Gridiron - Philip Kerr

'Guy found — I say guy found dead with blunt head injuries. Reported in by — I say you're goin' to love this one Frank — reported in by the fuckin' computer. Can you believe it? I mean, there's neighbourhood watch and there's Bladerunner, right? The call was taken by the central dispatch computer at 1.57 a.m.'

'One computer talking to another,' said Coleman. 'That's the way it's going to be, y'know. The future.'

'Your future — I say your future, not mine, son.'

'Still, it was nice of them both to cut us in on it,' said Curtis. 'When did you get here, Fog?'

' 'Bout three o'clock,' he yawned. 'Excuse me.'

'Not yet I don't.' Curtis glanced at his watch. It was still only seventhirty.

'So who's the vic?'

Foghorn pointed between the two Homicide detectives.

Curtis and Coleman turned to see the body of a tall black man lying on the floor of one of the elevator cars, his blue uniform spattered with blood.

'Sam Gleig. Night-time security guard. But not so as you'd notice.'

Noticing the incomprehension in Curtis's eyes, he added: 'Got himself-

I say he got himself fuckin' killed, didn't he?'

The police photographer was already folding his camera tripod away. Curtis recognized him and vaguely remembered that the man's name was Phil something.

'Hey, Phil. You done?' asked Curtis looking around the interior of the car.

'I'm sure I covered everything,' said the photographer, and showed him a list of the shots he had taken.

Curtis smiled affably. 'I think you got the whole album there.'

'I'll have them processed and printed before lunch.'

Curtis felt in his coat pocket and produced a roll of 35-millimetre film.

'Do me a favour,' he said, 'see if there's anything on this, will you? It's been in my pocket so long I can't remember what it is. I keep meaning to take it in but — well, you know how it is.'

'Sure. No problem.'

'Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. Only don't get them mixed up.'

Sam Gleig lay with his hands resting on his stomach, his knees bent and his big feet still on the floor of the car. But for the blood, he looked like a drunk in a doorway. Curtis stepped over the blood that surrounded his head and shoulders like a Buddha's halo and crowded down to take a closer look.

'Anyone from the coroner's office seen him yet?'

'Charlie Seidler,' said Foghorn. 'He's in the-I say he's in the can, I think. You want to take a look at the Johns in this fuckin' place, Frank. They've got — I say they've got Johns that tell the time and brush your fuckin' teeth. Took me ten minutes just to figure out how to take a leak in the damn thing.'

'Thanks, Foghorn. I'll bear it in mind.' Curtis nodded. 'Looks like someone hit this guy pretty hard.'

'And then some,' added Coleman. 'His head looks like Hermann

Munster's.'

'Big guy, too,' said Foghorn. 'Six two, six three?'

'Big enough to take care of himself, anyway,' said Curtis.

He waved his fingers at the 9 millimetre Sig that was still bolstered on Gleig's waistband.

'Look at this.' He tore away the Velcro retention strap that secured the automatic in the holster. 'Still fastened. Doesn't look like he was afraid of whoever attacked him.'

'Maybe someone he knew,' offered Coleman. 'Someone he trusted.'

'When you're six feet three with a Sig automatic on your hip, trust doesn't come into it,' said Curtis, straightening up again. 'There's not much that scares you that doesn't have a gun its hand.'

Curtis stepped out of the car and leaned towards his partner.

'Recognize him?'

'Who? The vic?'

'This is the guy who found the Chinaman. We questioned him,

remember?'

'If you say so, Frank. Only it's a little hard to place the face on account of it's being covered in blood and all.'

'The name on his badge?'

'Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry, Frank.'

'Of course I'm right. For Chrissakes, Nat, that's less than seventy hours ago.' Curtis shook his head and grinned good-naturedly. 'Where've you been?'

'Seventy-two hours,' sighed Coleman. 'Just an ordinary working day on Homicide.'

'Stop it,' said Foghorn. 'You're making me cry.'

'Who was first on the scene, Foghorn?'

'Officer Hernandez!'

A uniformed patrolman with a broken nose and a Zapata moustache stepped out of the crowd and placed himself in front of the three plainclothes.

'I'm Sergeant Curtis. This is Detective Coleman.'

Hernandez nodded silently. He had a sullen, Brando-ish look.

Curtis leaned towards him and sniffed the air. 'What is that smell you're wearing, Hernandez?'

'Aftershave, Sergeant.'

'Aftershave? What kind of aftershave, Mister?'

'Obsession. By Calvin Klein.'

'Calvin Klein. Is that a fact? You smell that, Nat?'

'I sure do, sir.'

'Mmm. A cop that smells nice. It's a little Beverly Hills, don't you think, son?'

Hernandez grinned and shrugged. 'My wife prefers it to the smell of sweat, sir.'

Curtis opened his coat and sniffed under his arm.

'I didn't mean — '

'OK then, Calvin, what happened when you and your aftershave turned up here this morning?'

'Well, Sarge, Officer Cooney and I get here around two-thirty a.m. We sort of look around for a doorbell or something and then we find that the door isn't locked anyway. So we walk into the lobby and that's when we see Kelly Pendry on the desk.' Hernandez shrugged. 'Well, she tells us where to come. She says to take the elevator to the basement. So we come down here and that's how we find him.' He pointed into the bloodied elevator car.

'So then what?'

'Cooney calls in the 187 while I take a look around. There's a security guard's office on the lobby floor that looks like this guy had just left there. The desktop computer is still switched on and there's a Thermos and some sandwiches.'

'What about the construction people? Do they know about this yet?'

'Well, I found a personnel file on the computer. You know? Foreman, clerk of works, that kind of thing. And so then I phoned my dad.'

'Your dad? What the hell for?'

'He used to be in construction. A riveter. I thought he'd know the best person to call. And he said that the site agent had control of the whole operation and instructed the trade foremen. Anyhow, I had no idea this was a woman. I mean, it just said H. Hussey. Maybe I should have called someone else. But anyway she said she'd get here as soon as she could.'

'That's her job, isn't it? To take responsibility for the work? Besides, working here she ought to be used to it by now.'

'Sarge?'

'Nothing.'

Curtis caught sight of Charlie Seidler coming towards the elevators and waved to him.

'Thanks, Hernandez. That'll be all. Hey, Charlie!'

'We seem to be forever here, don't we?'

'That's why they call it a smart building,' said Curtis. 'If you're smart, you stay the hell out. So what's the reader's digest on this one?'

'Well there's more than one head wound,' Seidler said cautiously. 'And that would seem to exclude the possibility that they were sustained during some kind of collapse.'

'C'mon, Charlie. You don't get a bump on the head like that from tripping on your fuckin' shoelace. This was no accident.'

Seidler's caution remained unabated.

'The blood splashing around the head would seem to indicate that the blunt head injuries continued after he had been felled. But- but-well, take a look at this, Frank.'

Seidler stepped into the elevator and motioned Curtis to follow him.

'Computer?' he said when Curtis was inside. 'Close the doors, please.'

'Which floor do you require?'

'Remain on this level, please.' He pointed at the inside of the closing doors. 'Now, look there. There's more blood splashing up to chest height. And yet none outside this car. On any of the upper floors. I know because I already checked every one of them.'

'Well, that's mighty efficient of you, Charlie.'

'I thought so.'

'So you're saying that he was struck while the doors were closed?'

'It looks that way, yes. But there's no protective bruising of the hands, so I'd say he was probably struck from behind.'

'With what? What should we be looking for? A bat? A length of pipe?

A rock?'

'Maybe. But it's not like there's much room to swing a weapon in here, is there? We'll have a better idea after the preliminary p.m.' Seidler turned towards the microphone. 'Open the doors, please.'

'You've certainly got the way of talking to that thing,' grinned Frank.

'This is one heck of a place, isn't it?'

The two men stepped out of the car.

'All this automation,' said Curtis, 'I don't know. When I was a kid we lived in New York. My dad worked for Standard Oil. They had an elevator operator and an elevator starter. I remember the starter real well. He had a panel where all the floor calls would light up and it was down to him when a car got dispatched. Just like a traffic cop.' Curtis waved his hand at the gleaming elevator doors of the Gridiron building.

'Just look where we are now. A computer's taken that man's job. Both their jobs. It won't be long before it takes over ours as well.'

'Yeah, well, a computer's welcome to mine,' yawned Seidler. 'I can think of better ways to start the day.'

'I'll remind you of that when they fire you. Nat, I want you to run a background check on Sam Gleig.'

'Sure, Frank.'

'Hey you! Calvin Klein! C'mere.'

Hernandez grinned sheepishly and turned to face Curtis. 'Sergeant?'

'I want you to hang around in the parking lot. And when this Hussey woman shows up, tell her to wait for me in the atrium, right? That's the room with the Christmas tree. I'm going upstairs for a look around the theme park.'

-###-

On his short tour Frank Curtis found meeting areas, coffee bars, halfbuilt restaurants, gymnasiums with no equipment, an empty swimming pool, a health clinic, a cinema with no seats, a bowling alley and a relaxation area. The Gridiron, when it was finished, was going to be more like some expensive country club or hotel than an office building. All except levels 5-10. On these floors Curtis found what looked to him like something from the pages of a DC Comic: row upon row of white steel pods, each of them a little larger than a telephone booth, with integral foldaway furniture, a loose wire to plug into something, and a curved sliding door. Sitting inside one of these sound-proofed pods, with the door shut behind him, Curtis felt like a rat or a hamster. But it was clear that the Yu Corporation and its designers expected people to work in these cocoons. Too bad if you were claustrophobic. Or if you liked having your workmates around to have a laugh and a joke with. There was probably nowhere for a laugh and a joke on a Yu Corporation time sheet.

He slid the door open and went down a couple of levels to get a better view of the atrium. Leaning over the balcony he saw an attractive woman emerge from the elevators on to the ground level. Her bright red hair looked like a drop of blood moving across the dazzling white. She looked up at him and smiled.

'Are you Sergeant Curtis, by any chance?'

Curtis grasped the handrail with both hands and nodded back at her.

'That's right. But, you know, I bet I could do a good Mussolini impression from up here.'

'What?'

Curtis shrugged, wondering if she was too young to have heard of Mussolini. He wanted to say something about Fascist architecture, then thought better of it. She was too good-looking to upset without reasonable cause.

'Well, it's that kind of building, ma'am. It's kind of inspiring, I guess.'

He grinned. 'Stay there. I'll be right down.'

-###-

The security office at the Gridiron was a gleaming white room with an electrically-operated Venetian blind screening a window that ran the length and height of the corridor. There was a large desk made of glass and aluminium and which was dominated by a 28-inch computer monitor and keyboard. Next to this were a videophone, a telephone, Sam Gleig's Thermos flask and, in an open Tupperware box, the dead man's uneaten sandwiches. Behind the desk was a tall glass cabinet containing what looked like another computer case still wrapped in plastic film. Curtis inspected the contents of one of the sandwiches.

'Cheese and tomato,' he said and started to eat. 'Want one?'

'No. No thanks.' Helen Hussey frowned. 'Should you be doing that? I mean, isn't that evidence you're eating?'

'Gleig wasn't hit over the head with a sandwich, ma'am.' Curtis inspected the glass cabinet and the unassuming white box in its protective wrapping. 'What's this?' he said.

Helen Hussey drew a breath and smiled uncomfortably. 'I was hoping you weren't going to ask.'

Curtis grinned back at her. 'Why's that?'

'It's a recordable multi-session CD-ROM,' she explained.

'A game? In here?'

Helen Hussey gave him a withering look. 'Not exactly, no,' she said.

'It's connected via an SCSI interface to the computer, with a date and an archive number. Each disc contains up to 700 megabytes. It's supposed to record what takes place on all the security cameras inside and outside the building. Our cameras work by cellular transmission. They're all supposed to feed into the back of that thing.' She shrugged. 'I think.'

Curtis smiled. 'Supposed to, huh?'

She gave an embarrassed sort of laugh.

'You're not going to believe this,' she said with a shrug, 'but the unit hasn't been connected yet. As far as I know it's only just been delivered.'

'Well, it looks very nice. Very nice indeed. Too bad it's not working, because then we might know exactly what happened here last night.'

'We've had a problem with our supplier.'

'What kind of problem?' Curtis sat on the edge of the desk and took another sandwich. 'These are good.'

'Well,' sighed Helen, 'they sent the wrong kind of unit. The first one wasn't what we ordered. The Yamaha records at quadruple speed. The previous one didn't. So it got returned.'

'Yours must be a tough job for a woman.' Helen bristled. 'Why do you say that?'

'Construction workers aren't exactly known for their polite language and good manners.'

'Well, neither is the LAPD.'

'You've got a point there.' Curtis looked at the sandwich and laid it down. 'Pardon me. You're right. You probably knew the guy. And I'm sitting here eating his dinner. I'm not being very sensitive am I?'

She shrugged again, as if she hardly cared.

'You know, some people, some cops, when they see a dead body, they get nauseous and lose their appetites. Me, I don't know why, but I feel hungry. Really hungry. Maybe it's because I'm just so glad I'm still alive that I want to celebrate the fact by eating something.'

Helen nodded. 'I won't have to identify him, will I?' she said.

'No, ma'am, that won't be necessary.'

'Thanks. I don't think I — ' She returned to their previous subject, feeling she owed him something more about her job.