The door had no knob and swung open with a slight push. Inside, I saw a battered old pay phone in the hallway. The dial was missing, the receiver was gone, and someone had gutted the body looking for change. There were two doors-rooms one and two. Dirty tiles crackled underfoot as I made my way to a stairway shy a banister. On the way up, the odd wooden strut poked out of the blackened carpet like a rotten tooth. At the top of the stairs, I found room five. Its doorframe was chewed and chipped from a thousand break-ins. I stood to one side of it-knocked, then heard a grumbling sound within. A metallic rattle followed as someone fumbled with the lock. The door swung open. Harsh yellow light was diffused by the dim gray morning of the hallway. I could see the illumination came from a single uncovered light bulb in the ceiling over Willieboy's head.
He glared angrily with his deep-set eyes. His mouth moved as though filled with gum. It was apparent that in this petulant state, a logjam of nasty words had formed behind his lips that his tongue hurried to sort out.
"You're early," he said finally with great restraint. I could tell by the swollen veins at his temples that he had other things he would like to say.
"You called late," I grumbled back as I stepped over the threshold onto matted orange carpeting.
Douglas Willieboy led a humble life. A hot plate and miniature fridge occupied a small five by five space in the corner that had been wallpapered with bright sunflowers to more resemble a kitchen. Food-encrusted plates were piled in a small sink that dripped and dripped. Willieboy's bed was a pullout couch that occupied the space opposite the door. It was pulled out and its gray sheets rumpled. I had to be careful of banging my shins on its metal frame as I entered. There was a funky smell of moldy cats in the room, but I resisted the urge to mention it.
A box of crackers lay open on a table in a pile of crumbs. Mayonnaise and peanut butter mini-sandwiches were dinner if the empty jars on the floor told me anything. In front of a door, I suspected was the closet, was a large iron bar loaded down with weights.
"You better watch your diet, Mr. Willieboy." I pointed to the remnants of his supper. "Mahatma Ghandi ate that stuff, look what it got him."
Willieboy was wearing nothing but his denims. He showed off an enormous musculature in chest and shoulders. "Shit man, am I ever wasted." He went to his fridge, and pulled out a little stack of pre-cooked beef patties that were glued together with a mortar of yellow grease. He peeled one off and ate it noisily as he spoke.
"Did you bring the fifty?" His lips smacked with a waxy sound and his yellow teeth champed like a horse's.
"Of course I brought the fifty," I snarled and took a seat in the crumbs on the side table.
Willieboy pulled up a chair that had been obscured behind curtains. I noticed an angry red welt on his neck and back.
"If you didn't know the dead guys who set the fire, then how did they know where I was?"
"What dead guys?" His forehead wrinkled.
I told him.
He made a fist of his face and shook his head. "I'm tellin' you, Wildclown, it must'a been a set up 'cause after I left you, I found six dead punkers waitin' for me downstairs. Jesus, I was mixin' it up good with them when the fire started!" He gestured to the injury on his back.
I pulled my gun. I didn't point it at him-just fiddled with it, sighting along its length and hefting it like it was new.
"Not the best excuse I've ever heard, Mr. Willieboy." I continued to play.
He froze, mouth full of hamburger, and then began nodding his head and sputtering. "There-there! Give a guy a goddamned gun and he gets tough every time. But I'll show you, you bastard, nobody fucks with Douglas Willieboy."
"Unless he has a gun, right." I grinned.
"That's right," he laughed. "You're okay, Wildclown-did you bring the money? I'm tired of eatin' like a blowfly!"
"I've got the money, but it'll take a good story to squeeze it out of me. I fell twelve stories last night-and I'm a little cranky." I leaned back against the cracker box and wall.
Willieboy started talking. He punctuated each sentence with squishy hamburger noises.
"All right, I knew her better than I said-the Van Reydner broad. I mean I knew her in that way, you know. Shit, who wouldn't-she was gorgeous. So, I was a little bit involved with her, which I said I wasn't. It wasn't true love or nothin', but it was fun. Not every night, but sometimes she'd phone down for room service…" He leaned back and laughed. "That's what she called it. Well fuck, who wouldn't go along?"
I couldn't think of who wouldn't and I said as much.
"So that went on for about a month, until she left." He smiled a great idiot grin.
"Congratulations, Willieboy," I grumbled. "But that's not worth squat to me. I hope you enjoy your memories." I stood up to leave.
"That's not all," he said this very shrilly for a man his size. "I knew she was going away. I was there when she packed her bag."
"Go on," I lit a cigarette, offered Willieboy one and took my seat in the crumbs.
"It was about six days ago-Tuesday night. She said she'd be leaving soon, but she wouldn't be away long. Asked me if I'd be sweet enough to let her go without a hassle. She owed money. See, I was kinda suckered, but fuck, what the hell. It wasn't my hotel."
"Do you know where she went?" I drew in on my smoke-there was no protest from the hotdogs. I felt like belching anyway.
"No, she just went. Course, the night she split-Thursday, no Friday morning-I didn't know that lawyer had been shot up there. He came down when I was going off my shift at six. She had already left, around 3 a.m.-nailed me in the back room for being a good boy!" he cackled knowingly.
"Did Authority question you?"
"Funny that, a little shit from Authority came in before I even got a chance to call. I just figured someone else in the building got a'hold of them."
"What was his name?" I leaned forward.
"I don't know, shit-I'm not a secretary!" he frowned.
"Did you tell him what you told me?" I started glaring.
"Hell no, they'd have framed me like a Vangoff. I'd be eatin' rats in their cellar right now." Willieboy wiped a hand across his mouth.
"Okay," I said. "You haven't told me much worth $50, give me some more, or I'll leave you to your filet mignon."
"All right, don't get your shorts stretched out of shape. See, she got a few calls from this guy, Simon-he never gave a last name. I'd work the switchboard you know, and he'd call up from time to time. Always late. Shit, I always figured she was full of it on the massage crap 'cause I only saw her with the one client. What did I care, right? That lawyer he had lots of folding money, understand? He can look after himself.
"I listened in from time to time, when they'd talk, her and that Simon guy. I ain't proud of that but it's a boring late night shift anyway. His voice was always kind'a scared like he knew I was listening. Well, they'd talk and I've never heard more boring talk. He'd only mention the weather. He'd say that the clouds were going to break soon. He wondered if she were ready for some sun. I kept wanting to break in and scream that they're both boring and could they talk about some sex or something." Willieboy sat back, his face a mask of introspection before continuing. "The only time it was interesting was the night the lawyer got whacked. This Simon guy calls her and says it's time for a change in the weather. She said she was getting really tired of the clouds and would be glad for a change and tonight would be good. Boring shit, still maybe, but at least it was something different. He sounded like a real pin-head." Willieboy smiled as though he'd just opened a treasure chest.
"Great Willieboy, he was a pin-head, big deal. I could have guessed that. It sure as hell isn't worth fifty bucks. A name, Simon, talked to her. Wonderful."
He kept grinning like a fool. Finally, he leaned forward and pulled a stained envelope from his back pocket.
"I wonder what his phone number and a picture of Van Reydner would be worth?" He waggled the folded envelope between his fingers.
I began digging for
Tommy's annoying plastic mouth purse.
Chapter 11
I could tell from the first ring that I had a bad connection. The phone line rattled and clicked like a drunk unlocking a door. Decay. I was just glad the lights were on. Blackouts would soon become a daily occurrence, like the rain. This was another fringe benefit of the Change. Just after the rains started but before the dead rose up, telecommunications the world over went on the fritz. Some of it made sense, too. Cell phones and other satellite dependent technologies like the Internet and television were immediately impaired. The continuous ceiling of cloud could be blamed at least in part for interference. But the Change went beyond that. It was as if the complex system of communications satellites had simply ceased to exist. Signals could not reach them and no explanation was forthcoming. Scientists wanted to blame the residual effects of the Millennium bug, but that concept was too laughable to bear. Instead, the shuttlecraft Declaration was prepared for launch to investigate the anomaly. It blew up on the ground killing everyone aboard.
Computer scientists had warned NASA about that, since it was no secret that computers and networked systems had also begun to behave erratically if they worked at all. But NASA went ahead, boasting a breakthrough in computer system shielding technology-one of the theories at the time was that electrical systems were being compromised by enormous bursts of electromagnetic radiation from increased sunspot activity. NASA ignored reports that information stored digitally was growing more difficult to retrieve and a program stored might not open completely, if it opened at all. The crash investigators later blamed the computer responsible for firing the solid rocket boosters. Its program designed to control this process fired only one of them, which ripped open and ignited the main fuel tank. Similar computer-related accidents the world over soon gave credence to the theory. Information saved on computers was being garbled and made irretrievable by causes unknown.
And there followed an all-encompassing devolution of sorts. Computers were too undependable so they were yanked out of everything: planes, boats, clocks and cars. Everything. Just about any device using post-1970 designs was scrapped and the world entered a retro phase. Simple old-fashioned internal combustion engines were embraced-wind-up clocks reappeared. Companies dug through their archives for designs and started working on the old reliable. You could get a `57 style Chevy that would look like an original if it did happen to have heavier, rain-resistant-perhaps bulletproof-options available. One company offered the Millennium-T with crank motor. I'd actually seen one on the highway-smoother lines but just as ugly. The new rule seemed to be simple works. So progress took a couple of steps backward.
Since microwave relay towers were useable but flawed, communications companies were forced to revert to more dependable landlines. Computers and the Internet were unstable, and so the public went back to typewriters and telegraphs. For some reason, electricity itself had begun to behave in an erratic and unpredictable fashion that scientists were still at a loss to understand.
Military leaders were made increasingly paranoid by the revelation that all electrical systems were behaving as if they had been subjected to the magnetic pulse released by a high altitude nuclear detonation. But since the whole world was affected, it was unlikely that any independent country could be considered that hostile. With every surprise the Change brought came a matching conspiracy theory. It soon degenerated to a whole lot of ignorance shooting in the dark as a crowd of walking dead formed around the experts. Pakistan and India nuked each other outright, the Middle East wiped itself off the map and a small but dirty atomic device lifted the Vatican to heaven. Luckily the mass destruction stopped there. Genocide raged through its familiar haunts in the Old World, and in southern parts of the new, but the nukes fell silent.
I had left Douglas Willieboy's room an hour before and was back at the office trying to look busy. A chirrupy woman's voice finally answered. "You have reached the office of Richard Adrian, President of Simpson's Skin Tanning and Preservation for the Deceased." A recording. "The offices are closed." She spoke quickly, as though she had consumed all the coffee in Colombia. "Our business hours are…" She rattled out the regular Monday to Friday, nine to five routine. "If you are calling from a touch tone phone." I hung up. I had no interest in leaving a message. The receiver shrieked as I set it in its cradle.
It was Sunday. Of course their office was closed. Some still held with the old observances-this company could afford to. Economic powerhouses like Simpson's owned enough of the market to be nostalgic. Most everyone else had to work whenever and wherever they could, continuing the spirit numbing grind set out at the end of the Millennium with the Merging Monopolies, the World Economy and New World Order.
Out of one of my plentiful utility pockets, I pulled the business card from Van Reydner's room. The logo was on front, under that the business office number for appointments. I flipped it. The five numbers on the back were different, but matched the phone number Willieboy had given me.
I looked at the photo of Van Reydner. It was old, but a good color image. Her hair was red, shoulder-length, and shimmered like blood in the sun. Willieboy had not exaggerated about her chest by much. It was out to 'here' forming a porch you could hold the company picnic on. Her pose had a Mae West kind of bend to it, all breasts and hips. Her liquid blue eyes trickled right out of the picture and dribbled into my lap. She wore an evening dress, and the lighting was perfect. The photo had a professional, staged look to it, like something you might find in a model's portfolio. Beneath my consciousness Tommy's psyche began to grow, as did his erection. I had to fend off the sick images that leaked across the barrier between our minds. I'm not a prude, few of the thoughts were alien to me, but having Tommy's presence leak through was like finding out your boarder has been filming kiddy porn in his bedroom. Van Reydner's face was pale, as redheads' usually are, but there was something dark in her gaze.
I kicked my boots onto the desk and leaned back in the chair. It was about three o'clock. I could hear the occasional scream echo up from the streets below. More zealots lamenting their fate. I still remembered the twitching dead thing I had found crucified on the telephone pole behind my building one afternoon-it might have been a Sunday too. The poor bastard had been nailed up during the night. Worse part was when I tried to help him down he nearly chewed my hand off. He started screaming proverbs at me. He told me he was doing this for me. I could remember the insanity in his eyes. The flesh around them was creased and stretched from inhuman devotion. I told him I would look out for my own sins, went into the office, and phoned Authority to come scrape him off. They managed to do so with the minimum of frenzied screaming. I kind of hardened after that.
Whatever had happened fifty years ago had knocked the holy wind out of quite a few religious sails. The true believers were caught napping-the ones who believed and loved the idea of believing. After it, strange sects had sprung up all over. Fanatics stepped out of the woodwork spouting new dogma for a new age. It turned out that just about every religion had an Apocalypse mythology written into it. So waking up one day to find dead people wandering away from mortuary tables was too much for many. The idea of Apocalypse and Revelations came to the minds of most-even the unbelievers. Hell it had been drilled into every waking moment by the media at the end of the Millennium-a phenomenon that had escalated from chasing fire trucks to setting the blazes. The Internet hummed with stories about government cover-ups and notions about the U.S. Army bioengineering a flesh-eating form of influenza. Stories circulated about lights from the heavens, holy men disappearing, Elvis was playing Vegas, but none of the tales were ever verified because people had grown used to gathering information without requiring proof. The Hype Age was mystified by the Change because the first rule of Hype was that none of the dire predictions ever came true. But what happened was worse than they had ever imagined. People had been primed for trouble whether something happened at the end of the Millennium or not. When something as strange as the Change did happen, t
he world just lost its mind. The jury was still out on whether it was going to be temporary insanity or not. I really couldn't tell much of a difference. Except for the obvious strangeness, it felt like the same world to me.
I lit a cigarette and rocked gently in my chair. So, we have a dead lawyer killed in the apartment of a woman who is missing. I had looked for her phone number already, and found nothing. So maybe she never existed before, or she lived at the Morocco and that was that. Still, from the picture, she didn't seem like the type of woman who would make her home there. She had the look of someone who was used to being treated well. Regardless, in the weeks before she disappeared and my client got whacked, she happened to have a strange set of conversations with a man named Simon who is somehow involved with a skin tanning salon for the deceased-and uses the company president's phone. Billings dies, and she disappears. Now the hotel burns down. I could already smell the incense burning.
Since the Change there had been intense competition among establishments for preserving dead flesh. Funeral parlors were the first into the competition. They easily adapted their embalming equipment to offer formaldehyde baths, skin tanning, leather preservation treatments, plastic wraps-there were lotions and creams-all of it. Death was a growth industry. Since you suddenly 'could' take it with you, the world found itself with a lot of extremely rich dead men who wanted to keep their earthly remains intact. Time was of the essence. The hearse had taken on a new role as a kind of high-speed ambulance for the dead.
And the dead were organizing. There was a rich dead industrialist and former senator William King who had dumped tons of his money into preservation techniques. Dubbed the King of the Dead by the media, he did what he had to in the name of research, and was so wealthy that he was allowed to hold his court in a neighborhood set aside for the living. It was rumored that he would stop at nothing to fulfill his quest for immortality. Certain individuals I knew had made veiled half-frightened observations about the King's underworld connections.
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