Gun, with Occasional Music

by Jonathan Lethem

  "Out late," said Kornfeld, too jauntily. "On a case?"

  "Not really," I said. I was tired, despite the fresh infusion of make, and I wasn't in the bantering mood. I wouldn't have minded talking to Catherine, but Kornfeld seemed to want to express himself verbally for a change.

  "You must have been somewhere," he said. "We've been waiting since eight."

  "Thanks, it makes the place feel lived in. I really appreciate it."

  "You've been warned off this case. More than once."

  "I've been warned off this case even more than you think. It's getting pretty dull."

  The door was still open. Kornfeld went around me and closed it. "We don't really want to talk about the case. The case is closed. We wanted to let you know that Orton Angwine is karmically defunct. As far as we're concerned, that's the end of it."

  "Great." I turned away from Kornfeld and faced Catherine Teleprompter. She seemed smaller and less formidable out of the Office, which didn't stop me from wanting to grab hold of her—it just made it seem more possible. She had her black waterfall of hair pinned back with a clasp this time, and it gave me a nice view of her throat. I watched it bob as our eyes locked, but she didn't say anything.

  "There's just one more piece of business," said Kornfeld from behind me. "I need your card."

  "Who gets credit for the nab?" I asked as I dug in my pocket for my card. "Morgenlander?"

  "Morgenlander was transferred off the case this afternoon," said Kornfeld. "He wasn't familiar enough with the beat. It was a mistake bringing him in."

  I handed him my card. Kornfeld took it and switched on his magnet. I assumed this was the part where they built me back up to an acceptable level as closure to the case. Sort of a payoff for swallowing their interpretation of events without gagging too loudly. The red light on Kornfeld's magnet blinked, and he ran it across my card, then handed the card back.

  "How'd I do?" I asked.

  "You're down to twenty-five points, Metcalf. Your file is up for review. Don't ask me any more questions or I'll be forced to cave your face in."

  I was stunned. I put my card in my pocket and sat down on the couch, oblivious to Catherine Teleprompter, the case forgotten. My karma hadn't been this low since I first dropped out of the Office. It made me feel nauseous. I could tell myself it was just a scare tactic, that karma didn't really mean anything anyway, that all I cared about was having the minimum so I could walk the streets—I could think all those things, but it still made me sick to my stomach to have it get so low. I could feel the moisture on my tongue evaporating.

  Catherine stepped past me like I was some kind of car wreck and went to join Kornfeld at the door. I barely had the heart it took to look back up. Kornfeld's paw was on the doorknob, but he wasn't going anywhere yet, just watching me suffer on the couch, and when our eyes met, he smiled.

  I'd underestimated him. I assumed anyone who started out gut-punching you in an elevator couldn't have all that much else in his arsenal. For instance, I had no idea he could smile, let alone at such an inappropriate time.

  "You're a big man, Kornfeld," I said. "But not too big to fit in Phoneblum's pocket. He really knows how to pick 'em. You and the kangaroo."

  "You're talking off the top of your head," said Kornfeld.

  "And you're talking through a buttonhole on your shirt collar. The whole thing stinks of Phoneblum's last-minute patch-up. Only the plaster won't hold over a gap this big." The first thing that goes is my sense of metaphor. "You brought Morgenlander in for show and even he knew it wasn't clean. What you did to my card just shows how bad you're scared."

  "What I did to your card came from the top," said Kornfeld evenly. "I don't make karma decisions. You ought to know that."

  "Don't make me laugh. You're the inquisitor on the case. Morgenlander is out—you said it yourself."

  "The order came from higher up. It's not my problem if you forgot how to play the game, Metcalf. The rules haven't changed."

  I looked at Catherine. She didn't want to look away, but that meant she ended up blinking to break the tension. "You heard him," I said to her. "It's a game. You don't have to feel bad about it. I forgot how to play."

  She still didn't say anything.

  "How'd you end up riding around with Kornfeld anyway?" I asked her. "Didn't you work the day shift?"

  "I expressed interest in the case," she said.

  I couldn't help smiling. She looked like she wanted to say something but couldn't in front of Kornfeld—or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. There was half a minute of awkward silence and then she opened the door and went out into the hall. Kornfeld closed it again and said: "I didn't take away your license."

  "Gee, thanks."

  "No," he said. "I mean I meant to. Hand it over."

  I gave him the license. He folded it into his jacket pocket along with his magnet, and straightened his coat on his shoulders with a tug at the collar. He looked at me with a deadpan expression for what I guess he thought was the last time, then shrugged and reached for the door.

  I almost let him leave, I swear to God. But something took over in me and I came out of the couch and converged on him, grabbing his collar where he'd just adjusted it and pinning him against the door with my elbows. His face turned red and his mouth opened to speak, but he didn't move except to squirm, and nothing came out of his mouth. I could feel the pulse of his neck against the base of my thumb. It felt nice and soft. "I'll cost you everything you cost me and more," I said. "I'll break you wide open. That's a promise."

  Roughing him up could cost me the rest of my karma, but I didn't think he had what it took to rub it off my card right here and now. That wasn't Office style, and Kornfeld was Office all up and down the line. I'd get a night to sleep on it, and there would be a knock on the door in the morning.

  Besides, as much as he hated my guts, I didn't think Kornfeld really wanted to see me go down on karma. I didn't think he could afford it. The result would be an inquiry, into a thing he was obviously eager to wrap up before anyone got too close a look at it. Grabbing his collar was a calculated risk, only at the time I did it, I hadn't yet calculated. I just went ahead and did it.

  "You're a fool," he panted.

  "No kidding," I said, and tightened my grip on his neck as I said it. "You think I need you to tell me that?"

  "Let me go."

  "Give me the license." I pushed with my thumbs on the part of his neck where it mattered most. "They can take it," I said, "but they'll have to send a bigger man than you to do the job."

  He brought it out of his jacket pocket, and I let go of him and took it from his hands. He rubbed his neck and patted down his hair, his eyes full of incredulous fear. "Enjoy it while you can, Metcalf," he said. "I wouldn't count on it lasting too long."

  "Fuck you."

  Kornfeld opened the door and went out. I heard him speak in muffled tones to Catherine Teleprompter and then I heard their paired footsteps tramping down the stairs, and then I heard the whine of the air hinge on the front door of the lobby. I looked down at my hands. My fingers were clenched as if I still had hold of Kornfeld's throat. I unclenched them.

  And then I made a vow. Nobody was going to end this case but me. I'd answer all my questions, the old ones and the new ones, and I'd live to see Orton Angwine walk out of the freezer. Not because I liked the guy so well. It wasn't that. At that moment I hated Kornfeld more than I liked Angwine, but it wasn't my hatred that would carry the vow either.

  If I was doing it for anyone, I was doing it for Catherine Teleprompter, oddly enough: I wanted to answer her question about why I'd left the Office. I wanted to show her what my job meant, and what it looked like afterwards when I got it right. How different it was from the Office version.

  But I wasn't doing it for her either, finally. It always came back to me, me and my old-fashioned sense of outrage. I could only laugh, even as I was making the vow. Either I or the entire rest of the world needed fixing, bad. Probably both.
>
  The rest of the evening I passed one way or another. From the empty ice trays in the sink the next day I suspect it had something to do with a connect-the-dot series of drinks, but to tell you the truth I don't remember a damn thing.

  CHAPTER 19

  I GOT UP THE NEXT MORNING WITH A HEAD THAT FELT like the change you get back from a five-spot when you spent it on a $4.98 bottle of wine. Determined nonetheless to act like an inquisitor on a case, I reamed out the insides of my skull with toothpaste, mouthwash, eyedrops, and aspirin, and at the same time drew up a mental list of places to go and people to talk to. First on the list was the architectural firm of Copperminer and Bayzwaite. That was the name I'd read off the blueprints in Pansy Greenleaf's dresser, and it seemed like as good a place to start as any.

  The musical interpretation of the news that morning was superficial and blithe, and it didn't go too well with my headache, so I turned it off. The information I wanted wouldn't be on the musical news anyway. I made myself a cup of coffee so strong it snarled, and chased it with a piece of dry toast and a couple of bites of a moldering apple. By the time I got out of my apartment, the sun was bright and high in the air and my watch said eleven.

  I drove up University to the parking lot in the Albernathy Overmall, where Copperminer and Bayzwaite kept their offices. The Overmall was all glass and chrome, and blinding to look at coming up from the bay. When I drove into the shade underneath it, I was plunged into a darkness so complete that I almost caromed my car off a concrete embankment. I gratefully turned my car over to the bulldog running the lot and took the elevator up into the Overmall.

  Architectural offices are always a good argument against architects, and Copperminer and Bayzwaite was no exception. The outer room served just about any purpose imaginable except those of walking in, talking to the receptionist, and sitting down to wait. I enacted these procedures anyhow, only I skipped sitting after taking a look at what passed for chairs. The room had been shaped from molten glass, pierced through with beams of burnished aluminum, and although several of these met in a confluence meant to suggest a seat, it didn't look like something I'd be able to get back out of, so I let it pass.

  After a few minutes a door opened in the back and one of the architects came out to see me, his hand extending for a shake from halfway across the oversized room. He was well groomed and looked alert, with a lick of hair sticking up in the back to create an impression of boyishness. I stuck up my hand to intersect with his—if I hadn't, he might have charged right past me or jammed his hand into my stomach in his enthusiasm. I guess he thought I was a client.

  "Cole Bayzwaite," he said.

  "Conrad Metcalf," I answered, trying to slow him down by drawing the syllables out.

  "Let's go into my office." He stepped to one side and pointed the way, then bent over neatly at the waist and whispered something to his secretary. I went inside and picked out the most user-friendly chair and sat down. Cole Bayzwaite closed the door and went around to his reclining leather chair. I took out my license and put it on his desk.

  His face fell, as if it had been supported only by his billowing optimism. The corners of his mouth tightened in an expression of distrust.

  "You must think I can help you in some way," he said.

  "That's right. I found your name mixed up in a case, and I was wondering if you would answer a few questions."

  "I guess that would be all right."

  "Your firm drew up a set of blueprints for a sort of bunkhouse, to be built adjacent to an existing property. Do you remember the design I'm describing?"

  "We draw up proposals on blueprint all the time," he said. "I'd need a name."

  "Maynard Stanhunt."

  He tapped it into the keyboard on his desk and squinted at the monitor: "No. He's not on our client list."

  "Try Pansy Greenleaf. That's whose room I found it in."

  He looked at me oddly for a minute and then entered the name. "No. Sorry. You must have the wrong firm."

  "Nothing under Stanhunt? His wife's name is Celeste—"

  "Nothing at all. I'm sorry."

  I was coming up empty, but I didn't want to let it go. I had to find some way to justify myself to Bayzwaite, and buy some time. "All right," I said. "Let's start over. Let me tap your intelligence. Let me describe a room to you: eight bunk beds crammed against a wall, with less than three feet allowed for each bed. This room is upstairs in a kind of clubhouse that's a stone's throw from a big, well-equipped modern house, in a fancy neighborhood. What would a thing like that be for?"

  "I—I really couldn't say."

  "Animals," I said. "That's what I think. Evolved animals. Some kind of servant's quarters, maybe."

  "We have a sheep," he said. "Built her a room on the back of the house. But she likes to sleep curled up."

  "Who has a sheep?"

  "My family. I'm just saying I think animals, evolved ones even, probably don't sleep all lined up in bunk beds."

  I'd managed to get Bayzwaite interested, but it only made me wonder if the whole architectural angle wasn't a waste of time. Maybe whoever drew up the diagrams, assuming the diagrams meant anything at all, stole the paper with the logo from Copperminer and Bayzwaite's office supply. Maybe I should have been questioning the secretary.

  "Okay," I said. "Good point. But then what are the beds for? Sixteen beds, remember. That's a lot of people in the same room."

  "Sounds like kids," he said.

  "Kids."

  "Right."

  "What kids? There are no kids. There's babyheads. About how tall is a babyhead?"

  "Tall enough for those beds of yours," said Bayzwaite.

  "Jesus Christ."

  "Excuse me."

  "I said Jesus Christ, Cole. I'm just feeling a little bit stupid. There's babyheads in this case, at least one, so I should have made the connection earlier. You've been a great help."

  Bayzwaite was all smiles. He'd helped a private inquisitor on a case, and it made him feel good inside. He'd have a story to tell his pals. It was worth my not being a new client. I shook his hand again and got out of my seat. And that was that.

  Almost. Maybe I just don't like happy endings, but something made me feel not right as I was reaching for the doon I turned around, and Bayzwaite's smile plastered itself back into position, but not before an appreciable interval. In that interval I spotted what the smile replaced, and it wasn't pretty.

  I put up a smile to match Bayzwaite's but I let go of the door handle.

  "Just occurred to me," I said. "Would you mind trying one more name on that client list of yours?"

  "Shoot," he said, and made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger and pulled the imaginary trigger.

  "Danny Phoneblum."

  The name was magic. It stiffened up conversation wherever it was used. Bayzwaite's face had fallen when he saw my license; now it froze into a mask of tension, but not without retaining the all-important smile. He put his hand on the keyboard and tapped in the name.

  "Nope."

  I moved around to where I could see the monitor. "You spelled it wrong," I said. "Pee-aitch, not eff."

  I watched his hands this time, and he knew it, and spelled it right. The name blinked into existence, along with the address of the place in the hills. I'd almost walked out of the office without making the connection, but the name was just sitting there waiting for me to find it.

  "What a coincidence," I said. "He must have been the one who ordered those blueprints. I guess he didn't go ahead with the project and you forgot all about it. But the name stayed in your files. I guess—what, do you keep a mailing list? Invite people to brunches and stuff?"

  "We just keep the names," he said stiffly.

  "Lucky for me. So, let's see—you must have the designs filed away somewhere too, right?"

  At that moment I became aware of a subtle shift. We'd been bodiless, even as the banter got hostile. Now we suddenly came into our bodies and sized one another up. I wasn't any taller, but I pr
obably had a few pounds on him. Not that we were about to pounce on each other, but the physical element was suddenly tangible.

  "I'm not sure," he said carefully.

  "Let's have a look." I stepped up to his desk and put my hands on the keyboard, and I had to nudge him aside to do it. "Index." I spoke aloud as I tapped out the commands. "Client, file. Phoneblum." The set of diagrams blinked into existence.

  I stepped back. "So. You thought a design like that was meant for babyheads. That look like what I described?"

  "Yes."

  "You draw this up?"

  "We draw up thousands of proposals—"

  "Right, right. You remember Phoneblum?"

  "No." Too fast, too firm.

  "What if I told you those blueprints were found curled up in the fist of a dead man?"

  Bayzwaite swallowed hard. "I guess I'd say that I wanted to contact the Office before I said anything further. I'm not so good at this game of questions and answers."

  "Well they weren't, so relax." I laughed. "Nobody's good at questions and answers anymore, so don't worry about that either." I realized I wasn't learning anything. I'd already seen the designs, and I'd more than confirmed the connection. Twisting Bayzwaite's arm wasn't going to get me any more. If I was hard up for arms to twist, I could come back later. He wasn't going anywhere.

  I took my business card out of my pocket. "Call this before you call the Office. I'm working on keeping a guy out of the freezer, and I'll take any help I can get. If you or your ' partner remember anything..." I put the card on his desk and picked up my license. Bayzwaite took the card and put it in the drawer of his desk. His face was blank.

  I went outside, nodded at the receptionist, and passed through the cavern of poured glass to the exit doors. Coming this way, I almost liked the effect of the early afternoon sun on the distorted walls of the office, all blurry and chiaroscuro, like some kind of underwater dream. I went into the corridor and pressed the button for the elevator.

  The attendant handed over my car, and I drove out into the sun and parked on a side street behind the Overmall. I pulled out the mirror in my glove compartment and snorted up a couple of lines of the new batch of make, the first I'd used today. It had the effect of flashing my memory back over the events of the past two days: the kangaroo in the rain, Morgenlander in my office, and, most of all, Angwine in the bar of the Vistamont. The drug should have provided the sense of remove I craved; instead it served to focus and intensify my disquiet.