The Lowdown in High Town: An R.R. Johnson Novel Read online

  When construction for the space elevator anchor station ended, all the workers left, leaving just the maintenance and loading facilities surrounding the base of the anchor station, located at the northeastern corner of the Sky Riser. The empty space was soon occupied. Domiciles first, then businesses. Eventually the area on top of the Sky Riser became the High Town District, and in the quarter of High Town opposite the space elevator, the Red Light grew.

  Along the border of the Red Light was a buffer zone about a block or two wide called the pink zone, which provided an unofficial transition area from the wild goings-on in the Red Light to the tamer parts in the rest of High Town.

  I mentioned my office was in the Red Light, the term nearly everyone used for the area. It was half a block south from being right in the middle, which was at the intersection of Houston and Dierker. Right in the crosshairs of Gulf City’s weirdest and wildest collection of places and people that made up a bewildering combination of clubs, bars, stores, restaurants, theaters, and a lot of places that defied definition.

  Located along the main drags were mostly businesses, ranging from the mundane to the fantastic. People could drop off their dry cleaning, have a nice dinner at a restaurant, then swing by one of the high-end clubs, and do so without hassle or danger, if they had the credits and knew which joints were safe. But wander into the wrong place or walk a block or two down the wrong street or alley, especially after dark, and those same people would be lucky to survive the experience. They’d likely be scarred for life if they did.

  As glamorous as that sounds, it wasn’t really.

  “You know, Rick, I was looking over High Town maps on the city computer and it looks like this building is condemned. Is that an error?” asked Detective Blanc when he walked into my office later that day. He showed up right on time. It was evening, about dark.

  “Are you moonlighting as a building inspector now?” I asked.

  “No, I just thought it odd that there would be businesses in a condemned building.”

  “It would be odd in most places I suppose, but there is a whole lot of odd in High Town. Besides, do you think the city would pour tons of expensive plascrete-C on a condemned building?”

  “I guess not. Speaking of odd, did you know you aren’t the only detective in your building?”

  He was speaking of the psychic detective one floor down from my office. “Yeah, I am aware,” I answered flatly.

  My door had Private Investigations painted on it in big black block letters. Nowhere did it say a damn thing about psychics, but a few people every week popped in looking for the charlatan. Made me wonder how many of my potential clients went to the psychic’s office by mistake. I would have asked the con artist, but I couldn’t stand to be in his or her presence. I say his or her because I was never sure which applied and I wasn’t going to ask.

  “Are there any other strange businesses in your neighborhood?”

  “I suspect you’ll find them all strange in one way or another. There is a clown college in the Pink Zone up the way,” I said, gesturing to the north.

  “Clowns?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Industrial-grade twisted degenerates getting training in clownery.”

  He looked at me as if I was crazy.

  I could tell he didn’t understand. He was young. Maybe he’d live long enough to figure it out.

  I asked Detective Blanc to dress so he didn’t look like a cop. He pulled it off pretty well. I guess he was young enough to be aware of what was fashionable, not like I would know. The problem was he didn’t act like a normal guy. It’s not that he acted like a cop, he was still too green to pick up those affectations. He acted like a guy just out of a police academy, showing the effects of the half-assed marching, saluting, and the weird moustache that went with it. Cops played like they were military, but most of them lacked the guts and discipline to actually cut it in the service. It didn’t really matter though, the kid was going to be with me, and I don’t really blend in with the hip and fashionable crowd except when I have to. Most people around here know me and know what I am.

  I opened the lower right-hand drawer of my desk and took out my holstered pistol and spare magazines, setting them on my desk.

  “What the hell kind of hand cannon is that?” Blanc asked, goggle-eyed.

  “That is an M1911 .45 caliber pistol.”

  “Nineteen-eleven, as in the year 1911?” he asked raising one eyebrow. “A slug-thrower from three centuries ago? Why would you carry such a thing?” he asked, looking at me like I was crazy, again.

  “I have my reasons, and yes, 1911,” I said. Mine was maybe ten years old, but the design was timeless. “What are you packing?” I asked as I removed the pistol from the holster and checked to make sure it was loaded.

  “The standard detective issue two-millimeter needler,” he said. He sounded almost proud.

  I laughed. “Well, that’s better than nothing. You might talk to Gene about finding a slightly more lethal alternative if you are going to work High Town.”

  “You actually think I’ll need to use this?” he asked, opening the left side of his jacket to expose the shoulder rig and the needler hanging under his armpit.

  “Maybe not tonight, but you said you want to work cases and, I assume, bring criminals to justice,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “In that case you’ll be stepping on a lot of toes. Some of those toes belong to men and women that don’t like to be stepped on. If they dislike it enough, they’ll send people out to try and stop you. At first, they’ll try bribes, then threats, then they’ll try and stop you permanently. You better be ready to deal with that.”

  “There hasn’t been a policeman killed in High Town in over a year. How do the cops working here deal with it?”

  “Simple,” I said with a chuckle, “they don’t deal with it. They don’t work cases if they can help it. They take bribes and only deal with petty crimes and minor street violence. They ignore murders that happen to the wrong people, because hookers and near dead don’t count. They hassle street vendors and prostitutes. They shake down club owners, dancers, and low-level black marketeers. A cop has to make a living. He has to go home at the end of his shift,” I said sarcastically.

  “I cannot believe they would ignore a murder. They must take reports, work the case. I know most don’t get solved, but that’s what I want to change.”

  “Fill out a report, and keep your head down. Nobody is going to miss a dead street hooker, so why investigate it. There are better ways to use police resources. There’s a mountain of doughnuts out there, and more coming every day. Those pastries are relentless. Somebody has to eat them,” I replied.

  He looked at me like I was making a bad joke, which I wasn’t.

  “Human life is precious, Rick. You don’t think so?” he asked.

  “Your own life, and the lives of those you care about may be precious to you, but that’s just your own personal bias. The rest of the universe doesn’t give a fuck.”

  “Each person’s life is precious.”

  “You need to meet more people. Some people are cancer, evil.”

  “Maybe, but aren’t they the exception?”

  “Maybe, but we were talking about human life in general. Life is cheap. History proves that. Make all the moral arguments and rational judgments that say otherwise, but humanity’s track record calls bullshit. Travel the world, walk the streets, or look out the window and you’ll see that reality doesn’t care about either one of our opinions.”

  “So you would just let bad men do evil things and not try and stop them?”

  “I never said that, Detective. I know what evil looks like. I’ve been face-to-face with it. Some say there is no evil. Horseshit. Those people need to get out more. I stop the bad from happening when I can, but the history is on their side, the bad side. If emotions or moral outrage motivates you to do something to stop the bad out there, fine. It’s easy to let emotion or outrage get the better of you,
makes it easy to cross the line. You do that and you start doing bad things in the name of doing good.”

  “Okay, Rick. Fair enough, but does being a cold and calculating burnout always lead you to make the right decision?”

  I laughed. “Detective, I don’t remember the last time I made a right decision. The right decision is rarely an option. More often than not it’s trying to pick the least bad choice, and I’m very often wrong.”

  “Maybe sometimes the least bad decision is the right one.”

  “Is that philosophy? You might be right, but what do I know. What I do know is you’re not going to have much help if you start going after real criminals. Those that commit the evil I mentioned? A lot of them wear a badge.”

  “Then report them. There is an Internal Affairs Division, you know.”

  “Oh, I know. All too well. Some years back I testified against a nasty piece of work named Henry Bartram in an IA case. He liked to bang whores and then beat them to a pulp, or the other way around sometimes. Killed a couple of them. He got suspended, then got retrained, then got reinstated. Supposedly, he’ll never be promoted above the rank of sergeant, but he’s still on the job. That’s the last time I try and work with the system.”

  “I know of a Sergeant Bartram that works one of the Midtown districts. Is that the same guy?” Blanc asked.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” I said with a nod. “He makes my life difficult as much as he can. He’s got a real revenge boner for me. He keeps his job and I get years of crap from him and his buddies. Keep that in mind if you’re serious about actually doing something in High Town.”

  “I am serious, but you’ve made me realize it’s going to be a lot more difficult than I thought.”

  Maybe the young detective wasn’t stupid. “You ready to go tour the freak show?” I asked as I stood up.

  “Sure. Is that a place here in High Town?”

  I laughed. “The Red Light is in High Town, Detective Blanc. The whole damned place is a freak show.”

  I took my standard issue black suit jacket off the back of the chair and put it on.

  “Remember, this place is schizophrenic. The Red Light is the kind of place where world famous athletes and celebs fly in to one of the high end clubs in a luxury skycar while two blocks away in some scummy alley-way you’ll find scavs crawling through the litter of used syrettes, inhalers, ampoules, and jectors looking for a trace of anything inebriating left in the refuse. That shit piles up centimeters deep and there are low-end hookers and worse-off johns conducting business in the middle of all that. There’s more than a few of those scummy alleys in the Red Light, Detective.”

  I took the kid to the Skyline for some dinner. It was a big diner that overlooked the skyway, seating more than two hundred during the height of the lunch rush. The place was built in the pattern of the classic diners from the mid 20th century. It might not have been the fanciest place around, but it was affordable and clean, and the head waitress in the evenings would make sure the cook didn’t spit in Blanc’s food if word got out there was a cop in the place. The food was standard fare, good, but nothing special, except for the pies. They were the best around.

  Blanc went with a Caesar salad. A guy in his early twenties eating salad. Maybe he wanted to live forever. I didn’t start on the salad kick until I was in my late thirties. I’m just glad I didn’t take him to the Jessop Restaurant down the block. Saw a guy order a Waldorf salad there once and they told him he was out of luck because they were out of Waldorf leaves.

  “Did you grow up in High Town?” Blanc asked as we started eating.

  “No. Well north of the city when it was part of the Gulf Confederation. Not far from the dead zone.”

  “How did you end up in High Town then?”

  “I came up here after the war looking for work. The confederation was gone and jobs were scarce, especially for ex-soldiers. I found I could get certified as a PI and make payments on the class later, so I did.”

  “So you’ve been here twenty years or so?” he asked. I had the impression he wanted to ask why I was still in High Town, and more specifically why still in the Red Light.

  “That’s right. That makes me a bit of an expert. I once had an elderly tourist couple hire me to be their guide for a week. If I had any sense I would have pursued that line of work. I’m still just a PI.”

  The kid laughed. “There is a lot of tourist traffic up here, isn’t there?”

  “Yeah. The space elevator draws in a big chunk of it, but many of them come for other reasons.”

  “The Red Light.”

  “Partly, yeah. Probably half the tourists that come here are Gulf City residents. A lot of the out-of-towners are accidental tourists. They confuse High Town with the Spire.”

  “Seriously?”

  “They don’t know any better. You point to the southeast and get them to see the giant thing towering over the bay and they figure it out pretty quick. Others see the name High Town on a map and say, ‘That sounds like a nice place, let’s go!’ Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of nice places up here, but there are a lot of tourists who blunder into the Red Light inadvertently. The smart ones leave quickly, find a guide, or they end up in trouble.”

  “Most of the people that come to the Red Light don’t just blunder in here, right? I mean, I’ve never been here before, but I have an idea of what’s here.”

  I doubted that was true, but that was why he came to me. “You got it. Some come here just to say they’ve been here. A badge of honor or some bullshit. Most come here because they like what is available. There are items, services, and activities that are for offer only in the Red Light. Most of them are perfectly legal, but some folks don’t know that. The idea they’re doing something bad makes it even more fun for them. They could take the tube north to that sleaze-pit LaTex or a suborbital to some other rathole somewhere else for the same things, but why?” I said with a shrug.

  “Is there anything to the talk about cleaning up the Red Light? City officials have been talking about that forever. Do you think that will ever happen?”

  “Not a chance. City officials largely ignore the Red Light. They leave it in the incompetent and corrupt hands of the cops. The city officials don’t like the rep of the place, but the place draws in people. Those people bring credits, not just to the Red Light, but in High Town and the rest of Gulf City. Those same officials that don’t like the Red Light crave the credits that get pulled in to the city coffers, so they squawk, but that’s it.”

  “If the cops are supposed to take care of things up here, why don’t they?”

  “You’ll have to ask them, Detective. I doubt you’ll get a satisfactory answer. High Town down to Midtown has a rep for being a dumping ground for bad cops. Not all of them are bad, but decent cops around here are rare. There’s better than six square kilometers of turf up here and a few dozen cops assigned to police it. They can’t cover it all even if they tried.”

  Blanc’s look told me he wasn’t convinced of the poor quality of his fellows. He’d find out once he was on the job.

  “Look, the cops run periodic sweeps to reinforce their belief they run things,” I said. “They make a few arrests to pad their stats and make it appear to those that might look into things that everything is under control. The reality is that way up here in low down High Town, the cops are just another gang fighting for control. And just like every other gang, they’re looking for their cut. You’ll have to deal with that. Gene did it, but it was tough.”

  “I would imagine. He said it wouldn’t be easy.” He paused, thinking about something. “So is this just a barely functioning den of thieves, or am I reading you wrong.”

  “I’m probably steering you off course. Look, not everybody in the Red Light is shady or a freak, and that’s certainly true of the rest of High Town. Most are normal people, whatever that means. It’s simply that places like the Red Light attract more than their fair share of hustlers, gangsters, con artists, cast offs, and oddballs. Most
of them just want to relieve people of their money legally through business. Some do it by other means. Some are more than happy to do far worse than just settle for creds. Those are the guys and gals that will try and stop you.”

  When we finished our dinner, we ordered dessert. Blanc did have the good sense to order a piece of cherry pie a la mode. I can forgive putting ice cream on pie, even though pie should stand on its own. I was glad to see the kid ate pie. A man who doesn’t like pie is not to be trusted.

  “I’ve looked over maps of High Town,” Blanc said. “I know that’s not enough to know the layout here. Tell me about the place.”

  “Okay, Detective. A quick primer on High Town, it’s architecture and geography.” That made Blanc laugh. “On the southern and eastern sides of High Town run the skyways. The southern side skyway is what separates us from the Bayport Industrialplex eight hundred meters away. The Industrialplex sometimes spews pollutants onto High Town when the wind is right, but the probarrier will stop most of it, when it’s functioning.”

  Blanc looked up from his pie. “You’re joking.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, no. If you see everyone wearing masks like they do in half the cities in East Asia, then you’ll know the probarrier is down.”

  “The learning curve keeps getting steeper.”

  I chuckled.

  “Remember, we aren’t an artsy, tiered, spread-out structure like the Spire. The Megablock and the Sky Riser are old school, straight walled buildings. If you want to, you can walk to the edge of the Sky Riser and look straight down three hundred stories to the foundation surface below. You can jump off if you want the quickest route down, the express route as they call it sometimes. Some people take the express down on their own for various reasons; others who piss off the wrong people get help. It’s generally considered healthier to take an elevator.”

  Blanc smiled. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll make a note of that, elevators are healthier than jumping.”