrine was glad he remembered his hard-taught manners.
"I hope you'll forgive me if I do not offer refreshment," the First Wife said. "It is regrettably important that this visit be kept brief."
"We understand," Jed said, inclining his head briefly to indicate no offense taken. "Our business often requires " he paused delicately and Sandrine silently cheered his unerring talent for putting people at ease. " discretion."
The First Wife released a tiny sigh, and Sandrine thought they might have passed some small test.
"But you can at least have a seat," the woman said. She indicated two chairs standing side by side opposite the desk.
"Thank you," Sandrine murmured and settled into the farther chair. Jed waited until the First Wife had resumed her seat, then eased his bulk into the suddenly fragile-looking chair. The First Wife cleared her throat and seemed uncertain how to continue.
Jed leaned slightly toward her, hands placed carefully and non-threateningly on his knees. "How may we be of service to you, ..." he paused, fishing for the proper honorific. The First Wife smiled, a tiny, fleeting affair.
"Madam is sufficient," she said.
Jed returned the smile, larger and more sincere. "Madam."
The First Wife glanced at the girl, who remained still and silent. Sandrine noticed that the girl's eyes were red and swollen, as if she'd been crying. "I'd like you to find someone," the First Wife said.
Sandrine pulled a small pad and marker from her pocket and prepared to take notes.
"Yes?" Jed said encouragingly.
"This is my daughter, Senada," the small woman said. "A tenday ago, her best friend disappeared. Senada has been distraught." Again, she smiled at the girl, but Senada remained unmoving, watching Sandrine and Jed with the silent concentration of a predator stalking prey. "No one seems to be interested in finding the girl." Here the First Wife looked at Sandrine and gave a small shrug. "Children are not always valued in this place."
Sandrine, who knew all too well just how little value was placed on children's lives in the streets of the city, nodded.
"Where was the girl last seen?" Jed asked, businesslike and reassuring.
"Senada saw her at school a tenday ago."
"What school?"
The girl answered, drawing a quick glance from her mother. "I went to the All Church School on River Road, with Sister Caeli."
"Went?" Jed asked, turning his attention to the girl. The girl looked at her mother.
"Senada doesn't go to that school anymore," the First Wife said. Jed hesitated, obviously trying to decide whether that was important.
"What's your friend's name?" Sandrine interjected, sensing that the issue of school was a tender one.
"Leah Calantropio."
"How old is she?"
"Same as me, 10. Eleven Standard."
"Do you know where she lives?"
The girl flushed suddenly and looked down. The First Wife shot a glance at Sandrine that held some sort of plea. For patience? For forgiveness? Sandrine had no idea what was going on.
"I believe the girl, Leah, lived somewhere down near the docks," the First Wife said, speaking quickly. "I'm not sure what the streets are called there."
"She lived in an apartment above a grinder," the daughter said. Her face was still dark, but she sat up straight with a determined set to her chin. "A fish meal factory."
Sandrine nodded and jotted a few notes. That explained the sudden embarrassment. Even in an out-of-the-way place like Brendan's, class distinctions were serious things. Senada was obviously a child of affluence. If her friend lived above one of the factories where Sagitta's plentiful fish were ground into fertilizer for the ever-increasing farms of the northwest, she was several class steps below. In fact, she was probably just barely above Outwaller status.
"What about Leah's parents?" Jed asked in an even tone. If the class distinction occurred to him, it was no cause for distraction. He pressed on for the necessary background.
"Her father works ground crew at the spaceport," Senada said. "I'm not sure about her mother."
"What's her father's name?"
"Jon, I think." The girl sounded uncertain. "Or maybe Jemal. Something with a J."
"Calantropio?"
She nodded. Jed shifted in the chair, which creaked alarmingly.
"What do you think happened to your friend?" he asked in the calm, friendly tone of a concerned parent.
Senada stared at him for a moment, then her face began to crumple. Sandrine realized how very real the girl's concern was. Leah Calantropio must have been a special friend indeed. Grabbing an intuition, Sandrine ran a quick mental review of the rooms and passages they'd passed through on the way to this place and realized she'd seen no sign of anything resembling a child.
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" she asked suddenly.
Senada sighed and a large tear broke free of her long lashes and trickled down her face. In a moment, her mother was standing behind her, arms wrapped around the girl's shoulders, looking at the two investigators from a rigid face.
"Senada is my only child," she said without heat, and Sandrine understood that the anger in her eyes was not directed at them. "This house has other children, but they are not deemed ..." she searched for a word, "... appropriate playmates for the eldest." She took a deep breath and gently stroked her daughter's hair, so like her own. "But that's not your concern. I'm solely interested in your finding out what happened to Leah Calantropio. Can you do that?"
Jed glanced at Sandrine, who nodded slightly.
"We can try," he said, accepting the First Wife's apparent desire to change the subject. "Our usual terms are 300 credits a day, plus expenses."
The First Wife tilted her head impatiently, as if the discussion of pay was of no importance. Maybe for her it wasn't, but Sandrine was glad Jed had remembered to bring up the terms.
"How long do you think it will take?" the First Wife asked.
"There's no way to tell for certain," Jed said, as he'd been instructed. "But we'd have to have two days' pay in advance, no refunds."
"That's no problem," she said, and turned to the small desk, bringing up a built-in comp. "Where shall I deposit it?"
Sandrine pulled a card from her pocket and passed it to Jed, who handed it to the First Wife. She studied it briefly, then tapped several codes into the comp. A barely audible tone announced completion of the transaction and she held the card back out to Jed.
"I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to go now," she said. "My servant will show you out." She touched a key on the desk, then picked up a small piece of paper which she gave to Sandrine. "Please make your reports to me through the comm, at this address. We can handle extra expenses that way as well. It would be best if you did not come back here."
A light tap at the door announced the arrival of the servant. Jed faced the First Wife and bowed deeply.
"We'll do our best to find the girl," he said.
"Or at least what happened to her," Sandrine added.
Senada turned her back to the room and sobbed quietly.
"That's all I ask," the First Wife said.
The rain stayed away, and the next day was back to business as usual in Brendan's Spaceport. The main dining room of the Cherta Inn was still half-empty when Sandrine arrived just before mid-day, but diners trickled in steadily, grateful for a cool place to escape the growing heat. Sandrine had just tapped her order into the tabletop when Jac Ellerbe pushed through the door. She was trying to decide whether it would be irretrievably pushy to try and catch his attention when he spotted her and his face brightened in a wide grin."Where's Jed?" he asked after he wound through the room, dodging new entries and waiters, to her table.
"Taking a nap, I think." No way she would tell him that she'd been delighted Jed was worn out after a long night with his girlfriend and their full morning of investigation. The kid had wanted a mid-day siesta. No way she'd let the reporter know she'd come here alone purely on the chance he might show up. She indicated a vacant seat. "Make yourself at home."
"Sure," he said and slid casually into the chair, draping his jacket over the back and stowing the ever-present vidset under the table. "You already ordered?"
She nodded. He pulled up the menu and tapped in an order with the ease of a Cherta regular.
"You'll never guess who I saw at the Neptune Baths this morning," he said, finishing the order with a flourish and looking up with a self-satisfied grin. The reporter hadn't adopted the native Sagittan dress yet, and Sandrine couldn't help admiring the fit of his black pants jeans, he called them and body-hugging topaz shirt. Get a grip, Sandy, she thought.
"Probably not," she agreed. "Who?"
"Petr Limieux."
She sat up straighter, suddenly interested. "No kidding? The real Petr Limieux? So you did hear him in the market?"
"In the flesh." He leaned back in his chair and stroked his short mustache with a forefinger, trying hard to contain his delight. "And some flesh it is, I gotta say."
A skinny blond teen-ager with one arm in a light foam cast wove from the kitchen to their table with Sandrine's lunch, a thick fish-filled pastry and a heap of the native carrots, a faintly sweet yellow vegetable usually served drenched in a tart citrus sauce. He placed a huge bowl of lightly dressed fresh greens in front of Jac, then poured two tall glasses of iced water.
Jac picked up a fork and poked at the greens, making a wry face and glancing with envy at her plate.
"I hate this stuff, you know," he said in a conspiratorial tone. "I'd almost give up my career just to be able to eat whatever I want."
Feeling slightly guilty, she picked at her pastry and changed the subject. "So did you get the interview with Limieux?"
He brightened. "Yeah, as a matter of fact. He agreed to meet me after dinner tonight. Here at the Cherta. Should be interesting." He dug into the salad without enthusiasm.
"Good luck," she said and speared a small bite from the corner of the pastry. They ate in companionable silence, although Sandrine had lost much of her appetite. Order salad next time, she warned herself sternly. She mulled the story about Petr Limieux, wondering what the dancer was doing here, if he'd find a place to fit into Sagitta's rough society. As a visitor he was on the rock bottom, open prey for everyone. If he decided to stay, where would he fit in? The city wasn't kind to the undecided: If Limieux didn't ally himself with some element in short order, the city would make the decision for him.
Sandrine had long been fascinated by the way society worked in Brendan's Spaceport. Mass mind, conventional wisdom, group judgment she'd never found a phrase to describe the uncanny way newcomers were rapidly slotted into place, sometimes without their ever knowing it. Natives, of course, knew their places from the start, and moving from one status to another was difficult. As a Waycross fisher, Sandrine had entered Brendan's near the bottom of the class ladder, above Outwallers, known criminals and tourists, but below almost everyone else. Her clerking job with the Governor's Guards had raised her a bit, about to the level of farmers, shuttle pilots and manual port laborers. When she and Jeddah decided to give their own security business a try, it gained them both a provisional step up to the ranks of independent businessmen. With any luck, she could translate that into a ticket off planet. But the journey had taught her some lessons about the difficulty of pushing beyond one's native class.
The missing girl, Leah Calantropio Sandrine wondered if she were trying to improve her position, maybe by association. Had she seen Senada Danjezian's friendship as a possible route away from the docks? Had she lain awake nights, as the young Sandrine Billar had, dreaming of escape
"Hello Sandrine," Jac's voice broke through her reverie. Embarrassed, she wondered how many times he'd called. The food on her plate was barely touched, she noticed. Had she been sitting there staring off into space?
"What are you thinking so hard about?" Jac's salad was gone and he used the tip of a knife to doodle designs in the pool of dressing at the bottom of the bowl.
"Sorry," she said. "My mind was on this new case."
"Oh, yeah, you guys had a meeting last night. What'd it turn out to be?"
Giving up on the remains of her lunch, Sandrine gave Jac a sketchy account of the meeting at the Danjezian estate, and about the morning she and Jeddah had spent searching the unnamed streets behind the docks, looking for the apartment of "Something with a J" Calantropio.
"Jimi Calantropio, as it turns out," she said. "Dreadful place. Three floors above a fish meal factory. The air was so thick I could hardly breathe, and I don't mind the smell of fish. Guess they don't either. But beyond the smell, the place was filthy, run-down. People were sleeping in the hallways, drunk, drugged, I don't know. I kept thinking what an awful place it was to be a kid, not that much of Brendan's is any better."
"It isn't one of your galactic hot spots, that's for sure."
"The father wasn't home. No one answered when we knocked. We found a couple of neighbors who were at least conscious, but didn't get much from them. One didn't even know Calantropio had a daughter. The other, an old lady living alone, said the girl was nice, helpful. Ran errands for her sometimes. Checked on her every tenday or so, just to make sure she was OK. She'd been teaching the girl needlework, believe it or not. Embroidery, other stuff. She had some beautiful work in that oven of an apartment."
"Where was this?" Jac reached for the notepad in his pocket. "I might want to do a story on her beauty among the ruins, art against all odds, that sort of thing."
Sandrine gave him a brief description of the building. "No address, since the streets down there don't have any names. They're just alleys, really."
"The district Guard records didn't help, either?"
"Brief report, that's all," Sandrine said. "The father came home and the girl was gone. He probably wouldn't have been terribly upset, except that he found blood in the bathroom. Not a lot of it, but enough to worry him. He called the Guards. They searched the place, found no signs of struggle. No sign of forced entry. Nothing else missing, as far as the father could tell. Just the girl and the clothes she was wearing that morning when she left to go to school. They did a routine check around the neighborhood, turned up nothing."
"The school?"
"She never got there. Sister Caeli says she hasn't been there in a tenday. The last day she was in class was the day before she disappeared."
"Sister Caeli?"
"She's one of the ministers at the All Church. She and her co-hort, Brother Bragi, have run an unofficial school near the All Church for, oh, a dozen years or so. Open to any child who wants to attend and can do the work. It's one of the few schools that gets a mixed group of students. Most kids go to school, if they go at all, in their own neighborhood. But the All Church School is tough, maybe the hardest school in the city. Kids who go there are probably the best of the lot."
"So this Leah Calantropio was smart?"
"Sister Caeli says she was a gifted writer, with a real flair for telling entertaining stories. She'd written or co-written several plays for the school. Senada Danjezian was her usual co-author, but the Danjezian girl has more flair in art than in writing. Sister Caeli said the girls were inseparable at school, always laughing, writing, plotting some mostly good-natured mischief. The Sister had hoped to get one or both of them accepted at the Art Academy on Altares someday. Now she says it looks like that may be impossible."
"She still has the Danjezian girl, doesn't she?"
"Senada hasn't been back to the All Church School since the day after Leah Calantropio disappeared."
"That's interesting."
"I thought so, too. So while Jeddah tried to find the girl's mother this morning, I spent a little time checking the schools out in the West End, on a hunch. Sure enough, Senada Danjezian's been enrolled in a small school less than five blocks from her home. Students are all West Enders, most from that same neighborhood. Lots of off-world credit, financiers, a few names I recognized from drug deals down in the industrial sector. Serious credit. The protected wealthy."
"Sounds like Senada's parents got tired of her slumming at the All Church School."
"Even with the brightest kids in the city. Yeah, that's the feeling I got, too. Klause Danjezian is one of the wealthiest men on Sagitta, with a finger in every pie. Lives the high life, semi-Muslim household, but his background's sketchy. Nobody's really sure where he came from. He's awfully careful about his upscale lifestyle now, though. Anytime UTW reps show up on planet, they end up at Danjezian's. So maybe he didn't like his daughter hanging out with lowlifes. But did he get tired of it before or after Senada's best friend disappeared? Or is the timing just coincidence?"
Jac blocked his cup with one hand and waved the waitress on with a smile. He was doodling again, this time with the tip of a knife in a small spill of cold coffee on the tabletop. "What about the girl's mother?"
Sandrine shook her head. "Don't know. None of the neighbors knew anything, and neither did Sister Caeli. Jimi Calantropio's a donkey for Port Authority, works day shift. We're gonna try to catch him when he gets home tonight, see what we can find out there. Or maybe we'll find the mother at home."
"A donkey?" Jac paused with his cup halfway to his mouth. "That's a new one on me. What's a donkey?"
"Unskilled manual labor, muscle. Donkeys do grunt work that Port Authority drones can't or won't handle. Sometimes they fill in with a drone crew, mix human and metalhead. It doesn't take a lot of brains to be a donkey, but it does take common sense. Calantropio's a crew chief, which probably means he's smarter than the average donkey, but he hasn't made it to indoor work. Could be he's not smart enough; could be he's just uneducated. We'll find out tonight."
All Jimi Calantropio lacked was education, Sandrine decided.The man wasn't at all what she'd expected. Sitting on the worn but clean sofa in his tiny spotless living room, uncontrived tears streaming randomly down his cheeks, Jimi Calantropio was clearly a man with dreams but no resources to bring them to life. And he truly loved his daughter. Of that there was no doubt in Sandrine's mind.
Calantropio brushed away the most recent tears with an unselfconscious swipe, and visibly pulled himself back together. "So no progress, that's what you're saying?" he asked, voice thick with emotion.
"We've only just started looking, sir," Jeddah said, uncomfortable in the face of such raw feelings. "Only today."
Calantropio pushed himself up from the sofa and wandered almost in a daze to the opposite side of the small room, where a holo of his daughter rested on a small corner table. A pretty girl with a wide, happy smile and sparkling hazel eyes set in a tanned face softened by the last stand of pre-adolescent chubbiness, Leah beamed at her father from under a halo of loose dark blonde curls. He reached out a callused, permanently dirty hand as if to touch her, drew it back with a sigh and stood silent with his back to them, head down.
"I didn't think anyone else would ever look for her," he murmured. "And I don't have any more ideas."
Sandrine's gaze kept wandering back to his hands wide, capable hands with long slender fingers, still elegant somehow under a ground-in patina of oil and dirt. Artist hands, she thought. Hands that could be firm but would prefer to be gentle. She forced her attention away from the hands and studied the rest of the man.
Tall and slender with a coffee and cream complexion and a short-cropped mane of light brown curls, Jimi Calantropio burst every mental image she'd had of a ground crew donkey. She'd expected coarse; he was refined. She'd expected ignorant; he was obviously intelligent. She'd expected, at best, an angry frustration at his daughter's disappearance; instead, they'd found honest heartbreak and a broken man operating on nothing but hope.
Jeddah cleared his throat. "I hate to keep asking, sir, but can you think of any reason Leah might have run away?"
Calantropio had gone through his fit of anger early in the interview. He'd plunged from gratitude that someone, anyone, was looking for his daughter, through fury that their questions seemed to implicate him, to a dull, listless sorrow. Sandrine wondered if he was only now facing the fact that his daughter was probably gone forever.
Children who disappeared in Brendan's tended to stay that way.
"No," he said softly, and for a confused moment Sandrine couldn't remember the question. "Leah was happy here. As happy as she could be, anyway. We both had hopes of something better, but we had them together. I've been studying nights, on public comp time, to get an equivalency degree so I can put in for a clerical job at the port. My supervisor said he'd recommend me, said I'm ..." he hesitated, still with his back to them, sounded abashed, "... too good to waste on the drone crews."
"And Leah?" Sandrine asked.
"Leah is ... was ... so bright she scared me sometimes." His hands found each other behind his back, fingers wound together, wanting to hold on to something suddenly out of reach. "I'd look at her and think my god, how can I have been party to the creation of such promise? I was so afraid I'd let her down somehow, that I'd never be able to get her the opportunities she deserved."
He turned back into the room, putting his daughter's image behind him with some difficulty. "Then last year we got her into the All Church School, and Sister Caeli took an interest in Leah's writing. She thought Sister Caeli, I mean that Leah might be good enough to get a scholarship to Altares if she worked at it. Leah and I were thrilled."
He wandered back across the room, picking up a small notebook from a low table next to the second sofa crowded into the room, the one that doubled as his bed. Leah got the one bedroom in the cramped apartment. He'd shown it to them earlier, a tiny space as neat as the living room, walls papered with photos clipped from discarded magazines, printouts from the newsnets, bits and pieces of wallpaper and found art. Sandrine had smiled briefly at the sight of a small newsnet photo of Jac Ellerbe near one corner, placed at an angle over a printout of the commonly available Jump route map of the known worlds. Leah's narrow bed was covered with a blue and white blanket, and a soft royal blue toy dragon perched on the white pillow, waiting. A model of a mid-size interstellar ship sat atop a narrow five-drawer chest of white plastic, and a compact closet held a small but tasteful wardrobe of Sagittan tunics and a long black raincloak. Not the room of a potential runaway, Sandrine thought privately.
Now the missing girl's father sat restlessly on the arm of the living room's single chair, thumbing absently at the small notebook in his hands.
"Could Leah have tried to make it off planet on her own?" Jeddah asked without any real enthusiasm.
"Leah would never leave me," her father said firmly. "We're all we have. We're all we've ever had. If we don't have each other, we don't have anything." His voice caught again, but he swallowed hard and continued. "Leah's mother died when she was six. I promised her that I'd take care of our daughter, no matter what. Even at that age, it was obvious to us, had been obvious for several years, that Leah was something special. Her mother had taught her a joy with words, taught her to play rhyming games, to sing, even when she was a toddler." He looked up suddenly, fiercely. "Do you have a child? Either of you?"
"No," Jed said, and Sandrine shook her head.
"You can't imagine how it feels to recognize so much promise in a child and know how little potential you have to give her a better life."
Sandrine thought, though, that she could imagine it. She'd seen that look a thousand times in her own mother's eyes, that frustrated yearning to do more, to provide more, even when there was nothing more to be provided.
"I'm not a saint," Calantropio said, running a hand through his hair. "I've had my share of distractions in the past five years. I haven't always been able to give Leah all my time, all my attention. I haven't even always ... wanted to, god forgive me. I've had to be away sometimes, and sometimes I've been away just because I wanted to. But I think Leah understood. I always made sure she was safe when I was gone. I always watched out for her " The unbidden tears began to fall again.
"Did Leah have a boyfriend?" Sandrine asked carefully, hating to ask it but knowing the question had to be answered.
"She was eleven years old," he cried in frustration.
"Brendan's is a harsh place," Sandrine said gently. "Eleven isn't considered too young in some parts of town."
He dropped the notebook on the floor and pounded his knees with both hands, punctuating the anguished words, "She ... had ... no... boyfriend. She did not run away. She did not leave with someone. She was taken from me. Taken, do you hear?" He clasped his thighs, trembling, and Sandrine was sure there would be bruises under those fingermarks tomorrow. "Leah was as ... innocent as I could keep her, given where we live. She had friends, but all of them were girls."
"Did her friends ever come here?" Jeddah asked.
"A few did, sometimes. Not her best friends, though."
"Who were ... are her best friends?" Sandrine asked.
"Two girls from the West End, Senada Danjezian and Shin-Yi Nomura. Both from the big houses out there. Their parents, I'm sure, wouldn't hear of them coming to the docks. And they never asked Leah to their houses either."
"So they only knew each other at school."
"For the most part," he said. "Sometimes they'd go up to the market together. But those two had a tough time getting permission to go anywhere. Just school and home, school and home. Leah said they envied her freedom."
He looked up with a brittle smile that didn't touch his blue eyes. "Imagine that. Those West Enders envied my Leah's freedom. To live this life." He gestured wide, to take in not only the cramped apartment, Sandrine thought, but the whole of the building, the neighborhood, maybe the city. "And now she's gone. So much for freedom."
Armed with printout photos of Leah Calantropio, Sandrine and Jeddah hit the streets as soon as the mist cleared the next morning. Jed covered the entire neighborhood behind the docks. He showed Leah's smiling face to the dockmaster, to gangs of dockside workers, to street people, to campers in dark, dingy rooms. Nothing. No one had seen the little blonde girl. It was as if she had never existed.Sandrine worked her way up Carbiner from the docks to the spaceport, checking bars, brothels, shops and factories. She visited the Grandmother at the Blue Flower, who was sympathetic but unhelpful. Leah Calantropio, if she had passed through those worlds, had passed without a trace.
Lunch was a tired, hot, disgruntled affair. Neither wanted to talk.
After the heat broke, Jed made a circuit of all the Governor's Guard offices in the city, leaving copies of the photo. The response ranged from near-sympathy to total indifference, with one exception. Near sundown at the West End office, an elaborate two-story structure that looked more like a corporate headquarters than a Guard building, Jed's routine questions drew unexpected attention and he found himself in the district commander's inner office.
Commander Bala Makido ruled the West End with an iron grip, Jed knew from his own time in the Guards. Although Jed had served in the industrial district, he'd heard regular tales about the West End. Petty crime simply did not happen in Bala's district; the penalties were swift, public and vicious. West End crime was of the more elegant variety high risk, high payoff and Bala Makido, ninth son of the Governor, always got a cut of the take. Or carried out the execution.
Bala lounged behind a vast expanse of gleaming desktop, an unexpectedly small man with neat, regular features marred by a raised diagonal scar across his chin and framed by a cap of straight mouse-brown hair. Jed stood inside the door and waited while he rolled a thin a smoke, sprinkling the filling generously with powder from an open bowl before sealing the tube.
"What's a market district rent-a-cop doing out here?" Bala asked. He tapped the paper cylinder on the desktop and lit it, savoring the first drag before exhaling a stream of savory smoke.
"A simple missing persons," Jed said, keeping his voice casual. "Just asking around."
"I haven't heard about any missing persons in the West End." Bala's eyes glittered, and Jed wondered what he'd put in the smoke.
"It's no one from West End." Jed fought a compulsion to add, "Sir," to clasp his hands behind his back. He forced his arms to hang loose at his sides.
"I see." Bala tipped back in the chair, which did not squeak. "Where is this person missing from?"
"The industrial sector, down near the docks."
Bala took another long drag, his icy blue gaze locked on Jed's face. The silence stretched uncomfortably. "What makes you think we'd allow a girl from the industrial sector into this part of town."
Jed kept his face still. "Day laborers come and go," he said mildly.
"We keep up with our day laborers, Jeddah Varone."
Jed couldn't keep the brief moment of startlement from his face. He hadn't given his name to anyone in this building.
"We keep up with everyone who has business in the West End," Bala continued, a hint of a smile showing his enjoyment of Jed's discomfort. "We even keep up with everyone who comes here and doesn't have business. We're a curious group."
No response seemed appropriate, so Jed remained silent.
"I know, for instance, that Jeddah Varone and Sandrine Billar of S&J Security visited the Danjezian estate two nights ago. What I don't know is why."
Jed tried to look inoffensive, but didn't offer an explanation.
Bala pressed a key on his desktop comm and Jeddah glanced back as the door opened behind him. Two burly Guardsmen stepped through and allowed the door to slide shut again.
"That was a question," Bala said, intently still.
"We had business with the Danjezian family," Jed said carefully. "It was private, at the family's request."
"And now you're looking for a girl missing from the docks."
"We're working on several cases."
"I don't think so." Bala leaned forward and laid his arms on the desktop. His hands were unexpectedly wide, Jed noticed, with stubby fingers. The little finger of his left hand was nothing but a scarred nub. Sweet smoke rose tantalizing into the air.
"When you showed up in my district two nights ago, we ran a little ID and background search on you. Jeddah Varone, former Governor's Guardsman, former Outwaller brat, now partner in a security and investigation business with Sandrine Billar, former Governor's Guard clerk, from a Waycross fishing family. Your business isn't a year old. You're barely scraping by, mostly on bodyguard work and security installations. I seriously doubt you have more than one job going right now. Unless you're pimping for each other on the side."
With great restraint, Jed remained silent. His impulse was to jump over the desk and throttle Bala Makido on the spot, but he knew he wouldn't get more than a step before the two Guardsmen would nail him with stunners. If he was lucky, they'd be using stunners.
Bala studied him carefully, eyes narrowed, calculating. He took another pull at the now half-gone smoke and leaned back again with a sudden hard grin.
"You won't find what you're looking for in the West End, Outwaller." The name sounded dirty, spat from his mouth. "We don't let trash like the Calantropio bitch run loose around here. And I don't think we want you here, either. So you'd better leave."
"You don't control everyone out here," Jed said, knowing he should keep his mouth shut. Bala Makido was not an enemy a sane person would want to make.
"Don't I?" As the two Guards nudged Jed out the door, Bala began to laugh. The laughter echoed down the corridor and all the way to the lift that deposited Jed near the entry. Although he knew it was impossible, he thought he heard that harsh laughter all the way outside and he couldn't shake Bala's ugly smile from his mind. But a few blocks from the Guards building, an equally ugly smile forced its way onto Jed's normally cheerful face.
He hadn't mentioned Leah Calantropio's name to anyone in that building. So how had Bala Makido known it?
Near sundown, Sandrine faced the fact that a full day walking the streets of Brendan's had taken its toll and turned back toward the office. She was ready to go home, shower off the dust and dried sweat, and relax with a glass of wine and a new vid. She'd picked up two in the Market as she passed through on her fruitless search for information on Leah Calantropio the three-year-old Petr Limieux remake of "The Maltese Falcon" and a brand-new costume drama about the Armageddon Wars on Terra.
Maybe they'd take her mind off this frustrating case.
Leah Calantropio had apparently vanished without a trace. As far as she and Jed had been able to find out, the last person to see her alive was her father, who'd kissed her good-bye when he left for work that morning. She had just gotten out of bed and was putting together breakfast when he left. Her breakfast dishes were washed and put away when he got home that night, her nightclothes folded at the end of her bed as usual. Everything was just as it should have been, except for that blood in the bathroom just a few dried droplets on the floor under the sink. "Like somebody missed some," Jimi Calantropio had said. "They cleaned the bathroom ..." His voice had thickened around horror, or tears. "... But they missed some."
The light was on in the cramped office of S&J Security when Sandrine got there just after dark. So Jeddah was back, then. Maybe he'd had better luck. She pushed open the office door, unbuttoning the jacket she'd slipped on when the sun went down."Hey, Jed, how'd it go this aft" She froze as she caught sight of her partner. He was sitting in his oversized desk chair as usual, but that was the end of normality. Blood oozed from a narrow cut across his forehead, circling a blackened and swollen shut left eye. His split and swollen upper lip made it appear, at first glance, that he was quirkily smiling, but the cold glitter of his visible blue eye put a quick end to that thought.
"Jed?" She stepped toward him and the door swung shut behind her. Only then did she realize her error. New to this business, dumb rookie mistakes, she thought irrationally, and knew that anyone who could subdue Jeddah would have no problem at all with her. She turned slowly.
There were three of them. The one behind the door was a massive Jalla, even larger than Jeddah, and sported a shiner that nearly matched Jed's. So her partner hadn't gone down without a fight. Good, she thought bitterly. He's one up on me. The second, stepping out from the corner behind the giant, was a woman, slim, dark-skinned, with small furious jet-black eyes and one arm tucked awkwardly inside her partially unbuttoned shirt. Both of them held wicked-looking modified blasters, the giant's trained on Jed, the woman's on Sandrine.
She didn't realize the third was there until he cleared his throat and she whirled to see a short, brown-haired man emerge from the closet-sized inner office. "Slowly," the black-eyed woman cautioned.
"Sandrine Billar, I presume," the brown-haired man said, holding out his hand as if this were a casual visit. She ignored it. He tsked. "Such manners," he said. "But I retain mine. Won't you please have a seat." He indicated her desk chair.
"Not until I know what's going on here," she said, defiant, heart pounding. She flicked a glance back at Jeddah.
"Sit, Sandy," he slurred dully. He motioned weakly and she saw that his wrists were snugged into binders. " S'no use."
In vids, this never happened. In vids the heroes sprang into martial arts action, threw salt in attackers' eyes, found razor-sharp desk accessories within reach, defied their torturers into acting irrationally. But that was in vids. This was real life, and Sandy felt neither defiant nor particularly competent. Dumb, yes, and scared. And curious. She crossed to her chair and sat cautiously, scanning the desk. Nope, no lethal clips, no needle-spiked markers. Unless she could figure out a way to disarm two people with a laptop, she was out of luck. Better just wait it out.
"You're wondering why we're here, of course," the brown-haired man said, settling into the visitor's chair across from her. "Your partner took exception to the fact that we were already here when he arrived, and assumed we are your enemies." He pulled a pack of smokes from a pocket and tapped one out. "We are not. We were simply curious as to why you were looking for a dock-side girl no one could possibly care about."
"Her father cares about her."
"Um, yes, the father." He lit the smoke and the sweetish scent of ganja floated into the air. "We'll have to ... reassure the father. Stop his worrying." He waved one hand idly. "But the father isn't the one who hired you. He barely has enough credit to live on. So who did hire you?"
"You know I can't tell you that," Sandrine said, gripping the arms of her chair lightly.
"Beg to differ, sweet lady," the small man said, and signalled his companions.
"Sandy!" Jeddah begged, but she didn't understand the sudden panic in his eyes.
With a tight grin, the huge Jalla fired a quick burst at Jeddah's shoulder. Jeddah screamed and bucked against the chair, crashing with it to the floor. Sandrine, aghast, jumped up.
"Sit," the brown-haired man barked, and she froze, looked up, saw the woman's weapon trained on her.
"It's a special weapon some Panjung genius cooked up," the man said. "We find it useful. It fires a sort of ... electrical shock, in a way. Some charming field that stimulates pain receptors without causing physical damage." He looked dispassionately at Jeddah, who twitched against the floor, one foot wedged between the overturned chair and the desk. "It isn't supposed to kill, but we've found that if you push the setting high enough, people will die. Of pain, I suppose." He indicated her chair. "Please sit. We have talking to do."
"But Jed"
"He'll be all right. He's already been hit twice at that setting, and he didn't die either time." He twisted to face her, crossing his legs idly, brushing at his skintight leggings. "He did tell us who you're working for."
"He told But if he already told you, why did you ask me? Why did you hurt him again?"
"Why, for confirmation, of course." He said it as if it were the most reasonable idea in the world, as if her partner weren't whimpering on the floor not a meter from her feet. And what was she supposed to do now?
"Why do you want to know?" she asked finally.
"Ah, now, I'm the one asking questions here, my dear."
"If I tell you who we're working for, we lose a job and it hurts our reputation."
"If you don't tell me, I'll kill your partner. Then you won't have a reputation to worry about."
"Who are you?"
He laughed, a bark of pure amusement. "You don't know? Then you have another reason to keep your partner alive. He can tell you."
If Jeddah had already told them about the Danjezian First Wife, what good would it do for her to deny it? They'd just hurt her, or maybe poor Jed again. But if Jed hadn't told them and she didn't, they'd still hurt Jed again. She couldn't let that happen.
"The First Wife of House Danjezian," she said, slumping back into her chair. "The missing girl is a friend of her daughter's. She wanted to find out what happened to her."
He pulled at the ganja stick again, studying her through the smoke. "That's what he said. I've already laughed. Want to know why?"
She shrugged.
"Because of the irony, you see. You don't need to bother looking for the Calantropio girl any more, unless you plan to drag the river."
Sandrine gasped in spite of herself. "What?"
"She's quite dead. I had to kill her myself. Nasty. I don't like to do that sort of thing. I'd much rather let specialists like Paul and Shiva here take care of it." "But why?"
"That's the irony," he said, propping the smoldering smoke against the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign on her desk. "I did it for Klause Danjezian. He didn't like the idea of his precious daughter spending time with that dockside brat. So we paid young Calantropio a visit, he and I. He got squeamish at the last moment and wanted to just kidnap the girl and sell her upriver or send her off planet. Which would have been fine with me, but the girl tried to run. Actually tried to get away from us. So I shot her with one of those." He waved one hand idly at the two silent bodyguards.
"That poor girl," Sandrine murmured. "Still, you didn't have to kill her."
"Of course I did," he said, astonished. "She slapped me. Left a scratch on my face. It's only just healed." He pointed to his left cheek.
"You killed her because she slapped you?"
"Wouldn't you?"
Sandrine sat speechless. Who was this insane man? He picked the short smoke back up, held it gingerly between his forefinger and thumb and sucked the last lungful, casually, as if an admission to murder were of no significance.
"So why could it possibly matter to you that someone was looking for the girl?"
"Curiosity, I suppose. I knew her father would never be able to find anything out. And I couldn't imagine who else would care about one stray kid." He laughed, a rueful snort. "I never considered that old Klause's daughter might actually care." He dropped the end of the smoke on the floor and ground it out with one heel. "I knew who hired you before either of you got back, you know. We found the record in your computer."
"Then why did you hurt us?"
"Because it was fun, of course."
Fun? It was fun? Sandrine looked at Jeddah, who had stopped moving on the floor. She could see his chest rise and fall, so he wasn't dead at least. The brown-haired man stood, scraping the chair back, and held his hand out to her across the desk. "We'll be going now. Have a good evening, Ms. Billar."
"Going? You're just going to leave?" she asked.
"What else should I do?" he repeated, sounding surprised. "My curiosity is satisfied. Did you have something else in mind?" He looked at her, up and down, as if only realizing she was a woman.
"What about our report to the First Wife?"
"What about it?"
"Don't you care? What if we tell her what you told us?"
He shrugged. "That her husband had her daughter's best friend killed? Sure. Tell her all you want. It would be interesting to see how she takes it."
"But won't her husband be angry?"
"He won't care. He probably would have told her himself if he'd thought of it."
"So Leah Calantropio is dead and Senada Danjezian has lost her best friend and Jimi Calantropio's heart is broken, all because old man Klause didn't like his daughter to play with a girl from the docks."
"That's the size of it." He turned to the door. "Paul, Shiva, let's get out of here. I'm hungry."
"Who are you?" Sandrine asked again, hopelessly, beaten in the face of such callous cruelty.
"Somebody you can't touch," Bala Makido said, and left the office laughing.
Much later, with Jeddah bandaged and sedated, fast asleep on the floor in her small living room, Sandrine sat blank faced on her narrow bed, staring without seeing it at an old Petr Limieux vid. So much pain, so much suffering, and for what? Because Jimi Calantropio wanted the best for his daughter? Because two bright little girls chose to see each other as equal human beings? Because of an old man's foolish pride?And now Leah Calantropio was dead. Sandrine didn't doubt it for a minute. Even before Jeddah had roused enough to tell her that their visitor was Bala Makido, ninth son of the governor, commander of the West End Guards, she'd known he told the truth. Leah was dead. Sandrine didn't want to know the details, was afraid they'd sicken her even more. Leah was dead, and no one would pay for the crime. Sandrine had sent a terse message to the First Wife, but didn't really care how the woman took it. They'd done their job as requested. They'd found out what happened to Leah Calantropio.
Tomorrow she'd figure out what to do about Jimi Calantropio. Warn him, surely. Bala Makido had implied a threat. But she'd rather not tell him the truth. She'd rather tell him his daughter was still missing, that they could find no trace. At least then he'd still have hope, however slight. And hope seemed to be all that was keeping him going. Maybe she wouldn't tell him. Maybe ...
Tears slid down her face, tracking well-marked paths. On the vid screen, Petr Limieux hoisted a glass as some other, equally bad, actor intoned, "Here's to a fair bargain and large enough profit for both of us."
But Sandrine saw only Jimi Calantropio's face, and the death of hope.
THE END
