Telling Stories

The sun was still well below the horizon when Lloyd backed his Ranger out of the apartment carpark. The rain shone in the headlights and made its usual drumming sounds on the car roof, but didn’t cause any inconvenience; Lloyd had the wipers on before he’d even cleared the exit. It was always raining in Tretton City.

The town had been slapped together in the months before operations began on Providence, as somewhere to house transient workers stationed on the moon. The port it grew next to was on the equator, in a rain belt between the mountains and the sea: the weather was consistently wet and warm throughout the year. Tretton itself was at least a little cooler than Earth; the tropical latitudes were only lukewarm. It was all that kept the place tolerable, in Lloyd’s opinion.

He pulled out of the side streets and turned right onto Hartnell. The street lights were doing their job, at least; he’d almost had a crash two weeks ago during a brown-out. Another problem with a town run by mobsters: there were no corners that would not be cut. The infrastructure, barely two decades old, was already falling apart. There was a fair amount of traffic at this hour – heavy freight carriers mingled with commuters, and Lloyd even saw the odd shiny imported vehicle. The contrast between the sleek, self-contained cars and the internal-combustion-engine bombs the locals drove was Tretton in a nutshell, really: deeply unequal but filled with opportunities.

Lloyd certainly owed a lot to that; most civilised worlds didn’t have many niches left for private snoops. “Nice” worlds had police, social security, infrastructure that ticked like clockwork – hell, infrastructure that largely was clockwork – and a million and one little safety nets to help people who fell through the cracks. They were, by and large, run for the benefit of the people living on them. Tretton wasn’t a nice world: it was run for the benefit of its owners, and a world without modern civilisation needed people like him. People would come to him to solve their problems – victims of identity theft, straight cops who couldn’t deal with a cover-up, spouses worried about infidelity – and now, Gabriel Luis Rojo, Mr Big himself. As much as he hated the man, Lloyd couldn’t have asked for a bigger sign that he’d hit the big time.

Pulling into Central, he turned the obvious question over in his head. What exactly did Rojo want him for? The man had an army of relatives, lesser lieutenants, bent cops, tame P.I.s; the only reasons to take Lloyd on were his unique skills (few, bordering on none, he muttered, keeping his ego in check) and his outsider’s perspective. Lloyd knew that outsiders rarely fared well in family matters, but his not-yet-broken kneecaps persuaded him that the risk was worth taking. The Rojos owned half of the spaceport, anyway – the only way to skip town would be to hide out in the jungle.

The Royale loomed at him, garish neon lights forming a skinny, twisting frame set inside the bulky brick-and-mortar one. Lloyd pulled over, checked his pockets twice for his wallet and his Marino, and told the Ranger to head to a local carpark until he was finished. He had credit with several right now; it would figure out which would give him the best deal on the way there. He swung the door open and stepped into the rain.

His hat and jacket deflected most of the deluge, but drops inevitably got through the cracks and got to work soaking through his cotton shirt. The thing was a nuisance, really – everyone else on the damn planet wore waterproof synthetics – but Monica had bought a dozen of them for him when she’d found out how he paid the bills. She’d dismissed his objections instantly; “you look more convincing when you’re a bit disheveled anyway, Rick,” had shut him up fast, and he hadn’t found the spite to dump them in favour of something better suited to the local weather. Sticky shirts were another thing he’d learned to put up with on Tretton.

The car took off, growling with hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide, and Lloyd looked up at the neon display in front of him. Six fifty-two, ante meridian: he was early. Wills had better appreciate the fact.

Gabriel Rojo.

Lloyd shuddered. More than a few of his investigations had come up against a wall the moment that name got involved. The Rojos were one of the biggest drug gangs in Tretton – a family business, naturally – and they’d never once been good news for him. They were responsible for more human misery than any other group he could quickly recall, and they had Wills and a dozen more like him to cover themselves from any repercussions.

Tretton City was a fairly lawless place, really – Tretton itself was a backwater planet whose economic life depended on Providence, its mineral-rich moon. There was no central government, and the system’s corporate masters had no desire to establish one as long as the flow of wealth from Providence continued unabated. The moon itself was locked down tight, but the planet was another story; organised crime had been allowed to flourish, and the huge pay packets being given to the miners and engineers on Providence gave it oxygen. Unfortunately for Lloyd, the city’s rough edges were what gave him work – admittedly, more often in an indirect fashion. Business was business, though. The Rojos’ money was as good as anyone else’s, after all – and he wasn’t interested in having his legs broken.

He skipped the shower, threw on yesterday’s clothes and grabbed his jacket. Five carefully calculated minutes were spent on a slice of toast smothered in honey; he had a feeling he’d need all the tiny morale boosts he could get today. He stepped into the study and set the business phone up to rebuff callers – it seemed a little distressed at the prospect, so he told it to offer to take a message from anyone who was particularly insistent. He took its silence as assent and ran through a checklist in his head.

No cases to delay, Monica’s going to be away for the rest of the week, but I’ll probably have to tell Casey I’m welshing on dinner tonight. Better take the car instead of a cab; don’t want to be late for my meeting with Mr Big.

He put on his hat and grabbed the car keys.

Time to go to work.

Some mornings, you didn’t want to wake up. Maybe you had a late night or a long day beforehand – being dog tired would make anyone want to stay in bed. Maybe you’d been at the bottle hard enough that all the sleep in the world wouldn’t have left you feeling good. Maybe your life was so much of a mess that there was nothing worth waking up to.

Lloyd turned over under the covers and switched off his alarm before it had a chance to drive the point home. Everyone gets a bad morning once in a while, he reflected. The best thing to do was just stay put and let it be a bad morning for everyone else. If he was going to have any say in the matter, it would keep on being a warm and comfortable night for him.

Not much to get up for, really; he hadn’t had any work in a while, and his usual clients didn’t call until late in the afternoon. Monica was all the way over on Providence, and all of his interesting neighbours had moved away in the last six months. Zero prospects at least meant zero responsibilities, he reminded himself. A sharp beep punctuated the thought. Funny, he thought he’d turned the alarm off; he hit it again to be sure.

The beep continued. Lloyd’s brain slowly moved up into second gear and he remembered that the sound was his phone. Christ, it was half past six; who could possibly be calling at this hour? Providence followed the same twenty-five hour clock as Tretton City, right down to the time zone – there was no way Monica would be calling now unless it was a genuine emergency. Could it be a client? Too hard to remember – the tone had gotten more urgent, disrupting Lloyd’s thinking.

He was sorely tempted to let it lie – go through to voicemail or just let the caller give up – but years of experience had given him an attitude that didn’t allow for that luxury. When an opportunity presented itself, you grabbed it by the throat; and when people came calling, it was a choice between being there all the time or letting them down when they really needed you. He stumbled out of bed, grabbed the receiver, and cleared his throat. He wished he had time to grab a glass of water.

“Rick Lloyd, private investigator. Who’s calling?”

A tightly controlled voice came through the line, not betraying any angles. “Lloyd, it’s Wills. Do you have any engagements today?”

Lloyd bit back a curse. Clayton Wills was a lawyer, and a slick one. He had a sharp tongue, a sharper mind, and nerves of steel; rumour had it he was his firm’s fixer, and every job he’d offered Lloyd in the past had been a mess. Most turned out fairly profitable, sure – but trouble was its own expense, and Lloyd wasn’t in the mood for it.

“Not sure why you’re asking, Clay, but it doesn’t matter because I’m not taking it.” The lawyer didn’t take the bait. “I’m asking, Lloyd, because my client is willing to compensate you for any cancellations you may have to make today while you’re working for him.”

That kind of ready cash did pique Lloyd’s interest, but the trouble was still likely not worth it. “I told you already, Clay: no deal. I’m not hard-up enough to take another of your jobs, and I’ll be damn sure to let you know when I am.”

There was a pause before Wills repeated himself: “You’ll be compensated for any engagements you have to cancel while working for Gabriel Rojo, Lloyd.”

Lloyd waited a full ten seconds before replying. “Got it, Clay. I’ll meet you at the usual place in fifty.”

“In thirty, Lloyd.”

Lloyd sighed. “Understood.”