Greater New York
Jinro could see cranes dancing in the imperial garden at Kyoto. Their antics, wings flapping, necks dipping and gyrating, were graceful, choreographed by evolution over thousands of years. The vision was faded like an old photo or distant memory. He'd left Japan with to live with his American father when he was 9, and filled his head with the heat of Texas until he'd run away at 17. He'd flown to Florida, then DC and points north, until one day he'd come upon the urban core of New York and settled to roost.
Startled by an unseen menace, the flock took to the air. As Jinro watched, four became eight, then sixteen, and thirty-two as each flap of bleached, downy feathers added to the number of cranes in the sky. The beat of thundering wings became deafening as the group passed overhead, beaks and eyes and legs the only flashes of color on an unending field of white. In an instant they were gone, the only mark of their passing was the rapidly fading sound of their wings as they disappeared like the sunset behind Kyoto Castle.
Jinro slowly opened his eyes, woken by the few beads of sweat trickling down his brow, soaking the pillow and staining the patterned silk pillowcase under his head. The sound of his dream cranes was no more than a tickle in the back of his mind. The slap of the ceiling fan over the bed made him wonder if he'd heard them at all. The dream was familiar, one that he'd come to recognize as a reoccurring harbinger of change. For better or worse he never knew, only that it was coming, the signs were always the same... a dream of flight.
He sat up and turned on the desk-lamp. There was a red-and-gold pack of Dunhills on the nightstand. He took stock of the world around him as he reached for them. It was still dark and shafts of light from the streetlamp outside his building filtered in, slicing through the gaps in the Rattan blinds over the window.
"Mesuinu. " He muttered. Whoever she was, the woman he had been with only hours before had smoked the last of his cigarettes, leaving only a few dry shreds of tobacco to rattle around in the bottom of the empty pack.
Live for one night only! Screamed words from the top of a club flyer, laying folded on the radio-clock. Jinro crumpled the empty pack into a ball and tossed it towards the wastebasket, then unfolded the flyer, it opened with a sticky crackle. There was a ring of burgundy on the back, the imprint of a kiss that accompanied her name and number, written in lipstick in the absence of anything more suitable. He snickered and lifted the sheet that covered his naked frame. There was a ring of the same color around his penis.
He rolled onto his stomach and reached underneath the bed, removed a shoe-box he found there and lifted the lid. There were stacks of paper inside; bar napkins, matchbook covers, business cards, corners torn off of newspaper pages, all of them carried a name and a number- names that he had forgotten and numbers he had never called. He tossed the flyer on the top of the heap and replaced the lid. The box went back under the bed and he pulled the covers back up to his chest, then turned off the light.
Jinro came awake when he heard the first knock on his front door. He turned onto his side and checked the clock, then mashed a pillow over his head. The knocking went on for ten minutes before he decided that the knocker wasn't going away. It couldn't have been the Jehovah's, the clock read 4:15, they never came out before 7:00.
Work. It's got to be work. Son-of-a-bitch. He thought as he levered himself out of bed and donned his robe, irritation stoking the angry heat he could feel building inside of him. It was his first day off in weeks and he'd been looking forward to sleeping in. If this is Walter I'm gonna punch him in his fat face.
The drumming stopped only when Jinro pressed the green 'admit' button and the door slid out from under rapping knuckles. His partner stood framed between the doorjambs. The man smiled and said, "Rise and shine, buddy-boy. Justice never sleeps."
"Go to hell, Walter." Jinro muttered. The lights in the corridor were bright and hurt his eyes. He lifted a hand to shade himself from the offending glare.
"No can do, my friend," Walter said and turned as a neighbor down the hall stepped out of her door, an elderly woman with a weathered face and a shopping cart in the hook of one arm. She waved at Jinro and disappeared down the stairs. "Flushing is in the toilet today, off-limits to everything except tactical squads."
"What? The Rippers and Wolverines are out again, huh?" Jinro leaned against the doorframe and made room for his partner to enter.
"Give the man a prize," Walter said and sighed. "The public defender thought the tacticals were a little rough on the last roundup. He got Judge Dower to cut 'em a break."
"Those punks," Jinro said. The gang problem was exploding. The undesirables from the Terran hinterlands that arrived daily by the freight-load were making the streets a menace. "We should stop putting them in the lockup and let tactical take care of them, for good."
Walter squeezed his considerable bulk through the door and drifted into the kitchen. He turned on the lights and took a cup from the stack in the sink, waving it at the surroundings. "This place is a dump, Jinro. Why do you have to live in Little Beijing?"
"Because I can go out for a drink and not have to sign out with the guard at the gate," Jinro said and allowed the door to slide closed. "I like it here, there's a lot of tradition in this neighborhood, it's got ambiance. I got a real nice view of the skyline from the roof of my building. What more could you ask for?"
"That's a crock if I ever heard one," Walter said and opened a cupboard. He found the jar of instant coffee on the second try. "All the transients left when the slopes started moving in. Oh, wait, that was when you moved in, too... sorry."
"Here I blend, at least until I have to talk to somebody, besides it's my dump until they tear it down. You got five minutes to say your peace before I kick you out and go back to bed."
"Some way to treat your partner," Walter said and rinsed a spoon he found in the sink. "At least you're not under water restriction today."
"This is my only day off, Walter. Four minutes, fifty-seven seconds... fifty-six... fifty-five... " Jinro said and twisted to check the clock hanging above the Mariachi HDTV box on the wall, a flat panel that currently displayed the "Zen Garden" wallpaper graphic.
"Alright, alright. The department needs a favor." Walter said while Jinro fought to keep a disgusted grimace off of his face.
"Really. What kind of favor?" He said, knowing that whatever it was would cost him sleep, too much of which he'd been losing to job related stressors.
"We need a team to go sign off on someone they found last night in the Prospect Park area. Some exec from AgraCon got himself crushed by a subway train. Everyone else is already assigned so that just leaves us."
"You don't need me," Jinro said and yawned. "Do it yourself."
"I'd do it myself, but the captain insists on sending a team. They want it done by the book. Captain Dravenheath said that she'd make it up to you though. Besides, the AgraCon crew's already there. You'll be back before noon."
"I'd better be, and tell Dravenheath that I want at least a long weekend for this." Jinro said as Walter programmed the faucet and stirred. Steaming water poured over the flakes of instant coffee he'd added to the cup. Once they'd dissolved, Walter took a sip and smiled. In his book it wasn't coffee if it didn't sour as it went down.
"Ahh, that's the stuff," Walter said. "Sure, I'll tell her... when she comes back from Lake Placid on Monday."
"You're a bastard, Walter. Keep it up and I'll have to shoot you."
Walter rinsed out a second mug for his partner and spooned in some crystals. He shook his head at Jinro in mock disgust, as if he'd confirmed something in his mind and found it distasteful.
"That's what happens when it's bad news," Walter said and dropped the spoon into the sink. "Everyone always wants to shoot the messenger-boy."
Jinro accepted the cup and bore it into his bedroom. He took a cautious sip and toed through the clothes hamper. The creases on yesterday's slacks were still faintly visible, so he set the cup down and pulled them on.
"Not me, good messengers are too hard to come by," He said as he buttoned on a clean shirt. His empty stomach rumbled at the thought of a large, high-caloric meal saturated in Butter Pecan syrup with a yellow scoop of soy-butter melting on top. "Can we get breakfast first?"
"No need, kemosabe. I got a box of Krispy-Kreme's in the car."
"No breakfast? This must be some crisis."
***
"So who's the corpse?" Jinro said as rain pounded the windshield. They rolled down the cruise lane of Shore Parkway. The traffic to their right, reduced to a crawl by the ongoing widening of the super highway, was as bad as it had been all month. The big board at TRANSIT control reported seventeen miles of grid-seizure caused, and exacerbated by, the continuing deluge. The lines of mostly electric vehicles stretched as far South as Coney Island and as far North as the checkpoints into Rosedale.
"We should've taken the skyway." Walter groused and tapped the brakes of their internal combustion powered ride: a blue, unmarked Crown Vic. "It's worth the extra five bucks, I'll tell you that, thank God we get to use the HOV lanes."
The cloud-cover had reduced the ambient light to a morbid gray and the rain cut visibility to a few dozen feet. Drivers were going to have to see them coming so they ran with full lights and sirens. The car was sealed, well-shielded against atmosphere and sound. Though the siren was loud enough to incapacitate at close range, the only thing that came through into the passenger cabin was a subtle groaning.
"Nice of you to think of that now," Jinro said and filled out a union grievance form to ease his displeasure at the upset of his off-time schedule. "Walter... "
"What?" Walter said and shot him a sideways glance.
"The corpse?"
"Oh, there's no corpse," Walter said as he took a sip from a fresh cup of Kwik&Go coffee. Jinro took a deep breath and allowed the unpleasant feeling he felt for the day begin to dissipate. "But the victim's name is Leonard Dean. He's the... correction, he was the associate director of human resources at AgraCon. Some big-wig."
"An associate director, huh? No wonder they're having a fit," Jinro said as he folded the grievance, took the last donut and pitched the empty box into the back. "So what happened?"
Walter, wedged behind the steering column, replied with a shrug.
"Somehow he wandered into a subway tunnel and got hit by the G train a little after one," Walter said. "They were scraping Leonard goo off the walls when I called you this morning. It took them four hours to stop the trains."
"Then thanks for letting me sleep in." Jinro said as he finished his donut and sucked the sugary glazing off of his fingers. Walter continued as if he hadn't heard.
