Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel (28 page)

Branen sat back and rubbed his neck. “Gone home with a migraine. She asked me to talk to you about the case and get you moving forward on leads. Is there a reason I need to talk to you? She seemed unhappy.”

“Not exactly.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “Since I’m not in the mediation business, I’d suggest you handle it. Cherabino was the biggest advocate for your job, you know, and there are a lot of people arguing the opposite right now. If she’s not there to stick up for you, it’s not a good thing.”

I shifted in my chair. “Did you need something? Or is my job on the line here?”

He shook his head. “I’m just saying, handle it. Paulsen’s still on your side, for the moment. Now, we got back a match on the fingerprints from that anonymous note—the one Paulsen had you interview the guy from?”

“Joey the Fish?”

“I believe that was the interview, yes. The fingerprints belong to Neil Henderson, the body on our roof. Piccanonni thinks he was trying to cry for help, perhaps lead us in the direction of capturing him and Bradley both.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Why put us talking to Joey?”

“We got good descriptions from the interview and a confirmation there were two men, at least one wearing a Guild patch. It was a good lead, and a well-executed interview,” Branen said sternly. “Have you had a chance to talk to the guy again?”

“I’ve been making phone calls all afternoon to anybody who might give me useful information,” I said. “All day. I had to leave a message with Joey’s hangers-on, but I called.”

“How likely is that to go through?”

I shrugged. “Hard to know.” With any luck the son of a bitch would call me back, but I was just a bit too close to the cops to have any faith in that happening.

A knock on the door interrupted me.

“Branen?” Paulsen stuck her head in the door without further pleasantries. “Sorry to interrupt, but I need boy genius for a bit.”

“Now?”

“Now.” Paulsen’s tone was polite but firm. “We have Joey the Fish on the line, wanting to talk. And he sounds skittish.”

Branen’s mouth quirked up. “Looks like your message went through. By all means, talk to the man.”

Lieutenant Paulsen pulled me into her office, the closest semiprivate area to be had, and gave me a stern look. “We’re recording this,” she said, and paused suggestively.

Confused, I peeked. She thought I was working the case; probably I was working the case, but I needed to stay clean, and there was always the possibility I was making a deal with the pusher. Joey the Fish had connections to drugs, but he also looked to be connected to Cherabino’s multiples case. She was giving me the benefit of the doubt but wanted to be there.

I nodded seriously, showing I understood everything she hadn’t said, and held out my hand. She handed me her phone. I gripped the handset carefully and brought it to my ear while Paulsen watched.

“Hello?” I said, half hoping he’d hung up already.

“Tell me who I’m speaking to,” an unfamiliar voice came back. I gave him my name, and he promised to connect me to Joey.

After a few seconds, and the popping sound that always indicated the call had suddenly become encrypted, Joey’s voice was on the line.

“Hello?” I repeated.

“You still looking for the Frankies?” he asked, straight to the point.

“I’m looking for the guy who killed all those people dumped in your neighborhood.”

“Then you’re looking for the Frankies,” Joey said. “You want ’em, I’ll give ’em to you.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“I don’t like Frankies. Who says I need somethin’ else? You want to talk or what?”

I looked at Paulsen. “Sure.” If Branen was right and Neil had sent us to Joey in the first place, the man had to know something we didn’t. “You want to come into the station?”

“No,” he replied, too quickly. “You meet me or you got nothing. No recorders, no cops. No records. You want this, it happens my way. You come alone.”

I flexed my neck. “Let me see if I get this straight. You want me to meet you somewhere—you choose where, I take it?—alone, without any backup. How do I know you won’t just shoot me?” I did watch movies. Going off alone is how all the cops in the movies got killed. Had he remembered who I was?

“You’re taking backup,” Paulsen said very quietly. Behind her eyes was her doubt of my intentions, and the vague feeling if this was on the up-and-up, we’d be more likely to get good intel away from the station. She’d go with me—her reports could wait awhile.

On the phone, Joey spoke up after a pause: “I ain’t doing no recorders. No mics, no records, no nothing. I choose the place.”

“And I bring a woman cop with me,” I replied, in that same certain tone of voice he’d used. “I need the backup.”

Paulsen sat back down on her desk, decided not to comment on me jumping ahead.

“Okay,” Joey said, after a minute. “Decatur Square,
fifteen minutes. Better be just the two of you.” He hung up.

I looked up and told Paulsen where he wanted to meet.

“Decatur Square?” she asked, unbelieving. “As in, center of the capitol buildings of the county government? That Decatur Square?”

“Yep.”

She shook her head and got up from the desk, as if to ask what the world was coming to.

“Remind me why I’m here again,” I complained, squinting in the sunlight. It was a hundred degrees in the shade, and the ugly metal statue in the center of the square was reflecting the sun in my eyes.

We were in the middle of Decatur Square, with the public transit MARTA bus station maybe five hundred feet away in front of us, past a second ugly sculpture; this one, supposedly centuries old, what once had been a multicolored cow, now peeling and beaten up. The train station was behind us, the library across the street, with shops and restaurants to our left and right. In front of us and to the right was a park bench; beyond, the DeKalb courthouse, just a stone’s throw away.

The square was crawling with people this time of day: office workers out for early lunch, people traveling from place to place, students from the local college. And us, waiting, trying to spot Joey in all the chaos.

“You’re here to be patient,” Paulsen replied, “and do your job.”

I nodded and suppressed a sigh. The minds of the crowd surrounding us pressed at me like a crushing weight; me Atlas, them the heavy iron world. I tried not to hunch from the perceived pressure, and yawned
to pop my ears, which sometimes helped but didn’t now.

I would have sat down, but the benches were all full with lunch-goers. We’d been here ten minutes already, and I was wondering if Joey was going to show up at all. It was too hot to stand around, just too hot, period.

A boy about nine ran up from behind us, from the train station. Short for his age, he was dark skinned and well dressed. He was also out of breath and carrying a folded-up, gray piece of paper. “You the cops?” he asked, gasping for air.

“Um…yes,” Paulsen replied. “Why?”

“Here you go!” the boy said, and pushed the paper at me. I grasped it without thinking, and he was running away again before Paulsen could stop him.

I looked at her.

“Well, don’t just stand there, open it,” she said.

I opened. The gray paper was soft and too textured, as if overly recycled, and on it was a blurry pen-and-ink rough map of the immediate surroundings, with a diagram sending us several streets and about a mile to the south to what was labeled, simply, tunnel. “What is this, a spy movie?” I complained.

Paulsen grabbed it out of my hands. I let go just in time. We were ruining the paper for prints, but I didn’t see arguing with her about it. Besides, if it was really that many times recycled, it would be hard to get prints from it anyway. I stood there in the heat for nearly a minute while she figured it out. With all the mental noise around me, I almost missed the moment she did.

She frowned at the paper, finally folding it up, and led the way back to the car. She’d checked out an unmarked vehicle, a beat-up, tan, classic hydrogen-burning sedan that made me nervous every time I
rode in it—didn’t she remember how flammable hydrogen was? The little fusion engines were so much more stable, and they only needed one little circuit chip, less powerful than an oven timer, to keep them stable. It wasn’t all that much Tech. Really, it wasn’t. The power was the physics, the fields. But apparently Paulsen had trust issues. She’d gotten one with the anti-grav generator, though; an old, hydrogen-mechanical model, but one that worked. We wouldn’t be confined to ground level.

Paulsen piled us into the car before answering any of my questions. She’d grown up in this area, she said, and negotiated the aircar-filled streets with alacrity. The tunnel we wanted was ancient. Having been there for centuries and rebuilt twice, it was a simple walking connector from the old college to the sidewalks leading to the square. Students still walked it every day—and every year, one or more of them was attacked there at night, no matter what measures the local police took. Usually they found the perps, but not always.

Paulsen shrugged to herself, thinking they couldn’t be everywhere. Weird that Joey wanted to meet outside his territory, though.

She made a few turns, waiting on the lights, and finally pulled into the parking lot of a small bar on the corner, Twain’s. The sign advertised pool—as in, billiards—and the building looked like it had been standing two weeks past forever.

Paulsen put the car in park and turned off the engine. I wasn’t sure where we were exactly and was secretly glad she’d chosen to come along. I didn’t want to admit it, but all of this secrecy and spy-novel crap was making me nervous.

I felt her make a decision, and saw her turn to face
me. “I’m here to observe,” she told me, turning to look me in the eye. “This guy called you. That means—unless you really, really screw this up—you talk. I don’t.” She opened her door. I could feel her nerves, but also her determination to let me find my rhythm if I could. Joey had called me.

She locked the car, then led the way—“easier to walk it,” she said—down the sidewalk past crumbling ancient houses with signs for day cares and law firms on their porches. Despite the shade of the old oaks, the air was still oppressively hot; I was sweating freely, especially under my long sleeves, and caught myself wishing for a nice glass of ice water. Tried not to think about the confrontation we were walking into. Telling myself again that Cherabino would be fine without me; she just needed time to cool off. My bad feeling was guilt and nothing else.

The road dead-ended, and there Joey was, his ridiculous fan-denim jacket tossed on the ground, a sweating sycophant standing next to him. Behind them, there was indeed an entrance to a walking tunnel. In the dead end of the street, there were no trees—and the sun was at the wrong angle for the cracked-concrete wall in front of us to provide any shade. I heard the whistle of a train, far off, lonely.

Joey’s man provided a folding chair, and Joey sat. The man then walked around us—nothing on his mind but being sure we were alone. Paulsen still turned all the way around to watch him until he circled back to us. He pulled out a small handheld radio-frequency detector—slowly, showing us what it was—and systematically scanned us for electronics, which we didn’t have. The man, satisfied, returned to Joey.

Droplets of sweat had formed on Joey’s forehead, but they didn’t seem to bother him. If anything, he
seemed cleaner than the last time I’d met him, streaks of dirt largely gone. He looked at me appraisingly.

I moved slowly toward him, confidently, even though I felt anything but—I had to show no fear, deal with these guys on the level they understood. I was a comfortable conversation’s distance away before I stopped, Paulsen right behind me.

Joey’s backup smelled sour, a smell strong enough to permeate the air even as heat-scorched as it was—or perhaps that was the tunnel behind him, dank and slimy and graffiti-filled.

“Joey,” I greeted him politely. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Yeah,” he replied, his expression almost…wistful. “You look good. Not like before. Didn’t recognize you the first time, you look so different, you know?”

He did recognize me. “I know.” As crappy as the last few years had been, they made the years on the street look like paradise—except for the fact I couldn’t have my poison, there was always that—and the regular sleep, exercise, and meals had done a heck of a lot to turn at least my body around. My mind, well…that was a whole different story. I was off balance now, wondering what he’d do, what he’d say where Paulsen could hear him.

Joey crossed his legs, emphasizing his seated position, his comfort with the situation. “Nice gig you landed. Yell at people, get paid regular. I bet you even pay taxes.”

I shifted, wanting to get out of the sun. I guess I could have chased that one down and gotten him on tax evasion, but it seemed a little too Al Capone for Joey. The IRS could do its own work.

“Seriously. What do you want to talk about, Joey?”

He looked directly at me. “The bosses up the line
says my boss is dead by now, says I have to step up, be the new boss. Says I have to work with the Frankies now, says whole world works with the Frankies, I can’t be any different. And the truth is, I don’t like me no Frankies, not any of ’em. Spoiled rich white boys from the north side, think they can come in our territory tell us what to do.”

I did not point out that Joey was also white. It didn’t seem like a polite thing to say. But Joey was up to his ears with Them, right? The Darkness, L’Obscurité. “What the big bosses say goes, right, Joey?” Paulsen was getting antsy, her back hurting from all the standing.

“We’re out of your territory now,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “Not too far. People here still know me. Still know what happened to Marge.” He looked directly at me then, a tap from a boxer’s glove, a light tap, just to get my attention. Yes, he knew who I was. “The big bosses, they got the suppliers. They got the power t’ say whatever they want, whatever they want to happen. But I don’t like Frankies.”

“You’ve said that already. Several times.”

He cracked his knuckles, slowly, significantly, showing off his meaty hands and the scars from one too many fistfights. I was glad Paulsen was here. Somebody to jump in if things got too bad. Somebody who wasn’t Cherabino.