Castes Book 1: The Prestige, Page 4

  Chapter IV

  By the time Owen arrived at the Council Building, he was beginning to feel apprehensive, a very alien feeling. He could be ordered into a gang fight where there were knives and guns being employed in the worst of ways without so much as mild trepidation, but an invitation into the heart of the political arena gave him butterflies. Of course, what business did a dwarf have visiting the elves at City Hall? Looking down at himself, he wished he was dressed more appropriately. But there had been no time to go home, change, and come back. Besides which, he wasn’t sure how Esmerelda would react to the news of his summons. In the back of his mind, he wondered if he’d ever see her again.

  Of course, he was being ridiculous.

  Stepping into the lobby of the building, he was taken with the décor. Dwarves didn’t often notice such things. Dwarf homes were practical. Many displayed trinkets that were linked to dwarf tradition or the family, but none were ever decorated so ornately. Humans and elves had an interest in aesthetics. Still, Owen was amazed at what he saw. The floors were constructed from a black tile and shined so clean that he could see himself in them. The lights from the ceiling reflected above him. Looking into the floor gave him the sense that he was hovering over a terrible abyss about to fall into the emptiness. The tiles on the wall were more of a beige with grey flecks of stone in them. He knew that dwarves had mined and cut the slabs of stone that had been used to make the lobby, but it had been human or elf eyes that had thought the stone pretty.

  With one hand on his beard, he walked over to the directory and scanned the names and office numbers. He suddenly realized he didn’t remember the name on the signature and so he didn’t know where to go. He was just pulling his phone out of his pocket when he was approached by a man in a suit. The man was smaller than most, only about five foot two or three. He still had six inches or more over Owen, but his thin frame and hooked nose made him look tremendously fragile.

  “Are you Officer Keefe?”

  Owen looked him up and down, his phone held lightly in his thick fingered hand. “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Van Deign is waiting for you in her office.”

  Owen wished he knew more about politics. He knew who the President was. He knew the governor and the mayor. But he didn’t know the names of any of the elves who sat on the council. Still, he put his phone away and followed the man toward the metal detectors. He was about to ask the man how he had known who he was when he realized that he was the only dwarf in the building. There were some elves heading into and out of the front doors. They were all dressed in business suits and walked with an air of pomposity that Owen found nauseating. All of the security was human, although there were other humans moving through the place. Many humans, like Owen’s escort, held administrative positions.

  When they reached the security station, Owen pulled his badge out so that he could show it to the guard on duty. He had to check his gun, which he didn’t want to do. He started to argue, but his escort shook his head surreptitiously so Owen dropped it. It seemed stupid to him that he would have to proceed without his gun. He was an officer of the law.

  Once through security, he was led to a bank of elevators. There had to be eighteen of them. Humans and elves waited up and down the narrow corridor, but not for long. Elevators came and went very quickly. Before he knew it, Owen was crowded into the back of one of the small cars surrounded by elves and humans who were trying their very best not to stare at him.

  At least they were trying.

  The elevator stopped six times between the lobby and the twelfth floor. When the 12 light lit up and the door opened, Owen’s escort tugged his sleeve and pulled him through the people into the hallway. Owen accidentally stepped on the foot of an elf who’d given him a particularly distasteful look. He apologized, but he did so with a grin.

  Across the hallway was the other row of elevators. Looking left and right, Owen saw that the corridor ended in T-junctions a short distance away in each direction. His escort led him to the right and then turned to the right again. There was an office with a glass door right there. There was a keypad on the door and the little man punched in six numbers quickly and then said his name, Rupert Oleander, into the mechanism. Owen noticed that the keys on the pad were smaller than standard size for a security lock. They had been intentionally made that way to prevent dwarves from being able to use them effectively. The system was probably also programmed to timeout a key push within one or two seconds. A dwarf would have to take care pushing those keys.

  A lock on the door opened with a click and the man pushed through, holding it so that Owen could follow. The reception area beyond was as ornate as the lobby below, although decorated very differently. The room was painted instead of tiled and there was a plush pale rose carpet on the floor. The front desk was done in a pastel green with shoots of brown forming a pattern on its front. Owen had never seen anything like it, but was strangely taken by the design. It had an earthy quality to it that appealed to his dwarf nature. He took a moment to study the room as his escort approached the lady receptionist behind the desk. There were several pictures on the walls. Each had a metal plate with a caption that described the scene. Some were pictures of land that Councilwoman Van Deign had saved from industrialization. Others were pictures of the councilwoman herself. Owen was taken with the number of photos he saw. He’d never realized how busy a councilwoman was. There was so much that she had done, and so much of it seemed to be for the good. Of course, she’d hardly post pictures of herself taking a back room bribe.

  Noticing a presence at his side, Owen turned to see Rupert. “Good luck, Officer,” he said, grabbing Owen’s hand and shaking it. Then he was out the door, leaving the dwarf alone.

  Confused, he looked at the receptionist.

  She smiled and told him that Mrs. Van Deign would be with him shortly.

  Momentarily, an inner door behind the reception desk opened and a tall elf woman poked her head out. At first, she looked at the receptionist, but her keen elf senses noticed Owen standing and waiting. She smiled and came out of the room.

  “Officer Keefe?”

  “Ma’am,” he replied nodding.

  She came over to him, took his hand, and shook it vigorously. It was an awkward gesture for both of them considering how much taller she was. She was also an elf and the touch of an elf was repulsive to a dwarf. Few dwarves ever considered how repulsive the touch of a dwarf was to an elf. Still, she smiled through the whole ordeal and looked genuine about it.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said to him with genuine affect. “Please come into my office and sit down.”

  Councilwoman Evelyn Van Deign had been serving for fifty one years. In her time on the council, she had introduced over two thousand proposals to the State Senate. Some had passed, others had been altered, and still others had been buried. Most of them had dealt with the environment. She was known as the naturalist. Her views regarding the evils of industrialization were widely known. Several of her peers considered her a crackpot while others thought she was dangerous. Despite having gone up against some of the toughest opponents, she had come through as a person who demanded great respect. She had built a small empire within her field and commanded a tremendous amount of influence in the Senate, in Congress, and among the lobbyists.

  Her office was just exactly what Owen would expect from the office of an elf politician. Certainly, this was his first experience being inside one of these palatial rooms, but he was not disappointed. The desk was not built for meeting with others. Instead it was built into the far wall with giant floor to ceiling windows on either side. That way Mrs. Van Deign could look out at the city from twelve stories up while updating her status on Facebook. Off to the left was a conference table surrounded by eight expensive leather chairs. To the right was a sunken area with a white leather sofa and that same pale rose carpet from the reception area. Mrs. Van Deign led him to th
e right.

  “May I offer you something?” she asked.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” he replied politely.

  “I spoke to your captain earlier today,” she said to him, once they were seated. He was happy that she was getting right to the point. “I wanted to get the details on what happened last night.”

  That was no surprise to Owen. That this meeting and the events of the previous night were connected had been obvious. What was not obvious was Evelyn Van Deign’s interest in those events. Her area of influence seemed so far removed from what had happened.

  “Owen,” she said. “May I call you Owen?”

  Swallowing his pride, he nodded.

  She smiled. “And you may call me Evelyn.”

  That was a surprise.

  “Owen,” she continued. “Do you know who Troy Van Walls was?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t, ma’am,” Owen answered.

  “Evelyn,” she corrected. “Troy Van Walls was nobody. And that’s saying something for an elf. His father, however, is one of the richest elves in the country. Lester Van Walls owns four casinos. At one point, he’d owned as many as sixteen but he’s been scaling back his empire for several years. Troy was his only son. He was fifty six years old and never did a thing with his life. Certainly, he was a young elf, but by fifty six I was on a team of executive assistants to the governor of New Jersey. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

  Owen thought about it. “Not really, ma’am. Evelyn.”

  She blinked for a moment, as if considering him all over again. “Captain Walters spoke very highly of you.”

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course. I’ve had a look at your record myself. Twenty four years of service without so much as a reprimand.”

  He laughed. “I get reprimanded all the time.”

  She laughed, too, feeling some of the tension drain from between them. Nothing eases a conversation with a dwarf like stroking his ego.

  “I meant officially.”

  Dwarves on the force tread a fine line. Owen had done his best to keep out of trouble because he had always known that a little bit of trouble grew exponentially for a police officer who was also a dwarf. He didn’t share that information with Evelyn, though.

  “I’m trying to tell you that what happened last night is going to send out vibrations all over the world. Everyone with any type of political influence is going to try to use it to manipulate the outcome.”

  “By outcome, do you mean what happens to Detective Anton?”

  Evelyn laughed again, but this time she laughed alone. Owen hated the sound of an elf laughing alone. “As things stand, Detective Anton’s fate is sealed. He’ll be tried and convicted for murder, maybe manslaughter. At best, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. At worst, he’ll be executed.”

  Owen gritted his teeth. “It was self defense.”

  “No, Owen, it wasn’t. Anton was defending you, which is a different matter entirely.”

  “So, what? The elves want to take over the police force now, too? It’s bad enough working under the humans.” He hadn’t meant to say anything like that. Owen rarely let his bitterness show through and he certainly should have kept it more in check considering his present company.

  But Evelyn didn’t seem to notice. “It will be much worse than that, Owen. The elves will look to impose stricter regulations on police officers, maybe force dwarves out of law enforcement altogether. The humans may or may not care about that, but they’ll definitely rally in Detective Anton’s favor. My biggest concern, however, is the dwarves. I’m sure you know that there are a number of dwarf groups that pretend to be civil rights groups but aren’t really.”

  “What are they then?” Owen grumbled.

  “Insurrectionists. And this type of event is just the kind of catalyst they need.”

  “You think the dwarves are going to revolt?”

  “Not today or tomorrow,” she replied, crossing one leg over the other. “But they’ll start thinking about it now. And six months from now, when Anton’s sentence comes down and the fire gets as hot as it’s going to get, the violence will begin.”

  Owen didn’t reply, choosing instead to try and see what she saw. He didn’t like having this conversation. He didn’t like talking about dwarves as if he wasn’t one of them. She was right, of course. There were many small groups of dwarves who talked about revolution on a regular basis. Caesar MacGregor was always saying that the elves needed a good kick in the ass. Owen always thought it was ridiculous. Elves had gained their power through magic. They still had that magic, so what would be the result of a revolution? Would the dwarves even have a chance or would they be consigned to an even worse societal class than they currently held?

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked and she nodded. “Is this conjecture or conjure?”

  She smiled, but didn’t laugh this time. Still, he didn’t like the smile. It was condescending. “You really don’t know much about elf magic, do you?”

  Of course he didn’t. Dwarves knew very little about the magic of the elves. That was by design and she knew it. You don’t put the secret of your power into the hands of your greatest threat.

  “We can’t predict the future,” she explained. “In order for us to be able to see through time, even using magic, we would first need to understand time. Our magic gives us the ability to manipulate science, Owen. Science has derived a number of theories about time, but not one of them is at all concrete enough for us to weave spells around them.”

  “Conjecture, then,” he said.

  Still with the smile, she nodded.

  “Why are you telling me? Why am I even here?”

  “Because you’re perfect,” she said matter of factly. “Oh, Owen, I’ve been seeing this coming for a long time. I’ve been on the lookout for just the right dwarf...”

  “The right dwarf?” he asked with more than caution in his tone.

  She paused, did him the decency of looking him in the eye. “Yes, Owen. The right dwarf. Before last night, I had never heard of you, which makes many of my own flaws very clear to me. But you are the right dwarf.”

  “The right dwarf for what?” he wanted to know.

  “This case needs a resolution and I’m afraid the police won’t be of a mind to find that resolution. If I read them right, they’ll make the assumption that with Van Walls dead, the matter is dead.”

  “Van Walls was the ring leader,” Owen agreed. “Trying to track down the humans that were with him is probably a waste of man power. They’ll either turn up later or they won’t.”

  Evelyn shook her head sadly. “You really haven’t been listening to me, have you? Van Walls is nobody. He had no special influence in the elf community. No matter how much he hated dwarves, even if he was on acid, I can’t imagine he’d have been stupid enough to go on a genocidal rampage.”

  “Did you know him, ma’am?” asked Owen.

  She shrugged. “Not as you would consider it, but elves know each other. If Van Walls had survived long enough to be picked up by the Judiciary Board, his actions last night would have served as the biggest embarrassment in a long line of embarrassments. Dead, though, he brings outrage to a diverse population of interested parties. Someone was pulling his strings so to speak, Owen. If you dig deep enough, I think you’ll find that Troy Van Walls was destined to follow a path into death last night. That it was a human protecting a dwarf is something I think no one could have predicted, but that’s ultimately going to serve this behind the scenes personality. This someone isn’t worried so much about dwarves as he is about elves.

  “The future is coming whether we want it to or not. Our society is on the brink of change, has been for a very long time. I think this incident with Troy Van Walls is very likely to be the catalyst that sparks that change. The question is whether or not it will be for the better.

  “If
dwarves have control of the change, I foresee a bloody revolution, the outcome of which will be horrific no matter who wins. If the elves control the change, specifically the elf behind Troy Van Walls, dwarves can say goodbye to even the most meager of their freedoms, and maybe their lives.”

  “So...what? You want to control the change?”

  She shook her head. “Not just me. You and me. Owen, at the risk of offending you, you and I are of a kind. You alone have been a force for change among the dwarves.”

  “I hardly see...”

  “That’s part of your problem. You’re a policeman because you feel you’re suited to it, yet you ignore the impact of that choice. In looking at your record, I noticed that you took the detective’s exam twice.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, confused but not confident enough to press the matter. “My first score expired.”

  “Please call me Evelyn, Owen. Please.”

  “All right,” he acquiesced.

  “At any rate, you’ve filed the paperwork regularly for how many years?”

  “A lot. A lot of years.”

  She nodded again, this time sadly. “And you did this knowing that you would never get that promotion?”

  “I always held out hope,” he said. “I thought that maybe someone would look at my record, see that I’m a good cop, and give me a chance.”

  “Someone did.”

  He looked at her.

  “Really,” she confirmed. “Captain Walters has recommended you for the promotion six times. His superiors have blocked it every time. As I said before, he thinks very highly of you. It is very fortunate that it was you on that call last night.”

  If he hadn’t been confused before, he certainly was now.

  Smiling, she shook her head a little sadly. “That’s what I mean, Owen. You aspire to rise higher than any dwarf ever has.”

  “I don’t...”

  She put up her hands. “I’m not implying that you think you’re better than they are, but your aspirations exceed theirs. Dwarf lives are consumed by dwarf tradition. Dwarf people live in dwarf communities and work dwarf jobs. You have chosen to live in the bigger world, Owen. Do you know how courageous that is?”

  She went to her desk and grabbed a folder full of papers.

  “You are never going to be promoted, especially after last night.” she said flatly.

  Owen’s eyes found the folder, but he couldn’t find the words to ask about it.

  He didn’t need to ask. “I thought, perhaps, you might try something else. I’ve filed and rushed all of the paperwork so that you could become a private detective. All you need to do is sign these forms and you will have your license and your business.”

  “What?” he stammered, crashing hard into the Earth. “You want me to quit the force?”

  She nodded. “A policeman hardly has the autonomy he needs in order to pursue this case. I’ll be your first client. I’ll pay you two hundred thousand dollars plus expenses to investigate further. Since the police have closed the case, there won’t be any conflict. When you find the elf responsible, you’ll inform me and we’ll strategize from there. When we, together, have effected real change that countermands the need for any sort of violence, our work will be done. After that, you’ll have some good startup capital and your own agency.”

  It was difficult for him to process this information. Though he had no idea what to charge for an investigation, he was quite sure that two hundred thousand dollars was well more than the going rate. It was a tempting offer. He had put in enough time to retire with a full pension. Sure it wouldn’t pay for Joi’s college. But if he could make a success of the business... He thought of all of the dwarves that never saw justice on any level. He could do a lot of good.

  But that was just one side of the equation. This opportunity seemed to come with a big fat contract signed by Satan himself. Evelyn could proselytize all she wanted, but the bottom line is that he did not like the idea of being a dwarf indebted to an elf.

  “No,” he said. “No, thank you. I can’t accept.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Evelyn…Mrs. Van Deign, this is a very tempting offer. But I’m a policeman.”

  “Is that so?” she said condescendingly. “And how do your peers feel? What are the next few months going to be like for you?” Coming back over to the sofa, Evelyn sat down next to him. Despite her slight build, she looked almost threatening as she leaned into him. “If it had been any other dwarf out there last night, this conversation wouldn’t be taking place. I would be biting through my nails wondering how I was going to prevent the inevitable. My motive is to ease society into a new era, try to avoid the terrible price people usually have to pay in times like these. I’m not sitting here trying to manipulate you. I feel fortunate to have a genuinely qualified detective to help me. Our relationship will be professional and strictly above board. You have my word.”

  What good is the word of an elf?

  He didn’t say that, either. It didn’t matter anyway. The whole thing was out of the question. If it had been any other dwarf, she really wouldn’t be having this conversation. Another dwarf would not have entertained her for so long. She was right about Owen being a different kind of person altogether. But he wasn’t that different.

  “Owen, I went to great lengths in order to invite you here. This conversation alone may have drastic effects on my political career. I considered it very carefully and decided to do so because I’m more afraid of what’s coming than what’s already here.”

  “Mrs. Van Deign,” he said, intentionally pulling the familiarity out of their relationship. “While your offer is extremely generous, I just can’t. I hope you understand.”

  She scowled. “I do understand, Officer Keefe. I had hoped you would be as strong as I was in neglecting the prejudice of our ancestors in the face of a greater good. I suppose I misjudged you.”

  Standing up, she made it clear that their conversation was over. He took the hint and, without another word, left her office. He stood outside the door for a couple of minutes just catching his breath. Then he went back downstairs, retrieved his weapon, and headed out onto the street.