Free Acts of Violence by Ross Harrison Page B

been busy
today, Jack.’ Lawrence stayed somewhere behind me. I expected him to drop
something heavy on the table again at some point. I’d probably jump again. At
this point it would probably send me into a fit of giggling. Then a fit of
rage. I was like that sometimes. ‘First you kill a sweet little barmaid. Then
you break out of police custody. Then you go and kill two more men.’
    DeMartino raised an
eyebrow at that. ‘Does this mean we don’t need Mr. Mason to tell us who took
him from your precinct?’
    ‘I think it does.’
The file hit the desk before I registered the movement. I jumped at the bang in
made. I didn’t laugh. ‘Agent DeMartino, say hello to Richard Webster. Shot and
dropped in the drink.’ They’d worked fast to find him already.
    ‘Little Dick
Webster,’ I said with a small sigh. Shame he’d had to die. He could have aided
my investigation. He was my investigation. ‘Actually
he was dropped in the “drink” and then shot. What century are you from again?’
    ‘“Little Dick”,’
DeMartino repeated with a smile. ‘That’s why I like you, Mr. Mason. Your wit is
so very clever.’ I suspected sarcasm. ‘So your investigation was into Webster
junior? That interests me greatly. Doesn’t that interest you, Detective
Lawrence?’
    ‘What interests
me,’ Lawrence said, ‘is putting Jack here in chains and personally driving him
up to Anshan to watch him die a killer’s death.’
    DeMartino didn’t
respond to that. ‘I happen to believe the Websters are – or were in the case of
“Little Dick” – involved in something highly illegal.’ Now it was my turn to be
interested. He hadn’t come here for me. He’d come for Webster. ‘I think the
mining operation is a front. That’s why I’m here. So, again: what was it you
were investigating?’
    I looked at him for
about a minute, trying to decide whether to talk or not. I didn’t have much to
say, but I needed it to sound like a lot. There was no point in me continuing
to try to be clever if landed me in Anshan.
    ‘This city’s lack
of colour.’ I could tell he thought I was being funny again. ‘Haven’t you
noticed? You won’t find a single person in Harem who isn’t white.’ DeMartino
frowned. He’d be running through all the faces he’d seen since he arrived.
Trying to find something a little darker than the paper in Lawrence’s file. I
couldn’t see Lawrence’s reaction.
    ‘Could you
elaborate?’ DeMartino said.
    ‘I saw a black girl
once. Once. A few months ago. She was being hassled by a few men in an alley.
One of them, I learned later, was Little Dick Webster. All I know about the
other two is that they should be prize fighters. I woke up in the same alley
and the girl was gone. Not just gone from the alley, but gone from Harem. I
asked around until I found her apartment. It was deserted. No furniture, no
clothes, no girl. The neighbours on either side were cagey. Denied she’d ever
lived there.’
    ‘There have been a
few disappearances around Dick Webster,’ Lawrence said. His voice told me he
was reluctant to part with any information that might have me stay here a
second longer. ‘Never any evidence he was involved, except that in the early
days he was seen hassling every one of them. Now, whatever’s going on, he’s too
smart to be seen directly involved.’
    ‘Little Dick
Webster and smart don’t belong side by side in any sentence that doesn’t
include a hearty laugh,’ I said. ‘And he has the money to make sure any evidence
evaporated.’ There was a slow, hard release of breath behind me, but Lawrence said nothing. He knew it was true. His frustration was probably as much about
that fact as my pointing it out.
    ‘What about the
barmaid?’ DeMartino said. ‘She was, at best, half white.’
    ‘Webster said she
was an experiment. Don’t know what he meant by that.’
    DeMartino’s
eyebrows tried to embrace. ‘Experiment,’ he said to himself. ‘Richard Webster
told you