Gun Machine

Twenty-Three

TALLOW DROVE around the 1st for a while, until he was certain his brain was still ticking along smoothly. It was pushing noon. He knew he should attempt food. It also occurred to him that he should continue to hand-tame his feral CSUs.

People who didn’t know John Tallow well were often surprised when he exercised some spending power, and even more surprised when they found out he lived on the island. Sometimes people assumed he was on the take in some mysterious fashion that didn’t require his energy or interest. The simple fact was that Tallow didn’t spend a lot of money, ever. He even did most of his laundry in the kitchen sink with cheap soap powder. He didn’t go out much. He didn’t eat much. He got his reading and his music inexpensively or free through the Internet.

Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow imagined his younger self standing down the timeline from his present life, bare toes curling in teenage beach sand, looking ahead to today and watching his future life collapse in on itself like a dying star. His future life becoming small and dark and dense, its gravity apparently grim and inescapable.

Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow spent some cash on a bottle of vodka and drank it at home within an hour.

He pulled up at a sandwich place he knew just before the lunchtime rush started, tucking his car in behind a brand-new SUV-type thing that, with its broad beam, gold, chrome, and huge tires, could have been a hyper-evolved version of a lunar rover. The place itself was little more than a hole-in-the-wall on a rolling six-month lease, and the selection was “minimalist,” but the food was terrific, skilled, and considered. Tallow took out his phone and called Scarly.

“I hate this thing,” answered Scarly. “It’s like an ankle monitor you have to fucking pay for. Except for your hand. Shut up. What do you want?”

Tallow felt a little headache start behind his right eye, which twitched. “I wanted to know if you guys want me to bring you some lunch back.”

“Hey. Bat. You want food?” Scarly yelled without holding the phone away from her mouth.

While Tallow shook his head, he could hear Bat moaning in the call’s background. “The bag hurts. Food is a trick on mammals. The bag is death, Scarly. Food is death.”

“He doesn’t want lunch,” Scarly said. “But get him some anyway. Either he’ll eat it and it’ll kill him or he won’t touch it and I’ll just eat it myself. Where are you?”

“A place in the 1st I know. How about a cold sliced steak sub on fresh bread with a red onion marmalade they make with beer?”

“Hell yes. That sounds like real fucking food.”

“Give me twenty minutes.”

“Thanks, John.”

“Death bag,” Bat howled in the distance.

John got out of the car, almost knocking down a tall, stringy man in a tan suede jacket and a guano-speckled bowler hat with three large turkey feathers sticking out of the makeshift duct-tape hatband. “Fucking filth,” snarled the man. His teeth were the color of mud.

Tallow impassively badged him. “Te’bly sorry,” said the man; he touched his fingers to the brim of his hat and shuffled on. Tallow walked to the storefront. He’d read somewhere that in the Five Boroughs there were no fewer than four hundred thousand people reporting serious psychological distress, and God knew how many people on the street who didn’t report to anyone and who slipped through the ragged net of the city’s scarily named Division of Mental Hygiene and the myriad agencies it paid to supposedly get crazy people off the sidewalks and into the system. A lot of people got paid. Any idiot walking the 1st Precinct could tell you how few of them were actually doing the job. If you were crazy enough to store the guns you ritually prepared to kill people, then in New York City you could hide in plain sight. Tallow considered that for all he knew, the stringy man in the bird-shit-spattered bowler could be his guy.

Inside the narrow store, there was a woman in a black, very architectural sort of jacket, turquoise jewelry, and unusual wedge-heeled boots that made her look like she was balancing on thick slices of gold. The two guys who ran the place, always in Williamsburg hipster uniforms of short-sleeved shirts and neatly trimmed beards that looked stuck on with spirit gum, paid, as ever, no attention to anything but the food and the money. Tallow imagined that every night they counted their money and prided themselves on having not made eye contact with anything human. New Agey synth music shot through with glitch and broken beats played softly from an iPod speaker station on the countertop.

The woman wore shades, and her hair was loose and framed her face, but Tallow could still see that she was pale. Not pale like the florist. This wasn’t a woman who took in light. This was a woman who crumbled a little bit under it, whose skin was made dry and drawn by exposure to the world. Roll-on balm wasn’t disguising bitten and blistered lips enough. He decided he was glad he couldn’t see her eyes.

She paid cash, which was taken from a tooled leather cylinder held in the crook of her right arm, no bigger than it needed to be for a billfold, credit cards, phone, and car keys. As she turned, Tallow saw the brooch at her breast, a disc of rough animal hide on a gold mount, a gold image of an elk head in its center, framed by two gold feathers. She saw him looking, brushed it with compulsive fingers, false nails tapping on the gold, and left. He noticed her wedding band looked a little big on her finger.

“Three of the steak sandwiches, please.”

“Coming up,” said Beard Number One, nodding to Beard Number Two, never once looking at Tallow. Together, they cut and smashed and wrapped the sandwiches in maybe twenty seconds. They’d gotten faster. Judging by the previous customer, Tallow thought word had really gotten around about the place. He imagined the pair training at night, listening to Animal Collective on repeat as they beat sandwiches into shape, racing against the same stopwatch they used to time their beard trimming.

Tallow paid his money, took his sandwiches under one arm, and heard the scream.

The woman in the black jacket was crouching on the sidewalk in front of the SUV and screaming as the man in the bowler hat stood over her waving his arms and wailing like a baby.

Tallow shifted the sandwiches to his left arm and shouted at the man in the hat to get his attention. The man turned and looked. Tallow very deliberately opened his jacket to show the man his gun. The man saw the gun. He stopped wailing.

“I just asked her for a light. She started crying. I figured crying was the thing to do today.”

“Get out of here. I’m not making the offer twice.”

The man ran down the street and away, clutching his hat with both hands.

Tallow sighed, looked around, and rested his sandwiches on the hood of the SUV. Good police never showed their guns unless they had to, he knew, but it was quick and easy and it worked. He’d bitch at himself later. The woman was rocking and sobbing now, wheezing, no air left in her lungs for screaming.

Tallow’s empathy extended to reading a situation and not a hell of a lot further. He had known that Bobby Tagg was in extreme distress and in the midst of a psychological break, but he very probably would not have been able to successfully extend comfort and calm to the man. Jim Rosato was a blunt object of a police, but people just naturally liked him better. It was why, Tallow thought, they’d made a good team.

Tallow had a sudden sour memory of the lieutenant suggesting that Tallow had been deluded about that.

He crouched down next to the woman. “It’s okay, ma’am. I’m a police officer. He’s gone. Can you tell me what happened?”

She folded her arms over her head and rocked, choking out the words “I thought it was him” over and over again.

Tallow said, “It’s okay, ma’am,” and experimentally put his hand on her shoulder. She shrieked and jerked away with terrified revulsion, almost fell over, and started coughing as well as crying. Being strangled by her own throat muscles and fluids seemed to pull her out of the fugue. She wobbled on her haunches, those strange golden heels pushing around on the sidewalk for purchase. He touched her again, under her forearm this time, softly. She turned her gold-framed black shades to him, and she allowed him to gently guide and support her to a standing position. She started sobbing again, and fell into him. He put an alien arm around her somehow, and looked at the ground. Her cylindrical purse was on the sidewalk, unopened, next to her wrapped sandwich. He strained a bit and put out a foot to the purse, rolled it closer to him.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said to his chest, sounding a million miles away.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“It’s not,” she said, scrabbling for an unconstricted breath. “He just asked me for a light. But I saw the, the feathers, and his clothes, and…” She broke into tears again, but the crying was cleaner now, more flowing, more purging. She was crying herself out, coming back to herself.

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Emily.” Her hands were shaking epileptically, and his arm was providing less emotional support than physical—he realized he was doing most of the work of holding her up.

“Let me get you sat down,” he said, and shuffled her with difficulty toward his car. His spine popped as he reached down to unlock the driver-side door. He swung it open and lowered her sideways onto the seat.

“One second,” he said, and swept up her purse and sandwich, reclaimed his own purchases, opened the rear door, and put his (and he had to ask himself, What was wrong with him that he was treating three sandwiches like fragile treasure?) precious food on top of the laptop bag. When he turned back to her, she’d fumbled her shades off and managed to stuff them in one pocket of her jacket. Emily did not have the eyes of someone who slept peacefully or often.

“Oh God,” Emily croaked, “look at my hands.” The veins on the backs were standing up like cables, and her hands were shaking so hard they almost blurred.

Tallow gave her her purse. She took it with difficulty, but held on to it. Tallow watched. The shaking diminished, but it didn’t go away. He hunkered down by her side, leaning on the car. “Can you take another shot at telling me what happened, Emily?”

He was oddly saddened to see deception crawl across her eyes like rainclouds.

“I, I don’t really know,” Emily said. “I haven’t been, I guess, I haven’t been well for a while. A, um, I’m not sure what you’d call it, an emotional problem, mental issues, I don’t know, anything I say makes me sound crazy, right? Things just get on top of me sometimes. I get frightened easily, maybe? And that man. He just. Wrong moment.”

She looked down at her brooch and plucked at it with hate, giving a laugh and a sob all in one horrible heartbroken sound. “And this stupid thing, it doesn’t…”

She looked at him, and caught herself. “…doesn’t matter.”

Tallow indicated her purse. “You have your phone in there?”

She nodded, unzipped, and produced it. The phone was very new, a model he’d only read about: just a thin slice of flexible, scratchproof plastic with an artful streamer of antenna wire baked into the back.

“We get given prototypes by phone companies,” Emily said, by way of explanation or apology.

“What’s your husband’s name?” he asked, taking the phone.

“Jason. Jason Westover,” she mumbled.

He opened the phone’s contacts, found the name Jason, and pressed Call. The warmth of his hand activated something in the phone’s structure, and it curled in his grip, taking on the curve of an old-style handset.

“Yes, Em, what is it,” said a tired man’s voice. Not a question; more a resigned statement.

“This is Detective Tallow, NYPD. Is this Mr. Westover?”

“Oh. Oh Christ.”

“It’s all right. Everything’s okay. Am I speaking with Jason Westover?”

“Yes. Yes. I didn’t—”

“It’s all right, sir. I’m with your wife. She’s had a bad scare, and I don’t judge her fit to drive home safely. She’s very shaken up. If you can let me know where you live and arrange to meet me there, I’d appreciate it.”

“Oh. Oh, I see,” Westover said. “Yes. Of course. Thank you. We live at the Aer Keep. I’ll head home as soon as I can and meet you in the main foyer. What about the car?”

“It’s locked and I have the keys. I realize it’s inconvenient—”

“No, no, don’t worry. I’ll have someone come home with me, and I’ll give them the keys and have them pick the car up. Where is it?”

Tallow gave him the address and listened to the scratching of Westover writing it down with a very sharp pencil on paper with a rich tooth.

“Thank you,” Westover said. “Thank you for doing this. I’ll start out for home now.”

“We’re heading to you. Thank you, sir,” said Tallow, and ended the call.

Emily seemed more miserable. “Was he angry?”

“He was just glad you’re safe. Now, can I get you to move over to the passenger seat? I’m not allowed to let you drive.”

She almost smiled at that. But then, thought Tallow, it was only almost a joke. He helped her up, walked her around to the passenger seat, and installed her in it. Getting in the driver’s seat and strapping in, he had a thought.

“I have to ask,” Tallow said. “If you live in the Aer Keep, what were you doing all the way down here?”

She gestured at the storefront. “They have the best sandwiches,” she said.

Tallow aimed the car uptown.

“It’s really very kind of you to do this,” Emily said.

“I couldn’t leave you stranded down in the 1st, and I really didn’t think driving was a good idea for you.”

“The 1st?”

“1st Precinct. The NYPD breaks the city up into zones, precincts, and we’re in the 1st Precinct right now.”

“How funny,” Emily said, without smiling. “Invisible walls for Wall Street.”

“I suppose,” Tallow said.

“Wall Street. Named for the wall the Dutch put up to keep the Native Americans out.”

“You like history?” Tallow asked.

Emily went inside herself a little. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the past year or so. I don’t really like coming down here. It’s not far enough from Werpoes.”

“Werpoes?”

“It was a major Native American village. Just by the Collect Pond. You can look at the little park there and almost imagine that you can see a bit of it. But I only went there once.”

She was rubbing the brooch again, chin down on her collarbone and looking at it as if expecting a genie to rise out of it. No, sadder than that: as if knowing that, despite a story she’d been told, nothing was going to emanate from the device.

As they crossed Broadway, Emily asked, “Are we still in the 1st Precinct?”

“Just left it.”

“This was an old Lenape walking trail. So one border of your 1st Precinct is the oldest road in Manhattan.”

“Ghost maps,” said Tallow to himself.

“What? Ghosts?” She sounded genuinely worried, eyes widening.

“Nothing,” he said. “Thinking out loud. What made you interested in Native American history? Or is it just Native Americans in New York?”

Tallow couldn’t tell if she was relaxing or coming apart again. She wasn’t staring out of the windows as if expecting an attack on the car anymore, but her hands were trembling harder and her eyes were wet.

“Just something someone said to me once,” she eventually said. “Did Jason sound very angry?”

“More like shocked.”

“Don’t look at me like that. He doesn’t beat me or anything.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Jason has a lot to deal with. More than anyone should. I don’t like to make things worse for him.”

“I see.”

“No. No, you don’t.” Her eyes glittered at him like well water. “But you want to, don’t you?”

Tallow had nothing to say to that. He kept his eyes on the road and continued to speed uptown. He could feel her look at him, and then look away, and then look back, as if keeping her eyes on him was safer than looking outside. Tallow started to feel like he should say something.

“Ghost maps,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s what I said to myself five minutes ago. You thought I said ghosts. Ghost maps. I had a meeting yesterday with a man who runs one of those big financial companies on Wall Street. You know, the kind you describe as a financial company but don’t really have a clue what it is it actually does?”

Emily’s smile was a ghost of its own. “I suppose it must seem like that,” she said.

“Does to me. Anyhow. He was talking to me about how there’s an invisible map of connections all over the financial district that do transactions at light speed, and how the map doesn’t quite fit the territory? Something that’s physically closer to the Exchange isn’t necessarily…informationally closer?”

“You’re talking about low latency,” Emily said with a shade of surprise in her voice.

“I think so?”

“This was the sort of thing that was really taking hold as I was leaving the field,” she said. “Ultra-low latency and algorithmic trading. Ultra-low latency means sending the trading information really, really fast. Algo trading is using specialized computer code to sort of break up every transaction into hundreds of little ones. You can almost think of it like rain, really hard rain hitting the windows of the Exchange. The rain’s eventually going to form one big puddle, but you’re not looking at that. You’re looking at the rain. The big transaction’s hidden in plain sight.”

“You worked on Wall Street?”

“I worked for one of those mysterious financial companies. Vivicy.”

“Never heard of it,” said Tallow. “Why did you leave?”

“I met my husband there. Well, kind of. I met him through my boss. They were old friends. And after we were married, Jason said to me: Andy’s kind of an asshole to work for, and the business is doing pretty good now, so why don’t you work for yourself, like me? So now I’m an independent financial consultant, which means I can work from home with my dog and drive downtown for the good sandwiches instead of being one of Andy’s wizards. I don’t have to do the magic for him. But I can’t learn the magic I need to know. Fuck—”

Emily started beating the dash with her fists, screaming Fuck over and over again. Tallow cast around with his eyes, twisted the wheel of the unit, and managed to pull over without causing a pile-up. He reached across the seat and grabbed her wrists. She was still trying to punch the dash even in his grip. He yanked her arms toward himself and yelled, “Look at me!”

She jerked, and her eyes seemed to roll up into her head for a moment before they came back to his. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “Please don’t tell Jason. He worries so much.”

“I’ve already told him all he needs to know. Anything else is between you and him.”

“Yes,” Emily said, but Tallow had the feeling that she meant something else. She sat back, and sat still, dread on her face.

Tallow pulled the car back out into traffic.

“Did Native Americans fish? Here in Manhattan, I mean,” Tallow said.

Emily’s eyes were closed now. “Yes, of course. They caught oysters too. When the Dutch came, they found huge mounds of discarded oyster shells and crushed them to pave—”

“—Pearl Street,” Tallow said. “Right.” He had the sudden strident sense of vast nets around him, so fine that they were invisible until the light caught them. He took out his phone.

“Scarly?”

“Lunch delivery is fail, Tallow.”

“I know. I got into something, I’m going to be a little late. Listen. The paints. Every one of those guns was cleaned before it went up, but he must’ve put the paints on with his fingers. Before you do whatever it is to identify the paints, you’ve got to check them for DNA and anything else you can think of. Okay?”

“On it. Bring food.”

“On it.” Tallow killed the call with his thumb and checked Emily out of the corner of his eye to calculate her alertness. “Emily,” he said, “do you know what Native Americans used for paints?”

She kept her eyes closed. “Ocher. Red ocher, around here, I think. It’s mostly what you find on the East Coast. It’s a clay-based pigment. They used it for all kinds of things, including body painting and staining their hair. Some people say that some of the first Native Americans to meet Europeans were wearing it, and that that’s where Red Indian comes from.”

Tallow knew his history. Not deep history, but certainly city history. He knew there had been mines all over the area. Staten Island, contrary to popular belief, wasn’t built on landfill garbage. The Dutch had mines there early on. His mind was jumping around, looking for fingerholds.

“Anything else?” he said.

“Blue clay. Crushed clamshells for white. They’d sun-dry things, or burn them, to get the colors they wanted. Charcoal, obviously. Tree sap, berries. Why?” She opened her eyes and looked at him.

“Just keeping you talking,” said Tallow. “You had a shock, after all. Where’s your dog?”

“I have a dog walker for during the day. She took the dog out, I went for lunch. My husband walks the dog at night.”

Emily seemed to be sliding into a state of…he wouldn’t say emotionlessness, but certainly distance and apathy. Her voice came from somewhere deep inside her, somewhere dusty that was a long drive away from being present in the world. The same remote point that he had sometimes, in rare self-aware moments, heard his own voice coming from over the past few years.

The past two days had put Tallow back in the world. Two days ago, he would have pretended he wasn’t police in order to safely walk past shrieking Emily and get in the car with his lunch. In the time before two days ago, he did everything differently. Which was to say, he did as little as possible. Cases got taken care of because nothing was hard.

He was back in the world, thinking energetically, engaged with people, and, he realized with a cold empty feeling in his gut, it was this that was making the scattered fragments of this awful, career-ending case slowly push together. His gut got icier and sicker as he kept thinking.

“So who was the man,” Tallow said, quietly.

“What?” She was far away, and fear was suddenly spoiling the scenery out there.

“The homeless guy who scared you. Who did you think he was?”

“Nobody,” Emily whispered, and turned her face from him.

Tallow steered into the Aer Keep. The front gate was a concrete checkpoint that wasn’t shy about its Cold War look. Tallow showed his badge to the security guard there, noting that the woman was wearing the same Spearpoint insignia as the drones at Vivicy. The guard bent over and peered into his car. “Mrs. Westover,” she said, “is everything okay?”

“Yes, Hannah, I’m fine. I felt ill, and this kind police officer said he’d drive me home. Is my husband here yet?”

“Yes, ma’am. Do you need anything? Should I send the building doctor up to your apartment?”

“I’m fine, Hannah, honestly. I probably just forgot to eat or something. But thank you.”

The guard gave a smile that said she hoped she’d done enough because someone who controlled her employment would certainly be asking her that later, and the gate rose to accept the car into the Keep.

“You go down into the garage,” said Emily. Tallow drove to the mouth of it, where it descended into the bowels of the Keep, and stopped. He wriggled his wallet out and took one of his cards from it. He slipped his notebook pen from of his inside pocket and wrote his cell phone number on the card.

“Take this,” he said, pressing it into her hand. “The number I just wrote down gets my cell phone, day or night. And I don’t sleep much. If there’s anything you ever want to tell me, anything that’s ever worrying you, anything happening that you need help with, call that number. That number’s your new 911, okay? Even if you just want to talk about history. That number.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She zipped the card into one of the peculiar vestibules of her jacket.

Tallow drove down into the island. It was lit down there, and Tallow thought of mines again. The roadway forked; he went right, which took them along a curve to the shining doors of the main foyer. There were more guards there, and one stepped to the car as Tallow got out.

“You can’t park here, sir.”

Tallow showed the man his badge. “Yeah, I can.”

“Actually, sir…” he began, but Tallow was already walking around the car to let Emily out. The guard saw her; his features creased with frustration, and he was compliant in voice only. Tallow knew when someone was memorizing his face in order to do something medieval to him later, and the guard was taking a good long hostile look. Tallow gave Emily her purse and, with a smile, her sandwich. He took her elbow, gently, and guided her past the guard. Tallow took a good look at the guard too, and gave him a shark’s dead-eyed smile, just for the hell of it.

The shimmering glass of the foyer frontage slid open to accept Tallow and Emily. Just inside, a solid man a few inches shorter and a mile fitter than Tallow stood talking to an athletically slim younger man in a sleek black suit and a Bluetooth earpiece. Two steps into the foyer, Tallow saw the Spearpoint insignia on a discreet pin on the younger man’s lapel.

Jason Westover greeted his wife with a warm, understanding “Car keys?”

Emily fumbled them out of her purse and passed them to Westover, who threw them to the younger man. The younger man nodded to Westover, discreet again in a small obsequiousness that stood in for the tug of a forelock, and left swiftly.

“You’re Detective…Tallow,” said Westover. Tallow’s skin prickled. Something had just gone very wrong, and he wasn’t sure what.

“That’s right. And here’s your wife, safe and sound.”

“Of course,” said Jason Westover, and reached a hand out for her. Not unlike someone who had just been informed that he’d left his cell phone on the table, Tallow thought. Westover was checking her over with the eyes of a man examining a bottle for leaks.

“Just curious, Mr. Westover. What business are you in?”

“I run Spearpoint Security. Founder and owner. Why?”

“Like I say, just curious. Lucky you could get away from the office on such short notice. But when you own the office, I suppose it’s easier. Well, your wife’s in one piece. Frankly, she’s been terrific company, and it’s been a pleasure to meet you both.”

“You’re very kind,” Westover lied.

“I’m just glad I was there to help. Your wife had quite a shock, and I really was worried about the wisdom of her driving home afterward. I understand there’s medical staff in the building? It couldn’t hurt to have someone check her out. Shock can be nasty. It can sneak up on you.”

“Yes,” said Westover flatly, taking Emily’s arm and turning away. “Well. Thank you, Detective. We appreciate it.”

“Yes,” said Emily, trying to keep her eyes on Tallow as she turned. “Thank you.” He made sure she saw a smile on his face that said it was okay and turned to leave himself with a “Have a good day.”

Tallow let the doors slide open so that the sound was in the air, but he stopped to watch Westover quickly guide his wife to the elevators. He was speaking tightly and insistently to her. Tallow saw the hand of her free arm twist into a fist.

Tallow went to his car. The guard was still standing by it. Tallow smiled again, and shook his head. “I was dropping off a resident,” he said. “No reason to get uptight, okay? I’m heading out.”

“We got laws in here,” the guard said, straightening and expanding his chest.

“Laws?” said Tallow, laughing. “In here? You sound like this place isn’t part of New York City, pal.”

The guard, to Tallow’s amazement, stepped to him. “It’s not. Just happens to be standing on a piece of it. And it’s my job to keep the laws in here. Pal.”

Tallow stopped walking. The guard took another step toward him. “Listen,” Tallow said, “you know what the difference between you and me is?”

“No difference,” said the guard, “except that in here it’s me telling you what the law is.”

“No,” said Tallow. “The difference is that sometimes you take off that shiny uniform with the Kevlar weave that some liar probably told you was bulletproof, and that great big gun that’s never been fired at anything but a paper target, and you dress like a regular guy and take your days off and go out in the world like you’re a normal person. Right? I’m a New York City police officer. I don’t live like a normal person. I don’t take days off. Ever. So when you see me in the street, the way you’ve been dreaming of doing for the last five minutes, you think about that. You have a good long think about that before you ever take one step closer to me.”

The guard took a step back.

“Enjoy the rest of your shift, sir,” said Tallow, and he got in his car and drove away, as slowly as he could. He would never understand why people wanted to hand him whatever shit was in their baggage.