Gun Machine

Ten

VIVICY WAS housed in the top ten floors of a 1980s skyscraper that looked like a spaceship standing on its launch gantry. A spaceship that had been staging, melancholy, since that decade’s recession, waiting for someone to come along who could afford to fuel it up for its leap to the sky. It was oddly sad, seeing the city soot barnacled to the clamps and pylons affixed at the building’s edges as an architect’s smiling decorations.

Its launch date was as long past as the days of the three-martini lunch in the financial district. Midafternoon, and the people still on the street were darting toward buildings with panic in their steps, chewing the last woody lump of a power bar or quickly stamping out a half-smoked cigarette.

Tallow, back in the 1st Precinct, had smoked a cigarette for lunch as he considered the building. He’d placed the phone calls to Vivicy he’d needed to on the long drive back downtown but had decided to reinforce a few points in person.

Inside the building, the spaceship metaphor held. A mother ship’s cathedral, with huge aluminum pipes for pillars and a burnished metal floor. Magnesium or something, Tallow thought, as he walked on it; it was sprung, or suspended on joists somehow, so that his feet lifted a little as he moved. A floor for Masters of the Universe that put a spring in their steps on the way to the elevators in the mornings. Inside, the building didn’t feel like an unfueled article on an abandoned launchpad. It felt like it was just waiting to fill up with all the world’s money before it took off for new maps.

Recessed golden spots attempted to throw Constable-like shafts of God’s light into the hall. The near-ambient background music was clever. Waiting in line at the security station, he realized the music swelled to a little climax every couple of minutes. Some Muzak-laboratory mutation of the theme to The Big Country, where the orchestral strike was muted and the motorik beat of German Krautrock from the seventies flowed under and past it. When the metal buttresses of this church were first flown, the music had probably still sounded like the future, he thought.

Tallow badged through the security station. The guards, bearing on their black shirts the embroidered brand of a firm called Spearpoint, nodded at Tallow in the conspiratorial and collegiate manner of those security employees who consider themselves brothers and sisters of police. Tallow nodded back, just to make life easier. He took the elevator with a man who was compulsively raking the base of his thumb with bitten fingernails. Hard enough to raise tiny red blooms from between the flecks of old scarring.

Tallow got off at Vivicy’s first floor and, along with a grim-looking courier, quickly took the second-stage elevator that serviced it and the top nine. The courier ground his teeth. It sounded like paving slabs being rubbed together. At the building’s top floor, Tallow stepped off and found a helpful map screwed to the wall by the elevator that laid out the office territory for him. Tallow waited until the courier was deep in hot negotiation with the harried receptionist and glided through the main doors into the main part of the floor.

People looked up as he moved down the middle of the space toward the corner office he wanted. They didn’t look at him so much as sniff the air, decide that they didn’t detect the kind of predator they feared most, and return to work.

The corner office was crewed by a personal assistant at a brushed-steel desk. Behind her, the big doors to the office she guarded. Tallow broke his stride—his Rosato-stride, the stride he’d learned to keep up with and then emulate, relentless Rosato like a ton of boulders rolling down a slope toward you. It’d been too easy to roll along with it.

Tallow took twenty seconds to observe the personal assistant. Japanese American woman in her twenties. Beautiful eyes, bitten lips, short black hair. She touched it. Pushed at it with her nails. False nails, but small and neat. Touched her hair again, caught herself doing it, made herself put her hand flat on her desk as she wrote with the other. Tallow had seen the hint of a tattoo under the hair. Her head used to be shaved. The hair was growing back, and she was managing it, but it still bothered her. The clothes bothered her. The clothes were good, business wear chosen with some taste, but cheap. A warm day, even under the air-con, but she had long sleeves. He watched her stop at the document she was annotating, turn to a battered little notebook, and refer to something. Her own notebook. She wanted to hold on to the job so badly that she was preparing for everything it could throw at her.

Tallow put his police face back on, walked to the desk, and badged her.

“Detective Tallow, 1st Precinct. I need to talk to Andrew Machen.”

She looked at his badge like it was his gun.

“Mr. Machen is, uh, he’s not available right now, Detective. If I can, can, take a number from you, I can arrange a meeting just as soon as he’s, you know, he has an emergency right now, and—”

Tallow dropped his voice. “He’s in there, isn’t he?”

She raised her voice, clearly hoping it was loud enough to be heard through the doors. “No, sir, Mr. Machen is not in his office right now.”

Tallow made a move to the doors. She came out of her seat, fear and tears pearling her eyes.

Tallow touched a finger to his lips. Smiled. Put out his hand to calm her. Said in a loud voice, “This is a homicide investigation, ma’am, and I’ll go wherever I like, and if you don’t get out of my way and stop blocking these doors, I will arrest you and then I will arrest him. Is that clear?”

She sat back down, a little smile timid on her face. Tallow smiled at her again as he opened the doors.

Andrew Machen said, “Did she really block the doors?”

A big man rose from an Xten Pininfarina chair that looked stolen from a starship’s bridge and very deliberately put a cell phone in an African blackwood case down on a Parnian desk before walking around its curve to meet him. His charcoal shadow-check suit was cut to accentuate his wide shoulders. He was a product of that Hollywood-gym regime that gave a man a wide chest, a long abdomen, and snake hips.

“Yes.”

Why are your fingers shaking? Tallow thought as Machen reached for a handshake.

“Detective Tallow, 1st Precinct. May I have five minutes of your time?”

“Seems like you already took it. Apologies for”—Machen waved that oddly trembling hand at the doors—“all that. Very busy time. Obviously I want to put myself at your service, but what we want, limitations on our resources, you know…”

Nothing in the office matched, Tallow noticed after a moment. There was no unifying approach, no theme at work. No taste, Tallow supposed. Just a collection of very expensive things that didn’t go together. Except, presumably, by the scale of their price tags.

“I know all about limitations on resources, yes. I have a few questions.”

The visitor’s chair—singular—was of the same make as Machen’s chair but cheaper, with two long curved runners instead of wheels and with a different color trim. Machen gestured to it, walking back around his protective curl of a desk.

“Whatever I can do, Detective.”

Machen’s hand seemed to shake less once he was in his space throne behind his absurd zebrawood desk.

Tallow gave him the address on Pearl Street. “You’re buying this building, yes?”

“Yes, I believe so. I mean, I don’t have direct day-to-day oversight of that purchase, but yes, I remember something about it. Possibly it’s not me you should be speaking to.”

“You do own Vivicy, yes? You did found this company and continue to own and control it.”

“That’s right.”

“Then it’s you I should be speaking to, Mr. Machen. What are your plans for that building?”

“I don’t have—”

Tallow let a little steel into his voice. “I think you can help me, sir.”

Machen simulated relaxing back into his chair. The thing seemed almost to close chrome arms around him. “Let’s say I can.” He smiled.

“Your plans for the building, sir?”

“Knocking it down.”

“Why? To build offices? Seems to me you have plenty of space here.”

“Ah, well, Detective, here we enter the dark arts of financial wizardry. And this is something I do actually employ a wizard for. Pingback.”

Tallow decided to take out his notebook. “I don’t really know what you’re referring to there.”

“It’s what my wizard calls it. The time it takes a bit of information to go from my computer to the New York Stock Exchange and back again. Any kind of financial trading has to take into account the speed at which an opportunity can be observed and a deal can be executed. The Pearl Street location has particularly good pingback.”

Tallow scratched down some notes, and then paused. “Wait. Aren’t we closer to the Stock Exchange here than we would be if we were sitting in that building on Pearl?”

Machen clapped his hands. Tallow had the sudden feeling that Machen practiced this routine for dinner parties. “Aha. And that’s why I keep a wizard. Because the pingback on the Pearl location is actually better than it is here. Even though we are physically much further away. Working this out is almost like feng shui.” Machen mispronounced it. Tallow let it go.

“My wizard,” Machen said, “tells me that it’s due to maps, utility services, history, even ground conditions. The maze of wires under our feet wasn’t all put there just to serve us in the financial sector. Otherwise, all lines would lead to Wall Street, right? The wiring we use to reach those computers aren’t laid down in a direct fashion, and they’re not all of the same quality. Jumping from fiber to copper and back again, or even from wireless to fiber to copper, and trunks going around the block when you just want them to cross the road…all of this affects pingback time.”

“Sure, but not so you’d notice.”

“But the computers notice. The databases notice. Fifty milliseconds’ delay in our information flow can be the difference between getting rich like pharaohs that day and checking the package of ramen at the back of the cupboard for green bits that night.”

“Really.”

“Well, not really. But it does decide who gets to close deals on a minute-by-minute basis all damn day. Pingback location is the new real estate in Manhattan, Detective. So, yes, I’m going to knock that tenement down and put a big shiny office on it with lightning pingback, as I’ve been instructed to by my wizard, and make a lot of people a lot of money. Which is what we’re all here for. Right?”

Tallow was trying to write it all down. “This is insane.”

“It’s where we live now. The real maps of the great cities of the world are invisible. They’re underfoot, or they’re wi-fi fields, or they’re satellite links. On a global basis, the financial markets’ biggest problem is the speed of light. I read a paper last year that said, quite bluntly, that what was holding back the efficiency of the global financial system was most often light-propagation delays. I know a guy in Bonn who thinks he can make a killing by floating an artificial island in the Arabian Sea and putting an uplinked trading center on it, bypassing six different choked systems and the delays inherent in their light cones.”

Tallow looked up at Machen. “This isn’t just your job, is it?”

Machen laughed, short and explosive, and some tension seemed to rush from him. “I love it. I love doing this. You know, some days, I don’t even see the buildings when I walk to work. I just see the networks, the flow of money and instructions and ideas, huge invisible shapes and zones and lines. It’s the biggest game in the world, and to win it I have to do battle with the forces of relativity itself.”

He laughed again, more quietly and easily this time. “And I know what I sound like. And you have to understand that I don’t take myself quite that seriously. But at the same time, nothing I’ve said is a lie. It’s just fun. It’s the life I always wanted.”

Tallow watched him. Machen’s happiness faded by inches. When Tallow judged him to be back at his starting point, he said, “I want to make something very clear. That building is the center of an extremely serious investigation. I am here to impress upon you that that building is not to be touched by anyone until our investigation is done.”

“Well,” said Machen, “that does make things…complicated. We have exchanged contracts with the owner of the property, but the money hasn’t yet been transferred, and…”

“Execute the contracts. Transfer the money. And then hold the building intact until the conclusion of our investigation.”

“I’m not certain, Detective, that you have the power to demand that,” Machen said. It seemed to Tallow that Machen then thought twice about having said that, rubbing a knuckle against his lips, his eyes going somewhere distant.

“I think it would be time-consuming for both of us if I were to attempt to find that out for you, sir.”

Machen stirred. “No. You’re right. I apologize. We’ll complete the sale and hold the building as is for a period. Can I give you my personal number?”

Tallow nodded, and Machen produced a silver card case from a drawer of his desk. With thumb and forefinger, he extracted from it a slim stainless-steel business card and reached across to hand it to Tallow. It, acid-etched in a Neville Brody font Tallow recognized from magazines, read:

“Nice,” Tallow said. He slipped it into his breast pocket, wondering if it was going to interfere with his cell phone reception, and for one distracted second amusedly regretful that the card was too thin to stop a bullet in the fairy-tale manner of a luckily placed cigarette case or brandy flask.

“So,” Machen said, “this is all about the naked man who got killed?”

Tallow gave him a look. Machen spread his hands, grinning. No shaking now, Tallow saw. “I admit, I have been overseeing the whole process of obtaining the location. Observing. So naturally I was informed of the incident fairly early on. Does the man have any family?”

“Not that I’m aware of at this time. Why do you ask?”

The grin became rueful. “Should I feel guilty? I feel a little bit guilty. It does appear that the purchase of the building is what set the guy off. I mean, we weren’t just shoveling these people out into the street. We were paying good money and taking care of all our obligations while remaining well within property law. But from all accounts, this poor guy just saw someone taking his home away and it sent him over the edge. I feel like I need to do something more.”

Tallow stood. “If I find out, I’ll let you know, sir. Thank you for your time.”

Machen rose again, offered his hand again. “And you’ll stay in touch about the building?”

“Of course. Once we’re done with it.”

Tallow felt a little tremble travel down Machen’s arm, through Machen’s hand, and into his own. “Perhaps,” Machen said, “more frequent updates?”

Tallow smiled and broke the grip. “I’ll do what I can.”

Tallow left the office before Machen could say anything more.

Outside, he whispered to the personal assistant, “You’re going to be fine.”

She beamed at him with relief, a stunning blaze of a smile.

Tallow left.

In the elevator, he reviewed the last minute of the interview. Machen had played the part of a charming, empathetic, understandably reticent but ultimately fair man reasonably well.

Except that if Machen knew Bobby Tagg was dead, then he also knew that Jim Rosato was dead. While Machen would have no reason to know that Tallow had killed Tagg and that Rosato was Tallow’s partner… why, if you were playing nice guy, would you not take the chance to commiserate with a policeman about his dead colleague? That rang wrong.

Why was Machen shaking? He had put down his cell phone, presumably his personal phone, when he stood up. What had just been said to him?

Perhaps he was in fact keeping his distance from the deal. He’d assigned it to underlings to complete. That would make sense, Tallow supposed. Perhaps he’d literally just heard about what happened. Perhaps it’d taken a day for the information to ping from the bottom to the top of Vivicy. Light-propagation delay.