Madlands Read online

  There was more business to take care of, but it would have to wait until morning. The other body was on the only bed in the apartment, and it struck me that it deserved a peaceful rest more than some sharp schmuck like me. I compromised by pulling the pillow out from underneath the other body’s head, and lay down on the floor.

  If I dreamed, I didn’t remember what it was.

  EIGHTEEN

  I DROPPED in on Harrison, still in the body he’d seen me in before. I could have done this bit over the phone, too, but I wanted the pleasure of seeing him plotz at the sight of me.

  The New Moon receptionist must have been in on the word about Trayne being kidnaped—maybe she and Harrison had a thing going, a little corporate pillow talk—because her mouth dropped open a foot or so when I walked in. She buzzed me right on in to Harrison’s office.

  “Jesus Christ!” Harrison jumped up from behind his desk, nearly toppling over his big leather chair. “Trayne—we thought you were . . . we heard that . . .” He came around and grabbed my arm, shoving his wide-eyed face right into mine, as if to verify I wasn’t some kind of hallucination.

  “Yeah, right; I know.” I disengaged myself from his clutch. “I know just what you heard. You got a phone call that said I’d been kidnaped by a bunch of bikers.” I sat down in one of the smaller chairs and sprawled my legs out.

  Harrison looked puzzled. “How do you know about the call?”

  I started to say I made it, then changed at the last second. “I . . . was responsible for it. I had a friend of mine ring you up with that message.” There was no point in complicating Harrison’s head with the truth. A civilian like him wouldn’t have understood, anyway.

  “What the hell for?”

  To dink with your sorry mind. I didn’t say that at all, but just kept silent.

  Harrison was back behind his desk, still shouting away. “Do you have any idea what’s been going on around here? Because of that stupid phone call? The scrambling around we’ve been doing? We sent a team out to your place, and when they reported back that everything checked out, that you were gone and your apartment was all busted up . . . we’ve been trying to throw together a contingency plan, all because we assumed it was true—”

  “You were supposed to assume that. That was the whole reason I had the call made.”

  “For Christ’s sake, why? Trayne—I thought we had a working relationship here.”

  I let out a sigh. “Don’t break your heart over this, Harrison. Everybody loves you as much as they ever did. It’s just that I’ve got my little plans and schemes, and I’m moving them along. You want to have Identrope plugged? Fine—that’s what I’m working on. The phone call to you was all part of that. I wanted the word to get out that I’d been kidnaped. That I was off the scene entirely. And it’s worked. So far the word is pretty solid out on the streets that I’m out of the action for a while. And I’ve checked out what’s been heard up in Identrope’s headquarters. It’s the same thing. As far as Identrope is concerned, his beloved choreographer is gone.”

  Harrison spread his hands out on his desk. “I don’t understand. Why do you want people to think you’ve been kidnaped?”

  A shrug. “I’m not going to be operating as myself. My plans for nailing Identrope call for me to be going around incognito. In disguise. So it helps if people are thinking that the real Trayne is nowhere around.”

  Harrison didn’t look puzzled now; he looked as if he were starting to get pissed. “Would you care to explain a little bit about these plans of yours? A few details about how you’re expecting to pull all this off?”

  I shook my head. “No. You don’t need to know.”

  “Then I’ll tell you something, Trayne.” A big dark storm had settled over his face. “Quite frankly, I think you’ve lost it. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea hiring you. The general perception is that everybody out there in the Madlands is a flake, but—we thought maybe you were the exception. But now I’m beginning to think you’re as screwed up as the rest of them. Trayne—why the hell do you think we wanted to hire you for this little job? Think about it. It’s because you are Trayne. You’ve got privileged access to Identrope. You can waltz in up there anytime you please, in the middle of the night when there’s nobody else around, if you want, and just see him. That was the whole point of your being added to this project. Now what use are you to us? You don’t have any more access to Identrope than the average guy off the street. There’s no way you can get to him now.”

  I tilted my head back and spoke to the blank ceiling. “Well, I think differently. I’ve got my own plans on how to do the job.”

  “Oh? Thinking differently, are we?” Harrison noisily rustled papers on his desk. “I’ll give you some different thinking. Consider yourself unemployed, at least as far as the New Moon Corporation is concerned. You’re not on this job any longer. We’ll find some other way to get done what we need. Using somebody whose brain is bolted down tight.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “What?” Harrison gave me one of those looks. “Trayne—we can do whatever the hell we want. It’s our project. And if we want all flakes overboard, that’s just what we’re going to do. You got me?”

  I shook my head. “You can’t do it. I’ll tell you why. First of all, your legal department is a lot faster and more efficient than is good for you. I checked this morning on our contracts. They’ve already been faxed and registered. That piece of New Moon’s future revenues is in my name already, contingent upon my performing satisfactorily. And it’s a strictly pay-or-play proposition. You try to yank me, it’s all mine and I don’t even have to do shit for it.”

  Harrison went white around the lips. “Contracts are made to be broken.”

  “Yeah, well, that brings us to my second point. Contracts are like eggs, Harrison; if you need a sledgehammer to break one—and you will, I can promise you that—then there’s going to be quite a mess flying around. I got paperwork on you now. On all of New Moon. You try to unhire me, it’s easy enough for me to go public with what you were originally hiring me to do. That’s major bad publicity. Plus whatever legal ramifications; probably have the Feds sniffing around here. Maybe the FCC—killing off your competitors, or your competitors’ programming sources, to be precise, might fall under unfair broadcasting practices. And you could kiss off any notion of actually being able to get Identrope anytime soon. He’d be warned; he’d button up the web and his headquarters so tight you wouldn’t be able to slide a nail file in there.”

  Pieces of Harrison’s face were twitching, as though they were about to fly off like Mr. Potato Head put together on a jelly grenade. “Are you threatening us, Trayne? Because if you are, I can assure you—”

  “Simmer down. Don’t think of it as a threat. Think of it as a prediction. Of all the shit that’s going to come down if you get antsy and start doing stuff you don’t have to bother with. Why get your ass in an uproar, Harrison? When it’s so much easier to just sit back and do nothing. Just let it ride for a little while. The plans I’m pushing along aren’t going to take that much time, for Christ’s sake. A couple days, maybe a week at the most. You’re in such a hurry, you can’t wait that long? Practice a little patience. It’s a virtue, plus you won’t eat out your stomach lining. You might as well give me the play, and see if I pull it off. If I screw it up, then you can go to your Plan B.”

  Harrison’s fury-laden eyes followed me as I stood up. “So help me, Trayne, if you’re screwing around with us . . .”

  “Don’t sweat it. What I need right now is for Identrope not to know where I am. So if you’ll keep a lid on it, about my coming by here, everything will be fine. You’ll see.” I turned and headed for the door.

  I hadn’t told Harrison all my reasons for wanting to disappear. He didn’t need to know that part of my reason for operating on the sly was so I could have a free hand in going about another little investigation of my own.

  I wanted to take a closer look at this whole New Moon
setup. The more I’d thought about them, lying on my back and looking up at one bedroom ceiling or another, the more I’d become convinced there was something hinky about them. I didn’t like the way they seemed to have popped up out of nowhere. They seemed to have some unusually complete sources of information, more than I cared to see anybody working with. With Trayne officially off the scene, I might be able to get a clearer fix on Harrison and his friends.

  On my way out, I winked at the receptionist. Her boss would put a clamp on her revving up the corporate gossip line; she didn’t know that yet. So I still got a smile back from her.

  NINETEEN

  I DIDN’T know where to start—I have the attitude for this sort of thing, but not necessarily the experience—so I drove Geldt’s Hudson back out to the junkyard. That seemed as good a place as any to do a little poke into this whole New Moon business.

  Time was a major consideration for me. I didn’t have a lot of it to screw around with, trying to read out what the real deal with Harrison and his buddies might be. My own plans to off Identrope, of which I had been bragging to Harrison, were my main priority. And the clock was ticking. If I looked into New Moon and the hole suddenly got much wider and much deeper real fast, I might have to curtail my interest to some more leisurely date, if that were to ever arrive. Or just learn to live with not knowing, ignorance being the standard human condition, anyway.

  The Hudson crested a shallow sandy rise, a desert-blown asphalt strip bisecting the hill, and the car’s rocket snout looked down on the military debris. All those bits and pieces of man’s crafty enterprise and death-lust. The sun gleamed off metal like a glaze of luminous syrup.

  I parked where I had before, right on the edge of the ’yard. The Hudson’s tire prints from the previous expedition were still visible in the dust.

  Somebody else was already there. Other than the ’yard rats, whom I expected to come slinking out at any moment for another hit off the shiny chrome and period styling I had come cruising in with. Somebody with a little more substantial claim to any human condition at all. I felt the tug inside my skull, a ripple on our mutually shared wavelength.

  She was hiding, watching me as before. I scanned around the mute landscape. “Okay, Eastern. I know you’re here. Come on out and say hello.”

  “You don’t have to shout.”

  I turned and looked behind me. She was sitting on the Hudson’s fender, her jeans polishing the metal. Her smile congratulated herself for slipping past me like that.

  “Watching me again?” I put a foot up on the bumper.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You’ve gotten to be way above my boredom threshold, Trayne.” She leaned back, palms on the hood’s curve. The residual engine heat seeping through was enough to arch her fingers. “No, I was out here already. Matter of fact, I’m somewhat surprised to see you out this way.”

  “I’m at least half full of surprises these days.”

  “Word is, you’ve been unusually busy. What with getting yourself kidnaped and all. And here you are walking around on the outs already.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected you to buy the kidnap bit.”

  Eastern laughed. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d seen it. I pretty much figured it was some tediously complicated maneuver on your part.”

  “How about doing me a favor and keeping your lip zipped on this one?”

  “I’m not going to blow your cover, Trayne. Not without a real good reason. It’s worth it just for the entertainment value I get out of watching you do this shit.”

  She jumped down from the fender and we started walking farther into the junkyard. A new silence nagged at me: the almost subliminal scratching and scurrying around of the ’yard rats was missing. It usually didn’t take them long before they came swarming around, hidden behind the crumpled banks of ancient metal, their shaggy heads popping out to study any intruders on their world.

  “What’s going on?” I looked around as we walked. “Where are all the regulars?”

  Eastern’s smile pulled on a knowing cast. “The rats? They’re around. I’ve even talked to a couple. But they got a scare thrown in them. Most of them are down in their burrows, just holding their breath.”

  “What scared them?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Several cars, nice new-looking ones from outside the Madlands, and a commuter van with the New Moon logo on the side, were parked in a clear space farther on. That suited me fine—a bunch of the corporation’s employees had apparently turned out for work, tightening screws or whatever on the old wartime satellite. White lab coat types, no doubt. If they ran true to form, they wouldn’t know who I was—tech drones usually kept their heads down and didn’t concern themselves with the front office’s shenanigans. I could ask a few strategic questions and maybe get a little closer to the inside dope on what was happening with their employer.

  The same unbroken silence hung over the area, like a rain cloud painted on glass. I couldn’t hear anybody working or even breathing in the building that Harrison had toured me through. It wasn’t too likely that everyone was taking a coffee break on the other side of the horizon—I didn’t like the nonsound of this.

  Eastern pulled back the big sheet-metal door, ripping the air with the sudden rattling noise. But I had already dug the toe of my shoe into a wet patch by the door’s long sliding track, and the sandy dirt had come up red. A fly with iridescent green behind black hairs—the insect looked large enough to have a name and Social Security number—buzzed away, annoyed at my intrusion, then came back to feed on the sticky fluid. I knew what it was, and knew there would be more inside the building’s darkness.

  I wasn’t wrong. Eastern looked over her shoulder at me, then led me in.

  The white lab coat types were there, just as I’d anticipated. But they weren’t working on the ancient satellite, or fine-tuning the rocket delivery system the New Moon Corporation had smuggled in from Indonesia. They were all sleeping with counselors and kings, facedown in spreading pools of red. The red was wet-shiny, forming mirrors in which the overhead ventilation equipment made little dancing crescents of sunlight. The only sound was the buzzing of other flies, the lucky ones who had found a way in to the great mother lode of fly-feasting. Plenty for everyone.

  “So what do you think?” Eastern’s smile was long gone. “A real mess, huh?”

  “Shit.” The air in the high-ceilinged building felt close and tight as a closet unopened for years. A little knot swelled behind the hinge of my jaw. I didn’t like to see poor bastards like these, who’d never really done much wrong except find themselves in the way of the world’s great sharp-edged gears, get it in the neck. It’s called a slaughterhouse when things as dumb and wide-eyed as cows walk in but don’t walk out. “Any idea what happened here?” I pulled my foot back from a hand outstretched on the bare cement floor.

  “Whatever it looks like.” Eastern had wrapped herself in a cold front, sufficient to make bored-cop sounds. “That’s what happened.”

  “Okay.” I worked to swallow, and the knot became loose and sour. “When did it happen?”

  “Beats me. I got here maybe an hour or so before you came rolling up, and the floral arrangements were all in place. As you see them.”

  I hated that flip crap. It all came from too many bad books and movies, where that sort of thing is considered cute. I should know, I had seen and read most of them, in or out of the archives.

  I went over to the workbench. Harrison’s satellite was still there, with all of its attendant equipment hooked up by black umbilicals. So getting hold of the prize egg hadn’t been the point of this little exercise. If it had been, it wouldn’t have been necessary to kill all the New Moon tech workers—it would have been perfectly easy, and a lot less messy, to lift the satellite out of their hands with just a few threats and a simple show of violence.

  Which meant, if you followed the thread far enough, that killing all these people had been exactly the point. That spoke of a rigorous sys
tem of calculation, one where getting a lot of pawns off the board as quickly as possible was desired.

  I turned back to Eastern. “So why are you here, anyway? Official capacity? Cop business, I mean?”

  She laid the same cool look on me. “Would have been, but I’m not a line cop anymore. I’ve gone over to the private sector.”

  “Yeah? Who with?”

  “Canal Ultime.”

  I expected as much. If she were going to quit the Feds, it would only be to go with somebody just about as big. And CU had undoubtedly made her a good offer. She had the smarts and the experience to do a good job for them.

  “So your new bosses sent you out here?”

  Eastern shrugged. “I’ve got a lot of discretion on how I operate. Long as I don’t fudge my expense account. I came out here because there’s been a lot of rumors floating around about some new communications satellite being worked on. I thought I’d better check it out.”

  “I thought these people were keeping a tighter lid on things than that.”

  “‘These people’ being the New Moon Corporation?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I got some sources in there, too. CU wouldn’t have hired me if I only had the same stuff they did.”

  I pointed a thumb at the spreadeagled bodies. “So Canal Ultime didn’t do this?”

  A shake of her head. “I’d know if they had. No, my outfit’s clean on this one.”

  She wasn’t lying to me. There was enough of our old wavelength on the air for me to read that.

  There was something else I could read, based on long experience and the cold look in her eye. She was only nominally working for Canal Ultime. Like me, once you got past the official, for-public-consumption allegiances, she was out for herself. An independent agent. Unless CU was even smarter—and corporations never are, it’s not part of their nature—they weren’t aware of what a snake they’d clasped to their collective bosom.