From Out of the Outlands
Part two
Police file:
Merrian walked through the banks of ancient metal detectors with the pistol pressed against the side of his chest. Not a gun in any traditional sense. Neither body nor bullets were made of metal, the whole compact weapon made of high impact plastic with projectiles built from plastic explosives. High tech stuff that had no more business on him, than he had any business stepping out of an armored limo. But he had with Quadro's fat hand shoving him out onto the street.
“You do this for us, boy, and we'll talk about the other thing.”
Talk? That's all he had gone to Quadro for, to talk, to figure out some kind of angle that would give him protection.
“The street's insane, man, and I'm a small operator. It's not like I'm an insider, that can go scurrying behind a neighborhood wall at night, confident I've got guards to keep me safe. I need the organization. Otherwise, I'm going to get myself killed.”
The idea had come on him slowly and perhaps far later than it should have. Outside was a jungle where a man ducked bullets to and from work, and if he had no work, he ducked bullets, looking for work, begging work from the greasy spoons along Broadway or the fast food shops uptown.
Outside, man, people died in the street, starving like dogs, fighting with dogs for crusts of bread, robbing trash trucks when they came out from the neighborhoods. These days, the trash trucks ran with armed guards, rolling out the iron gates from one neighborhood into the iron gates of the next, half the time shooting down people in the process.
“Protection?” Quadro laughed, removing his long cigar as he cast a knowing glance at his boys, all of them in suits and ties, though none looked a bit like an office worker. “You come to us for protection? What you got to offer us? What skills you got?”
“I run numbers sometimes,” Merrian said, hopefully.
“So does the corner store when they sell lottery. You ever shot a gun? You ever killed somebody with your hands?”
“Sure, I have,” Merrian said, remembering having held a gun once, and aimed it, and pulled the trigger, though it held no ammunition at the time. He imagined he knew what it felt like going off in his hand, imagined he knew what it was like to watch the bullet strike. He'd seen that part often enough, the sudden explosion of blood from the back of some poor fools chest, and the spray of red rain on anybody unlucky enough to be walking by.
“He's shot a gun,” Quadro said, pointing at Merrian with his cigar as the suit & tie boys laughed.
“Maybe you should send him out to do the job for us, Quadro,” one of the men said, still laughing. “Maybe if he comes back alive, we can take him in.”
“Yeah,” Merrian said. “I can do that.”
Quadro grew serious. “You don't know what you're saying,” he said, taking a long pull on his cigar. “You can't kill a fed with no imaginary pistol. You can't even get close to a fed these days without someone shooting you first.”
“I can do it,” Merrian insisted, never having seen a fed, only the outside police force parading around the broken streets in their armored police cars, or the walls guards from this neighborhood or that neighborhood taking pot shots at him, thinking he was trying to climb inside, thinking he was looking to steal something from the rich folks who lived there – safe and protected.
“Maybe he can, Quadro,” one of the other men said. “The feds don't pay much attention to kids. If he ain't got a record two miles long, they won't even know him. Maybe he can get close, put a slug in the dude for us.”
“And then what? Have them trace him back to us when he gets caught.”
“If he does it, he won't get caught,” one of the other men said. “That's not the way the feds work. If the kid doesn't get out after he shoots, they shoot him. No questions. Even if he misses, they'll cut his balls off with bullets. That's the way they work.”
So, Quadro sent Merrian along, giving him the plastic pistol and instructions on how to use it.
“You don't need to aim for the head or chest. You don't even need to hit him. Just aim it near him and the explosion will do the rest.”
“If I do it will I get protection?” Merrian asked. “I can't stand it out on the street any more. I need someone to look out for my back, to make sure the gangs don't get me, or the wall guards, to make sure my mother doesn't get raped every time she goes to the store.”
“You do this, we'll watch out for your family,” Quadro said. “That's a promise. I've never let one of my boys down. We'll watch your mother and your sister. We'll even move them inside a neighborhood somewhere, so they don't have to worry about walking the streets.”
“Really Quadro, you promise.”
“I said so didn't I, now just don't make a mistake. You got to kill that son of a bitch fed before puts the finger on us. You got to send the message to those boys that they can't mess with Quadro and get away with it.”
“I will, Quadro,” Merrian promised, wondering why the feds would come after Quadro in the first place, since the feds mostly went after the interstate stuff and let the intercity drug traffic to the state police or the interneighborhood cops downtown. It was a rare sight to see the Feds coming through town with their tanks and armored cars, machine guns popping off rounds at the smart assed wall guards who took pot shots at them. More frequently, it was the blue and white state machines that came through, armored ground cars covered by choppers and air support, heat seeking air to ground missiles taking out the worst of the gang before anyone of the cops arrived. What did Quadro do to earn this kind of attention? Merrian didn't ask.
But he didn't trust the son of a bitch either. Nobody trusted anybody outside the walls. It was dog eat dog here, a knife in the back the minute you turned. That was the reason Merrian needed protection. A wall guard had shot his best friend after a small burglary attempt, a slip over and back for some fresh fruit or maybe -- if real lucky -- chunk of frozen meat.
Pop! Pop! It was all over except for the meat wagon wheeling its way through the stripped cars and burned out storefronts to scrape up the body from the street. Nobody asked Merrian about it. Nobody cared. It was too routine to investigate, unless the city or town wanted to give the wall guard an accommodation for his hundredth kill. But the pop had taken out Merrian's best friend, Jake, a grammar school-high school buddy who had helped keep Merrian alive, a gruesome twosome who'd survived longer than most of their classmates, after dropping out. Now Merrian had to fend for himself, and he was scared, and he didn't trust Quadro to keep his word. So, when Quadro said to come back the next day, Merrian went home, wrote out a letter explaining everything had to do, put it in an envelop, put a stamp on it, then wrote out the address of the feds.
“Mail this on your way to the laundry, Ma,” Merrian told his mother before leaving in the morning to meet Quadro again.
“What is it?”
“A letter.”
“Who you writing to?” his mother asked, squinting at the envelop, though she didn't know how to read.
“Somebody about a job,” Merrian asked, thinking that if he got away, if he went back to Quadro and Quadro gave him what he wanted, then he would still have time to call home and tell her not to mail it after all.
“All right, I'll mail it,” she grumbled, and then crawled off to bed to sleep off the night's work and prepare for another tough night in the steaming room at the laundry.
Now, Merrian walked into city hall, shocked at the lack of security, any neighborhood had more protection than this. The ancient metal detectors were only the start. He couldn't see one machine gun and only a half dozen guards, most of them leaning against the wall smoking under the ``no smoking'' signs, looking so weary and careless that Merrian actually thought he might pull this off, going to the elevator bank where there was only one small camera watching him, and not watching the stairs. He slipped up them, shocked that they were even open. Didn't anybody care here about what could happen. Any neighborhood security chief could have pointed out the dangers, the bums that would swarm into any unlocked door, to drink or die in a warm place, or to build a nest. Merrian saw a few signs of occupation, rags cast into corners where the homeless people lived. City hall was like one big hotel for the homeless, and the violent -- he saw snatches of dried blood on the scuffed tiles and a few bullet holes in the wall. Yet far less of either than the lax security warranted.
Then, he reached the floor he wanted, and opened the door with care. A few guards lounged against the wall here, too, as tired looking as the bunch downstairs, though at the end of the hall, where gold letters above the door, marked out the mayor's office for Merrian, a few suited men stood more seriously armed, holding machine guns and eyeing the hall warily as if expecting an attack. Maybe they were. Maybe people took potshots at feds more frequently than the feds let on. These suited men were obviously feds and frowned when Merrian emerged from the stairs, as uncomfortable with the lax security as Merrian was surprised.
“You! Boy! What you doing there?” they asked, but were interrupted by the mayor's door opening behind them, and the man -- who photograph Quadro had shown him -- stepped out, arm in arm with the mayor. Merrian yanked out the pistol, aimed it, and squeezed off all eight shots, each one sounding like a pop on his end and all hell on the other. When he turned to run, smoke and debris were all he saw, and all that remained of the mayor's side of the hall. The police guards, dropped their cigarettes and grabbed for their guns, but Merrian already flew down the stairs the way he had come, knowing that if he didn't reach the front door quick, security would close it against him.
If he had taken an elevator, they would have caught him. All four carriages came to a halt at the same time, trapping passengers between floors. Merrian could hear the people screaming in panic, each believing this was some trick by the outsiders to rape or rob them, neighborhood people grown soft from living the good life behind walls and guards, coming and going in cars built with bullet proof glass, alarms and anti-robbery devices. But here, in the heart of the city, protected by the town's central government, they squealed like pigs in pens waiting for slaughter.
Merrian had no respect for them. They had looted the city with their investments and taken their wealth away, leaving him, his best friend, his mother and his sisters to scramble with the rest of the rats for what remained, dog eating dog. Such soft fools had no right to survive in a dog eat dog world, where security devices and paid guard substituted for instinct. If Merrian could have cut the cables to those elevator cars, he would have. If any bullets had remained, he would have shot the cars instead of the feds. Those people had killed his friend. Those people had robbed him of his protection.
But then, their squealing faded as he raced to the doors, the once-lackadaisical guards suddenly up and armed and aiming their pistols at him, squeezing off one round then many, only to catch themselves in the cross fire before they stopped and he slipped back out onto the street, onto the outside where gangs roved the street stripping security devices off the cars, breaking windows, shooting guards from neighborhood walls, catching innocent people in their cross fire, too.
Behind Merrian, the alarms on the building ran and blue uniformed guards piled out of City Hall like roaches fleeing a flooding flat, all of them shooting now as the word went out for the regular police, and a fax message went to Washington, announcing the death of some of its feds. Within ten minutes, this place would be packed with angry cops, from every level of government, from every place in the country. Merrian tasted the sweat that rolled down from his head and caught the corners of his mouth.
He'd done it! He'd killed the man Quadro wanted killed! Done it by himself without protection and got away. Quadro would have to listen to him now, Merrian thought as he ran, weaving through the streets in a fashion that only long experience could have taught, hurrying to get himself out of the net of police that would soon drop on that whole part of the city.
Then, he thought of the letter, and realized he had made a dreadful mistake. He had to get to a phone. He had to make sure his mother didn't mail it, even by accident. If the feds knew Quadro was behind this, they would swoop down on him, too. All that about instilling fear was the big man's bull. He just wanted one small federal agent dead. No message sent. No clue as to who had done it.
They won't catch him, the other man had said.
Why not, Marrian wondered. What had the man meant about feds always taking care of things the same way?
Did he really need to ponder it? Hadn't Merrian seen enough of that kind of thing with ordinary police, and eye for a brutal eye. One killing leading always to another and another. The feds killed people who threatened them. But here, Merrian had killed three maybe four of them in one small shoot-out in City Hall.
They would kill him without thinking. They would hunt him down street by street. Merrian had to get to a phone. He had to stop his mother from mailing that letter. Quadro had promised protection for Merrian's family. Merrian needed Quadro to survive.
Then, above him, hovering over the tops of six and seven story buildings, the helicopters appeared, not the blue and white helicopters of the state police, or the drab green of the local police, but the deep black color Merrian knew signified the feds. No message came down from them when they him. Only a heatseeking missile that blew up the sidewalk under his feet. One minute he was running on pavement, the next minute, running on air, his face feeling first the sting of the concrete dust striking it, and then the rip of the blast through his chest. But in that last moment, he didn't think of dying, the thought of the letter, and the protection, he almost had.
***********
“Mayor on the line, chief,” Vincent’s secretary said, her voice rising over the noise of Vincent’s computer, the same file and photograph on screen since the murder two days earlier.
“Thanks, Louise,” Vincent said, calling up the mayor’s screen, the heavy jowls of the irate politician replacing the delicate features of the corpse.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the mayor roared the minute the pixels finished solidifying his portrait.
“What’s wrong?” Vincent said, squinting, his bad right eye twitching the way it always did when he was taken off guard.
“You can ask me that after what you’ve done?”
“I’m asking because I don’t know. I don’t play games like that.”
The mayor blinked, seeming to check his anger. “I thought so, too, until this happened,” the man said. “But then, I don’t know you as well as I know other people in the department. That’s why I gave you this chance, making you chief instead of...”
“Mayor will you please tell me what’s going on?”
Again, the mayor blinked, his sentence trailing off. He squinted at Vincent as if peering through a fog. “You mean you really don’t know? Hasn’t he called you yet?”
“Who?”
“Cromwell,” the mayor said. “The man you accused of killing that girl.”
“We haven’t charged anyone with that crime,” Vincent said.
“Well, Cromwell seems to think you have. He called up from Chelsea raising one big stink, threatening to go to the Governor if I didn’t do something about it.”
“From Chelsea?” Vincent said, sitting up. “This is news to me. All we did was forward the artist sketch to Chelsea security. Frankly, I didn’t think anyone would get back to us on it. You know the lack of cooperation we get from those uppity places. Is this Cromwell someone important?”
“Too important to accuse of anything this heinous without evidence,” the Mayor said. “Where did you get this artist sketch?”
“We had a witness.”
“What kind of witness.”
“One of the neighborhood bag ladies,” Vincent said. “She saw the whole thing.”
“Based on that you started an inquiry in Chelsea?’“
“Based on the fact she followed the killer to the gate of that neighborhood, yes,” Vincent said. “It’s all procedure. We’re running this thing by the book.”
“I don’t care about the book, damn it!” the mayor shouted and pounded his desk, though Vincent could not see the rising or falling hand on the screen. He heard only the vibrations through the computer speaker. “What I care about is the fact that one of this city’s most prominent citizens believes we’re accusing him of murder.”
“Sir,” Vincent said, exaggerating the word until the Mayor stopped fuming. “I only sent a picture. Whatever happened on the other end isn’t my doing.”
“Fine, I believe you, but I need you to tell that to Mr. Cromwell.”
“Okay, I’ll call him...”
“No, don’t call. Go there. Personally. Apologize if you have to. I don’t need to have this kind of trouble in an election year. You understand me?”
“Certainly,” Vincent said, signing off, watching the pixels shatter and the face of the mayor fade, the image of the dead woman returning to the screen instead.
***********
“Are you sure you don’t want some of us to come with you?” Hudson asked as Vincent climbed into the cruiser, the dashboard systems coming alive before him, a tapestry of green and yellow lights announcing the activation of the vehicle weapons.
“Positive, Lucas,” Vincent said. “We go in there with force and the mayor will hear about it. I’m supposed to be showing contrition here.”
“You mean you’re actually going to apologize?” Hudson asked.
Vincent’s eyes twinkled. “Not if I can help it,” he said.
“But you’re going? Why?”
“To take a peek behind the wall, Lucas,” Vincent said, pulling down the strap that locked him in place. “I’m an Outlander, remember? I don’t get to see the inside much. More importantly I want to get a look at this Cromwell character.”
“You think he’s the man we’re looking for?”
“He reacted badly. But that’s not proof. People inside have a way of over reacting to everything. Just sit tight. I’ll know more when I get back.”
The hatch closed, sealing Vincent in, the hiss of air creating the illusion of a space ship - indeed, the designers had created the vehicle with space travel in mind, something to ease through the emptiness of the Outlands, keeping the occupants safe, armored so that it would take a tank shell to blast it open, air tight so no poison gas might seep inside. Vincent felt less comfortable in it than he might have in a coffin, and rather have walked to the Chelsea gate. But Security there wouldn’t open up the doors for a man walking off the street, or in any vehicle less impressive than this one. Even the mayor - with a face more familiar than the president’s in this city - couldn’t have gotten in.
Under the chassis, the tracks began their clink as they eased out of the garage onto the street, their metal threads digging into the asphalt under the weight of armor. Out here - with the faces of street people and pedestrians staring up - Vincent felt even more foolish, like a child playing behind the wheel of some adult’s car, a car he took out for joy ride. Yet he knew how he looked from out there, the tinted bulletproof windows giving his passage an eerie air, something less than human. He’d been on the wrong side of such visions all his life, and now seemed to have sold out his roots, betraying his friends for a badge.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled up to the southeaster gate of Chelsea, his communication screen coming to life with a prerecorded message from one of the towers.
“Please transmit your identification codes now,” the computer generated voice said. “You have thirty seconds to transmit.”
The threat of violence remained unsaid. Vincent wondered if the towers had the firepower to penetrate his shields, and he was almost tempted to delay his transmission to find out, finger poised for at least ten seconds above the button before he finally pushed it.
“Thank you,” the same voice said when it had received the data. “You may proceed.”
The gate opened outward, though Vincent saw no one inside - only another gate a few dozen feet inside.
“Please stop,” the recorded voice said as the gates closed behind Vincent’s vehicle, leaving him in a limbo between one set and another. On either side, along the top of the wall twenty feet up, faces showed behind the bullet proof glass as muzzles of automatic weapons protruded at intervals of two feet apart, weapons aimed at the police vehicle.
“Please turn off your engine,” the voice said again.
Vincent complied.
“And shut off your security.”
Vincent did this, too, pushing the appropriate buttons without hesitation, showing too much of his background in that single act. Other officers would have hesitated or refused, the nature of their psyches resisting this level of submission like strong, male wolves, unable to disarm themselves and make themselves so vulnerable. Only Vincent and the few other Outlander officers understood how little the equipment mattered, and how vulnerable officers had already made themselves by taking on such trappings. Strength didn’t come from having a faster helicopters or more powerful tanks, and those souls dependent on such things, most often found themselves without them. More officers died in action, not because they failed to outfight the gangs in the Outlands, but because their machinery failed. This sense of dependence Vincent vowed to end, changing the way officers trained - moving away from the computer and weapons technical procedures now taught at the academy to the more basic skills, hand to hand, and more important, mind to mind. The battle for the Outlands was not one of physical power, but of psychological barriers, and the sooner Vincent’s officers understood this, the better cops they would be.
The green screen on the dashboard changed, losing the pattern of the previous transmission as the face of a real human appeared, one dressed in the drab gray so popular these days with private security, billed caps like pre-Korean war airforce officers, small gold bars pinned to their collars to signify rank. This particular officer had the single bar of a lieutenant.
“Good morning, Police Chief Vincent,” the man said, in a tone so cold Vincent almost preferred the voice of the machine. “Would you mind stepping out of your vehicle?”
Vincent pulled up the catch the locked him in, belts shifting automatically from around his middle and across his shoulder. The door opened as soon as the belts vanished, and he stepped carefully out into the small, concrete court yard - the cold wind striking him from above, making him realize for the first time that he was still outside. No roof covered this space. Only the glow of the neighborhood lights reflecting off the heavy clouds. Slightly lower and along the upper rim of the wall, the machine gun muzzles shifted, away from the vehicle and towards him.
“Could you please disarm?” the cold voice said, now over some hidden loud speaker.
“I’m not armed,” Vincent said.
He felt nothing, yet knew several rays now criss crossed him in search of weapons, ex-rays looking for metal, heat sensing rays looking for other devices - all of it high tech and expensive and most of all thorough. Chelsea might be one of the most paranoid neighborhoods in the city; but it could afford this small luxury, buying the best and latest in detecting devices.
“Very good,” the cold lieutenant’s voice said. “Someone will be down momentarily to escort you in.”
Even then, the guards did not let him enter without patting him down, their brisk hands feeling around his shoulders and hips for possible lumps of plastique, their suspicious gazes giving him no quarter on account of his rank. Only after this did the inner gate open and they allowed him to step across its threshold. He half expected to find guards and machine guns on the inside, too, strewn along the neighborhood streets like a conquering army - and was surprised when none showed. This neighborhood was too wealthy to want the constant reminder of siege. Where other neighborhoods had guns and guards, Chelsea had cameras, silent monitors that studied the streets from obscure out of eyesight position. Ready guards waited on the other end of their transmission to leap out at any sign of trouble. Vincent also noticed inner gates along the route from the main gate, steel gates inset at key sections of the neighborhood, like pocket doors closing to a central command. At the report of trouble, security could seal off sections of the neighborhood to contain the trouble and deal with it there rather than disturbing other residents.
Vincent begrudgingly admired the security arrangements, though despised the paranoia which inspired it, and he despised the narcissistic sense of superiority that allowed these people to wall out the rest of humanity. He shivered as he walked, realizing only then that he felt cold. He had not dressed properly, too used to the Outlands where he traveled from home to office without stepping onto the street, living his life behind more narrow walls which did not allow this much freedom. He sighed, letting his mind wander back to the details of the case, as he followed the guards along the street to his destination.
***********
The wall guards left Vincent at the door of the town house where private guards greeted him, men possibly colder in spirit than those at the wall had been, eyeing him with the same sense of hostility Vincent always felt from wall people. His credentials did not excuse him from another search, nor win him more than a brief nod of recognition. These guards searched more for personal weapons than explosives, leaving Vincent feeling slightly violated when they finally abandoned him in a small redwood paneled room just inside the front door.
“Mr. Cromwell will call for you shortly,” they said and vanished.
A half-hour later, Bosk appeared, his scarred face stiff with what served him as a smile.
“Well, well,” he said, extending his long fingered hand. “We meet again - this time in the flesh.”
Vincent avoided the hand. “I thought you worked for the neighborhood?” he said.
“I do double duty,” Bosk said. “I’m head of Chelsea security and Mr. Cromwell’s personal security.”
“No doubt you are well compensated,” Vincent said.
Bosk’s grin did not wavier but the eyes hardened. “I do well,” he said. “Now if you’ll come this way, Mr. Cromwell will see you.”
Bosk led Vincent through a whole different world, the kind of world few Outlanders ever dreamed of and rarely saw, a plush world full of paintings, carpets and paneled walls, each and every element working towards a singularly wealthy effect. He might have walked into the office of the president of the United States or the residence of the Pope in Rome. No sound came but his own breathing and the odd off-rhythm of his own footsteps trying to keep up with Bosk’s. Then, after a twisting hall, Bosk delivered Vincent to what might have been a study - though the room was big enough to serve any Outlander as a house. All four walls held shelves with books. Several leather armchairs with accompanying tables and ashtrays to one side suggested drinks and conversation. Vincent could smell the hint of Havana cigars, the way he could sometimes smell the after scent of incense in a church. To the right, just out from the wall of books sat a huge man with huge fist folded before him on a massive desk. Not a fat man. Nothing about this character seemed remotely weak from the taunt flesh curved around his broad face and jaw to spread of his broad shoulders. He might have served as half the offensive line to any of the metropolitan area’s professional football teams. Only the slight gray in his closed-cropped hair suggested age, even this had the salt and pepper effect that made men like him seem seasoned like aging Marines who have kept themselves in as stern a shape as the recruits just then going to war.
“Mr. Cromwell?” Vincent said, moving ahead of Bosk for the first time, his hand extended.
Cromwell looked up, his gray metal eyes focusing on Vincent, then the hand, ignoring Vincent’s gesture as firmly as Vincent had ignored Bosk’s. But the stare studied Vincent - this too hard and seasoned, evaluating the police chief the way a banker might a loan applicant, clearly dissatisfied with what he saw.
“You’re the man who accused me of murder?” he said, his voice cool, yet without emotion.
“No one accused you of anything,” Vincent said, suddenly taken back by the sharp resemblance of the man to the computer image he had sent here from headquarters, the artist could have drawn it from this man’s photograph, the likeness was so sharp. “I’m simply conducting an investigation.”
“A witch hunt, you mean,” Cromwell said, still staring, though his hands had begun to move, hands that now seemed detached from him, like guard dogs stirring at the some half heard call of their master. For the first time, Vincent noticed the fingers and the thick gold rings that graced each broad finger, forming a kind of chain near the knuckles. “This photograph could do my reputation significant harm.”
“It’s not a photograph,” Vincent corrected, noting the image he’d sent sitting on the desk beneath the man’s huge hands. “It’s a computer image. Our artist drew it up based on information given to us by an eye witness.”
“And yet it looks like me, does it not?”
“Yes,” Vincent admitted. “But that’s not unusual. Those things are rarely 100 percent accurate. They just a tool for narrowing the field of suspects down to those resembling the most likely.”
“And yet you’ve sent this thing here,” the man said, tapping the top of his desk. “To my neighborhood where it can do me significant damage. I have a reputation to uphold. I do not need unwarranted accusations floating around me.”
“I already told you, we’re not...” Vincent said and stopped as someone else entered the room through one of the two other doors. The woman, when she appeared finally in the brighter light, looked as if she had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine, though one with a slightly sado-maschocistic twist - every inch of her dress made of silver rings, the tight mesh of which managed to hide from general view her lack of under garments. Her silver lipstick and nail polish matched the metal motif. So did her sharp silver eyes. She moved, too, with the same easy flow Vincent had seen down town in the clubs, not drunken exactly, more arrogantly slumming. She stopped near the corner of Cromwell’s desk, and there, side by side with Cromwell, Vincent saw the same stern set of face, though her features seemed more slenderly shaped, the way a dagger was from a broadsword.
“What does he want, daddy?” the woman said, eyeing Vincent from her perch, interested yet aloof, like a cat pretending not to be interested in a scurrying mouse. It was the kind of look Vincent had seen too many times from the elevated neighborhood women who thought their walls made them superior to those outside, a curious look of the civilized for the animal nature of beings less cultivated. His fingers curled into fists at his side, and yet something stirred in him, something he’d not felt since before the death of his wife.
“He thinks I’ve murdered some unfortunate woman,” Cromwell said.
“I never said that,” Vincent snapped, keeping his gaze diverted from the suddenly harsh stare of the woman.
“Murder?” she asked. “Who are you saying my father murdered?”
“I’m investigating the murder of a bar girl downtown,” Vincent said. “She was raped and strangled.”
The woman’s silver eyes glistened. “And you came here looking for the killer?”
“I came here following a lead,” Vincent said.
“Which is outrageous,” Cromwell said. “To come here and bother me over the death of some gutter snipe.”
“Murder is murder,” Vincent said. “It’s my job to investigate wherever it takes me. It happens in this instance the trail led here.”
Cromwell leaned forward, the palms of his hands flat on the desk as he stared straight at Vincent. His eyes did not show anger nor did the lipless mouth. Yet the waves of fury seemed to travel across the space between the men, assaulting Vincent.
“I know all about you, mister,” Cromwell said. “I’ve had you checked out.”
“Oh?” Vincent said, having the same difficulty swallowing as he did as a kid when called to task for some ill deed or another.
“Yes, I do,” Cromwell repeated. “You were born and raised out there.” The man waved his big hand in a direction that may or may not have been south. “You’re an Outlander, one someone was foolish enough to give a badge.”
“Give?” Vincent said, some harshness now sounding in his own voice. “I think I earned my badge and my position.”
“I’m sure you’d think that,” Cromwell said. “But we can only imagine the methods you used. All you Outlanders are little better than criminals, badge or no badge, brawling in the street like a pack of rats, stealing, killing, raping as you want. How dare you come here. How dare you accuse decent people with crimes you yourself commit routinely.”
Vincent waited until the man finished speaking, his face growing deeper red with each word. Even after the man had ceased, Vincent stayed silent for a moment, staring at the man, at his daughter, at Bosk grinning in the corner. Then, with great deliberation, he spoke.
“You’re mistaken, Mr. Cromwell,” he said.
“You deny coming here, looking to create trouble with me because you’re jealous?”
“Yes, I deny it. I’m not jealous. In fact, I don’t envy your life here, in this cage.”
“Then you want something from me,” Cromwell said. “Is this some attempt to blackmail me into giving a donation to one of those thieving charities of yours?”
“I don’t take bribes, even for charity,” Vincent said. “And I don’t treat people differently whether they come from the inside or out.”
“But you can’t deny your own animal instincts, can you?” Cromwell asked, his daughter’s eyes gleaming as she waited for Vincent’s answer.
“I survived, if that’s what you mean?” Vincent said, shifting his feet the way a thousand criminals had under interrogation. “Sometimes I’ve done things I didn’t particularly like doing. But being out there, crawling around, I acquired an incredible respect for law and order. I learned that human beings are bound together by laws. They are the walls that contain civilization and without them, we have only chaos.”
“Fine!” Cromwell said, standing up straight again. “Go out and enforce your laws. You’ll find plenty of lawbreakers where you come from.”
“I’d find just as many lawbreakers on this side of the wall,” Vincent said. “That’s my point. Inlanders seemed to believe only the poor are bound by laws, only the poor should be punished.”
“Well, they’re the ones who cause all the trouble,” Cromwell said. “That’s why the rest of us have to live behind walls. We built the walls to protect ourselves.”
“Did you?” Vincent asked, staring hard at the man. “Or did you lock yourselves behind these walls to put yourselves beyond the reach of the law as well, setting up your own fiefdoms, listening to no one but your own desires?”
“What if we did?” Cromwell asked. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Plenty,” Vincent said. “Civilization depends upon equal distribution of law. It must mean the same thing for people on the top as it does for people on the bottom.”
“Do you see any laws being broken here?” the man demanded.
“No,” Vincent said. “But then you have the means to hide it better, keeping your sins contained behind these walls while the rest of us have to live out in the open.”
“You bastard!” Cromwell roared. “You are accusing me of this murder. And without an ounce of proof. Get out of here before I do something I will be sorry for.”
“Not until you’ve answered some questions, like where you were on the night of the murder.”
“I said get out!” Cromwell shouted, Bosk advancing quickly to take Vincent’s arm.
Vincent shook himself free of Bosk’s grasp.
“If you have nothing to hide, Mr. Cromwell, there won’t be a problem. A few answers will settle everything and I can be on my way.”
“Bosk!” Cromwell said. “Remove him.” Then, in a last gesture before Bosk led Vincent out, Cromwell glared. “I’ll have your job for this, Vincent. I promise.
“You really got nerve, Vincent,” Bosk whispered as he propelled Vincent out the way they’d come, through the carpeted halls to the door, and then out onto the street - where two other guards waited, all of them equally hostile now, their cold gazes now stirred to fire.
“Hold on there,” an equally chilly voice said, Cromwell’s silver daughter hurrying down the hall, slipping out onto the street, apparently unaware of the stirring her sleek form caused in the guards - particularly Bosk. “I want to talk with the police chief - privately.”
“I’m not sure we can...”
“You work for me, Bosk. You’ll do what you’re told.”
“What happens if he gets violent?” Bosk objected. “I’m hired to protect you and your father, too.”
“I’m not asking you to vanish. You can stand over there and watch,” the woman said, her eyes flashing again as she looked at Vincent. “I’m sure the good police chief will behave himself.”
“What do you want?” Vincent asked, when Bosk and his two henchmen moved beyond earshot.
“You know,” she said, touching his forearm, her sharp fingernails stabbing lightly at his flesh like little knives.
“Why don’t you spell it out?”
“I’d like to – well, know you better. Could we meet somewhere. Later. For a drink?”
Vincent stared at her, noticing the change of expression, a hungry look replacing the formal coolness. She seemed starved and this struck him as remarkable sad. For all her fashion, for all her wealth, she stood absolutely alone before him, lonelier than the loneliness bum in the Outlands.
“Maybe,” he said.
“When?” she asked with a sharp expiration of breath
“Call me at my office. We can arrange something then.”
“Thanks,” she said with a deep sigh, and actually seemed to mean it, vanishing back behind her door as Bosk and his brutal crew retook possession of Vincent.
***********
“You son of a bitch!” Bosk said, striking Vincent in the chest with his fist, as the hands of the other guards grabbed Vincent’s arms, keeping him from striking back. “You’ve got nerve coming in here and bothering Mr. Cromwell like this.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Bosk,” Vincent said, more puzzled than alarmed, staring at the scarred face of the wall guard as if not quite believing the man’s attack. “That’s assault. I could have your ass in jail for striking me.”
“Could you now?” Bosk said, grinning, one his front teeth cracks, a small slice missing as to leave an angled gap. “What makes you think we’re going to let you leave - alive?”
“Is that a threat?” Vincent asked, still not concerned.
“No, it’s a question.”
“In the first place, my men know where I went, and would come looking for me if I didn’t show up. Then, they would take this neighborhood apart, you along with it.”
“That’s tough talk,” Bosk said. “But we’re not Soho or the West Village. We have some pretty tough people on our side of the wall, too, you know.”
“Yes, but how many of them would be willing to risk execution because of your need for vengeance?”
Something darkened in Bosk’s eyes, though Vincent could still see the smoldering fires, fires that had Vincent had set there over the years - those instances checking the man’s ambition now seemed motive enough to generate hate.
“`Look, pig,” Bosk said. “We don’t have to kill you here. All we have to do is dump you out onto the street and your little world out there will do it for you.”
“My department would still come here looking for me,” Vincent said. “They would find my car here and then ask questions.”
“Oh, but they wouldn’t find your car here,” Bosk assured him. “That would wind up on the other side of town. This would confuse your people, certainly, but they wouldn’t have any reason to doubt us when we said you drove away. Maybe later, when they found your mangled body in the streets, they’d figure something odd about you being away from your car. Still, you’re unpredictable. You might have climbed out of your car to investigate something. Someone jumped you, killed you, then drove off for a joy ride in your official vehicle. That’s where it would end. No one would think to bring it back here to us.”
“It sounds like a good plan,” Vincent said. “The question is whether or not you have balls to pull it off. Gauging from you past, you don’t.”
“Oh no?” Bosk said, the fires in his eyes now flaring up. “You don’t think so?”
“No,” Vincent said. “You may have come from the Outlands the way I did, but you never developed the killing instinct it takes to survive there. You were always looking for an alternative, an easy way out, just the way you are now. You don’t want to let me walk out of here – because you would lose face with your staff. Yet you haven’t got the guts to toss me out into the dark, chancing an investigation might uncover you as the culprit. An act like that would be seen as attempted murder. You would face execution as an accomplice. You’re not brave enough to take that kind of gamble.”
Bosk’s eyes blazed with fury, though his face tightened around the scar, somehow, looking more determined than Vincent had ever seen him – and in that face, Vincent saw his mistake, saw the desperation with which Bosk clung to his position here, and how shocked he must have been, seeing Vincent appear here, too, to ruin this gig the way Vincent had ruined those preceding it. Only this time Bosk wasn’t going to let Vincent spoil a good thing.
Perhaps Bosk had more information about his boss, Cromwell’s activities outside the neighborhood. Perhaps Bosk had even helped satisfy his new master’s fetish. A criminal charge against Cromwell, then would not only steal the job as personal security for Cromwell, but would ruin Bosk’s career as security head for the neighborhood. Even Chelsea wouldn’t put up with this kind of misbehavior, by Cromwell or anyone helping Cromwell kill.
Only then did Vincent understand his own danger, only then did he understand that he had pushed Bosk too far, cornering the rat, giving the rat opportunity to strike.
“We’ll see who has balls,” Bosk said, and grabbed Vincent’s arm – or tried to, Vincent shifting to the side just as the man move, grabbing the man’s hand and twisting towards the wrist. Bosk howled with pain.
“Get him off me!” he shouted at his men, men who looked on rather fascinated, the way young sharks might look at an old shark struggling, wondering if there was some advantage for themselves in letting the old shark die. “Didn’t you hear me? I said get him off me.”
“Try it and I break his wrist,” Vincent said.
“Let him break it,” Bosk shouted. “I’ll mend thinking about the Outlands' dogs tearing his body to shreds.”
The other men advanced. Vincent yanked Bosk’s hand down hard until he felt and heard the bones snap, one precious bone at a time, and heard the wail of pain from the man now limp beside him.
“Grab him!” Bosk shouted, as three men tried, and Vincent stabbed one with the tip of his boot, leather shoving the Adam’s apple in until that guard fell, too, gurgling in his attempt to breathe. He struck the second with his fingers, breaking the bridge of this guard’s nose, fingers coming away as blood spurted out both nostrils. Then, Vincent turned to address the third attacker, but found something heavy striking him in the side from where he had left Bosk, the painful tingle of an electric stunner draining the energy from his muscles. Vincent collapsed with all the integrity of a melting candle, a hazy swarming over him, though unconsciousness. He could still hear Bosk issuing commands to the wounded men, ordering them to haul Vincent out.
“We’ll dump him out the west gate,” he said. “That’s Trojan turf. Let’s see how well, Mr. Police Chief’s tricks will do with them.”
Whether a trick of memory or a side effect of the stun gun, Vincent saw flashes of his wife’s body again, with the same pain stabbing him in the side, hands unable to grasp even into fists now as the guards grabbed him up by the arm pits and slowly dragged him on, through the antechamber leading to one of the neighborhood gates. Those same hands rifled his pockets, removing his badge, keys, wallet and anything else that might immediately identify him. They left his watch and ring and the thin gold chain around his neck. Lures for the sharks outside, Vincent thought, as the outer gate opened and the hands shoved him out, dumping him onto the cold pavement.
“There,” Bosk said with a laugh. “Now let’s see who has balls. Get home with you, little piggy, before you get yourself lost.”
“Fuck you, Bosk,” Vincent said, still groggy, though his head had begun to clear.
Bosk’s face turned vivid red, the color emphasizing the pale scar down his left cheek. The head of security made a move to kick Vincent, but a noise from the outside drew up his stare. Something stirred in the darkness beyond the range of the wall lights, something clinking of metal. Bosk grinned.
“You’re friends are waiting, Mr. Vincent,” he said, and then went back into the neighborhood, the gate doors closing tightly behind him.
***********
Vincent turned his head, aware of the haze that still hung around him from the jolt of the electric prod. He couldn’t straighten out his thinking. His thoughts seemed to go off on tangents.
“Who is that out there?” he thought, then saw his dead wife’s body again, and then wondered whether or not he had set the alarm on the house, or whether he had made out a requisition slip for fuel for the week. He gripped the cold stone and lifted himself up by degrees, his arms weak, and shivering. He could barely see anything beyond the lights. But he could hear laughing from the wall behind him, jostling guards making bets as to how far he would go, or how long it would take some shark to devour him.
Between him and the dark veil of the abandoned Outlands, a fifty-yard wasteland waited, an old street stripped of everything that might add cover for possible attackers. Not a shadow showed. Not a living thing moved. Vincent recalled guards often using this zone for target practice, shooting anything that moved, rat, cat, dog or occasional human. He imagined someone – most likely Bosk –
leveling sights on his back now, though knew no guard would want to have the murder of the city police chief on his conscience. No, even Bosk would leave Vincent to the stalking creatures of the night, confident in the deadly ability of the Outlands at night.
And creatures did wait in that darkness, watching and waiting for the gates to open, sometimes the gates expelled trash, sometimes – like this time – a surprising human form would come forth, nearly naked save for clothing, sent out into the darkness as punishment for some serious social crime. Each neighborhood had its own courts, unruly kangaroo-like structures that ruled without the surety of strict laws or the aid of bill of rights. These courts punished people for the small crimes, the social crimes, the crimes of seduction and greed that often went on in such closed societies, this man’s wife sleeping with that woman’s husband, this man stealing from that man, this woman complaining about some peeping tom. For these, each neighborhood had their own jails, a few rooms with bars into which they placed such deviants, to teach them not to break the neighborhood codes, to set an example for those who might decide to take similar undesirable actions.
But in some cases, the crimes were more serious. Man raping woman. Man beating man. Often crimes of these kinds never made the police station blotter or saw the municipal court. Women who sold their services inside a neighborhood found themselves expelled. Men who killed their neighbor were dumped out onto the street after dark, their homes and goods repossessed. Although these punishments were utterly illegal in the city’s eyes, few of these exiles ever complained, few survived the darkness of the first night to ever make a report about their experience.
Outside each gate, the real punishers waited, sometimes dressed in jeans and chains, sometimes with hair colored green or blue, sometimes with scars across their faces, marking them as members of one city tribe or another, each with the same hungry look in his or her eyes – waiting and watching for that moment when some human cargo would get expelled and they could have their fun. No one knew the time of night or day of week when such a person would suddenly appear. Certainly not the police, whose few lucky guesses managed to rescue one or two souls a year. But the watchers seemed to sense the moment or sent someone back when such a person appeared.
Against the backdrop of the wall and under the unwavering glow of the wall’s flood lights, no figure could go unnoticed, nor make his way across the free fire zone quickly enough for the gangs to miss their opportunity. Vincent sensed the observation rather than saw anyone watching him. Over the years – living outside the walls – he had picked up this added sense, the way all true survivors did, a kind of radar keyed to other people’s hostility. He felt their stirring just beyond the bright lights, felt their anxiety as he moved – not towards the darkness, but parallel to it, keeping the band of light between him and his hunters. He knew they would not step into the light where the wall guards could take pot shots at him. But he also knew he couldn’t keep walking around the neighborhood wall before the guards grew weary of his game and shot at him instead.
Vincent moved, slumped slightly, his arms loose before him in the style of an ape, as if he expected at any moment to leap for an over hanging branch or rusted bottom rung of a fire escape – those things nearer the outer edge of the band of light. He did angle himself towards those things, squinting to the side, from which his sense said pursuit came. He caught glimpses of purple in the shadows and heard the rattle of chains. But only when he came within three yards of the darkness did he see the lurking figures, a gang of women, stalking him from the dark side of the line, hair spiked, noses, lips, ears and even tongue pieced with silver studs. Each carried a weapon of sorts, clubs, axes, maybe a pistol or two – a primitive tribe addicted to the more savage pleasures of personal combat, a one on one with knives and razors rather than a blasts of automatic fire.
In this respect, Vincent had lucked out. None would shoot him at a distance, preferring to get up close to hack off his limbs. Unlucky for him, these kind of gangs tended to make death slow, cutting off a finger at a time, enjoying the yelping echoes of their victims as the pain drove them mad.
By this time Vincent could see some of their faces, too, and the puzzled expression his odd, deliberate actions had given the gang. Vincent did not seem to act the way most insiders did when released, his movements too calculated, and his appearance too calm. He looked at them, studied them, did not appear overly alarmed by them, and this created alarm in the gang and made the gang that much more curious. For the first time in a long time Chelsea had tossed out something of interest, a mouse that might make increase the entertainment of their game.
“Hey, wall man,” one of them cried out, jangling what might have been a length of chain. “What did they toss you out for? You fuck the board president’s wife? Did you fuck his daughter? You want to come over here and fuck one of us?”
Vincent hurried on, increasing his pace, putting a few more yards between him and them before making the plunge across the line into the darkness, then, once inside their world, leaped up the first available street, his pumping legs taking him quickly into the mouth of one of the alleys, into which he promptly disappeared.
“Hey!” one of the gang said – a woman with mouth so thick with silver studs, she looked as if she was smiling and had all silver teeth. “Where did he go?”
“Don’t tell my you lost him already, Maggie?” another woman said, her nose pierced side to side with a silver stud a half inch thick – imitating the pigmy tribes people Vincent had seen in old issues of National Geographic.
“He ran in there somewhere,” Maggie said, pointing into the alley where Vincent hid. “He’s quicker than all the others, and I didn’t like the way he moved. He didn’t seem so much afraid as –
well, crafty.”
“You’re dreaming,” said a third woman, one with studs all around her ears. “You’ve always wanted some real man to get tossed out of there, some hunk of flesh you can fuck before you cut his dick off.”
“That’s not true, Kathy,” Maggie said. “I know they’re not going to toss out anything worth while. Maybe if I got my hands on a wall guard I’d have a few kicks. But I know what they toss out has to be a pervert or worse. It’s just this one felt all wrong.”
“What’s wrong,” Kathy said, “Is that you let him get ahead of us, now we’re going to spend the rest of the night routing him out of these allies. It’s like a maze in there.”
Even though the words scolded her companion, Kathy did not seem disappointed at the prospect, smiling a little, her eyes glinting as she stared into the darker space. Others came up behind her, big and small women, bearing all sorts of self-mutilations.
“Well, we’d better get at it,” one of the others said, as the whole group hooted, then moved into the alley mouth as one.
Vincent scrambled away, running now, bent over, trying to keep himself as small a target as possible, learning the technique from those days as a boy when he had to avoid police cruise search lights that often swept over the street from alley mouths such as these. But the oncoming gang was not the police, and they did not hide behind armor plating waiting for their target to make a mistake.
“There he is!” the studded eared Kathy yelled, her voice coming simultaneously with the boom of a pistol. Something hard slammed into the wall above Vincent’s head, sending down a rain of brick splinters. He ran harder, and turned the corner just as the second report came.
“I told you he was crafty,” Maggie yelled, the words slightly distorted by her mouthful of pins. “That son of a bitch ain’t no virgin at this.”
“Well, catch him, then, Maggie, if you’re so horny over him,” yelled another woman. “All I want to do it kill him before he gets away.”
Vincent ran with his gaze sweeping the sides of the alley, then stopped when he saw what he wanted. A culvert in the wall, some sort of steam escape from a building that had once been a factory. He struggled inside the pipe, gripping his legs with his arms so that his knees touch his cheeks.
“Where did he go?” one of the woman shouted.
“I don’t know,” another said.
“He couldn’t have made the turn that fast,” said a third.
“He was scared and quick,” Maggie said, catching up, stopping just outside the hole, her heavy legs like stovepipes, jeans encrusted with bits of metal the way her lips had been.
“We’d better hurry if we’re going to catch him,” another woman said.
“This all feels wrong,” Maggie said, shifting her feet. “I think maybe we should let this one go.”
“Fuck that,” Kathy growled. “Come on.”
So off they went, each set of legs passing before the hole in which Vincent had hid, charging ahead into the darkness and away from Vincent. He breathed easier, letting loose one breath he hadn’t been aware of holding in. Then, when the sound of them faded, he climbed out into the air again – right into the descending barrel of a aluminum baseball bat. He didn’t even see the person who wielded until after the blood spurted out from his broken nose – only the instinct to roll back with the blow keeping it from doing more than that. He rolled onto his back then, onto his feet again, bent again, wary, ignoring the flow of red now thick around his mouth and chest. The salty and metallic taste of blood informing him of the wound rather than the pain, though this came an instant later.
He blinked to clear his eyes, trying to focus on the shadowy shape, a woman – bigger than most men – with broad shoulders and a face as grim as a troll’s.
“Where you think you’re going, honey?” she asked, her voice as deep as a fog horn, carrying through the twisting alley as loudly as a siren.
“He’s over here, girls. A nice little tricky prick. Why don’t you come and get him...”
Vincent attacked while she was still speaking, charging right at her chest before she could lift the bat, or do more than lift it between them to ward off his kick. The bat took most of the blow, but also flew from her hand, clattering on the concrete well outside her reach. She didn’t have time to reach for it before Vincent’s second kick caught her between the breasts. She fell straight down like a sack, her eyes only dimly aware of her suddenly halted heart. Vincent didn’t even see this much, already racing away back towards the mouth of the alley, the racket of the gang echoing behind him, telling him that some of the gang had turned back to the woman’s call. And by the time they reached the body, he had reached the street. He heard the howl of their outrage, and caught some of the promises: cutting his balls off to cutting out his eyes to stick his own prick in. But they would not catch him now. He hunkered down into a fast paced charge along the street, away from Chelsea, gathering information about his location from a local street sign. It was a long hike back to headquarters.