Necropolis

by Michael Dempsey

  “Nicole said he died in Bolivia. But that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

  “Wait a minute. You said there were no witnesses?” said Maggie. “What about the bottom?”

  “Huh?” said Max.

  “The submissive, at the hanky-spanky club,” I explained. “She was tied up facing the dungeon.” To Armitage: “I’d like to talk to her. I don’t believe in locked room mysteries.”

  For some reason, Maggie was plucking nervously at her sleeves.

  Armitage clamped the pipe stem between his teeth. “Next order of business. What’s this I hear about some connection between you and Nicole Struldbrug from your first life?”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to think about this, let alone talk about it. It felt like my first time on the high board at the YMCA as a kid, looking down past my toes at all that empty space between me and the hard water below, the next guy already impatient on the ladder behind me, cutting off any escape. Only one way off.

  Sometimes no choice is the best choice.

  “There’s a small subdivision in the Department of Health and Human Services called the Office of Research Integrity. Used to be, anyway. My wife worked there.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Government oversight of scientific research.”

  “You mean like that stink over cloning and stem cell research in the early 21st?” said Max. “Much ado about nothing,” he sniffed, the expert.

  I couldn’t help it. I was starting to like the guy. “It’s about ethical treatment of test subjects and employing proper scientific methodology. My wife was a an attorney. She’d investigate violations, get injunctions, that kind of thing.”

  “I thought the FDA did that,” said Tippit.

  “The FDA’s mandate is food and drug safety. The ORI deals with safety and ethics during scientific research and development.”

  “The process, not the product,” said Armitage.

  “Exactly.”

  Armitage pushed a pack of real Marlboros across the table. Roy Rogers grinned at me from its side. I shook one out. “Elise told me that she was investigating a biotech company committing gross research violations. Said the scandal was big enough to lead the nightly news.”

  Everyone hid a smile. It pissed me off. “What?”

  “There hasn’t been a ‘nightly news’ in thirty years,” said Jonathan gently.

  I lit a cigarette and inhaled, clinging to the smoke like a lifeline. “Okay, here’s the crazy part. I have a memory of Nicole, a memory from the day Elise told me about the scandal. I passed Nicole in the hall. She was the company rep, going to see my wife. Which means the company was Surazal.”

  That earned me a robust chorus of disbelief.

  “How old was she?” Max asked.

  “Early thirties.”

  “That’d make her over seventy years old now,” Jonathan said.

  “Look, Nicole confirmed it. She told me that Elise gave her three days to go public on her own and lessen the charges. That’s when Nicole had us killed.”

  “You’re saying Nicole Struldbrug, sister of the man who runs the twelfth largest economy in the world, murdered you and your wife forty years ago to cover up illegal scientific research. That since then, she hasn’t aged a day. And that after you revived, she hired you to find her missing scientist,” said Armitage.

  “And then dusted you again when you did,” added Max.

  An animal noise came from my throat. “Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice, shame on me.”

  There was a moment of empty sound.

  “Why hire you?” asked Tippit. “Not very prudent.”

  “She’s a classic sociopath. In terms of behavior, they’re the hardest to predict because they don’t play by a set of rules and they don’t think they’ll be caught.”

  “So it’s all a game to her? A high wire act?” They looked dubious.

  “I know how it sounds,” I said.

  “Crandall did recognize Donner’s name,” said Maggie. “I heard it.” Maggie described Crandall’s professing that he’d had nothing to do with Donner’s murder.

  “Christ,” Armitage muttered.

  “Is she a reborn?” said Jonathan.

  “She’s not,” I said.

  “And you know this how?” said Armitage.

  “I’ve, uh, been close enough to tell.” That earned me some snickers. I coughed.

  “He’s right,” said Maggie. “I scanned her DNA. She’s a norm.”

  “The Retrozine-A, then?” said Max. “Could she have used youthed herself back to her thirties?”

  Armitage rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “According to you, the drug was unstable until very recently. Melted people into a puddle of cells.”

  The memory of that room blew dread across my neck. The stuff on the floor that smelled like rotting cheese. How many people had been swept down that drain to satisfy her agenda?

  Armitage sucked on his cold pipe, thoughtful.

  “You ever gonna light that thing?” I said.

  He ignored me, turning to Max and Tippit. “I want background on Surazal. The works.”

  Max looked pained. “What am I, a librarian?”

  “If Nicole’s been around since the last century, there’s a record.”

  “I have a link in my quarters,” offered Jonathan.

  “No, do it from a Conch cafe, or a library,” Armitage said. “Somewhere public, in case you’re traced.”

  I ground out my cigarette. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I’ll contact my superiors,” he said. “The decision’s theirs, but I’ll advise them not to go public about Retrozine.”

  “What?!” said Maggie, her mouth a perfect circle.

  “Not until we have hard evidence.”

  “What do you call Donner? And the formulas?”

  “That’s not proof of anything illegal, Maggie.”

  “They killed people testing it!”

  “Says you. Look. We have one chance at this. We throw wild accusations we can’t prove, we’re finished. Adam Struldbrug is the high pillow. His influence is global. In the public’s mind, Surazal is the only thing between them and chaos. They’re gonna hate hearing that their savior is really a monster. Now, the Cadre has a sympathetic ear in Congress. But this person will not make a stand against Surazal unless we can hand him undeniable proof.”

  “A smoking gun, you mean,” said Maggie, looking at me.

  “What makes you think this congressman’s going to throw down when the time comes?” I said. “Even with proof, it’s David against Goliath.”

  Armitage applied flame to his pipe. The room filled with the fragrance of his tobacco. “He’s a good man, and he’s chairman of the right committees. If we give him solid goods, he’ll break the story on the floor of the goddamned Senate the same time we flood the Conch with it. There’s no way they could avoid an investigation. Once the facts came out, the administration will have to distance itself from Surazal. It would be the first step in getting the public to rethink what’s been done here.”

  I looked at the floor. There was a sticky trap in the corner, full of dead insects. A fresh line of ants was heading for it, lockstep to their doom. “The public watched for a century as multinationals bought governments, cowed the media and chewed up the third world to run their machines. We didn’t care what happened as long as we had our SUVs and TV shows and an easy enemy to hate. What makes you think we’re going to do the right thing now?”

  “Did being a cop made you this cynical?” Armitage asked.

  “Being murdered a couple times.”

  Armitage waved this all away. “The Blister Joining Ceremony is in two weeks. The President will be in Necropolis for the first time. The whole world will be watching Times Square for the ribbon-cutting.”

  “Great time to go public,” I said.

  He grinned sideways at me. “Just what I was thinking.”

  Maggie gaped. “Two weeks?”

  “My monks are at yo
ur disposal,” said Jonathan.

  “I appreciate that,” said Armitage. He turned to me. “About that smoking gun. Think you can handle that, soldier?”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re dead. Off their radar.”

  Dead. And expendable. “We’re talking penetrating Surazal’s deepest defenses. “

  “You got in once,” said Armitage. “The lab, remember?”

  “Yeah, that went real well.”

  Max let out a surprised laugh.

  “We need evidence they’ve been snatching people, testing this drug on them, killing them.” He stood. “Two weeks.”

  They all stood. Meeting over.

  I waited until they left and it was just Maggie and me.

  “Nicole’s no fool,” I said. “There may be no incriminating evidence. Eight thousand people go missing in this city every year. It’ll be next to impossible to identify the ones Surazal kidnapped.”

  “So what do we do?”

  I drummed my fingers thoughtfully. An idea had come to me. There was another way. But it was incredibly high-risk. Armitage would never go for it.

  I pushed back from the table. “Any clothes in this place?”

  “Why?” said Maggie. “You going some place?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The morgue.”

  I pulled out my Beretta and checked the mag.

  It was time to play hard.

  35

  BRIAN

  Previously labeled a pussy, Brian now regularly waded into battle with the deadliest kids on campus. He never won, having no size or skill. But his innate fury and refusal to stay down earned grudging admiration from the school badasses. Security now searched him for kinetic knives and such, unaware that his most potent weapon was his hopelessness.

  On this day, La-Ron Zellers and Dell Broggorico, the worst J.D.s in school, blocked his way. The flow of kids instantly diverted to avoid the throw-down. Brian still wore the scratches and bite marks from his last encounter. But he fixed the larger boys with dead eyes and the muscles of his forearms knotted into bands. “Well?” he sighed.

  The insult that was the cursory precipitant to school fighting (e.g., “outta my way, you punk ass bitch”) was surprisingly not flung. Instead, La-Ron, who had a cruel brow and cubic zirconium teeth, grinned. Dell looked like a hyena who’d stumbled across a broke-back hare.

  “You fought Bill Markem,” La-Ron said.

  “So you want to try me, now?” Brian asked in monotone.

  La-Ron and Dell exchanged an amused look. “I outweigh you two-to-one.”

  Brian sighed. “I gotta go.”

  La-Ron was fidgeting now. This irritated Dell. “You hear of the Devil’s Fist?”

  There it was. Forget the Crips and Bloods, the Devil’s Fist were hardcore gangbangers that redefined hardcore. Their rank-and-file were mostly ex-cons with too much hate and too little future. They were a reeb hunt pack. Over sixty local murders had been attributed to them. They’d get pulled in for questioning once in a while, but the Anti-Gang Task Force mostly turned a blind eye. Reborn rights groups screamed that this amounted to state-sanctioned “reborn cleansing,” but the public was apathetic. After all, they only attacked freaks.

  An East Side councilman had run on an “anti-hunt pack” platform last year. He was found unconscious in a dumpster on C Street with some fingers missing. He’d dropped from the race, citing family issues.

  “Meet us outside Tally’s Gym tomorrow at six and we’ll show you how to really have fun.”

  Almost despite himself, Brian’s lips curled into a grin, as the hatred awoke and uncoiled in his belly.

  36

  MANUEL /

  MEDICAL EXAMINER

  The guard felt bad for the guy. The man had wandered into the Ambulatory Care Pavilion’s glass atrium at the worst possible time: 3:10, precisely when first shifters swarmed from the elevators in a lemming-like exodus. Their work was done, and God help anybody that got in their way. Manuel watched the man get buffeted by the crowd, then waved from his podium.

  “Sir! Over here!”

  The man surfed his way over.

  “Can I help you?”

  The man looked at him with a tremulous expression. “They called me. I have to…” His lip trembled. “Someone from the Medical Examiner’s office. My brother, he… Oh God.”

  Shit. Manuel hated this part of the job. Bellevue Hospital was massive, covering multiple blocks along 1st Avenue. He got lots of lost people. He’d direct them to the right block, the right building, floor and unit. Sometimes people were distraught. There was never an easy way to deal with them. But the ones looking for the morgue—they were the worst.

  “They called you to identify him?” The man barely moved, a whisper of a nod.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Crandall. Morris Crandall.”

  Manuel punched keys on his monitor and frowned. “He’s been here for weeks.”

  “I was on my boat off the Sound with no cell. They couldn’t find me.”

  Manuel cringed inside. Lousy bureaucrats. Now the guy was gonna see what his bro looked like after weeks on ice. “He’s in the morgue, lower level. Do you have ID?”

  The man buried his face in his hands, and like that, he was sobbing. Jesus. People looked over, giving Manuel accusatory scares. People hated security guards.

  “Maybe he’ll come back,” Manuel offered.

  The man raised his face hopefully. “You think?”

  Manuel typed into his console. A temporary clearance pass popped from a slot. He handed it to the man. “You’re in the wrong building, sir. Wave this at any one of the wall panels; they’ll direct you to the ME’s office.”

  “Thank you.”

  Manuel touched his intercom. “I’ll announce you.”

  “Can’t I just go over?”

  “It’s a secure area, sir.”

  The man’s hand was suddenly covering Manuel’s. “This is so traumatic. Is there a cafeteria? A place I can get coffee?”

  “There are vending machines on Level Two.”

  “Bless you. I’ll come back when I think I can… face it. You can announce me then. Is that okay?”

  “Take all the time you need.”

  The man headed for the elevators, shoulders hunched in grief. Manuel was so relieved to be rid of the guy that he didn’t notice when the man diverted to the rear exit.

  ***

  The porcelain-tiled room stank of disinfectant and worse. The rimmed metal autopsy table had holes for draining fluid and spigots that delivered water from underneath.

  A camera drone weaved around in the air, looking for the best angle. The creature annoyed the Assistant ME, but a clear record was essential. Bodies weren’t what they used to be. They had a tendency to sit up and scream in the middle of the autopsy.

  The AME and two assistants examined an obese sixteen-year-old reeb. He’d been weighed, X-rayed and measured.

  The AME held the liver up in the harsh light. Enlarged. He dropped it into a weigh pan. “Name: Belushi, John. Cause of death…” He sighed. “Same as the last time.”

  A throat cleared behind them. They turned, and were startled to find themselves at the business end of a gun.

  “Hi, boys,” the man said. “I’m here to pick up a friend.”

  37

  DONNER

  “You brought him here?”

  Veins stitched Armitage’s temples. The bare bulbs of the basement made his mottled face look leprous.

  “I thought we were in this together,” I said, lighting a cigarette.

  “How is compromising our security being in this together?”

  “We didn’t compromise anything,” said Maggie hotly. “Nicole thinks Donner’s dead, remember? Crandall, too.”

  “Crandall is dead!” Armitage swung his paw towards the tunnel, where the body was sitting in my wheelchair draped with auto deodorizers. “Dead and stinking up the place!”

  Twenty or so Enders and Cadre members had
formed a rough circle around us, divided by their loyalties. During my recovery, Jonathan’s inner circle had taken a shine to me, due to my semi-holy status as a double reborn. It was either that or my sparkling personality. I hadn’t cared enough to discourage it, but now I had a following I didn’t know if I wanted. Armitage’s people were bristling dangerously, sensing a threat to his authority.

  “Let’s all just calm down,” Jonathan said.

  “We would’ve stayed at the safe house on Bleeker, but there was no way to get there. Checkpoints are going up all over the city.”

  “You got him out of the morgue easy enough.”

  “Yeah, how’d you do that?” asked Max.

  Maggie looked at the ground. “We, uh. We stole a hearse.”

  “You stole—” Armitage stopped, gaping.

  Someone stifled laughter. Armitage looked ready to blow.

  “You prefer we took your Silver Wraith?” said Maggie.

  “How do you know you weren’t tracked here?” he asked.

  “Give me some credit, okay?” I said. “I wiped down the hearse with bleach and dumped it in Alphabet City.”

  “What about the hospital security cameras?”

  “Security experienced a cascade failure around the same time as the robbery,” smiled Maggie.

  Armitage was not appeased. “We don’t operate this way.”

  “You mean we didn’t have your permission,” Maggie said.

  “That’s right!” he roared. He gestured to the tense faces. “I’m responsible for these people’s safety! This man has his own agenda.”

  There were unhappy stirrings from the Enders.

  “You wanted proof that Surazal is killing people,” I said.

  “I didn’t say break into Bellevue and steal a body!”

  “There’s no time, remember? We want this to happen in two weeks, we have to take some risks.”

  “Our savior! We’ve done alright without you.”

  I didn’t blame the man for feeling like I was a threat. But this wasn’t about being elected Class President, it was about survival. So I dropped my gauntlet. “Done alright?” I said. “Living like rats in a hole, hiding from any loud voice? Jamming up the Conch with your little protest messages and managing to get yourself blamed for every violent act some other crazy group commits?”