Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [42]
We passed the journey time in our various ways, the girl applying lip-liner, me thrumming quietly, the old couple impersonating Egyptian mummies. They were pretty good at it, better than the girl was at doing her face. Maybe the fucked-up-chick look was what she was selling. The repairmen got off at 124, the girl in the 160s. When I left the elevator at 185 the old couple were still there, waiting stoically. Christ knows how high they lived. Maybe they were Mr. and Mrs. God.
I stepped out of the elevator onto a gravel pathway. Immediately, a couple of guys in beige uniforms started toward me. They were walking carefully, trying not to give offense until they were sure I was worth offending, but I knew they were going to check me out. I didn’t look the type for 185, thankfully. I decided not to waste anyone’s time and just waited for them, savoring the air. Below the 100’s you can see it moving sluggishly round your face, thick with recirculated cigarette smoke and the contents of other people’s fevered lungs. The high-lifers get it in clean every day, even on the floors where rich thugs masqueraded at being real people. It smelled so fresh I was forced to light a cigarette.
The xPress elevator comes up pretty much in the center of the floor, and wide graveled avenues stretched out in all directions, lit by regular street lamps. These led past rolling green lawns of lush nearGrass, which sloped up to huge houses in fetching shades of pastel. Most were three stories high—a couple only two, to allow for the gentle artificial hills. In the four corners there are small enclaves of service industries—family-owned delis and restaurants, a few chic bars—but apart from that the floor’s residential. Four stories above was the ceiling, which was basically a television set five miles square. During the day this played either white clouds over blue, or black clouds over gray—though usually it was the former. What’s the point of having money if you can’t make it summer every day? Today the sky was summer-night blue, with a few flecks of darkness just to make the point of how cloudless the rest of it was. Climate control was turned up high, and I was uncomfortably warm.
“Good evening, sir, and who will you be visiting today?”
I looked levelly at the guard who stood in front of me. He was young, and probably lived on the edge of constant embarrassment. Most of the people who came out this elevator looked like they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere. They were bound to. They were criminals. But stop the wrong one, and this guy’d be doing traffic duty somewhere where they didn’t have any traffic.
“Mr. Vinaldi,” I said.
“And is he expecting you?”
“Yes,” I lied, and he nodded affably. The guards at the elevator are just a levy imposed upon the 185ers by the police, a way of creaming a little more money out of the system. They’re not interested in getting involved in unpleasantness.
“Fine. My colleague will just give you a quick search, and then we’ll be happy to let you proceed.”
I raised my hands and waited patiently while the other guard gave me a quick patting down from behind. He found my gun but he also found the fifty dollars wrapped around the barrel.
“That’ll be fine, sir,” he said, and I was on my way.
I walked down the East pathway, sweating gently in the high humidity. A lot of the guys who live on 185 started their careers in LA, Miami, or New Orleans, and those who didn’t like to pretend they did. The spotless walls of their palaces glowed in the streetlights, each surrounded by fuck-off great walls and metal railings studded with security cameras. Most of these guys were in competition with each other for parts of the action in the lower floors. Usually, an uneasy truce held up here—typical wiseguy bullshit about respecting