Heaven & Earth

Walter was sitting in the Crown Vic parked near the entrance, reading the hardcopy of the Tribune, which he folded and wedged between the seats as Jinro, glad to be out of the eerie WCT, opened the door and climbed in.

"How'd it go?" Walter said as he turned the ignition key. The engine of the Crown Vic roared to life.

"About what we expected," Jinro said. "All their records are stored in a data haven- typical. I talked to the CEO about getting the rental logs released but he said it would take time."

"Well, if he comes through it'll be a start," Walter said and pulled out into traffic. "Where to from here?"

"Back to HQ, I think," Jinro said. "It's getting late and you know how much Dravenheath hates over-time."

"I know."

***

Jinro toweled himself off and then dried his hair. Steam vapor fogged the mirror in his small bathroom so after his hair stood out at damp, spiky angles, he used the towel to wipe off the mirror, not sure that he liked what he saw. He needed more sit-ups, or less Rocket-Top food, if not a vacation, or at least some time off. The face that stared back at him was stubbled, with dark crescents under the eyes and none of the scrubbed intensity of the Metro Academy graduation picture in the frame on his dresser.

He rooted through his closet for something he felt comfortable in, but after trying and discarding several combinations, he resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going to feel comfortable in anything. Jeans and a T-shirt were reliable stand-bys. With an indigo roll-neck sweater to keep out the evening chill and a yellow anorak to keep off the rain, he still was uncomfortable but at least he felt complete.

Without a POV permit he couldn't own a car, but the nearest subway station was only two blocks away. He turned out the lights as he went out the door. Once he was out, he jiggled the door handle to make sure it was locked, nodded to his neighbor carrying groceries up the stairs and walked passed the old woman out into the drizzle.

He rode the P train seven stops towards mid-town and got off at the Martin Luther King Boulevard station, just over the line into the corporate zone. The DataNet tower loomed up directly ahead of him as the escalator carrying him up from the platform crested the top and dumped him off. A look to his right saw the barricades cordoning off MLK Boulevard were still manned by Metro ground-pounders and the traffic moving past it was still being stopped and checked. After the Earth 1st Eco-Front bombed a crowded Paris Donburi-eatery shop, all the corporations took their security seriously.

Jinro turned left and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he started walking. Two blocks down on the corner was a night-club called Yesterday's. Even on a Wednesday, the line to get inside was ten minutes long. There were two large men at the door, one checking identifications, the other sweeping every customer with a metal detector before he let them through.

"Jinro!" Deacon, the bartender, said when Jinro pushed in between two seated patrons and leaned against the bar. "How ya been?"

"I've been better." Jinro said and laid his ICE card down. "Is there any talent in here tonight?"

"Nothing you haven't seen before," Deacon said as he mixed a strong gin-and-tonic and pushed it across the bar to Jinro's waiting hands. "DataNet is supposed to be bringing in a new load of trainees in about a week or so."

"Thanks, Deacon." Jinro said and swiped his card through the reader that came across behind it. He had been there enough times to be considered a regular and the Deacon knew what he drank. He took a sip and nodded. The Deacon really knew how to make them right: Tanquery with two limes and a squirt of tonic.

There was some space by the dance floor so Jinro picked his way through the throng to an open spot and surveyed the room. Small clusters of women danced or chatted with other women, a few men plodded vainly to the Electro-vibe beat blasting out of the huge overhead speakers, with dates or near enough to a woman that they might've been together. Most of the singles hugged the wall.

He took a gulp from his glass and slowly swept his eyes from left to right, putting his feelers out, if there were an interested member of the opposite sex checking him over, he might catch her looking. That's when the game started, but for some reason, he wasn't sure if he wanted to play.

Jinro felt tired, more tired than he could remember being. After he finished his drink, he'd probably call it a night. Contact. Gorgeous. A set of eyes staring right at him, coming toward him, but they didn't look happy. He mentally dove into the shoebox under his bed, scanning parcel after parcel for a name he could match to the face.

"Hi, Jinro," She said. "Thanks for calling me back, you shit."

Jinro opened his mouth to reply. Before he could finish the breath, he saw her arm catapult forward and felt something splashing onto his face and into his eyes. It stung, and smelled like Juniper berries. The drinks at Yesterday's were $10 for starters. The girl he could not remember had just had some very expensive revenge.

***

Walter laughed. "Then what happened?"

Jinro shook his head and smiled as if helpless. He shook out a hardcopy print-out of the morning New York Times and scanned the headlines. The lead story was that alert guards in Moscow had disrupted a bombing attempt claimed by the Unity eco-front. The regional weather was at the bottom; seasonal with scattered showers.

"She went bitch-cakes," He said and closed the paper. "Total bitch-cakes. She started yelling so loud that everyone in the place must've heard her. After about ten minutes I just went home."

"Alone?" Walter said. Jinro nodded as his vid-phone chirped.

"Yeah," Jinro said as he lifted the receiver, then cradled it again, hanging up on whoever had been calling. "I might have to let Yesterday's cool off for while before I go back."

"Well, all karmic debates aside, let me give you some good news," Walter said. "I think we caught a break for once."

"What kind of break?" Jinro said. Walter cracked his fingers and set his fingers to tapping his computer keyboard.

"Come have a look at this," He said and Jinro came around the desk as a window opened in the computer display. It was a picture of something; someone, but the quality of the image was marred by poor lighting and scratches on the Plexiglass lens-cover. "This is the call to emergency services that tipped us about the Dragon-Kings."

Jinro nodded and folded his arms, the crew that managed the hotlines really knew how to deliver on log requests, the crime lab was less efficient.

"So are you going to keep me in suspense?" Jinro said in mock irritation. "Let's see what you've got, inspector."

"Right." Walter said and keyed in new commands. The video capture started to play forward. "Don't get your hopes up, it's marginal but any tip is a tip."

"You got that right."

"Emergency services, how can I help you?" The voice of the operator came out of the desk-speakers first. The time on the video log was 3:55 A.M.

"I heard gunfire coming from Twenty-ninth Avenue, around Commerce Boulevard... many gunshots." The caller was a man, more details about him were more difficult to ascertain because of the hand pressed over the camera-lens.

"Is it just me or does it seem like this guy doesn't want us to see who he is?" Jinro said. Despite closed-circuit cameras on nearly every corner, there were still some areas without proper supervision.

"I'll need to ask you a few questions." The operator had said. "Please stay on the line."

Whoever he was flashed past the camera once more, giving Jinro perhaps his best look at the man. He was bald, or nearly so, with an underdeveloped chin and an overdeveloped nose.

"Come quick." The caller said and the line went dead. The screen faded to gray.

"Do we know this guy?" Jinro said when the playback stopped. The feeling that his brain held the information he desired was becoming maddening, he just saw so many faces in a day, it was impossible to put names to them all.

"Maybe," Walter said. "But he could be anybody. What I saw didn't set off any bells."

"How are you with the face-mapping software?" Jinro said. Walter shrugged.

"I might be a little rusty," He said. "Gimme a second to get it up and running. We don't got a whole lot to work with."

Walter tapped in more commands. The mapping program would digitally trace the contours of the subject's face and then compare it the results to the ones kept on file in the Metro mainframe.

"Okay, let's see which frame gives us the best look," Walter played the call in reverse, then forward again. "Here we go, the mapping program is running."

The software scanned the features it could identify, facial areas of high and low contrast, ear-to-eye ratio, cheek structure. The computer beeped when it finished.

"Oh, not good," Walter said when he saw the results. "We got a fifteen/fifteen trace... computer says that we got a hundred and fourteen-thousand potential matches on file."

Jinro winced. They'd only gotten at fifteen percent of the man's face, hardly enough to bother checking against the matches.

"Some break," Jinro said. "Give me what you got. We compare what we've got to every hit-man, enforcer, crook, or gang-banger that's big-time, small-time, or has done time."

"That's gonna eat up a lot of our CPU time," Walter said. "We'll have to get an okay from Dravenheath."

"I'll take care of that," Jinro said. "Why don't you take this scan over to the Friends of Babies and Invalids and see what they've got."

"I'll drop off a disk on my way home." Walter said as Jinro stretched and prepared his mind for the coming battle with Dravenheath. "You want me to give them your number?"

"I'm still having problems with my VP," Jinro said. "Just give them the office number."

"They probably have it anyway." Walter said and shrugged. He had worked with the FBI before and found them to be less rigid than he had first believed.

"Thanks," Jinro said and shivered as the little voice said that Walter was right. "If they get anything, let me know."

"Will do, Kimosabe. Hey, give my best to Miss Right-now when you see her later, or is there someone waiting for you today?"

Jinro laughed, then stopped abruptly. "Good one, go play in traffic."

"Okay, I'm off to the Parkshore Expressway for the six o'clock brake-and-wait," Walter said as he got to his feet and collected his coat. His wife would have dinner on the table when he got home. "I can't wait to get home. I got an e-mail from Madge earlier. She's-a making three-cheese-a lasagna."

Walter laughed as Jinro's stomach gurgled... an empty, sucking sound. All Jinro could look forward to was a cup of Nippon Noodles from the vending machines on the ground floor. Jinro stood and stretched, then put on his suit-jacket and went to see Dravenheath. It was close to quitting time and she was leaving, and so was surprisingly compliant.

The week of vacation must've changed her. Jinro thought as he stretched out at his desk and opened a printout of the Times. The lead story was in the upper right-hand corner beneath the headline.

The Olympics were coming to Washington DC, the events would be held at stadiums and arenas throughout the district and Baltimore. Security was expected to be very tight throughout the mid-Atlantic seaboard for the duration of the games, extra checks made on bridges and subway tunnels for any fanatic looking to spark a fire while the world was watching. They had Spring and Fall anti-terrorism training, a week long course of lectures and exercises promoted with a fervor that Jinro had gotten to find frightening.

Hopefully we'll never have to put that training to use. He thought as he chewed on the top end of a pen and worked his way toward the crime lab in the basement.

***

"We found some discrepancies you might find interesting," The crime lab tech said. "We dug some slugs out of the wall to compare to samples we shot on the police range, but there were a couple dozen we found that we couldn't match to a gun. They were the same caliber and might've come from a similar model, they didn't come from any of the weapons found at the scene."

"I like it," Jinro said. "I called ChiCom to try to match up the serial numbers we found on the weapons. Apparently they keep them in some data-haven we can't touch. When I asked them to send over what they had, they told me to go fuck myself... or whatever the Chinese equivalent is. The auto-translator was a little vague."

"We use those data-havens, too. Especially when the press is involved," The tech said. "There are advantages to having them in international waters. Nobody's laws apply."

"What else you got?" Jinro said. He expected barriers to the truth in any investigation, it was part of his business, the trick he was still learning was how to work around them.

"Only a few of the weapons we found next to the victims had been fired actually, less than ten showed any signs of recent use, either that or they didn't fire at all and just needed cleaning."

"I guess there might've been a few people that might've packed up and left once the shooting started, what do you think?"

The tech brought up a digital map of the crime scene. The positions that the Dragon-Kings were found in were marked by white silhouettes. A single keystroke overlaid a series of rings starting at the middle of the floor and expanding outward. He estimated that 80% of the victims fell within the second ring from dead center.

"Here's what the data tells me, most of your victims were shot in the chest or abdomen, about a third were shot in the side, two were shot in the back. Whatever happened started in the middle and worked outward. From what we can tell, people had time to react to whatever it was, they just couldn't get away quick enough. Most were shot at close range, I'd say, five to ten feet at most."

"If they didn't cap each other, then who did it?" Jinro said and lifted his MetroStars cap to wipe away the sweat collecting beneath it.

"Maybe he'll turn himself in."

"Yeah, killers give us free rides like that all the time," Jinro said. "Anything with blood on it probably found it's way into an incinerator by now, but hey, at least this gives me hope."

The tech stared at him expectantly.

"Now we got proof that what our witnesses think they saw wasn't the truth," Jinro said. "I think someone very clever planned for a long time to pull this off and make us think the Dragon Kings topped themselves. I hate when people try to get over on us."

"Will you be here late-night tonight?"

"As soon as I finish running a face through the felon database, I'm going home. If I'm here later than nine o'clock I'm gonna be pissed."

"If you're still here, look me up. We'll go down to Shamrock Club."

"I've been to the Shamrock too many times, but if I'm here later than nine o'clock, it's a deal."

***

"I wonder who ever told Krugman his opinions mattered?" Jinro muttered to himself as he shook out the "Op-Ed" page. "The old fart probably can't even spell his own name anymore."

He set the hardcopy of the Times aside as the vid-phone chirped and picked up the second ring. Walter was supposed to have gotten back to him with the results from the FBI already. Not that he expected much on a 15/15 composite.

"Inspector Kume." He said and waited for the caller's face to show up on the call-screen. It remained blank. The call was sent with the video-feed disabled.

"I'm disappointed in you, Inspector," A man said, it was a voice he recognized, the same one that called in the fate of the Dragon-Kings. "All of these good things I've been hearing about you... frankly I'm not seeing them."

"Who is this?" Jinro said as he involuntarily flushed red. The man on the other end laughed, the sound of it made Jinro's head itch. "Why aren't you sending a visual signal?"

"Because the booth I'm in doesn't have high-speed access to the net," The man said. His words came out rapidly, but were clipped as if he were making a conscious effort to slow them down. "If I told you who I was then I'd be doing your job for you."

Jinro took several deep breaths to calm his shaking hands as the caller continued. The man was mocking him, implying that he was incompetent, noone talked to him like that.

"What can I do for you this evening?" Jinro said as he collected himself, clenching and unclenching his fist to ease the angry stress he felt building up. He couldn't let this guy push his buttons. He looked around for someone to get a trace started on the call but it was the middle of the third-shift, there was nothing around him except empty desks and silence.

"I thought I might call and check-up on how the Dragon-King case is doing," The man said. "Consider me a concerned citizen."

"Well citizen," Jinro said and opened his note-pad. "I don't know how you got this number, but it's not department policy to reveal the details of an ongoing investigation. I've got the numbers to some community relations people that might be able talk to you about it."

The man laughed again. He had his laughing boy, Jinro was sure, so sure that it gave him chills. The same creepy feeling he'd experienced in the World Commerce Tower returned.

"They aren't the one's I wanted to talk to," He said. "By the time this call is over, you'll be wanting to talk about a great deal more."

"Is that so?" Jinro said and tried to work boredom into his voice. "Look, this game is getting dull. I really do have to get back to work."

"I'm sure you do," The man said. "Sitting there, all by your lonesome, looking through file after file for a face you can't even identify."

A shiver shot up Jinro's back. He looked around the room once more. The windows were closed and except for him the room was empty. If the guy had a telescope, he might've been watching him. There were security cameras in the room. A cracker could have gotten into the system and been looking through them.

"So how do you know that?" Jinro said. "You a mind-reader or something?"

"Or something," The man replied. "Think of me as one of the new types of people, we like to know what's going on."

"You know what you are?" Jinro said, his voice firm with irritation. "You're a nut-job, that's what you are."

"I guess that depends on who you ask," The man said. "The Dragon-Kings thought I was a nut-job, too."

Jinro's blood turned to ice. Shen Ming had been telling the truth, it had only been one guy, and this was him. He pounded his fist on the desk in frustration. He couldn't start a line trace by himself.

"So what can I do for you this evening?" Jinro said. "I take it this isn't a social call."

"Very good, Inspector." The man said. "I just wanted you to know that I didn't commit any crime, so you can stop looking for me."

Jinro sipped at the cold dregs in the bottom of his coffee-cup and sat back. The prefix on the caller identification told him that the call was being placed from a public phone.

"What makes you say that?"

"I felt you thinking about me, besides that, I hear that you're clever. You should be able to find your own answers."

"Fair enough," Jinro said. "You know I'm looking for you."

There was silence from the other end.

"You still there?" Jinro said. "You called me, now what do you want? I'm very busy right now."

"Call this a warning," The man said. "Let the dragon-kings lie. You don't know what you're dealing with."

"I wish it could be that easy," Jinro said and jotted down the vocal characteristics he could identify: course, serious. "I have a job to do."

"Then you're gonna get burned. If you don't believe me, just wait until you see the glow."

"What do you mean?" Jinro said, but connection had already been severed from the caller's end. Jinro's mind raced as he considered the implications of the conversation he'd just had. He still didn't know who the man was or what connection he had with the Dragon-Kings, and why had he just called? Who should he call about this? It was several minutes before he realized that he still had the hand-set to his ear.