No Dogs in Philly (15 page)

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She
grabbed the bartender by the arm, a burly man with
muttonchops.

“
Do you hear that?” she
asked.

“
Yeah,” he said, jerking his arm
free. He nodded at the jukebox, a shiny, colorful relic, not even
networked. “If you don’t like it you can change it.”

She froze, listening intently to the song, some
rockabilly tune about a cheating lover. No…she was imagining
things. She relaxed. A new song came on, some techno Elvis revival,
and she ordered another shot.

Take me down to the river, I don’t
wanna do this shit anymore

You sing it brother.

I got forty-two dollars in
checking, and I’m looking for a dollar whore

She’s got taste and class and a
body, but her mind ain’t what it should be

She thinks everything comes on a
platter, and life is so cheap it’s
freeeeeeeeaaaaaauuuuaaaaauaaauauauauauauaua

The note held long, impossibly long, and time
slowed. She could see it, see the sound, a rich golden thread,
woven of smaller colored threads. It was beautiful. She flew around
the thread, a bird, zooming in close, cresting the note as if it
were a wave and looking down at the ocean, the sea of notes and
colors, a dark shape below the surface, a whale, no, larger, a
submarine, a squid, a leviathan. There was danger there, she was
flying too close, too close to the wave and the dark shape rising,
filling the sea, suffocating the light within its body, no
beginning and no end, swallowing her. And there it was, of course,
it had always been there, in the song, before it was written even,
the greater song in the back of every living creature’s mind, the
fear song, the song of melting atoms:
uausuausuausuausuausuau
…

“
Hey, wake up!”

Someone was jostling her.

“
Wake up! You can’t sleep
here.”

His arm shot out and she heard a satisfying
yelp as her fingers clamped around flesh and her steel-reinforced
fingernails bit down. Then she lurched upright and let
go.

“
How long have I been
out?”

“
You bitch! You cut
me!”

“
How long?”

“
I dunno, a half hour. What’s your
fucking problem?”

She jolted to her feet and ran to the
door.

“
Hey, you gonna pay for
that?”

She ran up the stairs, slipping on the vomit,
and tore down the sidewalk at a sprint. Dread, jagged tumors of
dread squeezing her arteries, forcing the blood to race drunkenly
from one organ to another. She was wrong, horribly wrong, and late,
too late. She ran and ran and ran, but she couldn’t burn away the
fear, the song tendrils tracing after her, couldn’t look back or
she would see them. There was a screech and blare of car horns as
the Caddy tore up next to her, screeching onto the sidewalk and
smashing into a fire hydrant. She dove inside, slamming into
reverse and then pounding the accelerator, zigzagging through the
lingering evening jam and racing back to Broad. No, no, no, no, no,
no, no. Red lights and headlights, car-horn drones and screaming
tires, angry shouts and sirens blurring behind her as she raced,
her heart unable to slow, accelerating, pounding faster and faster,
pushing itself into a madness, no, no, no, begging to slow down
time. The vial of blood, hot with joy against her skin, laughing,
laughing, throbbing with the pulse of her heart.

There was a crick and a pop and an odd stereo
division of numbness and agony throughout her body as her head
bucked forward and bounce-crunched against the steering wheel. An
alarm was ringing, faintly almost. She kicked open her car door and
dragged herself over the crumpled hood of the Caddy, feeling a
grassy tickle on her palms as the metal opened her skin. Stumbling,
shambling she reached the stoop, the stoop from the afternoon; had
it been today or years ago? Her hand left a wet red turkey on the
door, which slid open easily. In a second she took it in, dirty
rat-hole apartment, dust bunnies and rat shit, torn, shabby
furniture, cracked walls, peeling paint, a yellow drip from the
ceiling.

McCully lay on the coffee table, arms and legs
hanging over the side. They’d opened his belly, peeled up his
wrinkled, white-tuft-happy-trail skin and unraveled his intestines.
She recognized the pattern, saw them twist and wind around the
floor in a beautiful circle, the notes from the song on the
jukebox, laid bare for her to see:
uausuausuausuau
… The look
on his face was more baffled than anything. How long had he lived
this way? Had he been alive five minutes ago? Gasping, whimpering,
burbling blood, and cursing her with his last breathe? Was it one
shot that had killed him or three together, or perhaps the slow
sips of the lager? Her face was wet, was she crying?

She stumbled to the kitchen and found Terry.
She lay on the kitchen table, thighs opened, split from sex to neck
so her insides spread out like a crimson flower. The black where
she should have had eyes seemed to accuse. You said I was safe.
Hah, I showed you! Look at me, look inside me! You can if you want.
I’d be alive now if you’d cared, cared about anything but your next
fix and the dollars to drive you there. Ha!

The room was spinning. She sat on the
chair—there was only one—that was the life Terry had, a one-chair
life in a dirty hole. I’m sorry Terry…I missed it, I fucked up. She
rested her head on Terry’s arm, still warm, and lay there. It was
comfortable. She listened to the drip drip drip of the faucet, the
drop drop drop of Terry’s blood: drip, drop, drip, drop, drip,
drop…
uausuausuau
…and the alarm in the background, the gentle
shouting from outside, the grumbling of a crowd, sirens, and then
heavy boots inside, swearing, rough arms grabbing her shoulder,
twisting her arms back, and the cold metal jaws of handcuffs
closing around her wrists.

Chapter 12

They cut her hair and shaved her head, locking
her skull in a vice after she smashed up the first would-be
barber’s chin with a head-butt. They stripped her down and sprayed
her with a hose and tossed floury burning delousing powder. She got
in a few good kicks and punches before they got the straight jacket
on her. It took three zaps of a prod (the third was so high she
pissed herself) to drag her to a cell and she got a solid crack in
the ribs when she managed to squirt blood in the sergeant’s eye.
She screamed and swore and tried to bite and kick, but none of the
pigs would really touch her, really let loose and break something,
give her a hard, satisfying pain that she could clutch and nurture
and giggle with. Her cell had even been washed—no shit or spit or
cum or blood anywhere—and then a medic had calmly shot her full of
darts (a proud, high dose that turned her into a fish) while he
bandaged her hands.

Then there was nothing to do but sit, so she
screamed and then they gagged her, and then there really was
nothing to do but lie on the cold cement and think. She didn’t want
to do that, didn’t like that the drugs were wearing off, the tranqs
and the booze, and the damping field shut down all her feeds so she
was alone in her own mind with no news or chat or porn or comedy or
foreign tragedy to distract her from her own. She tried to hum but
the humming became a whimper and then tried screaming through the
gag again but no one could hear her and no one reacted. She was
alone, alone, alone, alone, and her thoughts were her
own.

McCully was there, telling her to go back, but
she was busy. Terry was there too, in less detail, except for the
voice, which came through in agonizing clarity, the terror, the
panic—how had she missed it before? It had gone right through her,
right past her. But now she was stuck with it. Am I safe? What if
he comes back? He won’t come back. I’m a detective. I know what I’m
doing. You see, Terry, you fall into a gap, a wide gap, the gap
that most people fall into—you aren’t important. You are powerless,
and if someone wants to hurt you, they can and no one will stop
them. Not the cops, because they don’t care. Not me, because I
don’t care. Not McCully, he cares, he cared, enough to go back.
What did he say, what did he even do? Her gun, the little
six-shooter, hadn’t even been fired. They hadn’t even had a chance.
Did they die together, two perps torturing them as a team? Or was
it the one, the same man she’d dismissed? Had Terry heard McCully
screaming from the living room? Had they been able to scream? She
could never know. She wasn’t there.

And Friar, now you’re back, eh? Lecturing me
again. What would you make of this? Would you have stayed? Of
course, because you were good at this job. You had a method, a
purpose, a skill other than cracking skulls and an easy association
with filth. You bastard, why didn’t you take the case? Why did you
leave it to amateur night? And Hemu, the peacenik. Let you down
buddy. Just a big disappointment. Tell the Slow God to get her
socks all paired and her panties packed cuz ain’t nobody finding
that girl from inside a jail cell, and really, I think we both knew
that I wasn’t going to bring her to you anyway, you, just a
homeless man with a philosophy, versus ten million American
dollars. I’d let that dozer crush you for fifty.

The cell door swung open and two pigs grabbed
her by the feet and dragged her down the hall
wheeeeee
! They
hefted her to her feet and made her hop through a door into a small
interrogation room—cement floor, metal walls with a one-way mirror,
hard metal chairs and a metal table. Ah, shit. There he was, the
reason all these pigs had been pussyfooting around, afraid to break
a few teeth, fuck her in the ass and let her bleed out on the
floor—ElilE sitting calmly, so straight in the chair across from
her. The cops undid the straight jacket, carefully, tasers at the
ready, but she was out of fight. There was no point anymore. They
left her in the paper hospital gown and slunk away, closing the
door behind them. She smirked and leaned back in her chair,
spreading her legs, casual, calm, fooling not even herself. ElilE
said nothing. They stayed that way for a long time and then she
broke.

“
Well?” she said angrily. “Are you
here to scold me? Dad? Go ahead, have at it.”

“
Those deaths were not your
fault.”

“
Just shut the fuck up right
now.”

He did. They sat in silence again. She felt
very tired. She wanted to go back to the cell, to curl up and
sleep, maybe get them to beat her again.

“
Well, I guess you can take this
as my resignation because—”

“
Don’t be flippant,” he said,
sharply, breaking his calm. She felt the words like a whip, felt
herself rising, reaching for the prod that wasn’t there, bearing
the steel nails they’d ripped out, hissing like some monster and
then she was empty. She collapsed back into her chair and she felt
a shiver like all her anger turning to poison, and she hated
herself like she had never hated anything before. Then that too was
gone and she was empty again, nothing.

“
I’m sorry,” she said, and maybe
she really was. “People…people are dead…it’s my fault.”

He said nothing.

“
Anyway, I quit,” she said. “Find
someone else.”

“
You can’t quit.”

“
Watch me.”

“
Do you know the name Fanny
Duvak?”

“
I do, how do you?”

“
We’ve been going over your
evidence.”

“
You mean you’ve been going
through my shit, scanning my implants—hey can you do anything about
this flower? It won’t go away. You can see it, can’t you, no one
else can but I bet you can.”

“
Yes. You have visited
IlusithariusuirahtisulI.”

“
Come again? Oh I get it, yes.
Yeah, but they called her the Slow God. They call you guys the Sad
Gods, do you know why that is?”

He blinked. “We found the list of girls. We
believe it is accurate.”

“
Good to hear. Why don’t you go
find them, go protect them, so they don’t all get goddamn
murdered!” She hadn’t meant to shout but that’s how she found
herself, and standing too, slamming a fist into the
table.

“
We cannot.”

“
Bullshit!”

She fell back into her chair and glowered at
him. He just sat there like a fucking plant. It was amazing how
much she disliked him.

“
Oh…oh, I get it now.” She
laughed. “I know why you can’t do this. You guys don’t like each
other, do you? You and this other alien, the Blue God. If you go
running around and do find this girl, he’s not going to be happy.”
She took his silence as an admission. “But that still doesn’t
explain why you can’t get the cops or mercs or some other people at
arm’s length to go round up these women and ship ‘em off to Hawaii
and then sort out which one is which later on.”

His silence was pissing her off. He had all the
cards, all the options, all the information, and all the power—just
as he’d had from the start.

“
You don’t understand,” he
said.

“
You’re damn right I don’t.”
Standing again, where did this anger come from, what was she? Why
was he playing her like this, why couldn’t he give her a straight
fucking answer? Was she looking in a mirror? He couldn’t help for
the same reason that she couldn’t—he didn’t care. It wasn’t
important enough.