Laney’s suite, much larger than his apartment in Santa Monica, was like an elongated 1920s apartment following the long, shallow concrete balcony that faced Sunset, this in turn overlooking a deeper balcony on the floor below and the tiny circular lawn that was all that remained of the original gardens.
Lane>’ thought it was a strange choice, considering his situation. He would have imagined they’d choose something more corporate, more fortified, more heavily wired, but Rice Daniels had explained that the Chateau had advantages all its own. It was a good choice in terms of image, because it humanized Laney; it looked like a habitation, basically, something with walls and doors and windows, in which a guest could be imagined to be living something akin to a life-not at all the case with the geometric solids that were serious business hotels. It also had deeply rooted associations with the Hollywood star system, and with human tragedy as well. Stars had lived here, in the heyday of old Hollywood, and, later, certain stars had
died here. Out of Control planned to frame the death of Alison Shires 3 as a tragedy in a venerable Hollywood tradition, but one that had 0 C a 09 t been brought on by Slitscan, a very contemporary entity. Besides, Daniels explained, the Chateau was far more secure than it might at first look. And at this point Lane>’ had been introduced to Berry Rydell, the night security man.
Daniels and Rydell, it seemed to Laney, had known one another prior to Rydell working at the Chateau, though how, exactly, remained unclear. Rydell seemed oddly at home with the workings of the infotainment industry, and at one point, when they’d found themselves alone together, he’d asked Laney who was representing him.
“How do you mean?” Lane>’ had said.
“You’ve got an agent, don’t you?”
Laney said he didn’t.
“You better get one,” Rydell had said. “Not that it’ll necessarily come out the way you’d wanted, but, hey, it’s show business, right?”
It was indeed show business, to an extent that very quickly made Laney wonder if he’d made the right decision. There had been sixteen people in his suite, for a four-hour meeting, and he’d only been out of the lock-up for six hours. When they’d finally gone, Laney had staggered the length of the place, mistakenly trying several closet doors in his search for the bedroom. Finding it, he’d crawled onto the bed and fallen asleep in the clothes they’d sent Rydell to the Beverly Center to buy for him.
Which he thought he might well do right here, now, in this Golden Street bar, thereby answering the question of what the bourbon was doing to his jet lag. But now, finishing the remainder of the shot, he felt one of those tidal reversals begin, perhaps less to do with the drink than with some in-built chemistry of fatigue and displacement.
“Was Rydell happy?” Yamazaki asked,
It seemed a strange question, to Lane>’, but then he’d remembered Rydell mentioning someone Japanese, someone he’d known in San Francisco, and that, of course, had been Yamazaki. 70 Ahhtiapn Gibson “Well,” Lariey said, “he didn’t strike me as desperately unhappy, but there was something sort of down about him. You could say that. I mean, I don’t really know him well at all.”
“It is too bad,” Yamazaki said. “Rydell is a brave man.”
“How about you, Laney,” Blackwell said, “you think of yourself as a brave man?” The wormlike scar that bisected his eyebrow writhed into a new degree of concentration.
“No,” Laney said, “I don’t.”
“But you went up against Slitscan, didn’t you, because of what they did to the girl? You had a job, you had food, you had a place to sleep. You got all that from Slitscan, but they did the girl, so you opted to do ’em back. Is that right?”
“Nothing’s ever that simple,” Laney said.
When Blackwell spoke, Laney was unexpectedly aware of another sort of intelligence, something the man must ordinarily conceal. “No,” Blackwell said, almost gently, “it fucking well isn’t, is it?” One large, pinkly jigsawed hand, like some clumsy animal in its own right, began to root in the taut breast pocket of Blackwell’s micropore. Producing a small, gray, metallic object that he placed on the bar.