The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel (2 page)

Chapter Three

“This place got liquor approval?” McCallum said. “Seriously. The IG give it out like candy or did you all dispense with the charade altogether?”

“Hey.” Effchek put up her palm. “Don’t make it like that. One busted camera is negligence. Two busted cameras and a murder?”

McCallum pressed his lips together. Rosalie was right. She was always right, though he’d figured that out too late.

“Who’s next door?” McCallum shouted to the Ambyr Systems Security operative in uniform.

“A Kong place, sir.”

McCallum bowed his head. The only other cameras that might have collected footage of this girl’s murder belonged to a BCCA/Hong Kong Holdings business. As the girl didn’t work for them or fall on their doorstep, the company had no stake in the matter. They’d never release any feed. Another dead end. Each one raised the cost of the investigation.

“You want to come in?” Effchek poked a thumb at the entrance to the pub. “It’s a stupid kind of cold out.”

He thought about it. Going inside, with her, grabbing a beer, warming up. They could hunch over the oak, shoulder to shoulder. Talk about asshole insubordinates and asshole bosses and everything in between. She’d have to lean in to listen to him, put her lips against his ear to talk back. And all the while the clock would be ticking. His timesheet filling itself in.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve gotta check in at the egg. Make some calls.”

“You know where to find me.”

* * *

Sylvia stood outside the restaurant, by the valet’s stand. She told the kid to hold off getting her car for a moment. She needed to dash off a few messages.

To her friend Shirley, at Moshi Pictures, she sent, “Gavin Stoll. Who is he connected to? How can he raise a million dollars minimum?”

To her friend Han the film editor, “Gavin Stoll. My file says you worked with him. Need to play fuck or duck. Can’t say my trust-o-meter ticked too high.”

To her best friend ever Marshall St. Claire she recorded and sent, “Face-to-face soon. Private as possible.”

“Your car, Miss?” the boy asked.

Such a pretty face
, she thought. They all have such pretty faces out here. He looked so official in his short jacket with the stripes on the sleeves. Which helped, as she would’ve put his age at about 15.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“17, miss.” His eyes darted right and back. His left nostril flared, but not his right one.

“Really. If I tell you I’m a big movie director and I need your file because I’ve got a part that’s perfect for you, your bio’s going to say 17?”

His upper lip rippled. “Eventually.”

Sylvia grinned. “I’ll tip you for the answer alone. How old are you really?”

“15.”

“You get your homework done?”

“I work on it between ups.”

“Ups?”

“People with cars to park or get.”

Another boy walked up behind them carrying a car chip. He dropped into on the valet stand. It landed next to 20 or so others. He couldn’t have been a year or two older than the other boy, or any cuter. Such a full chin.

“Are you transitioning into feature work, if you don’t mind my asking.”

The valet knew exactly who she was, Sylvia realized. He must have run her face and found her bio.

“You’re not interested in documentaries,” she said.

“Oh no, it’s just—”

“I know, but you’d be surprised how many actors I actually hire. Is that why you work here? To troll for movie people.”

He nodded. “Series work, too. We’re not picky.”

“That’s good. Keep your doors open. You can get my car now.”

Sylvia tapped her cuff.

* * *

Emory knew something was wrong before the night began. Part of him said to avoid the meeting. He didn’t think he’d see a girl get stabbed to death, but he sensed wrongness. A thing. He didn’t have any word for it. He certainly never claimed to feel vibes or premonitions. Emory was about systems. Processes working in order, as planned, to their utmost efficiency.

Paper amounted to none of those things. When he saw the note, pinned under the windshield wiper of his car, trapped like damsel from an old movie, his nerves lit up. Just a little. A tingle. Because it was so odd. In his 32 years, he’d never seen someone use paper that way.

Of course, he’d never known anyone like John Raston before. They met just before John retired. John knew everything. His actual job for the 50 most productive years of his life — testing artificial compounds for absorbency qualities — applied little pressure to oceans of knowledge John sucked up. How to wire lights, unclog a drain, finance a house, get rid of mice — quickly or humanely, your choice — John had answers for everything.

Until he ran out. His husband of 35 years died five months after he retired. He had no children. He had, he told Emory, run out of answers.

Emory had one. He told John his idea. His big, dangerous, important idea that would probably only work because someone like John existed for Emory to meet. John Raston felt as if he’d been born again.

In the year since Emory started The Milkman, John had never sent him a note on paper. The man loved secrecy, he preached caution every step they’d taken, but he sent electronic messages just like everyone else. Cryptic, yes, but text-based, cuff-to-cuff messages.

The short, hand-written note meant, by form alone, that there was trouble. The fact that John failed to respond to Emory’s last message made the night more sinister. Emory understood the risks his hobby entailed. The company could screw him to the wall for The Milkman. This murkiness, though, none of this fit.

Lillian slept. Elizabeth slept. Emory sent another message: John, how are you? How’s the Jeep coming?

Midnight messages were common for them. The company would not notice anything odd. John and Emory did not have a set code; codes could be broken. Instead, they relied on context. Any old noun could stand in for the ones that mattered. In this case, ‘Jeep’ represented testing milk John purchased around the area. He monitored dairies from the region surrounding the city of Niagara Falls, measuring contaminants, bacteria and radiation counts. Emory posted these on an anonymous board, along with results sent in by other volunteers. The fact that John really was in the middle of restoring an old military-grade general purpose vehicle made the obfuscation work. John knew Emory didn’t much care about the truck. He cared about the milk, so it all made sense—

—more sense than a handwritten note saying to meet him in the parking lot of an India Group bar, anyway.

Emory’s cuff made warm pulses. He touched his wall screen so he could read it in large format. He had a message from John, which gave him a wave of relief. This would all make sense very soon. John would give him answers like he always did, since he was a fresh out of school, dazed by the world, amazed at what they didn’t teach you in college. He tapped the note.

The screen filled with video of Niagara Falls. Not the city, the actual water fall, huge and horseshoe shaped. A mammoth fork stabbed down from the sky, poking it like the Falls were a piece of cake. He couldn’t concentrate. Emory couldn’t get past the fucking, God damned stupid ass video. What the Hell was that? The paper note, that was queer. This?

Emory slapped the screen off. He stood. He raked both hands through his hair. He had to work in the morning and would never get to sleep again. Ever, he figured.

A fork in Niagara Falls.

Chapter Four

McCallum panned the area, standing in place, turning a full 360-degrees. He didn’t see any more video installations. Cameras monitoring the streets were supposed to make this job easy. They watched everything, all the time. When they worked. Tonight, it was back to the old days. The time before McCallum was born, much less an op. He’d have to piece together whatever happened to that poor girl from a bunch of nothing. Fibers and fingerprints and fine ideas. All of which took time and money.

McCallum opened the back door of the egg and climbed in.

“Evening, Donny,” McCallum said to the field tech. “I’m open to good news.”

“I’d like to give you some.” Donny sat folded onto a stool. The kind of sitting only the very young and very thin can achieve. He pulled down his monocle.

“But?” McCallum asked.

“Give me a budget.”

McCallum knew what he meant. All the cursory evidence was as clear. Stab wounds were not subtle. Patrons going into the pub gave them a time of death within minutes. For Donny to give him anything else, McCallum needed to give Donny a line of credit.

He tapped his bracelet. “Peggy?”

“Go,” the woman’s voice sounded in his ear.

“Who’s in Econ tonight?”

“Clement.”

Wayne Clement. McCallum had worked with him before and found him fair and straightforward— the two highest compliments he could ever bestow on an economist.

“Send me over,” he said.

“Later.” Dead sound followed the dispatcher’s voice. McCallum knew his audio monitor was active, but not by any discernable noise.

“Hi ya.” McCallum recognized Clement’s voice.

“Good evening, Wayne.”

“You pull the Vasquez case?”

“Yes indeed,” McCallum answered. “Very young, very attractive. Long career ahead of her.”

“Selling me already. There must be trouble.”

“You run any numbers?”

“I’m modeling a lifetime earning potential now. She was in marketing, which is always tricky. Sometimes those people are cash cows. Other times, they suck the company’s teat.”

“She’s got ‘talent’ stamped on her forehead.”

“Her immediate supervisor thought so. Human Assets wasn’t so sure.”

McCallum straightened up. “They note anything?”

“Sorry,” Clement said. “Nothing so overt. An HA manager named Whelen requested she make a lateral move three times.”

“Maybe some old dog got his tail up.”

“Three different positions, it looks like, so no. No horny coot looking for a special assistant. Don’t know what it’s about.”

McCallum felt another clue fall away, like petals plucked from a daisy. He will solve this? He’ll solve it not. He will solve this? He’ll solve it not.

“Bottom-line me, Wayne.”

“I’m lookin … at … two-thirty.”

“What?”

“230,000 dollars.”

“She’s brand spanking—”

“That’s all we can really hope to recover.”

McCallum’s stomach turned a notch. He could get a second opinion. They were rarely any better. Just requesting another analysis would come off Geri Vasquez’s case budget. The meter started running when the call came in. The uniform op, himself, the egg and the tech. Wayne’s thirty minutes of attention, deciding how much a young girl’s life was worth, probably cost her a couple hundred bucks.

He finished up with the Economics Department, checked in with his duty captain and gave Donny his budget. They could afford some basic forensic tests. Accent on basic. McCallum hoped the killer proved sloppy.

The chill of the night multiplied. You could step outside and not feel it. Stand outside and it drew the energy out of you a little, then a little more, then as much as the icy claws could grab. He had to make his call now. He couldn’t stand out here any longer. And he didn’t feel right making it from any other place than the scene of the insubordination.

Like dropping a bomb
, McCallum thought. Two middle-aged, middle-management parents, sleeping through the middle of the night, in their middleclass home. He had to wake them, speak the worst news they’d ever hear into their groggy heads and know all the time that it was all for nothing. No amount of jumping, dressing, crying and racing through the city would bring their little girl back to life. If there was one thing McCallum hated about security work (and there wasn’t, there were 24 things he hated about security work) but if he had to simmer and scrape and boil the others off, it would leave ‘reaction’. The killers and thieves always got to go first. He got to go second and the next move was always crap like this. Calling people at midnight.

He wanted to drive over to the Vasquez house. He didn’t know if delivering the news in person ever helped the loved ones. Probably not. Nothing could. It frequently helped him, though. The more you knew about the victim, the better your chance of finding their murderer. This home held no suspicious husband, sketchy boyfriend or roommate with a 30-gig file of prior policy breaks. What he could learn from mom and dad would be minimal. Not worth the cost. In the end, he didn’t think he could afford anything more than a call.

By midnight, McCallum knew he couldn’t procrastinate any longer. He rolled the cuff around his wrist, feeling the cold ceramic slide across the bone. He once chased a suspected rapist down a manhole, into the City of Buffalo sewers. Shit and freezing water, salty from the chemicals they put on the roads to keep ice from taking hold. No light. No sound after his splash settled down. The suspect had a 12-inch hunting knife, McCallum a flashlight. Right now, he wished he could do that again. That was better than this.

He pressed a thumb to his bracelet. “Call Richard Vasquez,” he said. Three rings. McCallum didn’t want him to answer, but they always did. Late night calls, the cuff would spell ‘ASS’ on the screen. They always opened a line, already scared.

“Hello,” the man’s voice sounded like putty.

“Mr. Vasquez, I have some news about your daughter…”

* * *

Sylvia Cho threw up in the toilet. A routine now; a cliché. She didn’t care for it. There was nothing beautiful, motherly or fulfilling about hurling your guts out and gagging. Fulfilling. Ha. Fullemptying. That’s what pregnancy had been so far. Fullemptying. And she knew the worst was yet to come. The swelling, the aches, the weird appetites, the lack of appetites, the stomach burn, oh, and the dying. You couldn’t forget that. One in 800 women died in child-birth. OK, that wasn’t true of the Pacific Coast Region, per se. Still. This affliction could kill her.

Along with her career. Turning down a job wasn’t an issue. People did it all the time. Turning down this job — a fully funded, social piece — would be painful. Turning it down because she was in a family way, that would get her name deleted from a lot of lists. There were always new kids coming up, always old geezers looking for one last chance, the middle, by nature, meant pressure. Going back to corporate videos? Passable. She’d still function. Would those offers dry up? How far would a baby knock her from the table? All the way back to “How to find the fire extinguisher on your floor” videos? Could she ever? Again?

Sylvia sat on the floor, back against the potty. The cold tile stung her bare legs and she liked it. The sensation took away from the tiny carousel spinning in her entrails.

The Aptitude Placement Office told her to become a landscape architect. At 18, she had no clue that was anything, let alone a career. She liked flowers, she scored well in math and the tests had, she realized years later, identified her creative strengths. “Movie Director” wasn’t on the list. There were only a handful of those in the world. Why get a kid’s hopes up? Point them towards an attainable skill the company could use. Let this chick learn how to place viable foliage. That’s a job.

Sylvia glanced up at the flowerbox in her bathroom window. Tuberous begonias. Fat, watery, wide and red, she still liked flowers. She had learned how to take care of them, along with image acquisition, editing, lighting and sound design, scripting and all the other skills she had to suck up on her own time.

“And your
actual
training?” the manager of programming said. She’d never forget it. She could — and did far too frequently — play the scene back in her head with brutal clarity. She’d given him her first short film for his festival. He watched all 10 minutes, without twitching, shuffling or confirming in any way that he was still alive. Then he asked what else she did. Actually. As if she were bereft of moving picture skill.

He had been the first and far from the last, to insult her ability. She kept a list of people who didn’t return messages, ignored her, or the worst of all offenders: the ones who look over, past or around you while you’re trying to talk. She didn’t want to keep a list. She just couldn’t forget all the men and women who told her she couldn’t make films. Those who gave Sylvia an honest, ‘we’re not interested’ to her face didn’t make her list. She didn’t know why she wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but she accepted the fact. As long as you acknowledged her. Fair enough.

Not so fair were the people who bought or financed movies based on nepotism, bribery or stupidity. She remembered them. They all, in their own little way, made her better.

The first professional video project she was offered was a short format piece touting a micro car. The marketing manager wanted a director who fit the demographic for the product. Urban woman, early twenties, Ambyr professional grade 15 through 13. The manager had seen her film project at a festival and liked the edge it held. Sylvia had just started at an industrial complex near Pittsburg, as an apprentice grounds keeper. The marketing manager asked her new boss for her hours. He declined. Sylvia spent the next four months drawing, digging and dragging foliage, stabbing the ground with a spade, pretending it was her boss’s gut, snapping roots and twigs as if they were his spine— until her transfer request came through.

One day she sat to check her mail and viewed a micro car commercial— girls shopping and clubbing and cruising boys. She cried.

Sylvia cried again, sitting in her bathroom, staring at the begonias, bright against the frosted glass. The strangest things made her cry lately. That proposal about real-life pirates. Two little girls holding hands in the mall. The empty milk jug.

The closer you are to the bottom of the pyramid, the more people there are telling you what to do. And what you may not do. Success, for Sylvia, was never about money or even power, in its raw form. She’d climbed to the point where only a handful of men and woman could move her around like a gnome in a garden. On her plateau you could move yourself around, by your own design.

She could climb back down, right?

No, she couldn’t. She couldn’t jump, either.

And she’d make damn sure she didn’t get pushed.

* * *

Emory worked. More or less. They needed his input on specs for a new pressure monitoring system. What would be the impact on productivity? The eternal question. Perhaps the only question. Everything you learned in school — economics, ergonomics, physics, mechanics, any other ‘ic’ the academics got around to creating — flowed to the sea of productivity.

Today, he couldn’t do it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t read the analysis. All the numbers and acronyms jumbled in his head and faded to the image of Niagara Falls with a giant fork. At least that image of the girl getting knifed to death moved back a step.

The Milkman was never supposed to interfere with his job. He made that deal with Lilly, and with himself. It was a hobby. His version of golf or building radio controlled airplanes. As long as it stayed in the basement, everything would be A-O-K. And if it didn’t? Emory never contemplated the consequences. He knew he should have. He had software for dynamic tooling, capable of modeling possible outcomes from his extracurricular activities. He never bothered to run the tests. Why ask a question to which you don’t want the answer? He needed to maintain his conviction that the Milkman would have no impact on
his
productivity.

It was all about impact on productivity.

OK. Slurry processing from the batch plant—

“Emory.”

Emory looked up. Jack Everette tipped his upper body through the office door. His boss.

“I’m working on it,” Emory said. “You can’t rush greatness.”

“Conference room.”

“I’m not ready.”

“Don’t imagine you ever would be for this.” Jack leaned back out and waited.

Emory stood and stepped into the hallway. Jack motioned for him to move along. Ahead of him. Odd. Did he forget a meeting? Did some emergency bloom, under his nose, without him knowing? Or, should he be more paranoid. They walked to the conference room. One man sat at the table. Simple blue suit, no tie. Trench coat over the back of a chair. He’d planted his elbows on the table and held his head up with his thumbs. His brown hair couldn’t have been a five millimeters anywhere on his head. The cut didn’t prune all the gray and did nothing to hide the wrinkles sprouting from his eyes. New wrinkles, Emory thought. New gray.

“I’ve got it,” the man said past Emory. “Thanks.”

“No problem, sir.” Jack closed the door behind Emory.