The Moreau Quartet: Volume One: 1 by S. Andrew Swann
Harrison looked pained. “I am afraid I can’t discuss Young. We are still dealing with the police on that matter.”
Probably true. Trying to cover things up, no doubt.
“Your headquarters was closed down last week. I suppose Young just waltzed in and took what he wanted?”
From Harrison’s expression, Young had just walked in. It also looked like Young had done a lot of damage.
“How many years back, five? Ten ? Fifteen?”
From Harrison’s face, fifteen.
“How much were you able to salvage?”
Harrison looked puzzled. “Salvage?”
Binder wasn’t the one with the trucks. Nohar supposed there was little harm in telling the lawyer, and it might jar something loose. “I was under the impression you were in charge of the trucks that carted away the remains of the fire.”
That got Harrison. “I am sorry. I really must go—”
I bet you must, Nohar thought to himself. He wondered exactly what kind of illegal crap was in those records that could turn Harrison white.
Harrison regained his composure. “I should tell you. Stay out of this—it doesn’t involve you, or your kind.”
As the connection broke, Nohar said, “But it does. More than you know, you little pink bottom feeder.”
If he could pick up that much from Harrison’s face, Nohar decided the lawyer would never win a jury trial.
There was a snore, and Nohar saw that Angel had fallen asleep on top of the filing cabinet. Instead of waking her up and leaving, he leaned against the wall and thought.
All that talk—well, all his talk—about Young had shaken loose a doubt. He was missing something, a big something.
Young’s motivation.
It just wasn’t your standard grief reaction to torch the finance records of your employer. Nohar could, even with Stephie’s doubts, believe Young blew himself up over lost love. But why the records?
Slowly, it began to dawn on Nohar that he was missing the obvious.
True, Johnson and Young had been lovers, fifteen years, above average for any relationship, pink or otherwise. Young saw Johnson’s killer—the morey canine Nugoya called Hassan—he probably saw Johnson get shot. But Young never called the cops.
Not only didn’t he call the cops, but Young actually covered for the missing Johnson. Stephie said Young had mentioned Johnson was out with “some bigwig contributor.”
Then, after a few weeks, he blows himself up.
Someone very purposefully removed almost every trace of the records Young had torched. If the motive for Johnson’s assassination was in those records, the odds were they had been carted away by the people responsible for Johnson’s death. There were four ways they could have known what Young had been trying to destroy. Binder’s people, Young himself, or the cops could have told them. All unlikely.
Or, they told Young to destroy the records.
“You’re not going to do me like you did Derry.”
Fear. Young was scared when he said that. He was talking paranoid. “You’re all with them.” Moreys, he was talking moreys and—something else. Franks? MLI? Whoever they were, they were in charge of Johnson’s death—and Young.
Young was afraid of them. Young was also pathological about Daryl Johnson taking the fall for something.
“Derry didn’t know he was helping them—what they were. When he found out he was going to stop. . . . People will say he was working for them.”
Why that fear for Johnson’s rep? If Young cared that much, why wasn’t he at the funeral?
Guilt.
Nohar triggered Young’s suicide: “You’re the finance chairman. Why didn’t you figure it out first?”
Then, blam.
Of course Young knew what was in the finance records. Nohar felt like an idiot for not realizing sooner. Young was the one to let in the canine assassin with the Levitt Mark II. Young was in a conspiracy with them. Somewhere there was a trail in the records. Johnson had found it and had confronted Young with it.
The two of them were close, but Johnson was going to put a stop to it, whatever it was. Young couldn’t let that happen—no, not quite right, they couldn’t let that happen. They hired the morey. They killed Johnson. They probably just told Young to turn off the security and leave the door open so they could explain things to Johnson. When Young blew up, they made sure the records vanished.
No way Young could call the cops. Whoever was handling Young must have forced him to go on, business as usual. Go into work, go back to his shadow house. All the while, guilt ate Young up. He felt responsible for Johnson’s death.
The whole charade of blowing out the picture window was to cover Young’s tracks. To give Young an alibi.
It was working so well—up to the point Young torched the records.
That seemed an act of desperation, and not just Young’s desperation—
Nohar had a bad thought.
Thomson had mentioned Johnson’s executive assistant, Stephie, as having the same access to the financial records as the gang of four. That was obviously just the “official” slant on things. After all, Stephie described herself as window dressing. What if they didn’t know that?
That worried Nohar.
What if they thought Johnson’s executive assistant knew something, and just weren’t sure enough to go to the lengths they went with Johnson?
What if she was being watched?
Could it be a coincidence Young went ballistic the day after Nohar talked to her?
Could it be a coincidence that the white rat’s—Terin’s—“Finger of God” seemed to have lifted?
He called Stephie. No answer.
It was ten-thirty, an hour and a half before he was to meet her. Damn. Nohar clutched the filing cabinet and started deep breathing exercises. His concern had triggered the fight-or-flight reflex, the adrenaline was pumping. He wanted to fight something. It was still too soon after those Ziphead rodents behind the bus. Something inside him was responding to the pulse, the adrenaline, the stress—
He fought it off.
Nohar couldn’t let his control slip like that.
He had barely brought himself back under control, when the comm buzzed.
Nohar told the comm, “Got it.”
The comm responded.
Smith had the video on. He was as eldritch as ever. The glassy eyes still stared out of a flat, expressionless face in the center of a pear-shaped head. Moisture glistened on the rubbery-white skin. On the monitor, Nohar got a chance to examine Smith from a closer perspective than he really wanted to. The pear shape of the frank’s head, Nohar now saw, was caused by a massive roll of flesh that drooped over the frank’s collar. The roll of fat obscured any neck or chin the frank might have had. The frank was totally hairless, too, no hair at all, anywhere. No pores Nohar could see. The frank could have been a white polyethylene bag filled with silicone lubricant.
The reason the frank didn’t blink was because he didn’t have any eyelids.
Smith also didn’t have any nostrils.
No ears either.
The frank was calling from an unlisted location, and the lighting only picked up the frank’s white bulk, nothing of the background. “I am glad I see you mostly unhurt from when you go to Philip Young.”
“Thanks.” Nohar immediately noticed Smith’s weird accent again. It was not Afrikaans. “Your message said you paid the hospital.”
“It is a legitimate expense of the investigation.”
“You want a progress report.”
The frank attempted a nod, sending the flesh of his upper body into unnatural vibration.
Nohar told the frank what he knew and what he thought he knew. How Johnson was killed, who was involved, and, of course, the as yet nebulous why. Nohar had convinced himself, despite Young’s unreliabil
“Excellent progress in such a short time.”
“Now let me ask you a few things.” Nohar knew he had jumped into the case prematurely, and what bothered him most wasn’t his involvement in a pink murder, or even his involvement with a murder, period. What bothered him was the absence of information on his client and his client’s company.
“I render what aid I can.”
“First, you’re worried about MLI being involved in the killing, and you told me you’re an accountant—what’s in the campaign records that could have connected back to MLI?”
“Only our heavy financing of the Binder campaign. A connection our board informs me will be severed as of our last payment—the three million Binder is missing and we are not. Our only contact with the Binder campaign is our money and suggestions on appropriate votes to take on the issues before him.”
Nohar snorted. Having a bunch of franks telling Binder what to do bordered on the absurd. “You dictated the way he voted in the House?”
“He never votes against us. Our support is based on his closeness to our views.”
That did not ring true. A frank’s views being close to Binder’s? Binder was a little to the right of Attila, was for the sterilization of moreys and probably the outright extermination of franks.
However, the finance records were the only connection between MLI and Binder. That gave credence to Smith’s suspicion someone in MLI was behind the killing. Since the money trail had been sitting tight that long—fifteen years back, the way Harrison acted—if the motive was in the records it was in some incredibly obscure financial tidbit where Johnson never would have seen it in the first place, or it was in those “suggestions on appropriate votes.”
“Second, I want to know where you and the other franks at MLI really come from.”
For the first time Nohar saw what could be the remotest trace of expression on the frank’s face. Close to a nerve. The bubbling voice seemed just a little strained when Smith responded. “I told you. We come from South Africa—”
“South Africa never signed the U.N.’s human genome experiment ban—but it’s just one non-signer of at least two dozen that have the technology. One of a half-dozen that uses it. That isn’t an Afrikaans accent.”
Smith let out a sound that could have been a sigh. “I do not know if I am glad or not I hire such a perceptive investigator.”
“Don’t compliment me on noticing the obvious.”
“I am afraid this information I cannot give you.”
“Oh, great—”
The sigh, it was a sigh, came again. “Please, I explain. Our origin must remain private. Just as we must remain unseen ourselves. It is for the company’s survival. If MLI has a murderer, or murderers, in its midst, such secrets are public. But my loyalty will not permit such knowledge until I know if the guilt is there. If you can’t pursue this without that information, I will let you go with the money you have earned.”
Good, you have an out. Nohar stood there, staring. He told himself he was going to say to hell with it. Drop the whole mess then and there. . . .
He thought of Stephie.
He couldn’t.
He had never ditched anything in the middle.
“You know you’re hobbling me when you withhold information.”
“I am sorry.”
“I need copies of those ‘suggestions.’”
“They’re on file. I get them. At ten-thirty Wednesday night we meet in the cemetery.”
“Comm off.”
What in the hell did he think he was doing?
He should have dumped the case when he had the chance.
Chapter 12
The walk past the city end of Mayfield was nerve-racking for Nohar. His sudden concern for Stephie had hit a few buttons. He was passing Ziphead territory with Angel. He felt the gun was all too obvious under his green windbreaker, even though when he chose the jacket it had seemed up to the job of concealing the Vind.
It felt like there was a target strapped to his back and the weight under his arm didn’t really help.
There were no rats around, hadn’t been since yesterday. That was becoming suspicious. There were always rodents around in Moreytown, even in daylight.
The streets were bare of them.
There was new graffiti under the bridge that separated Moreytown from the Circle. It was under the sarcastic, “Welcome to Moreytown.” It read, “The Zipperhead rules here.” The Zip graffiti was becoming too ubiquitous.
Nohar remembered the too-common slogan, “Off the pink,” from the riots. A decade later, that slogan—Datia’s slogan—had passed into general usage as a stock antiauthoritarian comment.
Nohar wondered if the people who used it habitually were consciously aware it was a call for human genocide.
It felt like he was in the Hellcats again and everything was about to explode into brimstone and shitfire. The feeling didn’t leave after they passed the concrete pylons demarking the end of Mayfield Road.
The pink universe of Case Western Reserve University was only a few blocks from the farthest extension of Moreytown. The border was marked by the sudden shift into decent landscaping.
Angel turned toward him. “You feel safe, Kit?”
“No.”
“Feel the shit’s about to go ballistic?”
“You, too?”
“When the players absent all of a sudden, you know the situation is going to ground zero on you.”
Nohar shrugged. “I’ve got a meeting to go to.”
“Right. Whatever it is, it ain’t us.”
Nohar let it go with an insincere nod. He knew Angel didn’t believe that. Neither did he. He didn’t believe in coincidence. He thought it pretty damn likely the absence of Zips had a hell of a lot to do with them.
They made the coffeehouse at a little after twelve. The aroma of exotic, rare, and engineered coffees overwhelmed Nohar’s sense of smell—at least it removed Maria’s ghost-odor from Angel’s clothes.
It was a college lunchtime crowd, with only one other morey—at least he and Angel weren’t the only ones—a graying red vulpine who was engaged in a chess game with a black pink. Some of the patrons gave the new pair a few stares. Nohar, being a rather singular morey, got more than his share. Nohar was relieved to see Stephie in the back. She had chosen a table with enough room for him to maneuver around.
Nohar walked straight to the table and sat down. Angel hovered a second at the counter, until she seemed to realize she didn’t have any money. Stephie was looking at Angel, but she directed her question to Nohar. “Who’s your friend?”
“She’s a lead from the Johnson killing.”
“She?”
Sometimes pinks weren’t quick on the uptake when it came to morey gender. Nohar supposed it had to do with the lack of prominent breasts.
Angel turned a chair around and sat on it backward. She rested her chin on the back, and scratched the base of her scar—her nose twitched. “Name’s Angel, Pinky. Kit here’s my bodyguard.”
“Ah, hello. My name’s Weir, Stephie Weir.”
Odd, Nohar thought, now she was acting like he’d expect a pink to around morey. It was usually one of three things—fear, condescension, or this vague nervousness that was now spilling off of Stephie in waves.
“You wanted to talk. What about?”
She took her eyes off the rabbit and looked at Nohar. “I’ve been offered my job back—”
Nohar gave her a close-lipped smile. “Congratulations—”
Stephie interrupted him. “—aren’t in order. It was conditional I didn’t talk to you. That kind of job security I don’t need. I’ve been let go once, like excess weight on a ballistic shuttle. I’m not going to be blackmailed into helping in a
Angel chuckled. “Good for you, Pinky. Fuck the PTB.”
Stephie looked confused. “PTB?”
Nohar felt his claws digging into the table. He untensed his hand and tried to stare Angel into shutting up as he explained. “P. T. B. Powers that be. Terminology from the riots— When did you get this offer?”
“After I gave you the lift from the hospital. It was waiting on my comm when I got back home. I never liked Harrison that much.” She smiled now. “I called his house the minute I got the message. I got him out of bed at two in the morning to cuss him out and tell him what to do with his offer. He gave me a raise twice. I told him, at this point, not even if I supported Binder.”
That nagged at something. The Binder campaign was riddled with that kind of inconsistency. “I want to know why the campaign has people like Thompson, Young, and Johnson in it.”
“I never probed too deeply into that. I told you I was just window dressing. It was a money thing. I admit it. I sold out. They needed me for Derry. Anyway, there are precious few women in my age-group that are for Binder. Those that were might have had some principles.”
He appreciated the fact she wanted to tell him about Harrison’s offer. It also reminded him about his worries earlier today. “Who’d you tell about our meeting?”
Stephie shrugged. “No one, not even Harrison—though I was tempted to tell him he was too late with his little job offer. Just to make him stew.”
Angel beat Nohar to the question. “Why not?”
Nohar glared at her as Stephie answered. “It’s my business. Why should I have told him about it?”
There’s the anger again, Nohar thought, just like that lesbian comment. It was laced with confusion, too, but less of it. It felt like she had come to some sort of decision.
Oh, well, let Stephie be pissed at the rabbit. “Stephie, you told no one?”
“Right.”
“Not boyfriend, girlfriend, family, your mother?”
“I said, no one—” She gave a weak smile. “Not even my nonexistent boyfriend.”
Now Nohar had reason to worry. Young’s self-destruction and the Zip attack on him had been just too well-timed.