The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel (6 page)

He pulled into the long driveway and drove towards the small, flat house. A pick-up truck stood parked at the halfway point.
Who parked midway up a driveway
? McCallum pulled up behind it and told his car to scan it. A Dodge registered to John Raston. His house, his truck.

McCallum pounded on the front door. He watched puffs of his breath vanish while waiting for a response that didn’t come. Standard operating procedure would call for an area sweep. He should have headquarters read cuffs in the vicinity. Headquarters could tell him all kinds of things about Raston or others in the area. It would go on the dead girl’s tab. Maybe they’d charge 25 dollars. Maybe there were two other visitors from two other companies and the cross charges would tally $500.

Screw it. Standard operating procedures were just that— standard. Usual. Normal. What you should do, not what you had to do. Right?

He decided to walk around back. The grass crunched under his shoes. He found the quiet helpful, but you could have too much of a good thing. Used to the continuous low hum of the city, the silence distracted him. This wasn’t stillness, this was a pause, like the world holding its breath.

He peeked through the back window. The kitchen lights were off; the back door was locked. He didn’t see any movement in the house. There weren’t too many places to hide. He circled to the garage side of the home. That side had a human-sized door around the corner from the truck-sized one. He flicked on the light.

Empty. A big vacant space in the middle of the garage. Plenty of tools. One of those big rolling toolboxes. Lots of cans. Big, red five-gallon ones. The smell of gasoline hung in the cold air. He hadn’t smelled gas in years. You didn’t forget it, though. He stared for a spell, holding the scene in his eyes. As a picture, it was incomplete. A painting without a subject. The concrete floor reminded him of white Gesso. The canvas had been primed and ready. Or, the center had been washed over. The artist wanted to start new.

McCallum crossed the concrete to the door connecting the garage to the house. This one wasn’t locked. He walked into the kitchen.

Ah, he thought, there it is. Over the years he’d become used to his ability — his gift or his curse, depending on his task at the moment — for catching the smallest thing so incredibly out of place. He walked through the kitchen to a small maple table and picked up a brushed aluminum bracelet. He tapped the side and spoke his override. He checked the last call. It was from him.

“Well at least I know why you didn’t answer.”

Chapter Eight

Emory watched the new people across the street unload their rented truck. He didn’t consider himself nosey or gossipy, more of a mind-your-own-business type of guy. Standing in his living room, back far enough from the front picture window that the new neighbors wouldn’t see him spying, it occurred to him that it might be time for a bit of personal recalibration. He preached constant vigilance at work. Why would he be any different? If, when a nice couple buys the house across from you and your first thought ponders whether or not they’re company surveillance experts sent to watch you, it is time to re-evaluate your life.

“They have a two-year-old girl,” Lillian said from somewhere behind him. She moved about, probably picking up loose toys.

“A little buddy for Lizzie,” he replied.

“It would be nice. Except…” She paused. Emory paused as well, though he didn’t take his eyes from the two men carrying a maple headboard down a bouncing aluminum ramp.

“Except they’re snitches,” Emory said. “They’ll flag us for listening to Woody Guthrie recordings?”

“Relax, cowboy. They’re BCCA. That’s all.”

“Kongers, huh? How do you know?”

“License plates on their rental truck.”

Emory looked back and smiled. “How observant.”

“I saw them unload a bunch of kid stuff and got excited.”

“And now?”

Lillian stopped beside her husband and put a hand on his shoulder. “You know how it goes. It’s easy to be friends when you’re two. Before, you know, everything else.”

Emory tilted his head to the side and rubbed his cheek on her hand. Before everything else, he echoed in his head. Before Lizzie asked Santa for a toy she saw at her friend’s, one that he couldn’t buy. Before they went off to different schools, with different cliques and started talking in different slang. Before the myths kids spread to other kids about how the other two companies serve puppy in the cafeterias and make kids take gym naked.

“They don’t look like saboteurs,” Emory said.

“They’re probably saying the same thing about us,” Lillian replied, leaving off the last part of her thought. The funny part, that wouldn’t make Emory laugh.

* * *

McCallum gave the woman a once over as he pushed the elevator’s “7” button. Tall, a decent shape, with a bit of muscle. She seemed alert. Almost too alert. With her dark yellow hair tied back, he swore he could see her ears turn and cup with the direction of every new sound. She wouldn’t be a bad partner for someone in a couple of years.

“How long have you been a detective?” he asked.

“43 days, sir.”

“Oh don’t be doing that.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Ed. Sorry Ed.”

“Got it.”

“Any idea how the tip came in?”

“Employee, unknown, suspected his husband of straying. He convinced a friend of a friend to tap the cuff. That’s when he heard it.”

“You ran that down like a pro,” McCallum said.

“Thank you, ssss…”

The door shushed open.

McCallum lifted his wrist to his face. “Dispatch, we’re approaching the room.”

“Hey Ed. We’ll give her a look,” he heard in his ear.

They walked down the hall, past old wooden doors with frosted glass windows. McCallum had never been in this particular office building before. An old one, perfect for this kind of thing.

“We got four in the room.”

“Give me a tap.”

They stopped just before the door to room 712. The young woman— he couldn’t remember her name. He didn’t want to at the moment. No idea why. He just didn’t want to know.

“…heure est-il,” he heard. “Quelle heure est-il.”

More than one voice. More than four, he guessed. He looked at his partner. “Francophiles. You take the lead on this.”

“Are you sure?”

“This bunch won’t be coming at you using their savate.”

She nodded. She stepped in front of the door, put her hand on her bracelet and kicked the door in. McCallum followed her into the room.

The office held a mess of folding chairs and not much else. Ten men and woman sat in a circle, various ages, but trending over 50. They all popped like corn in a pan.

“Ambyr Systems Security,” the partner announced. ““If you’re an employee of Ambyr Consolidated please stand. All others remain seated.”

“There must be a mistake.” A man stood, knobby green sweater and scarf. McCallum put him at 60 plus and a grade 12 at the most.

The partner said, “Hold your personal telecommunication unit up please.”

The man lifted his left arm and showed off a dull gold band. It made no sound, with no blinking light.

“Remain seated, sir,” she said.

“What is this about?” he continued. “We’re having a therapy session.”

“I asked you to sit down.”

“I don’t see what we’re doing that requires security.”

McCallum found the man’s eyes. He locked onto them and lowed his chin a quarter inch.

The man sat.

“Come on,” the woman said. “We know there are four Ambyr employees in the room. Let’s keep this civil.”

Four members of the group rose, hefted by jerky ropes. They watched each other. And older man and woman, friends McCallum thought, and a couple, around the age when kids go off to college.

“You are in violation of our company’s common language policy.”

“No,” one of the women said. “We’re having a group session.”

“You can discuss it with a Human Asset Advocate,” the partner said. She walked up to the woman and clinked their cuffs together. The security operative’s bracelet sucked out all it needed to know about the woman who wanted to learn french. Name, age, grade, address, occupation, direct supervisor, bank account, all the things that made her her. The things — in most cases the only things — the company cared about.

Was she nice? McCallum wondered for a second. Did she have friends and family that liked her? Did she want to learn French because she had an ancient copy of Les Miserables, passed down to her from her great grandmother, that she longed to read since she was 12?

When McCallum was 12 he saw Paul Gauguin’s ‘The Yellow Christ’ for the first time. It hung at the local Ambry headquarters, the part that stayed open to everyone, to show off he always figured. The painting enthralled him. The shapes were off, but dead on. The colors were wrong, but right. He’d been standing and studying it forever when an old man came up next to him and whispered like it hurt, “‘Le Christ Jaune’. That’s the real name. That’s what the plaque should say.”

McCallum’s partner made her final data transfer and looked over at him. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to make courtesy calls to security professionals he knew in the other two companies. They weren’t under any obligation and the future favors, he decided in the moment, could not be worth the toll. He couldn’t rat the Konger or the Groupies out for learning French. Not today. It was bad enough he had to write up his fellow employees.

He walked out of the room. There must be, somewhere in the catchment, a better use of his time.

* * *

Sylvia threw a white cashmere sweater into an open steamer trunk.

“This is silly,” she called out.

“Taking a sweater north east?” the image of Marshall on the wall asked. He sat at a desk, dressed in a cranberry plaid suit, behind a large, hexagonal microphone, perched in a Y-shaped stand. “It’s probably the smartest thing you’ve done in days.”

“Exactly.” She put her hands on her hips and faced her open closet. “But what does one wear to someone else’s war?”

“I always dress for respect.”

“You know what I respect? Information. Facts. Tidbits. You can stay in your footie pajamas all day if you’ve got something interesting to share.”

“Yes. About that.” Marshall adjusted his microphone, which didn’t adjust, which Sylvia knew full well didn’t matter because it wasn’t even connected to anything. Judging by the powdery look of the steel, it hadn’t been used for its original purpose in a century. “I have yet to unmute my channels.”

“Did you check out Gavin?”

“He is what he seems. A man greasing himself to make any kind of slide. He makes deals. He’s gotten lucky as of late.”

“But no word on his backers.”

“Not yet. I’m proceeding cautiously.”

Sylvia turned to face the wall displaying Marshall’s broadcast. “Timidity?”

“Prudence. I didn’t get where I am through use of a single tool. Sometimes one needs a bulldozer, sometimes a sable brush.”

“Mmmm sable. Perhaps there is an upside to the Great Lakes in winter. So why the sudden onset of caution”

“I’ve got money in play. I’ve always got money in play. Ambyr makes sure of that. They keep the interest rates so achingly low that the only way to build any wealth is investment. I choose movies, mostly. Not exclusively. Never put your nest eggs in one basket.”

Sylvia returned to the survey of her closet.

Marshall continued, “As such, whoever may be involved in this Milkman movie could very well be involved in another project with me. Or has been. Or, more pressingly, will be in the future. We all keep our money moving.”

“Ah,” Sylvia said. “The great we.”

“Yourself included. As you make more money on the side, you’ll look for ways to nurture it; get it growing.”

“I plan to make more movies.”

“Man plans, the company laughs.”

Sylvia took a pair of black pants from the closet and held them up, stretching the waist out before her. She looked at her slightly swollen belly and tossed them to the side.

“I know you, my peach. What you really want is the ability to finance your own films. Then you don’t have to answer to people like Gavin and Gavin’s spectral financiers.”

“Perhaps,” Sylvia said. “But like you said, that’s like putting your whole breakfast in one basket.”

“Risk is relative. I’m at the point now where the kinds of losses that might devastate some investors don’t make me check twice. If I never have another success, I’ll still never have to return to my official company position.”

“What was that? Do you even remember?”

“Something to do with shoes. Who knows.”

“So you don’t mind risking two million dollars on a movie?”

“Oh, I mind everything. That’s my nature. I’m just saying, my risk is less risky than, well, most. I’m not some grade 10 putting his life insurance into a falafel joint.”

Sylvia nipped a pair of white jeans off their hanger. “The ghosts behind this project. Are they like you? Is this just another roll of the dice for them?”

Marshall leaned forward on his desk and clasped his hands in front of the mic. “The people behind this venture are gambling on something else all together. This movie is someone’s vara and you are the picador. Your job is to weaken a low grade who is, I surmise, trying to jump even lower.”

Sylvia slapped the jeans into her trunk. “The movie’s secondary? As in, might not even get seen? It’s a… what did you call it?”

“Vara,” Marshall answered. “A lance used in bullfighting.”

“Like I said. This is silly. I don’t know why I’m bothering.”

“Because,” Marshall said. “You know, and I know, they don’t know you.”

Sylvia let the left side of her lip curl, just a little, under her nose. “Then I’m going to need a cape. White. Red’s not my color.”

“Really? I think you can pull it off.”

“Be a dear and send one out to me.”

“Certainly. I know just the man for the job.”

“You always do.”