I miss you dreadfully! (Jupiter Jazz Part 2)

“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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The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty–five years old, no taller than I am, childish features and a touchy temper. (Jupiter Jazz Part 1)

I sit in the bar with a cowboy in my hand, waiting for the end. It began on a Tuesday evening, when I was given the job. My apartment had been wrecked the night before when I called to inform my previous employers that I wouldn’t do the job they hired me to do. Seems certain mobsters don’t take kindly to people not finding those they want found. I was lucky in that they were only able to break the cosmetic stuff before I arrived. At least I can still sleep in a bed that isn’t in tatters. I suppose I should have gotten the room fixed, but I needed to get off of Mars and I needed to get off quick. These types of bastards tend not to stop at wrecking a room.

That’s when fortune gave me one of its rare smiles in the form of a radiant woman. She was dressed in a provocative red dress, the kind you don’t see outside of old noir books. The surgical scars across her body were not as noticeable as she thought they were. She walked with a newness to femininity and spoke like she had always been one. Forgive me if I screw up my language. Sometimes I say something rather rotten when I’m trying to be sweet. But she was stunning. So stunning, I thought I was day dreaming when she entered my little room. All my work was done in there. I couldn’t afford anything more.

“Are you Ryan Chack,” she asked me with a voice affecting curiosity.

“Yeah. I’m him.” I rummaged the room for a box of cigarettes, but apparently the mobsters thought it would be a cruel joke to break all of them in a scuffle. Bastards. Still, a broken cigarette is just as good as an unbroken one, I lie to myself. Fortunately, the lighter still works. “Want one?” She politely refused my gesture. Fair enough. Not everyone gets the appeal of a broken cigarette.

“I have a job for you.” She was curt with me. As I would find out much later, she had a lot on her mind.

“What kind of job?”

“Two million right now. Twenty million when you finish.” The cigarette fell out of my mouth. “Plus expenses.” Now, as many people who know me know, I’m not always one to smell bullshit. And yet, this all rank of it. For starters, she clearly had surgery done on her, the kind someone with twenty-two million woolongs to spend would be able to hide better, let alone two million. As I looked at her closer, the dress she was wearing started to show patches of age and decay. I’d probably notice more in better light, but that might just be even more damning.

At the same time, I wasn’t quite in the position to openly question my employer beyond, “What did you say your name was?”

“Claudia. Claudia Valespie.” That clinched it. I quickly told her I would take the job, whatever it may be. One doesn’t say no to a member of the Valespie family, even the black sheep. The Valespie family was perhaps one of the oldest crime syndicates in the inhabited planets. Despite being Earth based, they had enough clout and power to keep their name on the board. The Blue Diamonds learned that the hard way. You can still smell their remains on Titan. The reasons why she was the black sheep of the family were obvious to me when she first entered the room. I didn’t say them, but she knew I knew once she said her name. She became sadder when she came to this realization.

“My boyfriend is on Callisto.” She presented me with the photo of the guy. He had a smooth face, almost like a baby’s. His eyes were soft and brown, though there was a hint of anger in them. His left center tooth had been chipped and there was a small scar on his lips. His skin was slightly tan, though not dark enough to hide the shiner. He had curly hair, though the sides were partially shaved off. Not in the way one has a mohawk. It looked as if someone had failed to give him a haircut and tried desperately to fix it. Then again, I’m bald so who am I to talk about other people’s hair?

“And you want me to find him?” She nodded. “What’s his name.” She told me. I must have given her a look of incredulity as she immediately followed up the name with a hideously fake laugh before giving me a fake name. I let it slide for the moment. Instead, I asked her if she knew what he was doing on Callisto and she instead told me that he was known to hang out at a bar called the Blue Crow. I’d find out in time what he did and why. I wish I hadn’t.

We drove to the spaceport in the most opulent of cars and towards one of the most mundane of spaceships. I suppose that’s fair. Callisto has a long history of hiding criminals on the run. It stands to reason that they can’t all be murderers. Seeing the moon made me think otherwise. I’d never been to Callisto. No one goes to Callisto unless the ISSP is after you for a sum greater than seventy-five billion woolongs. It was a shithole. Not like Earth where you could at least have a conversation. I mean a proper shithole. It was a barren, desolate planet where the only life was a driving city without any cars in it. And, to top it all off, it was cold as balls.

So finding Claudia’s beau and convincing him to get off the planet wouldn’t be too hard. I started at the Blue Crow. Bartender seemed nice. Or, at the very least, he could act like he wasn’t thinking of the ways he could skin you to make a quick profit. Most of the clientele were either passed out or more focused on whatever was on the tv. Currently, it was that bounty hunter show that everyone watches for some ungodly reason. I never really got that show. It’s just two people talking about who’s going to die or go to jail soon. Sure, the lady had a nice rack and the guy looked like he’d be good for a fun one night stand, but the show just wasn’t worth it. Why watch some crap show with T and A when the internet exists? Or hell, just hire some prostitutes. I didn’t say any of this to the patrons. Even drunk, they were quite a fearsome bunch.

I asked the bartender about the lad. “Yeah, I’ve seen him,” he said with a rather uncharacteristically scornful tone. From the way he was talking to me before, I got the impression that he wanted to sleep with me before skinning me. I wasn’t much of a looker, but I had a similar build to the guy. Twinks, I think the term for us is. Maybe he knew something I didn’t. Then again, the way he said “him” rubbed me the wrong way. He must have noticed as he quickly followed up with, “He comes to the bar once in a while. Usually to listen to Gren. But Gren don’t play sax no more.” I didn’t ask what happened to Gren. His sour face told me the whole story. “Nowadays, the guy hangs out with the… other ladies.” I socked him in the face before heading out. Fortunately, the other patrons were more focused on the sudden increase in free beer to care about me.

“We’ve seen him, ya,” said one of the ladies. Her name was Vanessa and she wasn’t rich enough to look like Claudia. She could barely afford a razor to remove the five o’clock shadow, let alone the surgeries to make her look more like herself. Still, she had a beauty to her. The kind usually talked about scornfully by people who believed normality trumps humanity. She was quite sad, even when she was cheerfully talking about her life. She couldn’t quite stop telling me all the little details. How she realized who she was on Callisto, how she met others like her, how she loved and lost and loved again. So many stories, none of which are mine to tell.

When her story reached my quarry, she told me he was a sad lad. He claimed to have “accidentally” killed a mob boss, the head of Valespie family. A cold shiver went down my spine. The kind you get when an unwanted hand of a ghost touches you. I tried not to say anything, but Vanessa could tell I was worried. She held me, not the way a lover holds someone. But like one holds a fellow person when they realize that there’s no life on other planets, all that’s left is just one sentient species. That we are truly alone. She told me that my bounty, for lack of a better word, was hiding in an abandoned church. And then, she told me the rest of her story.

My life seems to be haunted by abandoned churches. My dad died in one, my mom was born in one, and my brother disappeared in one. I found Steven a few days ago after being hired to find him by some mobsters. It appeared that he had taken on some debt with the mob and had gone into hiding. They just wanted the money and, failing that, him. My job was finding people and he didn’t go by Chack, so they thought I’d be perfect for the job. I recognized my brother instantly. It had been a few years since I’d seen Steven and while he’d gained a few scars and his hair had gone grey, he was still the same kid I knew. Still the same little shit who stole my lunch money and gave it to the homeless girl outside our dump of an apartment.

I found him on the outskirts of Tharsis. He was tending a farm with a wife and three kids (two girls and a boy). We exchanged pleasantries. I asked him what kind of business he was doing with the mob. His wife looked rather worried about this question. It turned out that he didn’t owe squat to the mob. His wife used to be a moll for the mob who helped her “sugar daddy” (I think that’s the right term for kindly saying pimp) skim off from the top. Certain people in the mob caught wind and the sugar daddy put the blame on my brother, a sweet kid who would talk to Julia, his now wife, from time to time. The kids were all his from a marriage that ended in tragedy. That’s not my story to tell though.

He practically begged me not to sell him to the mob. I looked at this guy, who I haven’t seen for years, who I cared about so god damn much, who I was furious for leaving me alone with only the cruel awful world to keep me company, and I said to him, “Of course I’ll keep you safe. What are older brothers for?” He broke down in tears.

When I arrived at the empty church, it was… empty. People had once lived in the church. Some of the fires were still charred with ash and embers. But those who were there were just ghosts haunting the church like God did. I looked around for something, anything to help me find my missing person. Providence came in the confessional. There, he must have been sleeping. Because it was in there that I found his wallet. It had two hundred woolongs, which I pocketed, a picture of the guy and Claudia Valespie (and it was indeed the guy I was looking for) and a photo ID with his name on it. It was the first name that Claudia had given me, the name I thought couldn’t possibly be his. How could two people both be named “Ryan Chack?”

More As It Develops

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