Gun, with Occasional Music

by Jonathan Lethem

  "Okay," I said. "I can take a hint. Thanks for the drink." I polished off what was left in my glass.

  "Don't take it too hard," he said. "Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. You'll learn the rules."

  "I'll have my lips removed as soon as I learn a way to whistle out my asshole."

  "That's the idea."

  I guess I was making him happy. He'd set out to save me some trouble, and I was acting like I'd gotten the message. I didn't know whether or not to tell him the bad news—that a casual remark he'd dropped a moment ago triggered an insight, which made the whole case, six years dead or not, seem tantalizingly close to a solution. I might not have a license, but that wouldn't stop me from finishing what I'd started.

  I was pretty sure the defeated old ape across the table from me didn't want to hear it. But the other Surface, the grizzled veteran private inquisitor I'd known six years or two days ago, might feel a different way about it, might like to think I was still on the job.

  I didn't think about it long. The Surface who would have liked to know was six years gone. I was going to have to start making the adjustment. I got up and put on my coat.

  "Don't take it too hard, Metcalf," said Surface again.

  "Sure," I said. I wanted to get out of there, on the chance that what he had might be contagious. Besides, sitting still was making me nervous. I was thinking about the make in my pocket, and my hands were trembling.

  I didn't tell Surface to stay in touch, or take care, or anything like that. I thought he'd appreciate me keeping my mouth shut, so I just turned around and put my hand up when I got to the door. He nodded at me, and I went out and downstairs to the street. The sun was in the afternoon half of the sky now, and my stomach was beginning to chew on itself. It was about a ten-block walk to a place where I used to like to get a sandwich. Maybe it was still there. I started walking.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE PLACE I HAD IN MIND WAS GONE, BUT THERE WAS another one just like it down the block. Apparently people still ate sandwiches. I broke the inquisitor's fifty-dollar bill on a ten-dollar heap of bread and mayonnaise and a three-dollar cup of soda, and when the cash register opened up for my money, it performed a little burst of orchestral music that lasted until the drawer was shut again. The guy behind the counter smiled like it was the most natural thing in the world. I wanted to smile back, but the smile wouldn't come.

  "I suppose your jukebox makes change," I said.

  The guy frowned like he didn't understand. He took a little mechanical box out of his pocket and spoke into a microphone grille on the side of it. "That thing about the jukebox, just now," he said.

  "Just a joke," said a voice from the box.

  "Oh, yeah," the guy said, and he looked at me and laughed.

  I wanted him to be kidding, but he wasn't. I decided it must have been what Surface meant about people talking into their sleeves, and it made me shudder. I took the sandwich to a table in the back, but my appetite was gone. I ate it anyway. When I was done, I took the cup and the wrapper and put them in the can by the door. It rewarded me with a miniature flourish of trumpets, but this time I didn't say anything. I went outside instead and spent a quiet minute on the sidewalk putting the incident carefully out of my mind. My hands were trembling, so I put them in my pockets.

  The next step, as I saw it, was to acquire some kind of housing and some kind of transportation, and in my situation that meant only one thing. You can sleep in a car, but you can't drive a room in a flophouse. I located a rental agency and forked over the hundred-dollar bill to a fat guy in a lawn chair as the deposit on a weather-beaten dutiframe with half a tank of gas. I made sure to flash the stuff that looked like a pocketful of hundreds when I handed him the intact bill.

  "I need your card," he grunted.

  It was new to me to hand it over to anyone but an inquisitor, but I remembered what Surface said about keeping my mouth shut and learning the rules, and took it out. I had the funny idea he was going to bill me points, but he just looked it over and wrote down the serial number, then handed it back. I looked at the new card for the first time. It had my name on it but it didn't feel like mine. It was too clean. Mine had the pawprints of a thousand chumps all over it, and I missed it.

  That done, the guy let me sign a few forms and drive the wreck away. The hundred was my last real money, which left me with the car, the half tank of gas, and the clothes I was wearing. Plus the packet of make if I wanted to do some fast forgetting. It was looking better and better.

  I drove the car up into the hills until I found a view I liked. Then I got out and looked at it. There was a wind coming up off the bay, and it brought with it a smell of salt. It made me think of the ocean, and I entertained a brief fantasy of taking the car and driving down the peninsula to find a beach where I could throw my make and the stuff that looked like money and maybe even my seventy-five points of karma into the surf and then stretch out on the sand and wait to see what happened. I played with it the way you can when you know you'll never do it. Then I started thinking about the case again.

  I got back in the car and drove to the house on Cranberry Street. I didn't have any particular reason—I just wanted to. The case had started there, with me hired to peer in the windows at Celeste, and maybe I had the idea it would end there too. For all I knew the place was torn down by now, but I was willing to chance a little of my gasoline to find out.

  The house was there. I can't say if I was glad or not. I parked the car and walked around the back, just for the sake of nostalgia. The lot in the backyard was still empty; whoever had the blueprints drawn up six years ago had changed his mind about spending the money. I walked most of the way around the house, but didn't bother to look in the windows. Nothing on the outside was any different.

  Encouraged, I went up to the front and rang the bell. The wait was long enough that I was turning away when the door opened. It was Pansy Greenleaf, or Patricia Angwine. I didn't know which name was righter. She looked considerably more than six years older, but I recognized her immediately. She didn't recognize me. I hadn't aged a day—well, maybe a day—but she stood blinking in the sunlight, drawing a blank.

  "My name is Conrad Metcalf," I said.

  The name didn't make any more of an impression than my face had. I waited, but she just stared.

  "I want to talk to you," I said.

  "Oh," she said. "Come in. I'll consult my memory."

  She led me through the foyer. The house wasn't kept up the way it had been or could have been, but when I walked into the living room to face the sun through that big bay window, it didn't matter. The architect had designed the room to make you feel small and out of place, and it worked. Pansy still crept through the house like a burglar, and by now she'd lived here at least eight years, so I knew it worked oh her too. She brought me in, pointed to a seat on the couch, and stood for a minute studying my features, knitting her brow in a parody of thought.

  "I'll be right back," she said. Her voice was light. She looked twenty years older, yet the pall of guilt and sorrow she had carried with her everywhere before seemed completely lifted.

  I sat back on the couch and waited while she went into the kitchen. As far as I could tell we were alone in the house. The spot where I was sitting was warm, and spread out on the table in front of me was the last of what looked to have been a bunch of lines of make, and a razor and a straw. I didn't have to guess what Pansy had been doing when I rang, the bell. The only thing I felt was a vague jealousy.

  When she came back, she sat down across from me and put what looked like a pocket calculator with a microphone on the table between us.

  "Conrad Metcalf," she said into the microphone.

  I almost responded, but I was cut off by the sound of her own voice coming out of the device on the table. "I'm sorry," the voice said. "You don't remember that."

  She looked up at me and smiled, puzzled. I tried not to stare like too much of an idiot. "I don't recognize your name," she said. "Perhaps y
ou should check your memory. This could be the wrong house."

  I thought fast. "You got my name wrong," I said. "Maynard Stanhunt. Try it again."

  "Oh," she said, chagrined. She depressed a button on the microphone and said the new name.

  "Maynard Stanhunt," repeated the machine. "That nice doctor. He and Celeste were so nice to you, before. They've been away."

  "You're that nice doctor," she said guilelessly, as if the words hadn't been spoken in her voice just seconds ago by the thing on the table. "It's been such a long time. It's nice to see you."

  I was dumbfounded, but I worked double time to cover it up. "Yes," I said. "It's nice to be back"

  "Well," she said. "I'm so glad."

  "That's nice," I said. The word was like an infection. "It's nice to be glad."

  "Yes," she said.

  "I want to ask you a few questions," I said.

  "Oh," she said again. "Questions."

  I guess her hand was on the button, because the thing on the table said: "Only if it's completely necessary."

  "It's completely necessary," I said before she got a chance to repeat it.

  She looked in confusion at the machine and then up at me. She was unsettled by my responding to the recorded voice. I guess it was impolite to admit that it was there.

  "Oh," she said. "I suppose it's all right. If it's completely necessary."

  "Tell me how you can afford to keep the house," I said.

  She knit her brow like a housewife whose cake has fallen in the oven. "The money for the house," she said into the mike.

  "Joey gives it to you," came her voice right back.

  "Joey gives me the money," she said. "He's so nice to me."

  "Joey," I repeated. "What happened to Danny?"

  "Danny," she said to the machine.

  The thing said in her voice: "Danny Phoneblum. He's so big and fat. He used to be your best friend, practically. He got tired and went to live in the rest home. He's very good to Joey. Treats him like the son he never had. A whiskey and soda with just a twist of lemon, that's what he likes."

  "I guess I didn't understand the question," said Pansy haplessly.

  I was beginning to get it. Memory was permissible when it was externalized, and rigorously edited. That left you with more room in your head for the latest pop tune—which was sure to be coming out of the nearest water fountain or cigarette machine.

  "Forget it," I said. "Tell me who got pinned with the rap for Celeste's murder."

  "Celeste's murder," echoed Pansy.

  "Celeste went away for a while," replied the voice.

  "Celeste went away," said Pansy. "That's not the same as being murdered."

  "No," I admitted. "It's not the same."

  "You must have made a mistake," she said. "Consult your memory."

  "It's okay," I said. "I made a mistake. Tell me about your brother. Is he out of the freezer?"

  "My brother," she said.

  "You don't remember your brother," said her memory.

  She looked at me and shrugged.

  "Orton Angwine," I said.

  "Orton Angwine," she said.

  "The name just doesn't mean anything to you," said her memory.

  "The name just doesn't mean anything to me," she said. "I'm sorry."

  "No problem," I said. I was getting tired of the conversation. The ratio of redundancy to information was a little on the high side. I'd been playing with the idea that it might be the memory machine and not Pansy herself that I ought to interrogate. Now I changed my mind. The memory had too many gaps in it. Not as many as Pansy, but too many.

  "You're so full of funny questions, Dr. Stanhunt," said Pansy. "I wish I understood."

  "I'm sorry, Pansy. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't completely necessary."

  "You ought to use a memory."

  "I have the new kind of memory," I said. "It's a cranial implant. You don't have to speak out loud. You just think, and it talks to you in a quiet little voice in your head."

  "Oh," she said. She thought about that for a minute. "It sounds very convenient."

  "It's great," I said. "And I really appreciate your helping me fill in a few blank spots here and there. I've been away, and I guess I've got some catching up to do."

  "You and Celeste," she said brightly. "You've been on a trip."

  "That's right. Now tell me about Dr. Testafer. Do you remember him?"

  "Dr. Testafer," she said into the mike.

  "Old Dr. Testafer," said the memory. It sounded like the beginning of a nursery rhyme. "He lives on the hill. He was Dr. Stanhunt's partner, but he retired. A gin and tonic on the rocks."

  "He's your partner," she said to me. "I'm surprised you're not in touch."

  "I would like to be," I said. "Is he still living in the same place?"

  "That's enough," came a voice from behind me. Barry Phoneblum was standing in the foyer.

  "Barry," said Pansy, her voice warm and real for the first time since I'd rung the bell. "You must remember Dr. Stanhunt. Dr. Stanhunt, this is my son Barry."

  "We've met," said Barry sarcastically. He was dressed pretty simply, in a neat little shirt and a pair of striped pants, and he wasn't wearing a wig this time. He wasn't any taller, but his face now was that of a teenager, and his vast forehead was six years more wrinkled. Veins stood out like worms under the skin at his temples.

  "I want you to go upstairs, Pansy," he said firmly. "Dr. Stanhunt and I need to talk" He was talking to her, but he kept his eyes on me the whole time. It reminded me of Celeste coming home and sending the kitten away. I was always getting caught questioning people who didn't know better than to feed me the answers.

  "Oh," said Pansy. She scooped the memory off the table and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt. She left the razor and the straw, but I suspected she had another set upstairs. She had new stuff to forget now.

  "Okay," she said. "Good day, Doctor. Give my regards to Celeste."

  I promised I would.

  She tiptoed upstairs, leaving Barry and me alone in the living room. He vaulted up into the seat across from me in one neat movement, tucking his feet under his knees so they wouldn't dangle. I guess by now he'd had a lot of experience being three feet tall in a six-foot world. When he put his hand inside his coat pocket, I was expecting him to produce a memory. Instead he produced a gun. It performed a couple of bars of ominous, pulsing violin when it came out of his pocket, like the occasional music titled GUN for an old radio show.

  "Metcalf," he said. "The kangaroo said you were coming back. I didn't believe him."

  "It didn't take you long to come into the fold," I said. "So much for evolution therapy."

  "Fuck you," he said. "My motives are beyond your comprehension." Fuck you was his motto now, or at least he delivered it like one.

  "Try me."

  He just sneered. The phone was on the table between us, and he leaned forward and plucked up the receiver without the muzzle of the gun ever veering out of line with my heart I watched him push buttons. Whatever the number was, his little fingers had it memorized. He pinned the phone against his big ear with his shoulder and waited for an answer.

  "It's Barry," he said after what must have been a couple of rings. "Get me the kangaroo."

  The party at the other end kept him hanging a minute or so. I made amusing faces while we waited but he didn't laugh.

  "Shit," he said, when the answer came. "Well, tell him I've got Metcalf here at the end of my gun. He'll know what it means."

  They talked a little more, and then he put the receiver back and looked at me sourly, his vast forehead wrinkled all the way up over his skull.

  "You must really be a glutton for punishment," he said.

  "A gourmet, actually," I said. "If it isn't perfect, I send it back."

  He didn't laugh. "What did Pansy tell you?" he asked.

  "Nothing I couldn't have learned from a brick wall. We tried to play tic-tac-toe, but she kept forgetting if she was X's or O's."

/>   Barry didn't like that. I guess he still had some kind of proprietary interest in Pansy. His jaw tightened and his face got red where the skin wasn't stretched white with tension. "Fuck you, Metcalf." His voice shook. "I could blow you away right now if I didn't mind cleaning up the mess. You wouldn't be missed."

  "Fuck you, Phoneblum. You pull that trigger now, and the recoil's gonna break your nose."

  He moved the gun from in front of his face. "Don't call me Phoneblum," he said.

  "Maybe you don't buy him ties on Father's Day," I said. "And maybe he never took you to see the World Series. But that doesn't change it."

  "I'd forgotten your interest in genealogy," he said, recovering somewhat. But there was a conflict in him between the tough-guy lingo and the babyhead talk, a conflict he couldn't resolve. "It represents a pathetic inability to see beyond superficial relationships."

  "I know what you mean. I'm having a real problem seeing beyond the relationship between the kangaroo's hand and the strings attached to your arms and legs." While I talked, I inched my feet forward on the carpet and slid my knees under the edge of the big glass coffee table. "I expected more of you, Barry. You were a pain in the ass, but at least you had style."

  "You're making stupid guesses," he said. "I take the kangaroo's dough so I can care for my mother. That's the beginning and the end of it."

  "Your mother's dead," I said. "I walked in her blood."

  It was meant to make him flinch, and it worked. I jerked the coffee table up with my knees and toppled it over on him. The telephone and the razor blade slid to the floor in a cloud of make, and the table fell without breaking to create a glass wall which trapped Barry huddling in his chair. The gun was still in his hand, but he couldn't point it at me against the weight of the tabletop.

  I put my shoe against the glass where his face was. "Throw me the gun, Barry. This'll make a big mess if it breaks."