The Road to Hell (11 page)

Harrison smiled.

“
Seems like yesterday,” said Susan. “I feel like I’ve been a teenager forever, like I’ve never really grown up. But Olivia, she seemed to skip those years and go right into adulthood. Funny, that, how two sisters can be so different. But I guess that's what war does to people.”

Water flooded the gutters in the street, rolling out across the pavement.

Above them, dark clouds rolled across the brooding sky. Harrison hailed a cab while sheltering beneath the eves of the derelict shopfront.

Most of the cab drivers ignored them. Either they were too busy, or just indifferent. Robots could get like that. The emotion circuits worked a little too well, making them just as cranky as a human when their power cells began to run down. It seemed long hours and thankless work were a universal curse.

After a few minutes a yellow hover car with the traditional black and white chequered strip running around its waist descended from above, its bright headlights flooding the sullen street. Harrison opened the door for Susan, allowing her to jump from the curb, through the curtain of rain streaming from a broken roof gutter and into the cab. Following hard behind her, Harrison slammed the door shut behind them.

Water dripped from the two of them onto the slick leather seats. The butt of the sawn-off shotgun hanging from Harrison’s shoulder harness dug into his ribs as he slid across the seat. Whenever he stood, the cut-down shotgun beneath his trench coat was, for all intents, invisible, but once he sat down it became readily apparent that something nasty was hidden beneath the soft fabric. It didn’t escape the robotic driver peering at them through his rear-view plasma screen. A sheet of blast-proof Plexiglas slid up from the back of the driver’s seat.

“
The Astor, driver.”

“
Yes sir,” came the pre-programmed electronic reply as the craft lifted effortlessly back into the air.

“
My records indicate there are three hotels named the Astor in Old New York and one in New New York. Could you be more specific about your destination?” asked the robotic driver.

“
The Astor, South-side, on Maple,” replied Harrison.

Outside, flashes of yellow and red whipped by the smoothly accelerating cab. Rain pelted the roof, streaming past on the windows, distorting the image of reality around them into a blur of colour. Neon signs lit up the night. XXX Shows, No Loan Refused, Jackal on Primetime, Phase-Cola, pawn brokers and Turkish bath houses all called out, yearning for business.

Inside the cab, warm air began flowing from the ceiling. Music played softly while various advertisements rolled across the back of the driver’s seat.

“
Why the Astor?” asked Susan.

“
That’s where this all began,” replied Harrison. “From what I’ve heard on the street, some serious heat came down there about three or four days ago, which fits in with the time stamps on your photos. I figure that’s where your shots were taken, so if we’re going to pick up the trail, that’s the place to start.”

The cab rolled slightly, weaving its way through the old town, around buildings and spires, passing several pylons supporting the new city above. Susan stared out at the rain, watching as other craft whipped by just a few feet on either side, their computerised collision avoidance systems constantly correcting their course, ensuring order in the midst of the chaos in the air-lane. Slowly, the fluorescent neon signs began to fade as the cab moved out of downtown and into the old industrial area that had once been Newark, New Jersey.

The cab descended next to a burnt out factory and pulled up in front of the Astor. Vacancies shone in red neon, flickering in the darkness above the hotel entrance. Harrison paid in hard currency, not something uncommon in this part of town, where no one knew anything and nothing ever happened, nothing that could be proven at least.

Susan questioned him about it, so Harrison explained.

"Hard currency is a convenient way of avoiding an electronic trail, which is the sort of thing the police data mining department is always scanning for, some confluence of seemingly unrelated, benign events that together revealed criminal activity. Too much Big Brother for my liking so I stick with cash."

"Cops are dumb," Harrison continued. "Too much bureaucracy to ever be effective. Too much reliance on technology, when nothing will ever supersede the human brain. Even robots, for all their advances, are still no match for human thinking. At best, they are simply clever mimics drawing on psychometric interpretations, but never really thinking or reasoning for themselves."

Outside the cab, a couple of teenagers sat up against the side of the hotel. They weren’t bums, just out for a good night. Having had a bit too much alcohol, they were mellowing, sitting on a bench shooting the breeze as the nightlife rolled past. One of them, a girl, was about Susan’s height and build. Harrison pushed 20 credits into her hand and said, “This is for the shoes.”

“
What?” the girl asked, somewhat confused. “Hey, leave off,” she cried as Harrison ripped her sand-shoes off one by one and tossed them to Susan. Her drunken boyfriend was slow to catch on and in no state to do anything other than laugh.

“
No, wait,” the drunk girl cried as Harrison kept walking and turned into the hotel. Susan followed hard behind him, hopping as she slipped on the sneakers. Not a bad fit, she thought, a little worn, but not too bad at all.

“
Thanks,” Susan called out, waving at the bewildered girl as she disappeared inside the hotel.

A blast of warm air hit her as she stepped inside the lobby, which was a welcome relief from the cold damp of the city.

Smoke wafted from a cigarette sitting in an ashtray on the counter. Smoking was illegal. She knew that, and she was learning that, down here, nobody cared about the law.

Dark stains marred the carpet on the floor. The lobby was small, claustrophobic. Fake mahogany panels lined the walls while a small, electric chandelier hung from the ceiling. Strands of ageing cobwebs ran from the chandelier back to one corner of the room. The white ceiling had turned cream with age.

“
We’re full,” grumbled the clerk as they walked over to the front desk. That he was blatantly contradicting the vacancy sign flashing out on the street seemed of no consequence to him at all.

“
C.I.D,” said Harrison, flipping open his wallet and showing a counterfeit holo-badge. It had cost a sweet fortune when he’d purchased it on the black market, but it was paying its way today.

“
We’re here to follow up on the investigation team and conduct a damage assessment for insurance claims against the department.”

“
Since when did C.I.D become paper pushers? And why the hell are you coming here so late?” asked the clerk in his harsh New York accent. “Come back in the morning.”

“
You're pretty pushy for a desk jockey,” replied Harrison. “Hey, you don’t like it? I can come back next decade.”

“
No, no. I ain’t complaining.”

Harrison knew he wasn't buying it, but the Astor was for bottom feeders. What choice did he have?

“
Bureaucracy’s a bitch,” Harrison continued. “You wanna take a dump at the station, you need approval stamped in triplicate. Now, I can help you avoid all that.”

“
Yeah, OK,” the clerk replied, being able to relate to the state of almost complete paralysis brought down by the machinations of the government. “Well, it’s about bloody time someone showed up. I’ve been calling you assholes for days.”

“
Has anybody been in the room?” asked Harrison. “Anyone disturbed anything? Cleaners? Bellhops?”

Harrison wanted to know exactly what he was dealing with.

“
Cleaners?” replied the clerk, running his hand over the dark stubble growing on his cheeks, not so much of a five o’clock shadow as a five AM shadow. “Nah, they only come in once a week. No one’s been in there since your boys pulled out the bodies. What the hell happened in there anyway?”

“
That’s classified.”

“
And what’s with the chick?” asked the clerk, taking a good look at Susan.

“
She’s a concerned citizen,” replied Harrison. “What difference does it make to you? You ask a lot of questions for a clerk pulling a graveyard shift? Where were you when this thing went down?”

“
Hey, I own the joint, so back off, buddy. I’ll ask as many questions as I like. This shit-hole might not look like much, but she keeps the credits rolling in.”

“
Were you working that night?”

“
Nah, it was the weekend shift. I came in on Monday to pick up the pieces.”

“
Do you mind if we look around?”

“
Knock yourself out,” replied the clerk, tossing Harrison a key card to room 412. “But please, no more impromptu renovations, OK?”

Harrison smiled the kind of smile that said more than words ever could and the clerk brought it.

He walked over toward the elevator and paused, his finger hovering just above the call button.

“
What’s the matter?” asked Susan, reaching out and pushing the button for him.

“
It didn’t start up there,” muttered Harrison, talking to himself more than to anyone else. It was a bad habit and got him into trouble more times than he cared to remember, but that was his manner, to say what he was thinking.

“
Let me have a look at those photos again.”

Susan handed the photos to him as the ornate, wrought iron elevator doors opened in front of them. Harrison stood there closely examining each of the shots as the elevator doors shut again.

Susan glanced at the grainy, black and white images in his hand, trying to imagine what he was seeing in them. There didn’t appear to be much to see. He seemed intrigued by the shot from in the kitchen, which, to her, was the worst of the pictures. That shot was slightly blurred and seemed cluttered, confused. The angle the shot was taken on, together with the light reflecting off the chrome pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, made it the least interesting photo of all, at least to her.

Somewhat absentmindedly, Harrison wandered over toward a swinging door leading into the kitchen.

“
Aren’t we going up to the room?” asked Susan.

“
Not yet.”

A small square window in the centre of the kitchen door allowed Harrison to see the clean stainless steel bench tops on the other side. The clerk was absorbed in a vid-paper, a double sheet of flexible plastic that looked like the newspapers of old, displaying page after page of news, advertisements, sports reviews and saucy ladies, scantily clad. The clerk’s head was buried looking intently at an interactive, motion replay on the sports page. Whatever interest they’d generated when they’d walked in was gone. For an owner/operator, the care factor was pretty low, thought Harrison.

Harrison stepped into the kitchen. It had closed for the night and most of the equipment had been cleaned and put away. Harrison opened up a first aid kit hanging on the wall and pulled out some thin latex gloves, tossing a pair to Susan.

“
Put these on. We don’t want to leave any evidence we were ever here.”

“
What are we looking for?” asked Susan.

“
This,” replied Harrison, pointing at the picture. Although the image was grainy, it was clear the dark figure passing through the kitchen was holding something in his hand, something small. It was either white, or cream in colour. It was difficult for Susan to tell from the black and white image just exactly what it was.

“
What is it?”

“
I don’t know,” replied Harrison holding up another one of the photos. “But he didn’t have it in the stairwell.”

“
So he put it back in his pocket,” said Susan.

“
But what is it? Why was he holding on to it as he passed through the kitchen? Why wasn’t it in his pocket then? Why did he have it out? There has to be a reason.”