Anarchy

by Peter Meredith

  It was a world unto its own.

  The hall and the mole-like people who worked there had their own rules and worked on their own timeline. If a record took a week to be found, then it took a week, and no amount of bitching would ever move them along faster. If an officer was of a high enough rank, the moles could be threatened to produce reports quicker, and, like everyone else, they loved a bribe, and a good one could produce amazing results.

  Cole had no money and less authority than anyone in the building, except maybe the honey.

  He tried turning on the charm, however his smeared slag impersonation made his smile pathetic and the little person behind the counter—he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman behind the thick spectacles—only turned up a sneer at the attempt, before squinting through the quarter-inch lenses.

  “Hmm,” he/she said. “A special? This early? It’s going to be a while.” The mole gestured to the waiting room, which was empty. It was always empty. A half day spent in the Records Hall waiting room was equivalent to six years on the outside. Still, there was a couch of sorts. It had been a cloth-neoprene mesh forty years before, now it was apparently made of tape. It could have been made of brick and Cole would have still slept on it.

  Four hours passed in a blink and he was deep in a chaotic dream in which he was running through miles of barely lit tunnels when he heard: “Mr. Younger.” Cole cracked an eye and found himself staring at the oldest person he had ever seen. It was a woman half his height, stooped, wrinkled and so dusty that her white hair looked grey. She wore a faded pale peach blouse from the turn of the century that was tucked into an equally faded blue skirt. Apparently, she used the waist band of the dress as a bra.

  It was not a sight to wake up to.

  He sat up, quickly, thinking that she might rap his knuckles with a ruler and admonish him for having his feet up on the couch. “Yes…ma’am. That’s me. I’m Cole Younger.”

  “That wasn’t in question. I know who you are. You’re a bounty hunter.” She sighed and shook her head. “Follow me.”

  Cole stood, noticing for the first time that the lights in the Records Hall had been dimmed and that the place looked deserted. As the building was windowless, there was no way to tell if it was night or day. He guessed it was night and was surprised that it wasn’t even noon. “Where is everyone?”

  “On a break,” was all she said as she waddled along, watching her feet. He had to take achingly slow steps to stay abreast of her as they passed, with glacial slowness, through towering stacks of files each twice his height. They were so tall that he wondered how the diminutive clerks reached the higher ones. The moles hired their own people and it was obvious that men of Cole’s stature need not apply. Or people of his age either, for that matter. The moles had an eternal quality to them. There was never a “new” person. Each of them looked as if they had always worked there and always would, long after Cole was mulched.

  “In here.” They had come to a door made of actual wood with a doorknob that was real brass. The knob was the only thing in the Records Hall that wasn’t filmed with grey dust. It actually gleamed. The old woman reached out a spotted hand for it, again so slowly that Cole felt himself catching up to her in age.

  “Let me.” He opened the door, noting the stenciled name:

  Joanna Niederer

  Director

  “Joanna or should I call you Director Niederer?” Unlike Lloyd’s office, Joanna’s was well lit and fastidiously clean. The walls were painted a stark white and empty of pictures. The floor was softly carpeted in white. The only real color was the desk and the two chairs that sat on either side of it. Again, they were of real wood and in perfect condition. Cole didn’t feel clean enough to sit in the one on his side of the desk. What was more surprising than the wood and the cleanliness, was that there wasn’t a single piece of paper in the room. He had expected her office to be a smaller, messier version of the Records Hall itself.

  The director eased herself into her chair so slowly that she made all the sound of dust settling. “You can call me Jo.”

  He liked Director Niederer better. It seemed fitting. “Sure, Jo. Was something wrong with the form?” Other than maybe changing a lightbulb for her, it was the only reason he could think of why he was there.

  “Of course, there was!” she snapped. “This is a special, and not just any special. It’s a special, special.” He wasn’t following her and it showed on his face. “A special record usually involves a special person or a special case. You still don’t get it, do you? Sorry to burst your bubble, but we’re not all special. Yes, that talking butterfly my granddaughter watches on tv has got it all wrong.”

  Although she had the smell of a grandmother, Cole could not picture Jo ever being young enough to have a child herself.

  “Everyone has a record, even the mega-rich douchebags you kids call Vampires. They are the special ones. If you’re a famous person, or a mob boss, or a politician you’re considered a special. But this is a special special. Your kind of special.”

  Cole only stared at her, refusing to acknowledge the obvious. She sighed tiredly and sat back. “Yes. I’m talking about a zombie. A Dead-eye.” Jo pulled out a folder from her desk drawer and slid it over. “See the reference number. It starts with a 6. That means it’s a special. The following 13 means it’s either a special special, or it’s tied to one. In this case, it’s the latter.”

  “Tied to Mrs Grimmett?” Cole asked, sliding into the chair as he scanned the report. “She wasn’t a…one of them. I don’t see any sign of the infection. Her white count is within normal ranges. Was it changed?”

  “No. She was only tied to the case. Take a look at her injuries.”

  Cole was still reading and said, almost absently, “Injuries? The cause of death was blunt trauma to the back of the head.” When he glanced up, he found Jo had managed to summon the energy to cock a furry white eyebrow at him. Once more he felt as though she were about to rap his knuckles. His answer was incorrect. He looked again at the photos. “Her heart was taken out post-mortem. The lack of bleeding along the…wait.”

  He looked again at the notes. “Her blood volume was three ounces? Oh God. She was bled, wasn’t she?” He saw it now. The jagged cut that took off her head had disguised the deep incisions on either side of her throat.

  “Yes. It’s a special special and you don’t just come here demanding to see the notes on one of these. You of all people should know this. People talk, even my people, maybe even especially my people. I know it’s hard to imagine, but this isn’t the most exciting job and whenever any special comes up it becomes the stuff of gossip. And talk of actual specials is the last thing we need.”

  “I agree. May I take this?” he asked, holding up the file.

  She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Are you kidding me? No one takes my files.”

  It didn’t matter. He had leads. Perhaps Santino wasn’t a Dead-eye, but the blood he had taken from his wife was a lead. Had he sold it at the Mandarin joint? Or maybe at the flop house, or maybe…

  He stood, his mind in a whirl and was about to leave when he stopped abruptly. “What did you mean by ‘you of all people?’ Did Lieutenant Lloyd say anything about me?”

  “No. I’ve just read your file is all.” From her drawer, she pulled another file, this one an inch and a half thick.

  Cole grimaced at in disgust. There were probably horror stories about him in the file. The force needed to justify taking his meager pension and cutting his insurance off while he’d been recuperating in the hospital. “Don’t believe everything you read,” he told her.

  Chapter 4

  Unless you had a torture rack, a soundproof room and a lot of time to kill, breaking a Mandarin was next to impossible. Even the wrinkled-up grannies would only glare ferociously, cursing you and all your unborn children in every language they knew.

  They could be bought, however. For the right price, they would sell out that very same granny. Unfortunately, Cole didn’t
have the money. He had just a few pawnable items left and only the Crown would get him anywhere near enough cash to move the Mandarin to give up info on a customer peddling blood. People bought and sold everything under the sun in New York, but blood was one of those items that raised flags, and for good reason.

  Cole could see the reason from his apartment window when he raised his lead shutter. Jersey was a brown wasteland across the polluted waters of the Hudson. It was the edge of the Zone where a hundred million Dead-eyes had been incinerated a century and a half before. People had short memories for most things, but not with zombies. Everyone knew about their insatiable hunger for clean blood, and even a Mandarin would hesitate to sell it—unless the price was right.

  With the smeared tats washed from his face and wearing his best long coat, Cole entered the Mandarin joint at just after one. He was immediately assaulted by the aroma of three-day old fish. Beneath that was the pervasive, cloying smell of fried food. Every Mandarin joint smelled like this.

  There were fifteen or so customers; most at the standing tables in the center of the room. Two Mandarin families were sprawled out in a pair of booths in the back. They were all rather nondescript to Cole. It was another story with the wait-staff. They eyeballed a couple of almost-slags as if they were on the verge of becoming full-blown trogs in the middle of their Pho. The lone black man had it worse. The waiter wouldn’t come near him. He passed in a wide circle around the man and when he dropped off his plate, he left it at the far end of the table.

  To Cole’s left was a counter where he could order seaweed noodles thirteen different ways, hot soup five ways, and “fish” either fried crispy or fried limp.

  “We pay ah taxes, taxman,” the lady behind the counter said, right away. “We pay on time.” She spoke in the clipped tones of a recent immigrant. There was no such thing as a recent immigrant to New York. People paid good money to get smuggled out of the city, not into it.

  “I’m not here to shake you down. I’m not even a cop. I’m here for a bite and maybe a chat. What’s fresh?”

  Because of the way Mandarins were, he judged her age to be somewhere between twenty and sixty. She wore her black hair short in front—razor sharp bangs sat high up on her forehead—and long in the back, reminding Cole of a silken mullet. Her eyes had been squinty to begin with, but at the mention of a “talk,” they practically disappeared.

  “It all fwesh.” She cocked a thumb behind her at a filthy plexiglass aquarium where three fish of indeterminate species floated in some sort of fluid that was so grey and murky that Cole didn’t know if it still qualified as actual water. As the fish weren’t belly-up, he supposed that they weren’t dead yet. Then again, they weren’t alive like fish were meant to be; they only existed.

  “You make insult, you go,” the woman added.

  “No one’s insulting anyone. I’ll have the number two.” A quarter for soggy seaweed, a couple of old carrots and bits of “fish” bobbing about in the soup. He’d had worse. He ate slowly, ignoring the glaring counter girl. The black man had left, leaving Cole as public enemy number one.

  It was an hour before a stunted little man slipped into the booth across from him. By his attire and the grease glazing his pockmarked face, he was a cook. By the way he studied Cole with dark, intelligent eyes, Cole knew he was much more than that. “You Uncle Wu?” The neon sign above the joint’s door read Uncle Wu’s Happy Fish.

  “It’s just Wu. You buyin’ or sellin’?” He had no accent whatsoever.

  “Buying. Syn-ope. I’m looking for maybe a kilogram.” Moving a kilogram meant jail time and yet the man’s expression didn’t change.

  “Twenty-two hundred, up front,” he replied quickly, wasting no time. “Delivery: a quarter a day for four days.”

  It was too much. “Fifteen-hundred. All tonight. And I might need more tomorrow.”

  Wu’s reaction, a tiny shift of his chin, was significant. He was interested. “Eighteen hundred for tonight. Short notice and all. If you give me more notice, I can shave some of that off for tomorrow.”

  “This is my notice. Thirty-two hundred for two kilos. I’ll pay half tonight, half in the morning.”

  Instead of replying, Wu studied Cole for a long, uncomfortable minute. The entire time Cole was forced to sit there, a placid, simpleton’s smile on his face. Finally, Wu said, “I need ID.” Cole had never heard of a dealer asking for ID, and he sat back with what must have been a stunned expression on his face. Wu’s flat, emotionless look had not changed since he had slid across from Cole. “I have friends on the force. I need to make sure you’re legit.”

  In this case, “legit” meant being a criminal. To most of the police force, Cole was the worst sort of criminal. He slid over his ID. Wu took it and disappeared for a full hour. It took all of Cole’s patience to sit in the sticky booth with the counter girl unrelentlessly sneering at him. The only time she took a break was when she sneered at a young girl with a bad case of slag who came slouching in. All the tattoos in the world weren’t going to cover up the rot eating away her nose.

  “The taxmen don’t like you much,” Wu said, coming to stand at the end of the table. He almost smiled. “That means I like you even more. Sixteen-hundred tonight. Order the number thirteen to go. Pay in cash and go. Simple.” He didn’t offer to shake hands.

  “One other thing,” Cole said just as Wu started to leave. “I need some clean blood.” Wu’s eyes narrowed slightly, otherwise his face might have been made out of wood for all it moved. “Not much. A few quarts every other day maybe.”

  “I don’t move that stuff,” Wu replied.

  Now it was Cole’s turn to remain still. He forced himself to count to forty in his head before speaking. “You will for the right price.” Blood and Syn-ope; the implications were obvious.

  “Maybe. Wait here.”

  Once again, he went into the backroom and once again Cole was kept waiting. He figured it would be another interminable wait, but Wu was back in only fifteen minutes. “I have a call in,” he told Cole.

  “Will it be long?”

  “No.”

  Then why did you come out? To keep an eye on me? Cole’s eyes flicked to the counter girl. Her sneer was gone. She was standing very still. The stagnant, grease-stinking air had become thicker than it had been. Had the alley door been shut? Cole suddenly felt trapped, both in the booth and in the restaurant.

  “Have a seat while you wait,” Cole suggested.

  Wu’s head turned toward the back. “No, I have soup on the fire and I…” Cole’s left hand was below the table, the flimsy, wobbly, light table. He heaved one end up and smashed it into Wu’s surprised face. The Mandarin fell back as Cole leapt to his feet, his right hand sliding into the long black trench, going for his gun.

  The counter girl was no poker player, but God she was fast. She reached beneath the register and hauled out a cheap scattergun. The tip of the sawed-off barrel struck the register, giving Cole a split second to drop down and to the left, close to where Wu was scrabbling out from beneath the table. The girl hesitated, afraid she’d hit both Cole and Wu.

  In that split second, Cole had the Crown out and fired, aiming purposely to miss her. With the force looking for any reason to sink him, he’d be facing a murder charge if he actually shot her. He shot the aquarium instead. Three hundred gallons of brackish, toilet-stinking water exploded out, washing over the tiny slip of a girl and throwing her off her feet.

  Her scattergun went off with a deafening roar, taking out two ceiling tiles and a light fixture. Before the glass was done raining down, Cole was flying out through the kitchen. A knife was thrown his way, missing his ear by inches. The cook who’d thrown it reached for a second, but then lifted his hands as Cole aimed his gun at his face. “Where’s the back exit?” Then he saw it and raced on, glaring at a skinny teen with a wisp of black hair on his lip. He had picked up a bowl of near-boiling pho and had been thinking of throwing it at Cole. Instead it sloshed on his already stained wife-beat
er, making him shriek.

  Cole slammed through the back door, sending a pack of rats squealing beneath the battered trashcans they’d been feeding from. Hard, cold rain slashed his face, momentarily blinding him and nearly sending him into the back of a delivery van that was up on blocks. In the next second, he was racing down the alley, the sound of police sirens cutting through the storm.

  He took a quick right, then his first left, and immediately slowed, throwing his hood over his head to blend in with the rest of the afternoon crowd as it plodded dully about its business. Cole’s business was staying out of jail long enough to figure out how Santino and Wu were connected.

  As he walked, Cole ran over the timeline: Santino kills his wife and drains her dry. Sometime in the next few days, the wife is reported missing by a sister and Santino runs. Cole is given his ticket, tracks him to the flophouse and then to Wu’s. Santino dies half an hour later in the basement of his building.

  “He attacked the skirt to drain her,” Cole muttered, “and right in his own building, too. Talk about stupid.” He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, trying to remember what Santino’s slag numbers were. Sometimes the slag built up more on the inside than the outside, and every slag eventually turned into a moron.

  An armored police car trundled slowly up from behind. Cole recognized it by the crunching sound its wire mesh tires made. “Shit,” he whispered as it began to slow. When it pulled up abreast of him, he didn’t wait for the window to be cranked down; he turned and raced to his right. There was no alley to duck into, there was only a series of stoops, each leading to its own tenement building.

  With no time to be picky, he rushed for the nearest, taking the stairs three at a time.