Necropolis (9 page)

A chill numbness settled over me. Elise never went into those bodegas. She thought they were overpriced. So why…
 

Oh no.

I’d made her stop. On the way to the opera, I’d made her stop. And the only reason would be—

Oh no oh no…
 

So I could get a pack of smokes.

I’d gotten my wife killed for a pack of cigarettes.

The room’s angles changed. They seemed to be turning the room into a funhouse, how could that be, it was all weird shapes and colors, skewed, uneven…
 

“Honey?” Her voice came from miles away.

I lunged for the restroom. The retching came from my toes, wave after wracking wave of it. When it finally subsided, I splashed water on my face at the sink, rinsed the bile from my mouth. Little black pinpricks still flickered in the corners of my vision as I walked back to Arlene. She had a breath mint all ready for me. What a doll.
 

“Sorry,” I said thickly, sitting.

“Not every day you read your own obituary,” she replied. No trace of irony or pity in her voice.

“How do I get whatever records that exist? About… this?”

Arlene bit her lip. “You’re not supposed to focus too much on your old life,” she said. “It can be upsetting.” She looked at her hands. “That’s what they say, anyway.”

“I bet a smarty counselor told you that.” She didn’t reply. “Can you do it?”

She sat debating. Then she leaned forward, and her synapses flew.

***

A half hour later, we’d unearthed hospital records, pension files, insurance forms—the digital detritus of two people’s lives. Since Elise and I had died
intestate
and without heirs, our property had been auctioned off.

“Do reborns ever get their property back?”

“If it still exists, and if the heirs agree. Which isn’t very often.” She grinned. “Hearst was
pissed
. His own foundation wouldn’t give him back San Simeon.”

Bart had been right about my case. No follow-up articles. Nothing in the Criminal City Database. The file must’ve been tucked away with ten thousand other cold cases.

The screen returned to the
Times
article. “That’s it,” said Arlene.

That’s it. Dead end, for a dead guy.

Someone had gunned us down without batting an eyelash. Snuffed out two human lives, taken the handful of cash from the till and probably partied all night without a moment’s remorse. I’d seen it hundreds of times. I’d been sickened at first, this casual indifference to human life, but as the years wore on I’d grown calloused like my partners without ever really understanding. Now, my nerve endings like a nettle of black thorns, I knew what the loved ones of those victims had really felt. The bottomless depth of their anger, their loss. I’d counseled them with clichéd platitudes, so safe and naïve behind my badge.
Let it go
, I’d said.
Move on, live your life. Give yourself time to heal.
What pathetic bullshit.
 

Arlene was frowning at the holo image. She squinted at it.

“Weird,” she said.

“What?”

The image sprang forward, enlarged. She manifested a cursor and ran it down to the edge of the newsprint. “See?”

“See what?” I looked harder. “What am I looking for?”

She enlarged the representation some more. “Let me run an algorithm.” The image shifted into a blocky blur of pixels. Now parts of the image looked fuzzier than the rest.

“This has been digitally altered.” She moved the cursor back and forth between one line of text and the next. “It was an excellent job forty years ago. They matched color, highlight and shadows, but the resolution is a tiny bit different. It’s the section of the article about the robber fleeing the scene.”

“A last-minute edit before the paper went to press?”

“No, this is a scanned image of the actual newspaper, not some text version. The alteration had to have been done
after
the paper hit the stands.”

“Can I get the original somewhere? The public library?”

She forced back her giggle. “You’re cute. No one stores physical docs anymore. That’s what the Conch is for.”

“The what?”

“Ever hear of Carl Jung?”

“The psychologist.”

“He had this theory about a collective unconscious, a sort of psychic warehouse of racial memories. When the internet became self-aware in ’41, some smartass blogger nicknamed it the Collective
Consciousness
, since its core memories—its limbic system, you might say—are the stored data of humanity. We’re using it right now.”

The internet became The Conch. Question answered.

She puffed her lips out, made a raspberry sound. “This really gripes my cookies. Why would someone change it?
How
could they change it? The Conch is hack-proof.”

“I need my case file,” I said softly.

She swiveled to me, her eyes large.

“Know what happens when you try to hack the police network? Burly men show up at your door with morphinium handcuffs.”

“Besides, you said it’s hack-proof,” I added.

Her snort was so adorable that under different circumstances I would’ve had to bite my tongue. “I said the
Conch
was hack-proof. You think the government would trust its data to a sentient AI? No way. The government database is a separate system.”

“So it can be done?”

A wary look. “You’ve got ginger, baby, but I barely know ya.”

I laid my hand over hers. “You know me alright, Arlene. I’m like you. Trying to play a game where all the rules have changed.”

She stopped chewing. Her eyes stayed riveted on mine.
 

“It’s not enough, though, is it?” I continued. “Dressing like Sandra Dee, playing it safe, using all the right slang, staying under their radar.”

Her head lowered. Then she sighed and carefully affixed her gum to the underside of the desk. “I swear, I must be slack happy.” She pointed toward a door next to the bathroom. “This will take time. There’s a cot in the back room. You look like you could use it. When I got back, I was a royal bitch for weeks.”

***

Are you drunk? she says.

Hmmm?

I’ve crept into the bedroom. My head is spinning, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and drift away.

Go to sleep.

You smell like that damned bar, Elise says, sitting up.

I stop pulling off my shoes. It’s going to be a fight.

It’s part of the job, I say.

Bullshit! Coming home drunk at two AM is not part of the damned job!

Lone wolves don’t get promoted, Elise.

She isn’t buying it. She lies back quietly as I undress.

I’ve been going to meetings, Paul. Al-Anon.

Christ. You know what’ll happen if someone sees you there?

As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I know I’ve said the worst possible thing. Elise’s face breaks into jagged angles
of shock and hurt. Then it hardens. I hate to see it harden that way. It’s been happening a lot lately.

I’m there for me, Paul. I don’t want to leave you, but I can’t stand where this is heading.

I take her hand. It’s delicate, like a child’s.

Look, baby. There’s got to be a way we can compromise.

That’s called denial.

Denial, I think.
Goddamned AA. I’d sent many a petty criminal to them. But they were zealots. One way of seeing things. Everything was through the lens of their own addiction. And Elise had bought into it. Pretty soon she’d be telling me I had a disease.

Elise, I’ve never had a DUI, never hit you. I’m not one of those people!

You’ve never had a DUI? How many
should
you have had, Paul?

That stops me. Last year, on Van Dam Street, near the Long Island Expressway, I’d been pulled over for going left of center. I’d sweated blood when the officer had approached my car with a breathalyzer kit. Then I’d flashed my detective’s shield. The patrol officer had slowly nodded and stepped back from the door. But when he waved me on, there’d been disgust all over his face.

Does it even matter whether she’s right, I think? I can’t lose her. So I say:

What do you want me to do?

She comes to me in her satin teddy. She straddles me, settled against my chest, wrapping her legs around my hips. I can feel her heart beating. She’s warm from being under the covers.
An alcoholic can’t stop on their own. But you’ve never really tried, right?

I play it out. Ordering a Coke at Lefty’s. The other guys giving me shit. It’s not like it used to be. A lot of guys, the health nuts, don’t drink— Except who am I kidding? No one might say it to my face, but in this tribe, manhood was still measured by holding your liquor. Can I afford to slip in their estimation?

But that’s not it, is it?
 

I need it. There are times when the only thing that gets me through the day is the promise of that reward. I’ll stand in a bedroom in the projects, flies buzzing around the black blood, see the dead kid, smell the feces and the gun oil, and close my eyes and remind myself that by midnight I’ll be in Lefty’s and everything can go away. It’s all I have on those days when I feel like a janitor instead of a cop, cleaning up the city’s garbage. Our great citizens, the media, they don’t care. To half of them we’re the enemy. So why should I care?
 

What’s so damned wrong about having a little help, a little—

Crutch?

No. That’s not— There’s something else. A quieter voice inside whispers. There’s something, something I don’t want to look at, not ever. Something I can’t look at. Something…
 

I wrench myself back to her. I look into her eyes, see deep grief. I cup her face.

I’ll try, okay?

And if you can’t?

I try to smile. Then I guess we’ll know for sure that I’ve got a problem.

Paul, I have to tell you. I have to say this out loud.

I know what’s coming.

If this doesn’t… I can’t… I can’t…
 

I know. I get it, okay?

She searches my eyes for strength, for character, to see if I have the resources to do what I said.We’re at a crossroad.

I know you can do it, she says.

Hey, I say, How about I get two tickets to that opera everybody’s been raving about? This weekend?

She almost strangles me with her hug. Can we do dinner, too?

Sure, babe. Wherever you want. I kiss her soft lips and hold her tighter, thinking how I’d do anything, anything, not to lose her—

***

A hand was shaking me. I opened my eyes. Arlene was gazing down at my prone form. There was a mixture of childish amusement and very grown-up lust on her face.

“Sleeps like the dead.”

I groaned and sat up on the cot, abdominals cramping. I shook away the disturbing echoes of the dream.
 

Arlene puffed up her chest. “Wanna see how good I am?”

“Uh…”

She stuffed a data pebble under my nose. “NYPD Case File 03-1756. Robbery-slash-double homicide.” I bolted up and grabbed at it. Arlene snatched it back, spun triumphantly on her heels and marched back into the main room. I followed.

“It’s encrypted. It’ll take a day to turn it to English.”

“Sure you want to get any deeper into this?” I asked.

“We came this far, didn’t we?”

“Arlene, I don’t know how to thank you.”

She slid in close and gave my thigh a squeeze. “Listen, hero. My place is right around the corner.”

“Tempting. But I’m a little old for you, sweetie.”

She gave me a toothy smile and snapped a fresh piece of gum. “Old? Honey, I’m a hundred and three.”

***

I trudged up the steps of my building, my mind racing.

Why had there been no leads? The DA never rested in cop murders. It wasn’t a matter of vengeance—it was self-defense. The world had to know that if you killed a cop, you went down. Period. Otherwise, it’d be open season.
 

So what had happened? Where had my boys been? Bart? The Lieutenant? The case had closed way too fast.

Shot to death in a Korean grocery.
 

I saw it in my mind. Preceding Elise into the bodega, taking in the place in a quick sweep—the too-narrow aisles, the shrink-wrapped boxes of stock behind the counter, the coolers in the rear.
 

Anything suspicious and my radar would’ve gone off. So instead of stumbling in on a robbery in progress like the article said, it was more likely that our killer had come in after we were already inside.