His face was dark, and I knew there was something else on his mind.
“But?” I said.
“But Yhandim and the others are going to come for you now, and you alone, Jack. They don’t work for Maxen anymore, and they hate you more than they hate Johnny. Those guys have been comrades for nearly twenty years. You killed three of them, and now the rest can’t get back into The Gap. They’ve got a hard-on for you like you won’t believe.”
I knew what was coming. Howie winced at what he had to say. “You got to run, Jack. You got to get the fuck out of New Richmond and maybe never come back.”
We heard a shout out in the corridor then, about fifty yards away. I reached out and shook Howie’s hand.
“Thanks,” I said, wishing there was some proper way of saying good bye.
Howie said it. “Get the fuck out of here.”
I ran.
I clattered down three flights, legs pumping like a wind-up toy, then fell out of a door onto 197. Stood there gasping for a moment, trying to work out where to go next. The nearest xPress was the obvious answer, but I had to figure that if Yhandim was already on the case, that’s the first place they’d head for.
I couldn’t think of anything. It had been too long. I ran for the xPress anyway.
197 looks the way the Garden of Eden would if they’d had access to nanofertilizers. I hurtled down a path through the middle of a park, past shrubbery so refined it was probably entitled to vote. Narrowly avoiding knocking down a gaggle of old people, I made it into the xPress and slapped the button.
The elevator stopped at 160 and I waited inside for a second, half expecting to hear the sound of gunfire or something equally discouraging. When none came, I poked my head out the door, and saw I was on one of the chichi shopping floors. Ahead of me stretched a long lane going East—and I knew there was another xPress half a mile away which would get me down below the 100 line.
I ran with my head up, partly to avoid the meandering shoppers and partly in the hope it would help oxygen to flood into my lungs. People stared at me openly as I passed. I guess they had people to do their running for them.
After a couple of minutes I realized I was going the wrong way, and at the next crossroads I veered over into the next store-lined street. My mind was on what I was going to do after the next elevator: I didn’t see Ghuaji until I was only fifty yards away and running straight at him.
He was pelting up the street toward me, the very picture of a man gone rabid. Blood poured down his face, and his running was crooked from the leg he was dragging behind. His skin looked like it had spent some time underground. None of this stopped him from pulling a shotgun from over his shoulder and loosing a round straight through the crowd at me.
There were screams and a couple of people fell, but by then I was careering into an alleyway between an ice cream parlor and Emeralds R Us. There was another explosion behind me and as I ran I gathered from the face of a young woman that Hell was following after. I didn’t look around. I figured I’d know soon enough if they caught me.
Then God threw me a bone, in the shape of some dweeb on a motortrike. He was tootling slowly down the lane, showing off to some giggling Mall-girls who’d never dream of shopping on Indigo Drive. I had him off the trike so fast he probably still thinks he’s riding it to this day, leaped on, and roared off down the middle of the street with my hand glued to the horn. The waves parted in front of me and I rocketed past hundreds of eyes all open as wide as the moon.
Don’t worry about me, I thought wildly. This doesn’t affect you. Just get on with your shopping.
Four minutes of moving violations got me to the xPress. The door was open, for a miracle, and I just drove the trike right in—causing a degree of consternation to the young couple who were already inside.
“You’re not supposed to bring that in here,” the guy said. “It’s a violation of New Richmond road policy.”
From outside came the sound of a shotgun being fired and pellets tinkled against the outside of the carriage.
“You want your internal organs violated by buckshot?” I asked. The guy shook his head, terrified. I winked. “So press the fucking ‘down’ button.”
He did and the doors shut quickly enough, but they were glass and didn’t hide the fact that Ghuaji was only about a hundred yards down the path. Worse, Yhandim was now running alongside, toting a large weapon of his own. My contact with him had been minimal, so far. I wanted to keep it like that.
The xPress took me down a long way. The young couple expressed a keen desire to get out quite early on, but I encouraged them to stay by showing my gun. They admired its craftsmanship and eventually agreed that it would be a shame to say good bye before they’d had a chance to see me use it.
The elevator dropped majestically down to the 80s, and I stared out through the window at the huge atrium, ten stories of balconies draped with trailing green plants, like some biblical hanging garden. It had been one of Henna’s favorite places. I should have visited it more often. Too much time spent in the wrong rooms, as usual.
As the xPress started to slow I peered down below, without much hope in my heart. Sure enough, a guy with blue flashing lights in his head stood waiting for me. I don’t know how the fuck Yhandim got down faster than the xPress, but there he was. Maybe there are paths even I didn’t know. His head tilted up slowly and our eyes met, and in his was a hatred even I couldn’t match. Ghuaji looked up seconds later, and I saw a couple of others standing around them.
I reached out and slammied the “open” button as we hit the floor above. The xPress groaned at the deceleration, but halted and opened its doors. I shooed the youngsters out and then shot out the controls, hoping it would take the guys a moment to work out why the elevator wasn’t coming down. I drove the trike out, crouched down over the handlebars and steered it unsteadily along the balcony. The sound of gunfire within seconds told me my plan hadn’t worked; shells bit discouragingly large chunks out of the ceiling just above my head.
I stood on the pedal and went careering along the corridor as fast as I could until I found a stairway. Turned straight into it, and went bouncing down the stairs. By then I was beginning to fancy a cigarette, but I judged this probably wasn’t the time. I lit one anyway, figuring [might as well—it wasn’t as if life expectancy was a concern.
I bumped down turns in the staircase until I started getting dizzy, and then sped out onto 65. I just drove straight through the door, which was painful and foolish, but no one was on the other side. I hurtled along the main drag toward the next down elevator, cursing the lab-rat layout of the old MegaMall. Two hundred yards from the xPress I saw a police platform hovering fast out of a side street toward me. I didn’t know whether they were after me because of who I was or just pure traffic offenses, but it didn’t make much difference. With one hand still steering the trike I shot at the platform’s generator. More by luck than skill I hit it. The platform coughed and slewed into the pavement like a badly folded paper plane, spilling the cops onto the ground.
I dumped the trike outside the xPress, figuring that while it was fast, it also made me somewhat conspicuous. Then I stood thrumming and banging the walls, trying to catch my breath. I stopped the xPress two floors before I had to and made it across to another which got me as far as 24; as I tore out of the doors I heard shouts from up the street behind me but I didn’t look to see who it was.
I ducked into the store where I bought my Rapt, shouting to the proprietor as I entered. He nodded with weary recognition and stepped aside to let me through into the back of his store, where a hidden stairway no one knows about dropped me another floor and into a project level where nobody sane lived anymore. I was hoping that Yhandim would assume I was just heading straight down to the bottom, buying me some time.
23 is pitch-black darkness, filled with nothing but burnt-out warehouses that long ago used to be the Mall’s staff quarters. Nobody lives there except the psychos and losers who’ve been cattle-prodded ou
t of all the other floors. I ran straight across the heart of it, past fires burning on street corners. It’s truly rather frightening, to be honest, and I was very happy when I saw the light of the next xPress shaft ahead. I just hoped there was going to be one along soon. I didn’t want to hang around here long.
“Fucking stop right there!” shouted a voice, and I had a cardiac but kept on running. Then a shot whined past my leg and I realized running wasn’t going to cut it. I stopped and whirled round.
Two guys, both around sixty. One’s face was pierced and studded until it looked like a pincushion. The other’s had been in a bad fire.
“Look, what’s the problem?” I gasped, barely able to speak. My chest hurt like I’d cracked all my ribs at once and my legs were shaking. I kept my gun hand inside my jacket.
“No problem, sonny,” Burn-face said, his voice deeper than the rumble of a distant train. “But this is a toll road.”
“I don’t have any money,” I said, wondering why I was cursed to have the same things happen to me time and time again.
“Then you fucked,” said the pierced one, who spoke with a lisp and looked denser than three bags of shit in a one-shit trumpet.
I thrust my hands into the pockets of my jacket, and found Mal’s drive. I couldn’t barter with that. In the other pocket, the computer chip which held Ratchet’s brain. For a second I considered it, but no more. He’d helped me enough. I couldn’t let go of him again.
“Don’t suppose dropping Howie Amos’s name is going to help?” I hazarded, beginning to panic. I was losing time, and lots of it.
Burn-face shook his head. As a last resort I put my hand into my inside pocket and yanked out my wallet.
“Here,” I said. “You can have this.”
He took it, and flicked through. There was no more than ten dollars in it, but then he found my old own-Card.
“This’ll do,” he said, and they stepped aside. I didn’t volunteer the information that trying to use the card would get them more police attention than crapping on Chief McAuley’s head. I figured they’d find out soon enough, and it was about time they retired anyhow. I stabbed the “down” button, leaped in, and slumped to rest my face against the elevator walls as it started to drop.
It was when I stepped out on 8 that I realized my wallet had also held my only photograph of Henna and Angela. I couldn’t go back. Memory would have to be enough.
I ran through 8’s lamp-lit streets, past so many places I knew, past the beginning of the side street which led down to Howie’s place. As I tore down the main drag, toward the restaurant with the entrance to the chute, I felt like I was going in reverse, as if the video of my life had reached its end an hour ago and was now being rewound, spooling past everywhere I had ever been, back toward some point where it would end again. End, or perhaps begin.
I skidded taking the corner into the final straight and almost lost it, but managed to stay upright and careered toward the restaurant doors. I could see something was wrong: There were no tables outside and no lights on behind the windows. A solid kick on the door told me it was locked. I glanced around, saw no one, and shot out the lock. Then I shoved the door open and ran into darkness, turning to slam the door shut again behind me. I hoped to Christ Yhandim and his goons had gone the wrong way. If not, then this route might get me a few extra seconds. It wasn’t much; but the way things were going, a few seconds could make all the difference.
I threaded my way through the stacked tables and chairs toward the restrooms at the back, ears tuned for any sound from the streets outside. I was ready for it, and had in reserve a burst of speed which might just get me out in time.
What I wasn’t ready for was a lamp being switched on above one of the back tables. It dropped a soft pool of yellow light for a couple of yards, revealing a man standing by the wall.
“Howie said you’d be passing through,” he said.
“Hello, Johnny,” I replied, and swung my gun to point straight at his heart. “You’ve got two minutes to explain why you killed my wife and daughter for Maxen, and then I’m going to blow you apart.”
“When did you work it out?” Johnny said; slowly sitting back down. I stayed where I was, gun still held out, safety off.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe just now, maybe earlier. You knew about what happened with Maxen’s brother. I don’t think you heard a rumor. I think you heard it from him. All that talk about atonement. Then a choice of words which in retrospect was kind of precise. You didn’t put out the hit on Henna and Angela, but it was you who carried it out.”
Johnny didn’t say anything. Time was passing, but suddenly that didn’t seem important anymore. I had to understand. Dying seemed preferable to never understanding.
“Why, Johnny?”
“Maxen came to me, Jack. I was just a hood then, you know how it was. I was trying to get somewhere, but all the markets were sewn up. McAuley was tight with the old guard, and there wasn’t much I could do. Then some of Maxen’s guys came and found me, and took me up to see the boss. Maxen said he wanted into the rackets, that legit money wasn’t enough.”
“So you went in with him.”
“The offer didn’t exactly seem negotiable. I sat in a very small room with several guns pointed at my head and it occurred to me that I didn’t have much to lose. I say no, and he’s going to ice me there and then. I say yes, and I’m going to end up running most of New fucking Richmond.”
“On the end of Maxen’s leash.”
“We’re all on leashes, Jack.”
“So he greased the NRPD for you.”
Vinaldi sighed. “It wasn’t like I had carte blanche, but my competitors started getting a lot more cop attention than I did. I started clearing up floors, adding them to our collection. Maxen fed capital when I needed it, worked the brass when things got out of hand. It was going good until you got involved.”
He stared at me, his face tortured.
“Why’d you have to do that, Jack? Things were the way they’ve always been, just a little more organized. Maxen and I could have sewed the place up, and everyone would have been happy. Fewer people would have gotten killed in the crossfire every day, we’d have made lots of money, and everything would have been cool. If you’d come to me early on I’d have put you on the payroll. You were a good cop. We could have used you. Why did you have to get nosy? Why couldn’t you have just left it alone?”
I didn’t have time to explain, and I don’t think my explanation would have convinced even me. The truth was I didn’t know.
“Because I’m stupid, probably,” I said. “Or because I thought I was atoning for something myself.”
Vinaldi shook his head. “So what happens is suddenly we’ve got problems, because you and Mal are digging too deep. Doesn’t matter so much about me, because it’s generally known what side of the line I’m on. But for Maxen—it’s a problem. He can’t afford anyone to suspect that New Richmond’s premier white man is running all the shit.”
I could understand that. People like to feel that God and the Devil are different beings. Vinaldi ran a hand across his face. His eyes were hooded, and when his hand came away I noticed his fingers trembling.
“So Maxen comes to me and says he wants a show of loyalty, that I’ve got to prove I’m in with him up to the hilt. He tells me we need an object lesson. He already hates your guts because you whacked his brother in The Gap, but even he knew that had to be. If you hadn’t killed Cedrif he’d have been court-martialed anyway. But now you’re putting everything Maxen owns at risk, and so it’s got to happen, and he wants me to do it, Jack. It’s going to be my special job.”
Vinaldi breathed out heavily, and then looked at me steadily. “You made it easy for me, Jack. You took Phieta away from me. Maybe you thought I was just some typical wiseguy who kept a wife for show and screwed around on the side. Or maybe you were just fucking her to get closer to me. But I loved that woman. I didn’t know about what was happening, but Maxen had photographs
and he showed them to me. Phieta was my wife, Jack, and she was running around with you. She didn’t love me anymore, even when you were gone, but I wouldn’t let her go. You know what happened after she took you out of town, to the Farm? She killed herself.”
The entire city seemed silent around me then, as if nothing else happening in it mattered, as if none of it had any bearing on me. All I could do was listen, and keep my gun trained on Vinaldi’s heart.
“After he showed me the pictures, Maxen pumped me with Rapt, and two of his guys took me down to your floor. They stood outside while I went in, and they took me away when I was finished. I didn’t know until I was actually in your living room that Maxen had deliberately overdosed me. I didn’t know what I was doing, Jack. It was just going to be a clean hit. Then the walls went away and I was back in The Gap and everything happened the way it did.”
My hand was shaking, my finger slick against the trigger. Vinaldi’s chest looked like the biggest target in the world.
“You go back there, don’t you,” I said. “To the seventy-second floor.”
He looked at me. “How do you know that?”
“Some kid I met. He’s seen you standing down by the window.”
Vinaldi’s head dropped. “I can’t remember what happened in there,” he said quietly. “Not most of the time, anyway. Sometimes I dream about it, and when I wake up I go down and stand outside your apartment. You’re right about some things, Jack, and one of them is this: Sometimes you do things which won’t fit in any head. Things which are too big to forget. I gave you a hard time in front of Nearly about you thinking everything’s tainted, but you were right. I tainted my own life, and I don’t even remember doing it All I know is that the shit is there, and that it ain’t ever going away.”
I looked up at his face then, at the muscle twitching in his cheek. All the hate I’d nursed for him came crashing back into my brain, burning the image of his face into utter clarity. I saw his face so clearly that I realized it was my own, and as I started to pull the trigger it was with a feeling of utter relief.
Spares Page 33