by John Meaney
Climbing the steps forced him to slow the pace, and the tension in his thighs and calves was a kind of joyful pain as he reached the top. He stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Donal half-jogged past Fozzy's Rags, reached his apartment block, and took his time climbing the final stairs.
Home once more, he rinsed off in the shower and used one of his old scratchy towels to dry with. Then he pulled on fresh underwear and a shirt and the same suit he'd worn earlier but with a different tie, dark-green. He went back out.
There was a secondhand (and third- and fourth-hand) bookstore two blocks away, and that was Donal's first stop. He went inside and picked up a battered copy of Human: the Revenge, one of a fantasy series set on a parallel Earth where the only sentient beings were human and necroflux was either undiscovered or nonexistent: he hadn't figured out which.
“Thirty centals, for you.”
“Hey, Peat. How's it going?”
Peat was well named, from the spongy aspect of his skin to the dark woody scent that wafted from him. Not that Donal knew much about the countryside.
Each of Peat's hands ended in three stubby fingers, currently holding a massive stack of old books. He weighed about four hundred pounds, was three times stronger than a human, and knew every epic poem and sonnet of the last three centuries by heart.
“Well, Donal, as always.”
“Good.” For a man—a being—with such literary knowledge, actual conversations with Peat had a tendency toward brevity. “Listen, I need to get some dinner. But—”
“Later, my friend.”
“Yeah.” Donal put the coins down on the counter. “Later.”
He left with the book in hand and crossed the street to Freda's Diner. There, Marie, a short waitress with missing teeth and a gentle manner, took Donal's order.
Sipping weak coffee—after all, he had to sleep soon—Donal read from the book until his food came. Then he continued to read while shoveling eggs and tubers into his mouth. It was greasy and filling and he ate too much.
Then he went back home, stripped off his clothes and hung them up, and lay on his bed, reading. It was the end of a normal day.
But when he finally put the book down and slid into sleep, the dreams that visited him were of a rich, colored texture such as he had never experienced before: meadows of impossible emerald brightness beneath a sky that was pale instead of dark, where winsome fantastical semitransparent creatures out of legend grazed on blue lawns. Finally a black crack appeared across the sky and Donal began to run, ever faster without covering any distance, while words—or were they fingernails?—scraped across his skin.
We are the bones, the grass beneath his feet seemed to say.
Donal ran faster in his sleep.
We are the bones. We know you now.
Nine days later, Donal was sitting in his office with Levison, checking his watch and wondering whether the diva's flight could possibly land on time. All of yesterday, thick summer fog had cloaked Tristopolis, until virtually nothing was moving. Today it looked like more of the same.
“Accounts will have my hide,” Donal said, “if our guys have gotten an extra night in the hotel and the diva isn't going to make it here today.”
“She'll make it.” Levison looked up from the puzzle in his folded newspaper. “I'm telling you.”
“Uh. . . okay.” Donal leaned sideways in his chair, trying to see outside. From here, he could not see the sky, but he could judge the light in the artificial canyon of buildings and note the silver-lilac reflections in the windows. “I'm tempted to bet on it.”
“Listen,” said Levison. “You haven't been up to anything you shouldn't, have you, boss?”
“All my life.” Donal focused on Levison's serious expression. “Nothing illegal, though. What's on your mind?”
“Nothing.”
“Right.”
“It's just, er, I was talking to Helven in Records—”
“And how is she? Have you asked her out for coffee yet? Has she asked you? Does your wife know?”
“—anyway, so I happened to notice this woman among the personnel files.”
“While you should have been paying attention to Helven. Come on, Lev.”
“Your dossier, Donal. That's what this nice-looking blonde had in her hands.”
“Huh.” Donal's chair creaked as he swung his weight back. “So?”
“So she had a weapon and she wasn't no bureaucrat.” Levison's accent reverted to the streets and to his childhood. And Donal's. “Got it? Looked like IntSec to me.”
“Ain't no reason for Infernal Security to worry about me, pal.”
“Well.” Levison nodded. “Good.”
“Apart from those millions I got stashed away . . .”
“Hades, Donal. Don't joke about this stuff.”
“All right. Have you got a car arranged?”
“For the airport? Yeah.” Levison checked the small clock on top of Donal's bookcase. Inside the bichambered clock, dark fluid dripped from the lower chamber to the upper, causing the second hand to move. “Fifty-five minutes, downstairs.”
“Great. You go on.” Donal climbed out of his chair. “I've got stuff to do.”
“Okay, boss.”
Donal picked up his suit jacket and pulled it on as he left the office. That was mostly in case he ended up talking to a civilian before returning: hiding the gun usually made conversations proceed more quickly. Except during interrogation.
The elevator shaft opened while he was still ten feet away.
*Hey, lover. Missed you.* And as he stepped inside: *How long's it been?*
“All of an hour.”
*Feels like longer.*
“Range, please, Gertie.”
Invisible fingers seemed to cross his torso. *Where would you like me to range?*
But Donal was already falling down the shaft.
“Behave.”
*All right.* The hands began to slow Donal's descent. *Behave well, or behave badly?*
“Hades.”
*Mind your language.* Gertie exerted horizontal pressure on Donal's back. *Bad boy.*
The force expelled Donal into the corridor. He turned to say something, but the shaft had already sealed up. His snappy retort would have to wait.
Flat bangs sounded from the practice range. Someone was hard at work.
When Donal reached the entrance, Brian was sitting behind his desk, wearing a smart shirt and tie, his fresh skin bluer than normal. Behind him, two blank-faced men were flipping through folders and the boxed records of who'd signed equipment in and out.
“Hey, Brian. How's life?”
“Got my IntSec pals visiting. Right, boys? Other than that, biz as usual, Lieutenant.”
Brian dropped Donal a wink, as if thanking him for the warning that Internal Security was going to be here. But it was Donal who had called IntSec and told them to check out the range, and if Brian had failed to get rid of his stupid targets, then the man would have been out.
Donal leaned over the counter. The IntSec men looked up.
“Don't take any crap from Brian,” Donal told them. “Okay?”
“We won't, Lieutenant.” There was no humor in the reply, just leaden fact.
Neither of the IntSec guys matched the description that Levison had given: a nice-looking blonde who'd been holding Donal's personnel file in her hand.
“Gimme two hundred rounds,” Donal said to Brian. “And a pile of targets, ghouls and humans mixed.”
“You got it.”
“Er, Lieutenant . . .” One of the IntSec men held up a folder. “You signed for ammunition yesterday. Can you remember how many rounds that was?”
Brian's blue skin began to shine paler. Donal shook his head. Was Brian really that stupid, to change numbers of rounds handed over, overstate the expenditure, and pocket the surplus?
“Sorry,” Donal said. “Can't remember.”
* * *
Donal fired off the two hundred rounds and went back
to the counter. The IntSec guys were still there, peeking in the target drawers and archive cabinets. Donal got Brian to give him another hundred and went back into the range and shot his targets into shreds.
When he returned the second time, Brian was alone.
“Your IntSec pals,” said Donal. “They gone for the day?”
“Er . . . sure. Why wouldn't they be?”
“I definitely know the inventory's fine. It is fine, isn't it, Brian?”
“S-sure.”
“You worked the streets a long time. I appreciate that—”
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
“—but if I think ammo or weapons are going astray, I'll put a bullet between your eyes myself. You got that?”
Brian's mouth dropped open. It was all the answer Donal was going to get.
“Shit.” Donal turned his wrist over. “And now you've made me late.”
“S-sorry.”
Donal strode out of the range office and headed for the elevator. Gertie's door whisked open, and she bore him up to the garage level with only the faintest saucy humming in his ear, snatches of an old song he barely recognized and could not have named.
Coming out into the echoing concrete garage at a run, Donal spotted a squad car idling with its rear door open. Two uniformed officers sat up front, and Levison was in the back, on the far side.
“Airport,” Donal muttered to the driver as he got in. “Quick as you can.”
He pulled the door shut with an unnecessary slam.
The uniforms got the message. They pulled the car out into the traffic flow, using the black-light strobe and switching the siren from wail to maximum thunder.
For several blocks, the traffic was too heavy for it to make a difference, but then they were out onto streets where cars were moving—this was late morning, not rush hour—and frightening other drivers became a valid time-saving tactic.
Flashes of blackness reflected back from the buildings as the car accelerated, weaving in and out of half-filled lanes. They ran three stoplights in succession before reaching the Orb-Sinister Expressway.
All nine lanes flowed directly toward the center of the two-thousand-foot-high skull that marked the eastern boundary of midtown. There, the lanes peeled upward into the left eye socket of that vast construct—or maybe relic, no one really knew. They entered a mile-long round tunnel lit only by disembodied flame-wraiths, dancing overhead.
The wraiths were indentured for short periods these days. The stress of passing traffic was great, and everyone remembered the tunnel crash of '93 in the Orb-Dexter Freeway. Then, a kind of group hysteria had seized the flamewraiths, many of them into their second century of servitude. Wraiths discorporated explosively into showering sparks; drivers swerved in sudden shock. The hundred-car pileup killed dozens.
Soon the squad car was out into the open. The sky was heavy with purple-gray clouds, and Donal still felt closed in. They passed through the mercantile district of Prismatic Trance, with its rainbow ads and myriad illusions.
Finally they reached the turnoff for the airport, and the driver pulled the car out into the fast lane and floored it.
Fog was thickening overhead by the time they turned through the glowering twin-panthers gateway of Brody Airport (named after Fisticuffs Brody, still remembered as the best mayor the city had ever had). They slowed as they came to a police-only entrance, then turned and went down a ramp into the depths of Terminal Aleph.
“Good work, guys,” said Levison. He looked at Donal.
“Uh, yeah. Good job.”
“Sir.” The driver wheeled them neatly into a parking spot.
“You reckon the flights are on time?” said the other uniformed officer.
“Not with this fog,” muttered Levison. “Gives us more time to check around. Right, boss?”
“Right.” Donal sat unmoving for a moment longer. His unease might have been kicked off by some subliminal perception.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Donal retraced the drive in his mind, the route into the airport, and felt no specific reaction to any part of the route.
Shit.
It was the entire operation that worried him. A killer could strike from anywhere.
“Let's get going.”
They slid out of the squad car.
Whatever Commissioner Vilnar had said about keeping overtime payments down, there was only one way to stop the hit, and that was to ensure a visible presence. It would make two things clear: the killer would have to give up his (or her, or its) own life; and no one would be stealing the body afterward.
There was an escalator formed of rising glass slats, their lev-runes solidly encased and glowing darkly. Levison stood on the step above Donal as they rose through a seven-story atrium.
Donal scanned the crowds, soon spotting half a dozen men with fedoras tipped down over their eyes, hands in their overcoat pockets, standing at corners and pillars and other vantage points.
“They're all ours,” said Levison.
“Good.”
“But you want I should take a walk later, right, boss, and check them out personally?”
Donal glanced up at Levison. “I hate being predictable.”
“I knew you'd say that.”
“Fuck off, Lev.”
“And I also knew you'd—”
“I mean it.”
But Lev was grinning as they got off the escalator. They both knew he'd won that round.
The flight arrived late. Thick, pale-gray fog was everywhere when the four-propeller Dagger Airlines plane came to a stand near the terminal building.
Ground crew wheeled the steps into place and rolled out the long strip of crimson carpet. Reporters and photographers crowded as close as they could, held back by officers of the 1005th Precinct. Several local dignitaries, including Alderman Alexei Brown, were there to greet the diva.
The props were rotating slowly, and finally they stopped, one by one.
Magnesium bulbs popped white as the diva appeared at the open door and paused on the top step. From the small crowd's edge, Donal looked up and saw the triangular, fine features he recognized from the magazine articles he'd read during the week.
He hadn't realized how beautiful Maria daLivnova was, but as she descended, a kind of iron elegance ruled every motion, and when she paused once more at the bottom of the steps, the sense of her presence was overwhelming. Her smile as she looked around was wide and white and shining with the message: I'm full of joy being here.
Her gaze passed over Donal without pausing.
Expecting her to cavil at the arrangements had been one thing, but this was worse: her failure to recognize Donal's existence.
But why should he care? This was work, the diva was a commodity to be protected, and if he had to step between her and an assassin's bullet, well, that was what he'd become a cop for, what they paid him to do.
“What's it like to be in Tristopolis?” called out a reporter. He wore a dark hat and held his notepad and pen ready for the diva's reply.
“Nice fog you people have here.”
There was a round of laughter among the reporters.
After the handshakes, three black limousines with black windshields pulled up on the tarmac. The alderman's aides escorted the diva to the center limo. She got in and perched, half-sitting but with one stiletto-shoed foot on the crimson carpet outside, for a final round of bulb-popping photographs.
Then she pulled her foot inside, an aide closed the door—and Donal let out a tiny breath. This was the first possible fixed ambush point, and they'd gotten through it. If everyone could just maintain highest-level vigilance, nerves strung taut for the next eighteen days, they would make it.
Two weeks.
At least the time would pass quickly, because there'd be no time to stop and rest. That was Donal's theory as he got into one of the cruisers that pulled up, while the remainder moved into formation before and after the limos.
He looked back at the plane. The jou
rnalists were dispersing, the dignitaries were in the limos, and now the ordinary passengers were beginning to descend the steps, allowed to disembark.
No one was waiting to take their photographs or ask them what it felt like to be here.
There were outriders on low-slung motorbikes, officers with helmets and leather jackets, over-and-under spitguns clipped to the sides of their fuel tanks. They swung in on either side of the motorcade.
All the cars slid into motion. Donal watched in every direction.
He had wanted a helicopter overhead, but the fog was even better, providing visual cover from rooftop snipers: not so much here as when they reached the high midtown skyscrapers.
Except that in those architectural canyons the fog would be thinner.
Damn it.
Opportunities to make the hit were everywhere.
The diva's limo pulled up before the Exemplar. Here, not just journalists but fans had gathered on the sidewalks. Donal's nerves tightened as he exited his car fast and held his badge out for the uniforms to let him through.
“Nice to see you, Lieutenant,” said one of them, a gray-haired veteran whom Donal recognized. “Looks like everyone's here to get your autograph.”
“It's your picture they're taking.” Donal gave a half salute while scanning the windows high up across the street. “Okay, here goes.”
The diva was exiting her car, and the officers linked arms against the increasingly chaotic pressure of the crowd, as those farther back jostled. The dancing flames above the steps cast golden highlights on the diva as she stopped to wave at the crowd—don't stay in the open, damn it—and then ascended the steps so she was under the decorative canopy in front of the door.
Even here a Seeker round would pick her out through the obstacles. Donal waved at the doormen to usher the diva indoors. One of them bowed and murmured a greeting as he gestured inside, and the diva seemed to flow into the foyer.
Inside, Donal's own men were already posted at vantage points. He began to feel happier.