COUNT ZERO

She went into the tiny bedroom. There was a bright red folding chair and a slab of cheap yellow foam that served as a bed. The foam was marked with a brown butterfly of menstrual blood. She lifted it, but there was nothing there.

“You’d have been scared,” she said, her voice shaking with a fury she didn’t try to understand, her hands cold, colder than Alain’s, as she ran them down the red wallpaper, striped with gold, seeking some loose seam, a hiding place.

“You poor stupid shit. Poor stupid dead shit...”

Nothing. Back into the living room, and amazed, somehow, that he hadn’t moved; expecting him to jump up, hello, waving a few centimeters of trick wire. She removed his shoes. They needed resoling, new heels. She looked inside, felt the lining. Nothing. “Don’t do this to me “And back into the bedroom. The narrow closet. Brushing aside a clatter of cheap white plastic hangers, a limp shroud of drycleaner’s plastic. Dragging the stained bedslab over and standing on it, her heels sinking into the foam, to slide her hands the length of a pressboard shelf, and find, in the far corner, a hard little fold of paper, rectangular and blue. Opening it, noticing how the nails she’d done so carefully were chipped, and finding the number he’d written there in green feltpen. It was an empty Gauloise packet.

There was a knock at the door.

And then Paco’s voice: “Marly? Hello? What has happened?”

She thrust the number into the waistband of her jeans and turned to meet his calm, serious eyes.

“It’s Alain,” she said, “he’s dead.”

19 HYPERMART

HE SAW LUCAS for the last time in front of a big old department store on Madison Avenue. That was how he remembered him, after that, a big black man in a sharp black suit, about to step into his long black car, one black, softly polished shoe already on the lush carpet of Ahmed’s interior, the other still on the crumbling concrete of the curb.

Jackie stood beside Bobby, her face shadowed by the wide brim of her gold-hung fedora, an orange silk headscarf knotted at the back of her neck.

“You take care of our young friend, now,” Lucas said, pointing the knob of his cane at her. “He’s not without his enemies, our Count.”

“Who is?” Jackie asked.

“I’ll take care of myself,” Bobby said, resenting the idea of Jackie being seen as more capable, yet at the same time knowing that she almost certainly was.

“You do that,” Lucas said, the knob swinging, lined up now with Bobby’s eyes. “Sprawltown’s a twisty place, my man Things are seldom what they seem.” To illustrate his point, he did something to the cane that caused the long brass splines below the ball to open smoothly. for an instant, silently, extended like the ribs of an umbrella, each one glinting sharp as a razor, pointed like needles. Then they were gone, and Ahmed’s wide door swung shut with an armor-plated thud.

Jackie laughed. “Shee-it. Lucas still carryin’ that killin’ stick. Bigtime lawyer now, but the street leaves a mark on you. Guess it’s a good thing...”

“Lawyer?”

She looked at him. “You never mind, honey. You just come with me, do like I tell you, you be okay.”

Ahmed merged with the sparse traffic, a pedicab jockey blaring pointlessly at the receding brass bumper with a hand-held air horn.

Then, one manicured, gold-ringed hand on his shoulder, she led him across the sidewalk, past a sleeping huddle of rag-bundled transients, and into the slowly waking world of Hypermart.

Fourteen floors, Jackie said, and Bobby whistled. “All like this?” She nodded, spooning brown crystals of rock sugar into the tan foam atop her coffee glass. They sat on scrolly castiron stools at a marble counter in a little booth, where a girl Bobby’s age, her hair dyed and lacquered into a kind of dorsal fin, worked the knobs and levers of a big old machine with brass tanks and domes and burners and eagles with spread chrome wings. The countertop had been something else, originally; Bobby saw where one end was bashed off in a long crooked jag to allow it to fit between two green-painted steel pillars.

“You like it, huh?” She sprinkled the foam with powdered ci

Bobby nodded, his eyes confused by the thousand colors and textures of the things in the stalls, the stalls themselves. There seemed to be no regularity to anything, no hint of any central pla

“This place is okay,” he said, and gestured to the girl to refill his cup.

“Wait a sec, asshole,” the countergirl said, amiably enough. She was measuring ground coffee into a dented steel hopper on one end of an antique balance. “You get any sleep last night, Jackie, after the show?”

“Sure,” Jackie said, and sipped at her coffee “I danced their second set, then I slept at Jammer’s. Hit the couch, you know?”

“Wish I’d got some. Every time Henry sees you dance, he won’t let me alone...” She laughed, and refilled Bobby’s cup from a black plastic thermos.

“Well,” Bobby said, when the girl was busy again with the espresso machine, “what’s next?”

“Busy man, huh?” Jackie regarded him coolly from beneath the gold-pi

“Well, no. Shit. I just mean, well, is this it?”

“Is what it?”

“This place. We’re staying here?”

“Top floor. Friend of mine named Jammer runs a club up there. Very unlikely anyone could find you there, and even if they do, it’s a hard place to sneak up on. Fourteen floors of mostly stalls, and a whole lot of these people sell stuff they don’t have out in plain view, right? So they’re all very sensitive to strangers turning up, anyone asking questions. And most of them are friends of ours, one way or another Anyway, you’ll like it here. Good place for you. Lots to learn, if you remember to keep your mouth shut.”

“How am I go

“Well, I mean keep your ears open, more like it. And be polite. Some tough people in here, but you mind your biz, they’ll mind theirs. Beauvoir’s probably coming by here late this afternoon. Lucas has gone out to the Projects to tell him whatever you learned from the Fi

“That he’s got these three dead guys stretched out on his floor. Says they’re ninjas.” Bobby looked at her. “He’s pretty weird...”

“Dead guys aren’t part of his usual line of goods. But, yeah, he’s weird all right. Why don’t you tell me about it? Calmly, and in low, measured tones. Think you can do that?”

Bobby told her what he could remember of his visit to the Fi