They descended into the commercial streets and the sky was blotted out by a jungle of signs and advertisements dangling off the building faces, dripping gray water and runny ink. They parked underneath the shadow of the signs and walked down to a small corner diner, a dingy little eatery whose heat and noise spilled out onto the sidewalk. It was an early-morning place, filled with dockmen and construction workers and other tradesmen who awoke before the sun, a place where one could go and grudgingly wait the coming day. It was also a common stop for police, particularly ones who kept the most abnormal hours.
They had to fight their way through to a booth. Hayes thrust himself far into the corner and pulled his coat up so it made piles about his shoulders. He leaned his head against the window and stared out at the street, blinking languidly.
Garvey looked him over, frowning. “You look terrible.”
“Well,” Hayes said airily, “I rather feel terrible. But then, we just fished a corpse out of a river. How should I feel?”
“No, I mean you really look sick. Can I get you something?”
“Just water. Water will do me fine.”
“Water? Your usual breakfast menu includes a beer or two, if I recall.”
“No,” said Hayes, and closed his eyes.
“No?”
“No, Garv. I won’t have a beer. I won’t be having a beer for some time, I should say.” He tilted his head away from the window and smiled wanly at Garvey. “I’m giving it another go, you see, Garv. Trying to dry out once more.”
Garvey raised his eyebrows. “Again?”
“Yes. Again.”
“That makes this, what? Attempt number five?”
“Something like that,” said Hayes. He sank lower in his seat.
“What’s the occasion? Have another binge you regret? I can’t imagine it’d be worse than the time you fell off the trolley.”
“I suppose it’s something of a special occasion,” said Hayes. “But this is more professionally motivated.”
Garvey looked surprised. “Really? The company’s leaning on you to quit?”
“It’s all very unspoken. Everything’s done in subtleties. Courting a church girl is easier, I swear. Or at least I’d imagine it’d be, having never personally tried.”
“How’s it going?”
“How do you think?” Hayes snapped. “It’s fucking awful. It feels like there’s an army of nails trying to dig their way out of my head. How about you get me that water before I die right here in this booth, eh? Then you’ll have another fucking body to deal with.”
Garvey allowed himself a small smile, then nodded and left.
Hayes turned back to the window. Outside a chilly cement world tumbled by, filled with columns of steam and window-lined canyons and the colorless faces of crowds. He watched as people threaded through the alleys and the lanes to the waterfront streets. The Arch Street airship cradle was just a block or two down, its spire covered in glittering cables and panels, all tilting and shifting to correspond with incoming airships. Below that he saw the immense dark curve of the Brennan Bridge, the inner recesses of its arch lost to shadow. At the top two men sat dangling their feet through the railing and sharing some small meal. Their bodies steamed slightly in the morning air as though burning.
Garvey returned with a glistening plate of eggs and sausage and rolls. He put down a mug of water and pushed it over to Hayes, who lifted it up and maneuvered it through the lapels of his coat to his mouth. He sipped it once, then sipped again, deeper. “Ah,” he said. “That’s better. That’s just what I needed.”
Garvey carefully watched as Hayes placed the mug of water back on the tabletop.
“What?” said Hayes.
“So,” said Garvey. “You’ve quit drinking but you’re still hitting up the tearooms.”
“Well. Yes,” said Hayes, nettled. “I can’t give up everything at once. I need a few vices. Just to function. Just to keep my head on.”
“How long have you been dry?”
“Centuries, it feels like,” he moaned. “Ages. Ages and ages and ages. Civilizations have risen and fallen in the time I’ve been dry. But I would guess a month, really. Two, at most.”
“That’s pretty good, for you.”
“Mornings are the hardest. Mornings like this, especially. I need a little fire in my belly to stay on my feet.”
“What’d you think of it, anyways? This morning?”
“I don’t know,” Hayes said, turning back to the window. “Do you want me to be honest, Garv?”
“Sure.”
“I won’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”
Garvey nodded, sawing through a sausage with slow, silent care. Grease poured from its mealy cross-section to pool around the eggs.
Hayes waited a moment. Then he said, “If you want me to be completely frank, Garvey, I think you’re fucked. Very fucked. I don’t have any tricks to play here.”
Garvey stopped sawing. “You can’t at least check and see if he’s one of yours?”
“If you can get a name, sure. I can check him against the factory rolls. But that’s if you get a name, which I’ve got to think is pretty unlikely. Even though he wasn’t dressed, he didn’t exactly seem like a socialite. Not a well-known out-and-about-town sort. And even if you do get a name, there’s been a lot of flux among the loaders and workers since the whole union business started. It’s less organized than ever. It’d be… Well. It’d be impossible to nail it down.”
Garvey’s grimace subtly hardened. His limited range of facial expressions bordered on an inside joke among his fellow detectives in the Evesden Police Department. To the unobservant his face would seem to never move at all, his words just barely escaping his slight frown, yet to those who knew him the slightest twitch of his broad, craggy forehead spoke volumes. Garvey could tell you if he thought a body would file just by slowly lifting an eyebrow or pursing his lips. But his eyes never moved, permanently buried in the shadow of his brow. They were eyes that plainly said they had seen it all, or at least enough of it to feel they didn’t really need to see the rest.
“Yeah,” he said, and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Like I said, it’s nothing you don’t already know,” Hayes said. “I’m sorry you caught it.”
“You said that already.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“You sure he’s union, though?” Garvey asked, half-hopeful.
“Probably. You do, too, you just don’t want to admit it. I mean, come on, Garv, you can’t tell me you just fished a man who looks like a worker out of a Construct canal and haven’t thought it has something to do with the lefties rattling around.”
“No. Goddamn, I wish it didn’t, though.”
“So. How many does that make?” Hayes said.
“Make?”
“Yes. Union deaths in all. I’d expect you’re all keeping tally marks over the morgue doors by now.”
“Hm. Four,” said Garvey reluctantly. “Four in the past five months. And that’s not counting the beatings and other pointless violence that’s been going on. I don’t know how many we’ve had due to that.”
“But four murders? Four genuine union murders?”
“Yeah.”
“Hm,” Hayes said. “Things are heating up.”
“No doubt,” said Garvey. He began speaking in the toneless cadence of work-speech: “All four were found very, very murdered, all in different but discreet areas of the city. Docks. Vagrants’ cemetery, found one out there, pretty vicious. Most recent one was a union buster. He was found in a canal, like today. No one’s getting anywhere with any of them. Now Collins has us all taking anything that even smells like union and making it high concern. ‘Prioritization,’ they’re calling it. We’re probably going to junk those four, though. I don’t think there’s any headway to make with them. Not with fresh ones coming in today, like this one.”
