"Just a minute. Why do you think I permitted you to question me?"
"You tell me."
"I like you. I believe your intentions are honorable. It pleases me to save you trouble. Drop the case now and I'll see to it that your missing karma is restored. There's no future in this inquisition, Mr. Metcalf. No future at all."
"You like to mix up your threats with your enticements, Phoneblum."
"I haven't threatened anyone. I simply want to repair the damage that's already been done."
"The damage to Angwine is on the verge of becoming unrepairable. Nobody will maintain his body. He'll get shuffled into some cut-rate ice chest and disappear forever."
Phoneblum smiled in a complicated way. It gave me the feeling I was touching on something again, but I didn't know what, and Phoneblum wasn't about to set me straight.
"You have a very cynical view of our penal system, Mr. Metcalf," he said softly. "Cynical, yet somewhat naive. What makes you think unsponsored bodies necessarily remain frozen?"
"You mean the slave camps," I said, and shuddered. I hoped it didn't show. I got the feeling that Phoneblum was subtly boasting, that he just couldn't help showing off.
"Yes."
"I've heard that rumor," I said, regaining my poise. "Personally I don't see much difference between the big freeze and crypto-life with a slavebox on your skull. But if I see Angwine again, I'll ask him which he prefers and let you know—maybe you can arrange something."
I was ready to leave, and I started leaving. I was over to the elevator before I realized there was a keyhole where the button should have been.
"It's rude of you to suggest I could arrange such a thing," said Phoneblum, ever coy. But when I turned around, I saw he wasn't smiling anymore. "But then, I'm learning to expect that of you. You're rude generally."
"Thanks."
"Now you want to leave."
"That's right."
"I'd like to hear you say you'll leave the case alone."
"I'd like to be able to say it."
Phoneblum frowned. He picked up the phone on the desk and pressed a single button. "Yes," he said immediately. "Send Joey downstairs, Mr. Rose. Our visitor is ready to leave."
He put down the phone. "Please—have another drink while you wait."
I didn't get a chance to refuse his offer. The elevator door opened behind me, and before I could turn, something dull and heavy smashed itself into the back of my neck. I had long enough to think: the kangaroo had found his chance. Then the floor peeled up in a curl to embrace the sides of my head, and the weave of the carpet spiraled up to tickle the inside of my nose. It was a very interesting sensation.
CHAPTER 17
I CAME TO IN MY CAR. I COULD THANK THEM FOR THAT. They put my keys back in the wrong pocket, so I knew they'd gone through my clothes, but otherwise it was pretty much as if I'd fallen asleep in the car on a stakeout—except for the pulse of pain in my neck and the ringing in my ears.
I was alone. I toned my head slowly, experimenting with my neck, and looked out the passenger window. The holographic house stood still and dark and peaceful, looking very much the same as when I'd first approached it. I'd learned a few of its secrets since then, but they didn't show on the house. With a little luck the world could end, and that house would still be projected onto the crest of the hill, still and dark and peaceful. It was almost comforting.
I looked at my watch. It was ten. I'd spent two hours with Phoneblum, and maybe half an hour out cold in my car. I was hungry and I needed a line of make, and after that I might need a drink—I wasn't sure yet. I needed to sort out what I'd learned from Phoneblum and figure out where it left me. The big man had his fingers all over the case, but I didn't see any clear-cut culpability for the murders, not yet.
All I knew was that I had to go back two and a half years, to when Celeste met Maynard Stanhunt, and Pansy Greenleaf acquired her baby and her house. What happened then, whatever it was, set the stage for everything that followed.
I'd also grown more than a little curious about the exact nature of Phoneblum's racket. If he supplied Pansy with her illegal Blanketrol, it would explain one of the key lines of influence. And if he really had as much sway with the Office as he suggested, I needed to know—to protect myself.
Other, more basic questions remained unanswered. What had Maynard Stanhunt been doing in that motel room? I could have laughed at myself, but I wasn't in a laughing mood.
I took a minute to rub the back of my neck, then started the car and drove, aimlessly, down into the flats. I had a feeling the Office would be waiting for me when I got home, and I wasn't quite ready to face them. They would want answers I didn't have, to questions I would rather ask than be asked. I'd left them Angwine gift-wrapped, but I had a feeling it wasn't as easy as that.
There was some kind of factionalism going on between Morgenlander and Phoneblum and their separate spheres of influence, and until I understood how things had shaken out, it was best to stay out of the Office's hands. If I knew the Office machinery, they'd seize on the killing of the sheep as the last nail in Angwine's coffin—but I had to wait until the news came out tomorrow morning and made it official. A closed case would be harder to solve, but I'd step on fewer toes trying.
Everything pointed towards spending some time in my office. I could order a sandwich and lay out some lines and wait for the stakeout in my apartment to get tired and go home. If the inquisitors wanted me, they could find me:—I wouldn't be hiding, just cooling my heels. I liked the place at night; cool, dark, and no dentist. Maybe I'd get some thinking done.
I guess I should learn that it's never that simple. When I left the elevator, I smelled perfume, and it got stronger as I went down the hallway to my office. There wasn't anybody in the corridor, but the door to the waiting room was unlocked, and inside, sitting cross-legged on the couch, was Celeste Stanhunt. I must have surprised her, because she quickly swung her legs off the couch and arranged her skirt down over her knees. It didn't matter. I don't possess an eidetic memory, but I had a picture of her knees—and the creamy inches of skin above them—burned into my consciousness from the brief flash as I walked in. I could draw on that for reference if I needed to.
"Metcalf," she said, and it sounded like she'd been practicing while she waited.
"How'd you get in?"
"I came earlier—"
"The dentist."
"Yes. Don't be angry."
"I'm not angry," I said, and I crossed the room and unlocked the door to my inner office. "I'm tired and hungry and my head hurts. I'm tired of talking."
She followed me in. "Pansy said you'd been to the house."
"That's right. I was working."
I sat down behind the desk and wiped at the wooden surface with my forearm, took out the vial of new make, and sprinkled a healthy portion of it onto the desktop. I guess Celeste figured out that for the moment she wasn't the primary focus of my attention. She sat quietly in the chair opposite the desk and waited while I snorted up some lines.
"You hungry?" I asked.
She shook her head as if the question frightened her. I called downstairs and ordered a pizza. I had to wheedle a bit to get them to put mushrooms on a small, but they finally came around. I put down the phone and leaned back in my chair and savored the feel of the make flushing through my system. Like looking at the world through a rose-colored bloodstream, or something. Celeste arranged herself in the seat and ended up showing knee again, which quickly refocused my attention.
"Where were you when I came by the house?" I asked.
"You ask too many questions. It makes me nervous."
"Try answering one. I hear it helps."
She blinked at me. "I—Grover Testafer called me. We met for lunch."
"What for?"
"He wanted to talk about the practice—the settlement of Maynard's share. He wanted to talk about Pansy's brother, and about you—"
"Do you stand to benefit from Maynard's death?"
/> She looked at me sharply, and I got a momentary glimpse of the tough girl who confronted me the first time, on Cranberry Street. Then she smoothed her feathers back down and her voice came out pretty. "Not really. I'll probably turn it over to a lawyer to handle. I don't want anything to do with it. Maynard had a substantial income but very few assets..."
"You sound like you know what you're talking about."
"I didn't until this afternoon, when Grover filled me in."
I tried to put the chronology together Grover had been home waving an electric gun at me at eleven in the morning—and by the time I got to Cranberry Street, Pansy Greenleaf was already alone in the house nodding out on Blanketrol.
That meant Testafer could claim Celeste as an alibi for the killing of the sheep. It also meant Celeste had been out somewhere, doing something else, before her lunch date with Testafer.
My train of thought was interrupted by a knock at the door. I said it was open, and a human pizza-boy came in with the white cardboard slab and laid it on the desk. He was gangly and pimpled and kept glancing furtively at Celeste Stanhunt while I dug in my pocket for something smaller than Angwine's hundreds. I paid and tipped him, and he left. The pizza was hot, but it was the second time around for the crust, and the mushrooms weren't embedded in the cheese, just thrown on top. I took a couple of bites off the end of a slice, then fit it back into its place in the pie, unable to sustain my interest.
"What's next for you?" I asked. "The case is closed."
"I don't know how to do this," she said. "I ... I want to hire you."
"In connection with what?"
"I don't think Pansy's brother killed Maynard. I'm frightened." She stretched the last word out so it included all sorts of cozy erotic promises. "I need your protection."
"Have you told the Office?"
"I don't understand."
"Angwine's been set up from just about every angle. If you told the Office you didn't think he was guilty, it might pull some weight. You're the wife."
"I'm the widow." She smiled, but it wasn't coy.
"The widow," I repeated. "And you need protection. Who from?"
"From whoever killed Maynard. You're the only one who seems interested in finding out."
"I might be losing interest. The returns are diminishing." I was playing hard to get. I was interested in her money and possibly more, and she knew it as well as I did.
She put the quaver back in her voice—it was obviously available when she needed it. "If you won't help..."
"First you have to level with me, tell me everything. Answer my questions. Think of it as an audition. If you pass, we'll talk terms."
"I've told you everything I know."
"I'll try not to laugh at that. Just answer my questions. What did Pansy Greenleaf do to get rewarded with the house on Cranberry Street?"
Celeste blinked at me, but I wouldn't blink back She swallowed hard and said: "She was working for Danny Phoneblum. He bought the house. He likes to take care of people."
"What did she do for him?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Does he supply her with drugs?"
"I don't mean to appear stupid, Mr. Metcalf, but I thought drugs were free. You get them at the makery."
"Not the kind Pansy uses. Come on, Celeste. She leaves the needles lying out."
This time she stared without blinking, and her voice was completely lacking in affect. "He gives them to her. He'd kill me if he knew I told you that."
"I already pretty much knew."
"With Danny it doesn't matter. Just the principle of my telling you something—"
"Is that where his money comes from?"
"I—I don't know that much about Danny's business. It's better not to."
I picked a mushroom off the top of the pizza and put it in my mouth. "Let's change the subject. You married Stanhunt and Phoneblum bought Pansy the house and Dr. Testafer retired from his practice all at the same time. What happened two and a half years ago?"
She thought about it. "When Maynard and I made the decision to stay and get married, Grover decided he could retire and turn over the practice—he'd wanted to for some time. Maynard wouldn't say yes or no until he settled down, with me."
"What about Pansy?"
"You're making too much of the coincidence. There's no connection." She said it straight, but she looked uncomfortable.
"What did you do before you met Maynard?"
"I ... I was on the East Coast."
"What's it like there?"
"Excuse me?"
"I said what's it like there? You don't have to say if you can't think of anything."
She looked up wonderingly. I got up out of my seat and went to the door and held it open. "Go home, Celeste. You're lying through your teeth. It's a waste of my time."
She stood up, but it wasn't to leave. She applied herself to the front of my body like a full-length decal, seeking points of pressure all the way up and down, and working them until they responded. Her mouth drove into mine, and her scent filled my nostrils. She wrapped her arms around my neck and stood up on her toes to nuzzle at my face, making the most of the friction between our bodies as she rose. There were two or three layers of cloth between us, but I swear I felt her nipples grazing my ribs to rise and burn against my chest. My hands came out of my pocket and off the doorknob and went around the back of her to grip her snug buttocks and hoist her thighs even higher against my own, to bring her tongue even farther down my throat.
I felt something hard between our stomachs, like a sausage or screwdriver trapped absurdly between our bodies, and for a brief moment I thought she was carrying a gun. Then I realized it was my penis, insensate but still physically present and fully aroused. All I felt was the usual feminine tickle, like a meshing of soft, long-inactive gears. I was probably capable of making love to her if I wanted to, but I wouldn't be feeling what she would think I was feeling. The contemplation of it must have stopped me in my tracks, because she rolled her tongue back in and stepped away to look at me quizzically.
"Conrad..."
I didn't say anything. The kiss had affected me more than I wanted to admit. It had sent me spinning back to a time that was gone, when someone completely different wore my hat and coat and name. Celeste had filled me with desire, but it wasn't really Celeste I wanted. With Celeste I wouldn't recapture the thing I needed. It might be beyond recapture, or it might not, but Celeste wasn't the one.
She could only reawaken the frustrations, the anger. For Celeste, I knew as surely as our hips had ground together, danger was the intoxicant, and if there wasn't danger there would have to be something else, some other malign aphrodisiac. I wanted to hit her as much as I wanted to fuck her, and she probably wanted to be hit as much as she wanted anything.
So I hit her. I was certainly more equipped to do that than the other thing. I backhanded her across the teeth the way I'd been hit so many times, and she stumbled backwards in panic until she fell into the dusty chair in the corner. I went back to my desk and sat down and held my head in my hands.
After a minute she got up and came to the desk I thought she was going to hit me, but she pulled out some money instead and threw it in front of me. I looked between my fingers. It was two thousand dollars, in four bills.
"That was good," she said. "I understand now. You're tough. You'll protect me, I know you will."
"I'm not tough," I said. "You don't understand."
"Take the money."
"I'm not for hire," I said. "I'm still working out the remainder of Angwine's fee. Until then I'm booked up."
She didn't say anything. I opened up my drawer and got out the cigarettes, put one in my mouth and offered her the pack. She refused. I lit mine and took a big drag. The building around us was quiet, deathly quiet, and outside my window the night was like a dark nullification of the existence of the city. But underneath night's skirts the city lived on. Disconnected creatures passed through the blackness, towards solitary destination
s, lonely hotel rooms, appointments with death. Nobody ever stopped the creatures to ask them where they were going—no one wanted to know. No one but me, the creature who asked questions, the lowest creature of them all. I was stupid enough to think there was something wrong with the silence that had fallen like a gloved hand onto the bare throat of the city.
I stubbed put the butt and looked back up at Celeste. She was standing in front of the desk with a faded expression on her face, her hands pressed together over her heart like a schoolgirl making a promise. When she realized I was looking up, her eyes focused again and her lips moved together soundlessly.
"What are you afraid of?" I asked again.
She looked at me with wide eyes, and for a moment the mask fell and she was naked and honest, and for all of that moment I wanted to hold her and kiss her again, but then it was gone, vanished, replaced by the version that was hard and cynical.
"I'm not afraid of anything," she sneered.
"I see."
She scooped the money off the desk and curled it back into her pocket. "I don't know why I came here," she said.
"I guess that makes two of us."
"We'll never be two of anything." She knew it was a good enough line to leave on, and she turned to the door. I didn't see any reason to stop her. She shut the door firmly behind her, and I listened as her footsteps trickled to silence in the corridor.
I went back to my pizza, but the cheese had clotted. I picked off a few more mushrooms, turned off the light, and went down to my car.
CHAPTER 18
INQUISITORS KORNFELD AND TELEPROMPTER WERE WAITing for me at my apartment. I looked around for Morgenlander but he wasn't there. The apartment looked okay—if they'd gone through things, they'd done it gently—and Angwine was gone, all trace of him removed. The inquisitors had left depressions in the couch where they'd been sitting, but when I opened the door, they were on their feet. The depressions weren't so close together that I had to feel left out of something; if Kornfeld and Teleprompter tussled, they didn't do it on company time, or at least not on a stakeout. I would have preferred to think Catherine Teleprompter kept clear of the Office clowns, but it really wasn't any of my business.
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