Eight

 

There was a beat of silence, and then the lights went out. All of them, all at once. The cops fired first, a ragged clatter of firecracker pops from either side of me. I jacked my elbow back into Barton's face – simultaneously yanking my arm away from Travis.

Barton tumbled backwards and I threw myself to the ground as the first barrage of answering gunfire came from the other end of the room. I landed heavily, crunching my chin on the floor and knocking most of the air out of my chest, and scrabbled to my hands and knees as shots whined through the air around me. Then I just rolled and scrabbled, trying to get the hell out of the way without being able to see where I was going.

I heard screams from behind me, as at least one cop went down. The others were firing and reloading as quickly as they could, and no-one was paying much attention to me. When I made it to the side of the room I got off my knees: there was just enough light from gun flare for me to see where I wanted to go. The cops were falling back to the very end of the room, diving behind sofas in a vain hope of protection. The men in suits were advancing in a straight line towards them, and I squirmed forward along the wall as inconspicuously as possible, until I was behind them.

While I was on their blind side I moved quickly to the far end, the door just a twenty-yard sprint away. But the gunfire from the handguns was more sporadic now, a couple more of the cops down: I knew that if I ran then the guys in the suits would hear me. Maybe at first they'd wanted me handed over, but right now they didn't seem to be making any major allowances for my safety.

Not to mention that the rounds fired by the remaining cops would be heading straight in my direction.

I teetered for a moment, locked in position like a sprinter at the start of a race, not knowing what to do. In the end I crept forward until I was over halfway there, but did it too slow. Two of the shooters turned and saw me. I froze, barely three running strides from temporary safety: looked at another way, a million miles.

And then somebody ran into the room from the bar, already spraying fire from a semi-automatic. It was too dark to see their face, but I knew it had to be Deck, bless him. He found me immediately, grabbed me by the neck and swung me towards the door without saying a word. I didn't need a second invitation. I ran like hell.

It felt like an hour since the hacker had been shot, but it could only have been a couple of minutes, and the Café was in utter chaos – a mªlée of shadows scared out of their minds by the sound of the gun battle. Men and women were trying to clamber down from the terraces, scrabbling over each other, falling and fighting. I felt a fraction safer when I was in the middle of the bodies, but found myself being carried towards the outer door. I tried to resist, knowing that I had to try find Laura, and then go back and help Deck, but the pressure of other people's fear was too strong. Wipe pans of wide eyes, open mouths, hair – and an endless shout of terror from all around me, seeming to get louder and louder until it was almost tangible, something else pushing me forward. It was as much as I could do to keep myself upright and avoid being trampled to death.

I couldn't even turn my head until the crowd burped out of the Café and onto the street: half the people falling, the rest running straight over them as they obeyed a deep instinctual need to be on the East Coast for a while. I stayed on my feet – just – and got far enough from the door to turn around. The doorway looked like everybody had been told the devil was turning a blind eye and if they could get out of hell in the next five minutes they'd go free.

I had to go back. Fuck Laura, I had to find Deck. Hopefully he would only have stayed in the room long enough to cover me, but there'd been no sign of him behind me on the way out. He hadn't abandoned me, and I couldn't do it to him – but there was no way I could swim against the tide of bodies still crashing out onto the pavement. I was trying to remember if there was another entrance to the Café when I saw him, in the second row of the next wave of people tumbling out of the door. His hand was on Laura's head, keeping it down: his own head was up, watching the angles, working out the lines of least resistance. I shouted, and he looked over and saw me. He fought his way through the mass, elbowing people out of the way – the only person in the crowd with the presence of mind to head in a consistent direction.

‘Christ,’ I said, as they made it. ‘Am I pleased to see you.’

‘Wholly mutual, as always,’ Deck said. ‘But now I really think we should go.’

Laura was panting rapidly, and her green dress was torn in three places. ‘You coming with us?’ I asked.

‘Hell yes,’ she gasped, shock wobbling her up out of drunkenness.

‘How the hell did you do that?’ I asked Deck, as we ran down the wharf towards the car.

‘Do what, man?’ Deck said, turning his head to scan the mess outside the Café. A mass of people was still jamming the exit. We had a few minutes before the men in suits could hope to make it out, even if they started firing.

‘Find Laura again, and get out so quick?’

‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, slowing as we reached the car. His face was slick with sweat; a long scratch bled down one cheek. ‘I stuck with her, like you told me in the note.’

I turned, looked at Laura. Her face said Deck was telling the truth. She asked: ‘What happened in there?’

‘Your hacker snitched me,’ I said. ‘But the cops don't know about the connection to Hammond. Then guys in suits turned up. With big guns.’

‘The guys?’ Laura asked, looking very afraid.

‘Yeah. Four of them, which at least explains how they could be in two places at once. They told the cops to hand me over.’

Deck stared at me, frowning. ‘So how the hell did you get out?’

‘Someone killed the lights – everyone started firing at each other. I got near the door, was just about to get whacked, and then in came some other guy, slung me out of the way. I thought it was you.’

‘No. Sorry, man, it should have been, but it wasn't.’

‘Well who the hell was it?’ Laura asked, on the edge of hysteria.

I just shook my head.

‘Doesn't matter,’ Deck said, glancing back at the Café again. ‘Light a candle: of all the weirdos running around, at least one of them is on your side. Meantime we got to get out of here.’

‘So let's get in the car.’

Deck shook his head. ‘The cops will know your registration, maybe the other guys too. I'll take the car, hide it somewhere. You and Laura lose yourself.’

‘But what happens if they catch you?’

Deck shrugged. ‘I'll just say I boosted it. We're not known associates: never worked together.’

I looked along the wharf. The entrance to the Wharfland subway station was in sight. ‘But where do we meet?’

‘At mine. If I'm not back, let yourself in.’ He reached into his jacket, pulled out his gun and gave it to me. ‘Don't use this unless you feel like it.’

I unlocked the trunk of the car, took the dream receiver out, then gave the keys to Deck. ‘Try to keep at least two wheels on the ground at all times,’ I advised.

Deck jumped in the car and drove off fast. I ran to the entrance to the subway, Laura puffing along behind. A couple of guys were hanging round the stairs, peering up towards the chaos at the Café, and in the distance I could hear the sirens of approaching black and whites. ‘What's happened up the Café?’ one of the men asked.

‘Bizarre food-poisoning incident,’ I said, pulling Laura past them and down into the station. On reflex we reached our index fingers out towards the ticket machines; I snatched Laura's hand back just in time.

‘What?’ she said.

I reached for cash. ‘We finger the payment, they're going to know exactly where we went.’ Then I remembered my wallet was empty. ‘Shit – you got any money?’

Her face fell. ‘My purse was in the car.’

We ran back up the stairs, hung a sharp left then over the bridge. A squad car zipped past us going the other way, but there were so many people running in the streets by then it looked like a spontaneous civic fun-run had broken out – albeit one with no clear sense of direction – and nobody gave us a second glance. I headed down a side street where I knew there was an ATM. They'd be able to find out I withdrew money from there, but the cops knew I was in the area anyway. It was better than telling them exactly which train we were on.

The ATM was working. They generally are these days, after the banks got serious and installed anti-personal devices to make short work of anyone who tried to knock them off. I jammed my finger in the slot and got ready to bark instructions.

‘Statement of account, is it?’ the machine said immediately, rather stealing my fire.

‘Tempting, obviously, but no. What I want is two hundred dollars.’

‘Request denied,’ the machine said, and the slot pushed my finger out again. I frowned, then pushed it back. ‘You again,’ the machine said. ‘What do you want now?’

‘My money,’ I said. ‘And don't shit me around this time.’

‘Who's shitting?’ it replied. ‘Your account's empty, loser. Piss off.’

My finger was shoved back out again, and all the lights on the ATM went off.

I turned away, the ringing sound in my ears getting louder as I realized what had happened.

Laura looked at me anxiously. ‘What's wrong?’

‘My money's gone,’ I said.

‘Hap, man, shit – how you doing?’

‘Very bad,’ I said. ‘Let us in and then lock the fucking door.’

Vent stepped back with a little bow, and I shoved Laura in ahead of me. Three locks shot home – and I felt nearly safe.

It had taken us well over an hour to get across to the Dip from the ATM, slogging down back streets and trying not to be seen. After a while the sound of sirens started to fade, either because the situation back at the Café was sorting itself out, or because every cop in the area was already there. I hoped it was the latter. Laura was quiet most of the way, like she was thinking about something. What it might have been I have no idea, and I had enough worries of my own. She kept pace a couple of yards to the side, the little girl who walked by herself.

The Dip is an enclave built in one of the canyons which run through the West side of Griffith. Escalator at each end, street lights and power, but otherwise left natural and funky. Built into the walls of the canyon are little stores and dives, accessible by ladders. Most are delis, bars and speciality bookstores: Vent's isn't.

Vent is Tid's younger and more disreputable brother. He's lankier, better-looking and better-connected, and I've never seen him eat chocolate encased in a hard candy shell. His cave, if you know about it and he lets you in, is a treasure trove of illegality.

‘Beer?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I replied. Then: ‘Yes.’

Vent opened a door set into the wall of the store, and pulled out three beers. He handed one to Laura, who unscrewed the cap immediately and started chugging. ‘You going to introduce me to your ladyfriend?’

‘Laura, Vent: Vent, Laura,’ I said. ‘And she's not my ladyfriend. Look, Vent, I need some stuff, and then we have to go.’

With a smile: ‘Always the way, Hap my man, back in the good old days. Thought you'd straightened out, though. Ain't seen you in a coon's age.’

‘I had, more or less,’ I said. Laura had wandered a little way down the cave, and was peering at all the drawers built into the walls. Quietly: ‘A certain woman's put some pretty major kinks back into my life.’

‘They have that tendency.’ Vent nodded sagely. ‘Hence I get my kicks in VR these days. So: what are you looking for?’

‘Money,’ I said. ‘Temporary liquidity problem, and I need a twenty-four-hour loan. A thousand.’ Actually I just needed fifty bucks, enough to keep us going until I could get on the Net, but asking for that little would have been a clear signal that something was very wrong in my financial life.

Vent shook his head. ‘Cash I can't do. Just made some major buys. Can let you have a finger.’

‘Shit.’ Overkill – and illegal in its own right. ‘That'll have to do.’

Vent opened the fridge again, reached down to a lower shelf. Straightened up with an aluminium bag. ‘Very fresh,’ he said. ‘One of the things I just acquired.’ He slit the tape at the end of the bag and pulled it out: the index finger of a Caucasian male, with a small device fastened on the severed end.

‘How safe?’ I asked, aware of Laura staring at us.

‘Very,’ Vent said. ‘My friends cased the gentleman before he passed away. No-one's going to miss him for days. Or find him, given where they hid the body.’

‘What the hell is that?’ Laura asked. I told her. The finger of a dead man with a usable bank account, kept alive by a plasma generator. In other words: about two days' use of money belonging to someone who wasn't going to miss it. She blanched, turned away.

‘Anything else?’

‘Cigarettes, while I'm here.’ As Vent fetched them I tried to predict what else I might need, but came up blank. Then I remembered a thought from Ensenada: ‘Got any coincidences?’

‘Only three,’ he said. ‘And they're pretty small.’

‘The way things are, anything's a help,’ I said. ‘And I'm going to have to owe you on all this.’

‘Okay,’ he said, and opened a drawer. He pulled out a vial and a hypo. ‘I don't know about quality – there's no label. So if you get sick, don't blame me.’ He spiked the bottle and drew the liquid up into the syringe, while I rolled up my sleeve. Then he stuck the needle in my vein and injected the serum. There was a brief feeling of coldness and then everything felt the same again. Doesn't work for everyone; luckily it does for me.

I finished the beer, threw the bottle in the trash. ‘So how much do I owe you?’

‘Give you the fate shot for four hundred: finger for the standard rate – one hundred fifty per cent of the money available. Cancer sticks thirty bucks.’

‘Less my discount, right?’

Vent laughed, winked at Laura. ‘That's Hap,’ he said. ‘Always had that great sense of humour.’

We got to Deck's just before eleven. After we left Vent's I went straight to an ATM, and stuck the finger in the slot.

Laura acted pissed. ‘Are you really going to use that thing?’

‘Got any other suggestions?’ I snapped. ‘It's either that or we go on welfare until I can get back on to the Net.’ She looked away.

The dead guy was called Walter Fitt, and had close on four thou in the bank, which meant the finger was going to cost me six. Vent's suppliers would have checked before passing it on to him. I took out a hundred cash, and made a note of the account number and bank code.

The cash got us on the subway until it ended at the Griffith wall at Barham Gate. I took an oblique approach up to the tunnel, and saw what I expected: two cops doing security checks on everyone who wanted to leave. I didn't have much of a plan, but it turned out I didn't need one. Just as I was deciding that we might have to turn back and try some of the other exits, a guy in the queue ahead suddenly bolted. As one of the guards chased after him, his colleague just waved the rest of us through. I felt pretty blessed as we walked quickly out of Griffith, until I realized it was probably just the first of the coincidence coming through. Useful and timely, but not exactly earth-shattering – and now I only had two left. There's no way of telling when or how they'll click in: you just have to take your chances. Even fate shots take their timing from the vicissitudes of fate.

I stole a car half a mile the other side of the gate, and took Mulholland and Coldwater over to Sunset. Cut through Westwood down as far as Wilshire, and then just kept driving until we hit the coast. The roads were quiet, the sky clear. As we hit Ocean Avenue a column of sea view opened in front of us, stretching to infinity and blocked only by the leaves of trees along the Palisades. I turned right into the Avenue and pulled to a halt, looking out at the water. Dark blue and lit by moonlight, the ocean looked like a texture generated by a computer program, only less complex and more sane: apparent simplicity masking questions that never ended, instead of the Net's fake detail built on top of nothingness. Of course there's actually a hundred-foot drop the other side of the rail, then a busy road and a beach before you reach the water: there's probably a metaphor for life in there somewhere, but I've never had the energy to look for it.

‘I grew up by water,’ I said. ‘It makes me feel better.’

‘I don't,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel wet. Look – my ass hurts and I'm bored, so can we just get where we're going?’

Deck lives in an eight-apartment building a few blocks back, in a nice street lined with trees. He cashed out his chips from hard crime in a sensible way, and now lives in low-key respectability. These days he mainly just shifts stuff around for the fun of it, creaming off enough money to get by, keeps in practice at thumping people just for old times' sake. I drove the car round the back of his building and parked it close to the wall and out of sight. Deck's lights weren't on, which meant we'd probably beaten him home. That shouldn't have been the case, but I didn't know what route he'd taken or where he dumped my car.

We took the back staircase up to the third storey and I used my keys to let us in to the kitchen. Deck's a caveman on such matters, won't trust finger or even voice recognition. It's a matter of some irritation to me that he gets burgled less frequently as a result. You can crack a code or fake a voice pattern silently: forcing a lock is always going to make a noise.

A dim side light came on automatically as we entered the apartment. ‘Beer's in the fridge, hard stuff in the closet above,’ I said, and walked through into the living room where I sat on the sofa in the dark and closed my eyes.

At long last, I got the shakes: the roar in my ears an echo of gunfire and deep voices. As the retorts finally faded, the line of men came once more in front of my inner eye. I could picture them too sharply, almost as if I was dreaming – Laura's memory overlapping with my own experience. There was something else there too, something occluded and blanked, and I could feel it getting closer all the time. For a moment I almost had it again, a vision of light round a head like a halo, and then it was gone.

A couple minutes later I heard a rustling and opened my eyes to see Laura standing a few yards away. She was holding a large glass of something in one hand, and a beer in the other.

‘Would you like one of these?’ she said.

I took it and drank slowly while she looked around the room. The walls of Deck's apartment are covered in old film stills, ratty posters, and various other shit that he's collected from all over the place. I'm sure there's an order to it somewhere, but I'll be hanged if I've ever been able to find it. Deck's my best friend, but for some reason his collection irritates me. I think it makes me feel vulnerable. It feels like a taunt of insufficiency, a demonstration of what I lack. Most people bring something with them to the party of the present day, some wine bottle to present to their hosts: Deck has his stuff, his calm, and a compendious knowledge of where to buy the best chilli dogs; other people have friends, a style of being, an idea of who they are and why.

I don't seem to have any of these, and wade through life full of insecurity and vertigo, usually manifested as impatience and a panicky feeling of rootlessness. Have I actually been here all this time, I wonder sometimes: and if so – what the hell have I been doing?

Laura perched on the other end of the sofa. She'd found a rubber band from somewhere and pony-tailed her hair. ‘What happens now?’

I lit a cigarette. They're more relaxed in Santa Monica about such things, and smoking in the privacy of your own apartment is merely a misdemeanour and generally overlooked. ‘We sit here until either Deck turns up or I lose patience and fall asleep,’ I said. ‘At which point you run away, leaving me with a murder in my head and no way of removing it. During the night I dream a lot of other people's shit which I won't even end up getting paid for, because the account that REMtemps pays into has been frozen. Then the cops find me and bang me up for the rest of my life for something I didn't even do.’

She laughed shortly. ‘Feeling kind of sorry for yourself, aren't you?’

‘Yes – and with good reason. Quite apart from anything else, I've been shot at and seen a guy blown to pieces this evening. He may have been a long-haired snitch bastard, but that doesn't make it a great spectator sport.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘Who was long-haired?’

‘The hacker,’ I said. ‘Remember him?’

‘Very clearly. He had short hair.’

‘Not mid-twenties, big nose, thoroughbred geek?’ I asked, and stared at her.

Laura said it first: ‘Then he wasn't the same guy.’

‘So who the hell was he?’

‘How should I know? How did he find you?’

‘He didn't.’ Suddenly I glimpsed the first step along a line of truths that had been in front of me all the time. I pulled the organizer out of my pocket, kicked up the bare-bones Net software. Meantime the cellular card automatically established a 2D connection, and the operating system bid me a cheery good evening.

‘What are you doing?’ Laura asked.

‘I thought that nerd was too good to be true,’ I said, furious at myself. ‘He was straight out of Central Casting – even had a sweatshirt with the stupid slogan on it. But Quat said he'd be pretty distinctive, so I didn't make anything of it. Then he had this weird attitude, half scared, half cool. When it all went berserk I assumed it was just because he knew he'd been setting me up.’

‘But?’ I tapped my way through a circumventory login, then told the organizer to use a random whereis server to find my account daemon and haul it in – and to abort if looked like it was going to take longer than thirty seconds.

‘Hap, what are you saying?’ Laura asked. I shushed her, watched the timer. With ten seconds left the organizer announced that the daemon was coming home: two seconds later the results were there on the screen.

The daemon listed the six bank accounts it administered in my name: two real, two virtual, two nothing more concrete than randomized streams through gaps in the money market. All empty. Zeros straight across the board.

Laura gawked at the column of emptiness. I killed the Net connection before the cellular source could be traced.

Stared straight ahead, seeing nothing at all.

I had nothing to my name, and there was just one man in the world who could have taken it. The same man who'd been the only person able to dial into my phone that morning, and who suddenly did business over the wire so he could put me in a certain place at a certain time. A man who I'd trusted with all of my business for over a year, who knew everything about me.

‘It's Quat,’ I said. ‘He's fucked me over.’

‘Your hacker? Why?’

‘The transmitter your guy used – was it a suitcase full of junk?’

Laura nodded. ‘I couldn't believe it was going to work – but it did. Look, I'm tired of saying “Why?”, so can you just assume my participation from now is a generic question mark?’

‘Did you get Hammond's address through the same guy? From the same hacker who set up the transfer?’

Laura nodded. ‘I put a veiled ad in adult personals for hacker services: couple hours later this guy comes through.’ Which implied Quat had been her hacker, that he'd had access to a machine all the time and he knew about Hammond's murder. ‘Does that mean this Quat guy got killed?’

I shook my head, thoughts still whirling. ‘The guy in the Café was just an actor – method nerd going through his lines. Quat set me up, operating at one remove.’

I put it together as best I could.

Laura wants Hammond dead, for whatever reason, but doesn't know where he's at. She finds a hacker – Quat – or he finds her. He gets the address. Next day he reads that the guy has been whacked – then Laura wants an illicit memory dump. He had to know that it was the murder, and he arranges to send it into my head. I blow town for two days – he doesn't know where I am, and he's strangely difficult to get hold of. As soon as I'm back I get in touch with him: he holds off giving me a machine he already has, until he can set me up with the cops.

It held, though there were some weird coincidences in the mix which didn't sit comfortably. And there was still a big question, which Laura returned to immediately.

‘Yeah, fine,’ she said, ‘but why would this guy want to do that to you? You stiff him over a bill or something?’

‘No. He had control over all my money. I couldn't have stiffed him even if I'd wanted to. I trusted him with everything.’

Laura abruptly downed the rest of her drink in one swallow, looked at me bright-eyed. ‘Then we're both screwed.’

There was a noise, from out back of the kitchen. Deck, I assumed. Then I heard the sound of someone's feet going back down the stairs.

I stood up, pulled the gun. Walked into the other room and squinted through the kitchen windows. I couldn't see anyone out there. Gun held out in front, I edged towards the back door, wishing it had a glass panel in it. When I got there I took the handle as quietly as possible, took a breath, and yanked it open.

Nobody there.

The night had cooled, faint condensation hanging in the air and turning yard lights into sparkles. I looked down, saw a small suitcase that looked familiar.

I ran to the end of the walkway and stuck my head out, but couldn't see anyone heading away from the building. At a sound I whirled back round, and nearly blew Laura's head off. She was peering into the suitcase. ‘The transmitter?’ she asked.

I nodded, swallowing compulsively. ‘What's this?’ she added, reaching forward to pick up a small scrap of paper from inside the case.

I took it from her. She craned her neck to read it with me. On it was written just one word: HELENA.

‘Who's Helena?’ Laura asked.

I realized who'd saved me at the Café.

‘My ex-wife,’ I said, and went back inside.