Part
One of Two
I woke up
breathing ashes. My nose was stuck straight in the oyster shell ashtray she’d
bought, and ashes went up my nose and were blown around the compartment. The
ashes hovered out around us and circulated around the currents of our breathing
and were slow to settle down before the vents could suck them all out. I woke
up regretting her new smoking hobby and checked the time. Almost midday.
I nudged her softly, but she groaned beneath the sheets
and turned away, and waved an arm in half-awake annoyance. I felt badly about
it, but shook her a few times till she came to. Her eyes fluttered open and
tried to focus.
“Sharon,” I tried to say, “Wake up,” but my voice was too
gravelly from too much liquor, too much secondary cigarette smoke, and too
little sleep.
She turned again and lay on her back, eyes open and
starring. Her face was very pale and the flesh around her eyes was puffy.
I sat up and tried not to breathe
too hard. I leaned over gently and set open the doors to clear the air. The
cube doors came open and the ashes went streaming out with their motion.
Sharon had that soberide
hangover look I used to get. She got up
slowly on one elbow, turned a few shades of green, then vomited in my bed. I
pulled a shirt from the pile and pushed it into her hands and she wiped her
mouth with it.
I sincerely I wished I could have left her to sleep, but
I needed to clear her out of the cube before I left for the day. The Cube
Authority permitted overnight visitors without a penalty, but guests staying
more than sixteen hours were considered residents, and they’d increase my rent
over it— I’d have to file forms in triplicate and then file a petition to get
the rent back down. It had happened once before, and I had no desire to repeat
the experience. I coughed a little at the smell of vomit and jumped out of the
bed and came down outside on the landing.
“Could you hand me those?” I spoke softly, and pointed to
my shirt and trousers when I thought she’d regained her composure. She stared
for a second or two, and then her eyes
followed my motioning finger. When she figured it out, she threw me the
clothing.
I had to get out. My head was thundering, but the smell
in the compartment was worse; the walls were already too damn close when they
started closing in. I closed my mouth and kissed her gently on the forehead,
then donned my shirt and trousers and shoes, and headed for the Tenderloin.
I took the lift Topside and hopped the tube to Macey’s
at the Spiderdome.
Steiner was Macey’s token lush: a fat emigre from Austria. Well,
Steiner was fat here, anyway; on
Earth he was elephantine. Back home he carted four-hundred and fifty pounds of
baggage on his frame. He was too poor for gene therapy, but in the natural
gravity districts of Luna he was a seventyfive pounder with a spring in his
walk, and a fair chance of living past a hundred. In the Spiderdome district,
of course, he was a lot heavier— but he liked the pull of gravity on him once a
day, and he spent part of his off time at Macey’s
, sitting and eating and drinking,
with rolls of fat falling over his chair. His said the gravity helped his
digestion.
“McAuley,” he greeted me in his thick Austrian accent
when I walked in.
“Steiner,” I returned, pronouncing it ‘Schtyner’, like a
regularDeutsche . He was still
crocked on last night’s flightgum and this morning’s soberides. His belly bubbled and vibrated as he laughed to my
made-up accent and the whisper of a terse Teutonic bow. His bulk took up nearly
three seats at the bar and I wandered down away from him and sat safely out of
conversational range. Macey spilled a mug of beer in front of me and I drained
it half down before the foam settled.
Macey watched me have at the cheap brown liquid for a
little while and looked so pregnant that I stopped slurping and dropped the mug
and gave him a hard stare back.
A sly smile came around his lips.
“You’re a popular fellow, McAuley,” he baited.
Macey and his conversational tour bus. I looked back at him without comment,
waiting for the punchline.
He snorted a little at my impassivity. “There’s been a
guy here looking for you the last couple days.”
I stop for a second as my heart sank. “Not charmers?”
Macey laughed and waved a fat palm at me. “No, no,
McAuley; why don’t you relax? You’ve been spending too much time at the Health
Division— and I don’t think it’s doing your health any good. This guy’s no charmer— he’s an Earth man. He
says his name is Tanner. Says he’s a friend of yours.”
The unpleasant adrenalin retreated as I took a few deep
breaths. I went back to my beer and
came away from the drained mug licking froth off the rough stubble on my upper
lip. “I don’t know anybody named Tanner.”
“Something tells me you will,” Macey laughed, and leaned
over the bar. “He was here three times looking for you,” he said, adopting a
conspiratorial tone. “Wednesday, a little past nineteen, he tried to pick up on
that skirt you used to be friendly with. The one with the overbite?”
I choked back a grin.
“At first she didn’t like him. I think she’s got some
phobia about Earth people, I don’t know— but she got used to him pretty quick
after he whipped out the plastic. All Earthside gold cards. One of ’em had a UN
seal on it, so maybe he’s a G-man.”
Macey flashed his big eyebrows at me, still smiling. “Anyway, the cards
changed her opinion of him all of a sudden. Steiner and I watched the whole
thing, and we drank to his health after they left together. The next day she
came back in here all gummed-up. Steiner
asked her if her opinion of Earth men had improved— but she couldn’t remember a
thing about what she’d done with the guy after they left. She drew a total
blank on the whole date. All she could remember was the plastic.” Macey leaned
back, slapped the bar gently with the flat of his hand and smiled broadly with
significant eyes.
I stabbed a finger at my mug and he refilled it in front
of me. “You saying he scrammed her?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m only telling you what I
saw. The guy was an Earth man, he wore a black suit, and he had New York gold
card with a UN seal.”
“Lots of Earth people are patriotic— I’ll bet most
business people in New York have the UN seal on their credit cards. It’s part
of the city’s identity. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Okay, fine— it doesn’t mean anything. But the next day—
that was yesterday— he came in again. Only this time, he tried to make time with Steiner! He
started on him in German. Steiner told me later what they talked about. He said
he was an of old friend of yours, and was trying to track you down.” Macey
stood erect with this information and folded his arms across his chest. “But
Steiner— God bless ‘em— played dumb, and Tanner lost interest pretty quick;
Steiner kept hitting him up for rounds of synthoscotch.”
Macey shook his head and
snorted a laugh, making no effort to contain his good humor. “Wait a minute:
there’s more. Because the next thing is that the guy starts on me; he wanted to
know where to find you, and when it was that you usually came in—” Macey
stopped and stared hard over my shoulder. He shot his chin up towards the door
and narrowed his eyes purposefully. “And here he is; happy hunting, McAuley,”
he said softly, and he moved slowly away down the bar, drying a glass with a
towel.
I took a draught from the contents of my mug and dropped
my eyelids a fraction.
Tanner didn’t idle. I saw him in the bar glass. He pinned
two eyes on mine in the mirror and sprang lithely on Earth-hard legs to the bar
where I sat drinking. He plugged himself between me and the seats next to
Steiner and motioned Macey for a beer. His head and face and hands moved with
bourgeois finesse over his drink, and then a smile cracked halfway out of his
head and he turned sharply in my direction.
“Mr. McAuley.”
I ignored him on purpose till he spoke, then returned the
eyes.
“How do you do?” He said, all teeth and dimples. “My
name’s Sam Tanner.”
I nodded my head in greeting, but did not return the
smile. “Have we met?”
Tanner’s smile faded a little. “In a manner of speaking,”
he said. “I know enough about you to know I’d like to retain your services— if
you’re free to offer them.”
I took a swig of my drink. “I haven’t done any private
contracting for a while.”
“I’m aware that your business has suffered, and I’m
prepared to offer you a substantial sum for your assistance.”
“Yeah? There’s an understatement. I don’t even have a
business anymore— I don’t have a license to conduct business on Luna anymore.”
“Of course. And I’m aware of your status with the
Franchise Board. No offense. Mr. McAuley, but the people I represent expect a
certain thoroughness from me, and I spent some time familiarizing myself with
your case, and I am aware of your tax problems. I’m also aware that you live in
New Frisco, and that you used to live in New Venice, and that you used to have
offices here in Spiderdome a few years ago. You lost them because you had most
of your personal wealth in Merovian securities when the market crashed, and you
lost your business license when you couldn’t pay the taxes on your income. Bad
luck. I also know that you had debts afterward, but managed to pull clear of
them in, shall was say, an unorthodox manner. But please, don’t take offense; I
don’t mind telling you that I researched not only you but also a number of
other private investigators. It was my research and subsequent knowledge of
your career that brought me to you.”
I could smell his billfold well enough. Real leather, I’d
bet. Black, and fat with plastic. Folded in two like a cigarette case. Coat
pocket. A go-fer, though; he looked well trained, but not born to it. And he
didn’t strike me as an Earth native; Belter, maybe.
“You’ve been on Luna for eight years,” he shook his head.
“With your offices gone, it made it tough for me to track you down, not knowing
where to look.”
“I pay extra not to be in the book.” I leaned back and
looked at him. “You’ve certainly done your homework, though. Congratulations.
I’m flattered.”
His eyes were on me in the mirror. He turned his head and
we looked at each other.
“I’ll bet you miss Earth,” he said. “Who wouldn’t? I
mean, you’ve got your fertility rights, and you can’t even exercise them on
Luna.”
I held my breath for a second. The guy was laying it on
pretty thick— starting a family was about the last reason I had for returning
to Earth— but I tried to bury my desire to get off Luna with a show of
resignation.
“That doesn’t bother me,” I said. “And there’s freedoms
here that Earth never heard of. And you can sink damned low here and still come
back; Luna’s a lot more forgiving than the UN.”
“Come on, McAuley,” Tanner said, suddenly informal
“You’re an educated man. I know you came here for the gum— but now, even though you’re clean, Luna
won’t let you get back up on your feet. You’re locked out of Spiderdome and
living in a cube, for Chrissake. You think you’ll ever get an apartment up here
again? There’s opportunities for someone like you back home. But here you are
living like a rodent in an underground cage on a planet that doesn’t even have
weather.”
“Luna’s got a bad rep, but it’s perpetuated by people who
never lived here.” I felt suddenly defensive, and behaved as if I believed that
what I was saying was actually true. It wasn’t exactly an act— I’d lived under
both systems, and despite the sometimes exasperating living conditions, Luna
had something to recommend it.
Anyway, I felt uncomfortable
about letting this guy know what I wanted out of life; he knew too much
already.
Tanner dropped his mug on the bar. “Hey,” he said, and
ran a tongue across his lower lip, then showed the muscle in his face to mark
his thoughts without looking at me. “You ever heard of a Belter kid named Raoul
Simonson?”
My brows pulled together involuntarily and I pursed my
lips. “Simonson,” I said. “Sure. I’ve heard of the family.”
Tanner nodded. “He was born on Ceres, and emigrated to
Luna about three years ago when the gum trade was suspended in the Belt Worlds.
His mother was an Anartek Belter and his father was Erich Simonson, the Earth
industrialist.”
“Him I remember.”
“The Erich Simonson made big profits on war contracts
supplying weapons to both sides during the Martian Rebellion, about ten years
ago.”
“Pretty big scandal. I was the dick who cracked the case.
But you already know that.”
“Yes, I do,” said Tanner. “Anyway, this kid, he’s the
last one— the last Simonson. He’s a gumhead, and he lives in the dens. He used
to be a Belter gumhead, but when the Belt decided to suspend the flightgum
trade into the Belt Worlds, all the gumheads there migrated en mass to Luna.
“When he got here three years ago, the kid turned around
and sued the old Simonson estate on Earth for his inheritance under the legal
residency laws. So long as he was a Belt citizen, he could never get his hands
on the money; as a Lunar citizen, which he is now, he has every right to it.”
I nodded and drained my beer.
“You might already know from the Newslines that there’s
been a lot of noise on Earth about the disposition of the Simonson estate,”
Tanner said. “The Financial Security Council wants to claim jurisdiction over
the whole thing. Their position is that Simonson’s money’s a forfeit under the
supranational security laws. Raoul, naturally, doesn’t think so.”
I nodded and Macey brought me a refill for my beer and a
soycake sandwich.
“The trouble is that Raoul Simonson has been missing for
three months. I have reports that he’s been living in New Frisco— down in the
dens. The attorneys need his deposition to continue litigations with the
Financial Security Council over the disposition of the estate.”
“And that’s where I come in,” I said, between bites of
the soycake.
“That’s right. I represent the law firm that’s handling
the case— Hiembrecht, Garcia & Wayne,” he handed me his card. “I looked
over a lot of people, and I decided to talk to you before I went to somebody
legal. There could be some question of coercion if Simonson didn’t come forward
voluntarily and we had to hire somebody find him. With you— since this is going
to be an all-cash arrangement— we can obviate the possibility that someone at
the Financial Security Council will make that charge somewhere down the line.”
“Sounds square enough.”
“I can advance you five hundred Loonars right now,” he
said. “That should be plenty enough for expenses, just to get you started. In
addition to that, I’ve been authorized to pay you two hundred a day while
you’re on the case, and a bonus of twenty-five hundred if you can find Simonson
within the week. On top of that, I personally will promise you passage to Earth
after you’ve found him, if that’s what you want. I’ve got a company space
craft, and it’s an easy matter to take a passenger back with me when this is
all over. I can even arrange to have your fees converted into UN credits—
market rate, of course.”
I chewed on it and swallowed and washed it all down with
a sip of beer. “Generous.” I said. “And an offer I can hardly refuse.”
Tanner smiled and cocked his head back triumphantly.
“Bravo.”
“What about pictures of Simonson?” I asked. “ Last known
whereabouts? Names of friends?”
Tanner produced a small brown envelope from his vest
pocket. “Holographs, names, addresses and dates. It’s everything we have.” His
brows arched as he handed it to me. “There’s five hundred Loonars enclosed
here, and a number where you can reach me. And, if you don’t mind, a number
where I can find you.”
I took the envelope and stuffed it into a pocket and
downed my beer. Tanner took my card, shook my hand and left.
I went home to New Frisco.
I unlocked the cube and the doors swished open and the
air inside was thick with vomit and cigarette butts and stale sweat. I worked
off the source of the odors one by one as best I could. Then I closed up the cube and poured the
contents of the envelope Tanner had given me into a pile in the center of the
bed. It contained three holos of Raoul Simonson, copies of his passport and
visa, his application for citizenship on Luna, papers involving the litigation
of his suit against his father’s estate and the Financial Security Council, his
current address, his former address, dates of departure, arrival— and a brief
biography.
Raoul Simonson—
son of Erich Simonson, the late industrialist. During the Mars
rebellion, about ten years ago, it came out that the elder Simonson had been
supplying weapons to the Martian rebels in return for resource development
rights; at the same time the UN bought weapons from Simonson to fight the
rebels. When the UN’s Financial Security Council got wind of it, they tried to
brake the contracts. But Simonson refused, and so the Council had him murdered
by the BCI— the UN’s secret police.
That was ten years ago. I’d worked on the case myself,
which explained something of Tanner’s interest in hiring me. Since then, Erich
Simonson had become something of a posthumous folk hero in the outer worlds. He
was supposed to be a champion of the downtrodden, but it was all bullshit; in
the outer worlds they tended not to believe that he was a double dealing
scoundrel — I guess they needed a martyr.
The kid was just
an adolescent when his father was killed. Raoul Simonson lived a brats’
existence for twenty-six years before the flightgum prohibition in the outer
systems sent the little gumhead scurrying for New Frisco where all vices are
legal.
Simonson’s case was coming up for review before the Lunar
Judiciary in two months. If he was going to beat the Financial Security Council
over his piece of his father’s estate, he needed to make depositions and to
appear before the Court to prove he was still alive.
I counted the Loonars one by one. Five hundred Loonars
was a damn fortune here; but still not nearly enough to get me home to Earth.
The fact that the five hundred was clear cash meant everything, of course. If
the money had been registered, my cube rent would have shot up in a big way, if
I weren’t evicted outright. To each
according to his need, from each according to his ability. In practical terms, it meant that if I
could afford to live in better accommodations than the cubes, the Cube
Authority would either force me out to more expensive housing, or eat the money
I already paid them at an even faster rate. Under those circumstances, it was
practically impossible to put away enough money to ever get off the planet—
which accounted for the pervasive addictions there; if you couldn’t get off
Luna, you were better off getting out of your mind with gum and liquor.
I plugged Simonson’s holograph into my wall plug and
looked him over. Twenty-six years, but looked older. Tall and thin, but wirey,
like all Belters. Something about nutrition standards in the Belt Worlds
contributed to the development of their bodies, so they all looked and moved
like Olympian string-beans. Hair black, eyes blue. The holo had him at a Belter
social club— he milled about in a crowded and noisy room full of thin, tall,
and wirey looking socialites, all bright-eyed and gesticulating enormously. I
pulled the holo and checked his last known Lunar address: Lower Eastside New
Frisco. The heart of the gumhead dens. Well, for a spoiled Belter kid— it’s
where a gumhead goes, alright.
I took the lift straight down to the Lower Levels. A
kilometer deep and dark as hell when the lights go down. I caught a tube East
and walked from the terminal to Simonson’s cube.
The Eastside dens were a hang-out for the worst cases in
New Frisco: dumb kids from all over the solar system who sold their futures to
be drug addicts. They were rawest cases on Luna.
The Lunar Government always provided free passage to Luna
from any place in the solar system. Luna guaranteed free housing, warmth, food,
and all the gum you could chew. Guaranteed it, and enforced it; once you were
there, if you weren’t working, there was nothing left but to be an addict.
Most every vice was legal on Luna: it was supposed to be
a hedonist’s dream, but really it was a hedonist’s nightmare, because your
senses got dim to the life around you. On Earth, at least you’d die relatively
quick from the enviropoisons, or you might even be executed by the State for
violating some idiotic law. But down there in the Eastside— Christ, you’d live
a whole life like a walking zombie, dead but for the fact that you were
animated.
Down in the dens— it was the worst. Nobody had anything
and everything was free. Nobody paid rent, because no one worked. It was
humanity in its most liberated form. Only the young survived there. There
wasn’t much traffic in and out of that part of town; it was self-contained and
shunned by the rest of civilization nearer the surface. I put gravel in my
belly and bit on something sour when I got there.
I found Simonson’s cube all locked up, but a cube just
down the corridor was open and a young blond kid of maybe nineteen leaned
against the door panels, smoking a cigarette and trying to look dangerous. He
wore a black plastic jerkin and black plastic pants that stopped just short of
his knees, and was barefoot with filthy unwashed feet. His complexion was bad
and his hair was long and unkempt, and
stringy wisps of oily blond hair hung across his eyes like a raggedy Andy. His
arms were muscular and scarred and he smelled like old sweat and alcohol.
“Know who lives here?” I jerked my head at Simonson’s
closed-up cube.
The kid had been making a visible effort to ignore my
existence when I spoke. He stopped his show and cocked his head a little
insolently and hacked at his sinuses and spit across the tubeway. I watched the
performance and held back applause.
“Eat shitcake—
Boris .” He expelled a breath fast and short in what I suppose was a show
of amused contempt. His lip curled and his chin moved up and I watched his
cheeks pull back to show yellow grimy unbrushed teeth and a wide band of
whitish gums above them.
I guessed he figured I was a surface dweller and would
only hold me in sheer contempt because of it. They don’t generally like
outsiders in the Lower Levels; they consider surface-folk rather uncommitted to
the adventure of complete social chaos. I held back my impulse to be
unreasonable and employed psychology.
“I’m looking’ for a Belter named Simonson,” I began. “I
got a present for him.” I growled convincingly, and cracked my knuckles.
The kid got interested, and smiled, and suddenly there
was a very cruel glint in his eyes. “Gonna break his balls?”
I let my eyes turn dead and my expression went blank. The
kid let go a long whistle and he dropped his eyelids knowingly.
“You want Lucy,” he said.
“Lucy,” I repeated. “She live here, too?”
The kid shook his head yes. He hacked and spit again and
took a long draw on his cigarette. “She’s probably at the Jawbreaker , man. Fifty cubes down.” He jerked his thumb towards
the tubeway.
The Jawbreaker was a little gumdive, decorated with a pink
tile and chromium motif. Harsh electronic musak and a multi-colored stobe light
bombarded the few patrons within. I walked in and stepped up to the bar and
ordered a cheap brown liquor. I leaned back against my seat with my drink in my
hand and studied the room. The place was half empty but for couple of
patronless whores and a few obviously terminal gumheads. The barkeep wouldn’t look me in the eye when
I asked him if he knew somebody named Lucy, but only jerked his thumb to a
small partitioned table in a far corner of the room where the lights were very
low and very red.
Lucy was a big boned whore with no hair and perfect skin
and two big gaps where her front teeth should have been. She was wearing a
short black frock opened midway, and a short red skirt and black sandals. She
was chewing gum intently and her eyes were dopey and solicitous when she saw me
approach the table. They went half mast and all bedroomy when I sat down across
her without verbal invitation.
“Is your name Lucy?”
Her lips parted and curled rakishly and she leaned back a
bit as if to appraise me. “My, where did Gilbert find you ?” She asked, and her hand darted out and landed on my forearm.
“Gilbert didn’t send me,” I said.
A puzzled expression came frowning through. “Well, then?”
she said. She had stopped chewing and she stamped her foot with impatience.
“My name is Angelo McAuley,” I said. “I’m looking for
Raoul Simonson. I understand you know him.”
She seemed clear enough to that point, but suddenly the
gum took over and she smiled to herself and began chewing it lasciviously. In terminal gumheads the gum asserted itself
in waves, overcoming the addict with uncontrollable sensations of pleasure.
Lucy had obviously been a gumhead for a long while.
“Lucy,” I said.
“I hear you, big man,” she said dreamily.
I felt the power of her sexuality like an impact. I don’t
think she did it on purpose, but the combination of the gum’s earthy pleasure
and the force of her personality combined to produce hypnotic emanations of
eroticism. I felt suddenly heavier in my seat as I came under her spell.
“Raoul Simonson,” I said, still feeling her magnetism,
but trying to redirect our exchange to the purpose of my visit.
“Raoul,” she purred. Her lips parted and she took in a
sudden sharp breath and sighed.
“Know where I can find him?”
Her eyes refocused and the gum let go of her a bit, and
she spoke. “How should I know?”
“Well, where do you know him from, Lucy?”
“We shared a cube.”
“And you don’t know where to find him.”
Her face suddenly got all screwed-up, but the gum kept
the unpleasant emotion short-lived. “He left me,” she said. “a few months ago.”
“He left you? How come?”
“I was sick.”
“Gumloaded?”
“Not that time.”
“What, then?”
“We got beat-up by some skinheads.”
“Charmers?”
She looked at me squarely. “Not charmers. Just thugs.
They took our money. We were going to go back to Earth on my fuckmoney. I got
raped. Raoul got hurt bad, too. His head got cut. Concussion or something. I
lost my front teeth.” She smiled her gums at me. “Good for business,” she said,
and winked.
She went back to her drink and the gum welled up in her
again, and again I felt the tension of her sexuality. I tried to bring her
attention back to the subject. “What about Raoul, Lucy,” I said. “Where his is
now?”
“I told you,” she said— and again the foot stomp. “He
left .” And she smiled again. She
batted her eyes and turned her face away, a jaunty grin on her too red lips.
“Well,” she breathed. “He had to go to the hospital. They said he was going to
be alright, but he never came home.”
I had an idea. “Can we go to your place?” I suggested.
Her eyes widened with interest again, and a tongue darted
through the hallow space in her grin as she looked me over. She was dripping
with it. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
We left the bar together and headed up the corridor
towards her cube. Lucy’s magnetism was undeniable, but what I really wanted was
the opportunity to search the cube where Simonson had been staying. If the walk
sobered her a bit, so much the better. I would have preferred a straight
conversation with her to the distraction of her gum-charged orgasms— but I would
do what was necessary.
When we arrived, Lucy was as gummed and as charged as
ever. She brushed up against me at the cube door, and pressed her palm to my
chest before opening it. The blond kid I’d seen earlier saw us together and
smirked in an ugly way and spit his mucus and fell back to smoke another
cigarette.
Lucy opened the cube and stripped and fell on the bed.
Her body was not voluptuous, but white and narrow and sensual. I felt the
animal in me respond and I fell upon her and abandoned myself to the moment.
Afterward, I sat up in the bed and looked around the
cube. Like all cubes, it was very small and there wasn’t much there— certainly
nothing that might have belonged to Simonson. After her rash of orgasms, Lucy
was awake and alert and refreshed— though unwilling to discuss the subject of
Raoul Simonson.
It was fruitless: she was too gummed up to have an
interest in focusing on anything other than pleasure, but she was the only lead
I had. I made the decision to coax her back to my own cube in the upper levels;
Sharon had taken her soberides with
her, but I still had some left over from my own gumhead days— and I always knew
where to get the unregistered stuff. I reasoned that if I could get her down
off the gum— even for a short time— I might be able to get some sober answers
out of her.
Lucy was agreeable, and I managed to get her back to my
cube without incident; she enjoyed the the tube ride and sat passively beside
me, exuding her sexual magnetism.
I had to admit of a sympathy for Lucy. She looked
terminal, and the gum had no inclination to let go of her unassisted. When we
got back to my cube, I handed her the soberides in a bulb of water. She accepted it without comment and drank it
down and soon after, she fell asleep.
I left her to sleep it off and hopped the tube out to
Spiderdome Admin. I figured I’d have a need for more soberide before I was finished with Lucy, and so I called up to the
Health Division and asked for Gusto Sanchez.
Sanchez was a transplanted Spaniard and used-to-be
gumhead who got off the stuff and made his way up the Health Division
bureaucracy at Spiderdome by abetting the illegal distribution of soberides to
the Eastside dens.
The Eastside District was managed by a private
contracting firm that received its operating subsidies from the Lunar
government based on the number of active gumheads in the population. Since
Spiderdome had a vested interest in attracting and maintaining a body of sober
and productive citizens, this put them into conflict with the Eastside
denlords.
Soberides were the sore point between them: while legal
in Spiderdome and in some of the adjoining neighborhoods—like my own, in upper
West New Frisco— distribution of soberides in the dens was punishable by death.
Spiderdome Admin had a policy of catering to the political sensibilities of the
denlords, but in real life they encouraged by advancement the activities of
people like Gusto Sanchez, who made soberides readily— if not legally—
available to anybody who needed them.
Gusto was therefore a particular thorn in the side of the denlords, but
as a Spiderdome administrator he was untouchable.
After a short wait, Gusto greeted me on the comline, and
invited me up to his office.
“Hola, amigo,” he said, taking my hand.
“Same here, chum.”
“Glad to see you, Angelo.” He closed the door behind us
and we both sat on a couch near a viewport. The Spiderdome Admin offices were
located in a tower at the center of the city, and the view from Gusto’s suite
was commanding. It was a rare pleasure to sit in a room with a view of the
surface; the sun had just been rising over the past few days, and—through the
opaque window of the viewport— it cast long and beautiful shadows over the wide
Lunar plain.
“It’s good you showed up,” he said. “I’ve been leaving
messages for you all day.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s Deatherage. I guess he found out about about
the deliveries last month. Somebody spilled.”
My heart sank for the second time that day. I had been
doing occasional free lance work for Gusto on and off since I’d lost my
business license. It was all under the table, and it helped make ends meet— and
kept me from slipping into the dens.
The month before he had asked me to go between him and
his Eastside distributors. I had misgivings about this particular job, but I
agreed to do it. A dangerous fruitcake named Charming Deatherage was the
Eastside denlord whose turf had been targeted for soberide distribution. I was
nervous about the whole thing from the start because Deatherage’s contract boys—
we called them by the pejorative ‘charmers’— were notorious for their brutality
and excess.
“They got our whole operation,” Gusto continued.
“Uploaded everybody. Your contact must have provided a perfect description of
you, and somebody figured out who it was. They’ll probably try and make an
example out of you.”
“When did all this happen?”
“I just heard about it this morning, but I think they’ve
been rounding our guys up all week. No telling how long they’ve known about
you.”
“And what am I supposed to do about this?”
Gusto shrugged. “It’s tough for you, buddy. They’ll
probably try and upload you.”
“I’m not interested in having my brain uploaded into
Charming Deatherage’s mainframe, Gusto.”
“Don’t worry about it; I can fix you up with plates.” He
pointed to his left temple while he looked at my forehead. “They’ll get a
surprise if they try to probe you there.”
“How’s that going to stop ’em? They’ll just bring me in
and pull the fucking plates right out again, and then they’ll probably program
me for a slowboat or mining robot— they’ll sell me off to fucking Mercury.”
Gusto laughed
when I said it, then went serious. “We can’t let them have your gray matter,
Angelo; you know too much. We’ll fix you up with some specialized brain
protection and I’ll see if we can’t issue you a flashblaster, maybe some other
toys. We’ll make sure they’ll have to destroy most of your higher brain
functions to get the plates out.”
I looked at him, hard.
“I’m sorry, Angelo.” He said. “There’s not much we can
do. You know you’ve always been a free lancer— the Division can’t claim you.
That’s politics.”
“You said something about toys?” I tried to read Gusto’s
expression.
He smiled sheepishly. “A blaster, maybe a passcrambler—
whatever you think you need.”
“You fucker.”
He arched his eyebrows and spread his hands. “Hey— you
took the job, Angelo. It was easy money, but you knew what could happen. And
anyway, you’ve been walking around with ice bowels ever since we did the
Charmland job; now at least you know where you stand. This puts your destiny
back in your own hands. Sounds like a deal to me.”
Gusto was offering me the job of striking at Charming
Deatherage before he could get to me. Gusto was a shit. He was trying to stink
me up in his little turf war, and it looked like I didn’t have much choice but
to go along.
“I’ll send you down to Supplies with a blank check— you
can have anything you want, and its yours to keep. And get the plates before
you leave.” He pointed to my temple. “I’ll call down to the clinic and tell
them you’re coming. You should be out of there in half-an-hour.”
With my back against the wall, I agreed. He signed over
an authorization and sent me off to the candy store, “By the way, if you didn’t
get my call, how come you came out here today?”
“I’m subverting the masses. I got a little dearheart from
down below. I wanted to get enough sobers to pull her out of it.”
“I don’t know what you do with your time.” Gusto shook
his head, walked to his desk, pulled out a small bottle and threw it to me. “I think
you’d get into trouble without my help, hombre.”
I waved him off and headed for Police Supplies.
When I got home after a swing by the bar Lucy was still
asleep, so I sacked out next to her for the night and let the soberides do
their work.
The next morning she came to, her head puffed-up by the
gum on one side and the soberides on the other.
“Who the hell are you?” She said it through squinting
eyes. She had trouble pronouncing ‘th’ because of her missing teeth, but I
understood her well enough. Her manner carried a certain weighty unhappiness as
she perceived the world more or less soberly— probably for the first time in
years.
“My name’s Angelo,” I replied to her. “You’re in the
upper Westside.”
“What’d you slip me?” She continued to squint like she
was under a hot lamp.
“I had soberides. I was a gumhead myself once. Don’t worry- a friend gave them to me
unregistered. I figured I’d give you
the opportunity, if you wanted out. If not— well— there’s plenty of gum to go
around. You can catch the lift back down to the dens any time you please. It’s
a free planet.”
“Your friend’s got balls if he’s dealing soberides; the
denlords don’t piss around with people stealing their markets.” Her eyes seemed
to widen all of a sudden. “Hey— what the fuck am I doing here?”
“I brought you here yesterday. I was hoping you could
tell me something about Raoul Simonson.”
She expelled a breath from her nose and turned her head
away. “Oh, yeah. That little shit.”
“Do you have any idea where I might find him?”
She looked at me as she searched her memory. “I don’t
know.” she said.
“You must have been gummed up for a long while.”
“Don’t ask me how long— seems like years.”
“Maybe it was.
Anyway, your memory will improve the longer you’re on the soberides.
Here, I’ll get you some more.”
She sat cross legged on the bed as I poured another bulb
of water from the spigot and mixed in the soberides. She accepted the bulb and
sipped at it.
She looked at me again, a little quizzically. “You’re an
investigator?”
“I’m non-institutional; it’s a personal business.”
“And you’re looking for Raoul?”
“That’s right— hired by his attorneys. He’s been suing
the Financial Security Council on Earth for rights to an inheritance.”
She pushed back and furrowed her brow at me. “Bullshit,”
she drawled.
“I’m only telling you why I was hired, ma’am.”
“Well, that ain’t the reason, you dumb dick.”
“Okay, gumhead, you tell me why.”
She lowered her eyelids half way and laughed like she
knew a joke on me.
“I like you,” she said, and smiled like the professional
coquette she was.
“Seemed like it yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah,” she smiled and blushed. “I remember that
much.”
She was much more attractive on the soberides than she
had been on the gum. She was more vulnerable— more accessible. Before, her
magnetism had been close to off-putting; now, while she wasn’t so mysterious
and powerful, she made up for it by seeming human.
“Okay,” I said. “What about Simonson?”
“He was a gummer,
no doubt; but I haven’t seen him for at least two months. Nobody’s seen him in
all that time. I bet somebody sobered him, the shit.” She pulled her legs up
and cupped her knee caps. “Got a cigarette?”
I winced at the thought of more cigarette smoke and ashes
in my cube, but offered her the pack that Sharon had left the night before. She
lit it and took a long drag from rakish lips and held the cigarette between her
middle fingers when she exhaled. The foul smell of the smoke threw water on any
desire I may have been entertaining.
“You say nobody’s seen him,” I said. “Could you tell me
who his friends are? Maybe somebody else knows something.”
A kind of sick expression came over her face and she
stamped the cigarette out nervously in the oyster shell ashtray. “Cute,” she said looking at it. Then, “Shit— my head hurts.”
“It’s the soberides; don’t worry, it’ll pass, and then
you’ll feel at lot better, believe me.”
“I believe you,” she said, holding the bridge of her nose
between thumb and forefinger. “Look,” she said after her head cleared. “Just
find every gumhead Belter in the Eastside dens— and a few sober ones from up
around here, and you’ll have all the friends Raoul ever had.”
“Popular, eh?”
“Popular ? You
kidding? Nobody could stand him. All he ever cared about was dope and screwing.
He did every trip and fucked every whore in the Eastside— man or woman. All
those supposed friends of his from Topside shouldn’t of given a shit about a
gummed up fuckup like Raoul— but they did. And how come? Because he already owned them . So don’t tell me about
how he was suing for an inheritance. I don’t believe that bullshit. Raoul
doesn’t give a piss about Earth— he hates Earth. All he cares about are
blacksuits and Anarteks and technoshit.”
I started. “What do you mean? Why blacksuits?”
“Who the fuck knows? Raoul used to talk on the comline
with this blacksuit. He never let me listen, but he told me once that if I ever
said anything about him to anybody, he’d call up his suitboy at BCI and have my
brain uploaded. Fuck him, the little shit.”
She picked up the crushed cigarette again, and tried to
light it. “That blacksuit was the only one Raoul ever respected, though— I’ll
tell you that.” She struck the lighter and got the cigarette lit. “All those
other ones used to come over with their dicks in their hands. Raoul owned every
one of them, and they all called him ‘sir.’ All except the blacksuit. Raoul
always got a straight back when he talked to him. Inheritance? Fuck me. Raoul
was going back Beltside. That’s probably where he’s gone to. And good fucking
riddance to him, I say.”
She finished the cigarette and stamped the remainder out
again and then her face turned a little too pale.
“The soberides make you sleep a lot,” I said to her.
“They’re working the gum dependency out of your body; the longer you’ve been on
the gum, the longer it will take to detoxify. You’ll keep feeling sleepy when
you take the soberides as long as you’re addicted to the gum; when you get
clean, the soberides won’t effect you anymore.”
“That’s comforting.”
“You can even go back and use the gum again— as long as
you keep using the soberides, you’ll never get addicted. You can have your cake
and eat it up here, you know.”
“Does this mean we’re married?” It was the last thing she
said before she nodded out.
After Lucy fell asleep, I made a call to a Belter
immigrant I knew who lived in my neighborhood in the Westside. His name was
Jack Nabo. When I called, his wife answered the telecom and said he wasn’t
home, but she did say she’d heard of Raoul Simonson.
“I heard of him. But I don’t follow politics too much,”
she said incongruously.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you know, both Jack and I were gumheads Beltside.
We lived in the dens when we got here, and now Jack does freelance work for the
Embassy. But I try and stay out of politics.”
I took her for gummed or drunk, because she wasn’t trying
very hard to make any sense. I spoke slowly into the telecom, as if to a child:
“Excuse me, but when I asked you just now if you knew Raoul Simonson, you said
you did. I understood that either you or Jack might give me some idea where I
could find him.”
“Oh, Mr. McAuley,” she laughed and put her hand to her
breast chuckling. “Jack might know— but I never get involved in things like
that. Not that Jack does, either, mind you! It’s just that Jack follows those
things more than I do.”
I felt like I’d walked into the wrong Virtual house.
“Follows what kinds of things, Mrs. Nabo?”
“I’m not going to say anything more to you, Mr. McAuley,”
she scolded me. “You’ll just have to talk to Jack about it. I don’t know a
thing.” She had suddenly lost her good humor, and was beginning to get edgy.
“Well, could you tell me where I might find Jack?”
“I don’t know where he is today— he works for the
Embassy, like I said, and now we’re off the gum and we’re hoping to return
home. Jack’s made some friends at the Embassy, and we don’t want to rock the
boat— so maybe you’d just better ask someone else your questions.” Her tone had
definitely become defensive.
I saw no point in aggravating her further, but I was
intrigued. What was it about Raoul Simonson that made her so jumpy? “Alright,
Mrs. Nabo— but before I say goodbye, is there someone else you can think of
that might help me find Mr. Simonson?”
She though about it a minute, trying to decide if it was
an improper question. When she decided it wasn’t— or maybe that it would help
to get rid of me if she answered— she gave me the name and address of a Lower
Eastside gumhead named Tad who she said probably knew where to find Raoul
Simonson.
I was nervous about venturing into the Eastside again
after what Gusto had told me. I went back to my cube to check on Lucy and found
her deep in sleep. I pulled open a drawer and took out the flashblaster Gusto
had issued to me from Police Supplies. I hadn’t been able to carry a
flashblaster legally since I lost my business license— although I rarely
carried one even then. The one I now had was heavier then I remembered my old
blaster to be. And smaller. I joggled it in my hand to test its weight, then
adjusted the setting to a heavy stun level and dropped it into my side pocket.
It felt heavy to me there, but it wasn’t obvious that I was carrying anything.
Before I left I wrote a note to Lucy explaining that I’d
be gone for a short while, and to wait for me until I got back. I left the
bottle of soberides out where she could see them, and instructed her to take a
small dose if she felt the urge to chew the gum again.
Tad’s cube was in a thankfully remote corner of the dens,
and I did my best to remain as anonymous as I could. I got off the Eastside
tube a short walk from Tad’s address, and began walking North up the corridor.
As the tube tram pulled away, I felt the hackles on my neck go up and I stood
silently for a moment peering down the corridor in the direction I had been
walking. I stood near the tubeway platform at a three-way corridor junction.
The direction of Tad’s cube was just ahead of me, leading up a dim-lit corridor
that ran parallel to the tubeway. Another corridor branched off at a right angle.
As the sound of the speeding tram died down, an unhealthy silence enveloped the
neighborhood. There were no human beings to be seen, only the grimy and defaced
walls of the corridors.
Something was wrong. I heard something fall and an echo
of something else come from the direction of Tad’s cube. A low din of voices. I
felt for the flashblaster in my pocket and wrapped it around my hand, but did
not pull it out.
A moment later the artificial gravity cells beneath the
corridors cut out, and I was suddenly at the mercy of Luna’s feeble natural
gravity.
Charmers.
“Angelo ,” a
deep voice sang from the North corridor.
“Angelo ,” sang
another voice from the South.
“Angelo , I’m home ,” sang a third voice from the West
corridor.
I backed up toward the tubeway, facing the West, my head
looking first forward, then right, then left, and back again.
They emerged slowly from the shadows, walking
deliberately, unaffected by the sudden diminution of gravity.
They were enormous; they filled each corridor, and would
have prevented me from getting past them by their sheer bulk. Like Steiner,
they must easily have weighed five hundred pounds each on Earth. But now— with
the gravity in the corridors suddenly reduced— they carted their incredible
bulk with ease, while I could only hop, and that awkwardly.
“Angelo ,” sang
the one in the North corridor again. “You’ve been a bad egg, little boy.”
“And now we’re going to crack you,” said the South.
“And no one will put you back together,” laughed the
West.
They were closing slowly but inexorably. Each held a
blaster in his right hand, and the North had something else in his left. He
waved it at me when he saw that I’d seen it.
“It’s for you,” he said. It was a compressor. They’d try
and upload me— but they’d fail because of the plates. If they tried to pull the
plates, they’d rip my whole brain out and do themselves no good. And when they
discovered I’d spoiled their uploading fantasies with the plates in my head,
they’d probably sit on me and turn the gravity back up. Charming.
I had only the tubeway behind me; I wasn’t sure if they’d
stop me if I ran in there, because it was a sure death— it was only big enough
for the trams, and when next a tram came through, I’d be cut to pieces if I
were in there.
I did it anyway.
None of the three stooges reacted as I pitched backward.
I fell against the inside wall of the tubeway and bounced off, falling forward
and smashing my chin against the platform edge. I slid down into the curve of
the tubeway on my belly, and pulled the blaster from my pocket. I pulled the
blaster down into my midsection, and crouched with my legs under me as I slid
further towards the bottom of the tubeway curve.
In a moment, the three of them were standing together on
the edge of the platform, looking down at me in at the bottom of the tubeway.
“This should be interesting,” said one of them.
“When’s the next tram due? I’m hungry; let’s go to Denny’s ; it’s ‘all you can eat’ night.”
“We’ll take the tram when it gets here. Charming won’t
like it— but we already know this prick works for Sanchez.”
“Last chance to come out, Angelo!”
“Hey,” said the third. “Let’s piss on him. When they
scrape him up out of there, they’ll think he pissed his pants!”
The three roared with laughter and proceeded to pocket
their blasters and unzip their flys. I waited till each of them had started,
then pulled up and zeroed all three at point blank. I fired left to right, and
the three stood staring at me with frightened eyes holding their dicks and
unable to decide between an interrupted piss and evasive action. It was a
turkey shoot.
I hopped out of the tubeway instantly and came up on the
platform. All three were sprawled unconscious in a row and each continued
urinating from their elephantine members.
I pulled all three blasters out of their pockets, and the
compressor, too, and threw them all into the tubeway. Damn them . I pulled my blaster and readjusted the settings to a
full flash and pointed.
Damn them .
I couldn’t do it.
The tram was coming; I could hear the whistle in the
distance and a gentle breeze began to blow from the tubeway.
The ridiculous penises of the three giant stooges had
finished urinating. I’d been partly drenched, but I had had the last laugh.
I’d gotten away.
Lucy woke a few minutes after I’d returned to my cube.
Her mood was irritable, and she didn’t much feel like responding to my
questions about Raoul Simonson. I had earlier made some purchases at the
market, using some of my new found wealth to restock my food cabinets with
something other than soycakes and nutrajuice. I hadn’t been able to cook
anything since I’d lived in the cubes, so I bought stuff that didn’t need to be
cooked so much as prepared. Lucy had never had a roast beef sandwich before—
though she’d heard of it. She had spent her childhood in North America, but her
parents had been vegetarians, and, while she had no firm opinion about the
eating of animal flesh, she was wondered if live animals were bred and
slaughtered on Luna.
“Or is the flesh imported from Earth?” She asked as I
prepared the sandwich for her.
“They grow the meat in vats,” I explained. “They don’t
grow the whole animal, just the parts they sell.”
“I’ve never seen anyone on Luna eat this stuff.”
“It’s a small enterprise. Mostly the manufacturers cater
to the big hotels where the tourists stay.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I know a guy who works in the kitchen at the Sheraton.
It’s expensive, but one gets tired of Lunar cuisine.”
“Everything tastes like ripe strawberries when you’re
gummed,” she said.
“Well, here’s a reality sandwich.” I said, handing it to
her. I was proud of it, indeed, and set myself to work on my own. Roast beef
and Swiss cheese on a French roll with mayonnaise, poupon mustard, horseradish,
fresh green peppers, a few sliced up Roma tomatoes— all made right here, right
on Luna, almost exclusively for the tourist industry, and a few well-off
Spiderdomers. It’d had cost me over two-hundred Loonars for my one bag of
groceries— all courtesy of the Sheraton Hotel— but it was worth it when I bit
into the first roast beef sandwich I had since I lost my business license.
Lucy was quizzical about the whole thing, but she ate her
sandwich dutifully, and washed it all down with a bulb of water mixed with
soberides.
After we had eaten, I called Gusto and told him about the
incident with the charmers in the dens. He looked at me like I was crazy and
told me I’d been a damn fool to go back down there after what he’d told me
about Deatherage’s contract. I told him he was probably right, but that I was
only trying to make a living. He said I was closer to dying than making a
living so long as Charming Deatherage was alive. I told him that was trite, but
that I got the message.
Lucy sat through the whole exchange scowling out of sight
of the telecom. The soberides were starting to work on her again, and she
passed out shortly after I ended the conversation.
My attempt to confront Tad was a failure because of the
threat of charmers on my neck. I had one of two options: either devote my
energies to figuring out a way to kill Charming Deatherage, or follow up on the
Simonson case in the upper levels, where charmers fear to tread. I remembered
Tanner’s offer to return me to Earth if I could find Simonson, and that made my
decision.
I decided that I would talk to Jack Nabo.
His wife said he worked for the ‘Embassy.’ Jack Nabo was
from Astros, so I started at the Astros embassy.
I changed out of my clothing and sponged down a little
bit, dressed again, then wrote Lucy a note, and made to leave my cube and head
for Embassy Row in North Spiderdome.
Blackness came next; well, maybe a sharp report like
lightening in my brain for a split second— somehow the lightening and the
blackness intertwined in my memory.
I don’t know how long I was out; the shock itself wasn’t
life threatening, but it could easily have been worse. I woke shivering cold
and with a throbbing head.
Lucy was naked
and cool on the sheet next to me. The blaster had burned her badly, and it lay
on the floor just a few inches from where my fingertips had been as I lay
unconscious— as if it had been placed in my hand while I lay inert and had
fallen sometime before I awoke. The small holes in her temples indicated that
she had been uploaded.
The cube doors were closed tight. They’d been open
before— I was just leaving when the lightening struck I pulled myself up and found the wash basin and splashed ice cold
water in my face.
Justice was swift and merciless in New Frisco; the
denlords had to operate within constitutional rules, and murder guaranteed a
sure response. In the Eastside, human life was valued by a head-count of gum
addicts. Lucy’s death meant one less gumhead subsidy, and I looked responsible
for it. If it wasn’t enough that the flashblaster could be traced to me, the
fact that the murder had taken place in my cube would certainly be all they
needed to identify me as the prime suspect.
And when Eastside Homicide
finally figured out that the person suspected in Lucy’s murder was the same guy
marked by Charming Deatherage for soberide smuggling, there would be no place
for me to hide. Since the murder involved an Eastside citizen, jurisdiction
would be turned over the Eastside den authorities— into the hands of Charming
Deatherage himself.
I covered Lucy’s body with a sheet and regrets, and tried
to think.
Gusto’s advice had been plain: get to Deatherage before
he could get to me. Given the hot water I now found myself in, I didn’t suppose
his advice would change much.
I was jammed. I’d been set up for a murder, and now I was
jammed.
I called Sharon
on the telecom and explained what had happened.
“Christ, McAuley.” She said, shaking her head.
“The set up stinks like Deatherage,” I said. “ I don’t
know. The stooges couldn’t have come all the way up here— they can’t even walk
unless it’s natural gravity. It had to be somebody else working for Deatherage.
He found out what happened down there today, and now he’s fixed me. They could
have set the blaster up to stun us both, and when they figured out I had plates
in my head, they couldn’t upload me on the spot.”
“Then why are you still alive; why didn’t they just kill
you? It doesn’t wash, Angelo.”
“Sure it does. Think about it: Charming Deatherage put me
on a contract list. Gusto Sanchez takes that as an invitation to use me as his
counter strike; my only protection from Deatherage is to kill him first— that’s
why Gusto sent me to Police Supplies with an empty Christmas stocking.”
“That still doesn’t explain why they didn’t just kill
you.”
“Look: if Gusto maneuvered me into assassinating
Deatherage, he can do the same with someone else. If Deatherage just kills me,
it’s too easy. He’s got to make an example; he doesn’t want to worry about
somebody else gunning for him. He’s going to get it out on the Newslines and
then he’s going to make it painful for me. Got it? I’ll end up uploaded and
sent to work as a machine part on the hot side of Mercury. Deatherage wants to
send me to hell, and he wants to tell the world he did it.
“What about evidence? They can’t convict without
evidence.”
“Even though it was Westside territory, I can’t assume
that the killers would go through all the trouble of setting me up without
sweeping the cube clean. It’s easy enough to use micro-bugs to destroy
incriminating genetic evidence— the police do it all the time. I can’t assume
they didn’t do that. And anyway, who would question them?”
“What about your friend Sanchez?”
I snorted. “Fat chance. He doesn’t even know me anymore.”
Sharon cried when I told her to wait for an hour, and
then to call the Spiderdome cops and explain exactly what transpired during our
conversation. I was aware that all public comline conversations were digitally
recorded and stored in the city’s mainframe. It was only a matter of time
before they found it, so to save Sharon the charge of criminal association, I
instructed her to come clean. The Spiderdome cops would treat her okay.
The minute I was off the phone with Sharon, it rang and
nearly sent me out of my skin. It was Tanner.
“Heard you had some bad luck today, Mr. McAuley,” he
said.
I started. “How do you know—”
“I’ve got a monitor on police comlines. A Lower Eastside
prostitute named Lucy Van Holsty has been reported missing, but your name
hasn’t come up yet.”
I had a sudden realization. “You’ve got a monitor on my
line?”
He smiled. “Listen, McAuley: I can help. I was aware of the trouble