Gun, with Occasional Music

by Jonathan Lethem

  When I pulled up in front of the house at the end of Cranberry, I didn't bother hiding my car or concealing my intention of walking up to the door and ringing the bell. There were cars on the street, but none of them were familiar, so I had no way of knowing who, if anyone, was home. That was okay. No matter who I found, I'd have something to talk about, and if no one was in, I might be able to find some way of entertaining myself.

  I rang the bell and waited, but nobody came to the door, and when I tried the handle it practically opened itself. I could see through the foyer to the living room where I'd sat yesterday and chatted with the kitten and then Celeste, and it was empty. I went inside, shut the door, and looked around.

  Everything downstairs was neat, too neat, more like a museum exhibit than a lived-in house. The windows were designed to maximize the sun, and they were busy doing that; the house looked painted with light. Nobody had mentioned to the windows and the sunlight that there wasn't anybody home and they could relax.

  I went into the kitchen. Nobody there either. I poked through the refrigerator and pantry; they were well stocked, but I couldn't quite bring myself to eat anything. I went back into the living room and faced the picture window. After all the time I'd spent peering in, being on the inside made me feel visible. I spent a long minute looking at the view, past the monorail trestles to where the fog clung to the beach. Then my focus changed, and instead of looking through the glass I was looking at it, at the reflection of me in my shabby coat and hat standing in the fancy living room getting romantic about a view of a cold, wet beach. Who was I trying to kid? The bay was a five-minute drive from my apartment, and it was a five-minute drive I never bothered to make.

  When I started up the stairs, the carpet muffled my shoes, turning me into an inadvertent sneak. Everything about the house made me feel out of place. I went into Celeste's room first, lowering the shade to make myself more comfortable. The bed was unmade, and a shirt was spread out across the pillows; otherwise the room was all tucked away and tidy like downstairs. I went to the chest of drawers and pulled the pair on top open, but it was all socks and underwear. The bottom drawers were more clothing, the middle drawer almost empty. Celeste had only been living in the room a couple of weeks, and it showed. It was a guest room, and she was just passing through, and if she had secrets, she still kept them in some other place. The clothes smelled nice, and I let myself linger over them, but only for a minute, then I turned out the light and went back out into the hall.

  There were three other rooms on the upper floor. I looked quickly into a messy room that must have belonged to the babyhead, and a neat one that must have belonged to the kitten, both empty. By this time I was pretty certain I was alone in the house, and I wasn't taking any particular pains to keep quiet.

  When I opened the door to Pansy Greenleaf's room, it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and make out the faded figure lying on the bed. She was bundled in bedclothes, asleep or unconscious, and her black hair, splayed out against the pillows, was the only way I could tell she was something more than an arrangement of laundry on the bed. I went inside without turning on the light.

  The table by the bed was littered with piles of make, plus the equipment necessary to prepare it for intravenous injection. The needle was beside her on the bed. It was all very competently laid out, suggesting this was not the first time she'd taken it in the arm. I was reaching for her neck to feel for a pulse, when her eyes rolled mechanically open. She blinked a couple of times, and then she closed her mouth and worked up enough spit to talk.

  "You're the inquisitor," she said. She didn't move a muscle. The voice was strained up from some small reservoir of life inside an otherwise dead husk.

  I told her she was right.

  "I knew you would come," she said. "My card is on the dresser."

  "I'm not going to take any karma off your card," I said. "I'm not that kind of inquisitor."

  Her eyes closed again. She was like a part of the room, gray and dim, flickering only accidentally into persona and then receding again into the grayness and pallor. I took the needle off the bed and put it on the table with the make so she wouldn't roll into it.

  She was obviously an experienced mainliner, but it was equally obvious she wasn't in very good shape right now. I didn't like the idea of her dying while I was in the house. I went over to the dresser where her card was and experimented with making a lot of noise opening the drawers, but she didn't respond.

  The drawers were full of papers. I started leafing through them, without any particular goal in mind. It was all bills and receipts and direct mail, until I came across a folder full of architectural diagrams and a written proposal. I glanced at the blueprints in a perfunctory way, and I probably would have forgotten about them if I hadn't noticed that the proposal was for an additional structure on the Cranberry Street lot. That sent me back for another look.

  I wasn't much for reading blueprints, but the diagram of the upper floor was easy to read. It showed a wall of bunk beds, like a barracks-style sleeping quarters for an army of evolved animals. I looked closer. The beds were stacked in pairs to fit eight against the northern wall, if I was holding the diagram right. The measurement for the north wall was only twenty feet total, an allotment of less than three feet per bed. It was a funny idea, all those animals bunked up like soldiers, and it was even funnier to think of it in the backyard of the Cranberry Street house. I noted the architectural firm and slid the papers back into the drawer.

  "That's my stuff," she said, while my back was still turned.

  "I'm looking for a birth certificate," I said.

  "For Barry..." There was a note of panic in her voice. "You won't find one."

  "I don't care about Barry. I was thinking of you."

  "I don't understand."

  "I'm a friend of your brother's, Ms. Greenleaf. I was just wondering what happened to the name Angwine. Who was Mr. Greenleaf, and where is he now?"

  She gripped the sides of the bed and turned her head towards me. "There isn't one." Her voice was a whisper.

  "I see. Pansy Angwine? That's a little discordant."

  "Patricia."

  "Never married?"

  "No."

  I shut the open drawers of the bureau and went back to the side of the bed. Pansy just watched me, hollow-eyed and quiet, as I ran my fingers through the make on the table and held them up to my nose to sniff.

  "Whose kid is Barry?" I asked.

  I guess she thought I was going to ask her something about the drugs, because she looked at the paraphernalia on the table and up at me a couple of times, as if there was a connection. The truth was I didn't have anything better to do with my hands.

  "That's my business," she said. Her eyes wanted to sag shut again, but she was fighting the nod with everything she had. I was making her nervous. If I could keep her talking as she shook herself into life, I might learn something.

  "You worked for Stanhunt," I reminded her. "What did you do for him?"

  A sneeze erupted from the depths of her tortured little frame, and she covered her face with both hands and held them there the way a wounded soldier holds in his guts in a bad war movie. I folded a hundred-dollar bill into the shape of a little envelope, scooped up a sample of her make with the open side of it, and got it into my pocket before she re-covered control of her face.

  "Do you want a glass of water?" I asked. She nodded. I went to the bathroom adjoining the hallway, filled a glass, and brought it back. She took it in both hands and drained it quietly and steadily.

  "You were going to tell me about working for Stanhunt," I said.

  "Stanhunt—" She faltered and stopped.

  "He bought you this house."

  She looked up, almost sharply. "No. I bought it myself."

  "With what money?"

  She would have lied, but nothing convenient came to mind, so she just stared at me. For people who have managed to stay out of trouble for a long time the process of answeri
ng direct questions is a bit awkward. They never seem to work it all through in advance the way experienced liars do. It's as though they think questions don't need to be answered so much as swatted away, like flies.

  "Your brother thinks that Barry is Stanhunt's son, and that the house is a kind of thank you for keeping the whole affair and pregnancy under wraps."

  "You think that too."

  "I'd be willing to hear another version. Your brother didn't do his homework. If you were Stanhunt's mistress, why would Celeste run here when she needed a hidey-hole?" Sometimes if you do your thinking out loud, people feel the urge to chip in and help you get it right.

  "Dr. Stanhunt and I were never lovers."

  "I believe you. Maynard Stanhunt had his hands full with Celeste. And Celeste is a handful. I guess you're finding that out now."

  "Celeste is my friend," she said, straightening herself in the bed. She gave me a look that said that question-and-answer time was almost up. "I offered her the extra room. I don't regret it."

  "Somehow I think it's more complicated than that."

  The bell downstairs rang, and we both flinched. I'd been expecting Celeste for some time now, based on how rarely I'd seen her out of this house. But Celeste wouldn't ring the doorbell.

  "I'll get it," I said. I figured if it was the Office, I might as well get it over with. My car was parked in front, and if they wanted to talk to me, they'd be crawling all over it.

  Pansy put the empty glass down on the bedside table, and the condensation on it picked up a white coating of make. "Okay," she said. She was still fighting her way through a fog.

  I went downstairs, took a deep breath, and opened the door. A neatly dressed woman in her late twenties or early thirties stood in the doorway, and behind her a young guy in a suit and tie was walking up the steps. "Hello," she said.

  I said hello back.

  "We're students of psychology. If you're not too busy, we'd like to read you a few selections from Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents."

  It took a minute for me to blink away my confusion. This kind of thing didn't happen in my neighborhood. "No," I said. "But thanks no. I'm not a believer myself."

  She took it all right, wished me a nice day. I could see the guy in the suit already sizing up the next house down the street as I closed the door on them.

  By the time I got back upstairs, Pansy Greenleaf—or should I say Patricia Angwine?—was sitting on the edge of the bed, her nightdress smoothed back down and her brown eyes considerably more animated and lucid. The table beside the bed was all cleaned up.

  "I don't know your name," she said.

  I told her my name, and waited while she sorted things out.

  "You must know where my brother is..."

  "Your brother is in a lot of trouble. I let him spend the night in my office. What happens next might have a lot to do with you."

  "You mean setting up maintenance for his body—"

  "I mean telling me what you know about the murder so I can knock apart the frame. He's not a body yet, Pansy. He's a scared kid. He made a mistake when he tangled with Stanhunt, but I don't think he killed him. Do you?"

  "I don't know."

  I could only smile. "Tell me something. What happens next? Do you get to keep the house?"

  "Dr. Stanhunt's death has nothing to do with that."

  "I forgot Stanhunt's death doesn't affect you in any way. But what about the babyhead?"

  "You can ask him yourself," she said. She was pulling herself together, which meant she was getting a little indignant at the inquisition. "I don't think he'll show much interest."

  "I guess I might do that," I said. "Where does he stay? I mean, when he's not here." I added that bit to be polite. He was never at the Cranberry Street house for longer than to grab a sandwich.

  "He spends his time at the babybar on Telegraph. I guess they have someplace to sleep."

  "He's getting away from you, isn't he?"

  A flicker of anger appeared on her face and then vanished. "He's no different from the rest of them. It's the growth treatments. He's not the same as he was before."

  "What about Celeste?" I said. "What's next for her?"

  "I guess you should ask her about that."

  "I guess I will. Where is she now?"

  "I don't know. When I got up this morning, she was gone."

  "When will she be back?"

  "That's her business."

  "Are you expecting her for dinner, say?"

  "With Celeste I've learned not to expect anything."

  The conversation had taken on all the charm of a one-sided game of table tennis. I didn't know my next move, but I could see that this one was all played out.

  "I'm leaving," I said. "Are there any last words you want to convey to your brother?"

  She turned away from me on the bed. She looked pretty composed, but I didn't imagine she felt too good on the inside. Ten minutes before, she'd been too far gone to move the needle from the bed to the table. "Get out of here," she said finally. I could see her hardening herself as she spoke.

  I went to the door.

  "You shouldn't assume that my life revolves around my brother," she said. "I haven't seen him for years. I don't know him anymore, and he certainly doesn't know me. I have my own life. If he made a mistake, then I guess he has to pay for it."

  "His mistake was looking you up, apparently."

  She crossed her arms over her thin chest and looked at me and through me with one poisonous, icy glance. "Get out. Stay away from me and stay away from this house. If you ever come into my room when I'm sleeping again, I'll kill you with my bare hands. I swear to God." She just sat on the edge of the bed and delivered it like it was the weather, but I could see her skinny body trembling.

  I didn't bother reminding her that what she was doing when I came in wasn't exactly sleeping. I just went out to my car. I looked up and down the street, but the Freud nuts had given up and gone home. The sky was murky, the clouds were gnarled over the sun. A damp wind swept over the hills behind the house, chilling my neck. It was going to rain. I rolled up the windows of my car and drove back downtown.

  CHAPTER 11

  THEY WEREN'T EXPECTING ME TO COME STROLLING IN THE front lobby at the Office. They never are. When I told them my name at the front desk, the guy they sent out to meet me wasn't Morgenlander, or Kornfeld, or anyone else connected with the Stanhunt case. It wasn't a guy at all. It was a dame, a dish, a bird—I never know what to call them when I want to be other than rude. Because I'm always rude. But she made me want to be other, made me want to be someone I wasn't.

  I got up from the seat I was in, and she stepped towards me, and suddenly we were closer than we should have been. I liked it, but it was too close. She couldn't even put her hand up for a shake. I backed off a bit. I may have been wrong, but I came away with an impression of the warmth of her body against me, as if she'd left a kind of heat-print on the front of my jacket and pants.

  "My name is Catherine Teleprompter," she said. "What brings you in, Mr. Metcalf?"

  The question told me her full name was Inquisitor Teleprompter. I'd met a couple this young, but none this pretty. I straightened out the lewd expression on my face and said: "Let's talk in your office."

  She led me down a couple of hallways and around a couple of corners to her office, which was a room about the size of a shot glass. I guess she was new. She went behind her desk and I sat down on a chair in what little space remained.

  She leaned back in her chair, and the black curtain of her hair swept over her shoulder, revealing a throat I could have spent an hour on. An hour a day, or maybe an hour every five minutes. We had a hard time getting the conversation started because of it. I was looking at her and she was looking at me looking, and she knew it and I knew she knew it and the whole thing again, squared. She broke the spell by turning to her console, the purplish light illuminating her face as she squinted at the screen. I had a feeling she needed glasses but didn't want to
put them on in front of me.

  "Conrad Metcalf," she said.

  "That's right."

  "Private inquisitor. License up for renewal in May. Our last entry is signed by Inquisitor Morgenlander. He says he had to kick you off a case."

  "I don't know why they call this place a bureaucracy. That was yesterday. Congratulations."

  "So I suppose you want to talk to Morgenlander."

  "I did until you came along."

  "What should I say it's concerning?" she asked curtly.

  "You can say I need a jump start and I was wondering if he had a set of cables."

  She opened her desk drawer. "Pass me your card, Mn Metcalf."

  I dug in my pocket. "You see—"

  "Your card," she interrupted. I passed it over.

  I waited while she ran it through a decoder.

  "You don't have the karma of a man who wants to be barging in here giving dopey jokes as answers to my questions, Mr. Metcalf." She put my card down on the desk in front of her.

  "It's about this case," I said. "I'm supposed to lay off, only the case keeps rubbing up against my ankles and purring. I need to let Morgenlander know I tried to follow his instructions." I offered one of my better smiles, and she took it, but slowly.

  "I'll see if he's in the building," she said.

  "No, don't. Let me ask you a couple of questions first." I reached across the desk for my card, but she put her hand over it. I almost put my hand on top of hers but thought better of it at the last minute.

  "About Morgenlander," I said, trying to keep my mind on the case. I was functionally non-male, and the sight of a pretty inquisitor shouldn't make me forget it. The limb I was going out on here was one I didn't possess. "Who's pulling his strings on this case, and why? He's an outsider, from another district; why bring him in at all if you aren't going to let him work?"

  She looked at me hard. "You shouldn't ask questions like that without knowing who you're asking them of. You might get more than answers."