Avenging Angel Read online

  We got off on an unmarked exit and rolled into the last valley before the Hill. Outside the fence sprawled the grotesquely huge mansions of the nouveau riche, execs with enough money but not enough power or prestige to get on the Hill proper. Their estates were overly grand, as if in spite, a camp of pretenders in gaudy tents squatted outside the castle gates.

  The guard building next to the gate looked fortified enough to withstand anything short of a direct hit by a fusion bomb. Turrets peeked like misshapen heads from the squat concrete structure, pointing machine guns outward.

  I looked over at Joe. "Is it meant to dissuade solicitors, or are they expecting a popular uprising in the near future?"

  He shrugged. "If you got a good thing you want to keep it."

  Joe stopped the car in front of the barrier, and two SPF guards approached the car. They were thick necked and brutal looking, like tormented bulldogs. They examined our invitations with an angry sort of disbelief. They scanned us twice and still couldn't believe it. One took our invites into the guardhouse and the other unslung his submachine gun, ready to hose us down with armor-piercing slugs if we tried to make a break for it.

  "This always happen?" I asked Joe.

  His nervous look, magnified by his thick lenses, said it didn't. "It must be you," he whispered. "You look suspect."

  "Maybe the beret would have helped. What are they checking?"

  "Your criminal history, existing warrants, that sort of thing. That was a sixth-level scan they did. They know everything about you. You're not wanted, are you?" He gave me another nervous look.

  "Just by every sensible girl in town," I said.

  Joe acted as if he was choking on something, and the guard with the subgun flinched, unsure if one of us choking was reason enough to hose us down. The other guard came out of the guardhouse with our freshly stamped, initialed and fretted-over invites. He spoke briefly with the other guard, who still seemed incredulous. Finally they shrugged to each other; they had done all they could and whatever happened wasn't their fault. The one who had gone inside gave us a red card and told us to put it on the dash on the driver's side. He shoved the invites back at us and gave us each a glare that said they knew we were up to something and would catch us at it sooner or later, probably a whole lot sooner than we thought.

  I yawned in his face. "Thank you, Officer, you've been adequately entertaining this evening," I said in my best Oxford accent, then turned to Joe. "Drive on, Joseph. This man bores me."

  Joe didn't stop looking petrified until we were a good two klicks from the gate. "Jesus!" he cried. "Don't fuck with those guys. They can kill people like us legally. They wouldn't even have to report it. They'd just load us into the back of unmarked vans and haul us off to the protein vats. Jesus!"

  "Don't worry, boss," I drawled like a gangster. I opened my coat and showed him my pistol. "I had us covered the whole time."

  "You brought that thing on the Hill," Joe yelled. "What if they'd searched us? I know they were thinking about it."

  "Just trying to get you in on some of the gunplay and glamour, that's all." I smiled over at him, and he suddenly seemed very intent with his driving. He was brooding.

  The wide smooth road wound lazily up the hill, dropping every now and then into lush dales. It was very pleasant.

  "Nice lawns," I said, gazing at impossibly large plots of perfect green.

  "That's a golf course," Joe snapped without looking.

  "Oh, I've heard of them. Still nice grass."

  "It's not grass. It's better. It looks like grass, feels like grass, smells like grass, but it's not real grass. It's a new plastic. The acid rain was yellowing the real stuff."

  "Well," I said, "I'm glad technology isn't being wasted on unimportant things."

  Joe sniffed angrily and went back to his driving.

  The manors were as big as city blocks and looked a whole lot nicer. Acres of green plastic surrounded the houses like rolling green seas, and manicured hedges posed as breakwaters. There wasn't much grass in the City, plastic or otherwise, where most yards served as junk piles or gardens.

  I jerked my head over to Joe and gave him a wild look. "Does the Party social equity board know about this place?"

  Joe slid me a frog eye. "This is the Party. This is where all the bigwigs live. What, you think they live in the burbs with the workers or in the City with the scum?"

  "Well, gee, I guess I did. I mean, what with that 'Everybody's Equal' jingle on all the Party stations." I looked out the window and invoked a crushed look. "Well, there goes another long-standing delusion about our faithful leaders. I feel so misled and…" I gave Joe a sinister look"…vindictive."

  Joe looked sorry he'd brought me. He knew I was just kidding around but deep down inside Joe didn't trust me. Not since Houston. He wheeled the car off the main road onto a cobblestoned drive. It was getting dark, and the old-fashioned gaslights bracing the drive started to flicker on.

  "I thought the sun never set on the Hill," I reflected.

  Joe shook his head sadly and pulled into a large parking area in front of a house that looked to be a converted Masonic temple. Six cars sat in the lot, all long luxury cruisers and sleek sports models. I could tell Joe felt bad parking next to them in his old Chevy. He opened his door and got out, and I slid behind the wheel. He looked surprised and relieved at once.

  "You're not coming in first?" Joe asked hopefully.

  "Naw, I hate being early. Makes me feel inferior."

  "Well, okay, great," he giggled, unable to contain a big smile. "I'll tell them you'll be along later." Which meant he'd warn them about me.

  "Yeah, you tell those capitalist swine I'll be along for them all right." I patted my pistol, smiled and drove away. When I reached the bottom of the drive I could still see him standing there, staring in my direction. I wondered what he was thinking.

  14

  On the way to meet Joe at the university I'd stopped at a couple of service stations, looking to buy a map of the Hill. No one carried them, which made perfect sense. It would have been just as logical to carry maps of the moon. Fortunately Joe had been to the Petersons' before, and the directions he'd given me seemed fairly simple. I kept on the main road and after ten minutes of eyeing tastefully carved oak street signs I found Stag Hill Drive.

  If altitude meant anything, and I suspected it did, the Chamberlains were big shots. Their residence was not only near the very top of the Hill, but also sat on a little hillock of its own. Even from the main road I could tell it was a superior mansion, a three-story Victorian affair with subtle exterior lighting to show off the best parts. It wasn't as large as some of the extravagant posers outside the gate, but what it lacked in extra bedrooms it more than made up for in quiet elegance. A full three acres of grass lay like a moat between the mansion and me, and a healthy-looking patch of young birches was grouped in a lower quarter. Perfectly round one-meter shrubs dotted both sides of the redbrick drive that connected the mansion with the main road, discreetly lit by baroque lanterns hanging from wrought-iron poles.

  The picture would have made a lovely postcard except for the prefab Fiberglas guard post at the base of the drive, squatting like a beetle on a two-hundred-credit birthday cake. I stayed on the main road and drove past the guardhouse, pulling over a hundred meters up the road next to the copse of birches. After putting up the hood as a sort of mute excuse, I slipped into trees, angling toward the house. The little forest was crowded with pale moonlight, long shadows and wild fragrance. I was starting to feel woodsy when I stumbled into a birch and nearly knocked it over. I gave the tree a testing shove. It tipped fifteen degrees, then came back. A quick frisk revealed it wasn't a tree at all but a shabby imposter. I felt up a couple others, and they were plastic, too. Not even the trees were real anymore. The woodsy feeling felt betrayed and left. The Hill was starting to remind me of one of those model train sets with foam hedges and plastic postmen.

  Fifty meters into the pseudowoodland I ran into a thre
e-meter-high rock wall that appeared authentic. I jumped, got a handhold, did a pull-up and rolled over the wall. I landed in a crouch on the other side and listened for a moment, pawing the grass with a hand. Phony as a con man's smile.

  All I heard were crickets. I wondered what the poor devils did for food. Moving in a low crouch, I beelined across the sea of bladed plastic toward the house, waiting for genetically enlarged rottweilers to descend and rip me to pieces. They must have had the night off because I hit the front steps whole. I took them three at a time and popped onto a brightly lit porch that was as big as my apartment and many times more elegant.

  I pressed a glowing button beside the door and heard the tinkling of chimes inside. A moment later an angry-faced big-boned blonde answered the door dressed in a formal black-and-white frock. She was probably wondering why the guard hadn't called ahead to warn her of an imminent visitor. She didn't seem the type who enjoyed surprises.

  She stared at me, and I smiled disarmingly and handed her my card. She looked at it, looked at me, then looked at the card again.

  "Is Director Chamberlain expecting you?" she demanded.

  "Maybe, but I doubt it."

  She was still staring at the card, as if by concentrating hard enough she could make both it and me disappear. She looked at me again.

  "Still here," I said.

  She cocked her head like a confused spaniel and closed the door.

  I stared at the door. It was real oak with a big brass knocker in the shape of a lion's head. The lion looked upset about his job. I wondered if I should have used the knocker instead of the doorbell, as an expression of my ongoing struggle for individuality. They probably would have thought I was a hick.

  The door opened. The big blonde was back with a friend. A full-grown ogre towered behind her, his close-set eyes burning with an intense need to maim. His breathing was coming fast and heavy as if he'd run all the way to the door just to get a look at me. His bullet-shaped head was shaved to the skin and his forearms were bigger than Popeye's.

  "Director Chamberlain will see you in his study," the maid said, and stepped aside. The ogre didn't move, so my way was still blocked. In full view he seemed even larger. He wore an old-fashioned black tuxedo as big as a tent, and it strained at every seam. His shiny head rose from wide, bulky shoulders with a smooth curve, no sign of a neck. His arms hung stiffly at his sides, palms slightly forward. His body language didn't equate him with the perfect host. I guessed he was waiting for me to do the traditional cowering routine before letting me pass. I folded my arms and locked eyes with him.

  "Am I supposed to leap over you, or are you waiting for the magic word?" I said.

  He narrowed his eyes, then glowered ferociously. His fists clenched and his shoulders trembled. Otherwise, he didn't move.

  What the hell, I thought, and shoved past him. It was an effort akin to rolling a granite boulder uphill, but I managed without much visible strain. I looked pointedly at the shocked maid, and she sprang into action, heading for the stairs. I followed briskly, the muscles in my shoulders bunching up involuntarily. He didn't rabbit-punch me as I half expected, making do with some exaggerated foot stomping instead.

  As we climbed the stairs, I asked the maid, "If I'd used the knocker instead of the doorbell, would you have thought me someone trying to express his individuality or just a hick?"

  She didn't look back at me, which said a lot for her self-control. The ogre's feet hammered the stair steps into utter submission, and his breath came in great bellowlike blasts. I imagined I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck but I made a point of pretending he wasn't there. Which said something for my self-control.

  He was apparently starving for attention, however, because he added to his act by slapping the banister with a meaty hand. Combined with the stomping it made for a nifty slap-boom-slap-boom effect. He must have thought it sounded like the approach of impending doom.

  "That little act must be pretty effective with the babysitter and effete vacuum-cleaner salesmen," I said over my shoulder. He went back to just stomping. No imagination.

  We arrived at the study, where Mrs. Chamberlain waited. She was tricked out in an electric-red evening gown with matching rocks around her neck and wrists. Her orange hair flowed down her shoulders like hot lava, and I got hot just looking at her. She looked as if she planned to shuttle down to Vegas to catch a show or do a little gambling. Maybe drop ten thousand at the crap tables then laugh about it all the way home. She stood next to the white marble fireplace in a practiced regal pose, but it didn't come off somehow. Maybe if a crackling fire in the hearth lit the room instead of overhead fluorescents it would have worked. As it was, she ended up looking vain and silly.

  "That will be all, Marge, Harry," Mrs. Chamberlain said. The maid vanished, but Harry stayed in the doorway like a muddy dog waiting for his master to invite him in. "That will be all, Harry," she repeated.

  It was possible that Harry couldn't hear her. I felt that his every sense, his entire being, was focused on me, and in the vacuum of his hate all else was black silence.

  I walked over to the door and kicked it shut with the toe of my boot. Just before it slammed on Harry's face, it looked as if my proximity was going to make him lunge for my throat.

  I listened at the door for a moment. There was no ham-fisted pounding, but I didn't hear any retreating footsteps, either. Which meant he was still standing there, staring at the wood grain, his fevered brain locked in a murderous kill frenzy.

  "I don't think Harry likes you," came speculation from the hearth.

  "You don't think so? And I was hoping we could be buddies. Ever thought of having him neutered?"

  "Huh?"

  "I'm concerned he might reproduce."

  She looked at me as if she were wondering whether to laugh politely or look stern. She compromised with a smile that brought to mind the grass and birch trees outside.

  The study didn't shame the rest of the house. The fireplace, tables and ashtrays were of a white marble that served to unify the deep dusky gray carpet and blond oak paneling under a single elegant banner. The alabaster white Colonial furniture added a vulnerable touch offset by a heavy teak desk backed up by matching bookcases in the deepest corner. Ponderous tomes stuffed the bookcases, a picture straight out of Victorian England.

  "You know, Mrs. Chamberlain," I said, confronting the wall of books, "you can tell a lot about people by the books they read." I spotted Joyce's Ulysses and tried to pull it out. It seemed stuck. I tugged on David Copperfield. It wouldn't budge. I rapped the spine with a knuckle. It was plastic.

  "They're phony," Mrs. Chamberlain chirped.

  "Like I said." I carried my smirk toward a love seat near the fireplace. "So how's tricks, Babs?"

  "Well, I've been feeling a trifle ill lately," she said, then noticed where I was heading. Her voice speeded up comically. "But I'm better now. Say, I would offer you a seat, but the furniture is new and your clothes seem soiled."

  I stopped short of the love seat and looked at myself. She was right. The adventure with the trees and wall left me looking like a wino at the tail end of a week-long bender. No wonder the maid had taken an instant dislike to me. I shrugged and sank into the cushions of the love seat. Barbara let out a defeated sigh, and her pose slumped.

  The end table next to the love seat played host to two fat marble bowls. One had a lid and sat next to a silver-framed coke mirror and a pair of silver straws. The other bowl was full of chocolates. Barbara caught the direction of my gaze.

  "Would you like a snort?" she asked politely.

  "No, thanks," I said haughtily. "Don't use it." I leaned over and grabbed a handful of chocolates. I squeezed one to make sure it wasn't plastic, then popped it into my mouth. To my long-shammed taste buds it tasted too rich and sweet, which meant it was the real thing. Pure chocolate was gold in the City.

  "So what's your husband director of?" I asked.

  She looked surprised. "How did you know?"


  I gave her a hard-boiled look. "It's my business to know these things."

  "Oh," she said, smiling, "our maid Marge probably told you."

  "That's right," I fired back. "She works for me. She's been on my payroll since you hired me." I popped a chocolate in my mouth and leered. "I know everything about you."

  "Oh, really, Mr. Strait." She smiled, and this time it looked genuine. "Everything?" She surprised me with a look that would have got her arrested in the burbs. I realized there was a side to Barbara that I hadn't fathomed, and that it had been too long since I'd had a girlfriend.

  "Everything," I murmured sensually. She handed me another one of those looks. I estimated the distance from me to her and coiled my thigh muscles for the spring.

  The study door opened, and Dashmeil strode purposefully in, resplendent in a red-and-turquoise-striped dinner jumpsuit. Barbara's lewd smile hightailed it back to whatever dark corner it had crept from, and any hopes of hanky-panky in the study went with it. Dashmeil planted his feet two meters in front of me, chin out, hands on hips.

  "Okay, Strait, what do you want?" he demanded.

  "Not bad," I said through a mouthful of chocolate. "But you shouldn't put your hands on your hips. Looks effete."

  He stole a glance down his posture, dropped his hands from his hips, jerked them back up defiantly, then dropped them again. He deflated with a sigh and wandered over to the fireplace and stood beside his wife. I waited for them to clasp hands, but to their credit they didn't. He took a joint out of a gold case and lit it with a gold lighter. Neither of them seemed ready to start the conversation, so I did the honors.

  "I want my money," I said, taking another handful of chocolates from the bowl.

  Babs looked embarrassed, and Dash walked over to the teak desk. He unlocked a drawer and pulled out a leather-bound checkbook and pen. He scribbled for a moment, then walked over and held a check out to me. I laid a skeptical eye on it.