K Jeter - Noir

From the next seat over, McNihil glanced up at the screen. This month’s disnannie, all bright cartoon colors and state-of-the-art CGI, was playing. A week ago, it’d been fresh and coming over the wires to the upscale movie houses. Now its earnings had already dropped off enough for it to be printed out on old-fashioned film reels and dumped at flea-pits like this. There hadn’t even been a marquee or a pretense of a ticket window outside, but just an old woman on a folding chair, a debit-card reader and a cashbox on her schmatta ’d lap.

“What’s it about?” McNihil pushed away the popcorn tub that the pimply kid extended toward him.

“Beats me.” The kid shrugged. “I never pay attention to that story stuff.”

The kid was in his early twenties; that was what McNihil pegged him at. All skinny arms and legs, folded up in the seat with his knees against the one in front of him, looking like a whooping-crane carcass dressed in T-shirt and faded jeans. The reflection of the movie images made bright, shifting rectangles out of his glasses.

“It’s the visuals,” said the kid. “You just gotta go with that.” His hand operated by itself, feeding more fluffy shrapnel into his mouth. “That’s all that’s important.”

“Really? How can you tell?” In places like this, the standards were always shoddy. McNihil pointed to the wedge of light, filled with dust motes, above their heads. “They’ve got their projector element canted backward. Look at that keystoning on the screen.”

“Huh?” The kid bent forward, spine arched, squinting through his glasses. “What’re you talking about?”

“You can’t see it? The image is wider across the top than the bottom. That’s why everybody looks like some kind of hydrocephalic.”

“Aww…” A moan of disappointment escaped from the folded scarecrow figure. He hadn’t been able to see the aberration until it’d been pointed out to him, but now he wouldn’t be able to keep from seeing it. “That sucks.” He glanced toward the simple plywood door behind him. “I oughta get my money back.”

Like there’s a chance of that . McNihil let his gaze travel around the theater, such as it was. In the dark, smelling of sweat and urine and spilled wet sugar, the screen’s soft radiance fell on just a few scattered faces. And some of those were asleep, or looked so narcotized that if the film had broken and nothing but white light had filled their blank eyes, they wouldn’t have protested. They’d probably just have thought it was their own brain cells imploding into some territory of opiated bliss. McNihil looked back at the kid. “Don’t sweat it.”

The eyes behind the lenses were glaring at him with real hatred. “You’re a pretty smart guy, aren’t you?”

McNihil shrugged. “On occasion.”

“Smart enough to figure out why I wanted you to meet me here? At the movies?”

A song had started coming out of the theater’s rinky-dink speakers, mounted on the walls with cables dangling. McNihil glanced up at the misshapen screen image, remembering now that this month’s disnannie was a cartoon adaptation of the ancient black-and-white film The Lodger , transformed into something called Jackie Upstairs . A teenage Ripper was serenading a fogbound period London from his boardinghouse window, while a trio of cutely animated viscera-Kidney, Liver, and Uterus-danced and wisecracked around him.

“Beats me,” said McNihil. He looked back over at the kid. “If you feel like telling me, go ahead.”

“Because…” The kid leaned across the armrest between the seats. A yellow fleck of popcorn kernel hung on his lower lip. “I figured you might not be on the level, mister. Maybe you’re not a book collector at all. Maybe you’re a copyright thug. What do they call ’em? A snake-head.”

“Asp-head,” corrected McNihil. “It’s one of those bilingual confusions. Deutsch-lish, German and American muddled together. Asp from the English, kopf the German for head. So you get asp-head ; it’s what they call a back-formation, from the name of the old twentieth-century organization ASCAP. They were the ones who used to round up the money for composers and musicians, until the Collection Agency came together from the old software protection and copyright defense outfits, so there was just one rights authority for all intellectual-property forms.”

The kid goggled at him in distaste. “Did I ask you for some connectin’ historical lecture?”

“No…” McNihil shook his head. “You didn’t. But you figured asp-heads, or whatever you want to call them, don’t go to the movies?”

“Connect if I know. But they carry lotsa big clunkin’ metal around with ’em. Guns and stuff. ’Cause they’re bad .” The kid couldn’t keep an excited gleam from appearing in his eyes. “They like to hurt people.”

“Do they?” McNihil put away his smile. “I better watch out for them, then.”

“But you don’t have to. Not here. At the movies.” The kid displayed horsey teeth. “You can’t get into the movies, even in a crummy place like this, without walking through the metal detectors. Everything past the front door’s got a detection grid wired around it. If you’d walked in carrying a gun, man, every alarm in the place would’ve gone off.”

“Really?” McNihil let his own eyes go wide and round. “Gosh.”

The kid’s expression darkened. “Maybe if they didn’t have to spend so much on security procedures, places like this could get better projection equipment.”

“Naw…” McNihil shook his head. “They’re probably just cheap-ass bastards in general.” A shrug. “I’m older than you. I don’t have expectations about people anymore.”

“‘Older.’” The kid nodded appraisingly. “Yeah, an old guy like you… I figured you’d be the kind who’d be interested in this kind of stuff.” He shifted in the broken-hinged theater seat, so he could dig a chip out of his jeans pocket. “Not my kind of thing, but it should be right up your alley.”

“What the hell’s this?” McNihil took the featureless gray square from the kid and examined it between his thumb and forefinger. “I thought we were talking about bookscans.”

“Scans? Are you kidding?” The kid sneered at him. “You think I’m gonna walk around with prima facie evidence of copyright violation in my pockets? You’re out of your mind.”

“I thought you weren’t worried about asp-heads. And all sorts of other bad things.”

The song on the movie’s soundtrack had ended. The animated uterus, specked with bright cartoon blood, was perched on the young hero’s shoulder, dispensing its feminine wisdom.

“Not,” said the kid. “I’m just careful .” He tilted his back toward the doors. “That’s another reason for wanting to do the deal in a place with metal detectors. This way, somebody like you-if you were an asp-head or some other kind of uptight intellectual-property freak-you can’t read out what’s there on the merchandise.” The kid smiled even bigger. “You couldn’t get the hardware you need in here. The readers and outside lines.”

“Huh.” McNihil smiled and nodded in appreciation. “Pretty clever.” You poor bastard . It took some effort to keep his pity for the kid from showing through. The little schmuck wouldn’t know what hit him-except that McNihil would make sure he did. “So what am I supposed to do with this?” McNihil held up the chip. The ghost light from the projector beam made it sparkle like a blank postage stamp. “What good is it to me?”

The kid’s smile oozed self-satisfaction. “Plenty. If you want those scans of those old Turbiner titles, complete with cover art-” The kid nodded toward the chip in McNihil’s hand. “That’s how you get ’em.”