“Are you Ryan Chack,”
“Claudia. Claudia Valespie.”
“Two million right now. Twenty million when you finish.”
One doesn’t say no to a member of the Valespie family, even the black sheep.
“My boyfriend is on Callisto.”
“And you want me to find him?”
He claimed to have “accidentally” killed a mob boss, the head of Valespie family.
That’s not my story to tell though.
When I arrived at the empty church, it was… empty.
I found his wallet. It had a photo ID with his name on it.
How could two people both be named “Ryan Chack?”
“Do you have a comrade?” Ryan asked me with his sad, tender face. I found him in an abandoned by calling itself the Lovely Angel. There were some bottles of beer left over after the owners bailed. Ryan was there alone, waiting for no one in particular. When I realized that he would no longer be going to the Blue Crow, I asked around for other bars in the area. The city, like all driving cities, is vast with empty buildings creating the majority of the skyline. One could say it was a ruin of a city, though that would be too kind to ruins. Some of the buildings were still intact while others were on their way to collapse. Just like any other city, I suppose. In truth, the Lovely Angel was my third stop.
“A comrade,” I asked. Comrade has a unique meaning in my family. Or, at the very least, it does for my brother and I. When we were kids, we would play this game with some of our fellow locals. Soviets and Pigs, we’d call it. Half of us would try to steal a thing (usually a ball or a rock. One time, it was girl we knew who wanted to play. I think I can still see the scar on my leg from when that game ended exactly how you’d expect) and the other half would try to protect it. Whenever my brother and I would play the game, we’d be on the Soviet side. And we’d always call each other “comrade.” We’d even call each other that when we weren’t playing. In fact, the last thing I said to my brother before leaving was “It was nice seeing you, comrade.” He smiled when I said that.
Ryan made a small chuckle. “You know, a comrade? A buddy, a pal, a partner.” Though his face and eyes were tender, there was also a shiftiness to the way he asked the question, a mild if earned paranoia to it. Like a dog whose been kicked one time too many. If what Vanessa said is true, I can understand why he’d ask such a question.
“It’s just me. There’s no one else here.” The lie soothes him well enough. Or, at least enough not to flee at that moment. Did he see the shifty fellows outside the bar. The ones who thought they were hiding so elegantly in their blue suits and black sunglasses? Did they really think they weren’t sticking out like a sore thumb, especially when they were stroking their guns the way one strokes a cat: with trepidation and an understanding that things could go tits up at any moment. Did he know they were actually here for me?
Mobsters, as anyone who’s dealt with them can tell you, rarely let go of a grudge. I gave up on a job too quickly and they must’ve came all the way to Callisto to find me. That must’ve been what the two million was for. Security money in case they showed up. The briefcase was in my hands with all the money in it. I slid the money towards one of the hired goons. I put a note in there fingering some other mob boss for what my brother was framed for doing. Felt only right, I suppose. He looked inside, signaled his fellows, and they all disappeared.
Ryan Chack declenched even more. (It feels weird to refer to him by my own name. Like I’m not even talking about myself whenever I say those words. Chack, it seems, is a common Martian last name, though the question of Ryan eluded me for a while.) Ryan must’ve thought I was a currier rather than a bounty hunter. The truth is, I’m neither. I’m a detective, a damn good one at that. I find people, solve mysteries, and try to do the best I can. I see things that not many others do, or say they do. Callisto, for example, is a world designed to make you miserable. The sky is perpetually grey, the world is cold and bitter, and the air tastes like sulfur and misery. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a prison planet rather than an escape from prison planet. Maybe that’s why the ISSP never comes here.
Ryan’s misery was that of someone whose whole life had been ruined by the people he loved. A narrative was beginning to shape out of the scraps, lies, and fictions I was told about him. He was born on Mars with the wrong body. He fought on Titan with the right one. He fought against the Blue Diamonds and the dissidents. He shot children and women and all the other people the military deemed to be the enemy. He was a good soldier and served for seventeen years.
When he returned to Mars, he found himself adrift and confused. His home had been burned in a freak accident. His parents had long disowned him and would only take him back if he went back to who he was when he was a child in a cage of flesh. He, rather impolitely, refused. In the years that followed, Ryan found himself on the streets doing what he could to survive. He was good at it, such that some would call him a ghost. No one could prove that he killed that mobster, stole that vase, freed those dogs. But they knew.
The last thing he did was a job on Earth. He was hired by the black sheep of the Valespie family to kill off the father. They had been together, on and off, for a few years. She helped him become the person he was always meant to be and he loved her in return. Seemed he didn’t like the direction she took in life and booted her out of the family. He was offered seventy-five million woolongs in advance and twenty-five million when the job was done. Something felt fishy about the gig to Ryan, but he wasn’t one to say no, even to a black sheep. Plus, the seventy-five mil was legit and not secretly a bomb waiting to explode. So he took the job.
Getting into the mob boss’s home was simple enough. Just pretend that you don’t exist and everyone else will follow suit. He was an old man, probably old enough to remember the first spaceships. He was very much an earth man with earthly views on fairness and cruelty. I suppose he might have been an interesting man to talk to. Ryan waited until he was well asleep before slitting the old man’s throat. That was when he heard over the intercom that someone had killed all of the old man’s children. All but one, that is. Ideas and implications were clicking in Ryan’s mind. He was set up to take the fall. He fled quite quickly, quicker than the other assassins. There was a story about two kids in the woods he liked. They heard a bear and one kid asked the other why he was tying his shoes, as if he could outrun a bear. “I can’t outrun the bear. But I can outrun you.” He fled to Callisto, the only world no one wants to go to, as evident by Claudia sending me to the world. The only downside was he had no access to the seventy-five million woolongs in his bank account. Ryan spent five months on Callisto before he entered the Lovely Angel to find me waiting for him.
He finished his beer in a single gulp. It left a soapy mustache on his clean face. “Ryan Chack.” He extended his hand out for a handshake. I returned the favor, but with a fake name.
“What kind of name is William Bonvillain? Sounds made up.” He said this with a wry smile of someone daring me to ask about his name.
“It’s as real as Ryan Chack.” In my defense, I’m kinda easy to convince to fall into obvious traps. He started yelling at me, as if I wasn’t the only person in the bar. It felt performative and staged. Did he know why I was there? Who hired me. The rant changed subject quite quickly towards Claudia Valespie and I got my answer: inexplicably, no. He asked me part of the way through the rant, just as he was getting to Valespie, if I was aware of her existence. I lied and said only vaguely. He believed me and went into even more detail about her volumes of lies and deceit. About how she tricked him into having sex with her, just to make him think she loved him.
Perhaps the most fucked up thing about the relationship was that she did love him. She fucked him over, sent him on a job she knew could only end one way. Looking at the relationship from the outside, it didn’t seem like it was a healthy one. Ryan only loved Claudia because of what she did for him. Not that Claudia was completely blameless. Choosing to have the person you once loved killed instead of the more traditional break up is a bit fucked up, to say the least. Plus, you know, she’s a sodding mobster. I’m surprised I was able to find out as much as I did about someone she wanted dead. (I was less surprised to find a bomb on the ship she had loaned me. Not taking any chances, I suppose.)
Eventually, Ryan’s words started to become more slurred and confused. Though, that might have been the tranquilizer I had slipped into his beer. Eventually, he collapsed onto the floor like a cat that had seen where a bag of kittens goes. He was surprisingly light, all things considered. The ship wasn’t too far away. Even in a walking city such as this, it was surprisingly easy to hide a spaceship if you really wanted to. I took off to Mars.
On my way there, I thought about Steven. He was a good guy, all things considered. He had a wife and a bunch of kids he loved. A part of me hoped to have a life like his one day. Sure, I have twenty million woolongs now, but it’s not like money can buy you a family or even friends. I have a small number of them, mostly acquaintances and allies, but they are still, nonetheless, my friends. Plus I have Steven. With the twenty million, I could easily get him off of Mars and on a much safer planet or moon. I’ve heard nice things about Ganymede, though the floating cities of Venus might be more our speed. I can’t wait to get to know Julia and all those adorable little tikes. I can hear the other Ryan shuffle in the background.
“I’ll let you go,” I lie, “if you tell me one thing: why’d you pick Ryan?” He didn’t say anything for a bit.
“Dunno. Just felt right, you know.” Even without looking, I could tell he was trying to find something to get him out of the chains. Wouldn’t be the first and wouldn’t be the last. I think I’m going to continue being a detective, despite my riches. I just don’t think I could stand being so… idle. Some people just need something to do, you know?
“Yeah,” I said with a soft smile. “I know.”
Why Are You Alone?
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