Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [20]
Roberta was there, propping up the wall by the pawnbroker concession in the ticket office. A half-naked catfood monster was heaped in a fetal position on the concrete beside her, a line of spittle drooling from a slack mouth. Roberta was idly poking the monster in the back with the toe of her boot, considering whether to roll him or not; sometimes even a derelict had something worth stealing. Roberta wasn't happy about waiting all this time for Zamina but two were better than one walking the Stop.
There were more catfood monsters on Main Street. Clumps of them at regular intervals down the sidewalk. 'Got any scrip?' they mumbled as Roberta and Zamina walked past.
'Fuck off,' said Roberta to each of them in turn.
A detox crew in grubby whites were zipping up a body bag on the comer of Main and Percy. Yellow tape was strung out round the crime scene while a battered forensic scanner bobbed uncertainly over the area. A couple of housing authority cops kept a wary eye on the gawkers. Target visors restlessly scanning the blank white faces of the crowd. A detective with a bone-weary stance and a scraped-off masai haircut watched over the drone as it sniffed the ground.
'Ute's dead,' said Roberta as they crossed the road to avoid the cops. 'Happened back of the depot, some kind of structural collapse - really weird.'
The back end of the depot was Dixie territory, Ute was straight-up Afrikaans. 'What was she doing out of area?' said Zamina.
'You know,' said Roberta, 'nothing legal.'
At least half the skylights were out on Williamsberg Avenue creating an evil twilight in the lead up to the projects. Roberta didn't say much as they turned down the walkway to block fifty-six, keeping a wary eye on the shadows. Blocks twenty to ninety-four were solid Afrikaans and Der Broederbund generally kept the streets clear of any action they weren't running themselves. Still there was always the possibility of a raiding party by the Dixie Rebs or Le Penn Freikorps. A couple of girls could get themselves slotted forgetting that.
Zamina and Roberta's flat was on level three, up an evil-smelling concrete stairwell. Roberta lit the way up with a billy-lamp. Holding the heavy vulcanised rubber cylinder above her head, ready to use it as a club if she had to.
'I saw Zak,' said Roberta halfway up the stairs, 'doing it to some monkey in Pei Hai park.'
Zamina said nothing and kept going. Roberta didn't like Zak, didn't like him for proving her wrong. Roberta told the future for pin money, spreading a pack of cards on a scarf of irkutzi silk. Regular cards, not tarot, she had a special pack that came from an extinct casino in Las Vegas, each card neatly punched through the centre. Roberta said they did that when you won big, to kill the luck and to stop you marking the cards. Once when Zamina was stoned she had a vision of a cowboy standing on a high desert plateau, shooting the cards as they tumbled through the air. She knew they did it with a hole punch but sometimes when she was on the edge of waking the cowboy would walk into her dreams on booted feet, lucite and snakeskin burning in a desert sunrise.
Patterns, Roberta said, everything was in the patterns, the relationships between one card and those around it. Like the patterns contained within neural networks, the variegated webs that made up the brain. Roberta had spread the cards for Zak one day and told him straight out that he would die young in the Stop.
But Zak had walked away from the program, from Roberta's sharp little synopsis of life and death in the ghetto, and Roberta had never forgiven him for it.
'Don't you want to know about it?'
Zamina didn't, but she knew Roberta would tell her anyway. There in a grotty stairwell, where the cold moisture slips down the puff concrete walls that are etched with graffiti. About how there she was - trading favours for money in the Constitution Day crowds in Beijing, finishing off a trick in Pei Hai park when she saw Zak with some free squeeze. The slow urgent motion of their bodies drained of colour by the moonlight.
'Give me a break,'