The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - FORTUNATO (part 3)

Chapter 1, part 3

It was an understatement, but it made me blink from its coolness. Aristoi have ice-water veins, they say, though the younger ones dancing in the clubs seem pretty hotblooded to me.

“I’d think you wouldn’t,” I said.

Barsina stepped out of our back room, removed her notebook and a graphite stylus from her girdle, and stood in the corner.

He gave her the up-and-down as well, then looked back at me with the suggestion of a sneer. That was fine; I didn’t care what he thought I did with my girl. Mist’ Silk-Sash doubtless had some for the same purpose.

“Can you tell me about this attempt?”

“Why is she standing there?” he said.

As if I were a fine Miss, I gestured at the floor without looking at her. Barsina knelt gracefully, bowed her head low near the boards in respect, and then sat back on her pink heels with her notebook.

“She takes my notes and does my files.” I indulged in something like a sneer myself because I didn’t think this was going anywhere. “Mails my bills.”

He glanced around my bare office. “That can’t happen very often.”

I smiled. Aristoi win every argument, so it doesn’t help to get angry. “The attempt? When was this?”

“Two nights ago.”

“What was the method?”

“My ground-car.”

That was a new one. “Tell me.”

He nodded, looking at Barsina again. “Very well. I am the Director of the State Gallery. I am ultimately responsible for the display and preservation of everything there and the institution’s maintenance. You are,” he said, “aware of the State Gallery.”

“I’ve been,” I said. “Nice place if you like art.”

His teeth gleamed. “Amusing. Not an appreciator?”

“I like the things I like.”

“Well. There will soon be an exhibition of precious antiquities, things usually kept in vaults or private collections or which have been gifted to us specially. It opens Onesday next. Two days ago, I was working late with Sub-Director Azzopardo. Last-minute adjustments. Review of layout. We parted, and I entered my ground-car.”

“Two nights ago? It was raining.” We hadn’t been able to sleep on the roof, and our room was stifling.

“Yes, yes, it was. Heavily when my machine came out of the garage under the Gallery. The ground-car took the Prospect into the Green Quarter. It was going quickly—”

“Did you have a driver?”

“No. I didn’t need a man because I had only gone to the Gallery, and the car is—was—self-driving. The vehicle began to speed up. I noticed at once because there’s a dip in the cobbles on the Prospect that, if taken quickly, makes the ground-car bump hard. It bumped extremely hard, bang!” He slapped his hands. “And I looked out then. Things were passing fast.”

“What did you do?”

“I told the car to slow down.”

“And?”

He smiled grimly. “It did not.”

“Did you try to take control?”

“I was in the passenger compartment.”

“How fast was it going?”

“I couldn’t see the celeritometer well enough, but militia tell me that they think I was going over a hundred kilometers an hour when I stopped.”

“And how did that happen?”

“The ground-car drove me directly into someone’s garden wall. I’ve been picking kinetic gel out of my hair ever since.”

“Were you injured?”

“Negligibly. However, I nearly choked on the gel that filled up the compartment.”

“The ground-car?”

“For my purposes, destroyed. I’ll get a new one.”

“You have reason to believe it was not accidental?”

“It was a new car,” he said. “A trusted design. Updated software. And it drove me into a wall at excessive speed on a rainy night. I find deliberation there.”

“I understand. What did the militia say?

“They suggested that it might have had a sensor issue because of rain or reflections. There’s a white stripe painted on the wall because the Prospect ends there, and the owner of the palaco behind it is, ironically, tired of people driving into his garden wall. The investigating officer suggested that the sensors might’ve read it as a lighted way through.”

“Seems unlikely,” I said, “though I don’t know much about ground-cars.”

“It seems profoundly unlikely to me, and I do.”

“Mist’ Fortunato,” I said, “did they find anything wrong with it?”

“The processing core is still being examined.”

I nodded, turned the stylus on my desk a complete three-sixty, lined it up carefully, and then looked him in the eye.

“I don’t wish to question your motives, but why have you sought out a private inspector? Specifically, why me?”

“I’m skeptical of the militia now. I do not know whom to trust because if someone tampered with my car, it’s someone intelligent and thus dangerous. I don’t wish my enemy to be alerted if I go to one of the better private inspectors with a decent office. My man took me to buy flowers for my daughter, and in the hustle and crowd, I slipped away to speak with you. Besides, no one would suspect I’d engage a nothing and nobody and a woman on such important business. I can deny I ever spoke with you and be believed.”

“That’s straightforward. I appreciate the honesty.”

“But I hear you have gotten results.”

“It’s true. I have.”

“What’s your fee?”

“I charge by class,” I said. “Fifty drachms for aristoi, plus expenses.”

His teeth flickered again. “That’s as much as Caruano Gatto charges, and he’s a man.”

“He’d be happy to have your business,” I said. “I don’t discount for my physical inferiorities, no more than he discounts for his intellectual ones.”

He studied me with intense grey eyes, then nodded. “What’s your blocknumber? I’ll transfer it to you.”

“I’m afraid I handle cash only,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“That way,” I said, “I can deny I ever spoke to you.”

He grunted a laugh, pulled out an eelskin wallet from his sash, and pulled out blue bills, dropping them on the desk. My hand passed over them fox-fast, four ten-notes and two fives, and I put them in my girdle.

“Do you suspect anyone?”

“No one.”

“What is your family like?”

“I live with my daughter, Alkimila. My wife moved to my country estate, and she does not speak with me, nor do I try to speak with her. My younger brother is the administrator of the crèche in Calypso and lives in the other family villa there. I have cousins, first and second, who live the one family in Clytemnestra and the other on Artume. I’ve not seen either family in years, and I seldom speak with them.”

“What about this Sub-Director? Ambitious?”

His face was contemptuous. “Sub-Director Azzopardo will never be the Director, no matter what happens to me,” he said with bland assurance. “There is no threat there.”

“Do you have any enemies?”

“I’m aristoi; I have many. I have many friends. Often, they are the same people. Until the other night, I had not thought anyone hated me enough to harm me.”

“Have there been any other attempts?”

“No. No,” he repeated, then shook his head slowly. “But … ”

“But?”

“Two weeks ago, after supper, I got very ill.  Dizzy, nauseous. My heart was beating too fast. It passed after midnight, but I felt weak all the next day.”

“What did you eat?”

He thought. “Grilled branzino. Yellow rice. I remember because it was excellent.”

“Anything else?”

He shrugged. “Salad. I remember that because it was bitter, and I put it aside after a bite or two.”

“Did anyone eat with you?”

“I mostly dine alone.”

I nodded and looked at my girl.

“Thoughts on that, Barsina?”

“If Miss would have me speak, I would caution the Sir against eating more salad. There might have been hemlock in it.”

He pursed his lips, disturbed. “What do you propose to do?” he asked.

“I propose you eat no salad,” I said. “I would like to look at the ground-car.”

“It’s in the mews behind my palaco,” he said. “I have other business this afternoon, but you may come by after my supper. I should be done by nineteen o’clock, and I’ll show it to you. The servants will be out, and we can speak in confidence.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

( … Chapter 1 part 2 this way … ) ( … Chapter 2 part 1 this way …)