Desmond Barry - London Noir

You will look across at her long black hair and wonder why she came with you so readily. Even so, you made it look like she didn’t have any choice. CCTV cameras are everywhere, turning the entire area into a series of flickering electromagnetic shadows.

“They never tell me who I have to kill,” you’ll remark. “Usually I’m left to figure it out for myself.”

“Is that what you meant by those people getting in the way?” she’ll ask.

You slide a blurred black-and-white photograph across the table: a snapshot of a man with graying hair, smiling enigmatically, eyes black and closely focused.

“Look at the picture,” you’ll say. “He had a different name then.”

A waitress in a green coverall will then come over. She’ll be wearing a white plastic badge with her name on it and the message, I’m going to help you, printed underneath. She will look more like the kind of woman who’d have her first name spelled out in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on a gold charm around her neck. You order coffee.

“How do you take it?” the waitress will ask.

“Straight out the jug,” you’ll reply. “Like my mother’s milk.”

A silent pause accompanied by a blank stare. Last time you saw a face like that, the word before was printed below it.

“Black, no sugar,” you’ll reply. “Thanks for asking.”

She will later hand you a cardboard cup covered with a plastic lid. You stare at it. A newspaper lies on the next table. You notice the headlines out the corner of your eye. Mars Robot Goes Insane. Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in New York.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” she’ll observe as the waitress walks slowly away.

“Is anybody?”

The blurred black-and-white photograph still lies on the table between you.

“It’s not what you’ve done that poses the biggest threat these days,” you’ll say. “It’s what you owe. We want to extract our money before war breaks out in the ghost galaxies.”

“And for that you have to find this guy, this...?” She’ll pause, waiting for a name.

“John Frederson.”

She’ll frown.

“I don’t think I know him,” she’ll say. “Where’s he from?”

“Standard Oil New York,” you reply. “The Ryberg Electronics Corporation of Los Angeles, Phoenix-Durango, Islam Incorporated, the Russian petroleum industry...”

“He gets around.”

“Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, London... It’s amazing how much damage the system can take while still sending out signals.”

“So it’s up to you to track him down and...”

“Make him see reason.”

“All you’re missing is a raincoat and a gun,” she’ll say, a smile playing on her lips. Then she’ll take another look at you.

“Well, maybe just the raincoat,” she’ll add.

“Is that a problem?” you ask before peeling the tight-fitting plastic lid off your cardboard cup and taking a sip.

“I don’t like guns,” she’ll reply. “Guns kill people.”

“Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?” you’ll say, pulling a face. The coffee tastes like weed-killer. “Come on,” you’ll say. “Let’s get out of here.”

Total Information Awareness and the Policy Analysis Market focus upon high-level aggregate behavior in order to predict political assassinations or possible terrorist attacks.

“Where are we going now?” she’ll ask, taking a pack of cigarettes from her black patent-leather purse.

“Do you have to?” you’ll ask. “Cigarettes kill people.”

Another scratchy subtitle appears before your eyes: Ordinary men are unworthy of the position they occupy in this world. An analysis of their past draws you automatically to this conclusion. Therefore they must be destroyed, which is to say, transformed.

“Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?” she’ll reply.

Welcome to the Royal Lounge of the Baghdad Hilton, the sign says. No caps, no hoods, or tracksuits after 7 p.m.

You stand together inside the entrance of a cheap hotel, watching tired-looking girls appear and disappear behind a threadbare red-velvet curtain. Their movements are subdued and discreet: all shadows and cellulite.

A door in a dark side passage will open briefly onto a scene of Al Qaeda suspects kneeling manacled in their own private darkness, eyes, ears, and mouths covered, held captive behind a chain-link fence that runs down the center of the “Gitmo Room.”

Prostitute phone cards in reception show high-contrast pictures of female GIs in camouflage fatigues leading naked men around on leather leashes. Each one of them reads: Call Lynndie for discipline and correction. All services. Open late. Thanks for asking.

“Well, you certainly know how to show a girl a good time,” she’ll remark.

“Keep quiet and follow me,” you’ll say.

You push your way through the velvet curtain, but a man in a dark suit puts an arm out to stop you.

“Hey, you can’t do that,” the man will say.

“I just did,” you’ll reply. “Get used to it.”

Then you snap his forearm just below the elbow joint, breaking both bones instantly. You watch the blood leaking out from his sleeve.

On the second floor you stop outside one of the rooms.

“What are you doing?” she’ll hiss at you. “ Trying to start trouble?”

“Another operative was sent here a few months ago,” you’ll reply, tapping gently on the door. “He was supposed to contact me when I first arrived. He didn’t show.”

“Maybe he forgot.”

“Impossible.”

“Maybe you forgot.”

“I know when I can’t remember something.” You sound dismissive. Impatient. Almost brutal.

“Okay. I have two things to tell you,” she’ll say after a pause.

“Yes?”

“One: I don’t really appreciate you talking to me in that tone of voice, especially if you’re still expecting me to help you.”

“And two?”

“And two: There’s some guy behind you pointing a gun at the back of your head.”

You always know what you’re doing.

You’ll turn around and grab him by the throat. There will be a blind spasming of the flesh, and in another second there will be just you and the girl in the corridor again.

“See if he’s got a pass key on him,” you’ll say.

“As dumps go,” she’ll remark, looking around at the room, “this is a dump. Who do you suppose did the decorating? The Three Stooges?”

But you’re already staring at the body on the bed.

“Is that your contact?” she’ll say.

You’ll nod.

“What happened?”

“Electrocuted.”

“You can tell just by looking?”

The closets and drawers are filled with the worn smell of clothes long unworn. There’s dried shaving cream on the bathroom mirror.

“It stinks in here,” she’ll say, a flat statement delivered in a flat tone. “Should I open a window?”

It can be a small event: like a window opening in a nearby apartment block or blood sluicing onto the dock from a rusty outlet in a harbor wall.

“No, leave it.”

She’ll pick up a plastic entry pass from off the floor, its chain swinging gently from her long slim fingers. She’ll point at the photograph on it.

“Looks like John Frederson’s got a new face and name,” you’ll say, staring closely at the man in the picture.

She’ll turn the entry pass over, examining it carefully on both sides. “This will get you into his private suite of offices at One Canada Square,” she’ll say. “I can take you there, if you want.”

Outside the contact’s hotel you’ll be approached by a young Thai kid wearing a T-shirt with Listen to Dr. Hook printed on it. He’s selling DVDs out of a black Samsonite case. Homo Abduction: Series Red, Teenage Revolutionary Martyrs. Handcuff Party. Necktie Strangler Meets the Teenage Crushers. Baby Cream Pimp IV .