Gun Machine

Bat snorted. “Protection racket? But no. The property security is a side effect of getting your own private camera system laid out all over New York.”

“What the fuck?” Mike said.

Tallow stepped into the apartment ahead of the others to find Mike with his fists on his hips, looking at the back of the apartment’s front door. Enough of the guns in the area had been lifted by the ECTs that Tallow didn’t have to tiptoe or stretch to get there now. “Yeah, I said something similar,” Tallow said to Mike. “Any idea how the thing works? It’s got me baffled.”

“Sure,” Mike said. “It’s one of ours. How the hell did it get on here?”

Tallow had been feeling sick ever since he’d met these two. Now his gut was nothing but ice and acid. “Wait. You’re telling me that this is a Spearpoint security system?”

“Sure as hell looks like it. Sophie.”

Sophie was already there, standing behind them. “Yeah. I think that’s the Spartan Wave, the seven version? Couple of years old. Very high end.”

Mike was about as pensive as Tallow presumed he ever got, searching his memory with a degree of manual labor. “Sure. I saw one being installed one time. Some banker guy. We were putting one of these on the back of the door to his panic room.”

“Tell me how it works,” said Bat flatly from the other side of the door.

Mike rubbed some dust from the device. Scarly, in Tallow’s peripheral vision, flinched.

“It’s a magic-card system. What we’ve done is taken the original door here, and gutted it. Steel core, electric strikes—”

“I don’t know what those are,” said Tallow.

“Rods that push out from inside the door into the door frame and lock,” Mike said. “And other stuff, but the important thing is there’s a long-life battery in here that feeds a low-energy sensor. Where your skinny guy is, there, you stand there and wave your key card like a magic wand; the sensor feels it and wakes up the door. Power goes to the magnets and motors, and the door unlocks.”

“So the card has a power source too?”

“Yeah, but it’s like, you seen those sneakers kids wear with the flashing lights in the heels? They run on power harvested from running around. Same thing with the card. Wave it around a bit, and it makes enough juice to work the card and open the door. Without the magic wand? No one’s getting in this apartment. You could fire a rocket launcher at this door and it’d still be giving you the finger when the smoke cleared.”

“Magnets,” said Bat. Tallow stepped away and looked out the hole to see Bat scrabbling around in his field bag, a worn credit card between his teeth. He came up with an old round tobacco tin that he’d done something to. Metal strips and wires were wrapped all around the tin. He opened it and produced a black metal puck with some occult electronics glued to the back. Bat pushed a little red-painted switch on it, and passed the puck from the left edge of the door to the middle. There was a clacking sound. He made several more passes, on both sides and at the top and bottom. Bat then put the deactivated puck back in its tin and put his credit card to the side of the door by the original lock. Within ten seconds, the door popped open.

“What the fuck,” said Mike.

Bat stood in the open door and said, “I am a Crime Scene Unit detective from the New York City Police Department, you heinous fucking mongoloid, and there is nothing I cannot do.”

“I think it’s time to leave,” said Tallow. “It was nice to meet you,” he said to the Spearpoint people, and he went directly to the staircase, not looking at the place on the wall where everything in his friend Jim Rosato’s head had splattered and slid.

Tallow didn’t break step until he reached the car. The CSUs were ten seconds behind him, seething. “Get in,” Tallow said. “I’ll run you back to One PP. And then I’m going to see my lieutenant.”

“You need to see your captain, apparently,” Scarly growled.

“No. I need my lieutenant to handle the captain. Get in.”

They got in. Tallow stamped on the gas. Scarly and Bat exchanged an awkward glance, but neither of them asked Tallow what the hurry was. Instead, Bat said, “How fucked are we? On a scale of one to ten?”

Tallow bit back his first response and chewed it over a bit. “I was going to say thirteen. But, honestly, we might have been at thirteen even before someone threw our evidence collection to the wolves. I’ve got nothing but connections I can’t prove because, hey, there’s no proof. We don’t even know when our guy’s most recent kill was. Profilers would laugh themselves sick at anything I had to say to them right now.”

Looking in the rearview mirror, Tallow could see Bat fiddling with his tablet device and his wi-fi pod.

“Hey, Bat, you asked the question. At least listen.”

“I am listening. Keep going.”