~~~LLIAM~BSON He looked at the GlobEx bulge there.
Went for it.
It took him less time than it had to get the credit chip, to show his license and get the hatch open. It was a bigger package than he’d expected, and it was heavy for its size. Really heavy. Expensive-hooking foam-core stuff, very precisely sealed with gray plastic tape, and covered with animated GlobEx Maximum Express holograms, customs stickers. He studied the waybill. It had come from Tokyo, looked like, but the billing was to Paragon-Asia Dataflow, which was on Lygon Street, Melbourne, Australia. Rydell didn’t know anybody in Australia, but he did know that it was supposed to be impossible, and definitely was illegal, to ship anything internationally to one of these GlobEx pickups. They needed an address, private or business. These pickup points were only for domestic deliveries.
Damn. Thing was heavy. He got it under his arm, maybe two feet long and six inches on a side, and went back to get his bag.
Which he saw now was open, on the little counter there, and the guard with the pale eyebrows was holding Rydell’s pink Lucky Dragon fanny pack.
“What are you doing with my bag?”
The guard looked up. “This is Lucky Dragon property.”
“You aren’t supposed to open people’s bags,” Rydell said, “says so on the notebook.”
“I have to treat this as theft. You have Lucky Dragon property here.”
Rydehl remembered that he’d put the ceramic switchblade in the fanny pack, because he hadn’t been able to think what else to do with it. He tried to remember whether or not that was illegal up here. It was in SoCal, he knew, but not in Oregon.
“That’s my property,” Rydehl said, “and you’re going to give it to me right now”
“Sorry,” the man said deliberately.
“Hey, Rydell,” said a familiar voice, as the door was opened so forcefully that Rydell distinctly heard something snap in the closing mechanism. “Son of a bitch, how they hangin’?”
Rydehl was instantly engulfed in a fog of vodka and errant testos 91 terone. He turned and saw Creedmore grinning fiercely, quite visibly free of the human condition. Behind him loomed a larger man, pale and fleshy, his dark eyes set close together.
“You’re drunk,” snapped the security guard. “Get out.”
“Drunk?” Creedmore winced grotesquely, miming some crippling emotional pain. “Says I’m drunk. – .” Creedmore turned to the man behind him. “Randy, this mo~herfucker says I’m drunk.”
The corners of the large man’s mouth, which was small and strangely delicate in such a heavy stubbled face, turned instantly down, as if he were genuinely and very, very deeply saddened to learn that it was possible for one human being to treat another in so unkind a way. “So whump his faggot ass, then,” the large man suggested softly, as if the prospect held at least some wistful possibility, however distant, of cheer after great disappointment.
“Drunk?” Creedmore was facing the security man again. He leaned across the counter, his chin level with the top of Rydell’s bag. “What kinda shit you tryin’ to lay off on my buddy here?”
Creedmore was radiating an amphetamine-reptile menace now, his anger gone right off the mammalian scale. Rydell saw a little muscle pulsing in Creedmore’s cheek, steady and involuntary as some tiny extra heart, Seeing that Creedmore had the guard’s undivided attention, Rydell grabbed his bag with one hand, the pink fanny pack with the other.
The guard tried to snatch them back. Which was definitely a mistake, as the attempt occupied both his hands.
“Suck my dickl” Creedmore shrieked, striking with far more speed and force than Rydell would’ve credited him with, and sank his fist wrist-deep into the guard’s stomach, just below the sternum. Taken by surprise, the guard doubled forward. Rydell, as Creedmore was winding back to slug the man in the face, managed to tangle Creedmore’s wrist in the straps of the fanny pack, almost dropping the bulky parcel in the process.
“Come on, Buell,” Rydell said, spinning Creedmore back out the door. Rydell knew someone would’ve hit a foot button by now. 92 “Motherfucker says I’m drunk,” Creedmore protested.
“Well, you are, Buell,” said the heavy man, ponderously, behind them.