Free Noir by K. W. Jeter Page B

spaces—
Christ
, he thought with a shudder,
probably not any better than out here in the street
—would naturally have wanted to talk to something like her. A scrabbling down-on-his-luck asp-head didn’t get many chances along those lines. “So you talked.”
    Her turn to nod. “Some of the
craziest
stuff, too.” She had a child’s squeaky little voice as well, all innocence and fun. The sound of it made men’s teeth grow longer in their sockets. “Like you never heard.”
    “Really?” Harrisch supposed it was a good idea to know what was going on inside McNihil’s head. That was the problem with using these freelancers; you couldn’t just ring up the human-resources department and get a readout on them. “Such as?”
    “Oh … all kinds of things.” The cube bunny shrugged her bare, pretty shoulders. Raindrops made soft jewels on her artfully exposed skin. “Like the way he sees things. He’s got these funny eyes, you know? And the way he saw me. Stuff like that.”
    It was pretty much what he expected to hear from her. Sadly so; in this life, there were no surprises. “And you did everything else? That you were supposed to?”
    The cube bunny nodded happily, perfect white face and cherry-red lips. “Then I fell asleep—kinda—and he got up and went to the bathroom. That’s what I was waiting for. So I could get away, without him noticing.” An impish glint appeared in her eyes. “Or at least not right away.”
    Harrisch smiled back at her.
You little conniver
, he thought approvingly. He supposed her cute mind was part of her pretty genetics, her way of getting through this world of thorns and lust. Who could stay mad at someone like that? It would be like rage directed at the berry you were about to crush between your teeth.
    “That’s fine,” said Harrisch. “It doesn’t really matter, anyway. I’m sure you did a good job.”
    The glint in the cube bunny’s eye hardened to steel, or an even hungrier metal. “Does that mean I get paid now?”
    “Sure.” He reached into his jacket pocket.
    From below them, from the grating beneath his and the cube bunny’s feet, the wavering candlelight poured upward, as though a new sun had been discovered at the center of the earth.
How good they sound
, thought Harrisch, listening to the hidden chorus. They had shifted keys, to a bright C major, the notes of simple and universal triumph. The basses and tenors had dropped out; the female voices were slowly rising, not toward resurrection but to some even brighter apotheosis. Harrisch felt a little door open inside his heart as he lifted a weight of black metal from his pocket.
    “Maybe I could do something like this for you again some time.” The cube bunny didn’t see what he had in his hand. Her childish and seductive gaze was locked on Harrisch’s eyes, looking for some other door to open up inside him. “’Cause it was easy. All I had to do was tell him the truth. About what happened to poor Mr.Travelt. It wasn’t like I had to lie or anything. So it really was easy.”
    “Great,” said Harrisch. “Speaking from the viewpoint of upper management, I think it’s good that people get some sense of satisfaction from what they do. Every once in a while, at least.” Actually, he didn’t care. He raised and aimed the gun at a point equidistant between the cube bunny’s small breasts and slightly higher, just below the hollow in her white throat. “But I don’t really think you’ll be working for us again.”
    Genuine tears welled at the bottoms of her eyes; the trembling lashes darkened. “That’s not fair,” she said in a small voice, a whisper almost lost against the choir’s gentle murmur.
    “No, it’s not.” He had to agree. He could almost regret the tightening of his finger on the gun’s trigger.
    “But I did what you asked me to—”
    He watched her fly, propelled by the bullet’s imparted grace. The unmuffled shot echoed along the alley’s walls, shivering dust and bird