It was Friday night and I was at Cagney’s, that seedy cesspool of lowlifes. Fridays was Gangsters ‘n’ Divas Night and the place was heaving with every imaginable asshole in town—small-time crooks, hustlers and jerkoffs with nothing better to do than try to make out like they’re big time. It’s the biggest load of bullshit—if you’re small fry, you’re small fry and all the bravado in the world won’t change that. Let’s face it, a lowlife in their Friday night best is still a lowlife. Holy fuck, what the hell was I doing in this heap-of-shit place? What the hell was I—Cynthia Hemlock—thinking of? I wasn’t kidding nobody. I’d got myself a hot date.
Oh baby, I had to look my best and here I was sitting at the bar, wedged in between two sweaty small-timers, barging into me with their elbows and bellies, shouting real loud some crap about a bank heist you can bet your ass never happened.
“Hey Marv,” said the first waster in his thick Brooklyn accent as I moved my arms clear of their spilled booze. “I heard you was afraid to pull the trigger. Yeah, you heard the cops were comin’ and you shit yourself.”
“You been listenin’ to Larry, you dumb fuck,” said the second. “He don’t know shit. I tell you, I shot the fucker—straight between the eyes, never saw it coming.”
“You lyin’ asshole,” said the first one. “You couldn’t shoot craps, even if they were floatin’ round the bowl.”
The laughter disappeared into the sweat. I wanted to puke right over them, so they’d shut the fuck up, but they carried on, trying to impress anyone who might be listening. Maybe those skimpily dressed divas were listening, but then so what? They were too dumb to realize it was all shit, too dumb to do anything but giggle away in high-pitched bunny voices every time some jerkoff flapped their dick at them. Man, I had to get away just to preserve my sanity. Yeah, I might have been invisible for all the notice I got, all nothing-foot-nothing of me. If it wasn’t for my flame-red hair, nobody would have even known I was there. But it wasn’t them I was there for, the bums.
My date was the one real big shot in this joint, the one guy who could make my heart flutter. But as I sat there and waited, I was like, “Geez, has he stood me up?” I was mad—I mean, real mad. If he’d made me come here for nothing, if he’d left me here all by myself to listen to these assholes with their bullshit stories and bullshit sweat…. I could feel myself melt. Hell no. I could never be mad with him: he didn’t know he’d got a date, but when he saw me in my tight-fitting little sweater, no way could he resist. Oh boy, it would be like the movies. Please, please, he had to come. Now I was getting worried.
I bought some crummy drink to pass the time and moved away from the bar, listening to the drone of the retro-sax music. Too bad. I looked at the android musicians’ white plastic faces. I was right out of luck— they’d finished their last tune. Then, I saw him. Behind a gaggle of dancers, looking like he’d stepped right out of the silver screen. Nice Guy. Hot Shot. Mr. Big. Jimmy Lorenzo. He hadn’t stood me up! I stood up in a daze, my ears still ringing and my heart…. Geez, it was pounding like it was gonna burst out of my goddam ribcage, and he was looking at me with real big come-to-bed eyes.
“Hey sugar lips,” he said in his deep raspy voice, “come give papa a kiss.”
And that was it. I was walking toward him, all dolled up like some two-bit floozy straight out of grade school, everyone around him parting to let me through. I looked at him, dark double-breasted suit, two-tone shoes, his jet-black hair slicked back, and Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy—I felt like I was part of the flick. It was me and him alone. He was looking deep into my eyes, putting his arms all over me: my arms, my back, my ass, stroking his finger down my cheek, kissing me with his eyes, making me feel like a Hollywood star.
“I seen you all alone and that won’t do,” he said.
“Gee Jimmy,” I said, my voice going high-pitched, “I sure am pleased to see you.”
“Heeeeeey, ain’t that cute?” He laughed. “What’s your name, sweet lips?”
“Cynthia.”
“Cynthia. Sweet Cynthia.”
He held me close and pressed his lips against mine. One moment, a lifetime. I pulled the blade out from between his ribs and watched him fall to his knees with that stunned look like they always do. I spun round and dropped both his henchmen with single shots to the head. You should have seen their faces. Schmucks! The place went silent, the small-time hoods looking like they were gonna poop their pants.
“Licensed Operative Hemlock,” I yelled, flashing my badge. “Law enforcement.”
There was a brief murmur and the club went back to normal, the android musicians quickly striking up a lively number. I fired off a photo ID of Lorenzo’s bloated dead face back to the Case Office, blew him a kiss and left. Sweet Cynthia? Sugarlips? The asshole never stood a chance.
I decided I’d had enough of lowlifes for one evening, so I beat it. I had nothing to do, so I flew my shitbag car to the nearest skyport and took the express to the Night Zone: the same shitty journey with the same dumb-fuck Addicts, staring into space like they left their brains behind in the godbox. Outside, it was the same, too: ugly geodesic domes and battered skyscrapers that hadn’t seen a repairman since they were first built. Then, there were the ads—Faithcorp, Faithcorp, Faithcorp—plastered all round town so you couldn’t miss ’em. And it was raining. Real pouring down, turning to hail and battering the train windows, trying to remind you it’s there the whole time, like you hadn’t noticed. What a life, I thought, spending my whole goddam time pretending to like assholes just so I could kill ’em. Hell, it was shit, sure, but it paid well—real well: market prices for hits were through the roof, real booming. You could say the market for death was the only part of the economy that showed any signs of life. It was a good place to be if you were good at killing, not bad if you were average. Okay, so it wasn’t so great if you were the one getting whacked, but hey, that wasn’t my problem.
I looked outside at the green, red and gold lights flashing in the distance, then back inside at the brain-dead Addicts with their gaping mouths and spaced-out faces, desperate for their next hit. Hell, why did I never get the interesting cases? I mean, I was making a living killing scum like Lorenzo; I might as well have been on a turkey shoot. And, when I saw those sky-high prices, I felt a big sigh. Here I was taking out small-time hoods when I could be whacking the big shots. I had the smarts, I had the ambition, so why was I stuck with dicks like Lorenzo? I looked at the Faithcorp ads with their slick salesmen promising guaranteed spiritual bliss. That was where the real action was—and that was where they didn’t want me going. I let out another sigh, so big you could have heard it right across the whole goddam city, if everyone wasn’t so damned spaced out. Why was I stuck with the small fries? I knew why. Hell, did I know why. Miss, this ain’t no job for a lady.
The express slid into the train bay as the auto-voice announced, “Night Zone.” I stepped out into the rising steam and loud music blaring from the bars and casinos. It wasn’t my scene—too full of assholes—but, let’s face it, that was everywhere. At least the coffee was good. Business was slow with the big nightclubs—Future Noir, Boozy Floozy and Gold Digger—lots of noise and bright lights, but nobody going in. Even the advertising blimp wasn’t making much effort and I kind of liked it that way. I took a coffee from the self-serve automator outside Gio Ponti’s night-bar and sat down under one of its fraying red parasols, with no-one to bother me, except its twenty-four-hour news screen.
“Today,” said the gray-haired anchor-man, “Sunset Industries closed its doors, leaving 120,000 people without a job and the Rustbelt with an uncertain future.”
I put my coffee down and looked to the sky. Call that news? Why the fuck did anyone bother listening? So, the Rustbelt was sinking. It was sinking when they first built it and will be sinking when the universe ends. Big deal. We’ll be sitting in front of the Big Idiot on Judgment Day and we’ll still be hearing from those usual disgruntled jerkoffs about how their stupid, dumbass job was everything and how they’d been left on the scrapheap of life. What a load of shit. In work, out of work—it’s a tough world, and if you’re lucky enough to get born, it’s guaranteed you’re gonna die. Hell, there ain’t gonna be nobody around in the end to give a shit anyway, and suckers like that don’t get it. Attach too much importance to what don’t count and you end up an Addict, spending the rest of your days staring into nothingness with a dumb look on your face, your brain way-out, craving the godbox. The Rustbelt was bullshit. It wasn’t the real story. Didn’t these so-called newsmen know that three more Faithcorp managers got whacked today? Didn’t they know there was a guerrilla war between Faithcorp and the traditional religions? Hell no. The news never told us the real shit. As for who the Trads’ mysterious new leader was—the real guy behind these killings—nobody would say: not the news, not what passed for officialdom and sure as hell not my boss. It was like pretending he didn’t exist would make him go away. I knew, but then I knew a lot of things I shouldn’t have. In my job, if you didn’t have your smarts, you were fucked.
I was about to settle into my coffee when this envelope came flying across the table, knocking the cup over and spilling hot coffee all over my lap. Goddam! It hurt!
“Asshole,” I shouted. “You wanna watch where you throw your shit.”
I looked up. Salem Horthy was standing the other side of the table grinning at me like he’d been jerking off. I looked at his rotating bow tie and I felt this hatred like I always did whenever I saw him. “Asshole” wasn’t the word. Horthy was a grade A dick and complete loser: a wiry, smirking deadbeat who leered and sneered and only ever got where he was ’cos he knew how to kiss asses. Yeah, Horthy loved kissing ass and was a real expert, getting his tongue right up there to clean out every last piece of shit, like he knew asses would be all he’d ever get to kiss. But what really pissed me off was the way he thought he was better than me, like he was smarter, sharper, more ruthless. Like fuck he was. He was just a Lorenzo without the looks—and on my side.
“Check it out,” he said in this fake gruff voice.
“Aww, how cute,” I said. “Have you been sucking Jarcel’s dick again?”
He gave me this real stupid look, which made me think he had, and I opened the envelope. Just like Horthy, there was nothing inside it.
“Boss wants to see you,” he said.
I’d taken the express, so I had no choice but to go to the Case Office in Horthy’s stinking vehicle and that pissed me off some more. Bigger, faster, more luxurious than my useless little shitbag; why was it that this useless asshole got all the good shit? What the fuck did Jarcel see in him? It would all end bad. The tiniest bit of seniority and it had gone to Horthy’s head. The asshole knew he could lord it over me and spill my coffee—and that was just now. I held my nose, clambered over whatever half-eaten crap he had left over in his car and sat down. All the time, I could see him leering at me, not even bothering to hide it, looking up and down my legs, checking out my ass, rubbing his hands up and down the inside of his thighs, then grabbing his cock. I looked away in disgust and plugged my electrodes in, listening to the downbeat sound of electro-blues, but I could see him, right there, in the corner of my eye, lusting and smirking and making it so goddam obvious. What I wouldn’t have given for a contract on the creep’s life.
Dwaint Jarcel was waiting at the back of his office, leaning against a bashed-up metal filing cabinet smoking two cigarettes at once, like he was running out of time to give himself lung cancer. A pile of disposable credits sat on his crappy old desk next to a half-empty bottle of whiskey and bundles of papers that hadn’t moved in years. He took one look at Horthy and spat his smokes out half-finished.
“Make yourself scarce, Horthy,” he said, and the creep did just that.
Jarcel’s face lit up and he turned to me.
“Hey Cynthia. That was some great work whacking Mr Nice Guy. If I liked you, I’d call you ‘baby’.”
“But you don’t,” I said.
“No,” he grinned. “I love you. Sit down, baby.”
He threw himself in his seat and put his arms behind his head so I could see the patches of sweat on his shirt. And he just sat there, grinning away like he hadn’t a goddam care. Then he smiled at me in that weird way of his. Not like Horthy, nothing like Horthy. It was kind of like he thought I was some old pal he could chat with, like we got all the time in the world. But I hadn’t got time and he wasn’t my friend. Jarcel wasn’t a creep like Horthy. I’d even say he was a pussycat, only he wasn’t. Like me, he was a Licensed Operative—a contract killer registered to work for the state. Unlike me, he was a real old-timer who’d gone soft and become a timeserver, the kind of jerk who knew how to protect himself and let everyone else go hang. There’s nothing certain in life, he’d say, ’cept death and taxes: the government deals with the taxes and I do the other stuff. Yeah right, Jarcel. People like him never killed anything but time. They just sat around their offices, shuffling papers, knowing the system inside out and making sure they landed on their feet. A complete waste of space, in other words. Just like everything else round here.
I was just about ready to get up and leave when he looked at me from across his desk with a serious expression. He wasn’t drunk and he almost looked happy, which was unusual when he was sober.
“Here, you deserve it.” He chucked me the bounty money, all in disposable credits.
I counted it up.
“It’s all there, Cyn, I don’t short-change no one.”
“I don’t trust no one, neither,” I replied, mimicking his voice.
He laughed and lit up another two cigarettes. He slumped back in the seat behind his desk and closed his eyes, enjoying the moment.
“You know, I could have gone to any number of Licensed Operatives and they’d never have even got close. But you? You’s something else.” He took a puff of one cigarette, then the other, with a satisfied smile. “You do it with such style.”
“So why do you give all the good shit to Horthy. The guy’s a—”
“Horthy may be a creep.” Jarcel cut me off. “But he’s good at his job. Real good. Better than you think.”
He puffed again then looked at me with that strange Jarcel smile, which I didn’t like.
“I got something good for you.”
He handed me a blue plastic box with a bright yellow button and an electrode port: a self-speaking message. I plugged in my electrodes and this synthetic voice started speaking inside my head.
“Wanted,” it said, real solemn, “Father Marlon Speakeasy. Officially, a parish priest, formerly based in New York City; in reality, spiritual leader of the United Religious Front, padre to the terrorist Godly Resistance Army.”
“Says who?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to answer that question,” the voice replied.
It needn’t have bothered replying. I knew already. Even the dumbest of the dumb would have known.
“What are they paying?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Please restate your question.”
“What’s in it for me, shit-face?”
“For you, should you accept this case, Faithcorp offers you a personal journey of self-discovery, a voyage to spiritual enlightenment, a glimpse of the beyond, the world beyond heaven and hell, the transcendental reality, the numinous, the—”
I took my electrodes off.
“You offered this to Horthy?”
“He didn’t want it. The asshole told me it was a heap of shit.”
“What about the three Faithcorp managers who got whacked. What have you got on them?”
“Who told you about that?”
“The whole goddam street knows, Jarcel. Don’t tell me you gave it to Horthy.”
“I won’t then—baby.” He let out a little laugh and poured himself another whiskey. “You can forget the spiritual bullshit. They’s offerin’ cash equivalent.”
“I’ll take it,” I said.
Jarcel smiled.
“I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
He took this great satisfied puff, sitting back in his chair like he’d done something great.
“Hey Jarcel,” I said, “I didn’t say I was happy. This Speakeasy guy is small fry and I’m up to here with small fry. I’m sick of being held back. You know I’m good. I can do more. What about those dead managers?”
He poured me a coffee and nodded to the screen on his wall. Three stiffs in three different parts of town, black shoes poking out from beneath the same red and white street-blankets.
“Hit-and-run attacks, all this morning. They’s gettin’ good, Cyn.”
“The Trads may be crazy, Jarcel, but they’re people like anyone else. They can be beaten. It’s not like these three are anything special. Why did you give Horthy the case?”
“You’s good, Cyn,” he said. “Too good. You think you’s real smart going above my head to Centcom, don’t you? They like you, Cyn, they like you a whole damned lot and that’s what worries me. You should listen to me, Cyn. They’s a den of thieves, a real viper’s nest.”
His voice trailed off and he looked at me real scared, like his whole worthless career was hanging by a thread. The dumb sap looked so damned scared I had to laugh.
“You’re one pathetic piece of shit, Jarcel. I go out and shoot bad guys for a living and you sit there scared of those useless dummies at Centcom. They’re your bosses. Big deal. Those pen pushers wouldn’t know a bad guy if he fucked them up the ass. Hell, the most dangerous thing those filing cabinets face is whether they’ve got cookies to go with their coffee. They need us; they need us real bad, and we’ve got them by the balls, but you just sit there. Face it Jarcel, you gave up. You’ve become a timeserver like them: more scared of pens and paper than baddies.”
Jarcel sat there real quiet, knowing I was right, knowing he was a goddam timeserver right down to his crappy old boots, but I wasn’t going to leave it there.
“Let’s cut the crap,” I said, standing up, “Centcom ain’t the issue. Why do you give the good shit to Horthy?”
“Cynthia, Cynthia, Cynthia,” he said, looking at me in this real knowing way. “This Speakeasy guy ain’t no small fry. He’s—what d’ya call it—one of those funny cases only you get. One of those int-o-lect-u-al cases.”
He spelled out every single syllable and spoke to me in this pretentious voice and I could have sworn he was mocking me, but you never know with Jarcel. He was smiling at me again.
“You’s too young to be world weary. Tell me, why you in this business, Cyn?”
“What do you care?” I poured myself a whiskey and looked at him real harsh. “I don’t do it for you, I don’t do it for those jerkoffs at Centcom, I don’t even do it for the money.”
“So, what do you do it for?”
I was about to answer, but the image of my old philosophy tutor Professor Milton Schiefner barged its way into my head. Damn that asshole! Why did I always see his old face scolding me? Why did he make me feel afraid? I never felt afraid. Goddam! I could see Jarcel laughing at me. The useless fool knew what I was going to say. What else could I say?
“For the philosophy,” I said.
He creased up with laughter, rolling around and slapping his sides. His cigarettes fell onto the floor.
“Man, it cracks me up every time. When have you ever had an original thought?”
“Yeah. And what do you know about anything, Jarcel? Don’t laugh at what you don’t understand.”
“Hey baby, now that ain’t fair.”
He looked serious for a moment, then fell about laughing again. I felt like pistol-whipping his stupid face for a second. Then I kind of felt sorry for him. Then I walked out onto the roof terrace.
I stood up there on my own, looking out onto the city nightscape, getting soaked in the rain. What a goddam mess, a post-industrial wreckage of beat-up towers, tacky advertisements, and swarms of cars hustling for position in the three dimensions. Somehow everything looked so different from the roof terrace, like some great demon had dropped bits of city from the sky to create the most god-awful place. I watched the people rushing around, this way, that way, up and down, like it was one giant factory producing misery, no fucker ever getting a moment’s rest. What a shit old world it was. The factory was always open and the workers always busy. And when I saw those sad little figures manically rushing this way and that, it was like there was some meaning to it all, only I didn’t get it.
Would I ever figure it out? Hell, if I ever got the time. A procession of penitents and flagellants marched past at ground level, shrieking that Faithcorp was the devil.
“Repent! Repent!” the penitents cried as the flagellants whipped themselves into a frenzy. “Satan is loose, the apocalypse is upon us.”
The wackos disappeared round the corner and the place went quiet. Man, even if I worked out the meaning of life, I’d never understand these guys. All I knew was this fiery preaching was the work of the United Religious Front—the Trads’ political wing—and it was everywhere as they tried to scare folk and reclaim them from the godbox. Hell, they might have been wacko, but they were seriously bad news. These guys were behind all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the End Times—and they were the reason Faithcorp wanted Speakeasy dead.
Faithcorp. I looked again at the gigantic black hulk looming all across the horizon, with its huge logo—a large yellow circle with a smaller white circle peeping out behind it at the top—and illuminated letters F A I T H C O R P repeated at regular intervals. I don’t know why, but there was something about that place that made me feel uneasy—I mean real uneasy. It just sat there, brooding away beneath that pitch-black sky, whether it was day or night, defended behind endless neon lights and ads for the godbox, each one with the same dumb strapline, “Religitech—the Future of Faith.” What the hell went on in there? How had one corporation amassed so much power? And what the hell had happened to its founder, the great Julia Greengage, who nobody had ever seen? I looked at the man on the ads, who was standing by a capsule holding a crash helmet, smiling the most stupid, dumbass smile you ever saw, and lined him up with my fingers. Personalized spiritual experiences? Bang! Maybe I’d branch out into sniping.
“It sure is one ugly dump.” Jarcel had crept up behind me.
“It’s a target-rich environment,” I replied, firing another imaginary shot. “We’ll never be short of work.”
“I’ve known you for a long time now, Cyn. Wha’s up?”
I stopped. I didn’t like that comment. It was true, Jarcel had known me for a long time, and he’d got to know me a bit better than I liked. I thought about telling him to poke his nose out of my business, but then I’d kind of got to know him, too.
“What’s the point of this, Jarcel?”
“I don’t follow.”
He looked serious, like he’d done with laughing. I didn’t get it. Jarcel had been around a long time and knew the score, so what did he care? He was no intellectual. He was too lost in playing the system to protect his stupid job to see there was anything more. Anyone who disagreed was just some kind of smart-ass.
“Take the Lorenzo case,” I said. “Loads wanted Lorenzo dead and now the asshole’s croaked, so what? Some other fucker will take his place and others’ll want him dead, too, and on and on it goes, like everything else in this shitty world. There’s no point to this shit.”
“It’s work, Cyn,” he said. “Some folk don’t got that.”
“But I didn’t join up to kill losers. We’ve got to get the big guys, the generals, the criminals in fancy suits. If we don’t do that, we’ll never have real law and order.”
He gave me this mock-sympathetic look and patted me on the shoulder.
“Don’t feel too bad, Cyn. It’s the same for all of us. Times ain’t too good and we got to make our livin’ somehow. You’s right; you’s good, so make the goddam most of it—and stop askin’ so many questions.”
“Quit trying to be my dad,” I said, but it came out all crummy and I felt real dumb.
I wandered back home, real slow, down the shit-ass alleyway that led from Jarcel’s office to the main drag. Trashcan after trashcan heaped against moldy brick walls and burned-out streetlights patched up so they didn’t fall over; every goddam bum and Addict was there, lying in their own piss, groaning and calling out to each other, like they were back in boxland.
“Mother God, dear spiritual Earth-Mother, come swallow my balls,” one cried out, holding onto a trashcan like his life depended on it.
“O God, O God, I am the universe, I am the omega beyond the infinite, I am God Number One,” cried out another, his eyes screwed up real tight as he pissed his pants.
Man, was this what the godbox reduced people to? It made me sick. Stupid bums, thinking they could opt out of reality and spend their whole goddam lives in boxland, filling their heads with bullshit while the world around them turned to shit. You could pretend you lived in paradise all you wanted, but it would always be bullshit. Just because it was a shitty world didn’t mean there was an alternative. Hell, only tough action out here in the real world would achieve anything. So, why did I do this shit? Goddam, I had the smarts to bring some justice to this corrupt, stinking place and I wasn’t going to be held back—not by Jarcel, not by anyone.
I entered my apartment and watched the rain beat down against the Fenster Building opposite. Was there any point? Who knows, maybe the End Times really were coming: Faithcorp wanted the Trads dead and the Trads wanted Faithcorp dead, and hell, they both might succeed. I poured myself a vodka. And here I was chasing Father Marlon Nobody. Ah fuck. I could have said no, but Jarcel’d only find some other cheap way to keep me from the big cases. Well, fuck him. In this game, you don’t make yourself dependent on no one. Jarcel had become so obsessed with making ends meet that he’d lost his drive. He didn’t see it, Horthy couldn’t see it, but I could. There comes a time when the drive to take on life and shove it back up its own ass goes cold, when you can’t take it anymore, carrying on all washed up, hoping nobody don’t notice. Then that goes cold, too, and you’re finished. That’s what had happened to Jarcel and it wasn’t going to happen to me.
All the same, he was too experienced not to notice that something was wrong. He knew there was something bad in the air, and whatever crap he said about Horthy, he knew he wasn’t the person to deal with it. Call it guile, call it deception, but I say a killer’s got to have charm as well as smarts. People believe in illusions, so you feed them their illusions. Then, they go down thinking they won big when they breathed their last, just like Lorenzo. Ruthlessness plus charm equals me, and Jarcel was, like every other fucker, underestimating me: sweet little Cyn, the chick with the flame red hair. Well, let him, the dumb sap. I always got what I wanted and there was one case I wanted more than anything, the case nobody was offering. Something bad was going on inside Faithcorp, something that had got the Trads jumpy and triggered all this talk of the End Times. People could call me “sweet” all they liked; something happened to Julia Greengage and I was going to find out what, whether they liked it or not.
But first, I had to find a way in. Father Marlon would have to wait; I was going to speak to my old buddy, Drexel Reinhardt. I was going to Centcom.
