He stood on Skinner’s roof, pantlegs flapping in a breeze that gave no hint of last night’s storm, looking out at the city washed in a strange iron light, shreds of his dream still circling dimly … Shapely had spoken to him, his voice the voice of the young Elvis Presley. He said that he had forgiven his killers. Yamazaki stared at Transamerica’s upright thorn, bandaged with the brace they’d applied after the Little Grande, half-hearing the dreamed voice. They just didn’t know any better, Scooter. Skinner cursing, below, as he sponged himself with water Yamazaki had warmed on the Coleman stove. Yamazaki thought of his thesis advisor in Osaka. ‘I don’t care,’ Yamasaki said, in English, San Francisco his witness. The whole city was a Thomasson. Perhaps America itself was a Thomasson. How could they understand this in Osaka, in Tokyo? ‘Yo! On the roof!’ someone called. Yamazaki turned, saw a thin black man atop the tangle of girders that braced the upper end of Skinner’s lift. He wore a thick tweed overcoat and a crocheted cap. ‘You okay up there? How ’bout Skinner?’ Yamazaki hesitated, remembering Loveless. If Skinner or the girl had enemies, how could he recognize them? ‘Name’s Fontaine,’ the man said. ‘Chevette called me, told me to get over here and see if Skinner got through the blow all right. I take care of the wiring tip here, make sure his lift’s running and all.’ ‘He’s bathing now,’ Yamazaki said. ‘In the storm, he became.. . confused. He doesn’t seem to remember.’ ‘Have some power for you in about another half an hour,’ the man said. ‘Wish I could say the same for over my end. Lost four transformers. Got us five dead bodies, twenty injured that I know of. Skinner got coffee on?’ ‘Yes,’ Yamazaki said. ‘Do with a cup about now.’ ‘Yes, please,’ Yamazaki said, and bowed. The black man smiled. Yamazaki scrambled down through the hatch. ‘Skinner-san! A man named Fontaine, he is your friend?’ Skinner was struggling into yellowed thermal underwear. ‘Useless bastard. Still don’t have any power…’ Yamazaki unlatched the hatch in the floor and hauled it open. Fontaine eventually appeared at the bottom of the ladder, a battered canvas tool-bag in either hand. Putting one down and slinging the other over his shoulder, he began to climb. Yamazaki poured the remaining coffee into the cleanest cup. ‘Fuel-cell’s buggered,’ Skinner said, as Fontaine pushed his bag ahead of him, through the opening. Skinner was layered now in at least three threadbare flannel shirts, their tails pushed unevenly into the waistband of an ancient pair of woolen Army trousers. ‘We’re working on it, boss,’ Fontaine said, standing up and smoothing his overcoat. ‘Had us a big old storm here.’ ‘What Scooter says,’ Skinner said. ‘Well, he’s not shittin’ you, Skinner. Thanks.’ Fontaine accepted the steaming cup of black coffee and blew on it. He looked at Yamazaki. ‘Chevette said she might not get back here for a while. Know anything about that?’ Yamazaki looked at Skinner. ‘Useless,’ Skinner said. ‘Gone off with that shithead again.’ 211 ‘Didn’t say anything about that,’ Fontaine said. ‘Didn’t say much at all. But if she’s not going to be around, you’re going to need somebody take care of things for you.’ ‘Take care of myself,’ Skinner said. ‘I know that, boss,’ Fontaine assured, ‘but we got a couple of fried servos in your lift down there. Take a few days get that going for you, the kind of backlog we’re looking at. Need you somebody go up and down the rungs. Bring you food and all.’ ‘Scooter can do it,’ Skinner said. Yamazaki blinked. ‘That right?’ Fontaine raised his eyebrows at Yamazaki. ‘You stay up here and take care of Mr. Skinner?’ Yamazaki thought of his borrowed flat in the tall Victorian house, its black marble bathroom larger than his bachelor apartment in Osaka. He looked from Fontaine to Skinner, then back. ‘I would be honored, to stay with Skinner-san, if he wishes.’ ‘Do what you like,’ Skinner said, and began laboriously stripping the sheets from his mattress. ‘Chevette told me you might be up here,’ Fontaine said. ‘Some kind of university guy …’ He put his cup down on the table, bent to swing his tool-bag up beside it. ‘Said maybe you people worried about uninvited guests.’ He undid the bag’s two buckles and opened it. Tools gleamed there, rolls of insulated wire. He took out something wrapped in an oily rag, looked to see that Skinner wasn’t observing him, and tucked the thing behind the glass jars on the shelf above the table. ‘We can pretty much make sure nobody you don’t know will get up here for the next couple days,’ he said to Yamazaki, lowering his voice. ‘But that’s a .38 Special, six rounds of hollow-point. You use it, do me a big favor and toss it off the side, okay? It’s of, uh,’ Fontaine grinned, “dubious provenance.” 2.11 Yamazaki thought of Loveless. Swallowed. ‘You gonna be okay up here?’ Fontaine asked. ‘Yes,’ Yamazaki said, ‘yes, thank you.’ 28 Rv It was ten-thirty before they finally had to hit the street, and then only because Laurie, who Chevette knew from that first day she’d ever come in here, said that the manager, Benny Singh, was going to be showing up and they couldn’t stay in there anymore, particularly not with her friend asleep like that, like he was passed out or something. Chevette said she understood, and thanked her. ‘You see Sammy Sal,’ Laurie said, ‘you say hi for me.’ Chevette nodded, sad, and started shaking the guy’s shoulder. He grunted and tried to brush her hand away. ‘Wake up. We gotta go.’ She couldn’t believe she’d told him all that stuff, but she’d just had to tell somebody or she’d go crazy. Not that telling it had made it make any more sense than it did before, and with this Rydell’s side of it added on, it sort of made even less. The news that somebody had gone and murdered the asshole just didn’t seem real, but if it was, she supposed, she was in deeper shit than ever. ‘Wake up!’ ‘Jesus.. .’ He sat up, knuckling his eyes. ‘We gotta go. Manager’ll be in soon. My friend let you sleep a while.’ ‘Go where?’ Chevette had been thinking about that. ‘Cole, over by the Panhandle, there’s places rent rooms by the hour.’ ‘Hotels?’ 214 ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘For people just need the bed for a little while.’ He dug behind the couch for his jacket. ‘Look at that,’ he said, sticking his fingers into the rip in the shoulder. ‘Brand new last night.’ Neighborhoods that mainly operated at night had a way of looking a lot worse in the morning. Even the beggars looked worse off this time of day, like that guy there with those sores, the one trying to sell half a can of spaghetti sauce. She stepped around him. Another block or two and they’d start to hit the early crowd of day-trippers headed for Skywalker Park; more cover in the crowd but more cops, too. She tried to remember if Skywalker’s rentacops were IntenSecure, that company Rydell talked about. She wondered if Fontaine had gone to Skinner’s like he’d said he would. She hadn’t wanted to say too much over the phone, so at first she’d just said she was going away for a while, and would Fontaine go over and see how Skinner was doing, and maybe this Japanese student guy who’d been hanging around lately. But Fontaine could tell she sounded worried, so he’d sort of pushed her about it, and she’d told him she was worried about Skinner, how maybe there were some people gonna go up there and hassle him. ‘You don’t mean bridge people,’ he’d said, and she’d said rio, she didn’t, but that was all she could say about it. The line went quiet for a few seconds and she could hear one of Fontaine’s kids singing in the background, one of those African songs with the weird throat-clicks. ‘Okay,’ Fontaine finally said, ‘I’ll look into that for you.’ And Chevette said thanks, fast, and clicked off. Fontaine did a lot of favors for Skinner. He’d never talked to Chevette about it, but he seemed to have known Skinner all his life, or anyway as long as he’d been on the bridge. There were a lot of people like that, and Chevette knew Fontaine could fix it so people would watch the tower 215 there, and the lift. Watch for strangers. People did that for each other, on the bridge, and Fontaine was always owed a lot of favors, because he was one of the main electricity men. Now they were walking past this bagel place had a sort of iron cage outside, welded out of junk, where you could sit in there at little tables and have coffee and eat bagels, and the smell of the morning’s baking about made her faint from hunger. She was thinking maybe they’d better go in there and get a dozen in a bag, maybe some cream cheese, take it with them, when Rydell put his hand on her shoulder. She turned her head and saw this big shiny white RV had just turned onto Haight in front of them, headed their way. Like you’d see rich old people driving back in Oregon, whole convoys of them, pulling boats on trailers, little jeeps, motorcycles hanging off the backs like lifeboats. They’d stop for the night in these special camps had razor-wire around them, dogs, NO TRESSPASSING signs that really meant it. Rydell was staring at this RV like he couldn’t believe it, and now it was pulling up right beside them, this gray-haired old lady powering down the window and leaning out the driver’s side, saying ‘Young man! Excuse me, but I’m Danica Elliott and I believe we met yesterday on the plane from Burbank.’ Danica Elliott was this retired lady from Altadena, that was down in SoCal, and she’d flown up to San Francisco, she said on the same plane as Rydell, to get her husband moved to a different cryogenic facility. Well, not her husband, exactly, but his brain, which he’d had frozen when he died. Chevette had heard about people doing that, but she hadn’t ever understood why they did it, and evidently Danica Elliott didn’t understand it either. But she’d come up here to throw good money after bad, she said, and get her husband David’s brain moved to this more expensive place that would keep it on ice in its Own private little tank, and not just tumbling around in a big tank with a hunch of other people’s frozen zi6 brains, which was where it had been before. She seemed like a really nice lady to Chevette, but she sure could go on about this stuff, so that after a while Rydell was just driving and nodding his head like he was listening, and Chevette, who was navigating, was mostly paying attention to the map-display on the RV’s dash, plus keeping a lookout for police cars. Mrs. Elliott had taken care of getting her husband’s brain relocated the night before, and she said it had made her kind of emotional, so she’d decided to rent this RV and drive it back to Altadena, just take her time and enjoy the trip. Trouble was, she didn’t know San Francisco, and she’d picked it up that morning at this rental place on sixth and gotten lost looking for a freeway. Wound up driving around in the Haight, which she said did not look at all like a safe neighborhood but was certainly very interesting. The loose handcuff kept falling out of the sleeve of Skinner’s jacket, but Mrs. Elliott was too busy talking to notice. Rydell was driving, Chevette was in the middle, and Mrs. Elliot was on the passenger side. The RV was Japanese, and had these three power-adjustable buckets up front, with headrests with speakers built in. Mrs. Elliot had told Rydell she was lost and did he know the city and could he drive her to where she could get on the highway to Los Angeles? Rydell had sort of gawked at her for a minute, then shook himself and said he’d be glad to, and this was his friend Chevette, who knew the city, and he was Berry Rydell. Mrs. Elliot said Chevette was a pretty name. So here they were, headed out of San Francisco, and Chevette had a pretty good idea that Rydell was going to try to talk Mrs. Elliott into letting them go along with her. That was all she could think of to do, herself, and here they were off the street and headed away from the guy who’d shot Sammy and from that Warbaby and those Russian cops, which seemed like a good idea to her, and aside from her 217 stomach feeling like it was starting to eat itself, she felt a little better. Rydell drove past an In-and-Out Burger place and she remembered how this boy she knew called Franklin, up in Oregon, had taken a pellet-gun over to an In-and-Out and shot out the B and the R, so it just said IN-AND-OUT URGE. She’d told Lowell about that, but he hadn’t thought it was funny. Now she thought about how she’d told Rydell stuff about Lowell that Lowell would go ballistic if he ever found out about, and here Rydell was the next thing to a cop. But it bothered her how Lowell had been, the night before. There he was, all cool and heavy with his connections and everything, and she tells him she’s in trouble and somebody’s just shot Sammy Sal and they’re gonna be after her for sure, and him and Codes just sit there, giving each other these looks, like they like this story less by the minute, and then the big motherfucker cop in the raincoat walks in and they’re about to shit themselves. Served her right. She hadn’t had a single friend liked Lowell much, and Skinner had hated him on sight. Said Lowell had his head so far up his ass, he might as well just climb in after it and disappear. But she just hadn’t ever really had a boyfriend before, not like that, and he’d been so nice to her at first. If he just hadn’t started in doing that dancer, because that brought the asshole out in him real fast, and then Codes, who hadn’t ever liked her, could get him going about how she was just a country girl. Fuck that. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I don’t get something to eat soon, I think I’ll die.’ And Mrs. Elliott started making a fuss about how Rydell should stop immediately and get something for Chevette, and how sorry she was she hadn’t thought to ask if they’d had breakfast. ‘Well,’ Rydell said, frowning mto the rear-view, ‘I really would like to miss the, uh, lunch-hour traffic here. . zi8 ‘Oh,’ Mrs. Elliott said. Then she brightened. ‘Chevette, dear, if you’ll just go in the back, you’ll find a fridge there. I’m sure the rental people have put a snack basket in there. They almost always do.’ Sounded fine to Chevette. She undid her harness and edged back between her seat and Mrs. Elliott’s. There was a little door there and when she went through it the lights came on. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘it’s a whole little house back here…’ ‘Enjoy!’ said Mrs. Elliott. The light stayed on when she closed the door behind her. She hadn’t ever seen the inside of one of these things before, and the first thing she thought of was that it had nearly as much space as Skinner’s room, plus it was about ten times more comfortable. Everything was gray, gray carpet and gray plastic and gray imitation leather. And the fridge turned out to be this cute little thing built into a counter, with this basket in there, wrapped up in plastic with a ribbon on it. She got the plastic off and there was some wine, little cheeses, an apple, a pear, crackers, and a couple of chocolate bars. There was Coke in the fridge, too, and bottled water. She sat on the bed and ate a cheese, a bunch of crackers, a chocolate bar that was made in France, and drank a bottle of water. Then she tried out the tv, which had twenty-three channels on downlink. When she was done, she put the empty bottle and the torn paper and stuff in a little wastebasket built into the wall, cut the tv off, took off her shoes, and lay back on the bed. It was strange, to stretch out on a bed in a little room that was moving, she didn’t know where, and she wondered where she’d be tomorrow. Just before she fell asleep, she remembered that she still had Codes’ hag of dancer stuck down in her pants. She’d better get rid of that. She figured there was enough there to go to jail for. She thought about how it made you feel, and how weird it was that people spent all that money to feel that way. 2.19 She sure wished Lowell hadn’t liked to feel that way. She woke up when he lay down beside her, the RV moving but she knew it must’ve stopped before. The lights were off. ‘Who’s driving?’ she said. ‘Mrs. Armbruster.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Mrs. Elliott. Mrs. Armbruster was this teacher I had, looked like her.’ ‘Where’s she driving to?’ ‘Los Angeles. Told her I’d take over when she got tired. Told her not to bother waking us up when she goes through at the state line. Lady like that, if she tells ’em she’s not carrying any agricultural products, they’ll probably let her through without checking back here.’ ‘What if they do?’ He was close enough to her on the narrow bed that she could feel it when he shrugged. ‘Rydell?’ ‘Huh?’ ‘How come there’s Russian cops?’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘You watch on tv, like a cop show, about half the big cops are always Russian. Or those guys back there on the bridge. How come Russian?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they kind of exaggerate that on tv, ’cause of the Organizatsiya thing, how people like to see shows about that. But the truth is, you get a situation where there’s Russians running most of your mob action, you’ll want to get you some Russian cops.. .’ She heard him yawn. Felt him stretch. ‘Are they all like those two came to Dissidents?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s always some crooked cops, but that’s just the way it is . . ‘What’ll we do, when we get to Los Angeles?’ But he didn’t answer, and after a while he started to snore. ftydell opened his eyes. Vehicle not moving. He held his Timex up in front of his face and used the dial-light. 3:15 PM. Chevette Washington was curled up beside him in her biker jacket. Felt like sleeping next to a piece of old luggage. He rolled over until he could find the shade over the window beside him and raise it a little. As dark out there as it was in here. He’d been dreaming about Mrs. Armbruster’s class, fifth grade at Oliver North Elementary. They were about to be let Dut because LearningNet said there was too much Kansas City flu around to keep the kids in Virginia and Tennessee in school that week. They were all wearing these molded white paper masks the nurses had left on their seats that morning. Mrs. Armbruster had just explained the meaning of the word pandemic. Poppy Markoff, who sat next to him and already bad tits out to here, had told Mrs. Armbruster that her daddy said the KC flu could kill you in the time it took to walk out to the bus. Mrs. Armbruster, wearing her own mask, the micropore kind from the drugstore, started in about the word panic, tying that into pandemic because of the root, but that was where Rydell woke up. He sat up on the bed. He had a headache and the start of a cold. Kansas City flu. Maybe Mokola fever. ‘Don’t panic,’ he said, under his breath. 22.1 29 Dead mall But he sort of had this feeling. He got up and felt his way to the front. A little bit of light there, coming from under the door. He found the handle. Eased it open a crack. ‘Hey there.’ Gold at the edges of a smile. Square little automatic pointing at Rydell’s eye. He’d swung the passenger-side bucket around and tilted it back. Had his boots up on the middle seat. Had the dome-light turned down low. ‘Where’s Mrs. Elliott?’ ‘Mrs. Elliott is gone.’ Rydell opened the door the rest of the way. ‘She work for you?’ ‘No,’ the man said. ‘She’s IntenSecure.’ ‘They put her on that plane to keep track of me?’ The man shrugged. Rydell noticed that the gun didn’t move at all when he did that. He was wearing surgical gloves, and that same long coat he’d had on when he’d gotten out of the Russians’ car, like an Australian duster made out of black micropore. ‘How’d she know to pick us up by that tattoo parlor?’ ‘Warbaby had to be good for something. He had a couple of people on you for backup.’ ‘Didn’t see anybody,’ Rydell said. ‘Weren’t supposed to.’ ‘Tell me something,’ Rydell said. ‘You the one did that Blix guy, up in the hotel?’ The man looked at him over the barrel of the gun. That small a bore, ordinarily, wouldn’t mean much damage, so Rydell figured the ammunition would be doctored some way. ‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with you,’ he said. Rydell thought about it. ‘I saw a picture of it. You just don’t look that crazy.’ ‘It’s my job,’ he said. Uh-huh, Rydell thought, just like running a french-fry computer. There was a fridge and sink Ofl the right side of the 222 door, so he knew he couldn’t move that way. If he went left, he figured the guy’d just stitch through the bulkhead, probably get the girl, too. ‘Don’t even think about it.’ ‘About what?’ ‘The hero thing. The cop shit.’ He took his feet off the center bucket. ‘Just do this. Slowly. Very. Get into the driver’s seat and put your hands on the wheel. Nine o’clock and two o’clock. Keep them there. If you don’t keep them there, I’ll shoot you behind your right ear. But you won’t hear it.’ He had this kind of slow, even tone, reminded Rydell of a vet talking to a horse. Rydell did like he was told. He couldn’t see anything outside. Just dark, and the reflections from the dome light. ‘Where are we?’ he asked. ‘You like malls, Rydell? You got malls back in Knoxville?’ Rydell looked at him sideways. ‘Eyes front, please.’ ‘Yeah, we got malls.’ ‘This one didn’t do so well.’ Rydell squeezed the foam padding on the wheel. ‘Relax.’ Rydell heard him give the bulkhead a kick with the heel of one boot. ‘Miss Washington! Rise and shine, Miss Washington! Do us the favor of your presence.’ Rydell heard the double thump as she startled from sleep, tried to jump up, hit her head, fell off the bed. Then he saw her white face reflected in the windshield, there in the doorway. Saw her see the man, the gun. Not the screaming kind. ‘You shot Sammy Sal,’ she said. ‘You tried to electrocute me,’ the man said, like he could afford to see the humor in it now. ‘Come out here, turn around, and straddle the central console. Very slowly. That’s right. Now lean forward and brace your hands on the seat.’ 223 She wound up next to Rydell, her legs on either side of the instrument console, facing backward. Like she was riding some cafe-racer. Gave him about a two-inch difference of arc between shooting either one of them in the head. ‘I want you to take your jacket off,’ he said to her, ‘so you’ll have to take your hands off the seat to do that. See if you can manage to keep at least one hand on the seat at all times. Take plenty of time.’ When she’d gotten it to where she could shrug it off her left shoulder, it fell over against the man’s legs. ‘Are there any hypodermic needles in here,’ he said, ‘any blades, dangerous objects of any kind?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘How about electrical charges? You don’t have a great record for that.’ ‘Just the asshole’s glasses and a phone.’ ‘See, Rydell,’ he said, “the asshole.” How he’ll be remembered. Nameless. Another nameless asshole …’ He was going through the jacket’s pockets with his free hand. Came up with the case and the phone and put them on the RV’s deep, padded dash-panel. Rydell had his head turned now and was watching him, even though he’d been told not to. He watched the gloved hand open the case by feel, take out the black glasses. That was the only time those eyes left him, to check those glasses, and that took about a second. ‘That’s them,’ Rydell said. ‘You got ’em now.’ The hand put them back in their case, closed it. ‘Yes.’ ‘Now what?’ The smile went away. When it did, it looked like he didn’t have any lips. Then it came back, wider and steeper. ‘You think you could get me a Coke out of the fridge? All the windows, the door back there, are sealed.’ ‘You want a Coke?’ Like she didn’t believe him. ‘You’re gonna shoot mc. When I get up.’ 2.24 ‘No,’ he said, ‘not necessarily. Because I want a Coke. My throat’s a little dry.’ She turned her head to look at Rydell, eyes big with fear. ‘Get him his Coke,’ Rydell said. She got off the console and edged through, into the back, there, but just by the door, where the fridge was. ‘Look out the front,’ he reminded Rydell. Rydell saw the fridge-light come on, reflected there, caught a glimpse of her squatting down. ‘D-diet or regular?’ she said. ‘Diet,’ he said, ‘please.’ ‘Classic or decaf?’ ‘Classic.’ He made a little sound that Rydell thought might be a laugh. ‘There’s no glasses.’ He made the sound again. ‘Can.’ ‘K-kinda messy,’ she said, ‘rn-my hand’s shakin’-‘ Rydell looked sideways, saw him take the red can, some brown cola dripping off the side. ‘Thank you. You can take your pants off now.’ ‘What?’ ‘Those black ones you’re wearing. Just peel them down, slow. But I like the socks. Say we’ll keep the socks.’ Rydell caught the expression on her face, reflected in the black windshield, then saw how it went sort of blank. She bent, working the tight pants down. ‘Now get back on the console. That’s right. Just like you were. Let me look at you. You want to look too, Rydell?’ Rydell turned, saw her squatting there, her bare legs smooth and muscular, dead white in the glow of the dome-light. The man took a long swallow of Coke, watching Rydell around the rim. He put the can down on the dash-panel and wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. ‘Not bad, huh, Rydell?’ with a nod toward Chevette Washington. ‘Some potential there, I’d say.’ 2.25 Rydell looked at him. ‘Is this bothering you, Rydell?’ Rydell didn’t answer. The man made the sound that might’ve been a laugh. Drank some Coke. ‘You think I enjoyed having to mess that shitbag up the way I did, Rydell?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘But you think I did. I know you think I enjoyed it. And I did, I did enjoy it. But you know what the difference is?’ ‘The difference?’ ‘I didn’t have a hard on when I did it. That’s the difference.’ ‘Did you know him?’ ‘What?’ ‘I mean like was it personal, why you did that?’ ‘Oh, I guess you could say I knew him. I knew him. I knew him like you shouldn’t have to know anyone, Rydell. I knew everything he did. I’d go to sleep, nights, listening to the sound of him breathing. It got so I could judge how many he’d had, just by his breathing.’ ‘He’d had?’ ‘He drank. Serbian. You were a policeman, weren’t you?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Ever have to watch anybody, Rydell?’ ‘I never got that far.’ ‘It’s a funny thing, watching someone. Traveling with them. They don’t know you. They don’t know you’re there. Oh, they guess. They assume you’re there. But they don’t know who you are. Sometimes you catch them looking at someone, in the lobby of the hotel, say, and you know they think it’s you, the one who’s watching. But it never is. And as you watch them, Rydell, over a period of months, you start to love them.’ Rydell saw a shiver go through Chevette Washington’s tensed white thigh. 226 ‘But then, after a few more months, twenty flights, two dozen hotels, well, it starts to turn itself around . . ‘You don’t love them?’ ‘No. You don’t. You start to wait for them to fuck up, Rydell. You start to wait for them to betray the trust. Because a courier’s trust is a terrible thing. A terrible thing.’ ‘Courier?’ ‘Look at her, Rydell. She knows. Even if she’s just riding confidential papers around San Francisco, she’s a courier. She’s entrusted, Rydell. The data becomes a physical thing. She carries it. Don’t you carry it, baby?’ She was still as some sphinx, white fingers deep in the gray fabric of the center bucket. ‘That’s what I do, Rydell. I watch them carry it. I watch them. Sometimes people try to take it from them.’ He finished the Coke. ‘I kill those people. Actually that’s the best part of the job. Ever been to San Jose, Rydell?’ ‘Costa Rica?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Never have.’ ‘People know how to live, there.’ ‘You work for those data havens,’ Rydell said. ‘I didn’t say that. Somebody else must’ve said that.’ ‘So did he,’ Rydell said. ‘He was carrying those glasses to somebody, up from Costa Rica, and she took ’em.’ ‘And I was glad she did. So glad. I was in the room next to his. I let myself in through the connecting door. I introduced myself. He met Loveless. First time. Last time.’ The gun never wavered, but he began to scratch his head with his hand in the surgical glove. Scratch it like he had fleas or something. ‘Loveless?’ ‘My nom. Nom de thing.’ Then a long rattle of what Rydell took to he Spanish, hut he only caught nombre de something. ‘Think she’s tight, Rydell? I like it tight, myself.’ ‘You American?’ 22.7 His head sort of whipped sideways, a little, when Rydell said that, and his eyes unfocused for a second, but then they came back, clear as the chromed rim around the muzzle of his gun. ‘You know who started the havens, Rydell?’ ‘Cartels,’ Rydell said, ‘the Colombians.’ ‘That’s right. They brought the first expert systems into Central America, nineteen-eighties, to coordinate their shipping. Somebody had to go down there and install those systems. War on drugs, Rydell. Lot of Americans on either side, down there.’ ‘Well,’ Rydell said, ‘now we just make our own drugs up here, don’t we?’ ‘But they’ve got the havens, down there. They don’t even need that drug business. They’ve got what Switzerland used to have. They’ve got the one place in the world to keep what people can’t afford to keep anywhere else.’ ‘You look a little young to have helped put that together.’ ‘My father. You know your father, Rydell?’ ‘Sure.’ Sort of, anyway. ‘I never did. I had to have a lot of therapy, over that.’ Sure glad it worked, Rydell thought. ‘Warbaby, he work for the havens?’ A sweat had broken out on the man’s forehead. Now he wiped it with the back of the hand that held the gun, but Rydell saw the gun click back into position like it was held by a magnet. ‘Turn on the headlights, Rydell. It’s okay. Left hand off the wheel.’ ‘Why?’ “Cause you’re dead if you don’t.’ ‘Well, why?’ ‘Just do it, okay?’ Sweat running into his eyes. Rydell took his left hand off the wheel, clicked the lights, double-clicked them to high beams. Two cones of light hit into a wall of dead shops, dead signs, dust on plastic. The one in front of the left beam said THE GAP. 2.2.8 ‘Why’d anybody ever call a store that?’ Rydell said. ‘Trying to fuck with my head, Rydell?’ ‘No,’ Rydell said, ‘it’s just a weird name. Like ad those places look like gaps, now. . .’ ‘Warbaby’s just hired help, Rydell. IntenSecure brings him in when things get too sloppy. And they do, they always do.’ They were parked in a sort of plaza, in a mall, the stores all boarded or their windows whitewashed. Either underground ~r else it was roofed over. ‘So she stole the glasses out of a hotel had IntenSecure security, they brought in Warbaby?’ Rydell looked at Chevette Washington. She looked like one of those chrome things on the nose of an antique car, except she was getting goosebumps down her thigh. Not exactly warm in here, which made Rydell think it might be underground after all. ‘Know what, Rydell?’ ‘What?’ ‘You don’t know shit about shit. As much as I tell you, you’ll never understand the situation. It’s just too !ig for someone like you to understand. You don’t know how to think in those terms. IntenSecure belongs to the company that owns the information in those glasses.’ ‘Singapore,’ Rydell said. ‘Singapore own DatAmerica, too?’ ‘You can’t prove it, Rydell. Neither could Congress.’ ‘Look at those rats over there. . .’ ‘Fucking with my head…’ Rydell watched the last of the three rats vanish ilto the place that had been called The Gap. In through a locse vent ~r something. A gap. ‘Nope. Saw ’em.’ ‘Has it occurred to you that you wouldn’t be heie right now if Lucius fucking Warhahy hadn’t taken up rollerblading last month?’ ‘How’s that?’ ‘He wrecked his knee. Warbaby wrecks his knee, can’t 229 drive, you wind up here. Think about it. What does that tell you about late-stage capitalism?’ ‘Tell me about what?’ ‘Don’t they teach you anything in that police academy?’ ‘Sure,’ Rydell said, ‘lots of stuff.’ Thinking: how to talk to crazy fuckers when you’re being held hostage, except he was having a hard time remembering what they’d said. Keep ’em talking and don’t argue too much, something like that. ‘How come the stuff in those glasses has everybody’s tail in a twist, anyway?’ ‘They’re going to rebuild San Francisco. From the ground up, basically. Like they’re doing to Tokyo. They’ll start by layering a grid of seventeen complexes into the existing infrastructure. Eighty-story office/residential, retail/residence in the base. Completely self-sufficient. Variable-pitch parabolic reflectors, steam-generators. New buildings, man; they’ll eat their own sewage.’ ‘Who’ll eat sewage?’ ‘The buildings. They’re going to grow them, Rydell. Like they’re doing now in Tokyo. Like the maglev tunnel.’ ‘Sunflower,’ Chevette Washington said, then looked like she regretted it. ‘Somebody’s been look-ing . . .’ Gold teeth flashing. ‘Uh, hey …’ Go for that talking-to-the-armed-insane mode. ‘Yes?’ ‘So what’s the problem? They wanna do that, let ’em.’ ‘The problem,’ this Loveless said, starting to unbutton his shirt, ‘is that a city like San Francisco has about as much sense of where it wants to go, of where it should go, as you do. Which is to say, very little. There are people, millions of them, who would object to the fact that this sort of plan even exists. Then there’s the business of real estate. . .’ ‘Real estate?’ ‘Know the three most important considerations in any 2.30 purchase of real estate, Rydell?’ Loveless’s chest, hairless and artificially pigmented, was gleaming with sweat. ‘Three?’ ‘Location,’ Loveless said, ‘location, and location.’ ‘I don’t get it.’ ‘You never will. But the people who know where to buy, the people who’ve seen where the footprints of the towers fall, they will, Rydell. They’ll get it all.’ Rydell thought about it. ‘You looked, huh?’ Loveless nodded. ‘In Mexico City. He left them in his room. He was never, ever supposed to do that.’ ‘But you weren’t supposed to look either?’ It just slipped out. Loveless’s skin was running with sweat now, in spite of the cool. It was like his whole lymbic system or whatever had just let loose. Kept blinking and wiping it back from his eyes. ‘I’ve done my job. Did my job. Jobs. Years. My father, too. You haven’t seen how they live, down there. The compounds. People up here have no idea what money can do, Rydell. They don’t know what real money is. They live like gods, in the compounds. Some of them are over a hundred years old, Rydell …’ There were flecks of white stuff at the corners of Loveless’ smile, and Rydell was back in Turvey’s girlfriend’s apartment, looking into Turvey’s eyes, and it just clicked, what she’d done. Dumped that whole bag of dancer into the Coke she’d brought him. She hadn’t been able to pour it all in, so she’d sloshed the Coke out onto the top of the can to wash it down, mix it around. He had his shirt undone all the way now, the dark fabric darker with sweat, and his face was turning red. ‘Loveless-‘ Rydell started, no idea what he was about to say, hut Loveless screamed then, a high thin inhuman sound like a rabbit with its leg caught in a wire, and started pounding the butt of his pistol into the tight crotch of his jeans like 231 there was something terrible fastened on him there, something he had to kill. Each time the gun came down, it fired, blowing holes in the carpeted floorboard the size of five-dollar pieces. Chevette Washington came off that console like she was on rubber bands, right over the top of the center bucket and into the cabin in back. Loveless froze, quivering, like every atom in him had locked down all at once, spinning in some tight emergency orbit. Then he smiled, like maybe he’d killed the thing that was after his crotch, screamed again, and started firing out through the windshield. All Rydell could remember was some instructor telling them that an overdose of dancer made too much PCP look like putting aspirin in a Coke. In a Coke. And Chevette Washington, she was going just about that crazy herself, by the sound of it, trying to beat her way out the back of the RV. ‘Hundred years old, those fuckers,’ Loveless said, and sort of sobbed, ejecting the empty magazine and snapping a fresh one in, ‘and they’re still getting it. ..’ ‘Out there,’ Rydell said. ‘By The Gap-‘ ‘Who?’ ‘Svobodov,’ Rydell said, guessing that might do it. The bullets came out of the little gun like the rubber cubes out of a chunker. By the third one, Rydell had reached over, deactivated the door-lock, and just sort of fallen out. Landed on his back on some cans and what felt like foam cups. Rolled. Kept rolling ’til he hit something. Those little bullets blowing big holes in the whitewashed glass of the dead stores. A whole section fell away with a crash. He could hear Chevette Washington pounding on the back door of the RV and he wished he could get her to stop. ‘Hey! Loveless!’ The shooting stopped. ‘Svohodov’s down, man!’ 232 Chevette still pounding. Jesus. ‘He needs an ambulance!’ On his hands and knees, up against some low tiled fountain smelled of chlorine and dust, he saw Loveless scramble down from the driver’s side, his face and chest slick and shining. The man had been trained so deeply, it occurred to Rydell, that it even cut through whatever the dancer was doing to him. Because he still moved the way they taught you to move in FATSS, the pistol out in both hands, the half-crouch, the smooth swings through potential arcs of fire. And Chevette, she was still trying to kick her way out through the hexcel or whatever the back of the RV was made of. Then Loveless put a couple of bullets into it and she all of a sudden stopped. At four o’clock Yamazaki descended the rungs he’d climbed with Loveless, in the dark, the night before. Fontaine had gone, twenty minutes before the power returned, taking with him, against Skinner’s protests, an enormous bundle of washing. Skinner had spent the day sorting and re-sorting the contents of the green toolkit, the one he’d overturned in his bid for the bolt-cutters. Yamazaki had watched the old man’s hands as they touched each tool in turn, imagining he saw some momentary strength or purpose flow into them there, or perhaps only memories of tasks undertaken, abandoned, completed. ‘You can always sell tools,’ Skinner had mused, perhaps to Yamazaki, perhaps to himself. ‘Somebody’ll always buy ’em. But then you always need ’em again, exactly the one you sold.’ Yamazaki didn’t know the English words for most of the tools there, and many were completely unfamiliar. ‘T-reamer,’ Skinner said, holding up his fist, a rust-brown, machined spike of steel protruding menacingly between his second and third fingers. ‘Now that’s about as handy a thing as you can have, Scooter, but most people never seen one.’ ‘Its purpose, Skinner-san?’ ‘Makes a round hole bigger. Keeps it round, too, you use it right. Sheet-metal, mostly, but it’ll do plastic, synthetics. Anything thin, fairly rigid. Short of glass.’ ‘You have many tools, Skinner-san.’ ‘Never learned how to really use ’em, though.’ 234 30 Carnival of souls ‘But you built this room?’ ‘You ever watch a real carpenter work, Scooter?’ ‘Once, yes,’ Yamazaki said, remembering a demonstration at a festival, the black blades flying, the smell of cut cedar. He remembered the look of the lumber, creamy and flawless. A tea-house was being erected, to stand for the duration of the festival. ‘Wood is very scarce in Tokyo, Skinner-san. You would not see it thrown away, not even small scraps.’ ‘Not that easy to come by here,’ Skinner said, rubbing the ball of his thumb with the edge of a chisel. Did he mean in America, San Francisco, on the bridge? ‘We used to burn our scrap, before we got the power in. City didn’t like that at all. Bad for the air, Scooter. Don’t do that as much, now.’ ‘This is by consensus?’ ‘Just common sense …’ Skinner put the chisel into a greasy canvas case and tucked it carefully away in the green box.