Tag: Science Fiction

 
Penny sipped water from the cup Connelly handed her. Half way through listening to his offer she handed him the cup. “Do you have anything stronger?”

“Such as?”

“Coffee. A double espresso if you have it. A shred of lemon peel on the side and cream.”

A moment later the room’s door opened and a late-middle-aged bull of a man, clean shaven and his blonde crewcut going to gray, came in with a steaming espresso on a tray. He lowered it in front of her.

She eyed it suspiciously. “That’s real espresso? Not something from a little dixie cup like thing?”

Connelly chuckled. “Quite real.” He smiled at the bull of a man. “Tommy?”

“Ground the beans as she was asking for it.”

She picked up the glass demitasse and sniffed. “Nice.” She sipped, closed her eyes, and nodded. “Oh, that’s good. What was your name? Tommy? You want a job?”

Tommy smiled slightly. Connelly chuckled. “Thanks, Tom.” The bull put the tray on the nightstand and left. Connelly turned his attention back to Penny. “So, you in or you out?”

“I have a choice?”

“Choice is better than no choice.”

“How soon do you need to know?”

Connelly pursed his lips, considering. “When would you like to let me know?”

“I need to get some things. Go home. Definitely change.”

“Not a problem.” The door opened again and the bull reentered. “Tommy’s a Boston native. Knows the best places, the ins and outs, all the safe places and all the dangerous ones. He’ll make sure you get where you’re going, get their safely, and get away again with nobody even knowing he’s there.”

“He’s my tracker?”

“Consider him your friend.”

“But he’ll report everything I do, everyone I see, everyone I talk to, to you, right?”

“To keep you safe. Right, Tommy?”

“Yep.”

“Think of him as your chauffeur and bodyguard.”

“And your faithful lapdog?”

“I wouldn’t want Tommy sitting on my lap. Would you? He’ll take you wherever you want and give you as much privacy as seems…” He hesitated.

“Wise?”

“Prudent.”

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Ed opened his eyes at the smell of coffee. Morelli stood over him, steaming cup in hand. “You take it extra cream, right?”

Ed sat up and looked around. “How did I get home?”

“This is your bedroom, right? Any idea what happened to you? Me? Us?”

“You had a heart attack. I told you to cut out all those Italian cold cuts and to stop smoking, didn’t I?”

“You’re not stuttering. Am I talking with Ed or Gio?”

Ed threw off the covers and looked down at his rumpled clothing.

“Didn’t want to get too personal. You were on the ground. You spoke Italian again. All I got was Fortuna. Did Gio do something to you? He’s changed a lot since I knew him if he hurts people for no reason. Is that what happened?”

“How come you didn’t take me to Anna Jacques or Lowell General?”

Morelli pulled back slightly and looked at the floor. “I…no idea. Something said not to.”

“Did you get us here?”

Morelli snapped his head as if shaking off loose thoughts. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

“You’re okay now? No pain?”

“I’m fine. You? And this is Gio’s doing, right?”

“He made a…” Vox hesitated. His eyes darted around as if the correct word was hiding in the room somewhere. “A suggestion?” He closed his eyes and nodded as if supremely satisfied with the answer. “Yes. He made a suggestion.”

Morelli followed Ed’s eyes as if expecting Gio Fortuna to come out of hiding.

Gio took a sip of the offered coffee. “God, you always make it this strong?”

Morelli took back the cup and sniffed. “Whoa. Guess I did. Yeah, I must’ve. I remember now. I added an extra scoop of coffee. It mean something?”

“Maestro Fortuna likes it that way.”

“Is he here? Now?”

Ed stood. “He is here. Not here, exactly. He stopped by to…help. He also needed help. One of his teachers suggested someone.”

“He has teachers? There are people out there who can do more than him?”

“Several, according to him.”

“Christ, is this Dante’s Inferno in reverse?”

Vox absently took the cup and emptied it in two long swallows.

“I thought you didn’t like it that strong.”

Vox looked away and a slight smile creased his face. He nodded. It seemed more like a slow motion wag as Morelli watched.

“Is Gio with you right now? Are you and he…I forgot the term. Sharing?”

Vox’s face quavered, shifted, for a moment young, for a moment old, for a moment clean shaven, for a moment bearded, for a moment crew cut blond, for a moment balding salt & pepper. He spoke with two voices, one Ed’s own and the other almost forgotten. “Borrowing, Tony. It’s called Borrowing.” The quavering face nodded towards the shed holding Morelli’s listening device. “You’re needed in your shed, Tony.”

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

 
Seamus walked down Aer Lingus Flight 241’s jetway in a Hawaiin shirt, hiking shorts, riotous black hair against his roughened red skin, tablet tucked under one arm and phone in hand, all to the clacking of his Birkenstalks. He figured dressed like this he’d stand out easily enough for cousin Sean, who he didn’t see waiting for him.

“Probably getting me bags.”

The baggage claim carousel beeped and its red light began whirling as it vomited suitcases, backpacks, tightly bound battered boxes, and two baby walkers at his approach. He watched business people stand as the carousel brought their bags around, shifting from foot to foot, pacing but standing still, impatient to be off making money. Young couples stayed together, pointed, and laughed as they missed their luggage and watched it go around again. Parents left one to attend tired or excited children while they hurried after strollers, backpacks, gifts from the folks back home. One elderly couple struggled to get a large suitcase off the carousel and Seamus lifted it for them. “Let me help.”

The woman beamed. “You’re from Ireland. We just toured there for a week. Loved it.” She frowned as she looked at how he was dressed. “You don’t look like the Irish people we met, though.”

He exaggerated his brogue. “Ah, but you came over, to be sure, and had a crackin’ time.”

The woman’s smile returned.

“And don’t fret, missus. I got me Lucky Charms box, a red beard, green clothes, and a pair of shoes to mend and yay, a shilling in me purse to get by while I’m here.”

Both husband and wife scowled at him. The husband said, “Thanks for your help.” They turned and wheeled their suitcase away.

An exceedingly tall, elderly gentleman on the other side of the carousel from him didn’t pay attention to the traveling chaos. He smiled at children who gawked and pointed at him, dismissed parents chastising their children for being rude, and each time his face came up, he smiled at Seamus and nodded.

Seamus checked his watch. “Come on, Cousin. Traffic can’t be that bad this time of day. The morning’s just begun.” He called Sean on his phone. Voicemail. “Cousin, you know I came in Aer Lingus, right? You remember Aer Lingus? Your favorite airline? You always said it sounded like you’re going down on an angel?”

The carousel stopped gurgitating and people pulled, dragged, and towed suitcases, backpacks, bound boxes, and children to the buses and cabstands.

“Where’s me bags?” He looked around for the missing baggage office and the exceedlingly tall, elderly gentleman stepped aside. Seamus’ gymbag and travel kit sat beside him like exhausted travelers wanting a nap. The elderly gentleman smiled.

Seamus smiled and walked around the Carousel. “I think them’s mine, friend.”

The gentleman’s voice was silk on water. “Dia duit, an tOllamh O’Hearn.” He smiled at the shocked look on Seamus’ face. “I’m sorry, Professor O’Hearn, is my accent that weak? It’s been years since I spoke your beautiful tongue.”

“What’s this about? Where’s me cousin? Is he okay?”

“I’m told you and your cousin made a fascinating discovery. Or are about to. You’re here to confirm his findings, correct?”

“Who are you?”

“Forgive my rudeness. Introductions, of course. I’m John Willmette, Professor Emeritus, Investigative Forensics and a few other fields, Northeastern University. Call me Red.”

Red Willmette lifted Seamus’ gymbag and travelkit easily, walked to a security door, tapped a code, and it swung open. A middle-aged man in a non-descript blue business suit, revolver in hand, stood in what looked like a service hallway. He nodded and stood back.

Seamus stood at the carousel. Red Willmette turned to him and smiled. There were few people in baggage claim now and he heard the elderly gentleman speak as if they stood next to each other. “Please come with me. I don’t know where your cousin is. I’m here to help you find him and to learn a bit more about your incredible find.”

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

 
Sean sat in a prison with walls of living flesh. Something like seaweed hung over tunnel entrances. The seaweed looked like beaded curtains and his captors came and went without hesitation. He stepped through one upward sloping tunnel’s curtain and what looked like beads exploded against him. Thousands of little spiny things stuck to his divesuit – the only thing he was allowed to keep in his captivity – and the one or two which penetrated it and pricked his skin left him a convulsing heap on the rock floor.

Once he regained control of his movements, he got close enough to inspect wihtout touching.

Neuroblasts? Seaweed with neuroblasts? I’ve never heard of anything like that. Oh, Seamus, me cousin, what have I gotten us into?

The pool leading back to the ocean had so many torpedo and related rays in it you could walk across if you had to, but Sean had no desire to have two-hundred or more volts hit him from every angle imaginable.

Other than being an obvious prisoner and seeing to his vital needs – how did the torpedoes know when he had to shit and piss and move aside? – his captors didn’t interact with him. The same petite female brought him his meals – a collection of raw shell and finned fish, and some edible seaweeds – waited for him to finish, and removed whatever he didn’t eat only to throw it to the rays in the pool. The few times he saw a few gathered, they didn’t speak. Not with words, anyway, not in a way he could hear, although it was obvious they paid attention to each other, could direct each other’s gaze, communicated. They never seemed to argue. What he did experience was a slight frisson, like something lightly crawled on him, an insect needing to be brushed away. Each captor produced a slightly different frisson on his skin, as if he could feel rather than hear their different voices.

One petite female, whom he referred to as his warden, either ignored or couldn’t hear him every time he spoke to her. Once or twice the small, Asian looking fellow came with her and watched while she put his food down and waited. They communicated, or seemed to, and again Sean had no clue what was communicated or how it happened, only their movements, expressioins, their postures indicating something exchanged between them, and that annoying sense of frisson.

It didn’t help that day and night didn’t exist in this cave, his prison. The bioluminescent walls never fluctuated in their lighting or brilliance. Only his stomach, bowels, and bladder indicated time’s passage.

He dismissively chuckled. Think about his stomach and it growled an alert it was empty. As if listening, his warden came through the neuroblast curtain and an assortment of edibles and barely edibles on a wooden plate which looked like it’d been salvaged from some ancient sea wreck. Ocean delicacies he could never afford on land mingled with things he’d forgotten the names to which stared back at him with lethal eyes.

He waited until she put the plate down and backed away. “Are all of these edible?” He pointed. “Those two look like they’d rather eat me.” He caught a motion and looked up from the plate.

The small Asiatic man stood beside his warden. He pointed at the creature Sean was unsure of, pointed to his own mouth, and gave a thumbs-up.

It was the first time Sean had seen any of these beings do a roughly human gesture.

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)