Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven (7 page)

“Did you know Coyotl had a slave?” I asked him, after the two of us had settled down around the grey marble table in his office.

“You bet I did,” he said, grinning like a little kid. “I’m the one who brokered her servitude.”

“You?” I repeated, caught off-balance by the frankness of his admission.

Cueponi shrugged. “I have to make a living, don’t I?”

“Of course,” I said. “Except for one problem—only nobles are supposed to own slaves.”

“Only nobles are supposed to eat chocolate,” he pointed out, “but it doesn’t always work out that way, does it?”

“I’d say there’s a difference between eating chocolate and owning slaves.”

“Is there, Colhua? The Law says otherwise, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

It was true. The penalties for the two transgressions were virtually the same. But the Law had been inscribed a long time ago. No modern judge would have seen those two crimes the same way.

“
One
slave,” he said. “And when you think about it, it’s hardly even slavery. What girl
wouldn’t
want to give herself wholly and completely to a man like Coyotl?”

“What’s her name?” I asked.

He knew it right away. “Malinche. Atzi Malinche. You’ll find her
here
, in the same neighborhood where she grew up.” He took out a piece of paper and wrote down the address. “Mind you, it’s not the
nicest
part of our Merchant City. You have to be careful.”

“Thanks for the advice, Uncle. And here’s some for you—don’t sell any more slaves to common people. Your noble clients wouldn’t approve of the practice.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

As it turned out, Malinche no longer lived at the address Uncle gave me. She had moved half a cycle earlier. But one of her neighbors gave me the address where she worked.

It too was in the Merchant City, but at least it was in a better section.

The name that hung in bold, black letters on the outside of the building was Tezcatlipoca Monitor Parts. Tezcatlipoca was our god of the Smoking Mirror, our source of knowledge both past and future.

I flashed my bracelet at the front desk and asked to see the manager. He came out a moment later, a broad-shouldered fellow with a leathery face and a high voice that didn’t fit him at all.

I wasn’t offered a chair, but I sat down anyway. Then I asked the guy about Malinche.

He laughed. “She hasn’t worked here in a couple of moons, Investigator. Ever since she put one of her co-workers in a medical facility. Punched him in his mouth, knocked him right over a machine.”

“Why would she do that?” I asked.

“Because she’s crazy. People said she was a slave at one time but her owner turned her loose. Believe me, he didn’t do her any favors. Some people just can’t handle it on their own.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

He gave me an address. It was the one I had checked out earlier that morning. “Nothing more recent?” I asked.

He shook his head. “That’s all I’ve got. If you don’t mind my asking, why are you looking for her?”

“I don’t mind,” I said, “but I can’t tell you. Thanks for your help.”

Then I left, no better off than when I’d gotten there.

I was taking the rail back to the office when my radio buzzed. It was Necalli. “Colhua,” I said.

“Good news. One of Coyotl’s neighbors saw something after all.”

That
was
good news. But it begged a question: “Why didn’t this person say something before?”

Quetzalli was as thorough as they came. It was hard to believe she had overlooked someone.

“She was on vacation at the Western Markets. It wasn’t until she got home that someone told her we’d been around the building asking questions.”

That explained it.

“What did she see?”

Necalli told me. “Of course, you’ll want to question the woman yourself.”

“Of course,” I said.

Citlalmina Teluc was a short and round but not unattractive woman in her late forties. She wore a black and red dress that looked fresh from the Western Markets.

“Thank you for coming,” I said across the smooth wooden table. We were one flight down from my office, in the nether regions of the Interrogation Center.

“It’s no trouble,” she told me. “I’m happy to help.”

Still, she looked around a little nervously. No doubt, it was the first time she had been in an interrogation cell. I had to set her at ease if I was going to get everything I needed.

“Can I get you something to drink? Cane water?”

“No.” She smiled. ”I’m fine.”

“All right, then.” I leaned forward. “You told Investigator Quetzalli that you saw something suspicious in the basement of your building. What was it, exactly?”

“I was down there doing laundry. Most people in the building send their clothes out to be laundered, but I like to do it myself. I wasn’t always wealthy, you see, and it’s quiet down there.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

“Anyway, I was sitting there looking at an article on the Mirror—I have a portable console—when a man came in with a bag of something slung over his shoulder.”

“What kind of bag?” I asked.

“A trash bag. White cloth. The big kind.”

“What do you think was in the bag?”

“At the time, I didn’t give it much thought. I like to mind my own business. But looking back, I can tell you the bag was full of something big and long. And though the man who was carrying it seemed pretty strong, he was having trouble with it. A
lot
of trouble. He was staggering, grunting, sweating . . . that sort of thing.”

“So if you had to guess what he was carrying . . . ?”

“Again, looking back . . . I would say it was a body.”

“A dead body?”

Teluc shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Where did the man take it?”

“Out the delivery door. You know, the one in the back.”

“And that was the last you saw of him?”

“Yes. As I said, I didn’t think much of it at the time. But when my neighbor told me the police had been in the building asking questions—”

“It came back to you.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Thanks for your help,” I said. “If there’s anything else, I’ll give you a buzz.”

It was a polite way of saying goodbye. I think Teluc knew that. But she didn’t seem eager to get up yet.

“You know,” she said, “it’s scary to think someone was killed in your own pyramid. You hear about it happening in other places, but when it’s your own . . ." Her brow creased. “You don’t think he’ll come back, do you? The murderer, I mean.”

“We haven’t established that anyone’s been killed,” I said, “though I understand that it may have looked that way. In any case, we’ve posted an officer on the premises.”

She looked surprised. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

It took Teluc a moment to catch my meaning. “Of course. Silly of me. I guess I wouldn’t make a very good Investigator.”

“Experience helps,” I said.

“Will
you
be coming by as well?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. Unless, of course, there’s a new development in the case.” I couldn’t tell if she was asking for herself or for her daughter.

“Too bad,” she said, “You see, I have a niece. Lovely girl . . ."

Well, at least she’d answered
that
question. “Sorry, but I’m not allowed to socialize with witnesses or members of their families.”

Teluc sighed. “Can’t say I didn’t try.”

The basement of Coyotl’s building had three laundry machines, a couple of tables for folding clothes, and a cane water dispenser—but outside of that, the place was pretty stark. The walls were just walls, bare of the hanging sculptures, paintings, and feather arrangements that graced the lobby above.

Of course, my building didn’t have even
one
machine. But then, I didn’t live in a luxury pyramid the way Coyotl did.

I was standing there in the middle of the basement, trying to picture what Teluc had described to me, when I got a buzz from Calli.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said. Her voice was even more seductive than usual.

“Likewise,” I replied, because I didn’t know when someone might decide to come down to the basement.

“Meet me.”

“When?” I asked.

“Noon. I’ll bring lunch.”

It wasn’t the most convenient time for me. I said so.

“Be there,” she insisted.

“Where’s
there
?” I asked, thinking I could try to slip away for a moment if it was nearby.

She told me.

“That’s crazy,” I said, hoping she was kidding.

“Maybe. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Hang on,” I said. “This is
not
a good idea.”

But before I could get the last of my words out, she ended the link. I tried calling her back but she wouldn’t answer.

“Hands of the Gods,” I muttered.

Calli didn’t know what she was getting herself into. She couldn’t, or she wouldn’t have even considered it. But if she was determined to go there, I couldn’t let her go alone.

The closest rail station to the spot Calli had chosen was Itzpapalotl Street. I got there early—
really
early—so I could stand on the platform for a moment and look around.

Some neighborhoods are dangerous because they have too many people in them. But the most dangerous ones are those that have too few. This one had too few.

It was a three-block walk from the station to our rendezvous, but it seemed like ten times that distance. After all, I had to look around every few steps to make sure no one was following me.

As for the spot itself . . . it wasn’t the kind where I’d met with anyone before. And I’m not just talking about women. I’m talking about
anybody
.

Even my informants, some of whom were pretty rough around the edges, didn’t spend time in places like this. They were too concerned about running into people even rougher than they were.

It wasn’t even a place, strictly speaking. It was more like the
absence
of a place—a jumble of mostly demolished walls, the shortest up to my knees and the longest maybe twice my height. I felt like I was in the mouth of some angry god who had neglected to take care of his teeth.

Not that the site wasn’t intriguing in a morbid sort of way. Especially if you knew the story.

Two and a half cycles earlier, a developer—not one of the more established ones, because even the most opportunistic of them wouldn’t have touched a project in that neighborhood—had torn down a pyramid there. He was supposed to have begun construction on a new one before the end of the cycle, but he never came through on his promise.

He couldn’t. He was found drowned in the River of Stars, just upstream of the point where it entered Aztlan. It took weeks for us to find his killer—an employee the developer had fired for making a pass at the developer’s mate.

In any case, the guy never finished his demolition work, much less the construction that was to follow.

Which was why I found myself wandering among the remains of the pyramid that had once stood there. What was its name? I couldn’t recall. Not that it mattered. When something was gone, it was gone.

What was still very much in evidence was the neighborhood around it, which was even less savory than I remembered.

The question was why Calli had asked to meet me here. What could she possibly have found appealing about that place? Its remoteness? Its feeling of danger?

Then I smelled it . . . as dusky and rich as if I’d had a soft, thick morsel of it melting on my tongue.

Chocolate
.

I looked around to find the source. A block away, half-obscured by a piece of old pyramid, there was a squared-off building with a faded picture of an ocelot on it. The ocelot was the symbol of the Ocelotl family, who held the exclusive contract for making chocolate in the Empire.

They had a factory in District Seven—I had known that. But I hadn’t known there was one in District Two as well.

The smell wafting on the breeze it was intoxicating. I closed my mouth and inhaled through my nostrils, losing myself in what seemed like it should be a forbidden aroma.

But there were no laws against
smelling
chocolate.

I had to hand it to Calli. I didn’t know how she had known about this place, but I was sure the wind didn’t always bring the scent of the factory that way. She had to have researched the necessary conditions, and then made sure the wind would be accommodating her before she called me.