Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

Of course he did. He’s Fred Valens, after all.

And as long as he thinks he’s got control of me, I’ve got half a chance of finding out what the hell is going on here, and why my sister put a bullet in the back of Mitch’s girlfriend’s head.

6:45 P.M., Monday 11 September, 2062

Albany Avenue

Hartford, Connecticut

Abandoned North End

Razorface leaned against creaking, smoke-scented black leather and kicked his feet up on the chrome-edged coffee table. He liked his living room. He’d picked out the furniture himself, over Leesie’s protests. As if a woman knew anything about what looked good.

He still didn’t like the dingy unwashed cop perched on the loveseat across from him, but what the hell. You took what you could get.

“So this doc of Maker’s said he get in touch with her? She been calling me, like I asked, but you know she don’t listen to nothing.”

“Yeah. I know. He said he’d try. The prints came back. Hers, and the ones I lifted off the door of that Honda I told you about. Maker — or Casey—”

“Maker.” Irritation filled his mouth like the constant subliminal taste of steel. “What she want to be called.”

“Right. The other woman is her sister, this Barbara Anne Casey the car is registered to. Who works for — are you ready for this?”

“The drug company?” Razorface rolled his massive shoulders back against the sofa, settling in. He could hear Leesie in the kitchen, banging cabinets. She wasn’t pleased about having a cop in the house.

“Close. Unitek corporate headquarters. Hired recently, too.” The cop punctured the air with jabs of his open hand. He leaned forward, picking up a glass of cola he’d been ignoring while the ice melted, and then fiddled with the tubular steel art object on the coffee table for a moment until it lined up neatly with the glass and chrome edge. “I’ve got a theory, Razorface, and I need you to do some checking for me.”

“What sort of checking?”

“Your dealers.”

Razorface leaned forward and rapped on the coffee table. At the sound, Emery peered around the corner from the next room, eyebrows raised questioningly, hand on his lapel. On the job . Razorface waved him down. “I ain’t got no dealers, man. I got boys, but they don’t sell.”

“Yeah, whatever. These guys who were supposedly out of New York. The ones nobody’s ever seen or heard of before?”

“Fuck, yeah. They weren’t from New York.”

The cop cracked his knuckles. “I think they were from Canada. And I bet you know people who could find out for me if they knew the right questions to ask. And maybe had a few holos to show around.” He reached slowly into his breast pocket and drew out a holder with a thick sliver of clear crystal imbedded in it.

“Damn. How you get those?” Despite himself, Razor felt a grin creeping across his face.

“Border patrol,” Mitch answered. “I’m a vice cop. This is the case I’m actually supposed to be working on.”

“Huh. You think we got some gangsters from Canada moving in?” He didn’t move to take it.

Mitch kept the hand extended. “Nah. I think we got a corporation. I think they ditched the Hammers here because it was convenient. Because they wanted a — fucked if I know. I think they did it on purpose, and I think they tainted them on purpose. And I think the company that makes the things is behind it all.”

Razor reached out and took the holo chip in his meaty hand. He laughed, and it turned into a wet cough, which he swallowed. “Why’d a corp be dumping stuff on my street? Not for money. Have to move volume for that.”

“Fuck,” Mitch answered. “Not controlled enough for a trial. Unless there was some reason they needed to — no, that makes no sense. Your guess is as good as mine, Razor, I guess I’m trying to say. Maybe it’s just that nobody gives a fuck what goes on in the North End. Maybe it has something to do with Maker being here.”

The silence stretched heavy. “Mitch.”

“Yeah?”

“You talk about the North End. Why you give a shit about this city, man? White boy from the suburbs…”

“Why do you? You’re a goddamned warlord. Nobody can touch you. You don’t have to do things the way you do. You do right. Most gangsters who get where you are, they go about shit a hell of a lot differently.”

Razorface thought about that for a while before he found the right words. They weren’t the right words, really, but they were the best he could do. “I grew up here, man. Some people, they think I go about things wrong, anyway.”

“You’ve got problems?”

“Damn, where ain’t I got problems? I got a twenty-year-old punk wants me out of a job so he can take my place, I got 20-Love trouble and they’re getting machine guns from somewhere. I got — hell, you don’t care what I’ve got.”

“So you grew up here. So what? So did the punks who shoot the place up, put bullets through little girls on playgrounds.”

“Yeah, well. There’s men don’t provide for their children, too. Mean we all should do whatever the fuck we want?” Razor swung his feet off the coffee table and stood up, heaving his body out of the sofa. It seemed to get harder every year. You’re not that fucking old. But it was a struggle not to breathe hard, and he wasn’t going to let himself look weak in front of a cop.

The air was shit; that was all it was. He turned away from the cop and focused on the wall clock. It was chrome, too, and polished black enamel. Like Razorface. Like everything else in the room.

“No,” the cop said, climbing to his own feet. He finished the soda and set the glass down on a coaster. “No, we probably shouldn’t. You going to look into that shit for me?”

The big gangster studied the wall a little more closely, examining a crack running down it. It’s for Merc. And the other kids. “Fuck, yeah. But people see you coming to the house here they’ll talk, and I don’t need that shit. Next time, you leave me a message on my hip. I meet you downtown or in East Hartford. Not the neighborhood, all right?”

“All right.”

Razorface didn’t turn around until Mitch left. He didn’t want the cop to see the look on his face and think him — sweet.

Once he was sure Mitch was gone, Razor uncurled his fingers from the holo chip thoughtfully and held the little sliver of crystal up to the light.

Canada.

Wish to hell I knew what that meant.

1900 hours, Monday 11 September, 2062

Larry’s West-Side Restaurant

Toronto, Canada

Genie’s grown since Christmas, but maybe not as much as you’d expect of a girl her age. She’s a big-eyed elf, blonde and fine-boned, and her big sister always seems to have her arm around Genie’s shoulders. Leah’s a good kid. Looks just like her mother, with a promise of early beauty and later strength. Genie, on the other hand, has Gabe’s eyes.

I miss Geniveve. It’s a funny thing to say, but I do. She was good for Gabe, and I never had a shot at him anyway. She was a class act.

Gabe has always had a good eye for women. Only ever made one mistake that I know of, and we were both much younger then.

The girls want pizza and garlic bread and Greek salad, so we wind up in a little hole in the wall on the west side of town, gathered around a red-and-white checkered plastic tablecloth. The food’s good, all things considered. Genie eats like a pig. She has to, to maintain weight, although Gabe tells me she’s doing better now that she’s back on the gene therapy and the protein repair. Enzyme replacement therapy thins out the mucus in her lungs, but they haven’t nailed down the GI issues yet. She’s skinny and her cheeks are flushed and her skin is too pale, but she’s not coughing and she looks better than she did nine months ago, and that’s something.