Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

A hunch, that was all. A hunch, and the wonder why such drugs might have wound up on the street in Hartford, and not someplace sensibly trackless like New York or Atlanta. And why a batch that, according to the lab guys, should have been discarded after preliminary testing had been tabletized, labeled, stamped, and packaged in field-regulation twists. It never should have made it into the piller. It was an inconsistency, a flaw in the pattern, and Mitch hated those.

The fact that it wasn’t exactly Hammers didn’t bother Mitch so much. He could make that add up. He was sure the CA tested new combat enhancement drugs all the time.

Mitch slouched lower in his bucket seat as the woman hesitated, one hand on the steel doorknob and the other fumbling in her jacket pocket for an ID badge. She stopped and turned, head coming up as she scanned the cracked parking lot and the cinder-block walls of the nearby buildings. Thistles and sumac forced their way through the far edge of the pavement, a slender sight screen, and she studied that with a professional eye. Mitch held his breath, looking at her boots, afraid the pressure of his gaze would be enough to bring her eyes around to him.

For a long moment she stood poised, and he noticed that she had released the door handle and slid the hand not holding her badge inside the collar of her jacket. Damn. If that’s not Maker’s better-looking twin sister, I’m the Virgin Mary. What the hell is she doing at Consolidated? And what does Maker know that she’s not telling me?

Think like a part of the scenery, Mitchy. Despite the intervening distance, he only let his breath hiss out in a long silent sigh when the dark-haired woman relaxed, her hand slipping back into view. Shaking her head, she keyed a code on the door pad and badged herself in.

I knew I should have done this already. I’m running Maker’s damn fingerprints as soon as I get back to the station. I’d better pick up some doughnuts to bribe the guys down in I.D. They would know as well as anybody that he wasn’t supposed to be working this case. But they’d take pity on him nonetheless, because family was family, and a cop was a cop.

Ninety seconds later, timed on his heads-up-display, Mitch slid as casually as he could manage out of his Dodge and walked around the back end of the delivery van, tugging his coat into place like a man who has stopped to take a piss against a tire. And I’m probably rumpled enough to pass for a late-homecoming drunk, too, he mused, meandering an unsteady path to the corner.

The too-familiar business-suited stranger’s vehicle was easy to spot.

Ontario plates.

Well, I’ll be goddamned.

1420 hours, Friday 8 September, 2062

Hartford, Connecticut

Albany Avenue

Abandoned North End

I slide the giant old BMW-Amazonas motorcycle gently around the square frame of the cleanest house on the street and into its trash-heaped backyard like a fish nosing into a reef. There are armed guards and a high wall around it, but Razorface lives in the neighborhood he grew up in. Sitting on the back porch, cleaning a gun, he waves to me as I pull in.

I look around for Emery, who is usually in attendance, but Face’s lean and wary lieutenant is nowhere to be seen. Two adolescent boys play basketball in the cracked driveway, so I park my bike in the uncut grass by the weathered frame of a two-car garage and walk back up to the house.

“Nice day,” I say to the boys. The taller one turns to stare, fascinated; I let my eyes slide off him and over to Face, who rises, smirking, and gives me a hand up the three wooden risers. Not that I need it, of course.

He grins at me, steel teeth like the grille on a ’57 Chevy. It never ceases to amaze that somebody would do something like that to himself on purpose — but then, I’ve seen some piercings and other body modifications that make Face’s teeth look like a tattooed biceps. And they do make him… memorable.

“Nice as a day ever gets around here.” He gestures up to the glazed-blue sky overhead. There’s something special about September skies in this part of the world. In Toronto, I remember a lot of rain in autumn.

The porch railing creaks as I lean against it. Face settles down in his chair and returns his attention to the pistol disassembled on newspaper spread on his glass-topped table. Watching as he wets a square of gauze and threads it through the needle eye of a cleaning rod, I smell gun oil and the sharper scent of cleaner. He turns his head and shouts over his shoulder into the kitchen door. “Baby, get Maker a beer?”

“Razorface,” I begin, and let my voice trail off as he looks up.

“Going to tell me you have to drive?”

His woman comes out of the house with two cans of beer. If you can dignify the stuff Face drinks with the name. She juggles a plate of sandwiches in her other hand, setting it down on the porch rail before she hands a can to each of us. “Thanks, Alyse,” I say as I take it.

“Don’t mention it. You here to try and steal my man again?” Her black eyes sparkle. She cocks her head to one side and rolls her shoulder back, hands challenging on her ample hips.

I crack open the beer. “No one could ever compete with you, Leesie. Your cooking keeps him home.”

Head bowed over his pistol, Face grunts toward the newspapers. Smiling, Alyse picks up the plate of sandwiches and holds it out to me. I take one — bloody roast beef and processed cheese on white bread Maman would have shuddered over. Holding the beer in my other hand, I take a bite.

Alyse turns, and Razorface absently takes the plate from her. She bends her neck and half smiles, half frowns. Then she looks back up at me, alert and quick as a bird. “Maker, you do something about that cop friend of yours sniffing where he don’t belong, you hear me? I’d hate to see that boy get hurt.”

Mouth full of roast beef sandwich, all I can do is nod. I swallow half-chewed food and mumble. “I’ll do what I can, ma’am. You can’t lead a horse to water, eh? Has Mitch been here?”

Face looks up as she nods her head once. He’s got an odd expression on his face as he puts the tools down, wipes oil from his hands onto a rag, and picks up a sandwich. Sching. There’s nothing quite like watching Razorface eat roast beef on white bread with too much mayonnaise. Like a deli slicer.

“Woman, why do I put up with your ass?” He says it around a mouthful of food.

She straightens her neck and looks down at him, broad-shouldered Dominican goddess. “Because nobody else can handle you the way I can, baby.” She turns and saunters back into the house, and Face watches her until she’s out of sight behind the screen door. When she’s gone, he shakes his head in admiration and turns back to me.

He takes a long swallow of beer before he speaks. “That pig… yeah, I seen him. Hell out of his jurisdiction. Don’t know what Hartford P.D. wants up here on the Ave. We take care of our own. Besides, your boy isn’t homicide, and he’s barely been a detective a year. What’s he doing on a case like this?”

“I don’t know. How do you know what he’s assigned to?”

The big man laughs, shaking his head from side to side. “I’m s’poda know these things.”

It takes me a second to get the half-chewed meat and bread down. Mitch, what are you after? I chase the food with a swallow of beer. “Face, tell me the truth. You have anything to do with this business? Mashaya Duclose?”

“You trust me to tell you the truth?” He turns the beer can slowly in his hand before he lifts and drains it. Never taking his eyes from mine, he crushes it casually and pitches it at a paper bag beside the kitchen door. He misses.