Return to Ganymede

By Christopher Ant

The war with the roaches, an insectoid species from the darkest depths of the universe, is going badly. And the powers that be have decided only L.A. private eye Georg Draygo can turn things around. But, haunted by an unsolved case, Draygo is on his own private quest for justice. The authorities won’t take no for an answer, so he must juggle his personal crusade and saving the human race.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Ant
• Release date: Jan 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370567140

Book preview

Copyright Christopher Ant 2016. Smashwords edition. All rights reserved.

Any similarity to people, places or things in the real world is purely coincidental.**

Return to Ganymede

Christopher Ant

1

Her desk was three rows up and two over. Blue-black hair hung almost to the collar of her crisp white dress and shone in the sun. She seemed to be paying attention, but most likely was dreaming of one of the far-away places depicted so glossily on the walls.

The instant Miss Hooper would turn to the blackboard, the dusty oasis at the room’s center, she would turn to gaze out the open window at the distant mountains and beyond.

Pio Ood! Please try not to exacerbate my already perilously low opinion of your commitment to the scholastic endeavor!

Miss Hooper glowered in silence for a moment and then returned to her scratching. When he turned back to Pio it had started already. Behind her the classroom had become indistinct and she was aging fast—years passing in seconds—as life was sucked out of her. She turned to him, and her eyes, so dark you couldn’t tell where pupil ended and iris began, reached out to him, pleaded with him. He’d counted on having more time. He knew where to find the cause: A dark stain, a shadow that would scuttle back if looked at directly, keeping always just on the edge of his vision.

Thread after thread whipped out from it. Those that found their mark dug in and joined the feeding frenzy. They would leave a husk only, would take him somewhere he couldn’t go.

He crouched and spun to confront the shadow’s source. The burning searchlight blinded. The wolf-howl gale deafened. Overloaded nerve endings threatened to burn out, told him to pull back. If he could hold on just a little longer.

Bugs careered erratically behind his eyelids and he tore at them. Blood dripped freely from his nose and ears. He had to scream just to be sure he was making any sound at all.

"Who." The pain doubled.

"Are." Doubled again.

"You." And again.

He cut the visualization and slumped back in the chair. He opened his eyes. Sweat-slick fingers fumbled for a cigarette and lit it second try. As he’d been taught he began the visual inventory essential to avoid bleed-over: File cabinet where her TV had been. Stacked and dusty boxes of files overflowing from her kitchenette. Blown up telephoto shots covering every wall, tacked ribbon forming an abstract web between them.

Visualization was his most powerful investigative tool, allowing him, as it did, to draw together all the disparate pieces of data he’d gathered into a single gestalt whole. But in this case…in this case it was problematic. It always led to the same place: The body of a pretty, young woman, bespattered with restaurant garbage, oblivious to the cockroaches making a playground of her nostrils, her lips, her staring eyes.

He started to dial his girlfriend, thought about it and dialed his wife, ex-wife, instead.

Yes?

It’s me.

Hello, Georg. How’s the case going?

Case?

Young Miss Ood. You only call when she’s giving you a hard time. You’re picking at that sore again.

Come on, Helen.

Go look in the mirror, Georg.

He picked up the phone and squeezed into the bathroom.

You looking?

Yeah.

You see scratches. Deep, red scratches from just below your hairline, over your eyes and down your cheeks.

Silence.

So how’s the case going?

Same as ever.

You always were one for flogging dead whores, Georg. Why’ve you picked it up again?

I just have this feeling time’s short.

Really? How so?

He pulled back the edge of the drape and peered into the darkness.

I got this call…

2

The sun streaming through the half-closed vertical blinds behind him made her look like she’d been put through a giant hard-boiled-egg slicer, he thought as he listened to her tale. Oh, Mr Draygo. I don’t know what I’d’ve done without…

A sobbing heap, the woman was unable to continue. It wasn’t an unusual situation. Clients, grief-stricken by an unexpected visit from the grim reaper and overawed by his oversize and luxuriously minimal office, often fell apart on him. He studied her as she wept. She was a typical fat and pasty denizen of Blossom Heights, hiding under a wide brimmed hat and behind huge sunglasses. That she’d gone to pieces was no surprise at all. What was surprising, though, was the demeanor of the young girl sitting next to her. Back straight, head held high, eyes drilling into him, she showed not the slightest sign of being either crushed by sorrow or cowed by her surroundings. She was wearing the same long-sleeved cotton smock they all wore but he just couldn’t picture her flitting from shadow to shadow like the rest.

Without breaking her stare she held out a pack of cigarettes. The woman took one and the girl lit it.

It’s nothing, ma’am. Nothing at all.

Oh no, Mr Draygo…I’m sorry.

Take your time, ma’am.

He handed her another Kleenex and slid the box across the desk.

I have faith in you, Mr Draygo. I know you can find whoever did this terrible thing, if anyone can.

I’ll find them. You can count on it.

Oh, Mr Draygo, that’s wonderful. I owe the poor man that at least. I just couldn’t face the next electric bill if I didn’t do right by him.

He nodded sympathetically as he stood and came around the desk to show them to the door.

Without taking her burning eyes from him the girl noisily and deliberately hawked up her phlegm, rolled it around and, as the woman stared open mouthed, spit on the floor in front of him.

"Daphne! Mr Draygo, I’m so sorry. She’s been so upset. He was like a father to the poor child," she said as she stooped and dabbed at his shoe.

Calm yourself, ma’am. Grief takes people in different ways.

The elevator closed on her hate-filled stare but he didn’t let his expression of pious sincerity slip til he heard it descending. She was a brat, yes, but fiery, spirited. And it was this quality, he realized, that had brought to mind so forcefully someone he’d been sorely neglecting of late.

He returned to his desk, sat back down and pulled the phone toward him. Hello, Mike. I have a job for you. A Mr… He picked up the form the woman had filled out. Fetherly, Elmrod. Age forty-three. Shot to death night-before-last in back of Waxman’s Theater. You start looking into it and I’ll pay him a visit, see if he has anything to tell me.

He cut the line and dialed again.

Morgue.

It’s Georg.

Hey man! Long time.

Long time. You busy?

No, man.

Okay if I drop by?

Come on over.

I’ll see you in about ten.

He picked up his hat and dropped off the woman’s form with his secretary. Deal with this, will you, Molly.

Of course, Mr Draygo.

I’ll be about an hour. You need anything?

I’m just fine thank you, Mr Draygo.

He stepped from the cool lobby onto the sidewalk and paused in the heat. It was, as always, an unimaginably beautiful day. He looked around, soaking it up. Sun beat down from an impossibly blue sky, pure clean air held a hint of fresh-cut grass, and small birds chattered happily to each other in a nearby tree. He swelled contemplating it all. He paid a pretty penny for a spot here but, damn, it was worth it.

The lobbies of the apartment and office buildings that formed the sides of the square were mingled with high-end café-bars, restaurants and stores, and together they backdropped the lives of the stylish residents, who in turn served as supporting players in each other’s lives. In the park at the center, children played, mothers watched and a strolling couple paused to admire the pond’s resident swans.

He froze. An elderly roach was shuffling in his direction. He slid a shaking hand into a pocket, pulled out a glass pill-bottle and managed to unscrew the cap and swallow two pills. As the roach drew level it stopped and rotated its head toward him. Antennae twitched and mouth parts rubbed obscenely against each other. Somewhere deep inside him a switch flipped, a circuit closed. Every cell screamed at him: Filthy vermin! Exterminate it!

Excuse me, sir. I find myself disorientated in your fair city. Would you do me the service of directing me to the nearest Western Union establishment?

Shorted-out with hate and fear, he couldn’t speak.

I’m from out of town.

No shit, Sherlock, he thought as he jerked his thumb.

He watched in disgust as the creature shambled off. He looked around. The perfect day was soiled. Unable to stand the sight of it, he sank back into the building.

Draygo Investigations. How may I help you?

Put me through to Draygo.

Mr Draygo’s in conference at the moment, sir. May I take a message?

My, my, he has conferences these days, does he?

Yes, sir, he does.

Listen, girlie, you tell that little gutter-shamus the peace want to talk to him. Pronto.

I’m sorry, sir, he’s out of—oh, here he is now. I’ll put you on speaker.

She pulled a face at Draygo as she flicked the switch.

"My office. Twenty-twenty tomorrow. And I want to see you in the flesh, so drag your rancid carcass out of the tub. Pronto."

In the flesh? Are you serious?

Deadly.

"In public?

You heard me.

Ain’t gonna happen, Cooper.

"This is a direct order, and under state-of-emergency powers I can apply any sanction—any sanction—I see fit."

Well shucks, if you’re gonna go all honey-dripper on me how can I decline.

Your mommy never tell you the story of the wiseacre was so sharp he cut his own head off? Tomorrow. Twenty-twenty. In the flesh.

The connection was cut.

Grinding another butt into the ashtray, he looked at the ratty couch piled with boxes of interview transcripts, at the spools piled on top of them. He’d done a lot of work, gathered a lot of information. He had plenty of facts, possibly too many. A cloud of facts obscuring the truth. He’d hit a roadblock. The kind of complete and utter dead-end that made him think maybe someone was being protected. Someone worth protecting.

She was passing. Lots of girls and boys did it. As long as their looks held, there was good money to be made. He’d never been able to establish a motive. He’d ruled out sex, and she had no money or property that he could find. He looked around the tiny cheap shabby apartment. No, money hardly seemed a plausible motive. She was simply eliminated. Someone wanted her to not exist. Some one.

He followed ribbon from face to face, waiting for his gut to kick in, and, as always, kept coming back to Shitstain. Wherever he started, whichever direction he headed, he always ended up staring into the eyes of the high-priced shyster and part-time pimp. He was connected, rich, and to all intents and purposes a fine upstanding citizen. And he was all wrong. It was time to turn over a few rocks. He lay back in the chair, closed his eyes and initiated.

Across the moonlit lawn he could hear music, conversation, laughter. Naked pool girls and boys, powerful men and women, stood around the pool, spilled from french windows at the rear of the house. The french windows led to a ballroom where semi-naked groups, serenaded by a blindfold quartet, stood and sat, chatted and drank. At the far end a goon stood before the oversize oak doors that led to the smaller salon. There, a robed Shitstain lounged in a velvet-upholstered chair, a half-dozen aspiring starlets hanging on his every word and whim.

He spooned powder from a silver bowl and sipped oily blue liquid from a silver goblet. A clap of his hands and the room cleared save for two of the girls. He stood and they followed him into an even more private chamber. He closed and locked the door. He cut. There was no doubt, he realized, as to the ‘who’; it was the ‘why’ that escaped him.

He locked up the apartment, pocketed the key and skipped down the narrow uncarpeted stairs. Her landlord, his landlord, stepped into the corridor from the door that led to the back room of his bookstore. Hello, Mr Draygo. How are you keeping?

Fine.

You’ve started using the apartment again. Can I assume that means you’ve reopened Miss Ood’s case?

You can assume what you like, Simonds.

Let me rephrase my question. Are you currently investigating the murder of Miss Pio Ood?

You know that was just a name she got along with a dead baby’s birth certificate, don’t you?

She didn’t kill the baby. It died. Unless, that is, you believe she travelled in time.

I know how it works.

She was born a farm girl and committed the victimless crime of changing her identity.

True, it need only have taken the odd misdemeanor, but few manage it without racking up a felony or two on the way.

She was born on one of the most notorious farms on the planet and was raped and brutalized by her overseers. To pay a family debt her childhood sweet-heart shipped out as a lady-boy on a deep-space mining vessel.

I fetch a cop and you’d be Mars-bound in a second for the way you said what you just said.

Go ahead, Mr Draygo. They know very well what I think. I’m old news.

Poor kid was just looking for a decent life, I guess.

You think she came here to save herself.

Can’t blame her for that.

Let me know how you get on.

Of course.

And drop in the store sometime. I’ve some new items in might interest you.

The morgue was a three-story brick affair squatting in the shadow of a smokestack-topped municipal power plant. Above ground was all administrative. Guest quarters were in the basement.

He rode the elevator down and was deposited in the short corridor that led to Stanislav Ludnikov’s candlelit office.

What kept you?

Sorry. Something came up. Couldn’t get away from the office.

Hey, man, don’t sweat it.

Draygo reached in his coat and produced a paper-wrapped bottle.

Just like old times, man, grinned Stan.

Draygo planted it on the desk and sat down. Got any glasses?

"As always. And of course plenty of ice."

He half-filled the glasses with crushed ice from the small fridge in the corner and then brimmed them both. So, to what do I owe the pleasure?

Draygo dropped Fetherley’s details on the desk. Stan glanced down at the slip of paper but made no move to pick it up. Why the personal visit? It’s a long time you haven’t been here.

Well you have to understand, what with modern methods, your butcher’s tricks are all but redundant, but just occasionally—

"Be. You. Double el. ‘Cos you don’t want to remember is why. So I’m thinking if you’re here it’s ‘cos now you do want to remember. So how’s my aim?"

Deadeye Dick, as always.

So you’ve picked up that case and come here to fire up your blood.

That’s about the size of it.

You’re sure about starting it all up again?

It’s now or never.

Why not never?

You know why.

Yeah I do, but I also recall a time you were in here every day, three weeks straight.

The image of her face seen dimly through the frosted-up lid of a chest freezer tucked away behind piles of junk in a forgotten store room flashed into his mind.

Yeah.

Thirty-five.

Thirty-five what?

The number of cats and rats I had to round up to make the books balance in order to save her from the flames. Til they had that clean out and I had to send her on her way, that is. I’ll bet that skinny old guy’s folks were surprised-as-all-hell when they got a credit for two hundred fifty pounds deposited.

Kept their mouths shut though.

Naturally. What about this one?

He nodded to the scrap of paper on the desk.

You still got him?

He picked up the note and studied it for a second. Yeah, he’s due to check out on Saturday I believe. Gotta keep the home fires burning. You want to see him?

Not especially. Could you do your thing on him for me?

Fee’s gone up. Seventy-five now.

Fine.

It’ll take me forty, fifty minutes. You not gonna come watch?

I’ll just wait here, if it’s all the same to you.

"That’s fine, man, but the refreshment is coming with me."

Draygo sat in the gloom and listened to the distorted echo of subtle precise observations being committed to electro-magnetic tape. Alone with the familiar sights and smells he sipped his drink and let his mind drift to the tiled room, the sink below the rows of gleaming saws and scalpels, the overhead spot on its articulated, perfectly balanced arm, the steel table, the sheet covering but not concealing the body of a young woman.

You say she’s a farm girl?

Yeah.

"Well, Dorothy here is full of some opiate or other. There are multiple lacerations. C.O.D: She bled out. No sexual activity either post-mortem or immediately ante-. One thing, there are no defensive wounds. None."

And that’s unusual?

There are normally defensive wounds.

But not always?

It’s rare.

You said she was drugged.

Still…

Stan stopped the tape transport, released the brakes on the table and wheeled his patient back to his drawer. He hung up his rubberized apron, washed and dried his hands and then, glass and bottle in hand, started back to his office. No mystery there, he called out as he turned the door handle. A half dozen slugs did for him.

There was no reply. The room was empty. The barely touched drink, the un-smoked cigarette burned to ash and the hundred dollar bill on his desk, the only signs he’d had a visitor at all. He poured himself a drink and put the bottle in the fridge, picked up his glass and raised it high. So long, Draygo-man. Good hunting.

3

At McClusky’s the blaring TV sets hanging from the ceiling masked his arrival. Elements of the 352nd and 41st peace special-action battalions pacified a collaborationist nest unearthed at the southern edge of the Trang spread early this morning.

As he reached the bar, a fly turned. Hey, Draygo-man! How goes it?

I need a drink.

He