city blues 02 - angel city blues (10 page)

I crossed Santa Fe Avenue, and walked the last half-block to
Falcon’s Nest
. I knew the place would be open. Rico Martinez, the owner and chief bartender, followed in the traditions of his grandfather who had believed in opening the doors as soon as the sun was over the proverbial yardarm.

I pushed my way through the heavy wooden doors and into the near darkness of the club. The air was cool and smelled faintly of alcohol and cigarette smoke. I waited a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting.

Gradually, the Portsmouth paneling and exposed ceiling beams began to emerge from the gloom. The bar was nearly deserted, and my favorite corner booth was available. I slid in behind the table and settled into the red tucked leather upholstery just as Etta James was cranking up ‘
All I Could Do Was Cry.
’

I took a final drag off my cigarette and snubbed it out in an ashtray. Smoking was technically illegal in nightclubs and restaurants, but Rico ignored that particular law, and paid his fines with a smile when he got caught. Which was rarely, as the cops didn’t usually waste time on niceties in the Zone. It was difficult enough to maintain a semblance of order in the streets; they tended to overlook the minor stuff.

Not that stiffer enforcement would have changed Rico’s mind on the subject. Smoking had been allowed when his grandfather had opened the place, and Rico was not a big fan of change.

He caught sight of me and he was pouring my usual before I was even settled in properly. My eyes were still adjusting so I couldn’t make out his face very well, but his strange hobbling walk was unmistakable as he made his way across the room to my table. Even in the semi-darkness, every step was painful to watch.

He stopped about a meter away, resting his weight on his good leg. He set my drink on the table and slid it toward me. “How’s it going, Amigo?” His trademark grin was missing.

I reached for the scotch. “Maybe I should be asking you the same question,” I said. “You look like somebody licked all the red off your lollypop.”

Rico glanced around the bar and then looked back at me. “There was a cop in here asking about you,” he said. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

I took a sip of scotch. “I’ve got one cop sort of pissed at me, a missing-persons type named Bruhn. But he’s just upset because I’m crowding one of his cases. I haven’t actually done anything he can shake me down for.”

I took another sip of the Cutty. “Not yet, anyway.”

Rico shook his head. “This guy’s name wasn’t Bruhn. It was Delaney. Or, at least that’s what it said on his ID chip.”

I frowned. “Older guy? Gray hair? Bad suit?”

“That’s the one,” Rico said.

“Did he bring his partner with him? A woman named Dancer? Female body-builder type, packing about ninety kilos of muscle, and two hundred kilos of attitude?”

Rico shook his head. “He came in alone, maybe an hour ago, asking about you. I told him I didn’t know where you were. He ordered a beer, but I don’t think he ever touched it. He hung out for a while and then left.”

“Did he try to strong arm you?”

“Not at all,” Rico said. “He said he wanted to see you about something personal. Not police business.”

That surprised me. What personal business could Detective Delaney have with me? Whatever it was, it seemed safe to assume that it was related to the two phone messages from Dancer. Was this just an extended version of Bruhn’s threat? Or was it something different?

Rico held out a business card. “The cop gave me this. He said he needs to ask you for a favor.”

I took the card. A holographic image of the LAPD logo hovered a few centimeters above the plastic surface. Delaney had scratched out his work number on the front, and scrawled another number on the blank plastic of the back. His personal number? A
favor
? What was this all about?

Only one way to find out...

“Thanks,” I said. I dug around in the pocket of my windbreaker, and retrieved my latest phone: a disposable EuroSony with a bright green plastic casing.

I don’t like carrying phones. They can be dangerous to a guy in my line of work. Unless you turn it off, a phone or data pad can be localized and tracked—not a good thing for someone who needs to move surreptitiously. Besides which, any jacker worth half his silicon can peel the security system of the average phone like a grape. Again, not a good thing.

So I had taken to buying pre-paid disposables, usually from vending machines. I always paid cash, to avoid any linkage to my name or my credit accounts, and I never entered any personal data into the damned things. I would keep a phone for a week or so, turn it on only when I needed to use it, and—when the paranoid part of my subconscious mind decided that it was time for a change—I’d destroy the phone and buy a new one.

I didn’t pretend that my precautions made me untraceable, but they narrowed my digital footprint. These days, that’s about the best you can hope for.

Rico eyed the obnoxious green plastic of the phone. “Ooh, that’s a nice one. Even better than that pretty pink job you had a few weeks ago.”

I thumbed the power tab. “Don’t get too used to it,” I said. “This thing has a date with my garbage grinder.”

Rico shrugged and began hobbling back toward the bar.

It took the phone a few seconds to finish waking up. The vid screen was flat, smaller than a playing card, and the resolution wasn’t great.

The tiny display began to fill with advertisements. Korean sports cars competed for screen space with squeeze tubes of beer, brightly colored sports drinks, and vids of naked women. The last might have been sex for-hire ads, or sales pitches from surgical boutiques. On the cramped screen, it was difficult to tell.

I popped the audio bug out of its recess, and fitted it into my left ear. When it was properly seated, I punched in the number from the back of Delaney’s card.

The ads got shoved to the margins as the detective’s face appeared in the center of the screen. Once again, I was struck by his resemblance to an aging used car salesman. His expression was guarded, but it seemed to relax a fraction as soon as he recognized me.

“Mr. Stalin, I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

“So I hear. What have I done to piss off LA’s Finest
now
? Is this about the Bruhn thing?”

Delaney’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Bruhn?”

“Never mind,” I said. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

He hesitated for a second or so. When he spoke, there was a tinge of embarrassment in his voice. “Can we… ah… meet somewhere?”

I was tempted to make a lame joke about the quality of his pick-up lines, but I decided to skip it. “Sure,” I said. “Drop by my house. You can kick down my front door and stick electrodes on my head, just like old times.”

“We never kicked your door down,” Delaney said. “And as for the electrodes, that was a routine multiphasic truth-scan, conducted in strict accordance with—”

I held up a hand. “Relax. I was kidding.”

I checked my watch. “I can be home in half an hour. Come by any time after that.”

Delaney nodded. “I appreciate it, Mr. Stalin. I promise not to take up too much of your time.”

I returned his nod, and thumbed the end-call tab. Detective Delaney’s face disappeared from the screen, and the advertisements instantly reclaimed the center of the display.

I held down the power button until the phone shut itself off. Threats from Bruhn, messages from Dancer, and now a visit from Delaney. What in the hell had I done to suddenly have so many cops in my life?

I had a feeling that I was about to find out.

CHAPTER 6

Delaney showed up about twenty minutes after I got home. Perfect timing, as usual: close enough to our agreed-upon meeting time to show genuine interest, but not soon enough to feel like he was rushing me.

I met him at the door with coffee, and led him to the living room. Despite our earlier run-ins, this was evidently intended to be a social call. I had decided to treat Detective Delaney as a guest, until he started acting otherwise.

I settled into my favorite wingback chair, and motioned Delaney to a seat on the far side of the coffee table.

As he settled into the cushions, I got my first good look at him. His face carried deeply-graven lines of exhaustion. He seemed to have aged at least a decade since I’d last crossed paths with him, about a year or so earlier.

It occurred to me that I’d never seen Delaney without his partner before. I took a sip of coffee. “Where’s Dancer? Is this her day off?”

The expression that flickered across his face was somewhere between a wince and a grimace. “No,” he said. “She’s not my partner anymore. In fact, she’s no longer on the force.”

I hadn’t been expecting that.

Before I could formulate a reply, Delaney spoke again. “Priz has been brainlocked.”

That was the knockout punch—no windup, and no warning. “Wait…
Priz
? You mean
Dancer
?”

Delaney nodded. “Yes. Her first name is Priscilla. Or, it
was
. And she would have kicked anyone’s ass who tried to call her
Priss
. So, we called her Priz.”

I was still trying to process the news he’d just dumped into my lap. “Hang on just a second… You’re telling me that Dancer has been
brainlocked
?”

Delaney nodded again, and looked at his watch. “About six hours ago.”

I said the first thing that popped into my mind. “Bullshit!”

Delaney shook his head. “I wish it was bullshit, Mr. Stalin. But I was in the room when the sentence was carried out. I was one of the legal witnesses to the procedure.”

Of their own accord, my hands groped for my smokes. I had a lit cigarette between my lips before I was even conscious of reaching for the pack.

I could feel a subtle shift in air currents, as House automatically redirected the room’s ventilation system to draw the smoke away from my guest.

“How did it happen?
Why
did it happen? Dancer was a
cop
. Why in the hell would they brainlock her?”

“That’s a long story,” Delaney said. “And I’m not the right person to tell it. For now, let’s just say that Priz was guilty of multiple homicides.”

“Bullshit,” I said again. And I meant it. Don’t get me wrong; there was no love lost between Dancer and me. As far as I was concerned, her personality was underdeveloped, and her musculature was overdeveloped. Not a good combination in any human being, and even worse in someone who carries a badge. If there was a gram of compassion in her soul, she had never shown it to me.

She was too much of a hardass for my taste, but none of that made her a murderer. For all her lack of the finer human sentiments, she was as straight-laced a cop as I had ever seen. Or rather, she
had
been. If Delaney was right, and I didn’t really doubt him, then all of that was in the past. Dancer’s brain had been saturated with synthetic neurotransmitters, and her hippocampus had been cauterized by a concentrated electron beam.

Her body would go on breathing in and out, and her heart would continue pumping, but her conscious mind had been electronically flatlined. She’d spend the rest of her life, if you could call it that, as a semi-ambulatory vegetable.

The idea turned my stomach, and—as much as I had disliked the woman—it made me want to beat the shit out of someone.

I treated Delaney to a hard look. “Okay, I said. You’ve dropped your bomb, and you obviously don’t want to tell me the rest of the story. So, where do we go from here?”

His eyes darted toward the ceiling, and then back to me. “Can I ask you to disable your household AI?”

“Excuse me?”

“Just for a few minutes,” Delaney said. “I’d rather not have a record of what we’re about to discuss.”

My knee-jerk reaction was to tell him to shove his ‘rathers’ up his ass, but that was just the shock of hearing about Dancer. After a few seconds’ thought, I nodded and glanced at my watch. “House, we’re going to want privacy for about five minutes. Disable your cameras and shut off your ears until ten minutes after the hour.”

House’s voice was as impassive as ever. “Very well, David. Housekeeping and security sensors are now locked out.”

This pronouncement was followed by a soft chime to mark the beginning of the lockout period.

I looked at Delaney. “Okay, Detective, you’ve got your privacy. What’s this all about?”

Instead of speaking, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a rectangle of black carbon-polymer, about the size and shape of a candy bar. He laid the object on my coffee table. On the end closest to me, I could see narrow oblong shape of a fiber optic connector slot.

“Do you know what this is, Mr. Stalin?”

I stared at the small dark form of the device. I had never seen one this compact before, but I knew instantly what I was looking at. It was a Turing Scion. A digital image of a human mind, complete with thought patterns, personality traits, idiosyncrasies, and even memories—current right up until the moment the recording had been made.