Finch by Jeff VanderMeer Read online

  “Fuck, but I hate this job!” Wyte exclaimed, as their boots kicked up water pooling between rows of bolted-down chairs alongside the abandoned track.

  Said he hated it, but looked a lot happier than at the station.

  The address turned out to be a modest-looking two-story apartment building west of the Religious District. Shoved up against more of the same, with the billowing dome of the northernmost camp beyond.

  Finch recognized it as a former Frankwrithe & Lewden neighborhood. It had retained some sense of order. Of discipline. A few men with red armbands stood on the sidewalk like guards. While people traded goods.

  Finch was nervous. Always worried when they went to F&L places that someone would tag him as an ex-Hoegbotton Irregular. Maybe want to put a bullet through his brain. He would've liked to have told the detectives in this sector what they were doing, but the gray caps frowned on cooperation. They liked to keep the stations as separate as possible. Make themselves the conduit.

  It began to drizzle. Had been damp and warm all day. A mist gathered around Finch. Moistened his hair, his face. Green sweat had darkened the armpits of Wyte's shirt and now leaked through his overcoat.

  Would Wyte hold up? Truff, please let him hold up.

  Inside. Down the hall. Gun drawn. Leaking.

  Wyte always went first now. He'd accepted that role voluntarily. It only made sense.

  At the green-gold-purple splotched door of Bliss's apartment on the first floor, Wyte signaled his intent. The door didn't look that strong. Wyte would batter it down. Finch would storm through behind him.

  A strange mewling whine came from inside. Just strange enough to make Finch shiver.

  Finch mimed, Wait.

  Took out his handkerchief, turned the knob.

  The door opened.

  Wyte was through before Finch could stop him, yelling, “Detectives! Hands up! Weapons down!”

  Finch followed. Heart like a hammer. Gun squirting out a little between his hands in his hard double grip.

  The first four rooms: empty, trashed. Someone had destroyed or ransacked everything. Tables, couches overturned. Books shredded. Torn pages everywhere. A smell of shit or rot or both. And blood. Lots of blood. Sprayed. Pooling. But no bodies. From the looks of the furniture, the arrangement had always been meant to be temporary. Or at least, it was now.

  In the back bedroom they found the source of the mewling.

  “Oh fuck,” said Finch.

  “Is that him?” Wyte asked.

  “Yes.”

  Ethan Bliss had been nailed alive against the far wall, above a bed. His face was crusted with blood. White shirt red. Blood welling from his punctured extremities. His hands and feet still twitching as he tried to pull free of the green nails that looked like hard mushrooms. Whimpering and looking down at them through eyes crusted by something purple and brittle.

  The eyes through the crust registered Finch, Wyte. A bright red mushroom had been rammed into his mouth. But he'd managed to get most of it out.

  In a muffled roar: “Don't just stand there like a couple of fucking idiots. Get me down!”

  Bliss began to weep.

  Finch held Bliss while Wyte worked at the hands and feet. Too close. Sweat. Funk. Some underlying sweetness that was worse. For a sixtyyear-old man, Bliss was wiry and muscular. Odd. To be here with someone who had been so well-known. Nailed to a wall. Blood all over the place. Would've been a scandal before the Rising. Now it was just another day on the job.

  It took ten minutes to get him down. They tried to wipe the crust from his eyes. Managed to smear his face with green residue from his wounds. Looked like pollen dusted over the blood.

  Wyte muttered, “Should we take him back to the station?”

  Finch shook his head. “No. Let's do it here.”

  They took him to the couch in the living room. Pulled the couch upright. Wyte pushed the glass off of it using his sleeve. Finch found towels in the kitchen, brought them back and offered them to Bliss.

  Bliss angrily waved Finch off.

  “No, not yet,” he said.

  “For Truff's sake, aren't you glad to be alive?” Wyte said.

  Finch gave Wyte a hard look. “He's probably in shock.”

  “Shock's overrated,” Bliss said. “Hand me that red mushroom. The one they stuffed in my mouth.”

  It had fallen onto the bed. Finch went back and got it. Wondering if Bliss would recognize him. Probably not. Finch had changed his appearance completely, and Bliss had last seen him about twenty years ago.

  Bliss smeared the remains of the fungus, soft cheese consistency, all over his hands and feet. Glistening. Already he had stopped bleeding.

  “Now the towels,” he said, taking them from Finch. He glared at Wyte, then Finch. “Who are you anyway? How did you find me? What do you want?” Even in anger, he had a youthful face. One of those faces that got more rigid as it aged. But you could still see the boyish features under the wrinkles. Under the neatly trimmed moustache.

  Finch stood in front of Bliss. Wyte to the side, tapping his foot. Restless. Disturbed by something.

  “I'm Finch. This is Wyte.” Finch showed Bliss his badge. “You don't look happy. Should we put you back up there?”

  “I wasn't dying,” Bliss snapped. “Someone would have come along.” Emphasis on someone made Finch think Bliss knew exactly who.

  Bliss at the old desert fortress, turning slowly at his approach. A sound of metal locking into place. A kind of mirror. An eye. Then a circle of stone, a door, covered with gray cap symbols.

  “Who did this, Bliss?” Wyte asked, kicking a broken chair out of the way. “Whose blood is all over the floor? Who'd you piss off?”

  Bliss appeared not to hear this question. He stared instead at Finch. Measuring him. Like a light had clicked on behind his eyes. That weathered face had hardened remarkably, even as it managed a good imitation of a smile. Said to Finch, “You look familiar to me, detective. Do I know you? You obviously know me.”

  Wyte barged in, to Finch's relief: “Shut up. We're asking the questions.”

  Bliss registered Wyte as if for the first time. Said in a smooth voice that drove in the barb. “Why don't you find who did that to you, instead of wasting your time with me?”

  “I said, shut up!” Wyte slapped Bliss across the cheek. Hard.

  Finch had never seen Wyte hit a suspect who hadn't tried to hit him first.

  Bliss took it quietly. Cursed. Put a hand to the mark. Like it had happened before. Or like pain was just an inconvenience to him. “What do you think happened, detective? They surprised us, lit us up, and didn't leave much behind. Ten of my best men.”

  Finch, supporting Wyte: “Answer the question, Bliss. Who did this to you?”

  An exasperated sigh that seemed to signal a decision.

  “A new man, from the Spit. He asked a lot of questions about gray caps. About the towers.”

  “What's his name?”

  “He kept telling it to me over and over so I wouldn't forget. Even while they butchered my men. Stark.”

  “Just Stark? What's his full name?”

  Wyte broke in. “I know about Stark. He's only been here eight weeks. He's from Stockton. New blood. He's been liquidating the opposition the past few weeks.” Wyte was the station's Stockton expert. Ran a few snitches in that organization.

  “And we've been letting him?”

  Wyte shrugged. “Makes our job easier, doesn't it?”

  Finch gave him a look that said we'll talk more about this later. Found it odd that Wyte knew something he didn't.

  He turned to Bliss. “Why the hell did he leave you alive?”

  Bliss shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to send a message.”

  I don't believe you.

  “What kind of message? To who?” Wyte asked.

  Silence.

  “Take a guess about what he wanted, Bliss,” Finch said.

  “Part of what he wanted to do was to hurt me. He enjoyed that a little t
oo much. I think he would have done it even if he hadn't wanted information.”

  “Anyone with him?”

  “Just his god-awful muscle. His second in command goes by the name of Bosun, like on a ship. He's built like a kind of wiry circus strongman with a bullet bald head. Once you see him, you recognize him forever. He's the one who lifted me to the wall with one hand and drove the nails in with the other while Stark watched. All this before they asked me any questions.”

  “What questions, Bliss?” Wyte asked.

  No response.

  Finch showed Bliss the photograph of the dead man. “Do you know him?”

  Bliss stiffened, glanced up at Finch. “Again, it would be nice to know why you're here?”

  “Look at the photo, Bliss.” Bliss looked.

  “This man is dead.”

  “Yes, but do you know him?” Finch asked again.

  Bliss shook his head. “I've never seen him before.”

  Lying? Or truly confused?

  “What about these words?” Finch took out a piece of paper on which he'd written bellum omnium contra omnes.

  Saw the surprise on Bliss's face. Saw that surprise change to something vaguely cat-like and unreadable. Knew whatever Bliss told him would be truth diseased with lie.

  “Stark asked about something similar,” Bliss said, gaze distant. “But I wouldn't know anything about that.”

  Wyte made an exasperated sound. “Let's finish this at the station. Interrogate him there.” To Bliss: “If you cooperate, maybe it won't come down to a bullet and a memory bulb.”

  Most men would've gone a little pale. Bliss just sat there staring daggers at them. A defiant little man who had once run half the city.

  Finch pushed. “Maybe you're right, Wyte. I'd like to know what deal you made with Stark for your life. You don't mind a trip to the station, do you, Bliss? You've got nothing to hide, right?”

  Bliss erupted up off of the couch like a man twice his size, flung the lamp at Wyte, knocking his gun away. Completed the motion by slamming Finch on the side of the head with surprising strength. Dazed, Finch fell over a low table, banging his knees. Bliss bolted for the kitchen while Wyte was still scrambling for his gun.

  “Fuck! Finch, stop him!”

  Finch got up off the floor, drew his gun, stumbled toward the kitchen. Wyte was two steps behind.

  Beyond the kitchen: a flight of stairs leading down. Finch could hear running footsteps but couldn't see Bliss. Had no choice but to charge down the stairs, only to be greeted by another hallway. Then a quick, tight corner. Wyte had caught up, and they barreled around like a couple of slapstick comedians, sliding into each other.

  Caught a glimpse of Bliss's white shirt through darkness.

  “Bliss! I'll shoot! Don't think I won't!” Could Bliss even hear him?

  He lost Bliss in the shadows again, but got off a round or two. Hit nothing but wall. Cursing himself for not having checked the rest of the apartment. Collided with Wyte taking a second corner. Wyte was already breathing hard.

  They collected themselves. Opened the door that greeted them. Another long corridor, with a door at the end.

  “Fuck! How big is this place?”

  They sidled up to the door. Finch got down low on his haunches, put his hand on the knob. Now he was breathing hard, but not because he was winded.

  “Cover me high,” he said, glancing up at Wyte. Blood singing in his ears, fingers a little numb.

  Wyte nodded, face impossibly long and thick from that angle, chin jutting, expression priest-solemn. Finch turned the knob and pushed the door open. Slowly rose, knees already aching.

  “Goddamn it.”

  An empty room ten feet square, the walls made of cinder blocks painted white. A single bulb for light. No windows. No other door.

  They kept circling it with guns drawn, like Bliss would appear out of nowhere.

  Never lost.

  Except now he was.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  4

  'here had Bliss gone? The question haunted Finch as they left the apartment. Didn't know if anyone had heard the shots. Or if Bliss still had people who might be watching. “Secret door?” Wyte had suggested, almost as if it didn't bother him. But they'd found nothing. They'd have had to tear the place apart. Brick by brick. Didn't have the tools or time for that.

  They passed addicts with the familiar purple stains across their skin. Men in the ill-fitting uniforms of janitors for the camps. Somebody pissing in an alley. Faded posters on a long crumbling wall, showing pictures of members of the short-lived puppet government. Another blood-red mushroom looming over them big as a tree. Every week there seemed to be more of them. Next to it, a blossoming flower of a building atop the squashed remains of the local grocery store. Soft humming sounds came from an interior obscured by fleshy window flaps.

  Where had Bliss gone-and how was he involved?

  Finch replayed that moment over and over. Bliss running for the kitchen. Bliss in his memory bulb dream. Trying to reconcile those versions with the Bliss he remembered from before the Rising. The way Bliss's gaze couldn't settle on one thing. As if his mind worked faster now. A growing sense that this new Bliss hadn't been stripped of prestige and security but had traded it for something else.

  Wyte seemed agitated, and Finch thought he knew why. So he said, “It's my fault. We should've taken him in from the beginning, like you suggested. I didn't need to question him first. And I forgot to check out the rest of the apartment.”

  Wyte's neck had an orange stain on it. Fingernails that had turned black. A smell like a distant sewer drain. But he'd been worse.

  “I hit him, and I spooked him,” Wyte said. “I'm as much to blame as you. Maybe more. But that's not the point, Finchy.”

  Here it comes.

  Wyte stopped walking, faced him. Finch had his back to a crumbling wall veined through with fungus so blue it looked black. An overlay of scattered bullet holes. Across the street, a laughing pack of Partials shoved a couple of prisoners ahead of them. A middle-aged bearded man with a bandage across his forehead and angry rips in a shirt discolored pink. A woman who could have been the man's wife, her long black hair being used as a leash by one of the Partials. Just a jaunt around the block before getting down to business.

  “Look, Finch,” Wyte said. “I'm your partner. And you keep keeping things from me. I hadn't even seen the photo of the dead man until you showed it to Bliss. And where's the list Heretic gave you?”

  Wyte will never adjust. It made Finch sick deep in his stomach.

  Finch pulled Wyte back to the wall with him. The Partials had moved on ahead, oblivious to anything but their prisoners, but he didn't want to take any chances. In a whisper: “Listen to me. I'm just trying to protect you.”

  Wyte stared at him for so long that Finch had to look at the ancient dislodged stones of the sidewalk. A sudden hunger for a past when Wyte hadn't been this way. A feeling so strong he felt water in his eyes.

  Each word meant to wound, Wyte said: “I don't need protecting, like I've told you. Back in the day, I protected you.” Then self-importantly, when Finch said nothing: “I'm going to work for the rebels soon. I know someone who knows someone.”

  This shit again. Once every few weeks.

  Something snapped in Finch. Felt it in his head like the sudden eruption of a migraine.

  He shoved Wyte up against the wall. Didn't care who was watching. Felt the air go out of the older man's lungs. Those eyes scared by what they saw in Finch. Skin clammy. Some of Wyte's shirt wasn't really a shirt.

  Finch said as calmly as he could: “You are not going to be a fucking spy for the rebels. You are not going to be a fucking spy for the rebels. Ever. Do you understand?”

  “Get the fuck off of me!” Wyte hissed. Twisting in Finch's grip. Head angled toward the sky. Shoulders arched back like he was trying to take off his coat but had gotten his arm stuck.

  “You're not. And do you know why not? Because you've
been colonized. And it's gone too far. And they'll never take you.” Never take you back. Never want you now. Too late. “And if they did, you'd probably be spying on them. For the gray caps. Without even knowing it. Which is why you can't.” And you'd be leaving me with a station full of detectives who hate me because I didn't abandon you.

  He released Wyte, pushing off of him. Creating space between them in case it turned into a fight.

  But Wyte stayed up against the wall. What was the look on his face? Didn't matter. It was the way he stood. Finch had seen the same tired stoop in workers from the camps. Seen it at times in Rath.

  Continued on now that it made no difference: “The closest you'll get to working for anyone is wringing intel out of that ragged bunch of Stockton contacts you call a network.” Trailed off.

  Wyte's self-disdain when he turned to Finch made him look angry or righteous. A darkness there that might have been spores coming up through his skin.

  “Better than doing nothing, like you.”

  “I don't do nothing. I do what I can. There's a difference.” Hands clenched into fists. Face contorted. Close to being out of control. What if he's right?

  Stood there while Wyte opened his mouth to say something.

  But Wyte didn't say anything, just let out his breath with a shudder. Finch watched warily as Wyte reached into his overcoat pocket with a hand that trembled slightly and took out a flask made of battered silver and tin, the once-proud H&S insignia marred by fire burns.

  Finch had given it to Wyte on his birthday ten years ago. Emily hadn't liked it. Thought her husband drank too much anyway. Didn't need to “make it into a ritual” as she put it. But that didn't stop her from joining them when they'd stood on the step outside of the house to share a smoke and whatever Wyte had put in the flask. Remembered its quick glint as it picked up the sun or a streetlight.

  “It's got good brandy in it, Finchy,” Wyte said. “The last bit I've been hoarding.”

  “You're not going to hit me?”

  “What for, Finchy? What'd be the point?”