It was two weeks since the night in question, tell in the 2.9 morning, and Rydell was wearing a five-day beard, a fine-weave panama Stetson, a pair of baggy, faded orange trunks, a KNOXVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT t-shirt that was starting to disintegrate at the shoulder-seams, the black SWAT-trainers from his IntenSecure uniform, and an inflated transparent cast on his left arm. ‘Emotional pain,’ Rydell said. Hernandez, who was very nearly as wide as his desk, passed Rydell the coffee. ‘You way lucky, all I can say.’ ‘I’m out a job, arm in a cast, I’m “way lucky”?’ ‘Seriously, man,’ Hernandez said, ‘you coulda killed yourself. LAPD, they coulda greased your ass down dead. Mr. and Mrs. Schonbrunn, they been very nice about this, considering Mrs. Schonbrunn’s embarrassment and everything. Your arm got hassled, hey, I’m sorry . . .’ Hernandez shrugged, enormously. ‘Anyway, you not fired, man. We just can’t let you drive now. You want us put you on gated residential, no problem.’ ‘No thanks.’ ‘Retail properties? You wanna work evenings, Encino Fashion Mall?’ ‘No.’ Hernandez narrowed his eyes. ‘You seen the pussy over there?’ ‘Nope.’ Hernandez sighed. ‘Man, what happen with all that shit coming down on you in Nashville?’ ‘Knoxville. Department came down for permanent suspension. Going in without authorization or proper back-up.’ ‘And that bitch, one’s suing your ass?’ ‘She and her son got caught sticking up a muffler shop in Johnson City, last I heard . . .’ Now it was Rydell’s turn to shrug, except it made his shoulder hurt. ‘See,’ Hernandez said, beaming, ‘you lucky.’
In the instant of putting Gunhead through the Schonbrunns 30 locked-and-armed Benedict Canyon gate, Rydell had experienced a fleeting awareness of something very high, very puree and quite clinically empty; the doing of the thing, the not-thinking; that weird adrenal exultation and the losing of every more troublesome aspect of self. And that-he later recalled remembering, as he’d fought the wheel, slashing through a Japanese garden, across a patio, and through a membrane of armored glass that gave way like something in a dream-had been a lot like what he’d felt as he’d drawn his gun and pulled the trigger, emptying Kenneth Turvey’s brain-pan, and most copiously, across a seemingly infinite expanse of white-primered wallboard that nobody had ever bothered to paint.
Rydell went over to Cedars to see Sublett. IntenSecure had sprung for a private cubicle, the better to keep Sublett away from any cruising minions of the media. The Texan was sitting up in bed, chewing gum, and watching a little liquid-crystal disk-player propped on his chest. ‘Warlords of the 21st Century,’ he said, when Rydell edged in, ‘James Wainwright, Annie McEnroe, Michael Beck.’ Rydell grinned. ‘When’d they make it?’ ‘1982..’ Sublett muted the audio and looked up. ‘But I’ve seen it a couple times already.’ ‘I been over at the shop seem’ Hernandez, man. He says you don’t have to worry any about your job.’ Sublett looked at Rydell with his blank silver eyes. ‘How ’bout yours, Berry?’ Rydell’s arm started to itch, inside the inflated cast. He bent over and fished a plastic drinking-straw from the little white wastebasket beside the bed. He poked the straw down inside the cast and wiggled it around. It helped some. ‘I’m history, over there. They won’t let me drive anymore.’ Sublett was looking at the straw. ‘You shouldn’t ought to touch used stuff, not in a hospital.’ 31 ‘You don’t have nothin’ contagious, Sublett. You’re one of the cleanest motherfuckers ever lived.’ ‘But what you gonna do, Berry? You gotta make a living, man.’ Rydell dropped the straw back into the basket. ‘Well, I don’t know. But I know I don’t wanna do gated residential and I know I don’t wanna do any malls.’ ‘What about those hackers, Berry? You figure they’ll get the ones set us up?’ ‘Nope. Too many of ’em. Republic of Desire’s been around a while. The Feds have a list of maybe three hundred “affiliates,” but there’s no way to haul ’em all in and figure out who actually did it. Not unless one of ’em rats on somebody, which they do tend to do on a pretty regular basis.’ ‘But how come they’d want to do that to us anyway?’ ‘Hell, Sublett, how should I know?’ ‘Just mean,’ Sublett said. ‘Well, that, for sure, and Hernandez says the LAPD told him they figured somebody wanted Mrs. Schonbrunn caught more or less with her pants down.’ Neither Sublett nor Rydell had actually seen Mrs. Schonbrunn, because she was, as it turned out, in the nursery. Although her kids weren’t, having gone up to Washington State with their daddy to fly over the three newest volcanoes. Nothing that Gunhead had logged that night, since leaving the car wash, had been real. Someone had gotten into the Hotspur Hussar’s on-board computer and plugged a bunch of intricately crafted and utterly spurious data into the communications bundle, cutting Rydell and Sublett off from IntenSecure and the Death Star (which hadn’t, of course, been down). Rydell figured a few of those good ol’ Mongol boys over at the car wash might know a little bit about that.