K Jeter - Noir

“Great,” said Harrisch. “Speaking from the viewpoint of upper management, I think it’s good that people get some sense of satisfaction from what they do. Every once in a while, at least.” Actually, he didn’t care. He raised and aimed the gun at a point equidistant between the cube bunny’s small breasts and slightly higher, just below the hollow in her white throat. “But I don’t really think you’ll be working for us again.”

Genuine tears welled at the bottoms of her eyes; the trembling lashes darkened. “That’s not fair,” she said in a small voice, a whisper almost lost against the choir’s gentle murmur.

“No, it’s not.” He had to agree. He could almost regret the tightening of his finger on the gun’s trigger.

“But I did what you asked me to-”

He watched her fly, propelled by the bullet’s imparted grace. The unmuffled shot echoed along the alley’s walls, shivering dust and bird droppings from the ancient bricks. At times like these-Harrisch had done this before; he never left jobs like this to underlings-time smoothly ratchetted down to slow motion. An occasional pleasure in his stressful executive life; I deserve this , he thought. That part at least was fair. For him. The Denkmann book agreed, which was one of the reasons it was popular with high-level execs.

The impact of the bullet had lifted the cube bunny from her feet, tilting her onto her back as though on a feather bed of empty night air, her blond hair coming loose to form a radiant haloed pillow. Her bare arms flung back, as though wings. The petals of an intricate rose spattered against her chin. Then she fell, yards farther from where she had stood in front of Harrisch. She changed from angel to human, a wordless question in her clear eyes, and then to something that had the same shape and thermal signature of human, but wasn’t anymore. The pretty thing sprawled in the alley’s decaying litter, the side of her face turned against the base of the wall.

Harrisch had preregistered the killing, so he didn’t have to wait around if he didn’t want to. But he did; he let the weight of the gun dangle in his hand, its fading warmth traveling up the muscles of his arm and into his shoulder. He walked a few steps, working a crick out of his neck and gazing up at the stars. I should get out more , he thought vaguely. The choir of whatever church was hidden beneath the grating had piled on fortissimo with the gunshot, as though the noise had been the announcement of their redeemer’s return. A little of their holiness, however shabby and subterranean it might have been, resonated inside Harrisch; he felt at peace as the excess adrenaline metabolized out of his system. Get more exercise , he vowed.

Back at DynaZauber headquarters, he knew, some computer in the accounting department was humming almost silently to itself, deducting the minor cost of the girl’s death from the corporation’s stock of pollution credits, specifically on the urban misery index. Every year, DZ’s PR division planted along the roads enough seedlings-most of which died or grew into no more than toxin-stunted weeds-to more than counterbalance necessary operating deaths. Which proved that the system worked, if you let it.

A franchised black-and-white cruised up alongside the Daimler repro at the alley’s mouth. Harrisch scratched his ear with the muzzle of the gun as he watched the cop-only one had shown up on the non-priority scene-examine the dead cube bunny. The cop left a tripoded coroner’s camera, a variable-focus lens and digital frame-storage device, spider-legging around the corpse and clicking away, and strolled over to talk.

“That’s what you used?” The cop nodded toward the weapon in Harrisch’s hand. The cop’s voice was affable and unexcited. “Mind if I take a look at it?”

Harrisch knew he didn’t have to do that, either; the cop had already read off the gun’s bar-code ID with a remote scanner and matched it up with the hit registration on file. But he didn’t mind; he handed the piece over.

“Not bad.” The cop nodded in approval. “These three-fifty-seven parsifals do good work. Neat, as these things go; you don’t have to stand there, pumping away and knocking little bits off your target.” He held the gun back out to Harrisch. “Ever think of using something not quite so cannonlike? Something like that can really climb up in your hand, if you lose control of it.”

“But I don’t,” said Harrisch. “I’ve got a pretty firm grip.”

“I’m sure you do. Hey, no question about that, pal. But why take the chance? The wear and tear on yourself?” The dead cube bunny was forgotten as the cop warmed to his topic. “Personally, I think you could haul something a little more stylish, something a little more in keeping with your, um, position in life. Now, something like a tosca or a lightweight nine-millimeter, a traviata maybe-”

Harrisch felt his face harden into a sneer. “Those Italian pieces are all pussy guns. Those are for girls.”

“Hey… hey, I understand.” The cop backed off, holding up a mollifying hand, palm outward. “You want to carry major weight, that’s cool. I can go with that. It’s nothing Freudian, you know, it’s just an image thing, really. But remember, those aren’t your only choices. You want to stick with the Teutonics, hey, I agree.” The cop gave an admiring shake of the head. “Nothing fills your hand like those babies. But maybe for a change of pace, you’d like to go with a tristan; that’s a sharp piece. Or hey, go bigger; go up to a four-eighty siegfried. Or shit, go all the way to a connectin’ götterdämmerung; you just about need a crane to lift it, but I guarantee you, if you’d popped one of those off here, we’d be picking up the evidence with a push broom and a vacuum cleaner. I tell you-”

“Are we about done?” Harrisch interrupted the cop’s spiel. “Is there anything more we need to take care of?”

“No. I guess not.” The cop looked sullen. He glanced over his shoulder toward the camera at the other end of the alley. “You got what you need?”

“Sure do! Right on!” The camera had a minimal personality interface and the voice of an animated cartoon character. The round blank face of the lens swiveled toward Harrisch and the cop. “We be cookin’!” With fussy arachnoid movements, the tripod picked its way through the low, black dunes of trash.

“Just trying to do a little public service…” Under his breath, the cop muttered just loud enough for Harrisch to hear. “And what do you get for it? Connect…”

The coroner’s office was a low-budget item in the PD’s budget; Harrisch wasn’t surprised to see an antiquated low-rez LCD screen unfold from the camera’s dented and patched thorax. The display blurred through a reconstructive autopsy, extrapolating back from the gridded shots that had just been taken of the dead cube bunny. Her smiling face, near to lifelike, appeared on one side of the screen; the photo that Harrisch had registered before flashed on the other side.

“Pretty good!” pronounced the camera. “Close enough for police work! Everything looks copacetic, folks!”

“I think I’ll be on my way, then.” Harrisch felt tired and regretful. Not over the cube bunny, but on having let himself linger out here, where he could get latched on to by hustlers like this cop. Should’ve just gone straight back to the office , he brooded. Scenes such as this one were the consequence of mixing business with pleasure, even such innocuous ones as listening to the invisible choir’s music with heated metal in his fist. “Call me if there’s any other forms I need to fill out.”

“There won’t be.” The cop visibly shifted his glum mood. “Tell you what, though; why don’t you take my card?” From one of the dark blue uniform’s pockets, he extracted a thin white rectangle. “This is my private sideline business. I’ve got a little dealership thing going-”