Necropolis

by Michael Dempsey

  ***

  Are you drunk? she says.

  Hmmm?

  I’ve crept into the bedroom. My head is spinning, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and drift away.

  Go to sleep.

  You smell like that damned bar, Elise says, sitting up.

  I stop pulling off my shoes. It’s going to be a fight.

  It’s part of the job, I say.

  Bullshit! Coming home drunk at two AM is not part of the damned job!

  Lone wolves don’t get promoted, Elise.

  She isn’t buying it. She lies back quietly as I undress.

  I’ve been going to meetings, Paul. Al-Anon.

  Christ. You know what’ll happen if someone sees you there?

  As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I know I’ve said the worst possible thing. Elise’s face breaks into jagged angles of shock and hurt. Then it hardens. I hate to see it harden that way. It’s been happening a lot lately.

  I’m there for me, Paul. I don’t want to leave you, but I can’t stand where this is heading.

  I take her hand. It’s delicate, like a child’s.

  Look, baby. There’s got to be a way we can compromise.

  That’s called denial.

  Denial, I think. Goddamned AA. I’d sent many a petty criminal to them. But they were zealots. One way of seeing things. Everything was through the lens of their own addiction. And Elise had bought into it. Pretty soon she’d be telling me I had a disease.

  Elise, I’ve never had a DUI, never hit you. I’m not one of those people!

  You’ve never had a DUI? How many should you have had, Paul?

  That stops me. Last year, on Van Dam Street, near the Long Island Expressway, I’d been pulled over for going left of center. I’d sweated blood when the officer had approached my car with a breathalyzer kit. Then I’d flashed my detective’s shield. The patrol officer had slowly nodded and stepped back from the door. But when he waved me on, there’d been disgust all over his face.

  Does it even matter whether she’s right, I think? I can’t lose her. So I say:

  What do you want me to do?

  She comes to me in her satin teddy. She straddles me, settled against my chest, wrapping her legs around my hips. I can feel her heart beating. She’s warm from being under the covers.

  An alcoholic can’t stop on their own. But you’ve never really tried, right?

  I play it out. Ordering a Coke at Lefty’s. The other guys giving me shit. It’s not like it used to be. A lot of guys, the health nuts, don’t drink— Except who am I kidding? No one might say it to my face, but in this tribe, manhood was still measured by holding your liquor. Can I afford to slip in their estimation?

  But that’s not it, is it?

  I need it. There are times when the only thing that gets me through the day is the promise of that reward. I’ll stand in a bedroom in the projects, flies buzzing around the black blood, see the dead kid, smell the feces and the gun oil, and close my eyes and remind myself that by midnight I’ll be in Lefty’s and everything can go away. It’s all I have on those days when I feel like a janitor instead of a cop, cleaning up the city’s garbage. Our great citizens, the media, they don’t care. To half of them we’re the enemy. So why should I care?

  What’s so damned wrong about having a little help, a little—

  Crutch?

  No. That’s not— There’s something else. A quieter voice inside whispers. There’s something, something I don’t want to look at, not ever. Something I can’t look at. Something…

  I wrench myself back to her. I look into her eyes, see deep grief. I cup her face.

  I’ll try, okay?

  And if you can’t?

  I try to smile. Then I guess we’ll know for sure that I’ve got a problem.

  Paul, I have to tell you. I have to say this out loud.

  I know what’s coming.

  If this doesn’t… I can’t… I can’t…

  I know. I get it, okay?

  She searches my eyes for strength, for character, to see if I have the resources to do what I said.We’re at a crossroad.

  I know you can do it, she says.

  Hey, I say, How about I get two tickets to that opera everybody’s been raving about? This weekend?

  She almost strangles me with her hug. Can we do dinner, too?

  Sure, babe. Wherever you want. I kiss her soft lips and hold her tighter, thinking how I’d do anything, anything, not to lose her—

  ***

  A hand was shaking me. I opened my eyes. Arlene was gazing down at my prone form. There was a mixture of childish amusement and very grown-up lust on her face.

  “Sleeps like the dead.”

  I groaned and sat up on the cot, abdominals cramping. I shook away the disturbing echoes of the dream.

  Arlene puffed up her chest. “Wanna see how good I am?”

  “Uh…”

  She stuffed a data pebble under my nose. “NYPD Case File 03-1756. Robbery-slash-double homicide.” I bolted up and grabbed at it. Arlene snatched it back, spun triumphantly on her heels and marched back into the main room. I followed.

  “It’s encrypted. It’ll take a day to turn it to English.”

  “Sure you want to get any deeper into this?” I asked.

  “We came this far, didn’t we?”

  “Arlene, I don’t know how to thank you.”

  She slid in close and gave my thigh a squeeze. “Listen, hero. My place is right around the corner.”

  “Tempting. But I’m a little old for you, sweetie.”

  She gave me a toothy smile and snapped a fresh piece of gum. “Old? Honey, I’m a hundred and three.”

  ***

  I trudged up the steps of my building, my mind racing.

  Why had there been no leads? The DA never rested in cop murders. It wasn’t a matter of vengeance—it was self-defense. The world had to know that if you killed a cop, you went down. Period. Otherwise, it’d be open season.

  So what had happened? Where had my boys been? Bart? The Lieutenant? The case had closed way too fast.

  Shot to death in a Korean grocery.

  I saw it in my mind. Preceding Elise into the bodega, taking in the place in a quick sweep—the too-narrow aisles, the shrink-wrapped boxes of stock behind the counter, the coolers in the rear.

  Anything suspicious and my radar would’ve gone off. So instead of stumbling in on a robbery in progress like the article said, it was more likely that our killer had come in after we were already inside.

  I pictured Elise hovering by the door as I went to the counter. Saw myself digging in my overcoat for my wallet, perhaps distracted for a second as it got caught in the pocket…

  … Then the figure smashing into the store, knocking Elise against a display of fruit pies, gun in his gloved hand, coked-up eyes blazing through a ski mask like twin supernovas…

  … and I’d be turning, too late, already far too late, and then the sharp cracks, the stink of cordite, the shock on her face as crimson roses blossomed on her chest…

  I stood shaking in my hallway.

  Arlene was right. A little shut-eye. That’s what I needed.

  It wasn’t to be. A message from Maggie floated in the air above my couch.

  Meet me at Rick’s, it said.

  11

  DONNER / MAGGIE

  On the way, as I passed the alley, I heard: “Make yourself right with God.”

  The wino was tucked between two trash cans, a pint of Mad Dog against his thigh. “End of the world, and soon,” he said. “God’s Judgment.” He burst into tears. “Boy, am I fucked.”

  I shook my head. The same old end-of-the-world rant the loonies had intoned in my day.

  The only difference was, now they had evidence.

  ***

  “Rick’s Place” was writ large in blue neon over a door of beveled glass. Garish. I pushed through the doors of the bar and walked into a movie out of the 1940s.

  Onstage, a swing band was cooking.
The band leader waved his baton, lost in sonic reverie, his coat tails flapping. Trombones and clarinets wailed with a wild-energetic pulse. The enthusiasm was pure post-Depression jazz.

  Girls with short skirts and long legs circled, selling vice from their trays. The crowd was a cornucopia of white dinner jackets and two-toned shoes, pompadours and bobs, swing skirts and taffeta. The maitre d’, his hair slick with brilliantine, grinned at me beneath a pencil-thin moustache.

  “Welcome to Rick’s,” he said in a French accent. “Monsieur Rick never drinks with the guests, but I could give him a message…” His voice dropped. “If you have the letters of transit…”

  “Huh?”

  The host curled his lip at this obvious Philistine. His accent disappeared. “Shit, pal, haven’t you ever seen Casablanca?”

  I pushed past him, headed for the bar. Fuck the ambiance.

  I rested my elbows on the bar’s brass piping. The Chesterfield coat on the stool next to me was huddled over his drink in that protective way favored by veteran alkies. Excellent—no conversation. I waggled a finger at the bartender and got ignored, but good. Chesterfield finally roused himself from his morose life review and glanced at me. Did a double take when he saw my hair and eyes. He vacated his seat in a hurry.

  I smiled at the bartender. “Scotch rocks.”

  The bartender didn’t stop polishing the shot glass. “We don’t serve your type in here.”

  For the greater good, I put amusement in my voice. “Bet you’ve been waiting your whole life to say that.”

  A nicked baseball bat appeared on the counter. “Maybe you want me to repeat it.”

  Before I could stand, a voice came from behind me. “It’s okay, Mick. He’s with me.”

  Maggie slipped onto the empty stool next to me. Mick’s face cycled through a dozen shades of displeasure, but he went to pour me a drink.

  I stared at my suddenly very three-dimensional counselor. She laughed and put her hands behind her head, arching her back in a luxurious stretch.

  “I was wondering how I was supposed to ‘meet you’ at a bar,” I said.

  “I was feeling a bit cramped floating around your holo projector,” she said. “So I decided to get physical.”

  And how. A native would’ve called her a peach. Her slacks, penny loafers, and sweater fit body and personality perfectly, as did the black glasses perched in front of those amazing almond eyes. Her hair had been softly waved, the bangs left intact. When every other female in the room was trying for platinum blonde Jean Harlow, Maggie was a smart, sexy bookworm.

  I tentatively reached for her bare forearm. It felt solid. Not exactly like flesh, but—

  “Tensile hologram,” she sighed. “You really want details?”

  “No.”

  “So?” She arched an eyebrow, inviting comment.

  I shrugged. “A little on the skinny side.”

  Maggie looked thoughtful. She nodded, and her figure abruptly filled out, her breasts swelling into a parody of voluptuousness. “Didn’t know you went for the Mae West look.”

  The bartender burst into harsh laughter. I almost choked on my drink. Maggie smiled, and her body returned to normal.

  “Much better.”

  Jesus. Shape-shifting drinking partners.

  I gestured to the bar. “Nice place.”

  “I come here for the headliner.”

  The swing band had been traded for a woman encased in a single spotlight. She swayed, fingers caressing the square microphone like a lover’s cheek. I couldn’t quite place the boyish hair or the haunted, haggard face. But when she tip-toed into the first verse of “Over the Rainbow,” I gasped. The rendition was so tattooed on my soul, that there was no doubt.

  “Oh God.”

  “The way she’s been partying, she’ll be young enough to do a remake of The Wizard of Oz in no time.”

  “Are there a lot of reborn celebrities?”

  “Some. Some have restarted their career pretty well, considering they’re not allowed to leave Necropolis. But money is money, and Hollywood comes to them. Some agents specialize in reebs. The country doesn’t mind watching their movies…”

  “As long as they don’t have to live next door,” I said. “Like Nat King Cole, in the ’50s. Good enough to have his own TV show, but not to drink from the same public water fountain.”

  Maggie examined me with interested eyes. “I thought all cops were racist swine.”

  “I’m not a cop anymore.” I couldn’t manage to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  She picked up a drink. “Okay, a toast. Something old, something new, something borrowed—”

  “Something dead.”

  We clinked and drank. I gave her another look. “How come you didn’t look this great when I woke up, counselor? You’re… how would they say it now? The elephant’s eyebrows.”

  “A man can only stand so many shocks at once,” she smiled.

  “Might’ve given me a reason to live.”

  Maggie’s eyes twinkled. “Why, Donner. You flirting with me?”

  I froze. It all rushed back. My future that never was, striking me across the face like a lover’s slap. I knew I’d gone white. I couldn’t seem to speak. “I’m sorry—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Everything’s just so…”

  “I understand, Donner.”

  Irritation welled inside, bitter-strong. Why was I worrying about offending a machine?

  “So,” said Maggie, to change the subject. “Struldbrug.”

  I nodded, grateful. “You should have heard her rap.”

  “I did hear.” I shot her a look. “So sue me. I was eavesdropping.” She laughed. ‘Something to remember me by’. Can’t believe she actually went for a kiss.”

  “Yeah, thanks a lot for letting her in.”

  A smile. “Thought she was the maid.”

  “You know, it’s bad enough that I’ve got an electronic dog collar that talks.” I felt ugly satisfaction in watching her flush. “But now I don’t control who’s in my own apartment?”

  “Fine.” Her voice was sharp-edged. “I’ll tell the next gorgeous woman who comes to your door to get lost.”

  “And stop eavesdropping. Don’t I rate any privacy?”

  “I don’t listen when you poop.” She made a face.

  I ordered another drink. One wasn’t gonna be nearly enough.

  “So, c’mon, shamus. What’s your take on our femme fatale?”

  “I was wondering where she went to stereotyping school.”

  “You were hoping the first cliché to walk through your door would be a hooker with a heart of gold?”

  “A guy can dream.”

  “She left her gun. The .25.”

  I’d noticed.

  “She’s a liar,” Maggie continued. “I polyed her while she talked.”

  “You don’t need electronics for that.” I tapped my temple.

  “Yeah, you scoped her chassis pretty thoroughly.” She grinned. “Fuck her and I’ll shut off your electricity.”

  “Oh, Maggie, jealousy is so unbecoming in an artificial person.”

  “Gigabyte me.” Her eyes searched mine for a minute. “Surazal. You’re coming up in the world.”

  I chewed the ice, wondering how I’d finished the second scotch so fast. “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Not unless she needs the appearance of a legit investigation, but really just wants some dupe she can control.”

  The thought had occurred to me. “Get me background on her. And her brother.”

  “What am I, your Girl Friday?”

  I grinned. “You got a problem with that?”

  “No—for now. So where were you all day, anyway?”

  “You didn’t follow me?”

  “I do have a life, you know. Besides being an electronic dog collar.”

  “Like what?”

  “You still don’t get it, do you? I’m a person, Donner. Just a different kind than you’re used to.” Sh
e pressed a finger slowly into my chest.

  “Yeah, sorry… having a hard time with that.”

  “Well, just remember all those norms out there who are having a hard time with you.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “Now, you gonna show me the piece of paper in your pocket?”

  “What are you, Ray Milland?”

  She laughed. “I get it! The Man With X-Ray Eyes. 1963.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “I love B sci-fi. I mean, look at me! I am B sci-fi. And to answer your question, smart guy, I caught a glimpse of the paper sticking out of your jacket pocket when you sat down.”

  I pulled out the Times article. She unfolded it and started reading. Slowly, her eyes widened until her pupils were swimming in a sea of white. “Where did you get this?” she said.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Donner, this isn’t sanctioned. Digging into your past.”

  “It’s my fucking past.”

  “That’s not how the state looks at it. For good or ill, you’re considered a Fresh Start. Legally, whatever happened in your former life happened to a different person.”

  “So, what? You’re going to report me?”

  She toyed with her swizzle stick. “You’ve broken some fifteen different laws, big and small, since revival. Have I reported you yet?”

  She handed me back the article.

  “So why the slack?”

  She bent the swizzle stick, then lost her grip. It catapulted away down the bar.

  “Maybe… maybe I…” She bit her lip, cheeks flushing. “Look, just because I think—I mean, just because I think you’re—”

  She cut off. Her face was full of dismay. So was mine.

  I’d assumed the flirting, the feigned jealousy, was simply a game, a subroutine to make me feel more at home. But this made no sense. She couldn’t really be attracted to me, could she? A smarty couldn’t… could it? Even if the algorithms or whatever got so complex that true emotion crept into the mix… Chemistry between a created being and a human? Did that mean she was really a person, like she said?

  Did it mean I was?

  “Look, I’m way out of my depth here.”

  “Forget it. I’m just tired,” was her reply.

  “Tired.”

  Sad eyes. “Donner, I get tired, I sleep. I even dream.”