Sleepers

A week after Grampa’s funeral we regrouped in my office.

I refused to accept any further payment because we didn’t find grandpa alive. Ave refused a refund because we did find grandpa. In the end we compromised: I kept the original down-payment and Ava hired me to discover what happened to grandpa. “Is this about revenge, Ava, or something else?”

“Yeah, that too, but I want to know who would torture and kill an innocent old man, and why? I also what to know what Grandpa’s note meant - Save the Whales, save Steem, save the world.”

In my experience, no one is innocent.

Grandpa lived on the 101st floor of an abandoned mega-block. His lean-to squat was built in a windowless concrete shell of a half completed apartment. Three other squats shared the same apartment space. The rooms in grandpa’s lean-to were immaculately clean and tidy, as if their owner never expected to return. We found nothing out of the ordinary, except a letter addressed to Ava:

The letter contained a random sixteen digit hexadecimal number, and the words, ‘All yours, love Bob.’

“So your Grandpa Bob left you a code for a bank account or something. Nothing unusual in that.”

“His name was George, Grandpa George.”

Now that was weird. The way I saw it there were three lines of enquiry open to us: follow the money, follow the gang, or talk to grandpa’s friends.

To follow the money trail I would have needed the sort of Tech I didn’t possess. The money will have to wait. First were George’s friends.

A handful of oldies had made an appearance at grandpa’s funeral. With the help of Ava and a battered address book I had ID’d most of them.

First up is William De Laney, who had a squat in the same abandoned mega-block as George, Breitbart Tower, on the 63rd floor. He’s a lonely old gent who hardly ever descended to street level.

William confirmed he knew George, they played chess together, and yes he did attend the funeral. He doesn’t seem particularly surprised George is dead. “It catches up with us all eventually.” But he is very perturbed by the manor of George’s death. He complains endlessly about the state of the mega-block, his noisy neighbors, the local hoods, and the wind whistling through the glassless windows. I leave William De Laney grumbling to himself about the state of the stairwells.

Mr and Mrs Perez live in the same block and could have been expecting me. I am welcomed in and offered proper coffee in front of a fire of burning floorboards. When I reveal I am a private investigator, they are happy to chat about George as someone they knew in the community for many years, but to whom they were never particularly close. They saw him in the stairwells and corridors, and at the weekly market on the 50th floor. They are very sad to hear of his demise. There is nothing to be discovered here, other than George was a welcome sight in the block community.

It is not until I approached the lean-to of Mohamed Salah, third on my list, that the feeling of warm bonhomie evaporated. If Mohamed was expecting me, then he had left his front door wide open, which in this neighborhood was asking for trouble

I listened cautiously outside for a while, but there was no sound from within, so I drew my gun and slipped into the apartment. Mohamed’s belongings were scattered all over the place - the place had been trashed. Drops of blood on the floor, through which something had been scraped, suggested Mohamed did not leave willingly. Why would someone attack a lonely old man? Was there a connection to George’s death?

Among the tide of belongings, something caught my eye - curious. I snatched up my discovery and moved quickly on to an old red-brick tenement block, in search of the last name on my list. Mahalia Santos, a bent gray haired old lady opened the door a crack. As soon as she heard of George’s death she made excuses. “Sorry dear, I have to go.”

I wedged my boot in the door-jam so she could not shut the door on me. “Go where?”

Alarmed and flustered, Mahalia tried to slam the door on my foot. “Please remove your shoe.”

“Go where? Tell me and I’ll remove my foot. Does this have anything to do with George?”

Mahalia shoved the door again, she looked close to tears. “The plan. George said, if anything happened to any of us, we have to follow the plan. That’s all I can say, now please go.”

Instead I tried to smash my way through the door, but it was secured by a thick chain. “What plan? What did George say?”

“I said, please remove your foot!” That’s when the bitch stabbed my shin with her walking stick. Except it wasn’t a walking stick, but a cleverly disguised cattle prod. I snatched back my leg in pain and she slammed the door on me. This old lady was no fool - anyone who kept a fully charged cattle prod by the door was prepared for trouble

Mahalia was definitely rattled and keen to get rid of me, so I hung about in the shadows, waiting to see what would develop.

My cynicism and patience were rewarded when, twenty minutes later, Mahalia appeared in the doorway carrying a suitcase. She looked cautiously up and down the corridor, before locking the door behind her and, with leaning heavily on disguised cattle prod, she shuffled off towards the stairs. I trailed her slowly down three flights of stairs, keeping well back, before I heard a shriek from round a corner.

By the time I caught up there was no sign of Mahalia, except her suitcase thumped on the floor. With no clues to her whereabouts, I retrieved the suitcase and found a quiet alcove. I expected to discover underwear and shifts, instead, under a neatly folded blanket I found a power pack and a server - not what old ladies usually carry in their suitcases.

On a hunch, I raced back to Mahalia’s tenement, pulled my gun and blew off the lock. Inside, I searched through her papers until I found what I was looking for.

Frantically, I retraced my steps, but Mr and Mrs Perez were gone, and so was William De Laney. Why would anyone in their right minds snatch a bunch of old folks.
I searched their squats and found the same nondescript brown envelopes I had found in Mahalia’s and Mohamed.

Four identical envelopes all bearing the same single word: Ava.

Remember: If you are reading this, you are the resistance.

Previous posts:
If you are reading this, you are the resistance
Save the whales, save the world
Nomad on the blockchain