It Sometimes Snows In May: A B.E.A.N. Police Novella (5 page)

Before Ryles can react, Aalin pulls an auto-pistol on her, and two red dots dance around her forehead like fireflies.

“Whoa.” Ryles smirks. “You damn government net-paper pushers are trying to hustle me? Do you know who the buyer is?”

“For that kind of money there’s only one place,” Ryles says. Aalin and Elisa look to each other. “That’s right.”

“You think you two can just stroll into the bazaar?” Ryles asks. “I know people with new money can do some stupid things, but don’t make this one of them?”

“Oh no. You’re going to take care of the formalities,” Elisa says. Elisa turns to see the look of apprehension on Wellington’s face.

“Thank you for your time,” Aalin waves Wellington away with his un-bandaged hand. Wellington hesitates and meets Elisa’s eyes.

“It’s all right, I’ll ring you tomorrow,” Elisa says.

Wellington clutches his briefcase, and then rises. He nods approvingly at Ryles, and then walks around the table toward the front door. When Wellington passes Ryles, she grabs him tightly against her bosom, and then presses the nose of her drawn pistol to his temple. Aalin holds out his hand un-bandaged hand toward Ryles with even calm across his face.

Wondering how I got past your security with this, huh? Well, I’d ask whoever did your security,” Ryles says to Elisa.

Elisa glares at Aalin. Ryles grins and then eyes Aalin, Elisa, and the two shadows on the second-story landing picked up by her sunglasses’ heads-up-display.

“Please leave Wellington out of this. He has a wife and child to go home to,” Elisa says.

“How big of you. Here I am just trying not to get shot at by the two jokers on the second floor. How selfish of me,” Ryles says. Elisa grits her teeth.

The front door slides open once Ryles steps on the pad in front of it. She steps backwards through the door with Wellington, and disappears.

Three months later, at East Ispari Hospital, a nurse walks through an intensive care ward with a food cart. As she passes two other nurse, one male nurse teases her. “Time for your dinner date already, Lisa?”

“Be nice Laban,” Lisa says.

“Yeah, yeah. I know...The dead can still hear you. At least you know why he never calls,” Laban says.

Both nurses crack up laughing as Lisa enters a room two doors from the nurses’ station. As she’s done for the last three months, she immediately goes to the curtains and draws them closed.

“Hello John.” Lisa smiles at the withered black man laying in the bed. “You missed the fireworks last night. They were beautiful.”

She checks the monitors adjoining his bed for heart rate, blood pressure, and other vitals. They are below normal, but steady, as always. Lisa looks over the man older than his stats indicates, his cuts and bruises healed, but with scars remaining. “Well, tonight, we are going to watch
Independence Day
. It’s a classic. I know we normally watch Ispari Vice on Fridays, but I’m feeling patriotic.” Lisa giggles. The man remains motionless, eyes shut, a array of nodes, tubes, and nanotechnology keeping him alive. “I think you’ll like it. You look like a fighter, and this movie is about fighting.”

An hour later Lisa locks her gaze to the display watching antique
fighter jets,
as they used to be called, take out enemy space ships, when her PDA chimes. Lisa looks at the caller id, exhales, and takes the call as she walks out of the room.

              Moments later the heart rate display ripple to live with beeps and violently jagged topography. Soon the man’s closed eyelids begin to pulse. When Lisa returns to the room, she drop her PDA and stumbles backwards a step once she sees the man on the bed.

             
The next morning Morefishco trails Lisa into the man’s hospital room. The man is sitting upright in the center of the bed wearing a patient smock. He looks up to his visitors with apprehension.

              “Good morning John.” Lisa forces a smile. “This is Ispari State Guard Morefishco.

              Zota looks to Morefishco in resignation. “She wasn’t kidding when she said I’d been in a coma, in Ispari, for the last three months?”

              “I’m afraid so.” Morefishco studied the man's face.

              “How did I get here?” Zota asks.

              “What’s the last thing you remember, before you woke up?”

              “A red sports car.” Zota narrows his eyes. “I was driving…”

              “What else?” Morefishco can see the man straining. “Take your time.”

              “There was an explosion…” He places a hand on his temple. “Spinning. Everything started spinning.”

              “He needs to rest.” Lisa says to Morefishco, but is still staring at the man. Lisa walks towards him and then lays him back down on to the bed.

              “That’s all I remember,” he says.

              Morefishco moves to the bed besides the man. “Can you give me just a couple more minutes with him?”

              Lisa is about to protest when she get a ping on her PDA, and frowns. “Make sure it’s just a couple of minutes. I’ll be right back.” Lisa smiles at the man, who returns a weak smile and a half wave.

              “It’s okay. It looks like I’m in good hands,” The man says.

The man spies the auto-pistol in Morefishco’s holster. Morefishco waits until Lisa leaves and the door slides and hisses shut behind her.

              “She keeps calling me John because neither of us know who the hell I am. She called you when the hospital couldn’t find anything, since my identity chip is missing,” he says.

              “Your chip was gone when we found you. Nice and clean cut too. You had no other ID on you. The strangest thing is, no one has reported you missing, or come looking for you since.”

              The man runs his finger over a hairline scar on his forearm. “Since? Since what?”

              “Three months ago,
excreta
body bandits attacked a hover-shuttle by the DMZ.” Morefischo studies the man’s facial response.

              “What does that have to do with me?” The man asks. His face twists in confusion.

              “We found you on ice in a body box,” Morefishco says.

              “A what?”

              “A refrigeration unit for transporting large amounts of organs.” Morefishco smiled at the man. “You’re one lucky son of a gun.” The man looked up with fierce eyes. “I know it doesn’t look that way from where you’re sitting. But trust me on this one. I was there.”

Running his hand through his hair and then feeling his naps with the palms of his hands, the man gasps.

“I’m sure this is a lot to take in, but we need to know who you are, and why you were smuggled in a hover-shuttle,” Morefishco says.

“I..I don’t know. Still trying to wrap my head around this whole thing.” he stops, then scratches his head. “I don’t remember anything before the drive. Or after.” The man drops his head between his hands.

Morefishco waves until he gets Lisa’s attention, as she stare at the man from outside the room. Morefishco turns back to the man. “Well, someone wanted you badly enough. Body bandits willing and able to take that kind of risk aren’t cheap. That means someone gonna come looking for you sooner or later.” Morefishco turns to Lisa. “This room is gonna be on lockdown until further notice.”

“Lock down?” Lisa asks.

“There'll be a guard outside his room at all times. No one besides you and his primary doctor comes in here without my say so,” Morefishco says.

“I don’t think we have to go that far. Your alarming John," Lisa says.

“John?” Morefishco’s looks at Lisa, and then at the man, who shrugs in resignation. “Sure.”

“Besides, no one knows he’s here but us,” Lisa says.

“I’m about to change that," Morefishco says.

Several night later Ryles sits against the headboard of a hotel room bed. She wears her hair short and curly, from a styling kit she picked up at a convenience store a block away from the hotel. Her Big, gold, door-knocker earrings, swing and shine in the lowlight of the room. A blue light glows on the end of each earring. The in-room display suspended above the foot of the bed blares out world news. The red sundress she’s in shows the scars on her legs barely noticeable under her expensive, but hurriedly applied, makeup. Ryles nods and continues her seemly one-sided conversation.

“I’m sure they haven’t forgotten about me. This ware is something they want more than money. I had to disappear when things went south with the client.”

Ryles nods a couple of times before continuing. “If you’re sure they’re going for the termination clause, then I guess I’d better come up with a plan B.”

Ryles disconnects her call with a swipe of her right earring. She looks up to the live news report. “Increase media volume twenty percent,” Ryles commands.

“Male, black, mid-thirties...Ispari State Guard would like anyone with any information on a John Doe, in his mid thirties, to contact them at @TIPO-ISG or
[email protected]”

Ryles strains to study the man on the display with bushy hair and a full mustache and beard. It takes her about ten seconds before she recognizes him. “Zota.” She scrambles to her feet and scurries up to the display until she’s half a meter in front of it. “I can’t believe it. You son-of-a-bitch. You’re alive! My payday is alive, and I better get my ass in gear to claim it, before someone else beats me to it.”

Ryles swipes her right earring again, and initiates an outgoing call. She’s pacing back and forth on the memory mattress, pulling down her dress and smoothing it out. The call connects.

“
Ispari State Guard, I can I help you?
” a woman asks.

“Thank you Jee-sus,” Ryles says.

“
Ma’am?
”

“You found him! You’ve found my brother,” Ryles says. “I just saw the news broadcast about the Joe Doe.”

“
You’ll need to come down to our headquarters, and ask for Guard Morefishco. Let me give you the address…
”

The next morning, a black man, in his sixties knocks at a motel room door. Ryles answers it wearing a denim skirt, a snug and revealing blouse, and three-inch, open-toe high heels. Her face is made up heavy to enhance what nature and life had laid on her. She even managed a manicure and pedicure.

Ryles lets in a man wearing a work overalls with
James
embroidered over one of the breast pocket, and a toolbox in his left hand.

“What took you so long?” Ryles asks. “The
guardies
are gonna be expecting me this morning. You get everything?”

James plops his toolbox on the desk across from the bed. He opens it up, and pulls out net-paper of various sizes, ID cards, flash chips. “Hey queenie, you just can’t pick these up at your local office supply store.” He pulls up an ID card with thumb and retinal,  biometric output panes. “New state ID for Maria Brown, ground vehicle license, passport. I also set up financial records, relational history, back ten years...including your wedding to Mister Brown. And, since you’re one of my favorite, if not best looking, customer’s, I threw in wedding images, and courtship e-mails…”

“Damn.” Ryles blushed. “How well will it hold up?”

“It’ll be fine...as long as they don’t dig deeper than Misses and Mister Brown. The fake friends are hologram thin, so if some
guardie
with a hard-on goes hunting for your maid-of-honor, you may have some explaining to do. Unless you want to go for broke and get some cyber-actors?”