Necropolis (8 page)

“Two of my people, missing or murdered, Mr. Donner. What if I’m next?”

“You have security,” I said.

“The best in the world and worthless. You know that.” She was right. A fanatic could always beat protection, no matter how good. All it cost was his own life.

She radiated anxiety like a furnace. Somewhere, my alarms went off again. Her lids fluttered. “It’s so hot,” she said. Then she was sagging against me. I grabbed her to keep her from sliding to the floor. Her breath washed across my neck. I pushed her back, but she clung, lips rubbing across the angle of my jaw. I pushed her away more strongly. Her feet found purchase and she took a step back, straightening her blouse. She reached out and wiped lipstick from my cheek. I flinched like I’d been touched by a snake.
 

“Something to remember me by,” she said.

“The money’s enough.”

She smiled then, unreadable, and slipped out the door.

Slowly, very slowly, I leaned against the door jam.

I didn’t kiss her, Elise, I didn’t kiss her.

I walked over to the cracked mirror, found an intact piece, and scrubbed the remaining lipstick from my face, feeling like territory that had been marked by a predator.
 

I stood that way for a while, smoking and looking at my shattered reflection.

10

DONNER

A
spaceship showered sparks from its ass. It jerked and shuddered across the cardboard set, swaying back and forth from black thread. The stars were glitter, glued onto velvet.

A drawn-out timpani roll. “Buck Rogers in the 25th Centureee!” Organ music, cheesy strings. “When we last saw Buck,” the announcer continued, “He’d just discovered that the evil Dr. Huer had invented an atomic disintegrator ray that would DESTROY THE ENTIRE WOOORLD!” A cartoon beam of light hit a model of the Earth, which exploded, showering the universe with papier-mâché.

The announcer’s voice dropped abruptly from its melodramatic heights. “But first, Solar Scouts, have you sent in your labels from Cocomalt, the most delicious drink in the entire WOORLD!?”
 

I hit a stud on the armrest. The show dissolved, clearing the Plexiglas divider between myself and the cab driver.

The hackie laughed. “Don’t like Buck? It’s the hottest with the youngsters.”

“I don’t get it, I guess. In my day, if a show’s special effects were even a couple years old, no self-respecting kid would be caught dead watching. Now, the cheesier the better.”

The hackie shrugged, the padded shoulders of his uniform bouncing. “In Buck’s world, there’s always a happy ending. Not like ours.”

I blinked. Since when did cab drivers talk like sociologists? Since when did they wear neat little wool uniforms with duck-billed caps? It didn’t matter. I was just grateful for the ride. Seven cabs had refused me when they got close enough to see what I was.

I looked out the window. Soot-encrusted tenement buildings and tarpaper roofs rushed past. Laundry lines, satellite dishes and chimneys. The autumn sun was bright but weak.
 

Then we were on the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge itself was pretty much as I remembered, although it was augmented by high-speed lanes in clear tubes that made me think of hamsters. Across the divider, vehicles shot past like bullets.
 

In the distance below the rebuilt Statue of Liberty sat, no longer the metaphor of a nation; instead, a melancholy footnote of greatness past. Her remade face looked different somehow. Pissed.
 

“Air’s clear today. You can see the guys up there,” said the hackie.

I craned my neck to the Blister construction half a mile up. The arching girders looked too thin to support their own weight, let alone a structure that covered almost a hundred square miles. I’d read that they started construction from four sides—Englewood Cliffs and Inwood to the north, Secaucus to the west, Bayonne to the south, and Flushing Meadows Park to the east, with the goal of joining in the middle over Times Square. The interior Manhattan segments had finished and gone online early. Money had its privileges.

“Fullerite,” said the driver.

“Huh?”

“The Blister frame. Actually, it’s a type of ultra-hard fullerite called aggregate nanorods. Harder than diamonds. The grid between each section is electromagnetic buckypaper. Two hundred fifty times harder than steel and ten times lighter. Can’t even see it during the day, unless the sun hits it right. Then it kind of shimmers.”

The guy was a regular encyclopedia.
 

“There’s two layers… the first was finished about a year ago. When this second, inside skin is finished, the project will be complete. There’s going to be a Joining Ceremony.”

I could just make out the ant-like shapes moving around. “Anybody ever fall?”

“Couple a times. But their safety lines saved ’em.”

“Don’t they… I mean, what about EM?”

“Gotta be close to a surface for it to work. You know, to repel, like two magnets.” He nodded upward again. “Most of the guys up there are Amerindians. Heights don’t faze ’em. They lose their balance about as often as politicians tell the truth.”

“What about birds?”

He looked confused. “They got wings.”

I smiled. “No, I mean, once the fields are activated, won’t this thing act like a giant bug strip?”

The driver grinned and bobbed his head. “Atmosphere, birds, the stuff we want, gets in. They thought of everything with this baby. Biggest construction project since the pyramids.”

A red light winked in the corner of the Plexiglas divider. “News alert,” he explained.
 

I found the “play” button on the armrest. Images of a violent riot surged onto the plastic. The sight of the combat-geared Surazal security forces made my stomach tighten. Dozens of them waded into a morass of young reborns brandishing signs and placards. “Free and Separate Reborn State!” “We’re Human, Too!” The digital audio was very clear. You could hear the crunch of baton against bone, the muted snaps as limbs gave way.

I hissed. “They’re unarmed.”

“This time,” replied the hackie. “Hard to tell all the factions apart. There’s the Enders. And the Secessionists. And the Cadre. The worst are nasty violent. Blew up a bus last week. Killed thirty people.”

“The Secessionists—they want all the norms out of Necropolis, want to establish their own state?”

The driver laid the meat of his palm onto his horn, objecting to a trucker’s driving skills. “Believe me, I’d oblige ’em if I could.”

“But—you sounded proud, a minute ago. The Blister.”

“An impressive cage is still a cage.” He took in my confusion in his mirror. “Brother, my clan’s been here for six generations. But things is way too fucked up to hang onto tradition. I’d take boring old Cleveland in a heartbeat.”
 

I couldn’t figure it. The New Yorkers I remembered would never have wanted out. Neither would they have allowed their city to be turned into a resettlement camp. Guess dead people coming back to life was enough to take the starch out of anybody.

We merged into downtown traffic. I watched One Police Plaza and the Courthouse zip by, looking just as I remembered them.

The cab pulled to the curb in front of seven-story Beaux-arts structure with a mansard roof. The vehicle settled, the light in my wrist flashed and I was sixty dollars poorer. “Thirty-One Chambers Street. Department of Records and Information Services.”

I got out, feeling dwarfed by the towering Corinthian columns standing sentinel before the triple-arched entrance.
 

I turned back to thank the hackie, but he’d already flooded the backseat with pink disinfectant steam and raced away.

***

The main rotunda was still elaborate and huge, with its marble staircase. The mosaic ceiling was still populated by deities and zodiacs. But the Municipal Research Center was now a tiny corner room nestled between a law firm and a juvie clinic called “Forever You.” The Hall of Records looked like an afterthought. Apparently, they’d subleased one of the city’s grandest municipal buildings.

Here, I’d looked through original construction plans for the Brooklyn Bridge, genealogical records from 1795, and the personal papers of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Felt pride at living in a city with such history. But now it seemed New York was no longer New York.
 

I entered the Hall. A radio with a little metal dog on the grill played “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me.” The room consisted of twenty workstations. Smartscreens lay like silver puddles on each one. A teenaged reeb sat at the reception desk. Her name tag said “Arlene.” She looked up from her reeb fashion mag and treated me to a grin like the first day of spring.

“Hey there, playmate!” Arlene said.

“Uh…” I looked around. “Department of Records?”

“Bingo.” She touched her nose.

“So… where are all the records?”

“What’d you expect, hon?” she said, cracking her gum. “Shelves? Books?”

I sighed.
 

She grinned and waved a hand. “Aw, don’t sweat it, sweetie. Spend some time with your dickenjane and you’ll do fine.” She perused me more thoroughly. “I’ll give you the dime tour.”

She bounced from her chair and led me to one of the workstations. She pointed at the chair. I sat obediently. She slid another chair up beside me and leaned in to fiddle with the screen. Our shoulders touched. Her perfume was something sugary and soft. I turned and she looked directly into my eyes, only inches from my face. Not shy, this one.

She’d made no attempt to disguise her appearance. Her white pageboy tresses were curled under at the ends, and she was dressed in a Sloppy Joe sweater and powder-blue slacks. Damned cute, black nails and gold-flecked irises notwithstanding.

She pointed to the smartscreen, now floating at eye level. “Did you have computers in your pre-life?”

“How old do I look?” I said.

“Looks got nothing to do with it, sugar.” She smiled again, a blast of youthful good will. “Don’t suppose you got an interface.”

“A what?”

She pulled back a strand of her hair. A tiny tattoo of an old-fashioned plug connector glowed behind her ear. “Some kind of wireless device?” I ventured.

She grinned like I’d said something cute. “Close enough.”

I felt vertiginous. “When I died, our toasters didn’t talk back to us.”

She slapped my thigh. “Grade school stuff! Now, whaddaya need?”
I explained what I was looking for. Arlene blinked and subvocalized something. Seconds later, databases were springing into the air, replaced by others almost as quickly as they appeared. Information waterfalled down the holographic display.

“Bill Gates, eat your heart out,” I murmured.

“Who?”

How the hell could she not know about—

“Here we go. Now we’re cooking with gas.”

I watched in admiration over the next five minutes as she tightened the net she’d thrown out into the info-verse.
Wonder if they’re still calling it the internet
, I thought.

Then, abruptly, a single document floated.

“Oh, I’m good,” she said.

My heart stopped in my chest.
 

It was the Metro section of
The New York Times
, dated November 1, 2012. The headline read: DETECTIVE KILLED IN HOLD-UP. The columns of copy enclosed a photograph of Elise and me. I was in dress blues, fresh from the Academy. I looked ridiculously naïve. Elise was smiling, arm wrapped around my shoulder with that mischievous smile she got. I didn’t remember the occasion. Who’d taken the picture? Elise’s mother? Bart?

“Hey, that’s you,” observed Arlene. “You were cute.” I gave her a look. “Are cute, I mean.”

I gripped my wedding ring, tapping my forehead.
 

“Hey,” said Arlene, touching my arm. “Hey.”

(Special to the
New York Times
)
 

Brooklyn Detective Paul Donner and his wife, Elise Donner, were killed last night in Huan’s Grocery, near Lincoln Center.

According to police, Donner and his wife, a federal regulator, unknowingly walked in on a robbery in progress. Both were shot with a small caliber handgun.

Detective Jeremiah Kinderman stated that Donner was off-duty. “He was an experienced cop,” said Kinderman. “One of the best we had.”

The clerk, Hector Alvarez, 21, of Red Hook, was unharmed. Alvarez provided police with a description of the assailant, but as of yet, no arrests have been made. The assailant fled with an unspecified amount of cash.

The article went on to give a brief history of our respective careers and Elise’s work with the United Way.

Arlene whistled. “You just walked in on the guy?”

I shook my head mutely.

She nodded in understanding. “Wife’s not back?”

Jesus. A robbery. A fucking two-bit heist. And I’d walked right into it, like a goddamn rookie. Of all the senseless ways to go—