hear the answer.
“How’s DJ?” I asked from the floor.
Samuels didn’t take his eyes off the jar. “She’ll be fine; they’re releasing her this afternoon. Now what is it?”
I lay there staring and didn’t speak, I’m not even sure why.
Parry strode into my office. A moment later he came out again, walked to the jar and draped a black cloth over it. Then he looked up at Adam. “It’s soul-lution,” he said as if it were an answer at all.
The inspector shook his head clear of Parry’s vague response and directed his question at me. “What is it?”
My breathing and pulse had at last reached resting rate. I held up a hand in request of assistance. Adam walked toward me, but Parry made a point of being the one to help me up. After which he looked my tattered body and wardrobe up and down in careful examination. “Are you OK?”
I gave him the biggest smile I could manage, which wasn’t much. “I’ll be OK, and thank you Parry.”
Parry’s smile didn’t conceal his concern.
“Jazz?” Adams said, dragging the word out long in question form.
Parry turned on his heel. “Officer Samuels, Jazz has just been through a terrible ordeal and now needs to rest. You can make an appointment to see her, after she’s recovered.”
I rubbed my face. Parry was a good secretary, but made an overprotective mother. “I’m fine Parry. Adam, let me sit down and I’ll try to explain.”
I walked to my office and Parry followed close behind. He stopped at the threshold and pressed a hand to the jamb, and, with the other hand on his hip, leaned in the doorway. Samuels stood behind him as he now blocked the doorway. “Jazz, I really don’t think you’re in the right frame of mind to be speaking to a duly sworn enforcement officer of the peoples conduct codes.” Parry emphasized the conduct codes both in tone and in facial expression.
Parry barely reached five foot four. Samuels’ six foot frame loomed over him in the doorway, but cops didn’t intimate my secretary. Not because he was in any way tough, because he most certainly was not, but because he simply didn’t respect authority; especially inspector Samuels’.
“I’m fine Parry, thank you. Let the inspector in, oh, and bring me some water…a lot of water.”
“Parry dropped the hand but didn’t move. “Do you want tea?”
He was stalling, and my patience was beginning to fray. “No, just water thank you.”
“Do you want lemon in it?”
I sighed. “No, just water Parry.”
“How about something to eat?”
If I raised my voice he’d only raise his and I didn’t need an argument, I did need this to be over. The pain had superseded my hunger, but I was nearing complete exhaustion. So I lowered my voice to a near whisper, tapping a fingertip on the top of my desk, which was probably one of the last wooden desks in existence. “Just-bring-me-a-pitcher-of-water-please.”
Parry’s lips puckered out. “Fine.” He spun and stomped down the hall. Adam had to step back to keep Parry from running into him, which, quite frankly, Parry should have been thankful for.
As Samuels entered he pointed a thumb at Parry’s back and raised his eyebrows in question.
I nodded. “He a good secretary, I have to allow him his eccentricities.”
Samuels sat, covered his mouth, and I thought I heard him cough out a, “Better be.” Parry sometimes lost the inspector’s messages, or put him on hold for hours at a time, and, for some reason, the inspector chose to take it personally.
Samuels leaned back in the spindled armchair. “All right Jazz, what is it this time?”
“Cranks.”
Samuels’ eyebrows rose and his head wove side to side. “Cranks?”
He wasn’t going to make this easy on me. I was too tired to give him a hard time, besides, he was the only enforcer officer that didn’t hate me. I sat up straighter to help keep myself awake, and opened my mouth, but before I uttered a word, Parry swept in the office with a glass and a pitcher. We stared awkwardly as he took his time setting down a coaster, then the glass, and then filled it with water from the pitcher. When he finally finished he set the pitcher down beside the glass.
As soon as he finished I grabbed the pitcher, turned it sideways to my mouth, and took a long, gasping drink. Water ran over my face and dripped in my lap and on the floor.
Parry glared as I set the half-empty pitcher on the desk, then wiped my mouth on my fifthly, torn, and bloodstained sleeve. “Oh that’s nice. Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to eat?”
I sighed and looked up at him over my brow. “I’m sure, thank you Parry.”
“You’re welcome,” he said as he settled into the chair beside the inspector. His eyes widened and he clasped his hands together in anticipation. “So, what the heck happened?”
I pointed at the door. “Out, Parry.”
A look of shock flashed onto his face, and then his features slid into a pout. “Oh fine, I’ll just go and answer the phones that aren’t ringing, schedule the appointments we don’t have, and then deposit the credits we didn’t collect.”
“Good, thank you,” I said as sarcastically as I could.
As soon as Parry walked out, Samuels asked again, “Cranks?”
I held up my ‘one minute’ finger and called through the door. “Now Parry, and close the door.”
“Fine,” Parry said, sounding more hurt than I’m sure he was. He came off the wall where he’d been leaning and closed the door harder than necessary.
I leaned an elbow on the desk and rested my head in a hand, my eyelids felt impossibly heavy. “I ran into a squadron of Cranks on my way back from Feyitshire and they did what cranks do, opened fire.”
I was surprised that Samuels didn’t pull out that note-vid of his and start recording my every word. “They fired first…”
I blinked my eyes back open. “Is that a question or a statement?”
“Question.”
“Yes, they fired first, they always do.”
“And they chased you all the way back to Nittsburg?”
I assumed that was a question as well. “Ship was damaged by an unprovoked Crank firefight. I crash-landed in Clowntown. DJ picked me up, but the Cranks must have seen me go down and sent a squadron after me; they chased us back to Nittsburg, and they blew up the street.”
“Cranks stay out of the border cities, they wouldn’t dare take a shot inside the line,” he said, emphasizing the pronoun with a mocking rolling of his head.
I didn’t need the agg. “Believe what you want, but that’s what happened. Ask the witnesses.”
“We did, and they collaborated your story, but I wanted to hear you say it.”
My head snapped off my hand and my eyebrows V’d on my forehead. “You had witnesses but ran me through all that crap anyway? You jerk.”
Samuels smiled slyly and held up a hand. “Whoa, easy Cole, I didn’t know until I radioed in after you blacked out. If anyone’s a jerk it’s officer Smitty.”
My high-backed leather chair squeaked as I sunk into it. “Smitty’s not a jerk, he’s a total ass.”
I caught Samuels’ smile before he managed to stifle it. “That may be.”
“No, he is. And he’s a bigot.”
Samuels raised his eyebrows and hit me with his stylized close-mouthed half smile. “You do make it easy. Maybe if you didn’t dress in the whole gypsies, tramps, and thieves ensemble you wouldn’t catch such a hard time.”
“I am a gypsy, whether I dress like one or not. And there’s nothing wrong with being a gypsy.”
“You don’t look like a gypsy, and I’d love to ask all those questions about your past I know you’ll never answer, but the question of the moment is what did you do to make the cranks so angry that they’d risk an open fight inside of Nittsburg?”
I didn’t even try to hide my smile. “Why, what ever do you mean officer?”
Samuels rolled his eyes in mock surprise. We sat a moment in silence, a
nd I felt another wave of weariness wash over me. I really wanted to lay down on the couch in reception and take a good, long nap, but Samuels was waiting. “It was Toerang.”
As Samuels leaned forward his eyes widened. “The Kriscrossa? Here? Man, they must hate you bad.”
I shrugged. “What can I say, the bad guys hate me.”
“Good and bad are subjective, Cole.”
“Not to me,” I said, then another long silence passed and I started to wonder if he was expecting me to say something more. But I was just too tired to ask.
He pointed to the license hanging on the wall. “You have so many names they didn’t fit on one line. Funny thing tough, not one of those names is Jazz.”
Coltrane Jopass Montgomery-Milesmonk, that’s what was imprinted there, and frankly, none of those were even close to my real name, but that was my business. “Jazz is a lot easier to say than all of that.”
“I suppose so, but why Jazz?”
I shrugged, not really in the mood to explain. “It’s not important. Look Adam, I appreciate what you did, but I’m exhausted here.”
He stared at me in silence, his soft brown eyes piercing mine, and it felt way too nice for me to let it linger. Fortunately he didn’t. “Not until you explain what just happened out there,” he said, tipping his head toward the office door.
I nodded wearily. “It’s Soul—”
“Lution,” he finished. “I know, Parry told me, but what is it?”
The fastest way to sleep was full disclosure; I had to risk it. “I don’t know, not exactly. It’s some kind of cleansing agent, made just for the stone.”
A sudden look of awareness flooded his eyes. “The stone, I saw you swallow