Maybe this low-level entrepreneur had upped his mordida, his payoff bribe, before the hammer had come down. Or else he’d brewed up the contents of a packet from his stock and had been lights-out under the stall’s counter, walking and talking with some Old Testament prophet or bo tree-sitting with a wide-faced Buddha, and had conveniently missed all the action.
“Look—” The cheap fiberboard flexed beneath Deckard’s hands as he leaned toward the other man’s face. “I really don’t have a lot of time. Not in this world or the next.” He kept his voice low, using a quick nod to indicate the packets fastened to the stall’s interior. They were all the same small, flat rectangular shape as the one he’d found inside the talking briefcase; they varied in color, from monochrome to shimmering, eye-aching full-spectrum assaults. “But if you’re selling, I’m buying. Got it?”
Before the merchant could reply—he’d backed up a step from Deckard on the other side of the counter, sensing at least the possibility of violence-another customer came up. A wraithlike figure, all starvation eyes and scab-picked shivering flesh, arose trembling at Deckard’s elbow. “Do you A mouth studded with a few cracked and yellow teeth, beneath unattended running nostrils, quivered open. “Do you have any more of the . . . the New Orthodox West Coast Fundamentalists?” The emaciated figure struggled to bring his scattered thoughts to words. “Specifically . . . the Reformed Huffington Rite? The Santa Barbara branch?”
“Get out of here. You mooch.” The stallkeeper glared at the creature. “This is a cash-only business. Nothing on credit. Not that I’d ever have given you any.”
“I got money! Look!” A grubby fist unfolded, revealing wadded paper with pictures of famous dead people. “Not even scrip-real money!” The supplicant voice rose in pitch, a sympathetic vibration shivering the ragged man’s body.
“I can pay!”
Grumbling subaudibly, the stallkeeper turned, pawed through the thin packets stapled behind him, pulled one off, and slapped it on the counter. Distaste curled the corners of his mouth as he sorted out the grease-impregnated bills and octagonal coins. “You’re a dollar short,” announced the stallkeeper, as though that pleased him more than a simple sale would have. He snatched the packet away as the ragged man’s shaking fingers reached for it.
“For Christ’s sake—” Deckard reached into his own pocket and dug out a bill from his dwindling stash. He flicked it into the stallkeeper’s hollow chest.
“Give the guy what he wants, and let him get out of here.” Worth it, just to get things moving.
A second later, the wraith had fled back into the churning crowd, the packet clutched to the visible bones beneath his throat. “All right,” said the stallkeeper, turning his dark-ringed eyes back toward Deckard. All pretense of religious feeling had been stripped away, leaving the pure mercantile entity beneath. “What do you want? Buy it now and get what you can out of it, before you wind up like that asshole.”
“It’s not what I want.” Deckard pulled out the rest of his money, enough to evoke a swift glance of interest from the other man. “It’s what I need.”
“Let me guess.” In another life, another world, the person inside the stall could have been a tailor; the tape measure was at the center of his empty pupils. “Pentecostal? Got a wide selection here.” He gestured at the packets surrounding him. “You’ll have to supply your own snakes, or at least have ’em inside your brain, if you want to get into that Southern Degenerate thing.” A shake of the stallkeeper’s head. “Naw—you don’t look the type to have even that much fun. Nothing Jewish line, either; you’d know how to deal with guilt, if that was the case. No d say Heavy Calvinist. You look like you’re into predestination. Badly so.” The man gave an ugly, knowing smile. “Like Weber said: ‘Forced to follow his path alone to meet a destiny which had been decreed for him from eternity.’ ”
Deckard knew the rest of the quote. “ ‘No one could help him.’ ” He nodded.
“From The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.”
“Good for you. I should give an educated man a discount, but . . . we’ve really got the spirit of capitalism here.” The man fingered a couple of packets at the side of the stall. “How about Dutch Reformed? That should be a severe-enough God for you. Give you a good price—I’m trying to move this stock before it goes stale.”
“No, thanks.” Deckard shook his head. “I don’t need anything like that.” Got enough of that kind of shit already, he thought to himself, without acquiring any more. “No packets. I just need the supplies. Couple quarts colloidal suspension fluid, calibrated beaker, inert glass rod. That’s all.”
The stallkeeper gave him a hard look, eyes narrowed. “You got your deity already? The one you’re going to use?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “If you’re going with some back-alley, home brew pile of dust, you’re asking for trouble, man.”
“Think so, huh?” Deckard let a partial smile show as he gazed around at the stall’s wares. “This stuff you’re peddling doesn’t exactly look like it’s FDA approved.”
“Hey. There’s standards in this business.” The stallkeeper drew back, offended. “I’m here, and my competition’s not, because I sell quality. I’ve got customers right up at the top, man, the very top. I go in the front door of the cable offices, I’ve got merchandise sticking out of my jacket pockets, and the guards don’t even blink.”
“I bet,” said Deckard. It explained a lot. “Did you have a good time getting your competition cleared out of the marketplace?”
“Loved it, pal. Made my day.” The stalikeeper’s deep-set eyes glittered. “And just to show what a nice guy I am, I only jacked up my prices ten percent. But for you, because you’re such an asshole, it’s twenty.” He reached beneath the stall’s counter and fetched out a plastic gallon jug; the contents sloshed in a slow gelatinous wave as he set it down. The beaker and glass rod were slapped down beside the container. “There you go, sport. Knock yourself out.
You want to see God on some low-rent basis, it’s your head’s funeral, not mine.”
A minute later, his roll lighter—Deckard had never bought this kind of stuff before, so he didn’t know whether he was getting absolutely screwed or not—he turned away from the stall, purchases hugged to his chest. Before he could bull his way into the crowd, the merchant called after him.
“Hey—” The man held up a creased, much-used paper bag. “Don’t be an idiot and just go walking with it where everybody can see. The next millennium hasn’t arrived yet, pal.”
The briefcase harangued Deckard as soon as he walked in the door of the hovel.
“Did you get it?” Batty’s voice drilled insistent at his ear. “Did you get everything I told you to get?”
Deckard set the bag on the table next to the briefcase. “I’m not so screwed up I can’t handle a three-item shopping list.” He pulled out the plastic jug and the other objects. “This is what you asked for, this is what I got.”
“Anybody see you?”
He laughed. “Hundreds. Thousands. Not exactly a depopulated zone around here.”
“Come on.” The briefcase sounded annoyed. “You know what I mean. Cops, the police, the authorities. People who shouldn’t have seen you. Not if you want to take care of business without being interrupted.”
“We’re all right—for the time being.” Deckard didn’t know if that was true or not. And didn’t care. In some ways, it would be a relief if the hovel’s front door were suddenly broken down by jackbooted storm troopers from the deepest basements of either the cable monopoly or the U.N.’s diplomatic headquarters.