Damage Time

by Colin Harvey

  Bailey and van Doorn stood watching him. Shah guessed that he'd interrupted a conversation. "What?" he said.

  "Just had a call," van Doorn said. "Marble Hill pulled a young woman from the river."

  For an awful moment Shah wondered what Aurora was doing all the way up there. Then realization clicked. "Perveza?"

  Van Doorn nodded. "Sorry."

  Shah put his hand to his mouth. The worst part was the

  guilt. You thought it was Aurora, didn't even think of Perveza. What kind of father forgets his own daughter? "How?"

  "Drowned," van Doorn said. "She was so loaded with Scramble she wouldn't have known a thing. We think that she fell in while she was bombed."

  "Could she have been pushed?"

  Van Doorn looked pensive. "We can't rule Kotian out. But there are no clear signs of a fatal wound or injury, no witnesses – hell, no clear idea of where she went in. Sorry, bud."

  Shah said, "Thanks for telling me," and donning the hood at once to signal that the conversation was over – working time regulations or no regulations – fled back to work, where the problems were someone else's, and maybe had a solution.

  LXV

  You're normally a heavy sleeper, but something's woken you. Beside you, Angelica lies on her back, mouth open, snoring gently. There – it sounded like glass breaking.

  You pull on your eyepiece and see straight away that something's very, very wrong; the stand-by light is off, which means there's no network. Or, you remember what your father once told you, someone's jamming it. You check the alarm console in the bedside cabinet. Unsurprisingly, it's dead. Someone's cut the alarm.

  You're not a brave man, but the thought of anything happening to Angelica and the children lends you courage. Fumbling your feet into slippers and shrugging on a dressing gown, you reach into a bedside drawer to pull out a gun you've never really expected to have to use.

  In theory, the private security firm will send men to investigate why your alarm's gone offline. But you've heard urban legends about ghost circuits that echo the alarm's "all's well" transponder, and you're not going to chance that those legends might not be true.

  Angelica's still sleeping. You pause, debating whether to wake her, decide against it. You ease open the bedroom door and step into the corridor, gently lit by a night-light because Leonie won't sleep without it.

  Without warning a volcano of pain erupts in your eyes. You double over, clawing at them, wanting to gouge out what feels like red-hot needles being plunged into your eyeballs, and then the pepper spray hits your sinuses and your head feels as if it's suddenly too small for your expanding brain. Then the knock-out undertone hits, and oblivion welcomes you.

  You awake what could be hours or only minutes later, face down on your dining room carpet, hands tied behind your back. Everything is confusing – the world keeps spinning in and out of focus. You hear sobbing and screaming. The children! You look up. George and Leonie are each held by a pair of burly giants wearing masks. Angelica – similarly bound – is trying not to cry. She's white-faced, wide-eyed and shivering, naked, another masked man kneeling over her back, running a gloved hand up and down her spine.

  Another man stands with an automatic pistol held horizontally across his chest.

  You clutch at hope. They're masked. If they don't want us to see their faces, maybe they're going to let us live.

  "Mr Shah," the man kneeling over Angelica says. "Rex, I'm sorry to have to do this. I was a civilized man once, before your father robbed me of joy and hope." His voice is strangely rough, mechanical; there's a vox in his mask, distorting his voice.

  "I don't–" a man's boot kicks you in the side, driving the air from your lungs.

  "Hush now, Mr Shah," the man says. "I do apologize for the crudity, but getting good help is so hard these days. My subcontractors are not always up to spec. Why, tonight, due to the labor shortage your father's caused, I've had to bring along a pedophile to help out." He nods at the man holding Leonie's shoulders. "He doesn't want money, as long as he gets to play with the children."

  You feel an icy block form in your bowels. "Please, pl-please don't hurt them."

  "Well, that's a little tricky. But we'll wipe their minds after he's raped them. Of course, there's no guarantee that we'll actually carry out our threat. If you beg nicely enough, maybe we'll kill you quickly – an eye for an eye, as the Christian Old Testament says – a son for a son. Or maybe we'll take it in turns to gang-rape and sodomize your wife while they watch. Well, Mr Shah, how eloquently can you beg us to spare your children's lives?"

  LXVI

  Shah spent so long looking for his quarry that when he finally stumbled across him, he almost missed him. He'd spent a fruitless morning studying footage of Lindsay Wayne, from the last recorded moments before Kotian vanished her from the patchwork network of surveillance cameras, working backwards through the previous two weeks, in the rare instances where the camera had enough memory not to over-record every day. Each time Shah had to isolate one person in the immediate vicinity, enter their face into the match bank, then set the system to scan for matching images.

  In theory if the face matched one in the bank it would trigger an alarm, but in practice only the slightest distortion was needed – someone else walking in between the person and the camera, a shadow, even the wrong angle – to stop the software registering a match.

  Even so, there were enough possibles that Shah had to study them all visually, then check them off with the near-endless list of all Kotian's known associates. Even only a week's worth of surveillance produced so many permutations, which each had to be logged and checked, that by mid-morning Shah's brain felt as if it was melting. Only the thought that while Lindsay Wayne's killer was free, others were in danger kept Shah at his desk.

  It was long, dour, heartbreaking work that was the perfect answer to the paranoid fantasies of state surveillance that eddied around in the wake of 9/11. Almost fifty years later, society still had neither the technology nor the manpower to make the libertarian's nightmares true.

  The software's alarm chimed: match found. With jackbooted butterflies stomping in his stomach, Shah called up the result, while he scrabbled for the eyepiece he'd removed to rub the bridge of his nose. He saw van Doorn crossing the room. "We got a match!"

  Van Doorn turned and saw Shah's grin. "If you're kidding me, Shah, you're dogmeat…"

  "Nope," Shah said, still beaming. "Kotian. Six days before her murder. He must've seen her, had the idea, put a tail on her." Van Doorn stood beside Shah, staring at the screen. Shah ran the footage. "See him watching her? Then making a call. I'd bet you if we could isolate that call – and what a goddamn shame it is we can't – we'd get him telling someone to put a tail on her."

  "We can't isolate it from this," van Doorn said, already on his eyepiece, "but if we can sequester all his records, we can probably find that call." He turned and slapped Shah's bicep hard enough to make the older man wince. "Fantastic work!" He added, "Now take a break; you've earned it."

  Shah walked around the block to stretch his legs, but outside was even hotter and stickier than in the office, for all that the building's air conditioning seemed to be on the fritz much of the time. As soon as he'd bought a bottle of water and a sandwich from the nearest deli, Shah plodded back up the stairs to the office, where Bailey looked bemused. "Exercise," he said between panting. When he'd recovered his breath, Shah stuck his head around van Doorn's door. "What news?"

  "Got a warrant to sequester Shah's eyepiece records. And more. Grunwald's used the Lindsay Wayne killing as evidence that this Nico, Rico, whatever the hell the kid's name is, has vital information. Got the judge to grant us a warrant to access the kid's memories."

  "Lindsay Wayne?" Shah said. "You and I know there's a connection, but how did she convince a judge of it?"

  Van Doorn shrugged. "Judges keep an eye on the news as much as the rest of us. And they're only human; they worry that we might ever leak that we had a case and it
was baulked. Besides, it helps if you're talking to a hanging judge." At Shah's blank look van Doorn said, "Judge Warren's the duty judge for applications today. Soon as she saw his name on the roster, Grunwald lined up her arguments like it was a duck shoot."

  "Poor kid never had a chance, then – Warren's a bloodthirsty bastard."

  "Yeah." Van Doorn beamed. "But he's our bloodthirsty bastard. Unlike some that'd shove a stick up their ass in the name of civil liberties." He rubbed his hands vigorously as if to stay warm, although it was at least ninety-five and sticky in the room. "Maybe things are finally swinging our way."

  "Be about time," Shah said.

  Van Doorn's eyepiece chimed, and he stiffened. "Morning, Grunwald." He nodded, once, twice, three times. "I'll get on it straight away." He said. "Pete, you know this guy?"

  Shah's eyepiece took the download from van Doorn and–

  You're stood on a street corner, a guy handing you a scanner. Dilip says, "So we just rip the bitch, yeah?" He's stoned, his eyes dilated. You know the guy handing you the scanner from somewhere. Rudi, that's it. Not the brightest light bulb in the hallways. He nods in time to every other word: "Yeah, Mr K., he's saying he don't want her hurt, just wants a message sending to the Lady Leslyn's man-friend in the force. He axed me to do it, but I gotta 'nother job, so you guys take care of it, maybe there be some more work for youse in the future, heh?" He hands you each a pill. "That an am-nes-i-ac," he says. "You get caught, it wipes the last six hours, so we got no problem." Fuck that, you think; you'll drop the pill down the nearest drain first chance you get. Who knows what's in it. Probably a freaking suicide pill, or something. No sir, I ain't taking no tab from no stranger.

  Rudi hands you each a card. "Two hunnerd kilocals on each card, plus the same on another card when the job done. We meet here this time tomorrow, you bring the scanner with the rip, you get the rest of the payment."

  Shah ended the clip. "I'm guessing Grunwald's already presenting to Warren for an arrest warrant?"

  Van Doorn nodded, his mind clearly elsewhere, and smiled ruefully. "She already had when she sent that. She, ah, thought you might get a notion to Dirty Harry the job if she didn't build in a time lag."

  Shah stiffened. "She thought that I might play vigilante?"

  "No," van Doorn said. "But she and I both thought you might tag along to offer assistance like you did with Sunny. Even your presence in the vicinity allows the defense a chance to distract the jury, by suggesting that you were participating in a vendetta."

  Van Doorn held up a hand, listening to an incoming on his eyepiece. "OK, keep me advised." He looked at Shah and raised an eyebrow. "You're an office lawyer. You'll 'accidentally' stroll through a crime scene on your way to somewhere, or talk to someone you've been told to stay away from – look at what's happened with Kotian in the past."

  Shah made a conciliatory gesture. "That was then. I'm not going to screw this up."

  "Anyway, it's done. The bad news is Kotian wasn't at home or in his office." His eyepiece chimed again. As he listened, Shah saw him swallow, and lick his lips. "Problems?" Shah said, but van Doorn held up his hand again. "You're sure? OK. Keep looking, and I'll notify Grunwald." Even as he cut the line, another call came in, and then a third. When he had finished taking them, van Doorn sat, staring into infinity.

  "Why do I get the feeling," Shah said, "that that wasn't good news?"

  Van Doorn exhaled a long, slow sigh, but didn't answer Shah directly. Instead he made another call. "Nancy. One unit after another has reported in. They're unable to find Kotian." Shah could hear Grunwald's shriek of "What?" from ten feet away. Van Doorn said, "Looks like our friend Mr Kotian has gone underground."

  LXVII

  Shah spent the day a frustrated spectator, tapping his foot while police teams swept around New York. When van Doorn summoned the rest of the precinct to a briefing Shah said, "What do you want me to do?"

  "Everything that isn't Kotian," van Doorn replied, confirming Shah's worst fears. He gave Shah a long, hard stare. "If you dare go within a mile of this, I swear to God I'll throw you out of a window myself. Got that?"

  "Got it."

  By lunchtime, Shah had managed to offload a vagrant back to the Albany PD where his last registered address was. Suddenly lonely, he called Doug and Leslyn, but went straight to voicemail. He guessed they had already started their journey upstate. Passing van Doorn's office to get a sandwich, Shah heard shouting. Shah waited until the captain had finished and leaned around the doorframe. "You OK?"

  "Damn fools," van Doorn muttered. He seemed to see Shah for the first time. "Did you know Kotian had a private plane?" Seeing Shah's surprised look, van Doorn added, "I guess that's a no, then. But it's listed. And no one thought to put a guard on it."

  "That must cost… Jesus, a private plane?" Shah said. "How much is this guy worth?"

  Van Doorn held up a hand as his 'piece chimed again. "OK." Raising his eyes to the heavens, he blew out his cheeks. "Good." To Shah he said, "Thank God for that. A combined Homeland and Police squad have just got there."

  "No sign of Kotian, I guess?" Shah said.

  Van Doorn shook his head. "No sign it was even being prepared. Just a bunch of guys sitting around playing cards."

  "Just goes to show," Shah said, "the guy's got money to burn."

  After lunch Shah found it difficult to concentrate, instead spending the afternoon watching the frenetic activity. As instructions went out and confirmations came back of watches mounted on ports and airports, of bank accounts frozen, Shah imagined that he could hear one by one, the sound of locks being slammed on Kotian's freedom.

  But still no sign of him.

  Shah gradually forced himself back to running footage from the surveillance cameras – by the time he finished the day Shah had logged nine different scenes in which both Lindsay Wayne and Kotian had appeared in within the space of two minutes. "Good work," van Doorn said as the captain passed his desk.

  "Doesn't prove he did it."

  "You're playing Devil's Advocate?"

  "Someone has to."

  It builds up a pattern," van Doorn said. "Juries have convicted on patterns before."

  Shah had his doubts, but kept quiet. When he pulled on his jacket, van Doorn beckoned him over. The captain waved at two nondescript young men who leaned in his doorway. One was stubbled, chewing on a toothpick; he nodded a greeting. "That's Kennedy," van Doorn said. The other man was older, hair receding from a high forehead, but equally unmemorable. He raised a hand. "That's Levinson," van Doorn said. "They're your shadows from now on."

  "Say again?" Shah said.

  "Don't worry," Levinson said. His voice had the faintest twang of a southern accent. "We won't get in your face."

  "Going to check my bathroom for bombs?" Shah said.

  "We already have," Kennedy said, "when we moved you into a hotel." He grinned. "Don't worry, we're good at this. After a few days, you'll barely notice us."

  "That so?" Shah doubted he'd ever get used to having two men watching his every move. Then he thought of cameras. OK, he thought. Maybe you can get used to anything. "You guys cops? Feds?"

  Levinson shook his head. "Contractors."

  "So what do I do now?" Shah said.

  "Ignore us," Kennedy said. "Just do whatever you were planning on doing."

  But for the first ten minutes after he left the office, Shah found it impossible to ignore the two men. Running for a subway car he thought he might make it, but that they probably wouldn't. So held back and deliberately missed the closing doors. I'll get the next one, he thought, frowning at the idea. He looked around but couldn't see them at first, and had to fight a sudden flash of panic. Have they been attacked?

  He caught sight of a stubbled face that looked vaguely familiar. Shah squinted; it was Kennedy. The other man made an angry gesture, urging Shah to ignore him. Shah did, breathing out in relief a breath that he hadn't been aware he'd been holding. The rest of the journey 'home' to the hotel that the D
epartment had moved Shah to was uneventful.

  Shah guessed that every local, state and Federal agency in New York City booked their people into the ironically named Hotel Splendide. Reading the guestbook in his dingy room, the little box-like building that cowered in the shadows of the surrounding skyscrapers had once catered for tourists – those on a tight budget, Shah thought – but now the thin-walled rooms where the paper peeled away were haunted by transients like Shah, individuals or the occasional woman with children, but all people who stared into space or who jumped at sudden sounds.