But now she saw, the residual drug in Creedmore’s saliva having its effect, that what she’d been afraid of wasn’t that he’d hit her that time, or the possibility he’d do it again, but some instinctive, underlying recognition that there was something wrong, something way worse. That he was bad news and covered it up. Always, more carefully even than he chose his clothes.
And Tessa, when Chevette had had the conversation with her that had resulted in her moving to Malibu, had said that she envied men the inability to get it up, when there was something wrong. Even if they don’t consciously know, Tessa said, it won’t happen. But we don’t have that, so something can be just as wrong as can be, and we still stay. But you can’t stay if he’s hit you, because he’ll do it again.
Walking on, toward Treasure now, the bridge gone spectral, monochrome, and maybe that was the dancer too, she didn’t know.
“Out of control,” she said. That was how she felt her life was now. She was just reacting to things. She stopped. Maybe she was just reacting to Carson.
“Hey. Chevette.”
Turning to see a face she knew, though she couldn’t put a name to it. Ragged pale hair above a thin hard face, bad scar snaking his left cheek. A sometime messenger from her Allied days, not part of her crew but a face from parties. “Heron,” the name came to her.
“I thought you were gone,” Heron said, displaying broken teeth.
149 Maybe something broken in his head too, it struck her. Or maybe just some substance, tonight.
“1 was,” Chevette said.
“Where?”
“SoCal.”
“You ride down there? Messenger?”
“No,” she said.
“I can’t ride now,” Heron said and swung his left leg, rigid, forward, catching his weight on it, something wrong there with his knee. “Tangled with a cage.”A car, and she thought how long it had been since she’d heard that.
“You get insurance?”
“Shit no, cage from DoJ City.” The Department of Justice. “I got lawyers on it, but Crooked shrug. “One of my lawyers, Njembo, you know those three guys? Refugees from the African Union, right? Njembo, he knows that Fontaine. You know Fontaine, right?”
“Yeah,” Chevette said, glancing back over her shoulder. “He still out by Oakland, wives and kids?”
“No,” Heron said, “no, he’s got a shop, just up there.” He pointed. “Sleeps there. Sells stuff to tourists. Njembo says his wives are after his ass.” He squinted at her, the scar on his cheek catching the light. “You look good. Hair’s different.”
Something in that flash of scar catching in the edge of Creedmore’s spit-high; she shivered, the dancer dealing her cards of Carson walking this way, that same expression on his face, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.
“Good to see you, Heron.”
“Yeah,” he said, something sullen and untrusting, maybe longing, evident there, and again the crooked shrug, maybe just to shake some pain from his shoulders. He looked down and set off back the way she’d come, and she saw how twisted the accident had left him, hobbling, swinging his stiff leg as he went.
She zipped up Skinner’s jacket and went looking for Fontaine’s shop, wondering if she’d know it if she found it. ISO 36. FAMOUS ASPECT RYDELL bought a white foam take-out beef bowl from Ghetto Chef, then had to figure out how to get up the ladder one-handed, without spilling it.
Climbing a ladder with something hot in one hand was one of those things that you never ordinarily thought about, but that turned out to be difficult. You can’t safely tuck a hot beef bowl under your arm, and when you climb with only one hand, you’ve got to move that hand fast, keep catching those rungs.
But he got up there, didn’t spill any, and then he put it down while he unlocked the two-by-four and chicken-wire security grid. This had a chrome-plated Nepalese padlock on either side, and he’d found the keys, earlier, hanging on a nail. It was one of those deeply pointless arrangements, in terms of security, because anyone who wanted in could boltcut the padlocks, pry their hasps out of the wood, or just yank the chicken wire until the staples pulled out. On the other hand, if you went out, left it unlocked, and somebody took your stuff with no effort at all, he guessed you’d feel even stupider.