Conscience of the Beagle (6 page)

THE NORTH SIDE
of the
capital city dwindles into the south, growing darker with each block. There’s no line of demarcation, no border guards, but the cab brings me into another country.

The sidewalks are narrow and cracked. No lawns, no single-family houses here, only looming monolithic apartments. The streets wear a coating of grime.

It’s familiar, this place. Like the M-1 and M-2 Levels I work. Here and there are dark alleys and shadowed nooks: corpse-stowing places.

The cab stops on Divine Mercy. I tell it to stay, to keep its lights on. The door to Talia Hendrix’s building is cheap Mockwood so scratched the grain’s disappeared.

There’s no answer to my buzz. Pulling up the collar of my jacket, I look around. Dim street lamps on each corner. A solitary lighted window beckons from halfway down the block.

“Orders?” the cab asks.

“Follow,” I tell it.

Its headlights brighten the shattered sidewalk. It tags at my heels until I stop in the window’s glow.

The window is smudged. I peer through a fog of grime. A tiny restaurant. No tables. No chairs. The counter is deserted. The door’s open.

“Orders?” the cab asks.

“You can go.”

I watch it speed away, taking most of the light with it. Then I walk in the door. The barkeep gives me a hostile glare.

“Coffee.”

Wordless, she serves me. She slops the coffee over the top of the cup until it pools on the counter. I take a sip. The coffee’s watery. Bitter. Just the way it tastes at home.

The south side of Hebron is like an Earth magstation
—
a place where people pass through and occasionally die. I study the barkeep. Was she born here? Or banished here years ago
—
long enough for her to get the dreary expression right? “You know a Talia Hendrix?”

The woman doesn’t look up, but she pauses in wiping a glass. “Don’t know nobody.”

Her rudeness cheers me, like a familiar song cheers me when I’m far from home. “She’s not in any trouble. I’m with Earth’s Home Force. I just want to ask Mrs. Hendrix a few questions about her husband.”

“Don’t know nobody.” She goes back to her wiping.

The door opens, letting in the damp breeze. A man shuffles inside. He bellies up to the bar. There’s a cozy quality about this place: three people in a small room and no one talks. I drink in the seediness of it: the smell of old grease; the dirt caked in the corners. I look for roaches, but don’t find them.

The man ruins the spell. He stares into my averted face. “Tick, ain’tcha?”

His breath stinks of alcohol and rotting teeth. Familiar sins. I look into my cup.

“Hey, you. Hey, Tick. Listen. She got some Hap-Assy back there behind the bar. Let’s have a drink.”

I stir the lukewarm coffee with a finger. “You know a Talia Hendrix?”

The drunk coughs. “I might. You could buy me some Hap-Assy.”

A drink for old time’s sake. I motion to the barkeep. She pulls an unlabeled bottle from under the counter and pours a shot glass. The drunk downs it. “Tick, huh? I been to Earth once.”

“Do you know Mrs. Hendrix?” It doesn’t matter if he does or not. I could sit here all night nursing my coffee. I could sit here until the sun drives back the dark.

The man rolls his eyes. “Coming through . . . coming through . . . No. It just ain’t clear yet.”

I laugh. “Give him the bottle.” I toss her my card. She stares at its blank gold face, runs it through a rusting machine, and blinks when she reads the credit limit. Then she puts the card on the bar near my hand and sets the bottle near the drunk.

“You don’t believe me I went to Earth, do ya?”

The man’s a cheap wrinkled face over a cheap wrinkled suit. A hundred times I’ve come across his body lying in the streets. I don’t mind. There’s no blood. Their faces are always peaceful, as if they’re asleep. Willing victims of habit.

“Sure I do.” His eyes are sunken. His cheeks are a jaundiced yellow-gray. Even if he quits drinking, he won’t last long. “Have another drink,” I tell him, because there are worse ways to die.

He pours a shot glass. Gulps it down. “Walked right through that door and seen Earth. Damndest thing I ever seen. Bright there, ain’t it?”

“Where?”

“Earth. Awful bright.”

“Yes, you know, it certainly is.”

“Tal Hendrix.” The man casts his eyes heavenward as if the answer is written on the ceiling. “Works night shift at the Meat Market on God’s Gift.”

He’s surprised me. I didn’t expect, I didn’t need, any payment. Odd that his company was enough. “Oh? What time does she get off?”

“Four o’clock.”

I check the time. Three-forty.

“Show ya. Got it right here.” He shoves a dirty hand to my face. There’s an HF patch in it.

HF patch. Ragged edges. Green where stitching held and shirt didn’t.

Olive green. The color of Colonial Security.

My question comes out fast and hard. “How the hell did you get that?”

“Tolja. Tolja I got it off that tick when I went to Earth. Oh, they tried to stop me, but always was a light one on my feet. Bagged this when he grabbed me.”

“Let me see.”

Before I can snatch it, the nail-bitten hand snaps shut. The drunk is staring in horror out the window.

On the other side of the street, in the faint glow of the corner street lamp, Reece Wallace is standing. Even in profile I can feel the chill of his eyes.

The drunk grabs his bottle. Darts for the back door.

I have to follow. But the stool holds me. Reece holds me. Jesus. Now he’s looking. Reece Wallace is looking. And it’s as if he can see straight through the grimed window. Straight through the shadows in the bar.

Suddenly Reece turns and ambles into the dark.

My heart, my stomach, clench. “You see him? You see that man?”

The barkeep shoots me a look.

“Out there. Out the window. Just a second ago. Didn’t you see that man?”

She lowers her head. Wipes the counter.

I dash out the front door. Coming around the corner is a lone popcorn seller. Other than the vendor and her cart, the street is empty.

I sprint to her. “You see that man?” She’s hardly out of her teens. A girl with a fresh-faced look
—
the kind Reece liked to tie up and then carve on.

“What man?”

“The tall man in the black coat. Auburn sort of hair. He was right there just a second ago. Right there. He walked down this way. You couldn’t have missed him.”

“Oh. Him? Yeah, I seen him. You want Z-Tabs? Or some Light-Up? Good Light-Up. Three-fifty a snort.”

It’s hard all of a sudden for me to catch my breath. “No.”

“Hey, mister. You okay?”

The street seems cramped and the girl fragile, as though the dingy apartment walls are waiting to crush her. “Listen. You need to be careful. That man . . . that man’s dangerous.”

Lock your doors, I want to shout as I once shouted too late at Reece’s victims. Lock your doors, bar your windows and if you hear a knock, for God’s sake, don’t open up.

“You know him?” she asks. I’ve spooked her. The girl is hurriedly shutting the hidden dope drawer, tossing the cold popcorn away.

The street where Reece has disappeared is dark. Too dark for me to follow. Tears of frustration sting my eyes. “I killed him once,” I say.

PROOF.

There’s no proof: no snap of Reece and his lop-sided grin; no fifth HF patch on a planet where there should be four. My evidence darted out the back door; sauntered into the anonymous south side darkness.

It couldn’t be Reece. Just someone who looks remarkably like him. I arrested him, didn’t I? And testified against him. And nine months later watched him die.

I wanted his knees to go weak when they led him to the chamber. I wanted him to cry out. But they strapped him in and put the patches on his arm and a quiet minute later he closed his eyes.

Unfair that he died so easy.

It wasn’t required, but I stood witness to Reece’s autopsy. Just for the enjoyment, I watched his body burn. Six people attended the cremation. Me and the four members of my investigative team came roaring, back-slapping drunk. We watched his mother cry.

Down the narrow dark street moisture halos the street lamp. The cold seeps through my jacket and I shiver. I walk back to the restaurant. The light in the window is out. The door’s locked.

I shout for the barkeep. Beat my fist against the metal. Cup my hands around my eyes, and peer through the glass. I pound on the door until my knuckles throb. No one comes.

I stand back in disbelief. I’m alone on the sidewalk. In the dark.

I step off the curb and stride quickly into the damp street. By the time I reach the corner I’m nearly running. I turn right. The street sign reads: Deliverance. Faceless apartment buildings. Sooty clones of each other. They shoulder up to both sides of the road.

Like M-1 Level. Only the ceiling’s too high. Stars above. Faint pinpricks. Looking at them makes me dizzy.

I slow to a steady, determined pace. The pace of someone who has brightly-lit places to go. Friends to see. Any faster, and I’ll draw attention. Any slower, someone

Reece

will catch me. My boots click against broken pavement. I listen for a tell-tale double tap of someone

Reece

following.

At the next corner I halt. My breath comes in hard-fought whoops. I fling out my hand. Brace myself against a building to keep from falling down.

Lila. Had she been frightened like this? Had she heard footfalls behind her? And if she turned, what did she see? Something so bad that for a moment she must not have believed it.

Kanz coming into my office. Face somber. Footsteps soft. Hands folded.
Dyle?

I actually laughed. It couldn’t be. Not Lila. She’s too smart for that. Joking, because Kanz was so sad he scared me.
You guys fucked up.

A cluster of cops at the mouth of a dark alley. Warning me back. Me with the smile on my face. Not Lila. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to go in there. Never careless enough to be a victim. The DNA match is wrong. It’s wrong. Sometimes that happens. You know that.

Walking forward. Tap of boots on pavement. Kanz at my elbow, his voice dangerously soft.

Don’t look.

My knees didn’t soften. I didn’t cry out. With shock, incredulity always falls like a blanket. It’s the only proof I have of God.

My shoulders convulse. I try to take a breath, but my chest heaves. No air comes in. I can’t tell if the sound that emerges is sob or gasp. Lila. She lived long enough for even the divinity of cognitive dissonance to lose patience.

Gradually the spasms stop. The noises in my throat fall silent. I wipe my eyes, then raise my head.

The street sign above me reads: God’s Gift.

Steps cautious, I round the corner. Down the street is a lighted sign: MEAT MARKET. A man is standing in its glow, staring my way. Not Reece. Not whipcord thin. Not a man who would be quietly deadly. He’s burly as Beagle. The arms crossed over his chest have aged to muscle and flab. He has a butcher’s apron and huge bone-cracking hands.

He’s still watching me. There’s at least half a block between us, too much of a distance for me to read his expression.

I check the time: 3:52.

I step off the curb, cross the street, and walk toward the light.

“Evening,” the man says.

“I’m looking for a Talia Hendrix.”

He jerks his head toward the door. “Number Three.”

A glance over my shoulder, but he’s looking at the street again. Not coming after me. I enter the building. The inside is starkly lit. The corridor’s clean and unpeopled. I open the third door down, and tense as it shuts fast behind me.

The tiny room is blinding: white floors; white walls; white ceiling. It’s empty.

“Hello?”

A muffled woman’s voice. “Hello.”

Behind me, near the door, is a card scanner. In
one corner a video eye the size of a hen’s egg. I look into it. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“No talking. Find you a slot and put it in.”

The woman’s voice comes from behind the left-hand wall. Its thin, pliable surface is marred by thumb-sized puckers. I take my card from my pocket and push it through.

“Are you kidding? Jesus. Just a minute.”

A flurry of muttering, shuffling activity. The camera lens swings toward me and locks.

“Tick,” the woman says. “No wonder.”

“Can I see you? Can you come out from behind there?”

“We don’t do it that way. And you pay when you leave. Just find one of the slots comfortable for you and stick it through. The door behind you is locked. When you’re finished, put your card in the reader, and the door will open.”

Talia Hendrix sounds as if she’s on the down side of forty. “I don’t understand.”

“Christ.” Her mutter is so quiet I can barely hear it through the rubberized wall. “A blow job, okay? That’s what we do here: blow jobs. No fondling, no kissing. Just a blow job.”

Surprise makes me laugh. “Okay. We have a misunderstanding here, I think. I was looking for the Talia Hendrix who was married to Dr. Paulie Hendrix. I need to talk to her about her husband’s death.”

A long, weighty silence while the laughter dies in my throat. It’s a furtive silence, somehow a sad one, one in which the bright white room holds its breath.

“I’m that Tal Hendrix.” Her voice sounds older now, more like a tired fifty. “I get off work in about ten minutes. Wait for me in the hall.”