Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [80]
Suej was my problem, Nearly too, not to mention the rest of the spares; yet it was Vinaldi who was in there doing the wet work. It couldn’t have been any other way. I have no stomach for that kind of thing. It was the same in The Gap. I just did my time and tried to stay alive. I guess I managed it, but sometimes my life feels like a piece of demo shareware, all the key or interesting features disabled, running on a fourteen-day trial period that just repeats over and over again without ever becoming mine.
So I waited there, breathing smoke in and out, hearing the cries and melding them with many others from long ago. Something, either exhaustion or despair, was stripping years off me. I kept expecting to see flashes of orange, to hear beating wings and voices from long ago. I was remembering people I’d killed, and trying to recall why, and failing to see that it added up to anything at all. Maybe it’s impossible to see out when you’re stuck there in the if-loop. Maybe you’ve got to be dead for any of it to make sense. Life and chance write the code which drags you along, and all you can do is watch—alternately saddened, bored and horrified—as they execute their instructions. Emotions run the action, as they always have, and the brain is powerless to intercede.
I was on a bit of a downer, in other words.
Vinaldi joined me after ten minutes. He wasn’t even breathing heavily, although the front of his suit was splattered with blood.
“Yhandim’s in The Gap,” he said, with a small, brutal smile.
It was obvious, and maybe I had already known. Where better to hide than somewhere no one else can enter? Perhaps that’s why I’d spent the last twenty-four hours in decreasing circles of futility, running away from the problem.
“Then we wait till he comes out,” I said.
“Come on, Randall. You know we can’t do that. He’s got your girl in there, and the other woman. That’s no place for them. It’s no place for anyone.”
“Johnny, The Gap’s been closed since the last sidelift. That’s twenty fucking years. How the hell are we supposed to get back in there? It’s impossible.”
“Clearly it isn’t, or our lunatic friends wouldn’t be able to come and go as they please. And Maxen must have found a way, didn’t he? Howie in there came up with a plan. For once it’s a good one—so much so that he may have earned himself a higher place in my organization at some later date. We let that guy inside free, let him think we’re finished with him, and then we see where he goes. He’s fucked up pretty badly now. If you’re right, then he’s going to need to get back there real soon.”
“It won’t work.”
“It might.”
“No, it won’t.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Vinaldi shouted, his face suddenly inches from mine. “You got any better ideas?”
“I can’t go back in there,” I said. “I’m not going back in The Gap.”
“You’re scared, I’m scared,” he spat. “Anybody’d be fucking scared. But it’s the only answer, Randall. Either we go in there and fuck these guys up or they’re going to fuck up those two women and all the others you keep talking about. More important than that, far as I’m concerned, and I’m a selfish man and happy that way, when they’re finished with them they’re going to come after me. I worked twenty years to get where I am today, and I’m not losing it because some guys who should have been dead decades ago blame me for the fact they couldn’t keep track of where the fuck they were and follow the rest of us out of a firestorm which I didn’t lead them into in the first place.”
I turned away from him, but he carried on ranting.
“I could just wait until they come out, but you can’t. You got to go in there and find them. I’m offering to help you, Randall, but the offer ain’t going to last forever. Understand?”
“I can’t go back,” I said, and walked away.
People are always finding me when I don’t want to be found. When Vinaldi appeared in the doorway I was sitting on Mal’s floor, surrounded by used foil, unused packets and a needle. Half of the last of my money was already in my bloodstream, the rest was ready and