Malin lowered her jacket’s zipper, and with a tweak to her hair, she brought back life to her appearance.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘What a dumpster!’ that face said. The room on the inside looked as bad as it looked on the outside. It was a second-rate place going down for the third degree, so small that only a bed and a table fit in. It was poorly lit, looked ugly, and smelled like wet carpet mixed with a cheap vanilla freshener. Behind the bed was a door; that had to be the bathroom, though she didn’t bother to find that out; she’d already decided she wouldn’t set foot in there.
“Couldn’t you have paid for a better place?”
“It took you a while,” he received her and handed her a towel. “Is everything all right?”
She made a funny face and sneezed, then she sniffed the towel to make sure it was clean.
“Besides freezing to death, and what I told you on the way, all good.” And, while drying himself, she watched her friend.
Juzo Romita was there, expectant, waiting as if she were the one who had to announce the reason for the meeting and not the other way around.
Juzo was a peculiar guy and quite fascinating. Fascinating, in the sense that a genius or a psychopath could be to a therapist. Juzo hid a handsome face behind a frown; a pair of green eyes immersed in an eternal melancholy; brown hair always neat, and a stubble that never grew thick. His personality was as overwhelming as the weather outside, sometimes just as stormy, and his life was more than interesting. Food for shrinks, some would say. Demanding and sometimes insufferable, she would state, if asked for an opinion.
However, she understood him better than perhaps even himself and appreciated him more than anyone in the world.
This time, though, besides being serious, Malin noticed anxiety in him, something unusual for him. Juzo had an expression covered with shadows, and she bet all her chips the key to such darkness was in the way he was dressed up.
“You know uniforms don’t stimulate my fantasies, right?” she said, trying to break the ice, but he didn’t smile.
Juzo was wearing the olive-green privates’ uniform of the Markabian Imperial Army: a tight-fitting combat jacket with a wide belt, the white and crimson shield held close to the heart; cargo pants, and black boots. Those clothes meant only one thing: trouble.
“I remember when I used to dress one of those,” she said. “Did I hate it! It didn’t do my figure any justice.” She glanced around, looking for a clue as to what they were doing there. Juzo’s backpack was on the bed; maybe that’s where the secret lay. “So, what’s the big plan? Are we going to infiltrate another convoy?”
Juzo ignored her questions by asking another, “Did you find out what I asked for?”
“I’m sorry.” Malin shook her head. “There were no records of any building in the Southern Tropical Canyon before this case.”
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Juzo did not seem surprised by the answer.
“I’m telling you—” she added, “if my former Raid Squad comrades didn’t have anything about that place, its former occupants should be at Lawlessness University teaching ‘How to Stay Hidden’ classes. And here’s an extra piece of information: I don’t know if you knew, but some time ago, in that same place, the Gamma district investigated the discovery of a child, of his bones, actually. I know they closed the case ridiculously quickly and without solving it as if someone...”
“—Had deliberately ignored the case to prevent someone from finding out the bunker,” Juzo completed the sentence, and picking up his backpack from the bed, he withdrew some files from it. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told.”
“If so, it would mean that someone with authority knew of it,” she replied, while trying to see what those files were. “That’s what I could dig around. Why are you interested in a case like this, anyway?”
“Just because.”
Her face turned red. “Excuse me?” She took a deep breath, her hands on her waist. Did she cross a hell of a storm only to receive such an empty, unacceptable reply? And when she realized she wouldn’t get an extended answer on the matter, she got impatient. She looked him up and down. “Why do you dress like that?” She needed an explanation about whatever, but she didn’t have any luck with that either. “Why are we here?”
Juzo kept glancing at the files he had in his hand. The bastard was buying time to find an excuse to tell her; she knew it; she knew him pretty well to fall for such a silly ruse.
“I didn’t want us to meet in the usual place,” he said. “There’s an information leak in our group, and I wanted to keep this as far away as possible.”
Malin showed him around. “I think we’re covered in that regard. Now, talk.”
Juzo looked up at her but kept silent. The storm was howling outside.
“Juzo, I’ve been associated with your group of Rowdy Ones for almost two years, playing cat and mouse with the military,” she said. “It’s all I’ve done since I deserted. Two years, Juzo! And in all this time, we’ve discovered several who promised to die for the revolution, when in truth they sought to identify the movement’s ringleaders and run to the nearest imperial post to open their mouths and collect a reward. Or have you already forgotten about Simon? That there’s a snitch is not news; there are plenty of them and every group or association has at least one. There will always be roaches in restaurants’ kitchens, and we were never free from them!”
“Don’t get mad,” he said.
Malin sighed.
“Look, Juzo, I know you well. I know you brought me here for a more serious reason than an information leak, and you expect me to get into your game and try to decipher it as if it were the mystery of the day. ‘Let’s play roulette! Is Juzo truly concerned about a snitch, or is there a coded message in his words?’ If I can’t guess what you want, we’ll leave this filthy room and I’ll still don’t know why I left my house with this weather and I drove all the way here, freezing my butt, just to tell you something I could have told you over the phone.” She took her phone out of her pocket and shook it. “You know these lines are ready to operate on seven-frequency, and there’s nothing safer than that. Now, open your damn mouth! I wanna know why you disguised yourself as an imperial soldier, and why your face is sourer than usual.”
Malin crossed her arms, dropping the baton of the dialogue on him.
Juzo left the excuses aside; made a face a father would make to tell his son mom and dad won’t live together anymore and handed the files over to her.
“Yesterday, Rigel gave me this,” he said. “Old files they found in that bunker in the Canyon.”
Intrigued, Malin started to read them, glancing at the pictures attached to the folders. Her eyebrows arched, and her eyes went wide.
Seeing her friend so engrossed and unable to utter a word, Juzo saw reflected in her the same bewilderment he must have manifested the night before when he read those files for the first time. He would never forget it.