Sideways In Crime Read online

  “Her name is Chief Constable Brown. That’s B-r-o-w-n, not B-r-a-u-n.”

  “All right.” A woman’s shoulder bumped against my chest. “Is there anything else I should know?”

  “I would think so.”

  “So what is it?”

  “I don’t know either, herr leutnant, or I’d have told you.”

  When we started working together, I’d said that I hated yes-sir-no-sir subordinates without any sense of humor. So that’ll teach me.

  The swirling crowd flowed through the choke point that was the exit, and opened out into the marble foyer. A large woman got up from a polished wooden bench. She was wearing a light-gray skirt suit, no frills. Her pale hair (I figured it for gray-white, lightly bleached) was cut in a stylish, functional bob. I’d guess her age at late fifties, twenty years older than me.

  Her handshake was a good one, and when she spoke, her Deutsch was flawless.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Herr Leutnant Weber.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Frau Chief Constable Brown.” I used the English rank. “And I’m curious as to how I might help you.”

  “Can I begin with mentioning my authorization? Not just your bosses’ approval, but my Interpol credentials, in addition to my own as a Metropolitan Police officer.”

  “That’s the London regional force,” said Klaus. “Am I correct?”

  “Absolutely correct.” Brown smiled at him. “And I hope we get to work together, you and I. It’s just that I have to talk to the herr leutnant privately first.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I can tell you both that we need to take a suspect into custody some time tonight, probably quite late. Are you well rested, herr leutnant?”

  “Always,” I said, as Klaus smirked. “So who is the suspect?”

  “That’s the thing I can’t tell you yet.”

  Who? What? Where? She’d fallen down on the first question.

  Klaus said: “And the crime?”

  “Multiple homicide. In half a dozen different countries.”

  Without specifics, it sounded like she’d come to the right people. As we exited the courthouse and descended the steps, the sky was already dark over Manhattan. This was November, the evening air was cold, and none of us was wearing an overcoat. A patrol car was waiting at the curb with its engine running. This would be the vehicle Brown and Klaus had arrived in, hopefully with the heater on.

  “We should get back to Headquarters,” I said.

  “If you say so.” Brown looked at the car. “But do you know, I’ve never seen the Empire State Tower.”

  Just as I started to insist, Klaus shook his head. He probably did know more about the English than I did, so I paused and mentally replayed Brown’s words. Ah. Obvious. She wanted to talk alone, away from official surroundings.

  “You take the car,” I told Klaus. “We’ll take a cab.”

  “Um, sure, chief.”

  “And go home to the family. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir.” He smiled, and saluted.

  Winds twisted across the outdoor observation balcony of the Empire State. As Chief Constable Lisa Brown (she’d shown me her badge) and I walked around the circumference, the only other visitors, a group of well-bundled-up Japanese tourists, went back inside. The souvenir store was warm and well lighted. Out here it was freezing.

  “It’s so beautiful.” Brown gestured toward the Chrysler Building. “Iconic.”

  I could see the orange-and-yellow sphere two hundred feet above the once-Christian cathedral on Fifth, now known as Flare Abbey, Manhattan’s premier place of worship for the Church of the Holy Solar. The plastic sphere was lighted from within, mounted on top of a black steel needle hidden in the night.

  Call that iconic too, if you like. I think of it as one more monument to stupidity.

  “So,” I asked, “is this your first trip to Neu München?”

  Most Englanders would call it New Munich, but Brown was comfortable with the language.

  “Oh, no, herr leutnant. But always for work. I’ve never had time to come up here before.”

  I looked eastward to Brooklyn and Blauwald, where I grew up.

  “There’s more to the city than Manhattan.”

  “I’ve seen some of the other neighborhoods. So can we take a walk around? Just the balcony here, I mean.”

  We walked along the north and west sides, then stopped at the corner. Brown pointed out to the dark waters of the bay, where the great ovoid glistened white, with non-linear patterns of gold and scarlet drifting across its surface.

  “Ellis Vortex,” she said. “I was wondering how you feel about that.”

  She’s vetting me, for God’s sake.

  “It was necessary.” My voice tightened, against my wishes. “Otherwise the Nazis would never have stopped, never surrendered.”

  “But two days earlier, the Allies had already shown what they could do. With the Hanover Vortex lighting up the night, did the Axis really need to face a second demonstration? And with the Amerikan vice-chancellor on the island?”

  “Ancient history, frau chief constable. Before either of us was born.”

  “So you’ve no objection to working with an Englander?”

  I crossed my arms, more against the wind than as a defensive gesture.

  “On your previous trips,” I said, “did you get a chance to visit Brooklyn?”

  “In point of fact, I did.”

  “And perhaps you noticed small discs about so big”--I made a semi-circle with thumb and forefinger--”set into the sidewalk, in front of some houses?”

  “Yes.” Brown focused on me. “I was astonished, when my companion explained their meaning.”

  Each brass disc bears the name of a Jewish individual or family, pulled from their home by ASA brownshirts during the late 1930s. Mostly, the Amerikanische Sturmabteilung dragged their prisoners to Grand Zentral, to put them aboard the death trains.

  “You’ll find my grandparents’ names,” I said, “on one of those discs.”

  “Ah.”

  “And it was a very long time ago. So are you happy to work with me now, frau chief constable?”

  “I think you might be good enough.” She was smiling. “Perhaps we can go to your place?”

  “You mean the office.”

  “Well, of course, herr leutnant.”

  “I’d be honored, ma’am.”

  The Eavesdropping Suite is much as you’d expect: dark ceiling, bright-lit consoles, each with a shining steel-and-glass resonator some twenty centimeters long. The officers are plainclothes, in shirtsleeves with loosened ties, and their job is to listen in on encrypted traffic, the comms that make the underworld go round.

  A mix of languages came softly through the speakers. Brown listened, then said: “I heard, on my last trip, that Deutsch became the country’s official language by exactly one vote, in 1776. You nearly ended up speaking English.”

  “Something of an urban myth.” I waved to Andre, who sat at a console across the room, and he waved back. “Partly, it grew from the vote that made Deutsch the second language on all legislation, in 1795. And there was the influx of Lutherans from Europe, after the Vatican’s Revenge.”

  “I thought it was Benjamin Franklin’s doing.”

  “He pushed for Deutsch, all right. But there wasn’t a legally official Amerikan language until the 1950s, and Senator Hayakawa.”

  The history was familiar because, as a sophomore studying psychophysics, I’d read Hayakawa’s classic texts on semantics. I’d been interested enough to learn about the background.

  “Hey, herr leutnant,” one of the guys, Karl, called out. We’ve known each other a long time; in a bar he’d address me as Peter, but not here. “We got the Red Hot Doktors smooching on the vortex flow again.”

  “Give them my love.”

  “Right.”

  There were smiles around the room.

  “You surely can’t transmit on the flow,” murmured Brown.
“That was a joke, right?”

  “That’s right,” I told her.

  It’s hard enough to establish a listen-only resonance on an encrypted flow, without perturbation sending the link into nonlinear chaos. Transmitting is impossible, and when we’re eavesdropping on genuine criminals, we wouldn’t want them to hear a thing.

  “Red Hot Doktors.” said Brown. “Using hospital crypto kit for private conversations?”

  “You’ve guessed it.” Karl flicked a fingernail against his console. “They’re married, just not to each other. And they like describing things in, um--”

  “In clinical detail?”

  “Uh, right, ma’am.”

  “Well”--Brown gave a tiny smile as she scanned the room-- “that’s not exactly what I thought you’d be eavesdropping on.”

  “Um...” Karl stopped.

  I said, “We’re not supposed to target minorities, not even the Church of the Holy Solar.”

  Tiny muscles tightened in Brown’s face.

  A connection to the case you’ve still not explained?

  “Right.” Karl pointed at his monitor screen, with its list of eavesdropping subjects. “There’s your ordinary criminal activity, but Solar fundamentalists are dangerous. And they think vortex encryption is an unholy use of the flow, except when they’re using it themselves.”

  Brown looked at her watch. It was plain but elegant, therefore expensive.

  “You must be hungry,” I said, guessing she wanted to change the subject.

  “Well, my body clock thinks it’s two pm and I’ve missed lunch. But I’m waiting for a crypto signal first, from London or Berlin.”

  “And then you’ll be able to tell me what’s happening tonight?”

  “I hope so,” said Brown.

  Across the room, Andre was busy at his console. If there were an incoming signal for a ranking visitor, I’d expect him to field it. Meanwhile, beside me, Brown started yawning.

  “Sorry.”

  “Flying takes it out of you,” said Karl. “Going eastward is even worse.”

  “I didn’t leave my home until four hours ago. Just weeks of putting in long hours, is all.”

  Four hours?

  But we’d spent the last two hours here in Manhattan, which meant--

  “You resonated from London,” I said. “You didn’t fly.”

  Karl stared at Brown.

  “Yes.” She looked from Karl to me. “Is that a problem?”

  “ Um...”

  “Obviously I got through the Intention Scan.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” said Karl.

  “Accepted. And you, herr leutnant? Do you have a problem with my mode of transport?”

  “I didn’t say--”

  And then Andre, from across the room, called out: “Ma’am? Incoming signal, highest priority.”

  Call it a lucky rescue.

  Though Brown was a big woman, she was across the room very fast. Andre had scarcely popped an unformatted silicon/gallium sliver into his data resonator by the time she reached him. I got there as Andre clicked the glass cover shut.

  “Tell me when,” said Brown.

  “Done.”

  I hadn’t caught the flicker. To me, the sliver was unchanged.

  Andre opened the resonance cavity, removed the sliver with tweezers, inserted it into a thumbnail-sized data plug, and sealed the thing up. He handed it to Brown.

  “There you are, ma’am.”

  “Many thanks.”

  She pulled a PDA from her pocket, and clicked the data plug into a USB port. Then she turned away as the small screen swirled into life. She continued walking, intent on the message, ignoring us.

  Andre shrugged.

  “If it wasn’t confidential,” he said, “they could’ve just made a phone call.”

  “True.”

  But it might have been nice if she’d demonstrated some trust.

  “Do you think she was impressed with my books?” Andre nodded toward his small desktop bookcase.

  “Definitely,” I said, touching the original English edition of Hawking and Penrose’s Vortex Field Theory. “She noticed, for sure.”

  I was lying. What I really thought was, Brown was so intent on her job that everything else was secondary, including ethical considerations. Because with a little forethought and planning, she surely could have left London yesterday, and simply flown.

  When she came back, she gave another yawn.

  “Early to bed and to depart,” said Andre, “makes one healthy, rich and wise. Ben Franklin said that.”

  Brown looked at me. “And he might have said it in English, if history had been different.”

  “In English,” I said, “it wouldn’t have rhymed.”

  “So he’d have worded it differently.”

  “All right. Is there any chance of your telling us what’s going on now?”

  Andre pulled his head back, withdrawing from the hostility.

  “Herr leutnant,” said Brown. “You might not approve of my priorities, but I have eight high profile victims already in the morgue. Still, the urgency has nothing to do with them, it’s the next victim, the one who hasn’t died yet.”

  “Shit.”

  “So if you could get us to Grand Zentral right this minute, it would be a big help.”

  “The station?”

  “Exactly right.”

  But before we could get going, Karl called something, then Andre’s phone rang. He picked up. “What? Oh, right. Thanks, Karl.” He held the phone out to me. “Sorry, Chief.”

  “No problem.”

  It was Klaus on the line.

  “Herr leutnant, you said go home, so I did, but I have a telephone here. I made a few calls to London. One of my pals just rang back.”

  “That’s... interesting,” I said.

  “Oh, she’s there, is she? The frau chief constable?”

  I smiled. “You’re a smart guy.”

  “Tell that to my mother-in-law. So you want to hear some Interpol gossip? There’s allegedly a series of resonance deaths across Europe. Not a whisper on TV or any newspaper.”

  “My God, I’m not surprised.” If anything was covered by the European versions of the Restriction of Information Act, it would be fatalities caused by vortex technology. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, but Sabine says hi. And when are you coming to dinner?”

  “Hi back. Soon. And take it easy.”

  I gave the handset back to Andre.

  “Anything interesting?” asked Brown.

  “Wrong number,” I said. “So, Grand Zentral. You want to get something to eat there?”

  As we walked through the building’s exit, three armored vans squealed out of the side street, and went tearing off. I stopped, as did Brown. Then I headed back inside. Ignoring a clump of civilians in front of the duty desk, I said to the sergeant: “Any idea what’s going on?”

  Brown came in, and walked close enough to hear.

  “Officers down.” He rubbed his moustache. “Herakles team, on a bust. Wearing vests.”

  “Damn it.”

  “Exactly. You take care, herr leutnant.”

  I went back out. Beside me, Brown asked: “What’s a Herakles team?”

  “A police commando unit. We wear armored vests, so the other side have started using armor-piercing rounds. It’s what biologists call co-evolution, meaning--”

  “I know what it means,” said Brown. “If you don’t want to call me chief constable, you can call me Doktor Brown, all right?”

  “My apologies.”

  “That’s all right, herr leutnant.”

  On the sidewalk, I stopped. “Or you can call me Doktor Weber, if you prefer.”

  “Oh, really? In what discipline?”

  “Psychophysics, from MTI in Boston.”

  We work in vortex tech. What did you expect?

  After a moment, she held out her hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Herr Doktor Weber.”

  “Lik
ewise, Frau Doktor Brown.”

  We shook, as we had several hours earlier, not quite smiling.

  “You’re all right,” she said. “Why don’t you call me Lisa.”

  “I’m Peter.”

  “And are you buying, Peter? Dinner in Grand Zentral, I mean.”

  “Absolutely. And claiming it on expenses.”

  “I should hope so.”

  I flagged down a yellow cab, and told him our destination.

  “Aw, man,” the driver began. “That’s too short a drive for--”

  When I unbuttoned my jacket, it fell open. My Luger was under my left armpit.

  “I mean, hop right inside, officer.”

  “Twenty Marks if you’re fast.”

  Opening the door for Lisa Brown, I added: “Welcome to Neu München.”

  Twenty minutes later, we were dining on the balcony overlooking the Grand Zentral concourse. The pale, polished stone was clean and ornate: the architecture of more leisurely times. Orange characters scrolled down electronic boards, naming destinations: Stamford, Poughkeepsie, Neu Hafen.

  But I liked to watch the travelers, read their body language, modeling them in my mind with neuroflow equations. Call it keeping in practice, or a hankering for the purity of science, away from law enforcement.

  Brown--I mean Lisa--was dividing her attention between cutting her steak and staring over the balustrade. “I love these old stations.”

  “Yes. I guess.”

  I heard the overtones in my voice, too late to soften them. Lisa nodded. I guessed she’d seen my gaze flicker. But then, the setup is obvious, though most commuters wander around the thing without paying attention.

  In the center of the concourse, fashioned in stone that matches the surroundings--as if they’ve been here since the station’s inception-- stands an oval arrangement of twelve resonator booths. Each is massive, double the size of a phone booth. From above, a discreet awning hides the glass door on each booth, facing the center of the oval.

  And always a squad of marines stands guard, Heckler & Koch carbines held across their chests.

  “Welcome to modernity,” I said. “When I was a kid, you’d never see military in the city.”

  “Progress brings change.”