Buying Time

  “But I’ve been on the cube a lot.”

  “Without the face, people won’t recognize the voice. It’s real white bread, you don’t mind me saying. Might be different if you had a funny way of speaking or a strong regional accent.”

  “Okay. How long does it take?”

  “Hour. Then another hour for the local anesthetic to wear off.”

  “Eighty grand for two?”

  She cocked her head at me. “You want it done twice?”

  “I mean a package deal. I have a woman with me; they’re after her, too.”

  “Anything special about her?”

  I smiled. “Oh yes.”

  “That’s not what I mean. If she’s seven feet tall or weighs three hundred pounds, we’re in a whole different category.”

  “No. She is beautiful, in a classic Mediterranean way. Like Enrica del Vecchio.”

  “Beauty’s easy to fix.” That gave me a little chill. “Is she also a public figure, at all?”

  “No; in fact, she’s been a recluse for … many years. But we have to assume the people who’re after me will recognize her.”

  “Okay. Eighty thousand?” She thought for a moment. “Slow day. I guess so.”

  I took one of the packages of bills out of the bag I was carrying, broke the plastic, counted out twenty, and gave her the remainder. “Must not take you long to make your million.”

  “Almost a year, actually.” She quickly counted them out in piles of ten. “Lots of overhead. Protection and all.”

  Satisfied, she stacked the bills together and rolled them into a thick wad, with which she pointed to a door. “You go in there and shower, put all your stuff in the safe. The guns you were carrying ought to be in there by now. Ever kill anybody?”

  “Day before yesterday.”

  “Jesus. Well, I won’t tell you your business.”

  “It’s not my regular business. Any advice is welcome.”

  “Get rid of that hog-leg. The crowdpleaser. I don’t know any more about guns than the next cosmetic surgeon, but I know that that one’s a death warrant. It’s good out to four or five feet, then nothing, right?”

  “Guess so. I’ve only used it once.”

  “This town’s full of people who’ll stand six feet away and shoot you between the eyes, just to be cute. I mean it.”

  “Point well taken. I’ll hide the thing.”

  “Good.” She patted me on the shoulder. “I need repeat customers. You go get cleaned up and we’ll freeze your face.”

  The only person who knew me in both incarnations was Dr. Wolf herself. I never passed the receptionist again and the pair who dressed and coached me, Jules and Julie, only saw me after the implants and skin dye.

  From Anglo-Saxon to Mediterranean in two hours. I had olive skin and a force-grown moustache, generous but neatly trimmed, meeting salt-and-pepper sideburns that ran all the way down the line of my jaw. Long dark hair parted on the side, which felt odd but was obviously right. Lifts in my shoes made me walk rather forward, on the balls of my feet, and added an inch to my height. White raw silk business suit, more obviously expensive than I would choose to wear, also right. They tried to get me to smoke a long, slender cigar, but it made me sneeze. Lost the habit a century ago; the craving, maybe thirty years later.

  Julie spent half an hour coaching me with makeup. For at least a week, I’d have to cover up bruises on cheekbones and chin, where the tractors and pressors were inserted. After that I would use less, but to stay in character I should always have a little bit of powder. Cassius “Cash” Donato, my papers said I was. American, fortunately. I felt about as Italian as a hamburger pizza.

  Looking in the mirror was disturbing. The reflection really was a total stranger; she’d even changed the color of my irises, to black. The small tractors that drew up the skin of my cheeks were resting on my cheekbones, their bulk giving my face a triangular aspect that didn’t look too handsome. The two chin pressors created a dimple line and forced both sides of my chin out a centimeter or so.

  As the anesthetic wore off, it felt as if someone with an impossibly light touch had a hand on each cheek, pushing slightly in and up. Jules said I wouldn’t notice it after a couple of days. It also felt as if I had been punched in the face three times, but they gave me a pill for that.

  I went back to Friendly Mike’s and the fat man didn’t recognize me, or he concealed it well, while I bought a stinger with an ankle holster and a six-pack of shatterguns, one-shot. When I bought six shells for the crowdpleaser, he gave me a curious look and said, “Two in one day.”

  I went back to the motel and took the steps two at a time. Put the card in the door and slammed into a wall of pain.

  Having been hit by a stinger twice before, I knew what was happening and what to do. Don’t move a muscle. Be over in ten minutes or so. Don’t panic. People panic and die of shock, in agony.

  Stinger’s a neurological weapon that has something to do with the skeleton. Anything you do that changes the angle between two bones makes the joint between them fire up. The greater the change in angle, the more pain.

  Shallow breathing a constant ache. The small adjustments necessary to stay upright made a sparkle of twinges in knees, pelvis, shoulders, back, neck.

  Last time it happened, I let myself fall over, thinking it would be easier to not move if I were lying down. The pain of falling wasn’t worth it. My attackers were also unnecessarily rough, emptying my pockets.

  (They had shoved me around and laughed at my trying not to cry out, which cost them. They didn’t know who they were robbing. I tracked them down through some lowlife friends and had their hands and knees broken, shattered with a steel pipe.)

  Of course I knew it wasn’t hitters this time. My own stupidity. There was Maria, half hidden behind the easy chair, stinger raised to fire again. No. It’s me.

  “No,” I said, keeping my jaw clenched. “Don’t! It’s me, Dallas.”

  She threw down the stinger. “Of course it is!” She ran toward me.

  “Don’t touch.” She stopped; I’d told her about the weapon’s effects. “Okay. Take out the needle. Help me lie down.” The short needle that contained the stinger juice was marked with a length of fluorescent orange thread.

  She thought I meant lie down on the bed, and that was painful. Strong woman, though, to carry a rigid man my size ten, ouch, twelve steps. She spent a few minutes at first repeating how sorry she was and how effective the disguise was, and then just waited with her hand resting lightly on my shoulder.

  It wears off all at once, like a wave of sparks unrolling from the scalp and toes to the chest and radiating out. I sat up slowly and rubbed at the stiffness. “You did right. I should’ve called.”

  “I saw you running up and thought … I didn’t know what to think. Just remembered that … man in the taxi.”

  She looked like she was getting ready to cry. I pulled her over to me. “Yeah. You did right.”

  She extricated herself, not crying, and helped me off with my jacket. “Lie down, I’ll rub your back.” I did, gratefully. “You know, I’ve always hired people to do that sort of thing, protettori. If you want me to go armed, you’ll have to be more careful about surprising me.”

  “Right. Won’t give you any hand grenades.”

  “I’m serious.” Her fingers dug in hard. “You can’t know how I’m going to act because I don’t know how I’m going to act.”

  “That’s why the stinger’s good. You can shoot first and explain yourself later. Or be in the next county by the time it wears off and they call the police.”

  I told her a little about Dr. Wolf; her appointment was in forty-five minutes. We would meet back here and go out for dinner. I would not shoot her as she came in the door. She told me to get some sleep and left. I had to call her back; she’d forgotten the stinger.

  I really felt like relaxing in a hot tub, but didn’t want to go through the trouble of reapplying the makeup. Then realized I could use the practice, whi
le it was still fresh in my memory.

  Told the tub medium-hot with bubbles and got a beer out of the refrigerator, nine dollars American. I laid out all the armament on the vanity and undressed the strange dark body. Set a shattergun on the edge of the tub. If anyone came through the door I would take out him and the door, and part of the wall, and whoever was behind him. You can’t reload a shattergun, but neither can you miss.

  Slid into the soapy water and asked for classical music. Predictably familiar Brahms. The bubbles were odd, not like soap at all, but a kind of long-lasting slippery foam. I remembered an ad for the stuff, sexy to some people. It would wash off in the shower.

  Leafed through What’s On?, a promotional magazine describing the island’s various attractions. A casino where you have to be in costume or naked. An underwater brothel. A raw-meat restaurant, guaranteed fresh and free of parasites, Try Our Caveman Special. Maybe not.

  I was dozing, magazine drowned under the weirdly permanent layer of bubbles, when Maria came back. I heard the door squeak and shouted that I was in the tub. She didn’t answer; feeling foolish, I picked up the shattergun, getting suds all over it. Hiding it. She opened the bathroom door.

  “Nice.” Good disguise; she was still beautiful, but black. Helmet of short frizzy hair. She smiled, and I noticed three things simultaneously:

  Her teeth were different. Why?

  She was shorter. How?

  Her right hand was hidden by the doorjamb. It appeared with a pistol. My thumb twitched.

  There was a deafening explosion and she disappeared in a cloud of smoke and debris. I scrambled to get out of the tub, slipped and cracked my forehead on the faucet, managed to stay conscious. Groped through the dust and smoke for the crowdpleaser and another shattergun.

  I stood there in the ringing silence for long seconds, dripping, expecting to die. But there was nobody else. All over the living room, blood sucked up plaster dust, turning into brown clay. On the floor, intestines and liver and one whole lung rendered starkly diagrammatic by the dust, like a brutal sculpture. Feet still in shoes, jagged shinbones sticking out. Behind the couch I found the biggest piece: head, shoulders, and one intact arm, still holding the pistol. Her eyes had exploded and an impossible length of tongue lolled in the dust. I staggered back almost to the toilet and vomited.

  The shattergun doesn’t have a projectile as such. Shaped like a saucer with a handle, you aim it in the unfriendly direction and press the button, and it launches a pattern of ten or a dozen little bombs, shaped charges. They go about a foot and explode, making an expanding hemispherical shell of hypersonic turbulence that’s devastating indoors. Mine had little stickers on them warning the stupid-but-rich NOT FOR USE IN VACUUM.

  Most places, if you blew someone into dirty shreds with the sound of a spaceship exploding, you might draw some attention. In the Conch Republic people had more interesting things to do.

  The police eventually showed up, moving with understandable caution. By then I was dressed, glad we’d left the suitcases closed. They used a shouter and requested that I come through the door with my hands on my head. I did. The door itself was down on the other side of the parking lot, splintered and bowed slightly with the pressure of the shock wave, blood slick on one side.

  “Anybody else in there?”

  I couldn’t see who was talking or where he might be hidden. “No. Not alive.”

  “How many dead?”

  “Just one. Woman tried to kill me.”

  “Yeah, pal. That’s what they all say.” Two men and a woman, in heavy armor, appeared from behind parked floaters. They advanced on me with heavyweight lasers. Aiming lights danced on my chest.

  One had lieutenant’s bars. “Self-defense, eh? You know her?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  He climbed up the steps while the other two stayed below. Gestured me back into the shambles.

  “This is what’s left of her.” I showed him the thing behind the couch.

  “Oh yeah, Jesus. Sally Murchison.” He looked at me sideways. “You Mafia?”

  “What?”

  “No offense, just that Sally comes pretty high. Came. She had a sort of bug up her butt about the Mafia, though.” He spoke into his ring. “This is Freeman on that seven-twelve. Let’s get a meat wagon with a Delta Echo team. And a shovel.” His face went blank, listening. “No judge, no. Self-defense. Check for a bond under Murchison.

  “No prob about Sally,” he said to me. “Business is business. But somebody’s got to pay for the room.” He looked around critically. “You couldn’ta used a pistol.”

  “Bad shot.” That wasn’t true.

  “Yeah.” He took out a pad of forms. “Name.”

  “I don’t have to tell you, do I?”

  “Huh-uh. You can get shot resisting arrest, too.”

  I tried to remember my new name and drew a total blank. I handed him my passport.

  “Cassius, eh? Lean and hungry look?”

  I nodded. “People call me Cash.”

  “Yeah? Gonna call you Broke after this.” He copied the name and passport number onto the pad. “Got a damage evaluation team comin’ out with the hearse. Might be smart if you settle with the innkeeper soon as you get a number. Then fade real fast. Whoever’s after you can afford the best. Price of Sally, they could have fifty meatbrains walkin’ around with your picture in their pocket. Maybe they do.”

  He looked down at the gruesome mess and smiled. “Sally, she was one hell of a party girl. Off duty, y’know. She liked cops.” There was a tiny chime sound. He put a finger to his ear and nodded. “You’re in luck. Whoever hired Sally posted a damage bond. Plenty to cover this.”

  He handed back my passport. “Maybe you want a souvenir?” He held up the pad.

  “How much?”

  “Five grand and I tear it up. Ten, and the record shows we carried you out with Sally.”

  “This is an expensive town.”

  He shrugged. “Make it eight. Eight, and you’re covered all the way to the incinerator.”

  “As Cash Donato?”

  “Whatever name you registered under. Gotta keep the computer happy.”

  “Harry Morris Williams.” That was the name on the passport Cleta had conjured for me.

  I took out my fat wallet and counted eight from the thick stack of K’s.

  He watched with interest and accepted the money thoughtfully, then gave me the two pages off the top of the pad. “Maybe for another ten I could find out who hired her.”

  “Thanks anyhow. I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “Guess you would.” He turned his back. “Better fade.”

  I strapped on the ankle holster and shoveled the rest of the artillery into my suitcase. Lugged both bags down to the sidewalk and called Dr. Wolf’s office from a public phone. Left a message for the “current female client” to wait outside for Cash to pick her up. Waved at cabs for a couple of minutes. The hearse, a black unmarked van, floated up and parked under the blown-out room. Two men came out, one carrying a shovel and a long-handled scoop. I started walking, and of course, a cab pulled up of its own accord. The driver wanted to know what all the excitement was; I told him I was just passing through.

  Left our suitcases at a bed-and-breakfast a few blocks from the doctor’s office, loaded up a shopping bag, and walked over. I might not have recognized her, blond and blue-eyed and angular, if I hadn’t gone through a similar transformation myself.

  She didn’t recognize me at first either.

  “Maria?”

  “Dallas! You took long enough. Men keep propositioning me.”

  “Understandable.” They had put her in a teasing translucent white shift cut loosely in the bodice and slit up the side. It did look like a working girl’s uniform.

  We started walking. “Why didn’t you wait at the motel?”

  “We don’t have a room there anymore.” She listened in silence while I explained.

  She looked pale. “This has not been one of your bes
t ideas, Dallas. You said we’d be safe for weeks, months.”

  “We might be, now. If they do think she got me.”

  “Sure. Let’s take all of your weapons down to the pawnshop.”

  “Not yet.” I stopped in my tracks. “Damn. This means we can’t send the letters. Some of them are sure to go to people who are on the Steering Committee, people who think I’m dead.”

  She nodded but then said, “No … you can write ‘These letters are to be sent in the event of my death.’ Then have them remailed the way you said, from Arizona or someplace.”

  “That’s good. Shouldn’t even have to remail them, since this is the place where I died.” We came up to a bench, COURTESY OF EDY’S GARDEN OF EATIN’, and I sat down. “I should have thought of that. Damn.”

  “You’re still upset. It’s understandable.”

  “Before, too. I’m not thinking fast enough or well enough. We don’t get too many mistakes.”

  “Me, too. The terrible pictures in my head, I can’t seem to concentrate on anything.”

  “Yeah, Eric. What we need is Eric. He could always—”

  We looked at each other simultaneously. The Turing Image. “We can have his mind,” she said. “We should call anyhow and tell him, tell it, what happened.”

  “I wonder. Guess we should.”

  “Would it be safe? I mean, could they trace it?”

  More thinking. “About as safe as any kind of telecommunication. We used to use it as a kind of message center so as not to disturb each other with calls. We assumed it was completely safe.”

  “Scrambled circuit?”

  “Yeah, but the main thing was that it knew me as well as Eric did, in terms of recall. If somebody claimed to be me, it could ask the name of my nephew’s wife’s dog, or whatever.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Now?”

  “We have to do something! Not just wait around for them to find us again.”

  I had a strong temptation to point out that a couple of days ago, all she wanted to do was hang around waiting to die. “Used to be a scramble station down on Caroline Street. Check it out.”

  Operator: