“Wait here, my dear,” he sighed to the faceless woman lying on the operating table. Of course, speaking to her was pure whimsy: she couldn’t hear him. She was dead. She’d been a rogue splicer he had bought from a constable, who’d shot her in the head when she’d tried to decapitate someone with a fish knife. The bullet had left her alive—anyway, she’d lived until a few minutes ago—but paralyzed. So Steinman hadn’t needed anesthetic or restraints to keep her quiet during the carving…
He left the operating theater, climbed the stairs, and went through the operating suite’s door, locking it behind him. Absently toying with a scalpel, he crossed the small lobby and opened the outer door.
Steinman realized he should have cleaned up a bit before answering the door. Frank Fontaine and his bodyguards were standing outside the Medical Pavilion, staring aghast at his blood-splattered surgical coat and the bloody scalpel in his hand. The booster plasmid he’d been using was starting to make him a bit abrupt, careless perhaps. He had gone three nights without sleep.
“We didn’t realize you were, um, busy, doctor,” Fontaine said, rolling his eyes at his bodyguards: a thuggish sort in a tatty suit and a grubby long-haired man who looked like a dirty Jesus.
Steinman shrugged. “Just some anatomical investigation. Work on cadavers. A trifle messy. Do you wish to schedule some—”
“What I wish to
Steinman gestured with the scalpel—his movement was preternaturally brisk so that the scalpel made a whipping sound as it cut the air. The bodyguards reached for their guns.
“Take it easy,” Fontaine told them, raising a calming hand. “Wait out here.”
He stepped into Steinman’s lobby, and closed the door behind him. But Steinman noticed that Fontaine had his left hand inside the flap of his coat. “No need to be reaching for that gun,” Steinman sniffed. “I’m not some… lunatic. You just caught me at a bad time.”
“Then maybe you could put away the scalpel?”
“Hm? Oh yes.” He stuck it in his jacket pocket so it stuck up like a comb. “What can I do for you?”
Fontaine ran a hand over his bald head. “I am going to need some work done. Some on me, and some on… there’s a guy who works for me. Kind of looks like me. I want you to make him look
“Mmm, probably,” Steinman said, cleaning blood from under his fingernails. “I should have to see him to be sure. But you have a distinct face, and that helps. That chin. Yes. If you want, I might be able to do a face transplant! Yours on his, his on yours! Has never been successfully done, but I’ve always wanted to try it.”
“Yeah well—not a chance. No, just… a little painless surgery so I look… different. And so he looks like I do now. And I want nobody to know about it but you and me… And I mean nobody. Not Ryan’s people, not Lamb’s people, not even my people.”
“Lamb?”
“You haven’t heard? She’s got some kind of uprising cooking in Persephone. I don’t trust her—don’t want her knowing any of my business.”
“Mum’s the word!”
“So you can make me look different—in pretty short order? Painless? And not a freak like some you’ve been turning out. A good face. A face people’d trust…”
“Should be possible,” Steinman allowed. “It’ll cost you. I’ll need a free supply of plasmids and plenty of cash.”
“You’ll get it—but the plasmids come
Steinman waved airily. “I work long hours perfecting both my skills and my art.”
“Okay. Fine. I’ll get you a nice deposit so you’re ready to do this at a moment’s notice. It will be soon… Remember—not a word to anyone. Not even to Cohen—he’s too close to Ryan…”
“Oh, I see. Fear not. I would not have mentioned it anyway. I am ever discreet. It’s part of my professional code.”
“Better be. Or you’ll find yourself going headfirst out an air lock without a diving suit.”
Now there was the real Frank Fontaine, Steinman thought. That icy voice, the even colder eyes. His true colors.
Steinman winked conspiratorially. Fontaine just looked back at him—then went out the door.
14
Chief Sullivan, Pat Cavendish, and Karlosky were waiting for Bill in Fighting McDonagh’s Bar. Sullivan was wearing a trench coat; Cavendish in his usual rolled-up shirtsleeves and slacks, no matter the temperature; Karlosky in a brown leather jacket that might’ve come from the Soviet air force.
Bill carried a tommy gun Sullivan had issued him the night before—but he wished he didn’t have to carry it. He’d gone on bombing missions, but he’d never dropped the bombs himself. Still, it was beginning to look as if guns were going to be as much a part of life in Rapture as Jet Postal and bathyspheres.
It was early morning and the bar was closed. The wooden planks of the floor creaked under his tread as he came up to the group of armed men waiting near the window. Those planks always reminded Bill reassuringly of old pubs back home. A killer whale, big as a Cadillac, cruised by the window, slick black and white, in no hurry, a large eye rolling to peer curiously in at them.
“They ready down there?” Bill asked. He was wearing a deputy constable’s badge. He was even more uncomfortable with that than with the gun. Elaine had been right weepy when she’d heard he’d been deputized. It was only temporary, till they recruited more constables. Quite a number of them had been killed by splicers. It was risky—and it meant he was subject to the orders of Pat Cavendish, the new head constable, a right bastard if ever he’d met one.
Sullivan nodded. “They should be right outside the door of the wharf, keeping their goddamn mouths shut, I hope.”
“Where’s this hideout hiding out at?” Bill asked.
“Witness says it’s in a cavern under the fisheries. We think they bring the stuff into Rapture with a sub; then they take it in an unregistered bathysphere through a tunnel to their hideout. Right now the sub’s accessible to us in bay 2—word is, they haven’t moved the contraband out of the sub to the cave yet.”
“We going to be able to find the contraband on the sub?” Cavendish asked. “Probably hidden good.”
Sullivan scratched his unshaven chin. “We worked out that the stuff’s probably being smuggled in one of the fuel tanks. They’re refilling their fuel way more often than they need to. Meaning they aren’t carrying as much fuel as they should. Something’s taking up that fuel space.”
A voice was crackling from Sullivan’s handheld radio.
“Okay, Grogan, we’re coming down,” Sullivan said, speaking into the radio. “Soon as we’re there—we hit ’em!” He stuck the radio in a coat pocket, hefted his shotgun, and said, “Let’s go!”
Sullivan led the way; they followed him down a series of stairs, through hatches and doors, past the wharfs—and into a passage that led to the sub bay.
Six constables, heavily armed, were waiting at the rusting door to the sub bay. Sullivan trotted toward them, signaling “go ahead” with his gun hand.
Constable Grogan raised a pistol in acknowledgment. He was a stocky, freckle-faced man with sandy hair and a bushy, rust-colored mustache. A badge glinted on the lapel of his suit. He threw the latch, opened the metal door with a shove of his shoulder, and he and the others rushed in. Sullivan, Cavendish, Karlosky, and Bill were
