Mai Tais for the Lost, page 1
MAI TAIS
FOR THE LOST
A novella of
The Nightingale Electric Detective Agency
Mia V. Moss
Underland Press
For all the lost who found their way at Suki's
Electric Blue Moon Habitat
November 9, 2112
It was six in the evening and the sea above Electric Blue Moon was a riot of storm-tossed flotsam and unlucky fish. The call came in just as I was finishing the first round of a three-glass dinner of seaweed gin at Infinity's Cup, the favorite liquor cabinet of the habitat's young, reckless, and over-moneyed progeny.
Infinity Kovac himself was tending bar that night, slinging vintage trashy cocktails to classic house music in the moody purple light. He paused when my com buzzed next to my hand, the bottle of gin hovering a silent question over my empty glass. I glanced at the screen; it was Disco Bishop, my brother Rocket's fiancé. I nodded for Infinity to pour me another and picked up my com. I could polish off ten drinks before Disco was done talking.
"Marrow? Marrow, it's Disco."
His voice was strung higher than the lofty domed habitat roof. I sighed and motioned for Infinity to leave the bottle.
"Yeah, I know it's you Disco. What's the matter?"
"Rocket, he's—oh God, Marrow. I don't know how else to say it. Rocket's dead."
"Disco, baby, what do you mean Rocket's dead? I just saw him not two hours ago. He was fine. Perfectly healthy."
Rocket Nightingale was a force of nature. Young, beautiful, charismatic, wealthy as a king and generous as a saint. His life was one unbroken stream of flashy parties and delightful adventures. He was also my older—and only—brother. He wasn't the kind of asshole to turn up dead out of the blue on an otherwise uneventful Wednesday.
"Someone killed him! I came home to change for a dinner party at the Van Houten's and there he was, sprawled out in the foyer with his skull in pieces and blood all over the tile and oh God, Marrow. The goddamned foyer!"
He cut off with a choked sob. I tried to find the bottom of my stomach, but it was as though some unseen hand had scooped it out every ounce of guts and left me scrambling for nothing but cold emptiness. When I finally found the air to speak, it was as though someone else had taken over my vocal cords. I sounded frosty smooth, alien in my own ears.
"Alright, honey. Stay right where you are, can you do that? I'm on my way now. Fix us both a strong drink while you wait." I sure as shit didn't need another, but it sounded like he could use one. It would keep him preoccupied for a little while, at least. "And Disco, don't call anyone else until I get there, alright?"
"S-sure, Marrow. No one else."
"Especially HabSec," I stressed. "No cops."
Disco knew better than to call HabSec, but a bad shock to the nerves can make people do stupid things. Habitat Security goons stomping all over a crime scene, attracting every tabloid in radio range, was the last thing we needed. I ended the transmission and stood up, pushing the bottle away. Infinity came over to settle up my tab and I held up a hand to stop him.
"Chances are high I'm just going to talk Disco down off the ceiling and be back inside an hour." I said. "And if not, I'll be seeing you tomorrow. Same time as always, pal."
Infinity nodded in time with the music, indifferent to the specifics of my emergency, and moved on to other patrons. I grabbed my things, pushed through the arriving after-work crowds, and caught a streetcar heading uptown.
Electric Blue Moon isn't the biggest and is definitely not the most technologically advanced habitat city in the Pacific, but it is the third oldest and comfortably ranks among the top five wealthiest. It was built and funded by the type of dynastic old money that likes to buy one hulking set of furniture for their mansion and pass it down through the generations, regardless of how out of fashion it is. Half of them are still using those same dead wood furnishings their ancestors lugged down with them to the bottom of the sea. The closets all came pre-lined with skeletons, too.
That old money is built into the DNA of the hab. The smell of dusty, hoarded cash perfumes the very atmosphere that circulates through the ventilation, breathed in and exhaled by a hundred thousand souls. It's a hardwood-and-gilded corners kind of place; a fantasia desperate to recall a surface-world myth that never existed in the first place. The electric streetcars even make old-timey clangy bell noises as they glide through foot traffic.
A serene synthetic voice announced my stop and I ran fingertips along the age-worn authentic wood paneling as I disembarked. The last cedars on the planet had probably been cut down to contribute such finishing touches.
When I got to Rocket and Disco's place, I nearly kept right on walking. HabSec's Chief Security Officer, Varsity Beckett, was waiting outside the gate in his ridiculous turquoise uniform and white sailor's scarf, looking real anxious to arrest someone for something. I could tell by the way he hefted his meatslab physique off the fence and rested one twitchy hand on his sidearm that he was hoping it'd be me.
My breath caught for the briefest of moments. If HabSec was already on the scene . . . but no. My brother had been alive and healthy just hours ago. I could practically still smell his body wash from when he'd leaned in to tousle my hair as I left. I had been on the com with a client and my last gesture to my older brother had been to flip him off on my way out the door. I banished the thought with a scoff.
"If you're here to see Rocket, evidently you just missed him." I let my shoulder connect with his as I unlatched the gate and continued up the short walkway to the front door.
"Marrow Nightingale," Varsity spat, as though my name itself was a murder charge. "So quick with the quips. I've got some questions for you before you go inside."
"Give me a break, Varsity. I'm here about a family emergency."
"You just get here? Seems awfully convenient timing, you showing up right after the morgue picked up the body."
The body. Disco hadn't been hallucinating. My jaw clenched tight, but I refused to rise to Varsity's bait. I was well aware that anything I said would most certainly be used against me in his case write-up; he'd been looking for a way to get me off the hab ever since he'd picked up his badge.
It boils down to this. Electric Blue's got two types of bastards: rich ones and poor ones. There are the wealthy, and then there are the people who scrub the toilets of the wealthy. Or do their taxes. Sometimes both, if they're the kind of Poors with the right amount of hustle.
When everything went straight to Hell topside and the billionaires of Earth took refuge in the sea, they still needed their chefs, hair stylists, concierges, and housekeepers. And their HabSec Security Chiefs. Many of the toilet scrubbers have worked hard to build little worker-bee dynasties of their own, working overtime to ensure their children can live out of harm's way under the oceans.
But the threat of deportation to the surface always looms large. HabSec are police, judge, and executioner, and there are two ways it's going to end for a body if they get caught breaking the rules: a hefty fine they'll never work off or a one-way ticket to the surface. In other words, permanent exile. For you, your spouse, your kids—probably their kids, too, just to be thorough.
A twist of fate had elevated me, the humble daughter of service workers, out of reach from HabSec's threats and therefore out of their power. And if there was one thing men like Varsity hated more than anything, it was feeling impotent.
"I'm sure I don't know what you're insinuating, Officer Beckett. Have you had zero sensitivity training? What in the world are my family's generous annual donations to HabSec being used for?"
I looked Varsity square in his dull, narrow eyes for one long moment I held his gaze until his face turned a blotchy shade of red and he suddenly became interested in the walkway.
"Yeah, okay." He tried to brush it off, but the tough-guy posturing had been thoroughly skewered. He ran a scarred hand through close-cropped sandy blonde hair.
"I tell you what, Marrow. The fiancé says you were the last person to see Rocket alive. So you take a few to process your grief or whatever, but I want your butt in a chair at the station giving us a statement within the next twenty-four hours. After that, I'm putting out a public notice that you're wanted for questioning as a person of interest in a murder investigation. That sensitive enough for you?"
I stepped into the house and slammed the door in his face without another backward glance.
The foyer was empty. The godawful yellow marble floor was immaculately clean and newly polished, shining like a well-preserved mustard stain. If I'm being honest, I had expected a lot more . . . dead brother to be there. It hadn't been long enough for Health Services to collect a body and for HabSec to run the full crime scene and clean up after. I breathed in the synthetic white sage floor cleaner, and for a moment, I held on to the idea that perhaps Rocket wasn't dead. Maybe the whole thing had been a sick joke after all.
Then Disco peeked around the corner. His eyes were doubly lined: once with a thick application of metallic gold liner, and once more with the puffy red shade of a broken heart. I swallowed hard and opened my mouth to say something, anything, but instead of ‘hi' or ‘how are you,' all that came out was a warbled, inarticulate, strangely guttural cry.
He blinked at me in quiet surprise and said softly, "Wow. You changed into mourning clothes before coming over; I can't believe I didn't think of that. I should change, too—"
I looked down at my black heels, black tights, black sharkskin skirt, black bra top, and shook my head. "Disco, it's me. Relax. This is my normal."
"Huh." He let out a trilling laugh that echoed garishly around us. "Yeah, I guess it is."
My brother's fiancé looked at me and then looked down to the floor. I paused for a long moment to give him room to explain. At last as my mouth began to form a question, Disco suddenly reanimated, his eyes looking up wide and watery. He didn't say a word, but instead made a small, anguished squeal in the back of his throat and came running out on razor-thin stiletto heels to throw his lanky arms around me in a tight hug.
Disco Bishop was the kind of old-fashioned clothing model with a build that some called slender and others called wraithlike, but you wouldn't know it by the way he hugged. Drowning men hugged life rafts with less enthusiasm.
"I didn't call HabSec, Marrow, I swear. I would never. Or Health Services! They just… showed up right after I called you!"
"Easy, Disco, I believe you"
He pulled away, and my gaze followed his down to the pristine floor where Rocket's body should have been. At the very least, there should have been blood spatters, outline tape, something.
"Call me crazy, but I thought you said Rocket died right here, Disco," I said gently as I could.
He flinched, crossing his arms defensively around his chest and hugging his shoulders.
"Varsity called it in as soon as he arrived. He took a 3D scan of the scene and some samples. Bots cleaned up the . . . bots cleaned the floor. Your parents," he added, seeing the question forming on my face.
Of fucking course. Mom and Dad Nightingale would have demanded the height of discretion and a quick clean-up as soon as they had received word. Hide the bodies first, get drunk and yell about it afterward when the cameras weren't watching was practically the family motto.
But it did put a damper on the plans already marinating in my brain about how to get to the bottom of Rocket's sudden demise. Health Services would have taken Rocket deep into that bastion of red tape otherwise known as Electric Blue Moon General Hospital. As charming and generous with bribes as I was, it still wouldn't be easy for me to gain access.
I cast around, desperate for any trace of a clue. In the absence of a body, of any sort of blood or gore or scrap of fabric would suffice. I felt a scream rise up from deep in my gut, and I pushed the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth to keep it from escaping.
Disco, maybe sensing my distress or maybe just looking for something to do with himself, ducked into the adjoining den as I prowled the foyer and returned bearing two Mai Tais in crystal glasses appropriately shaped like skulls. Each was garnished with a wedge of blackened pineapple and a tiny black umbrella. The effect was a little old-fashioned, but it was a classic mourning drink.
Tears edged along the corners of my eyes and blinked them away, accepting the cup with a nod of thanks. This was the sort of cocktail you drank standing around at your great uncle's funeral. I downed half of mine in one go and reeled from the cloying sweetness. It tasted remarkably like bile.
"How strong did you make these?" I coughed.
"I used surface-proof rums . . . three different kinds I found in the back of the liquor cabinet." He had the decency to blush. Surface-proof booze was wickedly potent and not something you sprang on someone without a warning. "Do you want something lighter?"
I waved off Disco's question and set the drink on the entry side table.
"Walk me through what I happened," I urged him instead.
"Well, um, so I was out for the day, doing a gig at the Liu Komen Spring-Summer show. We had a ridiculously early call time so I left the house this morning around four a.m. But worth it, you know, because there were so many A-listers in the audience, and FashHags and Splashion both did vid segments on the show. After, I went out to tea with Kitten, Péri, and Tang. Péri was being such a cob nobbler the entire time and was like ‘why are we getting tea when pizza exists?' and it's like because some of us have actual meal plans we'd like to not fuck up? And that took a few hours because Tang's been going through some shit—you probably know all about that—but when we parted ways I realized I left my favorite tote at the workout studio so I took a little detour—"
I cut him off, pinching the bridge of my nose. "When you got home, Disco. Walk me through what happened when you got home. When did you find Rocket?"
Disco nodded. "Oh, right, yeah, of course. Well I got home around five, I suppose, and oh God, Marrow, I practically tripped over his body. Then, well I lost my mind a bit, screaming and everything. I checked to see if maybe he was still alive, which of course he wasn't with that gaping hole in the back of his head and his brains all over the walls and floor like that. And then…"
When he didn't continue I prompted, "Then?"
"Then I called you. And then I called your parents, you know," Disco rushed to add. "I figured they should hear it from family rather than HabSec or the news or something.. Then the ambulance showed up. Along with HabSec."
It was nothing at all to go on. I ran my hands through my hair, thinking. "Disco, think carefully, alright? You said there was blood, and Rocket, was there anything else out of place? Anything missing from the house? Were there signs of a struggle?" I looked at the walls. There wasn't so much as a scratch on them, but Disco had said Rocket had a hole in his head. "A bullet casing, maybe?"
Before he could answer, my com buzzed and I checked it on reflex. It was a text from a local habitat news channel asking for some interview time with the bereaved family. I shook my head and looked up in time to see Disco glance at his own com.
"It's Channel Three," he said. I showed him my screen.
"VBC here."
"Ugh, can't they leave us alone for two seconds?"
I put my com on Do Not Disturb and tried to turn Disco's attention back to the matter at hand.
"I should call Mom and Dad, too. Check in. What did they say when you talked to them?"
He shrugged nervously and ran pale fingers through thick, kelp-green hair.
"They were upset, you know? Told me to keep it quiet. Said Nightingales handled their own affairs on their own terms, and they didn't want any publicity. Said they'd be headed back to Electric Blue Moon just as soon as Kline was done getting some deal signed."
I picked up my drink and frowned into it. Figures Dad wouldn't want a little speed-bump like the death of his only son to come between him and a multi-billion doubloon business merger. I felt the tears coming on again, but they weren't the sad kind. I pushed them back down with a sip of Mai Tai.
"Disco—I know this sounds ridiculous—but can you think of anyone who had it out for Rocket?"
I sure as fuck couldn't. Even my brother's rivals loved him. He was just that kind of guy. Those who crossed him felt honored to have even held his attention long enough for him to crush them. I used to tease him that he was too pretty to hate. It was no surprise when Disco shook his head, but then he hesitated.
"Except . . ."
"Except?" I prompted.
"Well, you know about the trip he took out to Gucci's pleasure cabin last weekend, right?" He glanced nervously at me and I licked the inside of my teeth with the tip of my tongue.
Gucci Merriweather was Rocket's lifelong best friend and Electric Blue Moon's playboy extraordinaire. He was also so hot he could have set every topside continent ablaze with a glance, if they hadn't already been on fire for two decades running. The boy had a voice like molten steel and strong, nimble hands that came equipped with an intimate map of every body's pleasure triggers. We were familiar—to put it lightly—and I had known about the little getaway they'd taken with a dozen or so of their closest friends, though I hadn't gone with them, for reasons Disco knew.
"Yeah, I heard something about it," I hedged, waiting to see where this was going.
"Oh that was right around the time you were tracking down Velour Jameson and her new joyfriend, wasn't it?" I nodded and he shrugged. "I couldn't go, either. I had a gig. Anyway, Rocket came back pissed. Like, really pissed. He'd gotten into it with someone there, but he wouldn't tell me who or about what. He just changed into his workout clothes and went out to run stairs."
