Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven Read online

  MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN

  Copyright © 2012 by Michael Jan Friedman

  Cover and design by Aaron Rosenberg

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact Crazy 8 Press at the official Crazy 8 website:

  www.crazy8press.com

  First edition

  Aztec Names: A Pronunciation Key

  a as in father e as in net i as in police o as in note u as in flute au as in flautist ai like the first e in eye c hard before a, o, or u and soft before e or i ch as in choose cu like the qu in queen h as in hello hu like the w in way l as in lose m as in make n as in nose p as in pie qu like the k in kite t as in tell tl like the ll in llama tz like the ts in cats x like the sh in shell y as in you z like the s in sun

  Foreword

  Stop!

  The Aztlan books, featuring 21st-century Aztec sleuth Maxtla Colhua (did I really just write that?), are meant to be read in order. To do that, you need only know two things. One is that Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven, which you presently hold in your hands in one format or another, is the second book in the series. The other is that Aztlan: The Last Sun is the first.

  Simple, right? I mean, I’d have trouble with it, but I’m pretty sure you won’t.

  Now, if you choose not to read the books in order, the universe won’t go flying off its hinges. At least, there’s no data to support that conclusion. Well, hardly any.

  On the other hand, there are spoilers in this book that will reveal the identity of the murderer in the previous book. So you’re forewarned. If you don’t care about the spoilers, do as you wish. The ball, as Maxtla might say, is in your court.

  As for why anybody would want to write a 21st-century Aztec murder mystery . . . hey, why not? I love murder mysteries and I’ve always been interested in the Aztecs, and . . . well, if chocolate and peanut butter can go together, I guess Mesoamericans and whodunits can hook up as well.

  And then there’s the whole End of the World thing. I guess that figured into my motivation as well. Something intriguing about a society whose plans only extend to the end of a millennium. Not like we would do that, right?

  Yeah, right. Can you say Y2K?

  My recommendation? Read Aztlan: The Last Sun. Then read Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven. Then clamor for a third book on every social medium you can find. Okay? Okay.

  Sure glad we got that straightened out . . .

  Chapter One

  Ahuitzotl, one of the emperors in ancient days, once called his great, high-walled ball court in the city of Tenochtitlan “the place of possibility.”

  Of course, there were really only two possibilities in Ahuitzotl’s ball court. One was that you won and became an overnight celebrity, rewarded with all the delicacies you could eat and all the women you could love. The other was that you got heroically drunk, trudged obediently up the steps built into the side of a sun-baked pyramid, stretched out on a stone altar, and watched a priest cut your heart out.

  But I knew what Ahuitzotl meant, because it isn’t just the outcome of a match that can go either way in the ball court. It’s every moment that leads up to it—every pass, every goal-kick, every body-bruising block. Each one is a miracle of possibility all by itself, unscripted, unpredictable, untamed by the will of the gods.

  Everywhere else in life there are age-old prescriptions, paths to walk and paths to shun. We are told when to sow our fields, when to harvest our crops, when to celebrate life, when to mourn our dead. It’s all laid out in our calendar, beat by beat, as unchanging as the tides.

  But in the ball court, even the gods can’t wait to see what will happen next.

  That’s why people, especially people on the Mirror, say that everything between the stone walls is a surprise.

  That wasn’t true just in Ahuitzotl’s ball court. It was true of ball courts everywhere—even the third-class rehab in which I played my men’s league games every thirteen days. We were bumping for bragging rights, nothing more than that. No beans at stake. Just the chance to show the gods what we could do with the humble mortal forms they had given us.

  Ahuitzotl’s comment notwithstanding, I had always prided myself on being able to study an opponent’s habits and anticipate what he would do next. Most of the time I was right. Yet that one late afternoon halfway through the season, the Gophers’ center had surprised me by taking a shot at Atl’s knee.

  There was no mistaking it, no possibility of misinterpretation. The bastard hadn’t gone for the ball. He hadn’t been anywhere near the ball. He had purposely gone for the kid’s knee.

  Atl was a show-off, I had come to learn. He had lots of youthful energy, which was what you wanted in a defender, but he sometimes expended a little more of it than he had to. As I say, a show-off.

  And he liked to celebrate a little too much after he scored a goal, which he had done earlier in the match. And we were beating the Gophers 6-1 with a few minutes left to play, which wasn’t quite the outcome they’d had in mind.

  But that was no reason for the Gophers’ center to try to cripple Atl as the two of them dug a ball out of one of the corners.

  Of course, I didn’t think about any of that until later. When I saw the guy kick Atl in the side of his knee, I didn’t think at all. I just went after him. If I had gotten to him before any of my teammates, I don’t know what I would have done. Lucky for me that Huemac plowed into him first.

  Huemac was big and strong, like one of those old-fashioned carriages they had on the rails before the Emperor replaced them with new ones. He sent the bastard who had kicked Atl crashing hard into the stone wall, dragging a long groan of pain out of him. And he didn’t stop there. Before the guy could get up, Huemac was sitting on top of him and pounding him with his fists.

  Ecatzin and Ocelopan grabbed Huemac and pulled him off the guy. But by then the guy’s teammates had gotten into it, and so had the rest of us Scale Beetles. It was a mess.

  A bloody mess.

  Fortunately, it didn’t last long—maybe a minute. Then it devolved into a shouting match, the ball court ringing with our threats and accusations. Finally even that broke up, and we hobbled off to our respective locker rooms.

  We never actually finished the game, but we knew the league would give us the win. So we had that consolation. But Atl’s knee was so sore and swollen he could barely put any weight on it, and it was far from our only casualty. As usual, Huemac had a broken nose. I had a sizable cut below my eye. And Atl’s pal Panitzin, our other defender, was holding his ribcage as if he had cracked something in it.

  “Lizard turds,” said Huemac, dropping heavily on the wooden bench in front of his locker. He sounded like he just had a bad cold, but a glance at the mash that had been his nose made it clear the problem was more serious than that.

  “Better get it set professionally this time,” I told him. “It looks like a bad one, even for you.”

  Huemac laughed, hawked up some blood, spat it out on the tiled floor and laughed again. “I’ve set it enough times to be a professional.”

  Atl and Panitzin said they were taking the rail to a medical facility to see how bad the damage was. The rest of us offered to go with them, but they said they would be all right on their own.

  Even so, we saw them as far as the rail platform. For all we knew, some of the Gophers had decided to wait for them there, meaning to pick up again where they left off.

  As it turned out, the platform was free of Gophers and everyone else. So we just stayed with Atl and Panitzin until their carriage came. Then we took the tunnel under the platform
and came up on the other side to wait for a carriage home.

  We were still waiting when my radio buzzed. I took the call and said, “Colhua.”

  “Gods of Death,” said the party on the other end, “I’ve been buzzing you for the last hour and a half.” It was my boss, Eloxo Necalli, Chief Investigator for the Fourth Sector. I could tell by the gravel in his voice.

  “And you would still wouldn’t have gotten me,” I said, “if my game hadn’t broken up early.”

  “Your—? Oh, that’s right. Tonight was your I’m-not-a-complete-has-been-yet game. Well, guess where I am.”

  Necalli liked to play games. “I don’t know.”

  “The Tonatiuh Pyramid. Top floor.”

  Tonatiuh was the tallest, most exclusive residential building in Aztlan. Lands of the Dead, the city’s First Administrator lived there. The woman who ran the Mirror in our part of the Empire lived there. But the top floor . . . ?

  Then it came to me. “Coyotl’s place.”

  “Exactly.”

  Necalli had piqued my interest. “What’s going on?”

  “From the look of things, nothing good. Someone’s thrown some of the furniture around. And though there’s a game tonight, no one has seen our friend Coyotl in some time.”

  “We’re talking about Coyotl,” I said, just to make sure I hadn’t misheard.

  “That’s right,” said Necalli. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s been kidnapped.”

  He might as well have told me the Emperor had been overthrown. Then again, the Emperor was only the Emperor.

  Coyotl was Coyotl.

  It was twilight when I got to Coyotl’s apartment at the top of Tonatiuh. The first thing I noticed was the sprawling, golden splendor of Aztlan that graced the oversized windows on three sides of the main room. The second thing I noticed was the bleached lizard-leather furniture, a couple of pieces of which had been unceremoniously overturned. The third was the collection of pale blue and muddy orange statuettes—antiquities, unless I missed my guess—scattered across the plush, white rug.

  There were also two people in the room, neither of which was looking at the other. One was Necalli. A short, stocky man with bowed legs and the biggest forearms in the Empire, he was kneeling beside one of the overturned chairs, looking at something on the floor. The other was Ozo Ichtaca, the coach of the Aztlan Eagles.

  A man of more than sixty cycles, Ichtaca was sunken in a lizard-leather chair in the corner looking like he had lost his best friend. And in a way, he had.

  Seeing me walk in, Ichtaca looked up, his face a web of wrinkles beneath his thatch of silver-streaked hair. “Colhua,” he said, “it’s about time you got here. I told your chief I wouldn’t waste my time talking with anyone else.”

  Necalli frowned at Ichtaca over his shoulder, then looked at me, and finally turned back to whatever he was doing. Clearly, he hadn’t enjoyed the time he and Ichtaca had spent together.

  But then, Ichtaca wasn’t known for his tact. He had once publicly chastised the mother of one of his players because she had fattened the guy up in the off-season.

  Still, I was surprised Ichtaca had insisted that I be assigned to the case.

  True, I’d gotten some play in the Mirror for bringing down Huicton Itzcoatl, the man who had been the High Priest of Aztlan until he started making human sacrifices on the eve of the Last Sun. As Investigators went, I was something of a celebrity.

  In addition, I had played in the professional ball court, like Coyotl—though not nearly as explosively. That too could have figured into Ichtaca’s request to see me.

  But he’d also had a pretty big reason not to see me. Obviously, he had decided to look past it.

  Of course, it wasn’t everybody who could pick and choose the Investigator assigned to a case. Fortunately for Ichtaca, he wasn’t just anybody. He was one of the most accomplished coaches in the long history of the Sun League. And it wasn’t just the thousand-plus victories he had notched; it was the way he had notched them, often inspiring mediocre teams to play way over their heads.

  A half-cycle earlier he had been sipping octli and lime juice on the patio of his big, white vacation house on the Gulf, thoroughly enjoying his retirement. Then he got a call from the Eagles. Their coach was quitting for health reasons. Would Ichtaca consider coming back to the league to take the job?

  In the articles on the Mirror, Ichtaca had cited two reasons for emerging from retirement. One, of course, was the pile of beans he had been offered—a record sum for a ball court coach. But that, he insisted, was Reason Number Two. Reason Number One was Coyotl, the best player in the league—not just at that time, but arguably of all time.

  Without Coyotl, Ichtaca had won more championships than all but two other coaches in history. What couldn’t he accomplish with Coyotl?

  Now that the season was a few weeks old, we had begun to find out. We had begun to see a certain magic between the stone walls, not just a refinement of technique but a weaving of blood and bone and instinct—which was what made the call I had gotten from Necalli that much more unfortunate.

  Not that part of me didn’t enjoy the misery on Ichtaca’s face. After all, if not for him I might still have been playing in the Sun League.

  I didn’t see him the way other people did—as a genius, as a legend. To me, he was the gopher turd who had ended my career.

  Though, of course, he’d had help.

  “You’re looking at me funny,” Ichtaca said, his dark eyes narrowing. “I hope you’re not thinking about that night in Yautepec.”

  He was nothing if not insightful. I smiled and lied through my teeth: “Of course not.”

  “Good. Because this isn’t about you and me, Colhua. For the love of the gods, it’s about Coyotl.”

  No one needed to tell me how to do my job. “Let’s start from the beginning,” I said. The cut under my eye had begun to throb. I ignored it. “My chief told me Coyotl didn’t show up for practice this morning. Was that the first indication you had that something was wrong?”

  Ichtaca nodded. “Yes.”

  “And he’d never missed a practice before?”

  “Not since I became the coach here.”

  “You buzzed him to find out why?”

  “Several times. No answer.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police then?”

  Ichtaca shrugged. “Coyotl and I had had some words yesterday. I figured he was just making a statement.”

  “But you eventually wound up here.”

  “To confront him. I’d never taken crap like that from a ballplayer. I wasn’t about to start now.”

  “The doorman let you in?”

  “He’s an Eagles fan,” said Ichtaca. “I convinced him that tonight’s game hung in the balance. It wasn’t a lie.”

  The doorman could have lost his job for being so cooperative. Not that Ichtaca cared.

  “And when you got here,” I said, “you saw . . . ?”

  “Everything. The furniture upended. The god-statues scattered. And the blood.”

  I glanced at Necalli. More than likely, it was blood he was collecting as he knelt there.

  “That’s when you called the police?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  Ichtaca looked around. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  I took a moment to absorb what I had heard so far. “You said you had words with Coyotl yesterday. When was that?”

  “Right after practice.”

  “And what did you have words about?”

  Ichtaca scowled. “I told him we were a better team when he didn’t try to score goals all by himself. I might as well have been talking to a rubber tree.”

  He was right, of course. The Eagles were a better team when Coyotl passed the ball. But that observation wasn’t relevant to my Investigation.

  I asked Ichtaca a few more questions—most of them about Coyotl’s private life. None of them bore any fruit. As far as the coac
h knew, nothing in Coyotl’s world had changed recently—not the people with whom he associated, not his health, not his finances. But as Ichtaca was quick to point out, he didn’t know everything about Coyotl.

  “I’m his coach,” he said, “not his best buddy. It’s not my job to ask him where he goes when he leaves the ball court.”

  Suddenly, his brow furrowed as if something had just occurred to him, and he took out his timepiece.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Lands of the Dead,” rumbled Ichtaca, consulting the face of the piece, “I’ve got Yopitzinco in an hour.” He looked up at me again. “Is there anything else?”

  I had no good reason to keep him there at Coyotl’s place, even if I did enjoy seeing the bastard squirm. “Go,” I said. “If I have any more questions, I know how to get hold of you.”

  Ichtaca said something beneath his breath and left the apartment. By then, Necalli had gotten to his feet.

  “Blood?” I asked.

  “Blood,” he confirmed. “It doesn’t look like Coyotl disappeared just to piss off his coach.”

  I had seen Coyotl play. A guy like that wouldn’t have missed a game if his life depended on it.

  I looked around. “Blood on the floor, chairs overturned, expensive antiquities tossed around. But, interestingly enough, no sign that the door was forced open.”

  “So, obviously, Coyotl opened it himself. Which means he probably knew whoever it was that kidnapped him.”

  I nodded. “All we have to do is question the doormen.”

  “I already spoke to the one on duty,” said Necalli. “The problem is that the guy who was here this morning had the green-apple runs. There were a couple of stretches where nobody was watching the door.”

  “The runs,” I echoed. “How convenient. What did the guy eat for breakfast that got him in trouble? And where did it come from?”

  “I’ve got Takun over at the doorman’s apartment trying to figure that out now.”

  Takun was a slob, but he knew what he was doing. If there was information to be gotten, he would get it.