ARC: Peacemaker (10 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Juno’s Cantina was more tequila and corn beer and less fajitas and beans. But Sixkiller asked for a double order of vegetarian nachos to have at the bar and seemed happy with the result.

My double order was Mexican brandy and I’d earned it. Hellsakes, I wasn’t on duty and I’d just prevented three civilian deaths. Even if they were bangers.

Neither of us said anything for a while, him busy scooping salsa onto corn chips, and me watching the methodical way he consumed the messy food.

“Sure you don’t want some?” he asked as licked the last of the corn chips up from his fingers.

“It’s getting late,” I replied. “Can we get to it?”

“Sure thing, Ranger. Shoot.”

“Fine. Why did you come here alone?”

“Just following up on a lead.”

“Without me?”

He shrugged. “You were busy. So what were you doing here?”

“Following up on a lead.”

“Without me?”

“You were MIA.”

We glared at each other for a bit. Then surprisingly, Sixkiller offered me an olive branch. “Look, I thought it would be good for me to look around on my own. No harm intended.”

“Of all the places you could have gone… why here?”

“The bone we found has vodun significance. My intel says this is where to find out about local vodun.”

“Did your intel also inform you that wearing a Stetson on the streets of Divine might be the same as wearing a
you’re welcome to shoot and rob me
sign?”

He pursed his lips and stayed silent.

I sighed. “Look I have some contacts here who might help. Do you have the bone with you?”

He nodded.

Before he could comment, Sixkiller was jerked from his seat. I turned, hand to holster and found a party of gun-toting gangers behind us.

Three of them I knew straight away – the MY3s from the street just before. And three others who might as well have been their clones with the same tattoos, piercings and palpable anger. The guy at the apex of the circle though, was a different breed.

Taller than Sixkiller or I and sixty kilos heavier, he gave the term
man mountain
a baby face, an Hawaiian shirt and a thick plait.

“Who fuckeen hits on the MY3 in their place?” he rumbled.

I stood up. “Papa Brise, my name is Virgin Jackson from uptown Parkside.”

His frown appeared as two fold lines between his eyebrows. “The park ranger?”

I hesitated, blindsided by the fact that Mystere’s main banger knew of me. How so?

“Yes. I’m… Ranger Jackson.”

“Him?” The slight tilt of his head towards Sixkiller sent the folds of fat in his neck into a faint ripple.

“US Marshall on secondment. Working with me.”

Papa Brise blinked a few times in a way that suggested his mind was crunching through possibilities and outcomes. “Show me your fuckeen parlay, Ranger.”

I lifted my wrist so he could see. “A mutual friend said it would allow us to talk.”

“Your friend gotta fuckeen name?”

“Maybe we could discuss it somewhere more appropriate.”

That got the giant man laughing in a hostile way. “
Appropriate,
eh
?
You come to my fuckeen house, Ranger. This is my fuckeen kitchen. Outside is my fuckeen street. We talk where I want to talk in
MY FUCKEEN HOUSE
.”

I folded my arms and lifted my chin against his intimidation.

The cantina patrons fell silent. I could sense Sixkiller’s wariness to my reaction. I didn’t care. Men like… No
, people
like Papa Brise – jumped up bullies – jammed my stubborn button all the way down. Dad always told me that was my Achilles heel.

Papa Brise licked his lips and shifted the weight of his bulk from one leg to the other. His vest tightened across his girth, the palm trees on the print splitting apart where the button and buttonhole strained.

I snapped my gaze away from the puckered coffee-coloured flesh beneath it, to see him lift a single finger. His men seemed to understand what that meant and three of them began ushering the drinkers out by waving their weapons. Soon, the only people left in the cantina were Sixkiller, me, Brise and three of his guys. Even the bar keep had disappeared out the back.

“So speak, Ranger. Don’t fuckeen aggravate me any more than you already have.”

“Madame Corah gave me the parlay ink.”

His eyes widened, lids disappearing under the fleshy folds of his eye socket. “You know Corah?”

“Most of my life,” I said flatly.

That seemed to throw him. He licked his lips a few more times, and the perspiration grew thick on his upper lip.

If I hadn’t been so caught up in the moment, I might have recognized his reaction to her name as lust. But as it was, my pistol hand throbbed with the blood that should have been in my brain but wasn’t. I could feel a bad decision coming on.

It wasn’t till he hauled an empty table over to the bar and sat his triple-plus-size butt on it that I calmed a little. Maybe Corah hadn’t set me up to get shot on sight after all.

“So what you want to know?” he said.

I showed him my palms. “It’s in his jacket.”

“Put those pistols on the bar behind first. Both of you. Reach nice and slow for it,” he said.

I did as he asked, nodding at Sixkiller to comply as well.

When our three pieces had been slid away by one of the gangers and we’d been patted down, Brise nodded that I should proceed.

“Nate?”

The Marshall slowly withdrew a package from his pocket and handed it to me. I passed it to Papa Brise still wrapped.

We both watched as he withdrew a long nail file from his vest pocket and used it to flip the folds of the cloth open.

“Corah said you would know about the origin of the feather,” I said.

He poked at it with the file, rattling the beads and playing with the feather.

Then he blinked a few times and I saw the distortion of a magnifying filter slide across one pupil. He leaned in close and examined the object with the implanted lens.

As he straightened up, he’d blinked it away again and his eyes had returned to normal. “Where you get this?”

“Man followed us in the Western Quarter. When we tried to have a conversation with him things got noisy,” I said.

Papa Brise raised an eyebrow.

“Percussion device,” volunteered Sixkiller.

“You mean he threw a boom-boom and got away… from a Ranger
and
a US Marshall.” He belly laughed then, genuine mirth that made me squirm. “Glad this fuckeen country’s in good hands.”

I scowled a bit. “Yes, he got away but not before the Marshall found this on him. Corah told me you would know about the feather.”

“Mebbe I do. What you fuckeen give me to find out?”

“But Corah…?”

“Listen up! Your Corah gotta piece of this fuckeen big heart right here.” He beat his chest. “But Papa Brise don’t do fuckeen nothing’ for free. Feel me?”

I shrugged at that. What did I even
have
that he could want?

“Strikes me yer reward should be helping the law,” drawled Sixkiller.

Papa Brise blinked his piggy eyes at Sixkiller a few times then looked at me. “Fo’ fuckeen real?”

“The Marshall’s used to getting respect,” I replied. “Australians don’t get that so well.”

“You speakin’ out of school, Ranger?”

“Just an observation.”

His teeth appeared, surprisingly straight and clean, as his lips stretched into a grin. “Bitch is fuckeen funny.”

I let the “bitch” word slide on account of the odds and me still wanting something from him.

“I’m taking a fuckeen liking to you, Ranger, so I’m gonna take an IOU on this one. ’Cept you are gonna fuckeen owe me.”

“I won’t break the law for you,” I said automatically. “As long as you understand that.”

“Crystal fuckeen clear.”

He took a long nail file from a pocket inside his vest and poked at the stem of the feather. After a bit of prodding he stroked it. “See?”

I stepped closer. The feather had changed colour from a mottled grey brown to a soft pink which gradually brightened to the saucy red that reminded me of sunset over the park.

Papa Brise stroked it some more and the hue changed to the purple of the mesa.

“Birrimun Park colours,” I said without thinking.

“Your Park don’t have the fuckeen monopoly on those colours, Ranger,” said Papa Brise.

“She’s right though,” said Sixkiller.

I felt annoyed by the cowboy’s support, and worse, a tiny bit pleased as well.

“Feather’s from Manush,” said the big man.

“What’s that?”

“You saying it’s Romani?” asked Sixkiller.

Papa Brise nodded. “The original product, but is been tricked fuckeen out locally.”

“How do you know that?”

“Fuckeen branding, Ranger. How else? Only one person know who do nano-lumes like that.”

I arched an eyebrow.

“That fuckeen bitch Kadee Matari. And good luck with that.”

ChapterFourteen

I took Sixkiller home along the tourist route, picking the bus across the bridge from Gilgul and staying on the main line uptown. We got back to the Cloisters around 4am and parted in the lift with few words.

I drew my pistol before I thumbed my door open this time but no one jumped me. Even Aquila was a no show. The only sound I heard was Heart’s breathing in the bedroom. I stripped, dropped my clothes on the floor, sank into bed beside him and mimicked his breathing pattern until I fell asleep with my forehead resting against his shoulder blade and my foot on his calf.

I woke in the same position a couple of hours later when my alarm went off.

Heart slid his hand back onto my thigh and stroked it. “Late night.”

“Too late.”

“That cowboy making work for you?”

I sighed. “In ways you could never imagine.”

He rolled over to face me, so close that our lips almost touched. “You want to talk about it?”

I gave a slight headshake and a large yawn. A few stretches later I was able to speak again. “Not really. Just a case of a giant ego, a culture divide and some other shit.”

“Can’t help with the giant ego or the culture shock but I cog ‘other shit’.”

I stretched and drew back a little so I could see his face. “Says the guy who dropped out of political science to become an exotic dancer.”

His lips turned down. “You make it sound like I had a choice.”

The sketchy picture I had of Heart’s background went along the lines of… huge education debt, private loan, no job prospects, no family. When the debtors started to chase him, he used his
attributes
to kick start an income. Shame about it was he was good at dancing and good at women. Really good. Pretty soon he was top billing at his club and the education took a back seat.

The night we met, Caro had dragged me out to a show, saying I was overwound. We got a bit crazy afterwards – whiskey highballs, beer chasers and salty peanuts – and I was still slumped at the bar when the night shift staff left and the strippers emerged from their dressing rooms looking for a liquid breakfast.

Heart sat on the empty stool next to me and I shoved him right back off. He got up and asked me why I’d done that. I told him I was drinking with my father and it wasn’t polite to sit on his seat.

Anyone else would have written me off for drunk-crazy or just crazy, but Heart pulled up another stool and asked to be introduced to Dad. I told him he not to be a fucking loony and that my father was dead.

He laughed and a half hour later we were in bed.

Course it wasn’t the stupid conversation about my dad that attracted
him
to me. I worked out pretty quick that it was because I hadn’t shown a single bit of interest in him when we met. When your job is to encourage women to paw at you every night, it’s kind of refreshing when one kicks your chair over. Basic reverse chemistry.

I didn’t overthink what came next. Sure he was attractive – inspiringly, if I stopped to think about it
–
but I didn’t have any interest in a relationship with a pretty man. Just some way to let off steam and keep me connected to the human race.

The unexpected bonus was that we actually talked well together. In the brief moments before he left, or when he arrived, our conflabs covered the dissolution of individual states, the country’s centralized government and the loss of our welfare system. Heart had an opinion and so did I. We often hit some kind of synchronicity.

“I know it’s been hard,” I said. “But things are better now. You’ve saved some dollar. Maybe you could consider alternatives.”

“What? You don’t like dating a stripper?”

“Is that what this is?” I said surprised by the quaint term. “
Dating
?”

He pulled me towards him so our naked waists touched. “You might have noticed I quite like you. Thought maybe we could spend some time together.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“I mean… while we’re vertical.”

“You want to go
out
on a date?”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “For the novelty.”

I knew I wasn’t being very gracious about it but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “Wouldn’t that… y’know… ruin things?”

“It might make ’em even better.” He’d started to move against me, his skin moist and hot.

“Can I take it under consideration?”

His smile grew wider and parts of him grew harder. “Always cautious, Virgin.”

Cautious?
Like my play against Papa Brise’s men, facing them down to stop a shoot-out. “Yeah,” I said, softly. “That’s me.”

His hands began to move over me. “Let me help you with that particular affliction.”

I reached down between us. “Let me help you with yours.”

Less than an hour later, I was standing at Sixkiller’s door, my post-coital calm waning already. The Marshall was not there or not answering again.

I stomped downstairs and hopped a taxi to the Park. Normally I’d do the bus commute, but as usual I was a step behind my charge.

To pass the travel time, I trawled irritably through my messages, accessing my work ones first. A priority from Bull blinked at me, saying my sector would remain closed while the murder investigation continued.

The message did nothing to improve my mood but Leecey had Benny ready for me when I arrived. My horse snuffled and dribbled in my hand, her whiskers tickling my palm, reminding me I had some good things going on in my life.

“You look exhausted, Virgin,” was Leecey’s opinion as I mounted.

“Where is he?” I asked her.

“The Marshall? Went out about a half hour ago. Said you’d be coming in directly.”

“Directly, huh? Where did he go?”

“Dunno. Totes has got the door locked.”

“What?” I turned to her. Today her hair stood up in a golden-metallic crest, matching the colour of her jewelry piercings.

She shrugged. “Been knocking ever since the Marshall went out but the little runt is ignoring me.”

I let go of Benny’s bridle and walked down the corridor. The scent of synthetic hay and anti-bacterial spray hung sweetly in the air and the other horses shifted in their stalls to greet me. The stables at the Interchange felt more like home than my own apartment.

My office was set back between two stalls, masquerading as a storeroom. Or maybe it was masquerading as an office. Long and narrow and dark.

Down the far end, I kept a kickass office chair, worn to Virgin-fitting perfection, which sat in front of a large wall screen. My keyboard was a foldaway into the chair’s arm but it hadn’t done that since the day after it arrived from the supplier. To one side, a side table piled with paper maps, inherited from Dad. To the other side stood a beverage caddy on wheels that harboured a coffee machine, cups, a Clean-Cubator and my supply of cream shortbreads and jerky.

The Clean-Cubator doubled as a mini microwave. I tipped coffee into a cup and changed the setting from CLEAN to HEAT.

How the cleaning nanites switched off and the microwaves switched on would remain ever a mystery to me.

I took the coffee out and sipped while I got the map up on my screen. All the horses were tagged, as were the Rangers’ phones, and the tourist buses. Visitors couldn’t stray more than ten metres from the vehicle without an alarm going off, so we didn’t individually tag our
dailys
dailies
.

My Park grid access gave me basic location maps of anyone in the park in the form of little green blips. Totes was the one with infra-red and real-time satellite feed and all the bells and whistles data.

According to my Park map, the only blip in the Park
–
Nate Sixkiller
–
was halfway to the Paloma ranch-house.

Why there?
I wondered. And why without me? Did he have an agenda or did he just not play well with others?

The only thing I really knew for sure was that the guy hardly needed to sleep. I’d caught about four hours last night and a fog held my brain in suspension.

“Virgin!”

Bull Hunt face suddenly appearance on my screen made me jump.

“Capt’n,” I said.

He ignored the casual jibe. “I sent you details of an upcoming VIP visit. Need you to be there on the right day at the right time
. With
the Marshall.”

“Why? Who’s the VIP?”

“Just be there.”His voice sounded strange. A bit choked off, like he was being strangled. Bull was feeling the pressure today. Even his skin had a choked hue.

I scowled by way of agreement.

“Where
is
the Marshall?” he asked.

“Half way to the station house according to Park-Track.”

“And that would be because…”

“Honestly, Bull, I don’t know. The guy doesn’t talk or sleep much.”

My boss’s already purple face suffused to the colour of a bruised grape. “I expect you to stay with him.”

“I’m trying to and he’s trying his best to get shuck of me.”

“You telling me you can’t handle him?”

I took that bait willingly. “I’m telling you he’s making it difficult. Spent most of last night hosing down a situation in Divine.”

“What in blue fucking blazes were you doing down there?”

“Trying to prove I didn’t commit murder. He, on the other hand, was just out and about wreaking joyful havoc.”

“You telling me something happened that I should report.”

“No,” I scowled. Much as he irritated me, I wasn’t going on record about Sixkiller’s trigger-happy ways.

Bull covered his face with his hands. “One simple instruction, Virgin, that’s all.
Stay with the Marshall
.”

“Well soon as I’m done here, I can do that!” I bit back.

Bull’s face vanished as if it had been sucked away down a drain. I gave the screen the finger and slammed my cup down. The sticky Robusta bean liquid slopped over the sides, coating my fingers.

“Shit.” I wiped them on my pants, grabbed my phone and made sure Park-Track was synced. Striding out of the office, I marched to the supplies store and checked out a phone for Sixkiller. When I caught up with the Marshall this time, there’d be no excuse for him being out of contact again.

I shoved it in my breast pocket and buttoned the top. Time to get moving.

Leecey had Benny down the corridor near the inner door, tickling the horse’s nose with an oat stalk.

“Looks so real,” I told her as I took the reins and mounted. It was against regulations to mount inside but I was too bolshie to care.

“Tastes like crap though,” Leecey grinned, sucking on the straw for a second. She wasn’t one to get wound up about rules either.

“When doll-boy emerges from his hidey-hole, tell him I’ll be back when I am,” I said, nudging Benny’s sides.

“You want me to crowbar his door open to pass the message on?” Her expression was hopeful.

“Nah. But can you tell him he’d better cough up a copy of his audio recording from my room, or I’ll stick pins in Puti.”

“But they’re getting married next month,” Leecey joked. “She’ll be full of holes for the wedding.”

I rolled my eyes, waved at the motion release, and moved on through the inner door to the Interchange entry. As my sector of the park was closed to the public, I didn’t have to worry about mapping a route to avoid the tourist bus.

Within seconds, Benny and I were through and I felt I could breathe again. The sense of suffocation had been worsening lately every time I left the park. My chest had been tight the whole time I was in Divine last night. And that wasn’t just my irritation with Corah, or Sixkiller’s impulsive draw down on three bangers.

For the time it took to cross the Plains to Salt Springs and past Los Tribos, I let myself just enjoy being in the place I loved most. Sun-warmed and feeling the luxury of no tourists, I pulled my hat low and settled back to soak up the ride. Benny knew the route better than I did, and she picked her speed.

Paloma Station House was over an hour’s ride so I stopped at #3 trough to give her a drink and stretch my legs. Our arrival scared a large, open mouthed Bungarra from its perch on the ball cock, and a small party of galahs rose screaming to the sky.

Of all the birdlife in the park, the galahs commanded my deepest affections. Not as noisy as the Corellas or as baleful as the crows, their curiosity and sense of fun made them and endless source of pleasure to watch.

The little flock I’d scared wheeled off in the direction of the station house. I wondered if Sixkiller could see them, and had realized the reason for their sudden flight.

I imagined if the Marshall didn’t want to be found he could make it difficult for me, but this was a foreign country and he didn’t know the park terrain like I did.

Once back in the saddle, I urged Benny to a faster clip. All park horses had heart and muscular-skeletal enhancements which meant they ran quicker and for longer than racehorses. The racing industry had embraced genetic enhancements for a decade or more and then decided they couldn’t keep the playing field level that way, so they went old-school. Only horses to get up-scaled these days worked for law enforcement.