Black Man (55 page)

When it was done, when her eyes slid finally closed and her breathing stopped, when Murat Ertekin bent over her, sobbing uncontrollably, and checked the pulse in her neck and nodded, when it was over and there was, finally, no more left for him to do, Carl walked away.

He left Murat Ertekin sitting with his daughter. He left Norton standing trembling like a bodyguard running a high fever but still on duty. He left and headed down the corridor alone. It felt as if he were wading in thigh-deep water. Humans brushed past, moving aside for him, cued in by the blank face and the forced gait. There was no panic, no buzz of activity in his wake—Murat knew how to bypass the machines so they wouldn’t scream for help when Sevgi’s vital signs sank to the bottom.

They would know soon enough. Norton had promised to deal with it. That was his end—Carl had done what he did best.

He walked away.

The memories scurried after him, anxious not to be left behind.

“Don’t know what’s next,” she says, smiling as the drug takes hold. “But if it feels anything like this, it’ll do.”

And then, as her eyelids begin to sag, “I’ll see you all in the garden, I guess.”

“Yeah, with all that fruit and the stream running under the trees there,” he tells her, through lips that seem to have gone numb. Voice suddenly hoarse. He’s the only one talking to her now. Norton is silent and rigid at his side, no use to anyone. Murat Ertekin has sunk to his knees beside the bed, face pressed into his daughter’s hand, holding back tears with an effort that shakes him visibly as he breathes. He summons strength to keep speaking. Squeezes her hand. “Remember that, Sevgi. All that sunlight through the trees.”

She squeezes back, barely. She sniggers, a gentle rupturing of air out through her lips, barely any actual sound. “And the virgins. Don’t forget them.”

He swallows hard.

“Yeah, well you save me one of those. I’ll be along, Sevgi. I’ll catch you up. We all will.”

“Fucking virgins,” she murmurs sleepily. “Who needs ’em? Gotta teach ’em every fucking thing…”

And then, finally, just before the breathing stops.

“Baba, he’s a good man. He’s clean.”

He smashed back the doors out of the ward, along the corridors people got out of his way. He found the stairs, plunged downward, looking for a way out.

Knowing there wasn’t one.

Afterward, the COLIN exec came to find him in the garden. Carl hadn’t said he was going there, but it wouldn’t have taken a detective to work it out. The benches around the fountain had become a standard haunt for all of them over the past few days, familiar with habitual use. It was where they went when the weight of the hospital pressed down on them, when the antiseptic-scented, nano-cleansed air grew too hard and arid to breathe. Norton slumped onto the bench beside him like someone getting home to a shared house and hitting the sofa. He stared into the sunlit splash of the fountain and said nothing at all.

He’d cleaned up, but his face still looked feverish from the crying.

“Any trouble?” Carl asked him.

Norton shook his head numbly. His voice came out mechanical. “They’re making some noise. The COLIN mandate should cover it. Ertekin’s talking to them.”

“So we’re free to go.”

“Free to…?” The exec’s brow furrowed, uncomprehending. “You’ve always been free to go, Marsalis.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Norton swallowed. “Listen, there’s the funeral. Arrangements. I don’t know if—”

“I’m not interested in what they do with her corpse. I’m going to find Onbekend. Are you going to help me?”

“Marsalis, listen—”

“It’s a simple question, Norton. You watched her die in there. What are you going to do about it?”

The COLIN exec drew a shuddering breath. “You think killing Onbekend is going to make things better?

You think that’ll bring her back?”

Carl stared at him. “I’m going to assume that’s rhetorical.”

“Haven’t you had enough yet?”

“Enough of what?”

“Enough of killing whatever you can get your
fucking
hands on.” Norton came off the bench, stood over him. The words hissed out like vented poison gas. “You just took Sevgi’s
life
in there, and all you can think of to do is go look for someone else to kill?
Is that all you fucking know how to do?
“

Across the gardens, heads turned.

“Sit down,” Carl said grimly. “Before I break your fucking neck for you.”

Norton grinned hard. He sank onto his haunches, brought his face level with Carl’s.

“You want to break my fucking neck.” He gestured up. “Here it is, my friend. Right fucking here.”

He meant it. Carl closed his eyes and sighed. Opened them and looked at Norton again, nodded slowly.

“All right.” He cleared his throat. “There are two ways to look at this,
my friend
. See, we can do the civilized, feminized, constructive thing and work a long by-the-book investigation that may or may not lead us eventually back to Manco Bambarén and the altiplano and Onbekend. Or we can take your COLIN authorization and a little hardware, and we can fly down there and set fire to Manco’s machine.”

Norton levered himself upright again. He shook his head. “And you think that’s going to make him cave in? Just like that?”

“Onbekend is a thirteen.” Carl wondered fleetingly if he shouldn’t try harder with Norton, lever his voice up out of the dead tone he could hear in it. “Manco Bambarén may have hired him, or he may just be doing business with the people who did, but whatever the connection is, it’s not blood the way it was with Merrin. Manco’s going to see Onbekend and me as two of a kind, monsters he can play off against each other for whatever best result there is. He gave me Nevant three years ago to get me off his back, and he’ll give me Onbekend for the same reason. In the end, he’s a businessman, and he’ll do what’s good for business. If we make it bad enough for business to hold out, then he’ll cave in.”

“
We
?”

“Slip of the tongue. I’m going anyway. You can come with me or not, as your nonvariant conscience sees fit. Be easier for me if you did, but if you don’t, well.” Carl shrugged. “I promised Gutierrez I’d go back to Mars to kill him, and I meant it. The altiplano’s a lot easier gig than that.”

“I could stop you.”

“No, you couldn’t. First sign of trouble from you, I’m on an UNGLA bounce out of here. They practically tried to drag me onto the shuttle last week. They’ll jump at the chance if I call them. Then I’ll just double back to Peru on my own ticket.”

“COLIN could still make your life very tough down there.”

“Yeah, they usually do. Occupational hazard. It never stopped me before.”

“Hard man, huh?”

“Thirteen.” Carl looked at him levelly. “Norton, this is what’s wired into me, it’s what my body chemistry’s good for. I am going to build a memorial to Sevgi Ertekin out of Onbekend’s blood, and I will cut down anyone who gets in my way. Including you, if you make me.”

Norton sank back onto the bench.

“You think that’s just you?” he muttered. “You think we don’t all feel that way right now?”

“I wouldn’t know. But
feeling
and
doing
are two very different things. In fact, there’s a guy back on Mars called Sutherland who tells me humans have built their entire civilization in the gap between the two.

I wouldn’t know about that, either. What I
do
know is that an hour ago in there”—Carl gestured toward the hospital—“Murat Ertekin
felt
he wanted to put his daughter out of her misery. But he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. I won’t judge him for that, just like I won’t judge you for not coming with me, if that’s the choice you make. Maybe this stuff just isn’t wired into you people as deep. That’s what they told us at Osprey, anyway. That we were special because we were able to do what the society that created us no longer had the stomach for.”

“Right,” Norton said bitterly. “Believe everything the recruiting poster says, why don’t you.”

“I didn’t say I did, I said that’s what they told us. I don’t necessarily think they were right. This much is true—it certainly didn’t work out well, not for us or for you people.” Carl sighed. “Look, I don’t know, Norton. Maybe the fact that you don’t have the stomach for single-minded slaughter anymore, the fact that you’re forgetting how to do it—maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it makes you a better human being than me, a better member of society, a better
man
even. I wouldn’t know, and I don’t care because for me it isn’t relevant. I am going to destroy Onbekend, I am going to destroy anyone who stands in my way. Now, are you coming with me or not?”

In the hotel, he found mundane things to do. The last four days of Sevgi’s life had frozen his own existence in its tracks; he’d done nothing awake but sit by her and wait. He’d been in the same set of clothes since the night she was shot, and even the Marstech fabrics were starting to look shabby. He bundled them up and sent them for cleaning. Ordered something similar from the hotel catalog and wore it out into the street when he went looking for a phone. He supposed that he could have gotten phones easily enough from the hotel along with the clothing, but a habitual caution stopped him. And besides, he needed to walk. Away from or toward what, he wasn’t quite sure, but the need sat in the pit of his empty stomach like tiny bubbles, like frustration rising.

“Bambarén’s cousin’s a bust,” Norton had told him on their way back into town. The COLIN exec slumped in the back of the autocab as if broken at the joints. “So if you’re looking for a way in, that isn’t it. We got a name, Suerte Ferrer, street hook Maldición, string of small-time stuff on the fringes of the Jesusland
familias.
Did his three years in South Florida for gang-related, but he’s out right now and he’s dropped right off the scope.”

“The n-djinns can’t find him?”

“He’s gone to ground somewhere in the Republic, and I can’t get an n-djinn search in there without causing a major diplomatic incident. We’re not exactly flavor of the month since we sprung you from South Florida State.”

“You don’t think you can get local PD to cooperate?”

“Which local PD?” Norton stared emptily out of the window. “As far as our information goes, Ferrer could be in any of about a dozen different states. And besides, Jesusland PD don’t have the budget to run their own n-djinns.”

“So they hire one out of the Rim.”

“Yeah, they do that. But you’re talking about major expenditure, and half these departments are struggling just to make payroll and keep their tactical equipment up to date. You’re looking at decades of slash-and-burn tax cuts in public services across the board. There is no way, in that climate, I can start ringing up senior detectives across the Republic and asking them to buy n-djinn time to track down some minor-league gangbanger they’ve never heard of with no warrant out and no suspicion of anything other than being related to someone we don’t like.”

Carl nodded. Since leaving the hospital, he’d found himself thinking with a faintly adrenalized clarity that was like a synadrive hit. Sevgi was gone now, shelved in some space he could access later when he’d need the rage, and in her absence he was serene with vectored purpose. He looked back down the chain of association to Ferrer and saw the angle he needed.

“Norton.”

The COLIN exec grunted.

“How easy would it be for you to get access to unreleased Marstech?”

On the northern fringes of Chinatown, more or less at random, he found an unassuming frontage with the simple words clean phone picked out on the glass in green LCLS lozenges. He went inside and bought a pack of one-shot audio-phones, walked out again and found himself standing in the cold evening air, abruptly alone. In the time he’d been in the shop, everyone else seemed to have suddenly found pressing reasons to get off the street. He suffered an overpowering sense of unreality, and a sudden urge of his own to go back into the shop and see if the woman who’d served him had also disappeared, or had maybe ceded her place behind the counter to a grinning Elena Aguirre.

He grimaced and glanced around, picked out Telegraph Hill and the blunt finger of the Coit Tower on the skyline. He started walking toward it. The smoky evening light darkened, and lights began to glimmer on across the vistas of the city. He reached Columbus Avenue, and it was as if the city had suddenly jerked back to life around him. Teardrops zipped past in both directions, the muted chunter of their motors filling his ears. He joined other human beings at the crosswalk, waited with them for a space in the traffic flow, hurried with them when it came, across to Washington Square. More life here, more lives being lived.

There was a softball match just packing up in the center of the grass, people headed home from under the spread of the trees. A tall, gaunt man dressed in ragged black stopped him and held out a begging bowl in hands that spasmed and shook. There was a sign in Chinese characters pinned to his shirt. Carl shot him a standard-issue
get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way
look, but it didn’t work.

“Bearliunt,” the man said in a hoarse voice, pushing the bowl at him. “Bearliunt.”

He met hollowed-out eyes in a stretched parchment face. He held down the easy-access fury with an effort.

“I don’t understand you,” he told the derelict evenly. He jabbed a finger at the Chinese script. “I can’t read this.”

“Bearliunt. Rike you. Needy Nero.”

The eyes were dark and intelligent, but they darted about. It was like being watched by something avian.

The bowl came back, prodding.

“Bearliunt. Brack Rab from.”

And Carl felt understanding pour down the back of his neck like cold water, like Elena Aguirre’s touch.

The man nodded. Saw the recognition.

“Yes. Brack Rab from. Bearliunt. Rike you.”

Chilled out of nowhere, fucked up in some indefinable way, Carl reached into his pocket and fished out a wafer at random. He dumped it into the bowl without checking for denomination. Then he shouldered past the man and headed away fast, toward the rising slope of Telegraph Hill. When he got out of the park, he looked back and the man was staring after him, standing awkwardly with one arm raised stiffly like some kind of scarecrow brought barely to life. Carl shook his head, not knowing what he was denying, and fled for the tower.

He got to the top, out of breath from the speed he’d climbed.

The tower was closed up; he had the place to himself apart from a young couple propped against the seaward viewing wall in each other’s arms. He stood and watched them balefully for a while, wondering how much he might also look like a living scarecrow in their eyes. Finally they grew uncomfortable, and the girl tugged her boyfriend away toward the exit stair. He was a muscular boy, tall and handsome in a pale Nordic fashion, and at first he wasn’t going to go. He stared back at Carl, blue eyes marbled wet with tension. Carl concentrated on not killing him.

Then the girl leaned up and murmured in the blond boy’s ear, and he contented himself with a snort, and they left.

Somewhere inside Carl, something clicked and broke, like ice in a glass.

He went to the wall and looked out across the water. Watched the lights glimmer on the Alcatraz station, out along the bridge, over at the shoreline on the Marin side. Sevgi was there in all of it, a thousand memories he didn’t need or want. He blew hard breath through his nose, pulled one of the phones loose from the pack, and dialed a number he’d never expected to need.

“Sigma Frat House,” said a jeering voice. “This ain’t the time to be calling neither, so you leave a message and it better be a fucking good one.”

“Danny? Let me speak to the Guatemalan.”

The voice scaled upward, derisive. “Guatemalan’s sleeping, motherfucker. You call back in office hours, you hear?”

“Danny, you listen to me very carefully. If you don’t go and wake the Guatemalan up
right fucking now,
I’m going to hang up. And when he hears that you took some fucked-up decision about what he did and didn’t need to hear, all on your own pointed little head, he’ll have you bunking with the Aryans for a reward, I fucking guarantee you.”

Incredulous silence.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“This is Marsalis. The thirteen. Couple of weeks back I carried one of your shanks into the chapel after Dudeck, remember? Then I walked out the front gate. I’ve got something out here for the Guatemalan he’s going to like. So you go wake him up and tell him that.”

The voice at the other end went away. Soft, prison-wall static sang in the space it left. Carl stared across the hazed evening air in the bay, screwed up his eyes, and rubbed a tear out of one corner with his thumb. Grumbling voices in the background, then the bang of someone grabbing the phone. The Guatemalan rumbled down the line, amused and maybe slightly stoned.

“Eurotrash? That you?”

“Like I told Danny, yeah.” Carl picked his angle of entry with care. “Dudeck out of the infirmary yet?”

“Yeah, he is. Moving a little slow right now, though. You do good work, Eurotrash, I gotta give you that much. Dudeck what this is about? You feelin’ nostalgic, calling to talk about old times?”

“Not exactly. I thought we could do a little business, though. Trade a little data. They say you’re a good man to see for that. So I’ve got something I need to know, you can maybe help me with it.”

“Data?” The other man chuckled. “Seems to me you told me you’d hooked up with the Colony Initiative. You telling me I got data that COLIN don’t?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, yeah.”

There was a long pause.

“Want to tell me what my end of this is, Eurotrash?”

“Let’s see what you’ve got first. You remember a low-grade
familia
gangbanger came through SFS on a three-spot, got out a couple of years ago?”

Another rumbling chortle. “Niggah, I remember a whole graveyard of those
andino
boys. They bounce in and out of this place like they tied to it on a rubber line. Muscle up
sooooo
proud to the brothers and the Aryans and every other fucker that’ll look them in the eye, and mostly they get stretchered out again. So which particular skull you picking over?”

“Name of Ferrer, Suerte Ferrer. Likes to call himself Maldición. He went out walking, so he’s either tougher or smarter than average. That ought to ring some bells.”

“Yeah, Maldición. Smart, I’m not convinced on, but he certainly fit tough. Sure. Think I could be induced to remember that boy.”

“Good. You think you could be induced to tell me where he is now?”

“You talking about where he is
outside
population?”

“Yeah, it looks that way.”

A thoughtful, spreading pool of quiet on the line again. Carl could smell the reek of mistrust it gave off.

The Guatemalan’s voice came back slow and careful.

“I been in here nine long years, Eurotrash. Terror
and
organized crime, they slammed me away for both. What makes you think I’m in any position to know anything about what goes on outside?”

Carl let his tone sharpen. “Don’t get stupid on me, I’m not in the mood. I cut a deal with COLIN, not drug enforcement or the morals committee. This isn’t some hick Jesusland entrapment number. I want Ferrer found, and if possible delivered over the fenceline to the Rim. I’m willing to pay COLIN prices for the service. Now can we do each other some good, or not?”

The Guatemalan missed a beat, but only just. “I heard… COLIN prices?”

“Yes, you did.”

Another pause, but this time it thrummed with purpose. He could almost hear the whir as the Guatemalan made calculations and guesses.

“Moves on the outside come a lot higher-priced than in population,” the other man said finally, and softly.

“I imagined they would.”

“And cross-border delivery, well.” The Guatemalan made a noise with indrawn breath that sounded like spit steaming off a hot griddle. “That’s topping out the favors list, Eurotrash. Big risks, very high stakes.”

“Unreleased Marstech.” Carl dropped the words into the pool of quiet expectation at the other end of the line. “You hear what I’m saying?”

“Not a lot of use to me in here.” But now you could hear the excitement cabled beneath the Guatemalan’s casual tone.

“Then I guess you’ll have to spend it outside somehow. Maybe buy yourself some big favors at legislature level. Maybe just lay down a little future growth here and there. Man like you, I’m sure you’d know better than me how to find the best investment options for your capital. Now, you going to find Maldición for me or not?”

Silence again, tight with the promise of its own brevity. Carl twitched a sudden look over his shoulder, tingle of alarm. Gloom across the space behind him back to the steps up to the tower. Dark bordering shrubs and foliage. Nothing there. He worked his shoulders and felt the unreleased tension of days locked up there. The Guatemalan came back.

“Call me in two days,” he said calmly. “And think of a very big number.”

He hung up.

Carl folded the phone and listened to the faint crackle as the internal circuitry fired and melted. He let out a long breath and leaned on the wall, shoulders hunched. The tension gripped his neck like muscled fingers. The soft mounds of the Marin coast rose on the other side of the bay. He stared at the final orange leavings of dayglow on their flanks, filled with an obscure desire he couldn’t pin down. The phone casing was warm in his hand from the meltdown, the air around him suddenly chilled in contrast.

“You’re looking in all the wrong places, thirteen.”

The voice sent him spinning about, combat stance, gripping the phone in his hand as if it could possibly serve him as a weapon.

She stood at the borders of the trees, and he knew the shiver of alarm he’d picked up earlier was the sensation of her watching him. She came forward, arms spread, hands open, palms turned upward with nothing on them. He knew the poise, knew the voice. Looked for the face paint and saw that this time she hadn’t bothered.

“Hello, Ren.”

“Good evening, Mr. Marsalis.”

Carmen Ren came to a halt about three meters away. Feet set apart on the evercrete in cleated boots that promised steel beneath the curve of the toes. Black pilot-style pants with thigh pockets sealed shut, plain gray zipped jacket with a high collar that pointed up the elevated planes of her face, hair gathered simply back off the pale narrow face. He looked her up and down for weaponry, saw none she could access in a hurry.

He straightened out of the fighting crouch.

“Very wise,” she said. “I’m here to help.”

“So help. Sit down cross-legged with your hands on your head and don’t move while I call RimSec.”

She peeled him a brief smile. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling that generous.”