Free Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven by Michael Jan Friedman Page B

smiled back at him. “Listen, I’ll just come back with a writ of compliance. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to cooperate. Why not do it now . . .” I looked around the shop. “. . . before the health inspectors come back to find a violation they somehow overlooked?”
    I had no pull with the health inspectors, but I didn’t think he would know that. Either way, he didn’t budge.
    “Do whatever you feel is necessary,” he told me.
    There wasn’t much else I could say except: “I’ll be in touch.”
    As I headed for the door, the shopkeeper said, “Know the gods’ favor, Investigator.”
    Contrary to his wishes, I didn’t feel favored.

 

Chapter Six
    M y next stop was at She Of The Jade Skirt.
    It was inarguably the nicest hotel in town, with a gray marble lobby and lavender jade accents, and a carefully controlled cascade of water coating the wall opposite the service counter. One didn’t have to be an Investigator to figure out the clientele was wealthy. One look around was enough.
    The woman behind the counter was probably wondering what I was doing there, since I wasn’t blinding her with the reflected brilliance of my jewelry—until I held up my hand so she could see the jewelry I was wearing. In other words, my Investigator’s bracelet.
    “I’d like to see the manager,” I told her.
    She nodded. “Of course.”
    A few minutes later, I found myself sitting at a shiny black table in the hotel’s administration office. It was a nice piece, its legs inlaid with strips of turquoise and gold. Of course, the tables in the guest rooms were probably even nicer.
    The manager, who sat across from me behind a Mirror monitor, had high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, and the skin of someone had who’d had the pox as a child. He offered me something to drink. I declined.
    “How, then, may I help you?” he asked.
    “I need to check your records,” I said.
    “If I may inquire, for what purpose?”
    “I can’t say. It’s an Investigation.”
    The manager looked like he wanted to protest. After all, his salary depended on the number of beans the hotel took in, which in turn depended on his keeping his rooms occupied, and discretion was a plus in that regard.
    But really, what could he say? Like every other residence in the city, short-term or long-term, the hotel was run by the Empire. And an Investigator had asked him for his cooperation.
    “Very well,” he said. Then he called up a screen on his monitor, turned the monitor in my direction, and pushed it across the smooth surface of the table.
    “Just select a time frame. The last week, the last moon, the last cycle . . . whatever you require.”
    I selected the last cycle. Then I scanned for Coyotl’s name. I didn’t expect it to turn up, not even once. After all, he would have wanted his personal business to remain personal—even if he hadn’t been carrying on an affair with a noblewoman.
    As it turned out, I was wrong. His name did show up. Nearly a hundred times, in fact.
    Of course, there was no way to tell whom he had entertained on those dates.
    I homed in on one of them and checked the room’s buzzer record. No one who stayed in this hotel bothered to carry a pouch buzzer, so whatever calls Coyotl had made would be noted.
    There were three. I jotted down the codes.
    I left the hotel, found a quiet street corner, and called each one in turn. The first code turned out to be Oxhoco’s. The second belonged to an executive at a sports manufacturing company, who was worried sick about Coyotl because he’d invested a hill of beans in balls bearing Coyotl’s likeness.
    The third code was the most interesting. When I called it, a recording informed me that I had reached a high-priority line. In other words, it belonged to a noble. But I couldn’t determine which noble because that information was withheld from the public.
    And the fact that I was an Investigator wasn’t going to help.
    Funny—I felt like I was making progress, like I