Jonathan Lethem: Gun, with Occasional Music

I turned to my window and rolled up the shade. The view faced east, but I could see the colors of the sunset reflected on the hills over Oakland, glints of sun studding the banner of windows opposite the bay, like bits of tinsel worked into a tapestry. Yeah, the hills looked pretty good, from a distance. I turned back to my desk, pushed the sandwich aside, and spilled some blend out onto the wooden desktop. I chopped it up with my pocketknife, and was bending over to sniff it up when the phone rang.

“Metcalf,” I said into the receiver.

“It’s me, Orton Angwine,” said the voice on the line. “I need to talk to you.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“I hear you’re working on the case,” he said uncertainly.

“Right. Why don’t you come up to my office. I’ll wait around.”

“No. I don’t want to run into the inquisitors. You come to me.”

“I’m sure the inquisitors know where you are,” I suggested gently. “You’re the focus of a certain amount of attention.”

“No, I don’t think so. I think I lost my tail. I’m in the bar of the Vistamont Hotel.”

“All right,” I said. “Stay there.” I hung up.

I leaned down and sucked up the make on my desk, then put the half sandwich and the wax paper into the garbage pail. I took one last glance at the pinkish hills, then I pulled down the shade and went downstairs to find my car.

I PULLED OVER TO THE CURB AND BOUGHT AN EVENING edition of the Oakland Photographic from a crabby old goat working a newsstand. The printed word had been dwindling in the news media, but it hadn’t disappeared completely until a year ago, when it was outlawed. That did the trick. I double-parked and took a look at the paper. There were the usual captionless pictures of the government busy at work: the President shaking hands with the Inquisitor General, the congressmen shaking hands with the special-interest groups, the Governor shaking hands with Karmic Achiever of the Month. I flipped through to the local stories, and found a series of graphic photographs of the hotel room where Stanhunt had been killed. There was a chalk line indicating his sprawl across the carpet and a bloody smear on the hotel bedspread. The inquisitors were shown holding up a corner of the curtain, which had a bloody handprint, and then there was a picture of the corpse draped in white and being loaded into the back of a van. It reminded me of the standard photographs of the karma-defunct being shipped to the holding freezers for an indefinite term of storage. Same difference, I guess.

The last photograph was Inquisitor Morgenlander waving an open hand and talking to someone out of the frame to his left. Inquisitor Kornfeld stood behind him, jaw clamped shut as usual. The gist of the story was that our noble inquisitors were on the job again, righting wrongs. It was a gross oversimplification. A murder didn’t happen in a void, like some kind of hiccough. It was the outcome of an inexorable series of past events climaxing in the act, and with repercussions stretching into the future far beyond the usual inquisition. I listened to myself thinking this way and had to laugh. A murder was a garage sale. A murder was a stag party. A murder was a fire drill. A murder was whatever the Inquisitor’s Office wanted it to be.

I tossed the paper onto the passenger seat and started up into the hills. It was dark now. Ashby Avenue was quiei: and mostly scenic, and I let my mind wander freely over the events of the day, hoping for some fresh associations, but I didn’t get anywhere except up into the hills. I’d just snorted my blend, and I guess the fresh Acceptol in my blood was dulling the necessary sense of outrage. I probably would have better spent the time listening to the car radio.

The Vistamont Hotel was a high-class operation, a far cry from the kind of fleahouse Stanhunt had been unlucky enough to get himself nixed in. Killings, if they happened in the Vistamont at all, were probably peeled off the floor, fingerprints and all, and transferred to some less prestigious joint before the inquisitors were called. Who knew—maybe that was what happened to Stanhunt. The Vistamont was a place where rich folks stayed when they wanted to be able to say they had visited Oakland but didn’t really want to dirty their shoes. It was big and labyrinthine, and contained enough different restaurants and spas to keep you from ever having to sample the big bad world outside.

I parked the car in the Vistamont lot and tucked the newspaper under my arm. I figured the pictures might provoke some kind of response from a guilty party, whether he’d seen them before or not. Actually, they were probably strong enough meat to unsettle Angwine either way, but I was desperate for clues. I’m not known for my subtlety or tact.

I paused to let the doorman give me the once-over. He was an elderly black human, one of the last you could see in a menial service job. Evolved animals filled pretty much any position they were capable of filling these days, but the Vistamont prided itself on stubborn traditions, and this was one of them. He gave me a nice smile and held open the door and I tipped my hat to him.

The bar was a dark, sunken affair, with detached tables floating in the murk. The way to make a bundle in architecture right now was to devise new ways for people to pretend to gather while actually keeping their distance, and this was a sterling example. I stepped down into the pit and searched out Angwine. I had to admit that at least he’d found a good place to lose himself. I found him against the farthest wall, in a swivel chair at a table built for two. I slid into the chair opposite him, with my back to the wall. The chair was, plush, and I sank into it.

“You took long enough,” said Angwine, looking up. His face was less utterly ravaged, more hardened to the bitter realities of existence without the cushion of a few points of karma on his card.

“You’re not paying me for my time yet,” I replied.

Angwine snickered. “You like to keep it mercenary, don’t you, Metcalf.” He reached into his coat, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it onto the table between us. I picked it up.

Inside was fourteen hundred dollars. “Today and tomorrow,” he said when he knew I’d counted it.

“Today was my own time. I’ll take this as a retainer through Friday.” I pocketed the cash and left the envelope on the table. I couldn’t make out the address in the darkness, but it might be a mistake to take aboard anything that could be associated with Angwine.

“That’s optimistic,” he, said glumly.

“What is?”

“Assuming you’ll still have a job on Friday.”

“Actually, I don’t understand why the inquisitors haven’t hauled you in already. But the fact that we’re talking right now is cause for a certain amount of optimism. Morgenlander is edgy. He doesn’t have enough to sew it up, and it’s v bothering him.”

“He seemed pretty confident to me.”

“Don’t sulk, Angwine. You’re not used to dealing with the inquisitors. Morgenlander’s just a middleman, ultimately. They went public with this one, and now the spotlight is on. There’s pressure on him to deliver, but he’s got to get it right, or at least make getting it wrong very convincing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, but I propose to.” I tried to signal a waitress, but it was like trying to flag down a helicopter from inside a foxhole. “I’ll find out who killed Stanhunt, and why. If you’re guilty, I suggest you take your money back and spend it on drugs or women, real fast, because I’m in no position to cover for you.”

“I’m not guilty.”

I dropped the newspaper on the table, but the effect was lost in the darkness. “What’ve they got on you?” I asked.