I head outside. It’s another summer day in autumn. There aren’t many people around. Unfortunately I don’t have a car. Angela’s I left parked on the other side of town. I left the keys in the ignition in case somebody else wanted to take it for a spin. Stealing keys is a lot easier than hot-wiring the thing, though I’ve got plenty of experience when it comes to both.
I am at the bus stop with my ticket in my hand when the bus pulls up. The side of it is covered in advertisements for vitamin pills and contraceptives. The doors open with a swish. I climb on board.
“Hey ya doin’, Joe?”
“Joe’s fine, Mr. Stanley.”
I hand Mr. Stanley my bus ticket. He takes it from me and, without clicking it, hands it back. Winks at me like old bus drivers do. The whole side of his face crushes down like he’s having a stroke. Mr. Stanley is probably in his sixties, and looks like he gets a kick out of life. On mornings like these, he always likes to say, “Hot, ain’t it?” He wears the uniform all bus drivers wear: dark blue shorts, a light-blue short-sleeved shirt, and black shoes.
“This one’s on the city this morning, Joe,” he says, still winking, just in case I hadn’t noticed. “Sure is a hot one today, Joe, ain’t it?”
I figure if I smile back, I’ll get more free bus rides. “Gee. Joe’s thankful, Mr. Stanley.”
Mr. Stanley smiles at me and I wonder how he would look if I opened my briefcase and showed him what’s inside. Putting the bus ticket into my pocket, I walk down the aisle. The bus is fairly empty-a handful of school kids scattered randomly, a nun in one of those stiffly starched black-and-white outfits, a businessman with an umbrella even though it has to be ninety degrees outside.
Regular people. Like me.
I sit near the back behind two sixteen- or seventeen-year-old schoolgirls. I prop my briefcase up on the empty seat next to me. Nobody is sitting behind or opposite me. I thumb the combination on each side of the case. Slide the latches. Open the case. I have my knives stored away carefully inside-three in the lid, and three in the base. They’re held in place by strands of material that loop over them and snap into place with metal domes. The gun is the only thing that floats around free, but it’s in a black leather pouch to protect it, and the knives. The gun has three internal safeties, so I’d have to be three times unlucky-or stupid-to have any sort of accident. Ahead of me, the schoolgirls are giggling.
I take out a knife with a blade only two inches long, which cost twenty-five dollars. It takes a lot of stabbing to kill somebody with a knife that short. Once, about eighteen months ago, it took me a good forty or fifty goes. Small cuts. Lots of blood. I was sweating like a pig afterward. My shirt was pasted to me. He deserved it, though.
Mr. Stanley is a much nicer bus driver.
I’m absentmindedly running the blade up and down the back of the seat of the girl on the left. I’m thinking about women in general when her friend, the blond girl, turns around at the sound. I hide the knife behind my leg. Smile innocently as if I have no idea where I even am, as if all I’m doing is singing mentally to myself: The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round. She glares at me. Watching her, I can feel the beginnings of a relationship.
She looks away without comment, and they return to their giggling. I tuck the knife away in my briefcase. I’m not even sure why I got it out. I stare out the window and watch as the bus approaches the central city. More traffic, more smog, more aggravation as people get caught up at traffic lights. We pass a guy sitting on the side of the road next to a mountain bike, the front wheel all buckled up, both of his knees are bleeding. He catches me staring at him and gives me the finger.
I have the briefcase closed up by the time my stop appears. Mr. Stanley makes a special exception for me, stopping the bus directly outside my work. I give him a smile from the end of the bus. We exchange waves as I step off from the back exit.
Christchurch. City of Angels this isn’t. New Zealand is known for its tranquility, its sheep, and its hobbits. Christchurch is known for its parks and violence. Throw a bag of glue in the air and a hundred welfare recipients will knock each other over in an effort to sniff from it. Despite the blue skies, Christchurch City is still mostly gray. Many of the buildings date back a hundred years, some even more, gothic architecture imported from England along with the population back then. Gray buildings, gray roads, lots of office and shop windows reflecting it all. However there is the occasional splash of greenery: trees, shrubs, flowers. You can’t take twenty paces without passing something out of nature. Walk ten minutes to the west, and you’ll find the Botanic Gardens; more than twenty hectares of land dedicated to showing the rest of the world how clever we are at turning seeds into plants. In these gardens are thousands of flowers and hundreds of trees, but you can’t go there at night without getting stabbed or shot, becoming fertilizer.
I take a few paces forward, and my boredom does nothing to let up. It’s this city. Nobody can feel excited surrounded by buildings that date back a hundred years. Between the buildings is a warren of alleyways that any self-respecting drug addict can walk with their eyes closed. Christchurch patients live down these alleyways. If a businessman or businesswoman were to venture down one, they would have more of a chance of finding Jesus than getting out of there without being molested or urinated on. As for the shopping, well, shopping here is going out of style, and that’s reflected in the empty stores with signs hanging in the windows saying For Lease or For Sale. Even so, you can never find a damn parking space anywhere.
Christchurch is voted one of the friendliest places in the world. By who, I have no idea. Certainly not anybody I’ve ever met. But despite all of this, Christchurch is my home.
The air shimmers with heat, and in the distance it makes the roads look wet. Cars have their windows down and drivers’ arms are hanging in the breeze, cigarette ash dropping onto the sidewalk. Plenty of traffic is racing by, too much for me to run through, so I push the button for the crossing signal and wait. When it flashes and beeps for me to walk, I wait a few more seconds for the red-light runners to speed by, then cross the road. I roll my sleeves up. The air feels good on my forearms. I can feel beads of sweat running down the sides of my body.
Two minutes later I’m at work.
I walk directly to the fourth floor, taking the stairs since stealing cars doesn’t provide any real exercise. The stairwell smells of urine at the bottom, and more like disinfectant the higher I get. On the fourth floor I enter the conference room and place my briefcase, locked, down on the table, and move over to the photographs pinned to the wall.
“Morning, Joe. How are you this morning?”
I look at the man I’ve positioned myself next to. Schroder is a big guy with more muscle than brain. He has those rugged good looks of an action-movie hero, but I doubt he has any heroism left. He hates this city as much as anybody else. He has buzz-cut graying hair that would look better on a sixty-year-old drill sergeant than on him, an almost forty-year-old homicide detective. His forehead and face are covered in stress lines, which I no doubt put there. He has bags under his eyes, no doubt put there by the new baby he has at home. At the moment he’s going for the hard-worked-detective look, and with his cheap shirtsleeves rolled up and his thrift-store tie loosened, he has certainly achieved it. He has a pencil jammed up behind his ear, and another one in his hand, which he was chewing on before he spoke. He is standing with one foot forward, slightly ahead of the other, as if ready to pounce at the wall and start pounding on it.
“Morning, Detective Schroder.” I nod slowly toward the photographs like I’m agreeing with what I just said. “Any new leads?”