by K. W. Jeter
'Lady wants an owl,' said the first counter guy. 'What's the line on that?'
Francesco nodded slowly. 'Yeah ... we can do an owl.' His face was longer and sadder than the other staff's. 'It'd have to be a special order, though. We don't keep that kind of body frame in stock.' He pointed his thumb back toward the stall's interior. 'We do mainly the smaller columbidae and psittacidae — you know, pigeons and parrots. That's what people can afford around here. And maybe a couple of the bigger accipitridae — hawks — three or four times a year. For the collector's market. But we can swap around a lot of the basic structural elements on those. An owl, though ...' He shrugged. 'Different configuration; kinda stacked up vertical, you know what I mean?'
'Right,' said Iris. 'But that's not what I'm talking about. I mean a real owl.'
Both men stared at her in silence for a few seconds.
'Lady . . .' The lead counter guy spoke up, shaking his head in disgust. 'If you walked into a Seven-Eleven and asked for a diamond necklace, you might get a diamond necklace — but it wouldn't be a real one.' He turned and waved his hand at the stall's stock. 'See these? See how they go chirp chirp, flap their wings and stuff? They're fakes. That's what we do.' He turned back to Iris. 'Did you think they were real?' He glanced over at his longer-faced colleague. 'Lady thinks we deal in real birds.'
'I understand,' said Iris slowly, emphasizing each syllable, 'that you have, in fact, done so. On occasion. Dealt in real birds. True?'
'Who told you that? One of those putzes out on the street? Tell me which one, point him out, and I'll kick his ass.' The counter guy crossed his arms and scowled. 'Real animals are restricted. Even birds. You can get into a lot of trouble dealing in 'em without a license.' One of his thin eyebrows raised. 'You got a license?'
'I don't need one.' Her eyes had adjusted further to the gloom inside the stall; she could make out a few more birds tucked away into the corners and on top of a pile of packing crates. 'So nobody's come around lately, offering you a deal on a hot owl?'
'Yeah, right. Who'd have one? Tell me that.'
'You hear of any other dealer in the souk who's got one?' The counter guy turned surlier. 'How would I know?'
Iris decided to take another tack. She reached into her jacket and pulled out the hard-copy photo she'd had the surresper print. 'Ever see this person?'
The counter guy's gaze flicked down for only a second, to the photo of the cop named Deckard, then back up to Iris's face. 'You a cop?'
'What makes you think that?'
'Lady . . . that's what cops do. Pull out a picture and ask you if you've ever seen him. Jeez.'
Iris left the photo sitting on the counter, so she could pull something else from inside her jacket.
Both men nodded when they saw the gun in her hand. 'You're a cop, all right,' said the lead counter guy.
She let the gun rest flat on its side, on her palm. She touched the cold black metal with the tip of her other forefinger. 'We could go downtown,' she said, 'to that nice, shiny new station where all the other cops hang out, and talk about this some more. And on the way, I could take you and this into an alley and beat the crap out of you. Or we can talk now. Your choice.'
The counter guy picked up the photo and gazed at it. Iris replaced her gun in its shoulder holster and waited.
'Hey, this is weird. You know what?' The counter guy lowered the photo and smiled at Iris. 'I do remember seeing this guy before. He's some other cop, right?'
Iris said nothing.
The counter guy's gold-capped smile faded. He turned the photo toward his colleague. 'Remember him?'
'Kinda.' Tilting his head to one side, to see the photo better, Francesco scratched at the hinge of his jaw. 'But he didn't come here. I mean, to our shop.' He straightened and pointed to another stall, visible several yards away through the milling crowd. 'He was over there. Asking something about a fish. I dunno what, though.'
'That's right.' The lead counter guy nodded vigorously. He looked relieved. 'Go talk to the fish woman.'
It turned out not to be a fish. At least, not that the cop named Deckard had been looking for. The tiny Asian woman at the artificial fish dealer's stall gave Iris a story about the man in the photo having come around with a scale in a tiny plastic evidence bag; she'd put the scale under her microscope, read off the serial numbers and species reference, and then had pointed him toward one of the storefronts where a fez-wearing, upmarket Arab type, who'd never come any closer to making his hegira than the average LA infidel, dealt in the larger herpetoids.
'A snake?' Standing in the Arab's shop, Iris tucked the photo back into her jacket. 'He was asking about a snake?'
'Yes; he was.' The Arab dealer kept a handrolled cigarette, filled with ersatz and legal tobacco, cradled in the fingertips of his upsidedown hand. One corner of his lip curled with disdain. 'Very unpleasant enquiries they were, too. An ugly man; violent and cruel.'
'That was his job,' said Iris. She didn't give a rat's ass about Deckard, but she didn't care for civilians slagging off on cops.
'Nevertheless; if a police officer, he was a servant of the general population, not its master. An honest businessman such as myself naturally resents paying taxes and the expected schedule of bribery only to be abused by such a creature.' The Arab dealer took a deep drag off the faux cigarette, then contemplated the blue-gray cloud he expelled a moment later. 'I have heard tell,' he spoke meditatively, 'that the individual in question is dead. As the Prophet might have put it, payback is a bitch.'
'The Prophet can stick it.' A bad mood rose inside Iris, like the polluted tide coming in over the oil-stained beaches to the west of the city. The Arab didn't irritate her so much as the sinking realization that she had come to a dead end, scrabbling around for leads here in the hotly fetid-scented marketplace.
'You don't look well,' said the Arab, with no apparent concern.
The man's cologne, star anise mixed with unnatural flowers, flared Iris's nostrils and left a sour taste on her tongue. As she watched him pick up a foot-long baby coral snake and adjust the action of its flickering tongue with a twelve-power jeweler's loupe and a hair-thin watchmaker's screwdriver, she felt the shop closing tighter against her shoulders, as though one of the artificial anacondas in back had managed to escape and wrap itself around the storefront, squeezing the air out of it.
'No more questions?'
Iris heard the amusement in the Arab's voice, so she didn't need to glance over her shoulder to see his oily smile. She pushed her way out of the shop and back onto the crowded, jostling sidewalk. The tinge of nausea she'd felt at the base of her stomach abated a little as she drew in a deep breath of the rain-scrubbed air.
'You're wasting your time.' Another man's voice came from behind her.
'Think I don't know that?' Iris hadn't recognized the voice; she turned to see whoever it was that had spoken.
She didn't recognize his face, either. A nearly lipless smile slashed a horizontal line across the knife-sharp projection of his facial bones; the angular ridge of his nose and brow gave him as avid and predatory a look as the hawks inside the bird dealers' stall. He must have been waiting for her, out in the rain, for some time; his raven-black hair, cropped to a millimeter buzz, and the shoulders and back of his unbelted duster were soaked wet.
'What do you know?' His smile widened.
'Not your name, for one.' Iris didn't return his smile. 'I like to know to whom I'm talking.'
'Must be a cop thing,' said the tall figure. He extended a long-fingered, large-knuckled hand. 'Vogel. And you're Iris Knaught. Just in case you've forgotten.'
The rain, which had diminished to a sulky drizzle when Iris had first arrived at the souk, squalled harder now. Through the monsoon downpour, she could see a pair of jumpsuited simul-wranglers using sharp hooksticks to prod a half-completed baby elephant, a flop-eared head and snaking gray trunk fastened to an articulated steel skeleton, safely under cover before the pistons and servos of the exposed machinery got da
maged. Iris locked her grip on this Vogel character's forearm and pulled him against the window of the Arab snake dealer's shop, under the minimal protection of its retractable overhead awning. She could already feel a couple of damp rain tendrils trickling under the collar of her leatherite jacket and down her back.
She let go of his arm, like dropping a rat, either real or artificial. 'I don't like,' said Iris flatly, 'people who know more about me than I do about them. Makes me nervous. Like I'm being watched.'
'I imagine so.' Leaning against the security-tempered window glass, Vogel watched his own hands busily and efficiently rolling a cigarette. 'And it just wouldn't do to have someone like you get fidgety.' He extended the papers and bindle of artificial tobacco toward Iris, then shrugged and put them away inside his duster when she shook her head. 'Especially with the caliber of that piece you carry around with you. The way you blade runners are so given to firing your arsenal off in public, it's amazing that LA has any population crunch at all.'
'Hilarious.' The artificial tobacco smelled as though one of the more realistic props in the souk's gutters had been scraped up, dried and set on fire. Tut we only do it for a reason.'
'Sure you do.' Vogel flicked a scrap of ash toward the glistening street. 'People — and replicants — can be so uncooperative. Especially when you're trying to, urn, "retire" them.'
'But not you,' said Iris. Her gaze narrowed as she studied the figure standing beside her. 'Something tells me that you're motivated by some burning desire to be of help to me.'
'You got that right, cupcake.' One side of the man's face was lit in detail by the light spilling from inside the Arab snake dealer's shop; the other side was blue-shadowed by the flickering neon threaded above the souk's stalls. 'I'm the answer to all your prayers.'
'I've heard that from guys before.'
'Really?' Vogel leaned his head back and exhaled more gray smoke. 'Did it work?'
'Not yet.'
'This time, I promise you, it'll be different.' There was no remnant of his smile left as he leaned close to her. 'You really think you can find what you're looking for by just coming around a place like this and asking for it?'
'Depends.' Iris met Vogel's hard gaze with her own. 'But then . . . I know what it is I'm looking for. Do you?'
'Let's not screw around.' His knuckles were lit fiery orange by the cigarette's burn. 'You're looking for an owl.' He raised his eyebrows. 'You know? Big kind of a bird. Flies around and pounces on little mice.' He made a grabbing motion with one hand. 'Too bad if that's what you are.'
A chill, colder than the rain, crawled the wrong way up Iris's back. If he knows what I'm here for, she thought, then what else does he know?
'Yeah, too bad.' Iris nodded slowly. 'Lot of people come around here, looking for owls?'
'You're the only one.' One corner of Vogel's smile returned. 'Everybody else knows better.'
Two possibilities formed themselves in Iris's mind, like the thin rain puddles gathering at her bootsoles. Either this person, whoever he was, had spotted her when she'd first arrived at the souk, and had been following her around, asking the stallkeepers questions about the questions she'd been asking – and that was how he'd found out about her owl inquiries – or he'd known about this particular quest before she'd even got here. Which would mean, figured Iris, that he's in on the loop, way more than I am. Inasmuch as this Vogel knew all – or enough – about her and what she was doing, whereas she didn't know jack about him.
Either one of those possibilities didn't please her. But since the latter of the two was the worse, it was good practice to assume it was the case. And then do something about it.
'We need to talk,' said Iris. 'In private.'
'Who's listening in around here?' Amused, Vogel glanced at the crowded street and the narrower passageways between the stalls. A pair of Latter-Day Berbers, their mouths and aquiline noses swathed with indigo-dyed cotton, herded a small flock of replicated black-faced ewes toward a gated pen. 'These people have got their own business to take care of. They're not interested in yours.'
'Nevertheless.' She pointed with her thumb toward an unlit alley tucked behind the Arab's shop. 'Just to make me comfortable, all right?'
'Sure.' Vogel followed her into the alley. 'Whatever you want—'
His words were cut off by the air being violently expelled from his lungs, the result of Iris's small but rock-hard fist landing in his gut. He doubled over, far enough that Iris could grab the back of his head with both hands and smash his face against one upraised knee.
Iris threw him back up against the alley's damp brick wall, with enough force that he stayed there instead of slumping to the debris-littered ground.
'You are . . . a full-service cop . . .' Vogel's expression turned into a red sneer as he wiped the blood from his mouth and nose onto the palm of one hand. 'Some people pay extra for this kind of treatment.'
'Then you're getting a real bargain.' Iris reached up and pushed the man's shoulders against the wall. 'Because I've got more of it.' Rain trickled down her exposed wrists and along the inside of her jacket sleeves. 'So like I said. Let's talk.'
'About owls?' Vogel's sneer, dripping red, curled tighter. 'Buy a book.'
Her hands turned into fists, locked on the zippered front of his coveralls. She turned on her heel, yanking him away from the wall and sending him skidding on one shoulder across the wet paving. Before Vogel could shake off his stun, Iris had reached down and dragged him to his feet again.
'Yeah,' she said. 'Let's talk birds.' She thumped his spine against the wall opposite from where they had started. 'Let's talk about this one owl in particular. Former property of the Tyrell Corporation. They named it "Scrappy", God knows why; it's not that cute.' Another thump, this time with the back of his head against the bricks. 'What do you know about it? Other than that I'm looking for it.'
'I know lots, sweetheart.' Vogel rubbed more blood off his angular chin. 'Lot of stuff you'd never find out in a million years, wandering around the souk asking stupid questions. The kind of thing you're looking for isn't exactly the everyday merchandise they deal in here.'
'It was worth a shot,' grumped Iris. 'Where the hell else was I supposed to go?'
'Exactly my point.' Vogel spat a red wad onto the ground, then reached into his mouth and tested a wobbly tooth with the ball of his thumb. 'You don't know where to go. Haven't even started, and already you're out of your league.'
If she'd wanted to, she could've finished taking him apart, disassembling him like a meat-filled store dummy. Or a faster method: when she had first slammed him against the wall, she'd done a quick frisk while he'd been dazed almost unconscious, and had found that he wasn't carrying any armaments, licensed or otherwise. She could take her own cannon out of the holster inside her jacket, brace its snout against his forehead and put him to sleep for good. 'Interference with official police business' didn't even merit paperwork down at the police station; the depatment's clean-up squad wouldn't list it as a reportable death, only as cartridge expenditure.
And at the same time, she felt a dark-blue thread of fear underneath her heart. He's right, thought Iris. I don't know. Whatever level of confidence she had going for her when she was running down an escaped replicant, whether it was on some crumbling building ledge twenty stories above the teeming LA streets, or in that fractional moment of stopped time when she had to get her gun up, aimed and fired before the rep could squeeze his finger around the trigger of the weapon in his hand — that had been chilled and diminished now, confronted by the unknown. Her secret dread: not knowing what to do next. Hunting down replicants was simple compared to finding an owl, a real one, in a city where everything was fake.
'That's why you need me.' Vogel's words broke into her gloomy thoughts. I'm here to help you.'
Iris refocused on him; the center of his thin smile was still tinged with red. 'Meyer sent you?'
'Meyer?' Vogel shook his head in disgust. 'That putz? He's out of the loop, sweetheart. He
can get you into trouble, but he can't get you out of it. Not the way I can.'
This sucks, thought Iris. She hadn't become a runner, gone through the grueling training involved, both from the department and in the cold, precise ordering of her mind, just so she could wind up under somebody else's control. Crap coming down the division's chain of command, from the shadowy ones on top and then handed out by Meyer to her and the rest of her colleagues, was something she'd been able to get used to. That chain was something she might be able to climb one day, and in the meantime the crap-to-gold ratio was weighted on the side of getting to do what she wanted. Which was to hunt escaped replicants, and not some frickin' bird. And especially not under the thumb of some civilian she could take apart in two seconds.
'You know —' Iris spoke slowly and gave him a practised hard stare. 'If you've got information I need, I've got ways of getting it out of you.'
Vogel returned the stare without flinching. 'No, you don't. Not this time. Not with me.'
This was a steel needle, a tiny cold element at the center of his eyes, tinged blue by the flickering neon light that had worked its way down the alley. Iris recognized the bit, not real metal but something just as hard and sharp; she'd seen it in the mirror, in her own eyes. So she knew he was telling the truth. She wouldn't be able to get it out of him.
'All right,' said Iris. 'You win.' She figured that if it didn't work out, she could hand him major payback, painful and final, later on. And then they'd be done, like other, even briefer relationships she'd had in the past. 'So talk.'
Another shake of the head. 'Not here.'
'Wow you've got privacy concerns?'
'Like you said: it's a matter of getting comfortable.' Vogel dabbed another spot of blood away from his mouth, using a folded handkerchief he'd dug from the pocket of his duster. He held the red-stained cloth toward her, as though demonstrating stigmata. 'Now I got the moral right to insist on my turf. Plus I've got something to show you. So if you're done showing off your testosterone, let's go.' He turned and headed toward the mouth of the alley, then glanced over his shoulder at her. 'Coming or not?'