One of Us

by Michael Marshall Smith

  As I drank the fourth I found myself doing something I hadn’t intended. Thinking about Helena. About the person I’d been looking for as I travelled around, knowing I’d already found her. About a cheap honeymoon in Ensenada a long time ago, mornings in motels and evenings in bars; about walking in Venice in the warm afternoon, and cool nights in the house we shared there for a while; about our cat, and how soft his fur had been. About it being the nearest I’d ever come to being allowed to join the real world, to stepping out of my dreams and being awake.

  It came on slowly at first, fragments that felt like recollections of somebody else’s life. Then faster, and fuller, until the room shaded away and I was immersed in a reality that could have been, a life that other people and death had taken away from me.

  I began drinking faster, feeling the weakness fading. I’d been a criminal most of my life, but not a bad one. I’d sold Fresh, not smack—though the profits from the latter were much higher—and only to people who knew the mistake they were making. I’d stolen and cheated, but usually from people who could afford it. I’d care-taken trivial and accidental sins which had never nudged the Earth in its orbit one iota, merely afforded their owners a few moments of peace. I’d only ever killed in extremis, only once for money and only people who had deserved it.

  Sure, there were better ways of living. I could have been one of those people who spend their entire lives wearing stripy shirts and going to brainstorming meetings and saying ‘No idea is a bad idea’, and giving each other high fives when they won that big account. The people who never actually do or achieve anything real in their entire lives, living instead in some bizarre parallel universe where half a point of market share for some frozen food manufacturer actually matters. The people who live in the same city all their lives, pulled along tracks too boring to understand, who die in the place they were born, and then are buried to make room for someone just like them. Within my own terms, in my own stream of reality, I’d behaved as well as I could—and at least I’d done stuff. I’d been places. I’d seen things. I’d had a speaking role in my own life.

  For the second time in as many hours I had a sudden vision of my parents, the spring from which I had run. Mom no longer worked in the bar, but pottered with Dad round the condominium, killing bugs, changing sheets and making sure people were adequately air-conditioned. They’d never retire, would always be verbs, forever changing the world in ways however small. I was thirty-four years old, and yet if I had to be brought to account it wouldn’t be Travis, or a judge or God I would stand in front of. It would be them. They were the higher authority.

  With the fifth beer I thought about the things I’d done, and whether I could tell my parents about them. About the good, and the bad, the deaths and the shadow times.

  I decided I could. My mother would say ‘Oh, Hap’, and my father wouldn’t meet my eyes for a while. Within a few days it would be forgiven and understood. In the whole of your life there are maybe a handful of people who genuinely share your world with you, who for more than a moment inhabit the same place—as if you are imperfect facets of the same being. You owe them, and yourself. That’s all.

  I finished the beer, walked over to the table on the other side and grabbed the man in the cheap suit by the hair.

  ‘Tell Travis if he puts a tail on me again I’ll kill them,’ I said, and smacked his head down on the table.

  I left him face-down and unconscious in a sea of mixed nuts, and went to work.

  Eleven

  Hammond’s real house was over on Avocado, a big two-storey set back from the road. Not overly flashy, nor a showy neighbourhood, but certainly not a hovel. I got the address from Vent, who has a list he bought from a cop. A car I borrowed from outside the bar got me there fast: I ditched it half a mile from the house, in a brightly lit lot where it probably wouldn’t get trashed, and ran the rest of the way.

  I slowed to walk past the house on the other side of the road, covertly checking it out. I’d realized on the journey that I had no idea of Hammond’s domestic situation, or whether someone might still be living inside. There were no uniforms standing guard outside the house, and no obvious unmarked cars within two hundred yards either side. A light glowed from within what looked like the living room, but the rest of the windows were dark. When after two passes the street remained deserted, I hurried across the road and walked straight up to the front door. There’s no point messing about in these circumstances. You want to look like Joe Citizen calling on a friend, not like you’re expecting to be felled by a marksman.

  I rang the bell, waited. No reply. Rang it again, and leaned on it for a further ten seconds straight. No response, and no sound of movement from within, which tallied with what I was expecting. Most people, when they’re in, have more than one light on. Sure there are oldsters and environmental fanatics who turn off the light in every room as they leave, but most people don’t. Night means ‘leave the lights on, godammit, give me a flame to gather round’. The chances were high that the living room light was on a timer or internal security system. Either that or any inhabitants were utterly deaf, which would work to my advantage in any case.

  I made my way round the side of the house, shielded from the neighbours by a high hedge which ran along the boundaries of the property. All the windows had locks, which peered at me as I passed, little orange eyes swivelling to follow my progress. I kept my face turned away, in case they had strong views on the likenesses of people who were allowed to prowl around the house at night, and made it to the back without incident.

  The yard was compact and tidy, a big tree in the centre and an old cable drum in place for use as a table. I scoped out the back door: one major lock, no sign of wires round the edges. I jacked the organizer into it, and told it to get to work. Lights flickered on the organizer’s display, and streams of numbers rocketed back and forth and up and down across the screen. I’m sure that’s not entirely necessary, and that the organizer just does it to make sure I know it’s doing something hard.

  After thirty seconds it told me that it couldn’t break the lock, but that it might be susceptible to a bribe. I tapped in the deceased Walter Fitt’s bank details and let the lock transfer two hundred bucks into itself. God knows what it was intending to do with it, but after a few seconds there was a click and the door opened.

  I found myself in a short back corridor, with a doorway off over to one side. I shut the outer door, stood and listened for a moment in the darkness. My heart lurched when I heard a soft and rhythmic shuffling sound, but a second later I had an idea what it might be. I padded over to the doorway and looked inside.

  It was the kitchen, designed free range, and the appliances were on the move. The fridge and microwave were trudging heavily in opposite directions along the far wall, and a coffee machine and food processor were walking a circle together in the middle of the floor. A large chest freezer stood against the other wall, rocking back and forth.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, quietly. Everything except the freezer stopped moving. ‘Anybody home?’

  ‘No,’ whispered the food processor. ‘We’re a little worried.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Well, we haven’t seen Mr Hammond for days,’ the coffee machine said confidingly, walking up to stand at my feet. ‘And then last night Monica—that’s Mrs Hammond—just left, without saying where she was going, and we haven’t seen her since.’

  ‘Was she carrying a bag?’

  ‘Yes. Only a small one though.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, trying to be reassuring, ‘maybe she’s just gone to stay with a friend for a couple of days.’

  ‘You think so?’ asked the freezer, stopping its rocking for a moment.

  ‘Bound to be,’ I said. ‘Otherwise she’d have taken you guys.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ the freezer said, sounding relieved. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You hungry?’ asked the fridge. ‘Got some cold chicken in here.’

  ‘Maybe later,’ I said, a
nd backed out into the hallway again.

  So Hammond had a wife, and up until today she’d been in residence. I guess I could probably have discovered that from an intelligent perusal of the last week’s papers, but I hadn’t gotten round to it. The fact that she’d gone explained why there were no cops outside. The fact she’d been here, probably guarded, could mean something else: whoever had tossed Hammond’s other residence might not have had a chance to do the same thing here.

  It might also go some way to explaining why Laura had chosen to gun Hammond down in Culver City: and to suggesting what the nature of the relationship between them had been.

  I walked quickly down the corridor, keeping an eye out for security devices. The front of the house consisted of a reasonable-sized open space in front of a staircase, which led up to the second floor. Either side were doorways. I poked my head in the room with the light, saw that it was indeed the living room; then peered through the other door. Dining room, and not terribly interesting. Or sumptuously furnished: the Hammonds’ tastes ran a little austere, though what little there was looked expensive.

  I ran lightly up the staircase and along the upper hall, finding nothing but bedrooms on the right-hand side. The biggest showed signs of recent occupancy—and also that someone had left it in a hurry. Women’s clothes were spread over the bed, and the wardrobe doors were open. I turned the light on for a moment, snouted round in the bottom. All I could see was shoes, and plenty of them. What is it with women and shoes? I can understand needing different colours to go with different outfits, but like most of her sex Mrs Hammond had seven pairs in burnt umber alone. On impulse I checked the labels of some of the clothes left on the bed. Fiona Prince, Zauzich, Stefan Jones. Ready-to-wear, admittedly, but far from cheap. I wondered if Travis had seen any of this when he came to interview the widow, and whether he’d come to the same conclusion I was reaching: Hammond had been on the take.

  I turned the light back off and checked out the other side of the upper hallway. A bathroom, shelf above the basin in mild disarray. Not a panicky departure, exactly, but one where time had been of the essence. Some key female accessories were still in place, however, implying she was probably coming back. Then another small room, empty, purpose unclear. Maybe a nursery in the architect’s original design, but clearly not used for one now.

  One more room remained, at the front of the house. The door was shut. I took a deep breath and turned the handle, sincerely hoping it wasn’t alarmed. It turned, nothing went off, and I pushed the door open gently.

  Beyond was Hammond’s study. A desk up against the front window, and the outline of a big chair. A wall full of books, and another lined with filing cabinets. My heart sank. If there was anything hidden in here, finding it was going to take days.

  Then the light went on, and the chair swivelled to reveal a man in a dark suit sitting there.

  ‘Hello, Hap,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you again.’

  I blinked, discovered Deck’s gun was already in my hand, and pointed it at the man. It didn’t make me feel much better, or seem to worry him unduly. I kept pointing it anyway.

  The man held up a small electronic notebook. ‘Are you looking for this?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said petulantly. ‘What is it? And who the fuck are you?’

  Then I recognized him, and answered the question myself. It was the guy from the diner, the one who’d been sitting down at the end of the counter, apparently deep in post-alcohol stress. The one who’d spoken to me after my phone conversation with the man at Laura’s house: who’d looked a little out of place, and yet had been sitting there, opposite Laura’s hotel—almost as if waiting for someone.

  ‘My name,’ said the man, screwing up his eyes for a moment, ‘is Hap.’

  ‘No it’s not,’ I said steadily. ‘That’s my name. Try again.’

  The man frowned. ‘You’re absolutely right, of course. Sorry. My name is Travis.’

  ‘Stop being an asshole,’ I suggested, ‘and tell me who the hell you are. And turn off the light, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘What light?’

  The light switch, in keeping with common practice, was on the wall behind me, next to the door. He couldn’t have reached it from where he was sitting. The light had an unusual quality, almost tangible: as it might appear if I was swimming in clear water at night and someone turned on a powerful searchlight overhead. It didn’t seem to reach into the corners of the room, or to display objects in the usual manner, as if its role wasn’t actually visual.

  Keeping the gun trained firmly on the man in the chair, I reached behind and flicked the switch. The overhead light came on, and the room suddenly looked more normal, full of edges and a little dusty. Though not any brighter.

  The man winked. ‘And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day,’ he said, ‘for there shall be no night there.’

  ‘I really am running out of patience,’ I said.

  The man rolled his eyes, reached into his pocket and brought out a small torch-like object. ‘Ambient light projector,’ he said. ‘You can get them at Radio Shack.’

  ‘Great. I’ll look out for one. Now, for the last time: what are you doing here?’

  ‘Waiting for you,’ he said, standing. ‘You’re later than I expected, and I’ve got to go. Things to do. Anyway—it’s here.’ He placed the notebook on the chair, winked at me again. ‘You’d never have found it on your own. It was taped under the corner of the desk.’

  ‘Which is the first place I would have looked,’ I said irritably. ‘For whatever it is.’

  The man smiled and walked towards me. He stopped about a yard away, with my gun almost touching his chest, and waited patiently. I didn’t know what to do. Shooting him seemed excessive, but I didn’t know whether I should just let him go. In the end I let the gun drop. I was panting slightly, tired and strung out and empty. The guy had to be either a cop or someone else connected with Hammond, and he was obviously several steps ahead of me.

  ‘What’s going on?’ The question spilled out of me like a final breath. I felt like I could do with some clues, maybe a password to help me up to the next level.

  The man pulled out a wallet and handed me a card. ‘I wouldn’t hang around,’ he said. Then he just walked past me out the door, and I let him go.

  It was a moment before I thought to look at the card, to turn it over in my hands. Both sides were blank.

  I ran out the door, round the hallway and down the stairs, but he was gone. I dithered about whether to chase after him, then remembered the notepad was still upstairs, that time wasn’t on my side—and also that Deck could probably do with some support. I went back up to the study, made it dark again. I was intending to just pocket the notepad and go, but on impulse I found the back-lighting switch and turned it on.

  A screen full of numbers, separated by commas. There didn’t seem to be any discernible pattern, just row after row of figures. I leafed through a few other pages of the notebook, but they were all blank. Hammond had used a fifty-dollar device to store just one page of stuff: ergo it was probably important. Or maybe it was his golf scores. Worry about it later.

  Before I went I cast an eye over the shelves of books. For a cop he had a hell of a lot of them. Criminology texts, history, novels, spines battered and used. Also religious books, interpretations of the bible, one hundred and one ways to be a happy camper: rows of the fuckers, looking newer than most of the other books. I picked a book out at random from the non-religious section, opened it. Street light was just sufficient for me to see that the page showed a number of pictures of gunshot wounds. Not very nice, but quite interesting. It was certainly a better deal to see them by opening a book rather than looking down at your own shoulder. Not for the first time I wondered whether it might have been a better career decision to have been a cop, rather than a criminal. I was thinking about it, at one stage. As usual I decided that I’d probably had better pay and working conditions, and enjoyed slightly higher social status. Bei
ng a cop got you a nice uniform, on the other hand—and presumably people didn’t arrest you the whole time and say dispiriting things. Didn’t make much odds: probably a little late to apply to the Academy anyhow.

  As I put the book back on the shelf I noticed something. The next book along had a piece of paper stuck in it, a tiny corner protruding above the height of the pages it was sandwiched between. I pulled the book out, opened it.

  And knew I’d found something important.

  The page was about five inches by three, and laserprinted almost edge to edge. The text was nonsense, a jumble of letters with no spaces. A code. As I looked more closely I realized that the letter ‘x’ appeared far more times than it should, even if it was standing in for ‘e’. Chances were it was doubling as a space character, in which case the text was printed in word-shaped chunks.

  There was no printer on the desk, which meant maybe that the sheet was a product of Hammond’s activities in his other apartment. In other words, that it was a backup of whatever information the people who’d cleaned that place out were looking for. Two of the edges were slightly uneven, suggesting it had once been part of a larger sheet. You could probably have got four out of a normal piece of paper—implying there might be more?

  I put the book back, pulled out another from a higher shelf. No paper, nor in the next two I tried. There were hundreds of books on the shelves, and I knew it had to have been the coincidence shot which enabled me to find the first one straight off. Searching all the books would take the rest of the night, so I decided to just quickly toss one column.

  It still took over half an hour, but netted me three more pieces of paper. The letters on each were different, but otherwise they looked the same. Two words in bold at the top, maybe a name. Then a solid block of impenetrable text.