Bone Wires

by Michael Shean

  So taking all of that together, Gray accessed the network and declined the request that he go in for examination. He could feel himself tightening up as he touched the confirmation button on his terminal’s holographic display, as if something within himself strained to resist such professional self-injury. He told that part of him to go fuck itself, finished up overseeing the junior detectives’ reports, and by four o’clock was ready to go and risk his career all over again by driving over to see Marowitz. He made sure to avoid Carter on the way out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Though it might have been brought around by Vice tampering, Gray had to admit that the Cerico was a dream to drive. The acceleration, the power of its engine – he would never have imagined that a hydrogen engine would have had the kind of satisfying pull that the Cerico’s did. It felt almost like a racer, and people looked when the car drove through the Waters on its way east toward Lake Washington and the Vergeward side of the New City. Marowitz had his own money, having been the only child of fairly well-off parents that had left him a fairly solid inheritance when they died. He lived in a brownstone near the waterfront that had been there for nearly a hundred and fifty years, rebuilt and modernized time and time again, in a sleepy upscale neighborhood just west of Madrona Park. Gray heard they still had the Hawaiian gardens there, but he’d never seen them; maybe he’d take Angie there someday, to stand out among the rest of the hothouse flowers. He wondered if half the flowers smelled as good as she.

  Gray parked the Cerico up the street from Marowitz’s house, behind a Mercedes 6000C that had been coated with aurachrome such that it looked like a golden bullet. Parked next to something that gaudy, Gray’s car would look like a salaryman’s compact. He sneered at it faintly as he got out of the car, checking out his appearance in a side mirror – his suit was as silver-gray as the car, his tie electric blue and made of slightly reflective fabric. Flash, real flash. He considered it for a moment, then reached up and pulled it off before undoing the top button of his collar. No point in drawing too much attention, after all.

  He walked down the street toward Marowitz’s building, hands stuffed in his pockets. He felt nervous as his feet tracked the slabs of concrete, his newfound paranoia chiming away in his head. Was it possible that he was being watched by Moody’s men? Or by Administration? He imagined the Walleyes staring down at him, watching him from on high as he walked down to the house’s front door and knocked.

  No, that was ridiculous. The company wasn’t going to spend the resources to track someone just because they declined a psych evaluation, and the street was empty. Gray squared his shoulders as he waited for someone to come to the door, but none did. After a few minutes he knocked again.

  Finally, the door opened. A sleepy-looking man, fat and balding in a sweater and raggedy jeans, stared out at Gray from under heavy lids with dull gray eyes. Jack Marowitz didn’t just take a bad picture, he literally looked like a bad DMV photo given unnatural life. He said nothing for a moment, looking up and down at Gray as if taking in every detail, then shook his head.

  “You know,” said Marowitz, “You look like a company asshole.”

  Gray’s brows furrowed. “Fair enough, Jack. You look like someone who just lost his job.”

  Marowitz made a face. “Touche,” he said, and waved at Gray to come inside.

  Gray followed him into a dim but very clean and sparsely-decorated foyer, which led past the stairs to an equally dim and sparsely-decorated living room. A pair of large windows looked out onto the street. A massive holographic entertainment center took up one corner of the room, crouched on the soft gray carpet like a beast, and a large semicircular couch faced it like a seat of theater seats. “Nice setup,” he said, looking at the glossy black cabinet and the bronze dome of the projector apparatus set into its surface. “What is that, Hitachi?”

  “Voxelity,” Marowitz replied as he went to drop himself into one corner of the sofa. He looked like a sad cartoon hound there.

  “Nice.” Voxelity was a new, up-and-coming brand. Very sharp color definition and excellent 3-D video projection. Someone as brand-conscious as Gray could be would have to be impressed, and admittedly he was. He didn’t sit down, though, instead leaning against the wall and shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Okay, so let’s talk. You send me this hacked-up, cryptic message, I’m here to hear what you have to say.”

  Marowitz made another face. “You don’t sound really convinced,” he said.

  “If I thought you were full of shit, I wouldn’t be here.” Gray felt himself slipping into his corporate mode, into the iceman’s jacket. “So let’s hear it.”

  There was silence between the two of them for a bit. Gray watched Marowitz as the former tech looked him over, unwilling to speak up again. The ball was in Jack’s court. Whatever it was that Marowitz was looking for, he apparently found it – he relaxed a bit, crossing his legs and folding his arms across his stomach as he spoke.

  “So I saw you on the news, as I said,” Marowitz said. “The company might be talking you up as some kind of a genius, I think you walked in on that whole thing thinking you’d take someone in for questioning and ended up stepping into a slaughterhouse. Am I right?”

  Gray felt a stab of annoyance. “Something like that,” he said. “But I’ve been saying that.”

  “You’ve been playing it down.” Marowitz shrugged. “It’s not like I can blame you, I mean, what the fuck are you gonna say? Hey folks, don’t give me a medal or anything, it’s just dumb luck I ran into?” He shook his head. “Shit, I don’t envy you. Especially when I saw your face up there giving that speech.”

  “Oh?” Gray crossed his arms over his chest, feeling a bit uncomfortable as well as annoyed now. “How do you mean?”

  Marowitz snorted now, and he spread his hands. “C’mon! Maybe most people are brain-dead motherfuckers, but I ain’t. I know a man who isn’t sure of what’s going on around him when I see ‘im.”

  This kind of clarity wasn’t expected, and Gray felt more than a little exposed – but he wasn’t nearly about to show it. “So all right,” he said, “Let’s say you’re right. Why get in touch with me? I mean I feel bad about what happened to you, Jack, but it was kind of a bush league mistake.”

  “So’s getting Bud Moody’s attention,” Marowitz shot back. “I mean, shit, I might have gotten myself fired, but you’ve got the Devil on your ass. At least I got my ass fucked once and cleanly. You’re gonna be dealing with that shit for a long time.”

  “Funny.” Did everyone on Earth know what the hell he’d been up to? “How the hell do you know all this, anyway? You got someone watching me, or something?”

  “Moody’s Vice,” says Marowitz with a shrug. “He might be some kind of monster, but he likes to brag. Just because I got booted out of the company doesn’t mean I don’t talk to people. He’s been telling his boys that he’s got Homicide’s new poster boy up by his nuts and working for ‘im.”

  Gray drew a deep breath at that. His cool faltered, and he very barely kept himself from snarling. “Well,” he said instead, “That’s just talk.”

  “Oh yeah?” Marowitz screwed his nose up. “Don’t tell me that, man, I know how this shit goes. Look, I’m not trying to get up your ass about it, that’s just what folks in Vice are saying. You got some kind of girlfriend you’re gonna let them use as a rat, right?”

  Gray said nothing. Instead he merely stared at Marowitz, letting his icy gaze serve as an answer while he entertained fantasies of shooting Moody in the face again.

  “It’s like that,” Marowitz continued, “Because otherwise you’re both fucked. You and I both know what he’ll do if he’s crossed, so of course you have no alternative. Now…what is it he’s said he’s looking for?”

  The question laid on Gray’s shoulders like a wreath of lead. He stared at Marowitz for a little longer, but all his cold fury was cheerfully reflected by the fat tech. Finally, he relented. “Moody says there’s a Shard ring operating
out of there,” he said. “He wants her to sniff it out and give them evidence.”

  “What does your girl say?”

  “She says there’s nothing of the kind going on.”

  “So what does she say is going on?” Marowitz shifted a bit, sliding over to the end of the sofa and propping himself up on its arm. “I assume she’s got an opinion.”

  Gray shrugged. “She says there’s just a little prostitution and light drug use. Says the owner won’t take anything else.”

  Marowitz nodded. “She’s absolutely right,” he said. “There’s nothing like that going on over there. Matter of fact, I don’t think for a moment that these murders have anything to do with some crazy asshole from the European War. I think that they have something to do with whatever’s going on over at that club, and I think Moody does too. I think he wants in on it.”

  Silence. Gray stared at him, unsure of what to say. Finally words came to him, and he shook his head. “I think you’ll need to explain that.”

  “I won’t.” Those bland, hooded eyes stared at him without even the slightest inkling of fear. The iceman act just didn’t seem to have any traction. “I mean, not yet. What I will say, however, is that whatever he wants, it’s not Shard. It’s not whores or pillheads, either – this is something else. I want to know what it is.”

  Gray looked at him. “Why the hell would you want that?”

  “I’ll tell you next time.” The fat man shook his head. “Besides, I’m still digging around. You don’t have to come back here, Detective. You can sell your girl up to Vice like any of her little whore friends, and you can have your pretty badge and car and whatever else. I just don’t think you will.”

  So this was it? “All right,” Gray said, “But before I go, I want to know something.”

  “Sure.”

  Gray looked out the windows, at the gray street and the sleek, automotive opulence that sat parked along it. “You said you had information about Anderson that I should know about. If I’m gonna do anything with you, or for you, I gotta know what that is.”

  “Oh,” said Marowitz, “That.” He got to his feet and shrugged. “Well, your report said that girl of his, that one you’re hanging out with now, told you that he was selling information off to criminals. I saw where you went and stared down that Black-Eyes character – good job, that, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” Gray said with a smirk. “So?”

  “Well that’s just the thing.” Marowitz nodded toward him. “I mean, sure, he was selling information, but it wasn’t anything huge. It was the other stuff he had which was way more interesting. I read the data.”

  “I was told the machine fried itself.” Somewhere in Gray’s stomach, a lead weight was conjuring itself into being.

  “Sure, they’d tell you that.” Marowitz gave him a wide, ragged smile. It made him look manic. “But the truth is, there were a lot of names there. Names and pictures.”

  The weight dropped into him. Gray thought he knew what was coming next, and he didn’t want to be right. “Tell me.”

  “You might not want to hear this.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  And so Jack did, carefully and in measured tones so as not to set Gray off. It was a good thing, too, because with every word he felt his anger swell until he felt like he would explode in a pillar of fire. Angie hadn’t just been dancing for executive scum. She’d been fucking them, right there in the VIP room, and Anderson – who had been a pretty decent hacker – had been staging private recording sessions. Gray hadn’t wanted to think about Angie being involved in anything like that. And yet, that night when he had caught her grinding on that asshole she said was from Acene Electric, he had wondered – just a little bit – if more would have gone on were he not there. So she hadn’t been shitting him, and he should have known better. Now he just felt sick.

  Marowitz looked at him with pity as Gray sagged against the wall, his iceman mask having shattered into an ashen mask of anguish and rage, the first expression of emotion that the tech had shown since Gray had shown up at his door. “Look, man,” he said, his voice weirdly gentle now, “I’m not telling you this to fuck things up for you – I mean she’s gotta make a living, and shit’s hard. I wouldn’t hold it against her. And here.” He held out a data wafer to Gray.

  “What’s that?” Gray asked, staring at the thing with blank eyes.

  “The data in question,” said Marowitz. “Well, a copy of the names. And the only existing pictures. You make it go away.”

  Gray stared at it a little longer; the horrible emotions that he felt had congealed into a kind of numbness, a mental static that allowed him to cope for the moment. He knew the feeling well; it had been the same as he had experienced just a week before, only the carnage he experienced now was entirely within him. “All right,” he said simply, and he took it from Marowitz’s hand. “Fine.” Then, “Why?”

  “Call it quashing your doubts before we even get started,” Marowitz said with a shrug. “Because this isn’t about you, and I’m not trying to use you like any goddamned pawn. If I could do this on my own, I would. But I can’t. And I think that you and I would rather get this shit done right than let some Vice asshole fuck it up.”

  Gray stared at him, then at the data wafer. The gleaming epoxy rectangle was tiny in his hand, glittering with embedded golden filaments. “I like my job,” he said. “I like my promotion.” It wasn’t Marowitz that he was telling this to, though, it was himself.

  “Nobody’s asking you to give it up.” Marowitz laid a hand on his shoulder, seeking Gray’s eyes with his own. “Look. This asshole’s got you by the nuts already, and I want to tear him down. Now it’s up to you, and I’ll understand if you don’t come back here again, but I don’t know that this is something that you wanna turn your back on. Better you figure out and show the world now than leave it up to someone else to find out and fuck you with later.”

  Gray could say nothing. He turned and left Marowitz standing in his living room, shuffling numbly out the front door and back up the street where the Cerico sat waiting. His mouth was dry, his fingers cold – it was if he was dying from the inside out. Fuck. Fuck. By the time he piled himself into the car, he was barely able to focus. And so he didn’t try. Instead he sat there, sprawled in the driver’s seat, staring out at the empty street for what felt like hours as his thoughts warred with one another. Finally out of the mental carnage came the victor, a sharp thought, a thought that glowed and smoked as if it were a blade pulled out of a torturer’s coals.

  She better have answers.

  Simple words, but caged up inside of them was a fury that he had never felt. Betrayal. Rage. Despair. These things sank into him, drove his hands as he started up the car and turned it back onto the road. He had to go find her. He had to talk to her. He had to find out what the fuck was going on.

  Driving westward toward his apartment, where she had said the night before that she would be, Daniel Gray found himself entirely uncertain of how he’d handle being in the presence of this woman whom he so newly loved.

  It scared the hell out of him.

  Gray spent the trip over fuming, looking at pictures, and then fuming again. He was incredibly angry. He wasn’t quite sure if he was angrier at Angie for getting involved with idiots like Anderson in the first place, Marowitz for giving him the pictures, or himself for just swallowing the whole damned story in the first place without even talking to her. As the Cerico drove him back home, he went over the pictures Marowitz had given him.

  There she was, in twelve different images, all shot from various angles, various places – the VIP lounge of the Autumn Heights was the only place that he recognized. Others were various hotels, all of them very plush. He looked at them, saw her body in all the many positions that he had imagined her in – and though he did not recognize the places, he knew many of the faces belonging to the men and women she was shown with. Angie’s face buried between the legs of Anita Zeltz of Hydrodyne, whose face was a mask
of pleasure. Tied up and drilled from behind by Tom Matsui of Orbital Mechanics, Ltd. The star attraction in a sandwich between Andrew Sczerny of Applied Quantum Technologies and some beautiful girl who looked disturbingly like his daughter. Etcetera. Fucking. Etcetera.

  He shut off the constant chain of images at number seven, not even finishing them. He couldn’t. Gray wasn’t a data tech; it wasn’t as if he could prove that they were real or not. He hoped against hope that they weren’t, and he squeezed his eyes shut as the car drove on. Fuck’s sake, this was a turn he did not see coming – he could see Moody having something like this, faked or not, dangling it under his nose to make him work for him – but Marowitz? Could he dare believe that these were the only copies? But on the other hand, his pity was there, and it looked so very real…

  As he drove through the New City’s neon heart, Gray wondered what to do. The lights of the Waters flashed through his eyelids, and with every strobing pulse of light left afterimages of the pictures he had seen. Damn her, damn Marowitz, and damn him. He shouldn’t be so angry; there was no evidence that she knew anything about it. Hell, there was nothing wrong with fucking your clients. Even prostitution was licensed, and if she were violating the law wouldn’t Moody be on it already? He already had a man in, as he’d said. Or maybe he was luring her into a trap through Gray, using him to expose her. Well, he’d have to deal with it first. Her first, that is. He let the drive pass on and his consciousness submerge, to become as much background noise as the engine and the city beyond.

  Gray made his way back to his apartment, moving as if numb, mechanical. He stood in front of the door and stared at its featureless white surface. It might as well be a portal to Hell. He closed his eyes a moment to collect himself; his hand, stuffed in his pocket, closed tightly around the traitorous shape of the data wafer before he extracted it to produce his lock cylinder.