FORTY ONE

Two a.m., Penny Dreadful.

Tonight the light was dimmed; the lamp pushed further back from the bed, the whole room awash in shadows and a burnt orange glow.

Dolly was wired. She looked up and her face scared Rudlow: it was the expression, a look about her that suggested she hadn’t been just zoning, that she’d been injecting. But then she smiled, the light returning to her eyes, her sharpness back. She lifted her cigarettes, lit one up, took a drag, released it.

‘Man, that new Jesus VR?’ Her lips pursed, whistling. ‘What they say about it’s true, Chief. Blows your mind. You should really try it sometime.’

Rudlow reached for his shirt, pulled one arm in, then the other.

‘Already have,’ he said. ‘Got that thing working for me.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Dolly said.

She pulled the covers back over her naked body, shivering against a sudden chill.

‘I don’t know all these technical terms,’ Rudlow explained, ‘but that Jesus VR is transmitting stuff, things that might be of interest to me. We hit Vegas the other night, picked a few people up, folks who, through the course of their zoning or whatever, revealed something we can use, something that might connect them to McBride.’

‘What?’ Dolly broke in, furious. ‘You’re stealing people’s thoughts now?!’

She pushed back the sheets, reached for the wiretap on the ivory table, ran it through her hands, studying it.

‘I tried to tell you before, but you weren’t for listening,’ Rudlow said. ‘You said nothing would get to McBride. Well, I had to try something. Didn’t I?’

‘I can’t believe you’d do that! It’s gaddamn rape!’’

‘It’s gaddam legal. Which is more than anything McBride’s up to. Read your VR contract. The small print lays it all out.’

‘For God’s sake, would you take a look at what you’ve become, what you’re letting him turn you into?!’

Rudlow caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror across the room. His face was strained, shadows falling across grooves and lines he didn’t know he had.

His eyes found Dolly, still on the bed.

‘I really can’t believe this,’ she said, deflated. There was no patter from her, no poise, those long legs pulled up tight against her chest. ‘What would you do if that machine of yours,’ and she said the words with real venom, ‘told you that I was involved some way with McBride? Would you pick me up? Come bang the doors in, trail me out?’ She glared at him, her eyes watery and bloodshot. ‘well, would you?!’

Rudlow sighed, lifted his badge from the bed. Studied it.

Dolly swore under her breath.

‘Look, Chief,’ she said, and there was a tenderness back in her voice, ‘you don’t need to do this kind of thing. Not when you have me.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘what you got?’

Dolly laughed.

‘This again,’ she whispered. ‘Always back to this.’

He waited.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘had a no-mark in the other night, wired to the eyeballs and I’m not talking VR.’

‘Crack?’

‘You betcha. Thing is, he was so out of it, the poor dear’s mouth was working overtime. And we’re not talking oral sex here.’

Rudlow watched her in the mirror, feeling, perhaps for the first time, a pang of jealousy.

‘What was he saying?’

‘Well, everyone’s all about the holy these days,’ she still held the wiretap, playing with its coil as she spoke, ‘but this guy had some rather disparaging words to say about Lark’s Godly. You know a Reverend Shepherd? Old guy, runs the church down Cathedral Quarter?’

Rudlow did.

‘Seems Mr No-Mark picked up a stash of Grade-A Dope from the good Reverend’s back store just before that Jesus launch.’

Rudlow’s eyes widened.

‘You for real?’

‘Realer than real,’ Dolly said, still rolling the coil in her hands.

u

 

He stepped outside the Penny Dreadful, walked down the street, his coat’s lapels pulled up against the elements. Titanic’s skyblocks had reached into the sky, piercing the clouds, spilling rain onto Tomb Street.

Rudlow thought about the trouble over on River Quarter, the Jesus protests. There was something wrong with Lark City, a tension in the air he’d never known before. It was here, too. Sure, the place was busy, people bustling, moving into every bar and secluded entryway, doing their thing. But there was another vibe, a bad vibe.

Rudlow suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. He turned, found McBride, standing with a cigarette in his hand, smoking outside Vegas, across the street.

A troupe of dancers shuffled past, Rudlow caught up in their hustle and bustle, their decorative masks and thick perfume, the warmth of their skin as they pushed against him, laughing, singing. They moved on, and Rudlow again looked across to Vegas, but McBride was no longer there.

On the corner, several protesters faced off against an animated preacher, rambling on about ‘the light of the world’.

Rudlow watched for a moment, then went to move on.

‘Well, hello, Chief.’

It was McBride. He stood right opposite Rudlow, now, in the entryway of a two-bit porn shop, passers-by streaming through the walkway between them.

‘Paul,’ Rudlow said, gingerly tipping his hat.

The scene between the protesters and the preacher was getting more strained.

McBride smiled.

‘Are you a family man, Chief?’ he asked. ‘Have any kids?’

‘No,’ Rudlow said. ‘I don’t.’

‘Well, that explains a lot. You see, there are things a man will do to protect his family that a man without family wouldn’t understand.’ McBride dragged on his cigarette then flicked it into the rain. ‘And that’s the difference between you and me. Family.’

‘Oh we are different,’ Rudlow said. ‘But it’s got nothing to do with family. It’s to do with what’s right and what’s wrong.’

McBride laughed.

‘Says the man coming out of the whorehouse.’

‘Not a crime.’

‘No it’s not. And neither are most narcotics, I’m told.’

‘Most, but not all.’

‘Semantics,’ McBride said. ‘You can’t keep from people what they want, Chief. If you tell them they can’t have it, well,’ he zipped up his coat. ‘They’ll just want it more.’

And with that, McBride edged back into the crowd.

‘I’ve got you,’ Rudlow said. He drew his charge gun angrily, pointed it in the other man’s direction, his hands shaking, the crowds splitting as they saw the gun. ‘Paul McBride!’ he called, ‘I’ve got you!’

But McBride didn’t seem to care. As Rudlow watched, he faded from view, moving through the protesters and preacher as they continued to berate one another, one man making a grab for one of the Humanist’s placards. There was an angry outburst, a sudden fist being thrown, but Rudlow ignored it, replacing his gun in its holster and crossing the road.