Noir by K. W. Jeter Page B

“Why don’t you just take it back out to the street? This doesn’t concern you.”
    “The connect it doesn’t.” The man’s face was all bone angles edged with scabs and crusted dirt. His breath was ripe with alcohol and the cheaper grades of paint thinner. “This really sucks.” One plated arm gestured floppily toward the alley’s depths. “Sonuvabitch here just blew away that poor girl.”
    As though on a common gear, Harrisch and the cop looked toward the yellow-haired corpse, then back to the homeless figure in his dissembled shell. The cop shrugged. “So?” He looked genuinely puzzled. “What’s your point?”
    “Connect, man …” The red-rimmed eyes were filled with the fury of Old Testament saints. “You’re not gonna do anything about it?”
    “Of course not,” said the cop, deeply offended.
    Harrisch tilted his head back and looked up at the night sky. The patchy clouds, tinged with the city’s luminescence, still let a few long segments of clear stars through.
This is what I get
. When one’s tenderer sentiments were indulged, payment was exacted. The singing from the choir below had stopped, letting silence fill the alley’s narrow space again. For all he knew, they had given up their church service for the time being and were listening in on his problems.
    “The connect you aren’t.” Noisily, segments of the interlocking shell clattering against each other, the turtlelike figure rooted through the various grimy pouches and rope-slung sacks on his torso and around his waist. He came up with a miniature video camera, its silvery plasticsmeared with his black fingerprints. “I got it all down. I’ll go witness status. Then you’re in deep doo-doo.”
    “Bullshit.” The cop sneered again. “You’re not licensed for that.”
    “Yeah?” A gap-toothed smile showed on the gaunt face. “Check it out.” One gnarled hand extended a plastic-laminated card. “You and your little businessman pal here have got the wrong story going.”
    “Ah, damn.” The cop examined the card, then handed it back. A sigh born of deep frustration lifted and dropped his shoulders.
    “What’s the problem?” Harrisch took one of the cop’s arms and pulled him away from the smirking homeless. “There’s a problem, right?”
    The cop tilted his head toward the watching and waiting figure. Beyond, at the mouth of the alley, a few more of the homeless had tilted their shells back, the attraction of the voices’ buzz greater than the car’s dying heat. “There was that traffic-monitoring program about six months ago. Buncha crap, if you ask me. But the transport authorities issued videocams, little cheap throwaway numbers, to a lot of these guys; figured they were already on the street, might as well let them do the counts. The only thing, they had to be granted temporary citizenry levels as well, something high enough that the data they collected could go into the public records. The funding debates on some of these issues are pretty hot right now. But that’s where our problem comes from.” The cop pointed a thumb toward the shellback. “This guy’s temp level hasn’t expired yet; it’s still got three days to run. So technically, at this point in time—but not next week—he
could
enter testimony against you.”
    “On what?” Harrisch’s anger rose. “What charge? I don’t see what his level’s got to do with it.” This was the kind of thing that always pissed him off, little unexpected traps laid in the path of an honest man. “It’s her level; that’s what’s important.” He pointed toward the corpse, gazing up at the clouded sky, flecks of rain tearlike on her soft cheekbones. “She didn’t have any; you know that. I thought that was the whole reason I was able to preregister this hit.”
    “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” The cop tried to calm him down. “So it’s not like you’d get charged with anything major; it’s not a murder or an aggravated-assault