Cruel Zinc Melodies

6

I didn’t recognize the World first time past. I thought they’d just be getting started, not almost finished.

I expected lots of guards, too. Thieves inevitably appear wherever there’s something burnable. Even in this brave new postwar world, where law and order threatens to become a universal disease.

I was a hundred yards into the Tenderloin before I realized I’d missed. I turned. There it was. Looking just like one of the elevations Gilbey had shown me, not quite complete. How do you walk right on by a round building without noticing?

Max had used the sheer weight of his own fortune, supported by selective gratuities, to gain possession of a grand tract on the edge of the anything-goes part of town. He’d cleared the tenements and whorehouses, the taverns and feeble storefront-branch churches.

I headed back, wondering if there was something about Max that I’d been missing. The World looked like a monument to an aging man’s ego. Gilbey’s elevations had done little to betray the scale of the project. Maybe that’s how you miss a round building. It’s too big to see.

‘‘Where you goin’ there, slick?’’ a bony old man with a peg leg, a ragged white beard, a truncheon, and a wild walleye wanted to know. His other eye was glass and brown instead of a washed-out blue.

‘‘Do you read?’’

‘‘Some.’’

‘‘Here’s word from the owner.’’ I produced the paperwork Gilbey had given me. ‘‘I’m a security specialist. The Old Man isn’t happy with the way things are going.’’

«Who?»

‘‘Max Weider. Of the brewery Weiders. The man who pays your salary.’’

‘‘Lego Bunk pays my salary, ace. And he’s one cheap-ass mortar forker.’’

Watching a semiliterate, one-eyed, walleyed man try to read Gilbey’s fancy hand was an adventure. My patience got strained before the old boy nodded. ‘‘All right, chief. Guess you’re real. Mind me asking what you’re supposed to do?’’

‘‘You have a name?’’

‘‘They call me Handsome. I don’t know why.’’

Made no sense to me, either. ‘‘Handsome, the boss is worried about delays. Says people are blaming ghosts and bugs. Says he don’t believe it. He wants some heads busted. In order to encourage the others.’’

Handsome understood. I’d referenced a bad habit of Venageta’s rulers during the recent conflict. If they thought their troops weren’t trying hard enough, they executed a few. In order to encourage the others.

Handsome was a veteran.

The peg leg was a clue.

The war for control of the Cantard and its mines had gone on forever. It defined generations. It bound men together where they had nothing else in common.

‘‘You Corps?’’ I asked.

Handsome grunted an affirmative.

‘‘Me too.’’ He was way older so we had little else in common. But that was enough.

Two minutes after you start boot training they convince you that Marines are a separate and dramatically superior species. And once a Marine, always a Marine. Rah!

Marines are more family than most brothers and sisters. And so forth.

You never get over it, either.

We didn’t swap stories. You don’t do that, except maybe with the guys who were there with you.

Me bringing it up was as good as a secret handshake, though. Handsome became confidential. ‘‘I don’t believe they’s really no ghosts. That’s crap. I never heard no music, neither. An’ I been here since the start. Somebody’s pulling some shit, maybe, trying to fuck up the program. Maybe kids. They’s kids around all the time. One day gang-type kids, the next day kids that look like they run away from the Hill. But they’s plenty a’ fucking bugs, I guaroontee you that. Bugs you ain’t gonna believe till they climb your fucking leg.’’

‘‘Tell me about the bugs.’’

‘‘They’re big. And bold as cats. You go on in there, cap. Prowl around. Won’t be that long afore you see.’’ He stepped aside.

No one else challenged my right to visit the site.

Actually, no one seemed to give a rat’s whisker, one way or another. Everybody but Handsome was trying to get some construction done.

I went inside. It was warm in there. I saw no obvious reason why.

My familiarity with the theater phenomena was limited. I went to a passion play once with a lost girlfriend, way back. Twice recently I’d gone with Tinnie, to a comedy and a tragedy, both historicals based on rulers from Imperial times. Neither play impressed me.

Interior work on the World was just getting started. Most of the planking meant to become ground-level flooring remained to be pegged into place. No seating or stages or walls had gone up yet. A couple of carpenters pegged away. I strolled over. One worked an augur. The other sanded the head of a peg just driven into place. I peered into the lower-level gloom. ‘‘What’s the plan for ventilation down there?’’

The carpenters looked like brothers separated by five years. The elder said, ‘‘I’m a carpenter, chief. You want to know something like that, ask the friggin’ architect.’’

The other said, ‘‘Don’t mind this asshole. He married my sister. She sucked the nice out of him years ago.’’

Not brothers, then. The sister must be a walking disaster zone, she had a brother who talked like that.

The younger continued. ‘‘They’ll be louvered iron windows that can be adjusted from inside. And a stack in the center that’s supposed to draw hot, stale air.’’

‘‘Thank you.’’

Something brown scooted through the lower murk.

Carpenter the Elder failed to object to his companion’s remarks. I assumed the crab-and-grin was a regular act.

Another something moved downstairs. Followed by a bunch of somethings. Rats? ‘‘You guys seen any ghosts?’’

‘‘Say what?’’

‘‘Ghosts. Old Man Weider said you construction guys can’t stay on schedule on account of ghosts and bugs.’’

The crabby carpenter whacked a peg into place with a wooden mallet. ‘‘I heard the same shit, slick. ButI ain’t never seen no spooks. Bugs, though? Shit. Yeah. We got them fuckers out the wazoo. Some a’ them big enough to rape a dog.’’

‘‘Not mosquitoes, I hope.’’ In the islands we’d joked about the skeeters being so big they’d hang you in the trees so they could snack on you later.

‘‘Nah. They’s cock-a-roaches, mainly. I seen some ugly beetles, too. Shit! Lookit! There’s one right over there.’’ He threw his mallet. He missed. The mallet bounced all the way to the wall. Which I noted only in passing. Because I was looking at the biggest goddamned roach that ever lived. And the fastest thing on six feet that I ever saw.

It wasn’t big enough to rape a dog. Not even one of those little yappy fur balls favored by old women on the Hill. ‘‘Holy shit!’’ That son of a bitching bug had to be eight inches long. There wasn’t anything like that native to TunFaire.

I begged, ‘‘Tell me that wasn’t a baby.’’

‘‘Nope.’’ That was the carpenter who wasn’t busy retrieving his mallet. ‘‘That was the biggest one I ever seen. But they keep getting bigger. We kill as many as we can. Old Man Weider needs to get somebody in here that knows what they’re doing.’’

‘‘He got me instead.’’

‘‘Kind of takes the optimism out, don’t it?’’

What the hell? This guy didn’t even know me and he was piling on. ‘‘I’ll be back.’’

‘‘That a threat or a promise, chief?’’

‘‘Pick your poison.’’