MEMP’IS
BOOK
THREE – “HEARTBREAK HOTEL”
(Incident Report... draft... of Sergeant Chester Aspid regarding events that commenced Thursday, January 4, 2035 - moments past midnight)
While Homes and Norlin are having this fun, I go back to the Trouble
Factory and take the lift downstairs, way downstairs, past the sweatrooms and C-Squad, even, all the way to Jatesland’s morgue.
They're doing a lively trade down there... not only all those Mazzolas, Heenes and Igor Topple
from Blue City, there's also some dook as got stabbed
on the Hamorite Strip, another headless horseman
found under some bushes at the South Node and the usual domestics, LCs and
pickups from the vegetable gardens south of town. Since two-thirds of C-Squad's out... more
when you factor in the no-shows... I figure I can enlist Eric Ice, who's got a
head on his shoulders, however bent, unlike any Junior Detectives likely hangin' round upstairs.
He's distraught, almost crying like a woman... which is an unpleasant
sight to see, let me tell you! So I go
in and ask...
"Eric...
what's wrong!"
I'm
a soft touch in my old age, really!
"Conrad Heenes," sobs the young officer, "...well, his
relatives, you know... they've been selling off his fex
at kebbin' fire-sale prices. Piss an' shit still make some people
uncomfortable, you know? They're dumping
so fast I can't get financing together... there was a twenty-five percent Nancy
Reagan that went for twenty-one hundred Jeanos, two
pure Boitanos, this relative of Judge Louis kebbin' Brandeis for seventeen... grandson, cousin, keb!... the Devil hisownself! Seventeen!"
"Seventeen
hundred?" I ask... a real babe in the swamp I am regarding the Fex Market says the wife, who plays it religiously, nickel
an' dime samples like that ten percent of the fat guy on Saturday Night Live,
year before the K'ball...
"Thousand..."
Figures. "Hard to keep up a presence in the
market on a cop's salary," is what I say.
"Tell me!" And then Eric gives me a mean, little glance
- like I'd expect from a nobody like Norlin, not this
big lump. "If it were me had the Chinese Market on my beat,
I'd be down their tonsils like Paul Parchette at
cheerleading practice. Where the keb do they get off selling rotten produce to the shiks on MAU or Public Assistance... the point of poverty is to prevent the poor
from reproducing and makin' more of 'em to swarm
around our streets. Did pick up a nice
little flask of Dennis Rodman for three-fifty, though, which I can double,
sending it over to Hong Kong where they like, you know, the dark stuff? But that's penny-ante. Kebbin' NBA doctors
flooded the market."
What I get, bein' a hebe in a world gone to
freaks run wild... accusations, allegations.
Keb Eric Ice!
I do somethin' for him, it's cause he'll do
something for me, like it or don't.
"Tell you what..." I say, keepin' my
suspicious mind outta my voice, "...let's get
your mind off the Market awhile. I need
a hand down at the Morgue..."
Normally, you see, Eric
would make some crack about a hand, an elbow, slice of liver, somethin' sick, but he's glued to the pleader. "Keb, Chet...
I got transactions to watch..."
"If all you can do is watch, what's the kebbin'
point? Maybe I can put a good word in
for you with Demmy..." I suggest, "get you
a piece of, well, clone fex ain't
parkin' meter change, I guess, but how about milkin' Pearson's burglar?
Or some Conrad Heenes for your own, against
the day it goes back up?"
That got Eric up from his
pleader. "You'd do that?" he
brightened "Not just piss but a
little blood, maybe... or part of some viss. A slice of kidney or lung... the Collector,
himself, collected! I like the vissure in that," he said, pushing away from the whizzin', jizzin' stream of
commerce transpiring before his impotent peepers, "...lead on, then, down
into Guy's fragrant grotto!"
Guy... "Demmy"... Desmoulines' a
native, sort of. Got old family in Houma
since way before the k'ball, before there was a Jatesland or Barataria... claims
Jean Lafitte Himself was a distant relative.
Now you'd think my first reply would be "well, then what the keb are you doin' here then, workin' an'
chopping up dead bodies in an icebox?" but he's the man wielding the scalpel, our Demmy
is. Never keb
with the man wit' the knife! Besides,
there's keb goin' on all
over the Trouble Factory that half-smart people as myself learn never to ask
about. And, if you've come to terms wit'
the smell, the Morgue ain't a bad place to be in the
summertime, when it can get up to a hundred ten, and there's the humidity on
top of that. Kebbin'
global warming... thought that the plague and k’ball
taking all those old gas-burners off the road would stop it, but there's
scientist-giglios who say the hydros
are worse... something about all that
volcanic ash, condensation, greenhouse effect, that's what they say. An' that congealed sunlight is, really,
corrupted sunlight... even that it was Triple-J's own experiments in tryin' to bury smoke as, supposedly, caused the Cannonball. Don't
say that here, of course, but there's news comes over the borders from East and
WestAmerica - your average Baratarian's
not quite the yokel as we've got reputations for. An' it's a good thing, being average.
Demmy
ain't average, not by a longshot,
and he ain't in much of a mood when we call. Workin' his French
tail off in a stink like... well, like a bunch of dead, rotting bodies is what
it is. There's this sort of paste he
rubs under his nostrils to take off the edge... probably illegal, but who's
gonna nark? Not I, not Eric. We rub some on... burns, but does what it's
supposed to... Demmy has Elvis cubes playin' most of the time; favors movie soundtracks and the
bleaker stuff... "Catman", "Heartbreak
Hotel" and "Mystery Train"... doesn't trust KJAD, says they're cuttin' off the King's balls, like Colonel Parker. He's got "Adam and Evil" on while
we're doin' up our noses, but the evil gases are
still leakin' out from beneath those rubberized
sheets.
"Refrigerator
break down again? Feels cold..." I
said.
"It's not the
refrigerator, it's them! Clones decay
faster than ordinary humans... un fait accomplí, mon frere,
a given... but there's something wrong with these, they've almost liquified and in less than twenty four hours."
Even Eric can do fecund
mathematics on his fingers, if not in his head.
"That ain't right..." he frowns.
"There's
more!"
Desmoulines
motioned us over to a central station within a pentangle of five stiffs on
gurneys, the rest of his lesser clientele piled up against walls and in banks
of storage lockers that, near as I could figure, contained the unknown and
unwanted dead rotting in peace since Jates-knows-when. Hebes only - doops and most mutes go straight out the loading dock to Barataria's version of Potter's Field, on the wrong bank of
the Atchafalaya.
Unless...
Norlin
shoves the door open without knocking, wet and steaming.
"Kebbin'
Jazk'ball Jerkoffayomamma Jates... I swear, I been to hell an' this place smells clean, by comparison. Clem's girl, Adele, said you'd be down here...
what's up?"
I figure it wouldn't be
necessary to ask him about the meetin'.
"I was about to give
these gentlemen lessons in physiology," Demmy
says. "By all means Corporal, join us!"
And,
then, the Coroner removes a blue sheet, exposing a corpse to the waist.
"Behold!... Conrad
Brummell Heenes, investor and specimen broker in his
former life. Human being, or allegedly
so. All his money and his precious
bottles of fex can't help him now, where he's
gone. Haven't received one single call
from relatives asking about the remains... quite a few about his legacies,
though, way of our world. One slug
through the pump, dead before he hit the floor..."
"Better'n
he deserved, the way I hear it," Eric chipped in.
"Nothing special. Here's a Mazzolo,
typical clone..." Guy shrugged, "rottin'
like a stick of simbutter on a hot sidewalk in
July." Eric and I scowl as he lifts
the sheet, Norlin gulps a little and grows noticeably
paler - kebbin' right, I'd palmed a little bottle of
nose-number. (It went into a footnote to
my IR for Clem Clarke's amusement!)
"Harder to kill, you know, but a head-shot like this..." Demmy says, replacing the rubber and returning to the fex collector's remains, "did 'em all that way, you
know? And look... our leetle friends..."
Eric
recoiled. "Maggots!" Why collectors like their fex
in bottles, or those little plastic envelopes, cost a couple Jeans a dozen.
"Amazing creature, our
common housefly. Veritable Trojan Horses
of filth... note the size of these fellows as compared to... (and he lifted a
squirming white grub out of Heenes' nostrils with his
tweezers, then uncovers the clone, again, pointing) "... and here we
go."
"Hungry, Norlin?" I can't help myself, and the dook doesn't even answer, too sick!
Demmy roots around in the clone's headwound,
then plucks one of those round, green beetles out of the gore. "Atenchus Syntheticus -
your common Egyptian scarab, enhanced by DNA implants, but retaining most of
its old habits... back in the day, they were called dung beetles, you know? One of Triple-J's passions. Tend to find them around le merde; places where fex is traded and... since the modifications... they're
especially attracted to persons or dupes as handled fex,
but they'll go into ordinary dead flesh, too.
Not ours, by the way... little kebbers started
showing up in the Mideast on account of the governments there needing some way
to get rid of all the Cannonball dead.
Arabs, breedin' scarabs... hmmph!..."
"Why
is it," I ask, as I must, "you find ordinary maggots crawlin' around Heenes, but those things in the clones?"
"Made
to order," Demmy said. "Probably Iranian, like kebbin’ everything else… and then they got out into the
ecosystem, courtesy of our illustrious founder.
Always happens, kebbin' morons in white
coats. I do not consider myself a
bigot... well, not too much of one...
but most doops aren't wired together so well as we
are; their musculature structure is elongated, porous. They rot from the inside faster than we do,
and, once they're dead, well, everything comes apart at once. And death comes early - some spare-parters don't live as long as your average housecat."
I
could roger that. There was this
discussion round the Trouble Factory and in the City Council, ten years ago
when your clones-to-order were still novelties, about what to do with 'em when doops got old and sick.
Do we pay out to keep 'em in the vegetable garden, like hebes, or do we just euthanize 'em, put 'em to sleep, like
Felix or Fido. Now, of course, it's
proven no big deal... anyway, Guy's point was that fex
and doops, together, were like steak and ale to
scarabs except, of course, bugs don't have the Trouble Factory looking over
their shoulders. "All you need's a
little smear on a finger, microscopic, really and, of course, a location where
they're predisposed to hang around..."
"The
Tulane's fex central for low rent traders and
hustlers," Norlin grunts, still gaggin', "and its plumbin's
worse than the Trouble Factory..."
Demmy held the little, pill-sized sac dangling from the
writhing beetle up to the morgue's sputtering fluorescent ceiling
fixtures. "Female Syntheticus
is an opportunistic little bug. Thanks to Shiitic
science, she can hold a bellyfull of eggs for weeks,
months, even, hundreds of 'em. Waitin' on a whiff of fex and a
nice, warm wet portal, like a gunshot wound.
You came by round midnight and saw what you saw?" he asks me.
"Couple
minutes after," I said. "Maybe
twenny..."
"And
you reported the last witness seeing them alive at twenty two hundred
hours," the Coroner taunts, lowering his head while Elvis appeals to
someone’s little sister not to do what her big sister done. "Woulda
happened soon after, but it works.
Scarabs hidin' in corners and the curtains pourin' out... probably comin'
down from other floors, layin' their eggs. They're ready to hatch, no more than an
hour... soon as they're born, they belly up to the buffet..."
"How
long does it take one of them bugs to smell the fex
and, you know..." Eric said, "make a distinction that a body's dead,
rather than alive?"
"Minutes?"
said Demmy.
"Seconds! It's like they
have radar..."
Ice
turns to Norlin, sayin'
"...they could put Skark's pigs out of
business," as the Coroner rubs the dead doop's
scalp, almost affectionately, then holds up dark-stained palms. "Ouch!..." says Eric, "that
clone's been shot twice!"
"Well observed, but
note, now, the size of this little
beetle," says Desmoulines. "And, remember... shoepolish. Which indicates..."
"That
this ain't no clone at all," Norlin
says, "it's..."
"The Comte Mazzolo... in the original wrapping… as popped out of his
sainted momma's belly!" I exclaim.
"Seems whoever did th' job disliked him
sufficiently to shoot twice... once in the nuts, to make a point, then a coupe
de ville..."
"Coup de grace, Sergeant," Demmy winces.
"But, essentially, correct..."
Norlin
looks down at his fingers, wiggling them as he counts. I get the feeling that being a traitor and
pariah does help cover up the likelihood that the Corporal wasn't that bright
to begin with, livin' off his old man's
reputation. Everyone here knows about
Tom Norlin…
"Eight
slugs, eight vics... one of 'em done twice..." Norlin frowns.
"Ray's boys say the Heston's program
indicated no reloading. Even if one of
the clones did 'em all, then blew out
his own brains, it..."
"Doesn't add up?" Demmy suggested.
"No, it doesn't. And here's
why..."
The
Coroner lifts the sheet from head of the next cadaver and a wall of scarabs
flutter to the floor and skitter across to disappear under the drawers and
cabinets and dark places... the dead man is little more than reeking gray
slime...
"Jesk'ball!" Eric swears, but Norlin's
doubled over, being that this is bad... bad!... I can hardly keep from pukin' through all of the grease on my nose.
"Somethin'
die in here?" I wisecrack, after
the first wave has mostly passed...
"Now, things gets
interesting," the Coroner smiles.
Sick bastard, unveiling the rest of that other white meat... gray as it
was... to its thighs. Can't stand it - I
have to take the little bottle out of my pocket and do my nose, again and,
well, then I have to hand it over to Norlin. Poor keb thanks me!
"Shoepolish?"
he asks Demmy.
"Shoepolish." And the Coroner plucks a bug out of the
victim's groin.
Eric
Ice fairly snatches the bottle out of his boss' fist.
"Not very pretty. Brought in with the rest, but he ain't a clone either... even clones don't break down this fast. Even good ol' Baratarian
flies won't touch 'im! But he ain't so far
gone that a six year old child couldn't see there wasn't a milligram of lead in
his head... something killed this doop, but it wasn't any Heston
Heater...
Eric's
perplexed, but game. "A second
weapon?" he tries. "An
intruder, in a locked room?"
The
Coroner raises a finger, cutting him off.
"...and he wasn't the only one, either."
Desmoulines
then removed the sheet from the last of the five stiffs. A few of the green, muted scarabs were
clustered around an ugly throat gash... bigger ones, though not so many,
perhaps since what remained was even less human... or clonelike...
than the others. They crawled slowly,
fat and gorged on carrion-slime.
"Came in with an arrow
through the neck, the other night," Demmy told
us. "Igor Topple - the Blue City
burglar, himself. Ain't
human, but ain't a clone either... ain't any kind of
mute as been made by God or HRI."
"Lemme
guess," I venture, "...not
killed by an arrow."
"Look at that
slop," the Coroner said, shaking his head.
"Came in with the arrow fused to his neck... part of Igor, same
process of disintegration, hence: same substance, same fex.
Course I could be mistaken, these two come from different time frames,
but..."
"Demmy... don't hold back," I said. "This Topple, he ain't
human - right?... even though we've gotta jacket on
him would fit that new eight-foot Syrian tight end which plays for Vegas, and
I've collared him myself, twice. Ain't a clone,
neither... who'd clone a kebbin' loser like Igs? Now, I gotta go up to Clem, tell 'em our case against Pearson is fex on account of this un-Igor. Tell me it ain't
so."
"Sorry, Chet, it's
so. What happened to him... it... well, it's a crime... I think...
but it ain't murder.
Come over this way - you'll see something interesting under these
microscopes that might make up for some of the disappointment."
But
it's fifteen twenty hours - I gotta pick up Norlin's IR and stroke Clem's kebbin'
arse for a while so, maybe, I can get out of here
without too much more overtime. "Keb! I can't... gotta go," I apologize. Like it really fexed
me to have to leave without breathin' in more
corpse-gas and lookin' at infectious bugs under Demmy's microscopes. Then, making the afternoon a perfect keb-up, Eric Ice goes up to Demmy,
whisperin' something... I see the coroner step back,
shaking his head and scolding him, I guess.
Eric comes out after me, steamed as the clams we used to dig up and eat
when I was a kid, down Galveston way, before the K'ball
and red tidal waves, before Triple-J and his kebbin' rules.
"Wouldn't let me have
even a slice of collector's tongue or a finger.
Not even a whole finger, a joint is all I asked for," Eric squeals,
"...little tip of the little pinky finger.
A toe, k'ball! I ain't
greedy."
I got too much keb on my own mind to do anything but agree and then the
lift arrives.
Life
is cruel!
The whole fex equation, way I see it, goes like this... where most
people in Barataria, the East, West and MexAmericas, whole kebbin' world
all start out with a certain amount of personality, force, what makes them them, in other
words. And then life starts eatin' at you, soon as you're settled like a big ol' tree,
can't move... life and the sort of kebs as live off
other people, eat their souls. Cops,
criminals, citizens... it don't make any kebbin'
difference, they're vampires or not. And
a hard rain starts falling, like Elvis’ tears.
You stop movin', sink roots into the ground
and stuff changes on you... people change, familiar things, prices go up,
disappearances and change. And the only
way that you save yourself is pulling up yourself by those rootstraps
and going... I got twenty-four years in, sixteen in Barataria
as count. Four more years, I get a
quarter-pay kissoff, nine years an' I get half. Kids out into the world, on their own. So I'm startin' to
think... stay or go? Quarter-pay'll keep a keb alive in MexAmerica and they look th'
other way if an old-timer needs a shot of tequila for his arthritis. Everything here slidin'
into fex...
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