Gun, with Occasional Music

by Jonathan Lethem

  "Why don't you call Joey off, and we'll talk," I said.

  "Fuck you, flathead," said Joey. "Nobody calls me off. I call myself on or off. Nobody else."

  "Okay," I said. "Just put the gun away."

  "I think the gun is a good idea, Metcalf," said Testafer. "You're a violent man."

  "Product of my times," I said. "You know how it is."

  I rested against my car, and put my keys back in my pocket. If we were going to talk awhile, I wanted to be comfortable. It was cool out, and the air was dry. There wasn't any fog, at least not yet. I was recovering from my jolt upstairs. I wanted a line of make, but otherwise I felt okay.

  "We're looking for Celeste," said Testafer. "You'd better tell us if you know where she is."

  "She's not in there," I said, nodding at the Fickle Muse.

  Testafer was feeling his oats now, hiding behind the kangaroo's gun. "Maybe you should tell us if you've seen her today," he said. "And maybe you should explain what you were doing in there." He'd figured out a trick for asking questions without offending his own delicate sensibilities, and I guess it gave him an exhilarating sense of freedom.

  "Maybe you should tell me what you want her for," I said. "That's what I think maybe you should do."

  "She's running her mouth off," interjected the kangaroo. "She's causing trouble."

  "That doesn't sound so bad," I said. "Let her run it off. Why should that bother you?"

  The kangaroo scowled and pushed the gun out at me, like he thought that his having it meant I didn't get to ask questions.

  But he was wrong. "What are you afraid of?" I said. "Or is it Phoneblum who's afraid, and he's just got you out on the streets doing his worrying for him?"

  Just then the barkeep came out of the front door of the Fickle Muse. He had a pal along, the big pool player from the back room, to make him look small. Only he wasn't small. The two of them looked around the lot and then started towards where I stood talking to Testafer and the kangaroo. They moved well together. I had a feeling it wasn't the first time they'd fallen into formation.

  The situation was entertaining. Here Joey and Grover and I were leaning against the car having a nice quiet talk, while the two toughs from the Fickle Muse crossed the gravel, obviously gearing up to take on the lot of us. The moon was out, but Joey's gun was black and he held it low. In reality, it was four against one, but the four all thought it was two against three, and the one wasn't about to set them straight.

  Testafer looked unhappy. He didn't know whether to hide behind the kangaroo and his gun, which looked smaller and smaller all the time, or bolt for his car. He opted for the first. The barkeep brushed past him and the kangaroo both and took me by the collar. I was already conveniently pressed up against the car, so he just held me as if he'd put me there himself. The other guy hovered behind him like an extra pair of shoulders.

  "Hundred bucks is big news around here," I said. "How many ways you gonna split it?"

  The barkeep turned to his companion. "Check out tough boy here with his questions."

  "I'm inquisition," I said. I left out the part about the private license. "Ask Dr. Testafer here. He was just answering some questions about the little room upstairs. How Overholt keeps the bodies from rotting when they stub their toes."

  The barkeep turned and stared at Testafer. I put my hands over his and helped him let go of my collar. He was too busy looking and thinking about Testafer to notice.

  "I've seen you," he said. "You go around with the fat man."

  Testafer just about swallowed his tongue. He was looking even smaller than the kangaroo's gun. I'd seen the guy in his element—up on the hill, surrounded by upholstery and antique magazines and a little filigree box full of make—and this was definitely not his element. I don't know how Phoneblum convinced him to go out with the kangaroo and play errand boy, but it wasn't a happy arrangement.

  The kangaroo wasn't so far out of his milieu, but he seemed a little disconcerted anyway. He stumbled backwards in the gravel, waving his gun, not knowing where to point it. The big guy from the poolroom was squaring off against him, instinct telling him to go up against the one carrying the gun.

  It occurred to me that I was witnessing a conflict between people who all essentially worked for Phoneblum. The fact that they didn't know each other suggested that Phoneblum's position was less secure than he'd pretended, that he couldn't afford to let his cronies here at the Fickle Muse know about the trouble he was having with Celeste, and the Office, and me.

  The speculation was entertaining, but I couldn't afford to wait and see if the misunderstanding continued. I got my keys out again and began working on unlocking the car door behind my back.

  Testafer definitely didn't like the situation. He looked at the kangaroo, desperation in his eyes. "This is pointless," he said. "She's not here. Let's go."

  The kangaroo agreed. "Call these goons off, Testafer. It's you they know." He thrust the gun out, but the big guys didn't look frightened.

  "We could break thumper's head," the pool player suggested.

  "Forget the kangaroo," said the barkeep. "He's not important. Give me his gun. Then go get Overholt. I wanna consult."

  Cue Ball laughed. He and the barkeep were too big even considered separately, but together they were like halves of something you didn't want to think about. He stepped over and twisted the gun out of the kangaroo's hand. Poor Joey. He didn't know the rules. He'd brandished the gun without using it for so long that now he didn't count as having one. He looked with animal stupidity down at his empty hand, as if blaming it for failing to shoot. Cue Ball gave the gun to the barkeep, then turned back to the kangaroo. He took Joey roughly by the shoulders, if you could call them shoulders, and shoved him down onto the gravel. Then he headed back to the ban.

  Joey got up and dusted himself off. I got out one of the half hundreds in my pocket and handed it to the barkeep. "Here you go," I said. "Don't spend it all in two places." I opened the door to my can.

  Now it was the barkeep's turn to wave the gun. "Stay out of there," he said. "All three of you, get against the car."

  The kangaroo was in a trance. He and Testafer crossed between me and the barkeep, trying to obey orders, and I decided to make some trouble. I took them each by the neck and pushed them into the barkeep's gun hand, and when the dust cleared, the kangaroo and the barkeep came up wrestling for the gun. Testafer crawled away to cower behind a car. I couldn't figure out who I wanted to see win the prize, so I just leaned back against my car to watch.

  The barkeep knocked the gun to the ground, but it only seemed like a good idea, because that gave Joey the chance to get his big foot up in position between them. At this point I almost wanted to look the other way, because I knew what was about to happen, and from the look on the barkeep's face he knew it too. Time seemed to stand still as he groped for the gun—he might as well have been rubbing two wet sticks together to get the jump on a guy with a flamethrower. Before the gun was off the ground, the kangaroo delivered a series of short, fast, and devastating blows to the center of the barkeep's body. The barkeep doubled over, clutching at the kangaroo's leg for support, and collapsed when it was pulled away. He almost looked small curled up on the ground. The night covered him up like it was done with him.

  It was a pretty impressive vindication of Joey's animal lineage. I didn't want to stick around for the second act. I got into my car and put the keys in the ignition. Unfortunately Joey wasn't finished. He picked up the gun from beside the writhing figure on the ground and let off a shot that splintered the windshield in front of me. "Get out," he said raggedly.

  I took my hands off the wheel, left the motor running. "Put the gun away, Joey."

  "Fuck you, flatface." He twisted his muzzle into a sneer. "I've had enough of you. Get out."

  I sighed and got back out of the car The barkeep was motionless now on the ground, and Testafer was long gone, so it was just me and the kangaroo squaring off in the dark of the parking lot. The light
s and music of the Fickle Muse seemed far away now. Joey was breathing heavy, his eyes wide and crazed. The broken glass of my windshield was proof enough that he'd found his trigger finger.

  "Okay, Joey," I said. "It's your show. Just keep in mind if you don't hurry, you'll have company." I nodded my chin at the lights of the bar.

  I couldn't believe it. He took the bait and looked. It was the last brushstroke in the portrait of the kangaroo as rank amateur. I undipped the anti-grav pen from my shirt pocket and lobbed it gently at his face. When he turned back and caught sight of the pen in the air between us, he made a calculation of its trajectory based on a weight it didn't have, and batted at it with his free hand at about chin level. The pen soared through the air, the proverbial rising sinker, and hit him in the eye. He squeezed off a shot in the air before I landed my right fist on the underside of his jaw.

  I made contact so solid, I almost regretted it. The hand was instantly useless. I didn't have time to weep over spent knuckles, though. I put the bad hand around the back of his neck and moved in close to smash his nose with the hand that still worked. I got in about three good ones before I had to let both hands dangle, but by then Joey wasn't looking so great A dewy string of saliva stretched between his mouth and my fingers. The gun was still in his paw, but when I jostled it with my knee, he didn't even look to see where it fell. I'd learned from the last encounter that it was a waste of time trying to get a kangaroo to fall down. I kicked the gun under a car, grabbed my pen, and left him there swaying on his big feet.

  The two shots brought Cue Ball and some other guys tumbling back out of the Fickle Muse. I took this as a hint to get in my car. My hands didn't work all that well on the steering wheel, but I managed to put the car in reverse and peel out of the space just as the first guy jogged up to my window. I screwed the wheels around to face the exit to the street, and caught one last glimpse of the scene in my rearview as I drove away. The barkeep was up on one knee. Someone else was digging under a car for the gun. I could even make out Testafer's pink face hovering between two cars. They looked like a group of white dolls or puppets acting out some idiotic farce in the middle of a black night which then swallowed them whole. I pressed the gas pedal to the floor and squealed away from there before somebody got hold of the gun and started taking potshots at me again.

  A few miles away I pulled over into a driveway and turned off my lights. Nobody was following me. I folded my hands together, which took some doing, and flexed them until the knuckles cracked back more or less into their original positions. The pain almost had me screaming. When I felt ready to use my fingers again, I broke up some make on the dashboard mirror. There was a bleak interval while I waited for the drug to hit my bloodstream, and then the pain went away. I waited another few minutes for my heart to stop hammering, and then drove down the hill to my office.

  CHAPTER 25

  I WAS THROUGH THE REVOLVING DOORS IN THE LOBBY OF my building when Catherine Teleprompter came out of the shadows and took my arm. Her hair was loose again—I mention this because it was the first thing I noticed. She pulled me into the darkness against the wall of the lobby, a finger raised to her lips. I smiled and put up a finger to match hers. My hands felt better if they were elevated, anyway. She put her mouth close to my ear and started whispering. I had trouble concentrating on anything but the heat of her breath against my face.

  "They're upstairs," she was saying.

  "Then they must want to see me," I whispered back.

  "Kornfeld's taken your file off the computer," she said. "I don't know what it means."

  I turned so she could see me smile in the dim light of the lobby. "In my day," I said, "that was the end of the line." I laughed without making any noise. "But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. My day came and went a long time ago."

  She didn't say anything. She still hadn't let go of my arm. I certainly wasn't taking it away from her. I just hoped she wouldn't try to hold my hand.

  "I don't want you to go upstairs," she said finally.

  "Okay," I said. "But I want to talk to you. That is, if you feel you can afford to be having the conversation. Last time you weren't so sure."

  The weight of the enormous scrolled ceiling of the lobby seemed to press down on us as we huddled in the corner. The building was quiet, but I could sense Kornfeld, or whoever it was, waiting in my office. In fact, I could sense them across town too, waiting in the living room of my apartment. That time had come. I would have liked to go somewhere with Catherine Teleprompter, but there wasn't much of anywhere to go.

  So I suggested we sit in my car.

  "Let's make it mine," she said. "I can listen to Kornfeld on the radio."

  I told her it sounded okay and followed her out to her car. She sat behind the wheel and fiddled with the Office radio until it came in low and clear. The voice of the dispatcher droned on ceaselessly, spewing codes and coordinates, stirring up old memories in me of nights out cruising, alone or with a partner, listening to the voices on the radio, knowing and caring what they meant. I didn't anymore. I knew I could sit in her car for as long as I liked and not care once. Unless maybe they mentioned my name, and even then only maybe.

  I kept my foot on the passenger door so the overhead light would stay on, but I didn't look at Catherine. I was a million miles away. On my drive from the hill the bullet-cracked glass of my windshield had fragmented my reflection into a thousand pieces. Now, in Catherine's car, I was one piece again—one piece stretched out in the warped Plexiglas of the Office vehicle, until I looked like the fat man at the sideshow. Or Phoneblum.

  "Tell me what you think," I said softly, after a little time had passed.

  "I think it could blow over in a few days," she said. "But I wouldn't be you around here until then. I'd be somewhere else or I'd be someone else. Kornfeld doesn't like you."

  "I figured that out."

  "There's no point in going on, you know. Angwine is gone. Morgenlander was sent away. The case is closed."

  "The case is closed. It's so easy to say. The inquisitor's mantra: the case is closed, the case is closed."

  She almost laughed. "How'd you last a day in the Office?"

  "One of us has changed since then. Me or the Office. I haven't figured out which."

  "I think it was you," she said.

  I turned and looked at her. She was sitting sideways behind the steering wheel, and I could see she'd been watching me the whole time. Once I turned, I had no choice but to look into her eyes. I took my foot out of the door and let the light go off, solving the problem for the moment. I wasn't making a decision about eye contact between us, I was putting it off.

  "You went around with Kornfeld," I said. "You must know a certain amount about the case."

  My eyes were getting used to the darkness. Street light leaked through the windows, outlining her neck and jaw against the black backdrop of her hair. I watched her throat bob as she considered an answer, but nothing came from her mouth. Except, I imagined, the sweet, warm mist I'd felt on my ear a few minutes ago. '

  I sighed. "Okay, Catherine. Think of it like this, if it doesn't make you laugh too much. Think of me as the conscience of the Office, the tiny vagrant molecule of conscience that got loose and won't stop, even when the case is closed, even after it's become more than a little dangerous. I'm your big chance, Catherine. Get it off your chest. Tell me what you know about the case. Then you can forget it, even forget you told me what you knew. It'll help you sleep."

  We were quiet again. I could make out the little wrinkles in her brow, and the tension around her mouth. It was a speech I'd delivered before, and maybe even believed in. Either way, it seemed my words had actually touched something in hen.

  When she spoke again, her voice was deeper, less breathy, like she was talking out of hypnosis, out of some truer self. "I don't mind if you ask me questions," she said. "Find out what you need to know."

  I looked, but her eyes were hard. It could be I was advancing my case at the expen
se of what was in the air between us.

  "Okay," I said. "First of all, what's the case against Angwine? What was in the letter they found?"

  "I only saw the letter once. I wasn't on this case until yesterday, and I read through a lot of material to try and catch up. My impression is that Angwine wanted money, for him and his sister. He got self-righteous, accused Stanhunt of moral indiscretions. Angwine saw himself as representing the interests of his sister and her baby against Stanhunt, and when Celeste moved into the house, he took up her grievances too. He didn't approve of Stanhunt's heavy drug use, and he accused him of seeing a woman on the sly."

  "I was working for Stanhunt. He wasn't having an affair. He wanted Celeste back."

  "We're pretty sure he was meeting a woman in the Bayview Motel."

  I shook my head. "He went there to spy on Celeste. She was having the affair. You can talk to another P.I. named Walter Surface. He even saw the boyfriend once, he says. Maynard Stanhunt took a room to keep an eye on her. A jealous confrontation—that's a better motive than anything I've heard said against Angwine."

  She sighed. "Listen. All I can do is tell you our case. Your material doesn't fit."

  "What's your case? I still don't get it."

  "Angwine threatened in the letter that he'd follow Stanhunt. Made it clear he didn't approve of the affair, whoever the woman was. So Angwine tails Stanhunt to the Bayview and finds out that the woman in question is his sister. She's been hiding it from him. But it happened once before, which is how she got the child, and maybe the flame never went out. Angwine goes out of his head and kills Stanhunt. It accounts for everything, including Pansy's reluctance to shield her brother."

  I have to admit it stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the first coherent explanation I'd heard, and that included any I'd cobbled together in my head. I would have liked to believe it, except I was getting pretty attached to my idea that Celeste, not Pansy, was the mother of the babyhead. Anyway, Angwine was innocent. He hadn't played it completely straight with me, but he hadn't done the murder. I'd stake my life on it. Hell, I already had.