Chevette saw the asshole’s black glasses, right where she’d left them. In their case, behind Skinner’s ’97 Geographics. She tried to lift them out of there with mind-power. Right up to the tar-smelling roof and off the edge. Put those bastards in the Bay like she should’ve done this morning. But no, they were there.
‘That ain’t normal,’ Bunny said. ‘Know what I mean?’
‘You tell ’em where I live, Bunny?’
‘Out on the bridge,’ he said, then cracked her a little sliver of grin. ‘Not like you got much of an address, is it?’ Now he spun himself around in the chair and began to shut the monitors down.
‘Bunny,’ she said, ‘what’ll they do now?’
‘Come and find you.’ His back to her. ‘Here. ’Cause they won’t know where else to go. You didn’t do anything, did you, Chevy?’ The back of his skull showing gray stubble.
Automatic. ‘No. No… Thanks, Bunny.’
He grunted in reply, neutral, ending it, and Chevette was back in the corridor, her heart pounding under Skinner’s jacket. Up the stairs, out the door, plotting the quickest way home, running red lights in her head, gotta get rid of the glasses, gotta—
Sammy Sal had Ringer braced up against a blue recyc bin. Worry was starting to penetrate Ringer’s rudimentary view of things. ‘Didn’t do nuthin to you, man.’
‘Been carvin’ your name in elevators again, Ringer.’
‘But I din’t do nuthin to you!’
‘Cause and effect, mofo. We know it’s a tough concept for you, but try: you do shit, other shit follows. You go scratching your tag in the clients’ fancy elevators, we hassle you, man.’ Sammy Sal spread the long brown fingers of his left hand across Ringer’s beat-to-shit helmet, palming it like a basketball, and twisted, lifting, the helmet’s strap digging into Ringer’s chin. ‘Din’t do nuthin!’ Ringer gurgled.
Chevette ducked past them, heading for the bike-rack beneath the mural portrait of Shapely. Someone had shot him in his soulful martyr’s eye with a condomful of powder blue paint, blue running all down his hallowed cheek.
‘Hey,’ Sammy Sal said, ‘come here and help me torment this shit-heel.’
She stuck her hand through the recognition-loop and tried to pull her handlebars out of the rack’s tangle of molybdenum steel, graphite, and aramid overwrap. The other bikes’ alarms all went off at once, a frantic chorus of ear-splitting bleats, basso digital siren-moans, and one extended high-volume burst of snake-hiss Spanish profanity, cunningly mixed with yelps of animal torment. She swung her bike around, got her toe in the clip, and kicked for the street, almost going over as she mounted. She saw Sammy Sal, out the corner of her eye, drop Ringer.
She saw Sammy Sal straddle his own bike, a pink and black-fleck fat-tube with Fluoro-Rimz that ran off a hub-generator.
Sammy Sal was coming after her. She’d never wanted company less.
She took off.
Proj. Just proj.
Like her morning dream, but scarier.
12 Eye movement
Rydell looked at these two San Francisco cops, Svobodov and Orlovsky, and decided that working for Warbaby had a chance of being interesting. These guys were the real, the super-heavy thing. Homicide was colossus, any department anywhere.
And here he’d been in Northern California all of forty-eight minutes and he was sitting at a counter drinking coffee with Homicide. Except they were drinking tea. Hot tea. In glasses. Heavy on the sugar. Rydell was at the far end, on the other side of Freddie, who was drinking milk. Then Warbaby, with his hat still on, then Svobodov, then Orlovsky.
Svobodov was nearly as tall as Warbaby, but it all seemed to be sinew and big knobs of bone. He had long, pale hair, combed straight back from his rocky forehead, eyebrows to match, and skin that was tight and shiny, like he’d stood too long in front of a fire. Orlovsky was thin and dark, with a widow’s peak, lots of hair on the backs of his fingers, and those glasses that looked like they’d been sawn in half.
They both had that eye thing, the one that pinned you and held you and sank right in, heavy and inert as lead.
Rydell had had a course in that at the Police Academy, but it hadn’t really taken. It was called Eye Movement Desensitization & Response, and was taught by this retired forensic psychologist named Bagley, from Duke University. Bagley’s lectures tended to wander off into stories about serial killers he’d processed at Duke, auto-erotic strangulation fatalities, stuff like that. It sure passed the time between High Profile Felony Stops and Firearms Training System Scenarios. But Rydell was usually kind of rattled after Felony Stops, because the instructors kept asking him to take the part of the felon. And he couldn’t figure out why. So he’d have trouble concentrating, in Eye Movement. And if he did manage, to pick up anything useful from Bagley, a session of FATSS would usually make him forget it. FATSS was like doing Dream Walls, but with guns, real ones.
When FATSS tallied up your score, it would drag you right down the entrance wounds, your own or the other guy’s, and make the call on whether the loser had bled to death or copped to hydrostatic shock. There were people who went into full-blown post-traumatic heeb-jeebs after a couple of sessions on FATSS, but Rydell always came out of it with this shit-eating grin. It wasn’t that he was violent, or didn’t mind the sight of blood; it was just that it was such a rush. And it wasn’t real. So he never had learned to throw that official hoodoo on people with his eyes. But this Lt. Svobodov, he had the talent beaucoup, and his partner, Lt. Orlovsky, had his own version going, nearly as effective and he did it over the sawn-off tops of those glasses. Guy looked sort of like a werewolf anyway, which helped.
Rydell continued to check out the San Francisco Homicide look. Which seemed to be old tan raincoats over black flak vests over white shirts and ties. The shirts were button-down oxfords and the ties were the stripey kind, like you were supposed to belong to a club or something. Cuffs on their trousers and great big pebble-grain wingtips with cleated Vibram soles. About the only people who wore shirts and ties and shoes like that were immigrants, people who wanted it as American as it got. But layering it up with a bullet-proof and a worn-out London Fog, he figured that was some kind of statement. The streamlined plastic butt of an H&K didn’t exactly hurt, either, and Rydell could see one peeking out of Svobodov’s open flak vest. Couldn’t remember the model number, but it looked like the one with the magazine down the top of the barrel. Shot that caseless ammo looked like wax crayons, plastic propellant molded around alloy flechettes like big nails.
‘If we knew what you already know, Warbaby, maybe that makes everything more simple.’ Svobodov looked around the little diner, took a pack of Marlboros out of his raincoat.
‘Illegal in this state, buddy,’ the waitress said, pleased at any opportunity to threaten somebody with the law. She had that big kind of hair. This was one of those places you ate at if you worked graveyard at some truly shit-ass industrial job. If your luck held, Rydell figured, you’d get this particular waitress into the bargain.
Svobodov fixed her with a couple of thousand negative volts of Cop Eye, tugged a black plastic badge-holder out of his flak vest, flipped it open in her direction, and let it fall back on its nylon thong, against his chest. Rydell noticed the click when it hit; some kind of back-up armor under the white shirt.
‘Those two Mormon boys from Highway Patrol come in here, you show that to them,’ she said.
Svobodov put the cigarette between his lips.
Warbaby’s fist came up, clutching a lump of gold the size of a hand grenade.
He lit the Russian’s cigarette with it.
‘Why you have this, Warbaby?’ Svobodov said, eyeing the lighter. ‘You smoking something?’
‘Anything but those Chinese Marlboros, Arkady.’ Mournful as ever. ‘They’re fulla fiberglass.’
‘American brand,’ Svobodov insisted, ‘licensed by maker.’
‘Hasn’t been a legal cigarette manufactured in this country in six years,’ Warbaby said, sounding
as sad about that as anything else.
‘Marl-bor-ro,’ Svobodov said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and pointing to the lettering in front of the filter. ‘When we were kids, Warbaby, Marlboro, she was money.’
‘Arkady,’ Warbaby said, as though with enormous patience, ‘when we were kids, man, money was money.’
Orlovsky laughed. Svobodov shrugged. ‘What you know, Warbaby?’ Svobodov said, back to business.
‘Mr. Blix has been found dead, at the Morrisey. Murdered.’
‘Pro job,’ Orlovsky said, making it one word, projob. ‘They want we assume some bullshit ethnic angle, see?’
Svobodov squinted at Warbaby. ‘We don’t know that,’ he said.
‘The tongue,’ Orlovsky said, determined. ‘That’s color. To throw us off. They think we think Latin Kings.’
Svobodov sucked on his cigarette, blew smoke in the general direction of the waitress. ‘What you know, Warbaby?’
‘Hans Rutger Blix, forty-three, naturalized Costa Rican.’ Warbaby might have been making the opening remarks at a funeral.
‘My hairy ass,’ Svobodov said, around the Marlboro.
‘Warbaby,’ Orlovsky said, ‘we know you were working on this before this asshole got his throat cut.’
‘Asshole,’ Warbaby said, like maybe the dead guy had been a close personal friend, a lodge-brother or something. ‘Man’s dead, is all. That make him an asshole?’
Svobodov sat there, puffing on his Marlboro. Stubbed it out on the plate in front of him, beside his untouched tuna melt. ‘Asshole. Believe it.’
Warbaby sighed. ‘Man had a jacket, Arkady?’
‘You want his jacket,’ Svobodov said, ‘you tell us what you were supposed to be doing for him. We know he talked to you.’
‘We never spoke.’
‘Okay,’ Svobodov said. ‘IntenSecure he talked to. You freelance.’
‘Strictly,’ Warbaby said.
‘Why did he talk to IntenSecure?’
‘Man lost something.’
‘What?’
‘Something of a personal nature.’
Svobodov sighed. ‘Lucius. Please.’
‘A pair of sunglasses.’
Svobodov and Orlovsky looked at each other, then back to Warbaby. ‘IntenSecure brings in Lucius Warbaby because this guy loses his sunglasses?’
‘Maybe they were expensive,’ Freddie offered, softly. He was studying his reflection in the mirror behind the counter.
Orlovsky put his hairy fingers together and cracked his knuckles.
‘He thought he might have lost them at a party,’ Warbaby offered, ‘someone might even have taken them.’
‘What party?’ Svobodov shifted on his stool and Rydell heard the hidden armor creak.
‘Party at the Morrisey.’
‘Whose party?’ Orlovsky, over those glasses.
‘Mr. Cody Harwood’s party,’ Warbaby said.
‘Harwood,’ Svobodov said, ‘Harwood…’
‘Name “Pavlov” ring a bell?’ Freddie said, to no one in particular.
Svobodov grunted. ‘Money.’
‘None of it in Marlboros, either,’ Warbaby said. ‘Mr. Blix went down to Mr. Harwood’s party, had a few drinks—’
‘Had a BA level like they won’t need to embalm,’ Orlovsky said.
‘Had a few drinks. Had this property in the pocket of his jacket. Next morning, it was gone. Called security at the Morrisey. They called IntenSecure. IntenSecure called me…’
‘His phone is gone,’ Svobodov said. ‘They took it. Nothing to tie him to anyone. No agenda, notebook, nothing.’
‘Pro job,’ Orlovsky intoned.
‘The glasses,’ Svobodov said. ‘What kind of glasses?’
‘Sunglasses,’ Freddie said.
‘We found these.’ Svobodov took something from the side pocket of his London Fog. A Ziploc evidence bag. He held it up. Rydell saw shards of black plastic. ‘Cheap VR. Ground into the carpet.’
‘Do you know what he ran on them?’ Warbaby asked.
Now it was Orlovsky’s turn for show-and-tell. He produced a second evidence bag, this one from inside his black vest. ‘Looked for software, couldn’t find it. Then we x-ray him. Somebody shoved this down his throat.’ A black rectangle. The stick-on label worn and stained. ‘But before they cut him.’
‘What is it?’ Warbaby asked.
‘McDonna,’ Svobodov said.
‘Huh?’ Freddie was leaning across Warbaby to peer at the thing. ‘Mc-what?’
‘Fuck chip.’ It sounded to Rydell like fock cheap, but then he got it. ‘McDonna.’
‘Wonder if they read it all the way down?’ Freddie said, from the rear of the Patriot. He had his feet up on the back of the front passenger seat and the little red lights around the edges of his sneakers were spelling out the lyrics to some song.
‘Read what?’ Rydell was watching Warbaby and the Russians, who were standing beside one of the least subtle unmarked cars Rydell had ever seen: a primer-gray whale with a cage of graphite expansion-grating protecting the headlights and radiator. Fine rain was beading up on the Patriot’s windshield.
‘That porn they found down the guy’s esophagus.’ If Warbaby always sounded sad, Freddie always sounded relaxed. But Warbaby sounded like he really was sad, and Freddie’s kind of relaxed sounded like he was just the opposite. ‘Lotta code in a program like that. Hide all sorta goodies in the wallpaper, y’know? Running fractal to get the skin texture, say, you could mix in a lot of text…’
‘You into computer stuff, Freddie?’
‘I’m Mr. Warbaby’s technical consultant.’
‘What do you think they’re talking about?’
Freddie reached up and touched one of his sneakers. The red words vanished. ‘They’re having the real conversation now.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The deal conversation. We want what they got on Blix, the dead guy.’
‘Yeah? So what we got?’
‘ “We”?’ Freddie whistled. ‘You just drivin’.’ He pulled his feet back and sat up. ‘But it ain’t exactly classified: IntenSecure and DatAmerica more or less the same thing.’
‘No shit.’ Svobodov seemed to be doing most of the talking. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘Means we tight with a bigger data-base than the police. Next time ol’ Rubadub needs him a look-see, he’ll be glad he did us a favor. But tonight, man, tonight it just burns his Russian ass.’
Rydell remembered the time he’d gone over to ‘Big George’ Kechakmadze’s house for a barbecue and the man had tried to sign him up for the National Rifle Association. ‘You get a lot of Russians on the force, up here?’
‘Up here? All over.’
‘Kinda funny how many of those guys go into police work.’
‘Think about it, man. Had ’em a whole police state, over there. Maybe they just got a feel for it.’
Svobodov and Orlovsky climbed into the gray whale. Warbaby walked to the Patriot, using his alloy cane. The police car rose up about six inches on hydraulics and began to moan and shiver, rain dancing on its long hood as Orlovsky revved the engine.
‘Jesus,’ Rydell said, ‘they don’t care who sees ’em comin’, do they?’
‘They want you see ’em coming,’ Freddie said, obscurely, as Warbaby opened the right rear passenger door and began the process of edging his stiff-legged bulk into the back seat.
‘Take off,’ Warbaby said, slamming the door. ‘Protocol. We leave first.’
‘Not that way,’ Freddie said. ‘That’ll get us Candlestick Park. That way.’
‘Yes,’ said Warbaby, ‘we have business downtown.’ Sad about it.
Downtown San Francisco was really something. With everything hemmed in by hills, built up and down other hills, it gave Rydell a sense of, well, he wasn’t sure. Being somewhere. Somewhere in particular. Not that he was sure he liked being there. Maybe it just felt so much the opposite of L.A. and that feeling like you were cut loose in a grid of l
ight that just spilled out to the edge of everything. Up here he felt like he’d come in from somewhere, these old buildings all around and close together, nothing more modern than that one big spikey one with the truss-thing on it (and he knew that one was old, too). Cool damp air, steam billowing from grates in the pavement. People on the streets, too, and not just the usual kind; people with jobs and clothes. Kind of like Knoxville, he tried to tell himself, but it wouldn’t stick. Another strange place.
‘No, man, a left, a left’ Freddie thumping on the back of his seat. And another city-grid to learn. He checked the cursor on the Patriot’s dash-map, looking for a left that would get them to this hotel, the Morrisey.
‘Don’t bang on Mr. Rydell’s seat,’ Warbaby said, a six-foot scroll of fax bunched in his hands, ‘he’s driving.’ It had come in on their way here. Rydell figured it was the jacket on Blix, the guy who’d gotten his throat cut.
‘Fassbinder,’ Freddie said. ‘You ever hear of this Rainer Fassbinder?’
‘I’m not in a joking mood, Freddie,’ Warbaby said.
‘No joke. I ran Separated at Birth on this Blix, man, scanned this stiff-shot the Russian sent you before? Says he looks like Rainer Fassbinder. And that’s when he’s dead, with his throat cut. This Fassbinder, he musta been pretty rough-looking, huh?’
Warbaby sighed. ‘Freddie…’
‘Well, German, anyway. Clicked with the nationality—’
‘Mr. Blix was not German, Freddie. Says here Mr. Blix wasn’t even Mr. Blix. Now let me read. Rydell needs quiet, in order to adjust to driving in the city.’
Freddie grunted, then Rydell heard his fingers clicking over the little computer he carried everywhere.
Rydell took the left he thought he was looking for. Combat zone. Ruins. Fires in steel cans. Hunched dark figures, faces vampire white.
‘Don’t brake,’ Warbaby said. ‘Or accelerate.’
Something came spinning, end over end, out of the crow-shouldered coven, splat against the windshield; clung, then fell away, leaving a smudge of filthy yellow. Hadn’t it been gray and bloody, like a loop of intestine?