When Graveyards Yawn, G. Wells Taylor [a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT] 📗

“Willieboy’s just a cover name,” I grumbled, glowering at him over a fresh drink. He hadn’t moved. “I should have known. It’s just stupid enough to be believed.”

“I wanted to use a name that would inspire compassion.” He grinned angrily.

“Your face would have done that,” I snarled.

“But you should know,” Willieboy said sourly. “There’s more than one Inspector Borden.”

“More than one.” I was interested, but tried to be coy. “Nepotism?”

“It’s a nickname we have for a posting in Authority. It’s reserved for injured workers and bad inspector’s go there for punishment. We collect shit on the phantom baby, stuff like that.” He smirked. “It’s a play on Inspector Boredom.”

“What else do you collect?” I leveled my gaze. My head still thumped alarmingly.

“Records, man! Things about the baby, UFO’s, ghosts, you know, the odd missing person. But mostly weird stuff—anything that might be connected to the Change.” He shook his head. “Authority doesn’t know what it is—why there’s dead people walking around and that—so we collect and record every bit of unusual information that we hear.”

“So there are other Inspector Bordens?”

“Lots, maybe a hundred, I don’t know. I just found it a convenient dodge.”

I barely heard his last sentence. I was imagining a hundred Inspector Bordens, and myself trying to find out how many of them were involved.

“Let’s not waste time with your real name, Inspector Willieboy. I’ll just fire away like we’re old friends. Why were you working undercover at the Morocco?” I paused watching him. “Say you’re a rogue inspector fighting a corrupt system, and I’ll vomit.”

Willieboy frowned. “A maverick inspector, then.” He climbed from his chair to pace again. “There’s a lot of things going on that run against the original mandate of Authority. What you and I call Authority started to form five years after the Change from existing government and privately run agencies. Its original name was Social Authority. Anyway, we were kind of a police force designed to handle it all. No one knew what the Change was, or how long it would last. ‘To maintain a social direction,’ it says that right in our handbook or charter or whatever. You got to remember, everyone was scared back then. Nobody knew what was happening. I think the first steps to creating Authority were taken by the FBI and the CIA, although Interpol and the U.N. got involved because Authority is present in some form or other in every country in the world now. Anyway, it was decided that the social direction would be one with an open-ended policy of discovery. Since no one knew what the hell had happened we couldn’t wisely take any specific direction. And there were a whole lot of powerful Christians in government going bugaboo about the Second Coming. They didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. So, discovery was a safe bet.

“With law enforcement agencies privatizing at the start of the new Millennium we conscripted our first people there. Then for a while Authority competed with the government-run coppers. Remember the dead riots? Human rights conscious civil servants couldn’t cut the mustard anymore. A heavier hand was needed if civilization was going to survive the panic. So Authority started absorbing government police forces too.

“As time past, control of Authority was shifted to the civilly elected directorate boards that were created not long after the country fragmented—say fifteen years after the Change, when the dead took over the countryside and forced us all into city states. The Federal government had to change with the times and the politicians and lawmakers saw that to keep a hook in the action, they had to streamline the process of Social Authority being adopted by all political and legislative branches of government. The directorate boards were created using representatives from the old system to administer government on federal, regional and local levels.”

“Same shit. Different pile,” I said, pleased with the history lesson.

“Government in the Old World was simple: get elected, cover your ass and go for your pension. Same thing applied to the new directors only now, with the populace spooked they only had to offer protection and reassurance. Nobody blinked an eye when Martial Law was unofficially declared. Thirty-five years into it, democratic elections were taken over by Authority’s public relations wing, and the rest is history—the higher-ups just started making appointments from the ranks. We’re in the process of soaking in the air force, army and navy on the Federal level. There’s a movement on to re-unite the surviving cities under a single flag—a single Authority. Same thing’s going on all over the world: maintain a social direction. If Authority exists then people have something to rally around and something to fear. The result: order.”

“Good for business,” I mumbled in my most cynical tone.

“That’s what it’s all about.” Willieboy crushed his cigarette, sat down, poured himself another drink and then topped mine up again. He lit another cigarette, gestured for me to take one from the pack where he threw it. His level of literacy improved as he talked.

“As time goes on, society’s getting crazier and Authority’s growing more powerful. Since the men and women that make up the directorate board come from the old system, lobby groups, congressmen, senators and hangers-on, they just adapt their routines to the Change—and with the appointments from Authority ranks—well, people are getting really entrenched. And since everyone is suddenly immortal—you can imagine! There’s plenty of opportunity for old wounds to fester, and for special interest groups to grow within Authority—who am I kidding, they were there already. Now we got pressure tactics, protection rackets—that kind of thing springing up—nothing new.”

“And you’re one of the select few committed to the original ideals of the bold and brave drafters of the Social Authority mandate. I don’t buy it.” It was my turn to stand and pace a little. My head throbbed immediately, so I leaned against a desk along the far wall. It groaned, but held my weight.

“Fuck, you’re a cynic, Wildclown.” Willieboy turned in his chair. “That’s not it at all. I work for one of the groups inside Authority. But we’re on the level—you know, we’re not into any of this religious shit, or just violence for the fun of it. We’re straight money people. I’m not alone, and I’m not pure. We’ll put pressure on a bad loan, you know, lean on troublemakers; but we don’t grind people up. There’s no profit in that.”

“Who does?” I rubbed smoke from my eye.

“Hard to say. There are a lot of groups big and small. There’s even a bunch of ex-cops and law enforcement agents trying to clean things up. Some of the worst are the religious groups. They haven’t handled the Change well, you know. But look out for the King’s Men. They work for the King of the Dead. You probably heard of him—William King? He was about a hundred-year-old Senator when he died, and his death was violent, so what’s left of him ain’t pretty. But he’s become a powerbroker to be reckoned with. And he hires any Authority Enforcers or Inspectors who get killed in the line of duty, so he’s growing a nice little army let me tell you—and he’s connected, all those dead inspectors got friends. Anyway, we didn’t care about his operation—nobody did. Everything he did was involved with afterlife stuff—skin-stretchers. He does some smuggling, illegal drug sales. But he stayed on his own turf. That’s the only rule we follow. Stay on your own turf. And he was dead, and dead guys only go so far. They aren’t the same as us.”

“He didn’t see it that way.” My sarcasm was obvious.

“Hard to say.” Willieboy looked evasive.

“You were at the Morocco because of Cotton not Billings. Regenerics?” My face fell, I’m sure I heard it hit the floor. “You took up a position in the lobby, and hoped for the answer to walk through the door. You did your desk clerk act, and all that talk about Van Reydner was so much smoke.”

“No.” He looked at me gravely. “I gave you the story we got from the real desk clerk. Lucky little bastard said he got into her panties, too. Anyway, since Authority is so broken up inside, well, any case with clout is over-investigated. Everybody gets a look to see if it matters to him. My group, let’s call them the Businessmen, had a special interest in this one.”

“You moved in fast…didn’t the other groups get wise? Someone would have recognized you.”

“Authority is big, and I don’t always look like this.” He waved a hand across his face.

“Cotton was hiding at the Morocco.” The whiskey was taming my pain. “He had something for you.”

Willieboy leaned back. “Yeah, and whoever whacked Billings was the only witness to Cotton’s murder. Billings was in Blacktime when it happened.” He paused. “About a couple weeks before the murders we started getting calls from a guy who said he needed protection.