“The connect it doesn’t.” The man’s face was all bone angles edged with scabs and crusted dirt. His breath was ripe with alcohol and the cheaper grades of paint thinner. “This really sucks.” One plated arm gestured floppily toward the alley’s depths. “Sonuvabitch here just blew away that poor girl.”
As though on a common gear, Harrisch and the cop looked toward the yellow-haired corpse, then back to the homeless figure in his dissembled shell. The cop shrugged. “So?” He looked genuinely puzzled. “What’s your point?”
“Connect, man…” The red-rimmed eyes were filled with the fury of Old Testament saints. “You’re not gonna do anything about it?”
“Of course not,” said the cop, deeply offended.
Harrisch tilted his head back and looked up at the night sky. The patchy clouds, tinged with the city’s luminescence, still let a few long segments of clear stars through. This is what I get. When one’s tenderer sentiments were indulged, payment was exacted. The singing from the choir below had stopped, letting silence fill the alley’s narrow space again. For all he knew, they had given up their church service for the time being and were listening in on his problems.
“The connect you aren’t.” Noisily, segments of the interlocking shell clattering against each other, the turtlelike figure rooted through the various grimy pouches and rope-slung sacks on his torso and around his waist. He came up with a miniature video camera, its silvery plastic smeared with his black fingerprints. “I got it all down. I’ll go witness status. Then you’re in deep doo-doo.”
“Bullshit.” The cop sneered again. “You’re not licensed for that.”
“Yeah?” A gap-toothed smile showed on the gaunt face. “Check it out.” One gnarled hand extended a plastic-laminated card. “You and your little businessman pal here have got the wrong story going.”
“Ah, damn.” The cop examined the card, then handed it back. A sigh born of deep frustration lifted and dropped his shoulders.
“What’s the problem?” Harrisch took one of the cop’s arms and pulled him away from the smirking homeless. “There’s a problem, right?”
The cop tilted his head toward the watching and waiting figure. Beyond, at the mouth of the alley, a few more of the homeless had tilted their shells back, the attraction of the voices’ buzz greater than the car’s dying heat. “There was that traffic-monitoring program about six months ago. Buncha crap, if you ask me. But the transport authorities issued videocams, little cheap throwaway numbers, to a lot of these guys; figured they were already on the street, might as well let them do the counts. The only thing, they had to be granted temporary citizenry levels as well, something high enough that the data they collected could go into the public records. The funding debates on some of these issues are pretty hot right now. But that’s where our problem comes from.” The cop pointed a thumb toward the shellback. “This guy’s temp level hasn’t expired yet; it’s still got three days to run. So technically, at this point in time-but not next week-he could enter testimony against you.”
“On what?” Harrisch’s anger rose. “What charge? I don’t see what his level’s got to do with it.” This was the kind of thing that always pissed him off, little unexpected traps laid in the path of an honest man. “It’s her level; that’s what’s important.” He pointed toward the corpse, gazing up at the clouded sky, flecks of rain tearlike on her soft cheekbones. “She didn’t have any; you know that. I thought that was the whole reason I was able to preregister this hit.”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” The cop tried to calm him down. “So it’s not like you’d get charged with anything major; it’s not a murder or an aggravated-assault rap. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Damn straight.” Harrisch’s temper had come down a few notches, to a grouchy irritation. “The way I see it, I was doing my civic duty here. She didn’t have any entry permit. You know she didn’t.” Which brought it, he knew but didn’t need to bother explaining to the cop, under the “Invisible Wall” sections of the immigration code. The cube bunny’s looks and charm had been her only passport, her only badge of citizenship-and that had been revocable at a moment’s notice. The parsifal, cold now but still dangling in Harrisch’s fist, had accomplished that much. “So who cares if this dildo saw what happened?”
“Well… it’s a technicality.” The cop looked uncomfortable. “Even with a preregistration like yours… the actual code is that it has to be done in front of a law-enforcement official. Like me. You call up the dispatcher, I come out, you do whatever you’re going to and I check it off; then it’s all kosher. Now, in practice, it’s me and the coroner’s equipment showing up after the fact-that’s usually how it’s done. We can always fudge the time stamp on the hit.” He gave a big sigh and a shake of the head. “But with a certified witness on the scene… that makes it a little harder.”
“Dig it, jerk-off.” With a mottled grin of satisfaction, the homeless figure folded his plated arms across his chest. “I’m the crap sandwich on your menu.”
“All right.” Harrisch’s turn to sigh. He turned away from the cop and toward the other man. He pocketed the parsifal, then took his wallet from inside his jacket. “What’s this going to cost me?”
“Hey…” The cop’s whisper emerged from between clenched teeth. “Don’t let this schmuck hustle you.”
“Right. Like you’ve been so much help.”
“Well, at least get a good price from him.” The cop retreated next to the camera on its tripod.
The corners of the homeless man’s mouth were bright with saliva as he regarded Harrisch’s wallet. Harrisch took out a diamond Amex, his own, not the company’s. “As I said-how much?”
“Depends.” The interlocking plates clacked against each other. “You want to go for straight bribery-you know, buy me off-I could go for a thousand.”
“I don’t bribe. I buy.”
A puzzled look appeared in the other’s eyes.
“Come on.” Harrisch gestured impatiently. “The tape, the disk, whatever you’ve got it on.”
“Oh. Well, that’s gonna run a bit more-”
“Plus your citizenship status.”
“Huh?” The largest armor plate, the one over the surgically curved spine, shifted as the figure hunched forward. “What’re you talking about?”
“Figure it out,” said Harrisch. “You want to be an idiot, fine, but I don’t have to. There’s no way of proving to me that you haven’t already loaded the footage off to some data-store.” He used the corner of his wallet to point to the Mini-Cel™ linkem tucked in with the rest of the welfare agencies’ tracking devices. “Or some tipscanner down at the networks could be going over it right now. But if you don’t have current witness certification, it doesn’t mean jack. And that’s the way I want it.”
“I got ya.” The shellback nodded in understanding. “No wonder you’re some big exec type. You got brains. Okay, but it’ll cost you.”
Harrisch let the other man hit him for a mid-five-figure amount. The shellback returned the card after running it through his handheld scanner. He’d already decided to wait until the homeless figure showed some sign of realization; he knew it wouldn’t take long.
“Cool.” The gaunt-faced man radiated an appreciation of his good fortune. The other black domes, their residents’ eager faces peeping out from beneath their edges, crept closer, anticipating some distribution of the largesse. “Nice doing business with you.” The gap-toothed mouth barked out a laugh. “Only problem is, now I gotta go down to the charity offices in the morning and reregister. You just bought my whole ID, buddy. I can’t even collect my ration tags until I officially exist again…” His voice faded out; in his eyes, a new light faded in. Those eyes widened, staring at Harrisch. “Wait a minute…”