Angel Of The City (2 page)

All t
hose years spent under Keillor’s lash, and for what? I can speak well enough when I concentrate, when I’m in control. But when the anger explodes the brogue returns, thick as the day I left the Alba, my words broken and unintelligible, as though spewed from a mouth full of mutton.

She shakes her head.
“No,” she says in a voice made harsh by my grip. “He said you were the only one who could help. He said to tell you…,”

“
It dinna matter what ‘e said.”

“
.. to tell you,” she repeats, louder, “that this one is for his soul.”

Nothing happens for several
heartbeats; twice as many for her as me. The rage bleeds from me just as quickly as it came. I let her go and she drops to the floor, rubbing her neck and crawling away.

I
’m suddenly tired. Sleep, like rage, comes unpredictably to me. I can nod off in the middle of a conversation or wander around for days in a growing fog of insomnia. I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours and now it’s like I’m swimming with heavy weights; the feeling of being pulled down. Drawing a flask from my coat, I fall into a chair and throw back a mouthful of liquid heat.

Devon Blaze. I once watched him play a game of his own invention: shoot a dog while trying to keep it alive as long as possible. Eight shots
and he laughed the entire time. He’s
sold
girls younger than Pen. But every now and then he does something good. You never know when or why. He says it’s to balance his karma. Says if he can keep the ledger even, then his soul can go to heaven. I tried looking them up in a dictionary once, but I couldn’t find the words: karma; soul; heaven. Maybe he made them up. Maybe Counselors took them out. Doesn’t matter.

She
’s staring at me and I realize my head is starting to bob. I’ll be unconscious soon. I jerk my thumb at the extra mattress. “Get some sleep.”

“
Will you help me?”

I pull off my coat and
fall onto the other bed. “Yeah,” I say, because I can’t say no, not unless I want my four or five remaining years to evaporate into none. Besides, I think as the darkness envelopes me, what’s there to do? Anyone can claim remains.

I awake after only a few hours, bolting up from the mattress, my heart racing, sensing someone else in the room. With practiced ease, my hand slips into my boot and withdraws the knife as I edge cautiously around the table. In the dim glow of the heater, I can just make her out, a young girl sleeping on the spare mattress, all but her face covered under blankets. Seeing her, the memories of last night come tumbling back into place: the scanner, Devon, the One Twenty Seven.

What
did she say her name was—Pen? Yes, Pen.
I breathe out slowly, the tenseness in my muscles receding as I slide the knife back into its sheath. My mind used to be so focused, my memory sharp and reliable. Now it’s something spongy and opaque. The distant past is still clear and accessible, but things more recent can become lost, disjointed. My memory of yesterday—every yesterday—is always suspect. Even so, I don’t regret my decision. And besides, you get used to it after awhile.

I feel a pang of jealousy as I watch her
, deep in sleep. I used to sleep like that, dead to the world, lost in dreams. I haven’t had a dream in six years. Another consequence of the surgery, I suppose. I read once that dreams were necessary for the brain to function properly. Maybe it’s true.

I
’d like to get clean and maybe pick up a change of clothes, but it’ll have to wait until I can get to another nest. My mouth tastes like the bottom of my feet feel so I take a swig from the flask; let it roll around for a while before I spit it out. Better.

I wind my watch and check the tanks. I need to remember to refill the propane. Grabbing my coat, I head for the door, my movements waking Pen. She sees me and shrinks back into a corner, then relaxes as recognition sets in. But not completely. There
’s still a wariness, like she doesn’t quite trust me. I don’t blame her.

“
Where are you going?”

“
I need to check on a few things.”

“
What should I do?”

Go home. Go back to whatever shit-hole precinct you were born in.
But of course, she can’t. She’s a shade like me—untagged. Was that her idea I wonder, or something Devon talked her into? There are always kids who think they can live outside the system. Most end up dead, shot by Counselors or overdosing on coal or dying of starvation when they realize they don’t have the skill set to survive. Once you remove your tags there’s no going back—you can’t buy; you can’t sell; you can’t work. You don’t exist.

But all I say is,
“Wait here. There’s more food in the box. Water too. Take all you want.”

“
When do you think we’ll be able to get Abby out?”

I stop with my hand on the door. I want to laugh, but I don
’t because it’s not funny even though it is. Anyway, she’s not in on the joke and it’s not my job to explain it to her. We’ll talk about it when I get back, I tell her.

I leave through the tunnel and up the steps wondering how long she
’ll wait. There’s only enough food for a couple of days. Same for the propane. I hate to do it this way—just run out—but maybe it’s for the best. She’ll leave eventually, cursing me for the rest of her undoubtedly short life, but it might be worth it if she never has to learn the truth. Then she can go on believing her sister is out there somewhere, alive, even if she’ll never see her again.

Being sent to any precinct house is bad enough; a windowless granite interrogation chamber where confessions are extracted and people are shipped off to work camps. But the One Twenty Seven isn
’t your typical precinct. The One Twenty Seven is a crematorium.

I
don’t like this time of day. There aren’t nearly enough people up and moving about yet. Crowds are what you look for when you’re a shade. The more tag signals around you, the better. Not that anyone’s sitting around a room full of monitors, matching every tag to every person in the city, but if you show up all alone and there’s no signal, well, that’s a little hard to explain.

It
’s early enough that the scrap boys are still out, rawboned and emaciated, rooting through the newer trash piles, the older ones having been pilfered of anything worth taking long ago. They’ve been at it since before dawn: ashen-faced kids—bobbies—standing against a dark-colored mass of waste, some already showing the black nose. Their breath leaves them as a white fog in the cold air. Silhouetted against the dim light, they look almost surreal, like charcoal sketches.

It
’s peaceful now, each gang digging through the debris in silence, but that will change in an instant if something valuable is found. Then they’ll turn on each other with a ferocity that’s shocking the first time you see it and only the strongest will get to keep what they find. It’s hard to imagine looking at them, small and vulnerable, but the fiercest and most brutal of these kids will get a chance at a different life. They’ll get a chance to be Counselors.

The sun rises slowly as I make my
way west. More people take to the streets: day laborers in grimy clothes, low-level office help in threadbare, wrinkled suits, cleaning women. No one speaks; nothing but the occasional cough breaks the silence of the morning commute. Dirty, pockmarked, diseased, all slowly rotting from the inside, like the mountains of trash surrounding us. About half are wearing paper facemasks over their mouths and noses; protection against the plague. Like that would help.

A few rickshaws sit idle on on
e side of the street, their drivers pacing next to them, occasionally blowing into their hands for warmth and eying everyone hungrily for any sign of a fare. Too old to work the scrap heaps, too young for regular employment, there’s little for them in this quarter.

Looks like there
’ll be no takers today. The charge for a ride isn’t much but it isn’t free either, and here not a cent goes a wasted. Unless it’s for dust. I can afford it, but riding would set me apart from the crowd and I don’t risk unwanted attention.

I integrate myself within a group of dark-suited men, middle managers headed toward
another day’s drudgery. Jobs are scarce everywhere, but especially in the poorer quarters and the Bonifrei is one of the poorest. If you’re lucky enough to be employed here, you cling to that job like a life raft and take whatever they give you. No one asks if you like your work. It’s considered a child’s question.

My
trench coat makes them nervous—probably what made Pen nervous. Looks like a Counselor’s uniform, but too worn and frayed for one of them to be caught wearing. Natty dressers, the Cosags. Part of the image. You learn at an early age to keep your head down when one is near. No reason to draw attention to yourself, even if you have nothing to hide. And everyone has something to hide. The laws make certain of that. So you keep your mouth shut and your eyes down.

Heading to Devon
’s place, I have to cross from the Bonifrei into the Chojo quarter, but no one gives me any grief. I’ve been around so long I’m no longer considered a threat. Besides, it’s a myth they cut the heads off anyone they don’t know. Be hard to get any business done that way, wouldn’t it? But the story’s enough to keep most kids from wandering anywhere in the lower nineties and that’s not a bad idea. Because even myths have a basis in fact.

The city is divided into six quarters, roughly segregated by ethnicity.
The government didn’t create them and doesn’t recognize them officially, but they have an interest in maintaining them. Nothing just happens in the city. The Ministry has a reason for everything it does. And the reason is control. It’s always about control.

The separation helps keep the peace. There’s no love lost between the people of the various quarters. Most live their entire lives within blocks of where they were born, venturing further out only when need drives them. Some say the hatreds date to before the founding of the city itself, back when we were all just tribes roaming the wastes, killing one another to stay alive. Who knows? There’s no history before the city, at least nothing you’ll find in any government-sanctioned book.

Whatever the cause of the bad blood, the system
’s not perfect. There are still groups within each quarter with an ancestral hatred of each other. Entire clans have been known to go after one another on occasion and you don’t want to be anywhere around when that happens. Stupid. All it does is give the Council for Internal Security more reason to crack down.

Officially, t
he city is divided into two hundred and seventy-three precincts, grouped into twenty-two districts. There are two out-districts as well—walled expanses of land hanging off the east and west ends of the city like the lopsided ears of a mangy dog: the Eastside and the Westside. The Eastside is zoned exclusively for manufacturing; the Westside, agriculture, where food for the city is grown. Both are worked by criminals, political prisoners, the insane and anyone else the Ministry deems “unfit”. And beyond the city? Nothing. At least that’s what the maps show. They might as well stamp, “here there be dragons”, on the margins.

Another
forty minutes and the streets are so dense with people we’re shoulder-to-shoulder; right side of the street going in one direction, left side going the other. Reed says we’re all like lemmings but I’m not sure what a lemming is. I doubt Reed is entirely sure either.

With every block, we pass another scanner. Three foot tall, three foot off the ground, usually imbedded in a wall or a post, like a fluorescent light hung lengthwise. They
’re dark now. They’ll start flashing about an hour before curfew, the flashing getting faster as time runs out. Once the flashing stops, you better run. If you’re tagged. I smile at the thought of what would happen if one of them suddenly burst on right now. Maybe not so funny, as I’m in the crowd.

The scanners enforce the curfew without having to put Blueshirts and Counselors on every corner. It
’s the fear of the technology that keeps people in line, not the technology itself. The scanners are good, but they aren’t perfect. What is? Older ones can sometimes be tricked with certain clothing. It’s why Pen stripped. She knew that and wanted to impress me by letting me know she knew.

Thinking of her makes me think of Devon, which reminds me I have business of my own. I
’ve been carrying this bracelet around for two days. I want to get rid of it before the meeting. Especially before the meeting. His men don’t search me every time, but why risk it?

By the end of the
next block, I’m into the ninety-third precinct. Not exactly upscale, but the poverty isn’t as obvious. This is where people living in the mid seventies dream of living. At the end of the street, I push my way through the crowd to a corner jewelry store. Not much to look at, but in this quarter it’s as high-end as it gets.

The sales girl glances my way
and smiles for a moment before ringing up a customer. The only other person in the store is an elderly woman who takes one look and pushes past me—respectfully—to get out. I pretend to purvey the wares and ignore the cameras. Just simple security devices with no tag sensors, but still, you never know who might be watching.

A short time
later, I glimpse up at the sales girl standing behind the counter. Alabaster skin; dark eyes with hair to match falling in a single layer to her shoulders.

“
Can I show you something in particular?” she asks.

“
Hello Reed,” I say softly, still bent over the glass. I straighten up and smile for the camera. “Yes, I’m interested in a bracelet.”

She smiles back and leads me to another counter, one I could find on my own even if I was blindfolded. Reed is my favorite fence.

“What type of stone?” she asks, as though I’d come into a place like this looking for diamonds.

“
Turquoise, please.”

She pulls out a tray with a dozen or so turquoise bracelets. Most are crap, but mine
’s no better.

Taking my hand out of my pocket, I lift one up and examine it, making
“uh-huh” and “ah-hah” sounds before putting the bracelet back—along with the one I was palming.

“
How much for the other one?” I ask, pointing out the bracelet I just left her.

“
Oh, that is nice, but of less quality. I could let you have it for say, one hundred.”

I raise my eyebrows.
“Really? I saw one like it in a store just the other day and the man wanted two hundred. Can you believe the mack of him?”

She shakes her head.
“That man was robbing you. Even at full mark-up, this bracelet should never go for more than one-thirty—tops.”

“
One-thirty?”

“
Absolute top price.”

“
I see. Well then, I’m very glad I came in here. Your price is reasonable. May I come in later to close the deal?”

“
Of course,” she says, still smiling. “I’ll hold it for you.”

I get back to the street and squeeze into the crowd. A hundred and thirty isn
’t bad. I would have taken the hundred. I’ll stop by after hours and pick up my money. There’s always the chance that once a fence has your jewelry, he could refuse to pay later, but he wouldn’t be in the business very long if he tried. Some who have tried have ended up missing. But I don’t have that problem with Reed.

Thirty minutes later and I’ve reached the corner of Calypso and 129
th
Street, the far western limit of the Chojo and the location of Devon’s nest. From here, I can just make out the uncompleted wall that will soon divide the city, towering above the surrounding buildings. Two transfer gates, allowing entry to the Huenta and Aramaic quarters, should be finished before the end of the month. The Ministry claims it’s to regulate pedestrian traffic, but everyone knows its real purpose is to cut down on the violence between the quarters. People think it’s funny that the same ministry that refuses to acknowledge the existence of the quarters, chooses to build the wall right on the boundaries.

But it isn
’t funny. Like Pen, the joke is on them and like Pen, they aren’t in on it. I am, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

I
t doesn’t take me long to spy Devon’s people; four big men in khaki jackets hanging around on the other side of the street, trying to look inconspicuous while watching everyone who crosses into their territory. All have the black nose.

The biggest one sees me and gives a s
ignal so subtle it never happened. I cross the street and look around aimlessly, my hands in my pockets, not paying attention to anything for more than a few seconds, yet all the while following. We only go a short way when he ducks into an alley. I’m right behind and follow him through a side door into an abandoned building.

Dim l
ight filters in through a row of grease-smeared windows. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. I’m in a foul-smelling room strewn with trash. In one corner a shirtless man sits cross-legged, his eyes glazed, sniffing coal dust. A woman straddles the center of the floor on her hands and knees, naked, as a second man rhythmically slaps his pelvis into her buttocks. No one looks up as we walk over them and into the next room.

My guide pulls aside a
nasty, piss-stained rug and draws up the hidden door in the floor, moving quickly down the steps. It leads to a tunnel and after only a few dozen yards, another door. He holds it open as I enter. Two men are on me as soon as I step through, rifling through my pockets, hands up and down my legs, cupping my crotch. Frisking is unavoidably personal. All they find is my gun, a cigarette lighter and some loose coins. The gun and lighter I’ll get back. The money is gone. Makes me glad I dumped the bracelet.

The room is large, fifty feet across at least
, and just as deep. Carpets on the floor, chairs and some long tables along the walls. There are three doors on the far wall and another on the left. I have no doubt each leads to a maze of other tunnels heading in every direction and probably booby-trapped along the way. Even a Counselor would think twice about running after someone through that.

In the center of the room is a large table filled with foo
d, enough food to feed every bobby working the seventy-first’s trash heaps until he was sick. Only one person is at the table though, Devon. I wonder if he was eating like that when he met with Pen. I wonder if he made her watch.

He breaks out in a hu
ge grin when he sees me. “Ha Ha! What did I say, huh? By nine thirty, I said. Send that kid to him and he’s here by nine thirty, didn’t I say it? And look at the clock—just past nine. Ha!” He slaps the table with the palm of his hand. “Pay up you slags.”

Three large and decidedly unfriendly-looking men step out from the shadows and toss a few bills each on the table. Devon’s bodyguards.