NECROM

With a coupte of drinks inside him, he might feel a whole lot different about the world.

As soon as the cab he hailed on the corner of Avenue A and Sixth Street hit Third Avenue, he knew that there was a problem. The traffic on Third Avenue was going the wrong way. When he'd left, Third Avenue had been one-way uptown, and now it was ru

To his infinite relief, the Candy Box was still there, and open to him, subject to a little bargaining with the gorilla on the door. He realized that he didn't look like much: his Suit was rumpled and covered in purple stains, probably the translation of the orange stains that he'd got on it during the hillside firefight in the Hole in the Void. The Candy Box was filled with a typically representative cross section of those who couldn't find a reason to go home that particular night. Drunken rock 'n' roll musicians rubbed studded-leather shoulders with the silk suits of off-shift dope dealers, while nervous coke whores chain-smoked Marlboro Lights and waited for their next invitation to the bathroom. Wired leftovers from downtown discos, and alcoholics who hadn't quite drunk themselves into zombiehood, tried to keep the party alive long after all the vital signs had ceased, Gibson put away two cognacs in quick succession and felt considerably better. He even made a trip of his own to the bathroom to buy a beat quarter of a gram from a tall black man who went by the name of Elk. He told himself that the cocaine was purely for medicinal purposes. He needed something to keep him going until he'd completed all that he had to accomplish. He was a little surprised to see that there was no one he knew in the place, and even more surprised that no one even recognized him. He told himself that it didn't really matter. His ego could take a backseat for one night. He was more than happy to sit on a bar stool with a drink in front of him and his elbows propped up on the bar. The last things he needed were recognition or conversation.

Nine o'clock the next morning saw Gibson on the corner of Canal and Mulberry, waiting for a Chinese jewelry store to open. The owner, after a good deal of haggling, offered him two hundred an ounce for the coins, and Gibson accepted. The net weight was close to seven ounces, and although he suspected that the Krugerrands were probably worth close to twice that, it was a comforting sum to have in his pocket. Outside on the street, he flagged down the first cab that he saw and rode it uptown, having it stop a block short of his building on Central Park West. He stood for a full five minutes, observing the comings and goings to and from the building, satisfying himself that there was no one keeping watch on the place, before he risked approaching the main entrance. To his relief he saw that Ramone was the doorman on duty. A large weight fell from his shoulders. He was all but home tree.

He gri

He knew in an instant that something wasn't right. Ramone's face was a semihostile mask. It was the expression reserved for the most dubious visitors. "Can I help you with something?"

Gibson blinked. Ramone didn't seem to know him. Admittedly, there had been times when he'd come home roaring drunk and acting up, and Ramone had been needed to coax him into the elevator, but he'd always tipped the man very well after these incidents and Ramone had never been the kind to hold a grudge after money had changed hands.

"Hey, Ramone, what's going on here. Don't you know me?"

Ramone's eyes were narrowed and he looked at Gibson with practiced suspicion. "You sure you have the right building, my friend?"

Gibson wished that he had a mirror in which he could check himself. Had there been some weird change in his appearance during the transition back to Earth? "Ramone, don't you know me? It's Joe Gibson. I live in 10-E. What's going on here? Did the IRS put a padlock on the place or something?"

Ramone positioned himself between Gibson and the elevator. "I don't know what your problem is, pal, but I think you'd better get out of here."

Ramone was talking to him as though he was some crazy who'd wandered in off the street, and panic was rising in Gibson's chest like a flood, "I'm Joe Gibson, damn it. I live in this building, in apartment 10-E."

"I never heard of any Gibson. Dr. Cohen lives in 10-E. I think you'd better go now. We don't want any trouble, do we?"

Gibson made a desperate lunge for the elevator. "I want to get to my apartment, okay? I live here."

Ramone headed him off, ready to get physical if need be. Gibson knew for a fact that Ramone carried a blackjack in the hip pocket of his uniform pants. "You got keys for this apartment of yours?"

Gibson shook his head. It was getting worse and worse. This was like fucking Kafka. "No, I had a bit of trouble…"

That did it for Ramone. "Piss off, okay? Just piss off before I call the police."

Out on the street again, Gibson hailed a second cab."Twenty-third and Seventh. Chelsea Hotel."

At the Chelsea, they didn't want to know anything about his business except that he had the money for the room and a deposit for the phone, and the phone was the first thing he headed for when he was through the scant formalities of checking in. His first call was to Tommy Ramos. Back in the seventies, Ramos had been in the punk band Grim Death, and he and Gibson had been firm friends for longer than either of them, now they were in the nineties, cared to remember. The number rang four times and then an answering machine picked up. "Hi, this is Wilson…"

"… and this is Kimberly…"

"… and we can't come to the phone right now but, if you leave a message after the tone, we'll get back to you as soon as we can."

It sounded like a pair of goddamned yuppies. What the hell were yuppies doing at Tommy's number? Tommy lived in a cheap, rent-controlled apartment on Seventeenth Street that he'd had since Sid Vicious was alive and stumbling. It was full of as much junk as Gibson's place, and there was no way that Tommy was going to give it up. He tried the number again to make sure that he hadn't misdialed, but all he got was the same a

"I'm sorry, we have no listing in that name."

First Ramone didn't know him, and now Tommy Ramos seemed to have vanished off the face of the Earth. He called the desk. "Could someone get me a couple of drinks from the bar."

He tried three more numbers that he had committed to memory. None of them answered. Fear of the unfathomable was starting to gnaw at his brain. One more number remained that, if anything was weird when he called it, he'd know for sure that he and the world were seriously out of whack. He was reluctant to use it, however. He'd only talked to Desiree maybe a half-dozen times since she'd walked out on him, and all of those conversations had finished on notes of petty and wretched acrimony. By this point, however, he was sufficiently disturbed to resort to his ex-girlfriend. At that moment, though, the drinks arrived, giving him the chance to delay the call for a few moments. He'd ordered two double Scotches and four bottles of Amstel Light and the porter looked round for the other person.

Gibson gri

The porter nodded. "Been thirsty myself a few times."