Spares (48 page)

“Howie said you’d be passing through,” he said.

“Hello, Johnny,” I replied, and swung my gun to point straight at his heart. “You’ve got two minutes to explain why you killed my wife and daughter for Maxen, and then I’m going to blow you apart.”

“When did you work it out?” Johnny said; slowly sitting back down. I stayed where I was, gun still held out, safety off.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe just now, maybe earlier. You knew about what happened with Maxen’s brother. I don’t think you heard a rumor. I think you heard it from him. All that talk about atonement. Then a choice of words which in retrospect was kind of precise. You didn’t put out the hit on Henna and Angela, but it was you who carried it out.”

Johnny didn’t say anything. Time was passing, but suddenly that didn’t seem important anymore. I had to understand. Dying seemed preferable to never understanding.

“Why, Johnny?”

“Maxen came to me, Jack. I was just a hood then, you know how it was. I was trying to get somewhere, but all the markets were sewn up. McAuley was tight with the old guard, and there wasn’t much I could do. Then some of Maxen’s guys came and found me, and took me up to see the boss. Maxen said he wanted into the rackets, that legit money wasn’t enough.”

“So you went in with him.”

“The offer didn’t exactly seem negotiable. I sat in a very small room with several guns pointed at my head and it occurred to me that I didn’t have much to lose. I say no, and he’s going to ice me there and then. I say yes, and I’m going to end up running most of New fucking Richmond.”

“On the end of Maxen’s leash.”

“We’re all on leashes, Jack.”

“So he greased the NRPD for you.”

Vinaldi sighed. “It wasn’t like I had carte blanche, but my competitors started getting a lot more cop attention than I did. I started clearing up floors, adding them to our collection. Maxen fed capital when I needed it, worked the brass when things got out of hand. It was going good until you got involved.”

He stared at me, his face tortured.

“Why’d you have to do that, Jack? Things were the way they’ve always been, just a little more organized. Maxen and I could have sewed the place up, and everyone would have been happy. Fewer people would have gotten killed in the crossfire every day, we’d have made lots of money, and everything would have been cool. If you’d come to me early on I’d have put you on the payroll. You were a good cop. We could have used you. Why did you have to get nosy? Why couldn’t you have just left it alone?”

I didn’t have time to explain, and I don’t think my explanation would have convinced even me. The truth was I didn’t know.

“Because I’m stupid, probably,” I said. “Or because I thought I was atoning for something myself.”

Vinaldi shook his head. “So what happens is suddenly we’ve got problems, because you and Mal are digging too deep. Doesn’t matter so much about me, because it’s generally known what side of the line I’m on. But for Maxen—it’s a problem. He can’t afford anyone to suspect that New Richmond’s premier white man is running all the shit.”

I could understand that. People like to feel that God and the Devil are different beings. Vinaldi ran a hand across his face. His eyes were hooded, and when his hand came away I noticed his fingers trembling.

“So Maxen comes to me and says he wants a show of loyalty, that I’ve got to prove I’m in with him up to the hilt. He tells me we need an object lesson. He already hates your guts because you whacked his brother in The Gap, but even he knew that had to be. If you hadn’t killed Cedrif he’d have been court-martialed anyway. But now you’re putting everything Maxen owns at risk, and so it’s got to happen, and he wants me to do it, Jack. It’s going to be my special job.”

Vinaldi breathed out heavily, and then looked at me steadily. “You made it easy for me, Jack. You took Phieta away from me. Maybe you thought I was just some typical wiseguy who kept a wife for show and screwed around on the side. Or maybe you were just fucking her to get closer to me. But I loved that woman. I didn’t know about what was happening, but Maxen had photographs and he showed them to me. Phieta was my wife, Jack, and she was running around with you. She didn’t love me anymore, even when you were gone, but I wouldn’t let her go. You know what happened after she took you out of town, to the Farm? She killed herself.”

The entire city seemed silent around me then, as if nothing else happening in it mattered, as if none of it had any bearing on me. All I could do was listen, and keep my gun trained on Vinaldi’s heart.

“After he showed me the pictures, Maxen pumped me with Rapt, and two of his guys took me down to your floor. They stood outside while I went in, and they took
me away when I was finished. I didn’t know until I was actually in your living room that Maxen had deliberately overdosed me. I didn’t know what I was doing, Jack. It was just going to be a clean hit. Then the walls went away and I was back in The Gap and everything happened the way it did.”

My hand was shaking, my finger slick against the trigger. Vinaldi’s chest looked like the biggest target in the world.

“You go back there, don’t you,” I said. “To the seventy-second floor.”

He looked at me. “How do you know that?”

“Some kid I met. He’s seen you standing down by the window.”

Vinaldi’s head dropped. “I can’t remember what happened in there,” he said quietly. “Not most of the time, anyway. Sometimes I dream about it, and when I wake up I go down and stand outside your apartment. You’re right about some things, Jack, and one of them is this: Sometimes you do things which won’t fit in any head. Things which are too big to forget. I gave you a hard time in front of Nearly about you thinking everything’s tainted, but you were right. I tainted my own life, and I don’t even remember doing it All I know is that the shit is there, and that it ain’t ever going away.”

I looked up at his face then, at the muscle twitching in his cheek. All the hate I’d nursed for him came crashing back into my brain, burning the image of his face into utter clarity. I saw his face so clearly that I realized it was my own, and as I started to pull the trigger it was with a feeling of utter relief.

The shot rang out in the darkness.

I let my gun drop, listening to the shallow breaths of a man who’d seen me move my hand at the last minute and fire my bullet into the floor. I stood there a while, until the echoes had died away and left us alone again.

“Why’d you kill Maxen?” I asked. “Because he’d decided he didn’t need you anymore and pulled Yhandim through to take you down? because the guys from The
Gap were whacking your associates and girls? Or because of something else?”

“Jack…” he whispered.

“Get out of here,” I told him.

He stood, like an old man, and walked to the door.

“Good luck,” he said.

“If I ever see you again I’m going to kill you. Understood?”

He nodded once, opened the door and left.

I went into the women’s restroom, removed the panel, and climbed through into the pipe. Then I resealed the exit behind me, in the hope of putting off the inevitable for a little longer. I ran down the ventilation corridor as quickly as I could, ignoring a few bumps and cracks on the head. By then I didn’t seem to have any processing cycles to spare for worrying about a little pain. I was listening to the sound of pieces falling into place, seeing how they changed things and wondering how much difference it made.

But then I heard a faint clang behind me as they located the panel, and the shout from Ghuaji which indicated he’d heard my footsteps as I fled down the chute barely half a mile ahead of them. I hadn’t expected to elude them for long, but their speed was still a shock.

They were good soldiers. I’d lost them but then they’d found me, and now they were going to do their job.

My father only said one thing I admire. “The race isn’t over until everyone’s gone home and you’re left in the stadium by yourself.” He used to say it every time he lost a job. We would generally already be packing to leave for another town, and I never really understood what he meant. Not then, anyhow. But as I ran breathlessly through the dank guts of New Richmond I understood all too well. I played out the game to the last, darting through cross corridors, taking a deliberately bewildering route until I reached the main shaft, then putting my hands and feet on the outside of the ladder so I could slide down the floors as quickly as possible.

But I could still hear their boots thudding toward me, and as I swung off the ladder at ground level I knew the odds were against me. It seemed unfair, somehow, to have come so far, and for it to all come down to this. All I ever wanted was to escape from the noise, to find a little peace. I saw it then, that final moment, as if it had always been ordained. I saw the features of men who didn’t even really know enough to hate me properly, who were simply living out their programming; saw the random expressions on their faces as they crowded around me in those last seconds; felt the channels cut through me like shafts of ice. I saw myself dying in the bowels of New Richmond, and it didn’t seem too bad a way to go; and strangely, in that moment, I felt closer to my dad than anyone else in the world. However badly he fucked up he never gave in, until he chose to give it
all
up.

And then I saw something ahead of me, and the images fled as if they’d never been.

I was staring down the tunnel, half wondering whether I could find some new route, some way which would lead me toward gaps too small to find. I was paralyzed with indecision, my eyes flicking frantically over the smooth metal walls of the duct, when suddenly I realized I shouldn’t be able to see them at all.

There was a tiny light in the distance, like a single candle fluttering in the darkness. As I stared it seemed to come closer, until it was no longer a point but an orange glow. But it wasn’t coming nearer, just getting bigger; it had never been more than yards away.

The glow had a shape inside it. A figure.

I swallowed, feeling as if I had a brick in my throat, and whirled back to face the way I had come. The sound of the men coming down the ladder above told me what I already knew. There was nowhere else to run.

I turned back and stared into the light. It seemed the thing to do. Maybe somebody knew that my time had come, and had arrived to lead me through. I kind of hoped it wouldn’t be Mai. I loved the guy, and hoped I’d
see him sooner rather than later, but I didn’t want to eat noodles for eternity.

At first the figure seemed to be made up of many flickering wings beating in time, but then it started to resolve into solidity. When I saw who it really was my mouth fell open, as if it wanted to help shed some of the tears which were forcing themselves up through my eyes. Something had happened. The birds weren’t insane anymore. My lips trembled so much that when I said her name it was inaudible.

“Suej?”

She smiled, and I saw that the scar on her face had gone. She looked whole, and perfect, and I thought that no one should ever look less beautiful than that.

“We have to be quick, Jack,” she said, but the sounds behind me were forgotten as I noticed that as well as her summer dress she seemed to be wearing a ragged jacket, like those the Gap children wore.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “How did you get out?”

“I found some friends,” Suej said. “We’re making things different. The Gap’s closing. I’m the bridge.” She sounded proud, and serene, and I took a step forward, wanting so much to hug her. She held up her hand to stop me. I stared at it, marveling at the way it exuded light.

“You must go the other way,” she said. “Down to the lowest level.”

“But this is the way out…”

She shook her head. “Go the other way. And something else, Jack…You don’t need Ratchet anymore. You must throw him away.”

“No fucking way,” I said, but she interrupted me with a confidence she’d never had before.

“You
must
Then you have to run. And they told me to tell you this: You did more than you’ll ever know.”

I shook my head, not wanting to go, but her face was firm. It felt as if I were the child, as if she now held some truth to which I could only aspire.