The Courier (San Angeles) (3 page)

The building had five brass-framed glass doors in the front. Upset by the lost time, I strode to the first one and pulled hard. My shoulder jerked tight and I felt a small pop before my fingers slipped off the door handle. Dammit! The door was locked. The bastards were supposed to be waiting for me. I gently checked the other doors before I leaned into the glass and cupped my hands around my eyes to stop the glare from the dimming Ambients and flickering electronic billboards. The damn security desk was empty. I took a step back and sucked in a deep breath, trying to let my anger go with the expelled air. It worked about as well as my last boyfriend.

I looked for the call button. Every big building had one . . . some way to let security know you wanted in. I found it eventually. They put it so far away from the doors that you almost couldn’t see it. At Christmas, it would be behind the fucking tree.

I pushed the button, bending my thumb backward with the pressure. Five times. No one responded. What the hell? Did the big corps send their security guys home at night?

I stuffed the paperwork into my back pocket and slipped on my lid. I could at least leave a message for Dispatch. That would cover my ass in the morning when she found out the delivery wasn’t made. The computers would keep a record of my call, and maybe life wouldn’t be as bad as it could be if I didn’t try.

Dispatch answered right away. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and a chill ran down my spine. This day was getting stranger by the minute.

“Hey, girlie, you finished the delivery?” Dispatch’s voice sounded richer over the air than it did in person, losing some of its breathiness.

“Hell no. I just got to the pickup point. Why the hell didn’t you tell me it had doors on Level 3? I could have been home already.”

Dispatch’s voice lost some of its softness. “Don’t you take that tone with me, girlie. You think you’re privileged, riding that machine around all day, making runs and flirting with all the clients? Fuck you. You’re the one that’s supposed to know the area, not me. Do your job.”

At least ten thoughts pushed to the front of my brain, each one a worse idea than the other. I bit my tongue and waited a while—it was better than mouthing off to Dispatch. That would just make life more of a shit hole than it currently was.

I took another deep breath. “Yeah, sorry. Listen, the door is locked. I can’t get in.”

Dispatch’s voice softened again. “You wait right there, girlie, and I’ll get back to you.”

I heard the connection close off.

As I waited for Dispatch, I could feel a low flame burning in my gut, and it was slowly building into a roaring fire. Who the hell did the bitch think she was anyway? This was Kris time, a fucking rare commodity. Twelve hours a day on the job didn’t leave much for me. My whole night was so fucked up now, I may as well just sleep in the damn street and show up to work stinking. Hell, I would too, if it wouldn’t mess up my almost nonexistent tips.

“Hey, girlie.”

I looked at the time on the comm unit. Ten fucking minutes to see if someone was around. I pushed a “What!” through clenched teeth.

“Stand by the front door and flash your ID at the cameras, sweetie. The door will unlock and you can get in. The elevator will only stop at your floor, so no wandering around.”

“Wandering around?” My voice rose a notch, the fire beginning to show. “Why the hell would I want to wander around? I want to get home and eat and take my goddamn shower.”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, sweetie.”

Fuck that. “Just make sure there is somebody at the end of the run to take the damn package.”

“Such a tone from such a girlie. I try to do you a favor, and this is how you say thank you? We’ll talk about your attitude tomorrow.”

I heard a hard edge in Dispatch’s voice, even over the comm unit. Shit, now I’d done it. Life would be a bitch at work for the next little while. What the hell, I might as well go in all the way. “Just make sure someone is there, okay?”

“Already done, sweetie, now get your tight little ass in gear.”

The connection closed again.

Tight little ass? That was a new one. What the hell was her problem? I was the one out here waiting. And why the hell was she still at the office? I’d done a few late runs before, and she was never there. I always had to slip my paperwork in the door slot as well. Everything about this delivery felt wrong, and I didn’t like it.

I walked back to the door and found the camera sitting in its upside-down black bubble. I pulled out my courier ID card and held it up, angled so the camera could pick it up easy. The door clicked and I pulled it open, holding it there with my foot while I put away my ID. Something didn’t like that though, and a loud beeping started coming from the security panel just inside.

Old techno-fusion pop music played over the tinny sounding speakers in the elevator. I had heard the song before. Back when I first
started couriering, some red-haired bimbo in a business suit had walked on the elevator, looked at me, and made a decision based on what she saw—I wasn’t even worth noticing. She’d started singing to this shit, a quiet little whisper that turned into a full-belted song when I ignored her. I felt like imprinting the back of the bimbo’s head on the package. Instead, I’d gotten off on the next floor and walked up the stairs. Life was too short to put up with crap like that. I’ve hated techno-fusion ever since. And elevators.

The elevator opened on a hallway that was even worse. Sure, the music had stopped, but that really didn’t help things. These corporate buildings were pretty much all the same, and they didn’t get any more corporate than this place. The stale air and the background hum of electronics made me feel trapped, like I was stuck in a maze with no way out.

The short hallway ended at a reception desk, light brown with frosted glass around its back half, kept nice and clean to make a good first impression. Just behind it was what everybody called “cubeville.” Rows and rows of bland, gray-carpeted walls, topped with more of the frosted glass. None of it standing more than a meter and a half tall. Even
I
could see across the entire floor, the maze laid out before me, leading to the guy standing by a door in the far wall. He was waving his hand over his head. To couriers, anyone that spent their days locked in an office was a freak, and this freak was full on, with his three-piece suit and bright red tie.

There wasn’t a receptionist, it was too late in the day for that, and the freak didn’t come out to meet me. What the hell? I started walking toward him, picking a path between the carpeted cubicles.

With every step, my gut clenched tighter. Each breath felt harder to take. I moved to the outside wall and the pressure fell off a bit. Doors, all of them closed, dotted the wall every three meters or so, though it seemed they skipped a door in the corner. Maybe a bigger
office or a private meeting room. Most of the doors had little removable nameplates on them. I shook my head. What a life, your identity diluted down to a removable nameplate.

By the time I rounded the corner to the back wall, the freak was in full gear. His face looked flushed and beads of sweat stuck to his forehead.

“I’ve been waiting forever. What, did you decide to walk all the way here? And why did you take the wall? The aisles are way faster.”

Aww, hell. Why did he have to be an asshole as well as a freak? I took a deep breath and held my tongue for the second time in the last few minutes. There was no point in getting reported and having Dispatch even more upset with me. All this for a few extra bucks? I should have just gone home. I put on what I hoped was my sweetest smile.

“Sorry, sir. Bad traffic this time of day. Could I have the package, and I’ll need your signature here?”

He grabbed the paper from my hand and started reading all of the fine print on the back. What the hell, hadn’t he ever used a courier before?

“It’s a standard courier form, sir.” I was still trying to be sweet.

He ignored me. As he read, I looked behind him into the cramped office. It wasn’t much bigger than the cubes, but I imagined it would be nice to be able to close the door and shut out the world for a while. He even had a window, not that there was much to see. I’d gone up twelve floors, which put me just underneath Level 5, right up against the ceiling. The undersides of these things weren’t made to look pretty. All I could see was concrete, I-beams, and downward facing Ambients everywhere. All of it covered in years of grime. The billboards threw their light against the rough ceiling, scattering it in every direction. Personally, I would have closed the blinds.

I never thought about it much, but this close, the ceiling didn’t look like it was strong enough to hold up the other levels. But then again, they were thick enough to have three or four stories of parking and machinery in them.

The freak noticed me looking into his office. He took a step closer, I matched it with a step back of my own, and he closed the door behind him. Private little fucker. He shoved the signed paper and the package, a simple manila envelope, into my hands and stared at me.

“Thank you, sir. The package should be there in under an hour.”

“If you take as long to deliver it as you did to pick it up, I’ll be lucky to have it there next week.”

Forget freak. This guy was a fucktard right to the core. I turned without bothering to answer, and walked along the wall back to the reception desk and elevator. Thank god it was still waiting for me. I rode it back down to the Level 4 entrance and grabbed my bike. So much for him being a tipper.

Dispatch was really a deep down bitch.

The mist had finally stopped, but water still dripped from the ceiling, leaving a greasy wet layer on the ground. The roads would be slick for a while, until the sweepers could come in and clean things up a bit. If they came at all. Any kind of service was always intermittent, especially when you got down to the lower levels. I accelerated down the deserted streets of the Level 4 business section. Most of the freaks had gone home, and those still left behind were probably in for a long night of overtime.

With the lack of traffic, the ride down to the Level 3 ramps was
almost pleasant. No shitheads on their way home to swerve in front of me, hoping to beat the courier to the gap between the slower cars. Level 3 would be busier, but mainly with foot traffic, which meant more cops hanging around. I’d have to ride slow. Level 3 was less of a Freak Central and more a small shops kind of place. People would be out doing whatever it was they did with all their cash, and there was always scum looking to prey on that. The ride to the Level 2 down-ramp wasn’t too long, either.

When they engineered the levels, they scattered the various up- and down-ramps all across the city, adding more as Los Angeles grew and eventually connected with the southward growth of San Francisco. I was told Fresno and San Diego used to be separate cities. They were all just subdivisions now.

The engineers didn’t want to keep the ramps all in one place—something about congestion and pollution and death tolls. To me it was a major pain in the ass if I had to move between levels quickly. I slowed down as I rode past one of the huge Transfer Elevators used to move people and emergency vehicles between levels. I twisted the throttle and kept on going. If I used it with the bike, I’d lose my courier license, and have a hefty fine I wouldn’t be able to pay. No unofficial vehicles allowed.

I made it through Level 3 pretty quick and hit the Level 2 down-ramp. I was just coming around the last curve when the shitheads on their skateboards showed up. Dammit, things were just not going right. There must have been at least twenty of them, dressed in drab gray-and-green body armor that may have actually looked good at one time. The boarders walked in a staggered line across the entire ramp, their boards swinging from their hands in time with their steps.

Boarders would usually take a ramp and shut it down completely, forcing traffic to find another route or wait until they moved on.
Eventually the cops would show up and move them out, making a couple of arrests if they could catch them. Cameras had been placed on every ramp, but it didn’t take too long before the repair crews stopped coming out to fix them. This group was on their way up, walking to get the free ride back down.

As soon as they saw me, I cut to the edge where the group was thinner; there weren’t enough of them to stretch across the entire ramp. They preferred to walk right in the middle where they could stop all the bigger traffic.

Boarders and couriers had an unspoken rule, or maybe it was just boarders and motorcyclists. We never reported when they showed up, and in turn they would let us through. A group split off and started walking to the edge I was riding . . . I wasn’t sure it was going to work this time. Hell, no couriers worked this late at night. They probably thought I was out for a pleasure cruise. Right. On Level 2. Boarders weren’t too smart.

By the time I got close, half the group had swarmed to the wall I was following. Like most of the lower-level ramps, the walls here had crumbled, and the loose dust and gravel mixed with the rainwater created a slippery mess. The bike lost traction and I pulled it back in line.

I got about three meters from them before I cranked on the throttle. I leaned left, aiming the bike for the gap left by the boarders that had moved over to block me. The back end of the bike slipped out on me again and I slammed my foot to the ground to keep it balanced. The knobs on the tires grabbed in the loose gravel, shooting the bike toward the opening.

One of the boarders swung for my head with his skateboard. I ducked and leaned away from him, holding the bike upright. The skateboard missed me by a couple of centimeters. Too close. I twisted the throttle more and forced the bike into a quick slide. The rear tire
jerked back into line from the impact against the boarder’s legs, a good solid hit, and I raced past the group. The boarder would be all right. The bastards wore so much body armor, I doubted the idiot had gotten more than a light bruising.

Too bad.