Torn From On High: Free City Book 2 (The Free City Series) (9 page)

21. News Item:
Elderly gent attacked in apartment

Dateline: 7th of September,
2446; Free City, Earth

Free
City Police are at a loss to explain the brutal murder of a reclusive
ninety-seven year-old retired spacecraft crewman at his apartment in the
tranquil Eire District of the fair city.

Neighbors
summoned the police late last night to check on a violent altercation of some
sort in the man's apartment. When the officers entered the residence they
discovered two bodies, those of the victim and the assailant.

Coroner's
Officials removed both corpses early this morning and the Inquisitor's Office
has sealed the crime scene pending further investigation.

Neither
a motive for the unprecedented attack nor the names of the dead have been
released by investigators. Building tenants revealed that the anonymous elderly
gentleman kept to himself and may have confronted a burglar rummaging around in
the apartment. Speculation suggests that the old man managed to mortally wound
his attacker before succumbing himself.

The
two deaths mark only the fourth and fifth homicides in the staid Eire District
this year.

“What the
HELL happened to Slime?” Bowie slammed his fist on the bar, which caused the
accumulation of empty shot glasses to clatter and quake.

The
bartender warily watched the befouled threesome from the other end of the bar.

Wolfe
nodded, “How does a badass roughneck like Slime get killed by a spindly old
geezer?”

Rollo
stared drunkenly at the two big Goons.

“I
want to know everything that you two idiots found out in Free City. Wolfie, you
saw the bodies in the morgue;” Bowie absent-mindedly picked at a soiled napkin,
“what do you think happened?”

“Ah;
let me see,” Wolfe rubbed his bloodshot eyes as he thought, “the old man had a
cut on his chin and a lot of bruises. Slime had a big black burn on his chest.”

“There's
something's strange about all of this;” Bowie glowered, “it sounds like Slime
got hit with a Stunner. Why would the old man have a police weapon?”

Wolfe
shrugged.

Bowie
stared at the bartender and tapped his finger several times on the bar. The
barman nodded nervously and quickly brought over another round for the
well-oiled trio.

“Rollo,
what happened to the old man's body?” the head Goon asked.

“They
buried him at Old Saint Mary's,” Rollo grinned, “I watched the whole thing with
a couple of the grave diggers.”

“What
about Slime?” Wolfe wondered as he downed his drink “Nobody's claimed his
body.”

“Leave
him to rot at the morgue!” Bowie fumed. “It's what he deserves for getting
killed by an old walking bag of bones!”

“I
guess that you’re right,” Wolfe said. “Well;” he patted at the bulge underneath
his black jacket, “I’ve got a job to do.” He grabbed Rollo’s collar as he stood
up, “Come on dumby; you’re in on this one.”

• • •

He
seemed to be coming around, Mixion noted.

Seamus's
craggy old face slowly rippled as he lay stretched out on the cot in the CRAMP
situation room.

Jasper
and the Lieutenant had hauled the unconscious gent from the Free City Morgue to
the secret workroom two days ago packed gently away in a stout shipping crate
conspicuously marked 'FRAGILE! -- Cytoplasm Scanning Apparatus -- THIS SIDE
UP!'

As his
alter ego, Biology Professor Malcolm Evans, Zmuda planned to make a big show of
sending the now empty crate away in a few days, claiming that the supposed
scanner that it contained was not up to par.

Seamus's
eyes fluttered and finally opened.

He
gasped a bit and stared at the woman.

“Where...where
am I?”

“Safe,
I assure you,” she smiled.

He
nodded sleepily.

Nearly
an hour later, Mixion had gotten the old spaceman to sit up on the edge of the
cot. He clutched a water-filled mug with a spill-proof lid that he sampled
every few minutes.

“How
long has it been, my dear?”

“Oh,
let's see;” she started, “you were attacked in the apartment about a week ago.
We left you in conspicuous view at the Morgue for a day on a specially heated
gurney behind the big windows in one of the Examining Rooms. Jasper kept a
close watch over you during that ghoulish exhibition.”

Seamus
frowned, “Why did you do that, child?”

“It
wasn't my idea, but it makes sense,” she told him. “We are trying to track down
whoever it is that sent the thug to rough you up. Inspector Trop still thinks
that a girl friend or ex-wife may show up to claim the body of the dead punk.
Having your old carcass out in plain sight adds to the fiction of your death
that we planted in the news. Another possibility is that a colleague of the
mysterious dead burglar was one of the forty-seven people who happened to
stroll by the Examining Room while you were there. He or she would probably
report back that you were, in fact, dead.”

The
old man followed along with a look of consternation.

“Ryo
Trop and a few plainclothes Inspectors attended a funeral where an empty casket
supposedly containing your remains was buried at the Old Saint Mary's
Cemetery.” She grinned mischievously, “He said that it was quite touching.”

“That
sounds like much more of an honor than an old curmudgeon like me deserves.”

Seamus
sipped some water, “What happens now?”

She
dithered at the question, “I don't know. You can stay here for a little while.
We can't risk settling you elsewhere in Free City or really anywhere in
neighboring EurAfrica for fear that someone might spot you. Eventually, we'll
have to move you to a safe location.”

“I
suppose you're right,” he sighed.

• • •

Wolfe
was already regretting taking Rollo along on such an important job. It was true
that he was one of the Goons now but he was just
so
damn stupid.

“Come
on, you idiot!” the heavyset punk barked.

They
bumped their way down the crowded New Roman sidewalk towards the nightclub.

“What's
the hurry, Wolfie?”

The
big man spun around and stared angrily at the underling, “If we pull this off
then we'll split up ten thousand Units.”

Rollo
grinned doltishly, “Oh yeah.”

The
two punks pushed past a noisy group of Enlightenment Crusaders clustered around
the entrance to the EurAfrican Imperial Bank.

“Wolfie?
I got one question.”

“What
now?” he growled impatiently.

“Who
is this guy that we're supposed to kill?”

Wolfe
perfunctorily pointed to the
Hissing Serpent
nightclub. “I don't know
who he is or what he looks like.”

Rollo
stared dimly at his husky cohort, “How the hell are we gonna kill him if we
don't know who he is?”

“A
Liaison Agent named Macaroni or Macgillicutty, something like that, is going to
introduce us to a spy from Free City.”

“Why?”

“It
was set up weeks ago by the military, you idiot. Agent Macaroni thinks we have
some new information to pass along to the Free City busybodies.”

Rollo
seemed to barely comprehend what was about to happen, “We gonna kill
everybody?”

A
menacing sneer darted across Wolfe's face, “We just need to get the spy. Anyone
who dies after that counts as good luck.”

• • •

As she
often did late in the day on Mondays, Keira Norton was frittering away a few
stray hours of the workweek by thumbing through the Free City Liaison Office
Message Postings.

The
hundred or so notations and intra-agency requests represented a fascinating
view of what was transpiring just beyond the hubbub and noise of everyday life
in Free City and the Fiefdoms.

The
habit had started a little over a year ago when Keira had come upon an appeal
in the Message Postings by the Free City Consular in Dublin for some help in
securing a few new household staff members. The work had been easy and had, by
lucky chance, led to an exciting months-long adventure dashing across the Solar
System with the highly esteemed Inspector Ryo Trop in search of pirates and
stolen antimatter.

Keira
grinned as she recalled that she had met Lev Fesai during that escapade.

Most
of today's listings were routine: a request for a Liaison Agent to help settle
a group of fifteen new arrivals to Free City from IndoPacifica, a query about
how to negotiate prices for bulk tea leaves in East Africa and a plea for a
guest lecturer in International Affairs at the University of Buenos Aires.

But
Item 87 had caught her attention for some reason. An unnamed department at Free
City University was seeking help to discreetly relocate a mysterious elderly
gentleman. Details were maddeningly missing from the notice. Was it perhaps an
old professor who'd gone embarrassingly bonkers and now had to be quietly shuffled
away to avoid a scandal? Or was it something else?

She
reread the notice several times, trying in vain to parse more meaning than was
possible from the dozen and a half words.

Finally
on a whim, Keira entered her Liaison Office ID number at the bottom of the
notice and pressed 'Enter.' She had now officially expressed a desire to take
on Item 87 in the current Free City Liaison Office Message Postings.

• • •

“I'm
sorry to say that I don't care much for this particular city,” Ryo shook his
head in disdain.

“Really?”
The Lieutenant was taken aback by the declaration, “I rather like New Rome.”

The
two old friends strolled together towards a rather seedy looking nightspot
called
The Hissing Serpent
.

“New
Rome seems too self-absorbed and mean-spirited compared to the generally jovial
atmosphere of Free City.”

“I
guess that much is true,” Zmuda laughed, “at least it's better than Dublin or
Tunis.”

“What's
wrong with Dublin?” Ryo chortled.

“Nothing,
nothing,” Zmuda smiled.

The
cop and the spy made their way into the garish drinking establishment.

• • •

“Hi,
sugar. How's the deciphering going?” Jasper leaned down and kissed Mixion's
cheek as she labored away with the latest message from Tunis.

She
flashed a huge grin at the affectionate greeting.

The
two junior spies had slowly become much more than mere coworkers.

Mixion
glanced down at the several sheets of paper spread out on the desk, “I'm just
starting, but it looks like it should be an easy decryption.”

He
stared over her shoulders as she worked.

“Well;
that's odd,” Mixion tapped at the character that she'd just written.

“An
exclamation point?” Jasper noted.

“Yes.
Our guy in Tunis has never used one before.” She added a seven and a one to the
message, “Jasp; take a look in the appendix of the Morse Code book and find out
if exclamation points have any special meanings.”

He
nodded pleasantly.

She
scribed out several more characters while the big man thumbed through the
reference.

“Big
surprise,” he finally chortled, “exclamation means urgent.”

“Mmm,”
Mixion finished up with the decoding. “OK; I have !719RNZTLLLIK.”

Jasper
tilted his head as he studied the string of numbers and letters, “I guess it is
important, whatever it is.”

“Nothing
pops out,” she noted. “Perhaps it's reversed. He's been doing that a lot
lately.”

“That
makes sense,” Jasper noted, “exclamation points usually go at the end of
sentences.”

She
inverted the string, which yielded 'KILLLTZNR917!'

Jasper
pointed to the characters, “Three 'Ls?' That's strange.”

“WAIT!”
Mixion held up her hand to stop him.

She
hastily wrote out 'KILL-LT-Z'

“Kill
Lieutenant Z? 'Z'
must
mean Zmuda.”

Mixion
quivered as she continued, “N-R? New Rome?”

“AH,
CRIPES!” Jasper shouted. “9-17 is today!”

“Kill
Lieutenant Zmuda, New Rome 9-17!” She dropped the pencil and stared up at him,
“We've got to do something!”

The
burly Australian was uncharacteristically silent.

“What
about his communication device?” Jasper finally asked.

The
woman slid open the desk drawer with a look of utter horror, “It's here! The
boss forgot to take it with him.”

“OK;
he's with Ryo Trop, right?”

Mixion
nodded.

“Let's
just get a hold of him.”

She
hurriedly tapped out his number.

'Delivery
denied at New Roman Message Nexus -- Issuer of Block: UNAVAILABLE,'
flashed on the communication
screen.

Mixion
leapt to her feet, “WHO ELSE IS IN NEW ROME?”

Jasper
studied the short roster of trusted operatives, “It doesn't look good...”

“Damn
it!” She stared at the list of names, “What about her?”

“No;”
Jasper shook his head in dread, “the New Roman police locked her up last night
for drunk and disorderly conduct. She’ll be in jail until next week.”

Mixion
nervously dug her nails into Jasper's arm as she studied the other names.

“There!
Contact this guy!”

Jasper
quickly tapped out an imperative message to the improbable savior, “Hopefully
it will work, he's not a regular.”