Black Man (48 page)

“Yeah, because they fucking
trained
us.” For the first time, Onbekend’s voice rose almost to a shout, was almost pain. He flattened it again, instantly, got it down to a cold, even-tempered anger. “They locked us up from fucking childhood, Marsalis. Beat us down with the conditioning. You know that, Osprey must have been the same. How were we supposed to—”

“We did, as we, were told!”
Carl spaced his words, leaned on them like crowbars going into brickwork. “Just like them, just like the cudlips. We
failed,
just like we failed twenty thousand years ago.”

“That was then,” Onbekend snapped. “And this is now. And some of us aren’t on that path anymore.”

“Oh don’t make me fucking laugh. I already told you,
everything about you
is part of the cudlip world.

If you can’t come to some kind of accommodation with that, you might as well fucking shoot yourself—”

A ghost grin came up across Onbekend’s face. “It was your suicide I was sent to arrange, Marsalis. Not mine.”

“Sent?” Carl jeered it, leered across the scant space between them. “
Sent
? Oh, I rest my fucking case.”

“Thirteens have had an unfortunate propensity for death by their own hand.” The other man’s voice came out raised, words rushed, trampling at Carl’s scorn, trying to drive home a winning point he hadn’t embedded quite as well as he’d hoped. “Violent suicide, in the tracts and reservations. And a thirteen carrying as much guilt as you—”

“Guilt? Give me a
fucking
break. Now you’re
talking
just like them. Variant thirteen doesn’t do guilt, that’s a cudlip thing.”

“Yes, all the ones you’ve hunted down, murdered, or taken back to a living death in the tracts.” But Onbekend was calmer now, voice dropping back to even. “It stands to reason you couldn’t live with it forever.”

“Try me.”

A bleak smile. “Happily, I don’t have to. And as for the suicide, you’ve made it easy for me.”

“Really?” Carl looked elaborately around him. “This doesn’t look much like a suicide scene to me.”

But under the drawl, he already saw the angle and something very like panic started to ice through him.

He’d played all his cards, and Onbekend just hadn’t loosened enough. The other thirteen was watching him minutely again, back to the cold control he’d walked in with. Awareness of the place they were in congealed around him—ancient grimy fittings, the long arm of the bartop, scars and spill stains gleaming in the low light and the piled-up glassware and bottles behind. The worn pool tables in their puddles of light from the overheads. Dougie Kwang faceup on the floor, head rolled to one side, eyes staring open across the room at him. Waiting for company, for someone to join him down there in the dust and sticky stains.

“Suicide would be hard to fake here,” Onbekend agreed. “Would have been harder to fake wherever we did it. But you’ve been kind enough to let your drives get the better of you and so here we are, a mindless bar brawl in a low-grade neighborhood with low-grade criminals to match, and it seems Carl Marsalis just miscalled the odds. Pretty fucking stupid way to die, but hey.” A shrug. Onbekend’s voice tinged suddenly with contempt. “They’ll believe it of you. You’ve given them no reason not to.”

The oblique accusation stung. In the back of his head, Sutherland concurred.
If we are ruled by our limbic wiring, then every bigoted, hate-driven fear they have of us becomes a truth
.

Ertekin might not buy it.

Yeah, but she might. You don’t always get a clean wrap, Marsalis. Remember that? Life is messy, and so is crime.

Kwang seemed to wink at him from the floor.

Could be this’ll be just messy enough for her, soak.

As if he didn’t have enough with his own thoughts beating him up, Onbekend was still going strong.

“They’ll believe you were too stupid to beat your own programming,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he’d been there for Sutherland’s musings, too. “Because you are. They’ll believe you went looking for trouble, because you did exactly that, and they’ll believe you found a little too much of it down here to handle alone. So they’ll do a little light investigating, they’ll talk to some people, and in the end they’ll decide you got shot at close range with a nondescript gun that’ll never be found, in the hand of some nameless street thug who’ll also never be found, and they’ll walk away, Marsalis, they’ll walk away because it’ll fit right in with this idiocy you’ve spontaneously generated for us. I couldn’t have arranged it better myself.”

Carl gestured. “That’s hardly a nondescript gun.”

“This?” Onbekend lifted the revolver again, weighed it in his hand. “This is—”

Now.

It wasn’t much—the fractionally lowered reflexive response in the other man, neurochemical sparks lulled and damped down by Carl’s previous open-handed gestures and the descending calm after all the shouting. Then the fractional shift of the revolver’s muzzle, the few degrees off and the brief lack of tension on the trigger. Then Onbekend’s standard-issue thirteen sense of superiority, the curious need he seemed to have to lecture. It wasn’t much.

Not much at all.

Carl exploded out of the chair, hands to the table edge, flipping it up and over. Onbekend got one shot off, wide, and then he was staggering back, trying to get out of the chair and on his feet. The shadow by the door yelled and moved. Carl was across the empty space where the table had been, into Onbekend, palm heel and hooking elbow, turning, try for the gun, lock in close, too close to shoot at. He had the other thirteen’s arm in both hands now, twisted the revolver up and around, looking for the man by the door. Tried for the trigger. Onbekend got his finger out, blocked the attempt, but it didn’t matter. The other man yelled again, dodged away from the slug he thought was coming. The door flew inward on its hinges, the other half of Onbekend’s human backup burst into the room. Carl yanked at the revolver, couldn’t get it free. The new arrival didn’t make the same mistake as his companion. He stepped in, grinning.

“Just hold him there, Onbee.”

Desperate, Carl hacked sideways with one foot, tried to get the fight on the ground and jar the revolver out of Onbekend’s stubborn grip. The other thirteen locked ankles with him, stood firm, and Carl tumbled instead, pulled off balance by his own weight and a
tanindo
move that hadn’t worked.

Onbekend timed it just right, stepped wide and shrugged him off like a heavy backpack. He went down, clutching for the revolver, didn’t get it. Onbekend kicked him in the groin. He convulsed around the blow, tried frantically to roll, to get up—Onbekend leveled the revolver.

The world seemed to stop, to lean in and watch.

In the small unreal stillness, he knew the impact before it came, and the knowledge was terrifying because it felt like freedom. He felt himself open to it, like spreading wings, like snarling. His eyes locked with Onbekend’s. He grinned and spat out a final defiance.

“You sad, deluded little fuck.”

And then the gunblasts, the final violence through the quiet, again—again—again, like the repeated slamming of a door in a storm.

The Beretta Marstech had a burst function that allowed three shots for every trigger pull. Sevgi Ertekin came through the door with it enabled, gun raised and cupped in both hands, and she squeezed the trigger twice for each figure in her sights. No time for niceties: she’d seen through the window what was about to go down. The expansion slugs made a flat, undramatic crackling sound as they launched, but they tore down her targets like cardboard.

Bodies jerked and hurled aside. Two down.

The third one was turning, tiger-swift, the first burst missed him altogether. A big, heavy silver revolver tracking around in his hand. She squeezed again and he flipped over backward like a circus trick.

Marsalis flopped about on the ground, struggled to sit up. She couldn’t see if he was hit. She advanced into the room, gun swinging to cover angles in approved fashion. Peering down at the men she’d just hit, no, wait—

—she took in staring eyes and crumpled, awkward postures, one of them slumped almost comically in the arms of a chair, legs slid out from under him, one on the floor in a sprawl of limbs like some tantrum-prone child’s doll—

—the men she’d just killed. The Marstech gun and its load, unequivocal in its sentencing as a Jesusland judge.

The third one hit her from the side. Flash glimpse of a bloodied face, distorted with rage. She hit the floor, arms splayed back to break the fall, lost the fucking Beretta with the impact. For a moment the third man lurched above her, growling through lips skinned back off his teeth, empty hands crooked like talons. The look in the eyes was savage, stripped of anything human. She felt the terror thrust up like wings in her stomach and chest.

He saw the fallen gun. Stepped past her to get it.

“Onbekend!”

Her attacker twisted around, bent halfway over to the Beretta, saw the same as her—Carl Marsalis, propped up off the floor with the big revolver in his hand.

Onbekend wheeled around and the shot went wide. Deep bellow of the heavy caliber across the room.

Marsalis snarled something, swung and fired again. The door slammed shut on the other man.

Sevgi grabbed up her gun.

“You okay?”

Grim nod. He was getting unsteadily to his feet. She gave him a tight grin and went to the door. Pushed it open a crack and peered out. The teardrop she’d taxi-trailed from the hotel was still there on the other side of the deserted, dilapidated street. The injured third man fumbled at its door, got it open. No time.

She ran through and took up her firing stance again on the sidewalk. A thousand memories from the streets and back alleys of Queens and Manhattan, eleven years of pursuits and arrests—it pulsed through her, anchored her, steadied her hands.

“Police officer! Put your hands on your head, get down on the ground!”

He seemed to kneel at the opened door of the car. She trod closer.

“I said get your hands—”

He spun, yanked a weapon clear from somewhere. Came up firing. She shot back. Clutch of three—saw him punched back on the teardrop’s high-sheen flank, but knew at the same time she’d gone too high.

Felt something kick her in the left shoulder, staggered with it and fell back against the wall of the bar. One leg shot out from under her, she flailed not to go all the way down. She braced herself on the wall, saw him reel off the car, leave smears of blood on the shiny bodywork of the teardrop, stagger and collapse inside the vehicle. She fought to get upright again, watched him lean out to haul the door closed after him, knew she was going to be too late. She threw up the Beretta one-handed and snapped off a shot. The three-slug burst was too powerful to hold down; the bullets pinged off the teardrop, nowhere near. The door hinged and snapped shut with a clunk she heard clear across the street. The engine whined into instant life. She stumbled forward, tried to straighten up, tried against the numbness in her shoulder to get a clean bead on the teardrop as it took off.

Three times, she came down on the trigger. Nine shots, solid pulsing kick each time into the wounded shoulder from the two-handed firing stance she held. The teardrop slewed side to side, then straightened up, reached a corner and took it at speed, disappeared from view on a screech of abused tires. She let her arms drop, blew out a disgusted breath, and just stood there for a moment.

“Fuck it,” she said finally. Her voice sounded loud in the suddenly silent street. “Two out of three, anyone got a problem with that?”

Apparently no one did.

She walked back to the bar, pushed open the door, and leaned there in the doorway, surveying the mess. Marsalis had gotten himself upright in the midst of it, had the revolver in his hand. He jolted as she came in, then just stood there looking at her. A faint smile twitched at her lips.

“I take it there’s no one back there in the restroom.”

“You take it right.”

“Good. I’m tired.” She put the Beretta away in its shoulder holster, wincing a little at the pain the movement caused her.

“You okay?”

She looked down at her left shoulder, where the slug had torn through. Blood leaked slowly down the arm of her ruined jacket. The numbness was fading out now to a solid, thumping ache. She flexed her left hand, lifted it and grimaced a little at the pain.

“Yeah, he tagged me. Flesh wound. I’ll live.”

“You want me to take a look at it?”

“No, I don’t fucking want you to take a look at it.” She hesitated, gestured what might have been apology. Her voice softened. “RimSec are on their way. It’ll wait.”

“I heard the car. Did he get away?”

She grimaced. “Yeah. Hit him a couple of times, but not enough to put him down. Thirteens, huh.”

“Yeah, we’re tough motherfuckers you know.”

And then the breath seemed to come out of Marsalis as if he’d been punctured. He went to the bar, got behind it, and laid the revolver carefully down on the scarred wood.

“Thank Christ that’s over,” he said feelingly. “You need a drink.”

“No, I don’t need a fucking drink. He got away.”

Marsalis turned to survey the piled assortment of bottles behind him. His eyes found her in the mirror.

“Yeah, but look on the bright side. We’re neither of us dead, which is a big fucking improvement on what I was expecting ten minutes ago.”

She shivered a little. Shook it off. Marsalis picked out a bottle from the multitude and a couple of shot glasses from below the bar. He set the glasses up on the bartop and drizzled amber-colored liquor into them.

“Look, humor me. Least I owe you for saving my life back there is a couple of stolen whiskeys. And you look like you could use them.”

“Oh hey, thanks a lot. I save your fucking life, you tell me I look like shit?”

He made a wobbling plane of his hand, tilted it back and forth. “Bit pale, let’s say.”

“Fuck you.” She picked up the glass.

He matched her, clinked the glasses together very gently. Said very quietly, “I owe you, Sevgi.”

She sipped and swallowed. “Call it quits for the skaters. You don’t owe me a thing.”

“Oh but I do. Those guys in New York were trying to kill me as well as you. That was self-defense. This is different. Cheers.”

They both drained their glasses. Sevgi leaned on the bar opposite him and felt the warmth work its way down into her belly. He lifted the bottle, querying. She shook her head.

“Like I said, RimSec should be here any minute,” she said. “I called them back around the time your friends made their entrance. Would have stormed in a little earlier but I was hoping for some backup.”

“Well.” He looked at his hands and she saw they were trembling a little. It did something to the pit of her stomach to see that. He looked up again, grinned. “Pretty good timing anyway. How the hell did you wind up here?”

“I saw you walk out of the hotel. I was just arriving.” She nodded at the corpses on the floor between them. “Saw the teardrop with these guys pull out and go after your taxi. Took me a few seconds to flag one down myself. Then when I got down here, I saw them sit outside the bar and wait. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on, what you’d be doing all the way out of town like this, if these guys were with you or not. Only called it in when I heard shots and then headed on over. Which reminds me, what the fuck
were
you doing down here?”

He looked away from her, into a corner. “Just looking for a fight.”

“Yeah? Looks like you found a good one.”

He said nothing.

“So who were they?”

“I don’t know.”

“You called him something.” A sudden cop sharpness spiked in her mind, ruined the moment with its objections. “Back when he went for the gun. I heard you.
On
—something.”

“Onbekend, yeah. It’s his name. He introduced himself while he was getting ready to kill me.” Marsalis frowned to himself. “He was a thirteen.”

“He told you that?”

“It came up in the conversation, yeah.”

She shivered again. “Bit of a coincidence.”

“Isn’t it. Speaking of which, what were
you
doing back at the hotel watching me?”

“Oh yeah. That.” She nodded, let the satisfaction of being right warm her into a faint smile of her own.

“Came to tell you. NYPD tracked down the third skater and brought him in. He says their target was Ortiz all along. Not you.”

Marsalis blinked. “Ortiz?”

“Yeah. Seems you and me just got caught in the crossfire. Sort of puts Norton in the clear, doesn’t it.

Paranoia aside, I mean.”

“Are you sure about this? I mean, did NYPD check if—”

“Marsalis, just fucking drop it.” Her weariness seemed to be building. Or maybe the whiskey had been a bad idea. Either way, her eyes were starting to ache. “Better yet, just think about apologizing, if you know how that’s done. You were fucking wrong. End of fucking story.”

“Don’t gloat, Ertekin. It’s not attractive, remember.”

And she had to laugh then, even through the crushing weight of the tiredness. In the distance, she heard a RimSec siren approaching.

“And I’m not looking to get laid,” she said.

“Yeah, you are.”

She chuckled. “No, I’m fucking not.”

“You are.”

“Am fucking not, you—”

She coughed hard, caught off guard by the abrupt violence of it. Shook her head and found her eyes flooded with sudden tears. She heard Marsalis produce a chuckle of his own.

“Well, maybe not, then. I wouldn’t want to—”

Another shiver ripped through her, stronger. In the wake of the coughing, her head was suddenly aching.

She frowned and put a hand to the side of her brow.

“Sevgi?”

She looked up, gave him a puzzled smile. The shivering was still there; she hadn’t shaken it at all. The siren was louder now, but it seemed to get stuck inside her head and the noise it made there scraped. “I don’t feel too good.”

His face went mask-like with shock.

“What did he shoot you with, Sevgi?”

“I don’t—”

“Did you see the gun he shot you with?”
He was around the bar, at her side as she shook her head sleepily.

“No. He got away. Like I said.”

He turned her, put his hands on either side of her face. His voice was tight and urgent. “Listen to me, Sevgi. You have to stay awake. You’re going to start feeling very tired in the next—”

“
Going
to?” She giggled. “Fuck, Marsalis, I could sleep for a month right here on this fucking floor.”

“No, you
stay awake
.” He shook her head. “Listen, they’re coming, they’ll be here. We’ll get you to the hospital. Just don’t fucking flake on me.”

“What are you
talking
about? I’m not going to—”

She stopped because she noticed groggily that his eyes were tear-sheened like her own. She frowned, and the skin on her face felt hot and thick and stiff, she had to force expression into it like pushing a hand into a tight new glove. She made a small, amused sound.

“Hey, Marsalis,” she slurred, trying not to. “What’s the matter? You feeling bad as well?”