by Gene Wolfe
Jay shook his head.
“Okay, that will save me a lot of talking. You’ve still got the hundred thousand?”
Jay nodded.
“All right. In about forty-seven minutes we’re going to announce on all our channels that you’ve got it. We’ll give your name, and show you leaving this building, but that’s all. It will be repeated on every newscast tonight, name, more pictures, a hundred thou in cash. Every banger and grifter in the city will be after you, and if you hide it, there’s a good chance they’ll stick your feet in a fire.”
Smith waited, but Jay said nothing.
“You’ve never asked me what we’re paying you to do, but I’ll tell you now. We’re paying you to stay alive and get some good out of your money. That’s all. If you want to stay here and tough it out, that’s fine. If you want to run, that’s fine too. As far as we’re concerned, you’re free to do whatever you feel you have to do.”
Smith paused, studying Jay’s scarred face, then the empty, immaculate surface of his own desk. “You can’t take those chips out. Did you know that?”
Jay shook his head.
“It’s easy to put them in to upgrade, but damned near impossible to take them out without destroying the whole unit and killing its owner. They do that to make it hard to rob people of their upgrades. I can’t stop you from trying, but it won’t work and you might hurt yourself.”
“I’ve got it.” Jay counted the stars on Smith’s screen. Four.
“The announcement will go out in forty-five minutes, and you have to leave the building before then so we can show you doing it.”
The doors behind Jay swung open, and the security bot rolled in.
“Kaydee Nineteen will escort you.” Smith sounded embarrassed. “It’s just so we can get the pictures.”
Jay rose.
“Is there anything you want to ask me before you go? We’ll have to keep it brief, but I’ll tell you all I can.”
“No.” Jay’s shoulders twitched. “Keep the money and stay alive. I’ve got it.”
As they went out, Smith called, “Kaydee Nineteen won’t rob you. You don’t have to worry about that.”
Kaydee Nineteen chuckled when Smith’s doors had closed behind them. “I bet you never even thought of that, sir.”
“You’re right,” Jay told him.
“Are you going to ask where the holocameras are, sir?”
“In the lobby and out in the street. They have to be.”
“That’s right, sir. Don’t go looking around for them, though. It looks bad, and they’ll have to edit it out.”
“I’d like to see the announcement they’re going to run,” Jay said as they halted before an elevator. “Can you tell me where I might be able to do that?”
“Certainly, sir. A block north and turn right. They call it the Studio.” The elevator doors slid back, moving less smoothly than Smith’s; Kaydee Nineteen paused, perhaps to make certain the car was empty, then said, “Only you be careful, sir. Just one drink. That’s plenty.”
Jay stepped into the elevator.
“They’ve got a good holo setup, I’m told, sir. Our people go there all the time to watch the shows they’ve worked on.”
When the elevator doors had closed, Jay said, “I don’t suppose you could tell me where I could buy a gun?”
Kaydee Nineteen shook his head. “I ought to arrest you, sir, just for asking. Don’t you know the police will take care of you? As long as we’ve police, everybody’s safe.”
The elevator started down.
“I just hoped you might know,” Jay said apologetically.
“Maybe I do, sir. It doesn’t mean I tell.”
Slipping his hand into his side pocket, Jay broke the paper band on a sheaf of hundreds, separated two without taking the sheaf from his pocket, and held them up. “For the information. It can’t be a crime to tell me.”
“Wait a minute, sir.” Kaydee Nineteen inserted the fourth finger of his left hand into the Stop button, turned it, and pushed. The elevator’s smooth descent ended with shocking abruptness.
“Here, take it.” Jay held out the bills.
Kaydee Nineteen motioned him to silence. A strip of paper was emerging from his mouth; he caught it before it fell. “Best dealer in the city, sir. I’m not saying she won’t rip you off. She will. Only she won’t rip you off as badly as the rest, and she sells quality. If she sells you home-workshop, she tells you home-workshop.”
He handed the slip to Jay, accepted the hundreds, and dropped them into his utility pouch. “You call her up first, sir. There’s an address on that paper too, but don’t go there until you call. You say Kincaid said to. If she asks his apartment number or anything like that, you have to say number nineteen. Do you understand me, sir?”
Jay nodded.
“It’s all written out for you, and some good advice in case you forget. Only you chew that paper up and swallow it once you got your piece, sir. Are you going to do that?”
“Yes,” Jay said. “You have my word.”
“It better be good, sir, because if you get arrested you’re going to need friends. If they find that paper on you, you won’t have any.”
Jay walked through the lobby alone, careful not to look for the holo camera. Those outside would be in trucks or vanettes, presumably, but might conceivably be in the upper windows of buildings on the other side of Sixth. He turned north, as directed. Glancing to his right at the end of the next block, he saw the Studio’s sign, over which virtual stagehands moved virtual lights and props eternally; but he continued to walk north for two more blocks, then turned toward Fifth and followed the side street until he found a store in which he bought a slouch hat and an inexpensive black raincoat large enough to wear over his hunting coat.
Returning to the Studio, he approached it from both west and east, never coming closer than half a block, without spotting anyone watching the entrance. It was possible—just possible, he decided reluctantly—that Kaydee Nineteen had been as helpful as he seemed. Not likely, but possible.
In a changing booth in another clothing store, he read the slip of paper:
Try Jane MacKann, Bldg. 18 Unit 8 in Greentree Gardens. 1028 7773-0320. Call her first and say Kincaid. Say mine if she asks about any number. She will not talk to anybody nobody sent, so you must say mine. She likes money, so say you want good quality and will pay for it. When you get there, offer half what she asks for and go from there. You should get ten, twenty percent off her price. Do not pay her asking price. Do not take a cab. Walk or ride the bus. Do not fail to phone first. Be careful.
It took him the better part of an hour to find a pay phone that looked secure. He fed bills—the change from the purchase of his raincoat—into it and keyed the number on Kaydee Nineteen’s paper slip.
Three rings, and the image of a heavyset frowning woman in a black plastic shirt and a dark skirt appeared above the phone; she had frizzy red hair and freckles, and looked as though she should be smiling. “Hello. I’m not here right now, but if you’ll leave a message at the tone I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
The tone sounded.
“My name’s Skeeter.” Jay spoke rapidly to hide his nervousness. “I’m a friend of Kincaid’s. He said to call you when I got into the city, but I’m calling from a booth, so you can’t call me. I’ll call again when I get settled.”
None of the clerks looked intelligent. He circled the store slowly, pretending to look at cheap electric razors and souvenir shirts until he found a door at the back labeled DO NOT ENTER. He knocked and stepped inside.
The manager flicked off his PC, though not before Jay had seen naked women embracing reflected in the dark window behind him. “Yes, sir. What’s the problem?”
“You don’t have one,” Jay told him, “but I do, and I’ll pay a hundred,” he held up a bill, “to you to help me with it. I want to rent this office for one half hour so that I can use your phone. I won’t touch your papers, and I won’t steal anything. You go o
ut in your store and take care of business. Or go out and get a drink or a sandwich, whatever you want. After half an hour you come back and I leave.”
“If it’s long-distance …”
Jay shook his head. “Local calls, all of them.”
“You promise that?” The manager looked dubious.
“Absolutely.”
“All right. Give me the money.”
Jay handed the bill over.
“Wait a minute.” The manager switched on his computer, studied the screen, moved his mouse and clicked, studied the result, and clicked again. Jay was looking at the phone. As he had expected, its number was written on its base.
“All right,” the manager repeated. “I’ve blocked this phone so it won’t make long-distance calls. To unblock it, you’d have to have my password.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Jay said.
“Sure. You want out of the deal?”
Jay shook his head.
“Okay, you’ve got the place for half an hour. Longer if you need it, only not past three thirty. Okay?”
“Okay.”
The manager paused at the door. “There’s a booth out here. You know about that?”
Jay nodded. “It won’t accept incoming calls.”
“You let them take calls and the dealers hang around and won’t let anybody use it. You a dealer?
Jay shook his head.
“I didn’t think so.” The manager shut the door.
One oh two eight. Seven seven seven three. Oh three two oh. Three rings as before, and the image of the heavyset redhead appeared. “Hello. I’m not here right now, but if you’ll leave a message at the tone I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
The tone sounded.
“This is Skeeter again,” Jay said. “I’ve got money, and Kincaid said you and I could do some business. He recited the number from the base of the manager’s phone. “If you can give me what I want, this is going to be a nice profitable deal for you.” Hoping that she would not, he added, “Ask Kincaid,” and hung up.
He had slept in a bod mod at the Greyhound station, had left his scant luggage in a storage locker; that luggage was worth nothing, and seemed unlikely to furnish clues to his whereabouts when a criminal gang came looking for him and his hundred thousand.
The forty-five minutes Smith had mentioned had come and gone. His image had appeared in the Studio and millions of houses and apartments.
They might be looking for him already—at the bus station, at the Studio, at any other place they could think of. At the MacKann woman’s.
The phone rang and he picked it up. “Skeeter.”
“This’s Jane, Skeeter.” The loose shirt was the same; but the dark skirt had given way to Jeens, and her hair was pulled back by a clip. “Kincaid said to call me?”
“That’s right,” Jay told her. “He said we might be able to do business, and he gave me your number.”
“He must be getting to be a big boy now, that Kincaid.”
“He’s bigger than I am,” Jay said truthfully.
“How old is Kincaid these days anyway?”
“Nineteen.”
“He gave you my address? Or was it just this number?”
“He gave me an address,” Jay said carefully. “I can’t say whether it’s right or not. Have you moved recently?”
“What is it?”
Jay hesitated. “All right to read it over the phone?”
“I don’t see why not.”
The door opened, and the manager looked in. Jay waved him away.
“What address did he give you?”
Kaydee Nineteen’s paper lay on the desk. Jay held it up so the small woman seated above the telephone could read it.
“The print’s too small,” she told him. “You’ll have to say it.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?”
Jay sighed. “I don’t know. When I was in college, I used to play chess. Now I feel like I’m playing chess again and I’ve forgotten how.” He reversed the slip of paper. “Building Eighteen, Unit Eight in the Greentree Gardens?”
“That’s it. When will you be here?”
The black raincoat had slits above its pockets that let Jay reach the pockets of the camouflage hunting coat under it. Extracting a bill, he held it up. “Can you read this?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll give it to you if you’ll pick me up. You’ve seen me and how I’m dressed. I’ll be in that little park at the corner of Sixth and Fortieth.”
“No,” she said.
“I’ll be there, and I’ll buy. I’ll pay you this just for the ride.” He hung up, rose, and left the store, waving to the manager.
There was a hotel down the street; he went in and stood at the front desk, a vast affair of bronze and marble. After five minutes a black woman in a transparent plastic blouse asked, “You checkin’ in?”
“I’d like to.” Jay laid two hundreds on the counter.
“We can’t take those.” She eyed them as though they were snakes. “Got a credit card?”
Jay shook his head.
“You got no bags either.”
Jay did not deny it.
“You can’t check in here.”
He indicated the hundreds. “I’ll pay in advance.”
The black woman lowered her voice. “They don’t let us take anybody like you, even if you got two dots.
In a department store a block away, Jay cornered a clerk. “I want a lightweight bag, about this long.”
The clerk yawned. “Three feet, sir?”
“More than that.” Jay separated his hands a bit.
The clerk (who probably called himself an associate) shook his head and turned away.
“Three and a half, anyway. Forty-two inches.”
“Soft-sided?” The clerk clearly hoped Jay would say no.
“Sure,” Jay said, and smiled.
“Wait right here.” Briefly, the clerk’s fingers drummed the top of a foursuiter. “I’ll be gone awhile, you know?”
Jay removed his slouch hat and wiped his forehead with his fingers. The hat had been a comfort in the chill air of the street, but the store was warm.
None of the milling shoppers nearby were giving him any attention, as far as he could judge; but of course they would not. If he was being watched, it would be by someone some distance away, or by an electronic device of some kind. Looking around for the device, he found three cameras, none obtrusive but none even cursorily concealed. City cops, store security, and somebody else—for a minute or two Jay tried to think who the third watchers might be, but no speculation seemed plausible.
Men’s Wear was next to Luggage. He wandered over.
“What do you want?” The clerk was young and scrawny and looked angry.
With your build you’d better be careful, Jay thought; but he kept the reflection to himself. Aloud he said, “I had to buy this raincoat in a hurry. I thought I might get a better one here.”
“Black?”
Jay shook his head. “Another color. What’ve you got?”
“Blue and green, okay?”
“Green,” Jay decided, “if it’s not too light.”
The clerk stamped over to a rack and held up a coat. “Lincoln green. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jay said.
“Only if you turn it inside out, it’s navy. See?”
Jay took the coat from him and examined it. “There are slits over the pockets. I like that.”
“Same pockets for both colors,” the clerk sounded as if he hoped that would kill the sale.
“I’ll take it.”
The clerk glanced at a tag. “Large-tall. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jay said again.
“You want a bag?”
Jay nodded. A stout plastic bag might prove useful.
The clerk was getting one when the clerk from Luggage returned. He frowned until Jay hurried over.
“This’s what we call a wheeled du
ffel,” the luggage clerk explained. “You got a handle there. You can carry it, or you got this handle here that pops out, and wheels on the other end. Forty-four inches, the biggest we’ve got. You got a store card?”
“Cash,” Jay told him.
“You want a card? Ten percent off if you take it.”
Jay shook his head.
“Up to you. Hear about that guy with all the cash?”
Jay shook his head again. “What guy?”
“On holo. They gave him a wad so somebody’ll rip him off. Only they see what he sees, so I don’t think it’s going to work. They’d have a description.”
“They see what he sees?”
“Sure,” the clerk said. “It’s his augment, you know? Anytime he sees you they see you.”
“Can they spy on people like that?”
“They don’t give a rat’s ass,” the clerk said.
The angry Men’s Wear clerk had vanished. Jay’s new reversible raincoat lay on a counter in a plastic bag. He unzipped his new wheeled duffel and put the raincoat inside.
Outside it was growing dark; beggars wielding plastic broom handles and pieces of conduit were working the shopping crowd, shouting threats at anyone who appeared vulnerable.
The little park was an oasis of peace by comparison. Jay sat down on a bench, the wheeled duffel between his knees, and waited. Traffic crawled past, largely invisible behind the hurrying, steam-breathing pedestrians. Some of the drivers looked as angry as the Men’s Wear clerk; but most were empty-faced, resigned to driving their cubical vanettes and hulking CUVs at four miles per hour or less.
“Ain’t you cold?” An old man with a runny nose had taken the other end of Jay’s bench.
Jay shook his head.
“I am. I’m damned cold.”
Jay said nothing.
“They got shelters down there,” the old man pointed, “ta keep us off the streets. Only you get ripped off soon’s you go to sleep. Right. An’ they don’t give you nothin’ ta eat, either. So if you was ta give me somethin’, I could get me somethin’ an’ go down there an’ sleep without bein’ hungry. Right.”
“You could get a bottle of wine, too,” Jay said.