One of Us (11 page)

On the plus side, my guess was that the murder case wasn't going to be easy to crack, and that for the time being I remained reasonably safe. The cops' only route to me was through Laura, and something told me that her connection to Ray Hammond wasn't one that was going to leap out at them straight off the bat. The loaned memory of his eyes said Hammond was a man who was good at keeping secrets, and that Laura would be one of them. The wild card was the guys in gray who'd come along at the end of the memory. As I'd told Deck, they didn't strike me as cops—and I was even more sure of that now that I knew who Ray Hammond had been. It was partly their reaction at the scene of the crime and partly just something about them. These guys had nothing on me, and so no action was required, but I'd certainly be keeping them in mind.

It was possible that the cops would roust Stratten for information on his recent clients. Stratten would have no knowledge of my piece of freelancing, but I had to make sure that I behaved in as normal a way as possible, otherwise his brain might start ticking over. In other words, I needed to give him a call and act nice.

I ran back over it every which way, and always came back to the same conclusion. If we could just lie low for a while, and Quat came through for me, chances were I would be okay. Which left only one question, irrelevant but still curious.

What was a ranking cop doing with property in wasteland LA?

Eventually the sky started to darken and my speed picked back up as I approached the adult area. A Net Nanny peered at me at the intersection and let me pass, correctly judging I was of adult age, if not necessarily an adult. The adult zone's not a homey place—perpetual night, gas stations and twenty-four-hour mini-marts, bus shelters with no one standing at them and solitary figures trudging down roads—but I had to drive through it to get to where the wild folks live. Competing banner signs kept pace with the car as I shot through, shouting about the wares of sex sites along the way. Gradually the signs got sidetracked into punching each other out, and started to fall behind. At one point an entirely naked and silicone-enhanced female appeared in my passenger seat, cooing about the things I could see for just $19.95 an hour, but I kept my foot down and got out the other side before it got out of hand. The image pouted and dissolved as I crossed the line into hacker territory, leaving me with the sound of a kiss.

It's individual domains again out there, but the houses are of more baroque design and have Fuckoff Dogs sleeping out front. As you drive past in the twilight, each opens one eye and growls to let you know they're there. The Fuckoff Dogs are basically hack detectors, and can deal with anything short of a supervirus. There was a period when you'd see lions, dragons, and eternal vortexes of death-knives keeping guard, but then the hackers all moved on to some other fad and dogs slowly took over again.

Time tends to seem to slow in the hackers' zone because of the processing requirements of all their little tweaks and hacks. Roads seldom lead where you expect, and unless you know where you're going—and have forward clearance—you'll find yourself burped out somewhere on the other side of the Net.

Eventually I got to Quat's street, and drove up to his gate. His Fuckoff hauled itself to its feet and squinted irritably at me as I approached. He's an old version and getting tired, but Quat's too sentimental to upgrade. I held my hand out and let the dog sniff it, half expecting, as always, to lose my fingers, but he recognized my Preferences File and let me in. It tried to send a cookie back down the link as I passed, and I blocked it, as usual. One of Quat's milder cookies will localize your operating system into Amish, and one time he turned my avatar into a serial killer. I'd whacked fourteen virtual people in cyburbia before the sysCops caught up with me, but luckily Quat had included an Undo function and no lasting harm was done.

I parked in front of the house and ran up the path to the front door. As the buzzer played what sounded like an entire symphony deep in the bowels of the house, I nervously hopped from foot to foot and peered through the window into Quat's living room. It was very tidy. It always is. Quat's so house-proud, rumor has it that even in the real world when he has a party, he insists that everyone is modeled in code and spends the evening in a virtual-reality version of his apartment: Then, when they leave, he can just restore it from a backup, without the wine stains and piles of vomit. I'd never actually met Quat in the flesh, but I could believe it.

"Yo," he said when he opened his door. "You got my message."

"Nice suit, Quatty," I replied. Quat always dresses like a particularly straitlaced FBI agent from the 1950s, which I guess is an ironic statement of some kind. His virtual face, likewise, is a picture of stern respectability—whereas I expect in the real world he looks the usual hacker mess and doesn't spend enough money on clothes.

"Can't stay," I said, and he nodded.

"I guessed a call at three in the morning was unlikely to have been purely social. What do you need?"

"A machine."

"What kind of machine?"

I looked him straight in the eye. "A memory transmitter."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. And I need it fast."

He shook his head slowly, still looking at me. "Fast I can't do. To do it at all is going to be extremely difficult. As you know. And expensive. I know only about two people who might be able to lash one up. And they're both doing time with no hope of Net access."

"There's someone around who can do it," I said.

"Got a name?"

I shook my head, wishing I'd thought to ask Laura Reynolds but knowing she wouldn't have told me. "Just trust me, there is. And however much it costs, I need a machine. Now."

"Someone taken a job they shouldn't have?"

"That's about the size of it."

"It doesn't worry you that if Stratten finds out, he's going to be extremely mad? I mean, like,
killing
mad?"

"Quat, I've got no choice. The last lump of money your demon fractalled for me was the first payment for the job. The dump's already in my head. You've got to find this guy, and fast."

Facial reactions don't mean a whole lot on the Net, but Quat's stern face now looked especially stern. "What are you carrying?"

"A murder. A cop-killing. And there's something hinky about it. I need it out of my head."

He looked away, running his eyes over the pristine tidiness of his entryway. In reality he could have been doing anything, and was probably already starting getting in touch with his contacts. "Got to go," I said. "Give me an estimate."

"Twenty-four hours."

My heart sank. "Shit—that long?"

"If you're lucky. Where are you going to be?"

"Wherever I am," I said, and went.

Quat and his house dissolved into a shower of pixels, and I was back in the parking lot again. I was about to leap out and go running upstairs, with that youthful vigor I have, but then decided I could do with a quick cigarette without Laura Reynolds whining at me. Meantime I got the teleputer to flash up the bottom line of today's news. People were doing stuff, or had done stuff, none of it of direct relevance to me. It was going to be a sunny day unless it pissed down later on. There was nothing about the Hammond murder. Life was holding steady, at least for the time being.

I finished the cigarette and stepped out of the car, trying not to let any of the smoke escape.

I KNEW SOMETHING was wrong the moment I closed the apartment door behind me. Rather than knocking, I'd used my key, on the grounds that Laura might be in an escapist mood. Turned out not to be an issue. The living room was empty. No one was in the bathroom either. I quickly walked to both bedrooms, then turned and pointlessly searched the living room again. Deck and Laura continued to fail to be there.

I stopped myself from checking the other rooms again. The apartment was empty. You can tell. The objects in the room looked smug and overprominent in that way they do when they've got the space to themselves. I stood still for a moment, blinking, not sure how to react but suspecting that outright panic was the way forward. I hadn't specifically told Deck not to take Laura out shopping or something, but he's a bright guy. I'm sure he took it as understood. There was a third used cup on the counter, which meant there'd been time for Laura to finish up in the bathroom and doubtless irritably accept a cup of coffee. The readout on the answering machine said no one had called, and the machine itself bad-temperedly confirmed this.

There was no note, and no sign of a struggle in the apartment. There just wasn't anyone there. The place felt like the Marie Celeste, except that it wasn't a ship and it was carpeted.

The phone rang. I grabbed it. "Deck?"

"No—it's the Tidster."

"Tid—have you seen Deck? With a woman?"

He laughed. "No. That'd be something to remember, right?"

"You didn't see him leave the building."

"No."

"Then what the hell are you calling for?"

"You still interested in hearing if any official-looking dudes pull up outside?"

My blood ran a little colder. "What are you telling me?"

"Silver car, two guys, ten seconds ago."

"Holy fuck." I slammed the phone down on Tid, who was still talking, snatched my coat, and ran out of the apartment. Dithered for a moment in the hallway, then headed toward the bank of elevators that led down the northern side of the building—judging that the men would come up the central way.

As I ran I asked four questions: How the hell had they found the apartment? Why were they after me, and how did they even know I existed? Who the hell were they?

No answers came. Near the end of the corridor I found myself slowing down, and stopped just before turning the corner. I had the jitters big-time, and not just because of the general situation. I felt trapped. I glanced back toward the apartment: There was no sign of anyone yet, but once they entered my corridor they'd see me, and I was too far away to hear the elevator doors. Large and noisy sections of my brain were shouting at me to just keep running, head for the other elevator bank, and get the hell down to another floor. But something else was telling me to be careful. I decided to trust it.

I reached into my pocket and yanked out the clock, shook it vigorously until it woke up.

"Jeez, what time is it?" it said irritably. "I'm bushed."

"Got a job for you," I said.

At this, the clock brightened considerably. "Cool. What?"

"I need you to go around the corner and walk until you can see the elevator doors."

"Why?"

"Just do it. If the doors open and anything danger-shaped comes out, run back here screaming your head off."

I set the clock down on the floor. It peered up at me suspiciously, and I waved it forward. As it toddled off around the corner, keeping close to the wall, I prepared to feel kind of foolish.

For a minute it was very quiet; then I heard the sound of the elevator doors opening. The clock didn't shout.

I was halfway around the corner when I heard something else.

A gunshot.

After a brief pause in which I froze, shocked into immobility, the clock came hurtling around the corner toward me. "Shit," it squeaked breathlessly, and then it was gone. I ran after it as fast as I could, but not quickly enough to avoid getting a glimpse of who had come out of the elevator.

Two men. Dressed in gray.

I hurtled down the corridor, knowing I was trapped. As I passed the clock, it made a dive for my jeans, clung on, and scrambled hectically up my left leg. When it got to the top, it scurried rapidly back into my jacket pocket and nosed its way into the deepest corner. I sensed it wasn't going to be a great deal of help.

I heard a
ping
, and realized that someone was about to enter the floor via the central elevators. Glancing behind, I saw that the two men were coming down the corridor after me. They were running fast, with a compact running style in exact step with each other. In that second I also flashed on something I hadn't consciously noticed in the memory: Both wore old-fashioned sunglasses, like sloping beetle eyes.

The one on the right scoped me, and a shot rang out, whistling about six inches to the right of my leg. I found my rhythm again, and then some. As I sprinted around the corner, I saw four old people getting out of the elevator in a neat two-by-two formation. All looked pretty alarmed. I banged straight through the middle—knocking three of them over—and into the elevator behind them. I slapped the button and threw myself flat against the side wall as the oldsters squawked and jabbered. The doors closed mercifully quickly, and I just stared across the elevator, panting slightly, not bothering to peek through the narrowing gap.

Then we were heading down. "They shot at me" came a muffled voice from my pocket, sounding genuinely upset.

"Fuckers," I said, pulling out my gun. "I won't stand for that."

"You mean it?"

I slammed a clip in. "Absolutely. You're my clock. Anyone shoots you, it's going to be me."

I decided against screwing around with lower floors and went straight to the basement. Waved the gun around as I jumped out, but nobody was there. I turned and shot out the elevator controls on both sides, and an alarm of implacable vehemence went off.

I ran across the parking lot with the back of my neck tingling, expecting something small and hard to smack into it at any moment, and dived into the car. I left The Falkland's premises at around a hundred miles an hour, for once in my life deciding that anti-collision software was for wimps. I lost the back end for a while as I swerved onto the street, causing a certain amount of disquiet in my fellow road-users, then just put my foot down and headed for the gate.

It was only when I was half a mile away that I remembered I'd left the memory receiver in my apartment.

CHAPTER SIX

I called Deck's house from the car, though I knew it was pointless. He lives out near the beach in Santa Monica, and there was no way he could have gotten there in the time I was on the Net, even assuming he had a reason to. The phone rang for a while, and then his machine kicked in. I shouted something brief and to the point at it, then hung up.