then sat for a while on a bench in the street outside the bar, with a café au lait bought from a food stand on the corner. I knew there were only two questions worth answering—who the killers were and where they’d gone—but I felt as if I’d missed some train in the night. It was like I knew the rules but not the game anymore; or maybe it was the other way around.
The newspost on the corner kept distracting me, burbling the day’s current factoids. Another woman had been found dead, this time on the 104th floor. The story rated slightly longer than the previous day’s, because the victim lived on the right side of a certain horizontal line. Her face had also suffered “unspecified damage.”
I frowned—two homicides with the same MO, on different floors, on consecutive days. “Unspecified damage”smacked of the cops holding back something distinctive to weed out hoax confessors. For just an instant my mind clicked into an old frame of reference, stirred sluggishly toward interest.
Then I told myself it was none of my business anymore.
The rest of the bulletin was fluff. New advances in some technology or other, recent statistics on something else. Some guy believed to be a mob figure had been found dead, and someone had discovered that Everest wasn’t the highest mountain after all.
“Beignet?”
“No,” I said. I hate breakfast. I turned to see Howie standing beside me, contentedly munching.
“You should eat something. It gives you a good start on the day.”
“It gives you brain tumors,” I said. “I read it somewhere.”
Howie sat on the bench next to me and took a sip of my coffee. He chewed for another few moments, ostensibly watching the newscast. Then he turned his round face toward me.
“I know this is turning into a constant refrain,” he said, “but what you’re thinking about is not a good idea.”
“What am I thinking about?”
Howie pointed at me with a beignet “You should go bury Mal, if that’s what you’re going to do. Then find some wheels, and I’ll get Paulie to deliver Suej to wherever you are. You could be in the mountains by lunchtime, who knows where by tomorrow. That’s what you should do. To be frank, Jack, you’re not the guy you used to be—and I mean that as a compliment. I don’t look at you and think ‘Christ—a psycho’ anymore. You’ve already fucked off the guys who owned your Farm. Topping that by paying a visit to a certain spaghetti-eater of our mutual acquaintance isn’t such a hot idea.”
“What makes you think I’d do that?”
“Your head gives you away. It glows when you’re about to do something stupid. And that would be really stupid.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It would.”
When I was outside Mal’s door I hesitated for a moment. I’d seen a lot of bad things happen to friends, admittedly usually while on Rapt, but none of them had ever truly gone away. Sometimes I could feel them, just out of sight, as if I could turn my head quickly and catch them for a moment, bright and backlit and eternal.
On the other hand, if I didn’t do this now it wasn’t going to happen at all. I unlocked the door and opened it. The apartment was cold and it hadn’t really been that long: While I wasn’t expecting the smell to be bad, I wasn’t anticipating enjoying it.
I was surprised to find it wasn’t there at all. Slightly relieved, I shut the door behind me and crossed the room. I stopped abruptly halfway.
Mal’s body wasn’t there.
I stood there stupidly, turning my head this way and that, trying to see it differently. I couldn’t. His body simply wasn’t there. Closer inspection revealed that the floor was clean, with no sign of the blood, bone chips and brain smear which had been there the night before.
I checked the John, Mal’s sleeping area, the cupboards. The latter were stuffed full of Mal’s patented brand of junk. Everywhere else was empty.
Mal’s body had been taken away, taken by someone who’d unlocked the
The newspost on the corner kept distracting me, burbling the day’s current factoids. Another woman had been found dead, this time on the 104th floor. The story rated slightly longer than the previous day’s, because the victim lived on the right side of a certain horizontal line. Her face had also suffered “unspecified damage.”
I frowned—two homicides with the same MO, on different floors, on consecutive days. “Unspecified damage”smacked of the cops holding back something distinctive to weed out hoax confessors. For just an instant my mind clicked into an old frame of reference, stirred sluggishly toward interest.
Then I told myself it was none of my business anymore.
The rest of the bulletin was fluff. New advances in some technology or other, recent statistics on something else. Some guy believed to be a mob figure had been found dead, and someone had discovered that Everest wasn’t the highest mountain after all.
“Beignet?”
“No,” I said. I hate breakfast. I turned to see Howie standing beside me, contentedly munching.
“You should eat something. It gives you a good start on the day.”
“It gives you brain tumors,” I said. “I read it somewhere.”
Howie sat on the bench next to me and took a sip of my coffee. He chewed for another few moments, ostensibly watching the newscast. Then he turned his round face toward me.
“I know this is turning into a constant refrain,” he said, “but what you’re thinking about is not a good idea.”
“What am I thinking about?”
Howie pointed at me with a beignet “You should go bury Mal, if that’s what you’re going to do. Then find some wheels, and I’ll get Paulie to deliver Suej to wherever you are. You could be in the mountains by lunchtime, who knows where by tomorrow. That’s what you should do. To be frank, Jack, you’re not the guy you used to be—and I mean that as a compliment. I don’t look at you and think ‘Christ—a psycho’ anymore. You’ve already fucked off the guys who owned your Farm. Topping that by paying a visit to a certain spaghetti-eater of our mutual acquaintance isn’t such a hot idea.”
“What makes you think I’d do that?”
“Your head gives you away. It glows when you’re about to do something stupid. And that would be really stupid.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It would.”
When I was outside Mal’s door I hesitated for a moment. I’d seen a lot of bad things happen to friends, admittedly usually while on Rapt, but none of them had ever truly gone away. Sometimes I could feel them, just out of sight, as if I could turn my head quickly and catch them for a moment, bright and backlit and eternal.
On the other hand, if I didn’t do this now it wasn’t going to happen at all. I unlocked the door and opened it. The apartment was cold and it hadn’t really been that long: While I wasn’t expecting the smell to be bad, I wasn’t anticipating enjoying it.
I was surprised to find it wasn’t there at all. Slightly relieved, I shut the door behind me and crossed the room. I stopped abruptly halfway.
Mal’s body wasn’t there.
I stood there stupidly, turning my head this way and that, trying to see it differently. I couldn’t. His body simply wasn’t there. Closer inspection revealed that the floor was clean, with no sign of the blood, bone chips and brain smear which had been there the night before.
I checked the John, Mal’s sleeping area, the cupboards. The latter were stuffed full of Mal’s patented brand of junk. Everywhere else was empty.
Mal’s body had been taken away, taken by someone who’d unlocked the
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