The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - MAMA SOLENE - (part 1)

(Chapter 6, part 1)

We missed the bus, but it’s not a terrible walk back from the State Gallery, even on foot across Landing Park. Colorful birds were flitting from tree to tree and butterflies, and there were beautiful people: wealthy citizens, their children running ahead, and their girls tagging after with babies or parasols or baskets. I sighed. It looked like an easy life, carrying that parasol.

Well, looks can be deceiving, I’m here to tell you.

This case was deceiving as well. The murder of a prominent citizen was a sticky thing because then you began to think about politics. When he appeared in my office, I started worrying immediately and wasn’t far wrong to do so. Here was a priceless painting donated by a labor broker with two keys made for its display case, and the second key was stolen when a man of mystery conks my client over the head—after maybe two tries failed? More? What did that show?

An obvious suspect … but not a simple one because she could not have done it herself. And what was with the ground-car? What was with the hemlock, if that’s what happened?

I sighed again.

We skirted the brothel district, which at thirteen o’clock is pretty quiet. In fact, Aulis, in the day’s heat, had fallen as silent as it ever gets before midnight. The Night Market’s fresh food stands were emptied, everything perishable gone one way or another, and the other stalls closed until seventeen o’clock. There’s a font trickling at the corner of Strato Belaknabino and the Market, and we stopped to catch water in our hands and drink it—I don’t use the public cups. The Commissariat is just around the corner, but someone put her hand on my sleeve.

“Miss Fenek, nice to see you,” she said.

I turned and almost choked on my mouthful of water. It was Lunluma Inguanoz. She offered me a handkerchief and I wiped my chin. “I beg your pardon,” I said. “It was just such a surprise to see you.”

“A good one, I hope.”

Lunluma is one of Mama Solene’s under-madams, and when Mama Solene retires—no time soon—I’m sure she’ll take over the business. She has black hair, fair skin that she hides under a parasol and a silk shawl when she’s out, and most days, red lips and very elaborate makeup in the latest mode. She’s a bit older than me, though I’d never say it. She usually works the door to watch the girls lined up along the street on her right hand and the girls serving the tables on her left. She’s fond of fine footwear, and today, she was wearing black sandals laced to the knees under a white chiton with the legally required red girdle. She tapped the cobbles with the slender, supple stick she used on the girls’ legs if they didn’t hop-to quick enough.

“Always a good one,” I lied.

She looked Barsina up and down in the calculating way madams look at indentureds but did not address her. “I heard a rumor you’re on the Fortunato case—before it was even a case.” She tilted the paper parasol, painted with fish, to keep the sun away from her skin.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Around. Are you so short of clients that you have to work for cadavers?”

“Looks like,” I agreed. “He paid his retainer, and he has a live daughter. I thought I’d put in some work before I walk.”

“Ah, yes, Alkimila Fortunato,” she mused. “I heard she went in to see that new commissariat commander, that luscious bit of beef. I think you may have seen him?”

She’d been talking to Subaltern Alagon, then, or another of the bum-gropers like him.

“We’ve met,” I said.

Lunluma tapped her cheek with one pale finger. “This puts me in mind of something. Now what was it. Ah yes! Mama Solene told me if I saw you to ask you to come by.”

I hid my alarm with a friendly smile. “Really? What can I do for her?”

“Oh, it’s more what she can do for you,” she said. “She has some helpful information that might save you some difficulty and help you with the Fortunato business.”

“Oh really?” I cocked my head. “How so?”

Lunluma laughed. “My dear,” she said, “assuming I know anything about it, why would I tell you? Mama doesn’t give away anything for free, and it doesn’t pay to get on her bad side.”

This I knew. I hadn’t often been in Mama Solene’s in the past two years since I won Barsina, though she’d done nothing I knew of to get back at me.

Lunluma pivoted on one black-sandaled heel and put her arm in mine. “Don’t be shy,” she said. “It’s not like a card game or anything.”

Oh, that was baiting. I was conscious of Barsina’s alarm, but I wasn’t going to allow Lunluma the pleasure of frightening me. So she walked me down Strato Belaknabino, gossiping about high-rolling guests at Mama Solene’s and other big brothels whose behavior had scandalously crossed the line and about girls I knew who’d had one sort of trouble or another.

As you can tell from the name, Strato Belaknabino is crowded with pretty faces during working hours—but working hours only start after sixteen o’clock and continue until only three o’clock the next morning, which annoys the madams. They benefit from the government restricting ownership and investment in brothels to women, but what the Council gives, the Council takes away, permitting open doors only during those hours. That’s why big madams like Mama rent out their best girls as courtesans, who are a whole different level of expensive, have their own houses and servants and can work anywhere, anytime … but the secret to success is volume, as I can tell you. Or could if I had any. Success or volume.

Mama Solene’s isn’t much to look at off hours with the lights turned off, the wallset music at a mumble, dusty daylight leaking in, and the pretty faces lying asleep upstairs in their narrow wooden booths. Sunlight makes it look dingy; every mark and scar in the wood and trim is obvious.  It smells like spilled alcohol and sugar, and the day makes the gilded performance stage look small and embarrassing. That checks if you remember that it’s supposed chiefly to entertain men. One of the upper girls was sitting at the manager’s stand, spinning her collar round and round and keeping an eye out. She and Barsina knew each other and exchanged a few whispers. The blacklights were sitting on, making Lunluma’s white chiton look like it was made out of electricity and causing Barsina’s normally invisible serial number on her left arm to look like it was written in blue fire. I don’t like them; it’s eerie. I hugged my arms to my stomach tightly, wrapped in my shawl, as we crossed the dance floor.

Lunluma whisked us along and up a little lift to Mama’s office on the fourth floor, the highest and airiest, above the third-floor private party rooms and the second-floor booths. There was a door of black wood they get from jungles planted along the north side of Greater Thalassa—mahogany, I think it’s called—with silver hinges, and Lunluma raised a manicured hand and rapped on it.

“Enter!”

( … This way to Chapter 5 part 3 … ) ( … This way to Chapter 6 part 2 … )