4: Fathers and daughters
> All Jimi Calantropio lacked was education, Sandrine decided.The man wasn't at all what she'd expected. Sitting on the worn but clean sofa in his tiny spotless living room, uncontrived tears streaming randomly down his cheeks, Jimi Calantropio was clearly a man with dreams but no resources to bring them to life. And he truly loved his daughter. Of that there was no doubt in Sandrine's mind.
Calantropio brushed away the most recent tears with an unselfconscious swipe, and visibly pulled himself back together. "So no progress, that's what you're saying?" he asked, voice thick with emotion.
"We've only just started looking, sir," Jeddah said, uncomfortable in the face of such raw feelings. "Only today."
Calantropio pushed himself up from the sofa and wandered almost in a daze to the opposite side of the small room, where a holo of his daughter rested on a small corner table. A pretty girl with a wide, happy smile and sparkling hazel eyes set in a tanned face softened by the last stand of pre-adolescent chubbiness, Leah beamed at her father from under a halo of loose dark blonde curls. He reached out a callused, permanently dirty hand as if to touch her, drew it back with a sigh and stood silent with his back to them, head down.
"I didn't think anyone else would ever look for her," he murmured. "And I don't have any more ideas."
Sandrine's gaze kept wandering back to his hands – wide, capable hands with long slender fingers, still elegant somehow under a ground-in patina of oil and dirt. Artist hands, she thought. Hands that could be firm but would prefer to be gentle. She forced her attention away from the hands and studied the rest of the man.
Tall and slender with a coffee and cream complexion and a short-cropped mane of light brown curls, Jimi Calantropio burst every mental image she'd had of a ground crew donkey. She'd expected coarse; he was refined. She'd expected ignorant; he was obviously intelligent. She'd expected, at best, an angry frustration at his daughter's disappearance; instead, they'd found honest heartbreak and a broken man operating on nothing but hope.
Jeddah cleared his throat. "I hate to keep asking, sir, but can you think of any reason Leah might have run away?"
Calantropio had gone through his fit of anger early in the interview. He'd plunged from gratitude that someone, anyone, was looking for his daughter, through fury that their questions seemed to implicate him, to a dull, listless sorrow. Sandrine wondered if he was only now facing the fact that his daughter was probably gone forever.
Children who disappeared in Brendan's tended to stay that way.
"No," he said softly, and for a confused moment Sandrine couldn't remember the question. "Leah was happy here. As happy as she could be, anyway. We both had hopes of something better, but we had them together. I've been studying nights, on public comp time, to get an equivalency degree so I can put in for a clerical job at the port. My supervisor said he'd recommend me, said I'm ..." he hesitated, still with his back to them, sounded abashed, "... too good to waste on the drone crews."
"And Leah?" Sandrine asked.
"Leah is ... was ... so bright she scared me sometimes." His hands found each other behind his back, fingers wound together, wanting to hold on to something suddenly out of reach. "I'd look at her and think my god, how can I have been party to the creation of such promise? I was so afraid I'd let her down somehow, that I'd never be able to get her the opportunities she deserved."
He turned back into the room, putting his daughter's image behind him with some difficulty. "Then last year we got her into the All Church School, and Sister Caeli took an interest in Leah's writing. She thought – Sister Caeli, I mean – that Leah might be good enough to get a scholarship to Altares if she worked at it. Leah and I were thrilled."
He wandered back across the room, picking up a small notebook from a low table next to the second sofa crowded into the room, the one that doubled as his bed. Leah got the one bedroom in the cramped apartment. He'd shown it to them earlier, a tiny space as neat as the living room, walls papered with photos clipped from discarded magazines, printouts from the newsnets, bits and pieces of wallpaper and found art. Sandrine had smiled briefly at the sight of a small newsnet photo of Jac Ellerbe near one corner, placed at an angle over a printout of the commonly available Jump route map of the known worlds. Leah's narrow bed was covered with a blue and white blanket, and a soft royal blue toy dragon perched on the white pillow, waiting. A model of a mid-size interstellar ship sat atop a narrow five-drawer chest of white plastic, and a compact closet held a small but tasteful wardrobe of Sagittan tunics and a long black raincloak. Not the room of a potential runaway, Sandrine thought privately.
Now the missing girl's father sat restlessly on the arm of the living room's single chair, thumbing absently at the small notebook in his hands.
"Could Leah have tried to make it off planet on her own?" Jeddah asked without any real enthusiasm.
"Leah would never leave me," her father said firmly. "We're all we have. We're all we've ever had. If we don't have each other, we don't have anything." His voice caught again, but he swallowed hard and continued. "Leah's mother died when she was six. I promised her that I'd take care of our daughter, no matter what. Even at that age, it was obvious to us, had been obvious for several years, that Leah was something special. Her mother had taught her a joy with words, taught her to play rhyming games, to sing, even when she was a toddler." He looked up suddenly, fiercely. "Do you have a child? Either of you?"
"No," Jed said, and Sandrine shook her head.
"You can't imagine how it feels to recognize so much promise in a child and know how little potential you have to give her a better life."
Sandrine thought, though, that she could imagine it. She'd seen that look a thousand times in her own mother's eyes, that frustrated yearning to do more, to provide more, even when there was nothing more to be provided.
"I'm not a saint," Calantropio said, running a hand through his hair. "I've had my share of distractions in the past five years. I haven't always been able to give Leah all my time, all my attention. I haven't even always ... wanted to, god forgive me. I've had to be away sometimes, and sometimes I've been away just because I wanted to. But I think Leah understood. I always made sure she was safe when I was gone. I always watched out for her –" The unbidden tears began to fall again.
"Did Leah have a boyfriend?" Sandrine asked carefully, hating to ask it but knowing the question had to be answered.
"She was eleven years old," he cried in frustration.
"Brendan's is a harsh place," Sandrine said gently. "Eleven isn't considered too young in some parts of town."
He dropped the notebook on the floor and pounded his knees with both hands, punctuating the anguished words, "She ... had ... no... boyfriend. She did not run away. She did not leave with someone. She was taken from me. Taken, do you hear?" He clasped his thighs, trembling, and Sandrine was sure there would be bruises under those fingermarks tomorrow. "Leah was as ... innocent as I could keep her, given where we live. She had friends, but all of them were girls."
"Did her friends ever come here?" Jeddah asked.
"A few did, sometimes. Not her best friends, though."
"Who were ... are her best friends?" Sandrine asked.
"Two girls from the West End, Senada Danjezian and Shin-Yi Nomura. Both from the big houses out there. Their parents, I'm sure, wouldn't hear of them coming to the docks. And they never asked Leah to their houses either."
"So they only knew each other at school."
"For the most part," he said. "Sometimes they'd go up to the market together. But those two had a tough time getting permission to go anywhere. Just school and home, school and home. Leah said they envied her freedom."
He looked up with a brittle smile that didn't touch his blue eyes. "Imagine that. Those West Enders envied my Leah's freedom. To live this life." He gestured wide, to take in not only the cramped apartment, Sandrine thought, but the whole of the building, the neighborhood, maybe the city. "And now she's gone. So much for freedom."
5: Searching
Armed with printout photos of Leah Calantropio, Sandrine and Jeddah hit the streets as soon as the mist cleared the next morning. Jed covered the entire neighborhood behind the docks. He showed Leah's smiling face to the dockmaster, to gangs of dockside workers, to street people, to campers in dark, dingy rooms. Nothing. No one had seen the little blonde girl. It was as if she had never existed.Sandrine worked her way up Carbiner from the docks to the spaceport, checking bars, brothels, shops and factories. She visited the Grandmother at the Blue Flower, who was sympathetic but unhelpful. Leah Calantropio, if she had passed through those worlds, had passed without a trace.
Lunch was a tired, hot, disgruntled affair. Neither wanted to talk.
After the heat broke, Jed made a circuit of all the Governor's Guard offices in the city, leaving copies of the photo. The response ranged from near-sympathy to total indifference, with one exception. Near sundown at the West End office, an elaborate two-story structure that looked more like a corporate headquarters than a Guard building, Jed's routine questions drew unexpected attention and he found himself in the district commander's inner office.
Commander Bala Makido ruled the West End with an iron grip, Jed knew from his own time in the Guards. Although Jed had served in the industrial district, he'd heard regular tales about the West End. Petty crime simply did not happen in Bala's district; the penalties were swift, public and vicious. West End crime was of the more elegant variety – high risk, high payoff – and Bala Makido, ninth son of the Governor, always got a cut of the take. Or carried out the execution.
Bala lounged behind a vast expanse of gleaming desktop, an unexpectedly small man with neat, regular features marred by a raised diagonal scar across his chin and framed by a cap of straight mouse-brown hair. Jed stood inside the door and waited while he rolled a thin a smoke, sprinkling the filling generously with powder from an open bowl before sealing the tube.
"What's a market district rent-a-cop doing out here?" Bala asked. He tapped the paper cylinder on the desktop and lit it, savoring the first drag before exhaling a stream of savory smoke.
"A simple missing persons," Jed said, keeping his voice casual. "Just asking around."
"I haven't heard about any missing persons in the West End." Bala's eyes glittered, and Jed wondered what he'd put in the smoke.
"It's no one from West End." Jed fought a compulsion to add, "Sir," to clasp his hands behind his back. He forced his arms to hang loose at his sides.
"I see." Bala tipped back in the chair, which did not squeak. "Where is this person missing from?"
"The industrial sector, down near the docks."
Bala took another long drag, his icy blue gaze locked on Jed's face. The silence stretched uncomfortably. "What makes you think we'd allow a girl from the industrial sector into this part of town."
Jed kept his face still. "Day laborers come and go," he said mildly.
"We keep up with our day laborers, Jeddah Varone."
Jed couldn't keep the brief moment of startlement from his face. He hadn't given his name to anyone in this building.
"We keep up with everyone who has business in the West End," Bala continued, a hint of a smile showing his enjoyment of Jed's discomfort. "We even keep up with everyone who comes here and doesn't have business. We're a curious group."
No response seemed appropriate, so Jed remained silent.
"I know, for instance, that Jeddah Varone and Sandrine Billar of S&J Security visited the Danjezian estate two nights ago. What I don't know is why."
Jed tried to look inoffensive, but didn't offer an explanation.
Bala pressed a key on his desktop comm and Jeddah glanced back as the door opened behind him. Two burly Guardsmen stepped through and allowed the door to slide shut again.
"That was a question," Bala said, intently still.
"We had business with the Danjezian family," Jed said carefully. "It was private, at the family's request."
"And now you're looking for a girl missing from the docks."
"We're working on several cases."
"I don't think so." Bala leaned forward and laid his arms on the desktop. His hands were unexpectedly wide, Jed noticed, with stubby fingers. The little finger of his left hand was nothing but a scarred nub. Sweet smoke rose tantalizing into the air.
"When you showed up in my district two nights ago, we ran a little ID and background search on you. Jeddah Varone, former Governor's Guardsman, former Outwaller brat, now partner in a security and investigation business with Sandrine Billar, former Governor's Guard clerk, from a Waycross fishing family. Your business isn't a year old. You're barely scraping by, mostly on bodyguard work and security installations. I seriously doubt you have more than one job going right now. Unless you're pimping for each other on the side."
With great restraint, Jed remained silent. His impulse was to jump over the desk and throttle Bala Makido on the spot, but he knew he wouldn't get more than a step before the two Guardsmen would nail him with stunners. If he was lucky, they'd be using stunners.
Bala studied him carefully, eyes narrowed, calculating. He took another pull at the now half-gone smoke and leaned back again with a sudden hard grin.
"You won't find what you're looking for in the West End, Outwaller." The name sounded dirty, spat from his mouth. "We don't let trash like the Calantropio bitch run loose around here. And I don't think we want you here, either. So you'd better leave."
"You don't control everyone out here," Jed said, knowing he should keep his mouth shut. Bala Makido was not an enemy a sane person would want to make.
"Don't I?" As the two Guards nudged Jed out the door, Bala began to laugh. The laughter echoed down the corridor and all the way to the lift that deposited Jed near the entry. Although he knew it was impossible, he thought he heard that harsh laughter all the way outside and he couldn't shake Bala's ugly smile from his mind. But a few blocks from the Guards building, an equally ugly smile forced its way onto Jed's normally cheerful face.
He hadn't mentioned Leah Calantropio's name to anyone in that building. So how had Bala Makido known it?
Near sundown, Sandrine faced the fact that a full day walking the streets of Brendan's had taken its toll and turned back toward the office. She was ready to go home, shower off the dust and dried sweat, and relax with a glass of wine and a new vid. She'd picked up two in the Market as she passed through on her fruitless search for information on Leah Calantropio – the three-year-old Petr Limieux remake of "The Maltese Falcon" and a brand-new costume drama about the Armageddon Wars on Terra.
Maybe they'd take her mind off this frustrating case.
Leah Calantropio had apparently vanished without a trace. As far as she and Jed had been able to find out, the last person to see her alive was her father, who'd kissed her good-bye when he left for work that morning. She had just gotten out of bed and was putting together breakfast when he left. Her breakfast dishes were washed and put away when he got home that night, her nightclothes folded at the end of her bed as usual. Everything was just as it should have been, except for that blood in the bathroom – just a few dried droplets on the floor under the sink. "Like somebody missed some," Jimi Calantropio had said. "They cleaned the bathroom ..." His voice had thickened around horror, or tears. "... But they missed some."
6: Someone you can’t touch
The light was on in the cramped office of S&J Security when Sandrine got there just after dark. So Jeddah was back, then. Maybe he'd had better luck. She pushed open the office door, unbuttoning the jacket she'd slipped on when the sun went down."Hey, Jed, how'd it go this aft–" She froze as she caught sight of her partner. He was sitting in his oversized desk chair as usual, but that was the end of normality. Blood oozed from a narrow cut across his forehead, circling a blackened and swollen shut left eye. His split and swollen upper lip made it appear, at first glance, that he was quirkily smiling, but the cold glitter of his visible blue eye put a quick end to that thought. .
"Jed?" She stepped toward him and the door swung shut behind her. Only then did she realize her error. New to this business, dumb rookie mistakes, she thought irrationally, and knew that anyone who could subdue Jeddah would have no problem at all with her. She turned slowly. .
There were three of them. The one behind the door was a massive Jalla, even larger than Jeddah, and sported a shiner that nearly matched Jed's. So her partner hadn't gone down without a fight. Good, she thought bitterly. He's one up on me. The second, stepping out from the corner behind the giant, was a woman, slim, dark-skinned, with small furious jet-black eyes and one arm tucked awkwardly inside her partially unbuttoned shirt. Both of them held wicked-looking modified blasters, the giant's trained on Jed, the woman's on Sandrine. .
She didn't realize the third was there until he cleared his throat and she whirled to see a short, brown-haired man emerge from the closet-sized inner office. .
"Slowly," the black-eyed woman cautioned. .
"Sandrine Billar, I presume," the brown-haired man said, holding out his hand as if this were a casual visit. She ignored it. He tsked. "Such manners," he said. "But I retain mine. Won't you please have a seat." He indicated her desk chair. .
"Not until I know what's going on here," she said, defiant, heart pounding. She flicked a glance back at Jeddah. .
"Sit, Sandy," he slurred dully. He motioned weakly and she saw that his wrists were snugged into binders. " S'no use." .
In vids, this never happened. In vids the heroes sprang into martial arts action, threw salt in attackers' eyes, found razor-sharp desk accessories within reach, defied their torturers into acting irrationally. But that was in vids. This was real life, and Sandy felt neither defiant nor particularly competent. Dumb, yes, and scared. And curious. She crossed to her chair and sat cautiously, scanning the desk. Nope, no lethal clips, no needle-spiked markers. Unless she could figure out a way to disarm two people with a laptop, she was out of luck. Better just wait it out. .
"You're wondering why we're here, of course," the brown-haired man said, settling into the visitor's chair across from her. "Your partner took exception to the fact that we were already here when he arrived, and assumed we are your enemies." He pulled a pack of smokes from a pocket and tapped one out. "We are not. We were simply curious as to why you were looking for a dock-side girl no one could possibly care about." .
"Her father cares about her." .
"Um, yes, the father." He lit the smoke and the sweetish scent of ganja floated into the air. "We'll have to ... reassure the father. Stop his worrying." He waved one hand idly. "But the father isn't the one who hired you. He barely has enough credit to live on. So who did hire you?" .
"You know I can't tell you that," Sandrine said, gripping the arms of her chair lightly. .
"Beg to differ, sweet lady," the small man said, and signalled his companions. .
"Sandy!" Jeddah begged, but she didn't understand the sudden panic in his eyes. .
With a tight grin, the huge Jalla fired a quick burst at Jeddah's shoulder. Jeddah screamed and bucked against the chair, crashing with it to the floor. Sandrine, aghast, jumped up. .
"Sit," the brown-haired man barked, and she froze, looked up, saw the woman's weapon trained on her. .
"It's a special weapon some Panjung genius cooked up," the man said. "We find it useful. It fires a sort of ... electrical shock, in a way. Some charming field that stimulates pain receptors without causing physical damage." He looked dispassionately at Jeddah, who twitched against the floor, one foot wedged between the overturned chair and the desk. "It isn't supposed to kill, but we've found that if you push the setting high enough, people will die. Of pain, I suppose." He indicated her chair. "Please sit. We have talking to do." .
"But Jed–".
"He'll be all right. He's already been hit twice at that setting, and he didn't die either time." He twisted to face her, crossing his legs idly, brushing at his skintight leggings. "He did tell us who you're working for." .
"He told– – But if he already told you, why did you ask me? Why did you hurt him again?" .
"Why, for confirmation, of course." He said it as if it were the most reasonable idea in the world, as if her partner weren't whimpering on the floor not a meter from her feet. And what was she supposed to do now? .
"Why do you want to know?" she asked finally. .
"Ah, now, I'm the one asking questions here, my dear." .
"If I tell you who we're working for, we lose a job and it hurts our reputation." .
"If you don't tell me, I'll kill your partner. Then you won't have a reputation to worry about." .
"Who are you?" .
He laughed, a bark of pure amusement. "You don't know? Then you have another reason to keep your partner alive. He can tell you." .
If Jeddah had already told them about the Danjezian First Wife, what good would it do for her to deny it? They'd just hurt her, or maybe poor Jed again. But if Jed hadn't told them and she didn't, they'd still hurt Jed again. She couldn't let that happen. .
"The First Wife of House Danjezian," she said, slumping back into her chair. "The missing girl is a friend of her daughter's. She wanted to find out what happened to her." .
He pulled at the ganja stick again, studying her through the smoke. "That's what he said. I've already laughed. Want to know why?" .
She shrugged. .
"Because of the irony, you see. You don't need to bother looking for the Calantropio girl any more, unless you plan to drag the river." .
Sandrine gasped in spite of herself. "What?" .
"She's quite dead. I had to kill her myself. Nasty. I don't like to do that sort of thing. I'd much rather let specialists like Paul and Shiva here take care of it." .
"But why?" .
"That's the irony," he said, propping the smoldering smoke against the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign on her desk. "I did it for Klause Danjezian. He didn't like the idea of his precious daughter spending time with that dockside brat. So we paid young Calantropio a visit, he and I. He got squeamish at the last moment and wanted to just kidnap the girl and sell her upriver or send her off planet. Which would have been fine with me, but the girl tried to run. Actually tried to get away from us. So I shot her with one of those." He waved one hand idly at the two silent bodyguards. .
"That poor girl," Sandrine murmured. "Still, you didn't have to kill her." .
"Of course I did," he said, astonished. "She slapped me. Left a scratch on my face. It's only just healed." He pointed to his left cheek. .
"You killed her because she slapped you?" .
"Wouldn't you?" .
Sandrine sat speechless. Who was this insane man? He picked the short smoke back up, held it gingerly between his forefinger and thumb and sucked the last lungful, casually, as if an admission to murder were of no significance. .
" So why could it possibly matter to you that someone was looking for the girl?" .
"Curiosity, I suppose. I knew her father would never be able to find anything out. And I couldn't imagine who else would care about one stray kid." He laughed, a rueful snort. "I never considered that old Klause's daughter might actually care." He dropped the end of the smoke on the floor and ground it out with one heel. "I knew who hired you before either of you got back, you know. We found the record in your computer." .
"Then why did you hurt us?" .
"Because it was fun, of course." .
Fun? It was fun? Sandrine looked at Jeddah, who had stopped moving on the floor. She could see his chest rise and fall, so he wasn't dead at least. The brown-haired man stood, scraping the chair back, and held his hand out to her across the desk. "We'll be going now. Have a good evening, Ms. Billar." .
"Going? You're just going to leave?" she asked. .
"What else should I do?" he repeated, sounding surprised. "My curiosity is satisfied. Did you have something else in mind?" He looked at her, up and down, as if only realizing she was a woman. .
"What about our report to the First Wife?" .
"What about it?" .
"Don't you care? What if we tell her what you told us?" .
He shrugged. "That her husband had her daughter's best friend killed? Sure. Tell her all you want. It would be interesting to see how she takes it." .
"But won't her husband be angry?" .
"He won't care. He probably would have told her himself if he'd thought of it." .
"So Leah Calantropio is dead and Senada Danjezian has lost her best friend and Jimi Calantropio's heart is broken, all because old man Klause didn't like his daughter to play with a girl from the docks." .
"That's the size of it." He turned to the door. "Paul, Shiva, let's get out of here. I'm hungry." .
"Who are you?" Sandrine asked again, hopelessly, beaten in the face of such callous cruelty. .
"Somebody you can't touch," Bala Makido said, and left the office laughing. .
7: Coda
Much later, with Jeddah bandaged and sedated, fast asleep on the floor in her small living room, Sandrine sat blank faced on her narrow bed, staring without seeing it at an old Petr Limieux vid. So much pain, so much suffering, and for what? Because Jimi Calantropio wanted the best for his daughter? Because two bright little girls chose to see each other as equal human beings? Because of an old man's foolish pride?And now Leah Calantropio was dead. Sandrine didn't doubt it for a minute. Even before Jeddah had roused enough to tell her that their visitor was Bala Makido, ninth son of the governor, commander of the West End Guards, she'd known he told the truth. Leah was dead. Sandrine didn't want to know the details, was afraid they'd sicken her even more. Leah was dead, and no one would pay for the crime. Sandrine had sent a terse message to the First Wife, but didn't really care how the woman took it. They'd done their job as requested. They'd found out what happened to Leah Calantropio.
Tomorrow she'd figure out what to do about Jimi Calantropio. Warn him, surely. Bala Makido had implied a threat. But she'd rather not tell him the truth. She'd rather tell him his daughter was still missing, that they could find no trace. At least then he'd still have hope, however slight. And hope seemed to be all that was keeping him going. Maybe she wouldn't tell him. Maybe
... Tears slid down her face, tracking well-marked paths. On the vid screen, Petr Limieux hoisted a glass as some other, equally bad, actor intoned, "Here's to a fair bargain and large enough profit for both of us."
But Sandrine saw only Jimi Calantropio's face, and the death of hope.
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