Gun, with Occasional Music

by Jonathan Lethem

  There was blood on the doorknob, all right. Thinking of Angwine, I wiped at it with my sleeve, but it had dried. The light was off in the apartment, so when I entered the little doorway, I had to grope around for the knob on one of the floor lamps. The first thing I saw was my hand; it was smeared with red just from touching the lamp. When I looked away from my hand, I almost knocked over a chair getting farther away from the thing I was standing practically on top of.

  Someone had messed that sheep up bad. Someone had pretty much turned that sheep inside out. She was lying splayed on the blood-drenched carpet, and there were little pieces of her spread out nearly to the four corners of the room. A stomach-curdling stench rising from the carcass told me the lower intestine had been opened. My hand went reflexively to my forehead before I thought of the blood on it, and I printed my brow with sticky red. I backed away to lean against something and hit my head against the ceiling.

  I looked at the corpse again, forcing myself to try to find something meaningful in the way the killing had been done, but I couldn't concentrate. The dug-out cavity was like a maze that led my eyes against their will again and again to the mutilated black-red heart. I didn't have what it took to search that maze for clues, so I turned off the light and went outside.

  I went over to the main house and tried the handle, but the door was locked. Suddenly spooked, I put my hands in my pockets and jogged down the driveway back towards Daymont. I made it to my car without being seen, and drove out of the hills and down into Berkeley.

  I must not have been paying much attention to where I was going, because I cruised right into a checkpoint cordon on Alcatraz Avenue. Before I knew what was happening the inquisitors had the whole block cut off from the flow of traffic. Blinding light shone into my car. I could hear a dog baying somewhere, frightened by the sirens of the inquisition.

  There was a knock on the window of my car. I kneaded the blood off my forehead with my thumb and rolled the window down to see two helmeted inquisitors brandishing riot wands and flashlights. The one closest to my car leaned down and said: "Hand me your card and your job license."

  I dug the two chits out of my pocket and handed them over without saying anything; The inquisitor gave them to his partner and put his face farther into my car. I slumped back in my seat, but he was still too close.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Home," I said.

  "Where are you coming from?"

  "Just driving around."

  "He's a private dick," said the other one. "Conrad Metcalf."

  "Just driving around, eh? You on a case?"

  I must have been trembling. The image of the slaughtered sheep kept replaying itself before my eyes, and for an irrational minute I imagined they knew, and that the cordon had been set up expressly to bring me in. "Nope," I said.

  "Forty points," said the other one. "That's pretty low."

  "That's what I said to the guy who left me that way," I said.

  "What did you do?"

  "Nothing."

  "If we called your name into the Office, what would we find out?"

  "Try it and see."

  "I think I will," he said. "Pull over to the side and turn off your motor."

  I did what he said, and sat in my car watching the checkpoint proceed while I waited for the guy to access my file. The boys worked the cars over pretty carefully, opening a few up, rifling through trunks and glove compartments. They ran a lot of karma through the decoder and shook their heads reproachfully before handing back the cards. At one point a bunch of them got together and strip-searched a brunette in the back of her car. It was a fairly standard operation. I'd seen more than a few in my time that were worse.

  After a while the two guys came back to my car and gave me my card and license. The first one was smiling cryptically. "Your file's up for review," he said. "Unavailable."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Good luck, pal. Nice knowing you. Move along."

  "Unavailable?"

  "I said move along."

  They opened up the barricade and I drove through.

  CHAPTER 14

  I HAD AN AWFUL SENSE OF FOREBODING GOING UP IN THE elevator, but when I got to my apartment, everything was the same, almost eerily so. Angwine had fallen asleep on the couch in the same spot he'd been in when I left. The lights were on and there was tinny music drifting out of the radio. I reached over and shut it off, and took my drink from the shelf and brought it with me into the kitchen. The ice had melted, but I didn't care.

  I thought over my options. My fingerprints were all over the Testafer house, and I'd been cordoned coming out of the hills by the checkpoint boys. Assuming Testafer hadn't done the killing himself, he'd be coming home and raising quite a fuss any minute now. It was probably in my best interests to get hold of the Office and tell them what I knew before they came asking. If Angwine had really shaken his tail, I might pick up some much-needed points of karma by putting them onto him. It certainly couldn't hurt. It was time to cash in a few chips just to keep this game running smoothly—hell, just to keep it running at all.

  I stood in the doorway and watched Angwine snore. I felt sorry for him but I didn't feel guilty. There was nothing more I could do than what I was doing. He was the type of guy who once upon a time would have slipped between the chinks, back when the world still had chinks to slip through. The way it was now, his type didn't stand a chance. In fact, it didn't look too good for my type either. But I didn't have any regrets. I turned off the lights on Angwine and brought my drink into the bedroom.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and called the Office and asked for Morgenlander. The girl at the other end said he wasn't in the building. I asked for Catherine Teleprompter and got the same answer. When I told her I wanted to report a murder, she informed me that she would be tracing the call. I said I was surprised she hadn't already, and she didn't say anything at all, just switched me to another line. The voice on duty was a male inquisitor voice with a weary, skeptical air.

  "You want to report a murder," he intoned.

  "That's right. An evolved sheep was killed. I found the body."

  "That's not a murder," he said. "What's your name?"

  "Private Inquisitor Metcalf. I'm working on the Stanhunt killing, and I think the two are probably connected."

  "Where did this happen?"

  "In a private house in El Cerrito." I recited the address.

  "Where are you now?"

  "At home."

  There was a minute while the inquisitor played with his monitor. I could hear his fingers tapping.

  "Conrad Metcalf," he said.

  "That's right."

  "You'd better come in, Metcalf. No, sit tight, and I'll send a man over. Don't leave your apartment. We'll come to you."

  "Sounds nice, but I've got other plans. Thanks anyway."

  "I'm suspending your license," he said. "Stay in your apartment."

  "Sorry. We'll have to make it some other time. Tell Morgenlander he can leave a message on my home number."

  I put the squawking receiver back on the hook and finished my drink. I was playing it existential, and maybe a bit stupid, but it was the only way I knew how to play it. The Office was about to throw a blanket over the case, and I had to have that conversation with Phoneblum before they did.

  Phoneblum had to be the key. He had his leash on Pansy Greenleaf, Dr. Testafer, the kangaroo, and both of the Stanhunts, including the deceased. It looked like he might have one on Inquisitor Kornfeld as well. He'd flinched when I mentioned Morgenlander—the rogue brass that had Kornfeld and Teleprompter and probably the rest of the Office all jumpy.

  I wished I knew more. How the sheep's murder fit in, or the blueprints for animal barracks on Cranberry Street. What Maynard Stanhunt had been doing in that fleabag motel. And what the high and mighty Stanhunts had to do anyway with the pale little junkie Pansy Greenleaf. I would have liked to believe Orton Angwine's theory, that Dr. Stanhunt had been having an affair with Pansy,
but I couldn't do it.

  No, I couldn't afford to wait around here for the inquisitors to arrive. I had business elsewhere, even if I didn't really know what that business was. There was only one problem: what to do with Angwine. If I left him sleeping in the apartment, the only thing missing would be wrapping paper and a bow.

  I put my glass in the sink. Angwine was still snoring in the dark. I went over and nudged his leg with my shoe. His eyes flickered open. "I'm going out," I said. "The door locks by itself. I wouldn't stay here if I were you."

  I took a hat from the closet, put my jacket back on, and unlocked the drawer with the gun in it I didn't want to complicate things for the boys when they went through the apartment As I went out the door, Angwine was sitting up on the couch with an astonished look on his face, as if he'd been interrupted in the middle of a nice, believable dream.

  I'd crossed the street to my car when the Office van pulled up in front of the building. I ducked behind my car and watched through the windows as they got out and marched up into the foyer, all clustered together like a school of predatory fish. When they were safely inside, I got into my car and started the engine, my hand shaking on the safety brake. I couldn't afford to wait around and see what happened. It was pretty predictable, anyway. I drove around the block and pulled over until the shaking stopped.

  In a way my work would be easier with Angwine out of my hair. I'd been overextending myself to protect him, losing my objectivity. Now I could operate as a free agent, protecting nothing but my own interests. It suited me better If I could untwist the truth from the untruth in the process, then maybe Angwine would get his money's worth. If not—well, I would have tried, and besides, it wasn't really his money in the first place. I felt okay.

  I felt like an absolute bastard.

  CHAPTER 15

  IT WAS SIX-THIRTY. I DROVE INTO OAKLAND, PARKED ON A quiet side street, and walked down to the avenue. The makery was the only storefront open on the street, and its neon, lights were reflected in the puddles of rain and on the windows of the closed shops. There was a stiff wind rushing off the bay towards a collision with the hills, and it bit at my ears and nose as I went up the steps to the makery entrance. An electronic bell sounded as I opened the door. I lowered my collar and walked up to the counter.

  "I'll be right with you," said the maker, squinting into his monitor, his lined face and wire-rimmed glasses bathed in green. He was maybe forty-five, but his hairline had backed away to leave him a high, wrinkled forehead, and the hair at his ears was as white as the powder lying in careful little piles on his lab table. He copied a chemical formula onto a pad at his left without looking away from the screen, then punched up another set of names and recipes and muttered to himself about what he saw. I just stood and watched.

  "Name," he said, turning to me. His eyes, magnified in the lenses, worked over me quickly and indifferently while he waited.

  "Conrad Metcalf," I said, and then surprised him with my blend code. I had it stuck in my head. I don't know why.

  He turned back to the keyboard and punched it in. "Acceptol," he said.

  "Mostly."

  "Don't see many blends without Forgettol nowadays," he said.

  "Never liked it—"

  "One man's—"

  "Right. Listen ... if I gave you a couple of names, could you dial up the recipes for their blends on that screen?"

  He stopped what he was doing at the keyboard and turned to stare at me blankly. "That was a question you just asked me, mister."

  I put my license on the counter and waited while he looked at it. He held his glasses with one hand and kept the other hand in the air, as if touching the thing would bring him bad luck. When he looked up again, I slipped it back into my coat pocket.

  "What about it?"

  "You know I can't do that," he said in a pinched, reproving voice. He squinted at me painfully. From my jacket I brought out one of Angwine's hundreds and tore it in half up the middle, and put it where my license had been. The maker looked at it a little more favorably than he had the license. He adjusted his glasses with a little push at the nosepiece, and then looked up at me with his hand still in the middle of his face.

  "I'd want one like that for each name," he said quietly.

  I smiled and took out another hundred and ripped it and put the same half out on the counter; The other two halves went in my pocket. "Grover Testafer," I said.

  He turned nervously to his keyboard and punched it in. "It'll take a minute," he said. "I have to search the code. He uses another makery." His fingers moved indecipherably fast on the keys, his brow furrowing into the green light, as if he were some kind of subterranean creature worshiping a phosphorescent god. A recipe appeared on the screen. "Standard," he announced. "Forgettol, Avoidol, addictol. Nothing special. Lots of Avoidol."

  "Tell me about Avoidol. I don't use it."

  He liked shoptalk. It relaxed him. "Accelerates repression, basically. And equivocation. I'll add it to your blend if you want to try it out."

  "No thanks."

  There was a sound at the door that made us both turn and look. I went quickly over and pulled. The guy on the other side had his hand on the knob, and I yanked it out of his hand.

  "Excuse me," he said.

  I took out my license and flashed it too fast for him to read. His mouth opened and worked for a second, but nothing came out.

  "We'll be closed for a few minutes," I said. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

  The guy saw I wasn't moving. He went away mumbling, and I closed the door and went back to the counter. The two ripped halves of the hundreds had disappeared from view; in their place was a fresh vial of my blend, labeled with the makery sticker and my recipe code. I slipped it into my coat pocket and said: "Okay. Forget Testafer; Try Maynard Stanhunt."

  If he recognized the name from the radio murder report yesterday, it didn't show. "This is a little more interesting," he said after the formula flashed up on his monitor. I looked over his shoulder, but the symbols didn't mean anything tome.

  "The blend is almost straight Forgettol," he said. He looked more closely. "What's funny is the stuff he's taking as a modifier." He rolled the formula off the top of the screen and studied the rest of Stanhunt's file.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I've heard this was on the way," he said, "but this is the first I've seen. He's using a time-release ingredient. It's a way of linking up doses so you don't ever come clean. Very clever, if you can handle it."

  "What if you can't?"

  He snickered. "You'd forget what you do for a living, what street you live on, your name—that sort of thing."

  "What are the advantages?"

  He looked at me quizzically. He'd caught himself running on and suddenly thought better of it. I was afraid he'd clam up completely, but he said: "I don't know what it is I'm getting myself into."

  "You're not getting yourself into anything. I'll walk out of here and you'll be two bills richer. What are the advantages of the modifier?"

  He rubbed at his forehead with pinched fingers, and I could see him swallow hard. "Your man is a doctor, or he's got a doctor helping him out. Or he's very stupid. Anytime you try to regulate Forgettol, it's a delicate balancing act. Someday they'll work it out, but they haven't yet." He smiled a funny smile. "If he's doing it right, he can eradicate whole portions of his experience with the make, then sew up the gap for a sense of continuity. That would be the point: to be busy at things you don't want ever to think about. No return of what's repressed. That's if he's doing it right, which he isn't. Because it can't be controlled like that." He looked at me angrily. "If that's all..."

  "Not quite." I dug in my hip pocket and came up with the folded hundred-dollar bill full of make scooped off Pansy Greenleaf's night table. It was a payoff and a container all in one. "Take a look at this," I said, sliding it across the counter.

  His goggle eyes darted from my face to the packet a couple of times, and then his curiosity or greed got t
he better of him, and he took it to the microscope. I leaned across the counter and watched. He glared up at me from the eyepiece of the microscope and then started flipping through a reference volume that was open on the table. He went from viewer to book to monitor, then scooped the make into a manila envelope and put it back on the counter. The hundred had vanished.

  "I wouldn't go showing that around if I were you," he said carefully.

  "What is it?"

  "Blanketrol. A controlled ingredient. Put it away."

  "What does it do?"

  The lines on his forehead doubled. "I'll tell you about Blanketrol," he said, "and then I want you to take it and go. I'll pretend I don't think you know all about it already."

  "Whatever makes you happy."

  "Blanketrol is very crude stuff," he said. "It was the original prototype for Forgettol. They withdrew it when they found out it was completely hollowing out the inner life of the test subjects. The users went on functioning, but just by rote." He pinched at the nose of his glasses again. "Think of it as the opposite of déjà vu—nothing reminds you of anything, not even of itself."

  "Lovely."

  "I'm glad you think so. Now put it away, give me my money, and get out before I call the Office."

  I looked up into his magnified eyes, and they blinked away from the contact. I took the packet and put it in my pocket. The makery sickened me suddenly, and nothing seemed lower or dirtier than this owl-eyed little germ of a maker sententiously deeming one ingredient more legitimate than another. I reached across the counter and got him by the collar before either one of us had any idea what I was doing.

  I improvised. "Keep your half of the money," I said. "And I'll keep mine. I'll need your help again before too long. If you want to call the Office, go ahead. I think we both understand why that wouldn't be such a bright idea. See you in a day or two." I pushed him away from the counter, then buttoned up my coat and went outside without giving him a chance to say anything back.