The alcohol made me feel as if I were floating, and everything that had happened last night was coming through in flashes of lucidity. The only reason I didn’t crash my car into a building was because my muscle memory helped me hit the brakes just in time.
My legs somehow pulled the rest of me out onto the sidewalk, and I stumbled past an empty street meat cart toward my building. I rode the elevator up to my floor and arrived in my apartment shortly afterward; I didn’t remember opening my door or locking it, for that matter.
Hot flashes — my mind was starting to go. I hadn’t had that much to drink, had I? Last time I’d counted, I’d had a couple glasses of Scotch. Or were they bottles?
In my stupor and exhaustion, my body seemed to think the floor would be more comfortable than the couch, and I didn’t have much power to protest as I collapsed. Not even the ringing phone stopped me.
The ringing in my head was overwhelmed by the ringing of my rotary phone. It shook with aggression on the glass and oak table in the centre of the room, claiming my attention before my own pain did. Had it been ringing all morning?
I felt drool running from my cheek and onto the floor. I dragged myself to my feet, stumbling slightly, and grabbed at the table to steady myself. I lifted the receiver off the base of the phone. There was some static as the switchboard operator plugged in a jack on the control board. A distorted voice finally came through.
“I’d like to make a Night Call.”
CHAPTER 2
“I SAID I’D LIKE TO MAKE A NIGHT CALL.”
The voice sounded professional and hard, even through the rusty technology. Familiar, too — probably Robins or Sinclair. And impatient. I must have blanked for a moment. My brain finally comprehended the words that had come through the speaker as I responded with a cough.
I looked at the calendar to see what day it was. I’d been losing sleep lately. Late nights pounding back bottles had distracted my eyes from the calendar long enough for confusion to set in. From the rough black streaks on the wall calendar, I gathered that it was Monday. The clock beside it said seven o’clock. Seven at night.
“Where?”
“Prince and Greene.”
“Twenty minutes.”
It was a short drive away, but I needed that time to sober up, or perhaps bleed the hangover out of my body. I threw on my holster and straightened my outfit, trying to make myself somewhat professional. My holster was pretty light, and I realized I had left my weapon somewhere — again. Hopefully I hadn’t put it in the pot last night. It was probably in my trunk. I’d get it later, when I needed it. If I needed it.
I stepped out into the hallway. Its condition seemed to grow worse by the day. My own apartment could use some cleaning, too, but it was nowhere near as bad as the neglected halls of this building.
As with all the other buildings that were Control Points for the Plate, everyone took great care to make the office space inside look respectable, as if it belonged in the Upper City. The residential area, however, was another story.
I walked down the hall and waited a few moments for an elevator. When the doors parted, the carriage was already occupied: a Green-eye was standing inside, eyeing me and speaking in its whirrs and buzzes. My hangover distorted every word. Hell, it barely had a brain. It was probably talking about the weather — not that the weather ever changed in the Lower City. A few minutes later, the rusted doors peeled back and we walked out.
The machine left through the revolving doors and joined the swarming sea of humans and Automatics running from or to their jobs.
The metalheads were everywhere; nearly half the foot traffic in this damn city was now machines. The metal men’s rusted parts and peeling paint made for a terrible image. The Blue-eyes weren’t bad — most of them, anyway — but the damn Green-eyes gave me the willies. Maybe the Blue-eyes were a bit more tolerable because they could think for themselves. But, like Toby had said, there weren’t many left after Second Prohibition, when the law had required all Blue-eyes not employed by General Electrics to be made Green, for safety. It was more a sea of green than a sea of chrome.
I stepped out into Chinatown — at least, that was what they’d used to call the area. Nowadays it was called Manhattan’s Anchor, because people didn’t want to be referring to our main rival in the Automatics industry. Nor did the higher-ups want common folk complaining that the Chinese had once had a firm foothold on American soil.
I bought a newspaper and a hot dog just in front of the building. Yuri still made the best dogs in the city, and always gave me a discount on my nightly refuels at his stand. He was a shortish man, a bit chubby in the cheeks, his weight having suffered from eating his own merchandise. No doubt it was all he could afford. A privyet and a paka later, I was walking along the crowded street once more.
The newspaper was far less comforting than the street meat and full of the same shit: politics, Plate expansion, threats from China, robotic advancements, crashing stocks. Today there was also a short piece about a Mafia gunfight in the Heights the previous night, with five dead gunmen and no suspects. Nothing unusual in the news — and hopefully there wouldn’t be for some time.
I finished the dog and gave the newspaper to the old man
