Black Man / Thirteen

by Richard K. Morgan

  “The n-djinns can’t find him?”

  “He’s gone to ground somewhere in the Republic, and I can’t get an n-djinn search in there without causing a major diplomatic incident. We’re not exactly flavor of the month since we sprung you from South Florida State.”

  “You don’t think you can get local PD to cooperate?”

  “Which local PD?” Norton stared emptily out of the window. “As far as our information goes, Ferrer could be in any of about a dozen different states. And besides, Jesusland PD don’t have the budget to run their own n-djinns.”

  “So they hire one out of the Rim.”

  “Yeah, they do that. But you’re talking about major expenditure, and half these departments are struggling just to make payroll and keep their tactical equipment up to date. You’re looking at decades of slash-and-burn tax cuts in public services across the board. There is no way, in that climate, I can start ringing up senior detectives across the Republic and asking them to buy n-djinn time to track down some minor-league gangbanger they’ve never heard of with no warrant out and no suspicion of anything other than being related to someone we don’t like.”

  Carl nodded. Since leaving the hospital, he’d found himself thinking with a faintly adrenalized clarity that was like a synadrive hit. Sevgi was gone now, shelved in some space he could access later when he’d need the rage, and in her absence he was serene with vectored purpose. He looked back down the chain of association to Ferrer and saw the angle he needed.

  “Norton.”

  The COLIN exec grunted.

  “How easy would it be for you to get access to unreleased Marstech?”

  On the northern fringes of Chinatown, more or less at random, he found an unassuming frontage with the simple words clean phone picked out on the glass in green LCLS lozenges. He went inside and bought a pack of one-shot audio-phones, walked out again and found himself standing in the cold evening air, abruptly alone. In the time he’d been in the shop, everyone else seemed to have suddenly found pressing reasons to get off the street. He suffered an overpowering sense of unreality, and a sudden urge of his own to go back into the shop and see if the woman who’d served him had also disappeared, or had maybe ceded her place behind the counter to a grinning Elena Aguirre.

  He grimaced and glanced around, picked out Telegraph Hill and the blunt finger of the Coit Tower on the skyline. He started walking toward it. The smoky evening light darkened, and lights began to glimmer on across the vistas of the city. He reached Columbus Avenue, and it was as if the city had suddenly jerked back to life around him. Teardrops zipped past in both directions, the muted chunter of their motors filling his ears. He joined other human beings at the crosswalk, waited with them for a space in the traffic flow, hurried with them when it came, across to Washington Square. More life here, more lives being lived. There was a softball match just packing up in the center of the grass, people headed home from under the spread of the trees. A tall, gaunt man dressed in ragged black stopped him and held out a begging bowl in hands that spasmed and shook. There was a sign in Chinese characters pinned to his shirt. Carl shot him a standard-issue get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way look, but it didn’t work.

  “Bearliunt,” the man said in a hoarse voice, pushing the bowl at him. “Bearliunt.”

  He met hollowed-out eyes in a stretched parchment face. He held down the easy-access fury with an effort.

  “I don’t understand you,” he told the derelict evenly. He jabbed a finger at the Chinese script. “I can’t read this.”

  “Bearliunt. Rike you. Needy Nero.”

  The eyes were dark and intelligent, but they darted about. It was like being watched by something avian. The bowl came back, prodding.

  “Bearliunt. Brack Rab from.”

  And Carl felt understanding pour down the back of his neck like cold water, like Elena Aguirre’s touch. The man nodded. Saw the recognition.

  “Yes. Brack Rab from. Bearliunt. Rike you.”

  Chilled out of nowhere, fucked up in some indefinable way, Carl reached into his pocket and fished out a wafer at random. He dumped it into the bowl without checking for denomination. Then he shouldered past the man and headed away fast, toward the rising slope of Telegraph Hill. When he got out of the park, he looked back and the man was staring after him, standing awkwardly with one arm raised stiffly like some kind of scarecrow brought barely to life. Carl shook his head, not knowing what he was denying, and fled for the tower.

  He got to the top, out of breath from the speed he’d climbed.

  The tower was closed up; he had the place to himself apart from a young couple propped against the seaward viewing wall in each other’s arms. He stood and watched them balefully for a while, wondering how much he might also look like a living scarecrow in their eyes. Finally they grew uncomfortable, and the girl tugged her boyfriend away toward the exit stair. He was a muscular boy, tall and handsome in a pale Nordic fashion, and at first he wasn’t going to go. He stared back at Carl, blue eyes marbled wet with tension. Carl concentrated on not killing him.

  Then the girl leaned up and murmured in the blond boy’s ear, and he contented himself with a snort, and they left.

  Somewhere inside Carl, something clicked and broke, like ice in a glass.

  He went to the wall and looked out across the water. Watched the lights glimmer on the Alcatraz station, out along the bridge, over at the shoreline on the Marin side. Sevgi was there in all of it, a thousand memories he didn’t need or want. He blew hard breath through his nose, pulled one of the phones loose from the pack, and dialed a number he’d never expected to need.

  “Sigma Frat House,” said a jeering voice. “This ain’t the time to be calling neither, so you leave a message and it better be a fucking good one.”

  “Danny? Let me speak to the Guatemalan.”

  The voice scaled upward, derisive. “Guatemalan’s sleeping, motherfucker. You call back in office hours, you hear?”

  “Danny, you listen to me very carefully. If you don’t go and wake the Guatemalan up right fucking now, I’m going to hang up. And when he hears that you took some fucked-up decision about what he did and didn’t need to hear, all on your own pointed little head, he’ll have you bunking with the Aryans for a reward, I fucking guarantee you.”

  Incredulous silence.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “This is Marsalis. The thirteen. Couple of weeks back I carried one of your shanks into the chapel after Dudeck, remember? Then I walked out the front gate. I’ve got something out here for the Guatemalan he’s going to like. So you go wake him up and tell him that.”

  The voice at the other end went away. Soft, prison-wall static sang in the space it left. Carl stared across the hazed evening air in the bay, screwed up his eyes, and rubbed a tear out of one corner with his thumb. Grumbling voices in the background, then the bang of someone grabbing the phone. The Guatemalan rumbled down the line, amused and maybe slightly stoned.

  “Eurotrash? That you?”

  “Like I told Danny, yeah.” Carl picked his angle of entry with care. “Dudeck out of the infirmary yet?”

  “Yeah, he is. Moving a little slow right now, though. You do good work, Eurotrash, I gotta give you that much. Dudeck what this is about? You feelin’ nostalgic, calling to talk about old times?”

  “Not exactly. I thought we could do a little business, though. Trade a little data. They say you’re a good man to see for that. So I’ve got something I need to know, you can maybe help me with it.”

  “Data?” The other man chuckled. “Seems to me you told me you’d hooked up with the Colony Initiative. You telling me I got data that COLIN don’t?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, yeah.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Want to tell me what my end of this is, Eurotrash?”

  “Let’s see what you’ve got first. You remember a low-grade familia gangbanger came through SFS on a three-spot, got out a couple of years ago?”

&nbs
p; Another rumbling chortle. “Niggah, I remember a whole graveyard of those andino boys. They bounce in and out of this place like they tied to it on a rubber line. Muscle up sooooo proud to the brothers and the Aryans and every other fucker that’ll look them in the eye, and mostly they get stretchered out again. So which particular skull you picking over?”

  “Name of Ferrer, Suerte Ferrer. Likes to call himself Maldición. He went out walking, so he’s either tougher or smarter than average. That ought to ring some bells.”

  “Yeah, Maldición. Smart, I’m not convinced on, but he certainly fit tough. Sure. Think I could be induced to remember that boy.”

  “Good. You think you could be induced to tell me where he is now?”

  “You talking about where he is outside population?”

  “Yeah, it looks that way.”

  A thoughtful, spreading pool of quiet on the line again. Carl could smell the reek of mistrust it gave off. The Guatemalan’s voice came back slow and careful.

  “I been in here nine long years, Eurotrash. Terror and organized crime, they slammed me away for both. What makes you think I’m in any position to know anything about what goes on outside?”

  Carl let his tone sharpen. “Don’t get stupid on me, I’m not in the mood. I cut a deal with COLIN, not drug enforcement or the morals committee. This isn’t some hick Jesusland entrapment number. I want Ferrer found, and if possible delivered over the fenceline to the Rim. I’m willing to pay COLIN prices for the service. Now can we do each other some good, or not?”

  The Guatemalan missed a beat, but only just. “I heard…COLIN prices?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Another pause, but this time it thrummed with purpose. He could almost hear the whir as the Guatemalan made calculations and guesses.

  “Moves on the outside come a lot higher-priced than in population,” the other man said finally, and softly.

  “I imagined they would.”

  “And cross-border delivery, well.” The Guatemalan made a noise with indrawn breath that sounded like spit steaming off a hot griddle. “That’s topping out the favors list, Eurotrash. Big risks, very high stakes.”

  “Unreleased Marstech.” Carl dropped the words into the pool of quiet expectation at the other end of the line. “You hear what I’m saying?”

  “Not a lot of use to me in here.” But now you could hear the excitement cabled beneath the Guatemalan’s casual tone.

  “Then I guess you’ll have to spend it outside somehow. Maybe buy yourself some big favors at legislature level. Maybe just lay down a little future growth here and there. Man like you, I’m sure you’d know better than me how to find the best investment options for your capital. Now, you going to find Maldición for me or not?”

  Silence again, tight with the promise of its own brevity. Carl twitched a sudden look over his shoulder, tingle of alarm. Gloom across the space behind him back to the steps up to the tower. Dark bordering shrubs and foliage. Nothing there. He worked his shoulders and felt the unreleased tension of days locked up there. The Guatemalan came back.

  “Call me in two days,” he said calmly. “And think of a very big number.”

  He hung up.

  Carl folded the phone and listened to the faint crackle as the internal circuitry fired and melted. He let out a long breath and leaned on the wall, shoulders hunched. The tension gripped his neck like muscled fingers. The soft mounds of the Marin coast rose on the other side of the bay. He stared at the final orange leavings of dayglow on their flanks, filled with an obscure desire he couldn’t pin down. The phone casing was warm in his hand from the meltdown, the air around him suddenly chilled in contrast.

  “You’re looking in all the wrong places, thirteen.”

  The voice sent him spinning about, combat stance, gripping the phone in his hand as if it could possibly serve him as a weapon.

  She stood at the borders of the trees, and he knew the shiver of alarm he’d picked up earlier was the sensation of her watching him. She came forward, arms spread, hands open, palms turned upward with nothing on them. He knew the poise, knew the voice. Looked for the face paint and saw that this time she hadn’t bothered.

  “Hello, Ren.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Marsalis.”

  Carmen Ren came to a halt about three meters away. Feet set apart on the evercrete in cleated boots that promised steel beneath the curve of the toes. Black pilot-style pants with thigh pockets sealed shut, plain gray zipped jacket with a high collar that pointed up the elevated planes of her face, hair gathered simply back off the pale narrow face. He looked her up and down for weaponry, saw none she could access in a hurry.

  He straightened out of the fighting crouch.

  “Very wise,” she said. “I’m here to help.”

  “So help. Sit down cross-legged with your hands on your head and don’t move while I call RimSec.”

  She peeled him a brief smile. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling that generous.”

  “I didn’t say you had a choice.”

  Something moved in her eyes, the way she breathed. The smile floated back onto her face, but this time it was the adrenal veil, the prelude to fight-or-flight. She telegraphed it to him with an odd, careless abandon that was curiously like the offer of open arms. Abruptly he wasn’t very sure that he’d be able to take her.

  He cleared his throat. “That’s very good. How’d you do that?”

  “Practice.” The smile went away again, pocketed for later use. “Are we going to talk, or are you going to get all genetic on me?”

  He thought back to Nevant. Broken glass and blood. The nighttime streets of Istanbul, walking back to Moda and—

  He put a tourniquet on it, twisted hard. Grimaced. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “How about I hand you this case in a bento box?”

  “I told you already I’m not a cop. And anyway, why would you do that? Last time I checked, you were playing on Manco Bambarén’s team.”

  He was watching her face. No flicker on the name.

  “The people I work for hung me out to dry,” she said. “You want to ask yourself why I left you and Merrin to fight it out?”

  He shrugged. “Off the sinking ship in your little rat life vest. I assume.”

  “You assume wrong.”

  “Want to back that up? You know, with evidence?”

  “Right here.” She patted her jacket pocket. “We’ll get to it in a moment. First, why don’t you play back the fight in starboard loading for me. Think it through.”

  “I think I’d rather just see this evidence.”

  A thin smile. “You knock me down, take the others back inside, and use their numbers against them.” She mimed a pistol grip. “You take Huang’s sharkpunch, use it on him and Scotty, that’s Osborne to you, the Jesusland kid. So I hear both of them go down while I’m still on the floor, but that’s all it takes me to get back on my feet and there you are, mixing it up with Merrin and all that Mars-side tanindo shit. Now, you really think I didn’t have time to swing back in there and pull you off him? Come on, Marsalis. Work the gray matter. I had all the time in the world, and keeping Merrin alive was my job.”

  Hairline crack of unease. “Keeping Merrin alive?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Someone paid you to shadow him?”

  “Shadow him?” She raised an elegant eyebrow. “No, just get him aboard the Cat. Hook up with Daskeen Azul and keep him there, look after him until further notice.”

  The crack ran out, split wide, from unease to splintering confusion.

  “You’re saying…you’re telling me Merrin’s been locked down on Bulgakov’s Cat the last four months? He hasn’t been anywhere else?”

  “Sure. Took us about a week to get him there from Ward’s place, but since then? Yeah. Just a handling gig. Why?”

  The quarry face of what he knew blew up. Detonated from within, multiple blasts in the thin Martian air and the building roar after, rock shattering and s
lumping, sliding down itself into rubble and dust. He glimpsed the new face of what was behind, the new surface exposed.

  Onbekend’s face.

  The trace familiarity about the features, the certainty he knew them from somewhere, had seen them before or features very like them.

  Rovayo’s voice floated back through his head. This Onbekend must have been greased up pretty good.

  Yeah, he was. You could see it in the light, shining in his hair pretty fucking thick as well. No way he was going to be leaving trace material for the CSI guys.

  Right. Makes you wonder why Merrin didn’t do the same thing. Instead of leaving his fucking trace all over everything for us to track him with.

  The enormity of it towered above him like the sky.

  I’ve seen data, said Sevgi, the first day he met her, that puts Merrin in combat zones hundreds of kilometers apart on the same day, eyewitness accounts that say he took wounds we can’t find any medical records to confirm, some of them wounds he couldn’t possibly have survived if the stories are true. Sevgi in the prison interview room. He remembered the scent of her as she spoke and his throat locked up. Her voice ran on, wouldn’t get out of his head. Even that South American deployment has too much overlap to be wholly accurate. He was in Tajikistan, no he wasn’t, he was still in Bolivia; he was solo-deployed, no, he was leading a Lawman platoon in Kuwait City.

  The idiot pattern of the murders. Death in the Bay Area, then Texas and beyond, and then back to the Rim all over again, months later. No sense to the double-back, unless…

  Unless…

  “Onbekend,” he said tightly. “Do you know him?”

  “Heard the name.” Amused quirk in the corner of her mouth. “But it means—”

  “I know what it means. Are you working with anyone who has that name?”

  “No. I was working with a guy called Emil Nocera, and with Ulysses Ward, before Merrin went genetic and slaughtered them both. After that, I used Scotty to ride shotgun and pulled some contacts elsewhere.”

  “What contacts?”

  “Just contacts. No one I see any reason to hand over to you. They’re peripheral, they don’t count. Rimside plug-ins for the people who hired me.”