Windswept (18 page)

I snorted. “You picked the wrong little old ladies to cross.”

“Don’t I know it?” said the Freeborn woman. “I was just about to tell them to fuck off, when that one there” –she nods at the unconscious Union woman–“she grabs a bottle, smashes it on the bar like she was to cut me, and then this horrible smell just filled the place. She got a faceful of splashed rum, and the rest got on me. Ruined my clothes, would’ve got me if the stink hadn’t driven us out into the street.”

“And then what?”

She shrugged. “Police came, rounded us all up. She screamed some more in the bumblecar, then just passed out. Her drink caught up with her, in her gut
and
up her nose.”

“Do you remember what kind of rum it was?” I asked.

She snorted and shook her head. “The kind that was supposed to cost a lot.”

Another skunked bottle. What the hell was the Co-Op doing with quality control? I hoped Tonggow wasn’t going to let that happen to Old Windswept. I didn’t know what I’d do if it all started to go bad...

“–was supposed to be safer in the city,” said the Freeborn woman. “Instead, I get this abuse. I got to deal with cane rats and crops rotting on the stalk, and then I come here, and what do I get? You Inks talk about us coming to the city, getting drunk and starting fights. I work hard, I deserve to sit at a bar like anyone else.”

“I completely agree,” I said. “And when I get out of here, I’ll make sure it happens.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “If you were someone who could do that, you wouldn’t be in here with us.”

Soni walked into the cellblock, her patrol cap tucked into her uniform’s epaulet. Her head, like every other cop’s, was shaved to stubble. It was supposed to be intimidating, but it made her look like a freshly husked coconut. “Making friends?” she asked me.

“I like your haircut,” I said.

She gave me a sour look as she unlocked my cell. “One of these days, your compliments are going to get you beaten to a pulp.”

“As long as I keep making donations to the Widows and Orphans Fund, I expect the beatings to be quick and professional.”

“Let’s go,” she said, clanging the door open.

“What happened?” I said. “You realized you arrested the wrong woman?”

“Hardly,” she said. “You made bail. Look at me.”

Soni waved a red lightstick at my face; it beeped, and the Univoice reeled off my name and Union ID number. “You’re tagged for city limits only,” said Soni. “Go on the water or into the kampong, and you’ll forfeit your bond and get locked up until trial. Plus I’ll be able to do horrible things to your head.”

“I know how bail tags work, thanks,” I said.

“Not from this end,” she said. “And don’t try to make another smartass remark, unless you want it to show up in court.”

I looked at the Freeborn woman, who sat on her bench, her arms crossed. “When you get out,” I said, “you ask around this neighborhood for Padma Mehta.”

“That you?”

“That is,” I said. “I meant what I said about helping.”

“You want to help?” said the woman. “You let me get a drink where I want, when I want.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You lining up future customers?” said Soni as we filed out to the front desk.

I mimed zipping my mouth shut. She signed and buzzed us through a series of doors, each taking us into better-lighted rooms. When we entered a lobby with skylights, I figured I was almost home free. A sleepy-eyed desk sergeant handed me a clipboard and a bag of my stuff. Soni stood in front of the last door to the lobby. “Before you go, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re behind this. But you know I have to follow through on every lead, right?”

I gave her a blank face.

She cleared her throat. “All the same, I got pai logs that say you went to the office and stayed there all night. The signal winks in and out, and then I got Saarien arriving and staying there. What happened, Padma?”

I crossed my arms and tapped my clamped mouth.

Soni sighed. “We’ll be in touch.” She buzzed me through the last door into the lobby.

Estella Tonggow sat in a chair, a smile on her inked and lined face. “Well!” she said, patting her lap with gloved hands. “I don’t think either of us thought we’d be keeping our appointment in such an
interesting
place.”

“Madame Tonggow, what are you doing here?” I said, bowing and stuffing everything back in my pockets.

“Bailing your ass out, it would seem,” she said, standing up and smoothing her skirts in one deft move. “You wouldn’t be
lieve
the size of the bond I had to post. Ridiculous. Just like the charges.”

“My point exactly!” I said, pasting a smile on my face. “There’s no way I could have–”

“Ah-ah-ah,” she said, holding up a hand. “You don’t say another word until we are out of here, yes?”

I nodded and walked for the door.

Outside, a green limousine straight out of an executive’s wet dream materialized out of the traffic and hummed to a halt in front of us. The door glided open, and Tonggow floated into the limo, leaving a trail of cinnamon and clove perfume behind her. “Let’s go for a ride, shall we?” she said. She smiled, but from the way her eyes crinkled, I knew it wasn’t a suggestion. I bowed and climbed in after her.

The limo was austere, all spotless leather and hard edges. “I bought this off a derelict MacDonald Heavy ship,” said Tonggow as the door whispered shut. “Ugly as hell, but it drives smoothly. You can hardly tell you’re moving.”

I looked out the window; the streets of Santee City flashed by without a hint of acceleration. “Any idea who it was meant for?”

She shrugged. ”Someone with a massive paycheck and no taste. By the way, did you get my gift?”

I patted the flask on my thigh pocket. “I did. Thank you.”

She pushed the wall, and a panel clicked open. Inside was a pair of hand-blown rum tasting glasses and a fifth of Old Windswept. Tonggow cracked the cap, and the scent – oh, the heavenly scent of the rum filled the limo, sending my head swimming. The Fear ran screaming to the front of my mind, smashing against every bit of control I could muster. I swallowed, trying not to look desperate. It didn’t work, because Tonggow poured a finger in each glass and said, “Care for a drink?”

“Not when I’m on the clock,” I said, putting my hands beneath my legs so she wouldn’t see me clench them into white-knuckled fists.

“A good policy,” she said, knocking back her glass with one swallow. She took a quick breath in, sucking the air through her teeth. ”Oh, I will never get over that feeling. A little kick, a lot of velvet, and then the warmth. Makes me wish we had a serious winter here, just so I could appreciate it that much more.”

“That’s why I like a bit at night,” I said. ”You sit on your lanai, you get the breeze off the ocean with that chill, and then a little bit of rum to round off the evening.”

“Agreed,” said Tonggow, reaching for the second glass. “One of the many reasons why I’ve enjoyed talking with you, Miss Mehta. You sense a bit of the romance.”

“A bit.”

She took a sip, holding it in her mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. I just looked out the window again. We were in a neighborhood of new rowhouses off Cheswell Boulevard. This was striver territory, second- or third- generation Shareholders who had investing in all the non-Union and non-Co-Op parts of Santee. I’d met a few strivers in the aftermath of the last Contract; they were starry-eyed and optimistic as hell. I couldn’t stand them.

Tonggow put down the glass, and a tiny droplet of rum splashed onto her hand. She licked it away, then said, “I’m sure you realize that every romance includes danger.”

“Is that why we’re having this meeting in a fancy-looking armored car?” I glanced at the bottle again. It would be so easy to take a casual pour and sip. I blinked up the time: barely nine in the morning. Christ.

“Partly,” she said, smiling. “But we’re also nicely shielded from prying eyes and ears.” She tapped her temple. “No pai signals get in or out. No tracking, no tracing. And what I’m going to talk to you about could quite likely get us killed, so it’s probably a good idea to keep it just between us.”

I blinked away the time and looked at her. Tonggow’s face was stone, her eyes half-closed. “I’m listening.”

“Good,” she said. “Because you’re going to have to remember this without making a recording, and I’m only going to tell you once. I know, Miss Mehta, that you didn’t make your number, that you were counting on those miners. I know you’re worried that someone else will make a bid for my distillery, and I want you to know that no one else but you is going to get her grubby hands on the place... provided you do two things for me.”

“Whatever you say,” I said, hoping she didn’t want me to kill someone. I’d managed to avoid that for twelve years, and wasn’t in the mood to break my streak.

“The first is easy,” she said. “I have a pretty hefty shipment going up the cable tomorrow. I want you to make sure it gets there in one piece.”

“I can’t get out on the water,” I said. “You saw my bail tags.”

“Yes, but I consider this a test of how you delegate,” she said. “Think you can swing that?”

I nodded. “What’s the second?”

“I need you to go to every bar in this city and drink.”

I waited a moment to see if she was going to smile. She didn’t. “I think I’m missing something.”

“You know there have been... odd events with some of the Co-Op’s product,” she said, tenting her fingers on her lap.

“You mean the skunked rum?”

“Well, I could talk about the proper chemical terms” –Tonggow tapped her left cheek, right on the barely visible tattoo of an Erlenmeyer flask–“but, yes. There is a new kind of contaminant affecting our rum, and no one can figure it out what it is. Some of the best distillers in the Co-Op are releasing product that goes bad somewhere between crushing the cane and decanting. None of them wants to admit there’s something wrong, but every distiller knows something
is
going wrong, and we’re all scared shitless it’s going to be one of our bottles next.”

“But this has happened before, right?” I said. “Impurities in the bottles, something in the water, a smut on the cane?”

“For one or two producers every few years, yes,” she said. “But for this number...”

I sat back. “How many are we talking about?”

“Right now,” she signed, “fifty-seven. Fifty-eight, if I add that picture you sent me.”

“Who else?”

She handed me a piece of paper; on it was a list of distillers done in Tonggow’s loopy handwriting. None of the skunked bottles I’d smelt (other than the Nelson’s Column from that dive on Murdoch) were on the list. “You can add two more to this,” I said, then told her about the bottles at Big Lily’s and in the office. “Maybe a third,” I said, remembering the Freeborn woman in the jail.

Tonggow’s fist clenched. “It’s happening faster than I thought,” she said, waving toward the front of the limo. “You’ll have to move quickly if you’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Why me? Why this? Why can’t the Co-Op just... I dunno, co-operate?”

Tonggow gave me a sweet smile as she shook her head and put her hand on my knee. “We may be a Co-Operative in name, but we’re barely like it in practice. The Big Three have been driving down the price for industrial molasses for years, and now they’re trying to do the same with the rum. Profits are down, expenses are up, and the last thing anyone wants to admit to the other members is that they’re in trouble. Even if it really means
everyone
is in trouble. This has to stay quiet until we can figure out what the hell’s going on.”

“So, this is all on me?”

She shrugged. “Mostly on you. You get me labels, and I’ll do what I can to sort it out.”

“That’s a lot of rum for just me to sample,” I said.

“I know,” said Tonggow as the limo smoothed to a stop. “That’s why you’re going to take your new Breach friends along. Nothing like a bar crawl to celebrate one’s liberation, hm?”

“I can’t take them out in public,” I said.

“Why? You’re afraid the rank and file will lynch you?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

Tonggow’s smile disappeared, and I shivered. “Miss Mehta, if you’re afraid of that, then maybe you aren’t the one to run my distillery. I always thought you had more spine.”

I fought the urge to swallow my heart back into my chest and banged on the divider window. “Oy!” I yelled at the driver. “Take us to Samarkand and Benares, and get ready to pick up extra passengers.” I caught Tonggow’s surprised smile. “You can’t expect me to haul my new friends out on foot, Madame Tonggow. We’d never last the day.”

Tonggow raised her glass as the limo sped up.

“OK,” said Banks. “OK, OK, OK. The thing.”

“Is,” I said.

“Is what?”

“The thing,” I said, waving for the bartender to pour us another round.

“Right!” yelled Banks as he thumped the sticky metal bartop. “The thing is that I still don’t
get
how the whole thing
works
.”

“The hell” –One-Eye paused long enough to burp and grab another fistful of edamame from the bowl–“kind of lawyer
are
you, Banks?”

“Real estate, remember?” he said, trying and failing to keep himself together.

“I mean...
I
get how the whole thing works, and I hate it!” said One-Eye. “Why do we hafta wait for someone else to come down so we don’t have to, y’know...”

“...work?” offered Mimi, a bamboo stirrer in her hands.

“Exactly!” said One-Eye. “Why the hell can’t we start not working now?”

“Because,” I said, looking at the upended and empty shot glasses that surrounded our elbows, “because that’s the way it’s always worked.”

“Work,” said Banks, reaching for the empty bottle of Bastard’s Blend that spun on the bartop. “You know, I always worked. When I was a kid, I worked inna potato field. When I was older, I worked inna recyling plant.”

“Recyling?” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, bobbing his head. “When you use old stuff to make new stuff. Recyling. Anyway, I did that, then I got
this
” –he jabbed at the scales tattooed on his cheek–“and I worked more. An’ we had to work to
get
here.”