New York Nights [Virex 01]

by Eric Brown

  * * * *

  New York Nights

  [The Virex Trilogy 01]

  By Eric Brown

  Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

  * * * *

  New York City

  Winter 2040

  * * * *

  One

  That night was like a thousand others he’d woken to in El Barrio, but looking back Halliday realised that it marked the beginning of what he would come to see as the darkest period of his life.

  The alarm went off at ten. He blinked himself awake, his breath pluming in the icy air of the moon-lit loft. Kim lay beside him, her warmth tempting him to doze for another hour. The thought of what work Barney might have on file moved him to abandon the sanctuary of the futon and cross the loft to the bathroom, shivering in the sub-zero chill.

  He showered, relishing the jet of hot water. As he stood below the drier, looking through the open door along the length of the loft, he noticed that Kim had rearranged the furniture yet again. The Salvation Army couch and threadbare armchair now faced the wall-window that overlooked the back alley.

  Last week, intuiting a look from him as he tried to find the coatstand, she had wrestled him to the bed and pinioned his arms with her knees, jet hair falling around her serene oval face. ‘I’ve known you how long now, Mr Halliday?’

  ‘Seems like ten years.’

  She slapped him, hard. ‘Not even ten months, Hal. And in that time, what’s happened?’

  In ten months, his partnership with Barney had prospered: they never seemed to go more than a day or two without another case coming in, and their success rate in solving commissions was higher than ever. Halliday put it down to coincidence, or that psychologically he was feeling better for having this beautiful Chinese sprite enter his life like a miniature whirlwind and blow away his old apathy and desperation. He was feeling better in himself, and he was working harder: therefore, he was solving more cases.

  ‘I see this place, Hal. . .’ Kim had gestured around at the loft, ‘and I think negative energy, sick room, bad chi. I think, things need to change around here. So I rearrange things. And lo, your luck changes - you get more work, more dollars.’

  Halliday heard a squeal from the loft. He finished dressing and stepped from the bathroom. Kim was dancing around the room like a naked dervish, long hair falling to her child-slim waist. She pulled on underwear, minimal panties and bra, managing in the process to stare at him with massive eyes. ‘I told you to set the alarm for eight, Hal!’

  ‘When? You never said a thing!’

  ‘I get in at noon, you wake, I say, Set alarm for eight, Hal. You say, Hokay.’

  He barely remembered her sneaking under the thermal beside him. ‘I was dead to the world

  ‘You answered!’

  ‘In my sleep!’

  She cursed him in Mandarin, hopping on one leg as she forced the other into a pair of jeans.

  Halliday found his jacket and pulled the zip to his chin, shutting out the cold. ‘Anyway, why did you want to be out by eight?’

  ‘Work to do, Hal. Stalls to organise. Busy night.’

  ‘You could delegate.’

  Briefly, she stopped dressing and stared at him, shaking her head. ‘Delegate’ was a word that had yet to enter her vocabulary. Kim Long owned a dozen Chinese roadside food-stalls in the area, and Halliday had once calculated that she worked at least fourteen hours a day, every day. When he protested that he only eyer met her in bed, she always went out of her way to make time for him - she’d take him to a restaurant, or a holo-drama, gestures to placate his dissatisfaction. Then, in a day or two, she’d be back to her gruelling work routine and they’d hardly go out together until the next time he moved himself to mention the fact.

  ‘Can’t trust other people to do what you should do yourself, Hal,’ she told him. ‘Gotta make them dollars. I’m a busy girl.’

  He didn’t know whether to be amazed by her materialism, or sickened. She’d arrived from Singapore at the age of fifteen, following the Malaysian invasion ten years ago, penniless after her father’s restaurant had been confiscated by the Communists. She’d taught herself English, bought herself a microwave and a patch in a side-street, and slowly built up a thriving fast food business.

  He paused by the door. ‘Kim, why don’t you just slow down, take it easy? Enjoy yourself.’

  In moonboots and chunky climbing jacket, she widened her eyes at his apostasy. ‘I enjoy my work, Mr Halliday. If you enjoyed your work, you’d be happier person.’

  She ran into the bathroom.

  He almost let that one go, then thought about it.

  ‘Hey, that isn’t fair. My work’s different.’ He moved to the bathroom, kicked open the red-painted door with his boot, and leaned against the woodwork. ‘I spend hours looking for people . . . and sometimes I find them, sometimes I find corpses. And sometimes I find nothing at all. . . which can be even worse.’

  She squatted on the john, jeans shackling her ankles, and pissed. ‘Well, I like my work!’ she shouted. ‘I like what I do! Don’t blame me for that, Hal!’

  ‘I’m not blaming you, I’m just. . .’ He trailed off. He sometimes wondered why he bothered arguing. He’d never change her.

  She was a creature of extremes. She combined a feminine gentleness, an almost obsessive desire to please him on the rare occasions they were together, with a fierce, driven determination to get her own way in matters where finance and business were concerned. On the street, he’d seen her giving instructions to her managers, letting go with a rapid-fire burst of Mandarin that sounded like the high notes of a xylophone played by a madman. The depth of her rage often alarmed him.

  He’d once accused her of possessing a split personality.

  She’d snorted, ‘Please don’t give me none of that Freudian bullshit, Mr Halliday! You never heard of yin and yang?’

  Now he sketched a wave. ‘I’m outta here.’

  ‘Hal, if you don’t like your work, why do you do it?’

  He pushed himself from the jamb. I sometimes wonder, he thought to himself. ‘See you later, Kim.’

  As he left the loft, she called after him, ‘And remember to be back by . . .’ but the rest was lost as he closed the door. He wondered what she was talking about: he recalled no arrangement to meet her at whatever time.

  He made his way down the steps to the office on the second floor, descending into the welcome, starch-laden heat that rose from the Chinese laundry.

  A light was on behind the pebbled glass. He pushed open the door. The office was a long, narrow room with a mould-coloured carpet and nicotine-stained walls. A desk stood at the far end, before the window that looked out on a rusty fire escape. Most of the right-hand wall comprised a big screen, in twelve sections, the bottom right square defective for as long as Halliday could remember. The door opposite the wallscreen gave onto the bedroom where Barney slept nights. A fan clanked on the ceiling, stirring the soggy heat. A portable fire puttered beside the desk. The warmth was a relief after the arctic temperature of the loft.

  Barney sat with his outstretched legs lodged on the desk, a mug of coffee balanced on the hummock of his belly. As ever, the smouldering butt of a fat cigar was pegged into the side of his mouth.

  Halliday had once asked him if he’d ever thought of giving up his cigars, on health grounds. But Barney had just laughed and said, ‘Part of the clichéd image, Hal. What kind of private dick would I be without my cheap stogie? Anyway, I’m addicted.’

  He was regarding the screen of the desk-com past the V of his slippered feet. Halliday guessed that his partner hadn’t ventured very far from the office today.

  ‘I’m bushed, Hal,’ Barney rumbled. ‘The graveyard shift’s yours.’r />
  Halliday poured himself a coffee and sat on the battered chesterfield by the window, warming himself before the heater. ‘Anything new?’

  ‘Just those on file,’ Barney said, ‘and what Jeff sent along last week.’

  Every so often Jeff Simmons, over at the NYPD, sent them old cases that the police had failed to solve. They paid Halliday and Barney two hundred dollars per file to take over the clerical work; if they happened to close the case, they were given a bonus. It was donkey work, often futile, but it paid the overheads.

  Halliday often thought back to how he’d started in this line of business, and wondered why he continued. He’d been posted to Missing Persons, under Jeff Simmons, when he worked for the NYPD ten years ago. Barney was his partner at MP and, along with Simmons, they got along well and made a good team. Eight years ago Barney had quit the force and set up his own agency, specialising in missing persons. Five years ago, after the death of his wife, Barney had approached Halliday with an offer: join me and do the legwork for more than you’re bringing in down the precinct, and in five years you’ll be a partner.

  At the time, Halliday had been sickened by the grinding routine, the never-ending paper pushing of police work. The extra pay and the promise that Barney would handle the clerical side of things had swung it. He’d joined Barney and they’d done okay; they charged by the hour and demanded a bonus if they located the missing person, and their success rate hovered around the fifty per cent mark, which was not a bad average in the business.

  ‘I’ll leave you with the file,’ Barney said. ‘I’ll work on the Lubanski case tomorrow, after I’ve been downtown.’

  Halliday gave him a quizzical look.

  ‘Last day of the course, Hal,’ Barney reminded him.

  He nodded. ‘Look, I haven’t said anything so far, okay?’

  ‘You got a problem?’

  He wondered whether it was because Barney’s application made him appear lazy. For the past month, Barney had been paying a private tutor to fill him in on the technical aspects of virtual reality. As far as Halliday was concerned, this was going to be just another nine-day wonder that swept America and died a quick death. But, then, he’d thought the same thing about holo-drama.

  Halliday stared into his coffee. ‘You think we’ll need it in this line of work? The way you’re talking, people will be quitting the real world for VR like some crazy sci-fi holo-drama.’ He gave Barney a look. ‘You think we’ll be having to go in after them to get them out?’

  Barney was shaking his head. ‘Not as things stand. There’s a limit to how long you can stay jellytanked, for safety reasons. It’ll be a decade before you can remain under for any serious length of time.’

  ‘How long’s “serious”? Weeks?’

  Barney shrugged. ‘Some people are saying we’ll be able to live in VR indefinitely. But that probably won’t be in my lifetime.’

  Halliday smiled. He envisaged a depopulated New York, great hangars stacked with tanks each containing a floating, dreaming human being.

  ‘In the meantime, “ Barney went on, ‘I want to keep my finger on the pulse. If it’s happening out there, and might affect my line of business, then Barney Kluger’s interested.’

  Halliday smiled and took a long swallow of coffee. That’s what he secretly admired about his boss. Barney was what - over sixty now? He ran a third-rate detection agency in a run-down district of El Barrio, his wife was six years dead and he wasn’t in the best of health himself - and yet he was still up for the fight. He reminded Halliday of an ageing, punch-drunk boxer who didn’t understand the meaning of the word defeat.

  Knuckles rapped on glass, and the door at the far end of the room swung open. Kim leaned through, her scarlet moonboots and primrose padded jacket a rude intrusion of colour into the drab, smoke-hazed office. In her fur-lined hat, she looked like an Eskimo.

  ‘Hal, did you hear me? I said be back here for ten, okay?’ She sketched a wave. ‘Hi, Barney.’

  ‘Hi yourself, sweetheart. How’s trade?’

  She stuck out her bottom lip. Sometimes the simple expressions of her unlined, almost unformed face gave her the appearance of a child. ‘Up and down, Barney.’

  ‘You should be in the elevator business, kid.’ It was a line Halliday had heard many times before. Dutifully, Kim rolled her eyes.

  ‘What’s happening at ten?’ Halliday asked.

  ‘Hal always complains,’ Kim said, addressing Barney. ‘He says I never go out with him, says we never go places. Big surprise tomorrow, Hal. Don’t be late.’

  Before he could question her, she pulled the door shut and ran down the stairs. ,

  ‘Big surprise. She knows how I hate surprises.’

  Barney grunted. ‘You complain you never get out, and when she arranges something, what do you do? Complain. Listen, Hal. Lighten up. She’s the best thing that ever happened to you.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know, buddy. A year ago you were one sad, miserable bastard, believe me. I had to share this dump with you.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘That bad.’ Barney laughed. ‘Sometimes I think you don’t realise how lucky you are.’

  Halliday shrugged. ‘I don’t know...’ He considered how simple all relationships seemed to an observer looking in from the outside.

  ‘Hal, do you love the kid?’

  Halliday laughed. ‘Love? Jesus Christ, what’s love?’

  ‘You know, that simple human emotion, care for another human being, lust mixed with affection. The need for each other’s company.’

  ‘Yeah, all those things ... But I don’t know if they add up to love.’

  Barney shrugged. ‘Hal, trouble with you is you can’t see a good thing when it lands in your lap.’ He paused, his eyes seeing something long gone, and Halliday wondered if he was going to start another riff about him and Estelle.

  He smiled to himself. He wanted to tell Barney that you couldn’t judge one relationship against another. Every couple was different, made up of complex psychological imponderables. And anyway, things were different back then, thirty years ago. For a start, men and women married, supposedly - amazingly - for life. Halliday never looked further into the future than the next week.

  Perhaps, he thought, it was because he saw so little of Kim that they were still together. Then he chastised himself for such cynicism and wondered what surprise Kim had in store for him tomorrow.

  Barney stretched his arms above his head and gave a giant yawn. ‘I’m turning in, Hal. See you in the morning.’

  He eased himself from his swivel chair, hardly any taller standing up than sitting down, all thickset, thrusting torso, beer-belly and bandy legs. He closed the bedroom door behind him and a minute later Halliday heard the beat of the shower and Barney’s baritone rendition of some doleful Irish lament.

  He slipped into the swivel chair and accessed the desk-com. He scrolled through the half dozen existing cases, familiarity filling him with frustration.

  He was about to check a lead on one of the commissions - a businessman missing for the past month with a stash of company funds - when he saw a flashing star next to a name, denoting a new case. He wondered why Barney hadn’t mentioned it and read quickly through the notes his boss had made the day before.

  A woman called Carrie Villeux had come to the office on Monday morning, to report the disappearance of her lover, Sissi Nigeria. (Dykes - Barney had typed in his notes - which might account for the patriotic, back-to-my-roots name-change. Wonder why Villeux hasn’t changed her name to Quebec?) Nigeria had left the apartment for work one morning and had never been seen again. She’d failed to arrive at the offices of Cyber-Tech, where she worked as a computer technician. Villeux had left it a couple of days before calling the police, who had investigated and found nothing.

  Halliday patched the com-recording of the meeting through the wallscreen and watched a tall, severely handsome woman in an expensive silver raincoat, her shaven skull tattooed with mandalas
in the latest display of lesbian chic. She outlined the facts of the case in a steady French-accented voice, but beneath the sophisticated exterior Halliday could tell that the woman was more than a little concerned about the safety of her lover.

  She had brought a pix of Sissi Nigeria with her: a strikingly beautiful black woman with a shaven head and high, angled cheekbones.

  Halliday smiled to himself as he remembered his sister’s anger at his chauvinist labelling. ‘The subjedification of any woman as beautiful is just another bigoted, male-centric criterion employed to label and demean womankind . . .’ or something like that. The thought of Sue provoked a slew of painful memories. He glanced back at the screen, read Villeux’s address: Solano Building, Greenwich Village.