MEMP’IS
BOOK
THREE – “HEARTBREAK HOTEL”
(Incident Report... draft... of Sergeant Chester Aspid regarding events that commenced Thursday, January 4, 2035 - moments past midnight)
I
clock in Wednesday morning... I think
it's still Wednesday (unless the kebbin' City Council
took all their weekly and yearly namings back,
changing Wednesday back to something else, overnight)... anyway, I'm only
twelve minutes late. Not so bad,
considering the paperwork and with the driving back I get maybe three, three
and a half hours' sleep and Vurleen whomps me on the side of the head, comin'
into bed. Clock docks me a kebbin' twelve Jeans, though, on the grounds that what's
good for the bovi works for bonjovi
- as the Roman used to say - they use smart clocks at the Trouble Factory,
smarter than the cattle as have to work all hours of the night, overtime, get
no pay an' get docked comin' in the followin' morning. I
am starting to see twelve becomin' a really bad mojo number on this case... Clem Clarke, though, comes in
hot and furious because Captain Modesty has told him that the yellow fellow,
that Henry Hat, is off collecting evidence on something... maybe leftovers from
Pearson, maybe something else... and that I'm
designated to represent the Detectives on this case, not some zook of Clem's own choosing (like Minoso, or Sabrett). His fake
eye's probably busting out of its socket, behind that black patch, when he says
the Captain wants me stayin' on the case and, because
Norlin's rat mentioned the idea of multiple murders
in the first place, I'm supposed to take the biggest Departmental keb out of C-Squad and do rounds. It's probably Norlin
that steams Clem more than myself... Chief was close
to blowin' his top, even takin'
that scummy eyepatch off and thrusting his yellow,
pitted ol' Jates pre-K'ball
Fireball up against somebody's face, like he does when he's really losin' it. I got
nothing against Norlin myself... stupid, sure, but,
in time, the one detonatingly self-annihilatory abstract is
time. Not a traitor, prob'ly...
but I play ball. That's how survival
rocks and rolls at Trouble Factory.
"Kebbin' zook went over my hay-yahd!" Clem sputters.
"Fahled his report with
the Captain about some kebbin' informant, says he
reads the papers and gets tomorrow's news yesterday, or somethin'. Norlin! Guy can't take a haint. Nobody wants him here, not on the force, not anywahr in Jatesland, doin' to Max like he did..."
"Can't get any lower than C-Squad..." I say.
"He's
up to something, dirty keb." And the
chief gives me this one-eye, homegrown Baratarian
hoodoo like I'm the hebe in
bed with the regimental disgrace.
"Captain Modesty says he wants Norlin in
the loop, it was his intelligayence... it was his
dumb, kebbin' luck.
Wants to weasel his way back into polite society... but he ain't doin' so at my expense. You let me know ev'ry
move that boy makes, Chet, like that nutcase with his tomorrow's news today, I
want to know what he's doin' tomorruh,
and yesterday, too..." the Chief says.
"Understood." I'll say kebbin'
anything, just so he gets his face outta mine and
doesn't take off the patch. Did I
mention that old socket stinks up to Jates in Heaven,
like it died when he didn't, an' has kept rottin' ever
since? He's one filthy keb, Clem Clarke is.
"Meanwahl, stay out of trouble, hear? An' I got just the job for you and Corp’ral Norlin," he
smirks. "Go out and keb up some doops... you know the
kinda places they hang. Shake 'em upside and down... see if you can get Norlin to take a shot at one hisself,
wit'out greasin' any of his
winesses into shootin' at one
another with kebbin' arrhs! 'Member what happened to
Pearson!"
Anyway, I go down into the basement,
past the holding cells (which are quiet... L.C.'s already sent off to work
wherever the keb they're workin'
today). Past the interrogation two-ways
and rooms that they store lightbulbs and toilet paper
in, and fex to fix what's always broken down, I go
into broke-down ol' C-Squad itself. Norlin's on the autocom, to one
of his frequent flyers, I think... won't let him off the phone. Eric Ice is bangin'
on the digiclock... stopped at 0446 hours - ambitious
kid, but there ain't much upstairs, know what I
mean? So I try to help him out...
"Hittin' it won't work, sonny, you got a dead battery in
there..."
"Keb! Where
the keb are k'ballin' replacements..." Eric whines. "Everything around this dump is busted,
an' somebody's been drawing all over my papers again," he adds, holding up
one of the old files, defaced with savage lines and violated spirals. Moron!
"You
gotta fill out a requisition, then a couple more
forms, maybe get called into a hearin' upstairs. Better to just pay out of the Benevolence
Fund, buy 'em yourself, what I mean..."
"I
ain't in the
Benevolence Fund, since I get sent down here! Not all of us get set loose in the Chinese
Market to shake down vendors..."
Kid
rubs people the wrong way, you
know? So I stop feelin'
sorry for 'im – it’s the bad attitude what gets you
the one-way ticket to C-Squad. Anyway, I
gather from Norlin that his caller's this Vona Rae Slentcher... something
like that... petty thief and sometimes-donna with a fexatious
taste in johns. Thinks her piss oughta be worth somethin',
always crying out 'bout how it oughta be listed on
the FexMarket on account of her kebbin'
some dook as kebbed this
other donna got emptied into or onto by some jesk'ballin'
pre-K minor celebrity nobody cares about, now.
Some lawyer to a nephew of a bodyguard of the King's now-decrepit backup
drummer... or a nephew's bodyguard's lawyer, maybe, I'd just tell her we don't
enforce financial directives... which is only partly true. Norlin, he'd rather
shine her on with delusions and paperwork...
"Vona," I hear the unlucky dook
say... he's got the speaker off, probably something to be thankful for...
"you're supposed to file an eleven fifty one with
the primary colorians, not a seven oh three. Well, if you can't pay the sixty Jeans, file
a motion pro pauperis, that's only twelve... form
fifty one thirty six... Vona Rae, I didn't say
thirty-six Jeans, I said twelve. Well,
that's not my problem..."
Meanwhile, I see Homer Sack trying to
tidy his desk up before liftoff... futility, that is, simple futility. Take my whole life, too! God made New England full of stones and Iowa
full of pigs... he made Barataria full of headcases...
"Mornin'
Homer," I try to make conversation.
"Getting ready for the big liftoff?"
"I am, Sergeant..." says the
big mutt.
Eric Ice gives the clock a final
chop. "We were thinking about throwin' a party, maybe Friday afternoon. Seein' Homes off. Little
artificially sweetened choc'late cake... might be the
last we'll ever see (winking) and some Integral. Not too many speeches..."
"I'll come by if I can. No promises though... some of us gotta work..."
Eric's
pleader's displaying the morning fluctuations of the FexMarket...
good mornin' for the oldies. Syva, Pharm-chem, BRI... beaucoup brands,
prized by collectors.
"Roger that!" he gives me
some inane, moonlighting gesture.
I
give Norlin this look and he picks up the tempo,
getting rid of Vona Rae...
"...
everybody
knows the City Council's bent, but they don't fix the FexMarket,
that's the job of the collectors. One of those pan-American ventures. You need a kebbin'
passport even to go up to Yorktown, now.
If it were me, I'd lurk round the auctions, you
can find a lot of players there. Oh...
there's a bunch of 'em comin' up in honor of Jatesday, but you'd have to call the Jatesaneum...
health, security and property!" Norlin kills the
com, lookin' like he'd rather be outside, vomiting,
but I didn't get to be a Sergeant by coddling people's feelings...
"Mornin', Norlin," I
say. "Clem tells me you got a funny
sort of rat on the commons, tells you 'bout crimes before they happen. He say whether we made a collar on the killer yet?"
"You mean a
killer-collar..." Ice looks up from his fex
transactions...
"Shut
up, n' go back to your piss, Eric. Clem
says the Captain's idea is that you're turning into mushrooms, here, that I
should take you upstairs and out into the sun.
Keb up a few doops,
and maybe get a few answers... unless you know somethin'
I don't..." I start to crowd him
"No,
I tried my informant but he wasn't home.
He's not exactly the soul of reliability..." Norlin
admitted.
"Rats
seldom are..."
Then,
we're interrupted by another com for Norlin, which
Eric takes over the speaker, just for spite.
Sounds just exactly what it is... some snotty kid pretending to be a
loony, pretending to be a citizen with a complaint..."
"My
name is uh... Jezemiah Jates,
I've been alive... bein' held prisoner..."
"Who the keb is
this?" Norlin barks...
"Uh, Triple-J... like I..."
The
Corporal was out of patience. "The keb you are, you're one of them snotty brats from the tour...
what was your kebbin' name, Billy?"
"I... uh..."
"It
is, isn't it... Billy Frokes? Frakes? I gotta memory, you know... your
teachers get to that part about where people get LC jackets for makin' phony calls to the Trouble Factory? They will... hello? Billy... keb you!"
"Kids!" I say. I'm vampin'... had three of my own, drowned in the k'ball wit' my first wife, Jane. "Crucifixion ain't
good enough for 'em. Get your coat or
don't... it's almost seventy out there. Freakin'
weather!"
Homer Sack, like a radio, volunteers
his forecast. "There's a front
coming through, rain tomorrow, then turning clear and colder..."
"Who the keb
asked you... oh, right, clear skies and rocketship
weather Saturday..."
"I
think you mean Venuday..." Norlin
says, keb hasn't lost all his sense of humour...
I'm
still kebbin' tired, so I say: "Somebody go
ahead and rewrite the kebbin' calendar while I was sleepin' already? I
miss somethin'?
Get the keb out of that chair, Norlin, clones awaitin'..."
"What
about that loaner from the Solar Commission?" Eric needles me.
"Henry
Hat? Clem says he's out sherluckin' somewhere, pursuing clues. While we're supposed to
walk roun' Southwest Twelfth, shakin'
down clones. Sack, get your head
out of space and come with us, too, you can talk to some of these...
creatures... the way we can't, know
what I mean?"
We park in a shabby neighborhood where
clones saunter down Southwest Twelfth Street in threes and fours, mutes singly,
furtively... Homer Sack, like myself, in uniform, Norlin
in street clothes with this light, beat-up old tan jacket, made him look like a
bum. It's warm and foggy - we turn into
this greasy spoon, the Wide Angel, where more than a few patrons were in
shirtsleeves. Hark! these
angels are hairy, so the song goes... bare arms, insolent, amateur tatts. Over the
counter reposed a somber portrait of the martyr Drazen
Blount, the first clone harvested for a heart-lung combo for his primal; a
dozen pairs of hostile eyes in booths or around a few tables settling on us cops. Start something, one of you, I pray. The chef was a mute... reptile DNA, probably,
his face and forearms scaly and pitted with whorls and ridges as he raised his
spatula and thrust it towards one of those "We Reserve the Right to Refuse
Service" signs...
"We
don't serve the unclean," he grunts... more like a pig than a lizard, if
my opinion matters. "You..."
and he nodded to Homer, "...you here to eat or just keb
wit' my customers..."
Funny how a quiet mute like Sack draws
in confidence like a kebbin' sponge when he's among
his own queer kind. "The latter," says Norlin's
man. "Just
looking for a little information.
Mazzola... name mean anything to you?"
He's
got it wrong, too. I think there was somet'in with corn, used to be innat. Corn syrup or corn oil - before they made
those things illegal...
"Never came in here..." says
the snake, so, I guess, his sympathy for mutes stops at the door where business
starts. It's time to get official...
"Mind if we check that out for
ourselves? 'Course you don't," I
say.
So I start circlin'
the joint, lookin' for... I don't know, lookin' busy? Homer Sack trailed me like a shadow, Norlin
bringing up the rear. Saying
nothing, tryin' to look, somehow, more official in
his plain clothes, which was not helped by all the wrinkles and gravy stains. A table
of three clones, better dressed than the others (one wearing a vintage
artificial eye with little red lightning bolts, a genuine Triple-J, a
collector's item... expensive) caught my attention, so's
I picked up a chair, scraping it along the floor before sittin'
down facing them - Homes and Norlin standin' over me, one to my left, one to my right.
I thought we made a pretty good
triangle of intimidation. "Mind if
we join you?" I say.
"Do we have a choice?" the doop with the eyeball groans. Wise-ass!
I just shook my head. "Let's see some identification."
Not fortunately, all of their papers
were in order. Suspiciously so...
showing each of the clones to be Roger Falls... Roger Fallses,
Falluses?... numbers 2, 5
and 6. I passed their papers to Norlin, who tossed them back on the table.
"Lotta
people workin'," he said, "this time of
day..."
"We're medical," says the
eyeball-doop... Number Two by his papers, and a real
number two in person. Guess he was the
oldest of the gang. If they were
medical, there probably was a good explanation why Number One happed not to be
with 'em.
"Ree...eeally?"
I say, drawin' out the vowels so these doops can catch my drift, you know, in case the chemists
put cotton candy in where their brains oughta have
gone. "Sounds like a round deal...
nice crib to stay, food, maybe some walking-'round money and all for just
hanging round, not even having to work..."
"Until
we're harvested..." Number Six interrupts.
Must be the kid, try steppin'
over a cop that way. Tho' he does have a point.
"Yeah,
that's gotta be a problem," I admit. But a young
fellow like you... eighteen months old, right?... you
got a lotta livin' to do,
yet. Shouldn't be so bitter... maybe the
real Roger Falls comes down with somethin' can't be
replaced, or falls out a window, catches a bullet in a wrong place where the
medics can't transplant in time. Lots of that goin' around. See?
You... on the other hand... looks like one of
Triple-J's finest, there, by the master's own hand?" I bait the leader of
the pack. "Thousand
Jeans, maybe? But you'd rather
have kept the original..."
Roger
Falls Two recoils, as if from a whiff of bad cheese...
"...you've
been jukin' the system for seven years, nearly. Might be that your primal's
ready to call on you for another cornea, a kidney? Or maybe a heart... do I make you
nervous? Are you nervous, talking to the
police... you look
nervous..."
"If you are going to talk
about..." the doop said...
"Death? Yeah... I see your
point. Be convenient if Mr. Falls passed
away suddenly," I say, "nothing that anybody could do for him. 'Course it wouldn't be easy... giving up the
nice clothes, nice crib in the Northwest, lot of your
sort don't have it so easy. Their primals expect them to work for a living, dangerous work,
sometimes. You know the Mazzolos? Must've,
there used to be twelve. Not so many,
now..."
"We
knew of them," Number Five
corrects me. That
fastidious one, the middle doop. "We never met them, personally."
"Word
gets round quick, doesn't it? The
freaks, the clones, the mutes... lightnin' drinkers
an' chlorophiliacs... all have your own little
networks, right boys?"
Young Number Six looked upwards
towards the ceiling. "Next, you're
gonna tell us you're seriously investigating the murder of... wasn't it seven
of us, Officer?"
"Seven
little doops," I started countin',
then ran out of fingers, "truckin'
down to the ol' Tulane to parlee with one fex collector on behalf of another, keb
the royalty. Seven don't come back, go in bodybags, into the
morgue. With one human being... kebbin' piss collector, just between you 'n me, boys, Jatesland's better off without 'im..."
"Well
it's still murder. Killing one of us... well, that's less of an offense
than drinking a glass of wine."
"Bet
you like a glass of wine now and then," I kept at him. "Probably Falls
gets it for you, an' you all get tipsy together, up there on Northwest Twelfth. A little smoke, a little shot of sleepy dust
and caffa in the morning to get started... Jates knows what we'd find if I were to ask you to drop and
give me specimens..."
"Mazzolo must've run through twenty clones by now, he's a real spare-parter,
older than the K'ball," said Number Five, huriedly. "Knew
Triple-J personally..."
"Thought you said you never met
any Comte de Mazzolas," Norlin
jumped in. "Ain't
nice, lying to the cops..."
"I said we didn't know any of the
present Mazzolas,"
Falls Number Two covered for the younger doops. "There were..."
He
looked down at the table and his voice broke down, into sobs...
"Hey...
I unnerstand! Really!" I say.
"Just doin' my job... an' if somebody
goes down for Conrad Heenes, no matter that he's a
puke, well, they go down for the Mazzolas, too. I know..."
I even offered the kebbin
doop one of the napkins from the table, but Falls Two made a brave show of refusing it...
"You
don't know... you..." and he
glared at Homer Sack with especial venom, lingering on those long, droopy ears,
"...you ought to know better
than to waste your life working against your brothers..."
"I have found fulfillment in the complex
information and proportion of Jezekiah Jemaliel Jates," Officer
Sack replied, like the self-important, shot-into-the-sun keb
he was. "As Jatesians,
we recognize all who walk the gently curved, virtuous path of lifestyle virtue
as brothers... human beings, clones, mutes.
Ours is no simple crusade against Substance, but a jihad, rather,
against substance-abusers. Clarity and
the universal liberate us from mortal failings, acute angles and feminatedness and, when I begin to question my faith,
there's always a meeting going on... there's one now, only a couple of blocks
from here..." he suggested.
"Thanks,
but we're alright," Number Six sniffled.
"I guess you can quote more Triple-J to your killer... when you
find him."
"If I can, I shall..." Homer
promised, "... after I have
placed him in restraints."
I
figure everything's blown, good time to get up to move on, but Homer's the
tenacious one... must be a spot of bulldog behind the bloodhound in him, tho' he doesn't have that jowly look, more like the old
Elvis standard. Probably never caught a
rabbit for Jates, but he tried...
"Many
clones find what is absent from their lives by taking Triple-J into their
hearts and making devotions, attending meetings. Clones, mutes..."
I
get an inspiration - I know Clem,
Clive 'n Germany will like it... and it gets me out of this situation. I don't consider myself a mean person, tho' I have done mean things, sometimes. Hey, Norlin
deserved it. What he did to Max Bend and
those guys, he deserved anything short of the long sleep and, I'll tell you,
there's zooks at the Trouble Factory who wouldn't
mind if Norlin got on the wrong end of a heater or
fell out a window, somethin' like that.
"Well,
Norlin," I say, "sounds like you ought to
go with Homer and check this gathering out..."
He
looks at me like I'm the mean kid as snatched his teddy bear away. Can't help myself. There's just somethin'
about Norlin... since Max... that makes people want
to keb 'im up. He's a loser.
That's just what some people are, and there ain't
nothin' they nor anybody can
do about it.
"Be sure to send me a draft of
your incident report before you send it on to Clive." I add, just twistin' it in, just a little. So I'm happy... Homer Sack is kebbin' delighted, though you'd never know it to look at
him... the giglios will be happy. Even the kebbin' doops in the Wide Angel are happy, 'cause we are gettin' up to boogie on down the road.
Like I said,
the Trouble Factory's about protectin' turf, after,
of course, your own butt. So it's that
IR which I'm reading off, back to the boss, at fifteen-thirty, couple of hours
later. I'm so tired I'm almost fallin' over, at first, I'm hoping that the Chief will
recommend me for a shot of Police Serum, but Clem has this metal toothpick... pickin' fex out of his teeth as I
read it, gruntin' and spoutin'
Franco-Baratarian fex like
"centralicity" and "perp's most metahminded
colors" as if he's got some plan, spinnin'
behind that kebbin' black eyepatch. Plans... why he's a Chief and I'm only a
Sergeant. A tired
Sergeant.
Jates!... I really gotta do some
serious editing on this IR before turning it in!
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