Shudder (11 page)

“We have twenty-five percent of undecided voters who think they will vote in the elections,” Bob said.

Natalie nodded, prodding him to continue. He continued. “Of those roughly half are with nationalist-conservative value systems and another five percent are green socialists, whom I feel we can win over in one way or another. Theoretically.”

“So, that makes about seventeen percent of potential electorate.”

“Yup. We'll be lucky to convince four percent though, if you ask me. What about the peripheries?”

Natalie placed her printout near Bob's and pointed at the figures she had highlighted in yellow. “Well, the core of the conservatives is twelve percent and the periphery—eighteen. The periphery of the libertarians is two, and of the lefties—fourteen.”

“Good, good, so we can, at least in theory, unburden the right-wing of a few percent from the periphery.”

“Yes. But less than two months...that's insane.”

“I know that, and you know that, but we mustn't let the customer know that.”

Fancy that,
Natalie thought and grinned, they had suddenly exchanged roles, now Bob was saying her lines.

Would he be a good strap-on bottom?
She tensed at the unexpected fantasy.

A third person appeared at their desk. Penelope, the office manager. Her majestic puffy orange mane fell on her seriously padded shoulders. She was a hard-core 1980's revivalist. “Natalie, Mister Blonski wants to talk to you in his office.”

“Okay, I'm coming.” Natalie collected her printouts and her notebook, and followed Penelope to the chief's office.

Penelope knocked on the door and opened it. “Natalie is here, Mister Blonski.”

“Thank you, Penelope, come in, Natalie.”

Natalie delicately maneuvered herself into the chair in front of Blonski's desk, opened her notebook on her lap, and waited.

Blonski eyed her thoughtfully. “So, Natalie, how are things going with the National Patriot thing?”

“Well, me and Bob were just talking about the undecided voters...”

“What about the peripheries?”

“Them too, Mister Blonski.”

“And?” Blonski laced his hands as if in dignified prayer and leaned back.

“Well, in theory, there are enough loose voters around to help a fourth party wedge itself into parliament, but frankly, I don't think there's enough time to achieve this.”

“I also think that way but our customer, Mister Eberstark, seems to be an optimist. He's paying good money, and also, I happen to owe him a favor from way back.”

Natalie looked at Blonski. He was leading the conversation somewhere.

Blonski cleared his throat and started looking somewhere above Natalie's head. “He saw the preliminary report you and Bob wrote and he asks...he asks whether you would like to be his head of election headquarters.”

“What? Me? But…”

Blonski leaned forward again. “Now, you don't have to accept. I would be glad if you did, because as I said, I owe him a favor.”

“Why me?”

“Because I told him that he needs a miracle and the only person who can conceivably work this miracle is you.”

I owe him a favor he said.
Natalie felt something like anger stir inside her, and straightened out her back and stiffened her belly. “Well, boss, I guess I accept. But I've never actually worked on a campaign, let alone direct it...”

Blonski smiled and waved away what he thought of as childish fears. “No problems, really, he's willing to take that gamble. He knows his chances are small and he was impressed with your report. We all know you had more input in it then Bob did.”

“Still...”

“You know what?” Blonski looked at her like a parent about to produce a stuffed Christmas stocking. “I told him about your brain scan idea.”

“Still he wanted to work with me?”

“Not only that, he promised to buy some brain scan equipment immediately.”

Natalie closed her mouth and thought. Perhaps fate had thrown something valuable into her lap for once. In a rather unsophisticated manner certainly, but it did suddenly sound promising.

* * * *

As she traveled home later that day, conflicting emotions struggled for dominance inside Natalie. On one hand, she felt almost betrayed by old Blonski, as if he was giving her to another master like some sort of serf, a peon.

On the other hand she felt a certain excitement just thinking about being in control of the whole process of trying to win the elections.

Big league at last.

With the brain scanners.

All in all, things were working out quite fine.

The evening rain briefly drummed at her scalp while she ran from her taxi to the foyer of her apartment block. Inside, she brushed the water drops from her hair, and entered the lift.

It creaked and moaned as it went up to her floor, but mercifully nothing went wrong. Natalie exhaled as she went out. Back in childhood, she had developed a fear of other people's germs, and tried not to breathe while in an elevator. Not in all elevators, but in dirty ones like this one.

She went into her tidy home, and switched on the TV, unleashing a cheerful advertisement medley, and it felt almost like she wasn't all alone.

Monday. Morning. Rain. A gray dusky light creeping in through the window, with a promise of allowing the sun to make a serious comeback in about four months.

No hammering anywhere in the building. No music pounding and no kids galloping in homes where parents have already left for work. Only one faraway drill whining forlornly in the unknown distance.

When the elements conspire to make the day perfect for sleeping through it, only one thing can help.

Dave threw away his blanket in an act of manly defiance and with half-open eyes fiddled with his stereo until he found Obituary's
Slowly We Rot
album. Then he abdicated from his struggle against gravity and lay down on the carpet, his nostrils reminding him that sooner or later he will have to vacuum his pad.

A minute later, as the puke-like growls of John Tardy ripped into shreds the veil of sleepiness, Dave was already shaving and peeing into the sink, as bachelors are wont to do for lack of the restraining influence of a spouse.

After washing his face and briskly smacking his cheeks with lemon-scented antiseptic lotion, he paused to study his reflection. How had he looked in Natalie's eyes after all these years? He tried to imagine what she had seen.

A David who had slightly more pronounced bags under his eyes, with some tiny wrinkles around and below them. He still had a rather clean complexion, was not prone to bad teeth, and was free of the red patches that blossom on and around the chronic drinkers and the pill-poppers noses.

He fried himself some eggs and bacon and had a splendid breakfast with two large mugs of coffee with milk, scanning the day's news on his computer.

“Congratulations,” he told himself sardonically upon reading that the retirement age would rise again next year, from seventy-two to seventy-four. Another present for everyone.

Well-groomed, earnest government spokesmen talked of the right to work, longer life spans, aging populations, and market forces.

Why don't they cut the crap and establish firmly the limit once and for all,
he thought,
just say honestly that the retirement age starts one year after death and have it done with.

Dave promised himself to make his first million before he reached fifty. He smiled at his childish evasions of unpleasant thoughts, put on his coat and shoes, and went out.

“Drive, James,” he said and as his car vibrated to life he buckled up, pushed the gas, slowly released the clutch, and with the car's first movements flipped on the radio. This time he had opted to let fate decide. Every time he pressed ‘waveband', the radio would choose the next station in random mode.

A city bus crowded him and with a perfunctory honk, Dave changed lanes.

“The classical hit from the summer before last.
Snowball
, by Jake Buvarro.”

After the normal short introduction of a three-tone keyboard melody, the bass and the drum machine added themselves to the mix. Then a deep, male voice began rapping.

“Lissen up mah world.

I'm talking to you,

Snow White snorting snowflakes”

A burst of female back vocals interjected
:

“Snow White, Snow White.”

The male voice resumed:

“Ready up—for the ball

Ready up—for the snow ball

Ready up.

Ready up.

Lissen up mah world.”

Dave nosed his way in behind a gray Volvo, to the consternation of a retro man in a retro Smart behind it, and pressed ‘waveband' again. With a quick crackle, another song took the place of the previous one.

Although he had gotten rid of Jake Buvarro, what his ears registered now was something infinitely worse. Something, which gnawed at the very roots of that which made music, even bad dance music, was a mediator of the body and soul.

There was an acoustic guitar alternating five chords, at least three of which were open ones, a simple piano melody piddled along, and the tinkling of many tiny bells accentuated the chord changes. A longing male voice whined:

“
I don't know how,

I don't know why,

Just reaching for the light,

The stars shine in the sky...”

With an audible, “Gnyaaaggh.” Dave switched off the radio.

As the traffic slowed to a halt and the countdown beneath the red light was still at thirty-one seconds, he fumbled in his coat's pocket and fished out a memory stick.

After yesterday's coffee at Anton's, an impulse had appeared to listen to his old music. He hadn't thought of his old project for almost twelve years.

He slipped the memory stick into the appropriate hole and pushed ‘play'.

With a slightly nervous pulse, he listened to the first bars of ‘
Slaughterhouse Opera
'. Cows mooed, sheep brayed, and guitars fuzzed and buzzed. It wasn't as bad as he had feared deep down. Not only was it not bad, it also stirred dear memories as if from another life.

A quick fantasy of making a new band even sped across Dave's mind but this music was too heavy and morose by half for the start of the working day. He was humming to The Who's ‘
Love Is Like A Heat Wave'
, bobbing his head in time with the timeless groovy drumming, when he reached the office.

Maldiva was not with brown lipstick today, but with a normal purple one, which didn't leave the boundaries of her lips. On second glance only her lower lip was purple. The upper, thinner one was deep orange.

Around her left eye, the makeup was an imitation bruise.

A love bruise certainly, for although even these days women suffered from prosaic domestic violence, the displayed trend in makeup was not intended to signify that one was abused by a drunken spouse. Rather, it served to show that one's husband or lover was an untamed animal. Better yet
—
that one
managed to turn
the husband or lover in question into a wild lion, by virtue of one's unique sexual attractiveness.

Dave went through the morning ritual, i.e. he nodded at Maldiva, complimented her looks, made himself a mug of coffee, and went into his room. There, as usual, he opened the window and breathed in.

It was autumn and Maldiva would soon cover herself suggestively with her scarf, suggestively in the sense of guarding her frail health from Dave's eccentric fetish of opening the window instead of using the air conditioner.

He sat himself on his chair, pressed his palm on the ID box, and typed in the password. With a hum, the computer's monitor lit up. He had messages. One marked ‘report', and one marked ‘Season Girls'.

With a show of discipline, Dave opened the report first.

Quite ordinary news.

Girl goes to park with buddies, buddies gang rape her, passersby don't stop, one fellow her age stops when the gang-rapists flee, gives her his coat so that she doesn't freeze, and calls the police.

She knows the identities of the young rapists and the police are already rounding them up.

Dave took a drink from his mug. He opened the other letter. Andy Fortham had sent him a list of detectives who had worked in the past on the Season Girls case.

1. Arthur Harris, went on the case in 1979. Deceased 1981. Cause of death: home burglary gone wrong.

2. John Chen, went on case 1983. Deceased 1983. Cause of death: car accident.

3. Irvin Nolan, went on case 1987. Left police force in 1989 after disappearance of daughter. Deceased 1990 in his office in security consultancy firm. Cause of death: heart attack.

4. Abdel Faizabad, went on case in 1995. Deceased 1996. Cause of death: car accident.

5. Liliana Kostova, went on case 2011. Deceased 2012. Cause of death: rape and robbery on way home.

Note: Dave, this all looks mighty suspicious. No one has tried to handle this case since, and it took me ages to get this info. It was not readily available. Think twice before pursuing this. Andy.

P.S. An old timer—Joe Anderson, you've met him I think, even mentioned ‘The Season Girl Curse'.

Dave read the note three times and closed his eyes to think. For some reason the phrase “It ain't rain, it's a shit storm” swam out of some deep recess of his memory and spun in a closed loop in his synapses.
From some old movie probably.

“The Season Girl Curse,” he repeated to himself.

God.

He stood up.

“Why does everything have to be so fucked up?” he continued asking himself things out loud and bit his lower lip, or rather scratched it with his teeth, as if trying to make his way to the chin.

Well, curse or no curse, it would have to wait some more, because he had to wrap up the‘toy-basher business first.

Dave paced a bit in front of his desk, trying to focus on the task at hand and free his mental drives from attempts to compute irrelevant information.

He must not allow new information to do with cases that are for ‘later', to interfere with his work on the case that is for ‘now'. At least, he should try to not allow it to interfere.

He sat down and opened all of his files in the toy-basher folder. He read them carefully and then he opened his notebook, and saw the question mark, and ‘Next week Friday' scribbled near the name of Desmond Boyle.

He thought about Boyle again.
Why wait for the git to return?
He just had to phone him, perhaps even right now, and see if his info overlaps with that of Chippada and Bardales. If his hunch was correct, he wouldn't need a lengthy interview.

He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and dialed the number. The phone on the other side rang for some time and then the voicemail switched on. With a frown, Dave dialed again. On the third ring, Boyle picked up.

“Hello, yes?”

“Hi, Mister Boyle, it's detective Cohran again, can you speak now?”

“Yes, a secca, pissy.” Dave waited for about fifteen seconds.

“Yes, hello, Mister Cohran. You be finding who is messing in the paddies?”

“Almost, Mister Boyle, but I have to ask you four questions, if you don't mind. Just the four.”

“Be sure, go in.”

“Did you go to the X-SEX shop on Garibaldi to purchase the destroyed doll?”

“Yes, I think so,” answered Boyle with a suddenly more collected voice.

“Okay,” Dave made a tick on his notebook. “Did you go there after midnight?”

“Yes, it was around one. Listen, can I call you back?”

“Just two more questions, Mister Boyle, you're being a great help.”

“All right, what are they?”

“Was the toy in question a cyberpunk fifth grader toy-girl?”

Boyle coughed and wheezed a little into the telephone. “Yes, yes, it was. Cost quite a hoola, you know.”

Another tick. “Indeed, indeed, and the last question is, and please try to remember this precisely, at what day of the week did you make your purchase?”

“Um, I don't know really.”

“Please think, this is important.”

Boyle coughed and wheezed some more. “I be thinking it was Thursday night. Or you could say it be very early Friday.”

Dave looked at the calendar on his monitor. “That would put it around the seventeenth?”

“Er, maybe. I think so.”

“Thank you very much, Mister Boyle, you've helped a lot.”

“Thank you, Mister Cohran, for taking such interest.”

Cohran rang off. He scratched his right ear. Everything fell together. All three victims had shopped the same article, at the same shop, at roughly the same part of the night. Chippada had shopped Thursday night, Bardales had also shopped Thursday night, but a week before, and Boyle had bought his toy on the evening after Bardales.

Dave's fingers did some quick drumming on the edge of his desk. His teeth chewed some more lower lip. He had already seen the shop's website. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. At least nothing that he could see.

That was that then. Thursday night he would enter the shop and buy himself a fifth grader toy-girl of the cyberpunk line.

The corners of his mouth twitched, as he imagined presenting the bill to ‘Expenses'.

He played again the security camera clip of the toy-girl running in and out of the building in which Bardales lived. This time he watched the figure run is slow motion. It was even creepier that way. On an impulse, he dialed Anton's mobile number.

“Hi, Dave, what's up?”

“Hi, man, can you talk?”

“Go ahead, how can I be of assistance?”

“I need your opinion on something.”

“So, your puny mortal brain needs the assistance of a mightier intellect?”

Dave grinned and pinched his nose. “Yes, oh mighty one.”

“Flattery will get you anything. Go ahead.”