Noir

by K. W. Jeter

  Harrisch had preregistered the killing, so he didn’t have to wait around if he didn’t want to. But he did; he let the weight of the gun dangle in his hand, its fading warmth traveling up the muscles of his arm and into his shoulder. He walked a few steps, working a crick out of his neck and gazing up at the stars. I should get out more, he thought vaguely. The choir of whatever church was hidden beneath the grating had piled on fortissimo with the gunshot, as though the noise had been the announcement of their redeemer’s return. A little of their holiness, however shabby and subterranean it might have been, resonated inside Harrisch; he felt at peace as the excess adrenaline metabolized out of his system. Get more exercise, he vowed.

  Back at DynaZauber headquarters, he knew, some computer in the accounting department was humming almost silently to itself, deducting the minor cost of the girl’s death from the corporation’s stock of pollution credits, specifically on the urban misery index. Every year, DZ’s PR division planted along the roads enough seedlings-most of which died or grew into no more than toxin-stunted weeds-to more than counterbalance necessary operating deaths. Which proved that the system worked, if you let it.

  A franchised black-and-white cruised up alongside the Daimler repro at the alley’s mouth. Harrisch scratched his ear with the muzzle of the gun as he watched the cop-only one had shown up on the non-priority scene-examine the dead cube bunny. The cop left a tripoded coroner’s camera, a variable-focus lens and digital frame-storage device, spider-legging around the corpse and clicking away, and strolled over to talk.

  “That’s what you used?” The cop nodded toward the weapon in Harrisch’s hand. The cop’s voice was affable and unexcited. “Mind if I take a look at it?”

  Harrisch knew he didn’t have to do that, either; the cop had already read off the gun’s bar-code ID with a remote scanner and matched it up with the hit registration on file. But he didn’t mind; he handed the piece over.

  “Not bad.” The cop nodded in approval. “These three-fifty-seven parsifals do good work. Neat, as these things go; you don’t have to stand there, pumping away and knocking little bits off your target.” He held the gun back out to Harrisch. “Ever think of using something not quite so cannonlike? Something like that can really climb up in your hand, if you lose control of it.”

  “But I don’t,” said Harrisch. “I’ve got a pretty firm grip.”

  “I’m sure you do. Hey, no question about that, pal. But why take the chance? The wear and tear on yourself?” The dead cube bunny was forgotten as the cop warmed to his topic. “Personally, I think you could haul something a little more stylish, something a little more in keeping with your, um, position in life. Now, something like a tosca or a lightweight nine-millimeter, a traviata maybe-”

  Harrisch felt his face harden into a sneer. “Those Italian pieces are all pussy guns. Those are for girls.”

  “Hey… hey, I understand.” The cop backed off, holding up a mollifying hand, palm outward. “You want to carry major weight, that’s cool. I can go with that. It’s nothing Freudian, you know, it’s just an image thing, really. But remember, those aren’t your only choices. You want to stick with the Teutonics, hey, I agree.” The cop gave an admiring shake of the head. “Nothing fills your hand like those babies. But maybe for a change of pace, you’d like to go with a tristan; that’s a sharp piece. Or hey, go bigger; go up to a four-eighty siegfried. Or shit, go all the way to a connectin’ götterdämmerung; you just about need a crane to lift it, but I guarantee you, if you’d popped one of those off here, we’d be picking up the evidence with a push broom and a vacuum cleaner. I tell you-”

  “Are we about done?” Harrisch interrupted the cop’s spiel. “Is there anything more we need to take care of?”

  “No. I guess not.” The cop looked sullen. He glanced over his shoulder toward the camera at the other end of the alley. “You got what you need?”

  “Sure do! Right on!” The camera had a minimal personality interface and the voice of an animated cartoon character. The round blank face of the lens swiveled toward Harrisch and the cop. “We be cookin’!” With fussy arachnoid movements, the tripod picked its way through the low, black dunes of trash.

  “Just trying to do a little public service…” Under his breath, the cop muttered just loud enough for Harrisch to hear. “And what do you get for it? Connect…”

  The coroner’s office was a low-budget item in the PD’s budget; Harrisch wasn’t surprised to see an antiquated low-rez LCD screen unfold from the camera’s dented and patched thorax. The display blurred through a reconstructive autopsy, extrapolating back from the gridded shots that had just been taken of the dead cube bunny. Her smiling face, near to lifelike, appeared on one side of the screen; the photo that Harrisch had registered before flashed on the other side.

  “Pretty good!” pronounced the camera. “Close enough for police work! Everything looks copacetic, folks!”

  “I think I’ll be on my way, then.” Harrisch felt tired and regretful. Not over the cube bunny, but on having let himself linger out here, where he could get latched on to by hustlers like this cop. Should’ve just gone straight back to the office, he brooded. Scenes such as this one were the consequence of mixing business with pleasure, even such innocuous ones as listening to the invisible choir’s music with heated metal in his fist. “Call me if there’s any other forms I need to fill out.”

  “There won’t be.” The cop visibly shifted his glum mood. “Tell you what, though; why don’t you take my card?” From one of the dark blue uniform’s pockets, he extracted a thin white rectangle. “This is my private sideline business. I’ve got a little dealership thing going-”

  “No shit.” Harrisch looked at the card; a 3-D image of a dancing gun winked and pointed to a phone number. He stuck the card inside his jacket, knowing he wouldn’t be able to get rid of the cop, otherwise. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Hey, wait a minute.” Another voice, ragged and with slurred consonants, broke into the discussion. “This sucks.”

  Both Harrisch and the cop glanced over at the figure that had appeared next to them. One of the shellbacked homeless clustering near the Daimler had gotten to his feet and approached them. The segments of the black carapace soft-welded to his skin-the charity agencies did that, to make sure their clients didn’t lose any of the pieces of their minimal shelters-glistened in the first of a drizzling rain.

  “What’s your problem, buddy?” The cop narrowed his gaze to slits. “Why don’t you just take it back out to the street? This doesn’t concern you.”

  “The connect it doesn’t.” The man’s face was all bone angles edged with scabs and crusted dirt. His breath was ripe with alcohol and the cheaper grades of paint thinner. “This really sucks.” One plated arm gestured floppily toward the alley’s depths. “Sonuvabitch here just blew away that poor girl.”

  As though on a common gear, Harrisch and the cop looked toward the yellow-haired corpse, then back to the homeless figure in his dissembled shell. The cop shrugged. “So?” He looked genuinely puzzled. “What’s your point?”

  “Connect, man…” The red-rimmed eyes were filled with the fury of Old Testament saints. “You’re not gonna do anything about it?”

  “Of course not,” said the cop, deeply offended.

  Harrisch tilted his head back and looked up at the night sky. The patchy clouds, tinged with the city’s luminescence, still let a few long segments of clear stars through. This is what I get. When one’s tenderer sentiments were indulged, payment was exacted. The singing from the choir below had stopped, letting silence fill the alley’s narrow space again. For all he knew, they had given up their church service for the time being and were listening in on his problems.

  “The connect you aren’t.” Noisily, segments of the interlocking shell clattering against each other, the turtlelike figure rooted through the various grimy pouches and rope-slung sacks on his torso and around his waist. He came up with a miniature video camera, its silvery plasti
c smeared with his black fingerprints. “I got it all down. I’ll go witness status. Then you’re in deep doo-doo.”

  “Bullshit.” The cop sneered again. “You’re not licensed for that.”

  “Yeah?” A gap-toothed smile showed on the gaunt face. “Check it out.” One gnarled hand extended a plastic-laminated card. “You and your little businessman pal here have got the wrong story going.”

  “Ah, damn.” The cop examined the card, then handed it back. A sigh born of deep frustration lifted and dropped his shoulders.

  “What’s the problem?” Harrisch took one of the cop’s arms and pulled him away from the smirking homeless. “There’s a problem, right?”

  The cop tilted his head toward the watching and waiting figure. Beyond, at the mouth of the alley, a few more of the homeless had tilted their shells back, the attraction of the voices’ buzz greater than the car’s dying heat. “There was that traffic-monitoring program about six months ago. Buncha crap, if you ask me. But the transport authorities issued videocams, little cheap throwaway numbers, to a lot of these guys; figured they were already on the street, might as well let them do the counts. The only thing, they had to be granted temporary citizenry levels as well, something high enough that the data they collected could go into the public records. The funding debates on some of these issues are pretty hot right now. But that’s where our problem comes from.” The cop pointed a thumb toward the shellback. “This guy’s temp level hasn’t expired yet; it’s still got three days to run. So technically, at this point in time-but not next week-he could enter testimony against you.”

  “On what?” Harrisch’s anger rose. “What charge? I don’t see what his level’s got to do with it.” This was the kind of thing that always pissed him off, little unexpected traps laid in the path of an honest man. “It’s her level; that’s what’s important.” He pointed toward the corpse, gazing up at the clouded sky, flecks of rain tearlike on her soft cheekbones. “She didn’t have any; you know that. I thought that was the whole reason I was able to preregister this hit.”

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” The cop tried to calm him down. “So it’s not like you’d get charged with anything major; it’s not a murder or an aggravated-assault rap. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Damn straight.” Harrisch’s temper had come down a few notches, to a grouchy irritation. “The way I see it, I was doing my civic duty here. She didn’t have any entry permit. You know she didn’t.” Which brought it, he knew but didn’t need to bother explaining to the cop, under the “Invisible Wall” sections of the immigration code. The cube bunny’s looks and charm had been her only passport, her only badge of citizenship-and that had been revocable at a moment’s notice. The parsifal, cold now but still dangling in Harrisch’s fist, had accomplished that much. “So who cares if this dildo saw what happened?”

  “Well… it’s a technicality.” The cop looked uncomfortable. “Even with a preregistration like yours… the actual code is that it has to be done in front of a law-enforcement official. Like me. You call up the dispatcher, I come out, you do whatever you’re going to and I check it off; then it’s all kosher. Now, in practice, it’s me and the coroner’s equipment showing up after the fact-that’s usually how it’s done. We can always fudge the time stamp on the hit.” He gave a big sigh and a shake of the head. “But with a certified witness on the scene… that makes it a little harder.”

  “Dig it, jerk-off.” With a mottled grin of satisfaction, the homeless figure folded his plated arms across his chest. “I’m the crap sandwich on your menu.”

  “All right.” Harrisch’s turn to sigh. He turned away from the cop and toward the other man. He pocketed the parsifal, then took his wallet from inside his jacket. “What’s this going to cost me?”

  “Hey…” The cop’s whisper emerged from between clenched teeth. “Don’t let this schmuck hustle you.”

  “Right. Like you’ve been so much help.”

  “Well, at least get a good price from him.” The cop retreated next to the camera on its tripod.

  The corners of the homeless man’s mouth were bright with saliva as he regarded Harrisch’s wallet. Harrisch took out a diamond Amex, his own, not the company’s. “As I said-how much?”

  “Depends.” The interlocking plates clacked against each other. “You want to go for straight bribery-you know, buy me off-I could go for a thousand.”

  “I don’t bribe. I buy.”

  A puzzled look appeared in the other’s eyes.

  “Come on.” Harrisch gestured impatiently. “The tape, the disk, whatever you’ve got it on.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s gonna run a bit more-”

  “Plus your citizenship status.”

  “Huh?” The largest armor plate, the one over the surgically curved spine, shifted as the figure hunched forward. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Figure it out,” said Harrisch. “You want to be an idiot, fine, but I don’t have to. There’s no way of proving to me that you haven’t already loaded the footage off to some data-store.” He used the corner of his wallet to point to the Mini-Cel™ linkem tucked in with the rest of the welfare agencies’ tracking devices. “Or some tipscanner down at the networks could be going over it right now. But if you don’t have current witness certification, it doesn’t mean jack. And that’s the way I want it.”

  “I got ya.” The shellback nodded in understanding. “No wonder you’re some big exec type. You got brains. Okay, but it’ll cost you.”

  Harrisch let the other man hit him for a mid-five-figure amount. The shellback returned the card after running it through his handheld scanner. He’d already decided to wait until the homeless figure showed some sign of realization; he knew it wouldn’t take long.

  “Cool.” The gaunt-faced man radiated an appreciation of his good fortune. The other black domes, their residents’ eager faces peeping out from beneath their edges, crept closer, anticipating some distribution of the largesse. “Nice doing business with you.” The gap-toothed mouth barked out a laugh. “Only problem is, now I gotta go down to the charity offices in the morning and reregister. You just bought my whole ID, buddy. I can’t even collect my ration tags until I officially exist again…” His voice faded out; in his eyes, a new light faded in. Those eyes widened, staring at Harrisch. “Wait a minute…”

  Harrisch said nothing; he didn’t feel like rubbing it in. He saw the shellback’s gaze shift to the gun that he’d brought back out of his jacket. The homeless figure’s pupils looked almost the same size as the black hole at the front of the parsifal’s muzzle. Reflected fire shone bright for the millisecond following Harrisch’s squeeze of the trigger, then was gone as the other arced backward and away.

  The black shell cracked and splintered against the pavement, a few feet from the Daimler repro. Denuded of the portable shelter, the homeless figure’s corpse lay on the wet concrete and asphalt like something extracted from an unhatched egg, the artificial curvature of his spine drawing his limbs cocked above his shattered chest. A red puddle, blackened by the night’s limited spectrum and shimmered with the light rain falling, began to spread around what was left of him. The other homeless scurried away, toward darker and safer holes. Most of them speed-crept with their shell’s rims lifted only a fraction of an inch above the ground; a few, the more frightened ones, actually got as upright as they could and ran into the city’s shadows.

  “Jeez,” said the cop, shaking his head. “Even I could see that coming. What a dolt.”

  Harrisch glanced over his shoulder. “Any problem with this one?” He pointed with the gun toward the dead shellback.

  “Nope.” The cop gave a shrug. “The guy’s off the books. There’s nothing to even register.”

  With the gun put away, Harrisch took the Amex from his wallet and checked the account readout on the back. The charge to the homeless figure had bounced back, marked Account Canceled. The whole incident had been a freebie.

  Which,
as far as he was concerned, was as it should be. A signifier of God’s love toward the elect; it was times like this that made the strict interpretations of the Protestant work ethic seem so sensible. If only the choir beneath his feet had started singing again, voices raised in four-part SATB hallelujahs, then the moment would have seemed complete.

  The cop took off, leaving the cleanup to the city’s sanitation department. Harrisch was left alone in the alley, in silence.

  I want something to remember this by, he thought. He supposed he was getting sentimental in his old age. No need for a scrapbook; just some small item that he could keep for a little while, until its evocative power faded, then throw away.

  Harrisch walked over to the dead cube bunny. She was as pretty now as before; he knew that some of his colleagues in the company would have thought her more so. Where there had been a red flower between her small breasts, that the gun had blossomed forth, there was now only a fist-sized hole and a congealing wetness around.

  He took a little pasteboard rectangle from his pocket-the cop’s business card-and leaned down closer to the pretty corpse. He pressed his thumb against a bit of exposed, chilling flesh, then against the back of the card. When Harrisch straightened back up, there was an oval red signature, intricate lines and whorls, on the back of the card. He slipped it into his wallet-there were others like it in there, a little collection, one of them fairly recent-and then walked slowly, meditatively, toward the mouth of the alley and the waiting Daimler. The blank eyes of his witness gazed up at him as he stepped over the bits and pieces littering the ground.

  SIX

  DOWNLOADING THE ACTUAL BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

  The Bishop of North America lived in a hole nearly as bad as, or worse than, McNihil’s apartment.

  “Not just North America,” said the bishop, hunched over his computer terminal. “The Holy See just added Central America by Proxy to my job description. The appointment-well, elevation’s the right word technically, I think, but that doesn’t really seem right anymore-it fluttered in by E-mail just yesterday morning.”