‘Now about this next book on your list, Red Situation, what is it, a spy thriller kind of thing? I guess we could always pretend the author was really in the CIA or MI5 or something, but people are getting tired of authenticity too; we need a better angle.’ Mill sat back, shirt collar crackling, and looked at the world through half-moon reading glasses. ‘I understand this author is sitting in Nassau sending all this stuff in via satellite to a typesetting computer, right? What if we just shot down the satellite and blamed Russia? I know it’s expensive, but—’
‘Hell, bub, you’d be starting a war.’
‘Sure, but probably a limited war, and maybe only an international crisis. Meanwhile we get maximum worldwide coverage of our boy and his book, “The Book the Russians Trie’d to Stop!”’
Mr Kratt exhaled a cloud of oily smoke. ‘All sounds kind of crazy to me.’
‘But all part of the creative evolution of a literary property, and I do mean creative. Hell, I once got an author to sue himself for plagiarism — claimed a book he did under a pseudonym was ripped off. Of course the judge had him committed for psychiatric observation and the author ended up spending a year in a looney bin, but then we got a great book out of that, Call Me Schizo… yes, he ghosted that one for himself…’
‘For the last time,’ said the sergeant, ‘are you a Ludder or a Libber?’ He was counting change from Roderick’s pocket into a large envelope. ‘You gotta be one or the other.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you gotta. What were you doing when we arrested you?’
‘I was standing watching some guy painting on a wall. He was painting, “I bring you not peace but an electric carving knife”.’
‘Sounds like you’re a Ludder. Sit over there, after you sign for your twenty-nine cents.’
Over there was a long bench against the wall. Luke was there already, his saffron suit torn and dirty. Roderick sat between him and a fat man.
‘Are you all right, Luke? That cut on your forehead—’
‘Never felt better, Rickwood. Thinking of forming an escape committee, maybe digging a tunnel while we wait.’
‘But we’re on the tenth floor.’
‘Always some excuse to do nothing. Rickwood, don’t you realize? Everybody’s on some floor or other.’
A policeman took Luke out of the room. Roderick now noticed that the fat man was having an argument with his handkerchief. That is, he had drawn a face on the cloth and draped it over his hand to make a puppet.
‘The way I see it,’ said the man, ‘machines are responsible for almost every human problem today.’
The handkerchief coughed. ‘Bullshit, man. If you think machines are trouble, just look at the dumb bastards running them. Machines aren’t good or bad themselves, they don’t make the problems. Take a plough.’
‘Why don’t you take a flying plough yourself?’
‘A plough,’ said the cloth firmly, ‘feeds the hungry, man. You call that a problem?’
‘Sure, overpopulation. And don’t give me that old jive about a machine being no better or worse than the man who uses it, I heard that a hundred times. But can you tell me a tank ain’t evil? A guided missile?’
‘Okay, but who made them? Evil people. Get rid of evil in the human spirit,’ shrilled the handkerchief, ‘and you get rid of the so-called evil machines.’
‘You got it backwards, rag-head. Get rid of the machines and people won’t have to be so evil. They can be more — more human, like.’
The cloth made a face. ‘To be human is to be evil, you dumb twat! Get rid of the human race and you sure as hell get rid of all evil.’
‘Oh sure, and who benefits? The same damn machines that are exploiting us now!’ The fat man burst into tears, but the handkerchief remained unmoved.
‘That’s it, blame the machines for everything. Sometimes the human race reminds me of — of that cop over there, typing with two fingers Slow. Real slow.’
‘Stop it! Just stop it!’
‘You’re all sleepwalkers and bums. Gimme machines any time, at least they’re clean.’
A policeman called Roderick’s name and led him to a door at the end of the room. At the door, he looked back. The fat man was using the handkerchief to blow his nose.
The door led to a small office with dingy green walls, a scarred table with a folder on it, and a window that seemed smeared with shit. A single bare lightbulb with an enamel reflector hung over the single wooden chair. Two men watched Roderick from the shadows.
‘Sit down, Bozo.’ He sat down. ‘What do you think of our interrogation room?’
‘It looks like something out of the movies, heh heh.’
‘Heh heh, you hear that, Cuff? We got us an intellectual anus here.’
‘Yeah, lieutenant, a real sage sphincter.’
The beating seemed to go according to old movie arrangements, too; Roderick even glimpsed a rubber hose. He began to regret being equipped with pain circuits; it was hard not to begin disliking these policemen, who were probably only doing some kind of duty.
They played all the games he remembered from childhood, from the school playground: stand up sit down; no means yes and yes means no; and sorry I hit you oops sorry I hit you again…
‘Look at him,’ said the one called lieutenant. ‘Look at that innocent face, you wouldn’t think a face like that could do anything, would you? I mean does he really look like a guy that would rape a girl, stab her to death, chop up the body and hide the pieces in—’
Cuff was reading the folder on the table for the first time. ‘Uh, lieutenant. This is a different suspect.’
‘All suspects are the same, Cuff, you should know that.’
‘I mean this guy is from the Shopping Piazza beef.’
‘Then why do I tie him in with the Snowman Killer? Why? Why? He’s not the Moxon’s chauffeur?’
‘Nope, he’s clean.’
Lieutenant turned on normal lights. He was a normal-looking man, despite the propeller beanie he wore, no doubt to give himself character. ‘Isn’t that just it, though? He’s clean, he’s too clean. Anybody this clean has to be hiding something big.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘And this tells me he’s the Snowman!’ The tapping finger slowed, stopped, began exploring the interior of a nostril.
The finger pointed at Roderick. ‘All right, you. I’m gonna ask you one question and one question only. I want you to listen good. Were you at a party at the house of Everett Moxon, just before Christmas?’
‘Yes I was.’
The two cops exchanged a look.
‘Did you leave that party with a woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘A woman named Judi Mazzini?’
‘No, Connie McBabbitt.’
The two policemen groaned, withdrew to the other side of the room, and argued. ‘We had such a good case too, lieutenant. Sergeant Placket says he even mentioned an electric carving knife. And he was at the party—’
‘Sergeant Placket is a kind of a sophisticated bowel, if you ask me.’
A fat man was waiting by the counter when Roderick collected his twenty-nine cents.
‘How’s the handkerchief?’
‘Mister, you got some problem? Huh?’
‘Sorry, I thought you were another fat guy, I mean someone else.’ Now he could see the man was a stranger, deeply tanned and wearing a cowboy hat. ‘I was kind of dizzy there, not feeling too well.’