When Graveyards Yawn by G. Wells Taylor (popular books to read txt) đ
- Author: G. Wells Taylor
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âCome on, God damn it! You look fine. Shit!â Willieboy puffed heartily on his cigarette. âI canât believe you! Youâre worse than a woman with that goddamn shit!â He stood up and began pacing again; his heavy boots tore at the floor. His leather, steel and rubber jumpsuit creaked. âOh come on!â
âGo plant a gardenâŠâ I mumbled around my dead cigarette. Finished, I put the mirror and makeup away, clicked the case shut, and set it on the floor. I gestured to Elmo, pointed at my cigarette, he lit it and I leaned back taking a long hard drag. Willieboy walked back and forth, his cigarette a cancerous will oâthe wisp.
âAny whiskey?â I asked, smiling around my smoke.
âFuck youâre just coming out of itâŠAh!â Willieboy restrained himself, then went over and rummaged in a faded veneer cupboard. He turned around with a dusty bottle of Canadian Club and three glasses. I looked at the dust on the bottle, ran a finger over it, and peered at the gray on my fingertip as he poured.
âIâd say you havenât been treating this whiskey right, Mr. Willieboy.â I smiled again, and drank the glass offered me.
Willieboy sat down, drank his own, and then topped mine up. Elmo sipped at his. The whiskey sprinted into my veins. I took the initiative.
âI suppose it would be awfully insensitive of me not to mention the faded prison fatigues you were wearing that night at the Morocco Hotel. Nice touch.â
âGood eye, Wildclown. Glad you appreciated it.â Willieboy folded his hands over his knee.
âLet me see,â I said, making a steeple of my fingers the way Sherlock Holmes would. âYou are not an outlaw; but, you do work outside the law. Robin Hood, shall we say?â
âNo, not Robin Hood. I ainât giving no money to no one that didnât earn it. I just work outside their law.â Willieboyâs grin was unconvincing.
âWhose law?â I could feel my senses perking up.
âThere are powerful groups inside Authority that follow their own programs.â He let me have it with the eye sockets; they darkened as he squinted around the serious statement.
I dropped my hands and gazed at my boots through cigarette smoke. They were miles away. âIâll take a stab. Youâre Inspector Borden.â
âYes I am.â Willieboy smiled in an unfriendly way and my mind went to work tying that into the web.
âWillieboyâs just a cover name,â I grumbled, glowering at him over a fresh drink. He hadnât moved. âI should have known. Itâs just stupid enough to be believed.â
âI wanted to use a name that would inspire compassion.â He grinned angrily.
âYour face would have done that,â I snarled.
âBut you should know,â Willieboy said sourly. âThereâs more than one Inspector Borden.â
âMore than one.â I was interested, but tried to be coy. âNepotism?â
âItâs a nickname we have for a posting in Authority. Itâs reserved for injured workers and bad inspectorâs go there for punishment. We collect shit on the phantom baby, stuff like that.â He smirked. âItâs a play on Inspector Boredom.â
âWhat else do you collect?â I leveled my gaze. My head still thumped alarmingly.
âRecords, man! Things about the baby, UFOâs, ghosts, you know, the odd missing person. But mostly weird stuffâanything that might be connected to the Change.â He shook his head. âAuthority doesnât know what it isâwhy thereâs dead people walking around and thatâso we collect and record every bit of unusual information that we hear.â
âSo there are other Inspector Bordens?â
âLots, maybe a hundred, I donât know. I just found it a convenient dodge.â
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.
âLetâs not waste time with your real name, Inspector Willieboy. Iâll just fire away like weâre old friends. Why were you working undercover at the Morocco?â I paused watching him. âSay youâre a rogue inspector fighting a corrupt system, and Iâll vomit.â
Willieboy frowned. âA maverick inspector, then.â He climbed from his chair to pace again. âThereâs 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. âTo maintain a social direction,â 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 couldnât wisely take any specific direction. And there were a whole lot of powerful Christians in government going bugaboo about the Second Coming. They didnât know whether to shit or go blind. So, discovery was a safe bet.
âWith 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 couldnât 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.
âAs time past, control of Authority was shifted to the civilly elected directorate boards that were created not long after the country fragmentedâsay 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.â
âSame shit. Different pile,â I said, pleased with the history lesson.
âGovernment 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 Authorityâs public relations wing, and the rest is historyâthe higher-ups just started making appointments from the ranks. Weâre in the process of soaking in the air force, army and navy on the Federal level. Thereâs a movement on to re-unite the surviving cities under a single flagâa single Authority. Same thingâs 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.â
âGood for business,â I mumbled in my most cynical tone.
âThatâs what itâs all about.â 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.
âAs time goes on, societyâs getting crazier and Authorityâs 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 Changeâand with the appointments from Authority ranksâwell, people are getting really entrenched. And since everyone is suddenly immortalâyou can imagine! Thereâs plenty of opportunity for old wounds to fester, and for special interest groups to grow within Authorityâwho am I kidding, they were there already. Now we got pressure tactics, protection racketsâthat kind of thing springing upânothing new.â
âAnd youâre one of the select few committed to the original ideals of the bold and brave drafters of the Social Authority mandate. I donât buy it.â 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.
âFuck, youâre a cynic, Wildclown.â Willieboy turned in his chair. âThatâs not it at all. I work for one of the groups inside Authority. But weâre on the levelâyou know, weâre not into any of this religious shit, or just violence for the fun of it. Weâre straight money people. Iâm not alone, and Iâm not pure. Weâll put pressure on a bad loan, you know, lean on troublemakers; but we donât grind people up. Thereâs no profit in that.â
âWho does?â I rubbed smoke from my eye.
âHard to say. There are a lot of groups big and small. Thereâs even a bunch of ex-cops and law enforcement agents trying to clean things up. Some of the worst are the religious groups. They havenât handled the Change well, you know. But look out for the Kingâs Men. They work for the King of the Dead. You probably heard of himâWilliam King? He was about a hundred-year-old Senator when he died, and his death was violent, so whatâs left of him ainât pretty. But heâs become a powerbroker to be reckoned with. And he hires any Authority Enforcers or Inspectors who get killed in the line of duty, so heâs growing a nice little army let me tell youâand heâs connected, all those dead inspectors got friends. Anyway, we didnât care about his operationânobody did. Everything he did was involved with afterlife stuffâskin-stretchers. He does some smuggling, illegal drug sales. But he stayed on his own turf. Thatâs the only rule we follow. Stay on your own turf. And he was dead, and dead guys only go so far. They arenât the same as us.â
âHe didnât see it that way.â My sarcasm was obvious.
âHard to say.â Willieboy looked evasive.
âYou were at the Morocco because of Cotton not Billings. Regenerics?â My face fell, Iâm sure I heard it hit the floor. âYou 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.â
âNo.â He looked at me gravely. âI 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, letâs call them the Businessmen, had a special interest in this one.â
âYou moved in fastâŠdidnât the other groups get wise? Someone would have recognized you.â
âAuthority is big, and I donât always look like this.â He waved a hand across his face.
âCotton was hiding at the Morocco.â The whiskey was taming my pain. âHe had something for you.â
Willieboy leaned back. âYeah, and whoever whacked Billings was the only witness to Cottonâs murder. Billings was in Blacktime when it happened.â He paused. âAbout a couple weeks before the murders we started getting calls from a guy who said he needed protection.
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