The Spare Man, page 9
The smile seemed to turn a fraction more genuine. Immanuel glanced toward the bar that bisected the glass wall. “I think I can safely suggest anything on the menu.”
“Mm … competent but not inspired?”
Immanuel’s mouth pursed a bit as if he were trying to hold in a laugh. “This is not, perhaps, the bar for inspiration. Relaxation, yes. You would, I think, find the margarita unobjectionable.”
“I shall trust you on that.” Tesla took a chance. “I’m afraid that Josie down in the R-Bar has me spoiled.”
The tension came back into Immanuel’s shoulders, and the smile set on his face like plaster. “Ah … Yes, she would be on the mixology god end of your scale.”
“That she is.” Tesla let the subject of the R-Bar drop for the moment. She wanted to know how much Immanuel had heard of the argument, but not scare him off. “May I upgrade to real lime juice and an actual lime?”
Immanuel inclined his head, fingers already dancing on the edge of his tray to key in the order. “It shall be my pleasure. A moment and I shall return.”
“No hurry … I have a billion knots I need to soak away.” Tesla settled back on the lounger as Immanuel headed to the bar.
If Tesla had been preparing for a corporate merger, or to meet with a bright young inventor eager to sell her start-up to Crane Industries, she would have done the research and have a deeper base of knowledge to work from. So what common ground did they have? Meditation. Both probably vegetarian, although honestly with printed food that could be almost anyone. Tesla had the means to have beef if she wanted it but consciously chose not to. A practicing Buddhist would also be making a conscious choice.
Tesla slowed her breathing and closed her eyes. She let her consciousness expand to the sounds around her. Water lapping at the edge of the pool. A man laughing with a staccato rhythm. Ice rattling against polyamide. In the distance, a child’s squeal of delight. Closer, rubber-clad footsteps on the boardwalk.
“Here we are.” Immanuel sank into an easy squat on the boardwalk by the head of Tesla’s lounger. “One unobjectionable margarita with real lime juice and a real lime.”
“Thanks.” Tesla reached for the polyamide cup and smiled at the server. “Oh. Hey…”
Immanuel had that incredibly patient facade that service people got when they weren’t actually interested in what you had to say but didn’t want to blow a tip.
“Screw it.” She couldn’t tip anyway. Tesla set the polyamide cup on the boardwalk and shifted on the lounger to fully face Immanuel. “I was in the R-Bar last night when you dropped that tray.”
Immanuel froze. His chest contracted as if he was struggling to breathe. “I’m not sup—”
“Not supposed to talk about it?” Tesla grimaced. “Look, I had this whole plan to try to sweet-talk you into a casual conversation and try to swing us around to gossip—”
Immanuel dropped his tray, standing up so fast that he knocked over the margarita.
“But the fact is that they’re accusing my spouse of murder and I know he didn’t do it, so I just want to know if you heard the argument that—”
“I can’t talk to you.”
“That’s fine. I just need you to tell the security chief about the people that Mx. Saikawa was arguing with—”
“I can’t.” Immanuel looked at the comms badge on his chest and then said again, as if speaking directly to it. “I can’t talk to you.” Stumbling back, he turned and made a beeline for a service door.
That had gone splendidly. Sighing, Tesla righted the polyamide cup. A service drone had already trundled out of a wall and crawled toward the spill. Tesla climbed out of the pool, picking up the tray and the empty cup. She figured she may as well get a martini for Shal before she went back down. Granted, they had gin and dry vermouth in their travel bar, but no olives.
She carried Immanuel’s abandoned tray to the bar, where a bartender with a crop top revealing broad shoulders and abs made of steel turned to her with a grin. A forelock of Venusian cloud-surfer hair fell forward. “What can I do you for?”
“A margarita. Real lime and juice? Also a martini.” Tesla set the tray and the empty cup on the bar and glanced at the server’s name tag. Steve. He/they.
“Do you want vodka or gin in your martini?”
“I said martini.” It was snark, but she could tell a lot about a bartender by their response. The ones whose taste aligned with hers would perk up. The others, like this one, looked blank. “Fun fact: a martini made with vodka is called a kangaroo.”
“No kidding?”
She needed to get off her very large, unnecessary, soapbox before she spent her time ranting instead of investigating a murder. Also, she couldn’t tip this person to make up for having to put up with her—goddammit. Tips were bribes.
Fine. She’d use her other tools. A good trick in corporate trading was pretending you knew more than you did. “Oh, hey, Steve. Immanuel had to step out. You know, after last night.”
“Nutballs.” They flipped a cocktail shaker in the air. “Like, can you imagine? It’s so off. Like. Seeing the person who, like, just totally soaked your grandparents and then someone else offs her before you can even tell her off?”
Tesla blinked. Immanuel knew Saikawa? She took a chance. “Right. And then to have had her in his section?”
“Soak me! Yeah! I mean, that sucks and all.” As they spoke, they slung ingredients into the shaker from astonishing distances. “Like, Immanuel said his grandparents had gotten totally soaked. Investments or something. I dunno. Some soaking bank thing.”
“A start-up?”
“That was it! Soak me, yeah.”
Funny, the bartender didn’t look like they were still in high school, and yet … “Very soaked,” Tesla agreed, noting that they were going to shake the martini. “Could you—”
The shaking began.
“I already knew some of this ’cause, you know, you talk about why you’re on the ship, right? Like, his family, they lost everything, he had to drop out of college, I mean, they were really, really soaked.”
That martini was being shaken for far, far too long, although the motion did do nice things for the bartender’s biceps. “He was, like, literally vibrational with the mads when I saw him and he is the gentlest person. Immanuel recognized her when she sat down. Had this whole rant in his head that he was going to give and then?”
They slammed the shaker down on the counter, staring at Tesla expectantly.
“Then … murder?”
“Boom! Yeah. Worst soak of all time.” They popped the lid off the cocktail shaker and drained it into a polyamide martini glass. “Oh—we don’t have real olives up here. Printed ones, okay?”
Of all of Tesla’s concerns, that was the least of her worries. “No problem.”
They slid the martini in front of her with a flourish. “Whaddya think?”
She picked up the martini and took a sip of the highly watered, monodimensional paint thinner. “Mm…” Wetting her lips, she raised it in a toast. “To Immanuel’s grandp—”
The music cut off. “Would passenger Artesia Zuraw please report to sick bay? Passenger Artesia Zuraw, please report to sick bay.”
It took Tesla longer than it should have to recognize her shipboard name. And then she was running before her martini had finished falling.
BLOOD AND SAND
1.5 oz scotch
.75 oz sweet vermouth
.75 oz orange juice
.75 oz cherry Heering
1 orange peel
Shake ingredients over ice for 15 seconds and strain into coupe. Garnish with orange peel.
Sick bay was in the ring of the ship that had Mars gravity. Tesla sprang down the curving corridor, heart occupying a space in the back of her throat. She’d set her DBPS way, way past the safety margins so that she didn’t have to think about pain while she ran. There were two possibilities that she was bracing herself for. In the first, the doctor had discovered something about George Saikawa’s body and needed to ask her a question.
In the other, something had happened to Shal.
She had pinged him the moment they asked her to come to sick bay. Instinct had made her reach through that virtual space for him, even though she was cut off from the net. She was going to have Fantine crochet their souls into a dog toy for Gimlet if—
She rounded the last curve of the unadorned polyamide hall and misjudged the Coriolis effect, staggering into a wall. She didn’t feel a damn thing but held still for a moment anyway as if she’d be able to tell if she’d jostled a screw loose in her spine with the DBPS set this high. And when she regained her footing, it stopped mattering because Officer Piper stood outside the door to sick bay. She had Gimlet on a leash.
Tesla put her hand against the wall as the floor seemed to lurch under her. The little dog saw Tesla first, and barked. Her ears were low and she dragged the leash to its full extension. Officer Piper saw Tesla and came to meet her.
“He’s unconscious.” She bent down and scooped up Gimlet, holding her out to Tesla. “They’re examining him now.”
Tesla clutched her dog with unfeeling hands. Gimlet pressed her face into the crook of Tesla’s elbow, shivering.
Piper turned and led Tesla back to the entrance to sick bay. “Gimlet was barking and scratching at the door. It didn’t sound right. Mx. Husband was on the floor. Dr. Fish is on call and she wants to ask you about his medical history.”
“Of course.” She followed Piper through a tiny reception area and into a small examining room.
Shal lay on a hospital bed, with an IV in his arm. Beneath the black eye, his skin was gray and his mouth hung open a little. Dermal patches dotted his body, at temple and chest, with the corresponding vital signs cutting jagged lines across the wall monitor. She had seen him without his shirt as often as feasibly possible, but there was a profound difference between asleep and unconscious. His limbs looked slack and waxen. The bruising around his torso seemed more livid than it had in their room.
The wall of Bob stood in a corner, arms crossed over his chest, watching Shal as if he were going to spring off the table at any moment.
A doctor with streaks of gray in faded brown hair held a medscan over Shal’s chest and glanced up when Tesla entered. Then did a full-on double take, eyes widening. “You—”
Tesla welcomed the recognition. The tricks the cruise ship did to hide her identity only worked to redirect ID queries. If someone recognized her despite the wig, there wasn’t anything she could do. And being a Crane would get her better medical service for Shal.
“You were the first on the scene last night.”
She blinked, context shifting around her, removing the doctor’s smock and adding in a robotic assistant. The medic from last night. All of her priorities changed in an instant. “Get away from him.”
“Excuse me?” Dr. Fish blinked at Tesla and looked back down at the device in her hand. “He’s stable, which I imagine is the first thing you want to know, and then I have a series of questions for you.”
George Saikawa had been alive until Dr. Fish arrived and took her away. “Is there another doctor I could talk to?” There was the assistant … Candy, that had been the name. “Not Candy, either.”
As if Tesla hadn’t been perfectly clear, Dr. Fish continued, “He’ll be fine. Vitals are very good, but at the moment, I’m suspecting OD on painkillers and booze. Why didn’t anyone send for me sooner? The blow he took to the head alone is enough that he shouldn’t have been drinking.”
Tesla was shaking her head before the woman finished talking. “First of all, he doesn’t take anything stronger than aspirin.” Gimlet wiggled in her arms and she stroked the little white dog, using the contact to ground herself in the here and now. “Second, he has a head injury and broken ribs because your employees beat him up.”
“He fell down the stairs.” Bob spoke from the corner.
“Are you kidding me?” In her arms, Gimlet gave a sharp yip. “‘Fell down the stairs.’ That’s the best you can do?”
Beside her, Officer Piper cleared her throat. “We found your oxyfeldone in the cabin.”
Tesla’s mouth dropped open. “I—I don’t take. We don’t have any oxyfeldone.” At one point she had taken it, yes, and more than her doctor had prescribed, but the synthetic opioid was a safety net she hadn’t needed to use in years. “I had spinal surgery several years ago and had a deep brain pain suppressor installed.”
“Oh?” Dr. Fish repositioned one of the dermal patches. “Forgive my professional curiosity but—”
“The point is, we don’t have any oxyfeldone.”
Officer Piper was watching her closely. “Label says it’s his.”
“Then obviously it was planted.” Tesla tried again to contact Fantine and got nothing. “Here’s what needs to happen now. I want my lawyer and I want a different doctor.”
Dr. Fish didn’t even pause her work. “May I ask why?”
“No, you may not.” Tesla bit down on the truth that Shal thought this doctor might have had something to do with the murder. The last thing she wanted was for the person treating him to think they suspected her. Which was probably a thought she should have had sooner. Tesla grimaced. “How long are you people going to keep me from talking to my lawyer?”
Dr. Fish lifted the scanner and looked up and to the left as if she were accessing a HUD. “Sorry, looks like my hunch was right. He has oxyfeldone in his system, along with a significant amount of alcohol.”
Tesla stared at the doctor. “That’s not possible. I have to fight to get him to take anything at all for pain.”
“Are you certain?” The doctor looked at the medscan again, frowning. She wet her lips. “I mean, people with addictions are very good at hiding them.”
“Why would he be addicted to painkillers? He’s never been…” But Shal used to be a boxer. Gimlet whined in her arms and buried her nose in Tesla’s armpit. Swallowing, Tesla looked down and scratched the dog’s belly with the hand that supported her. “Look, I don’t know where it came from, but that oxyfeldone is absolutely not ours. Now, get me my lawyer or so help me I will buy this entire ship just for the pleasure of watching it deorbit.”
* * *
There was a special quality to hold music that, generally speaking, made Tesla want to murder people. Although, even in her own head, that metaphor sounded like a bad idea. She clutched the ship wallphone and paced in circles in the tiny room where Shal slept.
He was just sleeping. Now. His chest rose and fell with the regularity of an orbit. Gimlet followed Tesla as she paced, claws ticking on the hard floor, and the worry in her button-bright eyes seemed almost palpable. Biting her lip, Tesla leaned against the wall trying to steady her breathing, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to close her eyes. The door to the room stood open, with the wall of Bob standing guard outside. It would have been too much to hope that Officer Piper would be the one assigned to them.
Tesla bent at the waist, trying to stretch the tight muscles of her back. The music cut off and the nice young person who had been helping her came back on the line. His pleasant tenor voice still made her tense. “I’m sorry, Mx. Zuraw, I’ve asked all through the legal department and we just don’t know who you’re trying to contact.”
How many lawyers could they have on board the ship? Two? Three at the outside. This felt like she was being brushed off. Tesla spoke to the floor, staring at the old gray scuff marks on the tile. “I’m sorry, I don’t know their name.” All of the details she remembered Fantine saying about her lawyer friend who worked on the ship were not helpful in this context. “They play golf?”
“I wish I could help, I truly do.”
“Security Chief Wisor had a message from them this morning.” Tesla did not want to invoke Wisor, but she was more than a little desperate. She straightened, slowly and carefully. “Is there anyone who—”
Outside of Shal’s room, Security Chief Wisor walked into the sick bay’s cramped lobby, pausing to hold the door that led from the hallway. “… you to identify her.”
Tesla lowered the phone and leaned into the lobby. “Chief Wisor! I hate to troub—”
Haldan Kuznetsova, head bowed as if he were carrying a literal weight on it, stopped just inside the lobby door. His head came up and he turned to stare at her, then past her to where Shal lay on the bed. “Is this some sort of joke?”
Well, shit. Tesla’s fingers cramped on the phone. “Mx. Kuznetsova, I am so sorr—”
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare speak to me.”
Tesla pulled her head back, nostrils flaring, and barely caught hold of her temper. He’d just lost someone. He thought she was involved.
Wisor turned to Bob. “Why is the door open?”
Before Bob could answer, Kuznetsova wheeled on Wisor. “The question is why isn’t he in jail? How is anyone supposed to feel safe with a murderer on the loose? What if he comes after me next?”
Tesla’s back tightened and she dialed the DBPS up until she could only feel the pressure of Gimlet’s leash in her hand. “Mx. Kuznetsova. I understand you’re upset, but my spouse was the first on the scene and has been misidentified. We are cooperat—”
“I told you not to speak to me.”
Wisor stepped between Tesla and Kuznetsova. “I’m very sorry for the additional distress, sir. You won’t see him again.”
Tesla held her tongue, barely. Regardless of how wrong Kuznetsova was, she and Shal were the last people he wanted to see right now.
Shal was going to be fine. Even if Fantine let things get to a trial, there was no way that Shal would ever be convicted.
Oh, Tesla was under no illusions that being innocent would keep him out of prison.
Money would, though.
Money kept guilty men out, and it could certainly keep her spouse safe.
Wisor scowled and pointed at Bob. “Close that door!”
As Bob reached for the door of Shal’s room, Dr. Fish burst out of another examining room. “What is all of this shouting? I have— Oh my God. Hal? What are you—”
