Escher Man (eBook)

People would try to do one of three things when I was about to kill them: bribe me, beg me, or pretend they didn’t know me. A bribe could be any number of things, but it was usually money. The rational proposal that their counteroffer was of greater value than what I’d been paid for the hit. Begging was usually an emotional reference to family – I’ve got three kids to feed, I love my wife – that sort of inconsequential bullshit. Chances were, if it got to the point where I was paying them a visit, they hadn’t made family the most important thing in their life. The last was ignorance, feigned: I don’t know you, I’ve never seen you before – like it’s all a simple case of mistaken identity.

I never understood that one. Bribe me, beg me, but don’t bullshit me.

The guy looking up at me was trying to do just that. Fred ‘the Rake’ Bartlett: westerner, Former United States, business suit, crumpled now with blood on the dark grey lapel. He had a full head of brown hair that probably wasn’t natural and he was smaller than you’d think, given his occupation. The product in his hair held it neatly in place, even after the beating I’d given him.

His apartment was far more tasteful than anticipated. I was expecting oversized gold throw cushions, monogrammed bathrobes, maybe a large painting of a tiger eating its prey. The usual gangster bullshit. But his place was surprisingly understated. Minimalist white-and-red furnishings, brass fittings in the kitchen, nondescript art on the walls. Down one corridor I’d glimpsed a door with the letter S on it, sparkling with glitter.

The floor-to-ceiling windows provided a generous view of the city: the mammoth, bulging structures of the casinos draped in their eternal neon. The hard perpetual rain that drew a thin veil over it all. Macau – that steaming, throbbing gambling mecca; the dark underbelly of the Chinese Dream; the gaudy, glittering, and unapologetic face of its power.

Bartlett was seated with his back to the windows, dripping blood onto his white lounge. He was a nobody, really – a middle manager in an ice-nine drug cartel who had been fool enough to try cutting in on Mister Long’s territory. The memory of dinner, two nights ago, was burned deep:

Alone, eating chilli clams sautéed in beer, fresh-baked bread on the side and a large glass of whisky, straight up. The clams were real, so the dinner was expensive, but someone in my line of work ain’t saving for retirement, as a rule. The two small rooms of A Lorcha were cosy, friendly, and filled with the tantalising smells of baked seafood and crisp soy chicken. Conversations in Cantonese and Mandarin and Portuguese washed around me while I dipped the fresh bread in the clam sauce and savoured the reason this was my favourite spot in town.

The front door opened and a short guy (who I later learned was Fred Bartlett) sauntered over, cigarette dangling from his lips, a goon on either side of him. He had a gun in his belt that only I could see from this angle, sitting at a small table in the back corner of the second room. The guys with him were big shouldered: one Filipino, one white. The white guy had a shaved head and teeth that glinted metallic blue – a nano-alloy affectation wannabe gangsters had taken to implanting lately. The Filipino wore a white fedora and the calm, coiled stance of a professional fighter.

Bartlett had this grin on his face that made me want to break a chair across it. He said: “Endgame Ebbinghaus, in the flesh.” He made a show of looking me over. “I guess I thought you’d be more intimidating. Solid titanium limbs, tattooed skull, a dick that shoots flames – that sort of thing.”

I slugged half my whisky and said: “I have no idea who you are. And the woman who takes the reservations here is more intimidating than you.”

The grin stayed on his face, though it strained a little. He took a drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out through his nose. “I have a feeling you’ll remember me after this,” he said, and pulled the pistol from his belt.

I’d looked down the barrel of enough guns not to get too flustered by this one, but it’s never a pleasant experience. Quiet rippled through the restaurant as heads turned to watch. A table of three got up slowly to leave; one of the goons pointed at them and made them sit back down. Everyone else sat stock-still.

So, yeah – I’ve looked down enough barrels to know there’s one thing you never do: hesitate.

I threw the table up with both hands, the edge slammed into Bartlett’s wrist, making him fire a shot into the ceiling. I followed in one smooth motion with a straight right to the man with glittering teeth, using the full force of the augmented joints in my shoulder and knees as I rose with the punch. His head snapped back and he crashed into the table behind as he fell.

The Filipino was already moving, kicking low. I checked it. He flowed smoothly into a high kick. I stepped back; the blow didn’t come close.

I smiled at him. He didn’t like it.

He came at me hard, as expected, I moved inside to meet his charge, ducking and ramming my elbow into his face. The Filipino staggered, I grabbed him by the collar before he could fall and hefted him above my head, easily. The titanium sockets in my arms clicked and whirred softly.

I paused to savour the moment while Bartlett scrambled for his gun and patrons gasped or screamed or quietly cried. I laughed, though I’m not sure why, and then hurled the Filipino, knocking Bartlett backwards and over a chair. But the blow didn’t hit square, and the runt had sufficient adrenaline and panic coursing through him to pick himself up and fly out the front door.

I didn’t bother following him. Men that careless were easy enough to track down, and my main concern at that moment was finding a new spot for dinner.

I surveyed the mess. The Filipino groaned, but stayed down. The white guy was out cold, marinating in the beer and garlic prawns from the table he’d taken with him on the way down. I walked over to where the manager, a short Portuguese woman, was standing behind the bar. Her usual expression was harried and stern, with a touch of you-must-be-fucking-kidding-me when confronted by an atypically stupid customer. But now her mouth was parted in shock, and she had this look on her face like she was seeing me for the first time. I got that a lot.

I was mildly disgusted at myself for the scene I’d made, but outwardly I kept my face hard as carved wood as I threw a bundle of currency onto the counter.

I said: “I seem to have spilt my dinner. This is for the mess, and the meals of the patrons here whose evening I interrupted.”

She took the fat roll of yuan and weighed it in her hand, then eyed me. In Portuguese, she said: “[We don’t have any associations here.]”

“This isn’t the start of one,” I replied.

“[We can handle security just fine.]”

“Lady, I’m just here for the clams.”

She thought it over, lips pressed together, then closed her hand around the money. When I lingered, her familiar temperament returned: “[Well don’t just stand there, clogging up my bar with all that shoulder and chin.]” She nodded at the door. “[Get out of here.]”

“I’ll see you next week.”

She eyed the two thugs groaning on the ground, the splatters of red wine and broth on tablecloth and wall, and the shocked customers whispering emergency calls into their cochlear implants. “[Better make it two.]”

Hard to credit the tough-guy grin and trigger-happy disposition with the beaten-down, pleading little creature here in front of me now. But that is always the test of the mettle of a gangster: how they face death. Most failed in my experience – they begged or wept or wet their pants, and I went ahead and killed them all the same.

Bartlett wiped away the blood from his mouth, his hand shaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice higher than I remembered. “I’m not a drug dealer. I’m a nanotech designer at Baosteel Technology.”

“You’re saying you don’t remember me?”

“I’ve never seen you in my life.”

I seated myself opposite on the tasteful white-and-red faux-leather lounge. I nodded at him, impressed. “Comfortable.”

He kept giving me the scared shitless look.

I said: “You should have left town while you could.”

“Huh?” His pretence of confusion was very convincing. Imminent death has inspired some of the great acting performances, and Fred was angling for Best New Talent at the Shanghai Film Festival.

“It’s always the most logical response. You mess with the wrong people here, you’re dead. Macau is the most unforgiving town on Earth. Indifferent, too – just swallows you up into its black bottomless maw, and not a shred remains. Not even a memory. Everybody knows this, yet everyone believes this somehow doesn’t apply to them. So here you are, sitting in your nice apartment, trying to disbelieve the bullet that’s about to enter your brainpan.”

His eyes were wide open. When he spoke he made sure to verbalise each word, slowly. “Mister. I’ve never seen you before in my life. I swear.”

I placed the pistol on the armrest, pulled a packet of Double Happiness cigarettes from my pocket, and tapped one out. I lit it, snapping the heavy lighter shut, and drew the biting nicotine hit into my...