Noir by K. W. Jeter Page A

nine-millimeter, a traviata maybe—”
    Harrisch felt his face harden into a sneer. “Those Italian pieces are all pussy guns. Those are for girls.”
    “Hey … hey, I understand.” The cop backed off, holding up a mollifying hand, palm outward. “You want to carry major weight, that’s cool. I can go with that. It’s nothing Freudian, you know, it’s just an image thing, really. But remember, those aren’t your only choices. You want to stick with the Teutonics, hey, I agree.” The cop gave an admiring shake of the head. “Nothing fills your hand like those babies. But maybe for a change of pace, you’d like to go with a tristan; that’s a sharp piece. Or hey, go bigger; go up to a four-eighty siegfried. Or shit, go all the way to a connectin’ götterdämmerung; you just about need a craneto lift it, but I guarantee you, if you’d popped one of those off here, we’d be picking up the evidence with a push broom and a vacuum cleaner. I tell you—”
    “Are we about done?” Harrisch interrupted the cop’s spiel. “Is there anything more we need to take care of?”
    “No. I guess not.” The cop looked sullen. He glanced over his shoulder toward the camera at the other end of the alley. “You got what you need?”
    “Sure do! Right on!” The camera had a minimal personality interface and the voice of an animated cartoon character. The round blank face of the lens swiveled toward Harrisch and the cop. “We be cookin’!” With fussy arachnoid movements, the tripod picked its way through the low, black dunes of trash.
    “Just trying to do a little public service …” Under his breath, the cop muttered just loud enough for Harrisch to hear. “And what do you get for it? Connect …”
    The coroner’s office was a low-budget item in the PD’s budget; Harrisch wasn’t surprised to see an antiquated low-rez LCD screen unfold from the camera’s dented and patched thorax. The display blurred through a reconstructive autopsy, extrapolating back from the gridded shots that had just been taken of the dead cube bunny. Her smiling face, near to lifelike, appeared on one side of the screen; the photo that Harrisch had registered before flashed on the other side.
    “Pretty good!” pronounced the camera. “Close enough for police work! Everything looks copacetic, folks!”
    “I think I’ll be on my way, then.” Harrisch felt tired and regretful. Not over the cube bunny, but on having let himself linger out here, where he could get latched on to by hustlers like this cop.
Should’ve just gone straight back to the office
, he brooded. Scenes such as this one were the consequence of mixing business with pleasure, even such innocuous ones as listening to the invisible choir’s music with heated metal in his fist. “Call me if there’s any other forms I need to fill out.”
    “There won’t be.” The cop visibly shifted his glum mood. “Tell you what, though; why don’t you take my card?” From one of the dark blue uniform’s pockets, he extracted a thin white rectangle. “This is my private sideline business. I’ve got a little dealership thing going—”
    “No shit.” Harrisch looked at the card; a 3-D image of a dancinggun winked and pointed to a phone number. He stuck the card inside his jacket, knowing he wouldn’t be able to get rid of the cop, otherwise. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
    “Hey, wait a minute.” Another voice, ragged and with slurred consonants, broke into the discussion. “This sucks.”
    Both Harrisch and the cop glanced over at the figure that had appeared next to them. One of the shellbacked homeless clustering near the Daimler had gotten to his feet and approached them. The segments of the black carapace soft-welded to his skin—the charity agencies did that, to make sure their clients didn’t lose any of the pieces of their minimal shelters—glistened in the first of a drizzling rain.
    “What’s your problem, buddy?” The cop narrowed his gaze to slits.