Cahokia Jazz (eBook)

1

Eight in the morning, and Barrow and Drummond were standing with guns drawn on opposite sides of the doorway to which Detective Yanasa’s address had sent them – the door of a near-derelict rowhouse in the tract of poor housing that had grown like an afterthought, or a fungus, between the freight yards and factories in the city’s extreme south-west. Though the day was blue and still, without the seasonal quick-changes of yesterday, this ragged street was in the semi-permanent shadow of the great Mississippi Bridge, rising up on striding steel legs with its two decks for rail and road traffic. Up there, the whole commerce of the centre of the continent was going by, paying tolls to the Cahokia Pacific and consequently to the Man. The tracks in the yards led up to the Bridge. The factories belched smoke as they fed the Bridge, and were fed by it. The air reeked to serve the Bridge. The sunlight flamed on the metal heights of the Bridge. But down here under it there was an overlooked chill, a dismal little pocket of stillness. Whoever could afford it lived away from the smoke and the smell of the work done here. These streets of slimy cobbles were for the desperate, the wrecked, those who had lost their grip and fallen. They were what all the careful darning had been meant to save Fred Hopper from: instead of which he had fallen further still. But they might also, thought Barrow, be somewhere you’d put yourself if you wanted to be overlooked, if you thought it meant you wouldn’t be checked or interfered with.

The paint of the door was peeling. It didn’t look like the way in to the headquarters of anything formidable. But this was definitely the right place. BASHLI had been painted in a blackening red across the space above the first-floor windows, and from the upstairs casement hung a faded rag in red and green which Barrow could just about identify as the old flag of Cahokia, the flag of Cahokia the nation.

Drummond looked across and nodded. Barrow reached a fist and banged hard, backhand, on the door. Across the street, where the paddy wagon was parked, the hands of the four uniforms tensed on their shotguns. Nakbateroli had sent them to handle what he hoped would be a satisfactorily large and belligerent haul of suspects. The morning headlines had given the miko a nasty jolt: not just the Post’s WHO NEXT FOR SKYLINE SACRIFICE? and the Chronicle’s NO PROGRESS ON LAND TRUST HORROR, but lip-licking or head-shaking coverage from much further afield, the wire services having picked the story up overnight. Even Tamaha had run with ANOLI, ISISHI! (‘Speak, blood!’). Journalists were converging from all points of the compass, and Nakbateroli wanted a parade of perpetrators to show them.

No answer to the knock. Barrow hammered again. Nothing, except maybe a faint scuttering sound. He stepped out, turned, and kicked the door in while Drummond crouched to keep a clean shot into the hall. But there was no-one there; or, no-one there until the old takouma man who had been mashed against the wall as the door slammed open fell out from behind it onto the bare boards of the floor, and lay there dazed, clutching his bleeding nose. Barrow stepped in and hoisted him with his left hand, light as a bag of bones, keeping his gun up. The house smelled bad, and the person he was gripping smelled bad in the same way, only more concentratedly: a gross reek of meat gone rotten. He was wearing some sort of robe, thick with grease. Drummond made disgusted noises and pressed by, disappearing into the downstairs room. He emerged towing a small, equally elderly takata woman with her hair in a grey plait, twittering slightly. She looked peculiar, but unlike the stinking old man, strangely respectable. A necklace of crystal chunks; good clothes.

‘Police,’ said Drummond. ‘Where is everyone?’ To the air in general; but the lady answered.

‘I’m only here to bring him his breakfast,’ she quavered. ‘From the Theosophical Society? I’m afraid I don’t know where anyone is. Oh good heavens, don’t hurt him.’

‘What?’ said Drummond. ‘What?’

‘Lady, who are you?’ said Barrow. ‘And who’s this?

The uniforms were filing in as well, their guns lowered.

‘Sybil Auchinleck,’ she said. ‘Er, how do you do? This gentleman – I’m afraid I only know him as, well, The Great Crocodile.’

‘Crocodile,’ repeated Drummond, with flat incredulity.

‘Chunchouba,’ said the reeking man, showing snaggle teeth.

‘It is a spiritual title,’ she explained. ‘He is a shaman.’

‘He’s a fucking mess, is what he is,’ said Drummond. ‘And I’m not hearing an answer to my question. Where are the rest of ’em? The young ones? I was told there were a whole pack of young guys running around down here.’

‘Kaneya,’ said the Crocodile, with contempt.

‘Say what?’ said Drummond. It wasn’t one of his words.

‘I’m afraid he only speaks Anopa.’

‘Nobody only speaks fuckin’ Anopa. Joe, give him a tap.’

‘No, you must not,’ said the sergeant in charge of the takouma uniforms. ‘He is too old. There would be no honour in it. I can translate.’

‘Fine,’ said Drummond heavily. ‘Absolutely fuckin’ fine. I see I’m bein’ backed up here by the Boy Scouts of fuckin’ America. Right, ask him—’

‘It is a point of principle, you see,’ explained Sybil Auchinleck. ‘He will not dirty his mouth with the invader’s language. And you, young man,’ she went on with a sort of quivering courage, ‘you should not swear like that in mixed company. It is – well, it is rather disgusting.’

‘Oh is it,’ said Drummond, and kicked the wall next to her, hard, leaving a gash in the crumbling plaster. She jumped. ‘You got any problem with the par-fum oozin’ outta your spiritual friend here, or is it just my language that offends? God, what is that. One of you, go and search the place, maybe open a window or somethin’.’

A uniform headed upstairs.

‘Right. Let’s try again. With translation. Mr Croc – no, fuck it, let’s start off with your actual name.’

A burst of Anopa from the bundle of bones. Quite a long one; someone launching into an explanation on a favourite topic.

‘He says, none of our names are real. He says, our so-called takouma surnames are all the names of wild animals or wild things that grow, and we should be wild too. He says, we have been forced to pretend that we are like white people. To go against our natures. He says—’

‘Yeah, yeah. Enough with the lecture. Gimme your legal name, right now, or my very tall friend is gonna get angry, whatever the Theo-mum-jummery Society thinks about it.’

Barrow gave the shaman a shake, and lifted him so his feet left the floor. The grease-smeared face looked back at him with what seemed to be contempt.

‘He says, you cannot frighten him, because he is a servant of Hu-, Huitz-, I don’t know this word?’

‘Huitzilopochtli,’ said the shaman, showing his teeth again.

‘Of … that. But,’ the uniform went on, as more Anopa flowed, ‘he says that before he was brought into the true knowledge of things, and was forced to hide behind the deceiving mask of a Christian saint, he was known as … Laurence Chunchouba.’

‘Larry!’ said Drummond. ‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance! But we are a little bit pushed for time. So, real simply now please – Where. Are. The. Warriors.’

More Anopa, a continuing flow.

‘He says they are gone. He says they have given up the true cause and gone whoring after the false solutions of politics, which are as bad as the false God of the Christians, because—’

‘No, my friend,’ said Drummond, looking savage. ‘Gone where?’

A shrug, and no words at all.

‘Try asking when,’ said Barrow.

‘He says, two months, maybe three months? He says, he tried to teach the young men, but they were shallow. They had no patience. They turned away from the true path. They deserted him, even the—’

‘Even the what?’ prompted Barrow.

‘No, he stopped talking then,’ said the translator.

‘Looks like it’s a while since Yanasa ran across the Warriors, and his info is out of date,’ said Barrow to Drummond.

Back down the stairs clumped the uniform, looking both nauseous and shocked. ‘Detectives?’ he said. ‘I think you better see this.’

‘Larry, Larry,’ said Drummond. ‘What treat have you got lined up for us, eh? Okay. Better bring him along, Joe.’

As they trooped up the staircase, the voice of Sybil Auchinleck floated anxiously after them. ‘Do not be...