Vickers (Corp.s.e.)

ONE

IT WAS ONE of the second generation of shuttles, the kind that were already being called "Roman candles" by the media. Two of them had roman candled inside of eighteen months. Vickers' pessimism did its best to convince him that he was riding on number three. He imagined that burning up in the atmosphere would be fast. A streak of fire when the heatshield ruptured and good-bye. Would you char-broil or would the smoke get you first?

Vickers remained doggedly in his cocoon like the kid who gets to the beach and won't take off his jacket. He'd removed neither the H-bar nor the straps. He glared out balefully at the banks of electronics. LEDs rippled and twitched back at him. The cabin was filled with pulse, whistle and ramble. Vickers also glared at the crew as they moved fluidly around, reaching with their slippered feet for the velcro anchor pads. He didn't want to hear that freefall was fun. Also, he had thrown up when the shuttle started to decelerate. The contents of his stomach were still spread around the cabin in a fine floating fog of tiny droplets that tended to cluster around the larger pieces of more solid material. Vickers saw it as a microcosm of the universe. The crew hated him. On the ride out, he had thrown up three times. That crew had hated him even more.

From the very first moment, Vickers had decided that freefall was one of the nastiest things he had ever encountered. He couldn't remember many things that remained so consistently unpleasant. It was like a continuous bad dream, one of the falling kind. It went against all the lessons his ancestors had learned while they were still furry and living in a tree. His instincts told him that the conclusion of freefall was splat! No amount of logic could dispel that yawning anxiety.

The crew tended to stay as far away from Vickers as was possible in the extremely confining cabin. It wasn't just the vomit. The community of those who ventured beyond the atmosphere was small and not much could be hidden. The crew undoubtedly knew why he'd been sent from earth and what he had done. To Vickers' knowledge, he was the first man to kill in space. It had to be worth a dubious something even if it was only a measure of privacy.

The target had been short and balding with a gut and a goatee. His name was Wilson Theodore Dewhurst, age 35, chemist. Vickers usually didn't ask why. The information was never volunteered although there was always rumor. Rumor had it that Dewhurst had developed some wild theory that the continuously recycled water on the big donuts contained contaminants that would have everyone who drank it down with liver cancer in five to seven years. A story like that can run through a donut crew with potentially disastrous results. Dewhurst had had to go.

As Dewhurst was a Contec employee and working on the Contec donut, it was therefore down to a Contec corpse to put him to sleep. Since Vickers was generally acknowledged as the best of the Contec corpses, it had fallen to him to do the deed.

There were four of the big donuts, each one owned and operated by one of the Big Four. The smaller corporations had to make do with drones and robots. The satellites of the Big Four contained men. They hung in their geosynchronous orbits some forty thousand klicks out with human creatures inside them going about their weird business. Originally the agency had wanted to call the donuts RWs-rotating wheels-but ABC News had called the first one a donut and the name had stuck.

All corporations constantly generated their own words and expressions. Some were euphemistic, others were just bizarre. The designation Corpse was an example of the sickness of corporate humor. CORPorate Security Exec. Corpse. Get it? A killer for the corporation. There was an ambiguous saying among corpses and those who dealt with them. "The best killers have already died." It probably started with the Japanese. Their lives are run by that kind of thing.

In theory, the hit had been a simple one. Vickers thought that it was a particularly stupid decision. Killing the sucker would only validate his theory. As usual, though, he bit down on his opinion and scrolled through the program. As the computer told it, the round trip on the shuttle was the dangerous part. All he had to do was to walk in and garrote Dewhurst in his sleep. It is, of course, a very foolish and dangerous act to fire a gun in a spacestation.

According to the data, Dewhurst slept alone. This wasn't true. At the time in question, Dewhurst had, in fact, been in bed with a physicist five years his junior, called George. From the way they were breathing, it sounded like they were both drunk. Vickers had raised a silent eyebrow. The computer had told him that Dewhurst was heterosexual and a non-drinker. Maybe the strain was getting to him.

Vickers had raised Dewhurst's head by the back of his hair. He had deftly flicked the length of thin stainless steel wire around his neck and jerked outwards on the black plastic handles. Dewhurst didn't know a thing. George was something of a problem. The request had called for a single termination. It had not called for a witness. Dewhurst and George were pressed together in a narrow bunk, buttoned in by a safety web. Dewhurst had spasmed briefly before he died. George grunted and moved his hand. He seemed to be attempting to caress Dewhurst's shoulder. Vickers had held his breath and readied the garrote. George sighed. He slumped and inhaled with a loud snore. In that instant he'd saved his life. Vickers slipped out of the cubical. George's certain hysteria when he woke with a hangover and a strangled lover could cause some useful confusion.

As always, the soulsickness began immediately after the deed. Disgust gnawed at him. Inner voices, thick with contempt, reproached and berated him. There was nothing he could do to fight it. The sickness followed a kill as surely as the tension preceded it and the brief flash of exultation accompanied it. He was unclean. He hated himself and the huge, devious, slithering mass of the corporation that owned him. The voices told him that it was a vicious dog world, corrupt with creeping life. He was the one that did their dirty work. Perhaps the Japanese were right. "The best killers have already died." When you're dead inside you don't feel the sickness. Vickers' only consolation was that the sickness would pass. The station execs who escorted him to the shuttle looked like they wanted to handle him with long tongs. It was as though they thought that he was leaving a trail of slime in their bright, white, sterile corridors. Okay suckers, you want to put your hands on your hearts and say that you don't have anything ugly or dangerous brewing in your labs? As they walked, it appeared they were permanently in the bottom of a concave dip. It was an illusion of the centrifugal force that passed as gravity on the donuts.

He caught one of the station execs looking at him out of the corner of his eye. It was a look that he'd seen a hundred times after a kill. They all wanted to know how it felt. How did it feel to kill another of your species? They were fascinated by the idea of being able to inflict death. Vickers could remember one time when he himself had looked with that look. He had been about thirteen. The checkout clerk in the corner store had been shot dead in a robbery. He had been standing on the sidewalk watching when the killer was brought out in handcuffs. The young Vickers had wondered how it felt.

The trouble with squares was that they equated death with sex. These fools were looking at him like small boys in the schoolyard who know that one of their number has gone all the way with a girl.

As Vickers crawled from the umbilical and into the cabin of the shuttle, the execs' contempt was echoed in the faces of the crew. At that point Vickers had resolved to remain buttoned up in his bunk until the wheels touched. He wanted out of this little world in space. It was too clean and too innocent.

The shuttle started to vibrate; it shuddered and bucked. Vickers was leaking sweat from every pore. It sounded like it was tearing itself apart. A terrible metallic clanging echoed through the ship. Vickers was unashamedly terrified. At any moment he expected to see white-hot gas fountaining through a hole in the hull. A voice crackled in his headset.

"Nothing to get twisted about, my friend. We're just hitting the atmosphere. If you look forward through the ports you can see the glow of the heatshield."

Vickers muttered under his breath. "I'm not a tourist. What happens if there's a tile missing?"

If anybody heard him they didn't acknowledge. Someone shut off the interior lights. All that remained was the red glare of the heatshield, blazing as it absorbed the first contact with the atmosphere. The cold green, amber and red of the electronics was punctuated by the occasional small patch of cathode blue. Vickers tugged off the headset, tightened his grip on the cocoon's grabholds and resolutely shut his eyes.

The violent motion of the shuttle became more controlled and regular. The random whomps and shudders organized themselves into a series of measured, heavy bounces, like a rock that's been skimmed across the surface of a lake. Vickers tentatively opened one eye. The glow increased just before each bounce and faded a little afterwards. Vickers closed his eyes again. He wanted as little as possible to do with the mechanics of what he was still convinced would be his death.

The bouncing went on for quite a long time. Vickers was almost getting used to it. Despite himself, he had started to ride the rhythm. Then there was a bounce that was nothing like those that had gone before. The shuttle wallowed. It seemed to slide sideways. The grabholds were slick under his palms. The ship was dropping away. He was convinced that it was falling. He hated any situation in which he was powerless. He knew it. The damn thing was falling away to the side. Something was pulling him down into the cocoon. They'd lost it. The crew had screwed up and lost it.

And then the shuttle was behaving like a plane. It was flying. He opened his eyes. Sunlight flooded through the forward windshield. Freefall had gone and reliable gravity was back. His arms and legs felt impossibly heavy. He didn't think that he could lift his head. The crew were heaving themselves out of their cocoons. One of them was leaning over him, standing on the cabin floor like a real person. She pointed to the headset, indicating that he should put it on. Vickers scowled and did as he was told. He noted in passing that she was really quite pretty. Even in space, she wore eyeshadow. She was probably Korean. Koreans seemed driven to excel. A male voice grunted out of the headset. "We'll be down within the hour. You might as well climb out of some of that webbing. You'll only need a lapstrap, just like on a regular scheduled flight."

Vickers sniffed and flexed his fingers. He hadn't realized how tightly he'd been squeezing the grabholds.

"I think I'll stay as I am."

"It's up to you, friend, but if you do, you're a damned fool. If we have any problem on landing, you'll never get out of all that stuff."

Vickers made a low growling sound deep in his throat but he touched the cocoon's attitude control and returned it to a sitting position. He swung up the rubber-padded H-bar and started unhooking the webbing. A man had to know the difference between stubbornness and stupidity. A couple of the crew were grinning at him. He ignored them. He went right on ignoring them until the wheels touched. At the very last moment, the shuttle popped a wheelie. It was like a final insult, a final tweak at his nerves.

Vickers took a limousine into Manhattan from Kennedy. Originally, he had intended to take a taxi, even a train or a bus, as anonymous as his blue jeans and his white lightweight jacket. On the commercial flight up from New Mexico, he had cleanslated himself. At thirty thousand feet, the few credentials of Hamilton Dryden, the identity who had gone into space and killed, had been carefully cut into plastic slivers and flushed down the lavatory and into the septic tank of the 921.

In that moment, he was Mort Vickers again. When a man changed identities as often as he did, it was hard to stay in touch with who you really were. It took an act of faith to believe that he had always been Mort Vickers. He had stared at himself in the mirror of the 921's lavatory. He was tall, he was slim and, at the moment, his hair was dark. The problem was his face. He could swear that it was starting to blur into something like one of those composite photographs that are supposed to be a picture of Mister Average, the kind that has no discernable features and no discernable character. He reminded the mirror who he was. Mort Vickers, thirty-four and the best executioner that Contec had ever had. How could it be otherwise? His past was little more than a series of bloody traumas of which he was usually the sole survivor. How was it that none of the deaths and none of the pain showed in his face?

In the beginning, he'd had no choice. He'd been drafted and he'd been too macho dumb to weasel out of it. Six months later, he had been in Yemen. After what had gone down there, there was no possibility of turning back. He had re-upped and volunteered for the debacle in Panama. After that, there had been the freelance jobs and finally the invitation to the corporation. Neither the slaughter nor the horror ever stopped. It only ebbed and flowed. The best killers are already dead. The desire to travel by limo was clearly a product of a need to be someone other than Mort Vickers as fast as possible. He reflected on this as he picked up the courtesy phone under the Laverne Continental sign. If he was going to fall straight away into a new ID, it might as well be an affluent one. He hated assignments where he had to shuffle around as a wino. Pride dictated that he do them, but he didn't have to like poverty. Once inside the womblike back of the stretch Lincoln, he poured himself a drink, turned on the TV and selected a new identity from the small collection in his case. Joseph Pope. He half smiled. Pope was the richest of the collection. He could live very handsomely as Joseph Pope for the few days before he was plugged back in. Joseph Pope would be a man who knew how to unwind. He told the driver to take him to the Plaza.

The driver was a strange combination of black and blond in a severely jackbooted uniform. The blonde came from a bottle but the black was natural. As he'd climbed into the car, she'd snapped off a flashy salute. He'd forgotten that Laveme Continental was strictly a showtime operation. The competition between limo lines was intense. They'd never really recovered from the Millennium Fair. She spent most of the ride sizing him up. Vickers pretended not to notice, and stared, stonefaced, at the TV. All you could get in the car was the networks. On ABC, Grab was in its second hour. The contestants were on the floor howling and fighting for money. Vickers turned the sound up and waited. It took until almost the Midtown Tunnel before the intercom flashed. Vickers killed off Grab.

"Hello."

"We'll be in Manhattan in a few minutes. Is there anything I can do for you before we reach the Plaza?"

"Do?"

"Anything you might want but not know how to get."

Vickers shrugged.

"I can always use a few pills."

"What sort of pills?"

"Greenies, Marvols…"

"You'll have to get those from the bellhop at the Plaza. I can sell you twenty eighty-eights."

Vickers grinned.

"They'll do."

"Let down the security glass."

Vickers hesitated for an instant before he touched the button. It could be an elaborate trap but it was unlikely. If they'd been meaning to hit him they'd have done it way back in Queens. A hand reached through with a small baggie in it. Twenty eighty-eights. Vickers went to take it but the hand held back. "Fifty."

"Can I charge it on the bill?"

"Fuck no, this is free enterprise."

There were two schools of thought about Manhattan. Some said that you cleanslated it so nobody noticed you. Others claimed that you took on the strongest ID and hoped that if anybody did notice you they'd be convinced that you were somebody else. The one thing that everyone agreed on, on the few anxious occasions that corpses got together to agree on anything, was that Manhattan was lousy with bounts.

Bounts were what stopped the occupation of corpse from being a very attractive one. Bount was corpse talk for bounty hunter. They were a product of corporation policy. Bounts had a twisted Darwinism about them. Involuntarily, they policed the ranks of corpses. They picked off the stragglers. They preyed upon the weak and unwary. Each corporation had a price on the head of every known corpse of every other corporation. Bounts came out of the woodwork to claim the money. You could get the information from a terminal in any bank, hotel or train station, descriptions, pictures, all known ID that a particular corpse might be using. ID departments were constantly being penetrated and each time any corpse so much as used a credit card, there was a flash of fear.

The real trouble was that anyone could be a bount. Anyone could get a bunch of descriptions and start going after corpses. It was legalized murder. Nothing would happen to you if you killed a corpse as long as you didn't do it right in front of a cop. On the other side of the coin, though, nothing would happen to the corpse if he killed you. Such was the power and also the nature of the corporations. Bounts were invariably the worst.

They were psychos and short-spans, and terrorists without a cause, the drug wreckage of five continents and those who just liked to ultimately do it to others.

The corpses had fought the system for as long as it had been in existence. Their argument was simple. A corpse's life was hard enough. Why complicate matters with a lot of homicidal amateurs lurking around each corner waiting to ventilate you. The end result was that highly trained operatives went nuts from anxiety long before their natural time. It was needless and inefficient. Naturally, the argument cut no ice with the corporate execs. Something like the bounty system was a way for them to get their kicks. They saw it as a bolder, more absolute version of the way they perceived their own lives. It was competition brought to a razor's edge, and wasn't competition what fueled the free enterprise system?

There were times when the corporations went completely too far and even exceeded their own slight standards of decency. When McKinney was all-time hot at D&C, Soji had come out with a television commercial on him, an actual prime-time commercial with a half-dozen clips of McKinney: McKinney walking on the street, McKinney in a bar, McKinney at an airport, some shots of McKinney at home that only indicated, at least half the time, that they were using a look-alike. The sound track had been blatant. "Have you seen this man? This man is a killer. This man is worth $100 thousand- dead!" The music was like something from a snuff flick. In fact, according to market research, more than two-thirds of the people who saw the first airing assumed that it was a teaser campaign for a movie.

In the following week enough people caught on in the markets where the Soji corporation had run the commercials to cause the violent deaths of twenty-seven people who looked a little like McKinney. Ironically, McKinney himself was unscathed. The protests followed thick and fast. Rival corporations used their media subsidiaries to set up a ringing scream of outrage. D&C, McKinney and the relatives of the slain all filed suits against Soji in the courts of a dozen countries. Even some national governments tried to get in on the act but, even back then, their power had been so eroded and they were so enfeebled by their own corruption that there was no real chance that they could stand up to the corporations.

At first, Soji was intransigent. They didn't want to compromise. McKinney had wasted the five-man design team that was masterminding their most precious of secret projects. They were about as crazy mad as a predominently Oriental corporation could get. They only relented when everyone else started gearing up for a consumer boycott. They issued a somewhat stilted apology and paid off the relatives. In a way, Soji actually won. McKinney never worked again. After all the publicity, he knew that he had to hang it up.

About the only positive thing that came out of the entire debacle was a kind of ad hoc agreement that pros didn't go after pros except in the line of duty. The only time a corpse went after bounty was when he was perilously on the skids. Bounty meant it was the end.

The desk clerk at the Plaza seemed a little distressed by Vickers' blue jeans, his lightweight jacket and his singular lack of luggage. The distress faded a little when Vickers proffered gilt-edged plastic. It didn't fade completely, though. Here and there in the world, there were still places like the Plaza that tried to maintain the pretense that money wasn't everything.

For a corpse, a hotel was a mixed blessing. It was a place off the street and out of the rain but there was no true security. Maids and bellhops came and went, phone and computer lines went through central switch gear. Too many people going in and out, too many people listening, no locks that didn't have a spare key. The only real way to stay safe was to remain random. The clerk smiled and handed Vickers a key. Vickers scowled and asked for a different room.

Once inside, he took a four-way detector from his case and scanned the suite. The detector showed nothing except the smoke alarms and the simple tamper sensors on the door. This didn't actually mean very much. Surveillance technology had become a matter of gizmo and countergizmo. No sooner was a new spy toy developed than someone invented one that could negate its usefulness. Life at the top of the line for a bugging device was little more than three months. His detector was last year's model. If there was anything at all sophisticated in the room, it would know nothing about it. He threw the detector onto the bed and turned his attention to the other equipment in his case.

He picked up the Yasha 7 and thumbed both the ammunition and battery checks. LEDs obediently glowed green. Vickers handled the compact, plastic machine pistol almost lovingly. The Yasha was anything but last year's model. It was state of the art for sideautos. He looked around for somewhere to stash it. The refrigerator was as good a place as any. He went back into the bedroom, took his second gun, a Walther 9mm, from the case and slipped it under the pillow. Now there was a gun at either end of the suite. All he had left were shirt, socks, underwear, his remaining four identities and the bag of eighty-eights. The shirt, etc., went into a drawer, the identities were hidden under the carpet. With a strange meticulousness, the eighty-eights were placed on a glass shelf in the bathroom. He could consider his next move.

He needed a drink. In fact, he needed several. According to the book, he was in a situation where he should go out to an anonymous bar or, better still, not drink at all. To hell with it, hadn't he helped write the book? He called room service. He was exhausted. While he waited for the three double scotches and the quart of milk, he decided to make a start on building an image for Joseph Pope. He reached for the TV remote, flipped for Shopex and ordered several thousand dollars' worth of clothes from Barney's. It was a wordrobe suitable for the self-obsessed rich boy who had never done a real day's work in his life that Vickers was conjuring in his imagination.

Despite his previous bravado, Vickers jerked when the knock on the door came. He flashed the scene in the corridor outside. It looked like a perfectly normal waiter with a perfectly normal tray. Even the order was correct. Vickers forced himself to act like a perfectly normal guest and opened the door.

All went according to plan. The drinks were set on the table and the bill was signed, the tip accepted. With the door closed behind the waiter, Vickers sighed into a chair and started his first scotch. He was suddenly very aware that he was in the Plaza. He stood up and walked over to the window. The sinister velvet gloom of Central Park was spread out below him. He turned and surveyed the room. The real secret of the Plaza was that everything was a little larger than you expected. It was as though their fittings and their fixtures and their furniture, even the rooms themselves, continued to be designed for the original weighty robber barons, the Morgans and the Astors and the Vanderbilts who had built the city and built it large.

Through the second scotch and milk he slightly mellowed. He began to feel just a little human. He wondered if he should do something outgoing. That would be the style of Joseph Pope. He'd call a woman, eat at a restaurant, go to a nightclub or, at the very least, take a cab downtown and get drunk. Unfortunately, he couldn't be Joseph Pope yet. Joseph Pope's clothes had still to arrive. He was still Mort Vickers who had been to space to kill and was weary as hell. He sank deeper into his chair with something close to relief. He flipped around the TV dial. He paused for a few seconds at an old Jamie Lee Curtis movie and then flipped on.

During the third scotch he decided to call Myra. In his heart, he knew it was a stupid idea and by the third ring he was hoping that she was out.

"Hello."

"It's me."

"What the hell are you calling me for?"

"I don't know. I just wanted to speak to you."

"What are you trying to pull? Are you trying to con me that you can feel anything?"

"Myra, listen…"

"I don't want to talk to you. I told you after the last time, I can't take you, Mort. There's too much wrong with you. I can't deal with it and there's too much to ignore."

"Myra, I'm telling you…"

"Are you drunk?"

"A little."

"I don't want to talk to you, Mort."

"But I want to talk to you."

"Have you just killed someone?"

"Why don't you turn me in for the bounty? I'm up to sixty-five thou."

"Get off my phone, Mort."

"Myra, I need to talk to someone."

"Not to me, Mort."

"Myra!"

"Good night, Mort."

"Myra!"

"Good night, Mort."

She hung up. Vickers had an urge to redial her number and start yelling abuse. Instinct restrained him. If he pushed her too far, she might turn him in. In that moment, he felt wrenchingly lonely.

When the order from Barney's arrived, he wasn't as casual as he'd been with the waiter. His instructions to the desk clerk were precise and clear.

"I want your people to bring up packages. I don't want Barney's' delivery people coming up here. Do you understand me? I don't want them up here."

The desk clerk assured Vickers that it would be Plaza employees who would bring up the considerable quantity of packages.

"First, however, sir, we have to settle payment. Would you please place your card in the slot on top of the television set- magnetic side down, please."

Carrying the phone with him, Vickers did as he was asked.

"Thank you, sir. Four thousand, six hundred and thirty-seven dollars and nineteen cents have been deducted from your account."

Vickers grinned. Contec could afford it. He dialed room service and ordered more drinks.

When the captain and five bellhops paraded in with his purchases, it was like the opulence of a lost age. The single advantage of permanent unemployment is that there were a lot of surplus people only too willing to fetch and carry for those with money. When the packages were neatly stacked, Vickers beckoned to the captain. He handed him a twenty.

"What channel have you got the hooker commercials buried on this week?"

The captain smiled and winked. "J7, sir."

"Thank you."

When they were gone, he flipped to the channel. Some of the whores used a soft sophisticated come on, fuzzy focus, big soulful eyes, red lips and risque patter. It was, after all, the Plaza. Others preferred a more basic approach. They displayed their tricks for the tricks. Vicker's eye was caught by a pair of supposed twins. In the brief video clip, they were performing an act that, if not cruel, was certainly unusual. The recipient was a sallow, Hispanic teenager who seemed less than overjoyed by their attentions. Vickers decided that they were the kind for whom Joseph Pope would go. He tapped the displayed number into the phone.

A voice answered that might conceivably have belonged to one of the twins in the commercial. He gave his location and a brief outline of his preferences. Once again he slipped his card into the slot for a credit check. On the spur of the moment, he asked a final question.

"Do you have a video tape of the two of you fucking?"

While he waited for them to arrive, he took a swift shower, swallowed two eighty-eights and opened the packages. For Vickers, it was almost like Christmas. Most of his Christmases were a solitary vice. Finally he slipped into a yellow kimono with some sort of Oriental bird on the back. He inspected himself in a full-length mirror. Sure, he was Joseph Pope. He'd pass as a rich idiot.

When the two women arrived-separately and about four minutes apart, the Plaza still having its standards-they proved to be less than identical. The resemblance was mainly a result of common makeup and matching wigs. Vickers wasn't particularly disappointed. At best, hookers were a tacky illusion that matched his own make believe. In the care of a pair of well-paid professionals, he had at least a passing chance of pretending that he was enjoying himself. It was little wonder that Myra refused to speak to him.

"Did you bring the video tape?"

Late the following morning, Vickers called his control. He had been putting it off since the previous day. There was something lightheaded about the short periods when he was beyond their reach. He was free to be irresponsible. There was nothing he needed to think about except indulging himself. The only threatening thought was that, sooner or later, he had to plug himself back in. He noted the time as he punched up the special number. It was 11:57, almost high noon. Do not forsake me, oh my darling. The voice that answered could have been any receptionist.

"Designated Projections."

Vickers didn't recognize the voice.

"Victoria Morgenstern, please."

"May I say who's calling?"

"Tell her that Joseph Pope is calling."

"Does Ms. Morgenstern know you, Mr. Pope? Will she know what this is about?"

"She will when I tell her."

"I have my instructions, Mr. Pope."

Vickers found himself on hold. Rinky-dink idiot music came down the line. He hoped that the receptionist would know enough to check Joseph Pope against the phony ID directory. Victoria had a weakness for pretty but idiot bimbos fronting her office. The receptionist came back on the line.

"I'm afraid Ms. Morgenstem has no recollection of ever speaking to you. Perhaps if you wrote…"

Another bimbo. An earlier lapse of Victoria's had all but gotten him killed during a messy little incident in Milan.

"Sweetheart, did you ever hear of a code seven?"

There was an audible intake of breath. "Oh."

Victoria was instantly on the line.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"I took the night off, any objections?"

"There wasn't supposed to be a witness."

"You're damn right there wasn't supposed to be a witness. There was nothing in the profile about him being a gay drunk, either."

"Why didn't you kill the other one as well?"

"I was only asked for one victim. Besides, he didn't wake up. Do we have to talk about this on an open line?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm not going to tell you that. I'll come to you."

"This isn't some weird attempt to jerk me around, is it Mort?"

"Would I do anything like that? If anyone's complaining about what went down on the donut, they can complain to someone else but me. I was incorrectly briefed."

Victoria Morgenstem was someone whom Vickers would never jerk around. Victoria Morgenstem was an exceedingly determined and ruthless woman. Only the exceedingly determined and ruthless rose to head a corporate death squad. Victoria had enjoyed what used to be called a checkered career. At seventeen, she had been the mistress of Ruggy Toliver, who had invented the concept of retroactive foreclosure and made himself fabulously rich in the process. Ruggy had been 67 at the time with a set of sexual tastes that had become severely baroque. Before he finally died in harness, Ruggy had introduced Victoria to the fact that a substantial section of the power elite had a devilish need to physically ease their most deep-seated guilts.

Even before Ruggy was suitably buried, the family settled an undisclosed sum on Victoria with the understanding that she should depart quietly and never darken their self-image again.

She and her finely honed services were eagerly snapped up by the venerable C.J. Caulfield. In his late seventies, C.J. was known in the media as the friend of Presidents. If anything, he was richer than even Ruggy, but he was also eaten up by cancer. Despite that, C.J. was a good deal more outgoing than Ruggy. He was no longer able to participate but liked to watch. Victoria discovered that her main duties with C.J. were that of hostess, organizer and sexual stage manager at his regular but distinctly bizarre soirees. It wasn't on just one level that C.J. was the friend of Presidents. When he finally terminated, she managed to hold onto her position as queen of the Washington dungeons. She arranged the parties, hired the boys and girls and saved the video tapes. It wasn't long before it dawned on even that particularly self-obsessed group that the young woman had a quite unreasonable hold over them. It was decided that she either had to be killed or co-opted.

Victoria had no desire to die and readily went along with the new life plan that had been devised by a worried consortium of lover/clients. She abandoned her whips and all but the most crucial of her files and allowed herself to be enfolded by a corporation. At about the same time, she abandoned men. Vickers didn't know who had offered her the introduction to corporate homicide but it had been an inspired guess. Victoria had risen rapidly through the control division until she commanded Contec operations in the United States from the clandestine center in Manhattan.

"When are you going to come in?"

"I don't know. I figured I'd take a few days off. Just as long as some bount doesn't make me."

"I can't spare you that long. There's a panic brewing. I want you available."

Vickers started to protest. "I'm not ready to plug in. I don't want to be available. I've been to space and back. I'm stressed out. I need rest."

"I can't spare you."

"You have four hundred operatives. You can get by without me."

"Do I have to have you brought in?"

Vickers was angry. The damned woman was asking too much.

"You'd have to find me first."

She sounded out of patience. "We'd find you."

Vickers knew that this was true.

"Okay, okay, I'll come over but I'm damned if I'm going straight out on another assignment."

"I'll expect you in an hour."

Vickers slammed down the phone. Who the hell do they think I am? I'm no fucking superman. I need rest. I need relaxation. I am not a machine. He fumed as he dressed himself in one of Joseph Pope's daytime suits. He continued to fume as he removed the 9mm from beneath the debris of the bed and dropped it into a clip-on holster in back of the waistband of his pants. The fact that he was still fuming when he closed the door of the suite behind him and started down the corridor was almost certainly what made him careless.

The blast of pressure noise knocked him off his feet. He clutched groggily for the wall. Hands grabbed him. They were going through his pockets. They had his keys. They also found his gun. His vision was blurry. He swung out with both fists and feet, but he was roughly slammed back against the wall. The sonic blast had left him weak as a kitten. He was bundled back to the door of his suite. The door was unlocked and he was pushed inside.

It turned out that there was only one of them. She was, however, enormous, without a doubt some steriod beef job in an orange sweatsuit. Her hair was greased back, she had a five o'clock shadow and there was thick hair on her massive arms. The blast of pressure noise was starting to wear off. Vickers tried to struggle to his feet. She slapped him open-handed and he was sent staggering. Had she been an athlete or was she just a leftover from the muscle craze? The noise generator was in her pocket. She was pointing his own gun at him. She juggled it from hand to hand as she pulled the plugs from her ears. She was laughing at him.

"So how does it feel to be on the receiving end?"

Vickers shook his head. He couldn't speak. He finally managed to get onto his feet. The woman slowly walked around him.

"You sure don't look like no sixty-five grand."

Even a steriod beef could hunt bounty. Vickers was disgusted with himself for being caught so easily. He blustered without conviction.

"I don't know what you're talking about. If it's money you want…"

"You can cut the crap. I've checked you out. You're a Contec corpse called Mort Vickers and you're worth sixty-five thou-dead."

"My name is Joseph Pope, and if it's money you want…"

"Save your breath, Vickers, you're going to die."

Vickers shrugged.

"Why don't you get it over with, then?"

The woman shook her head.

"Oh, no, nothing as easy as that. Strip."

She wasn't only steriod beef. She was also a sadist. What were steriods supposed to do to the personality?

"Strip?"

"I said strip. What's the matter with you? Shy or something? I want to see more of what they're paying sixty-five grand for."

"And what will you do if I don't? Shoot me?"

The woman grinned. "I could hurt you plenty without using this gun. Nothing you could do to stop me."

Vickers didn't bother to resist any more. As he took off Joseph Pope's daytime suit, the huge woman lowered herself into a chair as though expecting a show.

"You're a sorry specimen." Her voice was an approximation of a bullfrog.

"At least I'm natural."

For one so big she was amazingly fast. He hardly saw the punch coming before his head exploded.

"Wipe that stupid expression off your face and get down on your hands and knees."

How weird was this going to get? The woman mountain settled herself back in the chair.

"You don't look much like the big bad killer."

Vickers didn't say anything. He stared resolutely at the pile of the carpet. He didn't want to show that he was sick with fear. This, however, didn't satisfy the woman.

"Hey! I'm talking to you. Look at me while I'm talking to you or I'll break your kidneys."

Vickers looked up. She was clearly getting her kicks from watching him grovel. He didn't want to guess what might be next on the menu. She started to answer the question he was hoping to avoid.

"This is going to take a long time. I've got plans for you."

Vickers wondered what would happen if he simply began screaming. He didn't really want to find out. Then the steriod woman stopped his train of thought dead on the tracks.

"You got any booze?"

Vickers was so stunned that he almost said no. He caught himself in the nick of time.

"Yes… there's some vodka. It's… in the refrigerator."

He could feel sweat running down the inside of his arms. Her bloated, meaty cheeks dimpled nastily. She gestured with the 9mm.

Vickers got to his feet. He walked slowly to the fridge, doing his best to look totally humilated. He opened the fridge. The woman's chair creaked. Was she getting up, coming up behind him? He didn't want to look back. The Yasha was on the top shelf. He put his hand on it. The black plastic grip was cold to his touch. The fingers of his right hand curled around it. With his thumb he moved the control to full auto. Red LEDs came to life. His left hand folded around the barrel.

"What's keeping you?"

Vickers turned, firing. The Yasha blared its high-speed snake hiss. His teeth were bared and he was snarling. He savored the instant of complete atavism and then he became coldly practical. The steriod woman had been blown across the room. She was a mess. There was blood on three walls. He stood perfectly still and listened. There were no running feet. No one was beating on the door. Perhaps he hadn't been heard. His next move was clothes. Joseph Pope's daytime suit wouldn't do. He was on the run until further notice. He selected a leather space jacket with built-up shoulders that was of ample enough cut to hide the Yasha. He pulled his spare IDs from under the carpet and stuffed them into his coat. The case and the detector could stay where they were. So could the 9mm. It had no serial number and the steriod woman's fingerprints were all over it. It would add a token confusion. At the door, he hesitated and hurried back to the bathroom. He grabbed the bag of eighty-eights, swallowed two and dropped the rest into his pocket.

He eased carefully into the corridor. It was always possible that the steriod woman had brought some backup. Nothing happened. There was no alarmed Plaza security or lurking bounty hunters. Vickers quietly closed the door and started toward the elevators. He turned a corner and was startled by a maid with her pushcart of mops, brooms, cleaning materials and fresh stationery. She looked at him with complete indifference. It seemed impossible but apparently she'd heard nothing.

Once inside the elevator, he felt safe enough to take his hand off the Yasha under his coat. Three floors down, a pair of middle-aged women filled the car with Chanel No. 5. They glanced at him briefly but again the looks were indifferent. Every time that he killed, he expected the first people he encountered to smell the death on him but they never did. He walked swiftly through the muted sparkle of the cut-glass lobby, whirled through the revolving doors and started down the steps. On the nearside of the street, yellow cabs were coming and going, on the far side, chauffeurs lounged against a line of limos. Beyond them, tourists sat on the steps of the fountain. A couple was feeding the pigeons. One of the Plaza doormen was looking enquiringly at him. Did he want a cab? Vickers realized that he had no plan. He hadn't thought ahead. He started toward the first available cab. It was a yellow Mercedes. There seemed to be more of them each time he came to New York. As he reached for the door handle, he spotted a face among the tourists by the fountain. Recognition was a shock. It was one of the whores from the night before. In the same instant, she spotted him.

She nudged a companion, a man in nondescript overalls. They were both looking at him. It all fell into place. The hooker must have made him for a corpse. She, the man and the steriod woman had decided to go after the sixty-five thou. They'd been confident. Steriod woman had thought she could handle him on her own. Vickers twisted away from the cab. The world went into slow motion as his reflexes took over. The doorman looked confused. The whore's companion was holding some kind of gift-wrapped package. He was desperately ripping it open. He was shaking the wrapping from a squat military-green object. It was a gun, one of those Brazilian frag guns that fired exploding .50 caliber plastic bullets.

Vickers was on his knees. The man had to be mad. A frag gun was a ludicrous weapon to use in a crowd unless you wanted to kill the whole crowd. They were wildly inaccurate and slaughtered en masse. The hooker's companion had laid it across the roof of a limo. A chauffeur turned to protest and caught the first bullet. The second hit the Mercedes cab. The third exploded somewhere behind Vickers as he hit the ground and rolled.

Would anyone notice that he had started for cover before the shooting began?

The main entrance to the Plaza was instantly turned into a scene from a nightmare. One of the revolving doors had been blown apart. Five people were dead and at least twice that number injured. Art Nouveau glass cascaded down from the big decorative awning. The hooker, her companion and three innocent tourists were cut down in a crossfire from Plaza rent-a-cops and regular NYPD. The companion's final shots had gone wild.

When the gas tank of the Mercedes exploded, Vickers was blown against the wall. He began to crawl. The sidewalk was made of blood and glass. A blown-apart suitcase had strewn a weird top layer of stockings and lingerie. He reached 58th Street. He got to his feet and fled, heading west at a desperate trot. There was sufficient panic for him not to be conspicuous. At Sixth Avenue, he slowed to a walk. The air was filled with sirens shrieking and whooping like every emergency unit in New York was running to the carnage at the Plaza.

He turned down Seventh. His mind was numb. He just kept walking. The air was steamy and the sidewalks were choked with people. He noticed that they were starting to step out of his way as though he was a psycho or a crazy drunk. At 49th Street he ducked into a bar. The bathroom stank of the battle between urine and industrial strength disinfectant, the walls were caked with graffiti but at least there was a functioning sink and a cracked mirror. He looked bad. His face was filthy and beaded with sweat. The patrons in the bar probably thought he was a junkie. There was a tear in the shoulder of his leather coat.

After washing up, he looked a little better. He swallowed two straight scotches and another eighty-eight and he hit the street again. On the big screen that floated at the southern end of Times Square there were already pictures of the bloody front of the Plaza. A giant microphone was thrust into the face of an equally giant cop. The cop shrugged. There was too much background din to hear the audio but the caption read "… but, did the bounty hunter's victim die in the massacre?"

Vickers halted. This was all getting far too close. It came frighteningly closer. The screen was filled with an enormous blotchy photograph of himself. It was almost certainly taken by a security camera. It was followed by a gruesome shot of the interior of his room and the dead steroid woman. Then the screen lost interest in his problems and switched to a story about Tomoyo Nakamora, the Japanese porno star who had contracted to fuck with a mountain gorilla on live television. Vickers felt himself hemmed in. All around him were the disorganized mobs of slowly shuffling gawkers. The sharks that preyed on them darted and briefly flashed. Vickers knew that he had to get away. He had to get off the streets. He had to put himself on ice until the incident at the Plaza had become old news. He pushed his way to a pay phone and deposited a dollar. He tapped out the number from memory. It rang four times before anyone answered.

"Yeah?"

"Joe?"

"Yeah, I think so. Who is this?"

"It's Mort."

"Mort? Where are you? Are you in New York? I'm groggy. The phone woke me."

"Yeah, I'm in New York. Can I come over?"

"Now?"

Vickers glanced around. A tail, skinny black man in dreadlocks and a lot of gold was staring at him intently. Had he recognized him or did he just want the phone?

"Yes, now."

"Are you in trouble?"

"Turn on the TV news."

"What?"

"Turn on the TV and I'll see you in as long as it takes."

Vickers could almost hear him shrug,

"Okay."

Joe Stalin was the closest thing that Vickers had to a friend. The name wasn't real. He'd adopted it years ago in the days when he'd been a bright young cultural rebel. It had stuck. The black man in the dreadlocks and gold was moving in his direction. Vickers ducked through the crowd, scanning the street for an available cab that would actually brave the area's reputation to make a pick-up.

Down the block someone started screaming. Another head-case had popped. Vickers could feel the anxiety that spread like a wave through the crowd. You never really knew who might be next. It might be the guy next to you. A couple of local merchants' association goons with kamakazi headbands pushed past him heading for the source of the disturbance. They carried short black billy clubs. Therapy was rough in this area.

An empty cab was headed down Seventh. A city bus turning out of 42nd Street cut across it and brought it to a halt. Vickers sprinted. He skipped through the traffic and reached for the handle of the rear door. He wrenched it open. It wasn't locked, an oversight on the part of the driver. As Vickers scrambled inside, the driver turned and snarled. "I don't pick nobody up 'round here."

Vickers just stared at him. The driver saw something in Vickers' eyes with which he just wasn't prepared to argue.

"Okay, sure. Where to?"