Slab City Blues: A Song for Madame Choi Read online

  "Inspector!" he greeted me as I picked my way through the inert bodies littering the main concourse.

  "Joe." I waved a hand at the carnage. "What was it this time? Politics or religion?"

  "Worse, economics." Joe heaved the two unconscious rioters over the temporary shock fence and onto the growing pile of compadres beyond. "The Level Council raised the housing maintenance rate by half a percent. Doesn't take much to kick things off round here."

  "How about a little holiday? Got a case and I need some back-up. Chief Inspector Mordecai cleared it with Commander Kurtz."

  Joe smiled, showing a wall of brilliant white enamel and for a moment it was like he'd stepped out of one of his ads from the old days, when he was a champion and the whole world knew his name. "You know you don't have to ask."

  "It's only polite. Get changed, civilian gear, and put this on." I tossed him a Sig newly drawn from the armoury.

  Joe regarded the Sig with a mixture of distaste and contempt. "Don't go much for guns."

  "Regulations, Constable. See you at the Pipe in ten minutes."

  We started in the most obvious places. Contrary to popular fiction Police work is largely a matter of pursuing the obvious. The Slab was home to a few specialised human trafficking gangs, some with a sideline in supplying children. It's a ruthless and grimly efficient aspect of organised criminality and none too easy for someone like me to trawl for intel on a missing girl. Luckily, I had a few well placed informants who prized continued good health and liberty above prudent silence. A few hours intimidating our way through the grubbier corners of the lower Yangs and it was clear that whoever had the girl they weren't interested in channelling her to a niche market brothel or porn studio.

  I took a call from Ricci having just finished turning up squat on Yang Ten. I'd hoped to extract some intel from the compadres of the two gang-members for hire who'd died alongside Mr Spaghetti and Meatballs. Sadly their gang-mates had disappeared themselves as soon as the news broke, leaving only blank faced hangers on and relieved shop owners who didn't have to cough up protection money any more.

  "Just finished the work-up on the crime scene," Ricci said. "It's pretty clean but I did find an interesting trace sample." My smart showed some kind of molecular diagram, donut shapes swirling about each other in a lazy dance.

  "Been a while since chemistry class, Ricci," I said. "Looks like blood."

  "It is, but with a difference. Look." Ricci zoomed in on a red blood cell revealing small, yellowish protrusions on the surface.

  "What is that?" I asked. "Some kind of blood disease?"

  "Nah, it's diacorteline, in inert form so it won't show up on a blood test. Only picked it up cos I ran a visual scan. It's present in every cell in the sample."

  "Diacorteline?" Joe asked.

  "Blues to you and me," I said.

  Bliss and Blues are the principal drugs of choice on the Slab. Bliss will send you to heaven on a wave of ecstasy. Blues puts you on a slow burn of pain free oblivion. The thinking junkie's drug.

  "Is it extractable?" I asked Ricci.

  "Sure. Run it through a standard blood cleanser and add acetic acid. Voila, usable, saleable Blues."

  I sounded off. A Blues and blood compound. Something new alright. There was someone who knew the Blues trafficking world a lot better than I did but I owed her enough favours already.

  "Shit," I sighed, making for the Pipe.

  "Where to?" Joe enquired.

  "Joe, my friend, prepare yourself for a trip to the Heavenly Garden."

  The place was early-afternoon empty save for a few endurance athlete drunks. Marco was keeping bar with heavy browed concentration.

  "Inspector," he said in his too precise and overly loud voice. There was a multiple scraping of chairs as the remaining patrons decided to take their custom elsewhere.

  "Where is she?" I enquired as Marco poured the Glenlivet, two glasses.

  "Upstairs." He stoppered the bottle and stepped back, brow creasing further as he considered his options. "I'll tell her you're here." With that he stomped off towards the stairs.

  I took a sip of scotch and gestured for Joe to follow suit. "It's the only free drink you'll get working with me."

  Joe seemed distracted, head angled, eyes closed. "Prefer Bourbon. You hear that?"

  "What?" I couldn't hear anything but empty bar and muffled street noise.

  "Someone's singing." A faint smile played on his lips. "Beautiful."

  A door opened upstairs and there was a brief snatch of vocal melody, pure and resonant. Joe was right, it was beautiful. The rumble of Marco's voice cut through the song shortly followed by Choi's answering bark. She sounded pissed. A brief pause then the heavy plod of Marco descending the stairs. "Be right down," he reported before taking his usual place by the door.

  "Bourbon," I informed Joe, "is a bastardisation of my heritage."

  "Scotch is the Devil's privy water. My grandma always said so. She should know, drank herself to death on Kentucky Red before she hit fifty."

  Choi appeared after a few minutes, all dragon lady elegance as usual. "Inspector," she gave a short bow.

  "Choi, this is Joe. A colleague."

  "Yes." Choi's smile was flinty. "He stole my rat." Despliced or not, she never forgot a face.

  "Liberated you mean," Joe rumbled.

  "Play nice kids," I cautioned. "We're all friends here."

  Choi inclined her head, moving behind the bar and pouring me another measure of scotch.

  "You auditioning?" I asked.

  Her porcelain smooth brow creased a little. "Your pardon?"

  "The singing. Joe was quite taken with it."

  "Ah." She blinked. "Merely an old recording. I like to listen to music when organising my accounts."

  "Right." I paused a little before reaching for the recharged glass. All the years I'd been coming here there had been no music. No piped in crap-pop, no juke box, no performers. Just the soft aria of alcoholic despair punctuated with the occasional drum roll of violence.

  "How may I serve, Inspector?" Choi enquired in her perfectly faked Mandarin tinged tones.

  "Anything new in the Blues world? Big splashes and ripples. You know the kind of thing."

  "As far as I can tell the balance is in order. Gangs trade, co-operate, kill each other and profit accordingly. No one group ascends above the others for long. No leader endures beyond a few months. The balance is in order."

  "Nothing recent? Rumours of a big buy maybe? Something new coming up the well?"

  "There is talk of a substantial purchase tonight. I was approached with a view to contributing a portion of the purchase price. I declined as my current stocks are sufficient."

  Joe shifted a little, uncomfortable with her frankness. The other informants we'd visited today had all displayed the requisite amount of reluctance or obfuscation. But Choi wasn't really an informant, she was a career criminal who spoke to me without fear of arrest because I owed her a favour and we were useful to each other.

  "Where?" I asked.

  She reached for a note pad and scribbled down the details. Choi had a healthy aversion to electronic media. "Security will be tight," she cautioned, handing over the note. "The groups involved are very professional."

  "Then they'll see the value in coming quietly." I threw back the rest of the scotch. "What d'you call that song anyway? The old recording?"

  "Redemption Song," Joe said. "Bob Marley. Favourite of my grandma's."

  "Kentucky Red grandma?"

  "Nah. Grandma Deane, my dad's mom. Used to be a musician. Never seen so many tattoos on an old lady."

  I pushed back from the bar. "Ersatz daylight's burning and desperadoes await justice. Later Matsuke."

  She barely flinched when I used her real name. Normally I could see her biting down the anger. "A true friend is always welcome Inspector," she said with a smile.

  I was out on the street before it hit me. Her smile had actually had some warmth in it.

  The
buy was set for 7 pm at an abandoned manufacturing plant on Yang Thirty, a mostly derelict level sparsely occupied by vagrants and rats. Prime drug deal territory. Sherry was able to scramble a SWAT team at short notice and we set up on the level ceiling, micro-cling gloves and knee-pads sticking us to the crete, kitted out in thermal-masking stealth suits and night vision gear. All very ninja. Sherry had opted to assume the role of Team Leader. I wondered if she was missing her marine days or keen to keep tabs on me.

  "Got ten suspects on the plot," Sergeant Manahi reported over the scrambled net. "All armed. Eight on perimeter security, two inside."

  Buyers or sellers? I wondered surveying the grey-green silhouettes below. They were all disappointingly adult-sized, no little girls, huddled and awaiting rescue.

  "Movement," one of the SWATs reported. "Five more approaching from Quad Delta." A pause. "No children in sight."

  "Could still be in there," I said. "Concealed maybe."

  "Hold until they get inside," Sherry ordered. "We don't bother waiting for the hand-over on this one. Remember, tazers only, exercise extreme caution. Possible infant in danger."

  I hung from the ceiling in a lateral pose, repelling cables hooked up and ready to go, watching the newcomers approach the block, a brief exchange with the guard on the door then two went inside, the three others lingering on the street, good spacing, loose formation, eyes constantly scanning. Choi was right; professionals.

  "OK," Sherry said. "As per the briefing I'm primary infiltrator. Sergeant Manahi is secondary. Alex, Joe, clean and sweep for the girl. Let's go."

  I punched the button on my chest and went into rapid descent. The height of every Slab level is a standard two hundred metres. Experience has taught SWAT over the years that to have a reasonable chance of taking down a group of armed suspects you had to cover the distance in under three seconds. In practice this means a dizzying 100mph fall to the floor followed by a jarring, just soft enough not to dislocate your lumbar vertebra, deceleration.

  I juddered to a halt five feet above a perimeter guard with an Ingram 5mm under his jacket. He was just starting to glance up when the tazer dart smacked into his cheekbone. I hit the quick release and landed astride his twitching body, looking round to see Joe choking another guard unconscious, meaty arms wrapped tight around his neck and mouth until he spasmed and went limp. He dropped the guard, caught my reproving eye and gave a silent shrug. Don't go much for guns.

  We sprinted for the main entrance amidst the multiple phut phut of the SWAT team's tazers as they took down the remaining guards. Inside it was already over, two unconscious forms on the floor and another two disarmed and cuffed, wincing from Sherry's none too gentle interrogation.

  "Where is she?" she demanded, holding up the holo of the little girl and handing out painful cuffs when she didn't get an answer.

  Joe and I swept the building finding only dust, some industrial plant that wasn't even good for scrap and the stale smell of disuse. Back on the ground floor a SWAT was running a scanner over a caseful of vials whilst his team-mate checked a holdall full of green.

  "Half a mil," she said and whistled. "Clean too. Numbers all coming up as legitimately sourced."

  "This is good stuff, Inspector," the SWAT with the scanner said. "Eighty percent purity. Your intel was a little off though." He held up one of the vials containing an opaque, greenish liquid. "This is Bliss, not Blues."

  I went to the prisoners, chose the tallest and dragged him to his feet, drew the Sig and jammed it in his mouth, held up Mr Mac's smart with my other hand, close to his eyes, wide and terror filled.

  "My name is Inspector Alex McLeod," I said. "Heard of me?"

  Faint twitch of the mouth around my gun, eyes widening a little more, a nod. "Good, then you'll know it's very important you give me a truthful response." I held the smart even closer. "Have you ever seen this girl?"

  Instant head shake, eyes imploring in a sweat slick face. No sign of a lie and I knew how to spot a lie from a man with a gun in his mouth.

  "Shit!"

  I removed the Sig, wiped spit away on his jacket and moved to the door beckoning Joe to follow. "Fire me if you have a problem," I said to Sherry's glare of disapproval.

  "She lied! She fucking lied!" I fumed on the Pipe, prowling the aisle, fists clenched. The carriage was empty apart from Joe, our fellow passengers wisely having decided to vacate a few stops back. "How many hours have we wasted on this crap?"

  "Dunno," Joe said. "Four maybe."

  "It's a rhetorical question." I slumped into the seat opposite. "She's never lied before. Not to me."

  "She was kinda right, just got the wrong commodity…"

  "You don't get it, she doesn't get things wrong. She deliberately wasted our time."

  "She did seem kinda pissed. Taking a little revenge maybe? For her rat I mean."

  I thought it over. Choi certainly had a vindictive streak, there had been enough bodies on the ground over the years to attest to that. But not to me, we had too much history of shared dependency, however much we both resented it.

  "Y'know, Inspector…" Joe began.

  "Alex, I keep telling you."

  "Yeah. You look like a man in need of a drink."

  Joe's apartment was on the fourth floor of a mid-price block on Yang Twelve. Mid-price in this neighbourhood meaning the elevator worked one day in five and the Super kept the stairways clear of Blissfuls and Blues Heads. The apartment itself, kept so neat and well ordered I wondered if there wasn't some military experience in Joe's back catalogue, boasted an en suite bathroom, fold-out bed and kitchenette slash living room. Plus a very large rat sitting on the couch.

  "You remember Sniffy," Joe said, closing the door.

  "Yeah." I found myself edging closer to the wall as Sniffy licked his snout and favoured me with his signature baleful stare. "Kinda thought he was enjoying life in the outer shell."

  "Guess he didn't take to it." Joe hung up his coat and moved to open a cupboard over the sink. "Been around people too long. He turned up a couple of weeks ago. Must've tracked my scent through the ventilation ducts."

  "Uh huh," I said, calculating the chances of getting to my gun if Sniffy decided he didn't like visitors. I'd seen him move with a purpose before and didn't think much of my odds.

  "Here we are." Joe extracted a bottle and two shot glasses from the cupboard and went to the couch. "Off you!" he told Sniffy. "Bed time."

  Sniffy gave me a final stare then hopped off the couch and into a blanket lined box under the window.

  "Kentucky Red," Joe said, pouring a measure. The bottle was square shaped with a picture of a running horse on the label. "Twelve years old. Got a contact at the docks puts a bottle aside for me. All legal of course, excise paid at import."

  "I'm sure." I sat on the couch, unhooking the uncomfortable weight of the Sig and dumping it on the coffee table.

  "Cheers." Joe handed me a glass.

  "Slange."

  Kentucky Red had a complex texture and a pleasing burn on the tongue leaving a rich wood-smoky aftertaste. "Piss-water," I told Joe.

  He grinned. "Thought you'd like it."

  I relaxed into the couch, thinking about lost little girls, pretend Dragon ladies and the enticing prospect of reacquiring my old face.

  "How long since you slept?" Joe enquired.

  "A day or so. I'm fine." In fact I wasn't sure when I'd last slept, my apartment had gradually morphed into a junk-food carton filled mess that felt more like a prison cell with every increasingly infrequent visit. There was no mystery as to why of course, since Consuela died I'd seen little point in domestic trivia. For that matter, I'd seen little point in much of anything. I worked, I hunted through this orbiting slum for murderers, rapists and sundry human drek, but I was going through the motions. It was only when I took a look in the mirror and finally decided I'd had enough of seeing a stranger there, that I started to feel like maybe I had a life to live after all. Then Mr Mac called.

  "What is it with yo
u and Choi, anyway?" Joe asked, pouring more bourbon. "Didn't used to bump uglies did you?"

  I barked a laugh. "Shit no!"

  "OK. Just thought I sensed a little tension is all."

  "Mutual dislike, my friend. What's between us is that she saved my life. I like to pay my debts. Plus she and the missus were compadres during the war." I paused, in truth Choi and Consuela hadn't really been that close, more politely professional than anything else. They co-ran the Yang-Side intelligence cell, Con was analysis whilst Choi ran the informants and took care of any security leaks with typical efficiency. She'd detected a last minute compromise as I'd led my cell against a Fed-Sec safe house where some of our people were supposedly being tortured. It was a trap, forty Fed-Sec Commandos laying in wait on the surrounding rooftops. Choi had killed her way through the outer perimeter and wide-cast a warning over the open net. The resultant shit-storm was pretty ugly but most of us made it out. Like I said, I like to pay my debts.

  The sound of Joe's humming broke my reverie. Redemption Song. Bob Marley. Since when did she like music? And she barely flinched when I used her real name.

  Probably the one thing that makes me good at the whole Demon biz is the innate inability to let things go. Consuela used to say it was like a form of autism. Consuela used to say…

  I put down my shot-glass and picked up the Sig. "You got any sobre-up?"

  "Sure, the drawer next to the sink."

  I got up and retrieved the pills, dry-swallowed two and tossed him the pack. "Back on the clock, Joe. Take yourself off to Madame Choi's. Exterior obs. Comings and goings. Try to be unobtrusive."

  "Erm, OK. Where you gonna be?"

  "Need to consult with my priest."

  Sobre-up does what it says on the pack but it also brings on an instantaneous hangover leaving the user bleary-eyed and grimacing from a pounding headache.