“So fight for it,” I said. “Stop complaining about pushing the boulder uphill, and organize a bunch of fuckers with shovels to come over and level the landscape. You want to make change, that’s how you do it.” I walked past the television, hopped on one of the plastic chairs beneath it, and slapped the power button off. Someone in the crowd hissed, a critique on my parenting skills that I immediately ignored. “You do that and we’ll both sleep better at night.”
“Oh, I am changing it. I’m actually making a difference, instead of locking up kids for minor infractions, leaving them with records that’ll keep them chained to low-wage jobs the rest of their lives. I organize voter registration drives, get ballot measures put together—”
“Politics? You think I meant politics?” I forced a loud, obviously fake laugh. “Hells, politics makes your neighborhood look like a playground. If you actually started to change things, you think CaCuri or the other dirt-bags in City Hall would leave you alive long enough to see the law passed? Politics, please.”
“Uh, am I interrupting?” At some point Jax had arrived. I reared on him, noticing the fresh clothes and still-damp head plates. He must’ve showered in the Bunker’s locker room.
Talena turned to Jax and snapped a terse, “We’re going.”
She stormed past me, her shoulder bumping mine with enough force that I could tell it was intentional, just like Vandie Cedrow had done at the festival site. But unlike the wealthy socialite’s ineffective shove, Talena kept her center of gravity low, just like I’d taught her, and I fell back a step. It was the closest we’d come to a hug since her mother died.
Jax glared at me and raised his hands in silent, bewildered accusation, What did you do to my date?, then turned on one heel to follow her. I didn’t call after them. It wasn’t the worst fight Talena and I’d ever had, and if history was any indicator, I figured we’d probably be on talking terms again within a few months.
When I got home I dumped my coat on the couch and walked to the record player. I dropped the needle on some vinyl I’d picked up earlier that week and gave myself a slow, bluesy soundtrack as I looked for something to eat—even the pitas hadn’t satisfied the growl in my stomach. I poked through my fridge and immediately heard a mew as I became Rumple’s focus of attention. I identified several boxes of takeout that hadn’t aged beyond reasonable consumption. I mixed them all into a glass dish and stuck them in the oven. While I waited for my casserole surprise to heat up, I poured a bowl of cat food and set it down just in time for the orange and white fur ball to start chewing on that instead of my ankles.
Rumple noisily crunched his way through the kibble, so focused on the food in his bowl that he was barely aware of my presence. I thought of that focus, and how someone like Bobby Kearn could have been so intent on a task as simple as tying his shoes before a knife plunged into his back. Was it simply because he’d sampled the angel tears, or was it something else? It felt like a thread worth holding on to. Sometimes that’s how it works—some image or idea triggers a thought that leads to another thought, that leads to a breakthrough. Ninety percent of detective work is quiet, methodical and boring, punctuated by insight and violence and the sorrow of those left behind.
I left Rumple to his meal and dragged a kitchen chair to the window. I cracked open my beer, followed by the window. The window’s ballast rope had snapped, and I propped it open with the book Guyer had forced on me. I sat back and took a long swig of beer as the sound of traffic merged with music from my stereo, the city’s underscore drowning out the noise of my neighbors’ latest screaming match.
Titanshade was a city of teeming millions, every one of whom wanted more—more space, more money, more sex, more power, more time to themselves. No matter what someone’s more was, there never seemed to be enough to go around. I’d defended those people when I wore patrol reds, and I’d tried to throttle the supply of street drugs when I worked Vice. But catching killers had been my true calling. Rumple snaked through the legs of my chair, then reared up, shoving his muzzle into my free hand. I scratched his head and asked myself if I’d go into a burning building to save him. He let out a high-pitched mew, and gently nibbled my finger. I sighed.
I’d go through a dozen burning buildings, if that’s what it took. Or more.
Working in Homicide I wasn’t defending against future crimes or playing counselor without the training. I was trying to balance out the scales for those irrevocably wronged. It was a good chore for a guy who never quite learned to connect with the living. The kind of man who spent his evenings alone, balancing his chair on its back legs and staring at the cover of Your Death and You while he thought about his life.
So I drank all my beers and watched my city, and eventually I fell asleep to the sound of the music and the traffic and Rumple’s purr. Or maybe it was the growl of my stomach.
14
OF ALL THE CHANGES CAUSED by the discovery of next gen manna, perhaps my least favorite was that I
