Elizabeth Bear: Hammered

I put my jacket down on the counter and turn on the water, cold. Splash my face. Watching Mitch in the mirror, I stick my toothbrush into my mouth. Mitch slips into the shop and shuts the door firmly, checking to make sure it latches. Then he picks his way catlike between the hulk of an Opel Manta much older than I am and a 2030 fuel cell Cadillac that probably has another life left in it.

Mitch circumnavigates a bucket and saunters over to my little nest of old furniture and ancient books. He pauses once to stoop and offer a greeting to Boris, the dignified old tomcat that comes by to get out of the rain.

I grin at myself and salute the mirror with my toothbrush. Spit in the sink, rinse, and turn off the water as Mitch leaves Boris and ducks under a hanging engine block. “Damn, Maker. It’s like a blast furnace in here.”

Cops are a lot like cats, come to think of it. They can tell when you don’t want company. That’s when they drop by.

“Been cold enough in my life.” I tuck the hem of my T-shirt into the top of my worn black fatigues and tighten the belt. Mitch stares for a second overlong at my chest, and then his eyes flick up to meet mine. He grins and I grunt.

“Save the flattery, eh? I own a mirror.”

He crosses the last few feet between us. “I like tough girls.” Matter-of-fact tone. Good God.

“I’m not exactly a girl anymore.” I’m old enough to be his mother, and I wouldn’t have had to start real young, either. “And I look like I’ve been through the wars.”

His grin widens. “You have been through the wars, Maker.” He hops onto the edge of the old steel table, his jacket falling open to reveal the butt of his gun. Hip holster, not shoulder. He wants to be able to get at it fast, and he doesn’t care who knows he has it.

I turn my back on him and pick up my own jacket from the edge of the sink, shrugging into it before turning my attention to the buckles. Despite the weapon on my own leg, I have an itch between my shoulder blades. Some people get used to guns, with practice. I never did. Guess I’ve been on both ends of them too many times. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I glance back as his smile turns grim. “A bunch of dead people.”

“We get a lot of those around here.” I tighten the last buckle on my jacket, well-beloved leather creaking. The coat is on its third lining, and I stopped replacing the zippers long ago. I got it in… Rio? I think. The cities all blur together, after a while. It was my present to myself after surviving my second helicopter crash.

There hasn’t been a third one. Small mercies. I turn back and take three limping steps to fuss with the coffeepot. Damn knee hurts again, no doubt from the storm. What’s worse is when my arm hurts. Metal can’t ache, but you could sure fool me.

“These dead people might worry you some.”

“Why’s that?” I pull my gloves from my pocket and yank them on. Driving gloves. The metal hand slips on the wheel, without. It’s an excuse not to look him in the eye as I ever-so-carefully adjust black leather over rain-cold steel.

“Because you know something about the Hammer, Maker. From when you ‘weren’t’ in the army. Special forces, was it? Nobody else gets that stuff.”

In the silence that follows, the coffeepot burbles its last and I jump, fingers of my right hand twitching toward the piece strapped to my thigh before I stop them. Wisely, Mitch does not laugh. Jenny Casey’s law of cops: there are three kinds—5 percent are good, 10 percent are bad, and the rest are just cops. The good ones want to help somebody. The bad ones want power. The rest want to ride around in a car with a light that lights up on the top.

I tolerate Mitch because he’s one of the 5 percent. Snot-ass attitude and all.

He gets up off the counter and reaches for the coffeepot, turning his back to me.

“What makes you think I was army?”

“Where’d you get the scars?” He hands me a cup of coffee before pouring one for himself.

I take it in my right hand, savoring the heat of the mug. “Playing with matches.”

He laughs again, and again it does not sound forced. Stares at my tits, laughs at my jokes, the boy knows the way to an old woman’s heart. “Did Razor ever find that dealer?”

I don’t wonder how he knows. “Any bodies turn up in the river?” The broad, blue Connecticut. Lake Ontario, it isn’t. But hell, it’s a decent-sized river — and every time they drag it, they find a couple of people they didn’t know were missing.

Mitch sets his cup aside and pins the floor between his lace-up boots with a glare. He’s wearing brown corduroy trousers, ten years out of style.

I wonder if I’m still drunk. The glass on the floor annoys me, and I turn away to get the broom and dustpan. Stooping over, I look up at Mitch. He’s stuffed his hands into his pockets, and he leans back against the table to watch while I sweep the concrete. I have to drop down to hands and knees to get the shards that scattered under the chair, and I wince and groan out loud when I do it. Something that feels like shattered pottery grinds in my knee and hip when I straighten.

Mitch chews his lip. “Getting old, Maker.”

“Still kick your boyish bottom from here to Boston, Detective.” I carry my loaded dustpan over to the trash.

“Where the hell does that name come from, anyway? Maker. Radio handle? You guys used those, didn’t you?”

I shrug, setting the cleaning tools aside. “Maybe it’s my real name.”

A tube of toothpicks squats among the clutter on my table. He opens it and selects a red one, working it into his teeth with the vigor of a man who is trying to quit smoking. “Yeah. A body turned up in the river.” He hesitates.

I award him the round. “Whose body was it, Mitch?”

He sweeps a chair over and throws himself into it with all the grace of youth. For a moment, I am insanely jealous, and then I make myself smile. If you’d died at twenty-four, Jenny, you never would have found out how much fun it is to get old.

But Mitch is talking, head down on his hands and words stumbling out in a rush. “So we’ve got this floater, right? Turns up three miles downriver, snagged on a boat anchor, just like the opening scene of a detective holo. A woman. About thirty. A cop.” His voice trails off, and he pulls the toothpick out of his mouth and flicks it away, littering my clean-swept floor, but he does not raise his head.

“Is that important?”

“You tell me.” He looks up finally and digs in his jacket pocket for a minute before lighting a nicotine stick. The red light of the flame remakes his face into death’s-head angles and the rich, hot scent reminds me that you can’t quit smoking, any more than you can quit any of the other addictions of which I’ve had my share. He holds the smoke in for a long minute and then breathes out like a self-satisfied dragon, relishing every moment of sensation and effect.

He wants me to ask, and I don’t want to give him another round, and so we hold an impromptu duel. He has a cigarette: something to do with his hands. I have years of practice waiting. I could pick up my mug, but I don’t. Instead, I lean my head back and watch the unpleasant old movies inside my skull.

He finishes his cigarette and clears his throat. “She was a detective sergeant. Were you a sergeant, Maker? When you weren’t in the army?”

“I was admiral of the Seventh Space Fleet, eh? What was her name?” How much about me does he know? Or worse, think he knows? I open my eyes and raise my head, catching him staring at me.

He waits again and again I do not ask. He needs to learn who to play games with. It’s not me.

I grunt. My fingers — the metal ones — itch for a cigarette, and I get up and pour myself a bourbon instead, washing down a handful of aspirin with it. I turn around to face him and study the water stains on the wall behind his head. More every year.