The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel (5 page)

“Disassemble,” Emory said, lips barely parting.

“Pardon me?”

“Have Olin disassemble the object after it’s done. Tell him you want to see how many he can build, then destroy. It’s so pointless. The pointlessness will…”

Emory didn’t know what else to say. If he had any more words they weren’t coming out. His face got too tight, his throat too tiny. He knew, in that moment, that he’d never fully forgive himself for saying what he’d just blurted.

“Em?”

Lillian’s voice brought him out of his memory.

“What ‘cha doing?”

He jabbed the ‘enter’ key and posted his milk reports. People all across the Niagara Falls and Buffalo catchments could now check on the freshness and quality of dairy products in their local markets.

* * *

The pub looked like any of the 1,400 or so McCallum had been in since birth. A thick swirl of beer, cologne and mold hung over an undying din of loud, yammering voices and acoustic guitars from a raggedy band in the back. The crowd averaged a good ten years younger than McCallum and stood packed tight. His parents were Ambyr Consolidated, he’d worked for Ambyr his whole life, so he had rarely been in an establishment of any kind that wasn’t part of the company. Even now, after 24 years of service forcing him into all manner of places, he still found another company’s watering-hole disconcerting. It looked like an Ambyr place, until you caught the details. Glowing signs for beers you never heard of. TV shows on the monitors that you’ve never seen. It was all familiar, yet different.

“Hey,” he heard from the middle of the bar. Effchek leaned on an elbow, hip out. She raised a brown bottle to him. McCallum felt every mistake he’d made in his adult life slap him in the back of the head. He wove through the crowd. She handed him the beer as he arrived.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Least I can do. Your money’s no good here.”

“It’s nice of you to do this.”

“For you?” She mocked. “I’m on the clock. We haven’t cleared this one yet.”

She wasn’t all business. Her tone, her head tilts, the way she winked a little with both eyes as if she could telegraph you a secret message. Which she could. When she wanted.

“Any progress?”

“Two steps back,” Effchek said. “A couple of kids noticed the vic on the way in. Nobody saw anything through the window.”

“Nothing?”

“Fog on the glass. Nobody was looking for anything. Cold night so everyone snuggled in tight.”

“Like I should be.”

Effchek smiled. “You always were a snuggler.”

They both sipped their beers.

“When did you make detective?” McCallum asked. “I hadn’t heard. Good news never seems to travel between companies.”

“Inspector, we call it. Couple of months. I should’ve sent you a note.”

“It’s not like we’re—”

“No, but you helped. You were like an inspiration. You got me

to put in for the job. You know, aim a little higher.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You couldn’t have,” she said. “Any other leads?”

“That’s too strong a word. I got an engineer, and he’s all kinds of twitchy. But I don’t like him for it.”

“You got a crystal ball?” Rosalie smacked McCallum in the shoulder. “You finally start using a psychic? I knew it.”

He couldn’t think of anything funny to say back.
Tease away
, he thought.
Put your hand on my shoulder again, if only for a second
. “No, he’s just… I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to do your job here.”

“No,” he let slip. “I mean, yeah, this is the job. I mean you can still make fun of me.”

“I will.”

They sipped their beers again. McCallum glanced around the room, not wanting to enlarge their moment. Not wanting any more super secret personal information to leak out, to get intercepted by her magical, womanly double wink powers.

“The tip came in anonymously.”

“Really?” she left her mouth open, in slight disbelief.

“I know. Hard to pull that off. We’ve got a whistle, if you know how to use it. Most people don’t.”

“So you don’t like the engineer for the kill because of the way the tip came in.”

“Pretty much,” McCallum said. “Don’t like things handed to me.”

“Yep.”

If there was more to the sentence, McCallum couldn’t make it out. Did she mean he was difficult? The right way and hard way weren’t always the same things. Did she—

“You try to trace the tip?” she continued.

“Dead end. Somebody wanted me to know that engineer was there.”

“Maybe some upstanding employee.”

“Anonymous? I’ve seen weirder things, but never weird in that way.”

Rosalie laughed. “I know. Weird in the weird way.”

The band started its next song. Everyone stopped with the first cord. Everyone knew the tune. Even McCallum. Some songs passed the company barriers like a breeze through a screen door.

“You look good,” he said.

“Thanks,” she returned. “It’s the stress. Keeps me young.”

The band’s lead singer started high and pure.

From the day of your birth

It’s bread and water here on earth

To a child of light, to a child of light

But there’ll be pie in the sky

By and by when I die

And it’ll be alright, it’ll be alright

Everyone in the pub raised their glasses and bottles and sang along.

Chapter Seven

Sylvia didn’t like driving. She liked being other places, but getting herself to wherever, in her mind, would be best left to someone else. Still, it was LA catchment. If you didn’t have a car, you were helpless. At the mercy of others. And she wasn’t ready to hire a driver. She didn’t make that much on her last film.

Her silver SAAB bounced and complained over the hard crumblecake that may have once been a road or a racetrack, before it lost its battle with the grasses and shrubs. Each thunk from around the front fender areas made her think the car was going to bend and break and leave her standing in the scrub, waiting for the coyotes to call all their friends and decide what sauce went best with a young, stupid girl.

The grass opened to a large expanse of broken concrete and asphalt. A few hundred yards beyond that, stood what? A long forgotten mausoleum? It sported three domes, with the center one twice the size of its companions. They weren’t smooth, though. One had a long hatch. The others might, too. She couldn’t tell because of the angle, and she had to drive, through all this silly ass brush.

“Marshall,” she said through clenched teeth.

Up near the building, she saw two other modern cars. Teardrops laid sideways. She never could differentiate makes and models like ops could in the movies. ‘Late model Chevy.’ Ha. It must have been easier in the old days. When cars looked like the one she saw up ahead, that massive black box on black wheels. It looked like a vault, if you overlooked the chrome trim and three-pointed star in a circle on its snout. That was the car you needed to drive up here, on this asinine hill.

“Marshall,” she said again.

She parked and walked a path of moss and white rocks— not rocks, but busted concrete she decided. The height and thickness of the plants made her uncomfortable. They stood well above her in certain places.

“
Centaurea solstitialis
,” she sneered. The pretty yellow thistles sat on battlements of hard needles. They could cut and many were cheek high. “You will love it up here, huh.” She recognized
aristida purpurea
, some very healthy
leymus condensatus
, with some fescue hanging in there, catching enough light to live. Were she still in the grounds keeping business, this would be her worst nightmare. Not that it wasn’t becoming that anyway.

At the fallen spire, she stopped. Marshall couldn’t be worth this. Chunks and rubble lay across the path, broken, but not so much that she couldn’t tell it had once been a concrete sculpture maybe four-times her height. Stone men had surrounded the base. Their lower portions still stood, atop a pointed pedestal. Their heads and shoulders ruined on the ground.

This place wasn’t safe. Not for a woman, all by herself. Probably not for anybody. Time to turn around.

Her wrist tingled. She shook it. “Yes?”

“You’re fine.” Marshall’s voice flooded her left ear. “We’ve been watching you.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m fine.”

He laughed as she shook her wrist again, telling the bracelet to end the call. She jumped the spire and continued on towards the main structure.

Marshall St. Claire didn’t like to meet indoors. At first, Sylvia thought he had an acceptable case of paranoia. His deals were, largely, opportunistic. After a few years, she concluded he simply found more comfort outside, watching people stroll, cars roll, birds, dogs and clouds pass him by. He watched everything as if submerged in a fully holistic movie.

Not that he was an outdoorsman in any sense other than being physically outdoors. Plum-pudding round, forever dressed in bespoke suits, with vests and ascots, he seemed to want to play the part of an old, odd uncle dandy in whatever film it was that he watched all around him all the time.

Today, he’d chosen a dark cinnamon cloth suitable to the season. Thirty — maybe forty — tiny bright buttons up the front of the vest, with more on the jacket, front and sleeves. Many minute buttons would soon be the new thing, in Milan or New York, she knew. She didn’t know if he picked up on trends early, or drove them.

He sat on a bench, a top—

“What is that?” Sylvia said.

“What?” Marshall appeared astonished.

“Get up,” she ordered.

He lifted his formidable butt off the green planks. “Is the paint wet?”

Sylvia pointed at the cushion on the bench, thick, quilted, cut from the same fabric of his suit.

“It’s a walking suit, dear.” He sat back down. “With accoutrement,” he added in a poor French accent.

“That means you only brought one.”

“I’ll give you the name of my tailor.” Marshall motioned to the open bench space next to him. “Besides, your tight young tush should have no trouble.”

Sylvia plopped down and tossed her head back far enough to see the structure behind her. “What is this place?”

“Griffith Observatory. I’m embarrassed for you having to ask.”

“Why should I know a piece of junk so desperate the company didn’t even repurpose it?”

“Rebel Without a Cause? Terminator?”

“Old movies I should’ve seen. I’m sorry. Life’s short.”

“Ha,” Marshall belted out. “Right you are. I’m trying to help preserve it. The property is Ambyr, but hobbyists are making a go at it.”

“You come here for sex?”

“Not that kind of hobbyists, dear.” He huffed. “Good God. I wouldn’t call you to a brothel.”

“You would.”

“Yes. I would. I didn’t in this case, however. These hobbyists are astronomers.”

“Fortune tellers?”

“Agh,” he belched. “Weren’t you, once upon a time, a woman of science?”

“I learned about photosynthesis. What else do you want from me?”

“Astronomers study the stars. They monitor the heavens, plotting where we are in the universe, along with everything else.”

“The point being?”

Marshall bowed his head, gripped in a sadness so heavy it had to be fake.

“I’m in trouble,” Sylvia said.

“You’re telling me.”

“No, Marshall. True trouble. I think I’ve bitten off more than I can put away for the winter.”

“That is unimaginable. You devour any challenge.”

“This may be my Waterloo.”

“Agh!” he belched again. “Napoleonic Wars you know, the difference between astronomers and astrologers eludes you. Did you hire an actor to play you at school?”

“What a great idea,” Sylvia said. “If I had thought of it, I would’ve hired someone to visit you out here in the rubble. I’m not jerking you around. Listen.”

“Of course.” Marshall put one hand on each of his knees and straightened his back. “Proceed.”

“I’ve taken on a contract for a documentary fully funded with private money.”

“Oh.” Marshall kept his mouth pulled into a circle. He looked off to the right, like he might want to slowly sidle away.

“I know. They want me to track down the Milkman. Some urban legend—”

“I’m familiar with him, or her as the case may be. My familiarity lacks that level of intimacy.”

“You’ve heard of the Milkman?”

“I have a fondness for people that flout the company.”

“Ambyr lets him exist. Lets him report on the viability of its products.”

“It would seem so.”

“If I do this film and raise his profile, am I going to get checked? Is this guy going to get checked?”

“I don’t know. You think the company doesn’t mind at his current level of nuisance. They will if he gets louder.”

“And there’s the money. Can it really be all private? Have you ever done a deal like that?”

“Never. I’ve come close, but if you can actually raise enough money from someone’s personal savings to fund a film, the company suddenly decides it’s a good idea and wants in.”

“The funding comes from outside, doesn’t it.” Sylvia flopped herself into a slump, arms to knees, hair hanging straight, hiding her face in a cascade of black. “One of the other companies wants to give Ambyr a tweak. I’m going to rake in huge trouble for what is it? Diversification of species? Is that the policy? Next time you see me, I’ll be pruning rose bushes around some grade 10’s pool house. Fuck it. I knew it. I freakin’ say ‘yes’ to my impulses far too frequently, lately. Far and away.” She sat up and rubbed small circles on her belly.

“I see why you called.” Marshall patted Sylvia’s knee. “I wish you would have called earlier. Still, now is fine.”

“This is bugger shit.”

“Whatever. You’re a bit wrong around the edges. Ambyr, India Group and BCCA/Hong Kong do, in fact, lob things at each other, but it’s usually beachballs, nothing with explosives or shrapnel. They’d never use a film. Do you know why I love film so much? This is not rhetorical.”

Sylvia said, “It helps you escape the sad little world you inhabit.”

“Wrong. Or, rather, not the answer for which I was searching. Movies are one of the few inter-commercial vehicles left to us. Despite it being highly contrary to company policy, they still find their way across channels. Seen any good IG films this year?”

“Several.”

“Despite potential fines and penalties.”

“No one cares.”

“They would if the message was anti-corporate. BCCA or IG can’t fund a film that flicks a middle finger at one corporation, without having to flick the finger at them all.”

Sylvia turned to Marshall with a rippled sneer across her brow and down her nose and around her mouth.

“Your problem, my dear, is actually much worse. I’ll wager some low grade wants to get over on some other low grade, and you and your Milkman shall be used to do it. You’ve been drafted into an internal war.”

Sylvia wanted to throw up for the fourth time that day.

* * *

Emory transferred his last message from John Raston to his wall. He watched the enormous fork plunge into Niagara Falls, like it were a slice of watery birthday cake. Lizzie toddled back and forth across the living room floor. She seemed to have to aim or project, just walking, in her arrhythmic, verge of falling kind of way. She had watched the Falls for a bit, then grew bored.

“What are you doing?” Lillian stood in the space between the kitchen and living room, shoulder against wall, arms crossed.

“It’s a cryptogram,” Emory said.

“That wasn’t my question.”

“I’m trying to decode it.”

“If you’re doing it because you like puzzles, fine. I’ve got no problem with that. But you don’t. You’re not a puzzle person.”

“Sure I am.”

“Jesus, Em. The ops questioned you.”

“That was about the murder.”

“They sent you there. Somebody wanted you there, watching. Don’t you get it?”

“No,” Emory said. “I don’t get it. I don’t get why they didn’t just call me, or send mail. There’s easier ways to get me a message than, you know, by trying to send me a message.”

“They want you to stop on your own,” Lillian said.

“And you? Do you want me to stop?”

Lillian bowed her head and twisted her left foot into the carpet.

“No one else,” Emory said. “Who’s going to step up and do this?”

“It’s not just you.”

“I’m the one posting.”

“It’s not just you you’re putting at risk.” Lillian raised her head. “Me. The baby. What are you going to do if the company decides they had enough? What are you — no, what are
we
— going to do if they fire your ass?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You ready to go off line? With a baby? No cuff, no doctors, no money?”

“The company wouldn’t do that. They’ve got too much invested in us.”

“Can I see your metrics?” Lillian asked. “What is the Milkman costing the company? You can’t compare what they’ve put into us if you don’t have that number.”

“It’s nothing,” Emory said. “I’m costing them very little. Once in a while we find milk that sat too long.”

“Then why bother? If you don’t find much wrong with the milk, why risk our lives?”

Emory watched Lizzie plop down and push around a small, yellow tractor that made beeps and flashed tiny lights.

“There’s something there.” Emory pointed to the wall. “John wanted me to know something, but not the company. That’s why he didn’t use voice or words. He sent me a message.”

“Lots of people sending you messages, Em. Any of them getting through?”

Emory watched roaring water fall.

* * *

McCallum drove north, outside of the Buffalo catchment, into that weird area where the Niagara Falls and Lockport catchments officially overlapped and were unofficially overlooked. Orchards, dairies, farms, all outside his usual haunts. The land, from the road out, belonged to Ambyr Consolidated, so he didn’t have worries about jurisdiction or even unfamiliarity. He worried about the cost. How many watts was the car burning? How many hours was he burning? His chief told him to go. No one ignores a call from security. McCallum agreed, he just didn’t want it on the Vasquez tab.