Necropolis

by Michael Dempsey

  The tension in the room surged geometrically. There were angry murmurs.

  “How dare you,” breathed Armitage.

  “Boss.”

  It was Max. “Boss,” he said. “Donner’s right.”

  Armitage gaped, blindsided. Limbs shifted uneasily.

  “We’ve been surviving, but that’s it,” said Max. “It ain’t enough anymore.”

  “Surazal is the best-equipped security force in the world! They control the streets, the media, the minds of the public!”

  “It don’t matter,” said Max. “You want to live like this forever? I’d rather die trying for something better.”

  Armitage fired a molten look at him, but Max puffed his barrel chest and held his ground. Behind them, there were nods of agreement, vehement “no’s”, and shuffling indecisive feet. Armitage goggled at the floor, an internal wrestling match playing out for his self-control.

  “If we can revive that guy,” said Max, “he’s the smoking gun you were looking for. Donner got him in one clean move.”

  Sandy and Tippit entered from the tunnel.

  “How’s the doctor?” I asked.

  “His tissues are regenerating,” the nurse replied.

  “It’s pretty gross,” added Tippit.

  One of Jonathan’s monks rushed down the wooden steps from the church above, sweaty and out of breath. “Jonathan! Checkpoints are going up all over the city!”

  Everyone turned.

  “They have barricades, armed squads. I passed three on my way here. If my ID hadn’t held, I would’ve been detained. They’re breaking Manhattan down into enclosed neighborhoods. They say it’s security for the President’s visit.”

  “They’re looking for you,” said Armitage to me.

  “They’re looking for all of us,” I said. “This was always just a matter of time.”

  It showed on his face then, the toll of leading a double life, being responsible for so many people. I’d self-destructed with self-pity while this man had soldiered on.

  “Look,” I said, more gently. “I don’t know another man who could have accomplished what you have. But you’re not going to be able to hide much longer. Those of you who still hold jobs will be ferreted out and arrested. The rest will be firebombed out of existence.”

  “They can’t,” a voice insisted weakly from the crowd.

  “They’re already doing it!” said Maggie with a heat that shocked me. “Open your eyes! What’s after checkpoints? A reborn Warsaw ghetto? You think the norms will protest?”

  Armitage said nothing. His stony blue eyes looked sad.

  “Pastor,” said an Ender. “What do you think?”

  “We’re coming to some turning point,” said Jonathan. “What it is, I can’t predict. That man in there has a lot of answers, if we can bring him back. Answers we can use against Surazal. It may be the only way to end this thing without violence.”

  Armitage blinked his craggy lids slowly, an ancient turtle. Somewhere gravity yanked a drop of water from an overhead pipe and killed it on the cement floor.

  “You love us,” Maggie said. “But you can’t protect us and fight a war at the same time.”

  He finally sighed. Everybody else did as well, in relief.

  “It’s moot anyway,” he said. “But no more going off half-cocked. We figure the next plan out together.”

  I gave him my eyes, softening them enough to let him see inside. “Okay, boss.”

  His expression didn’t change visibly, but something moved along his mouth. Something that gave me hope we’d edged past the stalemate, maybe to a place where trust could grow.

  “Somebody get Donner some food,” he said.

  “Could I have something, too? I’m famished.”

  Heads swiveled. Doctor Morris Crandall was peeking from behind the metal cabinet, his hair a fluorescent white.

  38

  DONNER

  The doctor needed a little time to recover, so I decided to interview the witness to Dr. Smythe’s murder. Queenie St. Clair, Acquiesce’s proprietress, gave me the name. Sharon was a landscape architect who lived/worked out of a converted warehouse in SoHo. On Queenie’s recommendation, she agreed to see me.

  I took the train. Laid into the walls of the station was artwork composed of hundreds of tiny ceramic tiles. I’d never seen subway art this beautiful before. It said “REBORNS IN REBORN CARS ONLY.”

  The C Local slid into the station. “This train making all stops!” the speaker screamed. The PA system hadn’t improved any in forty years.

  Every fourth car was black metal. Reeb cars. The norm cars were sparsely filled, the reeb ones packed body to body. The doors hissed. I cast a longing look at the elbow room next door. A transit bull within caught the look and threw out an arm. I felt like breaking his face, but crammed myself in with the reborn cattle, telling myself I couldn’t afford trouble.

  Yeah, Donner. That’s what they all tell themselves.

  On the way, we were boarded by a squad in combat cyberwear. They went down the aisle, checking everyone, more methodical than they used to be. New directives. Cold sweat wormed down my back as I waited for their handheld to approve me. To my relief, my new Cadre-supplied ID tat survived their scrutiny.

  My mobility wouldn’t last. Nicole would figure out who stole Crandall’s body. I’d be branded. Travel would be impossible. Worse, I’d be a liability to the Cadre instead of an asset. They’d cut me loose and I’d have to go it alone, survive underground with my face splashed across every smartscreen in town. In my day, with my old resources and friends, I might’ve been able to do it. But Surazal’s biometric tech made the city transparent. I’d be easy pickings. A grim scenario.

  ***

  Sharon’s loft took up the second floor of the building. It was accessed by a creaky freight elevator that rattled like it had been last serviced during the Reagan administration.

  The warehouse was a showcase for industrial chic. The floor was oiled South American hardwood, the brick beautifully re-pointed. Clusters of exotic plants were strategically grouped throughout the space. Ivy garnished the double-hung windows. The air hung heavy with jasmine and bougainvillea.

  Polychrome art frames, some empty, some not, floated at different levels throughout. The opaque panels held holomorphs of pain. A mother screaming as her child was torn from her grip. A mass grave with emaciated, half-buried corpses. A metal spike piercing a human triceps. This one didn’t hide her taste for the rough stuff.

  The loft’s southern end had been partitioned into living quarters. Brushed aluminum cabinets peeked around the translucent wall.

  Three junior architects were perched at tables of powder-coated steel in the center of the room. They hunched over their smartboards and measured and drew and erased, measured and drew and erased. No one looked up when Sharon ushered me in. They were well-trained.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “It’s home.”

  Sharon was petite—the kind of pixie that didn’t intimidate smaller men and didn’t interest the gorillas. Her trim figure had a soft edge, one that eschewed the hard-body aesthetic of cardio addicts. She’d feel velvety under your hand. Her eyes were slate. They saw deeply and didn’t care if it unnerved you. Her burgundy hair had been left to find its own shape, and she ran her fingers through it every few minutes. Impatient, starved for sensation, or both.

  She directed me toward her office. It wasn’t exactly a room, since the walls didn’t reach the fifteen foot ceilings. But it had a door, so we went through it. There was a work table covered in stone samples and horticulture books. A single orchid, stunningly perfect, sat atop an Art Deco credenza.

  She offered me the ottoman and went to a lacquered sideboard. On its door, a samurai was mounting his concubine from behind. They both looked like they had other things on their minds.

  “Drink?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Mind if I have one?”

  “No.”

  She poured some Mak
er’s Mark into a pony glass and returned, curling her bare feet beneath her on the far side of the ottoman. “It’s lunch time,” she said. “I could order something.”

  I shook my head.

  “You look like a meal would do you good.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Been through a lot lately,” I said.

  She took a sip. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “I wasn’t myself for a while.”

  Her eyes roamed my face. “But you’re better now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” she said. “If you don’t have your health…”

  “Someone else has it,” I replied. She laughed.

  She seemed professional, mature, well put together. Not the sort who hung out at places like Acquiesce.

  “You’re wondering what a successful businesswoman like me is doing tied up in an S&M club,” she said.

  I tried not to look like she’d just looted my brain pan. “That’s a good place to start.”

  “Have you ever been tied up, Mr. Donner?”

  This one didn’t beat around the bush. “Not the way you mean,” I said.

  “How, then?”

  The memory pulled my lips down. “It was unpleasant.”

  “Try me.”

  “When I was on foot patrol, I responded to a domestic disturbance call. I should have waited for back-up, but I was a rookie and immortal. The apartment door was unlocked. I heard noises of distress, so I went in. The husband cold-cocked me.”

  Her thick lashes narrowed.

  “A roll of nickels in his fist. Old-fashioned but effective. Before my vision could clear, he’d fastened me to the radiator with my own bracelets.”

  Sharon crossed her legs tighter.

  “He resumed beating his wife. Methodically, to within an inch of her life. Then he let me go.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “He said he didn’t like to leave anything half-finished. Crazy world.”

  “The world’s okay. It’s the people that are crazy.”

  I liked this one. “Tell me about the club.”

  A little laugh, glitter in those gray eyes. “To survive in this city, as the owner of a business, you have to be a man. If you’re a woman, you have to pretend you’re a man. Understand?”

  I did.

  “Acquiesce is a place where I can be a woman again.”

  “Dominated?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gloria Steinem is turning over in her grave.”

  “Actually, in her bed in Hippieville. And I don’t care what she thinks. I know what I am.”

  “A bottom.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who likes to be tied up.”

  She touched her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. “Have you ever slapped a girl, Mr. Donner? During sex? I don’t mean to really hurt her, just playfully.”

  “For a submissive, you ask a lot of questions.”

  “I’ll stop if you want,” she said. The twinkle was back. I knew what she was after. I supposed it was fair trade. “I had a girlfriend who liked to be spanked a little during sex.”

  Sharon pointed to the sideboard and the picture on it. “Like that? From behind?”

  I cleared my throat. “Anything else?”

  “Oh, much more. But we don’t have time, do we?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” she sighed. “I was tied onto a saltire.”

  “The X-shaped cross?”

  “Yes. St. Andrew the apostle was martyred on such a cross, feeling he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord. The saltire faced the door to the execution chamber. I saw that poor man go in. Dr. Smythe.”

  “What time was this?”

  She wrinkled her nose, looked skyward. “About seven, I think. Before the place got crowded.” She smiled. “It really cooks on the weekends.”

  “He went in alone?”

  “That’s why I noticed. Acquiesce is not a place you go to be alone.”

  “Anyone else in the room before he entered?”

  “No. And the doctor was the only one afterwards.”

  “How long were you in that position, facing the door?”

  She rubbed her wrists as though remembering sweet past pain. “A couple hours.”

  I couldn’t hold back a snort. “This is recreation?”

  “I was being softened up. Primed.”

  “By whom?”

  “Vince, one of my partners. He was wearing a hand-tooled leather hood and chaps.”

  “A boy to bring home to Mom.”

  “Depends on the mom.”

  “Did you hear anything from inside the room?”

  “Moaning,” she said.

  “And you didn’t tell anyone?”

  She laughed. “Mr. Donner. Moaning is to be expected.”

  “Right.”

  She shuddered. “Then the shrieking started. That kind of screaming, you don’t expect. It was horrible.”

  “Different from what you’re used to?”

  “Oh god yes.” She ran her hand through her hair again. “Mr. Donner, you have to understand, we know where the line is. This is for pleasure. The sickos and the sadists, the ones who are there to do real damage, they’re quickly weeded out.” A pause. “For the most part.”

  “But once in a while…”

  “When the screaming started, the place emptied in a hurry. We all knew. Someone got past the radar. Someone went too far. No one wanted to be around when the cops showed. Most of us have respectable lives, lucrative careers.”

  “You were still tied up?”

  “No one would stop and untie me. People were freaked.”

  “What happened then?”

  Sharon opened her mouth, then closed it. She carefully placed the drink on the end table and wrapped her hands around her knees. When she spoke, her voice was quieter.

  “Queenie and Bumpy ran down the staircase. Queenie released me while Bumpy forced the door open, took a step in, and saw the body.”

  “Smythe was dead?”

  A tight nod. “Bumpy came out looking like he’d seen a ghost. Told Queenie to call the police.”

  “Did Bumpy ever go deeper into the room? Out of sight?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but no. He just stood in the doorway, far enough in to see the electric chair. He couldn’t have killed Smythe, not without me seeing it.”

  “And that’s it?”

  A pause. Then another tight nod.

  She was leaving something out. Her delicate little hands, still clasped, were trembling. She looked at the floor, suddenly unwilling to meet my eyes.

  I rubbed my brow, feeling old. “Thanks for talking to me about this. I know how upsetting it can be.”

  “It didn’t happen to me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Witnessing violence can be as traumatic as being a part of it.”

  “I just heard screaming.”

  “While you were bound and helpless. The killer could have come out and seen you…”

  “But it didn’t, Mr. Donner.” The slate eyes were still perusing the hardwood floor, but with a desperation now. Looking for a way out, ready to chew off her own paw.

  I cocked my head. “It?”

  There was a silent moment. Then she said, “What?”

  “You said, ‘it didn’t.’ Not ‘he didn’t,’ or ‘she didn’t.’“

  Her whole body clamped tight, the barricades snapping into place. “I’m not a linguist, Mr. Donner. So if there’s nothing else—”

  She would have pulled off the terse dismissal. But when she reached for her glass, her hands were still shaking. The drink went off the table and shattered on the floor. Sharon jumped to her feet with a cry. Her architects were well-trained. Nobody rushed in. Sharon bolted to the sideboard, poured another double and drained it in a single motion. I stood, slipping some cushioning into my voice.

  “During trauma we can see thi
ngs that don’t make sense. Violence doesn’t fit into a neat little box.”

  “Get out,” she said.

  But her eyes were desperate, full of need. For guidance. For control.

  There was only one way this was going to play out. “Tell me, and I’ll help,” I said, my voice hardening.

  Her lips trembled. “I said leave.”

  I walked to her. I took a fistful of her hair, forcing her head back until her wide eyes were on mine, her white neck exposed.

  “Tell me, Sharon,” I said, gravel into my voice. “Now.”

  A soft moan escaped her. My fist tightened in her hair. “Call me a bitch,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  She let out a noise, somewhere between a sob and a hiccup. “It was a shadow,” she said in a whisper. “A shiny shadow.”

  Her wide eyes searched my face for signs of belief. I didn’t have much I could give her. I walked to the sideboard, poured myself some water from a siphon. It tasted metallic.

  “So something did come back out.”

  “Through the door. From inside the chamber.”

  “You said the door was closed.”

  “It was.”

  “You’re saying this shadow came through the closed door?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “After the shrieking started?”

  “Yes.” She shuddered.

  I’d hoped that whatever she’d been holding back would be relevant, but this? This could be anything. Flotsam, a random spike of imagery from a terrified mind. “Sharon, maybe it was a reflection or something. From all the lights, the strobes.”

  “No.” Her face had drawn together defiantly.

  “You’d been tied up for hours. You were exhausted, or in pain, or delirious.”

  “No!” She was adamant now, angry I didn’t believe her.

  “Alright,” I said, pressing my fingers to my temples. “A shiny shadow. I don’t know what that means.”

  “It was like an oil slick, but in motion.”

  “A moving oil slick.” I had a sudden flashback to my dream and the human-shaped shadow that dragged Elise into the ground.

  “You think I’m crazy,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “Anything else?”